Nate Kenyon - Day One

But Ernesto had his own checkered past, as he explained to them, and he was no friend to law enforcement. Hawke finally decided to trust him with more information. Ernesto didn’t seem all that surprised when Hawke explained most of what he knew about Jane Doe and Eclipse, saying with a half-serious smile that he’d always figured it was only a matter of time until the machines took over. He didn’t much care for technology, he said, never had. He lived his life the old-fashioned way.

In his prior life, Hawke might have labeled Ernesto a paranoid dinosaur; now, he thought, men like that might be the last survivors.

That night, their first on the island, Hawke took the dinghy back out to Brady’s boat under cover of darkness and used cans of old paint he’d found in his aunt’s shed to paint over the hull identification number and obscure the name on the stern. He had considered shooting holes in the hull to sink it, but there were enough old Bayliners in the world to keep this one hidden in plain sight, he thought. Besides, they might need it again.

Ernesto’s friend Samantha, whom they met on the second night, was a thin blonde of about forty with a husky smoker’s voice and a tendency to curse like a sailor, and she wasn’t inclined to ask many questions. Upon further observation, she and Ernesto appeared to be more than friends, but since they didn’t volunteer more information, Hawke didn’t ask for details. She was friendly enough and shared her stock of food willingly; the small Cuttyhunk country store was packed with supplies, and nobody was around to protest when they took what they needed.

At night they listened to a shortwave radio Ernesto had found while checking out one of the abandoned houses on the other side of town; they heard intermittent reports of chaos across the country. Signals appeared to be frequently blocked, but by using higher frequencies and changing them regularly broadcasters kept finding a way through. It appeared that the contagion, some kind of computer supervirus, had spread throughout the world, shutting down communications networks, immobilizing computers and most machines with a Web connection of any kind. It was reported that the virus had been unleashed by the hacker group Anonymous. Authorities were scrambling to find a way to respond to the threat.

When Hawke’s name was mentioned in a breaking news bulletin, Ernesto and Samantha barely seemed to react. To them, he was John Siegel from western Massachusetts. They had no reason to think anything else.

They settled in as best they could. Robin remained distant at first, but during the course of long days with little to do she began to open up. Hawke listened to her as she described the attack, haltingly at first, and then everything spilling out: It had happened just like he’d imagined, Lowry shouting about Thomas and then kicking the door down as Robin scrambled for a butcher knife from the kitchen, running through the hallway to hide in the bedroom. Thomas’s screams had continued, but Lowry had seemed surprised at the force of her attack. Perhaps, in his mind, she was the helpless little girl in the photograph from the basement. He had died with little more than a gurgle as his life bled out onto the carpet.

Thomas had witnessed everything.

If Thomas was traumatized, it didn’t show on the surface. But the boy seemed different. He was more talkative, animated, his eyes bright and inquisitive. He explored every inch of the house in the first few hours, Hawke trailing behind him, making sure he didn’t get into anything dangerous. Thomas would need to deal with what he had seen eventually, but for now, Hawke was content to let him absorb his new surroundings and radically altered life. The world was different now, too, and Thomas would have to deal with that. They all would.

Gradually, Hawke learned more details. They listened to the shortwave as much as possible and discovered a world on the brink of a new war. Two opposing factions appeared to be battling for prominence, and two separate histories about what had gone down were emerging.

Anonymous was gaining its own voice.

During the course of the next two weeks, Hawke learned of the five others still living on the island, in addition to Ernesto and Samantha: a seventy-nine-year-old man who couldn’t make it to the mainland on his own, a woman who had taught at the small schoolhouse and her eight-year-old son, and two gay men who had rented a cottage for the summer and had decided they were better off staying there while the rest of the country got its act together.

Not much of an army. But it would have to do.

Cuttyhunk Island was a couple of miles long in total, and the walk to the center of town was easy enough. Hawke left the house as dusk fell, taking Bayberry Hill Road to Bayview, which would take him past the Cuttyhunk corner store and onto Gosnold.

The sky was completely clear for the first time since they had landed here. Hawke looked up at the stars, saw what looked like winking pinpricks of light, imagined satellites wheeling through space, aiming their cameras down on him. He shivered. Doe was up there, watching. One false move and everything he had begun to build would unravel. Their life was fragile, their chances remote. But right now, it was all they had, and he was determined not to go down without a fight.

The harbormaster station was located on a finger of land at the end of Gosnold, with a dock that stuck out into Cuttyhunk Pond. There was direct access to the harbor, but that wasn’t what Hawke had come here for tonight. A faint glow illuminated the basement windows at the station. He reached the door and entered quickly, following the sound of voices to the flight of steps that led down into the flickering gloom.

They were all there, gathered around ghostly shapes covered with sheets: Ernesto and Sam, Donald Madison, Kent and Alan, Melissa and her son, Ryan. Other than Robin, who had remained at home with a sleeping Thomas, this represented the entire population of Cuttyhunk. Donald, the seventy-nine-year-old, had promised to show Hawke something, and they had all waited for him to begin.

A week earlier, Hawke had gone to Ernesto and Sam’s house, where he had proceeded to tell the true story about what had occurred in New York. The reports on the radio had convinced him to do it; if what he suspected was true, he would need all the help he could get. Although Sam seemed to reserve judgment, Ernesto bought it all immediately and rounded up the others who were left on the island for a meeting.

Which had led to this.

Hawke stepped into the light from the candles, looking around the basement at the faces, all focused on him. He didn’t see any hostility here; people were long past that now. You had to place your bets on those you could trust, and hope you were right.

Two channels on the shortwave had begun to offer an alternative explanation for the chaos. Anonymous had started firing back. Hawke recognized Rick’s methods in the reports and had become convinced that his friend was still alive, still operating his network as best he could and fighting Doe tooth and nail for what remained of the nation’s trust.

They couldn’t communicate using the regular channels, but Hawke was determined to find another way.

“Where is it?” he said to Donald Madison. The old man had told him about this place just yesterday, and what it contained. The building had been there for many years, and before it had become the harbormaster station it had served as the location of the only newspaper that had ever existed on Cuttyhunk.

Madison hobbled forward to the largest of the shrouded humps. He slipped off the sheet, coughing loudly as a cloud of dust rose up in the candlelight. An ancient, oily printing press stood before them, the kind with two large wheels and gears and metal feeders that caught the long sheets of paper and fed them through to the other side. R. Hoe & Company, New York was stamped in the metal along one side.