Heart of the Storm by Michael Buckley

  My father, with Finn walking beside him, carries Harrison’s body in his arms the whole way, cradling him tenderly like a newborn baby. Leonard holds his tears so no one else can see them.

  When everyone is aboard, they set Harrison down on a cushioned bench and wrap him in a blanket. The children gather around his body. Bex sits with him, eases his head onto her lap, and caresses his hair. My mother fights back sobs, bites her lips, and wanders around as if there are chores to be done but she doesn’t know where to begin. Riley and my father go to the bridge, and soon the ship putters out to sea.

  We sail up the coastline, drifting past silent cities. No one speaks except Finn, who sits on the floor beneath his brother. He holds his hands and sings “Across the Universe” by the Beatles. Behind the boat, the Rusalka follow; their heads pop up in the wake, then disappear, over and over again.

  The sun is directly above us when my father points the boat toward shore. We’ve kept one raft tied to the back, and the children pull it in, help my mother onto it, then lower Harrison into her arms. The Rusalka push them toward a sandy beach with a backdrop of tall firs. Dad gets the ship as close as he can, still several yards away from the dry sand, and urges everyone to swim for it. He’s going to turn the boat around, push down the accelerator, and send it out to sea. He doesn’t want anyone to be able to find us from the air.

  “Are you all right?” Bex asks me as we prepare to leap off the edge. My back is not going to like this activity, and the water looks frighteningly cold.

  “I will assist you,” Husk says, popping up in the choppy waves.

  “Help the others,” I insist.

  Husk nods and reaches his hand out to Bex. She looks at it, then me, and her face curls up in nervous consternation.

  “He’s okay,” I whisper. “I promise.”

  “Sorry if I don’t trust you,” she says to me. “You have terrible taste in guys.”

  She takes his hand and leaps into the water. Husk guides her toward shore, and I jump in next. Yes, it’s cold. Yes, it’s worse than I expected. It steals my breath, but the gills take over, and I start a slow trek toward the beach. In the water, I hear the boat’s engine roaring higher and higher, and then the splash of my father’s body leaping into the water.

  When I climb onshore, soaked to the bone, I see a sign pounded into the sand that reads CATTUS ISLAND PARK, OCEAN COUNTY PARK SYSTEM.

  “Where are we?” I ask as Riley turns on his glove and pulls the water out of my clothes.

  “Toms River, New Jersey,” my father says.

  “Where?”

  “Your grandfather brought me here a few times when he was having trouble with your grandma,” my father admits. “We stayed a couple days, camping and fishing. The place always stuck with me. The town is on the other side of the park. There’s a path right there that will take us. We have a house set up already.”

  “How did you know they would attack us?” I ask.

  “To be honest, I thought it would happen sooner. We’ve been lucky,” he says, then looks down at Harrison’s body in the bottom of the raft. “We were lucky.”

  Husk and his army join us on the beach. They seem solemn and quiet, like abandoned dogs.

  “What’s wrong?” I ask Husk.

  “We lost two of our strongest,” he says sadly. His despair hovers in the air, thick and heavy. “I believe it would be appropriate to say something.”

  “Me?”

  Husk nods. “You are the prime.”

  I turn and look into their blank faces. Their friends’ bodies are laid out on the sand. They are shockingly pale and rigid, each with a bullet wound in their chests.

  “They don’t want to hear from me,” I argue.

  “Lyric, it is my hope that you will do things differently than our previous leaders,” he says, quietly.

  “What does that mean?”

  “In my lifetime, no prime has ever considered the loss of a Rusalka worth mentioning, while other members of the empire were publicly mourned, no matter how small their roles. We are few in numbers. Every loss is a strike against our survival, but there is also a loss that is not so pragmatic. There is a sadness you might ease.”

  Talking to anyone about death is not something I’m going to be great at, especially when the dead were trying to protect me. I hate him for not letting me hide.

  “Lyric, we should get moving,” my father says.

  “No,” I say. “Not yet. Everyone, please, join me.”

  As the Rusalka gather around their dead, holding hands in prayer, I take Harrison from my father and lay him next to the others. Then I join the circle, stepping between two of them, breaking their hands apart, and taking them in my own. Their hands are long and sandpapery, and the claws at the ends of their fingers are sharp. I squeeze their palms, and together we stare down at the dead. My mother joins us, then my father, then Riley. Bex gestures for the children, and soon we are all together, with our heads bowed.

  “I don’t really know what to say.” I look up into each of their faces. “Tell me about our friends.”

  Husk raises his head. “Girod loved to talk about the sun. It amazed him. He often dreamed that he could fly into the sky so high that he could see the sun from every angle. He once told me it was as beautiful to him as his mother’s eyes.”

  “Thank you, Husk,” I say.

  “Harrison loved hot dogs,” Chloe says, between tears.

  “He was funny,” Renee says.

  “Very funny,” Riley adds.

  “Our father loved basketball,” Finn says. “Harrison was always working on his free throws. Dad taught us both a musical instrument. Harry loved the Beatles. He could play every song on Abbey Road on the piano,” he adds, before tears take over and he can no longer speak.

  One of the Rusalka looks up. When the words come out of her mouth, I realize that she is female, and from how she describes her fallen friend, I get the sense that she had feelings for him. I ask her name, and she says something that sounds like Dahlia.

  “She says his name was Bahl, and he was quiet and serious. He worked hard and listened well, but he longed to do work he wanted to do, rather than work he was forced to do. He and Girod were not friends. In fact, they often argued, not unusual for brothers, but even harder since they were both in love with her,” I translate for the others.

  I can’t help but cry for all of them.

  Husk lowers his head, as do all the Rusalka. He steps out of the circle and approaches me. He presses his forehead against mine.

  “This is how my people give comfort to one another,” he whispers.

  I reach up and caress the back of his scalp, pressing my head into his as well, then much to his surprise, and mine, I give him a hug. He squirms a little, feeling constrained, but I hold him tight.

  “This is how I do it,” I whisper back.

  When I release him, I approach Dahlia and do the same. She is stiff at first, like Husk, unused to physical contact with anyone but her own kind, but I feel like I need to do this even if she’s uncomfortable. I think she might need it, too. I circle the group, giving everyone a hug, all the Rusalka, the children, and my parents, and before I know it, they are all hugging one another.

  “Long live Prime Lyric,” Husk says.

  The Rusalka bark in agreement.

  My father and Riley take the path, leaving us behind on the beach, but promise to return soon. There’s a hardware store not far from the park. We need shovels to bury our friends. An hour later, they return. Everyone takes a turn shoveling the three graves. My back screams in protest, but it feels wrong to let others do the work. Harrison, Girod, and Bahl lost their lives trying to help me.

  When our friends are buried, Finn gives me Harrison’s glove. He scooped it up before we left and thinks it might be helpful.

  “He believed in this,” Finn says.

  The glove is such a small, almost flimsy thing. How has it caused so much trouble? I thank him and watch as he follows the others along
the path.

  “Is the house far?”

  My father shakes his head.

  We walk up a grassy embankment, then under a canopy of evergreens. Gray and brown needles carpet the ground, and the morning sun fires daggers of golden light through the thin branches above, down onto a crunchy path littered with brittle twigs and acorns. I take a deep breath and let the clean air zing around my lungs. It helps take my mind off my sadness.

  “It’s a miracle we weren’t all killed,” I say to Bex, who hovers at my side. Riley is on the other side, holding my hand.

  “Do you think Johar ordered the attack?” Bex asks.

  “He warned us they were coming,” I remind them.

  “I don’t think anyone who works for White Tower is capable of being honest,” Riley says bitterly. He knew Harrison for years. It’s obvious to me the boy’s death has hit him hard. “I’m sure it was a setup.”

  “He’s definitely got an agenda,” Bex says.

  “Sure, but maybe it’s an agenda we can take advantage of,” I say.

  Riley stops in his tracks. “I can’t believe what I’m hearing.”

  “People are dying,” I say. “It’s my fault. There are too many bad guys and too few of us. We need help if we’re going to have a chance.”

  “He’s playing a game with us.”

  “What if he’s not? What if he really will help? Who cares why they’re helping. It doesn’t matter to me, and to be honest, that’s someone else’s headache,” Bex says.

  “So you believe this crap, too?” Riley cries.

  I squeeze his hand to calm him.

  “We’re just trying to keep everyone alive. We have to get the Alpha out of that camp and somehow convince this country to fight for its survival. If Johar can make that easier, I really think we should consider his offer.”

  When we finally make it through the park, we find ourselves on a quiet suburban street with tiny one-story houses lining the road. Their windows are black and grimy from rainstorms, some so filthy that I can’t see through them. Unlike the Jersey Shore, Toms River looks as if it has suffered a hurricane. There are a couple of homes missing their roofs and cars pushed onto their sides. Trash is everywhere, piled by nature into heaping clumps. Birds are circling everything, desperate for scraps of food. I don’t see a soul anywhere.

  “All right, we all know the plan. Renee, Brady, get to the house as soon as you can and start getting things set up,” Bex says. “Check the fuel on the generators and make sure the food hasn’t been invaded by raccoons and rodents.”

  “I’ll take Finn,” Renee says. “It might be good to keep him busy.”

  Bex nods. “Start boiling water for drinking and baths. Riley, I’m giving you the laptop and the camera. Once you have the generator going, plug them in. The cold eats the battery, so they’re probably dead. Might as well double-check the cameras we stashed in the foldout bed. Can you post something about the attack? Tell them what happened to . . .” She trails off for a moment, sounding defeated and exhausted, then hands over the backpack with the laptop.

  “Maggie, can you and Jane make a run to that Walmart we found last time we were here? We need everything. Load up some shopping carts and wheel them over. In fact, everyone else go with them, too. They could use the help.”

  “Make a list,” I say.

  “Don’t worry. I’ve heard all the stories about Texas. We’ll only get what we need,” Maggie says, before racing off with the others. Chloe wants to linger behind with us, but Bex shoos her off to join her friends. “They’ll forget your coloring books if you don’t go with them.”

  The little girl chases after the others, shouting for them to wait.

  “They needed something to keep them busy,” Bex explains as we watch them disappear down the street.

  “Maybe you need something, too,” I say. I take her hand, and she automatically tries to take it back.

  “It’s just . . . He was such a good kid. He was really goofy and . . .” She takes several very deep breaths to hold back tears.

  “So you told everyone about our crime spree?”

  “I told her we were a couple of beautiful criminals.”

  “No point ruining the story with how little we bathed.”

  She nods, and a weak smile sprouts on her face.

  “Let’s get off the streets,” my father says. There’s a hard edge in his voice. He’s struggling with Harrison’s death, too.

  “What would you have us do?” Husk asks me.

  I’m at a loss. I look out on his crowd and feel stupid.

  “Follow us?”

  “Everyone must be freezing,” my mother says. Everyone is in their pajamas. Only my mother has warm clothes. She takes off her jacket and wraps it around me, then hands Bex her mittens.

  “You’re going to get frostbite,” I warn her.

  “I don’t think I can,” she admits. “You probably can’t either.”

  “Now you tell me.” I sigh, then take off the jacket and hand it to Bex as well.

  Dad steers us through the neighborhood, leaving the road and cutting through lawns. The grass is crunchy with frost, and there is a brisk breeze slapping us in the face. We wander in and out of backyards filled with gas grills and rusty lawn chairs.

  “How are you feeling?” my dad asks.

  “Queasy,” I admit. “I threw up at the other house and haven’t felt right since.”

  “You might have gone too fast with the carbohydrates,” my dad says. “I wish there was something healthy to feed you.”

  “You can lie down when we get to the house,” my mother promises. “How’s your back?”

  “It hurts. It always hurts.”

  “I’m sorry. I’m babying you,” she says.

  I grab her by the hand. “That’s your job.”

  The house looks like the house on every sitcom I have ever seen. It’s a flat, one-story ranch with a cobblestone path leading from the front porch to the street. There’s a NY Mets flag fluttering on a pole out front and a matching doormat.

  “You picked this one, didn’t you?” I ask my father. In New York there are two baseball teams to choose from, the Yankees and the Mets, and when you make your choice, you are expected to be a fanatic. My dad chose the Mets when he was seven, way late according to him. He swears it broke up friendships when a few of his buddies settled on the Yankees. He used to love to talk about the heated arguments at the precinct every time April rolled around. We never had the kind of money you need to go see a game, even before we were locked into the Zone, but he watched a lot of highlights on ESPN and caught as many games as he could on the radio. He grins at my accusation. He’s guilty as charged.

  The inside of the house is locked in a time warp—​1960s shag carpeting, plastic furniture, Formica kitchen counters, and wood paneling as far as the eye can see—​but it’s warm, which is all that matters right now. Bex opens a closet and hands me a sweatshirt that reads I’D RATHER BE FISHING and an oversize pair of sweatpants with a paw print on the rump.

  “Sorry, but they’re warm,” she says.

  “Thank you,” I say, and give her a hug. “Let’s find Riley.”

  “He’s in the back bedroom on the computer.” She points me down the hall to a closed doorway. I hesitate to enter, wondering if he needs time to think about Harrison, but maybe he could use someone to talk to, if that’s the case. I tap on the door and open it slowly. Riley is sitting on a full-size bed with a big oak headboard. The laptop is open in front of him. When he sees me, his face turns red, and he slams it closed.

  “I’m sorry,” he says.

  “Are you watching porn or something?” I say, with a little laugh.

  “I didn’t think it was private,” he says, flustered. “I thought it was for the site.”

  I close the door. “What are you talking about?”

  “There’s an email for you from someone named Dr. Lima. I opened it thinking it was a video or something for the site.”

  ?
??Okay, it’s cool. Lima was the doctor on the airplane,” I explain. “What does she want?”

  “You should read it yourself,” he says.

  I cross the room and sit down next to him, but he leaps up like I have a deadly contagion. When that doesn’t put enough space between us, he backs toward the door.

  “What’s wrong with you?”

  “I’m sorry,” Riley says again. “I swear I wasn’t snooping.”

  I open the laptop and the mail application. I see Lima’s email right away. It has a little red “important” flag next to it. I scan through several paragraphs wondering what about this email is making Riley treat me like I have the plague. I don’t catch much of what she’s saying or what it means or even how she found me, but I do spot a word that locks my eyes in place.

  Pregnant.

  “I’ll get Bex,” Riley says. He must realize by my face that I’ve gotten to the important part of the message.

  “No. Riley—”

  “I’ll go get her,” he says, opening the door a sliver and slipping through as if he’s trying to keep the news inside the room.

  I sit by myself, completely baffled by what I’m supposed to do or say. Should I write a reply to her? Tell her she’s made a mistake? Should I get my mother? This is an emergency. It feels like an emergency, but I can’t seem to move. I’m numb. I turn and look at the space that Riley just inhabited. His face burns in my vision, the sadness on his lips, the betrayal in his eyes. He didn’t just need physical space from me, he wanted emotional space. His heart is broken because I’m . . .

  Pregnant.

  I’m seventeen years old. The world is about to end. I laugh. This is ludicrous. I can’t be pregnant.

  “Fathom,” I whisper, then slide off the bed to the floor. “It was only one time!”

  One time is all it takes, dummy.

  Bex enters.

  “Riley is having a weird panic attack out there,” she says, closing the door behind her. “Did you show him your boobs? I know he’s our age, but he’s really not ready for that kind of excitement.”