The man went back to the rails and reached down for Jan. “Give me your hand! Come on, reach!”
But Jan was too far away; the cold had almost taken him.
On the side wall, she saw a lifebuoy tied to a rope. No one else had thought to grab it, so she did, taking the heavy object in her hand. She moved to the side of the ship, and the men parted for her.
“Let her pass!” one of them said.
“Toss it to him!” yelled another. “Before it's too late!”
As Lucja looked over the side, Jan stopped struggling. He saw her there, standing with the thing in her hands, and waited. His eyes seemed to know what she was picturing. She was seeing Jan as he really was. Not just her savior, but the man who had helped take her mother, the man who had kept her father imprisoned, the man who had stood by when her sister was killed. She was seeing the man who had pushed her father away when only two of them could fit on the motorcycle.
For the thousandth time, Lucja thought about the way Dominik had looked on the deck of The Adalgisa, the ax raised over his head. She thought about what she had seen in his face. She thought about what it was like to hold the power of life and death in your hands and the choices that would stay with you forever.
The moment passed.
She tossed the lifebuoy over the side, and Jan caught it. In seconds, the others were helping him onto the deck, and the island was disappearing behind them.
When he was up, he stooped and put a hand on her head, still breathing hard. “I will help you find your mother,” he said. “I promise you.”
She nodded, his hand like ice on her cheek. But just then, she wasn't thinking about her mother. She was still thinking about her father, and all the things he had done to make sure that she — Lucja — was the one standing on the deck of this ship.
“Goodbye,” she whispered, her voice dying in the wind. “Goodbye, Father.”
2
As Dominik passed through the gate, The Carrion ignored him, focused on the ones with the guns. The soldiers had yet to grasp they didn't have enough bullets. Eventually, they would all be dragged from the base. They would go screaming or they would go unconscious, but they would all go on their backs, their bodies instruments of some terrible new purpose.
Ari was standing where Dominik had left him, his hands huddled by his face. “There's nowhere to go! They're everywhere, Dom!”
“We'll find you somewhere safe.”
“There's nowhere safe!”
“There is. I promise.” His voice sounded strangely calm to his own ears. He supposed he knew why. Lucja was safe — or would be soon — and in a way, nothing else mattered. “Trust me, Ari.”
Dominik led his friend across the grounds, avoiding the hole leading to the lab. He could smell formaldehyde drifting up from the leaking tank and thought that it might be hours before it petered out. He stepped over a body by the hole, then another. To his left, he saw the remains of young Sergeant Metzger. The boy's head was missing, torn off at the neck, but Dominik could still see the silver cross on his chest. He saw Gloeckner and half a dozen others he recognized nearby, all of them silent and still.
In the thick of it all, they found the only building with its door still intact, and Dominik guided his friend to the entrance. Just before they stepped through, one of the blackened shapes leapt from the inside, stopping to shriek directly into their faces. Then it bounded off into the night, leaving them unharmed. A moment later, the generator lights cut out, and the sphere of night closed tightly around them.
Ari was near collapse. “I… I don't think I can—”
“Don't quit on me now, Ari!”
They stepped inside, and Dominik shut the door, sealing them into the supply bunker. They were alone.
“We have to be quiet.”
“All right,” the other man said. “I can do quiet. I can do that.”
Dominik felt his way past the shelves and the various crates and sacks scattered about the place, Ari's hand still clasped in his own. The place was sealed tight, and it was incredibly stuffy inside. Dominik wondered if the place was air-tight, but even if it was, they didn't have a choice. They were staying.
“Over here.”
The two of them sat against the wall at the back of the bunker, their arms wrapped about one another. The walls were thick, but they could hear shouts and thumps outside of the place. Ari was particularly affected, mumbling and whispering every time he heard something in spite of his promise. But after some time, the noises stopped.
In the dark, Ari began to weep. “We should have known,” he said. “We should have done something.”
“He who learns must suffer; and even in our sleep, pain that cannot forget falls drop by drop upon the heart, and in our own despair, against our will, comes wisdom by the awful grace of God.”
Ari sniffed, and Dominik heard him laugh a little. “What is that, a poem? It's beautiful.”
He smiled painfully in the dark, thinking back to his days at the university, a time when such a thing might have mattered. “I can't remember.”
“Then let's just stay here for a while. Will you hold me?”
“I will, Ari.”
Side by side, they slept, holding one another to stave off the dark. It was there they would stay, arm-in-arm, until eternity claimed them.
Chapter 25: The Way Home
1
They ran out of gas about thirty miles off shore. The boat had two oars, one of which was badly chipped and cracked, but the paddles saved their lives. It took them almost a full day to reach the mainland once the engine died, but arrive they did. By that time, they were both on the verge of collapse. They were exhausted, sunburned, dehydrated, starving. But alive.
There was no coast guard to bring them in, no rescue tankers, no cruise ships, no children playing on the beach. They arrived to a stretch of coast as ancient and deserted as the dead shores of the whaling docks. The white sand could have been beautiful once, but at present, it only looked dirty, littered with driftwood and the bones of dead fish.
None of this mattered.
When the boat finally washed up onto the beach, Kate rolled off its side and screamed with joy. For a long time, she could do nothing but grab handfuls of the muddy earth and let it slip between her fingers. AJ laughed hysterically as he dropped to the sand and then joined her, throwing his arms about her waist. He held her until they had both decided it was time to move on. It seemed like hours before it did.
AJ took out his key chain; his key chain had a compass. They had traveled northwest towards the coast, and though they didn't know it, they had traveled into the light. Darkness still enveloped the island, but the night had already come and gone on the mainland. They arrived at dawn, the sun greeting them like an old friend.
With some measure of serendipity, the boat landed less than ten miles from the place they originally departed. Having no knowledge of the land nor its people, they decided they should walk north to the old church while they still had the strength. When they arrived — around midday this was — they found it deserted. The old padre had gone, if he had ever been there at all.
They spent the next hour exploring, looking over the grounds, into the bunk house, into the chapel. This latter still had a hole in the floor, exposing the basement Mason had toiled so hard to uncover. When Kate went down, she found the cellar was devoid of Black Shadow's guns, but it was stocked with food and bottled water. She didn't know if it had been put there in preparation for Mason's return or if the old father was preparing a fallout shelter, but she didn't care. The food would keep them alive.