After getting Ariel into the water, they stood above the surface looking down at her. She bobbed softly in the gentle surf. “What will I do?”
“You have to get out of here, Ariel,” Jake insisted as he looked around nervously.
“Where will I go? How will I eat? I can’t get to my garden.”
Jake hadn’t considered this conundrum. She was not a wild animal. She could not simply be set free into the ocean the way he’d thought.
Ashley touched his arm. Without words, she understood. He met her soft brown eyes. She smiled and gave a subtle nod, “Where would we go?” and he knew.
“The Palladium?”
Ashley shrugged. “Yeah, I mean…”
Jake directed his attention back to Ariel. “Do you know where Harper’s Inlet is?”
Ariel narrowed her eyes. “I’m not sure.”
“The jetty down by the old docks on the river side, do you know where that jetty leads if you follow the sandbar?”
She nodded. “Yes, I think so.”
“At the edge of Harper’s Inlet there’s an old building. It used to be Palladium Surf Shop many years ago. It was wrecked in a hurricane, but the concrete structure still stands today, and there’s a huge basin that flooded into the basement. Go there. There’s plenty of places to hide out and we can get you food at nightfall.”
Ariel cracked a slight smile. “Okay, I’ll do it.”
“We’ll be there as soon as we can.”
Ariel ducked into the surf and splashed away with a kick of her tail.
Ashley let out a long sigh. “Did we do the right thing?”
“Ash, we did the only thing. What other options are there?”
“You tell me.”
Jake shook his head. “I’m not sure.” He could not help but feel like they’d made some sort of miscalculation. They couldn’t just let those people take her.
He started to get a sense of doom.
They took two steps back toward the van when the thumping blades of a helicopter split the morning skies above Fort Fisher. Cracking the wind around them, the rotors thumped in waves.
Jake grabbed Ashley’s hand and pulled her quickly toward the van. The chopper swung low, swooping between them and the van. They stopped as the door of the black machine swung open. A man with a large caliber gun waited behind mirrored goggles.
Jake was sure this was it. Death had finally snared them in its clawed trap. But in a flash, the chopper lifted up and gunshots erupted with thunderous violence, slamming into the van instead of their bodies. The van gasped and jerked in mechanical agony as the bullets virtually ripped it apart until it burst into smoke and flames.
They ran off in the other direction, trying desperately to get some distance between them and the death machine in the sky that was clearly set to destroy them. The only shelter was clear across the street in the form of the bunkers of Fort Fisher. He dropped Ashley’s hand in order for both of them to run as fast as possible. He felt like his legs would not drive him forward fast enough through the sand.
The roar of the helicopter raged at their backs. He felt a moment of doom just as they got to more solid ground and the firm dirt propelled them forward twice as quickly as they had been moving.
As they approached the paved street, a white van flew toward them, cutting off their path to the safety of Fort Fisher and the shelter. Another van sped in from the other direction. They were boxed in on three sides and that’s when Jake realized it was all but over.
A gang of men jumped from the van and began spraying them with gunfire. Jake screamed as he watched bullets tear into Ashley’s body. He prayed the bullets would take him, kill his vision. He fell to the ground and screamed as the bullets hit him with wicked force. Only after a moment did he realize his screaming was the only sound. He looked up. As if by magic, everything was gone.
The speeding vans were gone, the helicopter was gone, and the van they drove in was completely intact, as if nothing had ever happened. And most importantly Ashley was fine. Jake was sure he’d died, but the look on Ashley’s face was as twisted and confused as his.
As she caught her breath, she huffed, “What the…?”
Jake looked around suspiciously, waiting for the chopper to reappear. “This can’t be.”
Ashley moved back toward the sand in a few frantic steps. “Are we going insane?”
“We imagined the entire thing?”
“How? How can two people have identical elaborate hallucinations?”
Jake realized he was bleeding from the mouth. He’d bitten is cheek so hard that it took a chunk out. “I don’t know what just happened.” Jake took a few steps over toward the van, but then hurried back toward the street. He didn’t know what to do next. Things were happening in a strange way, the world was shifting. The clouds in the sky moved oddly.
Ashley started speaking to him but her words were broken and garbled. He didn’t know if it was her speech or his hearing. She faced him and took a step to square him up.
“Jake, are you okay?” Her words cleared.
He nodded. “I think so.”
“What happened?”
“I don’t know, but we have to get over to the island.”
“Huh? What island?”
“Where we told Ariel to meet us.”
“You told her to meet us at the surf shop.”
He shook his head. “No, that’s not right.”
“Yeah, Jake, that’s what you said.”
He was so confused. “Are you sure?”
She squinted and looked out toward the ocean. “I’m sure. I mean, I think so.”
“Ash, we are messed up.” Jake didn’t know how he knew, but he felt like he’d been drugged or something.
“We were just…” She trailed off and started marching toward the ocean.
Jake watched her for a few long seconds and didn’t think much of it, until she started marching straight into the surf.
“Ashley!” He broke into a fast walk, because he could not run. In fact, he was having trouble walking in the right direction. He staggered. The sand seemed to be getting so deep it was sucking him in. It was growing deeper with each step.
Meanwhile Ashley was getting deeper into the water. He could see her just about disappearing into the dark green waves. She was marching to her death and he could not stop her from doing it. He screamed, digging as hard as he could with his legs, trying with desperation to move forward, but he just could not get there.
He watched Ashley’s head disappear under the waves and she didn’t pop back up.
“Ashley! Ashley!” Jake was just about to give up when his feet suddenly pulled him forward, toward the harder sand near the break. He bolted into the water after her and just slammed into the first set of waves.
After a few seconds, he cleared his vision and looked around. He didn’t see her anywhere, but then he felt something hit his midsection and he reached down, catching hold of a hand.
He pulled back toward the shore and Ashley popped up on top of him, gasping what must have been her first breath in a minute. Jake swam backwards a few steps until he was able to catch his heels into the sand and walk back to solid ground.
He collapsed onto the beach with Ashley next to him. Maybe it was the excitement or maybe it was the cool water, but his head finally felt clear. Rolling to face Ashley, he gasped, “Are you okay?”
She wiped some sand off her face. “I’m okay now.”
“We have to get out of here.”
“We have to get away from that van.”
Jake looked at her. “What makes you think it’s the van?”
Flopping onto her back, laugh-salted words burst out of her. “I don’t know.”
It made sense. That van was their van, maybe there was something in it that could cause hallucinations. The problem was, he didn’t know when the hallucinations started. “You might be right.”
“I feel fine now.” She sat up.
Jake levered himself to his feet and held out a hand to Ashley. “Let’s get out of here.”
“To where?”
“Anywhere, let’s just walk.” He pulled her up. “I just want to get away from this part of the beach. Something here isn’t right.”
As usual, she was on the same page of his brain. “When did the hallucination start?”
Jake shrugged. “I don’t know.” He traced back in his mind. “But as usual we were thinking the same thing.”
“Why does that surprise you?”
“Ashley, that’s always going to surprise me.”