Danielle’s suggestion that they use Enrique’s boat was practical, if crazy. But they couldn’t haul the generator back to building 12 by hand. If not for the chance that Mirah’s infant would need it, might die without it, would they have gone out at all? Vance wondered.
Baxter’s manner became as sour as the crane driver’s when Vance asked him to go back out into the rain and help search. It was a three-man job, and Jonesy was too heavy and Carver was too brittle. “What, Tony too far above this work to pitch in?” Baxter huffed.
When Vance approached him, Tony refused on the grounds that he thought a search for the generator was ill advised. The baby’s apnea monitor had a battery backup, he argued. Even if that failed, there were means to ensure the baby’s continued breathing. Like waking the child at regular intervals. No point in risking so many lives when there were simple solutions.
Vance disagreed and, in the end, successfully appealed to Enrique’s and Baxter’s manhood. They had to at least try to get Mirah’s baby what he needed. They didn’t have to be reckless about it. They could turn back.
Wearing a fresh cotton shirt and a lightweight rain jacket given to him by Mirah, Vance helped Enrique and Baxter push the twelve-foot vessel back out of Mirah’s living room through the shattered picture window. The boat fell, puncturing the footbridge’s awning before wedging itself in the murky goo between the bank and the building. Enrique searched for the outboard motor that would have helped them navigate the strong currents. No sign of it. But one of the oars was reclining on Mirah’s once-luxurious sofa.
Vance worked hard to convince himself the plan was reasonable. Outside, the mud had become so treacherous on land that the water was a safer place for them to be. While the Rondeau River created its own powerful current through the former cove, the twelve foundations of Eagle’s Talon functioned like current-busting jetties. These plus the gentle curve of the peninsula sheltered the margins of the cove, enough that Vance believed they could row down and back safely, and without a struggle against the current. If they could find the other oar. Or better yet, the motor.
The afternoon light, already muted by the storm, was rapidly fading. They would be able to search for the generator quickly enough. It would take longer, perhaps too long, to load it onto the boat and return to safety upstream. Three men plus the heavy equipment would tax the boat’s capacity, but Vance didn’t see how they could manage it with only two people.
Slipping and sliding and pushing their boat through mud, the three men intended to bypass the pump-truck disaster and put out at the dockless platform of building 10. But on their way, Baxter noticed the missing oar protruding from the unset concrete of number 11’s battered platform. The paddle’s handle pointed at the sunken pump truck as if blaming the vehicle for all the abuse it had taken.
There’d be no getting it without climbing onto the sloping platform. To do that, they changed their plan and put the boat in the water on the south side of number 12, uncomfortably close to that sinking pump truck, which Vance hoped was stable. From their position on the water he had a clear line of sight all the way down to building 1. Contradicting Tony, all the structures but number 11 looked littered with flotsam but were secure. Their stabilizing poles were still erect. Those walls that had been put in place still stood.
Enrique directed them with his oar and, as soon as they were close enough for Vance to mount the tipping platform, Baxter grabbed the foundation’s frame to stabilize the boat.
If not for the rain and flood, the angle wouldn’t have been dangerously steep to climb, and the concrete would have been thick enough to walk on. But the moment Vance plunged his boot into the goopy mess and leaned far to grasp the oar, the mound began to slide. It took him to his stomach in a second and then dashed him against the outrigger that had pinned the foundation, cracking his elbow before sloughing him off. Enrique reached for him and missed. For the third time in a day, Vance dropped into the black river water. His heavy boots pulled him down.
The temperature felt unnaturally warm, and brightness penetrated his closed eyelids. He kicked toward the surface but seemed not to move. There was no friction of water against his face or arms, no ripples tickling his feet or legs. The liquid was a glove protecting him from any sensation at all. He opened his eyes and saw that his pant leg was snagged on the front fender of the drowned pump truck.
But this failed to explain what was happening.
He hovered in front of one of the long steel posts that held the foundations of these floating buildings steady in the water, securing them to the shore. A swarm of glowing fish darted around the pole, flashing blue and silver and giving off a spectacular brightness. They were so colorful, so unexpected in this freshwater river, so close to the surface, that for several seconds Vance didn’t even see what they illuminated. He had never imagined fish such as these, a few dozen of them moving like a cyclone around the twisted pillar of metal.
The distressed, shredded post. It should have been ramrod straight. It should have been smooth-surfaced and so new that it was still shiny clean. But the steel had lost its shape, had folded down on itself as if melted in the forge. Huge holes in the sides of the cylinder, six feet in diameter, gave it the appearance of having exploded from the inside. Scrappy shards stuck out at angles.
One of the bright things stopped darting around and hovered in front of Vance’s face, so bright he couldn’t look at it directly. He lifted his hand to shield his eyes. The fish—he didn’t know what else it could be—touched the center of his palm. The sensation was feathery and gentle and took away the tight need for air in the center of Vance’s lungs.
Then the lights shot away from the damage, expanding like a starburst explosion of their own past his face. He jerked his head away and felt the water move this time as it grazed his ears. The fish arced over his shoulders and out into the water, then darted downward, down and down to the bottom of the cove some twenty feet below, becoming pollywogs of light with flickering tails.
Here, the river bottom sloped away from the shore steeply. Underneath their silvery glow, the silt clouded the floor like fog on a stage. By the light, Vance saw through the disturbance a tangled rope of wires, the broken-off corner of a metal box, and the reflective red plastic of an indicator light.
The glowing creatures spread out, moving like liquid silver toward the shore. The land didn’t slope gently upward as it ought to have. The entire bank seemed to have caved into a black hole, and the pump truck floated above it, clinging by one outrigger to that unstable foundation.
Through the murky darkness Vance could see the steel poles of building 12. The silver blue lights were swimming in a tight school around the surface of the long stilts. If they had been damaged by an explosion, the swimming lights hid the bad news.
The fiberglass oar was still in Vance’s fist. It was pulling him upward. He realized that he needed to take a breath.
In one kick he broke the surface of the water, and when the air filled his lungs, the idea of a bomb filled his brain.
Why? Who? When? Were there others?
Enrique was leaning over the boat with an outstretched hand.
“Okay, man?”
Vance handed over the oar and shook the water off his face.
“You were down awhile. Thought I’d have to go in after you.”
He wasn’t sure where to begin explaining. “Something snagged my pants.”
“Ah. I thought something caught your eye.”
“Right,” Baxter said. “Because down there everything is bright as day.”
Enrique scowled at Baxter, then helped to heave Vance over the side of the boat. “Did you see something?” Vance asked.
Enrique busied his attention with fitting the second oar into the oarlock. “Just some kind of funky blue light. Probably just you getting unstuck,” he said. “You got a light on your watch, don’t you?” He pointed to Vance’s wristband.
Vance’s watch gave off a green light, but he didn’t point that out. “Let’s get this done,” he said, pushing off.
Baxter had retrieved an asphalt lute that had been embedded with some force, perhaps by the same wave that had thrown the boat through Mirah’s window, in an exposed piece of the foundation’s EPS foam. The concrete-placing tool, which looked like an oversized squeegee with a five-foot handle, had an aluminum alloy blade that he could use to push the boat away from obstacles.
The men stopped at the foundation of each building, braced the boat against the temporary bumpers that would be removed after the docks were installed, then sent Vance up onto the slick platforms and into the partially erected structures. He searched in 10, 9, 8, and at 7 discouragement settled into his bones. His heart returned to Psalm 119. My soul melts from heaviness; strengthen me according to Your word.
He took a deep breath and forced exhaustion off his back. But it wasn’t fatigue that pulled him down as much as his discovery that the pump-truck accident might have had a human cause.
“Turn back?” Enrique asked.
“Yes,” Baxter grunted. Rain was sliding off his shining round head and he was scowling.
Vance looked back up the water toward building 12. He couldn’t see any lights. The rain seemed to have leveled out, slowing down from pounding torrent to steady shower, but who was he to say it wouldn’t surge again?
The rain needled his cheeks. He turned his head downward toward the river.
A silver flash blinked beneath the undulating water, down near the posts that held building 6’s foundation firmly in place. A shot of fear gave Vance a jolt. Were the lights a warning of more disaster?
In his mind’s ear he heard a voice. Did you see them?
It took him a second to recall that it was Simeon who had asked him this. When the silver flash darted beneath the boat again, Vance’s fear slipped away, and he wondered if the boy had meant something other than emergency vehicles after all.
The glistening fish was headed toward building 5.
“Let’s keep looking.”
Enrique and Baxter pulled the boat out while Vance pushed off the dock with the lute. Building 6, and all those south of it, had completed docks. As they approached, the boat came round the end of the dock just as a swell arrived at the same location. They tipped, and Baxter threw his hand out. The tossing boat pinned his palm against the wood, and Vance heard the bones crack.
Baxter bellowed and dropped his oar. Enrique caught it before it was swept downstream. The boat bounced and all three men were momentarily airborne, then were seated again with loud smacks on their tailbones.
Already, the wrong decision.
Blinks of silver and blue like an army of arrows gathered around the boat, pointing downstream.
Baxter was gripping his hand to his chest and yowling. Vance quickly stabilized the boat.
Enrique was staring at the glowing lights just beneath the surface. He pulled the oars out of the water.
“Let’s call it a night, huh?” Enrique said, twisting to face Vance. There was fear in his expression.
Turn back. The thought was on its way from Vance’s mind to his mouth when the lights shot out of the water at Enrique’s back, arced in unison like a single dolphin, and then reentered the water. The high point of their dive lifted Vance’s sight to the sloping bank that rose out of the cove between buildings 5 and 6. His eyes fixed on two shadows there, crouched in the space that the low light couldn’t touch. The shadows were heads. The shapes were human.
“I see someone,” Vance said, pointing.
Enrique faced forward again.
“I think I broke it.” Baxter’s eyes were pinched shut. His tone was offended that his injury hadn’t earned Vance’s attention.
“You see it?” Vance asked Enrique.
“I see something. You think that’s people?”
“Two of them.”
“Could just be scrap,” Enrique said.
“Hang on, Baxter,” he said. “We need to check this out, and then we’ll get you back.”
Baxter swore but was in no position to argue. The water beneath the boat flattened out for a precious moment of calm, and Vance pushed off.
Enrique pulled on the oars, eyes scanning the water, and Vance kept an eye on the shadows, hoping they were neither an illusion nor dead men.
A swell smacked the side of the boat, turning the bow to a favorable angle toward the dock at number 5. Then a second wave hit the stern, coming up over Vance’s back and dousing him once more.
The boat thumped up against the dock and Vance got out, tying off loosely while Enrique held it steady and Baxter groaned his misery. From up here Vance could see that the shadowy hulk between the buildings was still in the water, caught under the narrow, railed walkway that encircled all of the buildings. The silver lights he had seen near his boat now floated deep in the water beneath the form, lighting it with a pale blue glow. As Vance approached, the lights blinked out, returning the watery crevice between the buildings to its dim gray state.
Water poured off the gutters at the edge of both buildings, forming natural translucent walls that were difficult to see through. He slowed his jog to a walk, trying to sort out the shapes.
“Hey there!” he called out.
At the corner he plunged his head out through the runoff and got his first real glimpse of the man in the water. He was faced away from Vance, his armpit hanging over something that floated. An open life vest, snagged on the foundation. It held up his arm at an awkward angle and pinched his shoulder and cheek together. The other side of the man’s face pressed up against the bottom of the walkway, rising and falling short distances with the water, tethered by a loose strap that ran behind his neck and disappeared under the platform.
White lettering on the back of the man’s bright red shirt was obscured by the water, but Vance already knew what it said. Pick up the pace!
“Aw, Sam.” Vance’s sigh was heavy. He jumped the rails and cut through the falling runoff, then dropped himself into the water.
The place where Vance slipped in was warm like a bathtub. Like the spot where the wet concrete had dumped him. He held on to one of the rails near the bottom and touched Sam’s shoulder. When he got no response, Vance let go of the walkway and treaded water while he looked for his friend’s pulse. Though the light was poor here, he could see the bloody mess on the side of Sam’s head.
The crew leader’s mind was asleep but his heart was fully awake. His breathing was even and as steady as the heartbeat.
“Enrique, a little help?”
He didn’t answer right away. “I . . . uh . . . best to stay here or we might lose the boat.”
It was easier to free Sam from the life vest than to free the vest from whatever entrapped it. As much as Vance wanted to take that vest with him, he had to leave it behind.
With an arm supporting Sam on his back, and Sam’s head tilted upward against Vance’s shoulder, Vance pulled him back to the boat. Immediately he noticed the change in the water’s temperature from bathtub cozy to lemonade cool. A shiver passed through him.
“Just one guy after all,” Enrique said. “Is he alive?” He reached over the side of the boat to help Vance, but his eyes were darting across the surface of the water.
“Yeah. It’s Sam, one of my crew leaders. Watch his head.”
Though pained, Baxter joined the effort by using his weight to counterbalance Enrique’s as he pulled and Vance pushed from below. It was sloppy work, getting the unconscious man into the wobbling craft. There was no room for him to lie down, so they propped him against Baxter, who kept Sam from tumbling out by encircling his shoulders with his one good arm. The boat sank dangerously low in the bouncing waters.
“This is better than a generator, finding this guy alive,” Vance said.
Enrique directed Vance to man the second oar.
“Better for Sam,” Baxter grunted.
“Shut up,” Vance ordered.
Enrique pointed the boat back upstream. Vance synced his efforts. Leaning into his stroke and keeping his eyes on the water right around the boat, Enrique broke the tense silence. “I saw this movie once where the earth was being overrun by these aliens, and the last few survivors were holding out at a fortress, but they were running out of food. So one of them risks it all, you know, to sneak out past the enemy lines and find something, anything, that they can eat. And he’s gone for three days, right? And they think for sure he’s gone down. But then he comes back, dragging this huge load behind him, and he’s jazzed, because even though he couldn’t find any food, he has something better.”
Enrique stopped here as if silence could hook the other men’s interest. Neither of them took the bait. To the west, the sun finally vanished, and the temperature fell with it. Vance concentrated on pitting the weight of the boat against the force of the current, which seemed strong even in this calm margin of the cove.
“It’s a dead alien,” Enrique burst. “The guy hauls it into their camp and says, ‘I figured out how to kill ’em.’ And they’re all like, ‘Wow, this is way better than food, because whatever you brought back, well, we were only going to burn through that anyway. Now we can get out of here, wipe out these monsters, go build ourselves a walled city, and plant some vegetable gardens or something.’”
Vance wanted out of this rain. Out of this boat. Out of this eternally difficult day. His oar cut the water. He dragged the vessel through, keeping time with Enrique. Cut, drag. Cut, drag. Rain was driving into his eyes. Revive me in Your righteousness. Let your mercies come also to me, O Lord.
“And then”—and here Enrique broke into a laugh—“you know it’s gonna be bad because there’s only seven minutes left in the run time, and sure enough, this dead alien begins to decompose and when he does he releases this toxic gas into the atmosphere that kills them all in, like, seconds. Bam. End of the human race.”
Baxter said through pain, “Thank you for that inspirational message.”
Enrique’s voice took on the impatient edge of a person whose passions had never been understood. “I’m just saying that sometimes what seems better isn’t really in the end.”
“If that’s an argument not to rescue you when you’re half drowned, I’ll keep that in mind,” Baxter said.
Vance’s patience was spent. “Sam’s not an alien. He isn’t dead. He won’t leak toxic fumes—which a generator could do, you know. Let’s take a good thing at face value, okay?”
Three of the little silver fish-like lights flickered beneath the water on the side of the boat, and when Enrique noticed them his rowing rhythm was disrupted. Vance opened his mouth to ask whether Enrique had seen these lights before, but Enrique met his eyes.
He said, “That kind of thinking always leads to trouble.”