No Romance Chapter 26

Chapter 26, “3:10 to Girafa Península”

The rivers of “lava” moved faster than Jack or Ann had been expecting.
            “Paddle faster!” said Jack as the bubbly orange stuff entered the mouth of the river fifty feet behind them.
            “There are no oars!” said Ann. “This isn’t even a rowboat!”
            “Then why haven’t we turned on the motor yet?”
            “That’s a more legitimate point!”
            They had just untied the boat and let it float down the river. Jack immediately corrected the error of their ways by switching on the outboard motor. Then they realized the peril of that choice: increased speed in an underground tunnel that happened to be pitch black.
            “Headlight! Headlight!” shouted Ann in darkness and desperation.
            “It’s supposed to come on with the motor!”
            “Okay, there it is.” The headlight had indeed come on. “Crisis averted?”
            “No,” said Jack, keeping an eye on the direction of the boat. “Crisis CONQUERED.”
            The radio came to life and Hilti’s New Zealander voice entered their ears.
            “Yes, hello, Jack and Annabel. Clara and I would really appreciate it if you could get us that password. Sometime within the next four minutes, or so my dashboard tells me. That’d be really, really great.”
            Jack turned on Ann in a swift swoop. One could almost hear the wind rushing around him, he moved so fast.
            “Annie! How do I reach Paula?”
            She looked affronted for some reason. “I have no idea.”
            “Are you Paula right now?”
            “How can I tell?”
            “Maybe I should punch you and see what happens.”
            “Jack!”
            “This is the fate of the island and the fate of our lives, you girl! Seriously, why aren’t you wearing little pigtails and a dress---”
            Paula interrupted Jack by punching him in the face.
            Jack turned back to her slowly, rubbed his jaw, and grinned.
            “That was easy.”
            She glared at him, looked away, and folded her arms beneath her breasts.
            Jack spoke into his wristwatch radio. “Hilti, we’ll have your password in just a minute.”
            “You have three,” was the response, “before this island blows sky high.”
            “I know that,” Jack said, irritated. “Why do you have to keep reminding me of the stakes? Never mind, never mind.” He turned to Paula. “Tell me what you know.”
            “Why should I?”
            “Really? That? Are you a child?”
            “I’m a woman and a damn good one.”
            “Then do the right thing like a damb good woman would.”
            This triggered something. Paula’s eyes shifted, giving away her uncertainty. Then her hard gaze broke and her mouth wibble-wobbled.
            “I can’t remember!” she said, wide-open eyes watering.
            Jack was confused. Was this still Paula? Didn’t sound like her. Or look like her.
            “Annie?”
            Paula shook her head.
            “Poppy?”
            Paula shook her head.
            “It’s somewhere in here,” she said, motioning to her head. “Somewhere...”
            Jack’s eyes grew so thin that...well, never mind. It was still Paula. And Paula was attracted to power.
            “What is it,” he said in a flat, direct voice. “What is the password.”
            She grimaced and a tear fell through her mascara. “I told you---”
            “WHAT IS IT?” Jack shouted, really shouted. “WHAT IS---”
            “I TOLD YOU!” she shouted back, her eyes and nostrils flaring in indignation.
            “You aren’t strong enough to save those people, are you?” Jack said mockingly. “You’re just impotent, like Annie. Can’t do a thing. Can’t remember a single word.”
            “Wait wait. Shut up. Shut up. Wait. I think...I can’t remember it because it was something we say so often. It was something common. More than common. We don’t even remember it’s a word. No, shut UP Jack. Stop asking me what it is. What it is...what it is...it is what, it is what...”
            “Jack, Annabel, I can see the wall...it’s yellow and black and has one of those nuclear symbols on it....” came Hilti’s voice. “It getting closer...I mean, it is getting closer...”
            “THAT’S IT!” roared Ann Paula, coming to life. “Is is it! It is is! Is is! IS.”
            “And that makes perfect sense!” said Jack triumphantly. “My son is...is what? That’s me the passwords are talking about, right?”
            “Don’t know, and who even cares. Hilti, did you get that?” said Ann Paula, yelling at Jack’s wristwatch radio. “Is!”
            Jack pressed the appropriate button on the radio and spoke into it. “Hilti, enter the word ‘is’. It should be the one.”
            A few silent, suspenseful seconds (other than the intense music Jack could hear that Ann could not) went by before Hilti responded.
            “The gates are opening! We are good to go! We’re over halfway to getting off this island!”
            “Isle,” muttered Jack, but not into the radio.
            “But I do need the next one within about twenty minutes!”
            Jack sighed. “We have to find Blake as soon as we get to Boxcutter Bay,” he said.
            “Do you have a plan for him?” Ann Paula asked.
            “I’m working on it.”

---

I knew everyone had a weakness. There was a way around every problem I was presented with, a solution to every puzzle and an answer to every question. That was just how these things worked, and how they always worked. I knew Blake would be no different. In fact, the seeds of his weakness had been sown the very first day I met him, given by Golbez himself in the open top jeep we rode in together.

“Don’t apologize, Blake,” Golbez had said. “It just makes you look weak. What if you have to battle him in real hand to hand combat later on? He’d know what you’re like inside and destroy you with a well-chosen word!”

Of course, I didn’t remember those exact words as they’re presumably printed there. The gist---along with other elements of the conversation in that jeep---was sufficient. I knew the exact combination of words that would tear down that giant of a man and turn him against his old boss Golbez and join my side. Or at least, help me out in getting off the isle.

The river, because of the significant rainfall that entire day, was higher than it had been earlier, so Annie and I (I can’t call her anything but Annie) had to stay low in the boat. But more importantly, the speed of the river’s flow had been increased, hastening our journey by several minutes, which I knew would be imperative to getting to Blake in time.

            But I didn’t care to thank the gods, or do anything that might engage them in discussion or even bring them to my mind. I didn’t want to think about them or my existential situation or what my judgment would be when they finally finished conferring. The scene at the volcano and the epic Mexican standoff had successfully distracted me, but sitting there in that boat for just those few quiet minutes brought back that numb, anxious feeling in my gut. I guess it was...fear. Of what they could do to me. Never had I rebelled so openly. It felt good in the moment, but those things we regret always do.
            That raised a question: did I regret it?
            Not yet, I’d probably answer.
            We got to Boxcutter Bay. After abandoning the Ex Nihilo we ran down the hill to the nearly empty compound.
            “Do you know where Blake’s going to be?”
            “By the train station. That’s where he was before.”
            We passed by a few Cardaccians who obviously weren’t aware that they had been freed. I was perfectly content to let them stay that way, but Annie, trying to do the right thing, stopped to try to explain to them what was going on. I had to grab her arm and pull her away.
            “Come on!” I said. “We can worry about them later!”
            I felt like I had performed that exact action many times over the past few days. It was wearing on me. Just like every other stupid thing today.
            The railway was in sight. We passed the restaurant at which Golbez and “Paula” and I had met earlier that morning. Then just down one more corridor, around some ugly chain link fence (I hoped I wasn’t alone in hating how chain link fence looked, trashy and industrial), and up to the platform.
            “Three minutes!” came Hilti’s voice over the radio. “We’re getting nervous again, Jack.”
            “Well you crashed our damb plane!” I replied into my wristwatch. “So this makes us even.” I took a deep breath and turned to the problem at hand. “All right, all right, we can do this, we can do this. Now just where the hell is Blake?”
            “Hey!” came the sound of a soft voice trying to sound like a bark.
            “That was mighty convenient,” I mumbled as Annie and I turned around.
            There was Blake, coming out of the train station building. It was easy to forget how huge he was. Nearly seven feet tall, an even longer wingspan, shoulders like boulders (ooh, I like that one), and a chest the size of a tank. I had to play it completely straight. No fear of the giant.
            “Blake! I’m so glad I found you!” I said, walking up to him with a bounce in my step.
            “You were...you were looking for me?” he said, confused.
            My ploy was working. I had him off the square.
            “We have some bad news.” This part was genuine. But at the last second I decided to change it around. “No, skip that for now. I’ll tell you later. Right now I just wanted to talk to you, get to know you better.”
            I could see I was successfully bewildering him. He didn’t even reply properly to that. Just knit his eyebrows, trying to figure out what was going on.
            Then I said something that made him positively melt.
            “Blake, can I read your poetry?”
            Tears started flowing. It had worked better than I planned. He couldn’t speak.
            Annie gaped, disbelieving. I thought about being impressed with myself, but it really wasn’t that hard a task. We got him on our side; we got the turn---now we just needed the prestige.
            Time to walk through the door we had opened.
            “Has no one ever asked you that before?” I inquired gently.
            “No one. Never,” he said, shaking his cement block of a head. “I would...I would love to show you. I was working one one just now.” He withdrew a notepad and pen from his pocket. “I had to hide this right when I saw you. Golbez doesn’t want me to compose while I’m on duty.”
            Then he burst into tears again and motioned us off the platform and onto the sand. Through his copious tears he drew a stick figure on the ground. “You made him cry! You made tears come out of his FACE.”
            I reached up and patted him on the shoulder. “I’m sorry, buddy. But I’d really like to read the one you were writing just now. Well, actually, before that---we really need something. A favor. See, the train is moving, and it needs to get past the Bay of Potato Peelers. Can you radio in your password to the train man?”
            “Oh, yeah, sure, of course,” he said, sniffing. His eyes were dry now, and he wiped away the remaining streaks on his cheeks. He then put his wrist to his mouth and said, “This is Blake. The password follows: named.”
            Named. My son is named---
            Jackie? What else could it be? That was Golbez speaking, right? He made up that password.
            I’d try ‘Jackie’ at a later time, when Blake wasn’t here with us. For now we were stuck reading his poetry.

“The book of poems I’m writing is called, ‘To Keith.’ He was my best friend in the whole wide world and he DIED. And that’s why I got into poetry. Here, this is the one I was working on before you came. I started it a couple of hours ago.”

I took the notepad and read:

            The bats, they fly
            WIth their wings, so high,
            Time is flying by,
            What’s your favorite kind of animal?

            I looked up. “Blake, this is beautiful.”
            I heard Annie behind me stifling a laugh that she turned into a cough.
            Blake’s eyes started watering again. “Really?”
            “I’d say my favorite animal is probably...the tiger. Or maybe the lamb. I’m not sure.”
            “Both are very poetic creatures!” Blake said excitedly, bouncing up and down. “Oh, those are perfect choices! I wonder which one I’d be born as. Hmm...”
            “Can I read some more of these later? We’re actually in kind of a hurry, so...”
            “But oh, didn’t you say you had some bad news to tell me earlier?” said Blake in a quieter, more somber voice.
            “Oh, right,” I said. “The bad news I had to say earlier was that...I don’t know how to say this, so I’ll just say it---” I hated myself for saying those words; I’d come all this way, and then to give in to a cliche like that? Horrifying---”Golbez is dead. And I think his whole army is too. You see, a miniature volcano just erupted in the middle of the isle, and---”

Blake bellowed like a mourning tiger, and it actually made me, in complete and total honesty, step back.

            “He’s...dead? And you killed him? You, who I just gave the most secret of all secret passwords to?”
            “No, Blake, no! I---we didn’t kill him! Like I said, a volcano---it was just a random occurrence. I mean, no, he chose it, he chose to set that volcano off and go into it. It was his decision. We barely escaped in time.”
            “But---but---” Blake’s tank-like chest was heaving, but he appeared to have calmed ever so slightly.

“Now, Blake,” I said, arms forward and hands open in a soothing movement, “Are you going to be the Tyger? Or the Lamb? The choice is ours. I mean, yours.”

“I’m...I’m the Lamb,” he said, breathing heavily. “I’m the Lamb with the broken leg that the Shepherd Golbez picked up so long ago. Three decades of service to him and now it’s all over...he did tell me about that Emergency Plan once, a long time ago. He said that’s how he’d want to go. So...now I’ll never see him again. O Shepherd! Thou has plucked me from my wounded place for the last, final, ultimate time. For the final act of mercy...”

            “But now you can be free to write all the poetry you want!”
            “Yeah. Yeah, that’s true. But Mr. McDowell! It’s your father who’s dead. How do you feel?”
            That was a good question. How did I feel about my father’s death?
            “Honestly, Blake, I don’t know if it’s really hit me yet. I had what you could call a complex relationship with him. He never really felt like my father, so I’m still figuring out how I feel.”
            “Maybe you could put your feelings into poetry! That’s what I’m going to do. But argh! How am I going to make money? This job is all I’m good at! It comes naturally to me. Look at me. I’ve never worked out or done exercises; I was just born this way. But it’s not who I want to be! It’s not who I am! It’s just...the only way I got validation. Golbez was always so proud of me when I punched a guy really well.”
            “I honestly feel like he may have been more your father than mine. And I’m sure you can get validation with your poetry! That’s what I just gave you, wasn’t it?”

”You know, you might be right. My pa, my real pa, always said, ‘Don’t quit your day job, son.’ I never did. But now I can. Now I can.”

            Eternally typecast. All his life. Just like me...just like me. I took genuine pity on the guy, not least of all because his poetry...well, let’s just say it wasn’t really beautiful.
            “Blake, this is the splendor of your new beginning. Like a phoenix rising from the ashes.”
            “Ooh! That’s my next poem! That’s my next poem! Oh, Mr. McDowell, you are a genius!”
            And he started writing something down. I frowned, as what I had said was pretty derivative, and I felt like I may have even completely stolen it from somewhere. Hmm.
            As Golbez would say, quidquid. I had another question for Mr. William Wgerald Blake.

“Blake, do you happen to know the last word, the last password that can get us off this isle?”

Blake looked like he was thinking real hard. Finally he shook his head and said, “No. No I don’t. But Golbez did keep a strongbox that he kept inside a secret locked room. Maybe I could take you there! You’re the rightful heir, aren’t you?”

I wasn’t sure if Golbez had time to have written me out of the will yet, nor if he even had time to write me into it to begin with. I also wasn’t sure he had a will. And in that case, it seemed like a simple solution. I must be the sole inheritor of Golbez Industries.

Well huh.

“Take me to that room,” I said. Then I remembered Annie behind me, and could feel her annoyance at being left out of the conversation. She’d probably complain that I was trying to disenfranchise women or something, then punch me. I decided to guard myself from that instead of convince her that things are just so much simpler when it’s just me and the enemy. I stepped backwards to be at her side. “Us. Take us to that secret room.”

Blake took us to the restaurant, which I remembered as where Golbez went when he was hungry, even when it was, like all of Boxcutter Bay, totally empty of both cooks and customers. But Blake didn’t stop there; he went into the kitchen and swung a certain pan that had been hanging on the wall from the right to the left. I heard a little victorious chime as a secret passage opened where a sink used to be, right before our eyes. It was a pretty cool effect. I wondered if I had seen that somewhere else before.

Down the stairs we went, into a simple basement with dark wood paneling and red shag carpeting. Another door was in the middle of the wall opposite us. It had a silver handle with a keypad directly beneath.

“Now, uh, I don’t know the keycode for this, so, uh...”

            So Blake took some initiative and punched in the keycode. Now, I don’t mean he pressed in the numbers; I mean he literally punched in the keycode. As in, with a fist. As with many of my other solutions in this story, violence was the correct answer. The door obliged, and respectfully opened itself for our entrance.
            We walked in wordlessly. All else was still. No sound from either above ground or below. This room had a gray cement floor and red brick walls. On the far side was a single filing cabinet with locked drawers that needed a key to open. On top of the cabinet was a small wooden box. This, too, was secured, not by lock and key but by a little system that needed a password and had a qwerty keyboard with little tiny letters that looked hard to press. I noted that a dambed lot of passwords were needed on this isle and sighed.
            Otherwise quietly, I took the box in hand. On a hunch I entered Moriarty. It popped open.

A photo lay inside. A photo of a child. A tan-skinned boy about ten years old. His features were soft, round, childish, such that I suspected he would have grown out of them within a few years. On his left hand was a baseball glove, in his right, a ball. Behind him was jungle. No other person or thing was in frame.

And that was all that lay in the box.

By chance I turned the picture over. On the back it said Jackie.

I put it down. It probably meant something. Maybe even something significant. But I didn’t have a clue as to what it could be, other than the photo itself.

Before I could even raise the issue with Annie (not that I had any desire to), Hilti’s voice came on the radio---but I was too far away, mentally, to register what he said. Though I did hear the second thing.

“And they have GUNS!” said Hilti’s voice.

“I’m sorry, what? Can you repeat that first part?”

“A bunch of guys with guns just hitched a ride on the train. Twenty or so.”

            “What do they want?”
            “How am I supposed to know?”
            “By them saying so while they’re pointing the guns at you.”
            “They aren’t with me. They’re just hanging out on some of the empty cars around the middle. I can see them in the rearview mirrors. But they look really close. Really, really close.”
            “That’s how those mirrors work,” I said absently. Were they friendly? Probably not. Guys with guns rarely are. But you never know. Either way, I knew we couldn’t just get off the isle that easily. Damb it to hell. I sighed and said, “Okay, we’ll be ready for them.” Then, to Blake and Annie, “Come on, back up.”
            Annie and I took the stairs pretty fast while Blake lumbered in our wake. He stayed behind as the two of us went back to the train station.
            “Hilti, about how long until the train gets to Boxcutter Bay?” I said into the radio.
            “About twenty minutes,” was the response.
            I immediately looked to the tower clock near the tracks. It said ten to three.

“We’ll have to wait,” I said to Annie, and sat myself down on the railroad beam.

It was the first time on this isle that I had nothing to do. As I sat down, anxiety started pouring into my noticeably empty stomach, making me irritable and sour. More than usual, I should add. My tiredness. It wasn’t mere physical weariness. And it wasn’t the same as last night. Maybe the same as this morning---my weariness of the life I led---but increased tenfold. Something was building up inside, soon to burst out. It all depended on what the gods were going to do with me. I wasn’t afraid anymore. They could do to me what they liked. I’d still keep fighting them at every chance I got.

---

“I can’t just sit and wait here,” Jack said, getting up. “I’m going to go meet that train.” He started walking along the tracks, towards the jungle from whence they came. “You can come if you want.”

            He was already twenty yards ahead when Ann caught up to him.
            “Do we have a plan?” she asked.
            “Not if they’re not friendly.”
            “Oh.”
            He opened his mouth to ask if she was afraid, but found he just didn’t care anymore. Whether it was Annie or Paula or Poppy or all of them or none of them did not matter.
            They walked, Ann trailing a few steps behind and to the right. The sandy shore Boxcutter Bay was built on turned gradually into forest. Up ahead the ground declined sharply into a bowl-like ravine filled with moss-covered logs and lots of green-leaved plants. Jack planned ahead and stayed on the train tracks. Ann stayed her course to the side.
            “The weather seems to be lightening up,” Ann said conversationally. “What do you suppose that means?”
            The sky to the south was bright and clear, the sun shining strong. But to the north, across the sea to the mainland, storm clouds retained their dominance.

“The gods are still making up their minds,” Jack said quietly.

            “About what?”
            He just shook his head.
            Then Ann, distracted by the conversation, slipped into the ravine, and only avoided a nasty, serious fall by catching herself on one of the logs. She gave a little shriek, but it died quickly. Jack watched unconcernedly as she struggled to pull herself up to safe ground.
            “Jack! Help me!”
            “Do you mean, save you?”
            “I---I...”

“Because I don’t want to save you.”

            “What? Why not?”
            “Because I’m tired. Switch to Paula. Save yourself.”
            He continued walking along the tracks. Ann stopped struggling and just looked on Jack, hurt clearly in her eyes. But he didn’t give her a second glance.
            Just a few seconds later he stopped in the tracks and listened, shoulders tense. Then he whipped around to face Ann, his nostrils flared. He looked angry. But it was not at her.
            He quickly moved down to the bank of the ravine and reached an arm out to help her.
            “What’s going on?” she said in a panicky voice.
            “I can feel the rails vibrating. The train’s coming.”
            She took his hand and together they got up to stable ground. Then they heard a voice, distant, coming from back toward the compound.
            “Hey! Will you be needing help, Mr. McDowell?”
            It was Blake. He had seven or eight of the Cardaccian workers with him.
            “If they’re not armed, they’re not going to be much help!” Jack shouted back. “Just act as if nothing is wrong. We’ll be watching in case they’re enemies.” Then, to Ann, “We need to hide. The train will stop automatically at the Boxcutter station. We’ll watch the guys on the train to see who they are.”

“Then there is a plan,” Ann said.

“My guess is they’re some last remnant of Golbez’s men, here to make sure I don’t get away. If they are, we shoot on sight.”
            “I don’t have a weapon.”

“What? Paula always had one.”

            “I’m not Paula, though. I’m Ann.”
            “One day I’ll figure out what that means, but today is not that day. Okay, fine. If you had a gun, would you have Paula’s aim?”
            “That’s instinct, so yeah, probably.”
            “Great. I’m giving you Wrench.”
            “What!”
            “You know, you say that a lot,” Jack growled.
            “But Wrench is your gun. It’s always been your gun. What will you do without a weapon?”
            “If the gods want to keep me alive, there won’t be any problem either way. There have been a deplorable lack of fistfights in this story, anyway.”
            He withdrew Wrench from his waistband and shoved it into her hand.
            “You lose this thing and you are dead.”

It looked like he even meant it. When his back was turned she sneered at him and huffed.

“We need to draw them away from the train.”

“You’re acting under the assumption they’re bad guys.”

“If that whole scene at the base of the volcano wasn’t enough to show you that I’ve got no friends on this isle---”

“Okay, okay, they’re probably bad guys. But if they’re Golbez’s men, they’ll know me, right? They won’t hurt me. I’m Golbez’s girly.”

He glared at her. “Remember Golbez’s final act with you? It wasn’t a kind one. Also, remember how no one gave you a second thought before war broke out? And all those men whose guns you stole and gave to the Cardaccians? That scene on the beach gave them plenty of reasons to consider you an enemy.”

Ann sighed. “That’s true. So I won’t try to use my feminine wiles on them.”

“Now isn’t the time. No, just shut up. We need to get them over here, to this ravine, so we have terrain on our side. The flat station platform would be a terrible place to fight. No theater there at all. So we need to hide.”

Once more Jack grabbed Ann by the hand, though this was no longer necessary; she had started moving with him. Doubling back, they found a place to hide, behind a voluminous piece of shrubbery a little ways from where the train would be stopping. They could hear the train whistle now, and the trembling of the tracks. It reminded both of them of the rumbling volcano. The signal of oncoming doom.

Jack shook his head, clearing it of the thought.

What was he doing? Why was he doing all of this? To get off the island? Why?

He shook his head again, but these thoughts did not flee. Instead they attacked feverishly.

Then the train horn, like a monster’s roar. Here it came, out from the trees into the lighter jungle. Jack watched without blinking to see who the men in the cargo cars were. A couple of the sliding doors were open, and there they were, some standing around inside the car, others sitting on the edge, letting their feet dangle. All had weapons in their hands.

“It looks like Amon Dem’s men,” Ann said. “I recognize a few of them.”

Jack cursed, very pointedly using the gods’ names in vain---William, Eagle Eyes, Montgomery. Pshah. “Definitely enemies,” he said.

Why were they enemies? What made them want to kill him? What made him want to kill them?

There were some valid answers to these questions, but Jack didn’t feel them.

The train gave off a high-pitched screech as it braked for the Boxcutter Bay station. Jack ran after it. He called out to Ann over his shoulder, “Get on the other side of the ravine there. That’s where we’re going to stake our claim.”

Gosh, Jack thought. I sound like a gold digger.

The train stopped before Jack got there and he could see the swarm of men, as Hilti had said, about twenty, jumping off onto the ground near the station platform.

            He thought about sending a message to Hilti to not start the train up again, but remembered that Hilti needed the final password, which Jack had yet to give him. But he thought he knew what it might be.
            Jackie.
            But he wasn’t sure he knew what that meant anymore.

He approached the men, Amon Dem’s personal toon. He neglected to notice how convenient it was that Amon Dem, of all people, had shown up in exactly the place they needed his password to get through. The final word that would signify his freedom.

He wanted it. Wanted that freedom. But right now, in this moment, this final moment, everything felt dead, inside and out.

Jack acted anyway. Played the part. He went forward, exposing himself completely.

“Hey, big shots! Too busy to go to your father’s funeral party?”

Then he spun around and started sprinting.

Shouts followed and bullets whizzed past him as he ran the thirty yards to the ravine. He leaped from the near bank and caught himself on a vine that appeared out of thin air, swinging across in a perfect arc and landing perfectly on the far side, where Ann waited.

I’ll die before I swing on a vine again, he swore internally.

Then a bullet zipped through the sleeve of his jacket, skimming the flesh of his arm. It stung like a sharp finger flick. Then it burned.

The first new feeling he’d felt in a long, long time.

“Hah!” he cried loudly, pumping his fists in the air. “YES! SensATION! Pain! I love it! Keep ‘em coming!”

The attackers certainly did. They had been successfully drawn over to the edge of the ravine, where they gathered across from Jack and Ann.

“You boys aren’t going to face us two at the same time, are you?” Ann said, aiming Wrench stylishly with both hands. “It won’t be much of a fair fight.”

            The men stirred. Something was clearly unnerving them, for they had lowered their guns with uncertain looks. Jack doubted it was because of Ann’s words; he wasn’t sure if she had meant fair for him and her or fair for them. But maybe ambiguity was the point. Ambiguity was literary, right?
            Then came Amon Dem’s voice with that strange accent. “Wound him, but do not kill him! He has to face his proper justice.” The short, tan-skinned man himself emerged in front of his fellows. He and Jack looked each other in the eye without pretense for the very first time. “He must be taken to Golbez alive.”
            “Oh, you didn’t hear about that?” Jack said. “Golbez is dead. As are the Johnsons, the Cardaccians, and all of your compatriots on this silly little island. Didn’t you notice the volcano going off? The volcano he himself caused---”
            “What is this nonsense?” Amon Dem said.
            “He’s dead!”
            “And you murdered him?”
            “Of course n---”
            “Of course! The hero admits it! The man calling himself Jack McDowell murders the man he claims is his father! Golbez took you in, Hero. Was that all a part of your plan? Convince him you were his son so you could take him and this family down? You sicken me.”
            Jack stayed silent. It was a clever narrative of Amon Dem’s, and he wasn’t going to bother correcting it. Let he and his men think they were fighting for a worthy cause. It would make no difference.
            “Whatever,” Jack spat. “Quidquid, as Golbez would say. If you fight me, I’m going to kill you. If you let me get on that train, you can all keep your lives.”
            “Does that sound like a hero, brothers? Of course not. I’ll be the one to take the first shot.”
            Amon Dem raised a black semiautomatic pistol.
            But Ann got him first. A bullet through his left calf.
            Amon Dem screamed in pain and nearly fell headfirst into the ravine, but his men caught him in time.
            “We’ll take him, Head Hermano! You stay in the back!”
            Jack caught Ann’s eye and winked. “Nice shot.”
            She smiled back. “Let’s do this.”
            But that single wink sank Jack deeper into oblivion. The old Dilemma had come up again: her. He had to remain apart from her, aloof. He couldn’t be involved, not with her, not with anyone. He had to retain the only aspect of his self he had a choice in defining. He had to.
            Else, what?
            That’s when the ground fell out from under him, and he and Ann slid, voicing noises of alarm, down the newly carved out ravine slope.
            This took Amon Dem’s men by surprise, too.
            At the bottom Jack and Ann righted himself immediately.
            “Get behind me,” he said quickly as they stood. “And aim over my shoulder.”
            She did as he commanded. They faced upwards at the men.
            “You won’t be able to hit me with your guns,” said Jack. “You know you won’t. You guys and all your friends have never been able to before. But we can shoot you from here. And that gun that she’s holding, it never misses. And it never runs out of bullets. So you can stay up there and miss and get shot and killed, or you can come down here and give me a good old fashioned fist fight. I’ve been missing those lately.”
            He didn’t know why he said it. A desperate plea for excitement?
            Well, it worked, but it didn’t work. For one, it was a lie. He felt nothing. And for another, the results were mixed. Some of the men tried firing down on Jack and Ann, but because of the jacket, they all missed. Ann fired back at those who tried, killing them. Their bodies tumbled down into the ravine. One of them was just shot in the arm, but it killed him anyway. Wrench had that capability.
            Seeing that capability, the rest of the men gave their war cries, something about brothers and family and honor, and slid down the steep incline to take on Jack with their bare hands. And so Jack began to fight.
            But like we said, it didn’t really work.

I hate this, Jack thought as the initial punches were thrown. I hate this and I swear on my life and on the gods that I’ll never do it again.

            Some of them tried to shoot from the top of the ravine, some tried getting cover to shoot from behind, and some went into the ravine to shoot Jack point blank, but none of those worked either. Ann kept shooting, her inner Paula taking over.

Jack punched and ducked and elbowed and kicked, all with an exceeding dullness in his heart. Cold apathy masked his rising frustration---his inner self was becoming his outer self. Both didn’t care what happened, how it happened, why it happened. He wasn’t even looking his enemies in the eye anymore. So he didn’t notice how scared they were getting---how they were trying to get out of the way, how their worst fears about this legendary hero and his invincibility were coming true---how he mowed down everyone who got in his path, for he had the gods on his side. They may have even see how his fists and feet moved and maneuvered of their own accord. How his every movement, every decision, was propelled by that jacket.

            The jacket. The symbol of his identity. The shield and protection of his body. The chains, the confines, the prison of his soul.
            “Will it ever end!?” he groaned, right after dodging an opponent’s blow.
            No, said a voice.
            And then everything seemed to freeze.