Chapter 5
CHAPTER 5
CLOVER
E ven thirty meters below ground, the explosions were deafening. Oliver’s cigar tumbled from my gasping mouth and hit the water with a hiss as the cave began to shake. It floated there in front of me, unlike the loose rocks that fell from the cavern ceiling. Those pummeled the surface like a hailstorm, dousing me with frigid seawater and crashing on the pebbled beach all around me. Covering my head with both hands, I darted over to the cave entrance and ducked inside the narrow tunnel that would lead me out.
The bombing was relentless. With every concussion, my heartbeat stuttered, my eyes squeezed shut, my body jerked, and my lips mumbled a prayer that the cave wouldn’t collapse before I made it out. But as I approached the mouth of the tunnel and that first whiff of smoke filled my lungs, I realized that the cave might be the safest place on the entire peninsula.
It couldn’t have been later than seven, but it looked like midnight outside. Plumes of gray smoke and ash billowed in the sky, torn and punctured by the endless barrage of missiles that came screaming off the deck of the cruise ship. Smoke swirled on the surface of the water as well, but not where a fleet of boat-like tanks sliced through it on their way from the belly of the ship to the harbor. Every panicked breath I took was answered with a violent cough as the thick, sulfuric air suffocated me. I had to get to higher ground. I had to get to Odie. But when I turned and stared up at the cliff behind me, I realized that my mental image of hell from earlier had been wrong.
Hell wasn’t a mountain of fishing nets. It was a burning cliff separating you from the people you loved.
Blast after blast rattled my chest as I climbed up the trail, constantly scanning the ground for my next step or handhold. Fire licked at the edges of the path and reached for me with crackling fingers, but I refused to look anywhere but straight ahead.
How many minutes had it been since the bombing had started? Three? Five? Maybe they were okay. Maybe they’d gotten out. I didn’t hear any screaming.
My stomach dropped.
I don’t hear any screaming.
I had just begun to panic when my body came to a sudden halt. The bush that hid the entrance of my secret trail was completely engulfed in flames. In fact, everything on top of the cliff was engulfed in flames. My mouth fell open as I tried to make sense of what I was seeing. What had been an idyllic sea of purple and yellow wildflowers swaying in the breeze just half an hour before was now a fiery, blazing wasteland. I couldn’t see a single house—they had either been demolished or were shrouded in smoke so thick that I couldn’t tell if they were still standing. And off in the distance, the rolling hills of Howth appeared to be boiling—everywhere a shell landed, an orange fireball swelled and popped, spewing a cloud of sparks and black smoke.
Pulling the neck of my shirt up over my mouth and nose, I leaped over a shorter bush and sprinted down the path. I could hardly see anything up ahead, but the fire closing in on the trail illuminated my steps as I ran. It was so hot; I expected to find my wellies melted onto my feet by the time I got home.
If I still had a home.
Pushing that thought away, I glanced over my shoulder in the direction of the cruise ship. I could only tell it was still there because its generic white paint color glowed through the haze and ash like the blurry essence of a ghost ship. Flashes of orange burst from the cannons on its deck, and after each one, a nearby explosion seized my heart and made me flinch. They never landed in the same spot twice, which was why it shouldn’t have surprised me when one screaming missile careened directly into the cliff in front of me.
Rocks and earth exploded in all directions as a blinding heat seared my face and sent me flying backward. I landed in the unforgiving arms of a burning gorse bush. Its sharp, flaming branches punctured my skin and singed my clothes before I rolled onto the ground, gasping for air. Clumps of dirt and grass rained down on me from the blast as I struggled to suck in a breath. I couldn’t hear anything, but everything was loud. I couldn’t feel anything, but everything hurt. I couldn’t see anything …
Until my unfocused eyes landed on a heap of green fishing nets.
Dragging myself toward it, I blinked and coughed and squinted into the smoke, desperately searching for something familiar within all that fire and debris. The nets were strewn about on a pile of rubble, which I crawled over, ignoring the shards of wood biting into my knees and palms.
“Odie …” I called, my voice barely above a whisper.
I didn’t know why I was being so quiet, but I suspected it was because I wanted to hold on to that last shred of hope a little longer. If I whispered his name and he didn’t cry out, I could tell myself that he just hadn’t heard me. But if I shouted at the top of my lungs and he didn’t answer …
A sob swelled in the back of my throat as the ropes and wood beneath my palms transitioned to chunks of stucco and shards of roofing tiles. I could feel the heat from a nearby fire, but the smoke was so thick that it didn’t provide much light.
“Odie …” I coughed. “It’s me, Clo.” My voice was louder that time. More frantic.
When no one responded, I began to dig and claw and tear at the pile of rubble that now spread out around me in all directions.
“Odie!” I coughed harder. “Da! Sheila!”
Wooden beams as long as my arm went sailing across the yard as I attacked the pile, choking on smoke and ash and my own unspoken fears.
“Da, answer me! I know you’re in there!”
Lifting half of our once-yellow door with both hands, I hurled it to the side and found my answer lying just beneath it.
A woman’s arm, severed at the elbow.
With my da’s key ring dangling from its finger.
Time stopped.
The explosions stopped.
The only sounds I could hear were the crackling of a thousand fires and the rumbling of a dozen tanks.
And my own mind, as it shattered into a million jagged pieces that would never fit together again.
It was a nightmare that I couldn’t wake up from. It didn’t feel real. How could it be? Less than an hour earlier, I’d been standing in that exact same spot, holding my baby brother. We’d all been together, watching TV. And now, I was crawling through a smoky wasteland, staring at …
I squeezed my eyes shut and willed myself to wake up.
This is real, a sinister voice whispered from somewhere deep inside my own skull. This is real, and it’s all your fault .
Wake up, Clover.
You knew you should have evacuated when you heard the news, but you were too scared to argue with Oliver.
Wake up!
You didn’t even try. Odie was right there in your arms. You could have just grabbed Oliver’s keys, and—
I grasped both sides of my head and opened my mouth to scream when a blinding white light flooded my vision. Squeezing my eyes shut, I tilted my face toward the source with a shuddering sob of relief. I didn’t know if I had died and was traveling into the light or if the morning sun had come to wake me from my nightmare. And I didn’t care. All that mattered was that it was about to be over.
Or so I thought.
“This is a message from President Abramov.”
Blinking in confusion, I shielded my eyes and squinted into the light. It wasn’t coming from the sun or a tunnel welcoming me into heaven. The beam was coming from a single spot, hovering a few meters above me. A drone.
And it was talking.
“Your city has been captured by the Armed Forces of the Russian Federation,” the robotic voice continued. “This is your only chance to surrender. You have ten seconds to raise your hands above your head and follow this device to the nearest encampment. Refusal to do so will be considered an act of war and will result in your termination.”
My mind reeled as I struggled to process the words that had just been spoken to me.
Captured.
Surrender.
Encampment.
War.
Termination.
I was dreaming. I had to be. That was the only rational explanation.
“Ten.”
But I wasn’t waking up.
“Nine.”
Why wasn’t I waking up?
“Eight.”
My eyes darted all over the wreckage, now illuminated by the spotlight, and the nightmare morphed into a horror film. In the light, I could see that the rubble I’d been digging through was splattered with blood. Everywhere I looked, I saw pulpy chunks of flesh, clumps of hair, severed fingers, splintered bone.
And I was kneeling in it.
My gaze landed on Sheila’s hand again—my father’s key ring still looped over her knuckle—and a voice inside of me screamed, Take it!
Shoving my hand into the pile of plaster and wood in front of me, I held my breath as my fingers brushed Sheila’s. A wave of nausea swelled in my throat at how real it felt. How cold and rubbery and limp.
“Seven.”
I slid the key ring off her finger and scrambled over the debris toward the area where I thought Oliver’s van was parked. It was hard to tell where I was with all the smoke and rubble. Nothing looked familiar. Nothing but the keys in my hand. The drone and its spotlight followed me effortlessly, lighting my way.
“Six.”
Butterflies of elation took flight in my belly as soon as the van came into view, but they quickly died, along with any hope I had of escape, when I realized that the driver’s side of the vehicle had been completely crushed under our chimney.
“Five.”
I stopped and stared at that wreckage as if I were staring into my own freshly dug grave. That van had been my only chance. I couldn’t outrun a drone, not for long. But I couldn’t force myself to lift my hands and surrender either. I watched the news. I knew what happened to female prisoners of war.
“Four.”
That was it then. I’d made my choice. Maybe there would be an afterlife and I’d get to see my family again, or maybe there’d be nothing but an endless black abyss. Either way, my suffering would be over in …
“Three.”
I held my breath and closed my eyelids, waiting to see my short, miserable life flash behind them. But it wasn’t my life I saw at all. It was him .
Steely-gray eyes shone up at me as I sat, perched on the branch of an oak tree. The fairy prince was shirtless and shoulder deep in the lake where we used to play—the one deep in the forest that was surrounded by blackberry bushes. The sky above him churned like a witch’s cauldron. The mist on the water rose toward it in curling tendrils. But there, in the center, was the eye of the storm. Calm. Powerful. Focused solely on me. The boy had become a man, and the sight of him twisted a knife of longing in my belly. The pain was sharp and deep as I gazed upon his hardened features. His cut hair. His square jaw, held high. A face that had once blushed bashfully under soft curls now gazed upon me with cold, masculine confidence.
“Jump,” he commanded, extending his sculpted, muscular arms toward me.
I’d never heard his voice before. The sound of it was so velvety and hypnotic that it took me an extra second to register what he’d said.
An extra second that I didn’t have.
“One.”
Throwing the keys on the ground, I turned and ran. The smoke and rubble in my path seemed to part for me, clearing the way so that every step landed sure and true. I heard the drone open fire behind me, felt the whoosh of bullets zipping past, but I wasn’t afraid. I saw the bushes engulfed in flames up ahead, but I knew they wouldn’t burn me. A sense of peace, of rightness , that I’d never felt before pulled me toward the cliff like a siren song. And every cell in my body listened, pushing me to get there faster. I never doubted, never wavered, and when I reached the cliff’s edge, I pictured my prince waiting to catch me below, arms outstretched, an impish smirk softening the hard angles of his face. I didn’t care if I lived or died beyond that leap.
And evidently, I wasn’t the only one.
As soon as I pushed off from the rocks—suspended and weightless in a spray of bullets—my gaze locked on to a moving shadow directly across the water. With my heart in my throat, I watched the figure jump off the top deck of the warship at the exact same time as me. Their body was just a black silhouette against the ghastly white of that death machine, but I could tell that we were facing one another as we fell.
And for one brief moment, I didn’t feel so alone.