Nightfall

  * * * * * * *

  Sunday, June 18, 2157

  Mike and Annabelle splashed down suddenly into the Gulf, and came up coughing and sputtering to a world that had changed in the blink of an eye. The sea was warm as summer, the dark sky strewn with a million stars. The faint orangey glow of Saint Petersburg in the distance had winked out like a candle in a draft, and the waves had subsided to almost nothing.

  But all those things were to be expected; it was mid-June of 2157, if the tachometer had delivered them to the right place. Fifteen years after Lieutenant Bartow had rammed the Lusitania, and two and a half years after the plague had destroyed the world.

  “Can we swim all the way back to shore, do you think?” Annabelle asked. She didn’t seem fearful, but then she’d always been brave of heart.

  “I think so, with the water calm like this. We’ve got the life preservers; we can rest whenever we need to. Long as we keep heading in the same direction we’ll have to hit the coast sooner or later, probably a little bit south of where we left,” Mike said, with a lot more confidence than he really felt.

  So they headed east, steering by the stars at first and then by the sun. It was a brutal distance to have to swim, but nearly twenty hours later they finally emerged exhausted on the beach at sunset.

  “Where are we, do you think?” Annabelle asked.

  “I don’t know; looks like an island to me,” Mike said doubtfully.

  Almost unbelievably, it turned out to be Edgmont Key, the very spot they’d just escaped from. Wind and waves had resculpted the beaches and dunes considerably over the past fifteen years, but Annabelle recognized the place as soon as they came across one of the brick streets of old Fort Dade. Mike couldn’t decide whether to laugh or cry.

  “That sure was a long trip, to end up right back where we started from,” he said wryly.

  “That’s the truth, but I’m glad to be here, anyway. As a matter of fact, this might be a good place for us to stay for a little while, at least till we figure out what the situation is elsewhere,” she pointed out.

  “Eminent good sense as always, my love,” he agreed. They clasped hands and walked slowly back to the cottage at the northern tip of the island, each thinking their own thoughts.

  “It looks just the same as always,” Annabelle said when they got there, shaking her head just a little.

  “It’s not quite the same, though. We’re not prisoners anymore,” he pointed out, and she smiled.

  The porch was covered in sand and scattered bits of gulfweed from passing storms over the years, but the lights still worked and the water still ran, and the place seemed to have survived the elements more or less intact. There were even still a few boxes of food in the cupboards. For a second Mike could almost imagine it was just a normal night, like any of a hundred others he’d spent in that place.

  But it wasn’t, of course.

  “Do you think he’s okay?” Annabelle asked softly. Neither of them had mentioned Tyke yet, but of course the subject couldn’t be avoided forever.

  “I’m sure he is. I know I saw them leave on that space plane,” Mike said staunchly, though he had his own fears, too.

  “He’d be nineteen years old by now; I’m not sure he’d even remember us,” she said.

  There was no good answer for that, but he tried his best.

  “We’ll find out soon,” he promised, squeezing her hand a little tighter.

  Then Mike quietly shut the door against the fall of night, and there was nothing more to hear but the soft wash of waves on the desolate shore.

  End of Book One

  Enjoy the following free sample chapters!

  Tycho

  The Tyke McGrath Series, Book Two

  By William Woodall