Living Legends

3) A Warning

SIX MONTHS AGO

The young man felt pain before he even saw it coming.  He staggered backwards as another blow was delivered to his face.  He hit the deck of the boat and immediately tasted blood.  Hoots and whistles erupted from the ring of men surrounding him.

            “You wanna tell us now?” the youth’s accoster growled, leering over him.  The man’s muscular form blocked the sizzling Florida sun from the youth’s vision, and the youth took that moment to catch his breath.  He squinted up through two newly-formed black eyes.

            “Answer me!” the man demanded.

            In response, the youth arched his back and spit in his face.  A gross mixture of saliva and blood ran down the man’s chin.  He wiped it off with the back of his hand and glared at his victim.  “That wasn’t so smart, Jack,” he growled.  “Or should I say…Jack Nau.”  Lifting his knee, he drove his foot hard into Jack’s stomach.  Jack immediately felt the wind get knocked out of him, and he gasped for breath.  His head swam.

            “Come on, Clyde,” the Spaniard said.  “I think that’s enough.”

            “Shut up,” Clyde snarled.  He wiped the blood off his knuckles.

            “The kid’s not talkin’.  What if he’s telling the truth? What if he doesn’t know where it is?”

            “Oh, he knows where it is, all right.”  Clyde laughed slowly and murderously.  “And he’s going to tell me one of these days, even if I have to give him a little motivation first.”  He leered over Jack once more, a sinister smile on his twisted face.  “Isn’t that right, Jack?”

            Jack closed his eyes and tried to ignore the chuckles of the men surrounding him.  It had been four days since they caught him—four long, torturous days.  But no matter what he said, they never believed him. 

            “Pick him up,” Clyde ordered.

            Two men stepped forward and slung their arms underneath Jack’s, lifting him off the deck.  Jack’s head lolled to one side as he fought to remain conscious.  His face was covered in bruises and blood, and when Clyde walked over to the railing, Jack swore he saw three of him.

            “See that horizon over there, Jack?”  Clyde nodded in the direction of the vast ocean, his lips curling into a smirk.  “We’re giving you one more day.  This is your last chance to tell us where it is, or we get rid of you.”

            Jack licked his bloody lips and did his best to remain upright.  Get rid of me?

            “The Caribbean is littered with islands.  You know that well enough.  There’s the Florida Keys, the Bahamas, the Virgin Islands…”  With every syllable, Clyde inched closer to Jack until he was breathing down the youth’s neck.  “But you know what?” he snarled.  “If you don’t tell me where that map is by this time tomorrow, you’re gonna be stuck on one of those pitiful little islands.  And I’ll make sure it’s an island far away from any shipping lanes, way out in the middle of the Caribbean where you can never leave.  You got that?”

            Jack told his limbs to do something—anything—to hurt Clyde, but it was in vain.  He was frozen.  Just as his puffy eyelids closed and his mind succumbed to unconsciousness, he got a glimpse of Clyde’s leering face.  “It’s up to you, Jack,” he said with a sneer.  “Your fate is all up to you.”