Sadie Walker Is Stranded (36 page)

“We’re almost there, Sadie,” Shane called.

“Thanks, little man.”

But I was falling behind. And Banana wasn’t swimming yet. I made the mistake of looking back over my shoulder. She was swarmed. I could see the glint of her hair and the bright fabric of her bandana, but the zombies in the water were outflanking her, and the horde closed in around her, an unbroken ring.

“Whelan,” I sputtered, splashing harder as I tried to keep up. My arms were failing, my leg felt like it had been doused in kerosene and thrust into a fire.

“Look at the boat,” he said. “Think of Shane. That’s all you can do.”

Banana’s cries grew sharper, different, and then the gunfire halted abruptly. I didn’t have to look over my shoulder again to know they were coming for us now.

No matter how hard I pushed myself, I just kept falling farther and farther behind. Whelan circled back, swimming up beside me, his face bright red and his hair salt-plastered to his face as he looped an arm around my waist. He began swimming with one arm, dragging us through the water in quick bursts.

“I can hear them,” I whispered, trying to find that last store of energy. I had to have something left … I only had to make it to the boat and we were getting closer, closer …

Andrea screamed, “Come on, come on!” I swam to the rhythm of it. Just a few more strokes, just a dozen or so kicks and all three of us would make it. Banana had gone down for us. Moritz had gone down. Everyone was gone, but the island wasn’t going to take me too.

Something was around my ankle, pulling and jerking. I slipped right out of Whelan’s grasp, yanked backward and then down. I felt the bite of too-hard fingers,
bones
, and kicked with my other leg. Water rushed in, filling my mouth, the sudden agitation turning the space around me all to tiny, bright bubbles. I kicked, felt flesh beneath my heel, kicked again. But I was tired, exhausted and sore and in pain, the swim had sapped me to the bone, and it didn’t seem to matter that I was kicking the thing over and over again in the head, it just wouldn’t let go.

And I was doing down with it, sinking, and everything was turning to blue.

TWENTY-THREE

In the swirling black you hear a sound, a zip. It’s hope and a promise and it’s coming for you.

The zip breaks the hold death has on you. It’s quiet and you almost don’t hear it … but there it is again and suddenly, inexplicably, you’re free. And you’d fight back if you could, if there was anything left, but you’re tired and you don’t know why. Then you’re floating, flying almost, and things that were blue and then black are white, too bright,
painful
.

You think of all the things you didn’t do, all the times you told Shane no, you cannot go down to the shore to collect shells. And you regret it. You regret not showing him more, teaching him more, making him smile as much as humanly possible.

Then you’re flat on your back, choking on what feels like a gallon of seawater and four sad faces are staring down at you. No, it’s not your funeral, but it is fucking embarrassing.

*   *   *

“Oh, my God, she’s alive.”

“Surprise.”
Ow
. It did not feel good to talk. Or think.

When I blinked, Nate was there, grinning, a rifle braced in his hand. I could hear the hum of a motor and the quiet splashing of the water as the blades whipped it into a frenzy. Shane rocketed into my arms, there and warm and
wonderful
. We had made it, maybe not to the end, but we were free of the island and still together.

“You’re okay,” he whispered, squeezing my neck.

“Couldn’t leave you, bud.”

Nate peered over Shane’s shoulder, smirking.

“Nice shot, by the way,” I said to him, shutting my eyes against the sunlight.

“
Lucky
shot,” Whelan corrected gently. “I think you mean lucky shot.”

I grinned. “That too.”

It took a few minutes before I was ready to let go of Shane, but then Andrea helped me gradually into the cockpit. She pulled off my soaked clothes and used her own sweater to dry me off.

“You should’ve seen it, man,” she said as she patted my shoulders. “You guys are, like, two feet away and then wham, you’re gone! I almost shit my fucking pants. Whelan dove down about five times and then Nate was just all, ‘Get outta there! I’m gonna shoot!’ Truly epic.”

“Sad I missed it.”

She went quiet then, letting me redress in one of Nate’s discarded layers and a men’s pair of thermal underwear. It all smelled like campfire smoke. Andrea laid out my wet clothes on the deck to dry, turning back with a thundercloud frown and her arms snapped rigidly over her chest.

“You left us,” she said. “You
drugged
us. With
my
drugs.”

“I know. I’m sorry about that. I just … lost it. Everything was closing in. I didn’t know what else to do.”

Andrea nodded, satisfied. “See what I did there? I forgave you. You should try it sometime—it’s a neat feeling.”

“I know. I should’ve listened to you.”

“Naturally.”

“And I’m not mad about the Rabbit thing. I wish you had told me but … it doesn’t matter now. It probably shouldn’t have mattered then.”

Andrea nodded. In the fray she had lost her hat and her messy brown waves tumbled around her face as she looked me up and down, satisfied with her work, and turned to go.

“That magical pill bag of yours didn’t happen to survive, did it?”

“Afraid not, sailor.”

“Figures.”

Laughing, she had one last pat for my shoulder and then she was hopping out of the cockpit, whistling merrily across the deck to where Nate was keeping a careful eye on the motor. Shane sat beside him, listening raptly while Nate described the finer points of boat mechanics. I’m not sure I could have felt luckier at that moment—if I were Shane’s age and had just narrowly escaped about five different ways of dying, I certainly wouldn’t be calmly listening to a lecture on boat propellers. I’d be a sobbing a mess, inconsolable. Shane glanced in my direction and waved, looking like an ant hill with a head in one of Nate’s huge, dry sweaters.

“Hey.” Whelan dropped down beside me. He had changed, too, wearing a pair of thermals that looked a lot like mine, though they fit him considerably better, and a ratty T-shirt with one sleeve. The missing sleeve had been appropriated for a new bandage, one that was tied tightly around his wound.

“So are we even or do I owe you a rescue now?” I asked.

He smiled. It had only been a day but I had seriously missed that dimple.

“We’re square, but you might owe Nate one.”

I nodded. It wasn’t awkward, just … frightening. I felt like there were a million different apologies I needed to make. Then I remembered that moment in the house, zombies coming at us, overtaking us, and the weird half-peace that had descended. Maybe apologies weren’t what he wanted. I know I was sick of hearing them.

“Whelan … how did she capture you?” A big fella like Whelan didn’t seem like the type to be taken down by one person with a knife.

“I woke up, saw you were gone and just … took off like an idiot into the woods.”

He leaned against the edge of the cockpit, staring out over my head toward the water. A deep, bright blush crept over his cheeks as I asked, “You didn’t notice the canoe?”

“For your information I wasn’t exactly in my right mind. You two were gone and my first thought was: house. So I went. The others tried to follow but there were tons of ’em in the trees. Moritz went down, then Stef. When I finally made it to the house I saw Cassandra there … I just didn’t put it together. I thought she had survived somehow…”

“I figured it out on the canoe,” I said. “I took her bag to store my stuff and … I found some crazy shit in it. Her nurse’s note, a badge … I think she must have killed her nurse, stolen her identity and escaped from a hospital. She was dead for two minutes … that can’t be good for your brain. Or maybe it was something else. Maybe The Outbreak was too much for her.”

“And you thought
I
was cuckoo for Cocoa Puffs.”

“So what then?” I asked, reaching for his hand. He lifted it, kissed my knuckles. Hm. Maybe
I
was cuckoo for Cocoa Puffs … or just him.

“She got me on the head with a rock.” He pointed to the bruise on his eye with his free hand. Chuckling, he murmured, “I don’t know how she manhandled me into that chair, but given how sore my ass feels, I’d say it involved a lot of dragging. She woke me up with another nice thump on the melon and started rambling about this family she wanted us to be … I couldn’t believe you could actually pack that much delusional into one person.”

“This is…” The salt on my cheeks was about to be refreshed. “If I hadn’t left…”

“I can’t blame you. I didn’t. I don’t.” Whelan wiped at the trails burning down my cheeks. “I mean, yes,” he went on, relentless, “I was pissed, but I get it. I shouldn’t have lied to you.” We kissed, just a short one, but it made the tears slow a bit. “And hey, look on the bright side, cuckoo Cassandra took care of one of my tats.”

“Too bad she didn’t get ’em both.”

Whelan winced. “Ooh,
ouchies
. No, it’s good she didn’t. I have plans for that one.”

“What sort of plans?”

“Well, you being an artist and all, I thought maybe you could come up with something to cover it. We get back to civilization and make it into something new. How does that sound?”

Do I need to write down the definition of
disarming
again? No. Didn’t think so.

“I approve of this idea.”

“Yeah?” O dimple of ultimate destruction, you will be the death of me.

“Yeah.”

“Maybe a spiky little sea urchin,” he mused, bumping his hip against mine.

“I was thinking more along the lines of Curious George. He could be beating the tar outta that bunny.”

Whelan laughed and it would’ve hurt my ears except it made me feel good all over. All the chuckling drew looks from the others. Shane watched us, not smiling, not frowning, just his usual observant self. I didn’t believe in heaven—it’s hard to when you pretty much live in a physical hell—but if it was real and my sister
was
watching me, I wanted to think she would be proud. Shane was going to be a lucky kid, not one or two parents, but four. I wasn’t sure where we were going, but wherever it was, we were going to look out for each other. Back to Seattle or to somewhere else to wait out the storm, he was going to get a better childhood. I promised that to him silently, and maybe later I would make it official and say it aloud. We would need to rustle up a jump rope for him, Pop Rocks, a bicycle, a puppy—all the good stuff that made the fear worth surviving.

“So where to?” Whelan asked, looking out again at the blue, blue water surrounding us.

“That’s a good question.” I started up the short stairs to the deck, intent on asking Andrea and Nate where they thought we should go. A big, warm hand wrapped around my wrist, tugging. I looked back, felt a tiny internal gasp, like a sigh or a hiccup but nicer. I had a feeling that would be happening just about every time Whelan gave me that look.

“Yellow hat,” he said.

“Sorry?”

“You’re my yellow hat.”

“Thanks,” I said, starting back up the stairs. “I love you too.”

EPILOGUE

It had been almost a year since receiving the key. Maybe the vault would already be empty, looted or moved. But I had to know.
We
had to know.

“What are you waiting for?”

Beneath a wild mop of curling hair, Shane stared up at me, fidgeting.

“I just don’t want you to get your hopes up too high,” I said. The key felt inordinately heavy in my hand. I brushed at the thick layer of dust that had settled over the door. It looked like nobody had entered the lower levels of the bank for months, maybe not since Moritz had been there. Like an ancient, undisturbed tomb, the narrow halls lay under an almost snowy coating of grime. Finding the place untouched lit a warm hope in my chest. Nobody had been down here in a long, long time, and I had the cobwebs in my hair to prove it.

“It might not even be the right bank,” I added softly.

“Only one way to find out.”

Behind me, Whelan waited, tapping his boot toe impatiently on the linoleum. Shane mimicked him, and the combined force of their anticipation pushed me forward, toward the door. The key fit into the lock with a low, rusty squeak. It was a regular door, retro, not the round, max security ones you always see in comic book movies. With electricity spotty at best, it would have been too risky to use one of the electronically sealed vaults. Nobody wanted to sit around twiddling their thumbs, waiting for a generator, or worse—until the grid came up—to check on their cache.

“Holy shit,” I murmured, my breath ruffling the streaky cobwebs swinging in front of the door. “I feel like Indiana Jones.”

“Indiana Jones would open the damn door,” Whelan whispered.

“Yeah,” Shane added haughtily.

“Do I have to separate you two?” The key turned, grinding, but it fit. Finally. We drew in a loud, collective breath, months of searching hinging on this moment. Treasure hunting was glamorous until it was boring, frustrating and time consuming. Treasure hunting in a burned out city that was now the gaping asshole of civilization was also dangerous, but I was getting handy with a pistol. I felt like a regular Lara Croft but, you know, without the massive knockers and sexy accent. Recently Whelan, with that beloved chest holster and khakis, was starting to look much more Malcolm Reynolds than Indiana. Not that I was complaining.

“Any day now, Doctor Jones,” Whelan said with a nervous chuckle.

Those moments of disappointment would be worth it.

“Here we go,” I said, pulling. The door wouldn’t budge. Drat. It took all three of us to haul the thing open, the hinges screaming in protest as we forced it back. You always imagine these rooms to be vast, cavernous, glittering with jewels and riches, coins and necklaces and genies overflowing from chests stuffed too full to close. It was a narrow space, with the walls on either side lined in safety deposit boxes. It wasn’t filled with chests belching out strands of pearls, but there were paintings, dozens of them, and a heavy box that I could only imagine was filled with sketches and studies.