He sighed and made a show of stopping his work to face me. “They’re guarding everything. Can you blame them?” His forehead relaxed slightly as he took another drag. I watched, fascinated, as the tip of the cigarette glowed bright orange, then white, as he sucked in. “Your best bet is to turn back and find a group to join. Make some friends.” He stumbled back a little, and I saw that he had been drinking.
“I don’t need friends. I need a ride to Saint John.”
He grunted. “Wouldn’t do you any good anyway. You gotta have a starpass to set foot in town, much less get to the gate. Only cops left on earth are the ones guarding the transport cities.”
“I have a starpass.”
“And I got a rocket right here in my pocket.” It was a line from the movie about the astronauts. I suppressed the urge to roll my eyes, and he slung the rope into the boat, swaying more than the action required.
“I’m serious. Look.” I dug into my shirt and pried the pass from my skin. I held it up and walked toward him, yanking Band-Aids off its corners and flicking them into the water along the way.
“Let me see that.”
I pulled my arm back. “Let me on the boat.”
He threw me a look I couldn’t read, then suddenly shrugged. “Worth a shot. All aboard.”
My satchel and food bag were on the floor of the boat in the next second, and I followed not a moment later. “Thank you. Thank you so much,” I said, straightening. “You have no idea—”
“Alright, alright.” Trin clambered into the front of the boat as I took my seat next to the inboard motor. “Let’s see the pass.”
“Here.” I held it toward his face.
He made a grab for it, but he was good and drunk, and I jerked it back with room to spare. “I’ll hang on to it.”
“Fine, fine,” he muttered into the dashboard. The engine sputtered to life, and I realized the boat ran on gasoline. This was old school. We went fast, much faster than I expected. The harbor shrank into the distance, and the light from the boat showed grass on both sides of the waterway. I was glad I’d brought the shapeless coat from the back seat of Meghan’s car. I slid it over my shoulders, careful to maintain an iron grip on the starpass. I wished I hadn’t tossed away the Band-Aids. Hands were not the most reliable way to keep up with stuff.
When the boat skimmed past the last mounds of earth and into the open water, I allowed myself to smile. As I expected, Trin swerved us to the left, and we swept north up the coast of Maine.
My moment of relief came crashing down an instant later when the engine died. I squinted at the actor, who was barely visible in the light from the dashboard. I couldn’t see his left hand, but his right slipped something small and metal into the pocket of his shorts. The boat key.
When he turned around, I imagined the gun in his hand before I saw it.
“Woah. Sit back down,” he said. “That’s right. Now just hand over that pass.”
“You have got to be kidding me. There’s no way they’ll let you on the transport. They’re gonna know you’re over forty.”
“We’ll see about that,” he said, in a tone that implied that he usually got what he wanted. “Give it here. Your bags, too.” Up close, his hands were enormous. His fingers were thicker than the barrel of the gun. They stretched toward my face like wooden stumps.
I drew a ragged breath and pretended to fumble for the pass. “Please don’t do this.” My breath came a little harder, and shorter.
He was unmoved. “Now.”
“Okay. Okay, I’m just—here.” I let my voice shake and held the pass toward him. His red-rimmed eyes were totally focused on that shiny blue card. When those wooden fingers were inches away, I dropped the pass and yanked them, using his weight to swing myself up to a standing position.
He fell forward, and I shoved my body against the side of the boat. The gun went off, and my heart squeezed. Did the bullet hit the motor behind me?
His right elbow slammed into my face with unexpected force, and my field of vision swung upward, toward the stars. It occurred to me, too late, that he’d probably had combat training for half the movies he’d starred in. I found myself leaning backward over the side of the boat, jerking my head away from the choppy surface of the water.
I grabbed the back of his neck just as he cocked the gun a second time, a fact I barely registered before my mouth connected to his skin. I bit down, suppressing the urge to gag. He crumpled, but only for an instant.
It was all I needed. I hit him in the side of the head as hard as I could, then reached for his pistol arm. Using every ounce of strength I possessed, I flung him into the side of the boat.
He tottered for a sickening moment, and I ducked and reached for his ankles. Above me, the gun went off a second time. I pulled his legs up while simultaneously shoving my head into his sternum, and Trin Lector went over the side of the boat.
With the boat key still in his pocket.
I figured I had less than a minute before he got back on board, gun in hand. Although his boat was old school, the gun was a more recent design. It would fire despite being wet.
Luckily for me, I didn’t need that much time. I yanked the cover off the keyswitch and grappled for the wires in the darkness. I threw the switch for the dash lights and studied the wad of wires in my hand. Then I reached for a razor blade.
Blast.
My razor blades. I’d left them in Meghan’s bathroom. Not good, Char. Not good.
I forced myself to block out the sound of the splashing nearing the back of the boat and threw down the lid of the glove compartment, frantically tossing its contents onto the seat. Surely he kept a knife in here somewhere.
A glint of red the size of my thumb caught my eye. A pocketknife. Brilliant.
Within seconds I had stripped every wire I had uncovered. I had never hotwired a boat before, but the rules were always the same when there was no computer involved. Find the positive, connect it to the negative, and touch that to the starter wire. Problem was, before the government standardized this stuff, every manufacturer used different colors for the wires.
My hands did not shake even as the boat pitched backward very slightly, signaling that Trin had reached the back of the boat and was hoisting himself up. I tried combo after combo, steady as a cat. It did not pay to have shaky hands when the game was playing out.
“Hold it right there.”
I’ll never know why he didn’t just shoot first. Maybe he had lost the key in the water, and didn’t know how to hotwire the boat without me. Or maybe there was some shred of him that couldn’t shoot another person in cold blood, even drunk. Even when the stakes were as high as they were that night.
I tried not to wonder which it was.
But he didn’t shoot. Instead, he said, “Hold it right there,” like we were in a movie, and that was all the time I needed. The motor growled to life, and I pressed the throttle into first position. An instant later, the engine compressed, and it was all over.
I slammed the throttle fully open. The boat jerked forward, and the sound of his splash was drowned in the roar of the motor.
I don’t know if he caught in the blades or hit the water clean. I did not look behind me.
Eight
I stopped only once, to retrieve the pass from the floor of the boat, and only after I was at least a mile away. As I slid it into my nylons, next to my thigh, I wondered what Meghan would have thought of my leaving Trin in the water and decided not to dwell on that. He’d planned to kill me, and I had done the only thing I could. Hopefully Meghan would have understood that.
The night was beautiful, and despite its age, the Bandito had a strong light on its prow. I hugged the coast and kept a constant speed, so that I knew how far I had traveled. After sixty miles, I slowed at each cluster of lights along the shoreline, but I needn’t have worried. Saint John was unmistakable.
The Coast Guard surrounded the harbor, holding the last fifty or so feet of water open. Each official-looking boat
had a floodlight and a loudspeaker, and the same message played over and over. “Civilian watercraft must maintain a distance of one hundred miles. Only citizens in possession of OPT passes will be allowed in the harbor. For the safety of law-abiding citizens, those violating orders will be shot. Anyone attempting to board a military vessel will be shot.”
A mass of boats formed a halo around the crescent of Guard boats, leaving no more than a few feet of distance between the civilians and the military. My hands were tight on the steering wheel. The situation was tense, and it would only get worse in the remaining twenty-five minutes before midnight, before we were all locked out forever.
I allowed myself ten seconds to scan the scene before guiding the Bandito into the only gap at the back of the crowd, but once I had wedged in, there was no way to get closer. The boats were packed too tightly. I pushed my hair out of my face, aware that my expression probably mirrored those around me: fear and desperation.
When the boat next to me jostled against mine, I shouldered my satchel and bag of food out of instinct. They were too vulnerable on the floor. Anyone could just jump right into my boat. Not that they would want to. I was probably the farthest person from the harbor. Another moment passed, and the Pinball was that much closer to us all. Twenty-three minutes before the gates closed. I scanned the scene before me, ignoring the dread rising up in my chest. Come on, Char. What was the move here?
Wait. Anyone could jump into my boat.
That was the move.
I pressed my bags into my side and scrambled into the front of the boat. The woman in the next boat up saw me coming and nudged her companion, her face tight.
“Oh, no you don’t,” the man called out. He stood, intending to block my way, but he was too slow. My feet touched their boat four times, and each step brought me closer to the prow. And then I was gone.
The next boat was much the same, as was the next. By the time I clambered onto my fourth, a yacht, I had commanded the attention of several people in the surrounding vessels. We were well lit by the Coast Guard’s floodlights. I caught the eye of a man of about thirty in the boat next to the yacht. His look of despair changed to hope in that instant. He gripped the rail on the front of his own boat, mirroring my movements, and jumped heavily into the craft in front of him.
I took a split second to stand up and assess the situation in front of me. At least ten more rows of boats stood between me and the Coast Guard. To my left and my right, people were abandoning their vessels and sweeping forward into the boats in front of them. Soon, too soon, this would get ugly. When the mob reached the Coast Guard, they would open fire, rather than allow themselves to be boarded. I had to stay ahead of the crowd, but there was no room for a misstep. If I fell into the water, or was pushed in, I would be crushed between the jostling boats or held underwater beneath them.
Voices filled the air around me, with protests increasing in volume, but those of us who climbed forward fastest were silent. Somewhere near me, a gun went off. The sound sent a jolt through my entire body. The message from the loudspeakers continued in the background, uninterrupted, closer and louder with each boat I overtook.
When at last I had reached the final boat, everything changed again. The announcement from the Coast Guard stopped, and I squinted into their floodlights. Each Guard boat was a blazing light. The Guards themselves were mere shadows in the darkness behind the lights.
We were close enough that I could count the number of Guards in each boat, even though I couldn’t see their faces. Something jostled me from behind, and I realized that I was standing on the front line of a huge crowd of people.
To my left and right, faces of all ages and ethnicities glowed in the spotlights. We stood precariously, knowing that to fall into the water would mean certain death.
There are too many of us. It was only a matter of time until the Coast Guard decided that we were enough of a threat to take action. And we were hopelessly outgunned. My breath shortened.
It occurred to me that my position, including my grip on the bitt at the prow, was prime real estate. I clamped down harder, resisting the urge to cry out when someone’s heel found my knuckles. The crowd bore forward, and the crashes of people hitting the water were all around me, along with their screams. We were so well illuminated by the Coast Guard’s lights that each bobbing, drowning head was impossible to miss.
A hand clamped onto my arm, and I shifted my weight, preparing to elbow its owner in the eye socket. But when I turned to look at my target, I stopped.
A young boy crouched next to me. His eyes were as dark as West’s, and my free hand wrapped around his wrist instead, surprising me. We were both as low to the boat as possible, so that we’d be harder to knock overboard, but that didn’t discourage people from trying. A moment later, a shin drove into the boy’s back, and he scrambled only for an instant before falling forward.
My heart squeezed, and the full horror of the situation hit me all at once.
We are all going to die.
There is no way to save any of us.
There was no point in even trying.
But my body ignored this logic, and my terror only fueled my actions. My grip on his wrist became like iron, and I yanked upward as hard as I could. He hadn’t lost his hold on me, either, and together, we pulled him back to the relative safety of the deck.
I realized that our eyes hadn’t left each other, and blinked.
“Thanks,” he said.
I managed to choke out a response. “Yeah. No problem.”
Then we heard the sound of motors shifting gear, and the floodlights began to move. For an instant, everyone froze.
The Coast Guard were leaving.
When their lights moved, I got my first view of the harbor, or what remained of it. Instead of docks, an enormous concrete wall rose up from the bay, with a single opening at water level. As I watched, the closest of the Guard boats slipped through the gap.
I had to get onto a Guard boat. It was the only way to get through the barrier in the harbor. Before this thought had fully formed in my mind, the slick surface beneath me lurched forward. I pitched backward and slammed onto the deck. My arms and legs grappled for purchase as the boat increased its speed. Just as I was about to slide into the water, my hip rammed into the bitt. I clawed at it with both hands, trying to get a solid grip. My bags shot overboard, but their straps were wrapped around my wrist, so that their weight yanked against my hold on the bitt. Beside me, the boy was doing the same.
A few people hit the water, and I willed myself not to look. Other boats had engaged their motors, too. Anyone in the water was likely to be run over. It was a bad time to lose balance.
I steadied myself with difficulty, then spared a moment of appreciation for the captain. He must have figured out a way around the GPS shutdown, but had the foresight to wait until the Guard boats moved first, so that he wouldn’t be fired on.
He also probably wanted to get rid of us before he got to the nearest Guard boat. I couldn’t blame him there. He was headed toward the tiny gap between the two Guard boats directly in front of us. Behind us, the swarm of boat-hoppers began to shout at the retreating boats, but the government-controlled GPS system had rendered all but a few of them immobile.
The man driving the boat had come prepared, and he had been on the front line, so he’d been parked there awhile—long enough to figure out his next move. I had no intention of finding out what that was.
I turned to the boy. “We have to jump.”
He nodded, wide-eyed.
“Get ready,” I shouted.
When we were within ten feet of the Coast Guard boat, I gathered my legs under me and perched on the front of the boat. One arm maintained my death-grip on the bitt, and the other squeezed my bags against my ribcage.
When we were four feet from the Guard boat, I jumped.
I hit the prow of the Guard boat so hard I had to wonder if I’d broken a rib. When my bags swung into my side an instant later, I decided
it was a distinct possibility. I grabbed onto the chrome railing and swung myself over.
The world exploded into red and orange as I landed on the floor of the boat. I had barely a second to register that the boy had made it, too—and more gracefully than I. There was a deafening noise, like a crash, and we scrambled to our feet. The boat I had just jumped from was on fire. At least, what was left of it. A magnificent bonfire rose up from the waves, its heat strong enough to curl my hair.
Had the Coast Guard just torpedoed an unarmed civilian boat? I had to remind myself to breathe.
I looked over my shoulder, as though my new shipmates would answer the question for me. I could not feign surprise at the young man who pointed a gun at my chest, since I had not expected a warm reception. But the shock of the explosion was evident on my face.
“That. He just…”
I must have been doing a killer damsel-in-distress, because he lowered his gun almost immediately. “I’ll have to ask you to keep your hands where I can see them, ma’am.” His eyes darted from me to the remains of the boat, and back to me. The blaze illuminated the sweat on his face.
Near us, another Guard was escorting the boy away from us. The Guard with the gun saw my panic. “He’ll be checked over there. For safety.”
“I have a starpass! I couldn’t get to the OPT. Everything was blocked.” Against my will, I glanced back at the burning boat behind us.
“It’s for everyone’s safety.” He spoke a little too quickly, and his words spilled into each other. “We anticipated someone might bypass the GPS shutdown. We can’t afford to be mobbed, and it’s too late to arrest anyone. Everyone in our ships has to get through the gate before it closes.”
My tongue was frozen in my mouth.
“Really, it’s for the best. I’m sure they didn’t feel any pain.”
The Guard was referring to the torpedo, but his words echoed the line they’d been repeating on the broadcasts about the meteor, over and over: “It will be quick. Citizens remaining on Earth won’t feel any pain.”
The Ark Page 6
