A Visit From the Last Tigers Brigade – Unsettling Futures - Issue #13
In a grim mood following the release of the IPCC report. Am attempting to exorcise my mental demons with some bitter flash fiction.
A Visit From the Last Tigers Brigade
The kidnappers carried Marcus over the concrete rubble dunes that lined the beach, a mummy in industrial plastic wrap and duct tape, cradled in a sling made from the silk sheets off his own bed.
They'd come upon him silently. Must have had the alarm codes from some quisling on his household staff. Someone on his security detail would find themselves in a world of hurt, once he was ransomed, that he vowed. Almost as bad as what awaited his kidnappers at the hands of the crisis-response unit no doubt already dispatching. He would have told the kidnappers as much, gloated over their imminent demise at the hands of ex-Seal Team snipers, but they'd taped his mouth immediately after they'd tased and bound him.
The rubble dunes were the remnants of shoreline condominiums, fallen when their rebar bones had corroded and their concrete bases had been undercut by the rising Atlantic. Weathered sawhorses and yellow hazard tape warned the public back but did nothing to stop trespassers.
They set him down on the beach. No sign of the lights of a boat offshore, Marcus noted. That was good. If their pick up was late, it gave more time for the response team to arrive.
One of the kidnappers – there were half a dozen of them, all wearing dazzle camouflage makeup and mismatched shoes to throw off gait recognition algorithms – set down an electric lamp.
Marcus lay next to a hole in the sand. The pile of sand next to it suggested it was big enough to hold a human body.
Before he could make so much as a muffled protest, they had slung him in, feet first. He stood, wobbly on bound ankles, his head barely above the level of the sand. One of the kidnappers steadied his shoulder while two others shovelled sand back into the hole.
"Easy now," said the one with her hand on his shoulder. Grey hair, but under the jags of orange-black-white makeup she could have been anywhere from fifty to seventy. "Easy now."
They packed in the sand, leaving just his head free.
"Tape off?" one asked the grey-haired woman.
"Might as well."
They were none too gentle removing the duct tape from his mouth.
They ignored his warnings to let him go, his descriptions of the strike team's efficacy, and then, his attempts to self-ransom. The youngest in the group, a gangly kid, laughed into his hand.
"Your pick up is obviously not coming," Marcus tried.
"Pick up?" said grey-hair.
"Your boat. Whoever was supposed to meet you here."
"No pick up," said a heavyset middle aged man. "We're where we want to be."
He reached over and shut off the lantern. The moon had come out from behind the clouds, fat and full even through the faint haze from the fires that were churning through Congo, on the far side of the ocean.
"He still thinks he's been kidnapped," the kid said, white teeth bright amid orange and black polygons of makeup.
"This is as far as you go, Mr. Taylor," said grey-hair. "We're just waiting for the turn of the tide."
Marcus felt a cold stab of fear in his guts.
"Who are you?"
"We're the Last Tigers Brigade," the woman said. "Formed eight months ago. After the Bengal tiger was declared extinct in the wild. Do you know why we're here?"
"I had nothing to do with tigers, I, I fund that conservation program. I donated to the North Dakota land reclamation fund!"
"'The economic impacts of that legislation would be devastating to the families of this state,'" grey-hair said. "'We cannot let a band of eco-fanatics dictate policy, based on dubious science about a so-called climate crisis.'"
"What?"
"Your words, Mr. Taylor. One of your many op-eds."
"You're…" He couldn't bring himself to say killing. They weren't killing him. The strike team would be here any minute. "You're doing this to me because I wrote an op-ed? Are you insane? That was, what, twenty years ago?"
"Twenty-three," said the big man.
"Shit, I wasn't even born yet," said the kid.
"State senator, lobbyist, think tank member, columnist, consultant," said grey-hair. "You've had a long and busy career, Mr. Taylor."
"And you're going to kill me for it, is that it? Is that it?"
She picked up a stick and scratched a line in the wet sand, about a foot in front of him, towards the lapping waves.
"This was the old high-tide mark, twenty years ago," she said. "The new one is, well, it's a bit farther back. If we'd buried you here two decades back, you'd be fine. But there's a king tide coming in tonight, and you did your part to make sure it would be higher than it had to be."
He blinked hard and shook his head, tried to writhe free of the wet sand. Howled in fear and frustration, snot bubbling at his nose. They watched in silence while he broke down and sobbed. Waited for him to speak again.
"It won't do any good," he said. "Killing me."
"We know. We've already tried doing good," said the big man.
"I marched and collected signatures. Worked campaigns," offered one woman.
"Donated money."
"Every month!"
"Drove an electric car."
"I gave up my car!"
"I worked for the Sierra Club."
"And I always sorted my recycling," said the big man. That got a laugh from the others.
"We're past the tipping point," grey-hair said. "That's the problem. Killing you won't fix anything. Nothing will fix this. Nothing."
"Then why?"
She gave him a strange look, one he couldn't quite make out under the tiger-coloured makeup. Shook her head sadly.
"For us," she said. "For the tigers. For the bees and the beetles and the reefs and the river dolphins, for everything."
They got up and left then, left him screaming hoarse into the loud slap of the tide, into the hazy sky at the pitiless moon. The last he saw of them, disappearing down the beach, were the silhouettes of their shovel blades, slung over their shoulders, ready to dig more holes.
The End
This is not a nice story, or a hopeful story, and it's definitely not a particularly subtle story. I don't think it's necessarily even close to a good story, but it's the story I wanted to write today. Sometimes a story is a scream.