The Sentinel by Jeremy Bishop Page A

frozen and unless you’ve got a bran muffin, this could take a minute. How about you guys close your eyes and I can pretend you’re not here. This is embarrassing as hell.”
    I’m about to respond when a loud hiss bursts into the air outside the raft. For a moment, I’m terrified we’re losing air, but Jenny screams and dives inside the raft.
    “Something sprayed me!” she shouts.
    I inch forward and lean out of the open tent door. A giant eye stares at me from the water. It’s surrounded by dark gray skin. A whale.
    Peach joins me. “Oh my god.”
    Jenny squeezes between us and sees the humpback whale watching us. “I got bideted by a whale.”
    The whale bobs there for a moment, inching closer. I can’t help wondering what it’s thinking. Its interest is palpable, like I can feel it probing my thoughts. Who’s to say it can’t? We don’t fully understand whales. The thought of whales having some form of higher intelligence makes me cringe. If that were ever proved, there would be a lot more people like McAfee out on the oceans. Hell, I might be one of them. The encounter feels cosmic and before I know what I’m doing, I’m reaching a hand out.
    The whale dips under the water for a moment, and I think it’s leaving, but then it returns. Its nose rises and touches my hand. The skin is slippery and soft, like a freshly shelled hardboiled egg. Peach and Jenny reach out and touch the whale, testing the limits of the raft’s ballast system. But we stay upright and the three of us share this earth-shaking moment.
    The whale exhales, sending a fish scented spray hissing into the air. With a collective shout of surprise, we fall back inside the raft. Peach is the first to recover, nearly diving back to the open hatch. “It’s gone!” she says and I think she might start crying again.
    But then something strikes the bottom of the raft. It’s the whale. There’s no doubt. The strike feels violent, but by whale standards, it’s probably just a gentle nudge. Still, Jenny starts to panic. “What’s it doing?”
    “It’s just being curious,” I say.
    “Its nose was covered in barnacles,” she says. “It could pop the floats, or ruin the ballasts.”
    Damnit. She’s right.
    A second bump sends the raft spinning in a lazy circle. What the hell is it doing?
    I return to the hatch, but there’s no sign of the whale. As we continue to spin around, I search the ocean until something larger catches my attention. “It turned us around,” I say, excitement creeping into my voice. I look back and find Jenny and Peach looking afraid. “It turned us around.”
    “So?” Jenny says.
    “So,” I say, pointing out the hatch. “I think it wanted to show us something.”
    As I lean aside, they lean forward and see something amazing.
    Land.
     

 
     
     
    9
     
    Peach and I hang out of the front of the raft, paddling like mad. Jenny sits behind us, holding onto our belts. If she wasn’t, I’d no doubt yank myself out of the raft and into the water—that’s how hard I’m paddling. We’re within one hundred yards now and my arms are burning, but I ignore the pain and the knowledge that my arms will hurt worse tomorrow. And even worse the day after that. But the idea of being on land, even the frozen wasteland ahead, is intoxicating. There might be resources. Shelter. Hell, there might be people. The Arctic North of Greenland is fairly devoid of human population, but there are hunters and adventurers that come this way. At the very least, we’ll be able to move in the direction we want—south—rather than be at the mercy of the wind and ocean currents.
    As we get closer to land, the waves get bigger. We’re fighting six foot swells, digging up one side and falling down the other. Had I not been at sea for the past month already, I’d probably be seasick, but my body is accustomed to the pitch and roll of the ocean. What it’s not used to is the cold. Salt water sprays in my face, over and over. The air is