Hawkins’s eyes remained open as he was pulled beneath the water. He saw the spider strike the water where his face had been just moments before. The creature slipped beneath the surface. Its legs scrambled for purchase and found nothing. Its tail twitched madly, but failed to propel the creature through the water. It sank down, spasmed twice, and fell still. The BFSs couldn’t swim.
But Lilly could. As she pulled him forward, he saw her toes splayed wide, revealing black webbing between them. She held him beneath her body, gripping his arms. Gills on the sides of her neck opened and closed.
Just like Kam, he thought as his vision began to fade.
He looked into her eyes, her inhuman but kind eyes, and smiled.
She returned his smile, flashing a pair of sharp, white canines and a contrasting duo of deep dimples. Then she arched her body and turned up. Hawkins coughed violently as they emerged into the air once more. He felt two pairs of hands reach under his arms and pull him up. He fell back with a wet slap and found himself on the deck of a strange-looking, trash-covered boat. The hard deck felt impossibly comfortable. Joliet appeared above him. He could see her speaking, but couldn’t hear her. He managed to smile up at her for a moment, and then closed his eyes.
51.
The sun flared bright in Hawkins’s eyes when they opened again. But then it faded, growing darker by the second, until it seemed like he would pass out once more. His pulse quickened, waking his nerves, filling his body with a pain so intense he knew consciousness was impossible. But his eyes … the sun … what was—
Then he saw the stars. It was night.
As his eyes continued to adjust, he saw many more stars emerge and the inky blackness of the night sky became something closer to a milky swirl of dark and light shades. The gentle undulation told him that he was on a boat. A small one. He could hear water gently lapping against the hull, but also a continuous, dull thumping sound.
We’re still in the Garbage Patch, he realized.
Hawkins turned to his left. Joliet lay next to him, flat on her back, her eyes closed. She looked peaceful when she slept. The expression on her face reminded him of the sketch he’d drawn of her. But her body, covered in scrapes, bruises, and dried blood, ruined this image. A shadow stirred and he noticed that Lilly lay in the crook of Joliet’s arm, snuggled up close. If not for the hair and feline features, she’d look like any other sleeping child. Beyond them, Bray and Drake both lay sleeping. They looked horrible, but the worst of their wounds had been tended to. An emptied first-aid kit laid at Bray’s feet.
He pushed himself up into a sitting position. His side ached and he paused to let his head stop swirling. He slid back and leaned against the hull, wondering why his wounds didn’t hurt more. Hell, he should have been dead. He looked down and found most of his chest and side wrapped in bandages. The one on his side had a red splotch in the middle, but didn’t appear to be bleeding through. Someone sewed me up, he thought, and then felt the bandage on his back. The bullet went straight through. He nearly laughed at the thought and realized he wasn’t feeling quite right in the head, either. Shock or morphine, he decided, but didn’t really care which. Both would eventually wear off and the pain would become unbearable.
A foreign sound tickled his ears and he instinctively looked to the sky. He couldn’t see a thing, but he knew it was up there. A jet. The running lights should have been easy to see in the pitch blackness, but there were none, which meant it didn’t want to be seen.
With a grunt he pushed himself to his feet. Are they looking for us? he wondered. He limped to the aft deck and got his first real look at their ship. Aside from the bare deck, the fifteen-foot vessel looked like a clump of garbage, nearly indistinguishable from the thick swath of trash surrounding them on all sides. They were still in the thickest part of the patch, which meant that they had yet to travel thirty miles from the island.
Hawkins flinched as a hand took his. He looked down and saw Lilly’s eyes reflecting the moonlight back up at him.
“What is it?” she asked, looking at the sky.
“Sounds like a jet,” he replied.
“You can’t see it?”
He shook his head no. Of course he couldn’t, but she could! “What does it look like?”
“It’s small,” she said. “Darker than the sky. Kind of a triangle.” She pointed to the sky, low on the horizon. “It’s there, moving away from us. Toward the island.”
The plane had already passed, moving at supersonic speed. The sound was just reaching them now, which meant it was really high.
“Sounds like a B-2 bomber,” Bray said. He stretched as he joined them at the back of the boat.
Joliet stepped up next to Hawkins’s right side. She leaned her head on his shoulder. “Thanks. For coming to get me.”
Pain lanced through his arm as he moved, but he managed to get his hand on her shoulder. He pulled her closer. “You owe me two cases of beer now.”