Nate Kenyon - Day One

Hawke gave Thomas a granola bar from the bag. When he turned back, Robin was shaking, her shoulders moving in the dark. “He wouldn’t stop,” she said. “He… just kept coming.”

Hawke couldn’t tell if she was talking to him or to herself. He started the engine and swung the dinghy back out into the Hudson. Into the black. The open water was terrifying without the normal lights of Hoboken washing over it. Fires still burned in Manhattan, but they had begun to die out, and a sickly orange glow seemed to drift with the wind, a core of light at the center of the cluster of buildings. Doe had kept the power on there, gathering her strength, perhaps waiting until she had evolved into something else, something even more powerful. He had the sense that he was watching the birth of an entirely new species, one that could mean the end of humanity.

New York as they once knew it, and perhaps the entire United States of America—maybe the world—was gone.

But for now, at least, there had to be others still alive. There had to be a way to regain control. Cuttyhunk Island was probably two hundred miles away, impossible to reach in the dinghy. Hawke had realized that before they left the apartment. But he had a plan: maybe not the best one, but it gave them a chance. His friend and editor, Nathan Brady, had an old Bayliner Encounter he called the Gypsy, a twenty-nine-foot sport-fishing boat with an enclosed cabin that slept four. Old enough to be without any kind of Internet connection or computer chip. He’d taken Hawke out on it several times and it was quickly evident that Brady used it more for drinking and sitting in the sun than catching his dinner, but they’d had a decent enough time talking about Hawke’s next project, back when he was still working at the Times. It seemed like a lifetime ago.

Brady kept the boat at a marina in Jersey City, less then three miles away.

Hawke motored the dinghy close along the shore, where occasional small fires sputtered and gave him enough light to navigate. A few minutes later, the moon broke through the layer of smoke and its pale glow washed over the glassy surface of the water. Hawke sat next to Robin and worked the rudder, keeping them moving as quickly as he dared.

He thought about the baby who would come, and the challenge of delivering it alone. He thought about keeping hidden for long enough that it would matter. And something else nagged at him and wouldn’t let go. Getting away was a little too easy, when all was said and done. If Doe had really wanted him dead, Hawke thought, she would have done it. The series of missile attacks had missed him, hitting locations where he had been only moments before. Almost as if she’d been herding him forward, pushing him to the docks and away from the city.

Perhaps, he thought, he was more valuable to her alive and at large, a supposed leader of the group that had struck at the heart of America. It would keep the authorities focused on something and provide a welcome distraction while she determined the best way forward. They would keep the power on, keep her running silently in the background and try to rebuild, blissfully unaware of the consequences.

And then, when she had figured out how to survive without the need of a single human life, she would eliminate them all.

To beat a machine at this game, you’ll have to act unpredictably. She would expect him to go underground, try to disappear. Protect himself and his family. Hawke thought about how he might blow the lid off this story. There had to be a way. Word of mouth, hand-printed flyers. Shortwave radios. These things still existed, tried-and-true means to communicate that Doe couldn’t easily manipulate to serve her needs. He thought about Rick. Maybe Doe had faked that footage, too. And Brady, if he was still alive. A network Hawke might be able to tap, let the story take root and grow. If they could convince the world to cut off all sources of power, to eliminate any remaining devices where she might hibernate.

He felt something warm touch his hand; Robin’s fingers entwined with his own. Her flesh tingled like an electric shock. It would take time, but he hoped she would recover. In the dark, with the wind rippling his clothes and the smell of smoke drifting over him, he could almost believe it was possible. They could make it; they could survive.

But first, the Bayliner. He knew Brady kept the key in a small ceramic cup under the boat’s kitchen sink.

If they could get going quickly enough, they might be able to make it most of the way to Cuttyhunk Island before dawn.

THE ISLAND WAS AN ENIGMA. It appeared abandoned, and yet it wasn’t; the rocky shoreline seemed hostile as the waves crashed and broke against it, but beyond that cold, battered, dead shore, there was life.

It looked like the last place on the planet where a revolution would begin.

Hawke had been keeping to the lower level of the small, dusty cottage during daylight hours, and he made sure Robin and Thomas did, too. The windows were covered and there was no way to see inside. They couldn’t risk being spotted by the spy satellites that still orbited the Earth with lenses sharp enough to pick up facial structure and map it to FBI databases in the cloud. It was likely Doe would feed that to the authorities, or strike against him herself. He couldn’t test his theory that she still needed him alive, if indeed that had ever been the case; she might have grown strong enough now that she would simply eliminate him.

There were seven others on the island with them.

When they arrived that first day, dawn had already broken in the east. They needed to find shelter quickly. Hawke anchored Brady’s boat off the rocky beach and took Robin and Thomas in the dinghy to the beach near West End Pond. Within moments of their hitting the sand, a man met them onshore. He was a lobsterman from up the coast who had been visiting a friend when the reports of an attack started to come over the TV, and he had remained there while most of the other inhabitants of Cuttyhunk Island had fled for the mainland.

His name was Ernesto, and his friend’s name was Samantha. She owned a summer cottage on the harbor side of the island. They had holed up inside all day and night, but he had taken her old truck down to the far shore looking for boat lights as the power had cut out and the news reports from Dartmouth had abruptly gone silent.

Ernesto was friendly, and he didn’t ask a lot of questions. He threw their bags in the back of the truck and took them to Hawke’s aunt’s place, which was at the end of a dead-end dirt road about half a mile from what stood for the center of town. There was no sign of Hawke’s aunt, but he hadn’t expected to find her there. She had a permanent home in St. Louis and was either dead or focused on trying to survive where she was. Getting to Cuttyhunk would be the least of her worries, if she had survived at all.

Ernesto promised to return later with supplies. Hawke couldn’t turn him down. The truck was too old to be tracked and Ernesto didn’t own a cell phone, and Hawke knew they were going to need help. This man was about the best bet they had. The cottage had been boarded up and abandoned. Hawke managed to get the water running, but there was no food, and mice had made nests in the mattresses and chewed the wiring and insulation to shreds. There was a generator, but no gas, and two upper windows were broken.

But the roof was intact and the inside was dry. They had water to drink and bathe in, and a place to regroup. It was enough, for now.

Later that afternoon, Ernesto returned, true to his word, and brought canned goods and candles, and Hawke spent three hours relating as much of his story as he dared, leaving out his real name. He couldn’t risk the chance that Ernesto had heard a report about him being a fugitive from justice. There was nobody left to arrest him on the island, but a man like Ernesto might decide to take the law into his own hands.