Extinction (34 page)

Meyer was about to climb up and slam the submersible door — knocking Piper out to keep her from preventing it, if he had to — when he heard the sounds.
 

The cannibals seemed to hear it, too, even over their shouting and deafening engines. A one-two punch, two events in seconds. They shouted; they drove forward and they ran; they threw their spears and brandished their blades. But almost immediately afterward there came the cacophonous riot of a levy breaking, like the roar of an oncoming train.
 

They all looked up, assaulted and assaulters alike. And when they saw it, the chase stopped mattering. Reaching the sub was all that mattered in the world.
 

“Meyer!”
Piper shouted.
 

His paralysis wouldn’t have broken in time. It happened too fast. But then Kindred was against him, shoving Meyer like stubborn luggage, pushing him against the submersible’s side, up the short length of ladder. Only a few seconds had passed, but no human seeing what they saw could have moved before the shock became fear became flight because fight wasn’t possible.
 

But Kindred wasn’t human.

“Move!”

No hesitation. No pause. No shock, just logical recognition. The space between Kindred and Meyer’s decision to board the sub after all (the others soon wouldn’t need defending) and the cannibals’ decision to give chase was only a second or two at most, but it was enough.
 

Piper grabbed Meyer at the shoulders and pulled hard, inverting him as he made his way inside, dropping him headfirst to the deck. Kindred followed, trying to climb in properly, finding himself unable as the clans turned and came at them. They almost had him; Kindred tried to kick one in the face, and the green-painted man grabbed it. But then Piper had his other leg, dragging him down, almost racking his head. Kindred got his leg free and kicked
hard
, the man’s nose splintering underfoot like the crunch of a smashed cockroach.

Peers was at one of the portholes, gaping out. And he said,
“Oh, fuuuu — ”

Water hit them, and the submersible, meant for calm exploration, took off like a rocket. In an instant their pursuers were gone and had become their own problem while Meyer, Kindred, Peers, Piper, Lila, and even the big obedient dog faced a new one.
 

They were weightless, turning end for end in the water. Meyer felt the sub hitch and jerk sideways as they struck something, hearing a crack that he hoped wasn’t vital. But it could have been anything. There was — or there
had been
— an array of delicate-looking instruments to the sub’s stern. They could be for communication; they could be for navigation; they could be for their goddamned
air
for all anyone in the sub knew. Whatever they were, Meyer hoped they weren’t essential to survival. Because Piper had already shouted that they had a bevy of supplies including food, but he doubted even a bonus cache of phones would let them talk to anyone if an antenna was supposed to be necessary.
 

He couldn’t get his bearings enough to be sick. For a long time, the world was just limbs and equipment and the sub’s padding-wrapped surfaces. And thank God for those; Meyer was only dimly aware as they rolled of striking one and then another like balls in a hopper. He felt a sharp but not particularly painful bang to his temple; it felt like pressure and confusion. One leg was caught in something he thought might be a bunk, and in the space of a long second he had time to wonder if it’d stay trapped and break as the sub whipped around.
 

An endless time later the chaos stopped, and Meyer found himself on the floor, staring into a pool of vomit that was probably his own. He wasn’t alone; Piper and Peers were both retching in the corner. The air inside was hot; it smelled like acid and burning and adrenaline. He hadn’t yet found his equilibrium; he nearly fell as he stood. His head hurt. He seemed to recall smashing it on something. Although he didn’t have it as bad as Peers — the man was bleeding from both mouth and nose. Piper was shaking out one arm, bending it, seeming to wonder if it was broken. Lila was caked with blood.
 

“Is everyone okay?” Piper asked.
 

Mumbles filled the sub.
 

“Answer me!” She exhaled, seeming to gather herself. “Lila.”

“I feel sick.”

“Anything broken?”
 

“I don’t know.”

“Meyer?”
 

“I hit my head. But I think I’m okay.”
 

“Peers? Are you … ?” She looked him over, watching his face smear with blood as he tried to wipe it away, the flow not stopping.

“I bit my tug,” he mumbled, barely comprehensible. “And I hit my node.” He nodded as if trying to convince himself. “I’d be okay,” he flubbed.
 

“Kindred?”
 

“I think we’re all okay, Piper,” Meyer said.
 

Nocturne barked as if in support. He looked unharmed, and Meyer noticed he’d somehow become tangled in blankets. Built-in doggie bed and shock-absorption system all in one.
 

“Kindred?”
 

“He’s okay, Piper. We’re all okay.”
 

Piper turned to Meyer.
 

“You sure you’re fine?”
 

“Yes.”
 

“Absolutely
certain?”
 

“Yes.”
 

Piper slapped him very hard. His skin stung.
 

“I told you to get on the sub. I told you.”
 

Meyer rubbed the spot, meeting her glare. “Someone had to keep them from getting to you before you could launch.”
 

“How did that work out?”
 

“I don’t know. Have you been eaten?”
 

“Fuck you, Meyer. You don’t always know best. You don’t always need to think of yourself!”
 

“I was trying to help
you!”
 

“We couldn’t leave without you! Don’t you get that?”
 

“If you weren’t so goddamn stubborn, you sure
should
have. You’d have been screwed if that wave hadn’t come. It was supposed to be the difference between three of you surviving instead of none of us.” That made Meyer wonder, and his eyes went to the porthole to see what the surface looked like and where they’d ended up.

“No, I mean … ” She sighed. “Tell him, Peers.”
 

Peers turned around, said nothing, and threw up in the corner.
 

“You survive,” Piper said.
 

“Thank you.”
 

“No. You don’t understand.
You survive.
At least one of you, anyway.” She looked at Kindred, rubbing his arm. “Peers was telling us. The Mullah know all about this. It’s happened over and over.”
 

“Good for the Mullah.”
 

Piper looked like she might hit him again. She was that furious, and Meyer didn’t understand why.
 

“You survive.
No matter what, Meyer Dempsey makes it. Do you understand? If you want to protect us, stay with us. Then maybe
we’ll
survive, too.”
 

Meyer didn’t understand.
He survived?
What kind of nonsense proclamation was that? What loose balls in his usually kooky wife had recent events finally knocked loose?
 

He opened his mouth but had no idea what to say. Should he apologize for some weird metaphysical discourtesy? Should he ask questions? She was speaking about it all as if it should be obvious, but she’d been doing the same since Cameron died. Maybe she’d finally tipped. Or maybe — and this, he didn’t like to consider — she was right, and he’d almost done something terribly wrong and nearly killed them all.
 

Except for himself and possibly Kindred, of course. Because
he survived
.
 

“Piper … ”
 

“Hody sit,” Peers said, speaking around his wounded tongue. “Look ad dis.”
 

Piper gave him a final glance then moved to the portal.
 

Meyer put his face to the thick glass. They were bobbing along the surface of what looked like an endless ocean. He couldn’t see the dock or inlet. Only water, as far as the eye could see.

“Bad news,” said Kindred from behind them. “We’ve got no power. None at all.” Meyer turned. Kindred flicked the caged light ahead, somehow intact, lit up like a contradiction. “These seem to be solar. But that’s all we have.”
 

Meyer moved to the sub’s center, tested its stability by rocking back and forth while grasping the ladder, and then, satisfied that he wouldn’t tip them, reached up to open the hatch. Once up, Meyer realized he could see some features invisible from below: one of the other subs, presumably vacant, off in one of the otherwise featureless directions. In the other, a distant mountain that remained above water. And worlds of debris.
 

On the sub’s rear was a sheared-away stub of metal: the communications/navigation/whatever array, broken off as anticipated.
 

“Bad news, Piper,” he said, surveying the open water. “I think Plan A to hook up with the other viceroys is off the table.”
 

Nobody answered.
 

“Piper?”
 

Then her voice came up, quiet and tentative.

“Meyer? What’s this?”

CHAPTER 41

The wave hit without mercy.
 

Carl watched it bombard the bridge’s right side window. The ship was titanic, meant for hauling something — Carl had no idea what — across the open sea. He barely had a clue how to enter the thing, let alone find the steering wheel, or have any clue what it did beyond moving left and right. Carl couldn’t swim, had never been on a boat, and was frankly more terrified of open water than aliens eating his brain. That’s why facing the Titans and shuttles at the gate had felt so easy. If they killed him and all the folks who’d run along behind him, so what?
 

But now Carl was reminded of why this had been such a terrible idea.
 

The system of docks at the port was long and complex. Here, where the oceangoing vessels were harbored, docks were sprawling concrete piers. But out on a jut were smaller concrete piers, wooden piers, and a spider’s web of dinky slips for rich people’s pleasure craft and indigents’ fishing skiffs.
 

Carl watched the wave as it propagated toward them, seeing it crest, ripping the everyman’s piers from the bottom like tearing carpet from the floor. Wood broke apart like a house of matchsticks. Time froze as Carl watched in horror, as Lawrence and the lady that might be his wife stood just behind as if they thought he could protect them. He watched the water rise from flooded but mostly flat to a ski slope, pulling pillars from the inlet’s bed like rotten teeth. The boats came with it. They looked like a giant’s bathtub toys, then the wave rolled and crashed, its sound like a bomb.
 

“Jeeeeezuuus … ”
said someone behind him.
 

Carl gripped a chrome handle on the control panel. He hadn’t commandeered this freighter because he planned to explore the world’s wet corners. He’d taken it because it could float. And sure, plenty of shit could stay buoyant, but this toy might be big enough to come up top after a wave that size ripped the —

“Oh,
motherfucker!”
Carl blurted.

The thought struck him like a punch to the face. He let go of the dash and took a half step toward the bridge door before realizing it was too late to de-dock the ship or whatever the shit captains called it when they untied the big ropes and prepared to hit the open sea for a few months of scurvy and sodomy. They’d passed the lines on their mad dash up the ramp to the first of the sealable doors, and those lines had looked as thick as Carl’s upper arms, fastened to cleats the size of small automobiles, bolted to the concrete. He hadn’t a clue what they were tied to on the ship’s side, but the time to analyze and care was long gone. They were about to find out what happened when an unstoppable force hit an immovable object.
 

Lawrence looked over.
 

“What? What is it?”
 

The wave killed the need to answer. It rolled the moored ship hard, the impact that might have shattered the bridge windows thankfully dispersed as the wave’s angle flattened. Carl and his prisoners of misfortune slid halfway down the floor toward the left (
port,
his mind corrected, unsure how he even knew) of the high-up room before the big dock lines caught with the feel of an enormous dog running into the end of his leash. The ship shuddered, unknown tons of floating metal waging war with the bolts or ropes or whatever else held them in place. Carl lost his footing and crashed to the deck, finding himself suddenly tangled in some white guy’s bare lower legs and running shoes. The pregnant woman landed on her back and, sliding, half crotch-planted against the support pole of a high stool. Carl cringed in spite of the chaos. Good thing that kid inside her hadn’t stuck his head out to see what the fuck was happening in the crazy outside world.