The dolphin before me was, in short, a real miracle.
My parents had told me stories about them as a kid. Sailors would fall overboard during ocean storms, and dolphins would appear out of nowhere to save them. The angels of the sea.
As the dolphin teetered in the water, I realized why it had appeared: to save my life. It was going to be my angel.
I kicked softly in the water. There was no need to worry anymore—the dolphin would swim me to the surface like it had done for the sailors in the tales I’d heard growing up. I would wrap my arms around its neck, and it would kick its flippers hard against the salt water, launching us to the surface. I imagined the look on Phoenix’s face when the dolphin leapt from the water, my arms wrapped around its neck.
I reached for the dolphin, my fingers tingling. Already feeling the mystical bond between us that would surely form when it carried me to the surface.
It gave me one look with its big blue eyes and hurried away.
It will come back, I told myself. The dolphins in the stories always came back.
Thirty seconds passed. It didn’t come back.
I swam toward the surface on my own. If I saw a mermaid, I’d keep swimming.
I sucked in a breath when I broke the surface. Two hundred feet away, a parachute drifted down to the water—Dove or Phoenix, I guessed.
Where was Bertha? She had to be nearby. I hadn’t been shot down long after she’d slipped from my arms. She’d fallen fast—too fast to land safely, even with perfect form.
Something plastic floated past my arm—one of Bertha’s guns.
Where was she? Had she survived the impact? Had she drowned? Was she hurt? I didn’t see any blood in the water. I had to keep searching. I stuck my face back underwater and started to paddle.
My head slammed into the side of something hard. “Oww,” a voice moaned.
I lifted my head from the water. It was a body—Bertha. Her eyes were closed. I shook her hard. “Bertha!” I said. “Bertha! Can you hear me? Please, wake up!”
She coughed but kept her eyes shut. “I think I hit a dolphin.”
“You hit a dolphin?”
She pursed her lips. “Landed on it—BAM!” She started laughing.
She was delirious. She must’ve hit her head. Her impact with the water had likely been tremendous.
“I was flapping my arms,” she said, moving her elbows. She held a waterlogged gun in each hand. “And then finally my parachute flew out of my pack, slowing me briefly ’til good ol’ Wet Willy saved me.”
“Wet Willy?”
She stuck a hand on her head like a fin. “Wet Willy.”
“You mean Free Willy? Like the whale in that really old movie?”
She moistened a finger in her mouth and reached for my ear. “Wet Willy’s comin’ for ya.” She moved her arm and winced. “Oww,” she said, holding her elbow in one hand. “I think I broke it. Or maybe my whole body.”
She’d lost it. The impact had given her a concussion.
“Take me home,” she shouted. “TO NEW TEXAS, BABY!”
I grabbed her feet and pulled her in the direction of the fallen parachuter. We had to find the others. And soon, or the Feds would be on us.
Fifty feet away a green flare shot into the sky. Phoenix was sending us a signal. I swam hard in its direction, dragging Bertha behind me.
“Whee!” she cried as I dragged her by her feet.
But the water was empty when we reached the flare’s source.
“Phoenix!” I called.
My legs shook, and my breaths came in short spurts. I was tired. Pulling Bertha hadn’t helped. I wouldn’t last much longer in open water.
“Phoenix!” I called again.
Something yanked my ankle, pulling me under. It was too late to scream. Phoenix hadn’t set the flare off at all—it’d been one of the Feds. The green should’ve given it away.
The soldier pulled me deeper and deeper. His grip tightened around my ankle as we sank. I tried to kick, but he held on that much harder. My lungs screamed—they needed air, and fast. I hadn’t had time to breathe before he’d pulled me under.
A shadow swam behind us, followed by a flurry of bubbles. Suddenly the soldier softened his grip on my leg and a cloud of bubbles shot from his mouth. His corpse fell slowly into the ocean’s blue depths. A shiver ran down my spine.
He is not your enemy, I reminded myself. The Feds are not your enemies. It was hard not to think so when they fought so desperately to kill me.
The shadow swam toward me. Did it have a similar plan in store?
Before I could decide whether or not to flee, the shadow grabbed me by the hand and pulled me toward the surface—Phoenix. He’d saved me again. Air flooded my lungs when my head broke the surface at last. I squeezed my eyes shut and laughed.
Bertha floated next to me, spinning and giggling in the water as waves passed. “I think I’d like some breakfast,” she announced.
Phoenix was silent. He stared up at the sky above and clenched his jaw. A hundred parachutes filled the sky—armed men with weapons slung across their chests. Feds.
“Their bullets won’t work in the water,” I said, “and moisture will ruin the guns.”
“BANG! BANG!” Bertha pretended to fire her waterlogged weapons.
“They don’t have bullets,” said Phoenix. “They know those won’t work underwater. They’ve got Dummy Darts—a lot of them, by the looks of it.”
“What if,” giggled Bertha, “they weren’t Dummy Darts, but Gummy Darts? And they just fired Gummy Bears at us and we collected ’em and ate ’em and then had a picnic.”
Phoenix turned to me. “What happened to her?”
“Concussion.”
“PERCUSSION!” shouted Bertha. “Somebody get me some drums!”
A hum sounded over the crashing waves. On the horizon, a boat sped in our direction. The Feds were coming at us from all directions. They might not have been my real enemy, but they’d try to kill me nonetheless.
Phoenix jumped in the water and waved his hands at the boat to signal to it. “Yell,” he told me, before screaming as loud as he could.
The boat swerved in our direction.
I yanked his arm. “What are you doing?”
“OVER HERE,” he yelled, ignoring my question. “HEY, OVER HERE!”
The waves broke faster as the boat sped toward us. I kicked hard to stay afloat and saw Phoenix do the same; his muscle mass made him heavy in the water. Bertha, however, floated along on her back with ease.
The parachutes were only a few hundred feet above us now, decorating the sky like polka dots swaying in the breeze.
As the boat came closer, a figure leaned over the boat’s deck and pulled something up from the water. I recognized the red writing printed along the boat’s starboard side: The Retired Lobster.
It was Churchill Wingnut.
“CHURCHILL!” I yelled. Phoenix looked confused. “He helped me when the Wet Pocket broke,” I explained. “He was the one with the hook and the blood and the shark and… yeah.”
Phoenix nodded, as if it were the most reasonable thing he’d ever heard.
“OWW!” Bertha cried out in pain. A thin yellow dart was protruding from her stomach. “What the—?” She looked around, startled. “How the hell did I get in the middle of the ocean?” She threw both arms back, then cried out in pain when she moved the injured one.
“Dummy Darts,” said Phoenix.
Waves crashed on either side of us as the Retired Lobster finally reached us and slowed to a stop. Just in time—the Feds were only twenty feet from the surface now. They began to cut their parachute cords and drop into the ocean like swollen raindrops. One Fed cut his chute directly over the boat and landed on its deck with a splat. Churchill quickly chucked the man’s limp body overboard.