Sadie Walker Is Stranded

by Madeleine Roux

  Ever since The Outbreak there was a general fear of going out on the water. Ironic, considering Seattle got its legs from being a port. But that changed when half the city tried to flee the first time across the water. One ferry managed to depart without any undead onboard. It never came back, staying across the sound, anchored at Bainbridge Island. The scourge reached Bainbridge eventually, through other means. The other ferry never left port. Its skeletal shell still floated at the ferry terminal, empty except for a few brave squatters. Even now, months after the initial panic, boats washed up against town, their poor owners starved to emaciated science projects or missing altogether. And sometimes—very rarely—a skiff landed with a crew of undead playing pirates in the hold. There was the Golden Princess, too, still upended in the harbor, a stark reminder of what might happen to those foolish enough to take their chances on a boat.

  The terror those stories had instilled in me was not to be overlooked. How do you commit yourself to the waves knowing the terrible fate of so many others? A boat, the sea, the isolation and uncertainty—to me it meant only death.

  “It’s suicide,” I said again in a whisper. Not that it mattered. I had failed in my one simple task—protect Shane, give him a safe and healthy life. That wasn’t the kind of failure you brushed off, like losing a wager or a favorite scarf. Maybe slow and inevitable starvation or death by zombie sailor was exactly what I deserved.

  “Would you relax?” Andrea barked, dodging down an alley and then another. “I know somebody.”

  Of course she did. Uncle Arturo, Uncle Tiago, Uncle Whoever, every single one of them had salt in their blood and sand in their beards. They each owned a boat and lived and died by the whim of the waters.

  I stumbled to a stop. I had to blink a few times just to make sure I was seeing what I thought I was seeing. Just down the hill, running horizontally across the road Andrea and I were sprinting down, was an achingly familiar head of blond curls, and they were bouncing and Shane was screaming, because two strangers were frittering him away to some gosh-darn lucky couple. They must have been holed up somewhere nearby before delivering Shane and now they were making a run for it because of this new Outbreak. There wasn’t a lot of logic to it, the way I peeled off from Andrea and charged down the hill toward them, but in that instant logic ranked a distant second to desperation. Andrea spun, just out of reach to grab me and pull me back.

  “Sadie! Goddamn it, Sadie!” But she was running after me; I heard her heavy footfalls just inches behind.

  Shane must have seen me coming, because he started screaming harder, little mouth opening up like a sink drain to bellow out another round of terrified shrieks. I’d never in my life heard him make that sound. It’s always the small, shy ones, the ones you least expect, who can really belt it out. Improvising, I stooped to pick up a tire iron abandoned next to some poor soul’s crumpled body. They looked old and frail. They had been trampled by the crowd. That same crowd pushed against me, a tide rushing down to the riverfront, slowing down Shane’s kidnappers but hindering me too. His arms reached out to me, his body slung over a slender man’s shoulder like a sack of grain. There was a gap in the horde of people streaming down to the water and I had my chance. With Andrea pelting behind me, shouting at me to slow down and let her help, I broke into a sprint, catching up to the two kidnappers just as they reached the alley. Lungs burning, head pounding, I wound up over my left shoulder, still running as I took a golf swing with the tire iron. The bearded man carrying Shane glanced back at the same instant. Thank God for Andrea, who caught up in time to screech to a panting halt, throwing out her arms for Shane and scooping him up as I cracked the man’s skull. He went headfirst into the pavement.

  The bearded guy’s partner whirled, a heavyset woman with a pale, round face and caramel-colored hair.

  “Danny!” she screamed, watching her partner roll uselessly on the pavement, blood pooling beneath his head. “You bitch! I’ll kill you for that.” She pulled a switchblade, the sharp edge flashed, serrated and mean.

  Andrea, more streetwise and ballsy than yours truly, grabbed the tire iron out of my hand and shifted Shane into my arms. I took a giant step backward, sheltering him from the squat little goblin woman and her partner. The bearded man flopped onto his side, as far as he could make it with his skull cracked. Laughing softly, Andrea pulled out a twelve-inch blade from the belt at her waistband. Apparently Carl was good for something. She held up both the tire iron and the knife, showing them to the woman as if this was The Price Is Right and these were her fabulous prizes.

  “Start running,” Andrea muttered. “I’ll catch up.”

  But there was no need. The woman took one last stuttering step and then turned on her heel, leaving her friend to wallow on the cold, wet pavement. He shouted after her, wild, inarticulate, and Andrea laughed again, shrugging as she tucked the knife back into her waistband. She threw one glance over her shoulder to make sure there were no undead bearing down on us yet. “I should take your balls for what you did,” she muttered, spitting at his feet, “but I’ve got a boat to catch and with that head injury you’re zombie chow.”

  Even so, she couldn’t resist aiming a swift kick at his groin. He hardly seemed to feel it, stunned from the hard blow to his head.

  Andrea led us back out onto the street, where the crowd had transformed into a headless mob. Shane swung onto my shoulder, piggyback, silent and trembling as we trotted down toward the waterfront. There would be time to explain everything to him later, but getting the hell out of dodge was priority one. We were getting closer, the slope down to the waterfront steeper by the second. A scream rang out like a gunshot from down the street. If this was the sequel to The Outbreak, then we were flaunting convention and getting to the harrowing climax in act one. It wasn’t possible. It was too fast. If the undead were already to the harbor then escape, by any means, could be impossible. The Queen Anne barrier was not close by, which meant the undead were multiplying at an alarming speed.

  A fire engine and its whining sirens roared by, flattening a stop sign. Another scream and Andrea didn’t need to tell me to hurry it along anymore. We turned north and then crossed Alaskan Way. The salt tang of the harbor and the squawking of seagulls announced the proximity of the water. As if that weren’t enough to send my heart rate skyrocketing, out of the corner of my eye I spotted something hunched and ragged lumbering toward us.

  “Andrea!”

  “I see it.”

  Another creature appeared behind the first, his face collecting in an oozing pile around his jaw bones. Andrea broke into a run, brandishing Carl’s knife but not moving to use it. I followed, the garbage bag over my shoulder knocking against my spine, Shane clutching my neck hard enough to choke.

  I saw now that we were late to the party. Hundreds, maybe thousands of mismatched people converged on one tiny strip of land, like Ellis Island, if Ellis Island—at its peak—had been wreathed in flames. One woman ran by in a bathrobe and hiking boots, a tiny baby bouncing in her arms. Nobody was in charge. Here and there someone would bellow an order or try to conduct the flow of foot traffic, but the panic had set in. Months of carefully managed fears meant nothing now, not when a hoard of hungry flesh eaters had you surrounded.

  Then someone seemed to get the idea to head for the ferry and suddenly everyone was heading for the ferry. I’d seen that kind of behavior before, in September, when a crowd of strangers all at once came to a conclusion together and nothing, not common sense or a rifle could stop them. Andrea pushed against this current, leading me north up the sidewalk and away from the surging crowd. For a moment I questioned her sanity, noticing that going north also meant facing about three times as many undead stragglers. Empty fish-and-chips diners and seaside hotels broke out along our left like jagged teeth. We tore ourselves away from the main body of citizens and tumbled out onto an empty strip of pavement. It was easier to simply bat the undead aside with our heavy packs; stopping to actually decapitate them would take too long.
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  The thin masts of sailboats appeared, stabbing upward from the docks, limp sails fluttering on the boat decks like huge, white feathers. Gray morning gave way to silver as Andrea veered left, down a sloping cement embankment to a staircase and the docks themselves. The boards were slick. A cluster of people stood at the far end of the dock, their backs to us. Andrea sped up, clattering down the dock with her messenger bag bouncing and rattling. Close on our heels, dragging themselves down the embankment, came a handful of the undead, moaning as if to complain about our pesky ability to outrun them. That boat had better be ready to launch because, one way or another, Shane and I were getting on it. The choice between staying on the dock and shoving out onto the water was not much of a choice at all.

  “There better be room,” I muttered, mentally taking a head count of the people on the dock. There were eight, not including us, and the boat in question didn’t look big enough for that many passengers. Andrea grunted something under her breath. She elbowed to the front of the crowd, me close on her heels. Shane clasped his little arms around my neck more tightly, whimpering. A short, stocky man was piling up a stack of ration cards in his stubby hands. Bribes. Apparently Uncle Arturo was as enterprising as his drug-dealing niece. He glanced up from his counting and frowned.

  “Tio,” Andrea said, slipping into Portuguese. She nodded to her bag full of drugs. His small black eyes twinkled in response. He reached up and scratched his scalp and adjusted his newsboy cap. Incredible. He didn’t seem to notice or care that the zombies shambling down the dock were gaining ground. The old Portuguese sailor nodded and stuck his thumb over his shoulder.

  “Sadie and Shane,” Andrea said, pointing at me. “This is Uncle Arturo. Everything’s kosher.”

  Everything? That was one way to put it.

  Stuck in the uncomfortable emotional wasteland between relief and terror, I sighed and followed Andrea onto the boat. Shane squirmed, sharing my unease about being out on the water. The boat was in remarkable condition, the wood still gleaming, the navy and white paint fresh and bright.

  “Fifty-one-foot Formosa center cockpit Ketch,” Andrea announced, running her hand along the polished wood railing, admiring it like a piece of fine art. A Portuguese thing, I guessed. “Isn’t she beautiful?”

  She was, but it seemed odd to be discussing this as if we were going out for a pleasure cruise, especially when the shouting started. Andrea, Shane and I had displaced passengers who had already bribed Arturo for a ride. What he planned to do with ration cards on a boat, I couldn’t guess. It was the principle of the thing, I suppose. Arturo shoved the unlucky ones away, back toward the end of the dock. A pretty woman in bloody nurse’s scrubs burst into tears. This seemed to make Arturo change his mind and he grumbled and nodded toward the boat. The nurse climbed aboard, still sobbing, as the other “chosen ones” joined us.

  Arturo scrambled up the plank resting against the edge of the boat and then kicked it over the side, stranding four poor souls at the end of the dock, their mouths falling open as they quickly realized the extent of their predicament. The outboard motor roared to life. I turned away, lurching back and forth as Arturo ran up the sails and the boat rocked. Screams followed us out onto the water, screams that died down to resigned groans. I grabbed Shane’s ankles as he let go of my neck to cover his ears. He whimpered. A splash. Someone had jumped off the dock. They paddled toward us, gulping down seawater as they fell farther and farther behind. The water out in the bay had grown foggy, the color of dishwater.

  Someone tugged on my sweater sleeve. Andrea was beside me, her messenger bag now resting on the deck, wedged between her knees. Arturo was shouting in Portuguese, to us or himself, I couldn’t tell. Splashing … screaming … blood thundering in my ears as I tried to take in the panic and confusion. Back south, at the terminal, the ferry had drifted out into the bay, white and green and tiered, like an enormous rusted layer cake drifting into the fog. But this cake was on fire, pouring with smoke and going slower by the second. I couldn’t imagine what was worse—jumping into the deep, freezing bay to escape the fire or burning to death while the ferry began to sink.

  “Jesus Christ,” Andrea muttered, reaching for her floppy cap.

  The ferry stopped in the middle of the bay, distant screams accompanying the shadows that flickered down over the side as desperate passengers jumped.

  “Still wish you were on land?” Andrea asked.

  “Thanks,” I said. “We owe you one.”

  “Sure.”

  I looked at her, tired of looking at the ferry, at carnage. We had trusted each other the moment we met. It was at a bar years ago. We were both single, flirting with our thirties, both tipsy and trying to fend off the horny sharks circling the dance floor. Maybe I felt I could trust her because, in many ways, we’re very similar, even physically. Both of us are petite, with dark, straight hair. She keeps hers in a long, no-nonsense ponytail and I cut mine in a messy, banged Louise Brooks bob. We both have pale, almost aqua-colored eyes. Her face is more severe and angular, like a fox’s, with a pointed nose and mine is softer—more elfin, I suppose.

  “It’s not all bad,” Andrea said with a sly smile. I didn’t see how that could be true. She nodded discreetly to the space over my right shoulder. Behind us, two men stood together, their hands on the railing of the deck as they watched the ferry go down in the middle of the harbor. One was young, just a teenager, the other was in his mid-thirties. I rolled my eyes and glanced over my shoulder at Shane, silently warning her. Luckily, Shane seemed to be slightly less anxious now that we had left the dock without sinking. I squeezed his hand and let him down like a monkey from my shoulders.

  Andrea shrugged, staring stubbornly at her quarries. They were all hers. With Shane to worry about, I didn’t have the energy to think about making a love connection.

  “Please tell me you mean the grown-up,” I said to Andrea, hoping that would be the end of that.

  “Don’t be such a prude,” she said.

  As we set out into the harbor there were seven of us onboard—myself, Andrea, Shane, Uncle Arturo, the nurse with the round, pretty face, the teenage boy Andrea had pointed out and the tall man in his thirties. The air was crisp and clammy with the fog. I had always had a fear of drowning and it took most of my energy to forget that the shore was becoming more of a shaggy line than a crisp silhouette. I nuzzled my nose down into the oversized neck of my sweater and watched my fellow passengers mill around. Only Andrea and her uncle seemed to know how to conduct themselves casually on the boat.

  As Andrea and I watched, the tall man strode over to the main mast and introduced himself to Uncle Arturo as Moritz Kellerman. He pumped the old mariner’s hand with exuberant gratitude. Mr. Kellerman looked as if he’d just gotten off the boat at Ellis Island—not the one on fire behind us, but the actual historical one—dressed for a journey from another time. Of any of us, he seemed the most out of place, dressed in ponderously formal clothing, a brown tweed suit with a looped scarf and teal dress shirt. He wore loafers and carried a handkerchief where a pocket square would go. Stranger still, his hair was longish, caramel brown and swept behind his ears. I hadn’t seen a man with hair longer than an inch or two in months. For hygiene’s sake, most guys kept their hair very short, even buzzed. Bald-headed men with beards abounded. Kellerman’s brown patchy coat was pushed up to his elbows, showing curiously hairy forearms and artistic hands. He walked away from Arturo to take a seat on a stack of life jackets and tripped on a loose piece of rigging. He swore under his breath in German.

  Andrea followed my gaze. She chuckled. “Nice,” she said, POV rooted firmly in the gutter. “Very nice. I’d lick him on three sides.”

  “Not me,” I said. I was off men. Maybe permanently. Fuck you very much, Carl. “And keep your voice down,” I added, nodding toward little Shane, who didn’t need to know about Andrea’s sexual ethics, or lack thereof.

  Shane leaned against the railing, peering down into the waves. Almost automatically, I
pulled him back, a vision of him plummeting into the water below flashing in front of my eyes. He frowned in protest, the baby fat still clinging desperately to his cheeks settling down around his chin.

  “Stay back,” I told him gently. “Or hold my hand if you’re going near the rails, okay?”

  He nodded, took my hand and proceeded to sidle immediately up to the edge of the boat.

  “Looks like he’s got your number,” Andrea said smilingly.

  I gave his hand a pinch. “That true?”

  With a shrug, Shane looked away and put his free hand on the rail. I was used to the silent treatment with him, but it made me nervous. There was nowhere on this stupid canoe to take him and have a private sit-down. I would just have to keep a close eye on his subtle mood shifts, which generally swung between broody and broodier.

  Andrea elbowed me, apparently unconcerned by Shane’s willful silence. She nodded toward Moritz. Fantastic. I was stuck there with not one but two children. Under different, more relaxing circumstances I could see where the German could be considered handsome. He was lean and long-faced with thick eyebrows and a prominent, crooked nose. On another man that nose would be hideous, but he wore it well. And there was that lingering sense of the old world, almost as if he were a ghost or a gentleman. Ha. Those didn’t exist anymore. I don’t mean that in the bitchy, girly magazine male-trashing way. I mean there simply wasn’t room for chivalry anymore. Survival was everything and opening doors and pulling out chairs didn’t mean much when you were starving or dying of pneumonia.

  Mr. Kellerman glanced up at us his with bright, frank eyes. I looked at my toes, embarrassed. Andrea danced her fingertips at him like a true born-and-bred minx.

  After a while I couldn’t stand to do nothing. I went to find Arturo, sure that I could at least pull on a rope or something. Shane came along. He seemed to perk up a bit at the thought of meeting the sailor again or at least being offered a distraction. It wasn’t hard to guess why—Arturo did have a mythic sort of presence, weathered and lined, like a character out of a pirate story. Rigging, sails, that was about the extent of my seafaring knowledge. I’d paddled a canoe or two in my time, but that didn’t exactly count. If it wasn’t in Master and Commander I didn’t know about it. We drifted north, hitting a strong current, and sailed by Queen Anne—with its dense atmosphere of smoke—and passed the Olympic Sculpture Park. A red spidery sculpture watched us from the hill top, abandoned and absurd in the rising fog.