Stranger Tides Read online

  “Oh, it’s you,” Jerry snarled with disdain, “What are you doing here?” He stepped the rest of the way into the elevator, moved to the mirror at the back and straightened his tie. He gave his hair another flick, before adjusting his suit and turning around.

  The Lamppost Man feigned mocked surprise, “Why Jerry, whatever do you mean? I’m merely showing my support. It’s not every day someone from mid-management gets called up to see the Board of the Directors.” Without even tearing his gaze away from Jerry, he extended a white-gloved finger and pressed a brightly-lit button labeled 1000.

  DING.

  The doors of the elevator were of the gilded cage variety and rumbled closed on their tracks.

  “Top floor…” the Lamppost Man said sardonically, “must be pretty important.”

  “Wear that stupid grin of yours all you want, but I truly doubt I’m in any serious trouble.”

  The Lamppost Man tilted his head as he thought about this for a moment. “Well, you don’t exactly get called up to the top floor for nothing, do you? I mean you are responsible for the Zombie-Pirate-King and his crew roaming about, pillaging and plundering across all the lands.” He straightened his head and asked, “How do you mess up a refurbishment anyway? I mean those R-Techs practically run themselves…”

  Jerry dismissed him with a flick of his hair, but as they began passing through the 300’s he shivered involuntarily. Human Resources. The array of screams heard within was as varied in octaves as they were numerous.

  The Lamppost Man closed his eyes and listened intently. “Oh, listen to them. What sweet music they make.”

  The elevator soon passed through them and continued to carry them upwards into the 600’s. Most of these floors were combined to accommodate one massive hanger for Research and Development. Within the cavernous space, they could see an early space rocket, like the kind used in the Apollo Moon Landings. Presently a lunar module was landing on a very convincing moonscape littered with strange alien artifacts. Seeing this, the Lamppost Man cooed, “Say doesn’t this look interesting.”

  Jerry harrumphed. “Please. That stuff is decades old. That’s merely what they want you to see. It’s an illusion. Who knows what those filthy lab rats are really up to behind closed doors. Nothing good, I can tell you that.” Finger-combing his hair he added, “Oh, how I long for the good old days, when I was little more than a hologram and the streets were paved with paying guests.”

  “Oh, how silly of me,” the Lamppost Man said with glee, “I almost forgot.”

  He snapped his fingers. When nothing happened, his face fell and he frowned. He snapped his fingers several more times, and still nothing happened. As though suddenly remembering, he held up a gloved finger and said, “Oh, right.” This time he clicked his heels twice and almost immediately, “The Girl from Ipanema” began to play over the elevator’s invisible speakers. Hearing this, the Lamppost Man drew his arms into his body and sighed appreciatively. “I just love this ditty.”

  Jerry shook his head in condescension and noticed they were now passing 700. Summoning his courage, and flicking his hair over, Jerry stated, “I seriously doubt that Upper Management would resurrect me solely for the purpose of destroying me all over again.”

  The Lamppost Man smiled that impossibly wide grin of his before asking, “How long have you worked here Jerry?”

  Jerry answered, “428 years, six months, four days,” and after checking his watch, “and Thirty-eight minutes.”

  The Lamppost Man raised his eyes at him once more, “So… not long then.”

  “Longer than most,” Jerry shot back.

  820, 821, 822…

  To pass the monotony, Jerry from Corporate moved to the back of the elevator to fix his tie again in the mirror, (thirteen times by Lamppost Man’s last count). It was while gazing in the mirror the man from corporate noticed the large, heavily-used, black leather case. It was sitting on the floor at the Lamppost Man’s feet. It resembled the ones the old country doctors used to make house calls with and was big enough to carry a bowling ball.

  Exactly 4.8 seconds passed and…

  “What’s with the carpetbag?” Jerry asked.

  The Lamppost Man waggled his eyebrows at him and replied with unrestrained delight, “Oh, you’ll see.”

  DING!

  “Oh my, here already?” The Lamppost Man leaned over in front of Jerry to hasten the rumbling cage open for him.

  The yellow light emanating from within the top floor was so bright, it was impossible for any mere mortal to gaze inside and see what was actually there.

  Jerry was about to step out of the elevator and into the blindness, but hesitated at the threshold. Turning his head toward the Lamppost Man, and dropping his phony corporate smile, he said, “I know you set me up, Lampy. But don’t you worry; I am going to tell them everything you have ever done. I’m even going to tell them about your little pet project, Maddie. I don’t care how much you think Upper Management needs you, everyone is replaceable, even you.”

  The Lamppost Man lowered his head, narrowed his eyes and said, “Run along now, Jerry. Mustn’t keep the Board of Directors wai-ting.”

  Jerry swallowed and tore his gaze away from him. Shielding his eyes with his hand, he purposefully put back on his phony smile and stepped into the light.

  “Well good afternoon, ladies and gentleman. My, it certainly has been a long time. It is so good to see all of you. First, I want to thank all of you for inviting me here today. I can’t even begin to tell you what a special treat this is…”

  As Jerry’s voice prattled on and continued to move farther and farther away, until it eventually droned out, the Lamppost Man removed his pocket watch and noted the time.

  After a few minutes of this, he impatiently put his fist on his waist, hunched over, and still staring at the face of his watch muttered, “This is taking forever.”

  Jerry screamed. It was a long and loud one, accompanied by no small amount of tearing sounds, like the kind when you tear someone’s arms and legs off one at a time. It was a sound the Lamppost Man knew well. After all he’d practically invented that move.

  Or did I?

  So much to remember. Some days it was difficult to remember where one century finished off and the other began.

  Oh well.

  Soon Jerry could be heard pleading for his life, begging them not to refurbish him, and listing all the reasons why they shouldn’t; blah-blah-blah. This was quickly followed by the sound of a powerful energy building up and Jerry’s final scream was cut short by a very precise detonation.

  The Lamppost Man closed the lid to his pocket watch and said, “Huh, that took a wee bit longer than expected.” He quickly returned the watch to its rightful place, and in a very deft move, spun around, and squatted down like a catcher behind home plate. The major difference however; was instead of a catcher’s mitt, he held the large doctor’s bag wide open and ready to receive.

  Jerry’s recently decapitated head bounced a few times and then rolled the rest of the way into the elevator. The Lamppost Man quickly snatched it up into his bag. He promptly flipped the metallic latch over and secured it, as though its occupant might escape at any moment. Releasing the breath he’d been holding, he rose slowly to his feet.

  Realizing he was being watched by those in the light, he respectfully tipped his hat at the occupants within and gave them a two-fingered salute.

  He rocked back on his heels and waited for the elevator gates to close. When it didn’t he said, “Oh, right,” leaned over and pressed the #1 button on the elevator panel.

  As the doors rumbled closed, he patted the doctor’s bag he was hugging in his arms and said softly, “C’mon Jerry. Let’s go home.”

  Chapter 4

  The Raft

  A bright light assaulted his eyelids.

  It was so intense, he wondered how he could have stayed sleeping in the first place. Eyelashes sticky with the slumber of the dead, George Stapleton attempted to open his eyes. T
he blaring sunlight was so painful, he immediately screwed his eyes shut again and shielded them with his forearm.

  It was then he first felt the rocking motion beneath his back. Am I on a boat? Now that he was aware of the rocking motion, it was already beginning to make him queasy. Also, from the knee down, something crisp and cool enveloped his right leg. The rest of him felt like a piece of dried-out wood.

  Shielding his face from the sun with his hand, he made a second attempt at just opening his eyes. Staring through squinted eyes, he found himself lying on his back atop a very small, wooden raft. The makeshift vessel couldn’t have been larger than a queen-sized bed, and the crudely hacksawed logs were so hastily lashed together with thin strips of leather that water was seeping in-between each piece of timber.

  Still lying on his back, George turned his head to the side. As far as he could see, all the way to the horizon, was nothing but endless ocean. Nothing. Look the other way, the other way. Turning his head, he witnessed the same view in every direction. Panic welled up inside him. Am I lost at sea? How far out am I? Fear fueling his dried out body, he managed to pull himself up onto his elbows. Looking down along his barely clad body, he saw he was wearing nothing more than a pair of white shorts haphazardly cut off at the knees, and past his bare feet, he saw nothing but more water.

  This can’t be. He smelled the salty air and thought, I’m in the middle of the ocean. This can’t be, this can’t be. What happened to everyone else?

  Wait. A memory.

  He recalled how he, The Leftenant, and Dawson were holding off the R-Techs so Tessa, Maddie, and the other plane passengers could get away aboard The Dauntless. But whether or not they succeeded, he was drawing a complete blank.

  Faint at first, he heard the sound of a motorcycle engine… far in the distance. It took him a moment to find it, but when he finally saw it wasn’t a motorcycle, but a bright red bi-plane. The really old kind, skimming over the waves, dangerously close to the surface.

  Normally he would think, That’s a short-range aircraft, so I must be closer to land than I thought, but in this world, anything was possible.

  Is that really a plane? He knew he had to get up and signal them somehow. This might be his only chance at rescue. He called upon his last ounce of willpower and managed to slowly clamor to his knees. He lifted his hand high overhead and yelled out, “Hey!” but his voice was hoarse, and George doubted the pilot would have heard him at this distance, especially over the engine propeller’s angry whine.

  The plane suddenly veered off course.

  He did hear me!

  George’s moment of hope vanished in an instant, when the bi-plane flew straight up into the cloudless sky.

  What’s he doing?

  A cloud of smoke suddenly began streaming out of the tail of the plane as though he had been struck by some unseen anti-aircraft fire. George couldn’t locate anything on the ocean’s surface that could have caused it.

  The plane reached its apex altitude, dropped down backward, flipped around, and began spelling out the letters…

  S – O –

  George read off the big, fat, puffy white letters…

  -R – R – Y…

  SORRY.

  Word completed, the skywriter dropped back down to only a few dozen feet above the surface and flew by his flimsy raft.

  George began waving at the man, but then slowed when he saw the pilot was wearing a top hat and a bemused grin upon his face.

  The Lamppost Man.

  George lowered his arm. The small bi-plane headed off into the sun now lowering itself beyond the horizon.

  Still weakened, George collapsed onto his flimsy raft. One of his legs fell into the crisp, cool water as he watched the plane vanish into sunny oblivion.

  He’s gone. And what did he mean by, ‘SORRY’? Maybe I should pull my legs out of the water before something…

  The jaws of an enormous Great White shark exploded out of the water. In one violent motion, it clamped down onto his leg and dragged George off the flimsy raft and into the murky depths of the sea.

  The raft continued to bob upon the surface of a vast ocean as though George Stapleton had never existed.

  Chapter 5

  We All Live in the Russian Submarine…

  …the Russian Submarine…

  …the Russian Submarine…

  “Is he dead?”

  This first voice was male, a gravely baritone, with a hint of an accent; Russian perhaps, possibly Yugoslavian. The way he spoke to the others, he was obviously someone in a position of authority.

  “He should be, but he’s not. No thanks to you,” judged a female with a different accent, Mediterranean perhaps. “It’s been touch and go for a while now, but I managed to save the leg.” Her tone became more serious, almost biting, “Did you have to use the shark?”

  “You’re kidding, right? We shouldn’t have come up this close to the surface in the first place.”

  “We had our orders,” the woman shot back.

  “Just keep him alive. I doubt this guy’s worth it, but I hate to think we came all this way for nothing.”

  “What do you think I’m doing?” she snapped back.

  “Well, why hasn’t he woken up then?”

  George Stapleton knew the answer to that one. It was simple. He didn’t want to. George preferred to wallow in darkness for a few minutes more. He was tired of all the fighting, and constant struggling. He had never hit the snooze button on his alarm clock in his life, but today, right now, at this moment, he desperately craved only a few seconds more in the inky blackness. Leave me alone.

  KER-RANG!!!

  A loud noise, like a dump truck running into a wall of steel, reverberated all around him. The shock wave was so violent even his bed shuddered beneath him.

  This was soon followed by the sound of a heavy door unlocking and groaning open. Boots hastily clanged on metal, and then, “Captain, we’re under attack!”

  The Russian accent again, “Really? No, kidding.”

  Nope. No thank you.

  Blessed darkness returned.

  ****

  BLEAT!

  Pain.

  Open your eyes.

  BLEAT!

  Where am I... this time?

  BLEAT!

  George Stapleton opened his eyes. It was all he could do for the moment. Still on his back, he moved his head to the side and scanned the room that materialized before him. He was in a metal box about the size of a prison cell; no windows. The walls were riveted steel and when he lifted his head, he saw a door. No. It wasn’t a door. It was a hatch, with one of those round submarine wheels in the center of it.

  Gazing down his body, he saw that someone had removed his castaway shorts and slipped him into a white, cotton t-shirt and a pair of boxers.

  BLEAT!

  The bleating sound again. This was followed by a loud rumbling. The floors, walls and ceiling around him tremored slightly in concert.

  BLEAT!

  Whatever was going on, it was bad enough for someone to have sounded the alarm.

  Although still dazed, George gathered his thoughts the best he could. Did Tessa and Maddie get away? He seemed to recall that they had escaped in The Dauntless, along with The Leftenant and all of the other passengers that had woken up with him on the plane. Did Dawson and Tank survive? I can’t remember.

  Gotta move, Georgie.

  He summoned his strength, groaned as he swung his bare feet over the side of his bed and placed them onto the frigid steel floor. The bed was narrow, barely wider than the width of his shoulders.

  “Ow.”

  George had banged the back of his head on the bunk’s bedframe overhead. He rubbed the ouchness out of his scalp gently with the palm of his hand. As he did so, he noticed his right leg was heavily bandaged from the top of the knee down to his shin. It felt stiff. Extremely stiff.

  Staring at it, he shuddered at the memory of a multi-toothed, monster of a shark, exploding from the water, c
lamping down on his leg and dragging him off of the flimsy raft. The water had been freezing, especially after baking in the sun for an indeterminate amount of time. As the Great White shark dragged him down into the murky depths, he had stared skyward and saw the sunlight sparkling on the surface, believing it was the last thing he would ever see.

  BLEAT!

  The horrific memory was over. The bleating alarm brought him back to the present. Gotta stand up.

  Using the overhead bunk as support, he grunted as he lifted himself up. Wow, that really hurts. He tested out his bandaged leg by slowly putting his weight on it. It felt sore and painful, but at least he could stand on his own.

  The walls were bare, and there weren’t any photographs or other keepsakes to indicate ownership. A second set of bunks were on the opposite wall with only a scant three feet between them. Eyeballing his own bed sheets, he saw bloodstains and flecks of blood. How he had survived the massive shark attack and came to be here, he hadn’t the slightest notion.

  George moved toward the steel hatch, dragging his bad leg behind him. He wasn’t really sure how to open it. Although similar to The Dauntless in many ways, this ship seemed more modern, more militaristic. He tugged on the handle, but it was locked. He gripped the small round wheel firmly in his hands, tried to turn it clockwise but it didn’t budge. Then, turning it counter-clockwise, he was soon rewarded with the sound of a heavy bolt unlocking. You were turning it the wrong way. Duh. The door cracked open on its own and fresh air from the hallway washed over him.

  George swung open the heavy hatch. A narrow catwalk in a darkened corridor lay outside his room. Before he could exit, he heard another rumbling sound. The walls around him shifted and his shoulder impacted painfully with the doorframe. Doing his best to keep most of his weight off his injured leg, he righted himself and stepped out into the corridor.

  It was dark, but not so dark that he couldn’t see. When the alarm bleated again he could see a red light bulb in a small cage glow brighter with each bleating of the alarm. He recalled images in his mind of W.W. II submarines but the memory didn’t quite match what he was seeing now. The steel grating was painful beneath his bare feet, so before continuing onward he glanced back into his cabin for any clothes or footwear. Maybe there’s something in a closet or in a footlocker tucked beneath the bed?