Chapter 23
Twenty Three
Callan
The next morning I’d already done my rounds through the building, checking the generator levels, making sure the pumps still ran where we needed them, confirming the doors we’d chained hadn’t been touched.
The power grid went down two days ago. The moment the city lights vanished across the horizon, the entire aquarium ran on generators.
I’d worked out a rotation system the night before—shutting down the main tanks for a few hours each night to conserve fuel while the fish could tolerate the temporary drop in filtration. Not ideal, but it bought us time, and time had become everything now.
Sloan was making coffee on the stove when I entered the cafeteria. The smell hit me immediately, and I felt a blip of joy at the simple pleasure of it.
“Hey,” I said.
The word came easily now, comfortable in a way it never had before.
The tension that had always lived between us—the old workplace friction, the constant clashing, the years of pretending we didn’t get under each other’s skin for reasons neither of us wanted to examine—had burned away over the past few days.
We still had that strange routine, though, and nights turned into something else entirely.
But mornings? Mornings we slipped right back into what looked a lot like coworkers again, only this time we were nice and could get along.
Neither of us ever mentioned it: the way the dark changed things between us, or the way her body fit against mine as if it had always belonged there, or the sounds she made when I…
I pulled myself from my thoughts. We seemed to be pretending none of it happened, and honestly, that worked for right now.
Sloane turned and held out a cup of coffee toward me.
I stepped forward to take it.
“Thanks.”
I was surprised when she closed the distance between us and leaned in, pressing a quick, soft kiss against my lips—a light peck. Nothing dramatic, nothing like that night.
Still—
My brain short-circuited.
Every nerve in my body fired at once, and I stood there holding a cup of coffee like a man who’d forgotten how his own hands worked.
Shit.
I cleared my throat and took a sip, as if that might somehow reset whatever had just happened inside my chest.
Sloane didn’t seem embarrassed, though. If anything, she looked thoughtful, as if she’d made the decision deliberately and intended to see how it went.
I forced myself to focus.
“Uh… I wanted to talk to you about something.”
She leaned back against the counter, crossing her arms.
“Sounds serious.”
“Long-term serious.”
That caught her attention. Her eyebrows lifted.
“Okay?”
I pulled out one of the folded marina maps we’d been studying and spread it across the cafeteria table, smoothing the creases flat with my palm.
“This place is good,” I said. “The aquarium, we have a solid building, definitely have good food supplies.”
“But?” she asked.
“But it’s not sustainable forever.”
She nodded slowly, no surprise in her expression—simply quiet confirmation of something she’d already turned over in her own head.
“I figured that.”
“Eventually, the generators will run dry, or something breaks that we can’t fix. The natural gas runs out, and we’re sitting in the dark eating cold fish out of containers.”
Her gaze dropped to the map.
“So, what’s the alternative?”
I leaned over the map again, sliding my finger slowly up the
coastline, past Massachusetts, New Hampshire, all the way up toward the jagged, rocky edge of Maine.
“I want to head here,” I said.
Sloane leaned closer. About three hundred miles north of us, a cluster of small islands dotted the map like scattered pebbles thrown into the Atlantic. Most of them didn’t even have names, tiny specks of land that barely registered.
I tapped one of them.
“This one.”
She squinted.
“That island’s barely bigger than a smudge.”
“Yeah,” I said. “That’s Finn’s Island.”
She looked up at me.
“And?”
I rubbed the back of my neck, suddenly aware that the next part would sound insane.
“It’s my brother’s island.”
Her expression shifted immediately, the kind you give someone when you’re trying to decide if they’re joking or in the middle of a breakdown.
“Your… brother’s island.”
“Yeah.”
She blinked.
“You’re serious.”
“As a heart attack.”
I leaned back against the table, folding my arms.
“He lives there.”
Now she looked at me as if I’d lost my mind.
“Callan,” she said carefully. “People don’tlive on tiny islands off the coast of Maine.”
“My brother does.”
She stared at me.
“Why?”
I sighed.
“Because he’s a paranoid motherfucker.”
That seemed to track slightly better for her.
“He’s an ex-Navy SEAL,” I continued. “Did a bunch of overseas deployments, came back… different.”
Sloane crossed her arms.
“Different how?”
“Prepper different.”
Her eyebrows lifted.
“Like a bunker-in-the-mountains prepper?”
I snorted.
“Way worse.”
I tapped the map again.
“Years ago, he somehow bought that island through some weird tax auction lottery; the previous owner defaulted on a pile of property taxes, and the state dumped it.”
“And your brother bought it.”
“Yep.”
She leaned in again, studying the map as if the island might grow bigger if she stared long enough.
“What did he do with it?”
I laughed quietly.
“More like what didn’t he do with it?”
“Callan.”
“He built a compound,” I said simply.
Her eyes widened.
“Of course he did.”
“Solar panels. Wind turbines, rainwater catchment systems, underground storage. Greenhouses.”
She blinked slowly.
“Wait.”
I nodded.
“Yeah.”
“You’re serious.”
“Dead serious.”
I rubbed my jaw, remembering the last time I’d visited, standing on that rocky shore while my brother walked me through his latest irrigation upgrade like a kid showing off a science fair project.
“I used to give him so much shit about it. Called it his doomsday island.”
“And now?” she asked.
I gestured vaguely at the silent aquarium around us.
“Now I’m thinking he might’ve been the only sane one in the family.”
She let out a quiet breath and looked down at the map again.
“If everything you’re saying is true…”
“It is.”
“…that island might be one of the safest places left.”
“That’s what I’m thinking.”
Her finger hovered over the tiny speck of land. Three hundred miles of open coastline between it and us.
“But it’s a long way.”
“About three hundred miles.”
“That’s a long way in a boat, Callan.”
“Yeah.”
“And we don’t even know if your brother is still alive.”
I nodded slowly.
“True, but even so, the island is still there.”
Silence settled between us. The noise of the generators filled the space where words should have gone.
Finally, she looked up.
“If he is alive…”
“He’ll let us in.”
“You’re sure?”
I smiled faintly.
“My brother’s a lot of things.”
“Crazy?”
“Very,” the smile held. “But family’s the one thing he never walked away from. If the world ended, that island is exactly where he’d be. Waiting.”
Sloane leaned back in her chair. I watched her turn it over—the distance, the risk, the slim thread of hope running through all of it. Her eyes drifted back to the tiny island again.
“And you think we could get there?”
“Eventually,” I said. “Not right away.”
I tapped the aquarium on the map.
“The aquarium is our staging ground. We stock up. We plan the route. We wait for the captain and his son to arrive and figure out what kind of shape their boat is in.”
She nodded slowly.
“Supplies. Fuel. Planning.”
“Exactly.”
Her gaze lingered on that small speck of land three hundred miles north. I watched something shift behind her eyes—not just calculation anymore. Something deeper.
“If that place is set up the way you’re describing…”
I waited.
“…then it’s not just survival.”
“No.”
“It’s a future.”
I nodded once.
“That’s the idea.”
She looked up at me again, searching my face for doubt, for hesitation, for any sign that I was lying. I held her gaze and let her look.
“You honestly think we can make it three hundred miles up the coast?”
I shrugged.
“If the world ended and my brother’s doomsday island is where we are going…”
I took another sip of coffee.
“…I think it’s worth everything we’ve got to try.”
“My plan involves the fishing boat showing up tonight.”
Sloane looked up from the tiny dot that marked Finn Island and frowned.
“The SS Mariner?”
“Yeah.”
She leaned back in her chair, crossing her arms.
“That boat isn’t making it three hundred miles.”
“I know.”
“It barely has enough fuel to reach us.”
“I know.”
She gave me a look—the one she reserved for moments when she suspected I’d lost my mind but wanted to give me one more chance to prove otherwise.
“Then how exactly does it factor into your plan?”
I slid my finger up the coastline again, this time stopping much closer to home.
“Fuel.”
Her brow furrowed.
“From where?”
I pointed to a narrow inlet just north of us.
“About twenty miles up the coast—Croatan Inlet. Small marina there called Beal Marina, mostly used by local fishing crews and charter operations.”
She leaned forward.
“And?”
“And they’ve got a dock pump.”
Her eyes narrowed.
“You’re assuming there’s still fuel in the tanks.”
“Fishing docks usually store a lot of it underground. Diesel and marine gas. If the power’s out, most pumps won’t work, but the fuel’s still sitting there.”
Sloane tilted her head.
“So you’re planning to siphon it?”
“Manually pump it. That’s why I want this specific marina—it has an old-style crank pump from the fifties. Takes a while, but it works without electricity.”
She stared at me.
“That’s not exactly a bang-up strategy.”
“No,” I admitted. “But it’s a starting point.”
She looked back down at the map.
“Twenty miles isn’t bad.”
“No.”
“But…”
I already knew what was coming next.
Her eyes lifted to meet mine.
“The problem isn’t the pump.”
“It’s the things,” I finished.
She nodded.
“If that marina looks anything like the parking lot outside this building, it’ll be crawling with them.”
I pictured it. Empty docks. Silent buildings. And those things drifting along the shoreline with their slow, wrong way of moving.
“Yeah,” I said quietly. “That’s the problem.”
She drummed her fingers against the table, thinking.
“And you want to take the Mariner there? After they dock here?”
“After we figure out how much fuel they’ve got left, what kind of shape the boat’s in, and whether the captain’s willing to risk it.”
Sloane nodded.
“That’s a lot of unknowns.”
“Welcome to the apocalypse.”
That earned a small snort from her.
She studied the map for another long moment. I watched her trace the coastline with her eyes, calculating distances, weighing risks, running through variables the way her mind always worked—quiet, thorough, three steps ahead.
“If we could get enough fuel,” she said, “three hundred miles isn’t impossible.”
“No, and we wouldn’t have to keep running.”
Her gaze softened.
“That sounds nice,” she said. And the way she said it, carefully, like she didn’t want to trust it yet—told me everything about how tired she actually was.
I folded the map back up halfway.
“But first, we get through tonight.”
She looked up.
“The captain and his son.”
“Yeah.”
“They’ll be scared,” she said.
“Probably.”
“And hungry.”
“Definitely.”
She pushed herself up from the chair.
“Then we should start getting ready.”
I stood too.
“Food?”
“Food,” she said. “And somewhere for them to sleep.”
She started toward the kitchen, then paused and looked back at me.
“You realize if this works, we’re basically recruiting them into your crazy brother’s island survival plan.”
I smiled slightly.
“Pretty much.”
She shook her head, but a small grin tugged at the corner of her mouth.
“Your family sounds insane.”
“Yeah,” I said.
Then I looked back down at the map one more time. At the tiny speck of land sitting three hundred miles north in the cold Atlantic water. My brother’s paranoid, over-engineered, heavily fortified answer to a question no one else had bothered to ask.
“But right now?” I tapped Finn’s Island with my finger.
“Insane might be the thing that saves our lives.”