Heart of the Storm

by Michael Buckley

  “Don’t worry. I’ve got you,” he says, then wraps his arm around my waist. Together, we leap as bullets zing past, then splash down into the frozen water. I’ve never been this cold in my life, but my gills appear and the webbing between my fingers returns. My scales shine like silver, the same color they make when I am happy. Riley presses his body close to mine, and when I look over, I see his gills just under his jawline. His scales are bright red. His glove rockets us forward, pushing the ocean out of our way. I can’t help but feel safe. I have found my tribe again.

  It’s difficult to tell how far we travel, or even in which direction. All I know is Riley is here, alive, bathed in the light of his glove, which turns him into the moon on a clear night. He holds me tight. It might be hours, days, years. I can’t honestly say. I’m in no hurry.

  Eventually his glove dims, as do those of the other children, and using his own strength, Riley pulls me out of the water and onto a rocky beach. If I thought it was cold in the water, the open air helps me redefine the meaning. The temperature has to be hovering around twenty-five degrees, and the wind is a swift kick in the ass.

  Chloe rushes forward and hugs me tight. My back screams, but I suffer through the pain. She looks up at me with her big green eyes and freckled nose. “I knew you weren’t dead. I told everyone you’d come back.”

  “Thanks for believing in me,” I whisper, but I’m shaking so much I wonder if my bones aren’t drowning out my words.

  “Just a second,” Riley says, then lights up his glove once more. A minute later, the water trapped in my pajamas seeps out, and I am completely dry, even my hair. It’s better, not much, but better. The rest of the kids do the same to themselves.

  “We need to get her to the house, quickly,” Maggie says. “I’m freezing, and she’s dressed for bed.”

  “Where’s this house?”

  Harrison points toward the dunes. They’re stacked high to fight back the tides and keep the line of million-dollar homes beyond them safe. They are dark and quiet structures, sentries made of wood and glass watching for what might come out of the sea. Riley takes my hand and leads me in their direction.

  “Where are we?” I say.

  Sienna grins. “The Jersey Shore.”

  We climb the hill of sand to a wooden staircase that takes us to street level. A lonely four-lane road lies ahead, lined with more two- and three-story homes on tiny lots with pebbled driveways. There isn’t a soul in sight, the streetlights are out, and not even a cat or a stray dog comes to investigate our arrival. Parked cars sit stranded with flat tires, each painted in dust and bird feces. A block away, a tree has fallen into the street. It pulled electric lines down with it. A kite is tangled in its limbs.

  “Why here?” I ask.

  “It’s completely deserted and ours for the taking,” Harrison crows. “The evacuation made for a great hiding place. Aside from the occasional drone and National Guard sweep, we haven’t seen a living person since we found it.”

  “And it’s a great place to do our work,” Finn says.

  “Our work?” I ask Riley.

  He smiles. “You’ll find out soon enough.”

  We cross the road and make a turn down a street inhabited by soft blue and pastel pink homes. On the corner is a little shop that invites you in to see its robot donut maker. On the opposite corner is a bar with a sign that shouts they have the best margaritas on the shore. I see crab shacks and skateboard stores, ice cream parlors and places to buy hats and boogie boards. There are bars and restaurants as far as the eye can see, but they are all empty, patiently waiting for the people to return.

  “My dad used to come here when he was growing up,” I tell the children. He told me he and his buddies used to raise hell here, but it’s hard to imagine. As long as he’s been my dad, he’s been straight-edge. He doesn’t even drink. I have a feeling it was more like “raising heck.” He promised to bring me here someday, but then the Alpha came and the fences went up and vacations were a little out of the question.

  We stop in front of a three-story home with a two-car garage and a weathervane shaped like the sun on the very top. Riley points to the front porch where three dark figures wait.

  “Surprise,” he says with a grin.

  “Lyric?”

  “Dad?”

  My father is the first one to leap off the porch. He’s in a Navy peacoat and heavy work boots. My mother is right behind him in jeans and Ugg boots, a down coat, and mittens. Their arms wrap around me so fast it takes my breath away. Predictably, I break down crying. They join me, and the three of us sob.

  My father holds me at arm’s length and gives me a full up-and-down examination. He’s not happy with what he sees.

  “You haven’t been eating,” my father says.

  “What do we have in the pantry?” my mom cries.

  “Peanut butter,” Brady says as he runs into the house. “I’ll get it!”

  My mother reaches up and caresses my face. She’s delicate and loving. I really don’t know how to process kindness anymore. I haven’t been touched in so long. I lean into her hand the way a flower leans into a sunbeam.

  “How did you all escape?” I ask.

  “It’s a long story,” she says.

  “Not really,” Riley laughs. “They rescued us.”

  “Did you know your mother is, like, crazy strong?” someone says from the porch. I got so caught up in my reunion I completely forgot there was someone else waiting, but now that I’m looking, I know the outline of her body. Bex steps into the moonlight. Her hair blazes like a torch. She is tall like an Amazon, smiling and crying at the same time. I race up the steps and knock her over with a hug. We fall to the floor, laughing and blubbering. I don’t care that it strains my stitches.

  “You ready to get to work?” Bex asks.

  “Work?”

  “Yeah, you know, being a pain in the ass?”

  Chapter Six

  THREE MONTHS EARLIER

  ROUGH HANDS RATTLED ME AWAKE. TWO TOWERING Rusalka hovered above with their ugly clown faces and those glowing strands dangling in front of their mouths. One of them was holding a long wooden spear with a carved, pointy end. He forced it into my hands, while the other lifted me upright. I swam back the best I could, certain he was challenging me to a fight. I’d seen how the Alpha settled their disputes—​blood sports that often turned into fights to the death, usually over the tiniest slight. I searched my brain, trying to figure out how I’d insulted this dumb beast. What did I do that pissed him off? The answer was probably nothing more than I was Lyric Walker and a filthy human being.

  “I’m not going to fight you,” I shouted, but I didn’t drop the spear. I was smart enough to know I probably didn’t have much say in the matter.

  “Groola,” one of them grunted. It was the closest thing to a word I had heard one of them say, unless you counted Husk, a reminder of how different he was from the rest of those things. From what I could tell, their language was made up of barks and grunts, yet Husk seemed to have a better vocabulary than me.

  “Get Husk. I don’t know what you’re trying to tell me.”

  The creature snatched the spear out of my hands and just as quickly shoved it back.

  “Groola!”

  “I don’t understand! What the hell does groola mean?”

  He made a waving gesture with his hand, swishing it through the water. “Groola!”

  “Waves?”

  “Groola,” his partner growled. Now they were both making the motion. Frustrated, he snatched the spear too and used it to mime himself stabbing something.

  “Hunt? Do you want me to hunt for food?”

  “Groola.”

  Without another word, they dragged me out of the room, down the tunnel, through the immense hall with the markings, and out into the street, where the metals and poisons filled my mouth and gills. It dawned on me that the little slots in the walls of my room were somehow filtering out the crap that was in the water, though I had no
idea how. Out in the open, my throat itched and my eyes burned like I was sitting too close to a fireplace. Why had the prime picked this lousy spot to build a city? It was a stupid, toxic place to live. Coney Island wasn’t exactly a nature preserve, but at least most of the garbage was on the ground or in the hot dogs, not swirling around in the air.

  I knew I’d get no answers from the ugly twins. They pulled me along, down the white boulevard, which I quickly realized was paved with shells and bones. Most looked like they belonged to fish or other small sea life, but more than a few were from animals as big as a man. Could these be the victims I’d seen in the reliefs scattered about the town—​the art I saw on every building glorifying war and slaughter? Fathom once told me there were other races of Alpha living in the ocean who had turned their backs on the empire. He hinted that some of them were conquered. Would the Alpha just leave their bodies in the road to be picked apart by fish?

  We swam until we were at the farthest edge of the city, as far from the Great Abyss as we could get, where the taste in the water was a bit more tolerable.

  “Groola!”

  “You want me to hunt fish? I don’t know how,” I said, staring down at the spear. “You have to show me.”

  Even with their blank expressions, I could see they were confused. Maybe it was because nothing I said sounded the way I intended. My words came out as bubbles, or maybe they just didn’t understand English, or maybe they were nothing more than animals.

  “Groola!” They beat on their chests like apes and bared their fangs.

  “Screw you!” I said, though I quickly regretted it. One of them lunged at me, his fists pumping with anger. His speed startled me, but my training sessions in the desert with Arcade were already in motion. She’d taught me that anger led to mistakes, and I was an attentive pupil. I like to think Arcade would have been proud of me when I stabbed the sharp end of my spear into the Rusalka’s gut. He shrieked and jerked away, wrenching the weapon out of my hands so that it floated down to the ground. Black blood oozed out of his wound. I’d seen these creatures take a bullet and thought they were nearly invincible, but it appeared they did have vulnerabilities.

  “Charchar!” the healthy one shouted. I was sure he was egging on his friend to get some revenge, but he didn’t attack me. Instead he held his wound with one oversize hand and nervously scanned our surroundings. He sniffed, then spun around, peering into the darkness as if there was something out there only he could see.

  “I warned Husk!” I shouted at them. “I’m not your slave, and if you try to force me, I will kill you all. Tell the others to let me go.”

  They completely ignored me, too busy watching and waiting.

  “What is it?” I demanded. “What are you looking for?”

  “Charchar!”

  Whatever a charchar was, they both sensed it now, and it sent them into a panic. They seized me by the arms and dragged me back toward the city, pulling me down the boulevard toward the temple while I fought and scratched. All the way, they took turns shouting, “Charchar, charchar,” to the rest of their brood. When they passed one of their brothers or sisters, he or she joined the chant.

  “Charchar! Charchar!”

  When we reached Minerva’s temple, all of the Rusalka were in the street and joined in the alarm. She and Husk emerged through the doorway. He left her there and charged through the gathering crowd just as a shadow passed overhead. I craned my neck to get a better look, only to see something massive and sleek gliding above the city. It was easily fifteen feet long with a white underbelly and a body like a torpedo. It was a great white shark. I’d seen one before, on the Discovery Channel and in a creepy movie my dad made me watch when I was seven. The panic around me suddenly made sense. Husk, however, swam straight for it and slashed at its belly with his claws, shredding the predator’s armor. Blood poured into the water and the Rusalka pounced on it, as if the shark were a broken piñata spilling candy at a child’s birthday party. They shoved Husk out of the way while they tore at the creature’s flesh and ate while its heart was still beating. Husk did not join the frenzy. He swam back to his queen’s side and silently watched. She shouted at him, and his attention turned to me. In a flash, he was by my side, forcing me to bow before her. Minerva’s vicious tail swished back and forth mere inches from my face. It was the same tail she’d used to slice the huge statue in half. I was certain the next cut would take off my head.

  Husk grunted and growled at her. I heard the words groola and then charchar again. Minerva flashed him a disapproving look, then turned back to me and screeched in my face.

  “I don’t understand you!” I shouted.

  Suddenly, all eyes were on me. I had disrespected the prime, and the Rusalka stopped their feeding frenzy to watch how she would react. Husk pleaded with Minerva, but she shook her head in defiance. Whatever he was saying was not going to be considered. She gestured to me, and he nodded. Before I knew it, he had me in his hands. Once I was on my feet, he spun me around so that my back was to Minerva, but his face told me nothing. There was no hint of what was about to happen, no word of warning, not even a subtle hint to brace myself.

  “What’s going on, Husk?”

  The pain didn’t come right away. The surprise of the tearing fabric and the pressure on my back jarred me most. Instead of agony, I felt ice cubes racing along my skin until they were replaced with a red-hot acid that seared my spine from the top of my neck to the base of my rib cage. My knees buckled, and if Husk hadn’t been holding me up, I would have fallen forward, but even he couldn’t prevent my collapse when the second slash came. I cried out, and my screams echoed back into my ears, frightening me. I fell into a blossom of swirling water and blood that enveloped my head and torso. I tasted copper in my gills and mouth. I smelled the metallic tang of my life all around me.

  Husk said something to her, but she growled angrily.

  “Charchar,” he persisted.

  Minerva pouted like a little girl who wants to keep playing with her doll even though it’s past her bedtime. She waved us off, and Husk dragged me away, down the boulevard, with stars exploding in my eyes and my nerves screaming. Up we went toward the surface until we broke into the air. He wrapped his arms around me, and we sprang out of the water, landing on the lonely black island. The open air only intensified my agony. The wind felt like steel mesh on my exposed flesh, and the hot sun dried the salty seawater inside the wounds. When my lungs took over from my gills, I tried to push past the pain with the breathing exercises my mother taught me for when my migraines were crippling, but this pain was so different. It was so much worse than anything I had ever experienced.

  “The rumors of human stupidity are true,” Husk said to me stiffly. “Are you trying to get yourself killed?”

  I couldn’t speak. I could only rock gently back and forth on the stones, watching my blood paint them red. I was sure I was going to bleed to death. The birds would pick at me until I was nothing but bones, and the winds would blow them away. No one would ever know what happened to me.

  Husk leaped into the water. I was sure he was giving up on me. Maybe he’d alerted the others that they could finally eat me. I knew I needed to get away before they came back. I didn’t want the last thing I saw to be Rusalka teeth. I tried to stand, but the slightest movement caused my back to shriek. I fell down onto my belly, helpless, as the warm sun turned everything to steam.

  Husk was there, then he was gone, then he was back, kneeling over me with handfuls of a murky black weed. He squeezed the moisture out of the leaves, then twisted some into long strands of twine. With this homemade rope finished, he piled the rest of the mound directly onto my wounds, then tied them tightly around my chest. He was rough with me, and when I cried out, he shouted impatiently, demanding that I shut my mouth.

  Whatever his medicine was, it had an immediate effect. Numbness swept over my wounds, hushing roaring agony into a whispering ache. It seemed to be having a similar effect on my mood. My anger and fear m
elted like ice cream on the pavement. Even my fists were unclenching.

  “Your suffering is your own doing, human,” he shouted as he pulled the twine tight. “I thought you’d understand the delight the prime will take in your failures. She will not pass up an opportunity to be cruel, no matter how important your role. I suppose you are the type that must learn the hard way.”

  “I’m not going to help her,” I croaked. Even talking hurt. “I told you, but you wouldn’t listen.”

  “Then I doubt you’ll survive her next disappointment,” he shouted.

  “Why would she even want my help? I’m her enemy!”

  “She has no choice,” he explained. “Many of my people have suffered a great sickness of the mind. Right now it is impossible to tell which of them are healthy enough to be trusted to assist her.”

  “Sickness of the mind?”

  He looked out toward the sun, squinting into the light. The waves crashed against the rocks. The wind howled into his face, but he was somewhere else.

  “You think Minerva is safer with me than with a Rusalka? There’s an ugly troll down there with a hole in his belly who might disagree,” I say.

  “You brag about your stupidity? You drew blood today, luring the charchar to our borders.”

  “You mean the shark?”

  “Those with the endless hunger. They can smell a drop of blood from a great distance. Today you were lucky there was only one. They often hunt in a pack. It was a foolish thing to do.”

  “You’re changing the subject,” I said. “What’s wrong with the others? It’s the Great Abyss, right? You know that’s not a god down there. It’s a volcano, and it’s blasting poisons into your precious kingdom. There’s lead and mercury, I bet. It’s probably what has caused the sickness of the mind, you know. It can mess with your brain. Can’t you feel it?”

  “This is a holy place, heretic. Our god speaks to us here. He gives us visions and insights. The giver and the taker ignites our blood and makes us strong,” he said.