The Last Girl (33 page)

35

They use most of the afternoon traveling up the winding river.

The electric motor Tia brought hums with next to no sound, propelling them along faster than Zoey would have expected of the little apparatus. It is nearing evening before they leave the water, pulling the boat up onto the bank and covering it with a tarp roughly the same color as the gray rock surrounding it.

“It’s barely a mile around the next corner,” Tia says in a low voice after they finish securing the boat. Zoey stares upstream, the knowledge of how close she is thrumming in her veins with adrenaline-fueled bursts.

The sky begins to glaze with a thin coating of clouds by evening, but there is no smell of rain in the air and no thunder in the distance.

They make a rudimentary camp at the base of a hill behind a towering
rock shelf and eat a cold meal of biscuits and sweet jam. Zoey sits with her back to the stone and wishes for a fire to stretch her feet and hands out to.

“When did you last talk to Merrill?” Eli asks Chelsea.

“About twenty minutes ago. He said Ian’s in position, and they’re stationed behind the relay building. From what he could see, he thinks
there’s only one worker and one guard. It should be easy for them to get in undetected.”

“What do we do if it doesn’t storm?” Zoey asks.

“We might have to stay here for another day or so,” Tia says.

“What if it doesn’t storm for a long time?”

“Then we’ll have to regroup, try again. Don’t worry, Merrill won’t give up, not as long as Meeka’s alive.”

Zoey rubs her finger against the nearest rock. Part of it has been smoothed by the river at a time when the water was much higher. She is like the stone, pieces of her eroding away. The parts that are most important.

They wait late into the night but there is no activity from the sky, only a mockingly calm quiet that grates on Zoey’s nerves. Eli offers to take first watch and the rest of them bed down, the river a rushing lullaby that does nothing to help Zoey sleep.

The morning dawns in a brilliant cascade of reds that give way to a hazy blue sky. They spend the hours before noon checking in with Merrill and Ian, inspecting gear that has been gone over a dozen times, and casting glances at the traitorous blue canopy overhead. The sound that Zoey fears the most, the chop of helicopter blades, doesn’t come, even though she expects it to at any moment.

The afternoon and evening pass in a moldering of time that grows from minutes into hours, and slowly night creeps in like an assassin from the east.

As the last light fades, Zoey settles herself beneath a heavy overhang of flat rock that leans against another boulder near the edge of camp. The stone creates a natural shelter from the wind and weather.

The weather.

She glances up at the mottled sky. The wind that was nearly nonexistent in the afternoon has risen to a constant pitch that sweeps over the hills and hums between rocks. The first clouds appeared just before dark and have taken on a poisonous shade of gray. But there is no thunder, and more importantly, no lightning.

For supper they had eaten dried meat and drank what Chelsea called “coffee.” It was black and bitter, but hot from Tia heating the water they used to make it over a hand torch from her bag.

None of them had commented on the activity in the sky.

Now the tension is something that Zoey can feel in the air. With each degree the sun falls, the river is leeched of more color. Soon it is a dark ribbon cruising past them, its constant rush adding to the apprehension instead of calming her nerves.

Zoey looks up as the other three come to sit with her beneath the overhang. She can no longer see anyone’s features in the gloom.

“Sure wish we could have a fire,” Eli says. “Could almost pretend we were camping out.”

“Yeah, maybe a couple cold beers to go with some hot food,” Tia murmurs.

“Okay, gotta stop talkin’ about it. Shit’ll drive me nuts,” Eli says.

“Did people used to go camping for fun?” Zoey asks.

“Oh yeah, all the time,” Eli says. “People used to do a lotta shit for fun, before everything went to hell.”

“Like what?”

“Like go swimming,” Chelsea said. “Janie and I would swim almost every weekend in the summer. Our parents used to take us when she was really little, and I kept doing it after they passed.”

“I miss the movies,” Tia says. “Used to go a lot. We had a big theater near our place in Seattle, one of the kind that had the screen that was curved. I can still taste the butter on the popcorn. It probably plugged up a few of my arteries, but I’m pretty sure I’d drink a gallon of it straight right now.”

Eli shivers. “Nearly made me throw up.”

“Weak constitution.”

“Ain’t nothin’ weak about me, woman, you know that.”

“Besides your mind and sense of humor,” Tia says.

“Don’t know why you don’t just confess your love for me. Could be a beautiful thing.”

Chelsea nudges Zoey and laughs quietly. She smiles and gazes at them in turn. At first she thought that the group was made of companions depending on one another simply for survival, but as she spends more and more time with them, it’s clear they are so much more than that. She’s imagined what her life would have been like if she had grown up with her parents, how different everything would seem, but she could never get a true handle on what it would be like to have a family. She still doesn’t, but she realizes now a family is exactly what she’s looking at.

“Think we should check in with Merrill?” Zoey asks Chelsea, pushing away the bittersweet sensation.

A rumbling almost imperceptible to the ear comes from the west. Zoey feels it in her chest before she registers what it is.

Thunder.

They stiffen and wait for the sound to repeat itself. After another minute it does.

Chelsea fiddles with the headset hanging around her neck. Her eyes widen. “Are you sure? Okay.” She stands. “Ian said he just saw lightning not more than twenty miles away. The storm’s coming.”

“Let’s get ready,” Eli says.

They move to the boat and uncover it. Zoey fumbles in the dark, trying to help where she can, but stays out of the way mostly. The handgun Merrill gave her is heavy in its holster on her hip. She grips the handle, feeling a modicum of comfort from its heft.

As quietly as they can, they lift the boat from its mooring and walk sideways with it into the water. Several times the aluminum bumps a rock and Zoey cringes. Thunder rolls again and this time it has more power, lingering longer in the sky. Then there is a purplish jump of light, the lightning blooming in the bowels of several clouds. It is getting closer.

Without speaking, they climb into the floating vessel, and Eli shoves them into the current.

Tia starts the motor, its sound all but muted now by the wind and the murmurs of the storm. They begin to glide up the river, their speed barely enough to keep them moving against the current.

“Remember, Tia and Eli at the front, me at the back,” Chelsea says, touching Zoey’s arm. “You guide us, and we don’t stop for anything, we keep moving until we’re back out and into the boat.” Zoey nods, her heart beginning to pummel her rib cage. The muscles in her arms and legs have become water. She flexes her hands and rotates her ankles, all the while trying to keep her breathing under control.

The dark landscape slides inexorably past, the bend in the river coming closer with each minute.

A glow begins to fill up the sky above the closest bluff facing the water.

The floodlights.
Oh God
,
Zoey thinks,
I’m home.

Chelsea hands her a small headset of her own and she dons it, poking the single earpiece in her left ear. “You’ll be able to hear everyone and if you want to talk to us, just start speaking, okay?”

“Okay.”

“Zoey, that you?” Merrill’s voice says into her ear as if he’s only feet away.

“Yes.”

“Good. We’re all set here. Newton and I are in position.”

“No trouble with the guard?”

“No. We’re inside the station, but it won’t take long for them to know something’s wrong after the power goes out. The guard had a radio attached to his uniform. The first thing they’ll do is try to raise him on it, and when that doesn’t work they’ll send out a repair team along with more guards just in case. You’ll need to be very fast. The storm’s almost above us.”

As if on cue, a light patter of rain begins to fall, dropping in cold points on her exposed skin.

“Tia,” Merrill says. “As soon as the lights are out, that’s your signal to get into position. If a sniper spots you, Ian will take him out.”

“Probably not before one of us goes down,” Tia says.

Merrill ignores the comment. “Wait for the signal. Good luck.”

They all tell him the same, and the earpiece goes silent.

Thunder booms, so much closer, shaking the extended sides of the boat. The lights continue to burn, creating a halo behind the bluff.

Time seems to still, stretching out, punctuated only by Zoey’s rapid heartbeat. How long will they have to wait? Minutes? Hours? Her jacket begins to plaster to her back, moisture running down her sides into her waistline. She grips the seat under her.

There is an incandescent flash so bright it blinds her for a split second. She can see the afterimages of the electricity imprinted in her vision.

Zoey blinks, straining to look past the bluff.

Darkness.

“Go,” Merrill says in the earpiece.

The boat leaps forward silently and Zoey clings to her seat. The black shores scroll past as another sound begins to build. A raw gushing that she remembers so well it forces her eyes shut.

They round the bend, and the ARC comes into view.

It is a monolithic shadow rising above them. The outlines of the walls towering over the straight line of the dam behind it is enough to suck the breath from her lungs. There is only the faintest glow emanating from what she knows is the landing pad on the roof of the main building.

The boat closes the distance, the ARC growing taller and wider with each second. She hears Eli swear quietly in her earpiece, and she agrees. It is something to be cursed.

The wind cuts across the water, tugging at her hair, and one of the collapsible sides folds toward her. Without thinking, Zoey jams her arm into its path, stopping it from clanging against the interior of the boat. Pain blooms from her elbow up. It’s so sudden and sharp, a bout of nausea boils in her center. Then Chelsea is lifting the side back into position and the aching pressure is gone. She rubs at the place where it struck her but she’s not bleeding.

She mouths
I’m okay
to Chelsea and the other woman nods, turning back around toward the approaching compound.

The huge concrete stilts the ARC is built on hold it nearly five feet above the water. They will be able to pass underneath its base, barely.

Zoey watches the walls as more and more detail becomes clear. There is the closest sniper nest, along with the man occupying it. He’s yelling something that is lost in another blast of thunder, and she cringes as lightning rips across the sky. They are held there for a second, pinned beneath the light in the center of the river fifty yards away from the structure.

If he looks down now, we’re dead
, she thinks.
There’s nowhere to hide.

The boat keeps moving and darkness floods back in, blanketing them.

She holds her breath.

Forty yards.

No shots.

Thirty.

Twenty.

Another shout from the wall.

Ten.

Five.

They slide beneath the ARC, its mass above them like some colossal animal standing on many legs.

“We’re under,” Chelsea says into her headset.

Tia guides the boat between the massive supports, and Chelsea turns on a flashlight that shoots a soft, red beam out several yards. The sound of the river’s passage is magnified beneath the structure, the water falling from the dam’s spillway a roaring that fills the air. At the corner of her vision, movement catches Zoey’s eye. She squints through the darkness but can’t make out anything until another stuttering pulse of lightning cuts the night.

Several long boats bob in the current beside a platform that’s mounted to the ARC’s wall. What looks like a small service elevator runs up and out of sight. That’s how the repair team would reach the shore. But with the power out, they’ll have to find another way down to the boats. That will buy them time.

“Zoey, where’s the laundry room?” Tia asks in her earpiece. Zoey brings her gaze back from the boats and searches the smooth concrete ceiling above them. Here and there are small ports that dribble water that looks like blood in Chelsea’s red beam. Zoey imagines the interior layout, positioning herself in the doorway of the laundry room. She twists in her seat and points to the left.

“Go around the next support and it should be right there.” Tia pilots the boat in a smooth turn that brings them past the thick stilt. The ARC’s base is unbroken for a dozen yards, and Zoey’s about to say they must have missed it when a large plastic pipe appears in Chelsea’s light. It drips water, and when she glances to the right there is another, smaller port she knows is the drying vent.