“I know how to run this thing,” the woman named Kletter announced to the people who’d been chosen for the voyage. Isaac had no idea how they’d been selected, but he was glad to have some of his friends aboard. Kletter had put her monstrous weapon inside a locked chest, hopefully to show them that she wasn’t a threat. “But I’m going to need lots of help, and you’ll just have to learn along the way. We have barely enough fuel for the return trip, you guys stocked us with plenty of food, and hopefully this heap of junk won’t die on us before we get to where we’re going.”

“Where are we going?’ a man named Alvarez asked. He was a tall, thin man, dark hair, always sporting a goofy smile. Isaac didn’t know him very well, but he was a member of Congress who’d made the decision to support Ms. Cowan.

“We’re heading for Los Angeles,” she replied. Isaac had heard of it but that didn’t mean a whole lot. “That’s where we’ve set up our medical clinics, just far enough away from the Godhead in Alaska and the Remnant Nation in the northern plains.” She obviously noted the blank looks on their faces. “Don’t worry, we’ll have plenty of time to talk about that stuff before we get there.”

The Godhead? Isaac thought. Remnant Nation? He didn’t know if that sounded promising or completely ominous. What were they getting themselves into?

“People might start waking up soon,” Ms. Cowan said. “We made our decision, so let’s get going. Pull up the plank, Wilhelm.”

“Wait!” someone shouted from the beach, just as Ms. Cowan’s second-in-command made a move for the long wooden walkway they’d used to climb on board The Maze Cutter. “One of you young whippersnappers come help me walk up this shuck thing.”

Isaac looked. Everyone else looked. Everyone stared. Ms. Cowan stepped forward, her mouth open but as shocked silent as the others. An elderly man, his skin as dark as his hair was white, superbly healthy for his advanced age, put one foot on the edge of the plank where it stuck into the wet sand.

“Now don’t bother arguing,” he said. “I’m coming, and that’s that. If I die along the way, then glory glory hallelujah amen.” He gave them a loud hoot at that, and then, without waiting for help—a good thing because no one had moved a muscle—he hopped up the bouncy walkway like he’d shed forty years just at the thought of an ocean voyage. An adventure.

“Well, I’ll be damned,” Dominic whispered, more words than Isaac could find.

Old Man Frypan was coming with them.

PART TWO

Water and Earth