Sadie Walker Is Stranded

by Madeleine Roux

  Noah’s books had spent the storm in the cockpit and, while dampened, remained readable. Most importantly, Arturo’s huge supply of matches for his cigarettes had weathered the storm, untouched. He kept them in a plastic zip bag. That decision could very well end up saving our lives.

  There wasn’t much to scavenge, so we boosted each other up onto the rocks and into the tree cover. Noah and Andrea took the tie-up ropes and looped them around the sturdiest pines. Shane scampered onto my back, hooking his arms around my neck and his heels alongside my ribs. I almost felt a pang of regret as we put the boat to our backs and headed into the forest. Almost.

  We stayed near to the edge of the rock cliff, with the water on our right. From the compass Noah had taken, it showed us heading south, southwest. It was hard going. The trees were thick, wild and the terrain shifted constantly with the rocky ledge swerving in and out. Stumbling was inevitable. A few times I heard Shane grunt in protest as a low-hanging branch swiped at him. Guessing where the next good place to land a foot was touch and go. But the proximity to the water helped us find a beach with relative ease, and after half an hour of constant walking we followed the slope of the ledge down to a clearing and then a shallow beach.

  “Not bad,” I said, trying to remain hopeful. “We should mark high and low tide, just to make sure we set camp far enough up the hill.”

  “Right,” Andrea said, momentarily surprised by my suggestion. I didn’t like the idea that she wanted to be the only one rubbing two brain cells together. She adjusted her sweater and walked back up the hill, finding a pair of long, pointed sticks. Shane had given her the hat back and it sat crooked on her head. She broke off the extra twigs and marched down to us, then hammered one of the branches into the pebbly sand with the handle of Carl’s knife.

  “We still have one fishing rod,” I said. We stood in a half-circle, our backs to the water. “And enough food survived to last us a few days. We’ve got the sail covers, and those could insulate a lean-to if we can set one up.”

  “We’ll need a fire,” Moritz added, “and drinking water, and we’ll have to take turns keeping watch at night.”

  “Enough for a start,” Noah put in.

  It was bolstering to know that once we finally got back onto land, our collective IQ rose by about two hundred points. Survival seemed manageable at this point, even probable. Beyond that, who could say? I glanced back northeast, in the direction of the cove and Arturo’s boat. I doubted if she would ever sail again and our optimistic plan to wait out the panic in Seattle and return felt like a cute but flimsy notion. Behind us, other islands dotted the distance. The possibility finally dawned that they could be inhabited, and not just by animals or the undead.

  “Why don’t you and Shane go with Cassandra to gather firewood?” Andrea suggested. I whirled around, finding that she was talking to me. Firewood collector? Come on. I thought I had earned something better for my clever high tide suggestion.

  “I’ll try to get some kindling going,” she added, “and Moritz and Noah can start on the lean-to.”

  I looked at Moritz, who seemed utterly confounded by the idea of building anything so complex. His suit was now beyond bedraggled, and he looked more like a homeless man than a hoity-toity art critic and collector. He chewed down on his lower lip, his big, earnest blue eyes filled with sudden regret. I stifled a scoff. Yeah, I thought, let him build the lean-to, he’s a regular Bear Grylls.

  Andrea caught on to my private sneering and tossed me a stainless-steel glare. I grinned and headed off at a clip for the woods with Shane and Cassandra. Team spirit, I reminded myself, go—fight—win.

  It wasn’t as bad as I expected. Shane didn’t bother to help gather wood, instead picking up whatever interesting tidbits he found on the ground. Traveling the perimeter of the beach gave me a chance to orient and to look for any bits of string or washed up detritus that could help us.

  “Did you get banged up in the storm?” I asked Cassandra. We found a small deposit of dry-ish driftwood on the northeast side of the beach.

  She looked back at me, one arm loaded down with wood. With her wild red curls in her face and her bloody scrubs it was difficult to judge whether or not she had actually sustained any wounds in the wreck.

  “A bruise or two,” she murmured in response. “I’ll live. You?”

  “Same.” I put down my growing stack of wood and wiped at my forehead. Even in the brisk weather I was breaking a sweat. “Sorry we haven’t … We haven’t talked much yet.”

  “You have your boy to look after,” Cassandra replied calmly.

  “Well … yeah, my nephew.” I cringed. I really had to stop making the distinction.

  “No difference,” she said. “Little boys need lots of looking after.”

  “Yeah.” I looked at Shane and felt something weird, a swelly feeling, like my heart was trying to beat too fast or there was too much blood in it. I had gotten us this far and that was something, right? Sure, I wasn’t Supermom and I’d taken a few stupid risks and nearly gotten myself pulled down into oblivion, but I wasn’t exactly going for style points. Shane turned at the waist, a sandy shell in his palm. He flicked the grains off, holding it up close to examine it.

  “You have kids?” I asked casually.

  “Little boys need lots of looking after…”

  “Yeah, I heard that bit.”

  Cassandra ducked down more quickly, the sticks in her arms jabbing her in the arm and throat. “Lots of looking after,” she repeated, her gaze falling on Shane. “Lots of looking after.”

  SEVEN

  Water would be a problem. Water was always a problem.

  Honestly? It doesn’t matter how many Man vs. Wild marathons you’ve embarked upon or how many times you were forced to watch The Voyage of the Mimi, and it certainly doesn’t matter how often you tell yourself, “Sure, I could do that! I know how to build a fire and whittle a weapon with a knife the size of a dill pickle. And hell, I could spear a fish and roast it over my own hard-won flames!”

  Because when it counts, when that moment comes you’ll forget everything. Wherever he was, I was letting my dad down. This was nothing new to me. I had camped, fished, roughed it in some pretty intimidating forests with my father, but that didn’t mean I could magically make drinking water appear. He and I would either wind up near fresh-water lakes and use a filter, or bring bottled water of our own. Arturo either hadn’t owned a distiller or it had gotten lost in the wreck because now we had no way to get drinkable water of our own.

  And unfortunately, Mother Nature, in her infinite wisdom, had not seen to it that we landed a stone’s throw away from a freshwater spring. That first night, with a fire actually going (that one wasn’t so bad with matches and my camping experience) and a lean-to fifty percent finished, I glared out at the endless sea surrounding us and scowled, really scowled.

  “Water, water everywhere and not a drop to drink,” Andrea muttered.

  “Thanks for the reminder.” I chewed through a piece of fish the size and texture of belt leather. I spat out a speck of grit that had stuck to the jerky. “This salty fish sure does go down smooth.”

  We had pooled the food, cutting off a square of sail tarp to make a waterproof satchel. Pro tip: Eating an entire meal of dried meat is a speedy way to turn your mouth into the Sahara. With darkness settling around us, there was no time to solve the water conundrum, but I would bet good money that every single one of us around that fire was trying to figure out a way how. Maybe dehydration was shrinking our brains, turning them to sawdust. If so, the zombies might actually leave us alone. Then I remembered something actually useful, something my resourceful father had taught me how to dew. Do.

  “Dew,” I whispered, awestruck at the idea. “We can set out some leaves to collect dew,” I said, louder. “And in the morning we can walk around in the grass and wring out our pants.”

  “That will not yield abundance,” Moritz said, reasonably. “But it’s a start.”

  Eat your h
eart out, Les Stroud.

  We picked straws for taking the watch. Selfishly, I’ll admit, when it came my turn I was relieved to draw the longest one. Moritz had drawn the shortest straw (or blade of grass in this case). He now had the dubious honor of taking the last watch, but he offered to stay up and keep me company for a while. He wasn’t sleepy and neither was I. In fact, being on land again had given me a buzz.

  “Doing all right?” Moritz asked. We had moved to the edge of the clearing. Around the outer limits of the camp, Noah and I had rigged up a primitive twine trip wire connected to a pair of sardine cans. If we had unwanted visitors, be they bear or the undead, we would know. (That was Noah’s idea so unfortunately I can’t take credit.)

  Meanwhile, Shane slept in the shelter of the lean-to, exhausted by a long day of collecting shells and asking me what animals lived in each one.

  “Peachy,” I replied. “I can’t tell you how glad I am to be off that damn boat.”

  “Agreed. But what will we become here?” he asked. “We can’t stay forever.”

  “Give it a chance, Moritz. It hasn’t even been twenty-four hours yet. Sure, it’s not the Edgewater, but you could give it some time. Maybe it’ll grow on you.”

  I set down Carl’s knife on the ground between my knees. That was the one weapon given to me for the watch. A few feet away, the gas canister and a matchbook waited, just in case things got seriously hairy. I had brought The Maltese Falcon, too, but the firelight didn’t reach and I would need a flashlight.

  Moritz and Noah had gotten enough of a shelter up to keep the tarp secured over a carpet of pine branches with blankets on top. Andrea stoked the fire, giving it one last prod before the job of keeping it up fell to me. That was part of taking the watch too. Under the sail cover, Noah and Cassandra slept at opposite ends of the shelter.

  Shane had trouble falling asleep. I wondered if maybe so many days on a boat made it difficult for him to doze off without the motion of the waves. He came with me to the watch, lying on his side on a blanket. I combed through his hair with my fingers, something that usually helped him get to sleep, while Moritz—at my prodding—regaled us with stories about his treasure hunts for paintings, and more specifically, his time in Colorado with Allison and her pals.

  “Liberty Village,” he began, fussing idly with the frayed end of his teal scarf, “well, it reminded me of those American forts in old western films. Very … pointy. Many gates and walls, sort of … blast it, what’s the word…”

  “Frontier?” I asked, the first word that popped to mind.

  “Yes! Exactly that. Frontier.”

  “Did you see cowboys there?” Shane asked. I laughed and gently pinched his ear.

  “Somebody is supposed to be getting to sleep.”

  “I did not see any cowboys, no,” Moritz replied gently. “Although they did have many guns. Just getting inside was quite an ordeal. One feels like a criminal, all of the gates and searches … But the town still stands, so such precautions must be working.”

  Under my hand, Shane nodded.

  “They had several paintings of interest, though some were not of professional quality. Some they used in the school and others they kept safe in a vault…”

  “They have a school?” Shane asked, mystified.

  “Yes, a large one. I’m afraid it’s all very boring and normal there. Children must go to school and do their chores and help their brothers and sisters with homework.”

  I smiled, knowing Moritz was teasing Shane. It worked.

  “Hmph,” Shane mumbled. “Boring doesn’t sound so bad.”

  “Well,” Moritz said, sighing, “the children there don’t like their chores and sometimes they don’t want to go to school at all. You might appreciate it, but they still want to fake ill and skip class and play football all day.”

  “Shane doesn’t like football,” I put in gently.

  “Sure I do! I’ve just never gotten to play it right.”

  And by right, he meant with other kids.

  “It is scary there, too, sometimes.” Moritz frowned, a crease forming in his brow. “Their parents go off to hunt or to recover supplies from other towns and they have to stay with a neighbor or in the community building. Not everything is school and football.”

  Even I had to admit that what he was describing sounded heavenly by comparison.

  “Anyway,” he said, hurrying on, “I met Allison and Collin at the gates. They gave me a tour of the town, showed me the new buildings they were constructing and the new fences they were making for fields and gardens. I had supper in their home with a lovely fellow called Ned. He has boys around your age.”

  “Do they go to school?” Shane asked.

  “Almost every day, yes. They took me to the schoolhouse. It’s not very big, but they have teachers for different subjects, and they do what they can with limited resources.” He lowered his voice and listened, as I did, to the quiet wheeze emerging in Shane’s breathing. Soon, he would be asleep.

  “They had the Cassatt in the vault. She was beautiful; even damaged she was … radiant. You wouldn’t believe the treasures in that room. I could have stayed for days just pouring over them, looking for masterpieces. But the Cassatt was the focus and my reason for being there.” This time when he paused, Shane was snoring quietly.

  “I think he’s out,” I murmured, still combing his curls.

  “I apologize. I think my story might have upset him.”

  “It’s not your fault. Some people have it better, he knows that.”

  The fire crackled behind us, the light seeping to the fringes of the forest.

  “Noah leant me some books,” I whispered, feeling charitable now that we were even more of a tribe. “You should give them a read. Helps pass the time.”

  “That would be lovely, yes.” Moritz smiled, leaning back and propping his hands on his knees. He was careful to keep his voice down for Shane’s sake. “I had quite a collection of books. Leaving them behind in Seattle was … unfortunate. Some were antiques. One,” he laughed, fondly, “was a gift from your Allison upon leaving.”

  “Really?” I perked up. “What did she give you?”

  He smirked, a lock of greasy hair falling in front of his eyes as he murmured, “Twilight.”

  “What?” Yeah, that earned an incredulous guffaw. “Talk about getting gipped…”

  “Not so,” Moritz replied. “She asked me to take it as a personal favor, citing an adversity to burning books. Collin accused her of snobbery. I was more than happy to take it off her hands. In doing so, I think I spared them a bit of domestic tension, or perhaps I’m attributing too much to my small gesture.” He glanced over his shoulder at the shelter. “Perhaps young Noah would have enjoyed it.”

  “Somehow I doubt that.”

  “A romantic distraction might suit him … Might suit all of us.”

  “Have you actually read that thing?” I asked, chuckling.

  “No,” Moritz answered. “The journey to Seattle left little time for relaxation.”

  “Let’s just say I don’t generally approve of book-burning either, but in this case it might be justified…”

  He frowned, shaking his head lightly. “All books are to be treasured now, regardless of … well, regardless, yes? I have to side with Collin in this instance.”

  “Says the art critic.”

  “Says the snob.”

  I laughed, remembering to keep my voice down at the last second. “Pot calling the kettle, etcetera.”

  Moritz shrugged. “Perhaps.”

  He stood, creeping to the fire to add another branch to the flames. My eyes swept the edge of the woods, looking for spare wood in case we ran out in the night. I couldn’t help but remember earlier that afternoon—while we gathered firewood, Cassandra had acted strangely. At first she had insisted on repeating her little mantra about boys needing looking after, but then a switch got thrown and she wanted to chat my ear off. She blathered on and on, opening up to me as if we’d been f
riends for years catching up over a cappuccino and scones. And I was right—she was a mother. She had lost a son in The Outbreak. It had to be rough to see Shane, to be reminded constantly of the child she could no longer hug and kiss.

  Moritz sat back down, wincing when a twig cracked under his foot and Shane stirred.

  “You have kids?” I asked Moritz. It just slipped out. He didn’t skip a beat.

  “No,” he replied, “and no wife. I kept myself busy and traveled. I traveled often. It was a solitary life, but peaceful. I think I was quite happy, comfortable, but perhaps I am remembering it wrong—rose-colored glasses and all that. Collecting garbage seems glamorous by today’s standards.” He paused, and then looked over at me. The firelight danced amber in his eyes. “What makes you ask?”

  “Cassandra. She had kids. She told me all about them,” I said. It was getting colder. I looked over my shoulder at the fire longingly. “Did you ever … I don’t know, want a family?” Some of his snooping ways were rubbing off on me. He frowned.

  “I have a family. Brothers, a mother and father … And no, I never felt compelled to start one my own. And that’s a good thing, too, wouldn’t you say? I cannot imagine looking after children, not now. God. Especially not now.” He blanched, quickly adding, “I didn’t mean to … Not that Shane is…”

  “He’s my nephew, Moritz, but I’m all he’s got. So he’s mine. Not even technically. He’s just mine.”

  “And that makes him very lucky.”

  I frowned, looking down at the blond curls slipping through my fingers. “I don’t know about that. We’ll see.”

  A quiet rustling in the trees at the edge of the beach followed my response. Moritz held up his hand, calling for silence. The fire snapped, sparked and then the leaves shook again. I felt a cold slithering crawl up my spine. I picked up the knife, shifting away from Shane. It was a long blade, but it felt totally inadequate given what might be coming through the trees. I actually held my breath and hoped for a zombie. The undead were slow, clumsy, I might be able to handle one or two, but if a fucking huge bear charged out of the darkness we would be torn to pieces.