Authors: Scott Cramer

Colony East (38 page)

BOOK: Colony East

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Lungs burning and legs throbbing, he stopped and dropped to his knees. The sob rose from deep inside his chest and tears filled his eyes. He collapsed forward, his forehead bumping the pavement. He pushed his cheek into the mat of wet weeds and cried.

~ ~ ~

Abby broke the surface and took a sip of air. Only a sip, because the river quickly sucked her back under. She spun and rolled as her arms and legs stretched at a force she felt might pull them from their sockets. Unable to control herself, she tried to breathe every chance she got, guzzling and snorting and huffing air each time her nose cleared the water.

She opened her eyes and kept them open. A deafening roar accompanied the blurry flashes of objects. She saw the pylons of the Brooklyn Bridge. A moment later, she flew by the pilings of the Williamsburg Bridge. Between momentary observations, her world was silent and black with a searing ache spreading inside her chest as her lungs scrounged for precious molecules of oxygen.

Abby took a deep breath of air and faced what appeared to be a mountain in her path. In the split second before she went under again, she saw the river coursing up the side of the mountain. The rising wall of water sheared near the mountain peak, creating two massive fountains. One cascaded to the left, one to the right.

When she was pulled down this time, Abby felt herself swept up and lifted higher as if the East River had changed course, and its mouth was in the clouds. A moment later, she hung suspended between sky and river. Then she started to fall, riding a waterfall, accelerating.

The thud came without warning, turning her world black and silent.

~ ~ ~

Lieutenant Dawson was still numb from exhaustion and from having let Abigail slip from his grasp when he stood. The sky had lightened to gunmetal gray and the rain and wind were easing up. He blinked and took deep breath after deep breath.

Fifteen minutes later, Dawson faced Trump Tower. The storm had blown out several windows on the upper stories. Shards of glass, bricks, and trash littered the street. It seemed that half the vehicles of the colony were here, the hub of the search activities.

He entered the building and on the fourth floor walked past Ensign Parker, who had his ear to a radio.

“Lieutenant,” Parker called out. “What happened to your shoes?”

Realizing he was barefoot, but not caring, Dawson entered Admiral Samuels’ office. Both the admiral and Doctor Perkins studied him. Samuels was out of uniform and had the red, watery eyes of someone lacking sleep. Perkins wore a crisp white shirt with his maroon bowtie firmly in place.

“Cadet Leigh jumped into the river. I’m afraid she drowned.”

“Parker,” the admiral barked, “Call off the search.”

“Yes, sir,” the ensign shouted back.

Doctor Perkins lowered his eyes and shook his head. “I’m sorry to hear that, Lieutenant. We invested significant resources in Abigail Leigh. I wish we could have monitored her vitals. She would have played an important role in our understanding of AHA-B.”

Dawson bit his tongue so hard he tasted blood.

Doctor Perkins directed his next comment to Admiral Samuels. “Can we recover the body? We can glean valuable information from an autopsy.”

“Lieutenant, what river?” Admiral Samuels asked in a somber tone.

Dawson paused a moment. Then he brought his shoulders back and lifted his chin. He stared at Doctor Perkins. “The Hudson River, sir. Right by the George Washington Bridge.”

DAY ONE

Abby opened her eyes to sunshine. With her cheek pressed against the mud, she saw a terrain of silt and debris washed ashore, including a birdcage and washing machine. The Colony East skyline was also in her peculiar view, as was the river, still running swiftly but nothing like before.

She sat up, gingerly moving limbs and fingers to see if anything was broken, and then saw what had deposited her onto dry land. Half the hull of a freighter sat firmly beached, half of it still in the river. She realized she had gone up it as if it was a giant waterslide. Despite the hard landing that apparently knocked her unconscious, she was grateful that the river hurdled her this way, or else she might be still drifting, or probably drowned.

Abby took stock of her situation. The colony was still very close, two or three miles away at most. No bones broken. One leg of her overalls had torn off, but her backpack straps had held sturdy. Her stomach growled for food, but the thrill of being alive helped take her mind off that. For now.

A group of young kids approached her, and she reached into her pocket, hoping to trade gems for a place to hide and get some rest. She pulled out a fistful of river mud and nothing else.

Abby picked out who she thought was the bravest of the bunch, a girl of five or six, and said, “Can you help me?”

Without asking for anything in return, they formed a circle around her and all pitched in to get her to her feet. Then, they escorted her toward a row of houses. Abby’s dad had read
Gulliver’s Travels
to her and Jordan. In the story, Gulliver is washed ashore after a shipwreck and becomes prisoner of a race of tiny people, less than a foot tall. Abby felt like Gulliver as the band of kids, whose heads came no higher than her shoulders, led her up the steps of a house. She would soon learn that she was in Greenpoint, not the country of Lilliput. Greenpoint was a section of Brooklyn, a half mile north of the Brooklyn Bridge.

The house was overflowing with kids around the same age as the group who had found her. Nobody seemed to be in charge, but they all seemed to cooperate. A sudden spike of hunger reminded Abby of what Hurricane David had brought. Sadly, the survival and organization skills of these kids were about to be put to the test.

She made her first trade. In exchange for dry clothes and half a boiled potato, she gave them her Colony East overalls, ripped leg and all.

The roof had leaked during the hurricane, soaking a lot of their bedding, but they found a dry place for her to sleep on the floor. Abby checked the contents of her backpack. Inside were six packs of cooked rice and the plastic tub. She gave two packs of rice to the kids, devoured one herself, and removed the two-way radio from the tub. She turned it on and quickly turned it off when she heard the hiss. The batteries were good. The radio had survived Hurricane David. She would attempt to contact Jonzy at midnight, after which, she would try to make her way to the fish market, hoping to find Toby. Her chances of doing the latter were probably much greater than the former. She gulped at the thought of Lieutenant Dawson marching Jonzy before the council. What would Jonzy say about their escape plan, and how would he respond when they told him she had shot Doctor Droznin?

Abby gripped the radio and curled up. She needed to rest and she needed to satisfy an insatiable appetite. Her brain battled her stomach. Exhaustion tilted the balance of power, and she drifted into a deep sleep.

Abby awoke in the dark. It took her a moment to remember where she was and what had happened. All of a sudden, she realized the radio was gone. The luminous dials of her watch showed the time was 12:15. In a panic, she quickly stumbled through the room, slowing down only after accidently kicking several kids sleeping on the floor.

She heard sounds coming from the porch. To her horror, kids had the walkie-talkie. They were giggling and passing it around. One kid pressed the button and shouted, “Pears.” The next one brought it to his lips and said, “Apples.”

“Please, I need that.”

Thankfully, they gave it to her.

Abby held the radio, about to ask if they heard anything, when Jonzy’s voice crackled. “Bossy, this is Lemon, over.”

Abby blurted, “Lemon, this is Bossy.” Tears streamed down her cheeks.

“Bossy! How’s the fishing?”

“All is well. But I could eat a fish whole. Lemon, how’er things at Treasure Island?”

There was a long pause. The kids crowded around her, straining to hear the strange conversation about fish and lemons.

“Bossy, go to the market, I hear they’re having a good sale tomorrow.”

He wanted her to go to the fish market. She had a million questions, starting with how Jonzy had managed to keep his radio and communicate, but every word they spoke might be picked up by the adults.

“Bossy, keep your shoulders back.”

Abby almost dropped the radio. That was not Jonzy’s voice. There was no mistaking who it was.

Then Jonzy spoke. “Bossy, we’re signing off for now. We have to go.”

From the swirl of confusion, a skim of hope rose to the surface of Abby’s mind. Lieutenant Dawson, speaking over Jonzy’s contraband two-way radio, had told her to keep her shoulders back. It was his way of telling her to be strong in the face of fear. And Jonzy had said, “We have to go.”

Abby ignored the gnawing pit of hunger in her stomach and pulled her shoulders back.

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GENERATION M – coming in 2014

http://eepurl.com/DlQMn

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

Writing is a team sport. Perrin Dillon and Otto Ball hung in there with me from the beginning, chapter by chapter. Dr. Roland Stroud is the king of grammar. I am also incredibly grateful for an outstanding group of beta readers who went beyond the call of duty: Karol Ross, Emma Lindehagen, Susan Pett, Megan Sciera, Sue Ryzak Wysocki, John Bickford, Doc Pruyne, Bonnie Tweddle-Shuster, Penny Adair, Eileen O’Neil, Don Cummings, David Roys, Kathe Filbert, Cynthia Sheep, Emily Sposa, Debby Alter, and others. Nanci Rogers proofed the novel and Diane Winger made important edits along the way.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Scott Cramer has written feature articles for national magazines, covered school committee meetings for a local newspaper, published haiku and poetry, optioned a screenplay, and worked in high-tech marketing communications. His pursuit of a good story has put him behind the stick of an F-18, flying a Navy Blue Angels' fighter jet, and he has trekked through the Peruvian mountains in search of an ancient Quechua festival featuring a condor. Scott and his wife have two daughters and reside outside Lowell, Massachusetts (birthplace of Jack Kerouac) in an empty nest/zoo/suburban farm/art studio with too many surfboards in the garage.

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Table of Contents

DEDICATION

RETURN TO CASTINE ISLAND