Run
“You’ve led me a merry dance, young lady,” he said. “I’m glad I’ve finally caught up with you. We have a lot to talk about.”
“I’ve got nothing to say to you,” Annalie said, already looking for an escape route, noticing that this time he’d brought backup. Two marines were standing by. There were probably more she couldn’t see.
“They’re very worried about you two back at Triumph,” Beckett said. “Very anxious for your safe return.”
“We were about to buy our train tickets actually,” Essie said, “so there’s no need for you to worry, we can get back safely by ourselves.”
“I wouldn’t want to risk you getting lost again,” Beckett said. “I’ve got a car standing by to take you back.”
“None of this has anything to do with her,” Annalie said. “She’s just my friend from school and she was on her way back anyway. Why don’t you just let her go?”
“That’s not strictly true though, is it, Annalie?” Beckett said, with his tooth-baring smile. “She’s just paid for all sorts of things she’s not going to need at school.”
“I made her do that,” Annalie said desperately. “She didn’t want to, but—”
“None of this is really relevant,” said Beckett. “Let’s go.”
He steered the two girls out of the information hall and toward the front entrance. Annalie’s eyes darted about, looking desperately for a chance to escape. “Don’t try anything,” Beckett warned. “It won’t work.”
Escape certainly seemed unlikely, with Beckett right behind her, and marines on either side of them. Where are they going to take us? she wondered. And what would Will do when they didn’t come back? She wished they’d made a contingency plan in case one of them didn’t return. She had no way of sending him a message, no way to tell him to get away. She imagined him waiting there at the boat, waiting and waiting while Beckett’s men closed in on him.
Suddenly an irate middle-aged lady appeared in front of them, trying to get the attention of the marines. “Excuse me! Excuse me! Could we get some help over here please?”
The marines tried to brush her off, but she wouldn’t be brushed. “Those men over there are creating a disturbance and no one’s doing anything about it! Over there, look!”
Some men, possibly drunk, were shouting and pushing each other in the midst of some discombobulated travelers. One of them crashed into a stand of water bottles and knocked them flying.
“Sorry ma’am,” said one of the marines, “we can’t attend to that right now—”
But Annalie, seeing an opportunity, blurted, “Talk to this man! He’s in charge of station security!” and pointed to Beckett.
The woman started demanding action, Beckett and his men tried to shake her off, and in that brief moment of turmoil and confusion, Annalie grabbed Essie and they broke into a run. They began weaving through the crowd, dashing and darting and ducking behind as many visual barriers as they could. People stopped to watch them go past, but they were lucky—no one decided to step in and stop them. Annalie spotted a camera as she ran, and realized that a place like this must be heavily monitored.
“We need to get out of the station,” she shouted to Essie.
They darted out the great open doors, the heavy thud of boots close behind them. Annalie chose a direction at random and kept running, only hoping Essie could keep up. She saw an alleyway and went running down it; it doglegged around, and came to a dead end. Essie came careering down it after her. “Where now?” she gasped.
There was a door, metal, dented. Annalie yanked it open and clouds of steam billowed out. Not knowing where she was going, Annalie darted inside; Essie followed. They pulled the door shut behind them and moved forward.
It was a huge industrial laundry. Massive washing machines churned in a cloud of steam; dryers roared. The air smelled heavily of washing powder and bleach and it was very hot.
“Hey!” someone yelled, seeing them, and they ran again, racing past rows of machines and huge trolleys full of grimy sheets and filthy tablecloths.
They found themselves in a loading dock where the trucks rolled in and out; more workers turned to stare at them as they jumped down from the dock and raced out into the street again.
“Do you think we lost them?” Essie gasped.
“Wouldn’t count on it,” Annalie said. Looking up, she saw a bus coming down the street. “Let’s catch that!”
They ran for the bus stop and flagged the bus down, flopping down into two seats near the rear doors.
“Do you know where this is going?” Essie asked.
“Nope,” Annalie said. Two stops later she jumped up, grabbed Essie, and they plunged into a busy market.
“Now where are we going?” Essie panted as they wove through slow-moving shopping crowds.
Annalie stopped by a stall that sold accessories. “Hat or scarf?” she asked.
“What?” Essie said, bewildered.
Annalie grabbed two hats with deep brims from the display and paid the first price the stallholder asked for. She pulled one of the hats on, tugging the brim down. “Disguise,” she explained. Essie pulled on the other.
When they emerged on the other side of the market, there were a range of different vehicles lined up waiting for fares. “We have to get back to the Sunfish,” she said.
“Wait,” Essie said. “There’s two things we need to do first.”
The first thing she did was find a cashpoint, where she took out an enormous amount of cash. “Now,” she said, when she’d done that. “Give me your shell.”
Annalie handed it over, and Essie opened up both the backs. Inside each was a little chip. Annalie’s was blue; Essie’s gold.
“Ah,” Essie said.
“What?”
“You’ve already got a chip-to-go.”
“A what?”
“There are two ways you can pay to use the links. Set up an account and pay it every month, which is what I’ve got. Or buy a chip-to-go that lasts for as long as it lasts, then you get a new one. This chip,” she continued, holding up her own gold chip, “has all my details and information on it. If my shell ever got lost or stolen or I left it on a bus, I could find it again, because it’s identifiably mine and searchable. But your chip has no information on it at all.”
“So?”
“So as soon as I switch my shell on, if I’m within range of the links, they can find it—and me. But they can’t use yours to find you.”
“Oh.”
“So I need one of those chips.”
She ducked into a store, bought a new chip and installed it in her phone. “There,” she said, with a grin. “Now I’m invisible.”
She dropped the gold chip and ground it under her heel until it was irreparably smashed, then scooped the bits up and binned them. “Now we can get back to the Sunfish.”
“Wait a minute. We?”
“I’ve made up my mind. I’m coming with you,” Essie said. “My mom’s run off with some rich guy I’ve never even met. My dad’s in jail. He’s probably going to lose the house. And he’s going to have to pull me out of Triumph at the end of this term anyway because he can’t afford the fees. I don’t even know where they’re planning to send me these holidays.” She took a shaky breath. “I’d rather take my chances with you.”
Annalie bit her lip, looking soberly at Essie. But all she said was, “Okay then.”
The code
Now, at last, they set a course for the west, and the Moon Islands. Will and Annalie spent a lot of time looking over the charts on Spinner’s old sat nav, discussing the best way to go. There were, of course, a million different ways to travel through the thousands of islands that made up the Moon Islands, and neither of them really knew how to decide which way might be best. Their charts were old and inaccurate, and although Spinner had made his own
annotations about places he’d been to, there were many places in the archipelago he’d never been.
Annalie and Will studied the routes, arguing this way and that about what looked better. Annalie didn’t want to go anywhere that looked too dangerous; Will was all about speed. He wished he could remember more of the route the magnificent new sat nav had conjured up for him, but there were too many unfamiliar place names, and after the first couple of stops he couldn’t remember any of it. Eventually, they came to a route that they were both happy with, and programed it into the sat nav. It couldn’t chart their position like a more modern sat nav could—they would have to determine their position the old-fashioned way, using instruments and measurements. Spinner’s navigation instruments were so old they’d been antiques even before the Flood, and Will had never really had the patience to learn to use them properly, so navigation would be Annalie’s job.
Their first day out of Southaven was a beautiful autumn day, perfect weather for sailing, and it felt more than ever like they were going on holiday.
The weather stayed fair for several days. It was easy sailing; they were in open water so there was nothing to watch out for. They had decided to travel outside the international shipping lanes, hoping they’d be less obvious to any Admiralty ships that might be looking for them, so they saw few other boats.
Essie quickly started to get a little stir-crazy. Normally when she was bored she checked her feeds, but that was impossible. Less than a day’s sailing out from Southaven they had lost their connection to the links. You needed a powerful booster to connect to the links from the open ocean, and Spinner had never seen the need for such a thing. So there were no more newsfeeds, no more fashion reports. “What do you do all day?” she wailed.
Annalie tried to teach her about the boat—words for things, procedures, things she thought it might come in handy to know—but none of it really seemed to stick. Will tried to show her how to fish, but Essie didn’t have the patience for it, and she didn’t much like fish anyway. Eventually she offered to become the cook, but even that was not enough to fill the long afternoons.
“Here,” Annalie said finally, “have some old-school fun,” and she handed Essie a worn old pre-Flood paperback. The book, an adventure story about children at sea, had been one of Annalie’s favorites when she was younger and she’d kept it, along with a small cache of others, to re-read on the boat whenever things got quiet. Essie looked skeptical, but opened it anyway, and as she did, a piece of paper fluttered out. She picked it up and looked at it curiously. “What’s this?” she said.
There was writing on the piece of paper, but it didn’t make any sense to her. Annalie recognized Spinner’s handwriting.
“I don’t know,” she said, taking it from Essie.
“Is it a code?”
It certainly looked like a code. The letters were all normal letters, but they didn’t form any words that made sense. They had been arranged down the page in small groups.
“It’s some kind of list,” Annalie said.
“Names?” Essie suggested, looking at the way the letters were grouped.
“There are some numbers too,” Annalie said. “Perhaps they’re names and addresses.”
Annalie studied them a little longer, hoping to spot a pattern that might help her guess what some of the letters were. But she couldn’t see anything.
She took the piece of paper up on deck and showed it to Will. “Have you ever seen this before?” she asked.
Will peered at it. “No,” he said. “What is it?”
“It’s a code. Spinner did it and hid it in one of my books.”
“Probably just one of those games you used to play,” Will said.
When Annalie was younger she’d had a passion for codes and puzzles, and Spinner had sometimes made up coded messages to amuse her, especially during winter when it was too wet or cold to go outside.
“But this is new,” Annalie said. “I’ve never seen it before.”
“Maybe he made it for you but you never got around to solving it,” Will said.
Annalie shook her head. “I re-read this book six months ago, and it wasn’t there then.” She looked at the piece of paper, willing it to give up its secrets. “I think this might be something important.”
Will yawned his disagreement. “Better go and work out what it says then.” And indeed Annalie tried, for the rest of the morning, without getting anywhere.
Later that afternoon, clouds began to mass on the horizon. Will and Annalie watched them as they grew, darkened, and moved toward them.
“Storm,” Will said.
Annalie nodded. “Can we get out of its path?”
“We can try.” And he did try, but the wind ahead of the storm front had dropped away, and the bad weather was gaining on them.
“We could use the engine and try to outrun it,” Annalie suggested.
“Let’s save that until we need it,” Will said. He studied the storm sagely. “It doesn’t look so bad. We can ride it out.”
“Better get ready, then.”
Annalie took Essie and went below, making sure that everything was safely stowed away, all the hatches battened and all the lockers locked. “It’s going to get rough,” Annalie warned.
The sky darkened. The wind came, and the gentle camber of the ocean became a violent surging. Waves flung them about, the rain poured down, the wind roared and the air was saturated with salt spray. The watery world threatened to engulf them. The storm raged for hours, and there was nothing they could do but hang on. The boat pitched violently. Graham clung to his perch, shrieking nerve-shreddingly whenever the movements of the boat became too rough. Essie looked terrified. Annalie, wide-eyed herself, tried to reassure her. “We’ve been through worse storms than this,” she said. “We’re going to be fine.”
The storm beat at them until late into the night, then it passed over and left them alone, and they fell into an exhausted sleep.
* * *
The next day was bright and burnished again. The boat had proved itself pleasingly sound—even in that world of water, very little of it had found its way inside. But when Will and Annalie checked their position they were much further south than they had meant to be—the storm had driven them off course, and they were now far from the international shipping channels.
“If that’s the worst we encounter on this trip I reckon we’ll be all right,” Will said, feeling some personal pride in the excellence of his vessel and the quality of his captaining.
“Don’t say that,” Essie said. “You’ll jinx us.”
Graham was in a foul temper. “Bad Will. No biscuit. Hate boats. Hate wet.”
No biscuit was the worst punishment Graham could think of for someone who’d displeased him.
“I got us through it, didn’t I?” Will said, annoyed.
Graham nipped him on the ear before flying up to the top of the mast where no one could reach him.
Less than an hour later, a ship appeared on the horizon. Essie was the first to notice it. “Hey, is that an Admiralty ship?” she asked.
Will pulled out the binoculars, took a look, and swore, then handed them to Annalie. Annalie swore too.
“What is it?” Essie asked again.
“That’s not an Admiralty ship,” Will said. “They’re pirates.”
Pirates
Pirate ships did look, from a distance, like Admiralty ships because they had all the same sorts of equipment: gun turrets and grappling hooks and high-tech gear that let them locate and board other ships. They were assault vessels, fast and ugly and built for plunder.
“They won’t care about a tiny little boat like this one, will they?” Essie said. “We’ve got nothing worth stealing.”
“A boat’s always worth stealing,” Annalie said.
“And you’d be worth a fortune for ransom,” Will said. “Us
, not so much.”
“Not any more,” Essie said. “My dad’s broke.”
“Let’s get some sail up,” Will said. “We’d better try to outrun them.”
Will and Annalie put up every sail and began to run before the wind, hoping that if they could make their way back toward the international shipping channels before the pirates could reach them, they might break off their pursuit and return to quieter waters.
“They may not have noticed us,” Will said hopefully. But they soon realized the pirates must have seen them. They had changed course and were moving to intercept them.
“Can’t we go any faster?” Essie asked. “Why don’t you put the engine on?”
“It doesn’t go any faster than we’re going now,” Will said.
“I don’t think they’re running on wind power,” Annalie said, looking back through the binoculars. The pirate ship bristled with ill-assorted turbines and solar panels, an ugly patchwork of some very advanced energy-generating tech, all feeding into a powerful engine that churned the ocean in its wake.
“Where are the Admiralty when you need them?” Will muttered, scanning the horizon ahead. He could see nothing.
In desperation they sailed on. The pirate ship kept coming, inexorably closing the gap between them. At last they grew close enough that Annalie could see individual people on the deck. All of them were armed.
“What are we going to do if they catch us?” she said, turning to Will. “We need a plan.”
“If they catch us,” Will said, “the best plan in the world won’t do us any good.”
Graham was perched beside Annalie. “Pirates!” he squawked. “Make Graham parrot pie!”
“No one’s going to make you into a pie,” Annalie said.
“Yeah, pirates love parrots. Don’t you know anything?” Will said.
Essie said nothing. She held the railing so tightly her knuckles were white.
“I’m sorry,” Annalie said. “I should have made you go home.”
“I wanted to come,” Essie said bravely. But she didn’t feel brave.
The Flooded Earth Page 11