Hawk's Apocalypse #4

Chapter 1

Acool wind came up through the Casino seawall and cut across my legs.

I gripped the rusted railing hard enough that the metal bit into my palms. The wind off the channel hit sharp, stinging the skin on my face and hands.

Joy’s hair blew across her cheek and slapped my shoulder.

I glanced at her. She was squinting into the dark, not looking at me.

Emma’s white sails stood out against the first light. Lines were pulled tight in the wind. The deck still shone with dew. She looked smaller out there than she ever did at the dock. I watched her move across the open water with nothing between her and the channel.

Autumn perched on my left shoulder. Her green velvet dress was stuck to her skin from the cold. Bare feet pressed into my shirt, toes curled. Her platinum hair blew around behind her in the wind. She didn’t shiver. She grabbed my ear and held on.

I kept my eyes on the sails as Emma steered for the break in the outer rock wall.

Shapes moved along her deck, tying off lines.

One by one, they paused at the rail, then disappeared below until the decks looked empty.

Only a small pale blur stayed near the bow a little longer.

It was gone by the time Emma cleared the mouth of the harbor and the first real channel wave punched the bow up.

Most of the Fatu Hiva women and a few of the elves had come out to watch.

They stood in borrowed coats and scarves from the salvage piles.

When Emma cleared the far edge of the wall and started shrinking into the channel, the crowd broke apart.

Groups headed off to their morning work, boots crunching over the last of the gravel.

Within a minute I only heard the gulls and the wet slap of the tide against the old pilings.

Joy’s hand found my arm and slid down until our fingers locked. Her skin was cold but soft, while mine felt rough from the masts. She pressed in close, shoulder pressed to my side, her head on my shoulder. Damp hair brushed my neck. She leaned harder against me and stayed there.

Emma’s hull stayed in sight a while longer, sails shifting north. The main caught the first sunlight. I spotted one figure at the wheel. Casey. Hair loose, mouth tight, eyes scanning the horizon.

My teeth clenched. My grip on the railing tightened until the metal stopped giving.

I could do nothing now.

The decision was made.

Emma’s voice touched my mind. There were no words, only a brief warmth. It faded fast. The farther she got from the island, the weaker it became, until it was only a faint vibration I barely felt.

Joy’s breathing changed. She drew in slow, let it out slow.

She didn’t shudder, but she wasn’t steady, either.

I felt the tremor in her arm, the slight give in her grip.

She didn’t look up; her eyes stayed fixed on the spot where the hull became a suggestion, then a memory.

When the sails disappeared behind the line of a distant bluff, she let go of my hand.

Autumn said nothing. She was still as a carving, the pressure of her tiny hand a steady pulse behind my ear. I felt her magic ripple along my skin, not power or the bright zing of a wish, but a low steady warmth that held on.

The sky turned from cold grey to a pale yellow as the sun came up.

It didn’t get warmer. The smell of rotting kelp off the tide pool cut through the day’s newness, sharp as an afterthought.

Farther down the beach, a lone gull picked at the shell of a dead crab, wings hunched against the wind.

The women were gone, back to the bakery or the outbuildings, or to the dock itself, to see if the water needed watching. Only the three of us stayed.

Joy finally spoke. “She’s gone.”

“She’ll be back,” I said, hoping she would believe it.

“I know.”

We stood there watching the hull fade into the haze until I couldn’t pick it out anymore. My hands felt gritty, salt-crusted along my skin. I flexed my fingers and wiped them on my jeans.

I turned. Autumn slid off my shoulder, arms flailing. I caught her before she tumbled. She crouched in my palm, knees bent, hair wild from the wind. Her eyes looked bigger than usual, mouth pressed tight.

I let Joy go first, her hand lingering a second before she stepped away. The tide had dropped another inch since we’d come out; the water drew back from the rocks, leaving a fresh shine on the flats.

When I started back for the Casino, Autumn rode in my hood, both hands gripping the seam above my shoulder. She didn’t hum, didn’t say a word. The day had barely begun, but it felt like the night hadn’t left.

I walked up the steps, Joy behind, Autumn weightless and silent, and left the empty railings and the empty sea behind.

* * *

The day moved at the island’s pace. By mid-morning, I’d left Joy inside with Akia and Teva working through supply lists, and I walked the south docks to check on Gascha.

She had her Ci Dyn work parties on the Chesapeake without waiting for my say-so.

Floppy ears forward, her voice low and steady, she kept three teams moving across the deck and up the rough new masts.

The Frenchmen, Gerard and Roux, had cobbled the spars together from salvaged timber.

They weren’t pretty. The joinery was rough, but they stood, and that was what mattered.

Most of the windows were still boarded where the shockwave had blown them out.

“Morning, Captain,” Gascha called when she spotted me. Her golden hair caught the light, and her tail gave a slow wag. “We’re finishing the Aft mast today. Found better planking in the old boatyard.”

“Good,” I said. “Need anything?”

She shook her head. “We’re covered. Stuart brought up more of the pitch the elves had harvested. I don’t understand it. Elven magic. That’s all Lyubor said about it.”

I watched them work for a few minutes. The Ci Dyn moved as if they’d been stepping masts for years rather than days. Some of them used the old tongue in their calls: the descending triple that meant “ready” or “approved.” Gascha caught me listening and smiled.

“They’re finding their rhythm,” she said.

“Yes.”

Horizon sat in the Casino parking lot, about a hundred yards from where I stood. Dull gray and black hull, engines cold, systems in standby. Ira’s team moved around her, mostly human and Ci Dyn, checking packs, weapons, and the last of their gear.

I walked the perimeter counterclockwise, starting at the south harbor approach.

Whisper had four ci dyn on rotation there, spaced along the old seawall with a clear line of sight to the channel mouth.

One of them, a dark-furred female with sharp amber eyes, nodded when I passed.

She had an M4 carbine slung across her back and a Kana pulse pistol on her hip.

The pulse pistol looked out of place against the weathered stone, clean modern lines set against old, cracked harbor rock.

“Anything?” I asked.

She shook her head. “Quiet water. Nothing since Emma left this morning.”

The north approach had a similar setup: two humans and a ci dyn watching the open water beyond the breakwater.

I checked their sight lines, made sure they had clear fields of fire if they needed them, and moved on.

The angle of the light on the scrub hills told me the hours better than any clock.

By the time I’d circled back to the Casino’s east side, the sun had dropped enough to throw long shadows across the parking lot.

I didn’t go inside. From the side doors, I could hear the hall beginning to fill.

The smell reached me first: seafood, baking bread, the sharp tang of citrus from the fruit the scavenging parties had brought back.

Low talk underneath it, the murmur of two hundred-plus people settling into the island’s new rhythm.

Salvaged lanterns hung from the ceiling beams, and the high-tech generator Taylor had pulled from Horizon threw a steady white light across the far wall.

Through the seaward windows, the Chesapeake’s silhouette showed dark against the fading sky, her masts rough and unfinished, like a sketch that hadn’t been filled in.

The Casino itself was still in good shape.

Two years of weather and a few months of cannibal occupation had left scars: water stains on the ceiling tiles, a section of railing torn loose and propped against a wall, the lingering smell of smoke in the north corner, but the walls stood and the roof held.

Stingray Arms had cleared the last of the cannibals months before we ever arrived, and the evidence of that cleaning was still visible if you knew where to look: bullet scars on the exterior concrete, a dark stain on the parking lot asphalt that wouldn’t wash away.

Most of the surrounding buildings in Avalon were the same: intact enough to use, a few burned or collapsed, nothing like the total ruin some places had become.

The old hotel across from the Casino had most of its windows boarded, but the structure was sound.

A couple of storefronts along the harbor front had been converted to workshops and storage.

Everywhere else stayed empty, windows dark, doors shut, streets left to the weeds and blown paper.

No one was sweeping the streets or cleaning yards.

Salvaging what was useful mattered more than making the place pretty.

A week had been enough to claim the ground we needed, but not enough to do more than that.

Ira found me near the side doors. Light-gray ears angled back, tail still. Her green eyes caught the last of the daylight and held it.