Plague

closer while not grounding. He was within ten yards of Drake. He didn’t have to raise his voice to be heard.
    Without turning toward her, and speaking in a whisper, he said, “Dekka, can you reach him from here?”
    “Barely,” she said. “The sharper the angle, the less I can do. But yeah.”
    “On one,” Sam said. “Three . . . two . . .”
    Dekka raised her hands and Drake rose feebly from the ground. He felt it immediately, knew what was happening, and kicked against the air like a marionette.
    Sam raised his hands. Twin beams of green light fired. They hit one of the creatures, two feet to the left, but Sam swung right and caught Drake’s leg.
    The leg turned bright and smoke swirled.
    Drake lashed with his whip and caught one of the creatures. He yanked himself out of Dekka’s field and tumbled among the creatures, blocked from Sam’s beams.
    “Will he die?” Toto asked.
    “Sadly, no,” Dekka said.
    From shore they heard Drake bellowing in outrage, then: “Get them! Go!”
    The creatures responded instantly. They rushed to the water’s edge. It was almost impossible for Sam to see them as living creatures, they seemed more like robots. Insects simply were not that big. Couldn’t be that big.
    They rushed in a swarm to the water. And kept running straight in.
    “They float,” Jack said. “That’s bad.”
    “Yeah, but they can’t swim very well,” Sam pointed out. He threw the engine into reverse and chug-chugged slowly back to a safer distance. The creatures had stopped rushing into the water. Those that could reach bottom scurried ignominiously back to dry land. Two of the creatures floated like unmoored rafts, or like trailers caught in a flood, twisting slowly, helpless.
    Then one of the creatures on shore opened its wings. Beneath the hard carapace were wings like a dragonfly’s.
    “They can’t actually fly, can they?” Dekka wondered.
    The creature lifted off. It was awkward and slow. But it flew.
    It flew toward the boat.
    “Go back to camp after you off-load the catch,” Quinn instructed his crews. “I’ll catch up with you later. And if I don’t . . . well, keep up the routine.”
    He felt worried eyes following him as he walked down the dock. There was one motorboat that still had a few gallons of fuel. They had designated it for emergency use only. He supposed this was emergency enough.
    “You coming?” Quinn asked Brianna.
    She shook her head. “I can’t beat these things, but I can at least fight them.”
    “What if he won’t come?” Quinn asked.
    “He’ll come. It will be his big moment.”
    “Will he be able to stop these creatures?”
    “How would I know?” Brianna demanded. “It wasn’t my idea. I’m not the one saying we should bring him back. Maybe he and Drake will go back to being best buddies. How would I know?”
    “Well, I guess Edilio thinks Caine can save us.”
    Neither of them spoke for a while, both thinking of Edilio, wondering if he would survive. Right from the start Edilio had been one of the good guys. Probably the best of them.
    He and Mary: two selfless, loyal, decent people. One dead after betraying everything and everyone. The other maybe dying right now, ignored and alone.
    “One more question for you, Brianna. It’s serious. So don’t just give me your automatic tough-chick answer, okay? Because I want the truth.”
    “Yeah?”
    “Can you beat Caine? If he starts in with his usual, starts pushing people around, hurting them . . . Can you take him?”
    He saw the beginnings of a cocky smile. But then she dropped the act, sighed, and said, “I don’t know, Quinn.”
    Still he hesitated. He didn’t want to go. And he knew why. “Everybody kind of likes me now because I fish. I have this thing I do, right, and it’s necessary and so people respect me.” He sighed and unwound the motorboat’s rope from its cleat. “Now I’ll be the guy who brought Caine back.”
    Brianna nodded. “Sucks to be you. Sucks worse to be me.”
    Impulsively, Quinn hugged her. Like a brother. She didn’t return the gesture, but she didn’t blur away either.
    “Hang in there, Breeze.”
    “You too, Fisherman.”
    Quinn stepped down into the boat. Brianna was out of sight before he could fire the engine.
    He headed out of the marina, chugging along slowly until he was away. Then he pushed the throttle to full speed and pointed the bow toward the distant island.
    Astrid looked around, wondering where they were and where they were going.