Adolfo stood up and looked at them both. "Alright, I'm going to lift the anchor and lower the sail."
"Wait," Fernanda said, quickly taking his hand. She was shaking, visibly disturbed.
"Don't go..." Clara whispered weakly.
He knelt and held their faces gently. "We're going to be okay, alright?"
"I won't let anything happen to either of you," Adolfo said firmly, kissing them both on the lips.
"Put your mask on again, and try to call home. See if anything gets through."
"And… don't think about Tati and Loli right now. We can't afford to. Not now."
"Alright..." the girls murmured.
Adolfo passed the bodies, now covered in blankets, and put his gas mask back on. Then he stepped out into the storm.
The freezing wind hit him like a slap. Snow whipped around in violent spirals, and the boat rocked aggressively beneath his feet.
'Fucking hell. It's so damn cold out here, so fast. If this shit keeps up, we won't even be able to see where the fuck we're going. I need to move, fast.'
He made his way to the stern to check the engine. Gripping the pull cord, he yanked hard, but the engine gave only a weak sputter and fell silent.
He tried again. And again.
Nothing.
'Shit... this fucking thing isn't working at all.'
'Alright... no other choice. I'll have to use the sail. Steering through this mess with no engine, low visibility, and these currents... this is going to be hell.'
He returned to the cabin. Clara was fiddling with the GPS, and Fernanda clutched her phone in her hand.
"The engine's out," Adolfo announced.
"The GPS won't turn on either. My phone's dead," Clara said, eyes wide with panic.
"Mine too," Fernanda added. "I've been trying for a while. The boat's radio isn't working either."
Adolfo nodded grimly. "That aurora borealis we saw... I think it worked like an EMP. Fried everything."
He glanced between the two women. "There's no other way. I'm going to steer the boat manually, get us to the coast. It'll be rough, but we can do it."
"I want you both to hold on to something sturdy. Stay low. No matter what, don't come out."
They nodded silently.
Adolfo climbed back out into the snowstorm.
The deck was slick with freezing spray. Snow plastered his mask, and every gust threatened to throw him overboard.
He crawled forward and fought the anchor line with half-frozen hands. It resisted for a while, but after several hard tugs, it broke free. The boat lurched as the tension snapped and it began to drift more freely with the current.
Next, he made his way to the mast. The sail had to go up, despite the storm. Fighting the tangled lines and the relentless wind, he slowly raised the mainsail, reefed down to a smaller triangle to avoid capsizing in the gusts.
The sail caught the wind with a sudden whump, nearly pulling him off balance.
'There! That'll do. Now... the rudder.'
Gripping the tiller hard, he angled it slightly, turning the sailboat toward the southeast—toward Olivos, where he hoped the coastline would still be visible once they were close enough.
He braced his feet and leaned into the motion, his body shivering under a raincoat, lacking clothes for the cold.
'Come on, El Nonino... bring us home.'
The sail flapped violently as it caught another gust of wind, the lines creaking under pressure. Adolfo gritted his teeth, leaning his weight into the tiller, fighting both the storm and the churning current of the Río de la Plata. Every nerve in his body was on edge, cold fingers wrapped around the handle.
Snow whipped across his mask in white, deadly streaks. The visibility was minimal, no more than twenty or thirty meters ahead at best—but then came a flicker. A flash above.
Adolfo glanced upward through the snowstorm and gasped.
There, burning across the sky like fireballs, streaks of flame tore through the cloud cover, splitting the sky open with silent, apocalyptic grace as if announcing the end of the world to anyone that saw them. They moved slowly, impossibly so, like molten comets descending in a wide arc over Buenos Aires and the horizon.
Each one trailed smoke and fire, their glow reflected in the dark, agitated waters around the boat. There were too fucking many to count, swallowing the sky above and falling like meteoric tears from a broken heaven as if announcing the end of everything.
"No... this can't be fucking real..."
He knew then, they were screwed. This wasn't just deadly weather. This wasn't just a blackout.
Something was coming down.
From the cabin, muffled voices called out, barely audible through the wind and gas mask.
"Adolfo! What is that?!"
He couldn't answer.
Instead, he focused on steering the boat through their current hell, working the sail and tiller with stiff limbs. The boat groaned as it crested a wave and crashed into the trough behind it, the hull slamming against the water like a war drum.
Through the snowy haze, the lights of Olivos port should have been visible, but the coast was pitch black. The city was still dead. No power. No streetlights. Only shadows. And the faint, dancing reflections of fire from the sky.
He was close, maybe 200 meters from shore now, when he saw it.
Something moved in the water.
Not a wave. Not driftwood.
Something big.
The boat rocked violently, tilting sideways as a massive dark shape surfaced just off the port bow. Then another. Then a third. They were swimming silently, but fast, almost coordinated. Big shadows bulging.
Adolfo squinted through the storm as one rose higher out of the water, and his breath caught.
It wasn't some big fucking fish.
It looked like a big fucking armored bug, like a beetle the size of a large horse. Its head, if you could call it that, looked like plate armor, eyes glowing faintly orange under the falling snow.
"Shit."
He quickly raised his hand and summoned the Colt M1911, materializing out of nowhere from his inventory, and chambered a round.
He controlled the tiller with one hand and in the other he awaited. When the creature swam closer, and was about to slap the side of the hull with its body.
He fired.
The .45 caliber shot echoed in the storm—muffled by snow, but loud enough to make Clara scream inside the cabin and Fernanda become alert and worried.
The round struck the creature's shell and ricocheted off with a dull metallic ping.
"What the fuck?"
He fired again. Another hit but with no effect. The bug turned, its plates shifting like moving armor, unimpressed.
He fired three more times, walking the shots up its thorax.
Still nothing.
Then the creature reared, exposing a softer, jointed connection between the armored head and body.
Adolfo squeezed the trigger again.
*CRACK*
The bullet hit home—right in the eye socket, or whatever passed for it. The creature froze mid-motion, then jerked backward violently, its limbs curling inward before it sank beneath the water, unmoving.
"The head. It's the bloody head..."
The second insect lunged, its body slamming into the side of the boat hard enough to send the mast lines quivering.
Adolfo turned and fired two rounds fast into its plated chest. Useless.
He aimed upward, at the head. He shot once. Then twice.
The third shot until the bug spasmed and rolled backward into the sea.
The last one came straight at him, rushing through the water like a torpedo.
Adolfo quickly reloaded with a new magazine and took a breath, waited until it was close, waited until he could see the face, and then fired again, in its head.
The insect twitched and immediately sank into the dark water like a felled stone.
The sea was still again.
Nothing moved but the wind and waves.
Adolfo stood on the deck, panting under his mask, gripping the gun with one hand and the other grabbed the tiller hard. His heart thundered in his chest after seeing these big bugs.
"Headshots only... goddamn bugs...These aliens..."
He lowered the weapon slowly, eyes scanning the black water for more ripples, but there were none.
The sailboat, free of pursuit, now floated calmly toward the docks. The worst seemed behind him, for now.
The boat made the rest of the way to the coast without incident. The snow continued painting the world white without rest, and the red glow from the sky remained, flickering over the waves like hellfire.
Somewhere around the world, more of those flaming comet-things were landing.
He knew, if this was an alien invasion... This was just the beginning.
He tied the boat to the pier and looked back at the cabin.
Clara and Fernanda were waiting. Alive.
But for how long? He hoped inside him that he would be able to protect them with the mysterious system he got.