The Terminals

by Royce Scott Buckingham

  “I was assigned to this condo,” Owen said stubbornly.

  “By our fearless leader.”

  “He’s more like a coach.”

  Cam watched Owen work the cards as thunder echoed across the water. He was quick and strong on the TS-9. But he wasn’t a natural athlete like Donnie. In fact, Cam could tell that, without it, Owen had probably been painfully average. “Did you play sports before?”

  Owen sat the cards down. “Yeah. In fact, I got to the semifinals of our neighborhood’s Fourth of July pickle ball tournament.”

  Cam waited for more, unintentionally betraying the fact that he was unimpressed by Owen’s big pickle ball triumph.

  “It’s a pretty big neighborhood.”

  “Any team sports?”

  “I almost made the high school basketball team.”

  He got cut, Cam thought as Owen explained the unfairness of the team’s selection of the ten players who were not him. That kind of thing sticks with a guy.

  “… and so, if it wasn’t for that, I would have made it.”

  He’s on a team here. An enhanced team. He hung around with Donnie, the top athlete, and he sucked up to the coach. Cam recalled how excited Owen was to make the scuba squad.

  Suddenly, the condo lit up, and a split second later, thunder shook it violently. Their lights flickered. When Cam looked again, Owen was gripping the desk with both hands, the cards forgotten and scattered across its surface like escaped mice.

  “Bunker?” Cam suggested.

  Owen nodded, and they both went to the door. Cam threw it wide.

  “Holy crap!”

  He caught himself before he stepped out into the surf. The waves lapped against the wood steps that led up to the hut. Their condo was the last in line, and the bunker was at the far end. Between them, the surf came and went at irregular intervals, sometimes ankle-deep, sometimes waist-high.

  “We can’t run through that,” Cam said. “We could get knocked down and dragged out by a big one.”

  The beach lit up again, and then there was no question of leaving the condo. Owen’s arms were wrapped tight around the pole holding up his bunk. Cam slid back inside and pulled the door closed.

  “Is this thing anchored firmly enough to withstand a storm surge?”

  Owen looked up at him, miserable. “It’s been here since before I got here.”

  “Ever have waves like this?”

  “No.”

  “Where the hell is Coach Ward now? Why didn’t someone come get us or blow a horn or something?”

  A thin sheet of water snuck in beneath the loose-fitting wood door and slithered across the floor like a hungry tongue licking at their feet.

  “Oh god, we’re screwed!” Owen whimpered.

  “Up onto the bunk!”

  Shaken by Cam’s shout, Owen scrambled up the ladder onto his bed almost without letting go of the pole. Soon, the water began to rise steadily. It pumped in under the door in rhythm with the thump of the waves against the thin east wall of the condo. The tide and the waves were conspiring, and when the water was knee-high, Cam climbed atop his own bed.

  “What do we do?” Owen asked.

  “We see how high it rises. Maybe it won’t get much higher. If it makes it up to the window, we abandon ship. I don’t want to have to dive underwater to get out.”

  Another wave slammed into the wall, shaking their beds. The window had been impossible to see through since the rain began to fall, and so Cam couldn’t see them coming. But he could feel each one as it hit the condo. The force of their impact varied, and it was agonizing waiting to see if the next one would tear up the condo and sweep them away. Then their light went out. Another wave hit, and the condo groaned under the weight of the ocean pressing against it. A loud cracking sound signaled a beam giving way somewhere underneath.

  Siena! Cam thought. She wouldn’t have been under the hut, he thought, would she? She couldn’t.

  When the next wave hit, the condo rotated, torn loose on one side.

  “We’ve got to make a run for it,” Cam said.

  “You mean a swim for it.”

  “Come on!” In the dark it was difficult to tell what Owen was doing, but it was clear to Cam as he lowered himself into the water that his new roommate wasn’t “coming on.”

  “Where are you?” Cam called.

  “The lightning will hit the tallest thing on the beach,” Owen called down from the bunk. “And that will be us if we go out there!”

  “Lightning takes at least two minutes to recharge. And we climb the bluff in less than that during our runs.” It was a lie. Cam had no idea how long it took for an electrical charge to build in the atmosphere. But it was a lie Cam was willing to tell to get Owen out of the doomed condo. If the waves ripped it free of its anchors, it would be sucked out to sea or battered against the bluff. Either way, Cam didn’t want to be inside when it happened. “As soon as we hear the next strike, we’re going!”

  Cam waited. Another wave pounded the wall. He held his breath, but it wasn’t a large one. Finally, an ear-splitting crack shot through the darkness. Cam reached up and found Owen’s hand.

  “Go!”

  Owen leaped down. Cam unlatched the door, and it swung open in the water. But it was he who hesitated.

  “My music!” he gasped, and he struggled back inside to find his headphones and player, leaving Owen clinging to the doorjamb. Cam nabbed the player from the desk and fought back through the water to the door.

  “It’s been almost a minute,” Owen whined when Cam returned.

  “No!” Cam said. “It’s only been thirty seconds. I’ve been counting. We still have a ninety-second window. Plenty of time if we go now!” It was another lie, but a necessary one.

  They were fortunate—the waves outside were receding as they exited, and they were able to stumble down into thigh-high water. It pulled at them as they fought through up the beach, and Cam knew that the ocean would throw a new one at their backs in moments.

  “The rope!” Cam pointed in the direction the bluff seemed to lie—a patch of darker darkness in the rainy and moonless night. His soccer legs churned through the water, but progress was painfully slow. It was like every childhood nightmare Cam had ever had of running through the dark in wet sand with a huge monster about to pounce from behind. Only this time, someone was with him. He was still holding Owen’s arm, he realized. Only now Owen was dragging him, his enhanced legs plowing water and pumping through the sand. He wondered if Owen’s fear of the next lightning strike was driving him almost as hard as the TS-9. It didn’t matter. He was a lifeline, and Cam clung to him.

  Then they were out of the surf, high enough on the beach that the next few small waves didn’t reach them. The rope was nearly impossible to find in the dark, however. They felt their way along, wet hands grasping blindly at rocks and thorny foliage until Owen suddenly lifted him from the sand. Cam didn’t have hold of the rope himself. Owen hoisted him up with one arm hooked under his armpit. The next wave crashed into Cam’s legs. It would have crushed him against the bluff and yanked him out to sea, but Owen held him just high enough that it merely shook them on the rope.

  “You have to grab on!” Owen yelled over the wind. “I can’t hold you and climb.”

  It was an amazing feat of strength to support him at all, Cam thought as he grabbed for the rope. His hand closed around it just as another wave higher than the last took him from behind. The wall of water slammed both of them against the bluff. The thick brush cushioned the blow enough that it didn’t crack his head open, but he lost his grip on the rope. Instead, he clung to Owen’s waist. To his surprise, his roommate was climbing, pulling them both upward even as the water sucked at them like a cold, hungry demon’s wet mouth. It retreated without claiming its prize and left them dangling in the darkness.

  “Try again!” Owen gasped, supporting them both until Cam located the rope once more.

  His hands were wet and slick, and it was all he could do to hold on. O
wen climbed a little and then lowered a leg for Cam to grip and helped pull him up, repeating the method again and again until they were safely above the surge of the surf. They found a ledge where they could rest and pressed themselves against the hill. Lightning struck again, and Owen held Cam tight, like a boy hugging his older brother after seeing the shadow of a boogeyman. Cam wondered if Owen had a brother and decided that he probably did.

  “I can climb now,” Cam said, though he wasn’t certain. He wanted to keep Owen moving. Being paralyzed with fear halfway up a cliff in the rain was precarious, and even a guy on TS-9 would tire eventually, he thought. Or would he?

  * * *

  The others were already at the temporary shelter in the jungle, which was little more than a tarp with stacked wood walls to keep the rain and large animals out. A cheer went up when he and Owen stumbled in. There were no dry towels, but a fire was already crackling beneath the smoke hole. They’d all made it to the shelter before the waves hit.

  “Why didn’t you come when the storm began?” Zara asked.

  Cam flopped down and rolled his exhausted head toward her. “I wouldn’t go, and Owen wouldn’t go without me.”

  “So you were stupid and he was loyal?”

  Cam was too tired to argue. Besides, he hadn’t thought of it that way. She wasn’t wrong.

  Owen interrupted. “It was Cam’s idea to make a run for it, or I’d be out to sea somewhere by now.”

  “Yeah, but you practically carried me up the rope when the waves hit us,” Cam replied.

  They shared a relieved laugh. Wally joked that they’d each done their best to get the other killed.

  “That’s teamwork for you,” Owen added.

  And suddenly Cam understood him. Owen simply wanted to make the team. That was his simple dream. To be a starter. As much as Calliope wanted to perform and Ari wanted to drive, Owen wanted to be picked first at recess. And perhaps Owen wasn’t so much spying as making sure Cam was doing okay, he thought. Concern and suspicion were sister emotions easily mistaken for one another. In the end, he was maybe just a kid who was scared of lightning and trying to do everything his coach asked of him.

  Cam put his knuckles up for a fist bump. Owen smiled and tapped them.

  CAM’S PLAYLIST

  29. HOPE AND CHANGE

  by That Weird Girl

  30. ’SPLOSIONS

  by WTF

  31. NO WAY!

  by Go Fish

  “Can’t wait for you to change, but I can hope.”

  Cam awoke to a presence again, someone kneeling over him as he lay on the ground. It was not yet dawn, but the storm had passed. Under the tarp, under the jungle canopy, under the residual gray clouds, and without the sun there was almost no light, but Cam knew it was Siena before she spoke.

  “Yes or no?” she whispered, her voice so soft he might have thought it a dream.

  “Yes,” he said.

  She led him out of the shelter and through the forest. Siena was better in the dark than he was, and soon they came to a small pool. Cam heard splattering water. He knew the place. He’d seen it in daylight. The stream ran down a sheer bank and into the pool, which then overflowed and disappeared over the bluff. In the light, a person could stand beneath the cascading water thigh-deep in the pool and look over the sea. Cam felt the vastness of it out in the darkness beyond his sight. They stood uncomfortably close so that they could whisper and yet still be heard above the plummeting stream.

  “The waterfall?” Cam said.

  “Yes. We can talk here.”

  He came right to the point. “I confirmed it. I’m not getting sicker.”

  “It would have been quicker and easier if you’d just trusted me from the beginning.”

  “Like you trusted me from the beginning, Miss Vague Love Notes?”

  It was dark, but Siena’s hesitation betrayed her blush. Perhaps she smiled. Perhaps not.

  “They weren’t love notes,” she said finally.

  “I want to thank you,” Cam said. Without eye contact, some other gesture was necessary to lend the appropriate level of sincerity to his expression of gratitude. He lifted a hand in the darkness to touch her arm. But she was closer than he thought, and his hand found her hip on its way up instead. Rather than grope his way up her body, he let it linger there. She hadn’t expected it. He felt her pull away slightly, but not enough to dislodge him.

  “It’s a bit early to thank me. I could be getting you killed.”

  “I might not have a chance later.”

  “I guess you’re welcome,” she said. She bit off the last word to eliminate any sentiment her tone might otherwise have hinted.

  There was silence between them then. In the darkness, the patter of the waterfall surrounded them, and the mist it sent up made Cam shiver. His hand was still on her hip.

  “The water is cold here,” Siena said, as though reading his thoughts, or perhaps she could feel him trembling in the dark. It was one of those empty phrases meant to save her from emotional exchange. Small talk.

  “This is where you showered, isn’t it?” The thought of standing in a shower with her stirred him. He suddenly wondered what she might look like with her long tangled hair brushed smooth, and without the tattered rags she wore.

  “I’m jealous of your warm shower,” she said. “But that hasn’t been the worst. It took me two weeks just to get up the nerve to steal shoes. The big-eyed girl and the pale one left theirs out on the steps every night. But it took me a long time to sneak down to their hut and take a pair. I thought they were the height of luxury. I’ll never take shoes for granted again.”

  “That was brave of you.”

  “I left tracks from a dead monkey’s feet so they’d think a monkey took them. Not the smartest two.”

  “I never heard about the missing shoes.”

  “That was before we met.”

  Cam smiled in the dark. It was a schoolgirlish thing to say. It made him feel like they were a couple, in a strange way, especially while his hand was still on her hip. And we might die today, he thought. He pulled her close and kissed her.

  Cam was surprised by the stench of her breath. It made him wince, and he immediately felt bad. It wasn’t her fault—she’d been living in the jungle, and who knew what she’d been eating. Raw fish? Bugs maybe? And a few bites of poultry.

  She pulled away. “Oh my god!”

  “What?”

  “I … I haven’t had a toothbrush for months.”

  “No. You’re fine,” Cam lied. “I just didn’t know if that was the right thing to do. This is a weird time for me. For both of us. I’m sorry.”

  “It’s okay,” she said. She still hadn’t let go. “We can keep hugging.”

  Cam took her in his arms, and the waterfall’s spray shrouded them so that they were the warm center of its cool mist cocoon.

  “I was a totally normal girl, before,” Siena whispered. “I wore tasteful makeup and went out on Friday nights. In real life, in the world of toothpaste, I would have kissed you back.”

  “What do we do now?” Cam asked. He liked holding her and didn’t want it to end. But everything ends.

  “The storm’s over,” she said. “And the bunker is unmanned.”

  Cam took a breath. “We obtain supplies?”

  “Yes. Then we sneak off in Pilot’s boat after they come ashore. There has to be a village along the shore within fifty miles. We can do ten miles a night and hide the boat each day.”

  “What if he comes in the kayak? You and I aren’t paddling to Florida.”

  “He won’t bring the kayak after this disaster. He and Ward will come in a fast inflatable. We’re lucky they got caught away when the storm hit. We’ve got a window of opportunity here.”

  Cam’s clothes were still soaked, but there were dry sets in the bunker.

  They located the northernmost rope down to the beach in the darkness. It was an easier climb than the center rope he and Owen had ascended. They felt their way to the
flat wall of the bunker and let themselves in. The lights flickered on inside. Cam could hear its generator still humming. They’d have been safe from the storm inside. There were watermarks at eye level on the door where high waves or spray had hit and some flooding in the main hall. Otherwise, everything seemed intact.

  “Food first,” Siena said, heading straight for the pantry. “Then fresh clothes. Is there a gun in here anywhere?”

  “I don’t think so, but we could check Ward’s office.”

  Siena gathered canned fruit and dried meats in a backpack that Cam found, while greedily stuffing fresh food into her mouth—leftover roast pork and bread. She gulped down three cans of fruit juice. Cam found a canteen and filled it with water. There were matches and knives in the kitchen. Cam wrapped a butcher knife in a cloth and wound duct tape around it to create a makeshift sheath. Siena grabbed a metal bowl. It could be used as a frying pan if they needed to cook or to boil water, she said, something Cam hadn’t thought of.

  Ward’s office was next. It was locked, but the bunker’s interior doors were cheap. Two kicks, and the jamb splintered. There was no gun, which didn’t surprise him. He’d never seen Ward carry one, and the Deathwing philosophy didn’t lend itself to lethal weapons. Siena, however, spotted Ward’s machete hanging from a belt on a hook behind the door and helped herself, strapping it around her narrow waist. She had to cinch it up past its last hole.

  The room was less an office than a place for Ward to stash his personal items during training. There were no files. No computer. No communications equipment either. Ward and Pilot carried radios on them, but there was nothing anyone could use to call the outside world. Clearly, they didn’t want recruits finding records or contacting anyone.

  “Blankets,” Siena said. “If Pilot goes airborne to find us while we’re floating the coast we might have to dive into the jungle.”

  “Do you know where we’re going?”