by neetha Napew
Instead of dancing lights, controlled by a high-powered computer complex, Zelig had a paper map on a board, covered with colored pins.
He stood in front of it, absently fingering the badge in his lapel that represented his organization: the space flag with a circle of tiny silver suns set against a maroon background.
"Closer, Jim Hilton," he said in his high-pitched thin voice.
The devastation wrought throughout the continent—and throughout the entire world—had made it close to impossible to function with the kind of efficiency that had been taken for granted before Earthblood. Gas supplies were minimal, which meant electricity depended on water or wind. Fortunately Aurora had ample supplies of both.
Operation Tempest, as it had been christened, also had some of the finest minds from both the civil and military arms of government. Men and women had been called together under the ultimate control of Zelig to try to help found a better world and sustain it against the gathering powers of evil and darkness.
The general made a hasty note on a pad in his left hand, in the neat, angular writing that had become famous throughout his command. In a leprous green ink.
"How long before Hunters move after Aquila survivors? Not long?"
He stalked back to his desk and sat down, wincing slightly and rubbing at his left knee. He still suffered in cold, damp weather from an overtime injury sustained when he played running back at West Point.
"Eureka," he muttered. He had a vague memory of having been there on a hiking vacation, back in the 2020s. A gray place, close to the gray Pacific.
The quakes had caused terrible devastation, interrupting his fragile lines of communication all down the West Coast. And the winter weather had brought blizzards farther inland, closing off the tenuous highways for weeks on end.
The word from Dorian Langford indicated that the stolen boat and the sailing ship were probably taken by some residue of the Aquila's crew.
Zelig looked out of one of the windows of his hut, seeing that it had begun to snow again. The thought of being on the ocean in a small rowboat didn't sound like the very best fun in the whole world.
He hoped it was going well.
Chapter Fifteen
The December cold had bitten at Jim Hilton's fingers, blurring his coordination.
He snatched at the butt of the GPF-555 Ruger, fumbling at the blued steel, nearly dropping it into the bottom of the rowboat. His eyes seemed mesmerized by the silent approach of the huge shark, now within spitting distance of Carrie Princip, who was still trapped deep in sleep.
His mind was also numbed, and he felt confused by the imminence of the danger, unable to try to decide what he should be doing. Shout or shoot?
The Blackhawk Hunter was finally in his fist, the spurred, checkered hammer clicking back, the wide trigger smooth under his index finger. The .44-caliber full-metal-jacket round exploded down the six-inch barrel. The cushioned grips with the walnut inserts absorbed some of the kinetic energy as he fired at the looming shark.
Jim put two bullets through the middle of the triangular dorsal fin, aiming as near the water as he dared for maximum effect. Ragged chunks of flesh splattered in the calm sea. The shark veered away from the boat and dived suddenly, its monstrous tail rising from the ocean and pounding down with a resounding slap, sending a wave of spray over everyone.
Sly Romero screamed out in fear at the double boom of the handgun and the fountain of salt water, holding his hands up over his face, while Heather Hilton was jerked out of sleep by the freezing shower.
Carrie also came awake, instinctively pulling her hand back into the boat. "What the fuck was—"
"Shark," said Jim, carefully standing up, keeping his balance as the frail vessel rocked backward and forward in the turbulence caused by the creature's dive. The moonlight danced off the waves, and he couldn't see a thing.
"Where, Dad?" The girl also standing, agile, staring all around them. "Was that the water?" It had pasted her short blond hair flat against her skull, reminding Jim for a heart-stopping moment of how much like her mother the girl was.
"What kind?" asked Carrie, moving to comfort Sly, putting her arm around his broad shoulders and whispering in his ear.
"Great white, I think," he replied. "About three times the size of the boat."
"Could be under us," said Heather.
Sly had stopped crying, suddenly becoming interested in what had happened. "Big fish?" he asked.
"Real big," said Jim, holding the revolver tightly, scanning the sea around them.
"Fish on dish can skate on plate," chanted Sly, rubbing water from his eyes.
"Quiet," said Jim urgently. "This is dangerous, Sly. The fish is angry, and it could come after us and try to tip the boat over. So everyone keep still and quiet. Sit still, kitten… Heather. Sit down."
Hearing the note of anger in her father's voice, the girl quickly sat down on one of the thwarts, turning her head from side to side to watch the serene expanse of ocean that surrounded them. There was no sign of land.
"Sure it was a big white?" said Carrie. She had drawn her own gun, a 6-shot .22 Smith & Wesson— the 2050 Model with the four-inch barrel.
"Sure I'm sure," Jim said, then paused. "No, I'm not. It was bigger than a city transit bus. And I doubt you can put a dent in it with that toy gun."
"There," whispered Sly, throwing his right arm out toward the west in a dramatic gesture. "Big angry fish comin' this way real speedy."
"Shit a brick," said Carrie, leveling her revolver and then thinking better of it.
There was blood leaking from two holes in the protruding fin, black in the faint moonlight. For a moment the gigantic head lifted from the ocean, about sixty yards away from them, the marble-chip eyes seeming to drill into Jim's skull.
"It's not," said Heather.
"Not what?"
"Not a great white."
Jim was holding his Ruger as steady as the boat's movement would permit. "How d'you… what is it, then?"
"Basking shark. Eats plankton and stuff. Might've accidentally tipped us over, but it definitely wouldn't have eaten us, Dad. You shot it for nothing."
He kept the gun trained on the motionless creature, trying to figure out whether his daughter was right. The jaw didn't really seem like a great white. But it was still enormous. "Reckon it'll get over those two little holes," he said.
"I hope so, Dad." Heather sighed. "Look. It's going now."
They all watched as the shark cruised slowly away, moving with an effortless dignity toward the west and the expanse of open ocean, finally disappearing with a last imperious wave of the great tail.
"ARE WE GETTING anywhere, Jim?"
"Sure," he said through gritted teeth. "We've been rowing hard for over an hour now, since the biz with the shark, and I still don't see any sign of land. Can't go on forever."
"STOP ROWING a minute, Carrie." He shipped the oars, hearing the water dripping off into the sea. There was a tight band of iron around his temples, and all the muscles in his chest and shoulders and arms and thighs and stomach were aching.
Sly and Heather remained fast asleep, tangled together in the bow like puppies.
"Could be there's an offshore current. I think we should be able to smell land by now, even if we can't see it yet."
"I know you're the second fucking navigator, Carrie, but it doesn't make you some kind of fucking oracle about small boats in the fucking Pacific."
There was a silence between them for a dozen heartbeats, then she laughed quietly. "You're that worried, huh?"
"Yeah, I'm sorry. I am sort of worried."
The night was coming toward its ending, with a faint lightening of the sky to the east, over where Jim knew the coast of California must lie.
"Could be we rowed too far west, or there was a current we didn't appreciate." He leaned forward, drawing in slow, deep breaths. "I don't know."
Carrie carefully stood up on her seat, balancing with outstretched arms. She put her hands a
round her eyes to try to focus her vision to the east.
"Just water," she said.
"Wait a minute."
"What?"
"Well, the word was there'd been big floods. Pacific had broken in for miles and miles after the quakes."
Carrie sat down again, smiling at him, her teeth a pale blur in the dim light. "Sure. So it'd be like a big new baby. If the lie of the land was right, it could be anything like… fifty to a hundred miles across."
The boat drifted gently while they both considered the idea. In the gloom to the west, there was a sonorous splashing sound, as if a whale had breached.
"So we'd best keep rowing, but head north, as well as east, you reckon?" said Jim Hilton.
"Don't ask me, Captain. You know I'm only the second fucking navigator. Not some fucking oracle on small boats on the fucking Pacific."
They both laughed and bent their aching muscles to the task.
Sly woke shortly after that and took his turn on the oars. He was so eager to please that he had to be gentled down, or he'd have rowed at a hundred miles per hour for three minutes and then collapsed exhausted. As it was, he kept a steady tempo on the bow thwart, while the other three took turns at keeping him company on the stern oars.
Dawn came up slowly behind a bank of pewter cloud that lay across the eastern horizon like an unwanted guest.
"Storms," said Carrie.
"Snow, likely," Jim agreed.
"What do we do when we reach land, Dad?" asked Heather. "How do we move on?"
"Steal transport, I guess."
Sly was chanting to himself as he rowed. "In and out and thin and fat and bin and bat and tin and tat…"
Jim steered a course that brought them back toward the land that should have been.
Heather was sitting in the bow, head over the side, commenting on how clean and clear the water was below them. "Saw a big sort of eel thing. And there's… I can see… I can see a gas-station sign!"
"Stop rowing, Sly, and hang on to the oars. Don't drop them over the side."
Jim leaned to his left, trying to squint past the dawn light that was glinting off the dappled surface of the ocean. For a few moments he could see nothing at all, then a shoal of tiny silver fish went skittering past only inches beneath him.
And then he saw it.
It was a semicircular sign, red lettering on white. It was smeared over with bright green algae, a sure sign that the planet was picking its way back from the brink of the Earthblood extinction. The white pole ghosted down to vanish from sight into the deeps below them. Jim could just make out the dim, shimmering block of what might have been the buildings of the gas station.
"Land," he breathed.
Now they had to be more cautious.
If they tried to go too fast, they might spike the boat on a pylon or submerged antenna. But now they knew that their suspicion was correct, everyone was happier.
Carrie spotted the first true sight of land, about two miles to the north, a low gray shape emerging from the misty cloud of a rain squall.
"There," she breathed, pointing to what Jim reckoned to be close to true north, maybe even a little west.
It proved that they were in a monstrous new bay created by the earthquakes. Even in the murky daylight, they couldn't see any sign of land away to their east, though there was a vague smudge on the horizon that could have been higher ground. Jim was appalled at the extent of the devastation.
"Must be a hundred miles wide and about the same from north to south," he said.
"Are we going over there?" asked Heather. "Up ahead?"
Her father nodded. "If my back doesn't break first with all this rowing."
Sly stopped at Jim's word, squeaking with alarm, nearly letting one of the oars drop into the ocean. "Don't want t'break my back, Jim."
"Just a way of talking, Sly," said Jim, leaning over to pat the boy reassuringly on the shoulder.
"Listen, we couldn't have done this trip without your help and strength, Sly. You've done real good. Real, real good."
"You tell Dad that, Jim?"
"How can he?" said Heather, quickly. "You know that…"
"That your father's gone on ahead to a different place, Sly," said Carrie loudly to override what the girl started to say. "But he can see what you do and he's going to be terribly proud of you."
Sly beamed at her and clapped his hands together. "Then double good for me," he crowed.
Heather glanced at Carrie and Jim. "Sorry," she muttered. "Didn't think."
"Don't worry," said Carrie. "We're all bone weary, kid. Get to land and catch up on some sleep. That's what I'm most looking forward to."
"Stop rowing," said Jim, sitting in the stern, fingers cramped around the tiller of the little vessel. Oddly it seemed to be chillier now than when they had first started their voyage, with sleet among the rain.
Sly and Carrie both followed his orders, carefully bringing the oars in and laying them along the bottom of the boat. Heather was poised in the bow, holding the coil of rope, ready to jump out onto the spit of land.
They'd come through a bank of drizzle, and everyone was cold and tired and wet. But at least they were going to he back on solid, if not dry, land.
Jim's wristwatch, when he wiped it clean, showed it was close to noon.
He glanced behind him, to the open ocean, and farther south, to distant Eureka. The sky was dull, clouds pressing down onto the surface of the sea as if air and water were somehow merging into each other.
For a fraction of a stolen moment the clouds shifted, and he thought he glimpsed a ship, far, far off, with dark-colored sails. Blue or green. Then the wind veered and the curtain closed and the vessel vanished.
"Painted ship on a painted ocean," he muttered, dredging the phrase from his high-school memory.
Jim's attention came back to the land. He wrinkled his forehead at the realization that he'd been careless. He'd been surviving in the ravaged world for long enough to know that if you wanted to stay alive you checked and then you checked again. After that you checked once more.
But there was no sign of life.
Dreary hillsides, bare of any vegetation, showed only the stumps of dead trees. It looked as though there had recently been a high tide, with mud and drifted detritus spread all along the waterline.
Jim spotted what looked like blacktop, approximately fifty feet above them, running north to south. Likely the highway that they'd have taken if they hadn't been forced into the detour of Eureka. There was also a burned out building along to the left, with smoke-blackened walls and eyeless windows.
It was just possible a mile or so north to see some higher ground, dusted with fine snow.
Heather was standing up as the boat drifted in, almost silently, its keel grating in the dirt. She turned around and grinned at her father.
"Like Columbus or the pilgrim fathers. Shall I claim this new and unknown land in the name of the Hilton family? Or in the name of Aurora?"
Jim and Carrie laughed, Sly following their example a few beats later.
The shot came from somewhere inland, close to the road, the explosion echoing flatly out to sea. Jim spotted a puff of smoke, blown instantly away.
But that wasn't what mattered.
Heather screamed once, her arms thrown wide, the rope dropping. Her feet slipped, and she fell over the side of the boat into the shallow water with a resounding splash.
Jim Hilton's mind blanked out on him at the realization of blind disaster.
Chapter Sixteen
Pamela McGill was standing on the main deck of the Eureka Belle, staring out ahead. It was freezing cold, with no sign of the sun, though her father had claimed that it wasn't all that far off noon.
The land had been visible for some time now. Paul had clambered up the mainmast an hour ago and shouted down that he could see it. Now it was more than just a blur. There were some mountains, snow tipped, to the north. The bay that the earthquake had created seemed to stretch inland for dozens o
f miles and had totally altered the shape of the coast.
"See anyone, child?" Nanci had come up behind her, silent as ever.
"No. Is there something on the beach there?"
The older woman shaded her eyes. "Lord gave you good sight," she said with what sounded like a note of irritation in her voice. "Can just make out… No, I'll take your word for it. What do you figure?"
"Driftwood?"
"Dead seal?"
"Rowboat?"
"Ah." Nanci glanced back to where Henderson McGill was at the wheel. "Bring her up a couple of points into the wind, Mac! Yeah, better." She returned her attention to Pamela. "A rowboat, girl? Well, now, wouldn't that be interesting?"
"Why didn't we come straight north, Nanci? We must be much faster than Jim Hilton."
"Two things. First, we could have overrun them in the dark. Second, this bay is just a load of sea pouring over a lot of land. Absolutely no way of knowing what lay under our keel a hundred feet or two feet beneath. Soft mud or the roof of a church set to pluck out our timbers like the sweet bird of youth taking petals off a rose."
Pamela nodded. "Course. Stupid of me."
"Yes," agreed Nanci. "It was."
JEANNE STOOD by her ex-husband, blowing on her hands. "Colder'n charity, Mac," she said, her breath pluming out ahead of her, drifting away over the high stern.
"Snow yonder," he said, not taking his hands off the wheel. "Farther north we have to go, then the worse the weather's likely to get."
"Where are we going to land?"
Paul joined them. "Sukie's got the squitters," he reported. "And she says she's cold."
His mother shook her head. "We all are. I was just asking your father where we'd land."
Mac ran his fingers through his wet, thinning hair. "No harbors, on account of the quakes. Maybe we'll keep on sailing north until we reach Seattle." Nanci appeared up the ladder from the main part of the deck, and he said to her, "Just wondering whether and how we'd finally put into land."
She looked at him for several seconds, stock-still, her eyes seeming to drill right through his head. Then she blinked and came close to smiling. "Just spent a few minutes with Jefferson in the anchor locker up under the bows, and I swear it's taken my mind clean off matters."