Undertow

by Michael Buckley

  “Understood,” I say. “And we can discuss all of that after you evacuate lower Brooklyn.”

  Her eyes pop open in surprise. “And why would I do that?”

  “Because you’re not stupid. We met once, and you wanted me to spill the beans. Well, I’m going to do it right now: the Alpha that are on this beach, they’re all that’s left. There used to be millions of them, but they were all wiped out by something much worse—”

  “What, Lyric?” Bachman taunts. “More characters from children’s books? You don’t think I’ll fall for that again, do you?”

  “I need you to listen to me, please. For one minute in your whole life, just listen to me. The Alpha have a weapon that controls water. With it they can bring a tidal wave that would wash everything away like it was never here. They won’t use it to hurt people, but there is another group who have the same weapon and they are on their way here. If you don’t believe me, then check, if only so that you can prove me wrong again.”

  Bachman blinks as if there’s something in her eyes. I suspect it’s her brain rebooting from all this information. I quietly pray that she’ll do the right thing. Don’t be stupid. Don’t be stupid. Don’t be stupid.

  The governor shakes her head. “Lyric, you know as well as I do that those things in the water headed this way are just more of your boyfriend’s family. You tell him if more of his ilk come within twenty miles of this beach, we will fire on them. Now, if you’re finished with your story, let me get down to business. We’ve assembled some rocket launchers over there on the boardwalk, and we’re going to fire them at this camp if you don’t vacate the premises by noon tomorrow.”

  “You can’t do that,” I say. “There are children in this camp.”

  “Sorry, honey, but the Alpha have lost their lease,” she says.

  “You’re attacking the wrong people!” I shout.

  “Noon, Ms. Walker. Put it on your calendar.”

  Fathom takes my hand. “We’re wasting our time. We have to prepare.”

  “Please,” I cry. “Evacuate everyone you can.”

  We step back through the wall, and Luna fills the hole. I can see Bachman shaking her head in disbelief. She didn’t listen. She’s not going to do a thing.

  My plan hurts Bex’s heart, but she listens. It’s the only thing I can think to do to spread the word about the doomsday that approaches.

  “I don’t know his password,” she says.

  I pull up his website on my phone, thanking heaven that it still has a charge, then click on the log-in page. “I think I can guess it.”

  I type in my best guess. It’s a complete long shot. Passwords can be nearly impossible to guess, but I knew him. Shadow had a one-track mind. I press enter and wait for the rejection. When it opens, I almost cry.

  “What? Did you get in?” She’s completely surprised. “How did you guess the password?”

  “It was ‘Becca Conrad.’”

  She bites her lip, and the tears just fall. I grab her tight and squeeze. “Bex, there isn’t much battery left on this phone. If it dies before we finish, we’ll fail a lot of people.”

  “So no time for hair and makeup. I get it,” she says, wiping her damp cheek. She reaches out her hand and takes the phone, focuses it on me, then presses the Record Video button. A red light comes to life near the lens.

  “My name is Lyric Walker,” I say. “For seventeen years I have lived in Coney Island. For three of them I have been lying to nearly everyone I know about what my mother and I are. We’re Alpha. To protect my family and myself and the people I care about, I kept it a secret.

  “You may have heard of me. You may think you know me from what you’ve heard. That’s fine. I’m not going to argue with you, but one thing I will tell you is, I am not a liar. Tito Ramirez was my friend. He would say the same. Please believe me and listen when I tell you that the people of Coney Island are in terrible danger.”

  I tell them everything I know about the Rusalka and what they can do. I tell them the government has it all wrong and should be fighting with us but aren’t. I tell them that if they can get out of the Zone—out of New York entirely—that they should do it. I beg them to try. Then we stop the video and upload it to Shadow’s website. I watch the battery sink from ten percent to five, then two, then one, and then it’s gone. I have no idea if the upload was completed. It could have all been for nothing.

  Bex sits down in the sand and closes her eyes.

  “Are you okay?” I have no idea how hard it must be for her. I loved him, but what they had was a whole new world.

  “Shhh,” she says. “I’m praying to him. The hottest girl at school told him she loves him. He owes me.”

  None of us sleeps. Everyone has a job to do to prepare for the Alpha’s last stand. I finally meet the Feige boy, who speaks in a snakelike hiss. His name is Thrill, and he and Arcade use their gloves to fortify the wall with more trash, dragging it out of the depths of the Coney Island waterfront and flinging it onto the weaker sections. It’s amazing what comes flying out of the water: a carousel horse, subway cars, parts of what looks like a steam engine, the bow of a sailboat, and huge jagged sheets of glass. The wall is twice as thick now as it was before, but I can’t imagine it will stand up to missiles fired from one side and a monster invasion from the other.

  Ghost and Luna build bunkers and tunnels on the beach to prepare for the Rusalka. I’m amazed at what they can do in such a short amount of time. The water they’ve tamed scoops the sand and earth away like it’s a big shovel. The holes will hide our fighters underground, ready to pop up and attack when the Rusalka come ashore. I hear some grousing from some of the Selkies that the plan is dishonorable, that the Alpha should stand and fight, not hide like eels, but Nor reminds them that the eel is deadly and that standing and fighting makes for easy targets. Their argument threatens to turn into a fight, until Fathom steps in and approves Nor’s plan.

  “Who will talk about how honorably we fought if there is no one left alive?” he shouts at them. “Today we are eels.”

  Then it’s my turn. Ghost, Luna, Thrill, and Arcade gather before dusk. They’re going to teach me how to use my weapon.

  “So where are the rest of us?” I ask.

  “There are only five,” Thrill says.

  “And how many Rusalka are there?” Bex asks.

  “Thousands,” he says.

  “Thousands! There are thousands of these Rusalka on their way and they all have these gauntlets?” I cry.

  “They don’t all have the gauntlets. I would say roughly half do. The others are killers and just as dangerous,” Ghost says.

  “Are you afraid to fight, human?” Arcade says. She’s giving me the “You disgust me” look again.

  “I’m afraid of not having a chance,” I admit.

  “These gauntlets give us a chance, Lyric,” Luna says. “They allow you to move the water around you. You can turn it into different shapes, increase or lower its speed, affect the tides, create waves that can destroy one of your human cities. The water is what you imagine it to be. It will do as you say.”

  “I have no idea how to do that,” I cry.

  “Lyric, you need to calm down,” my mother says. “They’re trying to help.”

  “You did it twice already without any training,” Ghost says, and he walks me to the shore.

  I take a deep breath. “So I just imagine a shape and the water will do the rest?”

  Thrill nods. “It helped me to close my eyes when I was learning.”

  I close my eyes and then I open them, wondering why I need to close them at all. Then I close them again. But how am I going to fight something if I can’t see? So they open, and seeing Ghost’s irritated face is all I need to stop doing it.

  “What should I imagine?”

  The others groan.

  “Make a hammer,” Arcade snaps.

  “Relax. I’m new at this,” I say, but as I say it, I hear a splash of water. I can’t help it—my eyes pop open.
There, hovering in the air, the water swirls and sloshes and then morphs into a hammer nearly five feet tall made entirely of murky gray Coney Island seawater. I can see a fish in the handle. It hovers there like an eager dog waiting for me to reward it with a treat for rolling over.

  “How does it stay up there?”

  “It’s a reaction between the electrical charges in your brain and the salt in the water,” Ghost says proudly. “The glove amplifies your natural energy. My grandfather discovered the principle.”

  “Turn it into something else,” Luna says.

  I think of a sword and watch it transform into a sword, then a pistol, then a trident. Anything I can visualize becomes real. I turn it into a snowman and a taxicab and then, almost against my will, a memory of Fathom and me kissing, and there it is, in all its three-dimensional watery embarrassment. I look to my mother’s disturbed face, and suddenly the water falls on me and I’m soaked.

  Arcade turns pale and, without a word, walks away.

  “That was not cool, Walker,” Bex says.

  “I didn’t mean to do that,” I say.

  “Your mind is already capable of making the shapes. What you need to work on is control and command,” Luna says. “You need to be able to sustain what you make, keep it until you don’t want it any longer.”

  “And it would do you well to think of something a lot more deadly. These hammers and pretty pictures are not going to kill a Rusalka,” Thrill chastises.

  “I can’t kill anyone,” I say.

  Ghost steps up to me. “The Rusalka used this gauntlet to create a spear that impaled my mother. Then they tore her apart and ate her. The same thing happened to Fathom’s mother and Luna’s brother and Arcade’s sister. They swarmed around the dead in a feeding frenzy until they had picked the meat off the bones and there was nothing left. It happened to millions of our people, and we were forced to watch.”

  I turn to my mother. She looks pale and horrified.

  “They will do the same to your people unless you learn to kill,” he continues.

  The day is long and without rest. I spend every hour learning to use the gauntlet. I can create small things—weapons about as big as a man—but the bigger things, like pushing back the tides, seem impossible. Whenever I think about the vastness of the ocean, the sheer weight of the water, my brain shuts down and I stand there waving the stupid glove around like I’m some kind of insane puppeteer. Luna tries to be patient with me—the others, not so much. But to be fair, Ghost always looks pissed off, so it’s hard to tell when I’m really making him angry.

  “You can’t think about the weight. The weight doesn’t matter,” Luna tries to explain. “You’re making it more difficult than it has to be.”

  “Um, I’ve never tried to pick up the ocean before, so you’re going to have to cut me a break,” I snap. I’m exhausted and worried about my father, worried about Fathom, worried about the world. Heck, I’m even worried about Tammy.

  “Try again,” Luna begs.

  “I need a break,” I say. I feel a tickle at my nose, and when I scratch it I find blood on my fingers.

  Ghost looks at it and is surprised. “The others do not bleed.”

  “Is it hurting her?” my mother says. She’s up on her feet, feeling my forehead.

  “It appears so,” he responds, though it doesn’t seem to bother him.

  Dinner for the Alpha is fish, pulled right out of the Atlantic Ocean, right near the shipping lanes. I mention how super filthy the Coney Island waters are, and I’m assured by an older Sirena woman that the fish were caught and brought back from many miles away. Luckily, we don’t have to risk it. Terrance brings us sandwiches from the Red Cross volunteers. He also brings Fathom and Arcade. My heart sinks when I see he is holding her hand.

  “Will someone tell me what happened out there?” my mother asks.

  Ghost sits down with a huge, flopping fish and takes a massive bite out of it. I nearly throw up, but I want to hear this story.

  “Certain members of the Rusalka began to complain of headaches. There were those who thought they were trying to get out of their work. They’re barely intelligent. So much of what they said was dismissed, but my grandfather Tarooh agreed to examine a few.

  “He discovered that their minds were overactive, filled with energy that was making them ill, so he built them the gauntlets to ease the pain.”

  “It had a side effect,” Fathom explains.

  “They learned they could manipulate the water,” my mother cries.

  “They heard the Voice of the Great Abyss. It was seen as a blessing. Those who wore the gauntlet could create houses, temples, arenas for sport. They could steer fish to us, eliminating the need for hunting parties and the endless concerns about starvation. No longer did the Alpha have to be nomadic. We could build a permanent home for all of us. Palaces rose from the sand and stones at the bottom of the ocean. It was a paradise, and we owed it all to our labor class, the Rusalka.”

  “They were slaves,” I say.

  “No, not slaves, just lowest in our class system.”

  “Let me finish the story for you,” I say, suddenly incensed. “The Alpha treated the Rusalka like crap for a thousand years, and when suddenly they recognized their own usefulness, instead of making things better for them, you fought back, right?”

  My mother clears her throat. “Lyric—”

  “But that’s what happened, right? And when you refused to give them their freedom, they took it, correct?”

  “You think you know something you do not,” Arcade growls.

  “No, let’s not do the conversation where you tell me about your people and their ways and honor,” I say. “I think I’ve had enough of honor today.”

  I stomp off across the sand and run down the shoreline. There is so much activity: people cooking dinner, others training for fights, children leaping into the water and playing with one another. There’s nowhere to run to, nowhere to hide, but I keep going for what feels like a mile, until the camp thins out. I sit down at the water’s edge, letting it seep up to my feet, and I bury my face in my hands and cry.

  “You don’t know everything,” Luna says, suddenly there. She must have followed me.

  “What am I missing?”

  “The Rusalka asked for better treatment. They wanted to be educated, choose their own mates. They wanted to change laws that were hundreds of years old.”

  “And of course your people told them where they could stick it.”

  Luna looks at me, confused. “Stick it?”

  “You told them no.”

  Luna shakes her head. “No, the nation told them yes. Most of the people agreed that change was necessary.”

  “Then what happened?”

  “I happened,” she says. “I started having terrible pain in my mind, so the doctors put a gauntlet on me, and I heard the Voice too. Ghost was next, then Thrill, then Arcade. It was a miracle, but the Rusalka didn’t see it that way. They worried that if everyone was developing the ability, their demands would fall on deaf ears, and instead of waiting to see how it would all play out, they attacked. They killed Fathom’s mother, right in front of him. Millions died in a matter of days. We fled, hid in every corner of the ocean we could find, but they always found us to continue the slaughter.”

  “That’s horrible. I didn’t know.”

  “We are not slave traders, Lyric Walker.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  “Your hostility is understandable. If Ghost was holding the hand of someone else, it would give me a great deal of pain as well.”

  “It’s that obvious?” I ask.

  She nods. “You dwell too much on what is happening now, Lyric Walker. Today he holds her hand, perhaps it’s for love and perhaps it’s from obligation. Tomorrow? Who knows. But you will never have him if you die when the Rusalka attack. Direct your attention to the battle, learn to listen to the Voice, let your Alpha blood direct your actions.”

  My mom and Bex hover nearby w
hile I practice moving the water. We have so little time and I totally suck.

  I point the gauntlet out toward the ocean and try to create a wall of seawater, but I can’t concentrate long enough to make it happen. Then I feel dizzy and my nose starts to bleed.

  “She needs a break,” my mother says.

  “We do not have time,” Ghost snaps. He has no patience with me.

  “I still can’t get around the sea’s . . . bigness,” I cry.

  “She keeps seeing its size, and it makes her feel small,” Luna says with a sigh.

  Thrill won’t even look at me, he’s so disgusted.

  “It’s not how big the ocean is,” Ghost says. “It’s your will that must be huge.”

  “We’ve been training her to be small,” my mother explains. “It was how we avoided being discovered.”

  Thrill cringes. “She has to be like a Kraken. She has to feel like she’s making the sea tremble with fear.”

  “Um, what’s a Kraken?” Bex asks.

  “A huge, terrifying monster, an eater of worlds. It lives in a chasm at the bottom of the Atlantic,” Luna says like it’s no big deal.

  “Please be joking.”

  Luna looks at her queerly. “I do not tell jokes.”

  “Okay, so she needs to think like a monster,” Bex says, then turns to my face. “Like a wild thing.”

  “Huh?” Arcade asks.

  “Nothing,” I say. “It’s silly.”

  “No, it’s not!” Bex shouts. “Did you ever feel more powerful, more bigger than life, than back then? Admit it!”

  “I haven’t felt stupider, either,” I grouse.

  “How is she doing?” Fathom says as he approaches. His appearance makes a tense situation into an oppressive torture.

  “I’m constipated or something.”

  “I don’t know that word.”

  “Good. I can’t get past whatever is blocking me,” I say.

  Fathom looks at the setting sun.

  “You will do your best,” he says, then turns to me. “I would have a word with you.”