Thorazine Beach by Bradley Harris Page B

Yawned. Snickers bar, nice and hard, from my mini-cooler. I stopped after one bite, tossed the rest into the outer dark. Contraband.
    More than one night I’d seen Hanjins and Lloyds bearing numbers with what seemed the right three final digits. But an eight, more closely inspected, became a three—that sort of thing. Once, I’d seen what I thought was the symbol, but the wrong serial, the wrong company’s container. False alarms both, MacDonald told me. Don’t worry about it. How the hell could he be
that
sure?
    Sometime after midnight, 31st July to the 1st of August. The rain let up a little.
    Sounds. Not unusual. Cracking branch. Movement, small animal—there was
something
here, I’d learned, that was attracting feral cats. Quiet again. Right now, no movement over in the yard. The craneman’s coffee break, I assumed. The hiss of the drizzling rain. The layer of steam it made over the ground.
    My head jerked. I heard what I hoped had been only a few seconds of snoring. The cranes were moving again. My video-cam’s tripod had tipped over, the camera doing a close-up digital documentary of my dirt pile.
    Sounds. Behind. Unusual. Foot on gravel—definitely not animal. Other foot on gravel—heavier. Coming nearer, but other side of the pile, other side of the ditch. Stopped. Froze. Footfall again. Light. Heavier. And, in between, the gentlest little thud. Slow. Light. Little thud. Heavier.
    Waiting.
    “Don’t you fucking move.”
    Loud enough, directed enough I knew he meant me, knew exactly where I was. Railway cop? No, no—that little thump, it sounded for all the world like a cane, of all the bloody things.
    Then: Unmistakable. Chuck-chick. Pump-action shotgun.
    “I’m coming over,” the voice said, some gravel in it. And more than a hint of an experience I surely didn’t want to be on the wrong end of.
    I knew for sure when he started onto the board-bridge Mac had laid for me. Light. Cane. Heavy. Not a railway cop. Not a Memphis cop. Not anyone with a badge. Not a nice grown-up you can run to.
    “Don’t you fucking move.”
    I breathed.
    I moved.
    I ran, as much as a man of sixty with eighty-five extra pounds can be said to
run
at all. Busted out of my lean-to, left all my gear. My toes tripped on rocks, branches, gopher holes. More than once I fell, my hands, arms, scraped each time. More than once, I banged my shins on what I guessed was scrap steel, broken concrete. A rip on a protruding piece of rebar.
    Diabetes. Peripheral neuropathy. You have no idea. The skin on my shins screamed.
    “God damn you!” behind me. And I wondered whether he mightn’t get that wish.
Jesus Jesus Jesus
, I said, whether aloud or inside I didn’t know, and couldn’t tell whether it was swearing or prayer.
    The flash, first. Then the sound of the blast. Cocked. Flash. Blast. Shot at twice, now.
    I took breathless cover behind a mound of dirt.
He’d
had the advantage, still had it. I’d been silhouetted the whole way against the blazing lights of the container yard, and would be again whenever I got up. I stayed low, looked
around
the mound, rather than over. I felt inside my lower pant leg for what was running there, felt it on my fingers. I couldn’t see, so I tasted. Blood, all right. But not enough that he’d hit me—just a bad bump.
    “God damn you!” again.
    I winced, till I realized from the voice’s faintness that he hadn’t come much closer than this side of the ditch, the gap in the fence, maybe the dirt pile. And I saw no sign of a flashlight. Still, he might be coming on yet, however slowly or clumsily. I couldn’t stay long. I waited, breathed, till either I figured he was gone or until I couldn’t stand it anymore—couldn’t tell you which.
    Minutes. No idea how many—I didn’t dare open my cell phone to see. But long enough that I had to pee, and did it, rolling sideways, into a little depression I’d felt in the dirt.
    The pee smelled, I smelled, and it had to have been an hour. Slowly as