The Boat (5 page)

He bent to kiss her white, gently parted lips. A spider crawled out from between them and scuttled across her chin. Steve yelped and sat back, knocking his head into the tree. Crazily, he dug his phone from his pocket. It was dead. He took her phone from her pocket, flipped it open and had dialed the 9 before he stopped himself. It was no use. The phone tumbled from his shaking hands and landed next to her ear in a nest of golden curls.

He put his head in his hands, but he was too shocked to cry. He thought about curling up next to her and waiting for it–the sickness–to take him, too. Hoping with all his heart that he would go quickly.

He lay down next to her, shoulder to shoulder, hip to hip, and closed his eyes. He felt calm wash over him, but even in his shock he realized it was not a good calm. It was more of a numbing. A deadening.

The wind began to sigh around him. The pines seemed to call his name, gently and with love. “Steeeeeehhhh…” He tried to smile, tried to tell himself it was going to be okay. He just needed to rest. Maybe none of this was real and he’d wake up at home, in bed with Amelia.

“Steeeeeehhhhhh…”

He realized the sound was coming from next to him. He opened his eyes and turned his head.

Amelia still lay supine, but her throat was working. Her lips pursed by millimeters. “Steeeeehhhhhhh…” She was saying his name.

He sat up and stared into her dead, unfeeling face. As he watched, another spider scurried across her unblinking eye. Her throat worked again, “Steeeeehhhhhh…” Her diaphragm lifted and settled, not as with breath but as a simple muscle contraction.

She began to sit up.

Steve scrambled back, trying to gain his footing, but his hands landed in marsh mud and he sank to his elbows. Amelia was on him before he could get his hands free. She swarmed up his body like a clumsy wraith, the expression of dead blankness never leaving her features. Her weight was that of the dead.

“Amelia, no! Please god please no…no Amelia!” He scrambled up and back and she tumbled off, rolling onto her back like a beetle. Her hands and legs waved sluggishly and then she found the ground again and righted herself. He took two shaky steps backwards and sank almost to his knees, the marsh mud cold and sucking on his feet and legs. “Amelia, stay back, stay away from me, please, stay back Amelia…we have to…we have to get you help.”

She stood, swaying, and turned in a confused circle. Then she found him again. She started forward, her arms raised, mouth hanging open. Now she had an expression: hunger.

“Amelia, no! Stay back! No, Amelia, no!”

~ ~ ~

The water lapped up the sides of the jet ski, chilling his legs as he thought about what had happened out there. How he’d had to…to put Amelia down. He shuddered and then the cold cloak descended, pushing regret and guilt to a dark recess where he thinks they’ll have no effect on future decisions. He keyed the jet ski to life and headed for ThreeBees to check out his newest charge.

The wind dried his tears so quickly that he didn’t even have to acknowledge them.

Chapter Four

Adam stood on the deck of
Flyboy
, the walkie-talkie crackling in his hand. He watched the scurrying jet skis. They’d found another survivor.
Another immune, most likely
, Adam thought. But he’d have to be watched. It was possible, if only slightly, that a non-immune had made it through. There were three ways to go: get the airborne sickness, die from the fever and reanimate; get scratched and slowly get the sickness and die and reanimate; or get killed by a walking dead, by a big healthy bite from their dirty mouths, die quickly and reanimate. There were a lot of people who hadn’t contracted the illness in its airborne state but would still succumb to a scratch or bite, but some people, it seemed, were completely immune to getting the sickness in any form.

Adam felt a presence at his side and knew that Dr. Sami Rafiq had joined him at the rail, but he didn’t turn.

The jet with the survivor went to the
Barbra’s Bay Breeze
. Adam felt a dig of irritation, even though he preferred the survivor be contained on the smaller vessel. The irritation came because Steve had
told
him that they were taking the survivor to ThreeBees, instead of
asking
.

Adam thought again about getting everyone aboard
Flyboy
but knew it wasn’t the best idea; it was just ego. Especially since it was he who had suggested that Steve split off onto the
Big Daddy
in the first place. He couldn’t let his ego get the best of him. Not this time.

People crowded the rails, chattering, speculating. Some had binoculars; others had walkie-talkies. It had been weeks since a survivor had been found and it had become an exciting anomaly all over again.

“Do you want me to go and check the survivor?” Dr. Rafiq asked, his voice soft and deferential.

Adam shook his head. “No, Maggie can do it. Just in case. You’re too important, Sami.”

Dr. Rafiq felt himself pulled two ways at once: flattered by being called ‘too important’ but embarrassed that Adam refused him the honor of his title. But Adam was protecting him; Dr. Rafiq knew that. Adam was protecting him because if everyone knew that he could have prevented the whole thing…he’d be lynched. Or so he thought.

Everyone else had taken to calling him ‘Doc’…it was something that Steve from the
Big Daddy
had started. It tickled him and brought to mind the handful of American westerns he’d seen as a child in India. Cowboys, as he’d seen them then, were in some respects also how he’d come to view his adopted country: brusque and somewhat crude but also incredibly brave and noble.

“If something should go wrong, I don’t want us effected,” Adam said. He didn’t lower his voice. He wanted the people closest to him to hear what he had to say; he knew they were listening and they would take it and tell the others. He felt this was how he’d gain their loyalty. “We’re the core group. No one here is expendable.” He didn’t believe that, of course. Everyone was expendable. But it made people feel good.

Dr. Rafiq turned troubled eyes from Adam back to the ThreeBees. What made them ‘expendable’? How were they different from anyone on the
Flyboy
?

His eyes caught the look of a woman two people down on the rail. She was staring at him, her gaze steady. She shook her head and although Dr. Rafiq knew it was in response to Adam’s comment, he felt as though she’d read his mind.
They’re no different from us
, she seemed to be saying.
So aren’t we
all
expendable, then?

Dr. Rafiq looked quickly to Adam and was glad to see he had not noticed Candy’s head shaking. Then he looked back at Candy. Ridiculous name. But she did resemble candy, even if it made him uncomfortable to think it. Her hair was soft, blonde floss and her lips and cheeks a bright pink. Her lids were shadowed in an energetic blue that eased to baby blue by the time it reached her artificially arched eyebrows. Dr. Rafiq knew that other men (and women) judged her to be stupid, vapid, and–worst of all to Dr. Rafiq–loose. But for Candy, it was a sort of camouflage. She was intensely bright and also just as brave as any of the fictional cowboys he’d ever seen in the movies, maybe braver. He loved her very much.

~ ~ ~

Dr. Rafiq had met Candy in Philadelphia in January of this same year. He’d come to the University of Pennsylvania from his hospital in Princeton to attend a speaking engagement. He was there to listen to the engineers of a new gene therapy treatment that was being hailed as a cure for HIV/AIDS. A research facility in Nevada had developed a way to turn off the gene that was a gateway for the virus. It had been nicknamed ‘Lazarus’ since it had saved patients who’d seemed, quite literally, to be at death’s door. It had a restorative power that had only been seen so far in stem cell therapies, but the best part was that it could be administered as a nasal spray. Once it came in contact with the mucous membrane, it went to work without further prompting.

Dr. Rafiq was there to try and meet one of the experts. He had a question about the findings of their trials. It seemed to him that there was a disturbing ‘back door’ to this new gene therapy and he wanted to question someone on it. As he sat listening to the main speaker, he burned with anxiety and agitation–what if he was very off base? What if he looked foolish? His eyes scanned the auditorium. There were hundreds of doctors in attendance–many of them his superiors from the hospital. Surely someone else would have noticed the same discrepancy as he had…if there
were
such a discrepancy. Dr. Rafiq was twenty-eight and had only been a full-fledged doctor for two years. He was intimidated to see so many doctors and researchers together to celebrate Lazarus. How could he
possibly
know something that thousands of others had overlooked?

When the lights came up and they called for questions, he stood, but then had an almost sexual sense of relief when he was passed over. His knees shook, and for a brief instant, he was light headed. The engagement adjourned with his questions unanswered.

He found the hotel where the research group was said to be staying and went to the bar. He was still in a sweat of conflicting emotions, but the strongest was his sense that–if he was right about what he’d seen–the implications might be rampant transfer of disease. He bolstered himself with two whiskeys when he normally didn’t drink. Ever.

The combination of alcohol and nerves turned him into an incoherent mess.

That’s where Candy found him.

Candy had been at the lecture, too. Her brother was dying of AIDS and she’d read about the Nevada group in one of the physician’s magazines she subscribed to. She came to the hotel to talk them into taking her brother on for the next trial. She knew she could persuade them–she was as rigorously convincing as any trial lawyer could ever hope to be. Plus, she was really, really cute. She had found that being cute helped out quite a bit in life. Born into rough circumstances, she’d learned to use what she had to get what she needed, and right now, her brother needed a miracle. He needed Lazarus.

She entered the dark bar, expecting to find members of the group there–doctors were hard drinkers, she’d found–but it was empty save for one young Indian man. She’d just wait, then. They were most likely at Capitol Grille or The Palm…surely they’d stop in here for a nightcap after dinner.

She sat halfway down the bar, keeping one eye on the lobby and one on the young Indian man. She ordered a club soda. She waited.

The young man was talking to himself, quietly but vehemently. One hand was fisted and he hit himself in the chest several times, as if to punctuate what he was saying. Candy thought she saw a gleam of frustrated tears in his warm brown eyes.

Just like that, she liked him.

The bartender’s face showed annoyance and Candy knew he was on the verge of asking the man to leave. She went to where he sat and put out her hand.

“Hi, I’m Candy,” she said. She’d always found it was best to get that out of the way up front…to acknowledge her ridiculous name and put it right out there, without apology.

He looked up in surprise and then touched the tips of her fingers with his–it was the barest, most hesitant handshake she’d ever encountered.

“How are you?” he said but she knew it was perfunctory. His voice was soft, his accent exotic and to her, beautiful. She slid onto the stool next to him.

“I’m okay,” she said. “You didn’t tell me your name.”

“I am Doctor Sami Rafiq; it is a pleasure to meet you, miss, uh, Candy.”

“Doctor? Are you here from Nevada by any chance?” She hadn’t recognized his name from the study or the lecture, but these things tended to involve a lot of people. “Are you working on Lazarus?”

It was like a secret code, the way it lit his features. He shook his head and almost tumbled back off his stool. She steadied him with one hand. “You know about Lazarus?” he said, astonished.

She nodded, completely unperturbed by his tone; she’d been underestimated plenty of times before. “You’re here for that, too, then?” she asked.

He nodded and nearly fumbled his almost empty drink. The bartender whisked away the glass without offering him a refill.

“What is your interest in it?” he said, “If you don’t mind me asking.”

They each revealed their reasons for wanting to talk to the Lazarus scientists. Sami, simultaneously bolstered and befuddled by whiskey, admitted his conflicting feelings and Candy told him about the struggles she’d had with her brother. Before they knew it, that day had become the next.

The Lazarus scientists never showed up. Or, they had never left their rooms in the first place. Either way, it amounted to the same thing: neither Candy nor Sami got what they came for. But they did leave with something they hadn’t expected: each other’s numbers and hearts.

~ ~ ~

Sami watched discreetly from the corner of his eye as Candy left the railing. Hiding their relationship had been necessary before everything happened. Sami’s parents would have been disappointed in his choice of an anglo mate and Candy’s family and friends would have taken every opportunity to ask why she wanted to date a terrorist.

As far as either of them knew, those people were all gone now. Or sailing in some armada of their own somewhere. Why did they keep hiding their relationship? Habit?

Sami ducked away from Adam, excusing himself, and followed after Candy.

Adam kept his eye on the ThreeBees, thinking. Maybe he should insist on having the survivor brought over, even if it was just to show Steve who was boss. Maybe that was reason enough. He brought the walkie-talkie up but before he could depress the button, a voice came blasting through the speaker, obviously panicked.

“
Flyboy
, this is Mitch, we’ve got trouble, over!”

The screaming whine of an engine ran counterpoint to the voice, adding to the sense of immediacy. “
Flyboy
, do you hear me? Over!” Adam felt his stomach twist in a knot of shock and his hand froze on the walkie, squeezing it convulsively.