“We’ll go look,” said Milo, buying time. “But we may have already given the fish out, put it out there with the fruit—”
The Monitor smashed him in the head with the butt of his burp gun, and Milo fell down and went dark.
—
When he awoke sometime later, things were even busier. Airships and watercraft growled in the air and growled in the surf. Music pounded.
The Hall of Famers kept to their huts, still.
Suzie dabbed Milo’s cheek with something wet. Jale and Chili Pepper sat nearby.
“Jale took them to the fish pantry,” Suzie told him. “Otherwise they were going to shoot you.”
“What the fuck,” Milo asked, “are we supposed to eat this month?”
“We get through tonight,” said Chili Pepper, “we’ll worry about that.”
Suddenly, shouting from among the huts out near the trees.
“No!” bellowed a woman’s voice. One of the Hall of Fame women went running by, wild-eyed.
Looking after her, Milo saw the source of her distress. Two men in suits had a preteen girl by the leg and were dragging her toward the trees. The girl thrashed and screamed. The woman reached the suits and pulled at them, shouting.
The suits appeared to be interested in whatever the woman was saying.
They dropped the girl, and the woman walked into the trees with them.
Milo stood, fists clenched. “I think I’d rather be dead than—”
“No,” said Jale and Chili Pepper together.
“You’ll make it worse,” said Chili Pepper. “It can get a lot worse.”
They heard the woman cry out from the woods. They stayed where they were. Milo’s eyes stung. Suzie gripped his wrist hard enough to hurt. He let it hurt.
Thunder rolled. Far off, it seemed. From around the side of the island.
He searched the sky, which seemed clear.
The thunder became a steady pulse.
“That’s not thunder,” said Chili Pepper, standing. “It’s the tsunami drum.”
—
Chili Pepper grabbed both Milo and Suzie roughly, shoving, shouting,“Go!”
Down on the beach, Milo found the Fish Committee dashing to get the outriggers in the water. The drunks on the beach seemed confused by the sudden rush of bodies and boats; they milled around and laughed, staggering out of the way. Someone turned the music up.
“Something spooked the moon niggers,” Milo heard as he dodged between suits and splashed into the surf.
Dark figures came flying out of the trees: the night shift from the pump, descending on hidden zip lines. They hit the sand and sprinted for the boats.
The fishing outriggers were full, Milo could see, and steering into the surf. Downbeach, Hall of Famers dragged other boats out of the trees. Huge, simple boats, great logs tied into catamarans, with rough masts and sails. There were three of these, and it took hundreds of hands to get them into the water.
“That way!” Milo urged Suzie. “Look for the twins!”
One of the cartel spacecraft flashed lights as the island boats left shore.
Whoop-whoop! Sirens and alarms drowned the music and the shouting.
Finally, soldiers went running for the sleds and heavies, eating bananas as they ran or straining to finish drinks.
—
On the catamarans, hundreds of hands raised the masts. Sails stretched, finding the wind. Milo leaped aboard the second catamaran, gripping wet wood with his toes. Hands steadied him, steadied Suzie as she followed.
“How many islanders can you fit on a boat?” someone called out.
“One more!” they all shouted. “Always one more!”
They found an open place on the woven netting and sat scrunched together, taking up as little space as possible.
Overhead, cartel ships blazed and screamed. The smaller craft rode their rockets into space. The giants waited for their skyhooks to tighten and pull, nosing them upward like rising whales. A few heavies smoked and steamed on the beach still, engines flexing impatiently, awaiting stragglers.
Suzie poked Milo in the arm and pointed seaward.
The horizon had darkened.
“It doesn’t look like a wave,” she said.
“It won’t be a real wave,” said someone sitting nearby, “until it gets to the shallower water. Then it’ll stack up.”
The voice was familiar…
“Carver!” cried Milo. “Have you seen my brother and sister?”
Carver shook his head but said, “They got aboard somewhere, I guarantee it. Sharp cookies, your bunch.”
Milo had to be happy with that for now.
“Anyhow,” continued Carver, “there’s a steep drop-off farther out. We’re trying to sail past that before the wave gets there.”
“We’re not going fast enough,” growled a woman with a tumor swelling behind her left ear.
Three men adjusted a mighty rope. The catamaran leaned sideways, causing its passengers to dig into the netting with their fingers. The boat gained speed.
Then the ocean dropped out from under them.
The catamaran seemed to nosedive, and Milo understood that the tsunami’s trough had reached them.
A mile away, the hump he had seen speeding along the horizon had begun building into a mountain.
“Holy God,” said Milo.
Before another breath passed, it was on them. Suzie squeezed his arm as the sea ballooned under them, tilting them up and lifting them into the sky.
Several islanders lost their grip and tumbled into the crazy water. They did not reappear.
Looking back toward the island, Milo saw that the cartel heavies were all clear, their engines torching hard, zooming straight up out of the atmosphere. All except one, which just now seemed to be wallowing in the sand.
The wave intervened as they passed over the crest. For a second, the catamaran might as well have been flying; below them lay the edge of the world and far-flung islands. Out to sea, the ocean was like a dark army—ranks and ranks of swells racing across the blue.
They slid down, gaining speed, their stomachs in their throats, and were thrown back up again as a larger wave took them, lifting. From its peak, they watched the first wave slam across their island.
The last cartel heavy, lifting off, trying desperately to gain speed, was swallowed up without a trace. In an instant, the trees and hills vanished underwater. Only the highest hill and the massive pump machinery remained untouched, surrounded by raging foam and whirlpools like jaws.
“Madness,” whispered Milo. “This planet is mad!”
Suzie shut him up with a long, wild kiss. The kind you feel in your throat.
—
A day later, in the evening, they sailed back ashore.
Not their familiar shore. Who knew where that was? The village was out in the sea somewhere or splintered among the trees in the forest. The tsunami had chewed the island a new shoreline.
They found a wide beach, and two of the great catamarans sailed ashore. They muscled the boats into the shelter of the trees first, before collapsing in the sand. Members of the Rebuilding Committee built a fire and began gathering shore debris for shelters.
“The twins,” Suzie said.
Carlo came plowing through the crowd, towing Serene. The two of them looked at Milo. Only looked.
“Good,” they said, simply, simultaneously. And they looked at Suzie, too, and said, “Good.”
They all roamed the edge of the forest together, gathering whatever looked useful.