Oh yes, I’m making excellent progress on Strikers: Eastlands. I passed over 45,000 words in the first draft this morning. I decided to take a read through, clean up the typos, and post that first chapter as-is. Because it’s as-is, that means it’s pretty much first draft and it could change substantially before publication. Nevertheless, here it is:

Chapter One

Susanna always says, “Life is a strange bird, so grab it out of the air and look it in the eyes before it flies away.”

I like that saying a lot and I’ve been living it for more than a year. And life has been a very strange bird indeed—but gloriously so, with bright plumage and wide wings. Every strange bird of new experience that flies past me, I grab and look in the eye.

Marcus’s mother is a wise woman, it turns out.

I pull on a semi-clean shirt and my favorite shorts, then take a minute to brush my teeth at the tiny sink we use for all sink-like purposes. The boat is rocking more than usual, so I brace my feet and try not sling toothpaste all over the place. It’s time to get moving, but Jovan still isn’t up yet. He sleeps like a log when we’re at sea. I’ll have to wake him if he’s going to get up on time.

Inside the smaller of the two cabins, Jovan is mumbling in his sleep again, something about a swimming cow. I’m guessing he’s mixing up a dream of the ocean with one of life back home in the Bailar territory in Texas. He doesn’t say so, but I know sometimes he misses it.

I don’t miss it. Neither do Cassie or Connor or Maddix. For us, there’s not much to miss. Sure, I think of my mom now and then, but she has her life and I was never an important part of that. Or, at least not more important than a bottle. And now she thinks I’m dead if she’s heard anything at all about me. I push the thought back and creep up to the bed.

When I brush back the lock of hair that’s fallen over Jovan’s eyes, he wiggles his nose as if I’ve tickled him and a giggle escapes me. We’re due on deck for our turn on watch soon or else I’d let him sleep till noon. The skies have turned angry and we’re going to need all hands on deck for whatever storm is coming our way.

“Hey, sleepyhead,” I whisper into Jovan’s ear. I see the smile bloom across his face even with his eyes closed.

His arms enfold me and he pulls me onto the bed like a sack of potatoes. With my arms trapped in his, all I can do is flail at him, but I think my laughter gives away that I’m not actually fighting too hard. He’s warm from sleep and he smells of salt and yesterday’s sunshine.

“No. You come to bed instead,” he murmurs in my ear. He nuzzles my neck like he’s seeking warmth, which is odd because it’s been broiling hot lately. I can barely stand to be near anyone in this heat. Even just sitting next to someone makes me sweat. The only way to be comfortable is to remain on deck in the wind.

Besides, what’s he suggesting is dangerous territory and I’m not rising to his bait. We’ve had a year to discuss this and the decision has been made. Marriage is for the future, not today. I’m still seventeen, effectively an orphan, and haven’t met my half-brother yet. He knows this, so I also know he’s not too serious about his suggestion.

We’ve spent this year whiling away our time inside a heavenly pause between lives. Fishing, doing trades with Florida via their weird little buoys, and occasionally shuttling trade cargo. Each trip from the big port of Pensacola in the Gulf Cooperative to one of the ports on the Mighty Miss allows us to while away more time without making decisions.

What all this movement hasn’t done is push us forward into what will be our new lives. What will those lives be? We don’t know. The world is big and full of choices. If there’s anything about Texas that I can safely say that I miss, it would be that I lived with certainty. I had no choices, no options, no hope for anything better…but at least I knew what came next. Out here, everything is limitless and that’s more than a little scary.

I’ve written back and forth with my father’s wife and my half-brother, but I can’t help feeling guilty that he’s lost a father and she, a husband. How can they not hold that against me? While I didn’t find his body that day when I went back to the burned remains of our hideout, his wife sent a team and found proof of his death.

Under the debris was a skeleton, his wedding ring and the metal bits from his clothes more than enough to identify him. Just like it must have done for them, the certainty of his death made me grieve harder. Without a body, there was always this tiny thread of hope that he’d survived somehow.

Past the grief, there’s still the reality of a brother for me to consider. It’s nice to think I have a family, but at the same time, I can’t bring myself to go there and see the pain of loss in their eyes. Especially since I’m the cause of that pain. There’s no getting around that simple truth.

My sigh must communicate more than I meant it to, because Jovan’s hand brushes my hair away from my face and he murmurs, “It’s okay. Everything is okay.”

There’s no question that I have the best boyfriend in the world. He’s my certainty, my north star, my safety amidst so much that is unknown. I love him and even better, I’m absolutely certain that he loves me too.

Cassie pokes her head in and purses her lips when she sees us, but the smile isn’t completely hidden behind her prim expression. “Well, now. I suppose I can just eat your breakfast for you.”

That gets Jovan up. He shoves me over on the bed and hops up like there’s a fire somewhere. “Them’s fighting words, little miss,” he says in his best cowboy accent. Then he leans forward to give her a peck on the cheek.

Cassie shoves him away and he disappears through the door with a laugh. I disengage myself from the mess that Jovan made of his covers and Cassie drapes an arm over my shoulder as we make our way up on deck. She chatters on about the sky, the clouds, and the possibility of storms in typical Cassie fashion.

Up on deck, I find that she’s more than correct. Cassie can be a little exuberant—she finds wonder in almost everything—but in this case, she’s minimized the impact of the low and threatening sky. It doesn’t look exciting to me, except in a scary way.

Connor and Maddix are in deep discussion with Marcus at the chart table, heads together and their voices impossible to hear over the wind that snaps our sails. The crackle of the radio punctuates their discussion and spurs Marcus to make another mark on the chart with a pencil.

When we picked up Maddix and Connor in Pensacola last summer, I felt like my family was back together again. And by family, I mean the real kind of family made up of people we love because we choose to love them. Neither of them is a natural sailor like Jovan and Cassie have turned out to be, but they’re doing pretty well and both learn quickly. The money isn’t bad either and that gives them incentive to learn.

Marcus looks up and catches my eye. There’s worry there and my stomach does a little back flip in response. Jovan must have caught it too, because his big hand lands on my shoulder and he whispers, “Go find out what’s going on. I’ll keep Cassie occupied.”

I nod and cross behind the wheel, tucking my hair into a ponytail while I walk. The wheel is locked on course with a line looped and tied just for that purpose. That tells me whatever they’re talking about is important. Marcus doesn’t like locking the wheel as long as there is someone on deck who can tend it. Even when we all got sick from something we ate last winter during a resupply trip, one of us stayed up near the wheel and locked it only when a visit over the rail to throw up was urgently required.

“What’s up?” I ask, my eyes taking in the neat series of dots and expanding circles on the chart.

“Tropical storm,” answers Marcus, his face grim. “Rapid developer too.”

The radio crackles out another series of numbers that Connor jots quickly down on the chart margin, resulting in yet another dot and another two circles around the dot. Jovan clearly failed at keeping Cassie occupied and away from the table, because they both come to the chart table—which is also our fish cleaning table—and listen.

“This is not good,” Maddix says, his eyes still locked on the chart. With one finger he points to our current location. With another, he traces the long line of dots and circles until his fingers touch. We’re just miles from the Florida coast. The dots they’ve been drawing based on the radio transmissions create a line that intersects our track quite neatly.

On the radio, a female voice says that the next storm track update will be in six hours, but that there will be hourly bulletins on conditions as the information arrives. Then the crackles cease and the wind in the sails is the only noise while Marcus stares at the chart in consternation.

I don’t interrupt him because he’s got that look on his face he gets when he’s trying to find a way out of a problem. And he’s been on the water his whole life, so he’s the one who’ll need to tell us what all this means.

I know what a tropical storm is, but we’ve not experienced one. Last year we pulled in to avoid some rough seas associated with one, but nothing came close to us. All a tropical storm was for me was some higher waves, a stiffer wind, and a cold glass of orange juice while we waited it out.

He seems to make up his mind about something and slaps a hand down on the chart. “Okay, we’re sort of in the pincer here.” Marcus drags a finger along a line connecting the dots again and then taps our position, north of the line, smack dab between the storm and the land. “We’re close to Florida and we can’t get too far west before we’re hit by the waves. Our best chance is to try to make landfall at the first place we can over the Gulf Cooperative border.”

That sounds perfectly reasonable to me. Cassie agrees because she says, “Fine, let’s go to it then. The seas are kicking up and the sky looks like it’s going to fall on us.”

I’m still not as good at reading charts as Jovan, but even I can tell that those storm locations are labeled to reach our area soon. And if those big circles around the storm track mean anything, we’re in real trouble. If the wind kicks up, we can’t just hoist more sail and go faster. It’s the opposite. We have to get out of the area before it gets bad or we’re sitting ducks.

Clearly, I’m thinking correctly because Marcus shakes his head, then looks past me toward the lowering clouds to our south. “We need to move. Now.”

The sky above is full of foreboding, dark and heavy and ready to spill on us. I have a feeling we’re in for one heck of a ride.

 

Let me know what you think! You’ve all been soooo patient while I worked on the Between Life and Death series, and I appreciate it. If this goes over well, I’ll share a few more chapters as I get them cleaned up.