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RED SOX: In spite of everything that happened last fall and this winter, let us find the strength to believe again.
WARNING: This is going to be a rough ride. Here’s the list of probable causes; lying, stealing, cheating, drinking, drugs, straight sex, gay sex, lesbian sex, group sex but no fuzzy animals will be harmed for the sake of a story, fornication, common night walking, heresy, bigotry, more phobias than a psych major can catalog, treason, nationalism, isolationism, raised voices, angry words, hurtful looks, preconceived notions, foul language, violence, murder, rape, rampant impure thoughts, bondage, S & M, B & D, P’s and Q’s but never Y, sodomy, explosions, ridiculous geographical explanations, impossible science, mob rule, religious zealots, ruthless business decisions, anarchists..., let’s just say that this story is...,
by Phair
Kendall hauled her duffle bag out of the taxi’s trunk. The stench of stale beer, pot, and fish made her flinch as she slung it over her shoulder. Two weeks at sea with a bunch of aging, reformed hippies had left her with enough money to pay the bills for two months and a little more empty in her heart than the night she left.
“How did I become a babysitter for spoiled, rich, middle aged idiots wanting to test the last of their metal on some stupid, contrived adventure?” She asked herself for the hundredth time in less than a month.
Her eyes beseeched the sky but she received no cosmic answer as the cab pulled away from the curb. The only response to her thoughts were the honks and sirens drifting in the salt heavy air of the cool San Francisco night. With a weary sigh of resignation, she climbed the stairs to the office of SAVAGE ADVENTURES.
The light in the first floor window was lit. She guessed her business partner was still working booking contracts for their little enterprise. More contracts meant more money but contributed to the dwindling of Kendall’s soul. At least, her partner’s presence in the office saved her from going around to the back entrance of the building. That entrance also led to her apartment above the office. However it meant two extra flights of stairs to crawl as you had to walk down before you could climb up. After her latest expedition, Kendall was too tired to face the extra flight of stairs.
“Hey Stein, just me,” she stated as she stepped in the door and silenced the shouting her partner was in the middle of.
The old man turn on her and hissed in a thick German accent, “Stupid shit! You have the worst fucking timing of any woman I’ve ever met. Couldn’t you have been ten minutes different in either direction!”
Kendall heard the tone. She understood Stein’s fear as she took in the scene around the room. Her partner was standing up against four muscular brutes surrounding one seated wimp. “Beckworth! Get you stupid ass out of my place. And, I mean now!”
“Kendall, please let’s not start this way. Don’t be angry with me. I’ve come with a business proposal. It’ll be good for both of us. Why can’t you and Mr. Stein sit down with me to discuss this offer like reasonable people?” Beckworth hesitated before continuing in a low voice, “Kendall, it’s important. Really, we need your help. I need your help.”
Kendall dumped her bag on the floor and walked over to stand next to Stein before answering. She towered over the frail old man, “We don’t need or want your kind of business, Beckworth. Your company made it’s choice two years ago. We got nothing to say to each other except, Good Bye.”
“Look,” Beckworth jumped to his feet and shouted, “Dr. Drapper is in serious trouble, I think. The whole settlement hasn’t been heard from in close to eight months. Who knows what’s happened to them. I sent kids there, Kendall. Little kids. Babies. You’re our only chance to save them. You know the island better than anybody else...,”
“Yeah, I do. Which clearly explains why you gave the contract to an inexperienced new grad like Drapper?” Kendall shouted back.
She took several menacing steps toward the thin, blonde wimp. Two of his muscle men surged forward and grabbed Kendall. They drove her back three feet. Slamming her hard against the desk’s edge and pinned her there.
“Enough of this bullshit. You guys are all done. I’m calling the cops!” Stein announced.
“Nope!” A bald muscle man who stepped up from the shadows and stood at Stein’s eye level pulled his weapon and pointed at the old man’s head. “You’re doing nothing and staying right where you are. Isn’t he, bitch?”
“Stein, hold it. Don’t do anything. Just stay put,” Kendall stopped her own struggle to caution her friend. “This how you conduct business these days, Beckworth? Strong arming to get what you want? A gun to the head of an old man?” Her disgust could not be concealed in her tone.
“Please,” the wimp pleaded as if he were the one being held down. “Hear me out. Listen to what I have to say and then I’ll go. Regardless of your willingness to help, hear me out and I’ll leave you in peace.”
Kendall strained against her captors’ hold but quickly realized she couldn’t budge them. A broken nosed Korean guy on one side and a farm fed American jock on the other held her fast. She relaxed her resistance and answered, “Make it fast, Beckworth.”
“Guys, ease up on ‘em. Give ‘em some space to breath,” Beckworth said as he returned to his chair.
The muscle men stepped back. However, the bald man kept his gun pointed at Stein’s head. The bald man gave a taunting grin to the old man as he pumped up his chest in victory.
“I’ve seen worse in my time than you, boy!” Stein spat at him. “Faigelah!”
The bald man’s grinned turned sour and his eyes narrowed with hate, “I don’t know what you said but I take offence to your tone, Jew Boy! When will your kind learn their place.”
“Beckworth!” Kendall yelled as she shook herself free of the muscle men previously restraining her.
“MR. SMITH! LOWER YOUR WEAPON!” Beckworth’s voice lifted above the opposing sides. “NOW!”
Smith glared at the old man but replaced his gun in it’s holster. “Another day, kike!”
“If I only have one more day then I’ve lived longer and better than you’ll ever see,” Stein promised Smith.
Kendall drew close to her old friend and hushed in his ear, “Abram, come on and sit down. Sarah will have my head on a spit if I let you take another heart attack.”
“My child,” the old man let his friend guide him to a chair, “don’t trust them. They smell like fascists.”
“Oh, I didn’t know that fascists have a smell,” Kendall chuckled as she guided the old man to his desk chair.
Once seated, Abram took Kendall’s face in the palms’ of his hands, “Fascists smell like rotting pig meat, my girl. Never forget it! I know I won’t. Never. Not in my days or in my sleep. Even in death I will remain vigilant to their kind.”
Kendall’s eyes welled up as she answered, “Never. I’ll never forget your story, Abram. Never.”
“Kendall,” Beckworth spoke. “I have an offer for you.”
The woman stood and moved to the front of the desk. She partially obstructed Stein’s view of Beckworth but also his henchmen’s view of Stein. Letting out an annoyed sigh, she nodded for him to continue.
“New Covenant Island hasn’t contacted my company in more that eight months. The agreement is one contact per quarter or we send in the troops.”
“Mercenaries,” Kendall corrected.
“Peace Officers,” Beckworth responded. “Anyway, we gave them some wiggle room figuring the weather could cause havoc with the equipment. We waited.”
Kendall smirked. “Even your little pay for service scientist couldn’t keep her radio dry? How sad?”
“I don’t know what went wrong with Dr. Drapper’s radio or her emergency transponder. She was in a remote location. Her site was at a polar opposite point to Settlement 1: Eden Reborn. It should be safe to assume that if she had a problem with her two means of outside contact then the main settlement would not suffer the same type of loss. At least, one of their four means of contact should have survived.”
“So, what they all broke. What do you want from me?” Kendall tried to sound disinterested.
“New Covenant Island is off official satellite. I did a fly over to get a bird’s eye of the place. I couldn’t mark the location from the sky. Kendall, regardless of what you think of me, you know that I’m one of the best at detecting habitats from above. I saw Eden Reborn at more than thirteen hundred feet a year ago. But, last week at just below a thousand feet, there wasn’t a trace.” The man shook his head, “Kendall, the settlement is gone.”
Kendall was silent as she thought about the information. She finally asked, “What do you want me to do about it?”
“Help me find them. I didn’t see bodies only burnt up homes. Please, help find the survivors. Help me find Dr. Drapper. Let me set this right.”
“What do you think?” Kendall looked over her shoulder at her partner. The old man puckered his lips like he was sucking a sour lemon. It made her smile.
“My girl, there are children there. Who with a heart could abandon children?”
Kendall gave a hesitant smile. “If I’m gone too long, will send somebody to look for me?”
“No,” Abram shook his head. “I’ll come for you myself. We’ll face paradise together or not at all.”
“You heard the man, Beckworth. We have a business agreement. Compensation terms as stated two years ago plus two percent. Should anything really bad happen to me or should I perish, then you have Abram Stein to answer to.” Kendall gave a small smile, “May God have mercy on your soul.”
