The Living

by Matt De La Peña

  Shy stared down at the battered lifeboat, scared to death that Rodney or Carmen might have been aboard. The top half ripped completely away. Paolo now explaining that they had to be close to the islands. Otherwise the waves wouldn’t be breaking the way they were.

  “I don’t see any land!” Kevin shouted.

  “We will by morning!” Paolo answered. “We just have to make it through the night!”

  “If a boat can’t make it,” Marcus said to Shy, “how will a raft?”

  Shy had no answer as he scanned the water, looking for Carmen’s head. But it was too dark to see anything more than shapes.

  The final two lifeboats were being lowered toward the ocean, several passengers staring out of the opening, looking down at the people floating on the water or back up at the burning ship.

  Paolo loaded the few remaining passengers and crew onto rafts, one after the other. Shy looked around as he moved with the line. The sinking ship. The lifeboats getting tossed around on the ocean’s surface. A group of passengers trapped up near the burning bow of the ship, leaping off, one by one, screaming as they fell past the raft launch site, into the raging water.

  Shy was shoved onto one of the rafts by the crew member behind him, bodies quickly filling in around him, and then the raft slowly lowering down the side of the ship. When it reached the end of its launch rope, the raft plunged toward the sea, Shy gripping the handle beside him, yelling like everyone else, weightlessness like a knot in his stomach, his gaze fixed on the life-vested bodies below, on the stripped ship parts and swirls of ship fuel, and then he shut his eyes as tight as he could and braced for impact.

  26

  Power of the Sea

  The raft slammed headfirst against the surface of the water, Shy’s grip ripped away from the handle and he was thrown into the freezing black ocean. He kicked and reached frantically with his hands, choking on salt water, coughing out the last of his air as he was completely submerged.

  Soon as his head poked back through the surface, he gulped in a desperate breath and coughed and looked all around in a panic. Heavy swells rolling past like moving mountains, lifting him, then dropping him, then lifting him again. Thunder pounded in the distance. A small wave broke over his head and he swallowed more salt water and gagged.

  He wiped his stinging eyes with the back of his wrist and spotted the raft floating upside down, half a football field away, a handful of life-jacketed people already swimming for it. He’d turned to look back at the sinking ship when someone grabbed on to the back of his jacket and started pulling him toward the raft.

  Shy spun his head back around, found Christian.

  He couldn’t process anything except that he was in the massive ocean now, freezing-cold, whitecapped waves cresting all around him.

  Lightning lit up the night sky and for a fraction of a second he saw all the survivors thrashing around in the water near the ship.

  Shy shook free of Christian’s grip, turned onto his stomach and started swimming for the raft himself, fast as he could, thrusting hand after hand into the furious water in front of his face, ignoring the pain in his ribs.

  Kevin was the first one to the raft.

  Then Paolo and Marcus.

  Shy saw them right the raft and begin pulling themselves up by the handles, heaving their waterlogged bodies over the sides. Kevin reached out a hand, pulled in Christian, then he reached for Shy, and Shy fell into the raft on his back and lay there, staring up at the smoke-filled sky and sucking in breaths and listening to the voices all around him.

  “Which way are the islands?”

  “We have to move away from the ship! There’s fuel all around us!”

  “Look! That woman’s alive!”

  “Grab the oars!”

  Shy told himself what was happening. They were lost at sea, and nobody was coming to their rescue. Carmen flashed through his thoughts, and he pulled himself up to a sitting position and scanned the water, but it was too dark to make out faces.

  Kevin was in the raft with him. Paolo. Marcus and Christian. Several passengers he vaguely recognized. The bodies floating near the raft were mostly on their stomachs, facedown, but a few held up their heads and beat the water with flailing arms and shouted for help.

  Two jagged fingers of lightning lit up the sky.

  Marcus and Christian were on opposite sides of the raft, digging oars into the choppy sea, propelling the boat toward a screaming woman. Paolo grabbed her by the arm, pulled her into the raft. Shy watched her curl into a fetal position in the water sloshing around at their feet. She looked up at him in shock.

  Shy turned back to the rolling ocean, looking for someone else to help, looking for Carmen, Rodney. He saw mostly lifeless bodies and ship debris. Three lifeboats in the distance. He saw pieces of the shattered lifeboat, the bottom half still floating near the ship, which was now mostly underwater, the front end lit up in flames.

  A passenger suddenly stood in the middle of the raft and shouted: “Row faster, goddamn it!”

  Shy spun around, saw another huge wave roaring toward them, at least as big as the one that slammed the lifeboat against the ship. And all they had to withstand it was a wide-open twelve-man raft.

  He started hyperventilating again.

  “The other way!” Paolo shouted. “Turn it around! We have to make it over!”

  Kevin and Christian spun the raft around, started rowing directly toward the rising wave, fast as they could, Shy gripping the raft handle, unable to take his eyes off the towering wall as it rose higher and higher before them, Paolo now shouting it down: “Come on, you son of a bitch!”

  Kevin and Christian rowed and rowed until the colossal wave was directly in front of them, carrying their tiny raft up its steep, roaring face, Shy leaning forward with everyone else, clutching the raft handle, clenching every muscle in his body.

  At the last minute, Kevin and Christian pulled in their oars and leaned forward, too, everyone yelling and Shy losing control of his bladder as the raft went nearly vertical with the cresting wave, spray battering his face.

  They were suspended like that for what seemed like forever, all gravity vanishing and sounds disappearing, Shy holding his breath and trembling—then the raft slipped over the thick lip and rocketed down the other side, dropping into what seemed like a hole in the ocean and at such speed Shy’s whole body vibrated and he ducked his head down inside the raft to avoid being blown back into the growling giant.

  When they made it to the bottom, they all turned and watched the wave explode into whitewash behind them, barreling over debris and life-jacketed bodies, colliding with the sinking ship, momentarily quieting the flames.

  Shy’s eyes darted around the raft as he sucked in desperate breaths. Everyone still there. Looking at each other. White-knuckled on all the raft handles.

  But then several of them were screaming again, and Shy turned and saw a second rise in the distance, this one building farther out and already more massive, and he knew immediately they wouldn’t make it over.

  Kevin and Christian dug their oars back into the ocean and rowed as fast as they could, but it was pointless. Paolo yanked the oar from Christian’s grip, tossed it into the ocean, did the same with Kevin’s. He dug into the raft’s emergency pouch and pulled out everything he could and shoved it into a dry pack, shouting: “Everyone off the raft! Diving under is our only chance!”

  But for Shy this was impossible.

  He stared at the cresting wave, a few hundred feet away, and then he stared at the water underneath them pulling back.

  Paolo strapped the dry pack on his back and dove overboard and started swimming directly at the wave.

  Kevin dove in, too.

  Christian.

  But everyone else continued gripping the raft handles like Shy, unable to let go, their faces all frozen in terror.

  Then the wave was in front of them.

  At the last second, and against every instinct he had, Shy pried his hand from the handle
and rolled over the side of the raft, into the ocean, the current sucking him toward the roaring wave. He watched it stand on its toes, a dozen stories high, the thick lip curling over, slicing down toward him.

  Shy pulled in one last painful breath and closed his eyes and dove underneath, far as he could.

  The violent undercurrent snatched him up immediately, sucking his now powerless body deep below, into blackness, thrashing him and his life jacket every which way like a washing machine, until he had no idea what was up and his lungs burned and still the ocean kept twisting his body until he lost consciousness.

  27

  Truth of the World

  Shy’s eyes popped open.

  He was bobbing on the surface of the black ocean in his life jacket, retching uncontrollably—warm salt water and bile flooding back over his tongue and teeth, fanning out in the water in front of his face, the awful taste of his own sick making him vomit again.

  He heaved for several minutes, until there was nothing left to purge, and still his stomach convulsed and his eyes stung and the world was blurry.

  He spit and looked all around the darkness, shivering.

  He was alone.

  No idea how long he’d been floating here or how long he’d been drowned. His life jacket must’ve brought him back up, saved his life.

  He spun around looking for what was left of the wave that had pulled him under, but there was nothing. The ocean was calmer, in fact. The wind less severe. He spotted the cruise ship, surprisingly far off in the distance—only the front third still visible, pointing straight up into the sky and half covered in flames.

  Nobody else around, dead or alive.

  “Kevin!” he shouted.

  “Marcus!”

  Any name that came to mind, he shouted out, but nobody answered and he slapped at the water with both hands, feeling overwhelmed and hopeless and having no idea what swam below him.

  He did nothing more than tread water in the dark for several minutes, battling his own thoughts. What if he was stranded for good? Nothing to eat or drink, no one there when he died? What if he never saw anything but water again? He felt like he’d been shown the truth of the world. The absolute power it held. People just meaningless specks that came and went as easily as flipping a switch.

  He couldn’t stop shivering in the cold wind and water as he looked around again, his eyes finally adjusting to the dark. A few ship pieces. Drowned bodies. An empty life jacket. An oar from a raft, maybe theirs. A rain slicker kept afloat by an air bubble trapped underneath.

  He spotted a portion of a wrecked lifeboat, probably the one he’d seen slammed against the ship by a wave. Most of the bottom half just sitting there, maybe a hundred yards away.

  He leaned forward without thinking and swam for it, picking up the oar and slicker along the way. His ribs throbbed as he splashed through the cold ocean, one arm in the slicker, tossing the oar in front of him and catching up, tossing and catching up, small waves sometimes washing over his head. Several times he swallowed mouthfuls of water and had to spit or vomit, but he didn’t stop until he was able to reach out and touch what was left of the boat.

  The top half was entirely ripped away, the sides jagged and sharp. Cracks and gashes running along the edges including one fist-sized hole that was half underwater. He floated around the boat twice looking for the least jagged side and then tossed in the slicker and the oar and pulled himself up to peer inside.

  A handful of passengers. All lying in two feet of water at the bottom of the boat. None were Carmen or anyone he knew.

  “Hello,” he said.

  Then louder: “Hello!”

  No one lifted their heads to acknowledge him.

  Shy floated there a few more seconds, looking back over his shoulder at the enormous black ocean, and then he pulled himself up and over the side and fell onto one of the bodies in the boat. He quickly rolled off and sat up and looked at the woman. Blood caked in her short gray hair.

  Shy went on to his hands and knees and sloshed through the pinkish water to inspect the other bodies, too. He lifted faces, tried shaking them awake, checked for pulses. Nothing. All dead.

  He picked up the oar and held it in his lap and looked outside the boat again. “Anyone out there?”

  He turned his head to listen for a response, a voice calling back, or splashing, anything, but there was nothing.

  Where were all the people on his raft?

  Where were Kevin and Marcus and Paolo?

  What if he was the only one left?

  Shy set the oar back down and carefully got to his feet. He sloshed around the dead bodies and tried to turn on the motor. Nothing. He saw that the entire control panel had been bashed in. Blood splattered across the dash. He turned and looked in the supply compartment underneath the control panel. A large package of fishing line and hooks. Water dye. A length of rope. A flare gun and six flares. A fiberglass patching kit and a tarp.

  No food or water, though.

  He left everything where it was and considered the salt water at the bottom of the boat. It was about knee-high, which was a problem because one of the jagged sides was splintered so it was only a few inches higher. He reached a hand down near the bottom of the side to feel around the biggest gash—water rushing in.

  He knew the boat surface had to be dry to use the fiberglass patch kit, so he pulled the soaking wet sweatshirt off the closest body, balled one of the arms and wedged it into the toothy hole. Then he started bailing water with his two hands cupped together.

  He spent over an hour doing this, tossing the ocean water over the side of the boat, handful after handful, the inside water level falling at a painfully slow pace, and he tried to keep himself from thinking too far ahead.

  Twice he stopped when he saw a bright light streaking across the dark sky. Looked like shooting stars, but they had to be flares. This gave him hope. Someone else had to be out there. He stopped bailing and fired a flare of his own in response and crouched there watching the sky.

  He waited several minutes hoping he’d see something else, but he didn’t, so he went back to work.

  When he grew too tired to lift his arms he sat back to catch his breath and rest his aching ribs. But just sitting there was even worse. It allowed too much time to think about how dire his situation was. Stranded in the middle of an ocean without food or water or any sense of direction—in a boat full of dead people.

  Panic rose in his throat and started to settle in his chest, making it hard to breathe. He pulled at his own hair for a few seconds, freaking out; then he closed his eyes and sucked in breath after breath until he calmed down and could resume bailing water.

  It wasn’t long before Shy grew exhausted.

  He put on the slicker to protect himself from the wind and sank down into the water in the boat, which was slightly warmer than the air. He shivered and stared at the bodies. Two older men, one with glasses and a cast on his right arm. A youngish blond woman who might have been pretty before her head injuries. Two older ladies, the one closest to him with a hideous gash across the side of her face.

  He thought about dumping them into the ocean so he didn’t have to look at them, and because eventually they’d rot and start to smell, but he thought it might be bad luck. And a part of him still believed he might be rescued by morning. If the bodies were still on the boat they could be given a proper burial.

  Outside the boat, the sky was slightly brighter. The sun would soon come up over the ocean. And before that it would come up over California.

  How was this possible?

  After everything he’d been through?

  He tried to imagine his family back home, safe inside the strong hospital walls. But he couldn’t picture their faces. Something was wrong with him. He’d swallowed too much salt water or lost oxygen to his brain. Because no matter how hard he concentrated, he couldn’t picture the faces of his own mom and sister and nephew. He could only picture Carmen.

  He looked back at the cruise shi
p, all but sunk now. Watched the last bit of the bow plunge beneath the ocean’s surface until all that was left was the flicker of a few bright flames coming off the tip. And then only flames. And then nothing.

  In its place, the first tiny sliver of morning sun.

  Shy held himself as he watched the slow rise of the bright blurry mass, unable to wrap his mind around it. His teeth chattering and every breath killing his chest and his mind stuck on what might’ve happened to Carmen.

  He reached a hand up to rub his tired eyes and found himself wiping away tears.

  Day 3

  28

  The Other Survivors

  Something jostled Shy out of his sleep.

  He sucked in a deep breath and looked around, imagining the cold hands of a dead person gripping his throat, but the bodies were all facedown in the boat the way he’d left them.

  It was light out.

  The water level was dramatically higher, too. Up to Shy’s chest when he sat up, which gave the impression of drowning. The boat was sinking.

  The boat shook, like he’d run into something. A piece of the sunken ship or a person, maybe.

  Shy crouched and scanned the glistening ocean, looking for signs of life now that it was daylight. He saw faraway ship pieces. A deflated raft. Empty life jackets.

  He knew he’d been sleeping a long time because the sun was directly overhead now and beating down hot. The air warm and dry. The ocean lay mostly flat under the brightest blue sky he’d ever seen, like a postcard.

  Then everything came rushing back.

  The waves and the ship fires and California and his family. He should be on the Lido Deck now, passing out towels to passengers. Miniature golf clubs. Sneaking peeks at every woman in a bikini, including moms. Waiting for Carmen to cruise by with her coffee so they could talk. But the Lido Deck no longer existed because the entire cruise ship was at the bottom of the Pacific. And he was stranded at sea all alone. No other survivors anywhere.