Sadie Walker Is Stranded (8 page)

“Help! Help me!” I screamed. Finally, knowing it might be too late when somebody finally remembered to look for me, I began swimming around the stern of the boat to the other side. They would see me there. Where the hell had Shane gone? Why wasn’t he listening for me? It was more than just dread, that sudden feeling that nobody gave a shit, that you were alone and drowning, cold and miserable in your final moment.

At least moving gave me something to think about. But when I rounded the edge of the boat I stopped, regretting it at once. Uncle Arturo was in the water—well, most of him was. Something bobbed on the surface next to him. I retched and flailed, coming up empty. It was his leg, severed raggedly at the knee. A fishing rod danced up and down in the swirling water and so did a pair of zombies—they must have pulled him in by the line. One of them had the fishing hook sticking out of its cheek like a gauche piercing.

Over the edge, Moritz saw me treading and freaking out. He loped over to my end of the boat, his arm dangling down uselessly toward me. It was too far.

“You have to get closer,” he called, out of breath.

Not an option. My sight seemed to be spinning, the world going topsy-turvy as I saw Arturo dip beneath the water. Noah was trying to fish him out but the old sailor was losing consciousness. We had to let him go. The water around me began to turn—cloudy at first but then swirling with scarlet. And like sharks scenting blood, the undead turned toward me.

“Leave him!” Andrea was shouting. She was sobbing, yanking back on Noah’s shoulders. “It’s too late! Leave him!”

She was right. Leg or no leg, he had already been bitten, infected, and the change would come on soon. Having him in the boat with us would be guaranteed suicide. Noah heaved backward, trying to pull Arturo up by the arms while two bony creatures weighted him down into the water. I had a horrifying thought—that the water was too deep, that they couldn’t have their feet on sand. They were swimming, or floating, though both were equally terrifying.

“The ladder!” I screamed, hoping Moritz understood. My teeth chattering like a pair of cocaine-addled macaws didn’t make my speech very clear. “O-On the other side. I’ll swim there!”

This was purely hypothetical—my limbs were beginning to fail from the cold. Moritz nodded and disappeared for a moment as he ran to the other side of the boat. Losing sight of him made the panic more acute, and it felt as if the icy water was closing in around me, becoming something solid and sentient. It would strangle the life out of me. Shane’s round face appeared under the railing. He stared down at me with a frozen expression of wide-eyed terror. Maybe he was preparing to lose me yet again.

But seeing his face was like a Taser zap to the ass. Survival wasn’t an option, not with him peering down at me. It was an imperative, a duty that had little to do with me and everything to do with shielding him from another loss.

Here’s one thing I’m now damn certain of: being chased by water zombies around a boat can turn a landlubber like me into Michael fucking Phelps on steroids. I didn’t look back, knowing I might catch a glimpse of one of the undead coming for me. Then I remembered that they could be
under
the water. Each of my clumsy strokes was punctuated with a girlish squeak of hysteria. A thin rope ladder swung back and forth, just a few yards ahead. Moritz, bless his heart, was already over the edge of the ladder, waiting for me to get close. He was just in time. Something unnaturally strong tugged on my ankle, hard, nearly pulling me under.

Shane … I reminded myself sternly … I had to get back to him. No matter what, I had to make it back onto the boat. I was in deep, deep trouble, sure, but it was nothing, not when I thought about him being alone, surrounded by strangers and abandoned by every single family member he had.

I heard Andrea shout up on deck and realized she was screaming at me. Moritz clamped a hand over my wrist and yanked with enough power to pull the arm right out of its socket. With another jerk, he scampered back over the edge of the railing and we hit the deck with a cold, wet slap, like so many suffocating mackerels flopping out of a fisherman’s net. Someone pulled the ladder up.

Distantly, very distantly, I heard the outboard motor start. It gave a roar like a meat grinder and Moritz cupped his hands over my ears, presumably to keep me from hearing the dulcet tones of Uncle Arturo and his new friends being sliced into chum. And dimly I realized that I was almost naked in the arms of a stranger. His tweedy jacket rasped against my skin.

“Cover her,” Noah was saying. Leave it to the teenage boy to be the first of us to have any sense. A blanket fell about my shoulders and Andrea rolled me a little, tucking the fleece around me and rubbing vigorously. The real aching cold was beginning to set in and I shook from toe to hairline. My vision wasn’t cooperating, either from the water clouding up my eyes or the chills. As if gazing through a thick glass jar, I saw Shane standing a few yards away, his hands tightened into pale knots at his sides. He looked at me like I was a ghost. Stumbling forward, I pushed through the others and grabbed Shane, hugging him close, squeezing until he squeaked in protest.

“I was so … But we’re okay.” My teeth chattered as I tried to talk. “We’re okay.”

Shane finally hugged me back. That was the signal I needed to stop gripping him so damn hard.

Moritz and Andrea waited until I had calmed a bit more to suggest I sit down. Shane came with me, not that he had a choice about it. His hand was icy in mine, though that might have been the lingering effects of the cold water. Moritz sat next to me, one hand on my back as he tried to rub some warmth back into my bones. The motor cut and Noah appeared again. His brows tented, his forefingers scraping up and down his temples. “What do we do now?” he asked, looking between each of us. Nobody had an answer. “What do we do now?”

Cassandra the nurse had started crying again. That was a given. Andrea gave her a look that could freeze lava.

“We should say something,” I managed between shivers. “She’s a wreck.”

“We’re all a wreck,” Andrea replied shortly. “And she didn’t fall in the water.”

I turned briefly to look at Moritz, still too numb to properly overthink his proximity. His jacket smelled of dust and sweat. For some reason having him there, his hand on my back, made me feel better, or safer. It was all in the eyes, which were a color match for the crisp green-blue of the water surrounding us. And there was something in his gaze that reminded me of sugar-high toddlers, all enthusiasm and curiosity; and it was this feature of his that made me—almost against my will—relax.

Shane gave my knee an unexpected squeeze and even though I knew it would bug him, I leaned over and gave the top of his head a quick peck. We were alive, damn it, and I couldn’t care less if it made little boys squishy and pouty to have their aunts show affection. But he didn’t flinch away. For a second, even half-drowned and freezing, my spirits actually lifted.

Gradually, it was dawning on us all that we were fucked, really and truly fucked. Uncle Arturo was the only person skilled enough to actually steer the boat and navigate the maze of inlets in which we now drifted, helpless and afraid. How long would the gas in the motor last? And how long until we needed more food and water? I wasn’t going to be the one to say that fishing was out of the question.

Andrea had none of my reservations. “We have to keep moving,” she said, a note of dread in her voice. She took off her hat and wrung it like a sponge. “What if they can get onto the boat? We can’t stop.”

She gave us a minute to let that sink in; the thought of underwater monsters crawling up onto the boat while we slept just about made me burst into tears. This was not a conversation I wanted to have in front of Shane, but there was no other choice. I wasn’t letting him go and we needed to come to some sort of conclusion about our journey. I could feel a bruise forming on my heel where the zombie had nearly dragged me under. Emotions run high when your one and only navigator becomes a Jackson Pollack original splattered across the stern. I shuddered, thinking how close I had come to that exact same fate.

“Stay calm,” Moritz said—reasonably, I thought. “There should be enough food to last for at least a week, if we’re careful.”

“And then what?” Andrea asked, throwing up her hands.

“Then we land,” I said with reasonable confidence. “We can’t stay on this thing forever.”

“We could go back,” Noah said, throwing in his two cents with a shrug. “I’m sure I can figure out how to turn this thing around.”

“No,” I said, this time more boldly. “We can’t go back. The city’s lost.”

“I agree,” Moritz said.

“So what do you suggest we do?” Andrea asked irritably. She hovered between the cockpit and the railing, pacing a trench into the deck.

“We might be near the San Juan Islands soon,” a helpful, squeaking voice spoke up. Each head turned together. Cassandra had finally opened her mouth, standing bloodied and wide-eyed at the bow, some feet beyond the cockpit. “We could land there.”

Silence. Apparently no one else had a better idea or even a quick rebuttal. The afternoon, which had earlier seemed so promising and simple—swimming, fishing, card games—had taken a sharp turn for the worse.

And it was growing dark. I wanted to be alone.

“Can we have a minute?” I asked, nudging Moritz when he didn’t respond. “Alone?”

“Come on,” Andrea said, motioning to the cockpit. “We can check the maps and see if anything makes sense.”

Shane relaxed when the others sidled away, his stubborn little fists easing apart. I gave him another one-armed hug, ruffling his hair with a mingled sense of relief and dread. No matter how hard I tried, I just couldn’t manage to protect him from misery. He had seen Arturo die. He had almost watched me drown … I never expected our life together to be a day at the park, but this was getting pretty wretched. Someone had failed to protect Cassandra. She cried all the time. I didn’t want that for Shane. He might always be quiet and serious, but he didn’t have to be abandoned.

“I’m okay, bud,” I warbled unconvincingly, teetering from the cold.

“Okay,” Shane replied. “That’s good.”

“Your granddad taught me some stuff,” I continued, fighting through the tingling shivers in my limbs. “I know it seems tough right now but we’ll stick together and get through it. That’s not just blowing smoke. Granddad taught me to fish, to camp … I can teach you those things too.”

Shane shrugged. He was so very good at ruining my little moments of inspiring speech.

“Are there lots of those things in the water?” he asked quietly.

Shit. I had hoped he wouldn’t ask that. “Some. I don’t know how many. But we can learn to avoid them.”

“How? If they’re right there in the water…”

“They can’t climb up onto the boat. The sides are too smooth.” I had no intention of frightening him needlessly, but maybe a bit of honesty would actually help. “I’m scared of them coming out of the water, too, we all are. We’ll just have to be smarter. We can do that, can’t we? I know you’re smarter than a zombie.”

Shane nodded. “Probably.”

I hadn’t talked to him much about his grandfather. Surviving in the city was more about learning to readjust normal things—no electricity, different food, different ways to clothe and entertain yourself … But if we were headed for a prolonged stay in the wilderness, well, that was nothing like giving up fresh vegetables for canned or finding a renewed appreciation for books and knitting. It took a kind of rugged perseverance I’m not sure either of us possessed. I would just have to channel my dad and maybe some Allison Hewitt, and forget about the doubts creeping around in the back of my mind.

I wasn’t the mothering type, not like my sister, Kat, but that was going to have to change.

“Maybe we’ll hold off on fishing for a while,” I suggested, suffering flashes of Shane being yanked into the bay by the end of a fishing line. “But there’s some cool stuff we can do … building fires and shelters, making traps…”

“I guess.”

And that was
why
I wasn’t the mothering type. For all your effort and care, a kid could just blow you off and make you feel two inches tall. But really … I couldn’t blame Shane. Why
should
he get excited about fires or camping when every part of his life he had ever enjoyed had been ripped unceremoniously away? I was the only thing he had left. Put that way, I couldn’t help but sympathize with his moods.

Kat was always better at this stuff. She didn’t wind up with someone like Carl and his sicko friends. Some internal compass kept her on the straight and narrow at all times. She understood kids and they loved her right back. She knew how to glide through the awkward moments when a child looked at you like Shane was looking at me then. Like maybe this was all a mistake. Like maybe he wished he had been on the train when his parents were killed and not stuck with me on a slow boat to nowhere.

“You’ll see,” I promised, swallowing a knot of emotion I wasn’t sure would ever go away. “You’ll see, big man. It’s going to be an adventure.”

*   *   *

The bickering started as dusk fell, but I couldn’t rouse enough energy to care. Someone would decide something. That was enough. The bare facts were impossible to ignore: we were on the boat and there were only two choices—keep going until we found a good place to stop or just keep drifting until we starved, were eaten, or went crazy.

I stayed put with my little boy sentry huddled there stiff and quiet. Andrea stopped over with my clothing. She seemed to hesitate, but left without a word. Dry enough, I pulled on my thermals and sweater and curled up in the soggy blanket, herding Shane into the spot in front of me.

A chill had crept into my bones, the iciness of the water driven inward. When the darkness came on, swift and foggy and damp, I was glad for the privacy of shadows. The boat felt emptier without Arturo, aimless. It was easy to start crying. I had been saving up. Shane fell asleep curled against me, wheezing with the quiet intensity of a child’s deep rest. I thought of poor Arturo, dead and abandoned. I thought of those bastards who had tried to take Shane. And Carl … Carl. I pictured him in the water instead of Arturo, his leg bobbing up and down like a decoy duck. I couldn’t remember the last time I had been so angry. This was worse than the initial outbreak, worse than losing family and friends and a home because it was just so damn
lonely
. Even with Shane there, or maybe especially
because
Shane was there. He was the only thing left, the last remnants of a family I could never get back again.