Jerry had no idea what they were attached to. Was it one giant creature? Many? There was no shortage of tentacles, however, and whether they shared a brain or a purpose, they soon learned to work together.

  The pirates focused their fire on one while another snuck up behind the men. And once the appendage had a solid grip on a boat, it was all over.

  The air filled with screams, cracking fiberglass and then silence for a moment as the boat was pulled under the river with the men still on board. A few pirates would inevitably make it back to the surface, but their escape was short-lived and they quickly disappeared beneath the surface for good.

  Their own personal tentacle reached in tentatively several times before making a solid lunge for the Boomer.

  The end of the tentacle landed inside the boat and brought their forward progress to a sudden stop. The stop threw Jerry forward. The boat’s steering wheel dug into his ribs and drove the air from his lungs.

  The limb had almost crushed Andy on the rear deck. The man was quick to respond by shoving the barrel of his shotgun deep into the gray skin. He pulled the trigger, and the tentacle whipped back into the air like a slapped wrist and quickly retreated into the water.

  The Boomer shot forward once more and Jerry almost lost his grip on the wheel.

  “Wheee! Oooof! I think I’ve had enough of this.”

  Behind them, the riverbanks frothed as the chaos that had begun in the middle of the waterway reached the shore. But, ahead of them, the river began to clear.

  Nothing else reached for them and he thought perhaps the creature or creatures had finally run out of arms. But behind him the tentacles grew thicker as the screams grew fainter. Marco was still on the speaker shouting orders and threats at his men. He directed a few more threats toward the Boomer for good measure.

  The Your Mom hadn’t ventured far into the fray and the men aboard were keeping the tentacles at bay. But they weren’t making any progress upriver either. The Boomer started putting some distance between the boats.

  “You’ve got our stuff, Mr. Mike,” Marco shouted over the speaker. “And we’re coming for it.”

  An explosion followed the warning as the pirates finally broke out the rockets. A tentacle exploded. It smelled like fish, and the bits and blood rained down on the water. It slowed the others for a moment. More rockets fired and more of the monster died.

  Jerry had no intention of waiting around to see the outcome. He pushed the throttles down and sped ahead into calmer water.

  It took a few minutes for the passengers to trust that the danger had passed. They eventually settled into their seats and let out exhausted breaths.

  “Now that is going in the movie!” Caine said.

  “That was terrifying,” Lana said.

  “It was pretty horrific,” Andy agreed.

  “It’s still better than gatormen,” Jerry said.

  “Ooof,” said Fidget, and then he threw up.

  23

  They motored upriver for another hour until the Ohio met the Tennessee.

  The explosions continued behind them back toward Paducah, but they grew fainter as the Boomer moved forward. The pirates could have been losing the fight against the beast, or they may have been winning, but they definitely weren’t catching up at the moment. Based on the number of explosions, the leviathan was either proving difficult to kill or there were multiple creatures beneath the surface.

  Either way, it was welcomed news. The longer the explosions went on, the more river the Boomer put between itself and Marco’s men.

  After a while, they couldn’t hear them at all. Jerry killed the engines. He didn’t have to ask for silence. The passengers all cocked their ears in Paducah’s direction and concentrated. There was nothing but the sound of the river passing through the grass near the shore.

  Caine finally broke the silence. “Do you think they killed it?”

  “Or it killed them,” Andy suggested.

  Jerry broke out the binoculars and peered through the lenses. “Or the fight goes on and we just can’t hear it because we’re too far away.”

  “Do you see anything?” Eve asked.

  Jerry lowered the binoculars. “Not a thing.”

  “Great,” Caine said. “So at the moment, the pirates are dead at the bottom of the river and no longer a threat, and also alive and angrier than ever and still coming after us. And we won’t know which it is until they either show up and start shooting at us or don’t.”

  “They’re like Schrodinger’s Pirates,” Lana said.

  “No, they’re Marco’s pirates,” Caine corrected her. “Try and keep the characters straight, won’t you, Lana? And why aren’t you taking notes? This whole pirate thing is terrifying, but it’s some great conflict. Get me some paper. I want to write this down.”

  Lana sighed and tossed Caine a notepad. She then turned back to the captain. “So what do we do? Is there a plan?”

  “There sure is,” Jerry said. “We are going to run and hide.”

  “So brave,” Caine said as he scribbled furiously in the notepad. “I’m just blown away by your courage.”

  “Do you want to get these guns to where they’ll do some good, Mr. Caine?” Jerry asked. “Or do you want to fight pirates?”

  “I…” Caine trailed off. “I mean, I wasn’t saying fight pirates. It’s just, how in the hell do you hide on a river?”

  Jerry turned the engines back on. “We’re going to have some options.”

  Everyone kept an eye on the river behind them as they continued down the Tennessee, but there was no sign of Marco or his men. They began to discuss whether the pirates would even bother pursuing, or would they just cut their losses and turn back?

  Businesswise, Jerry knew that would be the right decision. Marco had lost several boats and a lot of men in the last couple of days. Turning around and licking his wounds would make sense. But the pirate was being driven by revenge as well. Jerry had shown the audacity to not let Marco kill him. And in the eyes of a pirate, that couldn’t stand. He wasn’t about to get comfortable with the idea that the threat was no longer behind them.

  “Now that is a set piece,” Caine said, and leapt from his seat. He grabbed Lana by the shoulder and directed her outside the cabin where the two of them took up a position on the rail. Caine held his hands up in front of him as if he was positioning a camera frame and rushing Lana to sketch the scene in front of them.

  The Kentucky Dam rose 100 feet out of the river in front of them, a concrete atlas holding back the contents of Kentucky Lake. A dozen floodgates spanned the width of the river and were still regulating the flow of the Tennessee into the Ohio.

  Jerry pointed the Boomer toward the lock that would lift them 75 feet to match the level of the lake on the other side.

  Once Caine realized what was happening, he turned back to the captain. “Should I get the whiskey?”

  Jerry gave him a look that made him turn back to the dam.

  “Should I get the whiskey?” Eve asked with a smile.

  “Nope. These guys are more into food. There are a couple sacks of flour down below. But we’ve got plenty of time.”

  Jerry pulled into the massive lock chamber and secured the Boomer to a bollard that would rise along with the water level. He looked up at the edge of the concrete canyon, expecting to see at least the speck of a face looking back at him. He turned back to the river. The gates weren’t moving.

  “Hit the horn,” he shouted to Eve, who was manning the wheel.

  She sounded the air horn three times.

  There was still no response from above.

  She sounded three more blasts before joining Jerry on the deck. “Do you think they’re sleeping?”

  He hoped that was the case. It would be the first time, though. It was more likely that they just weren’t paying attention. “It’s not like they’re a professional operation. More like opportunists that saw a semi-legitimate way to extort people. We may have to wait.”

  Waiting wasn’t easy. And the longer they sat in the open lock, the more eyes turned to the river behind them. They had tried the horn a few more times, but there was still no response from above.

  Caine finally snapped. “Every minute we sit here is another minute those pirates have to catch up. Are we even certain there’s anyone up there?”

  Jerry stared up at the lock wall. No. He wasn’t certain about anything. He glanced over at the ladder on the side of the lock. If they were up there, they weren’t going to appreciate anyone scaling the wall. But, if they weren’t up there, he might as well change the Boomer’s name to the Sitting Duck while they waited for Marco and his men.

  He stepped into the cockpit and retrieved the rifle near his seat. He slung it over his back as Eve grabbed her own firearm.

  “I’ve got this. Stay here with the others and keep an eye on the Boomer for me. I’m just going to go get them out of bed. It’s best not to look like we’re trying to take the lock.”

  “What if it’s already been taken?”

  Jerry looked up at the top of the lock and then down at the water. “I’ll jump.”

  “It would make quite the scene for Caine’s movie.”

  “That it would.”

  “But I’m not sure you’d survive.”

  “Oh, I don’t know. It’s hardly Niagara Falls.”

  “Let’s not test it,” Eve said.

  Jerry nodded, grabbed the rung and stepped onto the ladder. He looked up and groaned. It was going to be a long climb.

  They watched him climb until he turned into a dot. It was several stories and it took a fair amount of time. The passengers split their time between watching his progress and watching for pirates.

  “Can someone else say, ‘it feels like we’re being watched’ so I don’t have to?” Caine asked.

  No one did, but Eve couldn’t argue with the feeling. It could be a trap. A lock was literally a trap. But if it was a trap, they would have shut them in. She shook off the feeling and went back to worrying about Jerry. Even Chewy watched the man climb.

  He finally disappeared over the lock’s lip and everyone held their breath.

  Eve grabbed the binoculars and watched the top of the ladder. She found herself holding her breath, waiting for a sign. She let the breath go when he finally stepped back to the lip and gave her a thumbs up. The thumbs up then turned into a wavy palm. So everything was okay, kind of.

  Jerry disappeared again. A moment later the massive gates began to swing closed behind them.

  Eve joined the others in a low-energy celebration. There had still been no sign of the pirates, but the longer they had sat still the more the tension had built. They let it out with a round of cheering as the water began to fill the massive lock.

  Jerry returned to the edge several times to check their progress, and Eve grabbed the binoculars each time. Everything seemed okay. He didn’t look like he was under duress, and he hadn’t been disarmed. Soon, the worry left and she began to pace the boat while waiting for the water level to reach the top.

  The Boomer finally made it to the top and he stepped back onto the deck. He asked the passengers to untie the boat and for Eve to drive it through once he opened the gates.

  “I’m glad you didn’t have to jump,” Eve said.

  “You and me both.”

  “What was with the…” she imitated the hand gesture.

  “The place was empty. But it’s not pretty. There’s blood everywhere. And a sigil graffitied all over the place.”

  “The Penance?”

  He nodded. “They seem to be everywhere. I haven’t seen this kind of organization outside of Alasis.”

  Jerry took the binoculars from around her neck and walked to the end of the lock. There he scanned the river behind them for several minutes before he returned.

  “No sign of Marco. That’s some good news at least,” he said, and hung the binoculars back by the captain’s chair before returning to the lock controls.

  Once he opened the gates, Eve took the Boomer through the lock and into Kentucky Lake where Jerry hopped back on board the boat.

  They hadn’t been back underway long before Caine started up with the attitude again. “So, are you going to tell us where you’re planning to hide a forty-foot boat?”

  Jerry felt the obvious retort flash in his mind but dismissed it and decided that, rather than insult the actor, he would just show him how much he didn’t know. “You see that channel off of our port side?”

  Caine looked to port. And then to starboard. And then to Jerry until he pointed to indicate which side was port.

  “Yes,” Caine said. “So?”

  “That takes you to the Cumberland River. Which could take you as far as Nashville. Before that, it runs parallel to the Tennessee for fifty miles. And on either side of every bank of both rivers are a thousand coves, creeks and tributaries. Do you think they’re going to search every last one of them?”

  “They’ve got a lot of boats,” Caine shot back.

  “They had a lot of boats,” Jerry countered. Caine wasn’t wrong. Marco could still have some considerable manpower, but he doubted it would be enough. He was counting a lot on the fact that the pirates probably didn’t know where they were going. “He’ll probably assume we’re heading east and be looking for us on the Cumberland. There are more places to sell guns out there than where we’re headed.”

  The skies had been growing darker all morning, and Jerry was hoping for a storm. It would make hiding that much easier. He picked a random cove off to the port side and turned into it.

  “Why this one?” Andy asked.

  Jerry didn’t answer. His thinking was if he didn’t know where he was, neither would Marco, and it wasn’t solid enough thinking to make it worth sharing. The inlet contained several coves that could possibly conceal the Boomer, but he was pleased to find a creek farther in. With no one at the dam to manage the floodgates, the water was high enough to make passage possible.

  He cut the engine to all but idle power and put Andy on the bow to call out obstacles or shallow waters. They had gone as far as they could when the sky finally opened up and spilled its contents on them. The rain was thick and heavy, and it was welcomed. As much as it was coming down, Jerry wasn’t worried the creek would recede and leave them beached. And it made it that much harder for anyone to spot them.

  It was cramped in the cabin. It grew muggy and uncomfortable quickly. The dogs, in particular, smelled. Conversations quickly turned to arguments, and even Caine eventually decided that it was best to remain silent.

  The rain kept up throughout the evening and the night fell hard on the passengers. No lights were allowed in the boat for safety’s sake. So they sat in the dark and damp, and soon all but those who were assigned watch drifted off to sleep.

  24

  Jerry awoke earlier than the others. Lana, the last on watch, was fighting sleep as the sun came up. She couldn’t even manage an “all clear” and instead just gave a weak thumbs up.

  It smelled like vacation outside. Parks always smelled like vacation. The petrichor, the mud, the residual drops baking off the leaves in the early morning. The only thing missing was mom and dad roasting coffee in a forty-year-old percolator and a multipack of cereal where everyone could have what they wanted until there was nothing left but the Apple Jacks. The multipack was brilliant in its promise to parents that there wasn’t going to be any fighting, but sinister in its execution. One Frosted Flakes and two Special K? The cereal makers were out for blood.

  He called for Chewy and the pair stepped ashore. The land between the two lakes had been cleverly named the Land Between the Lakes Recreational Area before the end of the world, and they didn’t have to walk far before finding the remains of a park road. He turned west and started walking back to the lake formed by the Tennessee.

  Birds filled the trees above him. Several deer crossed their path, unconcerned with his presence until Chewy barked and gave a brief chase. There were a lot of worries when the apocalypse happened. First and foremost, people thought about themselves. But, as the dust settled and it seemed like a part of the population had indeed survived, they started to wonder how nature would handle the end of the world. After several years, it was more than clear—nature was doing just fine. It seems all they had to do was leave it alone for a while and it took care of itself.

  Sure, there were mutations in the gene pool now, and curious amateur biologists wondered if they would be bred out or continue to appear in future generations of the species. At this point they didn’t seem to be any more or less prevalent than they had been right after the bombs. Perhaps these new variations were here to stay.

  Jerry and the mastiff followed the path to its end and found themselves near the old boat ramps. He pulled out the binoculars and started looking for pirates. There wasn’t another boat on the river, upstream or down. He stayed there for an hour, looking and listening for any kind of patrol boat, but saw none.

  Maybe the creature had killed them. Maybe they had turned back. He looked south. Or maybe they had passed by in the night or during the storm.

  He scanned the river one more time before waking the dog and heading back.

  The lack of pirates was a mystery with several possible answers. It was the lack of all other boats that puzzled him. The Tennessee didn’t see the traffic of the Mississippi or even the Ohio at this point, but he still expected to see a boat or two coming up Kentucky Lake. Of course, it could be nothing. It felt like a lazy morning. A summer storm was always a good reason to sleep in.

  He and Chewy made their way back to the Boomer and were greeted by the smell of frying bacon being made with far too much smoke. The smell of vacation was now complete.

  Caine stood at the rear of the cabin using a cushion to blow the smoke out of the boat while Andy stood in the galley shouting at Caine that it was “only a little burnt.”

  There were eggs as well, and the passengers sat around the dinette table and ate well while Jerry shared the news of his recon stroll.