The Ark. Laura Nolen Liddell
that every light in town was on. Of course. No one was concerned about saving electricity anymore.
Next was a convenience store with a cardboard sign taped on the window: “Take what you need.” Its fluorescent lights illuminated empty shelves. When the water of the harbor glinted into view, I started seeing restaurants. Every chair was occupied. I slowed my pace in spite of myself, trying to take in every aspect of the scene. The woman who caught my attention was draped over a chair, her long black gown spread out over the cheap red and brown carpet. She wore a diamond necklace and matching earrings. Also at her table were a teenage boy wearing a collared shirt and a man in shorts and flip flops.
The dining room was filled with tableaus as diverse as hers. There was a lot of wine, and a single man ran among the tables with food and bottles of liquor. He wore a smile.
A group of six sitting around a table for four waved at me, beckoning me to join them. The woman—I assumed she was the mother—slid to the side of her seat, indicating that I could share it with her. I didn’t even know I had stopped running. I was just standing at the window, taking it all in.
I almost joined her. I almost sat among this family of strangers and whiled away my remaining hours of life basking in their companionship, their acceptance. Maybe I would even tell them the truth about my life: that I had failed, in every possible way, that my family could never love me, that they’d left me to die in a prison commissary. I glanced at one of the boys at their table and thought that I would at least tell them about West, but not that he hadn’t come for me. I couldn’t tell anyone about that.
But I wasn’t one of them. I didn’t belong with their family. As much as I longed to fit into a group like that, it wasn’t in me. Maybe I would make it onto the OPT, and maybe I would die when the meteor struck. Maybe I would get all the way to the Ark, but not make it inside. Then I would die in space, alone. But I could never sit in a restaurant, drinking wine, and wait for fate to take me. One way or another, I was going to Saint John.
The harbor was clean and dark, and it smelled like fish and saltwater. A faint steam rose from the tips of the small waves, which were painted silver in the moonlight and dancing under the lights from the harbor. There were several larger boats and a few fishing rigs docked along a series of short piers. Glancing around, I climbed to the tallest point I could—a set of concrete steps leading to an American flag—and began to scan the gently bobbing boats. Most would have government-issue GPS systems and wouldn’t run. After checking the first few rows, I started to panic, just a little.
Then I saw it. It was about the size of a ski boat and mostly white, with plenty of peeling paint. The word “Bandito” scrolled across the bow in elegant script. It had to be at least twenty-five years old, before they started installing GPS on everything that moved. It was perfect.
It was also occupied. A man stood along the pier, pulling a length of rope hand over fist. Despite the slight chill in the summer air, he was stripped to the waist, and his skin appeared tanned in the half-light.
He turned to me as soon as the dock bobbled with my weight, and I raised my eyebrows.
“You’re Trin Lector.” I’d seen all his movies. His latest, about a group of renegade astronauts sent to uncover a plot to destroy the International Space Station, had been screened in the detention center right after the news about the meteor broke. It had broken every box office record ever, and it hadn’t even been that good, at least in my opinion. Not like his earlier stuff, anyway. But people flocked to anything involving spaceships these days.
The movie industry imploded after that, like everything else, but the demand for movies was higher than ever. No one cared about money. Executives quit. Studios collapsed. But the actors kept acting, and the writers kept writing. They said they were doing it for the fans, but I knew better. Immortality had never been more appealing, more urgent.
The most famous movie star in the world snorted at me. “No autographs.”
So he was a jerk. A jerk with a boat, though, so I couldn’t respond in kind. “No. I mean, sure. I am a fan, though.”
“Great.”
A cigarette dangled from his lips, and for an instant, I just stared. I hadn’t seen a real, lit cigarette since right after my first stint in detention, when Kip had given me one as a welcome home present. This guy must have saved up a pretty big supply when they went off the market fifteen years ago. That, or he’d only saved the one.
“Get going. I’m not taking any passengers.” His tone was less strained than before. He was used to being stared at.
“Just a couple hours. I need to get to—”
“Saint John. Yeah. You’re the first to ask.” The sarcasm brought the edge back to his voice. He turned to the rope.
“You can just drop me off and keep going wherever you’re going.”
“Fine idea. I don’t plan on getting shot, even if it’s all the same now. I’m going out to the middle of the ocean to meet the Pinball head on.”
“They’re guarding the harbor there?”
He sighed and made a show of stopping his work to face me. “They’re guarding everything. Can you blame them?” His forehead relaxed slightly as he took another drag. I watched, fascinated, as the tip of the cigarette glowed bright orange, then white, as he sucked in. “Your best bet is to turn back and find a group to join. Make some friends.” He stumbled back a little, and I saw that he had been drinking.
“I don’t need friends. I need a ride to Saint John.”
He grunted. “Wouldn’t do you any good anyway. You gotta have a starpass to set foot in town, much less get to the gate. Only cops left on earth are the ones guarding the transport cities.”
“I have a starpass.”
“And I got a rocket right here in my pocket.” It was a line from the movie about the astronauts. I suppressed the urge to roll my eyes, and he slung the rope into the boat, swaying more than the action required.
“I’m serious. Look.” I dug into my shirt and pried the pass from my skin. I held it up and walked toward him, yanking Band-Aids off its corners and flicking them into the water along the way.
“Let me see that.”
I pulled my arm back. “Let me on the boat.”
He threw me a look I couldn’t read, then suddenly shrugged. “Worth a shot. All aboard.”
My satchel and food bag were on the floor of the boat in the next second, and I followed not a moment later. “Thank you. Thank you so much,” I said, straightening. “You have no idea—”
“Alright, alright.” Trin clambered into the front of the boat as I took my seat next to the inboard motor. “Let’s see the pass.”
“Here.” I held it toward his face.
He made a grab for it, but he was good and drunk, and I jerked it back with room to spare. “I’ll hang on to it.”
“Fine, fine,” he muttered into the dashboard. The engine sputtered to life, and I realized the boat ran on gasoline. This was old school. We went fast, much faster than I expected. The harbor shrank into the distance, and the light from the boat showed grass on both sides of the waterway. I was glad I’d brought the shapeless coat from the back seat of Meghan’s car. I slid it over my shoulders, careful to maintain an iron grip on the starpass. I wished I hadn’t tossed away the Band-Aids. Hands were not the most reliable way to keep up with stuff.
When the boat skimmed past the last mounds of earth and into the open water, I allowed myself to smile. As I expected, Trin swerved us to the left, and we swept north up the coast of Maine.
My moment of relief came crashing down an instant later when the engine died. I squinted at the actor, who was barely visible in the light from the dashboard. I couldn’t see his left hand, but his right slipped something small and metal into the pocket of his shorts. The boat