The armed sentry shouldered past Jim, lifting his assault rifle. Harper was already rising from her knee. The boat took another lurch and flung her into the soft, warm mass of Renée Gilmonton.
The Fireman ignited, all at once, with a soft, deep whump, as if someone had thrown a match on a pile of leaves soaked in lighter fluid. He was a roaring bed of flame, a nest, and a bird began to rise from it. A great red prehistoric thing with vast and spreading wings. The assault rifle thundered, splintering the deck.
The boat slewed across a high wave. Allie grabbed Nick by the vest and stepped onto the cushioned seat and leapt. Harper had her arms around Renée and carried her over the side and as she lifted she had a sense of something tearing in her groin, in her abdomen. A man was screaming behind her. A yellow light was rising.
She hit black water, so cold it burned, it was like dying, it was like spontaneous combustion. A hundred thousand silver bubbles spun around her in a frantic whirl. She came up gasping, caught a mouthful of salt water and began to choke.
A blazing bird of fire, with eyes of blowtorch blue and the wingspan of a single-engine airplane, opened its terrible beak and seemed to scream. A man who wore a shroud of flame twisted madly before it. The pilot’s cabin was full of fire. Gray smoke boiled from the destruction. The boat was still moving, leaving them behind, already almost a hundred feet away.
Another wave slapped Harper in the face, blinding her, deafening her. Her vest carried her up and down in the tormented water. She rubbed her hands in her eyes and cleared her vision just in time to see The Maggie Atwood shatter, as the flames reached what must’ve been a propane tank. There was a flash of white light and a blast of concussive sound that struck Harper like a blow, knocking her head back. She would discover her nose bleeding a few moments later.
A blinding tower of fire rose into the sky from the immolated wreck of the boat, and a bird was hatched from that column of fire, a bird as big as God. It spread its wings and lifted into a sky of roiling black cloud, drew a great red circle of light in the sky, spinning above them. To Harper, it seemed magnificent and dreadful, a thing barbaric and triumphant.
It circled once, and again, and although it was high above them, Harper could feel its heat on her upturned face. Then it banked—banked and began to sail away, giving its wings one slow, dreadful flap, leaving them and the sinking, burning, hissing wreck.
Harper was watching it go when she noticed her thighs weren’t as cold as they should’ve been. There was a sticky, unnatural warmth around them.
Her water had broken.
Delivery
The water seemed less choppy once she was in it. Her vest lifted her gently to the top of each wave and dropped her back down over the side. The motion was almost soothing, didn’t make her feel seasick at all. Or maybe she was too numb, too frozen through, to care. She already couldn’t feel her hands, her feet. Her teeth were chattering.
Renée blinked and sputtered, shaking her head. She peered around in a frightened, shortsighted sort of way. She had lost her glasses. “What? Did we capsize? Did we—” A wave caught her in the side of the face and she swallowed some, coughed and choked.
Harper struggled toward her and took her hand. “Allie!” she screamed. “Allie, where are you?”
“Over here!” Allie cried, from somewhere behind Harper.
Harper kicked and waved her arms feebly and got turned around. Allie was making her clumsy way to her, towing her brother by the back of his vest. He was still asleep, his plump, smooth face turned to the sky.
“G-G-G-God,” Renée said when she could speak again. “S-s-so c-c-c-cold. What—what?”
“You were d-d-drugged. The stew. They were going to kill us. John. John.” Harper had to stop and catch her breath.
Instead of trying to explain, she pointed at the wreck. The prow of the boat had already dived into the water, the stern lifting into the air. The big rusted blades of the motor, snaggled with seaweed and algae, revolved slowly in the dark. The flames sputtered and seethed as The Maggie Atwood slid into the water. A great black oily bank of smoke mounted into the night. Harper moved her finger from the blazing ruin to the Phoenix, which was now no more than a distant bright glare of yellow in the night sky, like a remote passenger jet.
Renée looked at her without any understanding at all. She was still half doped, Harper thought, incapable of following any complicated chain of cause and effect.
Allie caught up to them and took Harper’s other hand. They were strung out in a line now, the four of them, kicking feebly in the black and icy water. Harper could see her breath. Or maybe that was smoke.
“We’ll die,” Allie panted. “We’re g-g-going to freeze to death.”
“S-sing,” Harper said.
Allie looked at her incredulously.
Harper lifted her voice and called out, ““In every j-job that must be done, there is an element of fun! Find the f-f-fun and, snap! The job is a game!”
“Why?” Allie said. “Why? This is s-s-stupid! It’s over. Does it matter if we die in t-t-ten minutes or in t-t-ten hours? We’re going to drown out here.”
Harper kept singing. “And every task you undertake, becomes a piece of cake, so sing! I’m not going to fucking argue with you!” She sang this last part right in key.
Renée, blinking and rubbing at her face with her pudgy hands, joined her voice to Harper’s.
They kicked together in the water, their wavering voices rising and falling as their bodies rose and fell in the waves.
Allie’s hands, scrawled with Dragonscale, began to shine, a yellow light spreading up her wrists and under her soaked shirt. A warm brilliance shone from within the hood of her orange rain slicker. Her eyes brimmed with gold.
The light seemed to race across her thin white fingers and up Harper’s hand. Harper felt warmth, a deep, cozy warmth, rushing up her arm and across her torso, as if she were easing sideways into a hot shower.
Their bodies smoked in the freezing water. When Harper looked at Renée, the older woman’s eyes were alight. Her blouse was torn at the collar and her throat wore a pretty choker of glowing gold wires.
“What about Nick?” Allie shouted when they had sung through the whole of “A Spoonful of Sugar.”
“Keep singing,” Harper said. “He doesn’t have to be awake. He won’t hear us anyway. We’re singing for the Dragonscale, not for him. Sing, goddamn it.”
“This is pointless!”
“Are you alive?”
“Yes!”
“Then there’s a point,” Harper told her and then couldn’t say anymore. She was having contractions, hard ones. Her insides seized up, relaxed, and then seized up again. She had always wanted a water delivery. That had been all the rage not so long ago.
They were singing “A Spoonful of Sugar” a second time when The Maggie Atwood was sucked underwater with a last loud hiss, a blast of gray smoke, and a noisy roil of bubbles.
They sang “Chim Chim Cher-ee.” When they forgot the words, they made them up.
“Chim chim-a-nee, chim chim-a-nee, chim-chim-a-chick, paddling in the water sucks a big dick,” Allie shouted.
“Blow me a kiss and you can blow it out your ass,” Renée sang.