The Ark. Laura Nolen Liddell

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СКАЧАТЬ couldn’t picture it, no matter how hard I tried. There were no cars on the road, and most of the cops were up in space already, so I pretty much floored it the whole way. As soon as I got to Calais, however, traffic materialized out of nowhere, and I screeched to a stop. I was still seventy-five miles from the launch site in Saint John.

      It took me a good ten minutes to realize that traffic was going nowhere. Everyone on this side of the continent wanted to be in Saint John right now, including me. A lot of people, like Meghan, had chosen to spend their remaining hours in the comfort of their home. People who had no shot at getting on board, due to age or disability. But a lot of people would try to get on the OPT at the last minute, whether or not they had a ticket. People like me. And the OPT wouldn’t let them, and their cars would stay in the road, and I would never get there.

      I needed a plan B. I jerked the wheel to the right and steered the car through the shoulder and toward the nearest exit ramp, which was also blocked. “Car!” I shouted, activating the system.

      “Good afternoon.” The reply was cold, even for a robot.

      “Is there an airport nearby?”

      “You are four miles from Saint Stephen Airport.”

      “Are there any planes there?”

      “The airport is currently out of service.” That made sense. Under the Treaty, every airplane on Earth was grounded all week. Hijacking and piloting an abandoned airplane was above my pay grade, so I needed another tack. “What about the harbor?”

      “You are one half-mile from the harbor. An international edict prevents navigation of waterways within one hundred miles of Saint John, New Brunswick.”

      “Yeah, well, it’s not like there’s anyone left to stop me.” I turned east and pressed the accelerator into the floorboard, sending the car flying over a curb and through a vacant parking lot.

      “You may steer the car away from the port now.”

      “No chance of that.” I was about four feet from a mostly empty side street, and I felt a tiny thrill of adrenaline as I pressed the accelerator harder. The electric engine snapped gently at the sudden velocity, then… clicked off. My chest slammed into my seatbelt.

      “What the heck, car!”

      “Your criminal intent is apparent. Car is powering down. Goodbye.”

      So the cars on the road weren’t just stuck in traffic. They had probably powered down, too, at some point nearer the launch site. Awesome.

      I slipped off my heels and shoved them into the satchel. Then I grabbed what was left of the food and a coat from the back seat and sprinted toward the water for all I was worth. I would have to try my luck with the boats.

      My nylons plucked against the blacktop in the first few paces, so that by the time I reached the end of the block, they were sporting gaping holes on the soles of my feet. This was for the birds. Seriously, did these things serve any purpose at all? I paused just long enough to poke my feet through the holes and bunch the shredded ends around my ankles. That would have to do. I had a lot of tricks up my sleeve, but running in heels wasn’t one of them.

      I was within a few blocks of the water when the air around me seemed to change subtly. At first, I couldn’t figure out what was different. I passed a man on a bench, leaning on a cane, then a group of people sitting in a circle on a big patch of grass. Someone had a guitar out, and several in the group were holding hands. I assumed they were around college age, but when I got closer, I saw that they were families. Old and young, huddled together. Small children ran in circles at the center of the cluster. No one so much as glanced at me as I sprinted by, and that was what had changed. I was no longer an outcast to be stared at, eyes narrowed. No one was judging me. I might as well have been invisible. Death had made us all equals.

      I hustled past an antique store full of digital clocks, the old-fashioned kind that people used to plug into their walls or set out on a desk or a nightstand. Every clock faced the outside, so that the window was full of green and red square-shaped numbers, all reading 9:35 p.m. That’s also when I realized that every light in town was on. Of course. No one was concerned about saving electricity anymore.

      Next was a convenience store with a cardboard sign taped on the window: “Take what you need.” Its fluorescent lights illuminated empty shelves. When the water of the harbor glinted into view, I started seeing restaurants. Every chair was occupied. I slowed my pace in spite of myself, trying to take in every aspect of the scene. The woman who caught my attention was draped over a chair, her long black gown spread out over the cheap red and brown carpet. She wore a diamond necklace and matching earrings. Also at her table were a teenage boy wearing a collared shirt and a man in shorts and flip flops.

      The dining room was filled with tableaus as diverse as hers. There was a lot of wine, and a single man ran among the tables with food and bottles of liquor. He wore a smile.

      A group of six sitting around a table for four waved at me, beckoning me to join them. The woman—I assumed she was the mother—slid to the side of her seat, indicating that I could share it with her. I didn’t even know I had stopped running. I was just standing at the window, taking it all in.

      I almost joined her. I almost sat among this family of strangers and whiled away my remaining hours of life basking in their companionship, their acceptance. Maybe I would even tell them the truth about my life: that I had failed, in every possible way, that my family could never love me, that they’d left me to die in a prison commissary. I glanced at one of the boys at their table and thought that I would at least tell them about West, but not that he hadn’t come for me. I couldn’t tell anyone about that.

      But I wasn’t one of them. I didn’t belong with their family. As much as I longed to fit into a group like that, it wasn’t in me. Maybe I would make it onto the OPT, and maybe I would die when the meteor struck. Maybe I would get all the way to the Ark, but not make it inside. Then I would die in space, alone. But I could never sit in a restaurant, drinking wine, and wait for fate to take me. One way or another, I was going to Saint John.

      The harbor was clean and dark, and it smelled like fish and saltwater. A faint steam rose from the tips of the small waves, which were painted silver in the moonlight and dancing under the lights from the harbor. There were several larger boats and a few fishing rigs docked along a series of short piers. Glancing around, I climbed to the tallest point I could—a set of concrete steps leading to an American flag—and began to scan the gently bobbing boats. Most would have government-issue GPS systems and wouldn’t run. After checking the first few rows, I started to panic, just a little.

      Then I saw it. It was about the size of a ski boat and mostly white, with plenty of peeling paint. The word “Bandito” scrolled across the bow in elegant script. It had to be at least twenty-five years old, before they started installing GPS on everything that moved. It was perfect.

      It was also occupied. A man stood along the pier, pulling a length of rope hand over fist. Despite the slight chill in the summer air, he was stripped to the waist, and his skin appeared tanned in the half-light.

      He turned to me as soon as the dock bobbled with my weight, and I raised my eyebrows.

      “You’re Trin Lector.” I’d seen all his movies. His latest, about a group of renegade astronauts sent to uncover a plot to destroy the International Space Station, had been screened in the detention center right after the news about the meteor broke. It had broken every box office record ever, and it hadn’t even been that good, at least in my opinion. Not like his СКАЧАТЬ