“Did she hit you?”
Lyle shook his head. The drive to the docks was short, barely a mile on the tiny island, and he screeched to a halt. There were already headlights behind them. Lyle and Lilly ran to the sailboat—Mummer’s Hoard, with a dark green Yggdrasil painted on the bow—and a soldier stepped out of the guardhouse, confused.
“Is everything okay?”
“There’s been an outbreak!” Lyle shouted, pointing wildly at the headlights. “Don’t let them get close!”
The soldier’s eyes went wide with terror, and he turned toward the approaching trucks with his assault rifle leveled, spraying a short burst of bullets as a warning. The trucks swerved at the unexpected attack, the beams of their headlights dancing wildly through the darkness. Lilly fired up the onboard motor while Lyle untied the boat. The trucks were stopped, the people in them crouching low and shouting at the guard to stop. The soldier backed toward the boat, firing another burst every time their pursuers poked their heads up, keeping them expertly pinned down.
“What do they have?” he asked. “Can we catch it from here?” He turned toward Lyle, but the boat was already fifteen feet from the dock, now twenty, now thirty. The soldier screamed in fear and fury, raising his rifle as if to fire on them, but turned back toward the trucks. He looked back and forth a few times, unsure what to do.
“We couldn’t stay,” Lyle whispered. “You have to believe me—there was nothing left for us but madness. You heard the plans they were coming up with: raiding the coasts for food and women. They were ready to kill each other over hand lotion.”
“You have to believe me,” said Lilly. “I’m glad to be rid of them.” She steered south, around the tip of the island toward Block Island Sound. “Will they chase us?”
“Can you really sail this?” asked Lyle. “Without the motor, I mean?”
“Through good weather, yes.”
“Then they don’t have anyone with the skills to chase us.” He looked behind them, but saw nothing. “I say we head south, and find an empty island in the Caribbean. We can hug the coast—at a safe distance, of course—and follow the GPS. We won’t even have to stop: we don’t need gas, and we can’t trust the food on the mainland anyway.”
“That’s a long trip,” said Lilly. “There’s supplies belowdecks, but I wish we’d brought more water.”
“I got one bottle,” said Lyle, holding it up. He held it toward her with a trembling hand. “It was the best I could do.”
She drank it, and Lyle threw the empty bottle in the sea.
* * *
The coast was on fire.
Lyle and Lilly sailed past in silence, watching from a distance as smoke rose from the husk of America, now in billows, now in slow, smoldering fingers. At dawn they saw movement on the shore, but they simply turned farther out and passed by on the open ocean. They saw no other boats or airplanes. They heard nothing on the radio—no broadcasts, no warnings, no pleas for help. They dined on the champagne and canned caviar from Cynthia’s luxury hold, toasting the night in case it was their last.
The weather grew warmer as they fled to the south. They almost stopped in Florida, but a creature on the shore scared them off—tall and simian, with tusks and human breasts and arms that hung well past its knees. They tried again in the Abacos, but a group of twenty identical women watched them with silent, somber eyes, and they steered away again.
The next day a black storm rumbled on the horizon.
“Can ReBirth get into the rain?” asked Lilly.
“Maybe,” he whispered. “Nothing we can do about it now.”
64
Day
Dawn
The Island
10 DAYS SINCE THE WAKING OF THE PEOPLE
Ket had been watching the white thing all morning, trying to decide if it was growing bigger or simply getting closer. None of the People had ever seen anything like it, and they were scared, but Ket was not scared, and he was not surprised. None of the People had ever seen anything before, for there had never been anything to see. They awoke at the birth of the world, granted a wisdom beyond the other animals on the island, and everything was new. They had food and water; they had tunnels to nest in, and a sky full of lights. They had everything they needed. There was nothing else.
But now there was a white thing on the water.
Ket tapped his spear against the ground. His sister Chirt had begun to make the spears on the eighth day of the world, and now on the tenth nearly everyone had them. They made it easy to catch the insects and mice the People lived on, far easier than catching them with teeth and claws. New things like this were happening almost every day, and Ket had to wonder if the world was offering them new ideas, or if their own capacity to have ideas was expanding. He wondered, for a moment, if his own ability to wonder was a new development, as well. The People were becoming smarter by the day, growing larger, and there were other changes, as well. He looked at his paw. He did not remember having these fingers in this shape when he awoke ten days ago. The mice and other rodents didn’t have them. Only the People. He wondered, and not for the first time, if the People had once been like the mice, and if their transition into something else was still happening.
What, he pondered, will we turn into?
The white thing was definitely closer to the shore now. It was enormous, the biggest thing he’d ever seen beside the island itself. He peered closer and saw with shock that there were creatures on it. Was it another island, floating up to theirs? More of the People clustered around him now, Chirt his sister and Tsit his brother, a dozen or more. They watched the white thing slide close to the shore, and the two creatures who rode it jumped down in the shallow water.
“They have arms like us,” said Tsit. “Arms and legs and hands.”
“It almost sounds like they’re laughing,” said Chirt. “Are they People?”
“They’re too big to be People,” said Tsit. “They’re as tall as the trees. And they have no hair on their bodies, only a tiny tuft on the tops of their heads.” He cocked his head to the side, watching closely. “Like leaves.”
“I do not think they are trees,” said Chirt.
“Look what they carry,” said Ket, and the People grew silent. The creatures in the water were pulling objects out of the white thing now, miraculous things that none of the People had ever seen before, and yet Ket could not help but compare them to the spear in his hands. We built this, he thought. Did they build that? And that? Their objects made a massive pile on the sand. Who are these creatures that build such great things?
“I think that they are Gods,” said Ket.
Chirt’s sharp eyes looked at him. “What are Gods?”
“Gods are People,” said Ket, “only bigger, and smarter. They have everything the People have, but they have more of it. Their size is greater, and their deeds are greater.” He looked at the Gods’ hands, saw their fingers in the same shape as his own. He wiggled his fifth finger, the one that gripped against the other four. The one the animals didn’t have. He looked back up. “We should approach them,” he said. “We should ask them for their gifts. Perhaps, with their gifts, we could become like them.” He paused. “Perhaps that is why they are here.”
