Sadie Walker Is Stranded (3 page)

“You’re up,” she said.

I was laid out flat on my back, the pitted plaster ceiling with its familiar whorls and patterns overhead. Sitting on the mattress beside me, Andrea pushed a glass of water and a little blue pill into my hands. She must have moved me back up to the apartment, but I wasn’t sure how. She’s about my same size, petite and slight, one hundred and ten pounds soaking wet. In the back of my mind I wondered if Carl was still crumpled at the bottom of the stairs. She pointed at the pill.

“Take that. You’ll feel better.”

“Shane!” I wailed. “Is he okay?”

I knew he wasn’t but I had to ask anyway. He was gone. I knew it, felt it and wondered if maybe some weak vestige of motherhood had actually begun to take root in me. That was a warm and fuzzy thought for another time. Andrea put her hand on my shoulder and squeezed.

“He’s gone,” she said quietly. “How’s your head?”

“It hurts … it doesn’t matter. He’s gone. I have to find him.”

I tried to sit up but the rush of blood and feeling made me dizzy and I collapsed back down. Andrea reached over and pried my lips apart, shoving the blue pill between my teeth.

“Swallow,” she commanded, “you’ll feel better. There’s not much time.”

“What are you talking about?”

With everything hurting, especially my head, Shane’s loss seemed far away—blissfully distant. Eventually I would feel it clearly but right now the haziness was more than welcome to stay. She pushed at my shoulders, trying to help me into a sitting position. There was an uncharacteristic urgency in her movements.

“Up,” she said. “We have to get you on your feet.”

“I can’t. My head, it’s … Am I okay?”

“Just a bad bruise,” she replied, pressing her fingers tenderly over the wound. I winced. “There’s a cut, too, but not deep. You’ve been asleep for a day.” Fidgeting, she glanced at the windows and then asked, “Did you kill Carl?”

“No … I guess so,” I said, trying to remember. “I pushed him and we fell down the stairs.”

“So that’s a yes, then?”

I nodded. Andrea shrugged and popped a blue pill of her own. I had known her before The Outbreak, when she was in marketing, but now everyone in a ten-block radius knew her too. Chinese, Japanese, Russian, American—they called her simply Lady Pharma, because she was more knowledgeable and better stocked than any of the functioning ration pharmacies. Pain killers, antidepressants and hallucinogens were her specialty—house calls only—but she could find virtually anything. Sometimes I was sure my surviving The Outbreak was pure luck, a fluke, but Andrea was resourceful; she didn’t simply survive, she thrived.

“We have to get going,” she said. Her lips pursed with determination, she began gathering up her things, shoving orange pill bottles into a bottomless messenger bag. Outside a fire engine screamed by. Andrea pulled on a hat, a brown knit thing shaped like the best part of a muffin.

“Shane,” I said, sitting up with a grunt. “I have to find him.”

“You won’t,” Andrea replied. “Whoever took him will be long gone.” That was Andrea—sensible, reasonable, and levelheaded even when the sky was falling. “I don’t think your little tumble with Carl put a hitch in their step. They’ll be out of the city by now. And pardon my fucking French, but the shit is really about to hit the fan.”

“Did you see them?” I asked.

“No, but it takes more than one person to wrangle a little kid.”

“Not Shane,” I said. Then quieter, “Not Shane. I’m going after him.”

Andrea shrugged and leaned forward, her dark ponytail swinging as she yanked the curtains back. I gazed over her shoulder at the view down to the waterfront. I gasped. Luckily I was already sitting down. Déjà vu that potent could knock you flat on your ass. There was the city sloping down to the harbor and all of it alive with columns of smoke and fire, a picture that might’ve been painted straight from my memory. The Outbreak. I shivered and covered my mouth, certain the retching would be soon to follow.

“How?”

“I’ll explain on the way out,” Andrea said, standing. She ushered me to my feet, strapping the enormous messenger bag across her shoulder. How a person of her size managed to drag that thing around the city on foot was unimaginable. For her trouble, she had a gorgeous pair of leather all-weather boots and she could afford the kind of food Shane and I only dreamed of. Sometimes she shared. She always treated us well.

Us. Shane. I had to find him.

Andrea went to the shallow walk-in closet and pulled open the accordion-style doors. With a sharp eye she found the heaviest coats and sweaters I owned and tossed them into a garbage bag. Standing was difficult, but I managed it with a wincing sigh. There was more than just the painful wound on my head. The tumble down the stairs with Carl had left me as tender and soft as a bruised pear.

The room spun as I gained my feet and the reality of Shane’s situation crashed down with sickening force. Kidnappings were not unheard of. Most things change, but some things never did, like humans just having to fuck up a damn decent thing. So even when the city was “stabilized” and most people could eat and sleep safely, there were those, like the Repops, who had to tamper and tinker and have things their way.

These people didn’t have a name but their shadowy presence lingered over children, like a boogey man or witch woman from a story your grandmother told. Thousands of newly childless parents meant there was a booming black market for children, especially cute, smart children like Shane. There was no trail of crumbs through the forest, no promise of candy, just coldhearted thieves dealing in babies. If a loon spotted a child that reminded them of their own, the next week they might pay to have that very same kid for themselves. A replacement, a flesh and blood Barbie doll. This wasn’t supposed to happen to us—having Carl around was supposed to
prevent
a kidnapping, not guarantee one.

Someone had paid dearly for this kidnapping and it was almost a relief to think of the price Carl himself had paid.
Almost
a relief. Relief didn’t bring Shane back, nor did it change the fact that I had screwed up, royally screwed up and let down my sister, wherever she may be.

“Shane will be safe,” Andrea said, reading my mind and my crestfallen face. “You don’t go through the considerable trouble of kidnapping a kid to make his life miserable. He’s probably safer than we are, so let’s get a move on.”

“How?” I asked again, still stunned. Andrea tossed a coat over my shoulders. She had stripped me down to a long-sleeve T and thermal underwear when she moved me to the bed. Now it was time to get dressed, time to care. Andrea knelt and helped me pull on a pair of jeans and then an oversized wool sweater. She tossed the garbage bag full of clothes into my arms and made for the door. Her boots crunched. My portfolio. Months of work. My drawings.

“Stop,” I said, blindly reaching to gather up the sketches. I stuffed them into the torn folder and clutched it to my chest.

“Just the basics,” she said, clearly disapproving. “Ya know—food? Clothing? Booze?”

“I can’t leave them.”

“Fine. Jesus.”

Fussing like a mother hen, she shooed me out the door and down the hall, pointedly away from the back staircase and—logically—Carl. As if seeing his dead body would bother me. The smell might, but the rage was still a big, ugly knot in my chest and the thought of Carl rotting in a shitty apartment stairwell made me feel absolutely nothing.

I wasn’t prepared for the panic outside. The streets were full, crowded with shoving, frightened strangers. I kept close to Andrea, following her dark ponytail through the turmoil in the streets. The drawings kept slipping out of the folder and so finally, frustrated, I pushed them into the garbage bag of clothing. Judging from the smell, Andrea had thrown some dried fish in there too.

Another fire engine shrieked by, red lights flashing like blood-soaked flashbulbs.

“The Rabbits,” Andrea said by way of explanation. I pulled up close to hear her. Even weighted down with her pill pack she moved at an amazing clip. “They finally had enough. They broke through the Queen Anne barrier with a dump truck. Barrier’s thin up in those parts,” she said, barreling over a man twice her size. “The undead could smell them so they were congregated outside—waiting, I guess. You remember last time.” I did. “Just takes one inside the city and boom, there goes your stabilization.”

There was that word again. I was really beginning to hate it.

“Not so easy to flee this time,” Andrea went on. “With the barriers up, everyone is trapped. It’s a goddamn buffet.”

That put a bounce in my step. In this case, being small had its advantages. We sliced through the panicking crowd quickly, squeezing into spaces bigger people couldn’t manage. Nobody seemed to have any destination in mind, just milling and screaming. A few groups peeled off, heading toward the nearest bus stop. Others fled south, toward the Citadel gate. I realized with a jolt that we most definitely had a destination in mind—
Andrea
had a destination in mind; she was leading me down to the waterfront.

Water … Boats … Suddenly that bounce in my step was gone. Andrea was Portuguese. Her whole family was Portuguese and lifelong mariners. She was full of amusing stories about their rollicking maritime adventures, but those tales always had the comforting hallmark of fiction. But it was in their blood, Andrea said so herself whenever we ate fish, which was often, and so her intentions were suddenly, horribly, as clear as a funeral bell.

“No,” I said, shaking my head. “I won’t get on a boat, I won’t. It’s suicide.”

Andrea grabbed me by the scruff of my sweater and hauled me forward, apparently unmoved by my protests.

Ever since The Outbreak there was a general fear of going out on the water. Ironic, considering Seattle got its legs from being a port. But that changed when half the city tried to flee the first time across the water. One ferry managed to depart without any undead onboard. It never came back, staying across the sound, anchored at Bainbridge Island. The scourge reached Bainbridge eventually, through other means. The other ferry never left port. Its skeletal shell still floated at the ferry terminal, empty except for a few brave squatters. Even now, months after the initial panic, boats washed up against town, their poor owners starved to emaciated science projects or missing altogether. And sometimes—very rarely—a skiff landed with a crew of undead playing pirates in the hold. There was the
Golden Princess
, too, still upended in the harbor, a stark reminder of what might happen to those foolish enough to take their chances on a boat.

The terror those stories had instilled in me was not to be overlooked. How do you commit yourself to the waves knowing the terrible fate of so many others? A boat, the sea, the isolation and uncertainty—to me it meant only death.

“It’s suicide,” I said again in a whisper. Not that it mattered. I had failed in my one simple task—protect Shane, give him a safe and healthy life. That wasn’t the kind of failure you brushed off, like losing a wager or a favorite scarf. Maybe slow and inevitable starvation or death by zombie sailor was exactly what I deserved.

“Would you relax?” Andrea barked, dodging down an alley and then another. “I know somebody.”

Of course she did. Uncle Arturo, Uncle Tiago, Uncle Whoever, every single one of them had salt in their blood and sand in their beards. They each owned a boat and lived and died by the whim of the waters.

I stumbled to a stop. I had to blink a few times just to make sure I was seeing what I
thought
I was seeing. Just down the hill, running horizontally across the road Andrea and I were sprinting down, was an achingly familiar head of blond curls, and they were bouncing and Shane was screaming, because two strangers were frittering him away to some gosh-darn
lucky
couple. They must have been holed up somewhere nearby before delivering Shane and now they were making a run for it because of this new Outbreak. There wasn’t a lot of logic to it, the way I peeled off from Andrea and charged down the hill toward them, but in that instant logic ranked a distant second to desperation. Andrea spun, just out of reach to grab me and pull me back.

“Sadie! God
damn it
, Sadie!” But she was running after me; I heard her heavy footfalls just inches behind.

Shane must have seen me coming, because he started screaming harder, little mouth opening up like a sink drain to bellow out another round of terrified shrieks. I’d never in my life heard him make that sound. It’s always the small, shy ones, the ones you least expect, who can really belt it out. Improvising, I stooped to pick up a tire iron abandoned next to some poor soul’s crumpled body. They looked old and frail. They had been trampled by the crowd. That same crowd pushed against me, a tide rushing down to the riverfront, slowing down Shane’s kidnappers but hindering me too. His arms reached out to me, his body slung over a slender man’s shoulder like a sack of grain. There was a gap in the horde of people streaming down to the water and I had my chance. With Andrea pelting behind me, shouting at me to slow down and let her help, I broke into a sprint, catching up to the two kidnappers just as they reached the alley. Lungs burning, head pounding, I wound up over my left shoulder, still running as I took a golf swing with the tire iron. The bearded man carrying Shane glanced back at the same instant. Thank God for Andrea, who caught up in time to screech to a panting halt, throwing out her arms for Shane and scooping him up as I cracked the man’s skull. He went headfirst into the pavement.

The bearded guy’s partner whirled, a heavyset woman with a pale, round face and caramel-colored hair.

“Danny!” she screamed, watching her partner roll uselessly on the pavement, blood pooling beneath his head. “You
bitch
! I’ll kill you for that.” She pulled a switchblade, the sharp edge flashed, serrated and mean.

Andrea, more streetwise and ballsy than yours truly, grabbed the tire iron out of my hand and shifted Shane into my arms. I took a giant step backward, sheltering him from the squat little goblin woman and her partner. The bearded man flopped onto his side, as far as he could make it with his skull cracked. Laughing softly, Andrea pulled out a twelve-inch blade from the belt at her waistband. Apparently Carl was good for something. She held up both the tire iron and the knife, showing them to the woman as if this was
The Price Is Right
and these were her fabulous prizes.