Elizabeth Hand - Generation Loss

I started to pull it on, wincing as it snagged my wounded shoulder, then gave up. It wouldn’t fit over my camera, anyway.

Toby began coiling lines. “You going to tell me what the hell happened back there?”

I did. When I was finished, he shook his head.

“I can’t believe it,” he said. “I mean, I do believe it, but…” He glanced at Kenzie huddled in the cockpit. “It’s hard.”

I snorted. “Yeah, well, I don’t know what you guys were smoking thirty years ago, but I think Denny got some of what Ted Bundy was having. Aren’t you going to call someone? Like the Coast Guard?”

“The Coast Guard rescues people,” said Toby. “Is our boat in distress? Do we need to be medivaced to a hospital?”

He glanced at my bandaged eye, then at Kenzie, and shrugged. “Yeah, but by the time they got here we’d be on shore. They’d tell me to radio the police. We’re better off just getting out of here fast as we can.”

He held up two oversized flashlights and tossed me one. He shielded his face from blowing sleet, pointed past the bow to a distant gleam like a dim emerald star.

“See that light? It’s a buoy. There’s a bunch of them between here and Burnt Harbor. Some are lighted, some aren’t. We need to follow one to the next, point to point. Use the flashlight to find them. I’ll tell you where to look, right or left.”

He switched on the running lights. A dull green glow illumined the right side of the cabin, red on the left, white at the stern. “Think you can handle it? I’ve got spreader lights up there on the mast, but they mess up my night vision. Plus, if Denny’s really out there looking for us, it’ll be like a billboard. You stay in the bow and I’ll yell out to you. Once we get past Paswegas it’s clear sailing to the mainland, and we should be able to see the lighthouse up to Togus Head.”

His voice was calm, but he moved quickly and nervously, ducking beneath the rigging and pausing only to light a cigarette. “Get Kenzie settled, I’ll be another minute.”

I joined Kenzie in the cockpit. She sat, staring at her knees. Beneath the orange life vest she wore the same clothes I’d found her in. She looked much older than fifteen; like someone who’d crawled out of a burning building only to find the rest of the world bombed to rubble.

I fumbled in my pocket till I found the Jack Daniel’s. There was hardly any left. I gazed at the dark hulk of Tolba Island and drank a mouthful then passed it to Kenzie.

She took a sip and coughed. “That’s nasty.”

“Damn straight.” I finished the bottle and set it down then glanced at her white face, the crosshatch of claw marks across her cheeks. “Hey. You okay?”

“Yeah.” She didn’t look at me.

“Did he—”

“No.”

Sleet rattled the dodger’s awning. I looked across black water to where Paswegas waited, lost in night and fog.

“What were you doing?” I finally asked. “That night. When you went down to the harbor.”

From below came the engine’s stuttering roar. The boat rocked and moved forward. Kenzie stared silently into the darkness.

“I just wanted to talk to you,” she said at last. She sounded defiant, but then I saw she was crying. “That was all. I just wanted to talk to someone else. From away.”

“From away. Well, that makes sense.”

“I hate it here.” She kicked out furiously, and the empty whiskey bottle went flying. “I fucking hate it.”

I smiled. “Hold that thought,” I said. “I’m going to help Toby. Here—”

I handed her my camera and the boat hook. “Keep an eye on these, okay?”

I stepped across the icy deck to the bow.

“That lighted buoy’s the first one,” Toby shouted as he hurried toward the cockpit. “After a hundred feet, start looking left—”

I stood in the bow and swept the flashlight’s beam across the water until it picked up the second buoy.

“There!” I yelled.

“Good. Next one’s about three hundred feet, still to the left—”

It was like a dream, the Northern Sky drifting through a world where all color had been burned away; a world of nothing but black water and black sky, with a shifting scrim of gray between and the occasional shaft of black where ledge emerged from the water like an island being born, the flashlight’s beam insubstantial as a white straw flung across the channel. The cold wind made it hard to hear the clanking of the buoys, but Toby kept directing me where to look, and we fell into a kind of restless dance, the flashlight sweeping through the night, the Northern Sky shifting right or left as she bore inexorably away from Tolba Island, the engine’s drone like my own steady breathing. We might have traveled for miles, for hours; I might have fallen asleep, exhausted as I was and no longer able to tell where one world ended and another began, sky and water and stone and blood.

Then Kenzie’s cry cut through the wind like a gull’s.

“ Cass! ”

She pointed behind us, toward Tolba Island.

“That’s his boat!” she shouted. “That’s him!”

Toby peered through the dodger’s window. I stepped to the side of the bow, squinting through the mist. I couldn’t see anything.

But I could hear it—the roar of a powerboat. Kenzie screamed.

“Get below!” commanded Toby. He pushed her toward the companionway. “There’s a radio; see if you can get it to work and put out a Mayday signal. Stay down there till I get you—”

She disappeared down the ladder, and I stumbled into the cockpit.

“Shit.” Toby stared at the silvery shape arrowing across the water. “He’s got Lucien’s Boston Whaler. Thing’s got a twelve horsepower engine, we can’t outrun him.”

The roar grew louder: the boat was a hundred yards off, heading straight at us. Denny stood in the stern by the outboard motor. I couldn’t see clearly through the sleet and fog.

But he could.

“I see you!” His voice rose to a ragged shriek. I swore and turned to Toby.

“What do we do?” I demanded. “He’s got a fucking gun—”

I remembered the flare gun below. As Toby hunched over the tiller, I darted to the companionway and climbed down. Kenzie held the two-way radio and the NOAA band. The boat hook and my camera were on the bench beside her.

“Is that radio working?”

“I don’t know.” She punched a button. I heard a blast of static. “I think so. Maybe.”

“Keep trying.” I flung open the drawer, grabbed the flare gun. As I passed Kenzie I hesitated, then grabbed my camera and climbed back up on deck. Toby stared at me from the cockpit, his face taut. He gestured angrily at the flare gun.

“That’s useless!”

“Not if I nail him.”

The distance between the boats had narrowed to about fifty feet. Denny’s arm dangled limply at his side. He had a gun but showed no sign of using it. His head looked misshapen, his features blackened and smeared across his face like tar. His jaw sagged, and I could see where the flesh had been torn away, like a peeled fruit.

He was smiling.

“I see you,” he cried thickly.

“He’s coming right at us.” I shook my head in disbelief. “Like he’s going to ram us.”

“Look out—” Toby swung the tiller, and the sailboat tacked sharply to the right. “Watch your head!”

I ducked and grabbed the rail as the Boston Whaler shot toward our stern. There was a grinding sound, and the Northern Sky lurched.

Toby’s face went dead white. “He’s going for the rudder—he’s trying to shear it off—”

The outboard’s roar became a furious whine. The Boston Whaler circled then swept toward us again, Denny crouching over the motor.