Unity, Page 3

  Fifty percent, Daniel. My anger is squelched by the knowledge that it could have been one hundred percent.

  I’m about to lead the way to the back of the transport when the blonde says, “Get our go-packs.”

  “We don’t even know what’s in them,” I say, my reaction born from a strong sense of don’t-tell-me-what-to-do.

  “Rations, survival gear, clothing.” Before I can ask, she lifts the girl up so I can see her Support brand, like it’s supposed to mean something. Then she squints at me. “How long have you been with Unity?”

  “Three weeks.”

  She deflates a little.

  “How long have you been with Unity?” I ask.

  “Three months.” She motions to the girl in her arms. “This is Mandi. She’s been with Unity for a year. My name is Gwen, and if you need my assistance, I’ll be—”

  “I got this,” I say. I step around her and pull a go-pack out, my rapid action fueled by my embarrassment over being kept in the dark. When I turn for the next bag, I see that Gwen hasn’t left my side.

  “That they put you in the field after three weeks says a lot for your strength of will. It means they think you can handle this.” Her confidence wavers a little. “Whatever this is.”

  At least she doesn’t know everything.

  “I’ll meet you at the back,” I say. She nods and leaves, and I go back to collecting go-packs. They’re a little smaller than standard school backpacks—jet black, and packed tight. Each weighs about three pounds. With my left arm loaded with four packs, I work up the nerve to steal two more from the dead, but that’s all I can manage. I head toward the back, pausing for a moment to recover my own mystery go-pack, which I notice weighs three times as much as the others.

  “C’mon,” Gwen says, as I approach the still-closed back hatch. I’m about to lose my patience again, when I realize she’s not talking to me. She’s talking to Daniel, who is straining to turn the handle of a lock, high above his head. It looks like something he might struggle to do normally, but with the transport upside down, the mechanism is nearly out of his reach. He doesn’t have the leverage to turn it.

  I approach the scene, lit in dull green, and I hand two of the go-packs to Gizmo. When he takes them, I hand over another two to Daniel. He already has his around his shoulders, but he has no trouble with another two. I put the last two by my feet and mine on my back. “We’re upside down, so the hatch is going to open up, not down, and there’s a chance it won’t stay open, once it’s up. Don’t hang around to have a conversation.”

  I take their lack of audible replies to be compliance, and then I take hold of the lever Daniel couldn’t move. I give it a tug, and when it doesn’t budge, I pull myself up, clinging to the handle like a monkey bar. I place my feet against one of two metal rails stretching down the hatch. Pushing with my legs and pulling with my torso and arms, the lever slides ten inches and then clunks into place.

  When I release the handle and drop to my feet, there are three sets of glowing green and impressed eyes looking at me. “It’s called leverage,” I say, uncomfortable with their attention.

  “We understand the concept,” Daniel explains. “We just couldn’t do it.”

  I’m not sure about Gwen. She seems pretty capable. But Daniel is right. He and Gizmo would be trapped in here without help. I put my shoulder into the door and shove. There’s a slight give, but the door isn’t budging for me. “Going to need help.”

  The moment the words leave my mouth, Daniel and Gizmo throw their feeble weight into the door. After turning her back to the door, even Gwen adds her body to the effort. The hatch moves, but it’s like there’s someone on the other side, pushing back. When the door budges a little and water surges in, I understand why. We might not be adrift at sea, but we’re not totally out of the water yet, either.

  “We need to get it above the water line!” I shout, before grinding my teeth and shoving harder. Daniel shouts beside me, putting every ounce of muscle his little body has into the effort.

  Water surges past my ankles as the hatch lifts higher. The warm liquid rushes to the back of the cabin, sloshing against the far end and the door leading to the cockpit.

  The pilots.

  The hatch is freed from the water, and it rises up. The sudden rush of water sweeps the go-packs at my feet away, and Gizmo along with them. Hand striking out like a snake, I catch Gizmo’s flight suit before he’s pulled back inside the cabin. With one hand supporting the hatch, I toss Gizmo outside, into two feet of water. It’s going to fill the cabin until it’s even with the water outside. The pilots will be trapped. I crack my last glowstick and toss it outside, just beyond the water. A sandy beach is revealed.

  “Can you hold this up?” I ask Daniel and Gwen.

  “What? Why?” Daniel’s indignant. Afraid.

  “The pilots,” I say. “They’re—”

  “There are no pilots,” Daniel says. “It’s a drone.”

  A drone?

  A drone! A litany of three-, four- and five-letter words flows through my mind as a series of phrases that I think are something like poetry, an ode to obscenities. I keep it all inside, though. But I’m seriously going to punch someone in the face when I find out whose idea it was to send a bunch of kids across the ocean aboard drones.

  “Go,” I say to Gwen. When she ducks her shoulders down to leave with Mandi, the weight of the hatch becomes almost unbearable. Daniel grunts from the sudden strain.

  When my arms start to shake, I glance down at Daniel. “Get ready, Danny-boy.”

  “Dan...iel,” he says through gritted teeth. Then he pulls his hands away and dives into the water. The dive is graceful, but he’s forgotten about the go-packs around his arms and on his back. He slaps into the water, but quickly shoves up out of it, sputtering and gasping. It would be funny if I wasn’t now losing the battle with the hatch.

  “C’mon!” Gwen shouts. “Jump!”

  And I do. My feet push off, but there’s no traction. The foam-gel beneath my feet, mixed with the oncoming rush of water, has become something like soap. Instead of diving forward, I belly-flop out, my legs from the knees down landing inside the transport. I flip over and shove up from the water in time to see the hatch fall down like some kind of medieval execution device. I yank my legs back, but it’s not enough.

  My eyes scrunch shut as I wait for the explosive pain. Instead there’s a loud clang, and then pressure on my shoulders. As I’m dragged back, I see a piece of metal debris shoved into the door. Daniel is backing away from it. Kid saved my life. But he had help. I look up and see Gizmo straining to pull me. If not for the water taking some of my weight, I doubt he could move me an inch, though the look in his eyes says he would try.

  There’s a loud shriek as the shard of metal slips sideways and falls. The hatch slams shut, the gong of its impact sounding like the start of some ancient challenge. I half expect a video game announcer to shout, ‘Fight!’

  Instead, I hear more crushing silence.

  It’s followed by the gentle lapping of waves.

  And then Gizmo’s small voice for the first time. “What the hell is going on?”

  4

  Before anyone can answer Gizmo’s question, a new ‘sunset’ fills the sky in the East. It blooms orange, rising up and drowning out the night sky. Then it fades back down to a flicker before disappearing entirely. With the light extinguished, the world plunges back into a sickly green-lit night. The sun has fallen in the West, or perhaps has been fully consumed by the storm still headed toward us.

  “Whatever we saw fall from the sky must have crashed over there,” Daniel says, his face lit by the glowstick in his hand, eyes turned toward the east. “Must have been huge.”

  A hiss rises from behind me, and for a moment I think that Gwen is shushing Daniel. But then the sound rushes past me, dousing me with a curtain of cold water. It lashes against my face, stealing the warmth from the air. The green light from the glowstick Daniel’s holding makes the dime
-sized rain drops look like Mountain Dew. Soda was outlawed for kids under eighteen, five years ago, but I’m old enough to remember it.

  I hear a voice shouting at me, but I can’t make out the words. I turn to find a waterlogged Gwen staring at me, the limp form of Mandi still in her arms.

  “What?” I can barely hear my own voice over the watery, windblown bedlam.

  “We need shelter!” Gwen shouts.

  I look inland, but the ring of green light that lets us see each other fades after ten feet. This patch of land we’ve crashed on could end twenty feet away, for all we know. The subtle scent of vegetation slowly being drowned out by the smell of ozone says otherwise, but until I actually see it...

  I look for the second glowstick and find it submerged under two feet of water, illuminating the rear hatch of the crashed transport. Partially buoyant, it wobbles with each crashing wave.

  Lightning cracks through the sky overhead, the volume of its sudden arrival making us all duck. It also gives me a brief view of our surroundings. Thirty feet ahead, at the end of a gently sloping white-sand beach, is a wall of tropical vegetation that looks impenetrable. The brilliant light disappears as quickly as it arrived, but a luminous green afterimage remains in my vision, the colors reversed like an old film negative. The island isn’t small, and it rises up at the center. Of course it does, I think. We’re in the Pacific, where pretty much all islands were formed by volcanic activity.

  “Let’s head inland,” I shout.

  Gwen nods and replies, “My go-pack should have a tent in it. If we can find a spot where the wind—”

  Her voice is cut short by Daniel, who is yanking hard on my arm. “Effie!”

  “What?” I shout, feeling overwhelmed and angry.

  When I see the mortified look on his face, I feel bad for snapping at him. But he’s not looking at me, he’s looking back at the ocean. “The glowstick!”

  I turn toward the crashed transport, expecting to see the cylinder of green light tossed by angry waves, but it’s gone. I scan left and right, finding the chemical light as a green pinpoint, quickly sliding away. Did a fish take it?

  “It’s headed east!” Daniel shouts.

  “Toward the crash!” the higher pitched Gizmo chimes in. The small boy is now clinging to Daniel’s arm. Apparently, both of them have already figured out why the glowstick is making a beeline for the horizon.

  And then I do, too.

  A violent spear of light stabs the sky, illuminating the scene, confirming our fears.

  The ocean is gone. Well, not gone, but surging away from the island, rushing east like a drain has opened up in the Earth. But that’s not what’s happening. Even non-genius kids have seen enough disaster movies to know what this means.

  Tsunami.

  “Run!” I shout. “Inland!” I scoop up little Gizmo and throw him over my shoulder.

  Despite being a little pudgy, in the way all computer-focused kids are, Daniel moves like a sprinter leaping off the line. He takes the lead, kicking up divots of sand, the green glowstick clutched in his hand giving the rest of us a direction to follow. Gwen follows in his tracks, Mandi now over her shoulder. The run is going to be rough for the unconscious girl, but the alternative is to die horribly in a wall of water.

  It’s rough for Gizmo, too, but he’s able to hold himself up, hands clinging to my go-pack, arms supporting his torso like flying buttresses. Lightning flashes. For me, it lights up the jungle, now ten feet ahead. And it reveals Gwen charging through a hole in the foliage. For Gizmo, it must reveal something horrible. I feel the boy’s slender muscles snap tight, and he’s suddenly harder to hold.

  I think he’s screaming, too, but as I punch through the large leafy plants lining the beach, the hiss of rain on the leaves drowns out everything. The darkness beneath the windblown canopy becomes absolute. I charge ahead, despite my blindness, one arm around Gizmo’s legs, one outstretched to keep me from running into a tree. A blinking green light guides me forward, my own personal Tinker Bell. But it’s growing more distant, flickering as Daniel passes behind trees. Within ten seconds of entering the jungle, I’m lost. I could be running back toward the ocean and I wouldn’t even know it.

  Gizmo’s small fist beating my shoulder like a jockey’s whip prods me onward. And that’s when I feel it. The slope beneath my feet. Uphill is good. Using the energy it takes to make each upward step my guide, I follow the grade, hoping it doesn’t end at a cliff.

  I didn’t think it was possible, but the volume of the jungle-lashing rain grows louder, drowning out my thoughts. My mind is a blank slate, instinct guiding my feet.

  And then Gizmo’s voice breaks through. He’s wrapped himself around my back and is shouting directly in my ear. “It’s here!”

  An elastic band of clarity snaps in my mind. The rush of water I’m hearing isn’t from above, it’s from behind. The ocean has returned like President Washington crossing the Delaware, turning retreat into world-changing victory. I would never admit it, but I know my history. I devour history books with the voracious appetite other kids save for pizza. Not that General Washington’s victory over the British provides any useful information at the moment. That comes from above.

  A point of green light waves back and forth, but it’s so high up, I think Daniel must have scaled a cliff. The truth is revealed underfoot, as a tangle of roots trips me up. I stumble forward, careening into the broad trunk of a moss-covered tree.

  The hint of a shouting voice pricks my ears. A slice of lightning makes it through the canopy, revealing Gwen on a branch above us, reaching down. She’s shouting, but I can’t hear the words. High above her, I see Daniel straddling a branch, hugging Mandi to the tree’s core.

  As the roar of oncoming death grows louder, I hoist Gizmo up. Gwen takes his small wrist in one hand and lifts him onto the branch. His spindly frame makes short work of the branch network above her.

  Gwen’s hand returns, and in another flash of light, I read her lips. “Jump!”

  My legs bend and spring, but I don’t move upward. I move sideways, knocked off my feet by an onrush of three-foot-deep water. I cling to the tangle of roots on the ground, but the rising torrent is too powerful. As my fingernails bend back, something solid strikes my leg, knocking me free and sweeping me away.

  I tumble through darkness, the gurgling rush of ocean filling my mouth before being coughed out. My feet strike something solid, and I shove. When the world grows loud again, I know I’ve broken the surface. I gasp in a deep breath before my gut wraps around the trunk of a palm. I cling to the rough surface, shivering from fear and cold, and then I climb higher.

  But the water rises along with me, and the rubbery tree is bending from the force. With a shudder, the tree’s shallow root system gives way. As I drop back into the water, I cling to the trunk. The buoyant spear keeps me above the fray, but its broad, leafy top catches the water like a sail. I’m catapulted through the jungle.

  For what feels like several minutes, the tree slams its way uphill, a water-propelled battering ram, intent on striking down everything in its path. A jarring impact nearly dislodges me, but I hold fast at the expense of the sinews in my arms, which I can feel stretching and popping. Water rushes past and surges over me. It’ s trying to peel me away from the tree, which wedges against something strong enough to stand against the battering ram.

  And then the current shifts. The flow of water cuts into my face, tries to work its way into my lungs. Still, I fight it. If I can survive falling out of the sky, I’m not going to die just after reaching the ground. The palm tree, clinging to whatever stopped it, slowly lowers back to the jungle floor. The rush of water dwindles to salty streams trickling downhill.

  My fingers uncoil. My arms fall slack. I can’t do anything to stop gravity’s pull. I flop onto my back, landing on a bed of tangled vegetation. It’s oddly comfortable.

  Lightning flashes again. The canopy above my head is less dense. The trees that blocked the sky now lie beside me,
or further uphill, or maybe they’ve been swept back out to sea. Rain lashes against my face. The storm rages in the sky above, radiant with blossoms of electric blue and fiery orange light. Despite the raging world, I close my eyes, place my hand over the waterproof pouch inside my chest pocket, and dream of a world where I’m not perpetually alone.

  5

  A seagull alarm clock pulls me from the oblivion of sleep, and for a moment, I understand the appeal of atheism. Could there be any better rest than non-existence? Then I remember my dream. Hooked fingers dragging lines in the sand, as a horde of faceless zombies pulls me away from the nameless parents I never knew.

  The photo I have of them came into my possession through subterfuge and a box of matches. The woman at the child welfare office made no effort to hide the folder labeled with my name. She knew who I was. Could read the names of my real parents. Could have given me their address.

  But she didn’t.

  Instead, she said, “Well, you have his eyes. But you’re not eighteen.”

  I nearly reached through the window and slapped her.

  She must have seen the look of abject horror in my eyes, because she added, “The record is sealed until then. Nothing I can do about that.”

  “You don’t understand,” I pleaded. “I don’t have an adopted family. No foster-parents want me.”

  And then she set my fiery plan in action while simultaneously adding herself to my mental list of arch-nemeses. “Well, hon, it would appear that your parents didn’t, either.”

  Restraint has never been my thing, but I managed it that day. When I want something—really want something—there isn’t much that can stand in my way. Even my own foibles. I stared at her for a quiet moment and gave her the squinty-eyed glare of doom. Before she could add some sass sauce to the bitter disappointment she’d served up, I walked away.