I spin the scope onto my sniper rifle and squint into the clouds. A near impossible shot from here. Roxana gestures toward the front of the boat. “The bow. Cleanest shot you’ll get. I’ll cover you.”
Finley has covered herself and Cassie with a thick blanket for diversion, while Lucy crouches behind a few bags. Roxana stands, totally unafraid, and fires at the copter. Quickly, I make my way to the bow and Roxana follows me, walking backward, taking the heat off me.
“Mason, get me a good shot.”
Mason outdrives the copter by taking advantage of a few rogue waves, and eventually gives everyone a three-second warning before dead-cutting the engine. Everyone tumbles except for Roxana and me, and she holds fire as the copter reorients and spins around to come back toward us. I get my bearings and aim down the sight. Calculate for speed, distance, trajectory. The type of rifle in my hands, the kind of copter in the air. The variables coalesce and I take my shot.
Bull’s-eye.
“Atta girl.” When I turn back toward the boat, Roxana smiles proudly at me as the fiery copter pitches nose-first into the waters behind her. Without taking her eyes off me, she calls back to Mason. “Circle back so we can get a look at the wreckage.”
“And snuff any survivors,” Finley mutters while she concentrates on taking care of Cassie’s wound. A pat on my shoulder from Roxana as I walk by is all it takes to form a lump in my throat. I kneel next to Finley and Cassie and inspect the freshly bandaged injury on her arm. “Bullet grazed her. Pretty minor.” Cassie’s eyes tell another story—one of fear, relief, and pain. Finley sees this as well and smiles at her reassuringly. “You’re good, Blondie Junior. Your first rendezvous and you came out with a scrape. My first time? Whew, took the hair clean off my head.”
I suppose Finley does have some purpose, as the fear melts off Cassie’s face and she lets out a feeble chuckle. Finley launches into another tall tale and I use it as an excuse to standnear the edge of the boat as we near the wreckage. Not much to find, and no survivors, but the copter is very clearly olive green.
“She won’t know it was us.” Lucy takes my hand and squeezes it. “Nobody left to tell her.”
“Unless they took photos.” Roxana appears beside me, looking grim. “Shooting a civilian boat without warning? Either they got confirmation on one of our identities, or they had orders to shoot on sight any suspicious vehicles. Both are not good news.”
“We need to get there as fast as we can. If Theia knows we’re on our way to New York, what’s stopping her from leaving? Flying to, you know, anywhere?” Lucy’s eyes scan the sky, as if Theia might fly by on her broomstick any minute. It’s a good point, but as I look at Roxana’s face, she is certainly thinking what I’m thinking.
“Theia doesn’t run.”
An hourbefore sunrise the next day, we safely arrive at our harbor of choice—a rundown former ferry port in the middle of New Jersey, on the Pennsylvania side. We snuck by Philadelphia under the cover of early morning and slipped by any potential trouble near the city.
This harbor no longer functions, and, aside from aggressive crabs and archipelagoes of debris, stands completely deserted. As such, we take our time unloading the boat with our meager provisions.
To one side, Mason and Finley compare tattoos and the size of their arm muscles. To the other, Delilah inspects Cassie’s wound and applies disinfectant from our first aid kit. Ahead, Roxana scouts the area with her rifle to ensure we are as alone as it seems. And, with her hand in mine, Luciana Piccolo standsbeside me and life condenses to this. Our hands, hearts, lives entwined.
“It’s almost over.” Lucy leans into me. “We’re almost done.”
“I hope you’re right.”
“Let’s go, lovebirds.” I heave a sigh at the sound of Finley’s voice calling us from near the road.
Lucy laughs and it’s like music, and puts a smile on my face. “You’re warming up to her,” she singsongs to me as we turn around and head toward the group.
I lift a duffel bag and carry it crosswise over my torso. “Untrue.”
“Yes, you are. I heard the tiny bit of fondness in that dramatic sigh.”
“Definitely not. Maybe congestion, the air is a bit smoggy down here.”
“Uh-huh.”
A single highway can bring us directly to the tunnel we’ll use to get into the city, but it is dozens of miles on open road. No telling how many UR checkpoints or tolls we may encounter, or soldiers patrolling the highways looking for smugglers and rebels. Wild animals that have reclaimed parts of the towns surrounding the roads. It will be a grueling walk.
The most grueling part is in fact that Finley forces everyone to play I Spy, except for me because I declined. It does, however, keep everyone busy for a couple of miles. We walk along the highway when it’s clear, and retreat to an embankment that runs parallel when we see anyone coming in either direction.
“Mason, you take point with the map. Roxana, you take our six. The rest of us need to be on our guard for anything suspicious. Any cars that pass us more than once, any aircraft.”
Finley salutes me and gets in step behind me, next to Cassie. “Yes, ma’am, Mini Boss, ma’am.”
Lucy and I walk hand in hand, me with a rifle over my shoulder and she with a pistol strapped to her thigh. The quiet of an empty road and farms or forest on either side of the highway make for a rather serene walk, if one can ignore the constant chatter of Finley. Factories burn off smoke in the distance, shooting soot and chemicals into the dark clouds above.
We never spent a lot of time in New Jersey, but it felt like a place yearning for an identity. Some of the most beautiful forests and mountains I’ve ever seen, and the ugliest, most pollution-ridden factories in existence. Rolling farmlands and brutal cookie-cutter suburbia for the more fortunate. Not quite New York, with its mechanical wonders and glass skyscrapers, and not Pennsylvania, with its deep coal veins and thick groves of trees. Something altogether different, and pretty forgettable. These transient highway towns blend into one as we get through nearly one-third of our trek.
A quaint factory town is where we decide to stop off for the night. We considered camping, but Delilah refused to “rough it” in such a way, and I got the feeling Lucy agreed with her.
