It was hard to tell where the beach ended and sea began. Attempting to guide John and Allen along the shore was the round moon. As it peaked, gray clouds tried to shield its eyes, an attempt to curb naiveté. Its beams landed in the sea, leaving the white strand tough to navigate. Even the air warned them to retreat, stinging their sinuses with salt.
Allen choked on his inhales. His mouth was dry, the veins of his legs felt like they’d buckle from carrying him so far. The folds between the joints of his fingers ached from the friction they’d endured. “I’m starting to think this wasn’t a good idea.”
“We’re close to our destination.” John reassured, not looking back at Allen and continuing forward. “You’ll collapse if you turn back now.”
Allen was forced to keep up, just to make sure John listened to him. “I’m never going to get off of this beach once we’re done.”
“Do you want your bounty or not?”
John paused his hike and slowly looked back at Allen. The older man behind him felt this burning in his soul. The weeks they had spent building their resources barely outweighed his desire to return home on its own. The scales tipped when he remembered what he had come here for.
“Yes.”
John nodded and persisted along the rugged shore, squinting for the separation of rock and sand. His calloused hands tugged an overfilled bag flush to his back. Its cargo of logs and crumpled paper rustled and clacked as he marched, dissonant to the beat of ocean waves at his right. Wind veiled his eyes with his umber bangs, ignoring his attempts to sweep them behind his ear.
Allen wheezed. The boney man took more labored breaths behind John. His paces required more energy to keep him from sinking into the sand. He carried large cage traps, one in each hand, each covered in a black cloth. Their secret weight was going to kill him any second. "Where are we stopping?"
"Right over there."
John stopped, turning his head up and to his left. The other end of the beach boasted rugged cliffs. Their height masked them from passersby, their overhang from rain. John ended his hike at its base, and dropped his satchel. "No one should spot us."
"Thank God." Allan unloaded his luggage and inhaled what he could. The cages rattled when they touched the ground. He took a breather before approaching John to help him unpack their firewood.
Meanwhile they pulled logs from the satchel, John and Allan's backs were turned to a few tall patches of beach grass. Their blades lazily rustled in the ocean breeze. Behind their veil peaked two small, yellow eyes. They belonged to a furry creature crouching in the brush, watching the men at work. The only feature besides its eyes that could give them away was the distinct white spot on their chest. It remained silent.
Allen pulled the scattered kindling into a pile before him. He arranged the wads of paper at the bottom, trapping them inside with a cage of logs.
John laid down an old piece of cedar he’d ripped from an old barn the night before. He laid it on the ground, and picked up a small branch. One end he dug into the plank, the other sticking high into the air. He clasped both of his hands around it, and spun it, back and forth. The wood softly grinded, and eventually began to squeak from the friction. His hands rubbed faster and faster, making their way down the shaft. When he reached the bottom, he moved his hands up one at a time to maintain downward pressure on the hearthboard.
Wood turned to a pile of dust, and dust turned to a tiny charcoal that waved a smokey hello. John carefully scraped his kindling into the pile of branches, and crouched down to blow on it.
The bush creature took a few steps closer to the cage. It was a cat, poking its face out to sniff the iron bars, getting a whiff of something familiar. It ducked its head beneath the cloth, and met eyes with another cat, an orange tabby, on the other side. Her chin was showing some gray, and her eyes squinted to understand her sight. Behind her were three other cats, confined tightly together.
The orange cat leaned in, and she spoke in a psychic language the two men couldn’t hear. “Kellas! Kellas found us!” She exclaimed to her cagemates, who lifted their heads to see if she was really there.
“You’re still alive!” Kellas chirped back. She slinked fully under the cloth. “I’ll get you out of here. I’ll start yelling so they’ll take me with you.”
“Right,” The tabby nodded. “But we don’t have much time. Their fire is almost done, and there’s no way we can all escape at once.”
“Okay. Give me a minute.”
Kellas exited that cage, trotting silently across the beach towards the other. Her paws gripped the sand, kicking it away with each step.
John lifted his head from the campfire, which was now glowing and beginning to eat at its fuel. He stretched, turning his head to the left.
Kellas reacted by sprinting to the cage, hiding behind it as his neck cracked. He veered his head to the other side and paused when he spotted the tiny footprints between the traps.
“Did one of the cats escape?”
“What?” Allen lifted his head. He had been laying in the sand recovering from the long journey here. He, too, spotted the paw prints. “How? I triple checked that I locked them.”
John shook his head. “The rest of them would have left too.” He stood, leaving the fire to dance and grow. He walked over to the cage trap the prints lead to.
Kellas gasped and scurried around to its next side, still evading John’s line of sight. Her breathing slowed, her vision sharpened. She needed to focus to stay hidden.
John silently crept around the cage, spotting just her tail. He would use her blind spot as a chance to ambush her from the other side, but Kellas’ reflexes were faster, and she darted away from the cage, onto the open beach.
Kellas stood still as John ran up the beach to grab her. She waited, and waited until he was just about to pick her up by the scruff, and she darted as fast as she could to the first cage. She was kicking up sand with her paws, until the sand fell below her and her kicks caught nothing but air. Allan had predicted her destination, and hobbled back to the other trap with her. “I got it!”
Kellas heard metal squeaking, and then everything went dark. The second cage’s door rattled before her, and then was latched shut.
“No, no, no!” She wailed on the door with her claws, desperately trying to find the latch and flip it. The cage rocked and rustled loudly from her panic. “I need to tell the others the plan! No!”
Even John seemed a little out of breath now from chasing the cat. He walked back over to the campfire, and would let himself fall into the sand, basking in its heat. The smoke filtered out from under the overhang naturally, and the breeze carried it from the men’s faces for now.
There was dead silence before Allen finally spoke. “So we’re really going through with this. The moment we start we forfeit our chance of going to heaven.” His voice trembled slightly when he stared into the waving embers that would greet him once he took his last breath.
“Yes,” John replied. “But remember why we did this, Allen. You wanted fortune to help find a cure for Annalynn’s illness. This was your idea.”
Allen looked down, and tugged at the pocket of his pants for his wallet. “You’re right. She’s been getting frailer by the day and we’ve tried everything I can think of.” He opened it, and in one pocket held a photograph. It was of him, his deceased wife, their daughter, her husband, and Annalynn, his granddaughter. “This- if it even works- is our last hope now. But why must we do this to get salvation?”