Page 122 of Almost Midnight

“Well, you can imagine why we might all want to leave then,” Walker said sourly. “It’s not going to be safe for non-humans in the North Americas for much longer.”

“Yeah.” The man exhaled. “Not super-safe now, from we can tell.”

Forrest turned his head, and Nick could have sworn Walker was looking directly at him.

“Incidentally, Nick… the vampire my wife is currently married to,” Forrest added meaningfully. “…Is probably listening to every word we say right now. So you might want to lay off a bit, before you manage to annoy him. He’s the leader of this bunch, and they’re tight. All of them. Me included.”

The man hesitated, then nodded. “Understood.”

Nick had a nearly overwhelming desire to smirk at that, maybe even to flash Walker and his Mi6 pal a bit of fang to press the point.

He didn’t, though.

He was too busy staring at the submarine and wondering if they’d make it all the way across the Atlantic before war erupted in the outside world for real.

* * *

The submarine endedup being a much faster method of transport than Nick would’ve believed. It was also a lot bigger.

They must have dug out that part of Sheepshead Bay to accommodate the damned thing, or ships like it, because Nick climbed down that ladder under the hatch for a while before he reached the bottom, and entered the sub’s main hold.

Nick realized a lot of things once he got down that ladder.

One, the entire area of the hatch proved to be a morphing extension made entirely of organic metals. The whole thing retracted once they were all inside, and reformed the submarine into a smooth, bullet-like shape that reduced water resistance down to nearly nothing apart from the sheer displacement from its actual size.

All of them, apart from Jordan, who was given his own room, were ushered into a long passenger carriage with reclining seats and windows on either side. It felt being given the entire first class section of a large airplane, or maybe a private suite on a luxury train.

All of them immediately began acting like tourists.

They clustered by the windows and peered out into the water, exclaiming over things they could see and pointing.

Nick had to admit, he was as fascinated as the rest of them, and just as glued to the view.

The submarine powered up slowly at first, until it got them to the edge of the underwater dome. The British military personnel, or Mi6 agents, or whoever happened to be driving this thing, must have either hacked their way into New York’s dome permission codes, or somehow got official permission to pass.

Either way, barely thirty seconds ticked by before that door began to open.

The submarine moved gracefully into a series of locks that eventually spat them out into the open ocean.

The view got infinitely more interesting after that.

Wrecks of old ships, some of them positively enormous, littered the waters around the Long Island shore. Warships, rocket ships and airplanes could also be seen through the yellow-tinted glass, along with missiles that hadn’t exploded or got disarmed before impact, ancient helicopters, and even land transport vehicles and one long, snaking piece of subway that somehow ended up out there. Once they ventured out past the island’s shore and into the North Atlantic, they saw fewer direct reminders of the last war.

The view also got a lot stranger.

The cabin grew silent as everyone stared out into the oddly greenish-gold water.

Occasionally, one of them would shout out and point, and a massive animal would swim by, something that only vaguely reminded Nick of the ocean fauna he remembered from before the war. A shark that looked forty feet long, sporting a mouthful of teeth like splintered glass. Whale-like creatures with long, armlike limbs. What looked like a seal only with a freakishly human-like face. Winding eels and bloated fish covered in what looked like twinkling gold starfish. Nick swore he saw something that looked like a mermaid, and Kit backed him up, declaring she’d seen it too, including the long, seaweed-like, green-blue hair.

Some of the things Nick saw, he didn’t get a good enough look to classify at all. Some looked so different from anything he knew, he didn’t knowhowto classify them. Human-sized animals with long spindly legs crawled along the ocean floor. Clouds of flower-shaped creatures he imagined must be jellyfish swarmed over large mammals like piranhas.

The submarine began to pick up speed.

It was gradual in the beginning, like a train building up speed to its highest gear.

It grew harder to see in the murk, the faster they went.

Then, all at once, it became impossible.

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