One of the flying creatures dove at the group of men before Lopez could explain the plan. They might not have believed him anyway. The ray swooped low, and cruised over the landscape, jaws open to reveal broad, flat teeth meant for crushing and chewing.
Poor Harry
, Lopez thought, and then he opened his mouth to shout the command to attack.
But he never got the chance.
He was interrupted when one of the ray’s undulating wings slapped against the green, spongy island surface. The reaction was immediate and violent. White spears punched up through the ground and then through the creature’s body. The ray’s momentum turned into a downward arc, smashing its face into the ground, where more white tendrils snapped up, enveloping the creature, pulling it down.
“You
knew
this would happen?” Kai asked, eyes wide.
“I hoped,” Lopez replied. “Red Sky is alive. And friendly.”
The group of men looked down at the squishy ground beneath them, aware for the first time that the pile of trash and boats had become much more than their home. It could, at any time, slay them all, but instead, it protected them, and provided for them. The colossal monster had destroyed continental humanity, but at the same time, it had provided a protector.
Far in the distance, Lopez saw the land rising up.
The fog horn blasted again, warning of an incoming tsunami, which they had no trouble riding out now.
He and the men ran back to the cargo vessel, climbing inside the cabin and holding on, while the big wave rolled beneath the island and moved on its way. Given the wave’s direction, he guessed the monster was headed back toward the West Coast. If there was anyone still alive on the mainland, he wished them luck, but what they really needed was to adapt, and to make a new life for themselves, like the people of Red Sky had done, and would continue to do.
30
Abraham
Hope, like what little remains of humanity, has become nomadic. Elusive. Always on the move. Never where you left it, or where you think it will be. And on occasion, it surprises you. Like the Nepalese mountain people living in caves. The Iranian desert dwellers, their tents never in the same place. The Egyptian raft villages outside the ruins of the now coastal Cairo, subsiding on the sea, ready to float away. And then, at the base of the Loma Mountains in what once was Sierra Leone but is now part of the Atlantic, we found a seaworthy vessel, cast aside by one of many civilization-crushing waves. The sailboat had the name
Daisy
, but I rubbed it away and duct taped a new name to its aft:
Hope
, the nomadic ship with three passengers.
“Abraham.” Graham sounds tired, and he should. For weeks, he has piloted us through a storm-ravaged sea and over a rolling tsunami that carried us miles backward before setting us back down into the ocean. Waves like those sweep across the oceans every time the Apocalypse Machine enters and exits one, reminding us of its presence. We’ve only seen it once since Ukraine, watching it from a mountaintop in Nepal, with the mountain men who took us in. It lumbered over the horizon, its miles-tall spines visible for a full day.
For years we dodged its path and the natural disasters created by its passing, pushing us further east, and then south, and then north again. Our lives became nomadic. The longest we stayed in one place was for a year, recovering after nearly starving to death. I’m not even sure where in the world that was—somewhere in southern Asia—but the tropical jungle provided enough food for the three of us. Until it dried up. All of it. Starvation nearly claimed us again as we headed back west for the first time, stopping our travels long enough to recover from them.
Sometimes we found ourselves uprooted by the Machine’s chaotic influence on the world, sometimes by lingering humanity, many of whom didn’t want to share their now precious resources. But we three, bolstered by each other, never descended into the animal-like life we saw in others. I came close, the first time I killed a man. It nearly broke me, but I did it to save Mayer’s life. And it wasn’t the last time. The world had turned violent, and the three of us, lacking a tribe, were always in danger.
It was many years before we got the chance to head west again, and our journey to the coast was two steps forward, one step back. Sometimes ten steps back. But we pressed on, mainly for me. My family has never been far from my mind, and every step in the wrong direction felt like torture. But traveling isn’t what it used to be. You can’t just pick a direction and strike out. For a time, we thought heading east to the northern Pacific was the answer. We could have crossed to Alaska in summer and worked our way southeast toward home. But a drought forced us west again, to Africa.
“Abraham,” Graham says again. “Do you see that?”
He’s sitting behind the wheel of the outdoor helm station. He doesn’t sound concerned, but it takes a lot to ruffle his feathers these days. Mine, too.
I’m seated below in the cockpit, which sounds official, but it’s really a nice back deck with a dining table and navy blue-cushioned lounge benches. Over the past fifteen years, we have struggled to survive, pushing through the Machine’s—and humanity’s—worst offerings. We are perpetual refugees, without homes, countries or families, in search of a way back to the United States, more curious about its fate than hopeful about what we’ll find.
After cutting across northern Africa, which is still primarily barren desert, the Leopard 48 dual-hull catamaran is a luxurious change of living situations. It took months to prepare for our cross Atlantic journey, but we have managed to enjoy the trip—when not fighting for our lives. The galley, stocked with fruit, game and fish, has a working propane stove for cooking. There are multiple quarters with actual beds, and soft blankets. The polished white interior and stylish accents are almost futuristic, making it easy to pretend that the rest of the world hasn’t reverted back to a primitive, pre-civilized state. And when the winds die down, or there’s a tsunami to overcome, the propane powered engines provide all the kick we need to continue forward.
It’s what we do now. We push onward, no matter what lies ahead.
We live.
We explore.
And occasionally, we hope.
I climb up into the small helm station, standing beside Graham, who has one hand still on the wooden wheel. His long dreadlocks that I have deemed his ‘Marley do’ wiggle in the wind, but they’re too heavy to really blow. My salt-and-pepper hair is still cut, but sloppy, with a knife. Completing my bedraggled look is a bushy beard that matches my hair, and a pair of sunglasses straight out of the 1980s, with neon green temples.
He points again, and I see it right away. There’s a distortion in the ocean ahead, almost invisible, but imperfect enough to see. We’ve come across more than our fair share of deep sea trouble, including large and hungry Machine spawn that have no fear of mankind. I called them Scion, short for
Scion Divergentibus
, the quasi-Latin name I created for their phylum, which basically means ‘Divergent Descendants.’ On the surface, they’re completely different from the animals that populated the Earth before the Sixth Great Mass Extinction was kicked into overdrive and the world was reset. But I’ve come to believe they’re not completely different from us, primarily in that we can trace our origins back to the same source: the Apocalypse Machine.
There is one thing every single mass extinction has in common—nature out of balance. Starting with the first mass extinction, triggered by a worldwide bloom of photosynthetic, oxygen-pumping micro-plants. This time it was humanity who had kicked things off. I don’t think it was our pollution, global warming or the rape of the natural world that triggered the Machine’s rise. It certainly wasn’t Kiljan’s toe. I think it was the combination of humanity’s effect on the planet. We reached a tipping point. Scorch the Earth and start anew, or let the world die. Those were the options we created. Had we known about the Machine’s existence, I’d like to think humanity would have made different choices. But I’m not sure it would have mattered. We saw the writing on the wall. We knew where our destructive lifestyle was leading the planet. But we continued forward, comfortable with our blinders on—until they were torn away and most everyone died.
As with all mass extinctions, not every living creature on Earth was killed. The heartiest living things, like sharks, thrive through the ages, weathering mass extinctions the way New Englanders used to do harsh winters. Others adapt and evolve. And still others rose from the seeds strewn by the Machine itself. Once upon a time, humanity was the result of such a mass seeding—Scion themselves, who evolved over the ages into human beings. But like so many species in Earth’s past, we triggered our own demise at the hands of the Machine.
I wish I could say that I came up with all of this on my own, but I’ve been plagued by dreams inspired by my two fifteen year old visions. As things have played out, I’ve become even more convinced that physical contact with the Machine generated some kind of communication, or transfer of knowledge. But I’m also convinced that they were both flukes. There was no real wisdom imparted to me for the benefit of mankind—now on the brink of extinction—or for my own. The Machine has nearly killed me on multiple occasions.
Nearly,
my subconscious says, and I squelch the thought. Death looms. In the air, on land and at sea. If the Machine doesn’t crush me underfoot, or drown me in a wave, the Scion will eventually consume me. Part of me misses the good ol’ days, when it was just the Machine and people trying to kill us. The rise of Scionic life forced us to relearn how to survive. We had to evolve from nomads to predators on the prowl, always ready to fight, always ready to eat when something was killed, because no one knew when the next meal might try to eat us.
And they would have already if not for Graham, whose job when we first met all those years ago, was to protect me. Funny how so much has changed, except for his job description, which is no longer carried out because of a sense of duty, but because of friendship. We’re no longer Science Guy and Supernatural, though we continue to fill those roles, and I think it’s part of why we’re still alive. Without Graham, I would have died a thousand times over. He has saved me from floods, starvation, poisoned air, human marauders and the Machine’s spawn. But I’ve also saved him, finding shelter, water, food and other resources in places he would never think to look.
I raise a pair of binoculars to my eyes, scanning back and forth until I see the strange shape in the water ahead. I flinch back, surprised. “It’s a boat!”
“Describe it,” Graham says, still sounding calm.
Recovering from my initial shock, I place the binoculars to my eyes again. “I see two sails. White. Two hulls, like
Hope
. And…there! A man. He’s looking at us.” I raise my hand to wave at exactly the same time as the man in the approaching vessel does. My hand stops mid-wave. My counterpart stops as well.
A reflection.
Feeling foolish, I lower my hand and search the area. Several large rectangles reflect the ocean ahead of us. I turn my view higher and stop when I recognize the shape above the reflective rectangles, which I now know are windows. The tower at its top has fallen over, but there is still enough of its unique shape for me to identify it.
“It’s a building,” I say. “One World Trade Center.”
Graham smiles, but it feels off. Not only are we seeing what remains of one of the world’s greatest cities, we’re looking at a symbol of perseverance in the face of vast loss, now sunken beneath the waves. And the city really must have sunk. The sea levels have risen a lot, but One World Trade Center stood 1792 feet tall. For us to be seeing just the top, the island had to sink. It’s not surprising, really. Just another terraforming project for the Machine. And while the events of 9-11 seem small in the face of the apocalypse, the symbolism strikes home.
“Abandon all hope,” I say. “Ye who enter here.”
Graham chuckles at me and shakes his head. We’ve had a long time to come to grips with the world’s end. He’s moved on. Accepted his role in the New World. I still need closure…which is part of the reason we’re here.
“We’re bringing hope to America,” he says, patting the steering wheel. “Remember?”
He’s quoting my own words back to me, when I sold him on the idea of sailing across the Atlantic to South America and following the remade coastline north. It didn’t work out quite that way. We ended up heading northwest across the ocean, taking the longest, most dangerous possible route across the open sea, traveling from what little remains of Sierra Leone to the submerged New York City.
He slaps his hand on the galley roof. “Liz! Get up here!”
The sliding door below us, which leads to the galley, lounge and below deck cabins, swishes open. Aliza Mayer, dressed in cargo shorts and a black bikini top, steps onto the back deck. She looks the part of vacationing Yacht owner, but is actually the most deadly person I’ve ever met. As many times as Graham has saved me from certain doom, she has saved us both. She’s been with us since we narrowly escaped the tsunami that swallowed Israel. After some time in Nepal, fleeing the drought, we returned to Israel, finding no human life, and the Mediterranean expanded into the Sea of Galilee. There was nothing left for her there, and the Scion who inhabited that part of the world were very large and very dangerous. Their size and energy was supported by an excess of oxygen in the atmosphere, which was a nice change after the season of poisonous air. We first survived that by wearing gas masks, and then by living deep underground, where the air was still clean. That was before we entered Africa, which required using a much smaller boat to cross the two mile stretch of water now bridging the Mediterranean and Red Sea.
“Coming up,” Mayer says, stepping up into the cramped helm station. She takes the binoculars from my hand without asking, her explosive hair tickling my face, getting in my eyes and mouth. I press her hair down, and make spitting noises. We’re comfortable with each other. We’ve survived by not worrying about personal space. So she doesn’t comment or care when I pull her hair back and tie it off. She just looks through the binoculars for a moment before lowering them. “We made it?”
“Welcome to New York City.” I sweep my hand out to the distant sunken skyscraper. “Home of absolutely nothing.”