“You make me ill,” I whispered. Before his eyes could get any bigger with confusion I jabbed, hard, right in his left pectoral. He hardly seemed to feel it, but his eyes shifted to where I’d poked him.
“Why do you think I left, Sadie?” It was the too-soft, too-calm voice of a man who knows he’s been busted.
“I don’t care.” Blaming him, not just for the way I felt right then, but for everything, seemed perfectly logical. “How many chicks did you knock up, then? I mean, that’s what you all do, right? That’s your thing.”
The blood drained from his face, from his chest, leaving him ghostly pale.
“I didn’t … Nobody. Look, there are a lot of misconceptions—”
“Fascinating. You’ll have to tell me about it sometime, like when I’m done vomiting on myself.”
“You’re not being fair, Sadie. I never … Would you just listen? Christ, I’m trying to explain—isn’t that what you want?”
“It’s all of you, right? You’re all Rabbits, aren’t you?”
Shifting from foot to foot, he wet his lips and glanced around. Ha. Nervous to out his pals. Fucking unbelievable. I turned for the cabin again, eager to be out of his sight, to have an epic cry and let the emotions explode before I actually thought of what to do. I really should have burned the eyeballs out of his head for lying, for somehow managing not to tell me about his membership in a fanatical, disgusting cult. They had destroyed the city with their bullshit antics, divided an already divided population, and set in motion the events that nearly took Shane from me. As far as I was concerned, his current status with the group meant nothing. Irrational? Maybe, but you would have to have been in the city, experienced the rising paranoia and discontent, to know what we felt. And Whelan had been part of it.
“They had guns.”
“How nice for them.”
Why was I even listening? He could concoct whatever story he wanted now and I would have had no way to prove him right or wrong.
“I met the others there, inside. None of us wanted to stay. It’s the truth, Sadie. We thought it was crazy. Guns and food only go so far. It was a nuthouse. We left.”
“Right, but not before getting inked.”
Whelan’s sharp, bitter laughter stopped me just before the cabin door.
“I can’t exactly get it taken off,” he said wryly. “I would if I could. It’s not something I’m proud of.”
No more. The only place I wanted to be was somewhere he wasn’t. He didn’t try to stop me again.
“Don’t do this. You’re making a mistake, Sadie.”
“I already have.”
I didn’t turn to look back at him, not when I knew I’d see those hideous tattoos on him. He had lied to us. They had all lied. Now we weren’t just stranded on an island riddled with the undead and harboring some sort of psychotic murderer, but our fellow survivors were Rabbits. Maybe they had come here trying to establish another colony, their own little paradise they could flood with children they couldn’t control or feed or care for. So what if they had left the Citadel? That didn’t mean they had changed.
And I had just slept with one.
I was back outside, around the cabin and vomiting against the side of it in about ten seconds flat.
Andrea found me outside in the midst of rinsing my mouth out with seawater. Not the smartest move, but I wasn’t going to waste our drinking water on what I planned to spit out anyway. She wore an uneasy frown that told me just about everything I needed to know. Her mouth was broadcasting loud and clear.
“No,” she said, shaking her head. “Don’t make a sad, make a happy!”
“You knew,” I said. Nate. Of course she would know. “Does he have them too?”
“Just one,” Andrea replied.
“Oh, well, then that makes it all better.”
She sighed, fussing with the rat’s nest on her head. Her floppy hat had been left behind in the cabin. “I should have said something. It just … didn’t seem like a big deal.”
“It is, Andrea. It is to me.”
“But you still like him, right? I mean, before you knew … It’s not like it magically changes his personality.”
“I don’t know what the fuck is going on around here, but I’m thinking I should just take my chances and swim to get away from it.” Of course that would involve Shane swimming too. Maybe he could hitch a ride on my back. I could steal the canoe …
Lightbulb! Torch … whatever. I could steal the canoe. I had flubbed it the first time, but now my feet were a bit better and I knew my way around the camp. Nobody would look twice at me wandering around at night. No … it was crazy. I had no idea how far the next island might be. We could see several in the distance, but you couldn’t trust your eyes with that sort of thing. They might be a mile or two away, they might be much, much farther.
“I know that look,” Andrea muttered. “What are you thinking?”
“I’m thinking you should leave me alone.”
“I’m fucking sorry, Sadie. You don’t think you might be overreacting here?”
“Shut up, Andrea. I’m done being naïve.” I stripped, tossing my things onto the sand with the kind of impotent fury of a child throwing a tantrum. The water would be freezing, but I needed to get Whelan off of me. “You can all just fuck right off as far as I’m concerned.”
“That’s real compassionate of you,” she mumbled, shoving a binder around her hair. She flounced her hair and turned to go, marking her exit with a dramatic huff.
“Don’t talk to me about compassion, you flake.”
“I hope you freeze to death!”
Half-starved people with emotions running high, zombies closing in and a murderer on the loose just shouldn’t talk to each other. They shouldn’t do it. Right away I regretted provoking her, but the wound was raw.
It was foolishness to go in the water alone. I barely felt the cold, my temper running so hot it filled my veins with fire. With my back to the camp I scrubbed, hard, wishing I could get rid of Whelan altogether and knowing that I couldn’t. But I could get away from him. I could escape. I could get away from them all.
TWENTY-ONE
“But where are we going?”
Winter. It was coming, unmistakable on the air now with its crisp, sharp forewarning. It would be on us any second. Shane shivered outside the cabin, flinching as I shoved yet another jacket over his head, shimmying it down around his shoulders until his arms popped out of the sleeve holes.
“You have to be quiet,” I whispered. The great escape was taking place in the middle of the night. I’m not proud of the fact that I may have stolen a few of Andrea’s sleeping pills and crushed them into the baked beans. Nobody would be up for hours and they would doze right through our departure. They wouldn’t know we had gone until they woke and found us missing, a few cans of food, paper-wrapped packets of fish and blankets gone too.
Saying good-bye wasn’t an option, and I would miss Banana and Moritz. They really did seem like good people. The others … the others I couldn’t accurately say, not anymore. How could I trust these people with my life, with Shane’s life, when they were just as shifty as Carl? He had seemed nice, too, but he was also a liar. He had tried to murder me and take Shane, and I wasn’t about to sit around and wait for something awful to happen. Nate and Andrea had been sleeping together for weeks—maybe that was all just part of the plan. Whelan had seduced me … I could be part of the plan too.
Creepy. It was way too creepy and not something I was willing to let Shane witness.
“We’re not safe here,” I said, shouldering the bag with our things. I had taken Cassandra’s bag, shoved our food, cantina, blankets and my drawings inside, and hoped to God the strap wouldn’t bust. Just in case, I grabbed the bow, knowing it was too risky to creep into one of the other cabins and take a gun.
“I don’t want to go,” Shane whispered, frowning. Little creases formed over his eyebrows.
“I know, sweetie, but it’s time…”
He followed me down to the water. The paddles were easy to find, and though my hands shook with the cold, I knew there was no going back. Shane scrambled into the canoe while I unhooked it from the pilings. I tossed the bag in beside him and carefully scooted off the dock and into the rocking canoe. A pang started, doubts collecting and punishing me for being so rash, so selfish … No, not selfish, cautious. With just Shane to look after we might be able to scavenge enough food or maybe meet up with another band of survivors that didn’t hail from the Land of Misfit fucking Toys. And we would be escaping the killer. We’d have to contend with zombies and finding food, but those things seemed manageable by comparison.
Sitting in the back position, I dipped the paddle carefully into the water. Nobody came running. Nothing in the camp stirred at all as I pushed us away from the dock. The canoe drifted out into deeper water, away from the shore and the pilings. Still in the shallows, the bottom of the boat scraped some rocks, making Shane jump.
“Everything’s going to be fine,” I said quietly. “It’s our time to go.”
“What about Andrea?”
“She’s smart, okay? She can look after herself.”
We both started to sniffle, the jacket pulled up under my nose becoming damp with snot and tears that came from the bite of the wintry wind. I started off on an alien route, traveling opposite the way Whelan had taken me to the southern camp. The tide was unexpectedly insistent, and paddling against it slowed us down considerably. I had tried to plan it so that we would have enough time to drift out of sight before dawn came and the camp awoke. So far, I hadn’t seen the other side of the island and I decided it would be best to aim us toward other island chains, away from familiar sights that would make it more tempting to stay.
Shane picked silently at his mittens and looking at him there, his curls covered by a heavy knit cap with a yarn tassel, another prickle of guilt started in my gut. Almost everything we were wearing had been taken from Whelan’s supply of winter clothes. The food and cantina were all his. The boat was his. Not the smoothest way to forget him—like there was enough vodka in the world for that—but if we found another pocket of civilization we could trade for new supplies and clothing. We could do this.
Paddling became the only way to stay warm. More doubts swirled and surfaced. What if we ran out of water before we could find another supply? What if the canoe was light enough for zombies to tip over from below? What if I fell asleep paddling? Was that even possible?
As the hours crawled by, Shane finally fell asleep, his chin tucked down against his chest as his breathing deepened. Fear or adrenaline kept me wide awake, and dawn arrived with a brilliant surge of purple across the horizon. We had made it around the first hump of the island, a geographical feature not mimicked on the other side. Traveling this route took longer than the way Whelan had showed me. There were more outcroppings to navigate, and more than once I heard the scrape of rocks along the underside of the canoe. A few birds started up their calls in the forest and with more light to see by I began to feel more confident. I stopped paddling, resting my arms and my sore hands. Shane mumbled something softly in his sleep. Tired but exhilarated, I watched the sun peek above the waterline, pink and orange bleeding in around the purple and lightening the scattered clouds.
I had never drawn or painted many landscapes, but that was one I wouldn’t mind capturing on paper forever.
Now I paddled sporadically, keeping us on a course to follow the layout of the island’s shore but still stay in deep enough waters. Every now and then I looked closely at the surface of the water, checking for any gruesome faces hovering below. But we were alone in the humbling quiet of the world waking up. I pulled the cantina out of Cassandra’s bag, unscrewing the cap with my half-numb fingers and taking a frugal sip. There were still a few bloodstains on the carpet bag, unsettling but unavoidable. I’d have to remember to wash it when we had a chance.
We drifted in toward the shore and I dipped the paddle back in to keep us a safe distance away. As morning advanced we found ourselves near the middle of the island lengthwise. Mentally, I could imagine Arturo’s boat on about the opposite side of the island from us. A slight curve inward marked a cove, water trickling down from what looked to be a stout waterfall. Above it, a little bridge hung over it, a fraying rope the only sign of any handrail. I went digging in the bag for the pencil and pad Banana had given me. We were floating along slowly enough that I could keep us idling. I wanted to draw it, I wanted, sentimentality be damned, to have one good memory of the island before we left it altogether.
In the bag, my glove caught on something, a piece of rope or ribbon. When I yanked it out I found a sort of key chain, a badge, with a nylon string to loop around the neck. It was a hospital badge, an old one, judging from the faded quality of the laminated paper. You know that feeling when, pre-Outbreak, you would walk down a street and a lamp overhead would suddenly go out? You feel like you’re being watched, like something bigger and badder is happening around you than just a coincidence of you being there and the timer on the lamp engaging. Logically you know it’s nothing but dread comes anyway, sliding around your neck like a cold, clammy hand.
The badge was stained with blood. I remembered seeing Cassandra for the first time, seeing those nurse’s scrubs and wondering how someone trained to deal with gore and death had come to fall apart so completely. It began to come together, all of it, not quite a clear picture but more like a steamed shower curtain. Seattle Mental Health Coalition. The badge ID photo looked nothing like Cassandra. The woman in the picture was at least fifty, with graying, close-cropped pixie hair … and blood stained all over her badge.
And her scrubs.
I dug back into the carpetbag. A torn page had been folded up tightly at the bottom. The handwritten script had once been neat, done in sprawling cursive, but after water damage it took a lot of squinting and sounding out to make out the message.
Heart failure, stroke, lack of oxygen to the brain resulting in abnormal behavior …
Karen Garner had signed the bottom of the note. My mind raced ahead, passing go, jumping straight to terror. No … It was just my paranoia. Maybe Cassandra had the badge because Karen Garner, nurse practitioner, was a close friend she wanted to remember. I found the pencil and the pad. Sketching would help that cold, itchy feeling go away … because it was nothing, a coincidence, and dwelling on it would only make me feel even guiltier for leaving the others and striking out with Shane …
When I looked back up at the picturesque bridge and waterfall, I found a figure perched there on the bridge, watching me. At that distance, I wouldn’t have recognized her but for her size and the bright pink Tee, torn but still recognizable. Little Teresa. Very much not alive and very much not alone. Other figures moved among the trees, walking too noisily to be animals. I waited, looked closer, demanded that my heart stop trying so hard to shatter my rib cage. Beyond the bridge, up a ways, hunched over the disappearing line of the waterfall’s source, was that fucking blue house. A light flickered in the back window.
After sketching for too long I used to get these hard cramps in my fingers. Sometimes they wouldn’t go away for minutes at a time, and I would sit there, thinking of what might happen if my fingers never stopped hurting, if they were twisted into a weird little claw for the rest of my life. But the pain always eased and I’d shake out my hand and go back to work. But this creeping feeling wasn’t going away. In fact it spread outward, a cramp that paralyzed my entire body. And so, horrified, I watched Teresa turn, losing interest in what she could not immediately reach or eat. She lurched across the bridge, north, toward the camp, and as more undead appeared on the bridge, they followed in generally the same direction.
I turned us around with much cursing and splashing. If I paddled hard I could reach the camp before the horde. But my plan to travel this route had been genius in one way, idiotic in another. If we had continued on our way south then the tide would have buoyed us right along. Now the c
urrent was stronger, pushing at us, nosing the boat back toward the south. But I couldn’t just let Andrea and the others die. They would still be asleep … asleep and hard to wake up because of my fucking sleeping pills.
Fuck.
Shane woke soon after, probably roused by the furious thrashing of my paddle against the waves.
“We have to go back,” I said furiously, sweating in the chill. “Help me paddle, Shane.”
God love ’im, he did, at once and without question.
“Eyes straight ahead,” I whispered. If he looked at the shore he would see the trees shaking, branches breaking and twisting as the undead moved through the forest. They were outpacing us, not by much, but enough that my hopes began to fade. I had fucked them over. Maybe Whelan, Banana and Nate were all Rabbits, maybe they were somehow responsible for all the shit that happened on the island, but somehow I just couldn’t see it. I had been wrong about Cassandra, wrong about Noah, and now I was sure I was wrong about this too.
I had overreacted, fled, and now they were all going to suffer because of me.
With my heart sinking, I watched the horde move ahead, leaving us behind. We didn’t stop, didn’t pause, but as the minutes became an hour and then two, I knew we had lost the race.
The beach looked deserted, almost peaceful, when we finally returned.
A weird popping had started in my elbow from all the paddling, but I ignored it, pushing us hard and fast up onto the sand, beaching us and hopping out even as the canoe came to a stop. I told Shane to follow, to keep up. At first I thought we had managed to beat the undead somehow, but no, blood, just hints of it at first, splattered on the sand near the fire pit, then more of it. I checked the cabins. They were empty and the guns were gone. That made me think that maybe the group had held the zombies off and then gave pursuit in the forest, but then I heard the moaning. It was faint but growing louder.
“Stay back,” I told Shane.
“But you just said…”
“I know what I said. Just stay here in the open where I can see you.”
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