Raging Sea

by Michael Buckley

  Jackson sits in the front with the pilot and shouts information about our mission into the speakers in our helmets.

  “Each one of you is going to detonate a concussion bomb when you reach the drop zone,” he says.

  “Heads-up: I sort of skipped concussion bombs in public school,” I confess.

  “I’ll show you,” Riley offers.

  “They’re simple. Don’t worry,” Jackson assures me. “They don’t do much more than make a lot of noise, but try not to get too close, because they will rattle your brain. Loud noises spook them so it should send the Rusalka swimming for the beach. They told me you can breathe underwater?”

  I nod.

  “Can you talk?”

  I shake my head.

  “That’s unfortunate,” Jackson shouts. “Stay close together, then.”

  The beach disappears into the horizon, replaced by a threatening purple sky. The water below looks like a vast black drain. The children see it the way I do, suddenly losing their eagerness to fight. They are silent and wary, watching the waves with anxious eyes. I know Riley would like me to say something to inspire them, but I’m not feeling all that inspiring right now. Fathom says I’m a raging sea. Right now I feel like I’m going to pee my pants.

  About a mile offshore, the helicopter slows and Jackson reaches back and opens the door.

  “We’re here!”

  We take off our helmets, then our boots.

  “Good luck!” the pilot shouts to us.

  “Wait! Aren’t you going any lower?” I say, looking out at the water. It’s a good fifty feet below.

  “A Rusalka can jump out of the water pretty high,” he says. “This is about as low as we dare.”

  Before I can argue, Arcade pushes past me and leaps out of the chopper. I watch her body plummet and then disappear into the waves. If I do the same thing, I’m going to smack into the water. It’s going to feel like pavement.

  “You’re not afraid of heights, are you, Lyric?” Georgia teases.

  “It’s really what’s at the bottom that bothers me,” I say.

  “You’re so funny,” she says as she powers up her glove. A moment later a spout of water rises up until it’s parallel with the helicopter. Georgia jumps out into it, and I watch her body sink down into the ocean below. It’s a pretty cool trick. Eric and Ryan are next, then Emma, Tess, Harrison, and Jonas, until it’s just Riley and me.

  “Let’s go, Walker!” Jackson shouts as he shoves a canvas bag into my hands. Inside are ten metal canisters as big as softballs. Each has a single red button on its side. “Here are the explosives. Get as close to those ugly things as you can and push the button. After that, just hold your ears.”

  My heart is racing. My head feels like it might pop off. This is so stupid. I am not a soldier. Can’t anyone see that? Why is Jackson shouting for me to jump?

  Riley reaches over and gives my shoulder a squeeze.

  “You can do this,” he promises, offering me his hand.

  Fathom would probably think I was being weak, but I take it nonetheless, and together Riley and I leap out into nothing. When we hit the spout, my whole body locks up. The water is icy cold and it steals my breath, even as my gills appear to take over the job of breathing. We drop downward until we splash into the murky ocean unharmed. Riley is still holding my hand. The scales on his face and hands are silver and blue. He’s beautiful.

  He says something to me, but it comes out as bubbles and nonsense. He’s grinning. I think he’s flirting with me. I think he’s telling me I’m beautiful too.

  Arcade finds us and points us toward the others. Once we are gathered, I hand out the bombs. Arcade gestures for us to follow her and takes off swimming. Her speed is incredible. Like the rest of my team, I have to depend on the glove to propel me forward, but once we get going, we take off like a shot.

  The team slices through the water using the dim light from the surface to keep us together. It isn’t long before Arcade comes to a halt. She points first at our concussion bombs, then just ahead of us. She makes a monster face. It’s ridiculous, but it gets the point across. The Rusalka are near.

  I press the button on my canister, then use my glove to send it torpedoing in the direction Arcade has pointed. I watch it zip away into the darkness, then watch my team mimic my actions. Eight more bombs shoot ahead and vanish into the pitch-black. I turn to Riley to see if he might be able to tell me how long it will take before the explosion, only to be knocked backwards by an ear-shattering boom.

  It jars every bone in my body and knocks me about. I spin in a dozen directions, so that I can’t tell which way is up. When I finally right myself, I search for my team. Most of them flailed out of control as well, but none of us have been injured.

  Arcade waves at us frantically and swims furiously toward the explosion. The Rusalka are on the move, racing toward the shore. Kita’s plan is working! Arcade doesn’t hesitate. She charges after the creatures, slashing their backs and their legs with her blades. They scream in agony, and black blood pours out of them. It makes the water smell coppery, and I nearly gag knowing it is in my lungs. I shake it off. I can be sick about this later. Right now I have a job to do.

  I wave to the team, showing them how to pull debris off the ocean floor. I mix it into sharp shapes, then fire it into the fleeing Rusalka. The children give chase, each one mimicking my trick, launching spears into the fleeing beasts.

  Our attacks have ferocity. The children channel whatever it is they’ve bottled up since they were taken to Tempest. Most of what they still believe about their mothers and fathers is a lie, but they have a cause I will not steal from them. Whatever gives them the courage to fight is good enough today. I have my own passion to fuel me. I fire one deadly rocket after another, watching them cut the Rusalka down.

  “Show me which ones have the gloves,” I beg the water.

  Magically, I can sense them all, as if we are linked together. They are spread out so many miles away, but there are a hundred close enough to be targets. If I can destroy them, the soldiers and my team waiting on the beach might actually have a chance. I reach out, concentrating on what is in the water. There is so much debris at the bottom, remains of Coney Island dragged out when the water crushed it to death. There are nails and pieces of glass and car parts and jagged planks of wood. I stop and focus on it all, pulling up as much as I can. It swirls around me in a whirlpool of filth, and the water seizes each deadly piece, turning it toward the fleeing mob and shooting it in one massive assault.

  I watch the pieces zip forward, catching monsters in the back. Bodies heave, then sink; and glowing blue gloves fall like stars into the deep. The kids are following my lead, creating their own shrapnel attacks. There’s too much agitation in the water to know how many we have killed.

  Suddenly, the chase comes to a screeching halt. We’ve reached the beach. It’s up to the soldiers and Finn’s team to do their part.

  Riley swims close and grabs my arm. He points toward the surface. There’s a rush, and suddenly he and I are soaring out of the water and into open air, riding the crest of a spout. The other children do the same, and soon we are all looking out over the battle zone. Despite the carnage we inflicted, there are still so many Rusalka that they have melted into a single black and purple mass tumbling onto the shore. The soldiers spray them with gunfire. Finn shouts orders at the children, and several rockets crash into the water, ripping dozens of our enemies apart in fiery explosions.

  But in this grotesque mess are five Rusalka who survived my attacks and have gloves like mine. I can see their glow from high above, and each monster is slobbering with fury. Together they lift their gloves skyward, and I hear a sound like the earth has cracked in two. Riley and I turn to find a swell rising higher and higher in the distance. It grows into a tower of liquid that is ten feet, twenty feet, fifty feet. It’s twice as big as the one that destroyed my home, and it’s coming right for us. It will kill everything when it arrives, charging through our
numbers and crushing our bodies. It’s an act of desperation. These creatures are willing to be torn limb from limb if they can take us with them.

  “I will stop this,” Arcade shouts, leaping off of Harrison’s spout. He tries to hold on to her, but she wrenches free and leaps down into the throng of Rusalka in a falling arc, She swings wildly, dismembering everything nearby. I have never seen such violence. She is killing and killing and killing, moving closer and closer to the last five who can destroy us all. I hope the Great Abyss has answered her prayers today, but she may not reach them in time.

  “We have to push it back!” I shout to the children. The power needed to make it happen is all-consuming. We tumble out of the sky and land in the shallows. I feel my ankle wrench, and a burn rolls up my leg. I may have broken it. Emma and Harrison look hurt as well. I can deal with it later, if I live.

  “Hold hands!” I shout.

  The children link to one another, and the wave trembles. It knows we’re in its path of destruction and we plan on stopping it.

  “You are all giants!” I shout at the children. “You are all five hundred feet tall. You have to believe me. We can stop this, but you have to believe that you are a force of nature.”

  “I believe it!” Riley shouts, and then each of the children says the same.

  “All right, bear down,” I instruct. “Don’t let it move forward another inch.”

  There are ten of us against an angry ocean, and the nosebleeds begin. Harrison is first, then Tess. I’m too exhausted to know if it’s happening to me. Georgia is shaking like she’s having a seizure, and the others are screaming from the intensity.

  “They’re breaking through!” someone shouts.

  I turn my head to see Rusalka storming onto the beach. Breanne is attacked and cut open. She falls to the ground, clenching her belly. Without her defenses, a dozen more Rusalka charge forward. They cut down Suzi, and a boy named Tucker, and Priscilla, leaving them bloody and in shock. Tucker can’t stop looking at the wound on his arm. He’s set upon by others. I hear his screams over the gunfire. The Rusalka leap forward, cutting five soldiers in half. One snatches up a loose rifle and accidentally shoots itself in the face.

  And our luck runs out. One of the Rusalka turns to find out what drove them to shore and realizes we are in the water behind him. He lunges forward and digs his claws into Jonas’s leg. The boy cries out and falls backwards into the water. Losing his connection causes the rest of us to lurch with pain.

  Another Rusalka leaps to slice me open, but I kick it in the face and it tumbles back. Five more follow. Riley manages to punch one before it can hurt him, and Emma turns her glove on the creature, crushing it between two spouts of water. Unfortunately her diversion weakens our hold even further. The energy needed to hold back the wave feels like it is ripping me apart, and I know if it’s this bad for me, it’s hurting the others even more. This is how it felt that day on the beach when I failed everyone. I fought and fought, but it was pointless. Everything was destroyed anyway.

  Everything.

  “Let go!” I shout to the team.

  “We can’t!” Harrison cries.

  “Let it go. Turn your attention on our people. Get them out of the water before they are swept away.”

  I call names out to the sea, asking it to keep everyone safe. When I say Arcade’s name, a wave shoots her into the sky. I see it happening to everyone on the beach. Kita, Jackson, all the soldiers and children. They are all hurtled skyward when we let the water go.

  Riley and I shoot into the sky as well, just as the monstrous wave stampedes beneath our feet. It crushes everything that dares stand in its way, even the Rusalka who created it. It swallows them up and chews them apart, and I feel my connection to their gloves snuffed out.

  The wave rolls up the beach, smashing into Childs Restaurant, knocking it off its foundation. It continues onward, bulldozing everything in its path. The destruction from this wave will wipe out neighborhoods that survived the first. I hope the die-hards who would not leave have a chance to escape. My mind searches the water for my parents and Bex and Chloe, but they aren’t out there. I hope Jackson fulfilled his promise. I hope they’re on their way to safety.

  When the ocean has had its way with the land, when it is just a simmering boil of hostility, I nudge it back to where it belongs. The other children help me until we can see the beach once more. There is nothing left, no debris, no weapons, no evidence that this place was once a neighborhood.

  We ease everyone back to the ground and gather in the wet sand. Arcade waits for me. She points at a jagged cut on my thigh. A Rusalka must have slashed me and I didn’t notice. I’m so full of adrenaline right now, I can’t even feel it.

  The children cry at their losses. There were thirty-three of us when we arrived. We lost nine in the fight. I stretch out and find their bodies. There is no life in any of them. We lost Breanne, Jonas, Emma, Tess, Leo, Georgia, Pierre, Tucker, and Danny.

  “Look!” Finn shouts.

  There’s a splash, and then something lands at our feet. I almost fall backwards in fear. Another Rusalka has arrived. Its yellow eyes study us for a moment, and its forked tongue licks the air. It barks and howls at us in its ugly language, but I can’t begin to understand what it wants.

  “He is not here!” Arcade shouts at it.

  The Rusalka stomps its feet and growls angrily.

  “Then he is a coward. I demand he retreat. His invasion has failed,” Arcade shouts.

  The creature lets out a defiant huff and springs back into the water, disappearing from view.

  “He is coming,” Arcade says.

  “Who?” Cole asks.

  “The prime. I will fight in Fathom’s place,” Arcade says, then stares at me with serious eyes. “I will not allow interference.”

  “This is my fight too!” I shout.

  I see the tips of tridents and swords rising out of the surf. All along the shore as far as I can see, they come, hundreds of Rusalka marching in our direction. Unlike the others, they wear the same armor that the other Alpha have been known to wear. It’s made of shells and bones and claws. In their midst is the prime and his pregnant wife, Minerva. They each bear smiles a million times more terrifying than their monster army. Once they are in position, they all stop and stand tall before us.

  “Where is the traitor?” the prime says, his eyes gleaming with hate.

  “Ever the coward,” Minerva hisses.

  “No mind. He will learn the new way of things when we root him out,” the prime says. “As for the rest, you may kneel and beg for a quick death.”

  “That is merciful,” Minerva says with all sincerity.

  “You are no prime,” Arcade cries. “The Alpha Nation is dead and scattered, all thanks to you. You are the leader of memories, not First Men.”

  “I think this child has lost her ability to see,” Minerva says. “Isn’t the empire standing before you? Only a small portion of it, of course, but it grows with each passing day. The Alpha live on.”

  Arcade looks up and down the beach at the beasts.

  “What did you have to say to get them to bend their knees to you?”

  “I simply offered them what they have been asking for all along—a place in my kingdom, a voice in my ear,” the prime answers. “I gave them the freedoms that my former advisers refused to allow, and apologized for the disrespect. I appointed several of them to be advisers and then welcomed the rest into my royal guard. Don’t they look fierce in their armor? They will play an integral part in our glorious future.”

  “Imagine the lives you could have saved if you had just given them a hug earlier,” I say.

  “I see the mutant has survived,” the prime snarls, then turns back to Arcade. “Throwing your lot in with the human filth too, Arcade?”

  “Kill her, lover!” Minerva shrieks. She’s so angry, her body shakes. “Kill them both!”

  The prime’s blades spring from his forearms with a deadly shhhkkkt.

&n
bsp; “Yes, I think that would be fun,” he says, then crouches as if he’s preparing to lunge at me.

  The air fills with a pounding rhythm. It begins with a low, plucking tone but grows louder until the air around my head is shaking with a thrum.

  Behind the wall of Rusalka, I see a second set of weapons rise. Along the beach for a mile in both directions come the Alpha—Nix, Sirena, Ceto, Triton, and Selkie. At the center is Fathom, dressed in his own armor. Next to him is a boy roughly his own age with long brown hair and an older man with a shaved head and a pointy goatee. I’ve seen them before. They are Flyer and Braken.

  The Rusalka part for them, and Fathom walks toward the beach. He looks to me and then Arcade, and nods respectfully.

  “You have done well,” he says.

  “Glad you could make it before the party is over,” I say.

  “Father, I come to you with an offer of peace,” he says to the prime. “Return to the hunting grounds. Rebuild the empire in whatever form you choose. I will not try to stop you as long as you leave the surface world alone.”

  “Is that your offer, little minnow?” Minerva mocks. “Shall we retreat now?”

  “It is not retreat, Minerva. It is a fair offer to my father!” Fathom shouts at her.

  “Yes, I am your father!” the prime rages. “And you should be proud of me, boy. I have taken our people back to a more glorious time, when we took what we wanted—food, weapons, slaves, and territories. The surface world is no different. It is ours for the taking.”

  “You are insane!” Arcade shouts.

  “The only madness here is the way we live,” the prime cries. “I am setting things back to the way they were always meant to be.”

  “And look at the price!” Fathom shouts. “Look at the death!”

  “And from it, birth,” Minerva says, rubbing her pregnant tummy. “I will raise the heir in the old traditions. He will bathe in blood and treasure. The surface is his dowry.”

  “Father, hear me. Consider peace,” Fathom says.