by Joe Hart
“I think you’re just trying to get me to stop,” Shirou says, as Zoey sucks in two watery lungfuls of air. “You need more motivation.”
Shirou’s hand yanks her head back farther and the water splashes against her face again.
She’s going to die.
Drown in this steel room while Lee watches.
Never see her daughter.
Never hold her.
No.
Zoey walks her feet up the partition again.
Shoves with all her strength.
There is the sharp bark of steel coming loose. Then she’s falling, tipping backward away from the pouring water.
Shirou gives a yell of surprise, something in another language, and she feels some resistance as if he’s trying to hold her and the chair upright.
Then there’s a screech of rubber slipping and she’s dropping again.
The chair crashes into the floor, her arms screaming as they’re crushed between the two.
She turns her head and vomits into the bag, screaming and coughing all at once.
Her mind tries to fade into nothing, but she tethers herself to the pain. This is the only chance she’ll get.
More of her weight rests on her left side and she shifts that way, yanking hard on her right wrist.
It comes free, the plastic snapping audibly.
She pivots to her left, rolling onto her hands and knees, ripping the bag from her head at the same time.
There is a quarter inch of water on the floor, more spraying from the hose above.
Shirou is sitting partially up across from her, one hand grasping a plate in the wall as he tries to hoist himself to his feet. Blood drips from one elbow where he slipped and fell, and his eyes are wide, teeth gritted into a line of white between his lips.
Zoey rises to her knees, twisting her bound arm against the plastic strap.
It breaks at the frayed point where she’d been working at it.
Shirou pulls himself into a crouch as she leaps toward him with both feet forward. She catches him full in the face, slamming the back of his head into the wall as she falls to the wet floor.
What air she had is gone, knocked free from the impact.
Somewhere Lee is yelling her name.
Zoey pushes up onto her hands and knees, crawling away as Shirou grasps her ankle feebly. She kicks free and rises, swaying like a tree in a high wind, sucking in great heaving breaths that have never tasted so sweet.
Shirou lies on his side, blood leaking from his nose and mixing with the accumulating water around him. He presses a hand to the floor, pushing himself up.
Zoey reaches over her head and grasps the nozzle’s valve, opening the flow fully.
She twists the handle sideways.
It bends, then breaks free of the pipe.
Water sprays in a powerful stream from the hose.
“Stop,” Shirou mumbles, blood running from the corner of his mouth as she backs toward the door. He fumbles with the pistol at his side as she opens the door and spills into the hallway.
She slams the door shut, locking it as Shirou aims his pistol.
Leaning against the steel hatch, shoulders shaking, saliva drooling from her open mouth, she doubles over with another coughing fit, hacking out more water as she stumbles to the left, sliding against the wall. Distantly she can hear Shirou shouting as the water rises.
Lee’s door opens by spinning a wheel set in its center. She crosses the room as he struggles to watch her.
“Are you okay?” he asks as she stops beside him, studying how his manacles are attached to the rail.
“Yeah,” she croaks, her vocal cords like open wounds. The restraints around Lee’s wrists are thicker than she first thought, their size spreading out the weight of his body through his forearms.
Please don’t be bolted in, she thinks, casting a look around the room. A lone chair, much like the one she was bound to but shorter, sits in the corner. She drags it close to the water bin at Lee’s feet and stands on it.
A cry of rage pulls her attention to the partition between the rooms.
Shirou stares at them, teeth bared, handgun aimed in their direction. In the instant before it happens, Zoey grasps Lee around the waist and pulls him close to her.
Shirou fires.
She waits for the bullet’s sting, the memory from the other times she’s been shot magnifying until she’s sure it’s already happened.
No pain comes. She looks at the other room.
There is a mushroomed crater on Shirou’s side, the plastic otherwise unharmed around it. The man himself looks stunned and it takes him a full second to fire another round.
The bullet hammers the plastic but it doesn’t break.
He shoots again and again, a look of panic beginning to take over.
The water level rises into view, nearly three feet deep now in the little room, as the hose continues to hemorrhage.
Shirou faces the door, firing several muted blasts at the door handle.
“We have to go,” Zoey says, returning her gaze to Lee’s shackles. Now that she’s closer she can see they’re hooked over the rail and latched out of reach of his fingers. She turns the catch and steps down from the chair before moving it into the water bin for Lee to stand on.
His legs barely hold him, but he manages to unhook himself and drop to the floor.
Zoey catches him and they nearly fall over together. His skin is slick with cold sweat.
“Thought I was going to lose you,” he breathes, leaning heavily against her.
“I’m here. Can you walk?”
“I think so.”
She slings one arm around his waist and they move toward the door.
The water in the next room covers the bullet marks in the partition but none leaks onto their side. Shirou stands navel deep watching them leave. He raises the gun and fires twice more at Zoey’s face as she passes, the plastic splintering his visage into something inhuman.
They step into the hallway and close the door behind them. The ship hums. Somewhere above them a ringing begins but quiets almost immediately.
How much time do they have before someone notices Shirou isn’t in his room?
They move past the door to her cell, which weeps water from its lower half, a hollow banging coming from within.
To their right the hallway extends in a murky red light along a section of doors. Ahead are the stairs she was brought down earlier.
“We have to get up to the top deck and off the ship,” she whispers. “Can you climb the stairs?”
“I think so.” She lets him go and he wobbles but stays upright.
“Okay, hold my hand.”
“You couldn’t get me to let go.”
She can’t help but smile at this even as her throat burns and the cuts on her wrists flare with pain.
They climb the stairs carefully, Zoey first, their footsteps masked by the thrumming noise of the ship itself.
One flight.
Two.
At the third a flash of movement above makes her pause. A guard strolls past on the next level. If he looks down, there’s no way he can’t see them.
He walks out of sight.
Below them a door slams, and a conversation begins to grow in volume.
Two men coming toward the stairs.
She squeezes Lee’s hand and he returns it.
They move together, climbing fast and steady even though her legs feel as if she’s just run several miles. The next level is an open corridor three times the width of the ones she’s seen so far. Straight across from the head of the stairs is a doorway.
And beyond it the early morning sky.
Almost there.
Zoey checks both ways, seeing the back of the man who had passed moments ago farther down the ship.
The men’s conversation continues. They are perhaps twenty seconds from being spotted if they don’t move.
The guard on their level turns a corner.
She tugs Lee with her, and they cross
the open space, vulnerable and easily caught if they’re seen. She fumbles with the door for a stomach-shriveling second before it opens.
The fresh sea air welcomes them, and she’s suddenly aware of how suffused the inside of the ship is with competing odors. The sky is overcast with only a thin swath of lighter clouds on the horizon.
Zoey closes the door behind them and they stand with their backs against the wall, listening to the men talk, voices louder, louder, then softer until they’re gone completely.
She exhales, moving away from the door toward the rear of the ship. The deck is wide and slick with moisture. In the half-light the shape of the rear gun turret is like giant fingers reaching out from the ship’s surface. A towering structure rises high above the rest of the vessel, lights shining down from its top. A man walks the perimeter of the tower, glancing down near their position before continuing on.
Zoey eyes the harbor, its distance much more intimidating than it was on the ride out to the battleship.
“I don’t know if I can swim that far,” Lee says, bringing his manacled hands up. “Not like this.” She inspects the steel but there are no catches or releases she can see that would set him free. They’ll have to cut them off somehow, but it will have to wait for later. Any second Shirou will either break loose or someone will discover their absence, and daylight is not their friend.
They have to leave now.
“There,” Lee says, pointing to a round ring almost the size of a tire hanging from the railing across from them. “It’s a life preserver. We can use that.”
She nods. “Okay. We grab it and go over the side. Head for that spot over there,” she says, pointing at a length of shoreline slightly north of the ship’s position.
Lee swallows and jerks his head, not looking at her.
Zoey watches the tower guard pass by again, making his circle, and holds out her hand, folding her fingers in one at a time.
Three.
Two.
One.
They run.
In seconds they’re at the railing. Lee yanks the life preserver free as she glances over the side.
The distance to the sea makes her take a step back. Hitting the water is going to hurt.
Lee is already climbing up the railing. He tosses the preserver over. “Land with your feet,” he says, reaching out to hold her hand.
Zoey steps up beside him and has a fractured second to orient herself.
Then they leap together.
Air rushes past, an animal howl in her ears.
The water speeds toward her and she holds her breath.
It’s like jumping into a pit of needles.
The water bites with fangs of ice, and she opens her mouth in shock, shutting down the impulse to suck in a breath. She’s breathed enough water for one day. Lee’s hand is gone and the ocean drones eerily around her as she kicks and paws at the inky water. A sickening bout of vertigo comes and goes, the unmooring loss of direction so strong that down and up are interchangeable in the near dark.
Then her head breaks the surface and she sees Lee clasping the preserver to his chest a dozen feet away. She swims to him and they begin propelling themselves as quietly as they can toward shore.
Every few strokes Zoey glances back at the ship that looms less and less over them. The deck is still empty at the early hour, and so far the lookout on the tower hasn’t spotted them.
“So cold,” Lee says, gripping the preserver with white knuckles.
“We’ll make it. Keep going.”
The sea continues to brighten around them, their wakes no longer hidden in shadow.
The shore is closer with each passing minute but she knows they’re not going fast enough. Lee’s teeth chatter briefly before he clamps his jaws together in a grimace, breathing hard through his nose. The water was unbearably cold at first and has gotten colder, but now it has the effect of an anesthetizing agent. Her body is less her own and more an idea highlighted by the fact that if she quits swimming she will drown.
A cramp forms in her right leg, quickly tightening to a solid knot of pain. She gasps and water laps at her chin and nose as she slows. Without saying anything, Lee shifts almost completely off the preserver and shoves it toward her. She grabs it and tries to stretch her leg but the cramp only strengthens.
“Come on, Zoey, we’re almost there,” Lee says in her ear.
“Can’t . . .” she says breathlessly, trying to kick with the opposite leg.
“Yes you can. You saved me, you can make it.” He shifts so that he’s swimming backward, and begins to tow her, kicking hard with his legs. “Look at me, keep looking at me.”
She blinks, her vision a smeared mess of monochrome, and focuses on him.
And in that moment, with his hair plastered to his head, lips blue, and a look of gritted determination on his face, she has never loved him more.
After several seconds she realizes there is something wrong with her feet. It’s not numbness or pain.
They’re touching something.
Shore. They’ve made it.
She looks up, seeing a long patch of dirty beach set before a layer of brush and trees. Beyond the barricade is the suggestion of a fairly tall building.
Lee stands, shoulders emerging from the water. He drags her in closer to the sand as she manages to get her feet working. They slog up onto dry land, clothes weighing a thousand pounds, breath pluming white in the morning air.
“We made it,” Lee says, “We reall—”
A startling siren shreds the silence, shearing his words off, as a red beacon begins flashing aboard the ship. Spotlights erupt out of the last murk of night and slice across the water.
She reaches out, not taking her eyes off the vessel that’s coming alive with motion, and Lee’s hand is there, cold but strong.
Together they run.
34
Brush slaps at her face, claws at her soaking clothes, trying desperately to hold her back.
The cramp in her leg loosens before cinching tight again, causing her strides to become a rushing hobble.
Lee pushes through the bare foliage ahead of her, hand still gripping hers. Behind them the ship’s alarm howls and distantly engines rumble to life.
After struggling through the brush for another ten seconds they burst into full view of the building she spotted earlier. They are in its parking lot, its slanted architecture rising several stories above them. Beyond the structure is a road and a row of homes.
“Hide here or run?” Lee asks between heaving breaths.
“Keep moving.”
They rush side by side to the road, crossing it with a brief glance.
Empty.
The neighborhood they enter seems to be laid out in a rough crescent, the drive in front of the homes curving away back toward the center of the city. Zoey adjusts their course, running north through several side yards before coming to a stop at another cross street. It’s vacant, so they continue to the next neighborhood. Each house becomes the same, every alley and yard identical. At a low one-story she comes to a stop, slumping against its siding before sliding down. Her legs are on fire and the warning throb of pain in her lower back has returned.
“Have to rest,” she says, stretching out her leg to banish the persistent cramp. Lee nods, bent over, elbows bracing against his knees. The sound of engines hasn’t gotten any closer but neither are they farther away.
“Maybe they didn’t see us at all,” Lee says, straightening. “Maybe they just realized we weren’t on the ship anymore.”
“Could be.” She leans into the stretch, the coiled ball of muscle straining to the point she thinks it will snap before it grudgingly begins to release. Her heart rate gradually lowers, and the frenetic anxiety running through her drops several degrees as the vehicle’s growls fade slightly.
When she’s sure the cramp has relinquished its grip, she stands, surveying the surrounding homes and yards. Nothing moves. The tepid light continues to spread, brushing back th
e shadows. “You know the city. Is there a way out that isn’t watched?”
“I haven’t been outside the city limits since they showed up, but I’m sure every road and bridge is covered.”
“Can we slip around them? Off the roads or through the trees?”
“I don’t know.”
“I think that’s our only chance.”
Lee looks at the shackles on his wrists. “Wish these were gone.”
“We’ll get them off somehow when we’re safe. Are you okay otherwise? Are you injured anywhere?” she asks, looking him up and down.
“Are you trying to get me to take my clothes off?” His grin is back, the one she knew so well from the ARC.
She shakes her head. “You’re terrible.”
“Maybe. No, I’m okay except for aching all over. It feels like I was beaten everywhere.” He winces, stretching his back. “Thank you. I wouldn’t have lasted much longer. Especially seeing him do that to you, I would’ve told.”
“It’s okay. We made it.”
“Yeah, we’re totally free,” he says, gesturing around them.
“If we do it right, we will be.” She frowns. “One thing I don’t understand, though, is why Shirou kept asking us where the ARC is. You said that’s where they were headed from here, right?”
Lee squints at her. “Right. Their leader told me they had the location.”
“That doesn’t make any sense. Why would they need us to tell them?”
“I don’t know.”
They sit quietly for a time listening to the distant rev of engines until finally Zoey says, “We should get somewhere safer before it’s full day.”
“We can try for the north bridge. It’s not too far, and there might be a way around the roadblock, but you won’t like it.”
“Why?”
“It involves swimming again.”
She groans. “Ready?”
“Whenever you are.”
She walks to the corner of the house and peers around it.
Beyond is an intersection. Several old cars are parked on a corner and a few seconds tick by before she dismisses them. The chances that they would start are near zero, and driving away will draw too much attention. They’ll have to go on foot.
She glances in all directions before motioning to Lee.