Sheba stopped. “You don’t owe me for what happened to my children, Old Man. You couldn’t have saved them. And I don’t owe you for bringing me here. Not anymore.”
“It’s not about owing. It’s about putting the people you love first.”
“There are people in that town!” she said. “Not enemies. Not animals. People.”
“I’ve seen people get killed, Sheba. You think I don’t know—”
“Don’t give me another speech about the war. Please, not now.”
“Well, that’s why the husky came to me for help, isn’t it? I know about war.”
“Yes, and little else.”
Mort(e) spun away from her, trying to think of something else to say. Many miles away, Lodge City was silent, its lines of smoke extinguished.
“I’m going to the camp tomorrow,” Sheba said. “To see if I can do anything. Don’t you dare talk to me unless you want to help.”
She left him standing there. When the door shut behind her, the sound echoed from some empty space inside of him.
Mort(e) wished that this house included a basement, like his first home. A cool, dark cellar with a scratchy rug and a furnace that kicked on at odd hours. This bungalow, with its creaking hardwood floors, offered no such solitude. That night, while Mort(e) slept in the den, he could hear Sheba fidgeting in the bed they normally shared.
Mort(e) and Sheba usually spent the night twisting into various poses, dancing in their sleep. He’d rest his head on her ribs and listen to the air go in and out. She’d face away from him, their spines touching, sending warmth down to their tails. Or they would reverse-spoon, head to tail, the smaller cat forming a circle inside of the dog’s outstretched limbs. Their bodies changed, and yet the ritual remained.
Alone on the carpet, however, Mort(e) contorted into unfamiliar positions, each one leaving him chilled. The pillows provided a poor substitute for Sheba. He fell asleep grudgingly, his mouth propped open so that his tongue went dry, his whiskers crumpled awkwardly against his face, his tail squeezed between his hip and the floor. The dreams began with two-dimensional images of his master’s house scrolling by. He could not even lift his hand to touch them. Stop, he said. Stop. I know it’s a dream. I’m waking up now.
But he couldn’t escape. He inhabited his former body here, standing only a foot off the ground. Though Mort(e) refused to move, the dream shuffled him along anyway. He had grown used to it by now. Ever since using the translator, certain dreams repeated themselves, like Sheba’s videos. The Queen’s revenge on those who trespassed into her world.
He floated along the carpet, up the stairs, past the room where his masters slept. Fine, he thought. Let’s do it again. He traversed the house like some spirit pushed by the wind. He could smell Sheba. Every room he entered, her scent grew stronger, and yet he could not find her. Passing by the children’s room, he heard Michael calling to him. Help me, the boy said. In here. Save me. Another useless echo of the translator. A misfiring in his brain. He ignored it. The camera-like view peered under the bed, poked into closets and behind the big chair in the living room. He should have seen her by now. That was how the dream worked. She would be reclining in their spot in the basement, or leashed in the driveway, or sitting obediently by the kitchen door.
Instead, he heard water sloshing against the walls. The room tilted. At the window, a new odor greeted him—salt, creeping into his throat. Outside, an ocean extended as far as he could see, disappearing under a fog. Everything he remembered drowned in the waves—the telephone poles, the neighboring houses, the cars. The house became a drifting boat, an ark ferrying them through a flooded world. He could hear the hull groaning.
The house was sinking.
Bluish-green water climbed the steps. Somewhere in the house, he could hear it gushing from a breach in the foundation. The water lapped at the great mirror that hung from the wall. Photo frames and vases slid from the mantelpiece and splashed into the water. Mort(e) retreated to the attic, the place he once took Sheba when they were still pets. She had to be here, hiding under an old coat or in a cardboard box.
The water overwhelmed her scent. It did not care that Sheba had disappeared. It simply flowed into the empty places, following a path of least resistance.
Mort(e) woke to find the sky brightening from black to purple. He sat up. It took a few deep inhales for him to accept that the salt water had not followed him into the real world.
Mort(e) knew what to do. His mind narrowed to his training, leaving no room for questions or doubts. He slipped into those days during the war, when he would gear up in freezing temperatures, in the rain, in the middle of a mortar attack with his left ear partially deafened. Then as now, he would prepare himself to die without seeing Sheba again.
In the garage, Mort(e) started with a tactical vest, a lightweight camo with four pockets in the front. In the pouches, he placed salted Alpha meat, a water bottle, and a grenade. He fastened a utility belt around his waist, to which he clipped a small first aid kit and mini-binoculars. Then he turned to the guns. A CZ 550 elephant rifle with a sniper scope, and a bandolier of bullets capable of piercing concrete. The oil smelled stale to him, so he disassembled the rifle, greased it, and put it together again. As much as he hated wearing shoes, he opted for a pair of Army-issue desert boots, specially fitted for him at Camp Delta during the war. Their steel tips could snap a human femur if he kicked hard enough.
He went outside to listen to his clumsy boots on the gravel path. Too loud, he thought, but he would take them anyway. The front door of the house opened and Sheba stepped out. With her eyelids drooping, she took inventory of the weapons that weighed him down.
“I know how we can save the hostages,” he said. “I think I know.”
“You wanna help now?” she said, yawning.
“I can help all of us, actually.”
“What does that mean?”
“I’m going to talk to the bats. Maybe we can broker a peace deal.”
“The bats hate the beavers.”
“I think I can bring them on board. They just need the right incentive.”
“Which is?”
“The same thing we want. A home. Safety. Being left alone.”
Grimacing, Sheba tightened the straps on his vest, like a human mother fixing a hopelessly disheveled boy. She palmed the grenade, shook her head, and then let it dangle. “You said it would be impossible.”
“No. I said unwinnable.”
“Whatever. You said it would take an army.”
“It will.”
“Where do we get one?”
Mort(e) pointed at the pen. The Alphas arranged themselves in rows like an audience entranced by a play.
“They’re not lasting through this season,” Mort(e) said. “We can either put them down, one by one, or we can let them go out like real ants.”
“Okay,” Sheba said. She repeated it a few times until her voice trailed off.
“Take them to the refugee camp,” Mort(e) said. “I’ll go to the bats. I should be able to meet you at the camp tomorrow afternoon at the latest.”
He explained his plan to attack the city, starting with bat recon, and ending with an Alpha assault. Before he could start comparing it to some battle he had witnessed, Sheba wrapped her arms around him and squeezed until his ribs popped.
“Thank you, Old Man.”
Mort(e) let her hug him for a while before telling her he had to go. And even then, they kept hugging, their eyes closed, until the brightening day reminded them that they had work to do. As soon as they disentangled themselves, Mort(e) walked to the trail in the forest.
CHAPTER 7
The Floating Island
The Sarcops moved north into the frigid, barren waters. Scouts probed the territory, desperate to find food, while a line of Juggernauts protected the rear of the convoy. Taalik’s mates circl
ed him closely. Every morning, Orak gave him a report of the dead. Starvation and exhaustion had long since weeded out the older, weaker ones. These days, most of the casualties were young, the recently hatched. Their tender corpses served as food for the others.
At night, Orak kept watch while Taalik mated with the other females. She no longer participated herself. He asked her to continue—perhaps one day the Queen would restore her ability to bear young. But Orak refused. The Sarcops needed Taalik to mate as often as he could. For her to continue simply because he favored her would only hurt everyone else.
The darkness had passed over the water more than sixty times since they left Cold Trench. They had entered some dead zone, devoid of life, where the trenches plunged into oblivion, and choppy, rough currents troubled the surface. The expanse swallowed up the familiar smells—fish, seaweed, a line of crabs trundling across the seabed.
Worst of all, the Queen would not speak to him. This after months of visions and dreams of the war. At night, he saw the Queen’s enemies from afar, the humans, mere shadows marching upright on the horizon, searching for prey. They could summon death from great distances, with sharp objects or machines that flew through the air. Long after these revelations ceased, Orak continued to ask about them. The Queen shows you these terrible visions, she said. She should use her powers to find us food instead.
One day, scouts returned from an expedition, breathless, darting about in a panic. What is it? Taalik asked them. What did you see? They tried to describe it: an enormous object resting on the surface of the water. A boat? No, they said. Too large. After some debate, they settled on a term—a floating island. Taalik hoped that it was a chunk of ice, broken off from one of the northern glaciers, a sign that they were getting close. The scouts could not say for sure.
Taalik would have to see for himself. He ordered the convoy to wait, which meant once again asking Orak to keep an eye on things. Do not speak, he told her. Just do. Do what I say.
Taalik made the trip at night, with nothing but blackness in every direction. As the morning arrived, he sighted the floating island. He recognized it from the many visions the Queen bestowed upon him. The scouts were wrong—it was a boat, one of the largest the humans had ever built. A testament to their power, their recklessness. The humans could carve out a chunk of their land and transform it into a moving country. Under any other circumstances, the convoy would have slipped quietly under this metal beast. But things had become so desperate that Taalik wondered if the ship could somehow help their cause. Maybe it contained something his people could use. Or perhaps the Queen placed it here as some kind of test. Once that idea began to claw at him, he knew he would have to venture above the water to face death yet again.
The sun blinded him when he broke the surface. It took a moment for his eyes to moisten. When the blurriness passed, the impossible structure loomed before him. The gray hull of the ship—rusted and freckled with barnacles—had to be the length of over three hundred Sarcops swimming end-to-end. A tower was mounted in the middle. Taalik recognized the machines on the deck from his night journeys with the Queen. They seemed to be made of the same smooth material as the hull, as if the ship had given birth to them. These devices could travel through the air the way his people could move through the water. They resembled fish, with fins and enormous blank eyes.
Having held his breath this entire time, Taalik flapped his gills, opened his mouth, and sucked in the air. He took deeper breaths, until he imagined himself draining away the endless blue that hung over the water. This time, it did not hurt. The air gave him strength.
When Taalik reached the ship, he tapped the smooth metal with his claw. The shell on his back split open, and the four tentacles wriggled out. The suckers gripped the hull. He began to climb.
Near the top, he felt vibrations in the metal. Something moved on the deck. He poked his head over the edge. The flying fish stood tightly packed, some with their wings protruding off the side of the boat. The tower sat dormant, its windows caked in salt. White cylindrical containers were arranged in a group, each brimming with rainwater. Parts of the deck had been sectioned off into large rectangles, covered in dirt and lined with rows of green plants. In the middle of all this, one of the beasts from the land—a human—straddled a machine with two wheels that rolled around on the deck. The solitary monster pedaled his contraption in a loop, his head swaying. The man had white hair and pink skin and a long, red nose. A strange fabric hung loosely over his skeletal frame.
With no one else around, Taalik pulled himself on board and crawled underneath the flying fish. He unraveled his tentacles, making himself appear larger than he really was. When the man spotted him, the riding machine skidded to a halt.
The human spoke. Taalik did not recognize the language at first. The Queen’s visions taught him many tongues. It took a moment to place this one.
“Who are you?” the man said. “Can you speak?”
This time Taalik understood.
“Only a matter of time, I guess,” the man said. He let the riding machine fall sideways with a clatter. “They took over the land, now they’ve taken over the water.”
Taalik swallowed to loosen his throat muscles. The air dried him out so quickly. “Where?” he asked. He pointed at the deck. “Where . . . are we? What is this . . . place?”
The man’s mouth stretched to either side of his face, scrunching the wrinkles around his eyes. He extended both arms. “This is the United States of America!”
Individually, those words made sense. Strung together like this, they meant nothing. “Who are you?” Taalik asked.
“Nathan Finch, Last Man on Earth, and Captain of the USS Harry S. Truman, the only unconquered territory left for the Allies. Until today, I guess. Have you come to kill me?”
The man seemed giddy at the prospect. “No,” Taalik said.
Nathan Finch grunted. “I guess I’d be dead already. You’re going to leave me out here then? Just as well. I can stay here as long as it takes.”
“How long? How long . . . here . . . are you?”
Nathan Finch eyed him. Taalik wondered if the man was trying to smell him as well. “How long have I been here? Going on twelve years.”
The man kept busy all this time by marking the ship with symbols, large pieces of artwork depicting animals and humans in battle. Underneath Taalik’s feet, a pack of wild humans chased animals covered in fur, with large ears and teeth. Near the tower, a man drove a spear through the neck of a giant insect. The chalky remnants of the word HELP still clung to the deck, nearly scrubbed away by the elements. Even when they should have gone extinct, these primates dug their claws into the earth and hung on.
“They used to send bird patrols to mess with my head,” Nathan Finch said. “But I took out a few of them with the fifty cal. After that, I figured the Queen stopped caring.”
Finch admitted that the crew members were all dead. The last few departed in a lifeboat three years earlier. That was the last time the captain had spoken to a real person.
“Have you been to the Queen’s island?” the man asked. “Have you seen her?”
“The Queen is gone.”
“You mean dead?”
“She lives. In me.”
“Okay. So you’re not here to kill me. What do you want then?”
“Food. To eat.”
“Food to eat, sure.”
“You must bring.”
The man squinted. “Come with me.”
They walked to the tower. Nathan Finch pointed to the curved dish on the roof. “I’ve spent years trying to hail someone, on every frequency,” he said. “And then a talking fish comes aboard.”
While the man rambled on, Taalik examined the ship more closely. Near some of the painted images of battle, Taalik noticed a depiction of a man wearing Nathan Finch’s uniform, holding the hand of a smaller person, a female human. Perhaps
this man sketched out his life story, and traveled around it on his riding machine so he wouldn’t forget. The Queen had reduced her once fearsome enemy to an old man drawing pictures in the middle of nowhere.
“Do you like it?” Nathan Finch said. “There are some more over here.”
Taalik approached an image of a boat floating on the water, its cannons ablaze. When his foot came to rest on the ship’s bow, a sound like grinding metal screeched behind him. He turned to see one of the flying fish tipping over the side of the boat. Its fin pointed straight into the air as it tumbled off the edge.
“Oh, God,” Nathan Finch said.
A cable zipped across the deck, dragging a sharp piece of metal. Taalik sensed danger, tried to move away, but it was too late. The metal pierced his tail and flipped him onto his stomach, scraping his scales on the tarmac. He tried to grab something as the deck slid underneath him. The tether lifted Taalik into the air and slammed him against the wall of the tower. Dazed, hanging upside down, Taalik reached for his wounded tail to find it impaled on a large metal hook. The cable ran through a pulley at the top of the tower—an elaborate trap that used the weight of the flying fish to snare a large animal.
Footsteps approached. “Never thought I’d have to use that,” Nathan Finch said.
The thin air made Taalik delirious. He glanced at the human, who stood inverted before him. “Tell me where you come from,” Nathan Finch said.
Taalik tried to pull the hook out of his tail. The barbed tip protruding from the flesh would not budge. He remembered this same object, like a severed claw, stuck into the fin of the mighty shark Graydeath. The humans used these tools to trap his people. How many died like this, drying out in the sun, while the monsters watched?
“We can make this quick,” Nathan Finch said. “But I need to know who you are.”
Taalik had shouted his name when he first landed on the beach. But this human did not hear it. Taalik would have to shout it louder. He gripped his tail with his claws, right below the hook. The skin began to tear. His tongue hung out of his mouth from the pain.
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