He nodded. His chin quivered but he was trying to be strong. He was a fighter, and I was confident he had learned that from me.
We were no longer alone in the clearing. The trees seemed to come alive, the branches shivering and dancing as the undead dragged themselves out from behind the house and the surrounding woods. Those that Banana hadn’t managed to pick off in the house filtered out from the front door.
“I’ll cover us,” she said, waving. “Haul ass.”
“Shane, can you keep up?” Whelan asked, turning and striding toward the opposite side of the clearing.
“Yes.”
“Okay. You holler if we’re going too fast, understand?”
“Yes.”
Shane grabbed onto Whelan’s belt loops. Banana kept pace with us, popping off a few rounds every few feet to stop the closest zombies. Their stench and their howling followed. One voice was loudest, a human voice, screeching and wailing as we reached the other side of the clearing and ducked into the cover of trees.
“I swore,” I said softly, “to never end up in your arms like this again.”
Whelan laughed, pressing his nose into my temple. “Admit it—you don’t mind.”
“Not really, no.”
That’s one small step for feminism …
Fuck it. I really didn’t mind, not when we were struggling to outrun our deaths.
We wove through the trees, mindful of the poky underbrush and swooping branches. This was much less traveled than the sort of path between the camp and the blue house.
“What about Cassandra?” Banana asked. A rat-cla-tac of rifle fire came close on the heels of her question. Shane ran as hard as his legs would carry him, clutching Whelan’s belt loops.
“She’s ill,” I said. “Let her have her zombie paradise.”
“You serious? After everything she did?” Banana stopped, though Whelan didn’t seem to notice.
“We can’t go back, not now. Let’s just get out of here.”
“Sadie…”
“Listen, Banana.” I dug around in my back pocket, risking an uncomfortable fall to find the crusty key I had been given. I held it up until Banana began to walk again, trotting to catch up and see it. Shane gazed up from where he held onto Whelan’s belt. “Moritz gave me this. It’s the key to his vault in Seattle. I want to see what’s in it. I don’t want to die here.”
“Fuck,” Banana murmured, whirling to watch our retreat. A spray of glossy blond curls fell free of her bandana. “I liked that mousy little dude.”
“So did I.”
“I hate to break up the Kodak moment,” Whelan mumbled, “but we’ve got company up ahead.”
Banana breezed by, the shoulder of her sweatshirt slipping down as she lifted a low-hanging bough to survey the way forward. The leaves rattled; moaning that was almost certainly not Andrea and Nate drifting toward us from the direction of the water.
“Unless those two stopped for some afternoon delight…”
“No, Whelan,” I pointed. Wind and tide had pushed the ketch off the sand bar. So that was one thing going our way. There was the boat, its mast bobbing as it idled in the cove—a flash of blue, the water, and a shifting along the sand. Then gunfire—not ours, but Nate’s. “We’re almost there,” I added softly, sadly.
“Almost there,” Banana said, “and surrounded.”
Whelan pushed forward, through the trees, his arms squeezing around me more tightly as if in preparation for the trouble ahead. We burst through the edge of the forest, stumbling out into an embankment of pebbly sand that lead down a steep hill to the shore. The tide was high enough to cover most of the sand at the bottom of the embankment, allowing Arturo’s Ketch to find water. I shielded my eyes from the sun, staring at the Ketch, at Nate and Andrea on board and the ring of undead closing in on them. A few had peeled off, trying to climb up the embankment toward us. They clamored at roots and rocks, but none had actually managed to find their way up the hill.
“What now?” Banana asked, firing into the trees behind us. The groaning from that direction was growing disconcertingly near. My leg throbbed, numb now from the knee down.
“Go!” Whelan shouted, waving one hand when Nate and Andrea looked up at us. “Start out!”
“What are you doing? There are too many of them in the water.” Not that I had a better plan.
Even more undead crept up out of the water, foam streaming down off of their pale flesh and gleaming skulls as they alternately turned toward the boat in the shallows or us.
“Go!”
The Ketch teetered, the hull looking scratched and battered in places. The outboard motor sputtered, caught. Fuck. If they couldn’t get the motor going then there would be no possible way to get out of the cove—the mast was crooked, and might not fly a sail. The motor whirred again, clicking like an empty gun.
“Come on,” Whelan mumbled, glancing nervously over his shoulder. “We only get one chance at this…”
“They’re here,” Banana warned, firing into the trees again.
The motor purred to life, a cheer going up on the boat and on the embankment.
Whelan began gesturing to the north. On board, Nate and Andrea seemed to conference, then she went to steer the motor, guiding them down the beach while Nate continued firing at the undead from the deck.
“Here we go,” Whelan said, veering right and down the embankment. “Hold them off as best you can, Nan.” He knelt carefully, turning his back to Shane. “Hop on, bud.”
The way down was almost too quick to be nauseating, which was fortunate, because if Whelan had given me even the tiniest hint of what he was about to do, I probably would have choked him out rather than endure it.
He sprinted against the tree line and then toward the water, careening down the hill to the shore. It wasn’t as steep as the embankment, but it was steep enough to give me a heart attack. We gathered speed, Banana behind us, her gun silenced for the moment as she and Whelan concentrated on not plummeting straight into a zombie.
Which isn’t an exaggeration. We hit the bottom of the hill, and a zombie. Whelan kicked it in the jaw as it tried to scamper up out of the surf. Banana finished it off with a spray of bullets to the face. I listened to her change out the clip behind us as Whelan jogged down the beach, following the Ketch as it slowly slid south.
“We’re going to swim, aren’t we?” I asked.
“It’s going to sting your leg like hell,” he warned.
“I can do it.”
The undead that had followed us from the house reached the embankment. They slid willy-nilly down the hill, some of them losing their footing and tumbling like rag dolls down into the water. A few were so mangled by the fall that they simply stayed put, twitching and groaning. The others were luckier, joining their brethren down on the beach.
“Start swimming,” Banana grunted, slamming a fresh clip home. “I’ll give you a head start.”
“You’re coming with us,” Whelan replied curtly, wading out into the water.
“I know that, dummy. Don’t you think I know that?”
Wet, floating, I started to paddle, ignoring the persistent throb in my leg and the burning of the saltwater as it soaked the bandage and the fresh wound below. Whelan couldn’t have felt any better, his throat nicked and his arm slashed. I said nothing, fighting the little squeaks of agony that died in my throat on each stroke. Whelan swam closer, Shane on his back, and brushed a kiss across my cheekbone.
“Could be worse,” he said breathlessly. “Could be sea urchins.”
The boat drifted, less than half a mile from shore. It looked like an ungodly mess, that boat, but it was our ungodly mess and, more importantly, our one shot at escaping. Nate seemed to be watching us through the scope of the rifle, Andrea poised at the aft beside the motor.
Behind us, the rifle fire came in a constant, deafening stream. Banana taunted the undead as she mowed them down, laughing like some crazed Amazonian war goddess as she poured bullets into them. Each stroke began to hurt, the
canoe paddling catching up to me, the lack of food catching up to me … Shit, damn near everything catching up to me. Whelan broke out ahead of me, a stronger swimmer even with Shane on his back.
“We’re almost there, Sadie,” Shane called.
“Thanks, little man.”
But I was falling behind. And Banana wasn’t swimming yet. I made the mistake of looking back over my shoulder. She was swarmed. I could see the glint of her hair and the bright fabric of her bandana, but the zombies in the water were outflanking her, and the horde closed in around her, an unbroken ring.
“Whelan,” I sputtered, splashing harder as I tried to keep up. My arms were failing, my leg felt like it had been doused in kerosene and thrust into a fire.
“Look at the boat,” he said. “Think of Shane. That’s all you can do.”
Banana’s cries grew sharper, different, and then the gunfire halted abruptly. I didn’t have to look over my shoulder again to know they were coming for us now.
No matter how hard I pushed myself, I just kept falling farther and farther behind. Whelan circled back, swimming up beside me, his face bright red and his hair salt-plastered to his face as he looped an arm around my waist. He began swimming with one arm, dragging us through the water in quick bursts.
“I can hear them,” I whispered, trying to find that last store of energy. I had to have something left … I only had to make it to the boat and we were getting closer, closer …
Andrea screamed, “Come on, come on!” I swam to the rhythm of it. Just a few more strokes, just a dozen or so kicks and all three of us would make it. Banana had gone down for us. Moritz had gone down. Everyone was gone, but the island wasn’t going to take me too.
Something was around my ankle, pulling and jerking. I slipped right out of Whelan’s grasp, yanked backward and then down. I felt the bite of too-hard fingers, bones, and kicked with my other leg. Water rushed in, filling my mouth, the sudden agitation turning the space around me all to tiny, bright bubbles. I kicked, felt flesh beneath my heel, kicked again. But I was tired, exhausted and sore and in pain, the swim had sapped me to the bone, and it didn’t seem to matter that I was kicking the thing over and over again in the head, it just wouldn’t let go.
And I was doing down with it, sinking, and everything was turning to blue.
TWENTY-THREE
In the swirling black you hear a sound, a zip. It’s hope and a promise and it’s coming for you.
The zip breaks the hold death has on you. It’s quiet and you almost don’t hear it … but there it is again and suddenly, inexplicably, you’re free. And you’d fight back if you could, if there was anything left, but you’re tired and you don’t know why. Then you’re floating, flying almost, and things that were blue and then black are white, too bright, painful.
You think of all the things you didn’t do, all the times you told Shane no, you cannot go down to the shore to collect shells. And you regret it. You regret not showing him more, teaching him more, making him smile as much as humanly possible.
Then you’re flat on your back, choking on what feels like a gallon of seawater and four sad faces are staring down at you. No, it’s not your funeral, but it is fucking embarrassing.
* * *
“Oh, my God, she’s alive.”
“Surprise.” Ow. It did not feel good to talk. Or think.
When I blinked, Nate was there, grinning, a rifle braced in his hand. I could hear the hum of a motor and the quiet splashing of the water as the blades whipped it into a frenzy. Shane rocketed into my arms, there and warm and wonderful. We had made it, maybe not to the end, but we were free of the island and still together.
“You’re okay,” he whispered, squeezing my neck.
“Couldn’t leave you, bud.”
Nate peered over Shane’s shoulder, smirking.
“Nice shot, by the way,” I said to him, shutting my eyes against the sunlight.
“Lucky shot,” Whelan corrected gently. “I think you mean lucky shot.”
I grinned. “That too.”
It took a few minutes before I was ready to let go of Shane, but then Andrea helped me gradually into the cockpit. She pulled off my soaked clothes and used her own sweater to dry me off.
“You should’ve seen it, man,” she said as she patted my shoulders. “You guys are, like, two feet away and then wham, you’re gone! I almost shit my fucking pants. Whelan dove down about five times and then Nate was just all, ‘Get outta there! I’m gonna shoot!’ Truly epic.”
“Sad I missed it.”
She went quiet then, letting me redress in one of Nate’s discarded layers and a men’s pair of thermal underwear. It all smelled like campfire smoke. Andrea laid out my wet clothes on the deck to dry, turning back with a thundercloud frown and her arms snapped rigidly over her chest.
“You left us,” she said. “You drugged us. With my drugs.”
“I know. I’m sorry about that. I just … lost it. Everything was closing in. I didn’t know what else to do.”
Andrea nodded, satisfied. “See what I did there? I forgave you. You should try it sometime—it’s a neat feeling.”
“I know. I should’ve listened to you.”
“Naturally.”
“And I’m not mad about the Rabbit thing. I wish you had told me but … it doesn’t matter now. It probably shouldn’t have mattered then.”
Andrea nodded. In the fray she had lost her hat and her messy brown waves tumbled around her face as she looked me up and down, satisfied with her work, and turned to go.
“That magical pill bag of yours didn’t happen to survive, did it?”
“Afraid not, sailor.”
“Figures.”
Laughing, she had one last pat for my shoulder and then she was hopping out of the cockpit, whistling merrily across the deck to where Nate was keeping a careful eye on the motor. Shane sat beside him, listening raptly while Nate described the finer points of boat mechanics. I’m not sure I could have felt luckier at that moment—if I were Shane’s age and had just narrowly escaped about five different ways of dying, I certainly wouldn’t be calmly listening to a lecture on boat propellers. I’d be a sobbing a mess, inconsolable. Shane glanced in my direction and waved, looking like an ant hill with a head in one of Nate’s huge, dry sweaters.
“Hey.” Whelan dropped down beside me. He had changed, too, wearing a pair of thermals that looked a lot like mine, though they fit him considerably better, and a ratty T-shirt with one sleeve. The missing sleeve had been appropriated for a new bandage, one that was tied tightly around his wound.
“So are we even or do I owe you a rescue now?” I asked.
He smiled. It had only been a day but I had seriously missed that dimple.
“We’re square, but you might owe Nate one.”
I nodded. It wasn’t awkward, just … frightening. I felt like there were a million different apologies I needed to make. Then I remembered that moment in the house, zombies coming at us, overtaking us, and the weird half-peace that had descended. Maybe apologies weren’t what he wanted. I know I was sick of hearing them.
“Whelan … how did she capture you?” A big fella like Whelan didn’t seem like the type to be taken down by one person with a knife.
“I woke up, saw you were gone and just … took off like an idiot into the woods.”
He leaned against the edge of the cockpit, staring out over my head toward the water. A deep, bright blush crept over his cheeks as I asked, “You didn’t notice the canoe?”
“For your information I wasn’t exactly in my right mind. You two were gone and my first thought was: house. So I went. The others tried to follow but there were tons of ’em in the trees. Moritz went down, then Stef. When I finally made it to the house I saw Cassandra there … I just didn’t put it together. I thought she had survived somehow…”
“I figured it out on the canoe,” I said. “I took her bag to store my stuff and … I found some crazy shit in it. Her nurse’s note, a badge … I
think she must have killed her nurse, stolen her identity and escaped from a hospital. She was dead for two minutes … that can’t be good for your brain. Or maybe it was something else. Maybe The Outbreak was too much for her.”
“And you thought I was cuckoo for Cocoa Puffs.”
“So what then?” I asked, reaching for his hand. He lifted it, kissed my knuckles. Hm. Maybe I was cuckoo for Cocoa Puffs … or just him.
“She got me on the head with a rock.” He pointed to the bruise on his eye with his free hand. Chuckling, he murmured, “I don’t know how she manhandled me into that chair, but given how sore my ass feels, I’d say it involved a lot of dragging. She woke me up with another nice thump on the melon and started rambling about this family she wanted us to be … I couldn’t believe you could actually pack that much delusional into one person.”
“This is…” The salt on my cheeks was about to be refreshed. “If I hadn’t left…”
“I can’t blame you. I didn’t. I don’t.” Whelan wiped at the trails burning down my cheeks. “I mean, yes,” he went on, relentless, “I was pissed, but I get it. I shouldn’t have lied to you.” We kissed, just a short one, but it made the tears slow a bit. “And hey, look on the bright side, cuckoo Cassandra took care of one of my tats.”
“Too bad she didn’t get ’em both.”
Whelan winced. “Ooh, ouchies. No, it’s good she didn’t. I have plans for that one.”
“What sort of plans?”
“Well, you being an artist and all, I thought maybe you could come up with something to cover it. We get back to civilization and make it into something new. How does that sound?”
Do I need to write down the definition of disarming again? No. Didn’t think so.
“I approve of this idea.”
“Yeah?” O dimple of ultimate destruction, you will be the death of me.
“Yeah.”
“Maybe a spiky little sea urchin,” he mused, bumping his hip against mine.
“I was thinking more along the lines of Curious George. He could be beating the tar outta that bunny.”
Whelan laughed and it would’ve hurt my ears except it made me feel good all over. All the chuckling drew looks from the others. Shane watched us, not smiling, not frowning, just his usual observant self. I didn’t believe in heaven—it’s hard to when you pretty much live in a physical hell—but if it was real and my sister was watching me, I wanted to think she would be proud. Shane was going to be a lucky kid, not one or two parents, but four. I wasn’t sure where we were going, but wherever it was, we were going to look out for each other. Back to Seattle or to somewhere else to wait out the storm, he was going to get a better childhood. I promised that to him silently, and maybe later I would make it official and say it aloud. We would need to rustle up a jump rope for him, Pop Rocks, a bicycle, a puppy—all the good stuff that made the fear worth surviving.
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