The Dolphins
With half an hour to spare before dusk and the beginning of the curfew, O’Hara and Annie stopped by the center so she could check on the dolphins. He had a feeling something else was going on with her, but couldn’t figure out what it was. Sometimes, she was difficult to read.
“The marine biologists have been preparing all the dolphins for transfer tomorrow to Dolphins Plus in Key Largo because they’re so agitated by events here,” she explained as they got out of the car, slinging her large bag over her shoulder. “I think it’s a huge mistake, even more traumatic for them. So I’m freeing them.”
“Good thing I’m wearing my swim trunks.”
She looked surprised. “How’d you know to do that?”
O’Hara laughed. “You kidding? Every time I’ve been here, I’ve left soaked to the bone.”
Annie patted her bag. “I’ve got my tools.”
“So we’re going to bust them out?”
She nodded.
“I assume you’ve got a plan?”
“Absolutely.” She paused, then added, “I just hope it works.”
They entered the tank area, lit up like high noon by security lights. Veronica—the marine biologist who was Annie’s boss—was feeding the dolphins. She waved them over. Tall and thin, with wild, curly hair, she reminded O’Hara of a cartoonish mad scientist.
“Hey guys, what’s up?”
“I forgot some stuff in my office this morning,” Annie replied. “You here alone?”
“Yeah, I told Barb to get home. She has to catch the ferry to Key West. We all know how long these lines are at the docks.”
“You need some help?” O’Hara asked.
“That’d be great, Jon. You’ve fed them before. Annie, my son just called and he needs a ride before curfew. So can you close up?”
“Sure. Is everything ready for the transfer tomorrow?”
Veronica nodded, wiped her hands on a towel wrapped around her skinny waist. “As ready as possible. We’ve got five vessels with two slings apiece that will be here at six tomorrow morning.”
O’Hara walked over to her. “How long will it take to get them to Dolphins Plus?”
“Most of the day. They’re going to be much better off there until things here are resolved.”
Yeah, sure they are. Like an obliterated bridge and an island invaded by psychic freaks would be resolved in a few days, he thought, but kept his mouth shut. He stripped down to his bathing trunks and draped his clothes over the back of a nearby chair. He plucked a slimy fish from the bucket and tossed it toward the tank. One of the three bottlenose dolphins Annie had nurtured leaped into the air, flukes slapping the water, splashing O’Hara.
“Priscilla has been like that all day,” Veronica said. “Little hissy fits. She’s agitated.” She untied the towel at her waist, handed it to O’Hara. “I appreciate you two doing this. Text me if there’re any problems, Annie. And let’s hope for a quiet night.”
Then she hurried off with a wave and O’Hara and Annie exchanged a look. “Isn’t it going to be obvious that we freed them since we’re the last ones leaving?”
“Naw. Let’s give her a few minutes, then I’m turning off the security cams.”
“Won’t Veronica know?”
“Eventually. But she’ll think the electronics went haywire. And if she’s busy with her son, she won’t check her app for a while.”
“Since Priscilla, Boss, and Rose have grown up with humans, isn’t it possible that could endanger them in the wild?”
“It could. But I think they’re smarter than that. What would really endanger them is being transferred to another dolphin facility and possibly separated from each other and enduring hours of more tricks for live audiences and long periods of utter boredom.”
It wasn’t what she said that convinced him, but the passion with which she said it. “Okay, what next in this grand scheme of yours, Annie?”
“Be right back.”
Annie hurried out of the tank area and ducked under an awning without cameras. While she was there, O’Hara crouched at the edge of the tank and snapped his fingers. “Hey, guys. We’re going to bust you outta here. It may be a felony because you’re worth a shit ton of moola, but it feels like the right thing to do, you know?”
The dolphins chittered and squealed and splashed him. Fifteen minutes passed before Annie returned to the open tank area and announced, “The security cams just blew out.”
“You did that from your phone?”
“I installed those cams. I know how to make it look like something it isn’t.” She stripped down to her bathing suit, set her bag on the ground, dug around inside it. She brought out pairs of wire cutters, head lanterns, masks. “What we’re going to do is snip the wire along the top of the divider between the tank and the canal and use our feet to push it toward the canal, bending it down so the edges don’t cut the dolphins as they swim out.”
“I think it’d be easier to do this from the canal side, Annie.”
“How about one of us on each side?”
“That’ll work. You think we need tanks?”
“Not with both of us doing this.”
“I’ll take the canal side,” he said.
The dolphins twittered and whistled and O’Hara figured they knew something was going on. He made sure the mask fit, let it slide down his face to his throat, secured the head lantern. It fit snugly across his forehead and the back of his skull, and the bright light worked. He picked up the wire cutters and went over to the far side of the tank, where the wire mesh fence divided the tank from the canal. At the edge of it, he eased his bare feet into the cool water.
“You have a spot where you can stand?” Annie called.
“Don’t know yet.”
As she slipped into the tank, the three younger dolphins—Priscilla, Boss, and Rose—swam up alongside her, twittering, clicking, whistling. O’Hara raised his mask, turned on the head lantern, took a deep breath, then sank under the water, and started snipping along the top of the rusted wire mesh. He could see Annie on the other side of the fence, cutting quickly while the three dolphins at her sides peered at him. Then more dolphins lined up and started butting their heads against the wire mesh.
He and Annie surfaced for a gulp of air, she flashed him a thumbs up, and sank again. When he’d cut through much of the mesh, O’Hara slipped the wire cutters into a pocket in his swimming trunks and hoped neither of the blades stabbed him in the ass. His fingers slipped through the mesh, and started pulling. On the other side, Annie pressed her feet against the mesh.
They both came up for a final gulp of air and when he went under again, he counted twelve dolphins lined up on either side of Annie. Six each. And more were behind them. They battered the mesh with their heads and flukes and the stuff surrendered with creaks and groans. O’Hara quickly swam out of their way. Just before Priscilla, Boss, and Rose slipped through the opening, all three of them came up to Annie and touched their beaks gently to her mask. Then they swam free with seventeen other bottlenose dolphins.
He scrambled onto land and moments later, so did Annie. They tore off their masks and head lanterns and ran after the dolphins along the narrow seawall. They surfaced before they reached the mouth of the Atlantic, the air filled with their happy whistles, clicks and chatter. Annie blew them a kiss and she and O’Hara watched them swim in the starlight until they dived again.
“Awesome,” she whispered, tears beading on her cheeks.
“And we’ve just committed a felony.”
“And I’m now unemployed.”
“And it was the right thing to do.”
They laughed. “We sound like co-conspirators, Jon. Should we check the fence to see if it looks like the wires were cut?”
“They beat it so hard with their flukes and heads, most of the mesh just tore away,” he replied. “That’s our story. We should be on the same page.”
“They freaked and hit the fence full force. We saw it happen,” Annie added. “How’s that?”
“What’s the first thing Veronica will do?”
“Ask to see the security footage.” She paused, frowned. “Yeah, forget that version.”
“What time did you short-circuit the cams?”
She glanced at her phone. “4:47.”
“Do you usually text her when you finish the final feeding for the day?”
“Shit, yeah. I get paid by the hour.”
“So tell her we left at 4:30.”
“It’s 5:17 right now. Is that time gap suspicious?” “With everything else that’s going on here? Unlikely.”
“Texting her.”
“I’m starving,” O’Hara said. “How about if I fix dinner tonight?”
“I think my mom, Shep, and the others are making the bookstore their safe haven tonight. I feel like I should stay there, too. We’ve got cots and bedding and plenty of food. Feel like cooking for the clan, Jon?”
“What the hell. Sure.”
“I’ll set up our cots in the yoga room in the back, so we have some privacy.”
His eyes met hers. It would be weird making love to her in a yoga studio, he thought, in her mother’s bookstore. But he appreciated her suggestion and took her hand. “Hey, on this long trek inland we supposedly may take, we’ll be sure to have our own tent.”
“Do you think we’re actually going to do that?”
O’Hara shrugged. “Things are so strange now it feels like anything is possible.”
They made their way back along the seawall to retrieve their clothes and close up for the night. The tank area seemed eerily quiet, especially when Annie flipped off the security lights. Then, in the light of the stars, the pod’s song drifted through the air, a cacophony so hauntingly beautiful they both whipped out their cells and recorded it.
2
By nightfall, One World Books looked nearly normal again and Mira felt more hopeful. The place wasn’t just her livelihood. It was her child, nurtured for more than twenty-five years, cared for, tended to when injured. She had raised it with her daughter and grandmother and it mirrored her own unconscious—emotions, beliefs, issues, failures, triumphs. And what she saw now would be perfect once a new front window was installed.
In metaphorical terms, she supposed that new window represented Sheppard, and how he had integrated himself into all this after the events on the bridge.
Blanca and Carmen had gone by the cabin and picked up most of the food there and now O’Hara whipped up meals for everyone who had helped restore One World Books. Nigel wandered from one group to another, barking encouragement, tail wagging when Gutierrez, Delgado, and Sheppard pushed the new tables together so they could all eat in the same area. Then the dog followed Mira and Annie outside and watched as they pulled the shutters across the bookstore’s shattered windows, closing up the place to looters. It wouldn’t keep Crows out, Mira thought, but it was better than gaping holes. She didn’t have any idea when she would be able to have windows replaced and until then, the shutters would stay shut.
“What’s up with you, Nigel?” Annie nuzzled her face against his head. “You keeping an eye on us?”
Nigel barked and pawed at the ground. “What’s that mean?” Mira asked.
“Beats me. What about the windows at the back of the building, Mom?”
“Nothing broken back there. They’ll be fine.”
Annie motioned up and down the street, where other businesses had also put up shutters. “No one’s taking chances. Even the Island Grille has shut down.”
“Have the dolphins acted up this evening?”
“Uh, no.”
Mira heard something in her daughter’s voice that meant trouble. Her first thought: Annie was pregnant. But she hadn’t known O’Hara long enough to know if she was pregnant and before him, Mira knew, Annie hadn’t slept with anyone for a year.
“You can’t be pregnant. So what is it?”
“Pregnant?” Annie laughed. “C’mon, give me some credit. I’ve been on birth control for a while to regulate my periods.”
“Then what’s the big but I heard in your voice?”
For the first time ever, Annie hesitated. “How much do you want to know, Mom?”
Everything. “Whatever you feel comfortable telling me.”
Annie held Mira’s gaze, then burst out laughing. “Yeah. Right. That sounds like it came from some Internet website or self-help book about mothers and daughters.”
Mira had read dozens of books of that kind and in the end, had decided she understood her daughter better than any book did. She’d opted for complete honesty.
“Just give it to me.”
“Jon and I freed the twenty dolphins at the center… and I think Nigel sensed it.”
“You… wow.” Of the various possibilities on her list, that one hadn’t even made her list.
“I couldn’t stand it anymore, Mom. When I first started there, they had mostly rescued dolphins like Prissy, Boss, Rose. But then they started trading dolphins with other facilities and selling and buying them and before this whole fiasco began with the Crows, the center was like fucking Sea World, okay? They tripled their entrance price, charged ridiculous amounts of money for dolphin swims, kept them in shallow tanks in totally boring environments… and tomorrow they were going to move all of them to Key Largo because they’ve been so agitated since the Crows arrived.”
Images clicked through Mira’s head, snippets of memories that shouted, Yes, of course, she’d do something like this. “Well, it was a stupidly illegal thing to do and considering what those dolphins are worth, it’s probably a felony.” Mira paused. Annie looked shocked. “But frankly, I think you did the right thing. It took guts and conviction.”
The shock froze Annie’s expression. Mouth partially open, eyes wide. “I thought you were going to say you disowned me.”
“Oh, c’mon, Annie. You did what I would have done if I’d worked there.”
Her daughter laughed, a soft, melodic sound, and squeezed Mira’s hand. “I didn’t really think that.” She reclaimed her hand. “Jon said the same thing about a felony. I think I covered our tracks well.” She paused. “I hope.”
“And now you’re unemployed so I’m officially putting you back on the store payroll.”
Annie hugged her. “Jon cut the wire on the canal side, I cut it on the tank side. We followed them along the seawall as they went through the canal and on out to sea. It was incredible. And beautiful.”
She talked fast, with passion, excitement, and right then, Mira knew her daughter had met her soul mate in O’Hara.
Annie played the recording she’d made of the dolphin sounds as they swam to freedom. It was the most beautiful music Mira had ever heard, nuanced, vibrant, haunting, forever. Nigel dropped his head back and howled.
“Nigel recognizes what those sounds are,” Mira said. “And if there’s a time stamp on that recording, you should send it to me and then delete it. Just in case you’re arrested and they confiscate your phone.”
“Very funny, Mom.”
“I’m half-serious. You need to cover your tracks that way, too.”
“I’m sending it to you.” She tapped away at the phone. “But I’m not deleting it. It’s too beautiful to delete.”
Nigel barked at the door to go back inside. Mira opened it and they followed him in. Blanca and Carmen were setting out paper plates and utensils and Rincon and Keel started carrying over platters of food. She was still suspicious of Keel and his motives, but considering what he’d done for the store today, she couldn’t exactly tell him he wasn’t welcome at dinner.
The food included a shrimp casserole, a vegetarian dish, a fresh fruit salad sprinkled with walnuts and pumpkin seeds, and several choices of beverages—white or red wine, lemonade, iced tea or any coffee concoction. Everyone chose wine.
Before Carmen joined them, she set a bowl of food in front of Nigel.
“What’re we celebrating?” Blanca asked, holding up her paper cup.
“That we’ve survived three nights with the Crows among us,” Rincon replied.
“That I’m not suing the FBI for Hal’s disk,” Keel said. “And that at least one of them was injured in here last night.”
“Which one?” Sheppard asked. “Any idea?”
“Nope,” Keel replied.
“We’re all here together,” Blanca said. “That’s what matters right now. Salud, amigos!”
Throughout dinner, cells dinged and sang with emails and text messages, most of them ignored. Everyone, Mira thought, needed a break from the twenty-four/seven focus on these recent events. But when O’Hara brought over dessert, Sheppard broke the info fast by turning on the TV mounted on the wall.
“The lower Florida keys are still under a state of emergency tonight,” an MSNBC anchor said. “Two thousand National Guard troops are there, most of them on Tango Key, which seems to be the main target of the terrorists. Two nights ago, the destruction of the bridge that connects Tango Key to Key West and the rest of the keys killed a hundred and eighty-two people and more than a hundred are still missing. We’re going now to our team on the ground for the latest.”
The scene switched to the Tango airport terminal, where Richard Engel stood with some of Keel’s troops, discussing the current situation on the island. It unnerved Mira to see Engel on Tango Key. As NBC’s chief foreign correspondent, she associated him with reporting on madness in the Mideast. In the Russian/Ukraine situation.
“While the government labels these events in the keys as terrorism, a number of videos taken on the Tango bridge as it was being destroyed show a kind of terrorist we’ve never dealt with before,” Engel said. A video clip of the lightning woman filled the screen. “Instead of an assault rifle, this woman appears to have electrical currents running through her body that she’s able to direct and release. Earlier today, I spoke to the island coroner, Dr. Ian Rincon. He has autopsied three of these terrorists, including the one people are calling Lightning Woman.”
Sheppard muted the TV and everyone at the table looked at Rincon, who shrugged. “Hey, I like the guy. He’s a good journalist. And Jon, he said your columns were what first caught his attention. Engel is making our situation here visual and powerful. Anyone in his or her right mind already knows these freaks aren’t terrorists in the traditional sense. Engel is confirming that.”
“You should’ve invited him for dinner,” Mira said.
“He has an open invitation to visit any of us.”
Another cell dinged and Delgado got up and walked into the main room to take the call. When he returned, he didn’t look happy. “All the dolphins have escaped, Annie. Veronica’s reporting it to the police just so there’s a record of it. For insurance purposes.”
“What? When did this happen?”
“Apparently it happened shortly after you and Jon left this afternoon,” Delgado replied. “The security footage is fried, so we don’t know the details. Veronica is concerned that the escape is indicative of another weird turn with the Crows.”
“It might be.” Annie glanced at her cell, shook her head. “The security footage ends at 4:57 this afternoon.”
Mira thought Annie was a good actress. A believable liar. She also looked completely innocent. “Can they survive in the wild?” Mira asked.
“Absolutely.” Annie tapped her phone several times. “They’re all chipped. Right now, the youngest three are hovering about two miles offshore of Tango. The rest of the pod is farther out, six miles east of the ferry docks.”
“Does Veronica have that info, Annie?” Delgado asked.
“Sure.”
“She intends to talk to you and Jon tomorrow to confirm her conviction that the dolphins escaped to protect the island.”
“Really?” Annie exclaimed. “That’s what she thinks? She actually said that?”
“Just now,” Delgado replied. “So you’re our dolphin expert, Annie. You think it’s true about the dolphins protecting the island?”
“Remember Elian Gonzales, Carlos?” Annie asked.
“Sure, the Cuban kid who came to the U.S. clinging to an inner tube in, what, 1998? 1999?”
“1999,” Annie replied. “The refugee boat he was on sank. He was clinging to an inner tube and said that every time he lost strength and started slipping off, three dolphins helped him stay above water and that they saved his life.”
Diego nodded. “Yeah, I remember that!”
“There’re countless stories like that about dolphins saving lives,” Annie went on. “So why wouldn’t they try to save an island? This island? It’s been their home.”
“It’s a great angle for a story.” O’Hara said. “And there’s some pretty solid scientific research on it, too. Some of the world’s foremost dolphin experts say that rescue behavior in dolphins isn’t automatic or purely instinctual. They apparently make conscious decisions about when to intervene and they’re selective about who and in which circumstances they help.”
Annie looked surprised. “How do you know that?”
“For one of my columns, I interviewed an Aussie wildlife filmmaker who was doing some underwater filming of four dolphins when a great white shot toward him in attack mode. The dolphins intervened and saved his life.”
Carmen blessed herself. “Dios mio. This is hopeful.”
And this, Mira thought, was where O’Hara’s brilliance lay. His column would add to the mystique about the dolphins’ escape, the media would jump on it, and any suspicion Annie’s boss might harbor that she and O’Hara were responsible would vanish. Mira knew she should be appalled that her daughter had committed a felony. But she was proud of Annie and O’Hara. They’d done the right thing.
“Dolphins, mermaids, whales, aliens. We need all the help we can get,” Keel remarked, and got up and started clearing the table.
3
Hal woke suddenly.
Whiskers was snuggled into the curve of his neck, purring loudly, and he rolled onto his side, running his fingers through the cat’s fur. Whiskers drew his tongue across the back of Hal’s hand, as if to thank him for the temporary sanctuary. And in that moment, he experienced something he’d never felt before, a profound camaraderie and connection with an animal.
The overall emotion seemed similar to the kind of love he’d experienced with Wind for years after he’d rescued her. Yet, it was strangely different. This cat asked him for hardly anything. Lend me your neck so I can cuddle. Feed me when I’m hungry. Let me chase lizards. Whiskers didn’t expect anything. Wind had asked him to change and, like her sister Red, had begged him to blend, not invade. But Red hadn’t embraced that idea until after she’d gotten here and all these nightmare events had unfolded. Wind had always embraced that idea.
The cat lived moment to moment.
Had he?
No.
For his entire life, he’d lived from strategy to strategy, from Plan A to B to C and on down through the alphabet. And here he was, in the midst of Plan Z. Only a handful of his Crows had made it, not the hundreds he’d anticipated. One of them was badly injured and the others were entertaining second thoughts about all this. He couldn’t blame them. He was beginning to think Wind had been right all along—blend into the twenty-first or stay behind in the dome. But in his head, he’d been through this a million times already.
He rolled onto his back, sat up, dropped his legs over the side of the couch. Whiskers lifted his head briefly, meowed softly as if to say, Hey, dude, what’s going on? Then he curled up in the blanket and shut his eyes again.
Hal glanced at the time on his phone—nearly five a.m.—and made his way down the hall to the bedroom where they’d put Squirt. Nico had fallen asleep in the chair beside Squirt’s bed, his head slumped to one side, his hand resting against Squirt’s arm. The blended concoction Red had made was half gone, but Hal didn’t know if Nico or Squirt had consumed it. He didn’t want to wake either of them, so he leaned over Squirt and touched his forehead.
Burning up. His skin felt like it might explode any minute.
He needed antibiotics, real drugs, twenty-first century drugs, not the shitty herbal concoction from the dome. Hal rushed out of the room, fingers working his phone, Googling madly. By the time he’d torn open a yogurt and grabbed a bottle of water, he’d decided that Squirt needed amoxicillin. Or something else
He Googled the closest pharmacy, a lone building across the street from the market they’d nearly destroyed earlier. In, out, save Squirt. Simple. He hurried out to the porch and was shocked to see Liz sitting on the steps, staring out into the darkness, her wings not fully extended, but fluttering.
“Hey,” he said. “I thought you were inside, asleep.”
“I can’t sleep much these days, Hal.”
“Squirt’s going to die unless we get drugs into him. Real drugs.”
She looked up at him. “Shit. Where do we get drugs? You know where to go? What drugs to look for?”
“I think so.”
“Then let’s get there fast. I’ll carry you.”
“You aren’t big enough.”
“Ha.”
She started shifting, her hair going first, feathers sprouting from her head, her neck, then the beak, around her eyes, then her human legs morphed into the condor body and finally, those wings unfurled, longer than he’d ever seen them before. Her transformation, singularly beautiful and mysterious, always astounded and thrilled him. But this would be a first.
Hal approached her, wondered where the hell he was supposed to sit, and finally threw his left leg over the widest part of her condor body and leaned forward, arms closing around her neck. She twisted her head several times until the position of his arms was comfortable enough for her, flapped her massive wings, and took off.
Hal felt so disoriented by the rapid ascension he nearly threw up. Wind whistled in his ears, a sound his Wind often made when they having sex. Or making love, as these people of the twenty-first called it. Once he overcame the nausea, it thrilled him to be flying like some mythic figure of the ancient world. His eyes watered from the wind, so he couldn’t see much below, but he found he could guide her with the pressure of his arms. Up, down, right, left. And when he spotted the pharmacy, he squeezed his arms once, and down she went. She’d seen the place, too.
The air bit into his eyes. Dizziness seized him. He hoped she landed before he puked.
She touched down smoothly in the rear parking lot and Hal realized they’d covered the mile in a fraction of what it would have taken him on foot. He slipped off of her, still nauseated, his legs shaky, and vomited.
She quickly shifted back into her human form. “Wow,” she whispered. “No one has ridden me since I tried to fly my dad out of the dome years ago. I was too small then and he was too big. You okay?
The nausea had ebbed. He nodded. “What’s it like to fly when there’s no limit to the sky?”
“Like… being divine.”
This was why he loved her. Being divine. Could she actually feel it, the proximity to that kind of greatness? “Back door, Liz.”
They ran toward it.
The lock liquified easily enough and when he pulled on the knob the door swung open. The inside of the pharmacy seemed hallucinatory. Rows and aisles and shelves held vitamins and herbs, makeup, creams, lotions for this and that, shampoos and toilet paper and paper towels, bottles of sleep-aids, pain killers, Band-Aids and bandages, school supplies, dog and cat food, a refrigerated wall of water, beer, wine, pizzas. Like a little grocery store without the fresh foods and meats.
“Back here.” Liz motioned him toward the pharmacy sign at the rear of the store. Here, the shelves were compact, well-labeled, but there were endless rows and bottles, containers, packets. He didn’t know where to begin.
He and Liz moved along the shelves, periodically calling out the names of drugs, remedies. Then, on a shelf behind the desk, where the prescription items were kept, he found amoxicillin. .He grabbed one, read the label. If you are pregnant or lactating…
Squirt wasn’t pregnant or lactating. He was dying. Hal scooped a handful of packets in the bag that hung from his shoulder, then moved along the shelf, helping himself to other drugs.Augmentin,Vicodin, Zocor, lisinopril. He would read the labels and warnings later.
“We need vitamin C,” Liz called out from some other spot in the store. “Vitamin C, COQ-10, papaya…”
“Take whatever you want.” He kept moving along the aisles, no longer looking at what he dumped into his backpack. It didn’t matter. They could use it all. Welcome to the twenty-first century, he thought, where there seemed to be a remedy for almost anything that ailed you.
4
Nigel, Frisbee in his mouth, nudged Mira awake, his tail whipping from side to side. She rolled off the cot in her office, scratched Nigel’s head. “You have to go out, Big Guy?” she whispered.
His tail thumped the floor.
“Okay, let me find my shoes, my phone.”
She didn’t want to wake Sheppard, snoring on the other cot. Mira scooped up her phone, noted it was 5:42 a.m., texted Sheppard that she was taking Nigel out. His phone was muted, but he eventually would see the message. She pocketed her cell, slung her bag over her shoulder, weapon inside, picked up her shoes. She and the dog crept quietly out the rear door, into a massive, eerie silence. Mira dropped her shoes, slipped them on.
Still dark. Nothing moved, not a breath of a breeze. Then birds twittered, as if in greeting, and Nigel trotted over to a strip of grass alongside the parking lot and peed. He still held the Frisbee in his mouth. She didn’t have a leash for him, but he didn’t seem to need one. His snout lifted into the air again and he sniffed noisily. Mira checked her cell for news, emails, anything new, and when she glanced up, Nigel was gone.
“Nigel,” she called softly. “Hey, where’d you go?”
Mira ran out to the front of the store and there he was, paused on the sidewalk, head cocked, listening to something she couldn’t hear, then moving from side to side as he sniffed loudly. “Nigel, we need to go back inside. C’mon, boy.” She turned toward the bookstore but he took off down the sidewalk.
“Shit.” She should’ve grabbed a leash before she’d left the bookstore.
Mira loped after him, through dim puddles of light from the stars and the setting moon, into deeper shadows. She didn’t want to shout for him. In this stillness, her voice really would wake the dead, a cliché that defined the depth of this silence. So she broke into a run. Nigel was locked into a scent, though, and moved fast, vanishing around a corner long before she reached it.
When she finally got to that corner, she spotted him just ahead, frozen on the sidewalk, staring at a pharmacy across the street from the Tango Market. Mira caught up to him, crouched, slung her arm across his back, fingers burrowing through his thick fur, searching for his collar. “What?” she whispered.
Nigel turned his head, licked her face, then took off toward the pharmacy. She ran after him to the edge of trees that bordered the parking lot behind the building. The dog had dropped to his belly, his tail thumped the ground. Mira knelt next to him, slipped her cell from her back pocket, started to text Sheppard, but decided to wait until she could check things out. She turned on her recorder instead, described what was happening, that it might be nothing more than Nigel pursuing a squirrel.
She wanted a personal record.
Nigel darted forward, Mira loped after him to the back door of the pharmacy.
Not a squirrel.
The door knob and lock were gone, an ooze of metal marred the surface of the wood, the door hung by a single hinge. Mira changed her mind and quickly texted Sheppard. Tango pharmacy. They’ve been here.
Then: voices, male and female.
“I think vitamin E is supposed to be really good for you, Hal. And I could use some shampoo and a bar of soap that smells really good.”
“Pick out whatever you want, Liz.”
“And my wings are kinda sore from you riding on me, so I’m going to get something for that.”
“Fine.” He paused. “Like what? Advil? Tylenol?”
“No, a homeopathic thing made from marigold flowers.” She waved the small package in the air. “I’ve been Googling it.”
“Okay, sure, whatever you think will help, Liz.”
Mira could tell he didn’t have any idea what she was talking about.
She brought out her weapon, started backing away. Even though she was armed, she’d seen the videos of what Hal could do. He could liquify her before she fired a single shot. That aside, she had no desire to shoot anyone. Her weapon was strictly for defense.
Suddenly, Nigel shot forward, not making a sound, tail wagging, and vanished through the doorway. Fuck. Mira lunged after him, but when she barreled into the store, Nigel was already past the end of the row. She heard Liz squeal, “Oh my God, a dog, it’s a real dog!”
Nigel leaped at Liz, licking her, whimpering, perhaps sensing she wasn’t entirely human. She threw her arms around him, rubbed her face against his fur, and Nigel ate it up, wallowing in the attention. Then Hal appeared at the end of an aisle directly across from Mira and they just stared at each other. She knew he recognized her, but nothing about him appeared to be threatening.
Not yet.
Can I take them both before Hal liquifies me?
“Is that dog yours?” he asked.
He said it casually, like they were two dog owners in a park, inquiring about each other’s pooches. “Right now he is.” Mira snapped her fingers, whistled. “Nigel, come.” He reluctantly left Liz’s side and trotted over to Mira. She hooked her fingers under his collar. “Sit, Nigel.” He sat. “Good boy.”
“I really like him,” Liz said. “He could be my pet just like Whiskers is yours, Hal.”
But Hal didn’t look at Liz. Or the dog. His eyes were on Mira, and it unnerved her. “What’re you doing here, Mira?”
Blunt. Vaguely threatening. “What’re you doing here, Hal?”
He looked amused. “I asked you first.”
“Nigel woke me up. He needed to pee. Then he apparently sensed you two and took off and ended up here.”
“I should melt you both.”
“Don’t you dare hurt that dog, Hal.” Liz stepped forward, wings starting to unfurl, to beat the air, knocking stuff from the shelves.
“Okay, okay.” Hal patted the air with his hands. “Just stop with the wings. I won’t hurt the dog.” He leaned forward, palms against his thighs, and called softly to Nigel. “Hey, will you lick me, too?”
Nigel’s wagging tail slowed to a languid swish. He stepped forward hesitantly, then backed up, looked at Mira. “I think Hal wants to be your friend, Nigel,” she said.
But the dog wasn’t convinced. He moved to Mira’s side, then darted over to Liz once more and licked her legs. “Oh, the things I can show you, Nigel,” she said, and rubbed her face against his fur again.
He retreated to Mira’s side again.
“So you didn’t come here looking for me?” Hal asked.
“Like I said, Nigel had to go to the bathroom and woke me up. The last thing I’d do is look for you, Hal. You really tore apart my store and by destroying the bridge, you fucks have set Tango Key back at least twenty years.”
She felt that familiar current racing through her, causing her arms and hands to tingle. But could she ramp it up and conjure it quickly enough? She doubted it. Her fear of Hal—of his ability—loomed, an impenetrable wall. “You and your people should leave before you get killed.”
He snickered. “You are going to kill us? I don’t think so, Mira.”
“Not me. But drones, bombs, and grenades might. You don’t have a defense against any of that. You can’t do shit against an army. Yeah, you can melt anything, Trixie can teleport stuff, I don’t know what Cam and Nico can do, and Squirt has that wicked throw. But…”
“Tell me about the amoxicillin.”
The abrupt switch threw her off. She guessed the antibiotic was for the Crow who had been wounded in her store by Keel and his team. “I’m not a doctor.”
“Have you taken it?”
“Yeah. And its derivatives. The Z-pack, Augmentin, they’re all basically the same. One pharma at a time. For fever, grab Advil or Tylenol. What do you have in your time for infections?”
“A remedy,” Hal replied. “Herbal. But it isn’t strong enough for Squirt.”
“And we have healers,” Liz added. “But unfortunately, none of them made it.”
“Uh-huh.” Mira kept them talking as she stepped back toward the door, the frantic drumbeat of her heart pounding in her ears. Her fingers curled under the top of Nigel’s collar, urging him to move back with her. He did. “Since I didn’t come here looking for you, Nigel and I are going back to where we’re staying and…”
“And tell the rest of your group, soldiers and all, where we are?” Hal laughed. “Nope. You’re coming with us.”
Mira moved her fingers away from the dog’s collar. “What can you possibly gain from that?”
Hal grinned, his teeth lining up in his mouth like a mottled picket fence. “You’re my hostage.”
“No one’s going to pay anything for me, Hal.”
“We don’t need money. We want the island.”
Mira started sweating. Could either of them smell her fear? She struggled to keep her expression and voice neutral. “And you think you can exchange me for the island?” She laughed and hoped it didn’t sound phony. “Yeah, sure. You don’t know much about this century.”
She stroked Nigel’s head and continued stepping back, closer to the door. Then she looked down at him and whispered the magical words that Blanca and Rincon had taught him. “A la casa, Nigel.” Home.
He looked at her with those soulful eyes that struck her as so human she nearly threw her arms around him, to keep him close to her. “Corre!” Run!
Nigel spun around and flew through the door. Mira leaped out of the way and dropped to her knees as Hal raced after the dog, everything within a few feet of him liquifying—pieces of shelves and products, part of the floor near the door, then the door and its frame and part of the wall.
“Not the dog!” Liz shrieked.
Impossibly long wings suddenly sprouted from her shoulders, flapping so fast and wildly that a single flap sent Hal sideways into a shelf that toppled, spilling bottles and containers and vials that crashed to the floor. Liz ran over to him, wings still pumping. “You will never hurt that dog, Hal. Give me your word or I take off now.”
Hal, on his back, lifting up on his elbows, looked shocked that she’d challenged him.
With the two of them distracted by each other, Mira whipped around and ran through the door. Behind her, she heard Hal shout, “Her too? You’re going to let Mira escape, Liz?”
Mira raced harder and faster toward the woods. The sky had lightened to the east, but didn’t offer enough illumination yet for her to even glimpse Nigel. She heard the constant beat of Liz’s wings behind her, a throbbing, like a heart.
She sent Annie and Sheppard a voice text: Taken. Pharmacy. Then she hurled her cell into the brush to her right, and hoped their find my phone was on. She threw the gun in the other direction.
When a giant condor landed in front of her, its eyes said it all. Liz. Mira threw up her arms. “You win.”
The bird immediately morphed back into young, skinny Liz. “That was smart of you, Mira.”
“Was it? And what’s with you anyway, Liz? Why’re you so loyal to that psychopath?”
She cocked her head. “Psychopath? That’s like, what, a real crazy? Hal’s not a psycho anything. In the dome, he saved my life.”
“The clever ones do.”
“What the hell is that supposed to mean?” Liz snapped.
“The clever psychopaths often save lives in return for loyalty.”
As soon as Mira said it, she knew it was the wrong thing to say to this shape shifting weirdo blinded by her loyalty to Hal. “That’s a crock of shit,” Liz said.
Before Mira could reply, Hal reached them. He looked pissed. “Check her pockets, Liz. I might inadvertently liquify her if I touch her.”
Liz patted Mira down. “No phone, no weapon, nothing. She’s clean, Hal.”
“That dog is going to alert the others. We need to get out of here.”
“I can’t carry both of you,” Liz said.
Hal gestured at the electric cart in the corner of the lot. “Mira and I will take that. Get back to the apartment and wake the others.”
Liz nodded and her physical form started shifting. Mira watched, fascinated and horrified, intrigued and repulsed, certain this image would stay with her forever. It would be the kind of thing that would move with her from life to life, a soul image that would remind her of this life as Mira, granddaughter of Nadine, mother of Annie, wife of Sheppard, bookstore owner, psychic whose descendant hailed from the twenty-second century.
The condor rose up into the brightening sky and looked magnificent flying through the light—unless you knew what it really was.
Hal poked his finger into Mira’s back. “Move.”
The sensations swept through her again, up through her fingertips, into her hands, arms, shoulders, and seemed to be daring her to take him on, to use the ability his presence had awakened in her. But fear seized her. She wasn’t ready yet.
Maybe she would never be ready.
Disgusted with herself and now terrified that he might melt her once they were in the electric cart, she said, “None of this will work, Hal. Even with hundreds of you here, it won’t work. The military will just bomb the island into fucking oblivion.”
“We’ll see.” He grabbed her roughly by the arm and moved toward the electric cart.
If she made a break for it right now, how far would she have to get before he was unable to liquify her? Better to delay him, give her peeps time to bring in troops, more cops, something. But if Hal was killed, they wouldn’t know where the rest of the Crows were staying. The situation might worsen. Only Keel had confronted them so far and that had resulted in three deaths in less than a minute. She realized she was in an ideal position. Undermine them from the inside out.
But how?
Hal gave Mira a final push into the cart, then swung into the driver’s side. No key, she noticed, but when he gripped the steering wheel, a green light flashed on the console and he slammed the cart into gear and drove out of the lot.