Nothing To See
Cam loved to sleep on the beach. Sometimes he slept with a load of buddies, sometimes with one special friend. This morning he was alone. He had and his main crew had left Corpus Christi a few days earlier.
"The Corpitoz has lost its sparkle you by-standers. Let's scoot up the Gulf." Blazer was the youngest and the most easily bored. He liked to cajole the others verbally when he felt he was not getting enough attention, particularly when the surf was flat and he was not making the grade.
"Let's go up to Galveston." Chrissy was Cam's occasional friend and could usually sway most of the group when their attention began to drift. "The company is usually better there." He nodded and Blazer nodded and pretty soon they were all hitching up the coast.
After a couple of days, some of them had decided to divert off on a camera trip, taking laid-back pictures and getting back to nature. Cam had done all that sort of thing before and since he had been raised in Galveston he continued ahead alone.
On a whim, he passed by the family duplex, a cheaper area of town on the bayou facing over to Texas City. But his reception had not been friendly. "Hey look. The loser's back. What a surprise! With his board too. Now our life is perfect." After that short but heated conversation with this sometime family member he had decided that the old ways were the best. He found some fruit in a dumpster, still in good condition, then made his way to the other side of the island, to a part of the beach he remembered as being safe, sheltered and quiet.
After watching the Sun set he huddled up in some light blankets and slept lightly. In the morning, just as the Sun was rising, he scribbled a few lines of poetry in his Moleskine notebook.
From day to night I love the beach
The sand when warm, when dry, when white
His musings were interrupted by the slow motoring of a boat. The scrappy little barge appeared clumsily around the headland, still a couple of miles away, rolling with the waves
"What a jerk." Cam muttered to himself, annoyed that his space had been interrupted by this small intruder. "You're out of the main lane!" he shouted. "You'll run aground!" The rusty vessel continued its slow progress thru the strait, almost silent now, clearly intending to sneak quietly behind the island and onto a quieter part of the shore.
The small barge was glowing in the sunrise, the whole of the top deck rippling with orange and yellow flickers like smooth flames.
From the west a shadow drifted along the beach. Cam looked up to see a small airship, like those that pulled advertising banners, slowly motoring overhead. It was a small craft and whatever powered it was quiet enough to be covered by the sound of the waves.
The little blimp soared lightly out over the water and slowed to a position over the barge. Whoever was on the little boat, their reaction was not visible. They might even have been taking holiday snaps. Cam could not tell from where he was and was not really awake enough to care. As he kept watching it was obvious that blimp was attempting to match the speed of the barge, turning gently to face back to shore and keep above the boat. The boat kept moving at the same speed as before, almost oblivious to the aerial follower. Then things turned nasty.
A thin rope snaked down from the airship, lashing around expertly until it dropped onto the deck of the barge. Still no-one appeared. No-one appeared to be interested as a seething flash of flame spilled down the line and onto the deck of the ship. Whatever was running down from the blimp onto the barge, it splashed furiously until the top half of the boat, the half above the surface of the water, was touched by liquid fire.
The quiet little blimp tacked round and round, over-steering then re-turning to tilt at the burning barge.
"No!" He shouted up at the blimp. "This is my beach!" He threw some feeble stones into the air. "You can't do that here!"
The blimp drifted silently on the line, turning a further circle. Once the barge was completely engulfed in silent flame, the line dropped down onto the water, and the blimp jumped softly up in the air.
"You can't do that!" He shouted again and started waving furiously in the air. "That is not cool!"
His jumping and waving stopped as the blimp drifted slightly sideways, then turned firmly to face him. He could not make out anyone in the cab; maybe there was no pilot at all and this was some horrible remotely-controlled machine. He shielded his eyes as the Sun moved up in the sky and the blimp moved forward to where he was standing like a fool.
"Now I'm the not-cool one." His anger drained quickly, his body chilling with the fear of the approaching danger. He turned to run, then thought about his board left propped by the rocks. He turned back on his already moving ankle and stumbled in the sand. "How can a surfer lose his balance on land?" He was chiding himself now. He looked at the board within reach, a few steps away. He looked at the approaching balloon, shadow on the front, sunglow at the back. He made a decision. "I'll come back for you." He whispered goodbye to his faithful board.
He turned and ran, the only sound from behind the crashing of the waves, not knowing how far he would have to run to escape the drifting threat. He dared not look back, feet pounding the cool sand, sometimes wet, sometimes dry, the surface changing with every step. But he did not even begin to escape. Within a minute the shadow of the blimp loomed over him and he started to stumble, then trip, then fall. He bumped his face on the sand and turned without skill to face up at his pursuer. He was exposed in a natural hollow of the dune.
"I didn't see nothing!" He shouted up. "I did not see anything!"
He lifted his hand up to cover his face. There was a light whistling noise and a flicking tumble of the plastic line as it flipped and flopped onto the sand beside him. Within a few seconds, it looked like the little hollow would become a boiling kettle of fire. Cam jumped at the line, briefly thinking that he could toss it far enough away to avoid being engulfed in flame.
He gripped the line firmly, helping himself to his feet and shouted up at the blimp above, its now-giant size blocking his view.
"Go to Hell!" He shouted, waving his fist, wrapped around in the deadly wire.
Cam heard nothing. He knew that the picture you saw traveled quicker than the sound you heard. The blimp exploded silently above him, ripping without flame into a hundred pieces. The pulse of air flung him back, punched his eyes, twisted his arms, bent his legs. Big pieces of debris battered his face and ripped at his belly.
"Wake up young man. We have to run." Cam heard the well-spoken but hasty English. He felt a hand grab his.
"I… I can't even walk," he gasped.
"Okay, okay. Just stumble quickly." The voice was still in a hurry, but it remained reassuring too. "Just don't look. Things'll be easier if you don't look."