Four
Dawn was breaking and the smells of the wooded slope overlooking the ocean were raw and pungent. The man stood alone on the hillside, looking through the brush as though he had lost something. Setting down his canvass backpack with a clank, he took the long steel pole that he carried and poked the ground repeatedly. He continued this work, slowly and methodically, until he heard the sound of metal against metal. He set the pole down and tore at the brush until he exposed a round steel plate with a circular handle in the middle, similar to what might be found on a Navy ship. He turned the handle.
He stopped and looked around, as if in response to a noise from an unknown source. He waited. Satisfied that he was alone on the surface, he continued to turn the handle until it stopped. He sat back on his heels and waited for his breathing to slow down. Apparently composed, he reached for his backpack and unzipped the top. From inside he pulled out what appeared to be a six-pack of long-neck beers. He set the cardboard bottle container on the ground and pulled one from the pack. It was indeed a beer bottle, but the cloth stuffed into the top showed it to be a beverage that was designed for pain and destruction: a Molotov cocktail.
The man took out a plastic lighter and lit the end of the cloth. It burned lazily like a tiki torch. He gripped his hand tightly on the handle of the steel plate—which now looked like a hatch—and closed his eyes, as if in prayer. After a few seconds, he jerked on the handle and the hatch pulled heavily away from the ground, screaming as the ancient hinges resisted. The man’s face contorted in disgust, apparently in reaction to the smell that emerged from the darkness below him. He reeled his arm back, holding the cocktail like an Olympic torch, and thrust it down into the chamber below. The glass exploded and a harsh light radiated upward, illuminating the man’s face.
It was Dad. It was Joe Ellington.
In rapid succession, he lit the remaining bombs and threw them into the chamber. A howl, as if from a wounded beast, echoed below ground. The man stood to his feet and fell back two or three paces. He looked around for the steel pole and found it. As he rose from the ground, a firestorm seemed to belch from the chamber below and out onto the hillside. It appeared to be a man in flames, screaming and flailing his arms in an attempt to put out the fire. In an impossible leap he flew upward into the branches of a pine tree, bounding off limbs and rolling through the green branches. Two-thirds up the height of the tree, the man jumped away, falling to the earth and rolling down the hill into the brush. The fire seemed to be out. Smoke rose from the acacias that punctuated the hillside.
Joe’s breathing once again settled into a semi-normal rhythm. He waited a few minutes and then moved toward the spot where the other had landed. The steel pole now rested on his shoulder, carried in the manner of a day laborer who had finished his work. He approached the acacia bushes and watched as smoke drifted up from their midst. He raised the pole as though it were a spear and seemed prepared to thrust it into the bushes. Before he could make the throw, the body on the ground rose up and struck Joe violently in the solar plexus. Joe fell back on the ground, gasping for air. The attacker stood over him, blackened by the fire, smoke drifting off his body.
Joe rose to his knees. The man fell upon him, biting and tearing at him like a wild animal. Joe screamed and soon fell silent. The man continued his attack, like a starved hyena on a carcass. The scene clouded over and faded from view.
When Vickie awoke, she ran down the hall to the bathroom. She locked herself in, bent over the toilet and vomited.
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