The relief she felt over finding herself alive vanished when a skein of lightning illuminated the beach. Her boat was nowhere in sight.
She pushed herself up to start the search.
As she shambled along, her broken toe throbbed, but her eyes adjusted to the faint blue glow of the sky.
Waves crashed, churning up blocks of white foam that piled up on the sand.
A few minutes later, she stopped to get her bearings and realized she had lost more than her boat and headlamp. She had nothing to defend herself with.
The first thing she spotted was a pole sticking out of the sand. She walked over and tried to dislodge it.
Wiggling it back and forth, she finally managed to free the five-foot length of pipe. It reminded her of the spear General Rhino carried. Almost as long as her body, it was so heavy she could hardly swing it.
The farther she trekked, the more frightened she became. She had no real weapon. No flashlight, no food, no water. And no idea where her boat was.
Ada stopped and thrust the pipe into the sand.
You’re okay. There’s nothing out here with you.
She wanted to believe that, but the electrical storm illuminated a dense tropical jungle growing up through the old-world resort city. Trees had grown up through mounds of rubble, and vines curled like snakes toward the beach.
A quarter mile away, a raised concrete walkway cut the beach. At the end, metal poles stuck out of the sand and rose from the water. The pier that had connected them to the concrete walk was mostly gone.
In the harbor, bows and masts jutted out of the surf. She counted two dozen yachts and double that number in smaller craft, washed up along the shoreline and partially buried in sand.
The bigger vessels didn’t make much sense to her in a harbor so shallow that their remains poked out of the water like broken bones.
Maybe people had fled here after the bombs, she thought. Maybe they anchored here to wait out the war.
She looked back, to where hotels and resorts had once overlooked the harbor. The buildings were mostly rubble. Probably felled by a monstrous tsunami—a bomb would have caused much higher radiation readings.
She climbed up onto the concrete walkway for a look at the beach on the other side.
Lightning flashed, and in the glow, she saw there wasn’t much left of the pier on this side of the marina, either. Only a few rusting platforms—mostly just poles sticking out of the water.
She waited again for lightning and used it to scan the shore.
Her spirits lifted when she saw a boat that looked like hers. But they sank again when she saw tracks in the sand just below the edge of the concrete walkway.
She waited for another lightning bolt. It provided just enough light to make out a trail made by webbed feet about the size of a human’s.
The tracks ran between her and the capsized boat that looked like hers.
She hurried down the sand, past the remains of a metal boat whose hull was cracked in half. Something skittered out from under the stern.
Alarmed, she jabbed the metal pole into it, impaling a purple crab the size of a sea turtle. The creature squirmed, claws snapping at her, all four eyeballs looking on probably the first human it had ever seen.
Ada gave a scream, not of horror but of disgust, and flung the pole down on the sand. The crab managed to free itself and scuttled away into the crashing surf.
She stood there staring for several moments until her heart stopped pounding. Then she raced to the capsized boat, leaving the pole behind. Coming closer, she saw that it was indeed her boat, with the same oars she had spent countless hours hauling through the waves.
She pulled it from the sand, only to have it snap in two.
“Son of a…”
She found the other oar still strapped against the hull, but the top of the paddle had broken off. Gear and uncoiled rope lay scattered about the boat. The steering wheel was partially buried in the sand.
But at least the hull didn’t have any damage that she could see. If she could rig a rope, maybe she could turn it over and launch it back to sea.
Somewhere on this beach, there had to be other oars for the scavenging. She found her machete in the sand. Then she ducked under the portside gunwale.
The cabin she had called home was crushed against the beach on the starboard side. She tried to open the hatch, but it, too, seemed broken.
She kicked it with her good foot. The steel toe did the trick, and the hatch popped open. Inside, she saw that the starboard side of the cabin bulkhead had been crushed inward, knocking off all the gear and crates she had locked in place. Even worse, they had spilled into standing water.
“No luck at all,” she whispered.
She dug through the soup for whatever she could salvage. In the end, she returned to the sand with her soaking backpack, a knife, and a hand flashlight.
Slumping down onto the beach, she watched the surf and felt the anger warm her body. The Cazadores she’d killed had it coming for what they did to Katrina, but how did she deserve this punishment?
“Fuck you for sending me out here, Xavier,” she growled. “Fuck you for not believing me about the Cazadores.”
She lay back on the sand, looking up at the blue explosions of electricity in the clouds rolling overhead. The thunder made her think of bombs.
“What the hell am I supposed to do now?” she muttered.
As if in answer, a croaking sounded in the distance.
Ada shot up, grabbing the machete and the flashlight. She clicked the button, but the beam didn’t come on.
She tapped the flashlight with the spine of the machete, and it flashed several times, then died again.
Dropping the flashlight, she scanned the mounds of rubble along the shoreline for movement.
The croaking came again a few minutes later, but it didn’t seem to be coming from the beach or the fallen buildings.
She turned toward the surf.
A capsized sailboat lay in the sand, its hull stripped of paint. The mainmast was broken, but a remnant of sail flapped lazily in the breeze.
It struck her then. Maybe she wasn’t stranded here after all. She didn’t need fuel and oars to get her to Florida. She just needed the wind and something to catch it.
The beach was littered with dozens of boats. At least one had to be seaworthy.
The croaking came again.
The escape strategy was great, but she must first survive whatever mutant beasts lurked out there in the ruined city.
Machete in hand, she backed up to her boat. She wanted to climb inside and hide, but she stayed on the sand, searching the water for the source of the noise.
When it came again, it was louder. Its source had moved. She scooped up the flashlight again and tried it. The beam came on, lighting up a small area of beach and surf.
She flicked it in the direction of the next croak.
Playing the light over the concrete walkway, she paused on a slimy green mass of something attached to the side wall. Horns lined the spine and head of a creature with four jointed legs spread out in L shapes. It looked a lot like a frog.
The large eyes looked back at her. A purple crab claw hung out of its mouth, wobbling as the creature chewed.
She kept the beam on the beast, but it didn’t seem to care. The claw fell from the mouth onto the sand. A long tongue shot out and whisked it back into the open mouth.
Ada took a step back toward her boat, bumping up against the portside gunwale. The light flitted downward and picked up something else on the concrete. Something even slimier than a frog.
At first glance, the three blobs looked like worms, but then she remembered seeing leeches in her biology classes on the Hive. These were orders of magnitude larger than the small creatures from that lesson.