Elizabeth Hand - Generation Loss

“By his feet.” Toby called to me and pointed. “There’s a plastic container, it’s usually got fuel in it. You only have one flare. See if you can hit it.”

I braced myself against the rail. It was hard for me to take aim with one eye bandaged, but I did my best. Denny straightened to stare at me. His mouth opened in a wordless shout.

“I see you too,” I said, and fired.

There was a low whoosh , and a white ball rocketed toward the Boston Whaler. Around us the world glowed as a bright plume like a meteor’s tail split the sky in two. Denny lifted his face, arms outstretched, his shirt blinding white. The flare plummeted soundlessly to his feet and continued to burn, not fiercely but steadily, while brownish smoke rose around him. I dimly heard Toby behind me, cursing. Then the Northern Sky arced smoothly away from Denny’s boat and began to churn across the reach.

I clung to the rail and stared at Denny. The flare’s light still glowed in the Boston Whaler’s stern, but he made no move to put it out or kick it away from the fuel container, only stood with arms lifted and face tilted to the night, as though welcoming something. I could see the dull glint of the gun in his hand. Then his fingers opened. The gun fell, disappearing into the water. Denny lowered his ruined face until he stared at me then stooped for something at his feet. The flare, I thought.

But then he straightened. His eyes trapped the flare’s dull glow as he shook his head, slowly, sorrowfully, and his mouth split into an anguished smile as he held something out to me, a large, flat, rectangular object that flapped in the freezing wind and billowing smoke. His book.

There was a hiss like air escaping from a valve. Denny’s legs bloomed orange and black.

“Get down!” shouted Toby. “That’s the fuel line!”

A column of flame shot into the air. Denny screamed, a terrible high-pitched sound like a child’s cry, and the engine exploded.

I stared transfixed as gold and argent pinwheels spun from the boat’s stern. Black smoke ballooned and momentarily obscured everything as I grabbed the camera around my neck and clawed off the lens cap. I braced myself against the rail, shielded the lens from sleet, and coughed as oily smoke enveloped me then dispersed, windblown, as Denny burned.

I shot him as he died, his clothes ragged wings and his hair ablaze, his hands beating at the flames as though they were swarms of fiery bees. His face blackened and collapsed; one arm twitched rhythmically as the boat began to dip below the water’s surface; and still he burned, a man like a dancing ember. I pressed the shutter release and angled myself along the rail, coughing as smoke coiled around me and my eye streamed, until a dome of black and gray erupted from the water’s surface and the Boston Whaler disappeared. Gray eddies washed toward us, the stink of diesel and melted fiberglass and charred meat.

The Northern Sky drifted, slowly, its engine a soft drone. As in a dream I replaced the lens cap on my camera, pulled it from my neck, put it in my bag, and shoved it out of the way. I stood against the rail and stared across the black swells.

A life preserver floated a few yards off, yellow nylon line, a clotted white shape that might have been part of the outboard engine: scattered wreckage that was too far off for me to see. Freezing rain beat against my face. It was a moment before I realized I was crying. I wiped at my one good eye, touched the sodden bandage on the other, and gazed back out at the water.

The life preserver had drifted out of sight, but the swells brought other things closer: sheets of oversized paper, some torn but others miraculously intact, or nearly so: Denny’s book, its pages ripped from the homemade binding. I stared in disbelief as a sheet floated past and disintegrated before my eyes, its layers detaching themselves—leaves, hair, green pigment, ochre, albumen, blood, all dissolving into a bright slick upon the surface of the sea then disappearing into flecks of foam and brown kelp. A tiny shard like an arrowhead seemed to crawl across a page floating past. A swell lifted it, and a torn photograph curled from the sheet. I had a glimpse of eyes blurring into mouth and hands, a turtle’s shell.

I gasped and leaned forward with one hand, reaching for a sheet that seemed intact. My fingers closed around one corner, the heavy paper sodden but untorn. Another swell nearly tugged the sheet from my grasp. I stretched out my other hand to grab it, winced as my hand closed on it and my legs suddenly shot out from under me. My boots slid across the icy deck as I pitched forward, and overboard.

The water slammed me like a wall. My mouth opened to scream, and I kicked out frantically as I sank. Frigid water filled my mouth and nostrils. I kicked again, frantic, pinioned by utter darkness. Freezing water crushed me; I saw nothing, felt nothing but that terrible weight and then the shock of light, air, my name.

“ Cass! Cass! ”

I gasped then choked as air filled my lungs, felt a dull pressure against my cheek. Something glinted then struck me again, on the shoulder this time. The boat hook. I tried to grab it but my hands were numb, then dimly saw a figure reaching from the stern. Kenzie.

“Hang on!” she shouted.

Another shape appeared behind her. “We got you, Cass, hang on there—”

Toby grabbed me by the shoulders as Kenzie dug the boat hook beneath my arm. Together they pulled me on board. I knelt, puking up sea water, as Toby draped a blanket around me.

“Come on, girl, let’s get you below. Come on,” he urged. “You’re gonna freeze to death.”

He half-carried me below deck, giving instructions to Kenzie beside us. “Try to get her warm, whatever you do keep her warm—”

Kenzie forced me onto one of the bunks and peeled off my clothes, wrapped me in more blankets, then lay beside me. Most of the grime was gone from her wan face, and she’d put on one of Toby’s heavy sweaters over her filthy sweatshirt.

“Are you okay?” she whispered.

I nodded but said nothing. The two of us lay there in silence, listening as Toby spoke calmly into the radio and then climbed back up on deck.

When he was gone, the cabin seemed to contract around us. The lamp guttered to a dull glow as I listened to the creak of wood, a noise like someone scratching at the hull. The hiss of sleet sounded like my name. After a while Kenzie and I sat up, still without speaking. We crouched side by side on the bunk, with Toby’s worn blankets wrapped around us and his voice echoing faintly from above, and stared out the porthole into the darkness until the first lights of Burnt Harbor shone through the night.

We were met by John Stone and Jeff Hakkala, two ambulances and a number of state troopers. A crowd had already gathered outside the Good Tern. I recognized Robert and the two guys who’d set upon me earlier; also Merrill Libby; Everett Moss, the harbormaster; and a small white TV van, headlights blazing through the fog.

“My camera,” I said.

Toby gave me a funny look.

“It’s safe,” he said. “I put it below. Out of sight,” he added.

I swore as someone started running toward us from the news van.

Toby put his arm around me and walked me toward the ambulance. When the reporter drew up beside us, Toby shook his head fiercely.

“Can’t you see this lady’s injured?”

“That ain’t no lady,” a voice yelled as the reporter fell back into the crowd.

I glanced over to see Robert standing beside Kenzie and her father. He grinned at me, tongue stud glinting in the headlight, then turned away.

At Paswegas County Hospital, Kenzie was examined and treated for trauma and poisoning; there was no sign of sexual assault. My arm was cleaned and bandaged. I got fifteen stitches and a temporary eye-patch.