Lives We Lost,The by Megan Crewe Read Free Book Online

to look guilty. “We’re going now,” he said, grasping the wheel. “Before they notice us.”
“But other people from town might come here to get away,” I said. “The rest of the boats are wrecked. We have to wait and see—”
“No,” the man said. “We’re lucky we’re not already dead.”
He tugged the wheel, and the boat swerved away from the dock. As it sped toward the mainland, I turned. The town I’d spent most of my life in wavered with smoke and flames, growing smaller as the strait stretched between us and the island.
five
    When we reached the mainland harbor, we all scrambled onto the end of the longest dock, watching the strait in case someone else came. There was still the ferry, and those boats on private docks that hadn’t been destroyed in the soldiers’ rampage two months ago. But none of us could quite believe what we saw. So we stared, minds blank with shock.
    That was our island burning. Our island flaring bright as the helicopter dropped another bomb. A faint glow flickered amid the distant shapes of the buildings. A haze of smoke was replacing the clouds. Meredith shuddered against me, and I wrapped my arm around her.
    After what felt like ages, the helicopter turned and whirred north again. It dwindled into a dark speck, and vanished. The waves smacked against the dock’s supports. Speckles of icy water splattered my already numb face. And still, I couldn’t make out anyone in the island harbor or along the shore.
    Maybe, despite the chaos, the most important places had gone untouched. Maybe Nell and the others were just fine and all we’d lost were a bunch of already abandoned buildings.
Or maybe we were the only ones who’d survived the attack.
    It still didn’t make any sense to me. Turning, I realized the man who’d driven us here had left. Anger sparked through the haze in my head. I picked up the cold box from where I’d set it by my feet and marched down the dock.
    “Hey!” I shouted as I stepped onto the concrete loading area beyond the docks. “Hey, guy with the boat!”
The door to the harbor office opened, and our rescuer stepped out. He’d drawn back his hood, revealing a narrow face topped with a pale sheen of recently shaved hair. His lips were badly chapped, and his blue eyes flickered nervously. He couldn’t have been much older than twenty. I wondered if he had any more authority here than we did.
“What’s going on?” I demanded. “You knew that helicopter was coming, what it was going to do.”
“I tried to get here sooner,” he said. “I really did. The snow—the roads were just choked. And then I had to find the keys to one of these goddamn boats.”
The others had come up behind me. “Who are you?” Leo asked.
“Rawls,” the guy said, and grimaced. “Tobias Rawls.”
“So you drove here,” I said. “From where? How did you know the helicopter was coming?”
Gav took a few steps past Tobias toward the office. He stiffened. “Is that what you drove here in?”
Tobias jerked around, but Gav was already striding forward, to a vehicle parked just beyond the building. It looked like a cross between an SUV and a delivery truck, boxy and sharp-cornered. And it was covered in splotches of camouflage paint. My heart sank.
“You’re a soldier,” Gav said, spinning to face Tobias. “You’re one of them.”
Tobias laughed, short and bitter. “If you had any idea, you wouldn’t say that.”
“Then why don’t you tell us what the hell happened?” I snapped.
Silence stretched until Tessa said, in a soft voice, “We just saw our home destroyed. You’re not even going to tell us why?”
“You don’t know what it’s been like,” Tobias said, looking away. He bit his lip. “We have a base a couple hours north of here.”
“I didn’t think there were any military bases in the province,” Gav said. “Not any more.”
“It’s not official,” Tobias said. “It’s supposedly been inactive for decades, but the government reinstalled a