1 | The Tip
of the Claw
The end was near. With weapons aimed and ready, the trio of Outer Banks attackers steadily closed in on their prey, the crafty but doomed Ben Prescott.
Too, too bad.
Ben had done well, Porter Rockwell thought. He’d almost outwitted and outlasted his well-armed adversaries. Almost made it to be the last player standing. But the Outer Bankers had him outnumbered at this point in the battle. They’d spread out slowly and funneled him down to the very tip of the Claw. Beyond that was only water. The Claw was a long spit of sand that stretched out from Pennyhook Bay into the wide waters of North Carolina’s Albemarle Sound.
Ben had darted from cover to cover, pursued by a relentless volley of bottle rockets and tossed firecrackers. Yet somehow he hadn’t been hit. Getting hit by a rocket would have meant “game over.”
Outer Banks teams—they called themselves the OBXers—had started with a firepower advantage in both bottle rockets and firecrackers.
They were ending with one, too, Porter reflected bitterly. As a rule, Outer Banks residents had the best boats, the best jet skis, and pickup trucks lifted and tricked out like jet airplanes—and tonight, the night of the annual Fourth of July Claw Fireworks Battle, they’d come with the most fireworks. Loads and loads of them.
It seemed that somebody among the OBXers had a father who owned a chain of fireworks stands across the South Carolina border, where more powerful fireworks were legal to sell, and the Outer Banks boys had armed up with a warehouse-full of gunpowder-fueled mayhem and destruction. Thousands of dollars’ worth, one of them said.
The Heels, Porter’s team, didn’t exactly have Outer Banks–level resources.
Porter’s dad was a large animal veterinarian. His friend Latch McRae’s father was a Marine master sergeant. And Ben was the son of a boat captain who ran a marine salvage, construction, and demolition business. Ben’s father was also a famous North Carolina treasure hunter, but that part of the business had not made the Prescotts as rich as the title “treasure hunter” might imply—at least not “Outer Banks Rich.” Most of his finds went to museums.
Tonight Porter had played well but had taken a hit to his chest while leading a charge of Heels. Porter liked to think he’d played out his death scene well. That was part of the game. You could get bonus style points for “dying” in the most horrible, dramatic manner, pretending your guts were streaming out in your hands or your eyeballs were blown out—or something worse.
He’d clutched his chest and shouted, “Ah, I’m done for, boys! They got me in the lungs and gut.” Then he added for good measure, “And in the heart and the liver and the . . .”
“Spleen!” someone had suggested helpfully.
“They got me in the spleen!” Porter yelled. Porter slapped around on his chest and belly. “Wherever that is!”
He stuck out his tongue, gave a final howl, and fell to the ground. “Aaah!”
There he lay, sprawled in the sand, jerked around a few times, called out, “Latch, Latch, bro, I’m coming! I’m coming to you!” and stopped moving.
Porter gave his “death” the obligatory five-second count, then got up and joined Latch, who had “died” near the start of the battle, whacked in the back by a stray bottle rocket from his own team. Friendly fire counted, too, unfortunately. Latch had joined others in the crowd of area teens who were watching. These included many non-players who had come to take in the fun, which always ended with everyone sitting around bonfires and talking, listening to music, and trying to impress the girls who’d come out to watch with tales of derring-do.
The Heels were high schoolers and middle schoolers from the nearby towns of Ridgeport, Elizabeth City, Edenton, and all the tiny outposts where people lived along the local stretch of “Inner Banks.” This was the mainland shore, which made up the western edge of Albemarle Sound. The name “Heels” was allegedly short for “Tarheels,” but the truth was that the nickname went so far back nobody knew where the term had come from.
Heels. My people, Porter thought. For better or worse.
Tonight it was definitely for worse. The Heels were getting stomped by the OBXers.
What was worse, this win would make the OBXers three and zero against the Heels in three years. Except for a miracle, for three Fourth of July battles running, the OBXers would walk away bottle-rocket victors, and the Heels would go down to another defeat.
The battle had surged along the long, thin Claw for over an hour, but now it was concentrated at the very end, the tip of the Claw. As the “survivors” moved further toward the tip, the watching crowd shuffled along with them, eager to witness the firefight finale.
Porter watched the trio of First Flight High School seniors approach the bleached hull of an overturned wooden dinghy lying in the sand. The dinghy—a rowboat with a curved bottom made of overlapping wooden slats—had been on the Claw for as long as Porter could remember. People sometimes took it out for fishing and crabbing, but always put it back.
There was nothing else but sand out here on the Claw’s tip. Ben had to be under the dinghy, Porter figured. Where else could he be hiding? There was nowhere else to run. Nowhere to hide. Unless . . .
The faintest of flickers. More like a glow, a tiny cherry of momentary light to the side and slightly behind him.
Porter turned toward the source of the feeble glow. What was that? A firefly? No way, not out here.
About twenty feet away was a big driftwood log that had settled toward the Sound-side water. Had he seen some bioluminescent fungi on the log?
But the driftwood was behind the OBXers. Sure, it did offer some type of cover. But the OBXers had already checked there, right? Of course they had, Porter remembered. They’d even poked around in the sand under the driftwood with sticks. Ben had been nowhere in sight.
Which meant he had to be hiding under the hull of the overturned dinghy.
Porter shook his head. Whatever the glow was, it couldn’t be Ben. What a shame. Ben was the smartest, most resourceful guy Porter knew, but even Ben could not avoid the inevitable.
He turned back to the overturned boat. Uh-oh—there were at least six inches of navy-blue fabric sticking out from underneath the dinghy!
Everybody in the fireworks battle had to wear goggles and some kind of long-sleeved covering. The bottle rockets still hurt when they whacked you, but at least the participants didn’t come away with third-degree burns. Well, most of them didn’t. Shooting fireworks at each other was never going to be exactly safe, after all. Hence the remote location.
Yes, that was definitely Ben’s jacket protruding from under the dinghy. Porter recognized it.
Latch, who was standing next to Porter, muttered, “Man, Ben, your coattails are showing.”
“I know, right?” Porter replied to Latch in a low voice. “Too bad. And this is our senior year, too. I really wanted to go out in style.”
The attackers had Ben now. Soon it would be all over.
It looked like the OBXers had won again.