Generation Loss (35 page)

I
had no idea where we were but figured we couldn't be too far from the road,
with the smaller quarries between us and Denny's compound. After a few
minutes
the trees thinned and I halted, panting. Kenzie drew up beside me as I leaned
on the boat hook and fought to catch my breath. I strained to see something,
anything, that might signal safety, finally gave up.

"Can
you see?" I whispered hoarsely.

"I
think there's a light," Kenzie said.

She
pointed, and I could just make out a blurred point that might have been light,
or maybe just a break in the trees. But I thought it was the right direction
for Lucien's house.

"All
right. Here—"

I
fumbled for her hand in the darkness, thrust the flashlight into it. "You
take this. Stay right in front of me and don't move too fast. Keep the light
close to the ground and listen for me, I'll tell you to put it out if something
happens. Go on, I'm right behind you."

She
nodded then went on ahead, the flashlight's beam so feeble that more than once
I lost it among the wind-thrashed trees and underbrush. I followed her as best
I could, lurching clumsily, my boots sliding across stones and fallen tree
limbs as sleet lashed at my face. My feet were so numb it was difficult to
move. I jammed the boat hook against the ground with every step, feeling my way
in the dark.

There
were fewer trees here but more rocks. Several times I tripped and nearly fell,
catching myself with the boat hook at the last moment. The wind shifted again;
the hiss of sleet against dead leaves fell silent. I breathed on my fingers,
trying to warm them; then held my hand out, palm up, and felt a touch like
another, colder breath. Snow.

Through
the trees I saw a pale glimmer, like the moon but moving, slowly, resolutely:
Kenzie.

Good
girl,
I thought.

I
kept going, head down, when a thin wail drifted back to me. I looked back but
saw nothing and staggered on toward the sound.

I
found her standing at the edge of a large clearing, the flashlight turned so it
blinded me.

"Put
it down!"

She
ignored me, just moaned and pointed the light into the clearing. I came up
alongside her, grabbed the light and swept it across the ground. Snow sifted
down, flakes fine as dust, but enough to leave a thin white tracery across several
dark, humped forms. I handed the boat hook to Kenzie and walked toward them
slowly then stopped.

Three
huge turtle shells had been arranged in a rough circle. Each was so large that
my hands, extended, would not have encompassed it. Instead of legs and tails,
grayish shapes like driftwood protruded from the shells. Large white fragments
were scattered where the heads should have been. I thought of tiny shells being
crushed beneath Denny's feet then bent and picked up a cusp of jawbone as long
as my finger. Between two teeth, long white strands of hair were snagged, like
fishing line.

I dropped
it and stumbled to where Kenzie waited.

"What—"
she began.

"Just
go," I said and pushed her. "Faster."

We
stumbled on across the island. Snow changed to rain again; the wind rose and
fell. My heart felt like a fist pounding at my chest. Kenzie whimpered; I
pulled her to me and held her, murmured until her voice stilled and I drew
away, and we both moved on. We saw no further sign of Denny Ahearn, heard
nothing but wind and then, gradually, a noise that I recognized as waves
beating against rock.

"There
..."

I
pointed at a phantom light that seemed to waver ahead of us. I coughed,
spitting blood, touched my swollen eye and winced. The light remained, and I
began to run.

Ahead
of us, Lucien's house loomed into view. A single light shone from the kitchen.

"Toby's
there," I said, but Kenzie had already raced ahead of me.

I
staggered inside after her, locked the door, and turned to see Toby standing
unsteadily in the living room.

"Cass?"
His voice was thick. He looked down, saw the glass of Moxie on the floor, and
reached for it.

"No."
I kicked the glass away. "We have to get out of here."

I
grabbed his arm and pulled him into the kitchen.

"Is
that Kenzie?" He stared at her in disbelief, then at me. "What the
hell happened to you?"

"Denny
Ahearn happened." I flinched as he reached to touch the corner of my eye.
"Your harmless hippie friend."

"Let's
go, let's go." Kenzie looked at us wild-eyed. "Why are you
waiting!"

Toby
blinked, uncomprehending. "Kenzie? Were you—was she here? In this house?"

"Toby.
We have to go. Now."

He
shook my hand from him. "Cass. You did this, didn't you?" He didn't
sound angry, just confused and stoned. "You . . . drugged me, right? Like
a roofy?"

"Yes!
I'm sorry! I'm a shit! We still have to leave!"

He
glanced back at Kenzie. "Jesus Christ."

"It
was bad, okay?" I said. "I'll tell you when we're on the boat. Right
now
we have to get out of here"
I pounded the door in frustration.
"Can you sail that fucking boat or not?"

"I
guess." He ran a hand across his face. "I don't feel too good,
but..."

He
looked at me, holding the boat hook like a lance, then at Kenzie's bruised
face. "But I guess I'll take my chances."

He
put a hand on Kenzie's shoulder and rested it there for a moment. "Come
on. Let's get you home."

They
went outside. I grabbed my camera, ransacked kitchen drawers till I found some
dish towels. I used one to stanch my bleeding arm; with the other made a
bandage for my eye. I bound it in place as best I could then hurried after
them.

A
stiff wind sent curtains of freezing mist up from the water's edge. Toby and
Kenzie had already dragged the dinghy into the shallows. I clambered in beside
them, using the boat hook to push off as Toby rowed us out to
Northern Sky.

"We'll
have to motor," he yelled above the wind. "It'll be rough. Kenzie,
you better stay below."

We
boarded the sailboat. Toby tied off the dinghy and pulled on his foul weather
gear, then turned to Kenzie.

"You
wait below like I said, okay?"

She
shook her head fiercely. I thought of the bound figure on the floor of that
filthy shower stall. Toby started to argue, and I cut him off.

"Just
give her a life vest. She'll stay out of your way."

Kenzie
shot me a grateful look. Toby frowned.

"If
you say so. Here—" He tossed a life vest at each of us. "You too,
Cass. I need you to help navigate."

I
started to pull it on, wincing as it snagged my wounded shoulder, then gave up.
It wouldn't fit over my camera, anyway.

Toby
began coiling lines. "You going to tell me what the hell happened back there?"

I
did. When I was finished, he shook his head.

"I
can't believe it," he said. "I mean, I
do
believe it,
but..." He glanced at Kenzie huddled in the cockpit. "It's
hard."

I
snorted. "Yeah, well, I don't know what you guys were smoking thirty years
ago, but I think Denny got some of what Ted Bundy was having. Aren't you going
to call someone? Like the Coast Guard?"

"The
Coast Guard rescues people," said Toby. "Is our boat in distress? Do
we need to be medivaced to a hospital?"

He
glanced at my bandaged eye, then at Kenzie, and shrugged. "Yeah, but by
the time they got here we'd be on shore. They'd tell me to radio the police.
We're better off just getting out of here fast as we can."

He
held up two oversized flashlights and tossed me one. He shielded his face from
blowing sleet, pointed past the bow to a distant gleam like a dim emerald star.

"See
that light? It's a buoy. There's a bunch of them between here and Burnt Harbor.
Some are lighted, some aren't. We need to follow one to the next, point to
point. Use the flashlight to find them. I'll tell you where to look, right or
left."

He
switched on the running lights. A dull green glow illumined the right side of
the cabin, red on the left, white at the stern. "Think you can handle it?
I've got spreader lights up there on the mast, but they mess up my night
vision. Plus, if Denny's really out there looking for us, it'll be like a
billboard. You stay in the bow and I'll yell out to you. Once we get past
Paswegas it's clear sailing to the mainland, and we should be able to see the
lighthouse up to Togus Head."

His
voice was calm, but he moved quickly and nervously, ducking beneath the rigging
and pausing only to light a cigarette. "Get Kenzie settled, I'll be
another minute."

I
joined Kenzie in the cockpit. She sat, staring at her knees. Beneath the orange
life vest she wore the same clothes I'd found her in. She looked much older
than fifteen; like someone who'd crawled out of a burning building only to find
the rest of the world bombed to rubble.

I
fumbled in my pocket till I found the Jack Daniel's. There was hardly any left.
I gazed at the dark hulk of Tolba Island and drank a mouthful then passed it to
Kenzie.

She
took a sip and coughed. "That's nasty."

"Damn
straight." I finished the bottle and set it down then glanced at her white
face, the Crosshatch of claw marks across her cheeks. "Hey. You
okay?"

"Yeah."
She didn't look at me.

"Did
he—"

"No."

Sleet
rattled the dodger's awning. I looked across black water to where Paswegas
waited, lost in night and fog.

"What
were you doing?" I finally asked. "That night. When you went down to
the harbor."

From
below came the engine's stuttering roar. The boat rocked and moved forward.
Kenzie stared silently into the darkness.

"I
just wanted to talk to you," she said at last. She sounded defiant, but
then I saw she was crying. "That was all. I just wanted to talk to someone
else. From away."

"From
away. Well, that makes sense."

"I
hate it here." She kicked out furiously, and the empty whiskey bottle went
flying. "I fucking
hate
it."

I
smiled. "Hold that thought," I said. "I'm going to help Toby.
Here—"

I
handed her my camera and the boat hook. "Keep an eye on these, okay?"

I
stepped across the icy deck to the bow.

"That
lighted buoy's the first one," Toby shouted as he hurried toward the
cockpit. "After a hundred feet, start looking left—"

I
stood in the bow and swept the flashlight's beam across the water until it
picked up the second buoy.

"There!"
I yelled.

"Good.
Next one's about three hundred feet, still to the left—"

It
was like a dream, the
Northern Sky
drifting through a world where all
color had been burned away; a world of nothing but black water and black sky,
with a shifting scrim of gray between and the occasional shaft of black where
ledge emerged from the water like an island being born, the flashlight's beam
insubstantial as a white straw flung across the channel. The cold wind made it
hard to hear the clanking of the buoys, but Toby kept directing me where to
look, and we fell into a kind of restless dance, the flashlight sweeping
through the night, the
Northern Sky
shifting right or left as she bore
inexorably away from Tolba Island, the engine's drone like my own steady
breathing. We might have traveled for miles, for hours; I might have fallen
asleep, exhausted as I was and no longer able to tell where one world ended and
another began, sky and water and stone and blood.

Then
Kenzie's cry cut through the wind like a gull's.

"
Cass!"

She
pointed behind us, toward Tolba Island.

"That's
his boat!" she shouted. "That's him!"

Toby
peered through the dodger's window. I stepped to the side of the bow, squinting
through the mist. I couldn't see anything.

But
I could hear it—the roar of a powerboat. Kenzie screamed.

"Get
below!" commanded Toby. He pushed her toward the companionway.
"There's a radio; see if you can get it to work and put out a Mayday
signal. Stay down there till I get you—"

She
disappeared down the ladder, and I stumbled into the cockpit.

"Shit."
Toby stared at the silvery shape arrowing across the water. "He's got
Lucien's Boston Whaler. Thing's got a twelve horsepower engine, we can't outrun
him."

The
roar grew louder: the boat was a hundred yards off, heading straight at us.
Denny stood in the stern by the outboard motor. I couldn't see clearly through
the sleet and fog.

But
he could.

"I
see you!" His voice rose to a ragged shriek. I swore and turned to Toby.