The Living

by Matt De La Peña

  45

  The Penthouse

  Shy and Carmen labored up the stairs, toward the penthouse on the twelfth floor. He’d spent the last two hours at the restaurant with everyone, doing nothing more than eating and resting and thinking, but it hadn’t seemed to give him a whole lot more strength. He was already out of breath and there were still seven flights to go. He made himself a promise: the second he got on the research ship he’d find himself a bed, or a cot, or even just a spot on the floor, and he’d let himself sleep for twelve straight hours.

  “So someone’s actually guarding the doors?” he asked Carmen.

  She nodded. “A few of the guys take shifts. But don’t get all nervous, they’re only passengers. And a few people who worked at the hotel.”

  Shy didn’t see what the big deal was. Especially if he and Addie were supposedly protected by their shot of vitamins. And someone had to make sure the sick people knew the plan, right? They were leaving in two hours. And how were they going to get down to the water? He wasn’t so sure he trusted anyone right now.

  Mostly, though, Shy just wanted an excuse to visit Rodney.

  As they passed the eighth floor, Carmen said: “So, what are the chances we’ll find our neighborhoods still standing?”

  “No idea,” Shy said. “I don’t wanna jinx it.”

  “Hearing them talk about it at lunch,” Carmen said, “I don’t know. It made me feel better and everything, but I got the feeling they were holding something back. I mean, you saw the footage in the theater. It was bad.”

  “I was thinking the exact same thing.” Shy started assisting his tired legs by using the handrail. “Wanna hear something else?” he asked. “That guy at lunch who said I saved him, he was the dude who was following me all over the ship.”

  “Stop it,” Carmen said. “Really?”

  “I promise. Me and Kev were doing our sweep, and I heard someone calling for help. I didn’t even think about it at the time.”

  “He seemed really appreciative about you helping him out.”

  Shy shrugged. “He still creeps me out. I don’t trust the guy.”

  As they passed the tenth floor, Shy switched subjects. “So, what’d you and Addie talk about?”

  “I just gave her a little nutritional advice,” Carmen said.

  “I’m being serious,” Shy said.

  “Me too. That girl’s too skinny. She needs protein.”

  Shy shook his head. “So, you were checking her out?”

  Carmen grinned. “I peeped her out a little. So what?” She climbed a few more steps and said: “Don’t start having some big deserted-island fantasy, okay? We just talked. She told me how you blasted a shark with an oar. And how some injured guy threw himself overboard when you two were sleeping.”

  Shy felt the ring in his pocket as they climbed the final flight of stairs. He decided he needed to tell Carmen about Addie’s dad. The picture Addie had found in his room. How he was partners with the guy Shy saw jump off the ship on his first voyage and how there was something seriously sketchy happening on the island.

  But just then they reached the top of the stairs and peeked around the corner. Two men were sitting on metal folding chairs outside the double doors of the penthouse. “What now?” he whispered to Carmen.

  “Best way to deal with shit like this,” she said, “is to act like you know what you’re doing.” She popped out from behind the wall and started walking directly toward the men.

  Shy followed.

  Both men stood up at the same time. The heavier, balding one moved in front of the door. The other guy, who was rocking a military flattop, held his hands up and said: “Sorry guys, nobody’s allowed in there right now. Doctor’s orders.”

  “Christian’s the one who sent us,” Shy said.

  Carmen slowed and put her hand on the guy’s elbow. “We’re supposed to go in there and run them through the launch details.”

  “Sorry,” the flattop guy said. “Nobody’s allowed inside. Not even us.”

  “It’s for our own protection,” the heavier guy by the doors added. “Plus Larry was just up here talking to them. Christian must have made a mistake.”

  Shy and Carmen glanced at each other. There was no way Shy was gonna climb all those stairs without seeing Rodney. “Okay,” he said, turning back to the two men. “I guess it was a misunderstanding, then. We’ll just go back downstairs and tell Christian—”

  Shy suddenly shoved his way past both men and pushed through the doors.

  “Hey!” they shouted from behind him.

  Shy spun around, saw that one of the men had fallen to the floor. Carmen was hurrying past them, too, and they both ran through the hall, into the main living area, where an awful smell hit Shy.

  And then he saw.

  Fifteen or twenty people were lying on their backs on temporary cots. Their arms and legs tied down. Some of them looked up when they heard Shy and Carmen come into the room. Others didn’t move.

  Carmen covered her mouth with her hand.

  The two men who had been guarding the door hurried into the room after them, shouting: “You can’t be in here! We’ll all get sick!”

  But then they went quiet, too, and stared at the strapped-down bodies.

  Shy pulled Carmen by the wrist and they moved from one body to the next, looking for Rodney. The patients were in various conditions. Some seemed alert and shouted at Shy and Carmen. Others had vomit all over their shirts and they moaned and twisted in pain. Others clawed frantically at their own thighs.

  A few weren’t moving at all.

  “No,” Shy started mumbling as he and Carmen continued through the rows of patients. “No, please.”

  The men were after them again, shouting: “We have to get out of here before they come back!”

  “There!” Carmen shouted. She was pointing to a cot in the far corner, where Rodney was lying, and they both rushed toward him.

  Rodney’s face was turned toward the wall.

  His eyes seemed open, but when Shy shook him he didn’t respond. Carmen turned Rodney’s head toward them, and Shy’s entire body went cold. The whites of his eyes were entirely red and fixed on nothing.

  Carmen continued shaking Rodney and calling out his name, until Shy grabbed her by the wrists and said: “Let’s go.”

  As the men dragged Carmen and Shy back through the room, Shy stared at each body they passed. Everyone in the penthouse was infected with Romero Disease. And some, like Rodney, were already dead.

  And they’d been left there to rot.

  46

  Two Paths Along the Cliffs

  After the two men led Shy and Carmen out of the penthouse, they hurried down the stairs together in shock. “How’d it get way out here?” Carmen said. “And why has nobody told us?”

  “I need to get the duffel bag,” Shy said. “And find Christian. The shot we got has to have something to do with the disease. Like a vaccine.”

  “There is no vaccine.”

  “Then why haven’t you gotten sick?” Shy said. She glanced at him as they continued down the stairs, but she didn’t say anything. Nothing made sense. A few minutes ago they were excited to be going home. Now there were people on the island with Romero Disease. And Rodney was gone. And they’d just left him there.

  “The bag had pills, too,” Shy said. “Maybe it’s the kind of medicine they gave my nephew.”

  “What’s happening!” Carmen shouted. “Did you feel how cold Rodney’s arm was? Did you see his eyes?”

  Shy stopped her as they got to the bottom of the stairs. “I know where Shoeshine hid the duffel. We have to get the meds on the ship or the rest of the patients will die before we get home. I’ll get Shoe. He has to know more than what he told me.”

  “I’ll find Christian,” Carmen said. “He’s about to explain why everyone’s been lying to us. I’ll get Marcus, too.”

  Shy looked out across the lobby, where a few passengers were lounging on the couches, talking, laughing.
They had no idea that people just a few floors above them were dying. “I’ll meet you back here before six, okay? So we can line up for the ship together.”

  Carmen nodded. “It doesn’t make any sense, Shy. Why would they lie to us?”

  All he could do was shake his head.

  Before leaving the hotel, Shy hurried to Addie’s room and knocked on the door. Her dad’s company had to know about the disease. How else would there be a bagful of the vaccine and medicine? And Shy was sure that was what he’d found on the motorboat. He remembered Addie saying LasoTech made hospital equipment. But if they had scientists who worked in a lab, it only made sense that they’d make drugs, too. Maybe they’d been working on a way to protect people from Romero Disease.

  He knocked again and called out: “Addie, open the door! It’s Shy!”

  When there was still no answer he hurried back through the lobby, pushed open the doors and went outside. He made his way back to the top of the stairs, where he saw the helicopter slowly lifting off the ship. He watched it lean to the side and start moving away from the island; he wondered who was in there and why they’d be leaving ahead of the ship.

  Shy skipped down a few stairs and sifted through the bushes where Shoeshine had hidden the duffel bag, but it wasn’t there. Someone had taken it. Maybe Shoeshine.

  He stood up again and watched the flight of the helicopter, trying to figure out what was happening. He kept picturing Rodney’s lifeless face. His blood-red eyes. And everyone else who was strapped down to cots in the penthouse. The minute he’d found those dead scientists in the ocean he’d known something bad was happening here. But he never would’ve guessed it involved Romero Disease.

  Shy took the trail beyond the gazebo, which led him higher up the cliff, through dense trees and bushes, around large boulders and exposed roots. He had no idea where he was going, he just knew he needed to find Shoeshine. And the last time he’d seen the guy he’d been headed in this direction.

  He came upon a few of the researchers, who were spraying the bushes and trees with some kind of squirt bottle. They didn’t even look up, so Shy scooted right past them. When the path broke off into a Y, he chose the route that led farther up the hill. His lungs burned as he climbed. His legs felt like Jell-O. But he had to make sure the duffel bag got on the ship. And he had to talk to Shoeshine.

  Shy glanced up as he ran. The sun was already dropping from the sky. He only had about an hour and a half before he had to get back to the hotel. He tried to pick up his speed.

  The land leveled out and the path began to narrow. Shy kept running, ducking under tree limbs, leaping over puddles. The faster he ran, though, the more his mind flooded with questions. How had the disease gotten all the way out to the island? Was someone on the cruise ship sick? One of the hotel workers? And where were the two scientists going on that motorboat with the duffel bag? And who shot them?

  Shy didn’t notice that the path came to an abrupt end until the last second. He tried to stop, but his momentum made him slide through the dirt. At the very edge of the cliff he grabbed a thick tree branch to keep himself from falling.

  He looked down, his heart climbing into his throat as he watched the rocks he’d just kicked tumble fifty, sixty feet, into the ocean. He’d survived giant waves, a sinking cruise ship, circling sharks, only to almost fall off a cliff. He squatted down to catch his breath.

  There was a large clearing to the right. A cement platform that looked like a helicopter launchpad. To the left he saw what had to be the flooded lab sticking up out of the ocean. A tall security fence wrapped all the way around it.

  No sign of Shoeshine.

  Shy doubled back to the Y in the path and was starting down the other route when he heard someone calling his name. He stopped and turned around. It was Bill, limping up out of the brush, using a stick as a cane. “Shy! I’ve been looking all over for you!”

  “Me?” Shy answered. “Why?” He looked around to see if anyone else was there. Even after the nice things the guy had said about him during lunch, Shy still didn’t trust him.

  “I wanted to thank you personally,” Bill said. He was wearing a generic baseball cap now and a green backpack. He looked kind of scratched-up from walking through the brush. “I meant what I said back at the restaurant. I wouldn’t be here if you and your friend hadn’t pulled me out from under that chandelier.”

  “Anyone would’ve done it,” Shy said cautiously. He needed to shake this guy and continue looking for Shoeshine.

  “But it wasn’t anyone. It was you.” Bill pulled off his cap, ran his fingers through his hair and put it back on. “What’s the matter, Shy? You seem upset. Everyone else back at the hotel is so excited to be going home.”

  “That’s ’cause they haven’t been up to the penthouse,” Shy fired back. He was sick of all the secrecy. It was time for people to start being straight with each other. “There are people dying up there, man. And nobody’s telling us shit.”

  “You’re right,” Bill said, balancing on his stick. He adjusted his cap again. “I don’t think they want to alarm anyone. We’ve been through enough already, haven’t we?”

  “And what about LasoTech?” Shy continued. The questions were just flowing out of him now. “You work for them, right? What do you guys do?”

  “We produce pharmaceuticals,” the man answered. “Well, I don’t personally. I’m only a member of the security team.”

  Shy knew it. There had never been any hospital equipment. He wondered if Addie had straight-up lied to him, or if she really didn’t know. “And what do you know about a brown and blue duffel bag with vaccinations?” Shy found himself shouting now. He could feel the heat rising in his face as he pointed out toward the ocean. “And how about two scientists who got shot on a motorboat out there?”

  Bill nodded at him for a few seconds; then he glanced at his watch. “Listen, there’s still a little over an hour before we need to be on the beach. Let me show you something, Shy. It won’t take long, I promise.”

  Shy scoffed at the guy. “I’m not going anywhere with you,” he said. “All I’m saying is I know your company is shady as shit. And sooner or later, everyone’s gonna find out.” He turned and started back down the path, pissed off but scared now, too. Because maybe he’d said too much.

  “It involves the loss of your grandmother!” Bill called after him.

  Shy stopped in his tracks and spun around. “What are you talking about?”

  “Your grandmother,” Bill said. “Or more specifically, the disease that killed her.”

  Shy stared at the guy, breathing hard, trying to make himself think straight.

  “I’m only telling you this because of what you did for me on the ship.” Bill waved with his stick for Shy to follow him. “Trust me, you’ll want to hear what I have to say.”

  The man turned and started limping up the path.

  47

  The Roles We Play

  Shy followed Bill up the hill, to a lookout point just off the path where he pointed to an even better angle of the submerged lab. “You see that building down there?”

  Shy nodded. “I already know, it’s your company’s lab.”

  “It was the lab,” Bill said. “Before the ocean surge destroyed it. Do you know what took place inside those walls?”

  Shy shrugged. He’d come to hear about his grandma, not to listen to some long, drawn-out story.

  “The most important drug research and development in the country,” Bill continued. “But it turns out that’s not all LasoTech developed. The man you saw jump off the ship—”

  “David Williamson,” Shy said.

  “Yes, Mr. Williamson. He left a letter in a cave that’s a few hundred feet away from the lab. We used the cave as a second dock for our boats. The scientists also used it as a storage facility. The day my lifeboat landed here, I learned that a scientist had discovered this letter. I then read the letter with my own eyes. It was long—seven typed pages—and it revealed some very distu
rbing information.”

  Shy vaguely remembered the comb-over man mentioning a letter before he jumped. “So what does all this have to do with my grandma?”

  “Everything,” Bill answered. “This letter explained exactly how Romero Disease originated. I believe Mr. Williamson had what people call a crisis of conscience. Kind of ironic that the information I was seeking this whole time was printed on lined pages, isn’t it?” The man limped a few steps toward a small boulder on his left. “God, this leg is killing me.”

  Shy watched him sit down and take off his backpack, set it between his feet.

  Bill looked up, said: “Mr. Williamson had been part of the company from the beginning. He developed many original medications that helped a lot of people and made the company a lot of money. But according to his letter, he wasn’t satisfied. He wanted to do something no scientist had ever done before. That’s when he and Mr. Miller came up with a novel idea. Instead of always reacting to the environment, they wanted to create the environment. So they worked backward.”

  “I don’t get it,” Shy said.

  “Instead of developing a drug to treat a disease, they set out to develop a disease that would need a drug. And that’s exactly what they did.”

  When it hit Shy what the guy was saying, his whole body went numb. “They created Romero Disease in a fucking lab?”

  “According to the letter we read,” the man said, nodding. “Trust me, we were all as blindsided by this information as you are.”

  Shy could feel his anger rising as he stared at the man. “So how’d people get infected?”

  “That’s where Mr. Miller came in—your friend’s father. According to the letter, Mr. Miller opened a free clinic in Mexico—under a different name, of course. For two years they treated poor border communities for everything from the common cold to breast cancer. But they also secretly infected the first few patients with their deadly disease.”

  Shy stared at the man, horrified.

  “They knew it would eventually make its way across the border, into America. And they knew the fear it caused would drive up demand for treatment. When reports first started surfacing, they sat on it for a while, knowing it wouldn’t look right if they had a treatment too soon. A few weeks ago their medicine that treats the disease was approved by the FDA. Their plan was to submit their vaccine by the end of the year. But the earthquakes changed all that, of course. We’ve received word that the disease is ravaging the entire West Coast now. It was determined that the best course of action was for the company to distance themselves from the situation completely.”