That’s when I knew.
“You can’t be serious,” I said to Tori.
“Everybody hold on to something,” was her response. She was locked in, calculating the physics of what she was about to attempt. I hoped she was working with something more solid than guesswork.
I buckled into the copilot’s seat. Kent and Olivia each grabbed safety rails.
“What are you going to do?” Olivia asked nervously.
Tori ignored the question and called out, “How far back are they?”
“Forty yards,” Kent replied. “The guy’s standing at the machine gun. He’s lining us up.”
Tori said, “Tucker, when I tell you, power down by half but keep your hand on the throttles.”
“Got it,” I replied though my mouth had gone dry.
The doomed destroyer loomed over us as we came up quickly on its stern. I saw sailors jumping for their lives off the port side.
“Thirty yards!” Kent called out.
The machine gun behind us opened fire.
We were about to cross the stern of the flaming destroyer when—
“Now!” Tori called.
I pulled back on the throttles as Tori spun us into a sharp left turn. We had been traveling so fast that I feared we would flip, but with an expert touch she kept us righted as we side-slipped forward, passing the stern of the doomed ship…
…with our bow now pointed toward the mainland.
“Throttle up!” Tori yelled. “Go, go, go!”
I thrust the throttles forward and the monstrous engines roared back to full power. The jolt of acceleration was so sudden that Olivia and Kent were nearly thrown over.
“You’re crazy!” Olivia shrieked in terror.
I couldn’t argue with her. The listing, burning destroyer was now to our left. To our right was the battleship. Between them was a narrow corridor of water. The battleship was doomed. Even if it had power, it wouldn’t be able to clear in time. The burning superstructure of the destroyer was seconds away from toppling onto the deck of its neighbor—with us sandwiched in between.
“My God,” Kent screamed. “We’re in hell.”
The heat was quickly becoming unbearable as the listing ship tilted toward us. The flaming superstructure loomed directly over our heads, creating a ceiling of fire.
Tori didn’t show a hint of fear or concern.
“Are they coming?” she asked.
I twisted to look back and was shocked to see Granger’s gunship sliding into the same maneuver we had just made. It was about to follow us into the suicide corridor.
“Yeah, they’re coming,” I called out. “They fell back a little making the turn. I don’t think they expected us to do that.”
“Neither did I,” Kent wailed. “We’re gonna be incinerated.”
Tori stayed focused. I kept my hands on the throttles, pressing down hard as if that might help us go faster, but the engines were already wide open.
We made it to the mid-ship point—and Olivia screamed.
A chunk of flaming metal fell off the superstructure and dropped toward us. It would have landed directly on the deck if Tori hadn’t made a subtle but lifesaving shift toward the battleship. The flaming mass hit the water to our port side, the hot metal sizzling as it slammed into the water.
“The whole thing’s coming down on our heads!” Kent screamed.
The destroyer had reached the tipping point and was on its way over. Our engines roared and dug into the water that was being churned up by the massive ships on either side of us. Bits of molten metal fell like sparkling rain all around, each drop as dangerous as acid. Some hit our front deck and quickly melted holes in the fiberglass. We huddled under the canopy to avoid the burning shower, but the thin top would do nothing to protect us from the tons of flaming metal that was seconds away from hitting us.
Above the pounding of our engines and the white noise of the inferno, I could hear the panicked shouts of sailors from both sides who were abandoning ship.
I reached out and held on to Tori’s shoulder. I wanted her to know that in spite of what was about to happen, she had made the right move. The only move. Besides, I wanted the last moment of my life spent making human contact with someone.
She looked at me and I gave her a smile. “It’s okay,” I said with surprising calm.
“I know,” she said with a cocky shrug. “We’re gonna make it.”
She gave me a wink…
…as the superstructure came down.
It hit the battleship and we were instantly enveloped in a cave of fire. The heat was so intense I feared it would melt the fiberglass boat. The screaming sound of a thousand tons of wrenching, burning metal cut through the roar of our engines. Above it all I could hear the panicked cries of sailors from both doomed ships who were desperate to escape the death trap.
I braced myself, ready to be crushed or burned alive…as we cleared the destroyer’s bow and charged into open water.
Safe.
“Yahhh!” Kent screamed in triumph as we flew on, leaving the carnage behind.
Olivia screamed too, out of pure joy.
The superstructure erupted like an angry volcano, shooting massive spikes of flame high into the sky. A powerful wave of heat hit us in the back as the two ships collapsed into each other to create a single massive floating inferno.
“Granger?” Tori asked while keeping her eyes straight ahead.
I focused on the flames at sea level, expecting to see the attack boat come charging out of the fire.
A second passed. Then another. The destroyer was nearly on its side, its burning superstructure having hit the battleship and crumbled into the space between the ships. Kent had called it. It was hell.
Olivia said, “Do you think they—”
An explosion erupted in the space that had once been the corridor between the ships. A cloud of debris blew from the impact point, creating a fiery bloom of burning metal. For a fleeting instant I saw the dark silhouette of a machine gun spinning out of control. The one thing I didn’t see bursting out of that explosion…was the attack boat.
Olivia, Kent, and I kept staring back, not daring to believe what we had seen. Seconds passed as the two massive ships burned as one.
“There’s no way they turned around in time,” I finally said.
“And they sure as hell didn’t make it through,” Kent added.
We all shared stunned looks.
“Is it possible?” Olivia asked.
“I think it is,” I said, hardly believing it myself. “They’re done. Granger’s dead.”
The four of us let out a spontaneous cry of triumph. Kent threw his arms around me and lifted me off my feet.
“We did it, Rook,” he said with tears in his eyes. “We beat him. We won.”
Olivia wrapped her arms around the both of us. She was sobbing.
I think she said, “We’re not going to die,” but it was hard to tell because she was such an emotional mess.
Tori stayed focused ahead.
I leaned down to her and whispered, “You know something? You are crazy.”
Tori gave me a quick look—and a smile.
“I told you we’d make it.”
Olivia gently put a hand on each of her cheeks and kissed her on top of the head.
“Sister, you are my new hero,” she said. “But I will not go on a boat with you ever again.”
“Take a break, Sleeper,” Kent said as he put one hand on the wheel. “You earned it.”
That’s as big a compliment as Kent was capable of giving.
Tori hesitated, as if not wanting to give up control. Or maybe her hand was frozen to the wheel after having gripped it tightly for so long. She leaned forward, winced with a twinge of pain in her shoulder, and eased back on the throttle.
“She’s all yours,” she said to Kent. “Get us the hell out of here.”
We had done it. We’d escaped. And as a bonus, we had cut off the dragon’s head. SYLO’s leader
was on his way to whatever level of hell he belonged in.
It was a moment filled with relief and joy. I walked to the stern of the boat, alone, to look back on the miles of floating devastation that had once been a fleet of ships spread across the horizon. Several were still intact and under power, though just as many were foundering. The sky had grown dark with the smoke of a hundred floating fires.
Pemberwick Island was completely blocked from view. I wondered if I would ever see it again.
“We did it, Quinn,” I whispered. “We made the Pemberwick Run.”
Against all odds we had survived. But the feeling of triumph was soon replaced by another nagging thought.
Was this the end of our journey, or just the beginning?
TWENTY-FIVE
I took control of the boat from Kent.
Driving actually helped calm me. The battle seemed to be over but I wouldn’t be able to relax until we hit dry land. Tori lay across the stern seat with her head in Olivia’s lap. Kent stood over them, staring back at the war zone.
Several of the black planes flew overhead, their incongruous music now clearly audible as they headed west, back toward the mainland and away from what was left of the naval blockade. They were no longer flying in perfect formation but instead were scattered across the sky like shell-shocked soldiers staggering back from the battlefield after having lost most of their comrades.
Casualties were heavy on both sides. Looking back at the line of damaged ships that grew steadily smaller the further we moved away made it clear that the Navy had taken just as bad a beating as the invaders from the sky.
“How many people died?” Olivia asked wistfully, to nobody in particular.
“I only care about one—Granger,” Kent replied without a trace of sympathy.
“What was the point?” I said. “Who won? Those planes came from over land. Don’t invasions usually come from the sea?”
“I guess that depends on what’s being invaded,” Tori pointed out.
That reminded me of something she had said earlier.
“Is that possible?” I asked. “Could those Navy ships have been trying to keep the black planes away from Pemberwick Island?”
Kent snickered and said, “Possible? Are you serious? Why use logic now? I’m thinking anything is possible.”
“But then…why?” I asked. “More important, who? We just saw two huge military forces going at it. Who has the kind of technology we saw with those singing planes?”
“We know the United States is involved,” Tori offered. “President Neff himself set up the quarantine.”
“So then who was flying the black planes? Were they from SYLO, like Feit said? Why would they be attacking their own navy?”
“It could be the Chinese,” Kent said. “Or the Russians.”
“What about that laser weapon we saw the other night?” I asked. “Where on earth did that come from? And why didn’t they use it today?”
“Maybe you hit it, Rook,” Kent said soberly. “Who on earth has that kind of technology? Maybe nobody. What if that attack came from somewhere else?”
I didn’t register what he meant at first but when it finally struck me, I had to laugh. “You can’t be serious. You think this is, like, an alien invasion?”
“This is real life, Kent,” Tori admonished.
Kent stiffened.
“No, it isn’t,” he said with absolute conviction. “This is fantasy. There’s nothing that happened over the past few weeks that has anything to do with real life. At least not the life I know. When you cross that line, I don’t think you can rule anything out.”
I’d disagreed with pretty much everything Kent Berringer had said and done since I’d known him—until then. In the absence of any real explanations, how could we rule anything out, no matter how wild it seemed?
“So then, what do we do now?” Olivia finally asked.
Tori said, “All we can do is stick with our original plan. We go to Portland, find a TV station, and talk to the world. Let somebody else figure this out.”
Now that her adrenaline spike had left her, Tori was left looking pale and fragile. She was right, we had to stick with the plan, but that plan had to include finding a hospital to get her help. For that we had to get to Portland, so we pressed ahead, drawing ever closer to the mainland and hopefully to answers.
It took us another hour to make land and find a dock to tie up to. Part of me wanted to continue up the coast until we reached Casco Bay and the city of Portland, but none of us wanted to be on the water, and vulnerable, anymore. Having dry land under our feet would be a good thing.
We motored a short way north until we came upon a rickety old private dock with a float. I brought the boat around and Kent jumped off to tie us up.
“How are you feeling?” I asked Tori.
“I’m good,” she said.
She wasn’t. She was white. I didn’t think she had lost a dangerous amount of blood, but until she saw a doctor and got patched, we had to worry about her.
We had landed in a wooded section of the coast. It wasn’t the middle of nowhere, but there weren’t a whole lot of houses around either.
“We gotta find transportation into Portland,” I said. “Olivia, wait here with Tori. Kent and I will go looking.”
I figured that Kent wouldn’t want to do anything but sit on the dock and vegetate, but I couldn’t have been more wrong. He jumped from the boat, ran off the dock, fell to his knees, and leaned over until both his hands were on the ground. He then started to laugh. He couldn’t control himself. He laughed until tears ran down his cheeks.
I exchanged nervous looks with Olivia and Tori.
Tori shrugged. She didn’t know what his deal was any more than I did.
“Dude,” I called out. “You all right?”
He turned to us and sat on the ground.
“I never thought I’d set foot on land again,” he said through gasping breaths. “We could have died like a couple of dozen times back there but—here we are. How awesome is that?”
I couldn’t help but smile. I looked at Olivia and Tori, who were suddenly beaming. I took a deliberate step off the dock onto the dirt and gravel to plant my foot firmly on the mainland. It felt good.
I laughed too. That’s how relieved I was. It wasn’t until I felt solid ground under my feet that I truly believed we had made it. We had escaped. It was a great moment. One I hadn’t expected. There was no way to know what the future would bring, but it was good to be able to stop and take a few seconds to appreciate what we had done.
“All right,” I finally said, trying to control the giddiness. “We’re awesome. Yay us. Let’s keep going and end this for good.”
I walked to Kent and held out my hand. He took it and I helped him to his feet.
“Yeah,” he said. “Let’s end this for good.”
Kent and I climbed up a steep hill from the dock to find that we were at the end of a desolate but paved road.
“We’ll walk until we find a house,” I said.
A few hundred yards in from the coast, we came upon a big old rambling white house that had probably stood there for a hundred years. It was the kind of place that usually belonged to wealthy boating people. They probably owned all the land right up to the shore and the dock where we were tied up.
I hurried up the driveway and rang the doorbell. Nobody answered so I knocked. Hard. If somebody was inside, they would have heard.
“They’re probably at work,” Kent said. “Or maybe they’re weekend people.”
“Or maybe they’re hiding in the basement because, oh, I don’t know, there was just a huge battle raging off shore.”
“Or that,” Kent said soberly.
I left the porch and rounded the house to the detached garage.
“We’re trespassing,” Kent said nervously.
“Do you really care?” I asked.
“I care about getting shot by somebody who doesn’t appreciate people snooping around their h
ouse.”
“I am way beyond worrying about that,” I said and continued on to the garage. Looking in through the window, I saw two cars parked inside, an old Saab and a Subaru Outback.
“Maybe they really are hiding in the basement,” Kent observed.
“Then they’ll come out when they hear their car starting,” I said and lifted the garage door.
“What are you thinking, Rook? You want to steal a car?”
I threw the garage door up the rest of the way then looked straight at Kent. “I’m thinking about borrowing one of these cars, and I hope there are people inside who are watching and that they call the police and the police will show up and arrest us so we’ll get a ride into town and Tori to a hospital, which would save us the trouble of getting there on our own. And when they give us our one phone call from jail, I’ll call the New York Times and tell them what’s been happening on Pemberwick Island. What are you thinking?”
Kent rolled that over in his head, then said, “Yeah, that’s pretty much where I was going.”
I looked into the Outback and, sure enough, the keys were in the ignition. Gotta love the country. Nobody expects a car thief to mosey by.
“You’ve got a license,” I said. “You’re driving.”
“Seriously?” Kent exclaimed. “After that big speech, you’re worried about getting in trouble for driving without a license?”
“No,” I replied patiently. “I’m worried about wrapping us around a tree because I have zero experience driving on the highway. But if you want to take that risk—”
“Enough, enough, I get it,” he said, throwing his hands up.
Kent got behind the wheel and started up the car. As he backed out of the garage, I kept my eyes on the house to see if anybody was watching, but there was no sign of life. It was looking as though we would have to make our way into Portland on our own.
I hopped in and Kent drove us back to the shore. Olivia had already helped Tori up from the dock and they were sitting in the grass waiting for us. I guided Tori into the back seat and slipped in next to her. Olivia sat in the front with Kent.