The taints came in through the front windows and over the yard fence. Elias learned to let them get near since a blast of the shotgun would only put them down at close range. Robbie had taped a flashlight to the gun's barrel, letting Elias see what he was shooting at. He still missed some. The second one through was Old Man Robson, the bum, without a bottle for once. Elias aimed at his chest and destroyed his left knee instead. The old man lost his balance and pitched off the roof before reaching them.
Robbie had turned the generator off to save fuel and to keep them from choking on fumes. Also the light drew taints. Without it though they had to be vigilant. Where some of the crazies came in at a flat sprint, others would creep.
The taints in the backyard raged and howled threats but once out of the tide they seemed too consumed with anger to use the cunning that James had shown beneath the darkness. Each of them moved on after a time, looking for victims they could reach. It seemed almost as if common darkness were painful for them. It made Elias amazed that Billy Cesar had dared the light of day to get them.
The shotgun blasts roused Kia from her faint and she crawled out to join them on the roof, slowly recovering her wits. She took up a flashlight, helping Elias scan for intruders.
The dark tide reached half way up the walls of the carport before Robbie's rope-over-a-bar lifting system, with the bar supported by a tall fridge on one side and bookcase on the other, finally allowed them to hoist the generator onto the raft. The raft legs creaked alarmingly and the whole thing swayed ... but it held.
Another taint came through the broken window, an old woman, lacerating her legs on the remaining shards of glass. Elias levelled the shotgun at her but she surprised him, veering out of sight.
"Did she go into the study?"
"Upstairs," Kia said, swinging her flashlight across the outside of the house.
Elias watched the bedroom windows and only Kia's warning alerted him to another taint coming through the window. This one, fat, male, and nearly naked, charged them squealing his rage in an improbably high register. Elias brought him down on the edge of the roof. The shotgun blast hit his chest and though the stock punched Elias's shoulder the taint barely shuddered, though thankfully he did collapse. It wasn't like the movies where the blast knocks baddies back across the barroom.
The thud against the bedroom window took them all by surprise as Elias reloaded. If the old woman had managed to break the glass she would have landed on them, maybe catching the edge of the raft and toppling it. Thankfully her bodyweight didn't match her ferocity. Elias managed to finish loading, aim, and fire, all before she moved away for a second try. He was probably the worst of all of them when it came to aiming but some long overdue luck was with them and the taint fell back and didn't rise again.
"Three shells left."
"Getting there!" Robbie worked industriously with the nail gun.
"Will it work?" Kia's quiet question fitted into a lull.
"Don't know," Robbie said. "Still time to run." He nodded toward the front door. The dark tide would rise through the roof of the carport at the same time it reached the front yard.
The tide reached to within a foot of them and still the lights weren't lit. The moon had yet to show its face and in the full dark the black sea was rising as fast as they had ever seen it, eating up the inches. Some of the tainted must have piled junk against the wall because a shout from Kia had Elias turning to see blackened, bleeding hands gripping the edge of the roof. A grinning face followed, rising out of the blackness, and vanishing just as swiftly after Elias shot it at close range. A red mist hung in the beam of the Kia's flashlight. A second taint lunged out before Elias was ready to fire but Robbie put four nails in its face and it fell back. The last one looked like Mr Inkman from the tourist office. Aspiration, the San Francisco of the East.
"Time to start this baby again. Hold the raft steady, Kia." Robbie hauled on the generator cord. It caught first time, chugging away.
"Moment of truth!" Robbie turned back to the raft and began to plug each of the beds into the socket block fixed to the planking.
"Oh shit!" Nothing happened.
"Wait!"
A low flickering glow trembled beneath the raft and suddenly the first bank of lights snapped on, the light continuing to build. One by one they all warmed up then lit. The glare laid bare the true strangeness of the dark tide stretching out all around them, drowning the yards and streets that had been their view until the evening came.
The raft began to wobble and jitter.
"Crap!" Robbie moved to steady it. "Pull the plugs! Pull the plugs!"
Kia and Elias worked furiously, pulling out the plugs as the raft bucked and rattled before them. It settled.
"It's pushing on the tide just under us," Robbie said. "We need to get on-"
A taint came screaming out of the dark house. With the lights off and all three flashlights on the ground Elias had nothing but a black shape to aim at and no time to do it. The gun went off between them with a deafening roar and the taint crashed against him. Both of them tumbled against the raft.
"No!" A desperate scream from Robbie.
Elias felt the edge of the raft hard against the back of his thighs as he fought the taint's twitching weight. The raft lurched and groaned and shifted, and Elias was falling. "No!"
Screams filled Elias's ears as he fought his way out from under the taint.
"It's coming! It's coming!" Kia's voice. And Elias knew that the rippling blackness must be just below the planks and roofing felt at his back, rising smoothly. It would come through the boards as if they weren't even there.
With a cry Elias rolled the dead taint from him. Somehow Robbie had kept the raft from collapse. The legs proved sturdier than Elias had thought and rather than buckle they had slid toward the far edge of the roof.
"Get on. Quick!" Robbie yanked the generator cord. Kaff! Kaff! "But carefully! Carefully!"
Elias grabbed his gun and in the swinging flashlight beam saw his guess about the tide's level had been right. Even as he edged onto the raft on hands and knees he saw a black ripple lick through the roof by Kia's feet
"Stay low!" Robbie edged on, spreading his weight.
"We need the lights." Kia joined them and the raft swayed, groaning.
Robbie yanked the cord. Kaff! Kaff! He took a deep breath and hauled on it more smoothly. The generator purred into life. The lights beneath them began to glow and flicker. "Plug the steering lamps in!"
Kia moved to obey.
"We need to get out of here as fast as possible," Robbie yelled above the generator's noise. "Need to get out where it's deep!"
"Why?" Elias watched the house, playing the beam of his light through the living room. He didn't like the sound of 'deep'.
"Because." Robbie crawled closer and lowered his voice. "One of those things below thinks to throw a stone up at us and break a few bulbs ... down we go."
The raft began to sway now not because of their movements but because of the pressure it exerted against the rising tide. The blackness rose around them, almost level and yet still they jittered and didn't lift. Elias could see that the dark must be around the bulbs now. In moments it would destroy them and he would die screaming with his friends. The terror unmanned him and he found himself screaming.
Without fanfare the jittering became a smooth sway and suddenly they were floating. Elias peered over the edge as well as he could without going close. The light's pressure made a depression in the blackness so that although they sat almost level with the sea on all sides, the darkness beneath them remained a foot or so below the sunbeds.
"Elias! Gun!"
A taint was advancing through the house, creeping from behind a couch to hide behind the dining table. When he saw that he had been discovered he stood, grinning a grin that stretched too far across the ruin of his face. Even tainted as badly as he was Elias could still recognise Mr Davis. He must have let the tide take him so he could reach them.
"Shoot him!" Robbie hauled on the rope, tilting the sunbed nearest the house, and they began to move.
Mr Davis uttered a shriek that turned Elias's blood cold and started to run. Elias levelled the shotgun and fired but nothing happened. "I'm empty."
They were accelerating smoothly but Mr Davis was faster, gaining a yard for every two he ran. "Too late for burning!" He was on them, clawed hands reaching. And suddenly he was gone, swallowed by the darkness.
For a moment Elias had no idea what had happened.
"He ran off the edge of the roof," Robbie said. "Grab those lamps. We need to turn! Quick, before we hit something!"
Elias, still shaking, grabbed a sunlamp and aimed it at the blackness. It felt like pushing with a pole. Together he and Kia turned the raft a few yards shy of hitting the houses opposite the one they left, and smoothly they headed out over the valley, aiming for the midpoint between the three small light-speckled islands that were all that remained of Aspiration.
For a long time they couched, trembling, hardly trusting their craft. Later Elias lay, staring up at the stars rather than contemplating the malevolent sea around him.
"What do we do now?" he asked.
"Go back to Pike's Hill and make land," Robbie said.
"Land? That's crazy. We nearly died getting off West Hill!"
"And we have two cans of gas, no provisions, apart from this pack of Oreos, and no water."
"Shit." They'd not had the time.
"We need to land and stock up."
"Why Pike's Hill. That's where she is. Mrs Eaves."
"Take a look," Robbie said. "Deer Hill will be gone before tonight's tide stops. West Hill will be a few dozen houses. All of them packed with terrified people. Pike'll be bad enough, but at least there might be enough space to disembark."
"They'll see us," Kia said.
"She's right. We're lit up like a Christmas tree!" Elias said. "And we'll come down in the margins with taints hiding in all the houses. Once we're down this baby isn't lifting off again for at least twelve hours. We'll be stranded with everyone out to get us. And we've got a grand total of no bullets and no shells."
"We come up behind the stables block at that big place by the Hights mansion. That will shield us from being seen once we get in closer." Robbie stared at the lights of Pike's Hill. He looked like a leader. He'd always been the momentum behind their plans back when it was Elias, James, and Robbie, but now he looked like something new, the old confusion pared away to reveal someone hard, decisive, and above all competent. The dried blood on his face looked like war paint. "And I never said anything about landing the raft. I'll come up behind those stables as the tide goes down and put you two on the roof. With just me aboard I can turn off two of the beds. Fuel I got should last til the next tide. I come in, pick you guys back up along with all the gas, food, and water you'll have gathered, and bingo! Off we sail for the leading edge."
"Leading edge?"
"America goes up from the coast. The further inland the higher up it gets. Like ... all of Colorado is about three miles up or some shit."
"We ain't getting to Colorado on this thing."
"We just need to get to wherever the tide has reached so far. After that we can run."
"And then?"
"Then hope. Fuck, I don't know. We got scientists don't we? Kia can't be the only person who can do what she does. We'll have time. Someone will fix it."
"Wait ... me and Kia go in. You drift about out here?"
"Yup."
"But..."
"You can stay on the raft instead of me," Robbie offered. "Just so long as you know what to do if something goes wrong."
Coming in toward Pike's Hill as dawn threatened and the tide began to retreat it was hard not to believe that every eye was turned their way. A good number of the grand homes atop the hill blazed with light powered by their own generators and a worrying number of the others twinkled with candles. The surviving population had been driven into such a small area that the hill, depleted by the summer vacation and the civic minded exodus to hunt for a lost boy, was crowded once again. Far from ideal for scavenging. The only thing in their favour was that the dark tide wasn't mounting a siege. It was an all out assault and nobody really believed they would starve or run out of resources before it took them down.
"Careful!"
Robbie had brought them up behind the Hights stables. Mr Hight kept racehorses, exercised on Wennit Sands and taken to meetings across the north east. If any of them were still in the stable block they were ten feet under.
"Careful!" Robbie levelled the drive bed and they drifted in, using the sunlamps to steer. "Don't get too close to the wall!"
"We have to get close!" Elias eyed the gap. Robbie wanted them to catch the edge of the roof and scramble up. That meant negotiating the guttering, currently around chest height but getting higher by the minute as the tide retreated.
"How will we get down?" Kia asked.
"You'll have to manage somehow!" Robbie held the raft from the wall with his arm. "Go! Go!"
And lacking any alternative, they went.
As the raft withdrew and came into view from the shore they heard distant cries and the crack of rifle shots, but the Pandora sailed out regardless, until it became a twinkling star, fading as the sky lightened in the east. The name 'Pandora' had been Kia's idea. She'd had an odd collection of books scavenged from the attic of the house on Franklin Street and had somehow learned to read over the years without being taught, picking what she needed from the Eaveses in unguarded moments. Pandora had opened her famous box and unleashed a flood of ills. But at the bottom of the box had been hope. Robbie had said, "I hope it floats!" And Kia had said, "Hope floats."
Elias lay by Kia, hidden from the shore by the slant of the roof. He shivered in the predawn chill. A light rain began to fall and he added waterproofs to his mental list of necessary supplies. Then blankets. Then toilet paper.
Elias gripped his shotgun. Empty it held only intimidation value but it comforted him even so. "How the hell are we going to do this?"
"I don't know." Kia didn't sound worried. She seldom did. Perhaps because her life had been so strange and so terrible, or because her mind just saw the world in a different way. She looked ill. As ill as Henry James had the year before when he had leukaemia, eyes sunken and with an unhealthy glitter to them, bones showing. His parents took him away from school to a specialist hospital. He didn't come back.
"We'll probably get caught. And if we're caught we're not getting off this hill." Dying with everyone else didn't seem unfair to Elias, just terrifying. "There's only one way to do this."
"Yes?" Kia rolled to look at him. She was still pretty despite how sick she looked.
"It's not a good way but ... but everyone here is going to die anyway ... aren't they?"
"They're going to change," Kia said.
"We need to start a fire. A big one." Elias held out the length of tubing Robbie had given him for syphoning gas. "A bunch of houses. A big fire. A perimeter. Then we hunt for what we need inside that area."
"Won't we burn up?"
"We might. It will be dangerous. Just less dangerous than searching through streets crowded with people looking for us. The witch has them hunting us, and they must have seen the boat. It just can't be done without a fire. It'll keep the taints off too, and the crazies. They don't like light, so they won't like fire."
"OK."
"OK?" Elias had expected Kia to protest. Or maybe he had just hoped she would and then suggest something better.
"I don't want the dark to get you and Robbie," Kia said, her voice gentle.
"Or you."
"Or me." She closed her eyes. "I found a little china dog once. It was very pretty but what made me really want it was that someone had loved it very much and her love clung to it. It made me happy. But I knew mother would not let me keep it, and it was too big to hide." Kia rolled to her back. "So I broke it, and I kept some of the pieces hidden in my shoe."
"I don't know what that means," Elias said.
"Neither do I."
Elias watched the tide retreat. The taints followed it. Some he heard beneath the waves, tearing and smashing as they went. Others trailed behind it, walking into the black sea's embrace as the sun began to climb. Others still secreted themselves away into the dark recesses of the homes where the blackness drained away.
"We need to move. They'll be coming to look for us." Elias didn't know if that was true, but it might be.
They climbed down the drainpipe, which looked dangerous and was. The corroded metal gave way under Elias's weight and pitched him to the floor. No bones broken, but that was just blind luck. His glasses went flying and the lens over his good eye ended up cracked through.
Kia led the way through the spoiled streets, reaching ahead of her with senses Elias didn't possess to avoid any taints hidden and waiting to pounce. They came out of the tide zone through a gardens of a house so large it could fit Elias's home five times over. In the garage where the tide reached just past the front door they drained the gas from a Thunderbird and a Porsch into a rectangular plastic can. Elias fished the cigarette lighter from his pocket. A zippo with a green marijuana leaf on it. He'd spent the four months since he got it in mortal fear that his dad would somehow find it. See it through his pocket with X-ray vision maybe... He didn't have to worry about that now. He suddenly wondered ... if his dad had been one of the taints charging them when they lifted off in the raft ... would he have been able to shoot him?
A collection of dusty wine bottles were shoved in a corner to the rear.
"Perhaps the rich kids came out and drank Bojolly or whatever you call it. You know, where their parents couldn't see."
Kia gave him a blank stare.
Elias's penknife had a corkscrew on it. He'd never used it. Now he opened nine bottles while Kia poured the contents on the floor.
"It smells bad," she said.
"This smells worse." Elias hefted the gas can. He had tasted some of it when syphoning. His mouth still burned.
They made nine Molotov cocktails.
"Let's go." Elias led the way, most of the Molotovs clicking in a plastic Woolworths bag and one in hand.
Elias saw movement in the house before he threw the burning cocktail. It smashed through the big window and exploded into flame. They ran immediately, making for the next house.
They set fire to eight houses. Elias fumbled the third Molotov and nearly set himself ablaze. He found himself anticipating the whoosh of flame after tossing each bottle. A hot and reckless anger burst inside him with each explosion, as if he was somehow striking back against all the injustice of the past few days. He caught himself grinning, watching the flames reflect in the pool of the sprawling mansion he had flung the last of their missiles at. He let his gaze wander back across the arc of buildings they'd set burning. The fire had reached the roof of the first of them. Suddenly he felt empty. The conviction seized him that somehow the tide had risen unnoticed around him, that he had become a taint and never noticed it. He raised his hands, surprised to find them clean. He no longer found it hard to believe Mr Davis's claim that dark tides had risen before and everyone alive had lived their whole life beneath dark waters, a vicious parody of what humanity had been in its golden youth.
The first grey wave of smoke rolled over them, scratching at their eyes, sour on the tongue. "Come on."
Elias led the way. They raided kitchens of houses that were beginning to burn, they coughed their way into sheds and garages with buildings blazing around them, the heat snatching away moisture leaving skin tight and red. They took tins, filling bags until their arms ached. They took soda bottles and emptied out the contents, refilling them from attic water tanks while the fire crackled through neighbouring houses. They made a stockpile hidden in a garage just above the high tide line.
Syphoning gas into the various cans they collected and carrying them with gas-wet hands through the ember-laced smoke should have been the scariest thing Elias had ever done. He knew how awful it was to burn. And yet when your salvation is to sail off on the dark tide, even burning starts to seem to be a natural hazard.
It took a long time. Hours. They ate cookies and apples in the shelter of a wall where the smoke hung thin and allowed a hazy view of the sun. Elias sat coughing then chewing, chewing then coughing. Kia ate little and watched him with curious grey eyes. Her cough was a sharp thing within the thin confines of her chest.
Elias sat with the shotgun across his lap, loaded now. They had found a box of nine shells in the kitchen of a house. An odd place to keep ammunition but these were odd days. The roof had been on fire so they hadn't the time to search for weapons.
"Robbie will come back for us." Elias pulled an Oreo apart.
"I know."
"Do you think we'll make it? To the mainland, I mean. Can you ... see the future? They said Mrs Eaves could."
"She used me to see what people worried about. Nobody can see the future. Just some can make better guesses than others."
"I miss ... everyone." Elias saw James falling from the tree. He missed James.
"I don't miss her." She meant Mrs Eaves.
Fire crackled behind the wall. Something fell and a whoosh of heat rolled over them.
"I can't believe this is working." Elias tried to smile. The smoke had tears on his cheeks. "We nearly have everything we need. Well, everything we can carry. I didn't expect to get off this hill again."
"I didn't expect to get out of the trunk of that car. Not so soon at least."
"If we'd left you there you might be on the other side of the tide with places to run."
"I would rather risk a life I cared about." She smiled at him, and Elias looked away, embarrassed.
Sunset found them hiding in the garage they had selected to stash their hoard. They had found an extending aluminium ladder and planned to take to the stables' roof again, carrying up their supplies in stages. The fires had mostly burned themselves out. Some still raged but had spread further around the hill. Mostly it was quiet, as if the other survivors were hidden in their homes, waiting for death. Twice a crazy staggered past muttering to themselves. Elias wondered whether if the tide decided to stall for long enough would everyone would end up touching the darkness 'just to see' and if all of them would corrupt night by night until they walked voluntarily into the waves rather than needing it to rise and swallow them.
"I thought there would be more people hunting us. Didn't they see our lights coming in?"
Kia shrugged. They sat almost close enough to touch and in the garage's gloom Elias felt rather saw the motion of her shoulders. "There were a lot of other things going on. Maybe they got the idea and are busy building their own boats."
Elias hoped they were. He felt suddenly guilty that they hadn't tried to share the secret. "And the witch ... she can't sense us? You're still strong enough to hide us?" She didn't look strong at all.
"I don't know. I can't feel her. Maybe she's gone."
"Someone killed her?"
"Maybe."
Elias remembered the dark fury in the woman's eyes and hoped so.
Shortly after sunset Elias led the way back to the stables. They carried the ladder between them with some of the bags of food hanging from it on bungee cords that Kia had suggested would be useful to secure things on the raft.
It's hard to be unobtrusive carrying a fifteen foot silver ladder. In the half hour after sunset Elias figured that the tainted would still be lurking beneath the tide or in their lairs between the low and high tidelines, and that the survivors would be busy trying to stake their claims on real estate in the ever-diminishing space that might still be above the blackness by the next dawn. The judgment proved sound as they made it to the roof unmolested.
On the way back Elias felt safer with his hands free to hold the shotgun. Even so he had no desire to use it. Shooting taints at night had been bad, but at least the darkness had hidden the details. And if any of the survivors came looking ... he didn't think he could shoot a person. Not in the daylight. Not someone he recognised.
Back and forth they went as the light failed and the tide began to advance. Kia changed their route three times. The taints hidden in the buildings were getting restless and ready to roam. Her grimace made Elias think she was hearing their thoughts. He shuddered. Just listening to what they said was bad enough.
"I don't get it." Elias lay gasping, flat on his back on the peaked stables' roof. Kia lay to his left and on his right sat all their supplies, artfully mounded to stop them sliding off. If the gutter gave they would lose it all, but the tide hadn't reached this high and it felt solid. "We aren't this lucky."
"Maybe we deserve it," Kia said.
"Maybe." Elias had had to shoot a taint that had shown his face at a window as they passed with the last load, but they made it up the ladder and had managed to pull it after them before the taints drawn out by the shot managed to catch hold. It had been a close thing though. "It's a good thing they're stupid until it gets dark." He said no more but if the taints paused their raging to think then they'd remember how well stables burn. The taints under the tide might be cunning but it seemed this tide was taking fire off humanity's menu.
"I can't see him." Kia had sat up, looking out over the endless black ocean before them.
"We'll see him," Elias said. "When it gets darker." He gave his words a confidence he didn't feel. He had no doubt on Robbie's account ... but maybe the fuel hadn't lasted as long as expected, or the bulbs failed, or broke on some obstacle or...
"There!" Kia pointed to a distant speck of light.
Elias sat up too and leaned forward. The dark tide had reached the foot of the stables and the timbers whispered their protest. It would still take quite some time before it was deep enough to bring the raft in, longer still if they wanted it to be beyond the reach of any taints below, and even longer if Kia and he were to step down onto it rather than jump.
The two of them sat and watched as the dark tide covered first Deer Hill then West Hill, the last few lights winking out. Behind them the sound of screams and gunfire drifted with the smoke as Pike Hill prepared for its penultimate night.
At last Robbie came, floating on a bed of light.
"Hurry up! I'm down to fumes here!" He edged the raft closer to the stable wall, still about a yard below them, rising slowly.
Elias let the relief lift him to his feet. He offered a hand to Kia who seemed weaker by the hour. "Gas coming!" With some effort he lifted the biggest gas can.
A light shone out behind him.
"We'll take over now." A woman's voice.
Elias turned just shy of the guttering to see standing across the roof ridge, two tall shapes. Kia's flashlight found them. Mrs Eaves, still dressed as if she were attending a ladies' meeting of the church circle, the raven dark fall of her long straight hair hiding half her face. Beside her the equally thin Mr Eaves, black eyes glittering, a heavy pistol in his hand, aimed directly at Elias.
They must have been lying quietly on the other side of the roof for hours. Letting Elias and Kia do all the work assembling supplies. Elias couldn't believe he hadn't looked, but he hadn't wanted to risk being seen from the hill.
Mr Eaves raised his gun, arm out. "The one reason I haven't shot you in the face, boy, is that it'd be a kindness." He shifted aim toward Robbie. "Don't you be going anywhere either, tough guy." Then back to Elias. "You kick that shotgun over the edge."
Elias held dead still.
Mrs Eaves tossed something onto the roof by Kia. A rope attached to a collar. A dog leash. "You put that on, dear." She turned back to the boys, brushing her hair aside. She had a livid bruise along her cheekbone and her eyes held a hungry gleam. She shared Kia's sunken look and Elias guessed that the effort required to hide her presence from the weakened girl had taken all her strength.
"You boys might be wondering why you should be scared of my husband. A bullet really is a kindness. Maybe you're thinking of making a grab for that shotgun. A slim chance is better than no chance?" Her smile made Elias's skin crawl. "It really all comes down to what sort of children you are. I intend to take this ... boat ... of yours and leave you here to die on this roof. But I will be taking Kia with me. So ... do you want to stop me so badly that killing Kia is a price worth paying or are you going to do what I say?"
Elias looked down. It was the witch's speciality. Knowing what people want. She wasn't risking much.
"OK." He pushed the shotgun over the roof's edge with his foot.
"Good boy. Now load my boat."
Suddenly Robbie shouted and flung himself flat on the raft. It began to move away.
Mr Eaves came skittering down the roof and, steading himself, and raising his gun again.
"Shoot me and you'll bust the bulbs underneath me!" Robbie shouted.
"Put it down, you idiot." Mrs Eaves came down behind her husband at a more sedate pace.
"Robbie, isn't it? Robbie Honecker?" She raised her voice to carry. "Sailing on fumes, you said?" She pressed down her husband's gun. "I would threaten to shoot your friends if you don't come back. But I'm not going to shoot them. They're just going to drown with us. That's much much worse. And you'll drown too when that generator stops. It's starting to struggle even now... And all you can do about it is choose to do the right thing. Bring it back and one of your little friends gets to live."
Robbie pulled on the rope and the raft drifted to a stop. He lay on the planks, staring daggers at Mrs Eaves then glancing helplessly to Elias as if there might be a solution they'd missed. Elias said nothing. It had to be Robbie's choice.
It took maybe sixty seconds. Sixty long seconds. Then with a curse Robbie got to his knees and began manoeuvring the raft to bring it back.
"Good boy." Mrs Eaves greeted his return with a thin smile. "Now, all of you. Load my boat."
They piled fuel and supplies at the centre of the raft under Mr Eaves's watchful eye. Mrs Eaves had Robbie gas the generator before he joined the loading effort. It didn't seem to take long, though by the time it was done the dark tide was just inches below the guttering.
"Thank you, boys. Now, if you would..." Mrs Eaves waved them onto the roof. "You stay there, child." A raised hand to prevent Kia's exit. "So ... this rope to make us go. And these lights to steer. All seems simple enough. Child's play almost." A small laugh that made Elias want to kill her. She stepped aboard. A wobble but the raft supported her weight along with Kia and all the supplies. She took hold of Kia's leash.
Mr Eaves readied himself to board and Mrs Eaves moved to the raft's far side to counterbalance his arrival. She rummaged in her skirts and raised her hand. A deafening crack rang out and Mr Eaves fell back onto the roof, clutching his chest. She shot him three more times.
"I'm sorry, Ian." She sounded regretful, but hardly broken up. "But the child and I will go further without you eating our food and weighing our boat down." She aimed her small pistol at Robbie. "Take his gun by the barrel and throw it onto the raft."
Robbie tugged the weapon from Mrs Eaves's grasp. The man's eyes tracked his progress but the strength was gone from him, leaking from his chest and running into the gutter. For a moment Elias thought Robbie would spin the gun around and try his luck, but with a sigh he tossed it across.
"Good boy." And with a tug of the control rope Mrs Eaves had the raft moving slowly out across the darkness.
"We're fucked now." Robbie sat down and watched the raft pull away.
Elias edged forward and fished the shotgun from the gutter, just seconds before the darkness rose through the metal. He shuffled back up across the tiles. "We are."
"I thought you kicked that over!" Robbie said, excited.
"Pushed it slow enough for the gutter to catch it." Elias levelled it at Mrs Eave's back. "No use to us now though. They're too far off. I might hit Kia, break lights, hole the fuel cans ... blow up the generator maybe."
"Can't you just take off the witch's fucking head?"
Elias drew a bead on the witch's head. "The spread's too big. Even if I was a good shot. Which I'm not." His finger tightened on the trigger. "You think Kia would want me to do it?"
"She'd tell you to take the shot." Robbie spoke the words in a low voice, understanding at last. Elias wouldn't take the shot. "We stole her chance when we took her from that trunk."
"Ain't gonna steal it again." Elias offered the gun to Robbie. "Your shot if you want it."
Robbie shook his head. Elias punched Robbie's shoulder and said nothing. He was glad not to be alone.
They both backed a few more inches up the roof to keep their toes from the tide. Soon enough there would be nowhere to go. The shotgun might earn its keep then.
A thin cry rang out, not from behind but from the raft and Elias raised his eyes to it. Mrs Eaves and Kia were locked in combat at the raft's leading edge. A wholly unequal struggle. There was no way Kia could get the woman over the edge. But even as Elias thought it impossible Kia clamped herself arms and legs around the witch's knees and ankles. By the motion of her head she had taken a mouthful of thigh meat and was biting down for all she was worth.
The boys watched Mrs Eaves's slow and inevitable fall. Without the pain the woman might have kept enough wits about her to choose the direction she took. But she toppled, screaming, into the blackness, head and shoulders first, feet last, dragging her fierce opponent with her. She had fallen with the sloth of a felled pine and it had seemed to take an age. Now it seemed sudden. In one moment she and Kia were gone. The raft lay empty, still heading west.
"Holy shit..."
"No! No!" Elias got to his feet, furious at the waste. "No!"
"Not Kia." Robbie threw himself back, head crashing the tiles. "Jesus."
Elias levelled the shotgun, determined to vent his rage on the treacherous raft before it went beyond his range. His finger tightened on the trigger. Something moved at the head of the raft. "W..."
Robbie stood to join him. "What is that?"
A black line stretched from the edge where they had fallen and ended at a point a foot or so back from the edge. A line, almost invisible at this distance. It seemed to slide a little to one side. And then a hand caught the edge and a second later a head appeared.
"The leash! She hooked the leash over a nail!"
Slowly and with huge effort Kia hauled herself back onto the raft. A man couldn't have done it, but she weighed next to nothing. She must have grabbed the rope as she fell, then dangled in the blackness, keeping the dark tide from her skin but not from the witch's. And when Mrs Eaves fell away Kia climbed back on.
Both boys stood and watched, cheering as Kia turned the raft and headed back. Kia reached them before the tide drowned the roof and they climbed aboard, wordless, and hugged her, one then the other then all of them together.
The Pandora rides the gentlest of swells. The dark waves shy away beneath her brilliant hull. The chug of her generator is the only sound on a midnight ocean, starlit and calm.
Three sailors steer her toward the future on an ancient night. And anything is possible.
The End.
It's listed on Goodreads if you'd like to throw it some stars! https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/51044591