Читать книгу The Ark - Laura Nolen Liddell - Страница 12

I made it to Calais, Maine, in record time, not that I knew much about what constituted regular time. Maine wasn’t the type of place where girls like me tended to take road trips. Every so often, I’d think about how much time I had left, before the gate closed, and the blood would pull away from the tips of my fingers, leaving them slightly blue.

Whenever I passed a town, or a deserted shopping mall, I tried to fit it in my head that in a few hours, they wouldn’t exist anymore. They’d be gone. Space debris.

I couldn’t picture it, no matter how hard I tried. There were no cars on the road, and most of the cops were up in space already, so I pretty much floored it the whole way. As soon as I got to Calais, however, traffic materialized out of nowhere, and I screeched to a stop. I was still seventy-five miles from the launch site in Saint John.

It took me a good ten minutes to realize that traffic was going nowhere. Everyone on this side of the continent wanted to be in Saint John right now, including me. A lot of people, like Meghan, had chosen to spend their remaining hours in the comfort of their home. People who had no shot at getting on board, due to age or disability. But a lot of people would try to get on the OPT at the last minute, whether or not they had a ticket. People like me. And the OPT wouldn’t let them, and their cars would stay in the road, and I would never get there.

I needed a plan B. I jerked the wheel to the right and steered the car through the shoulder and toward the nearest exit ramp, which was also blocked. “Car!” I shouted, activating the system.

“Good afternoon.” The reply was cold, even for a robot.

“Is there an airport nearby?”

“You are four miles from Saint Stephen Airport.”

“Are there any planes there?”

“The airport is currently out of service.” That made sense. Under the Treaty, every airplane on Earth was grounded all week. Hijacking and piloting an abandoned airplane was above my pay grade, so I needed another tack. “What about the harbor?”

“You are one half-mile from the harbor. An international edict prevents navigation of waterways within one hundred miles of Saint John, New Brunswick.”

“Yeah, well, it’s not like there’s anyone left to stop me.” I turned east and pressed the accelerator into the floorboard, sending the car flying over a curb and through a vacant parking lot.

“You may steer the car away from the port now.”

“No chance of that.” I was about four feet from a mostly empty side street, and I felt a tiny thrill of adrenaline as I pressed the accelerator harder. The electric engine snapped gently at the sudden velocity, then… clicked off. My chest slammed into my seatbelt.

“What the heck, car!”

“Your criminal intent is apparent. Car is powering down. Goodbye.”

So the cars on the road weren’t just stuck in traffic. They had probably powered down, too, at some point nearer the launch site. Awesome.

I slipped off my heels and shoved them into the satchel. Then I grabbed what was left of the food and a coat from the back seat and sprinted toward the water for all I was worth. I would have to try my luck with the boats.

My nylons plucked against the blacktop in the first few paces, so that by the time I reached the end of the block, they were sporting gaping holes on the soles of my feet. This was for the birds. Seriously, did these things serve any purpose at all? I paused just long enough to poke my feet through the holes and bunch the shredded ends around my ankles. That would have to do. I had a lot of tricks up my sleeve, but running in heels wasn’t one of them.

I was within a few blocks of the water when the air around me seemed to change subtly. At first, I couldn’t figure out what was different. I passed a man on a bench, leaning on a cane, then a group of people sitting in a circle on a big patch of grass. Someone had a guitar out, and several in the group were holding hands. I assumed they were around college age, but when I got closer, I saw that they were families. Old and young, huddled together. Small children ran in circles at the center of the cluster. No one so much as glanced at me as I sprinted by, and that was what had changed. I was no longer an outcast to be stared at, eyes narrowed. No one was judging me. I might as well have been invisible. Death had made us all equals.

I hustled past an antique store full of digital clocks, the old-fashioned kind that people used to plug into their walls or set out on a desk or a nightstand. Every clock faced the outside, so that the window was full of green and red square-shaped numbers, all reading 9:35 p.m. That’s also when I realized that every light in town was on. Of course. No one was concerned about saving electricity anymore.

Next was a convenience store with a cardboard sign taped on the window: “Take what you need.” Its fluorescent lights illuminated empty shelves. When the water of the harbor glinted into view, I started seeing restaurants. Every chair was occupied. I slowed my pace in spite of myself, trying to take in every aspect of the scene. The woman who caught my attention was draped over a chair, her long black gown spread out over the cheap red and brown carpet. She wore a diamond necklace and matching earrings. Also at her table were a teenage boy wearing a collared shirt and a man in shorts and flip flops.

The dining room was filled with tableaus as diverse as hers. There was a lot of wine, and a single man ran among the tables with food and bottles of liquor. He wore a smile.

A group of six sitting around a table for four waved at me, beckoning me to join them. The woman—I assumed she was the mother—slid to the side of her seat, indicating that I could share it with her. I didn’t even know I had stopped running. I was just standing at the window, taking it all in.

I almost joined her. I almost sat among this family of strangers and whiled away my remaining hours of life basking in their companionship, their acceptance. Maybe I would even tell them the truth about my life: that I had failed, in every possible way, that my family could never love me, that they’d left me to die in a prison commissary. I glanced at one of the boys at their table and thought that I would at least tell them about West, but not that he hadn’t come for me. I couldn’t tell anyone about that.

But I wasn’t one of them. I didn’t belong with their family. As much as I longed to fit into a group like that, it wasn’t in me. Maybe I would make it onto the OPT, and maybe I would die when the meteor struck. Maybe I would get all the way to the Ark, but not make it inside. Then I would die in space, alone. But I could never sit in a restaurant, drinking wine, and wait for fate to take me. One way or another, I was going to Saint John.

The harbor was clean and dark, and it smelled like fish and saltwater. A faint steam rose from the tips of the small waves, which were painted silver in the moonlight and dancing under the lights from the harbor. There were several larger boats and a few fishing rigs docked along a series of short piers. Glancing around, I climbed to the tallest point I could—a set of concrete steps leading to an American flag—and began to scan the gently bobbing boats. Most would have government-issue GPS systems and wouldn’t run. After checking the first few rows, I started to panic, just a little.

Then I saw it. It was about the size of a ski boat and mostly white, with plenty of peeling paint. The word “Bandito” scrolled across the bow in elegant script. It had to be at least twenty-five years old, before they started installing GPS on everything that moved. It was perfect.

It was also occupied. A man stood along the pier, pulling a length of rope hand over fist. Despite the slight chill in the summer air, he was stripped to the waist, and his skin appeared tanned in the half-light.

He turned to me as soon as the dock bobbled with my weight, and I raised my eyebrows.

“You’re Trin Lector.” I’d seen all his movies. His latest, about a group of renegade astronauts sent to uncover a plot to destroy the International Space Station, had been screened in the detention center right after the news about the meteor broke. It had broken every box office record ever, and it hadn’t even been that good, at least in my opinion. Not like his earlier stuff, anyway. But people flocked to anything involving spaceships these days.

The movie industry imploded after that, like everything else, but the demand for movies was higher than ever. No one cared about money. Executives quit. Studios collapsed. But the actors kept acting, and the writers kept writing. They said they were doing it for the fans, but I knew better. Immortality had never been more appealing, more urgent.

The most famous movie star in the world snorted at me. “No autographs.”

So he was a jerk. A jerk with a boat, though, so I couldn’t respond in kind. “No. I mean, sure. I am a fan, though.”

“Great.”

A cigarette dangled from his lips, and for an instant, I just stared. I hadn’t seen a real, lit cigarette since right after my first stint in detention, when Kip had given me one as a welcome home present. This guy must have saved up a pretty big supply when they went off the market fifteen years ago. That, or he’d only saved the one.

“Get going. I’m not taking any passengers.” His tone was less strained than before. He was used to being stared at.

“Just a couple hours. I need to get to—”

“Saint John. Yeah. You’re the first to ask.” The sarcasm brought the edge back to his voice. He turned to the rope.

“You can just drop me off and keep going wherever you’re going.”

“Fine idea. I don’t plan on getting shot, even if it’s all the same now. I’m going out to the middle of the ocean to meet the Pinball head on.”

“They’re guarding the harbor there?”

He sighed and made a show of stopping his work to face me. “They’re guarding everything. Can you blame them?” His forehead relaxed slightly as he took another drag. I watched, fascinated, as the tip of the cigarette glowed bright orange, then white, as he sucked in. “Your best bet is to turn back and find a group to join. Make some friends.” He stumbled back a little, and I saw that he had been drinking.

“I don’t need friends. I need a ride to Saint John.”

He grunted. “Wouldn’t do you any good anyway. You gotta have a starpass to set foot in town, much less get to the gate. Only cops left on earth are the ones guarding the transport cities.”

“I have a starpass.”

“And I got a rocket right here in my pocket.” It was a line from the movie about the astronauts. I suppressed the urge to roll my eyes, and he slung the rope into the boat, swaying more than the action required.

“I’m serious. Look.” I dug into my shirt and pried the pass from my skin. I held it up and walked toward him, yanking Band-Aids off its corners and flicking them into the water along the way.

“Let me see that.”

I pulled my arm back. “Let me on the boat.”

He threw me a look I couldn’t read, then suddenly shrugged. “Worth a shot. All aboard.”

My satchel and food bag were on the floor of the boat in the next second, and I followed not a moment later. “Thank you. Thank you so much,” I said, straightening. “You have no idea—”

“Alright, alright.” Trin clambered into the front of the boat as I took my seat next to the inboard motor. “Let’s see the pass.”

“Here.” I held it toward his face.

He made a grab for it, but he was good and drunk, and I jerked it back with room to spare. “I’ll hang on to it.”

“Fine, fine,” he muttered into the dashboard. The engine sputtered to life, and I realized the boat ran on gasoline. This was old school. We went fast, much faster than I expected. The harbor shrank into the distance, and the light from the boat showed grass on both sides of the waterway. I was glad I’d brought the shapeless coat from the back seat of Meghan’s car. I slid it over my shoulders, careful to maintain an iron grip on the starpass. I wished I hadn’t tossed away the Band-Aids. Hands were not the most reliable way to keep up with stuff.

When the boat skimmed past the last mounds of earth and into the open water, I allowed myself to smile. As I expected, Trin swerved us to the left, and we swept north up the coast of Maine.

My moment of relief came crashing down an instant later when the engine died. I squinted at the actor, who was barely visible in the light from the dashboard. I couldn’t see his left hand, but his right slipped something small and metal into the pocket of his shorts. The boat key.

When he turned around, I imagined the gun in his hand before I saw it.

“Woah. Sit back down,” he said. “That’s right. Now just hand over that pass.”

“You have got to be kidding me. There’s no way they’ll let you on the transport. They’re gonna know you’re over forty.”

“We’ll see about that,” he said, in a tone that implied that he usually got what he wanted. “Give it here. Your bags, too.” Up close, his hands were enormous. His fingers were thicker than the barrel of the gun. They stretched toward my face like wooden stumps.

I drew a ragged breath and pretended to fumble for the pass. “Please don’t do this.” My breath came a little harder, and shorter.

He was unmoved. “Now.”

“Okay. Okay, I’m just—here.” I let my voice shake and held the pass toward him. His red-rimmed eyes were totally focused on that shiny blue card. When those wooden fingers were inches away, I dropped the pass and yanked them, using his weight to swing myself up to a standing position.

He fell forward, and I shoved my body against the side of the boat. The gun went off, and my heart squeezed. Did the bullet hit the motor behind me?

His right elbow slammed into my face with unexpected force, and my field of vision swung upward, toward the stars. It occurred to me, too late, that he’d probably had combat training for half the movies he’d starred in. I found myself leaning backward over the side of the boat, jerking my head away from the choppy surface of the water.

I grabbed the back of his neck just as he cocked the gun a second time, a fact I barely registered before my mouth connected to his skin. I bit down, suppressing the urge to gag. He crumpled, but only for an instant.

It was all I needed. I hit him in the side of the head as hard as I could, then reached for his pistol arm. Using every ounce of strength I possessed, I flung him into the side of the boat.

He tottered for a sickening moment, and I ducked and reached for his ankles. Above me, the gun went off a second time. I pulled his legs up while simultaneously shoving my head into his sternum, and Trin Lector went over the side of the boat.

With the boat key still in his pocket.

I figured I had less than a minute before he got back on board, gun in hand. Although his boat was old school, the gun was a more recent design. It would fire despite being wet.

Luckily for me, I didn’t need that much time. I yanked the cover off the keyswitch and grappled for the wires in the darkness. I threw the switch for the dash lights and studied the wad of wires in my hand. Then I reached for a razor blade.

Blast.

My razor blades. I’d left them in Meghan’s bathroom. Not good, Char. Not good.

I forced myself to block out the sound of the splashing nearing the back of the boat and threw down the lid of the glove compartment, frantically tossing its contents onto the seat. Surely he kept a knife in here somewhere.

A glint of red the size of my thumb caught my eye. A pocketknife. Brilliant.

Within seconds I had stripped every wire I had uncovered. I had never hotwired a boat before, but the rules were always the same when there was no computer involved. Find the positive, connect it to the negative, and touch that to the starter wire. Problem was, before the government standardized this stuff, every manufacturer used different colors for the wires.

My hands did not shake even as the boat pitched backward very slightly, signaling that Trin had reached the back of the boat and was hoisting himself up. I tried combo after combo, steady as a cat. It did not pay to have shaky hands when the game was playing out.

“Hold it right there.”

I’ll never know why he didn’t just shoot first. Maybe he had lost the key in the water, and didn’t know how to hotwire the boat without me. Or maybe there was some shred of him that couldn’t shoot another person in cold blood, even drunk. Even when the stakes were as high as they were that night.

I tried not to wonder which it was.

But he didn’t shoot. Instead, he said, “Hold it right there,” like we were in a movie, and that was all the time I needed. The motor growled to life, and I pressed the throttle into first position. An instant later, the engine compressed, and it was all over.

I slammed the throttle fully open. The boat jerked forward, and the sound of his splash was drowned in the roar of the motor.

I don’t know if he caught in the blades or hit the water clean. I did not look behind me.