Midnight by Anna Dove (books for new readers .TXT) 📕

They were alone on the water as far as the eye could see. She pulled back the sail, the remaining droplets running off over the side of the sailboat. The others moved up to the thwart and took in the beauty of the gentle water stretching out to meet the galaxied heavens. A breeze played lightly in the air.

“Help me get this back up,” said Elizabeth, and they all pitched in to quickly hoist up the mainsail and jib. Catching a faint breeze with a quick hand, Elizabeth guided the sailboat skillfully, needing no compass as she kept the bow pointed towards the North Star.

15.  No More Bourbon

“Be not the slave of your own past - plunge into the sublime seas, dive deep, and swim far, so you shall come back with new self-respect, with new power, and with an advanced experience that shall explain and overlook the old.”

―

Ralph Waldo Emerson

Jack Hoffman stood in the doorway, tucked out of view of the alley in NE Washington. His face was thrown into shadow, but his eyes watched the entrance to the alley like a trapped cat, fixed with a queer resolve on the narrow passage. He leaned against the side of the doorway carefully, his weight shifting. One hand slipped inside his jacket and stayed there. It was a warm night, and so one might have found it peculiar that he wore any sort of jacket.

         Presently another figure came into view, entering the passageway and treading heavily on the pavement. The same swaggering gait--it was the man who had previously provided Jack with alcohol at the Supreme Court. He strode confidently down the alley, and his lips puckered in a whistle.

         As he passed the doorway, Jack stepped noiselessly from the shadows and fell into step behind the other. The other man ceased whistling, and abruptly stopping for a split second, swung his elbow back and pitted his follower in the chest. Jack stumbled back for a moment, his hands rising up for balance, and then he flung himself forward, knocking the other to the ground.

         They struggled and rolled in deathly combat, each straining in a fight for their very lives. These were no amateurs; they positioned their bodies and attacked each other with expertise indicative of many years of training. They were up; they bounced from wall to wall in the narrow alley. Jack finally landed a hook on the other man’s jaw, stunning him momentarily; one moment was all that was needed. Jack’s hands found their way to the throat of his rival, and stayed there. A thrashing, a desperate clawing, and then the other man fell very still.

         Jack let go, and the other crumpled to the pavement.

         “I knew it, you dog,” said Jack quietly. He stared down at his dead rival unflinchingly. “I’d best be going now. You already got what you wanted from me. Seems like you and whoever else involved in this sickness, seems like you want me gone. Fine, so be it, I’ll be gone.”

         He turned to step away, and then paused, turned back and knelt by the body. Taking off his jacket, he covered the face. His hands moved from the jacket to the dead man’s shoulder.

         “How did they get you, Rick?” he said, and his tone had changed remarkably. He spoke with a great sadness, a heartbreaking gravity, that was no facade but that welled from the depths of his being.

         “I’m sorry I had to be the one,” he continued, under his breath. “I’m sorry. I won’t remember you like this, I promise. I’ll remember you playing cards in Tehran, and I’ll remember that damn picture you carried around with you all the time. Jessica, right? I’m sorry. I’m so, so sorry. I hate them all the more--how the hell did they make you like this? I swear to you, I’ll avenge you, you and all the others of whom they’ve disposed like pieces of trash to be burnt. This wasn’t my fault, friend. Wasn’t my fault. I’ll promise you, this won’t be how I’ll remember you.”

         He rocked back on his heels and looked up at the sky.

         “I’ll remember you buttoning up your jacket, and lacing up your boots, and facing the enemy side by side. Those were great and terrifying days. What a shame, that our existences are so whittled down when we become pawns in another’s hand. You used to be one of the best men I knew. What was it? How did they get you?”

         He fell silent for a minute, and the night air closed around them.

         “Well, then, goodbye,” he murmured hesitatingly, and his voice trembled ever so imperceptibly. “See you on the west side of the moon.”

         Leaving his jacket, he went from the alley into the street, where the moonlight illuminated his features. His hands shook, his pale, long fingered hands with skin seemingly transparent to purple veins below.

         Jack Hoffman was an alcoholic. He suffered from post-traumatic stress disorder, acquired from his time deployed in Iran. And he had, in his pocket, a small bottle of the last alcohol he had been able to obtain since the attack two weeks ago, a Bombay gin.

         He had to leave this city. There were too many people who knew that he was a lynchpin in the attack, that he knew too much. He had watched the attack happen, the electrical grid disintegrate, the death toll rise as people battled desperately over food and water. How many people had been involved, and at what levels? No doubt Reed was involved, but how many others?

         He thought back to his time on Baker Island. The names of all those involved rolled around in his head like marbles, and he reached for the gin, and then decided to wait, considering that this was the last he had.

His mind, his body, depended chemically on alcoholic stimulus every day. He