I Didn’t Look Back -Finn
Forty Two
I Didn’t Look Back -Finn
The sign appeared on the right side of the road, maybe ten minutes later, and I took the exit.
I knew exactly where I was now.
This stretch of Maine coastline had been familiar to me long before any of this.
I’d driven this road in better circumstances, in a different version of the world, coming up to see Fiona when life still included weekend trips and reasons to visit friends.
The marina owner—Cal, sixty-something, the kind of man who communicated primarily in single syllables and considered that more than sufficient—had never minded me leaving the car in his lot for weeks at a time, never charged extra, never asked many questions.
He just waved from whatever he happened to be doing and went back to doing it.
I wondered briefly what had happened to Cal.
I turned left onto the dirt road past the bank, feeling the tires leave the asphalt. The treeline opened up on both sides. Before the water came into view, its scent did—salt and cold and, somehow, a sense of relief.
Then the ocean appeared.
My whole body went slack.
Thank God. Thank fucking God.
Still exactly where it should be.
I stopped at the fence; the familiar squeal of the marina gate’s hinges loud in the quiet air.
After I swung it shut, the latch dropped home with a solid thunk.
A quick scan of the lot showed nothing out of place—just the wind tugging at loose tarps and the creak of the docks.
I pulled up to the office trailer and killed the engine, letting the silence settle.
For a moment, just looking out at the water, I let myself believe we were safe.
Then I saw her.
I very nearly laughed out loud.
Sitting right there in the third slip from the left, exactly where I’d left her—the Dredge. Dark navy hull, white trim weathered but intact, her name painted on the stern in the slightly uneven letters I’d always meant to fix.
I’d bought her secondhand a few years ago from a retiring fisherman in Gloucester who’d been deeply skeptical that I knew what I was doing with her, and he’d been right about that.
Sailboats were not my thing, and for the most part, I professed that loud and clear for anyone who would listen.
But this one had spoken to me. She’d required more work than advertised, more money than I’d budgeted, and more weekends than I could count spent learning her particular personality—the way she sat in a swell, the temperamental nature of her secondary bilge pump, the specific throttle setting she preferred at cruising speed.
I knew every inch of her the way you know something you’ve earned.
I’d genuinely not expected to see her again.
“Is that—?” Fiona’s voice came from between the headrests, the question hanging unfinished. She’d been on the Dredge twice.
“Yeah,” I said.
“Finn.” Her voice was tentative, the name hanging in the air for a moment. “She’s still here.”
“Looks like it.”
“I assumed—”
“Yeah, me too.”
I stepped out into the salt air and stood there looking at her.
The dock lines were still tied the way I’d tied them.
The canvas cover had come loose at one corner, lifting slightly in the breeze—but otherwise, she was as I’d left her, solid in her slip, entirely indifferent to everything that had happened since.
You have no idea how glad I am to see you.
Libby appeared at my shoulder, and I heard her quiet intake of breath when she saw what I was looking at.
“Is that yours?” she asked, her voice quiet.
“She’s mine,” I said. “Name’s the Dredge.”
She was quiet for a second, looking at it. “She’s beautiful.”
I glanced at her sideways.
“She’ll do,” I said, the most I’d ever managed to say about something I was actually proud of. I started walking toward the dock.
We moved fast, hauling everything from the car to the boat: the gas can, Fiona’s medical box, the food bins, our personal stuff.
On the last trip back to the car, I grabbed the final bag from the boot, straightened up, and something stopped me before I’d taken a step back toward the dock.
The gate stood open.
I stared at it. I’d closed it—I was certain of it. I’d heard the latch engage.
It was open now.
I turned slowly.
They came from the treeline at the far edge of the lot—not one, not a handful, but dozens, spread across the full width of the entrance in a loose, shambling mass that carried no urgency and didn’t need any.
That remained the horror of a horde, every single time—the complete absence of urgency.
They moved with the patient, indifferent momentum of a tide coming in.
My brain ran the distance in under a second.
Too close. Far too close.
“GO!” The word came out at full volume, every pretense of quiet gone in an instant, and I spun and sprinted back down the dock with my boots hammering the boards hard enough to shake them loose from the pilings. “GET ON THE BOAT—NOW—MOVE.”
Libby saw my face before she saw them. That was enough—she dropped everything and moved. Fiona looked past me toward the lot, went completely still, then grabbed the nearest line and started working it free.
I hit the dock at a dead run, seized the stern line and threw it clear, grabbed the bow line and threw that, then swung myself down into the cockpit and hit the ignition on the trolling motor.
It caught with a low electric hum that sounded absurdly small against the scale of what crossed the lot toward us—but it could move us, and moving remained the only thing that mattered.
“Push off the piling—get us clear—”
I looked back toward the lot to check the distance.
My stomach dropped straight through the deck.
Lily stood on the dock.
At the very edge of the boards, her body turned back to the car, one foot forward as though she’d taken a step toward something and arrested herself at the absolute last moment before the water, her arms empty at her sides and her hands opening and closing against nothing.
“Lily!” Libby’s voice was a raw shout from across the water.
I cleared the rail before I’d finished the thought, boots back on the boards, covering the distance between us in five hard strides and locking both arms around her from behind to haul her bodily away from the edge.
She fought me.
Actually fought—twisting hard, trying to wrench herself back toward the car, her elbow finding my ribs with enough force to pull the stitches and nearly break my grip.
I locked my arms tighter; she threw her weight forward anyway, both feet scrabbling at the dock boards for purchase, fingernails finding the back of my forearm and digging in without, I think, any awareness that she was doing it.
“The carrier!” The words tore out of her—not crying, not even close to crying, just raw and completely beyond composure. Her voice barely sounded like her. “The carrier—I put him down. For the bag—I put him down, and I didn’t—I left him.”
I looked past her.
The carrier sat on the ground beside the rear of the car, mesh window facing the dock, and Doc Fluffbutt’s broad orange face pressed against it in the absolute stillness cats adopt when they understand that something in their environment has gone wrong, his green eyes fixed and unblinking.
The leading edge of the horde had closed to thirty feet from the car.
Twenty-five.
I looked at Libby across the gap of water. Her face had gone completely white, both hands locked around the railing, tears running without sound. Her eyes found mine and held. I could see exactly how much she hated it.
“Fiona.” My voice came out low and even. If it shook, she’d fall apart. “Don’t overthink it.”
Her head came around sharply. “Finn—”
“Get them out.” I slid Lily across the gap into Libby’s arms. She was still twisting, still reaching for the car, her hands grasping empty air. “Two minutes. That’s it. Then you go. Don’t wait. Don’t argue. Just go.”
“Finn—” Libby’s voice broke completely on my name, and the sound of it almost stopped me, almost reached past the part of my brain that had already committed to the decision, almost found the place where my own fear lived and dragged it out into the open where it could do real damage.
I couldn’t look at her again. The decision had been made, and looking at her face would unmake it, and I didn’t have time for that, didn’t have the luxury of standing in the space between wanting to stay and needing to go while the distance closed behind me at the speed of a slow walk.
I turned and ran.
Boots on boards, then gravel, the sound dropping out from under my feet as I cleared the dock and hit the lot.
The horde had spread wider. Fifteen feet from the car now, maybe less—close enough to catch the smell of them on the salt air, so close the nearest one turned its head toward me with the slow, unhurried patience of something that had nowhere else to be and all the time there was to get there.
I ran harder than my shoulder wanted me to. Every impact sent a bright, jagged line of pain through my ribs, but I did not care. I could not afford to care—the carrier sat fifteen yards ahead, and the nearest of them shuffled ten yards beyond it.
The carrier handle came up into my grip, and I didn’t break stride—scooped it mid-run, Doc Fluffbutt’s weight swinging hard inside as the carrier arced up off the ground, and I pivoted on my outside foot with everything I had, redirecting all of my momentum back toward the dock without stopping, the carrier clutched tight against my chest with both arms wrapped around it, and inside the mesh a low guttural yowl built and broke as the cat pressed himself flat against the carrier floor.
Behind me, the sounds of the horde shifted and grew louder as the closest ones reoriented toward the movement, toward the noise, toward the only fast-moving thing in a lot full of slow shapes converging on the space I had just occupied.
I didn’t look back.
I ran.