by Blake Crouch
Sleet ticking dryly on the windshield.
Pavement streamed under the car, the road reaching north into the dullblue nothingness of daybreak.
4:56.
I pushed the engine past eighty-five, the stench of hot metal seeping through the floorboards.
4:57.
For the first time I noticed my clothes—the fleece pants melted, my undershirt pocked with quarter-size, black-rimmed holes where the electricity had eaten the polyester.
4:58.
The world dimmed.
My head went light.
I slumped into the steering wheel, swerved into the other lane, tires dipping over the shoulder.
My vision sharpened.
I swung back into the road.
It ended.
Taillights ahead.
I stomped the brake, tires screeching.
In the immediate distance five cars waited in the boarding lane at one of the docks. As I steered the Impala to the back of the line, a crewman started waving vehicles onto a ferry vessel called the Kinnakeet.
First to board was a dilapidated old pickup truck, its puttering engine expelling gouts of smoke into the stonegray dawn.
67
THE Kinnakeet is a long barge, broad enough for four cars to park abreast. From the centerdeck rises a narrow three-story galley—restrooms on the first level, an observation lounge on the second, and crowned by a small pilothouse. North Carolina and United States flags hang regal from the mast.
The six vehicles on the 5:00 a.m. ferry were directed into two singlefile lines—three cars starboard, three portside.
I was parked in the back of my line, the Kites in the front of theirs, separated by the galley so that we couldn’t see each other.
As I turned back the ignition, the ferry’s engines went to work and the Kinnakeet wended slowly between the pylon bundles and away from the Ocracoke docks.
We chugged out into open water. The wind picked up, gusting now, shaking the car, sleet bouncing off the concrete deck, seagulls swarming the vacant stern, crying for a breakfast they would not receive at this hour.
The tip of Ocracoke dwindled into a smudge on the horizon, and suddenly there was nothing but mile upon mile of mercurycolored swells, the eastern sky flushing now with a tincture of purple.
Several passengers abandoned their cars and ascended the steps to the lounge—departing vacationers, workers making the long watery commute from Ocracoke to Hatteras. The gentleman in the Chevy Blazer directly in front of me crawled into the back seat and laid down.
I sat listening to the sleet.
My burns killing me.
There was no movement on my side of the deck.
I opened the door, stepped out into the cold, motes of ice needling my face.
I walked back to the sternside of the galley, crouched by the steps that rose to the lounge and pilothouse. Portside, three cars were parked along the railing—a Honda, a Cadillac, and an old Dodge pickup truck the color of a zinc penny save for its rusting blue doors.
The Kites had left the truck.
I peered around the steps.
They stood at the bow, their backs to me, gazing north across Hatteras Inlet. Rufus, his white hair twisting like albino snakes in the wind, was pointing west at an inconsequential landcrumb, dry and visible only for moments at the nadir of lowtide.
The Kites and I were the sole passengers on deck.
I made my furtive way to the navy Honda at the rear of the Kites’ three-car line and ducked under the backend. Through the side mirror I glimpsed the reflection of its driver, sleeping, his head resting against the window. I crawled between the Honda and the railing amid a brief spate of sleet, finally reaching the next car in line, a Cadillac, its passengers having retired to the lounge.
I leaned against the back bumper to regain my breath. Glancing under the sedan, I saw the three pairs of legs still standing by the canvas-lattice gate at the bow.
I crept on.
My scorched clothing did little to shield me from the piercing cold, and I was shivering violently by the time I arrived at the back of the Kites’ truck.
The tailgate was closed, the truckbed covered by a bright blue tarp.
The seagulls had discovered the Kites and besieged the bow of the ferry, their lamentations cut and diminished by the gale. I crawled to the driver side door, peered through the glass. The cab was empty. Violet had to be in the truckbed.
I noticed a pistol and a pumpaction shotgun in the floorboard, tried the door but it was locked.
I sensed movement, looked up.
Rufus walked quickly toward me, just three steps from the passenger door.
I hit the ground, rolled under the truck as he pulled it open.
Staring at the corroded innards of its underbelly, warm motor oil dripping on my throat, I heard Rufus shout, "You want the whole loaf, Beautiful?"
Then the door slammed and I watched his legs propel him back to the bow, a bag of squashed bread dangling at his side.
Get Violet to the Impala before you do anything.
As the gulls regressed into a ravenous frenzy I wriggled out from under the truck. Their squawks and the engines and the moan of the wind masked the grating squeak as I lifted the handle and lowered the tailgate.
Still fettered with duct tape, Violet lay unconscious on the rusty truckbed in a smattering of damp pineneedles and splinters of bark—remnants from a load of firewood.
While the Kites fed the seagulls—three breadbearing hands thrust into the sky—I climbed into the truckbed, took Violet by the ankles, and pulled her onto the tailgate. Breathless, on the verge of blacking out, I lifted her from the bed and set her gently on the concrete deck beside the railing. She stirred but did not wake. I closed the tailgate and proceeded to drag Violet by the shoulders toward the end of the line.
Exhaustion stopped me beneath the driver side window of the navy Honda. Fighting pain, I stared at the dozing driver, his face still pressed against the window, drool sliding down the glass. I willed his eyes to stay shut.
At the Honda’s back bumper I glanced up to the bow, saw the Kites’ attention still engaged with the feasting birds.
I slung Violet over my shoulder, struggled to my feet, praying no one in the observation lounge would see us.
A dozen tenuous steps and we’d reached the Impala.
I stowed Violet in the back seat and climbed behind the steering wheel.
Sleet pouring faster than it could melt, ticking madly on the roof.
It stopped.
In the east, bits of early morning indigo showed through, the clouds cracking like ancient paint.
As the sky aged through warming shades of purple into oxblood, a wire of land materialized to the south and east.
Now emerging on the horizon—the silhouette of the Cape Hatteras Lighthouse, at two hundred and eight feet, the tallest in America, its beam still sweeping over Diamond Shoals, graveyard of the Atlantic.
I ached to drive off this ferry with Violet, get her safe, get myself something for this terrible fucking pain.
Drawing the keys from the ignition, I climbed into the backseat and sawed the longest key through the duct tape binding the young woman’s wrists. Then I ripped away the strip across her mouth.
"Violet," I whispered. "Violet, do you hear me?"
She mumbled and shifted onto her side.
"You’re safe now," I said. "You’re with Andy."
It grew cold inside the car.
As I maneuvered back into the driver seat, key readied to crank the engine and start the flow of heat, I glanced through the windshield, saw Maxine Kite, her eyes cupped and peering through the tinted side windows of the Chevy Blazer just ahead.
She wore an old frayed gabardine coat, so long on her withered frame it fanned out beneath her like a black wedding dress.
I locked each passenger door.
Stepped out onto the deck.
Maxine looked up when my door slammed.
&nbs
p; She bolted, disappeared around the galley.
I limped after her.
The coming daystar tingeing the clouds with a soft peach stain.
Gulls screaming.
These Outer Banks turning into the sun’s dominion—a cuticle of pink fire peeking over the edge of the sea.
The Kites stood at the bow, awash with sunrise, ruddyfaced, watching me approach with a fusion of shock and amusement.
Except for Luther.
He lunged for me but Rufus grabbed his arm and jerked him back.
"Not here, son."
Rufus stared at me, shook his head, grinning.
"Christ, Andrew, what are you made of—rubber?"
I stood five feet from the psychopaths.
"I have her," I said.
"I see that."
"What do you say you get in your truck, I get in my car, and we go our separate ways when we reach Hatteras? I think we’re even, Luther. I left you for dead, you left me—"
"I don’t give a fuck about even."
Eddies of dizziness enveloped me.
Sky spinning.
Faltering, I stumbled backward, caught myself.
"But you sort of admire him, don’t you?" Rufus said. "I mean, he took some nasty voltage. We left him charred, no respiration, no…" A crewman strode past, lips moving to the music that blared from his headphones. "No pulse. It’s a resurrection."
Hatteras was close, its mammoth soundside homes like mythic dollhouses in the distance.
"Look," Rufus said, "you’re telling me you’ll let us leave this ferry without any commotion? Let us just drive off into the sunrise? No revenge? After all we did to you?"
"I just want to take Violet."
"Well. I suppose you’ve earned that."
"Pop, come on, what the—"
"Shut your mouth, boy," Maxine hissed.
"Look me in the eye, tell me you won’t follow us," Rufus said.
I looked the old man dead in his oilblack eyes and told him.
As I started back toward the Impala something occurred to me.
I turned to face them again.
"What happened to Elizabeth Lancing?" I asked.
Luther just smiled.
68
I sat seething behind the steering wheel, the Hatteras shore looming.
No fucking way I wasn’t going to follow the Kites off this ferry. I’d finish them right now if it wouldn’t endanger the other passengers.
The ferry engines quieted as we neared the island.
My thoughts turned to Beth but I shut them down. The coming hours would require my full attention. And if I lived beyond them there’d be ample time to grieve.
Violet drew a sharp breath. I glanced back, saw her eyes fluttering. They opened. They died. Went broken and void as though she’d ingested some awful truth.
Turning into the vinyl seat, she wept.
The engines quit altogether.
I climbed into the backseat, let my fingers slide through her hair.
"Violet. We’re on a ferry, about to dock on Hatteras."
She looked up at me, said, "How are you alive?"
"I have no idea."
Glass exploded.
We both jumped.
Something crashing through the windshield.
The ferry captain, headfirst, his torso draped backward over the dashboard, spraying the car with a warm burgundy mist.
I wiped blood out of my eyes as gunshots resounded from the observation lounge, three cataclysmic booms carrying the thunderous authority of a shotgun.
Elsewhere on deck there erupted the dry staccato cracks of a lesser firearm.
Screaming.
Another thud caving in the roof of the Impala.
Blood sheeting down the back window.
Someone moaning in the lounge, pleading for help.
The driver of the Chevy Blazer stumbled out of his idling car, suit wrinkled, bewildered.
I called out to him through the busted windshield. He looked at me, then moved dreamlike toward the bow, gazing all around in a sort of stupefied disbelief, as though he’d fallen into a movie.
At the front of the ferry he stopped abruptly, backpedaled, and went to his knees.
Rufus approached him, revolver in hand.
The businessman raising his arms in surrender.
I didn’t see him die, just heard the tiny pop as I opened the door and dropped down between the railing and the car.
"Stay here," I told Violet.
"What’s happening?"
"They’re killing everyone on board."
I closed the door and crawled on between the cars and the railing, glancing back at the Impala, the crewman sprawled across its devastated roof like a giant mortar shell.
Sternside, Maxine emerged from the gunsmoky observation lounge, two of its starboard windows blown out. Swallowed in her black coat like a demon queen, she bore the long pumpaction shotgun I’d seen in the cab.
Luther descended from the pilothouse, met her on the second level.
Rufus fishing the pockets of his leather jacket for more bullets.
I froze. Bereft of strength or will. Heaving, I disgorged what little water I’d been given in the last twenty-four hours.
Gonna sit here, let them kill you? Let them have Violet?
As Maxine and Luther walked down the steps together, I sprang to my feet and charged Rufus, the old man looking up when I was ten feet from the bow, still fumbling to reload the .38, bullets spilling on the deck. He closed the breech anyway, pointed the gun between my eyes, and pulled the trigger.
It clicked as I swung at his face, felt his tender bones fracture. He tripped over the man he’d just executed, Maxine and Luther running toward me now from the stern.
I fled to the other side of the galley and took cover between the railing and the Kites’ truck, crouching behind the left front wheel.
I opened the revolver.
Rufus had managed to shove two bullets into the cylinder. Had he squeezed the trigger once more I’d be dead or dying.
From portside I could see the carnage up in the observation lounge. Two silhouettes leaning against each other, the glass behind them splintered and shimmering red in the early sun. Wind gusted and the window collapsed, glass raining on the deck.
Closing the breech, I peeked over the hood of the old Dodge.
Maxine and Luther were helping Rufus to his feet.
I aligned Luther in the sight, pulled the trigger twice.
Luther looked in my direction, his raven hair windblown and twining about his bonewhite face, the gunshot echoes fading fast across the water.
He fell.
His parents knelt around him, Maxine lifting his shirt.
I could hear Luther talking.
Then his mother roared, struggled to her feet with the shotgun, and started for the truck, eyes soulless, raging, Rufus trailing after her.
I scrambled toward the stern, passing the navy Honda again, a single bullet through the window, the driver shot through the cheek while he slept.
I heard the shotgun cocking, glanced back between the railing and the cars, saw Maxine leveling the barrel on me.
I rolled behind the Honda.
The twelve gauge boomed, pellets shattering the windshield, chinking on the metal. As the old woman pumped the shotgun again I made for the sternside steps and climbed to the rear entrance of the observation lounge.
The door stood open.
Row of seats in the middle, more along the windows.
Dead couple on the left.
Still sitting upright.
Shotgun blasts to the face.
Obliteration beyond all reckoning.
Another facedown on the floor, heavy sluglike smear where they’d tried to crawl.
The pink sun brilliant through the fissured glass.
Quiet now save for a few idling engines and the sound the bow made ripping through water, the ferry moving with its own deteriorating momentum.