Mark Torrey
2024
She lifted her binoculars and leaned out from the sail to get a clear view around the Prospect’s exhaust stream. The Grackle was still charging recklessly up the narrow passage, splintering the little huts on both sides of the waterway. She could see the faint shadows of people atop the sail directing its course. With no reduction in speed at all, it drove into the shallow bar. The sharp leading edge of the ram plowed deep enough into the sludgy ground that the muck erupted from the bottom in a thick black moraine that rose until it cleared the surface. A small tsunami of brown water, turbid with mud, rose and traveled up the small channel before the stuck boat. Their pursuers were stopped dead in the passage. Through her binoculars, Percy imagined she could almost see the figures of the people on the bridge of the sail thrust forward against the edge of the fairing as the momentum suddenly came off the boat. She could see an arm raised in anger and hear the vitriol spilling off the sub’s sail. As soon as the residents in the surrounding area realized what happened, they attacked the grounded sub, throwing rotting food, scraps of wood, and rusted bars of metal at the black monster that had been tearing up their neighborhood. The Grackle began shooting jets of bilge water out of its sides, and presumably blowing any remaining water out of their ballast tanks as well. Percy could see they were also driving forward at full throttle, hoping to push through the shallow spot on straight power. The screws were kicking up a tremendous wash of frothy water behind the sub, enough that nearby huts leaned back from the pressure against their stilts. This angered the residents still more.
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