Yellow Mama E zine

WINNER TAKES THE RUINS

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by George Garnet

 

           The heat in Nouméa didn't just press down—it slammed. Like someone swung a wet shovel square into your chest and held it there. Salt off the lagoon mixed with diesel fumes and that godawful red nickel dust that crept into your pores, your lungs, stayed forever. Tasted like rust and regret every time you swallowed.

         I stood on the dock at Port Moselle watching a forty-foot container swing off the *Pacific Maru* like a hanged man. Inside were two brand-new Komatsu excavator buckets—teeth sharp enough to bite the horizon. My buckets now. My score. 

        I’d paid three dock boys in beer and a promise of more to look the other way while the crane driver “accidentally” dropped the container on my flatbed. Accidents happen, especially when the driver owes me for the night his wife spent in my bunk while he was drunk in Baie de la Moselle.  

        I lit a Gaulois and watched the container settle. The night was thick, the kind that makes a man sweat through his shirt just breathing. Somewhere a Kanak drum started up, slow and angry like the island itself was warning me to get the hell out before the gendarmes showed up.  

Too late.  

       A black Citroën DS glided in, silent as a shark. The door opened and she stepped out. Long legs first, then the rest of her—black linen dress clinging like it was painted on, red mouth, eyes the color of gunmetal. She moved like she owned the air between us.  

        “Jack Harlan,” she said. Not a question.  

        I blew smoke. “Who’s asking?”  

        “Sophia Valois. I fix things for people who can afford to break them.” Her accent was Paris by way of hell. “Your little hobby is costing my client forty-three million francs a year. That ends tonight.”  

        I grinned. I like a woman who gets straight to the throat.  

       “Your client should buy better locks.” Her smile didn't reach those eyes. “Or I need better bullets.”

       Two gendarmes appeared behind her like trained dogs. Big ones. Polynesian boys with French uniforms and island hate in their eyes. One had a scar from ear to chin, old tribal business. The other carried a MAT-49 like he was born with it. 

       I flicked the butt, ground it under boot heel. “Bringing cops to negotiate? Rude.”

       “Bringing results.”

        The scarred one stepped forward. “Hands up, blanc.”  

         I looked at Sophia. “You going to let him talk to me like that?”  

        She shrugged. “He’s local. Locals get touchy when foreigners steal their future.” 

        The one with the submachine gun moved closer. I could smell the betel nut on his breath. I could also see the safety was still on. Sloppy.  

       I smiled wider. “Tell you what, sweetheart. You want the buckets? They’re yours. For a price.”     

       “Name it.”  

       “One night. You and me, no badges, no guns. Just skin and whatever truth comes out when clothes hit the floor.”  

       The gendarmes looked at her. She looked at me. For a second the mask slipped and I saw it—hunger. The same rotten hunger that keeps me breathing.  

       “Deal,” she said.  

      The scarred cop started to protest. She cut him with a glance sharp enough to shave with. “Take the truck. I’ll handle Mr. Harlan personally.”  

       They didn’t like it, but they obeyed. That’s power. Real power, the kind that makes men forget their own names.  

       She walked over, hips rolling like a slow storm. Took the cigarette from my fingers, drew on it, blew smoke in my face like a kiss. 

      “My hotel,” she said, “Le Méridien  Room 1204. One hour. Come unarmed or don’t come at all.”  

       I watched her slide back into the Citroën. The taillights disappeared into the humid dark. I felt it then, the hook setting deep.  

       I went armed anyway. A man who trusts a woman like that deserves what he gets.  

       Room 1204 smelled of jasmine and gun oil. She opened the door wearing nothing but a silk robe the color of fresh blood. The robe didn’t stay on long.  

        We didn’t talk much at first. Bodies first, questions later. She bit like she wanted to leave marks that lasted forever. I gave her reasons. The bed broke, so did the table. When we finally came up for air,  dawn was bleeding through the shutters and the sheets looked like a crime scene.  

She lit two cigarettes, passed me one.  

         “You’re good at this,” she said.  

        “Stealing?”  

         “Making people want to lose.”  

         I traced the bruise on her throat. “You’re not here to arrest me, Sophia. You’re here to understand me. That’s worse.”  

        She laughed, low and bitter. “I’m here to bury you, Jack. Quietly. The board wants the losses to stop and they don’t care how.”  

        “And you?”  

        “I care about the price.” She rolled on top of me, her hair falling like black rain. “I care about winning.”  

        I grabbed her wrists. “Then win me.”  

        She kissed me hard enough to draw blood. “I already have.”  

        That was the first night. There were more.  

        Days turned into a slow knife fight.  

       She worked fast. By the end of the week my best fence, old Pierre the Kanak with the gold tooth, was found floating in the lagoon with his tongue nailed to a coconut. Message received.  

Another buyer in Prony Bay got a visit from “health inspectors” who torched his warehouse. My runners in Thio stopped answering phones. The independent miners started looking over their shoulders.  

        Sophia was good, too good.  

        I hit back the only way I knew—harder.  

        I took an entire shipment of Epiroc drill rigs bound for the Goro mine. Forty containers. Hijacked the barge off Îlot Maître at 3 a.m. with four boys from Wallis and a crate of dynamite. Left the crew tied up naked on the reef for the sharks to laugh at.  

       Next morning the stock exchange in Sydney opened down eight percent. Phones in Paris started melting.  

       Sophia called me at the villa I kept up in Anse Vata.  

       “You bastard,” she said, but there was pride in it. 

        “Come get me.”  

        “I will.”  

        She came at sunset. Alone.  

        Stood on my terrace in a white dress that glowed against the blood-red sky. The lagoon was flat calm, mirror for the storm coming.  

        “You’ve cost me everything,” she said.  

        “You cost me more.”  

        She stepped close. “I could have you killed tonight. One call.”  

        “You won’t.”  

        “Why not?” 

        “Because you’re in love with the chaos. Same as me.”  

         She slapped me. Hard. Then kissed me harder. We tore at each other like animals. Clothes ripped. Blood on the tiles. I took her against the balcony rail with the whole damn ocean watching.           After, she lay on the cool stone, breathing smoke.  

         “There’s one last shipment,” she said. “Biggest yet. Caterpillar D11s. Twenty units. Leaving  Nouméa tomorrow night for Nauru. If you take it, the company dies. Stock goes to zero. Thousands out of work. Islands starve.”  

          “And if I don’t?”  

          “I disappear you. Clean. No body, no trace. You cease to exist.”  

           I looked at her. Really looked. Saw the exhaustion under the makeup, the fear she’d never admit.  

          “What do you want, Sophia?”  

          She stared at the horizon where the sky bled into the sea.  

          “I want to burn it all down with you. And I want to save it. Both at once. It’s tearing me apart.”  

          I pulled her close. “Then let’s do both.”  

         The plan was insane. Beautifully insane.  

         We would hit the shipment together. I’d take the gear, sell it to the independents in Tonga and Samoa—spread the wealth so wide no one could choke it off. She’d spin the story: “heroic locals reclaiming resources from foreign thieves.” The corporation takes the fall. Stock tanks. Heads roll in Paris.  

        She gets promoted for “containing the crisis.” I get rich. The islands get a fighting chance.  

Win-win. Except someone always bleeds.  

        The night of the heist the moon was a thin blade.  

        We met at the old nickel wharf in Doniambo. Rust and rot and the ghosts of a thousand forgotten strikes. My boys were ready, six hard men with nothing to lose. Sophia wore black fatigues and a look that could kill.  

       The *Southern Star* was tied up, fat and lazy, waiting for the tide. Twenty yellow Cats lined up like soldiers.  

         We moved fast, cut the lines. Boarded silent. Crew never knew what hit them. Zip ties and gags. Into the drink.  

        Then the lights came on. Floodlights, fifty of them. Blinding.  

        Gendarmes everywhere, armored trucks, a helicopter thumping overhead.  

         Sophia in the middle of it all, bullhorn in hand.  

        “Jack Harlan, surrender now!”  

         My boys looked at me. I looked at her.  

          She’d played me. Final move. Checkmate.  

          I raised my hands slow. One of my guys, young kid from Lifou, panicked and pulled a pistol.   

         The sniper on the crane took him through the eye.  

         Then it went to hell.  

         Gunfire stitched the night, my boys went down screaming. I dove behind a dozer blade, .45 barking. Dropped two gendarmes before the slide locked back empty.  

         Sophia walked through the chaos untouched. Bulletproof vest under the fatigues. Queen of the goddamn world.  

         She stood over me while I bled on the deck.  

          “You knew,” I said.  

          “I suspected.” She knelt, brushed hair from my forehead like a lover. “I had to be sure.”  

          “Sure of what?”  

         “That you’d burn the world for me.”  

          I laughed. Tasted blood. “Did I pass?”  

         “With flying colors.”  

         She leaned close. Whispered against my mouth.  

         “There’s a Zodiac under the pier. Keys in the ignition. Go.”  

          I stared at her.  

          “You’re letting me go?”  

          “I’m choosing,” she says. “For the first time in my life.”  

          Behind her the helicopter spotlight swept over. Any second they’d see.  

           I grabbed her face, kissed her hard. Tasted salt and cordite and goodbye.  

          “Next time I see you,” I said, “one of us dies.”  

           She smiled, eyes shining. “Make sure it’s memorable.”  

           I ran. Dove into the black water. The Zodiac was there. Engine coughed alive, I pointed it south—Fiji, Tonga, anywhere but here.  

           Behind me the *Southern Star* burned. Someone had torched the Cats. Beautiful orange funeral pyre for a dying empire.  

          Never saw Sophia Valois again.  

          But every time a new load of gear shows up in Apia or Nuku’alofa, bought cheap by men who work their own land, I know she kept her side of the bargain.  

           And every night the wind smells of jasmine and gunpowder  I know she’s out there somewhere, fixing the next crisis.  

          Waiting for me to come back and finish the game. 

         One bullet. One kiss. 

          Winner takes the ruins.

 

THE END

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          George Garnet, a writer who thrives in the shadows, has seen his fiction published in esteemed publications like Mystery Tribune, Switchblade, Out of the Gutter, Mystery Weekly, Pulp Modern Flash, Yellow Mama, The Dark City, and other shadowy corners of the literary world. He calls the vibrant chaos of Melbourne home.

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         Sophia Wiseman-Rose (aka Sr. Sophia Rose) is a Paramedic and an Anglican novice Franciscan nun, in the UK.  Both careers have given Sophia a great deal of exposure to the extremes in life and have provided great inspiration for her.  

  She has travelled to many countries, on medical missions and for modelling (many years ago), but has spent most of her life between the USA and the UK. She is currently residing in a rural Franciscan community and will soon be moving to London to be with a community there.  

        In addition, Sophia had a few poems and short stories in editions of Black Petals Horror/Science Fiction Magazine

        The majority of her artwork can be found on her website.

  https://www.artstation.com/sophiaw-r6