Heart of the Storm

by Michael Buckley

  I was fucked.

  Chapter Three

  A HEAVY FIST POUNDS ON THE STEEL HATCH DOOR. One of Encardo’s sons is outside shouting my name.

  “We’re coming into the dock,” he shouts.

  “Thank you,” I call back, then listen for his boots to climb the steps. When he’s gone, I stand and come face to face with myself. A mirror mounted on the back of the door, something I didn’t dare use the night before, can’t be avoided. I have always been unapologetically vain. I’m seventeen. I’m young and, well . . . I was hot, once. Now, as I look at my reflection, I feel like I’m staring at a stranger. My skin is markedly pale, almost like a corpse. I’m way too thin. I’ve lost all the curves that used to make me self-conscious and then some. Now I want them all back. My body is all muscle and tendon, lean and efficient, pure necessity. My eyes are sunken. I look crazed. I play with the mop of hair on my head. It’s like hay. Chunks of it come out in my hand. None of this concerns me the way it once would, when I was a wild thing running the streets of my neighborhood and making boys crazy. What concerns me is that my appearance is going to draw attention in ways I don’t want, especially if I’m on foot. My plan, once I get off this boat, is to do exactly what Bex, Arcade, and I did in Texas—​hitchhike, steal cars, and rob convenience stores until I get back home. It’s going to be harder now that I look like the walking dead.

  When I unlock the door, I find a cup of coffee waiting for me outside on the floor. It’s swirling with creamy milk, and next to it is a plate with two donuts. It’s crap coffee, and the treats are about two days past stale, but the sugar will put a little light in my eyes and maybe a little weight on my frame. I gobble them down, shocked at the sugar and buttery flavor.

  There’s a loud whirring sound outside, one I know very well. I used to hear it back in the Zone on hot summer nights when the Alpha ran the streets and the cops took to the air to hunt them down. Helicopters are flying over this boat.

  I charge up the steps and into a pissing rain. The storm Encardo and his sons wanted to outrun is creeping up on us, and the sea is boiling over. The ship rocks back and forth in a herky-jerky motion and forces me to hold on to a railing, while high above and descending fast are two black choppers, both loaded with guns and rocket launchers. Ahead of us, and on either side, are two small military boats with guns and soldiers of their own. When I look back, there are two more, just as heavily armed. We’re fast approaching a rocky shoreline. A marina floats alongside it, with a few more fishing boats like this one, all bobbing up and down in the water. There’s a dock as well, packed with people. Most of them are wearing black uniforms covered in pockets and pouches. They wear black berets with golden badges sewn into the fabric and carry assault rifles. Even at this distance, I can see their anxiety, the way their eyes are trained on me, how their fingers tickle the triggers on their guns.

  It doesn’t take a genius to figure out how they found me. Encardo’s boys won’t even look at me. They are ashen as they busy themselves preparing to dock. They look physically ill as they tie knots and pull ropes and shout to one another.

  Their father is in the bridge just behind me, wrestling with the steering wheel and shouting as well. I throw open the door and stomp inside to confront him.

  “I just wanted to go home.”

  Encardo grimaces. “We found you floating out in the water. You were unconscious. It’s basic maritime rules to call in an incident. It happened before we even dragged you onboard. I swear I didn’t tell them who you were. I swear.”

  A boat speeds alongside, forming a wake that pushes against us. On the deck are more of the soldiers in black.

  “You know they will kill me,” I say. I want him to understand what he’s done. “Give me a gun.”

  Encardo blanches. “This might not be what you think. This is Panama, not the United States. The Alpha didn’t attack us. I’ll talk to them for you. We’ll make them listen to your story.”

  “Five boats are escorting us into the marina. There are two helicopters flying overhead. The pier is full of armed men. This is exactly what I think,” I rage, then push the door open and stomp out onto the deck. I peer over the side, preparing to leap, hoping I’ll hit the water before the marksmen on the dock can put a bullet into me. If I make it, they won’t be able to catch me. I put one foot over the railing when a voice sledgehammers my brain.

  “LYRIC WALKER HAS LED US TO THE BAD CHILDREN.”

  A stampede of images tramples my mind—​the fat, bloated faces, the obese bodies letting go of the volcano walls, flames and waves of heat rising around them as they swim upward, by the tens of thousands. The voice awakens a migraine like I haven’t experienced in months, and I stumble back, falling hard onto the deck. I curl up in a ball and press my hands to my head, certain that it will explode if I do not hold back the pressure. My mom and I used to label bad migraines. The worst was an F5. This one makes those feel like a mild inconvenience.

  “What’s wrong with her?” Ricardo shouts.

  “Step back. Give her some air!” Encardo kneels before me. “Lyric, can you hear me?”

  “They’re coming!” I shout at him. I don’t know if he can hear me. The voices are drowning everything out. “They’re following me here.”

  “What is she saying?” Manuel demands.

  “Try to get her on her feet,” Nicky says.

  Hands help me stand, but I shake them off. I lean on the railing, trying not to throw up, and watching the approaching shoreline.

  “I’ve led them here. No one is safe,” I say. “I’m sorry.”

  “She’s hallucinating,” Encardo says.

  I turn to him. “Take your sons and everyone you love and get as far away from the ocean as you can.”

  Nicky rushes to the bridge and steers the boat into the marina, brushing against the slick, algae-coated wood of the pier. The crowd pushes forward, and I realize it’s not just police and soldiers waiting for me. There are reporters with cameras and video equipment. They shout questions in both English and Spanish, wanting to get the first interview with the notorious Lyric Walker.

  A dozen serious-faced soldiers point their weapons at me. Every one of them looks like a clone of the soldiers that used to patrol the boardwalk in Coney Island. I’ve met a hundred men with identical faces, all of them impossible to read. Are they here to arrest me? Kill me? They surround me, shouting in Spanish and then English. They want my hands on my head and me on my knees. I glance at the water. No, that chance is gone. My plan has crumbled. I won’t find my family and get them to safety now. I’m probably going back to Trident and Bachman. She said she’d get me back. I hate that she was right.

  Encardo tries to put his body between the soldiers and me. His sons shout at him to stop, and the soldiers join them, but he keeps demanding to be heard. He yells in Spanish, but the soldiers act like they don’t understand a word he is saying. He tries English, but it’s clear they don’t care what he has to say.

  “She’s just a kid, and she’s not well,” he tries to explain over the din.

  They put guns in his face and order him to step back. When he doesn’t, one of the soldiers tackles him hard, and he crashes to the pier. He’s handcuffed and dragged to his feet. A trail of blood leaks out of a cut on his temple.

  “I’m sorry, Lyric,” Encardo cries, over and over. “I didn’t want this for you.”

  “SO MANY BAD CHILDREN,” the voice booms, pouring acid on the migraine. I fall again. “SO MANY TO CLEANSE. SPACE MUST BE MADE FOR NEW OFFSPRING.”

  A soldier and his colleague shove me down the steps and off the boat, into the waiting mob. The crowd pushes forward with cameras and microphones, but soldiers are waiting for them. They force everyone back with their plexiglass shields and make a path for me through the crowd. One reporter breaks the line and gets a closed fist to the mouth for his trouble. A man in a dark suit and tie steps into our path but isn’t assaulted. He exchanges words with the soldiers in Spanish. I don’t understand an
ything they say except for the words United States of America, but whatever is being said puts all the men in black berets into a foul mood.

  “Ms. Walker, my name is Miguel DeCosta,” the man says when he turns his attention away from the soldiers. “I’m the United States ambassador to Panama, and I work on behalf of U.S. citizens on Panamanian soil. I am officially taking you into custody on the request of the president of the United States. I’m legally obligated to tell you that you have a choice. The Panamanian government wishes to arrest you, and you can choose to stay here with them, but you will be imprisoned. Tell me, how much do you know about prisons in Central America?”

  “Are you sending me to Trident?”

  “I’m turning you over to the State Department for questioning,” he promises.

  I shrug, too exhausted and in too much agony to sort through my options. They both sound equally terrible. “Fine.”

  “Let’s move!” he shouts, bringing several more soldiers to join us. They’re wearing camo fatigues with the American flag sewn onto the arms. The Panamanians reluctantly hand me over to DeCosta.

  “We will bill you for the handcuffs,” one of them says to the American soldiers.

  “You do that.” DeCosta laughs. “Ms. Walker, do you need medical attention?”

  His hand vanishes before me. Suddenly, I am with them—​the beasts on their way to find me. I see what they see, the ocean floor below them and their endless army. Sorrow rolls through me, but it is not mine. I feel what they feel. I sense their anguish. The children cannot hear the voice of the parents or one another. The disconnection has terrible consequences. It has made us turn on our brothers and sisters. The peace they hoped would be ours is lost. We are spoiled and ruined. No! Why am I feeling what they feel? I’m trapped inside their minds, or are they inside mine? I fight to keep from melting into their consciousness. I cannot risk returning to the family.

  “NO!” I scream, and with everything I have, I shove back at their invasion. I bear down on their voice, fighting back at the tendrils that threaten to wrap around my brain.

  “IT IS POINTLESS TO FIGHT THE FAMILY. WORK WITH US TO END THE BAD CHILDREN.” I hear my voice repeating their words, just as I make a final push to free myself.

  “What did she say?” a soldier asks.

  “She needs a doctor. She’s in bad shape,” DeCosta explains. “Have Lima meet us at the airport. Tell her to hurry, too. We have to try and beat this storm, or we’ll never get out tonight.”

  I fall forward. I can hear my head crack against the wooden pier, and then everything goes black.

  Chapter Four

  THREE MONTHS EARLIER

  THE RUSALKA PULLED ME UPWARD TO THE LIP OF THE volcano’s crater. Minerva was waiting there, her body aglow in blood-red light. She stared down into the hole, seemingly seduced by its churning power, trapped in a mash-up of terror and ecstasy. Part of me wondered if she was considering jumping in herself, but somehow she shook off its spell. She shouted to her grotesque army, and suddenly I was free, completely untethered and drifting over the crater. I tried to right myself and swim for the side, but I got only a few feet before the Great Abyss inhaled, turning me into a bug at the bottom of a bathtub drain. It was useless to struggle. The pull was too strong. How do you defy the very planet? My only hope was to reach one of the rocky outcrops inside the volcano’s throat so I could cling to something until the inhale ended. I managed to get to a handhold, but it felt like I’d fallen out of a moving car and was trying to cling to the door. In desperation, I wrapped my whole body around the rocks. Just hold on! I shouted at myself. If I wanted to live, I had to fight the pull. I told myself it would stop soon and cough me out, but at that moment, I felt like my arms were being torn out of their sockets.

  My handhold crumbled in my grasp, and I once again flailed out of control. I skidded along the wall, slamming hard against porous, volcanic rock. I hit one awkwardly, and it sent me spinning, end over end. I was falling and falling and falling. All the while Minerva raved. Even over the din of a hungry planet, I could hear her ugly prayers. Her monsters, however, watched silently from above, their eyes glowing reflections of the death beneath me.

  And then someone took my hand. Fingers wrapped tightly around my palm. They were strong and sure. I was no longer falling. A voice shouted something to me just before the volcano spat us out, but I couldn’t make it out over all the noise. We shot higher and higher, spinning and turning inside a zillion hot bubbles. I lost my grip on my hero as I breached the surface and rocketed into the warm, salty air, before crashing painfully back into the rumbling ocean. I had enough strength left to tread water and keep my head above the waves. The light up there was blinding so that when the hand found me again, I couldn’t see its owner, only the silhouette of a man with broad shoulders. He pulled me onto land—​even though I knew that it wasn’t possible out there in the middle of nowhere, still it was there. My gills receded and my lungs took over, always a painful, stressful transformation. I coughed up water and tried to thank him, still unable to decipher his form, but certain I knew him.

  “Fathom?”

  “Just breathe,” he said in a voice strange and alien. I hunched over on hands and knees, looked at the dense, black rock beneath me, and watched his shadow drape over the ground.

  “Who are you?”

  “I am called Husk.”

  I forced myself onto my knees then lifted my hands to block the sun. I had to see this guy’s face. If he wasn’t Fathom, I had to know who had helped me, but when I did, I reared back in horror. He wasn’t a man at all. He was a Rusalka.

  I scampered on hands and knees, ignoring how the ground tore the soft skin of my wrists. My only goal was to get away from that thing, but it stalked me as I crawled. When I reached the water’s edge, his claws dug into the back of my jumpsuit and pulled me to my feet. I surprised him with a punch, striking the side of his jaw with everything I had left. It was wild and weak, a glancing blow that didn’t seem to faze him.

  “Get away from me!” I screamed, pounding my fists on his chest as he pulled me close.

  His answer was a slap so hard I worried he’d broken my cheekbone.

  “Calm yourself!”

  “You speak English!” I say. “How can you talk?”

  “Listen to me. We have little time. The prime will be enraged if I do not report to her at once. I offer you a bargain, human—​your life in exchange for your service.”

  “What are you? Rusalka do not talk. They aren’t smart enough to talk.”

  The Rusalka slapped me again. “Watch your tongue, bottom feeder. Do you agree to my terms, or do I throw you back into the Great Abyss?”

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about! What terms?” I cried.

  “You are simple and foolish. I will choose. You will live. I will present the prime with the bargain. Stay here,” he said, then leaped into the water and vanished.

  It took a second for my brain to reboot, but when it did, I scanned my surroundings, desperate for some way to escape. There was nothing out there. I was trapped on a barren island, a tiny, tiny dot in the middle of nothing. It wasn’t even an island. It was a stone pretending to be an island. A few courageous blades of grass defied the rocks, but nothing else grew. I hurried to the edge, straining my eyes to find a boat, another plot of land, anything I could get to that would take me away, but I was utterly alone, and I knew that thing was coming back.

  A splash behind me sent me spinning. Husk leaped twenty feet into the sky, riding a spout like Old Faithful. He landed nimbly in front of me, then trained his eyes on mine. At that moment, I wished I had my glove. For most of the time I had worn it, I’d wanted to be free of the damn thing, but now I wished I could feel its cool metal against my hand again. I missed the tingling charge that activated the power, the whispering voice asking me how it could help. I would have made a spear, a giant fist, a tidal wave—​anything that might crush Husk out of existence—​but the power was gone. All I ha
d was me.

  “The prime has reluctantly agreed to the bargain.”

  “The prime is dead!” I said, taking a big step back from him.

  “The former prime is dead. His consort, Minerva, has claimed his title for herself, and her people have accepted. She rules the Alpha and will rebuild our empire. You will play a small, but pivotal part in her efforts.”

  “I don’t understand what you’re saying to me. I don’t even know how you are possible.”

  He growled as if I offended him.

  “Minerva carries the Alpha heir. Your assistance is required in his birth. You will prepare for his arrival by satisfying her current needs. You will hunt food. You will take all pains to make the prime comfortable. You will prepare a shelter for the heir when—”

  “Fuck you.”

  He stared at me, silently. I think it was the first time he had really looked at me. I don’t think he liked what he saw.

  “You know what those words mean, smart guy? Minerva tried to kill my mother. She tried to kill my friends. She just threw me into a volcano. I’m not going to be her . . . her nanny.”

  “I will not risk my life for your stubbornness.” Without warning he tossed me back into the water. I flailed, trying to get control over my body, but he grabbed my arms and dragged me back down into the deep. All the while, I punched at him, doing as much damage as a kitten might. He continued onward, diving into the dimmest regions while I screamed threats. It was several moments before I realized we were swimming away from the Great Abyss, down toward a hidden valley tucked into the shadows. What waited there was even more impossible than a talking Rusalka. A city revealed itself, an abandoned metropolis of towers and arenas built on a wide, snow-white boulevard, intersected by an intricate maze of short, squat buildings. I’d seen cruder versions of the same layout back home in the tent city the Alpha built on the beach, and like those buildings, these didn’t have roofs.

  “What is this?” I shouted, but I knew the answer. Fathom used to call it the hunting grounds, the Alpha homeland, built by the Rusalka for the many races of the empire. During our quiet moments, he’d told me about how his father helped settle it after generations of nomadic life. This was the place Alpha had dreamed of for generations, a home to throw off their life of struggle and the ceaseless hunt for food and shelter. This was their promised land.