“Maybe. But if you are the water whisperer, I wanna see it.”
“Reid—”
“Just try it. Tell the water to move. I dare you.”
“You want me to just... yell at it?”
“Pretty much. C’mon, Moses. Let’s part some shit.”
He rolls his eyes so hard I’m shocked he doesn’t fall over, but then he steps down until he’s ankle-deep. He faces the flooded stairwell.
“Move,” he says flatly.
Nothing.
I smirk. “Wow. So commanding.”
He turns and glares at me. “Sorry, I forgot my staff at home.” He spits sarcastically and then huffs out an annoyed breath. “Fine. You want drama? Here it is.”
He throws his arms wide and yells, “MOVE!”
A breeze that shouldn’t exist inside a building flows past us and the water shudders. That breeze turns into a hard wind, causing the water to pull away like it’s been yanked back by invisible hands, climbing the walls and leaving a narrow, clear path down the middle of the room.
I burst out laughing. “Holy shit! You did it! Jules, you’re the new Moses!”
He stares at the parted water, face pale, breathing hard. “What the fuck.”
“Exactly!”
Jules shoves his wet hair back as the wind pushes it into his eyes and he turns to look at me with a stunned expression. “I don’t think I controlled the water. I think I controlled the air that’s pushing it back.” He frowns, closes his eyes and mutters, “Stop.”
I feel the wind slow to a stop and the water being held against the walls flows back to cover the floor and creep up the stairs again.
We both back away from the wet stairs as a loud squeal echoes from outside. We run back to the window and look down in amazement. The whales are back, this time with the little boat floating just outside the shattered windows of the level we came in through. Jules and I exchange a look, each of us asking the other if we are really going to do this, trust a bunch of killer whales? Almost as one, we both shrug like, fuck it, and move down the flooded stairs to the next level and over to the broken window we originally came in through. I reach out and drag the boat in closer until it bumps into the building’s floor and hold it steady as Jules climbs in. He grabs the frame of the broken window to keep the boat in place while I get in and sit down. It’s not a very big boat at all, more like the size of a paddle boat you would find in a lake. Don’t care. It’ll get us to shore if these whales do what they said they would because there are no actual paddles to be found.
The pod surrounds us, clicking and chirping.
“You gonna name them?” Julian asks with a smirk.
“That one’s definitely Carl,” I say, pointing to the closest whale.
Carl nudges the boat forward like he agrees, making me hum a surprised laugh. This is so beyond real right now. I should belosing my shit, but for some reason, I’m calmer than I’ve been since waking up in a saltwater soaked bed this morning.
As the whales guide us toward the edge of the flooded zone by bumping the boat ahead, I can’t stop staring around me at the destruction. This shouldn’t be real. None of it should be. I look away when I see a few more bodies floating face down in the water and turn my face up to the sky. My shoulders immediately hunch lower at the huge, way too close, cracked moon that fills the sky. How the fuck did that even happen? Something must have crashed into it for it to move so much closer to Earth and crack like that. But we have satellites and telescopes. You’d think there would have been some kind of warning from NASA or astronomers? I pull my gaze away and focus on Julian who is looking from whale to whale nervously.
Julian murmurs, “What do we even say to them?”
“Thank you?” I whisper. Then louder, “Thank you, Carl and friends!”
The whales let out one final burst of whistles and chirps before diving and a sense of contentment flows through me, but they don’t speak to me in the same way as earlier. I panic for a moment that they’re leaving us stranded until I realize that we’re almost to where the shore is now and they had to stop because the water was too shallow.
I hop out first and turn to help Jules. “Come on, Moses. Let’s go find dry socks and answers.”
He snorts. “Sure, Steve Irwin, but if I start growing a beard and hearing voices from above, I’m blaming you.”
We step onto solid ground and for the first time all day, I believe we might actually survive this.
Chapter 47 - Gage
