Sadie Walker Is Stranded

  “Language,” I hissed. Shane smiled, just a little, but enough to demonstrate the fact that he had clearly heard Andrea, and maybe even understood her. Damn it. The last thing I needed was those two making an unholy alliance.

  I glanced at the water. It didn’t look inviting exactly, but it did have a certain allure about it, exclusively because we were all beginning to smell. “I could seriously use a bath,” I muttered, thinking aloud. “It’s not too choppy out there…”

  “Go in,” Andrea said laughingly. “There are no sharks around these parts. Scout’s honor.”

  “A fear of water is totally rational,” I said. She snorted. “Well, it is. There could be anything down there … like … like…”

  “Fish? Seaweed?” She gasped, covering her mouth with both hands. “Algae?”

  “Now you’re just trying to provoke me.” We would all have to wash up eventually, and who better to prove to Shane that there was nothing down there to fear than someone who had a totally normal and rational fear of drowning?

  “You really think it’s safe?” I asked, peering over the edge of the boat at the water.

  “Sure,” she replied, “but you know it’s going to be freezing cold, right? Just be fast. I’ll watch Shane and stay close to the edge in case you start to seize up.”

  At that, my skin broke out in gooseflesh preemptively. Just glancing at the cobalt blue surface of the water made my limbs try to shrivel up and recede inside my body. The placid surface resembled one unbroken, glassy film of ice. Heavy pine branches like green furry arms hung over us as the boat came to a stop a dozen or so yards from the shore. The pebbly bank was empty, as dark as pitch with the thickness of trees. Shane got up and stood against the rail, both pudgy arms over his head as he grasped the bar and stared out at the dark gloaming of the forest.

  “I’ll be quick,” I assured him. “Just in and then back on the boat.”

  “Can I come in too?”

  “Not yet. Let me test it out first. You can keep watch and make sure I’m safe. Then maybe we can go closer to shore where it’s shallow and you can have a try.”

  I hated denying him, but I wasn’t about to let him paddle around in water this deep. Even I wasn’t perfectly comfortable with the idea of going in. “It’s going to be super cold too,” I added. “And you don’t want to get sick…”

  “What if you get sick?”

  “Well … I won’t. I promise, how about that?”

  “You can’t promise that,” he said reasonably.

  “I guess not. How about … I’ll try really, really hard not to get sick and I’ll be in and out so fast the germs won’t even have a chance to catch me!”

  Shane frowned, arching one quizzical eyebrow. “You don’t get germs from the cold.”

  I really shouldn’t have let him read so many damn books.

  “No, I suppose not, but they can weaken your immune system and then other germs can get you, right?” It was easier to argue with Andrea. She wasn’t nearly so perceptive.

  “I guess that’s true. Okay. In and out.”

  “Yup. You won’t even miss me.”

  Easy, right? Right.

  Andrea walked to the ocean-side railing of the boat and waited for me to jump in. The others had congregated to watch Arturo bait a line and drop it into the water. Even Cassandra perked up, standing a few feet off to examine the process. Arturo gave directions to Noah, who followed the old sailor’s lead and set up his own rig. I heard their lures splash over the side just as Andrea gave me a little nudge.

  “Nobody’s watching, you pansy,” she said. “Go on, I’ve got your back. Shane is fine.”

  I crouched down behind the cockpit and pulled off my sweater, T-shirt, jeans and thermal leggings. Those could use a good wash too. Since Arturo didn’t plan on telling us our destination, I figured it would be easier to wait and do the washing up once we stopped for good. Wearing sopping wet clothing at night was not my idea of a good time and I had no intention of compounding seasickness with chills. I smiled to myself as I looked over the edge of the railing into the water; it was kind of exhilarating not to know where we were going. Maybe when we got there I’d ask Cassandra if she’d like me to rinse her scrubs. I’d even let her borrow a shirt if she promised not to cry all over it.

  “Come on,” Andrea muttered, “they won’t fish forever.”

  “Doesn’t fishing take hours?”

  “Get in!”

  “I knew it. You just want to see me suffer,” I grunted, but she laughed and gave me a wolf whistle as I dropped into the ice-cold water.

  A walk-in blast chiller on the polar fucking ice cap is probably more welcoming than Puget Sound before summer hits. The urge to panic was strong, but I remembered to breathe, to keep moving and make the blood pump hard through my legs and arms. At some point during my stalwart boycotting of the sea I had forgotten just how difficult it is to tread water. I held my breath and plunged beneath the surface for one second, half-terrified I wouldn’t come back up. But the cool rush of water over my head was worth it. This wasn’t grubby, industrial waste water just off the coast of a city; it was pure, refreshing and beautifully untouched. A silvery shape slipped by my side. A minnow, I thought, or something slightly bigger.

  Odd, to think that there were still fish down there. Maybe the waterways were the last parts of the world to go on unchanged. Out of all the ways I could end up taking a swim in an unspoiled inlet in the middle of nowhere, international undead crisis was the least probable. But there I was. There was no denying it and no way to avoid the cliché. Something good and small was happening to me. And I didn’t look panicked, which may just convince Shane that being on a boat wasn’t so bad after all and that we might even return to some sense of normalcy.

  Well, it was nice while it lasted anyway.

  “Okay,” I said after less than a minute of splashing around, “I need to get out … preferably now, before the blood freezes in my veins.”

  The railing above me was awfully quiet. I glanced up. Andrea was gone, nowhere to be found. She had taken Shane with her. “Son of a bitch,” I shouted. “This isn’t funny! Andrea! Andrea? Shane?”

  There was a commotion on the other side of the boat, shrieking and screaming and the sound of arms beating the water. My heart sank like a lead ball to my numb little toes.

  Something was in the water.

  Idiot. Idiot! I was about to prove that the water was absolutely something to fear. Just add yet another bad example set by Shane’s poor excuse for a surrogate mum.

  I turned a hasty circle. The side of the boat facing me was smooth, curved, with nothing to grab onto. A tiny rope ladder was curled against the railing, tied up and knotted. Theoretically I should have been on that ladder, joking with Andrea as she hauled me over the side, safely back onto the boat. The desire to panic rose again, too strong to fight this time. I scraped my hands against the side of the boat, trying to get purchase, my pulse coming as fast as my panicked breathing. There was nothing, not even a dent, and all the while I couldn’t fight the idea, burrowing its way into my brain, that I needed to get out of the water for more than one reason. It wasn’t just cold. It was suddenly very dangerous.

  “Help! Help me!” I screamed. Finally, knowing it might be too late when somebody finally remembered to look for me, I began swimming around the stern of the boat to the other side. They would see me there. Where the hell had Shane gone? Why wasn’t he listening for me? It was more than just dread, that sudden feeling that nobody gave a shit, that you were alone and drowning, cold and miserable in your final moment.

  At least moving gave me something to think about. But when I rounded the edge of the boat I stopped, regretting it at once. Uncle Arturo was in the water—well, most of him was. Something bobbed on the surface next to him. I retched and flailed, coming up empty. It was his leg, severed raggedly at the knee. A fishing rod danced up and down in the swirling water and so did a pair of zombies—they must have pulled him in by the line.
One of them had the fishing hook sticking out of its cheek like a gauche piercing.

  Over the edge, Moritz saw me treading and freaking out. He loped over to my end of the boat, his arm dangling down uselessly toward me. It was too far.

  “You have to get closer,” he called, out of breath.

  Not an option. My sight seemed to be spinning, the world going topsy-turvy as I saw Arturo dip beneath the water. Noah was trying to fish him out but the old sailor was losing consciousness. We had to let him go. The water around me began to turn—cloudy at first but then swirling with scarlet. And like sharks scenting blood, the undead turned toward me.

  “Leave him!” Andrea was shouting. She was sobbing, yanking back on Noah’s shoulders. “It’s too late! Leave him!”

  She was right. Leg or no leg, he had already been bitten, infected, and the change would come on soon. Having him in the boat with us would be guaranteed suicide. Noah heaved backward, trying to pull Arturo up by the arms while two bony creatures weighted him down into the water. I had a horrifying thought—that the water was too deep, that they couldn’t have their feet on sand. They were swimming, or floating, though both were equally terrifying.

  “The ladder!” I screamed, hoping Moritz understood. My teeth chattering like a pair of cocaine-addled macaws didn’t make my speech very clear. “O-On the other side. I’ll swim there!”

  This was purely hypothetical—my limbs were beginning to fail from the cold. Moritz nodded and disappeared for a moment as he ran to the other side of the boat. Losing sight of him made the panic more acute, and it felt as if the icy water was closing in around me, becoming something solid and sentient. It would strangle the life out of me. Shane’s round face appeared under the railing. He stared down at me with a frozen expression of wide-eyed terror. Maybe he was preparing to lose me yet again.

  But seeing his face was like a Taser zap to the ass. Survival wasn’t an option, not with him peering down at me. It was an imperative, a duty that had little to do with me and everything to do with shielding him from another loss.

  Here’s one thing I’m now damn certain of: being chased by water zombies around a boat can turn a landlubber like me into Michael fucking Phelps on steroids. I didn’t look back, knowing I might catch a glimpse of one of the undead coming for me. Then I remembered that they could be under the water. Each of my clumsy strokes was punctuated with a girlish squeak of hysteria. A thin rope ladder swung back and forth, just a few yards ahead. Moritz, bless his heart, was already over the edge of the ladder, waiting for me to get close. He was just in time. Something unnaturally strong tugged on my ankle, hard, nearly pulling me under.

  Shane … I reminded myself sternly … I had to get back to him. No matter what, I had to make it back onto the boat. I was in deep, deep trouble, sure, but it was nothing, not when I thought about him being alone, surrounded by strangers and abandoned by every single family member he had.

  I heard Andrea shout up on deck and realized she was screaming at me. Moritz clamped a hand over my wrist and yanked with enough power to pull the arm right out of its socket. With another jerk, he scampered back over the edge of the railing and we hit the deck with a cold, wet slap, like so many suffocating mackerels flopping out of a fisherman’s net. Someone pulled the ladder up.

  Distantly, very distantly, I heard the outboard motor start. It gave a roar like a meat grinder and Moritz cupped his hands over my ears, presumably to keep me from hearing the dulcet tones of Uncle Arturo and his new friends being sliced into chum. And dimly I realized that I was almost naked in the arms of a stranger. His tweedy jacket rasped against my skin.

  “Cover her,” Noah was saying. Leave it to the teenage boy to be the first of us to have any sense. A blanket fell about my shoulders and Andrea rolled me a little, tucking the fleece around me and rubbing vigorously. The real aching cold was beginning to set in and I shook from toe to hairline. My vision wasn’t cooperating, either from the water clouding up my eyes or the chills. As if gazing through a thick glass jar, I saw Shane standing a few yards away, his hands tightened into pale knots at his sides. He looked at me like I was a ghost. Stumbling forward, I pushed through the others and grabbed Shane, hugging him close, squeezing until he squeaked in protest.

  “I was so … But we’re okay.” My teeth chattered as I tried to talk. “We’re okay.”

  Shane finally hugged me back. That was the signal I needed to stop gripping him so damn hard.

  Moritz and Andrea waited until I had calmed a bit more to suggest I sit down. Shane came with me, not that he had a choice about it. His hand was icy in mine, though that might have been the lingering effects of the cold water. Moritz sat next to me, one hand on my back as he tried to rub some warmth back into my bones. The motor cut and Noah appeared again. His brows tented, his forefingers scraping up and down his temples. “What do we do now?” he asked, looking between each of us. Nobody had an answer. “What do we do now?”

  Cassandra the nurse had started crying again. That was a given. Andrea gave her a look that could freeze lava.

  “We should say something,” I managed between shivers. “She’s a wreck.”

  “We’re all a wreck,” Andrea replied shortly. “And she didn’t fall in the water.”

  I turned briefly to look at Moritz, still too numb to properly overthink his proximity. His jacket smelled of dust and sweat. For some reason having him there, his hand on my back, made me feel better, or safer. It was all in the eyes, which were a color match for the crisp green-blue of the water surrounding us. And there was something in his gaze that reminded me of sugar-high toddlers, all enthusiasm and curiosity; and it was this feature of his that made me—almost against my will—relax.

  Shane gave my knee an unexpected squeeze and even though I knew it would bug him, I leaned over and gave the top of his head a quick peck. We were alive, damn it, and I couldn’t care less if it made little boys squishy and pouty to have their aunts show affection. But he didn’t flinch away. For a second, even half-drowned and freezing, my spirits actually lifted.

  Gradually, it was dawning on us all that we were fucked, really and truly fucked. Uncle Arturo was the only person skilled enough to actually steer the boat and navigate the maze of inlets in which we now drifted, helpless and afraid. How long would the gas in the motor last? And how long until we needed more food and water? I wasn’t going to be the one to say that fishing was out of the question.

  Andrea had none of my reservations. “We have to keep moving,” she said, a note of dread in her voice. She took off her hat and wrung it like a sponge. “What if they can get onto the boat? We can’t stop.”

  She gave us a minute to let that sink in; the thought of underwater monsters crawling up onto the boat while we slept just about made me burst into tears. This was not a conversation I wanted to have in front of Shane, but there was no other choice. I wasn’t letting him go and we needed to come to some sort of conclusion about our journey. I could feel a bruise forming on my heel where the zombie had nearly dragged me under. Emotions run high when your one and only navigator becomes a Jackson Pollack original splattered across the stern. I shuddered, thinking how close I had come to that exact same fate.

  “Stay calm,” Moritz said—reasonably, I thought. “There should be enough food to last for at least a week, if we’re careful.”

  “And then what?” Andrea asked, throwing up her hands.

  “Then we land,” I said with reasonable confidence. “We can’t stay on this thing forever.”

  “We could go back,” Noah said, throwing in his two cents with a shrug. “I’m sure I can figure out how to turn this thing around.”

  “No,” I said, this time more boldly. “We can’t go back. The city’s lost.”

  “I agree,” Moritz said.

  “So what do you suggest we do?” Andrea asked irritably. She hovered between the cockpit and the railing, pacing a trench into the deck.

  “We might be near the San Juan Islands soon,” a helpful, s
queaking voice spoke up. Each head turned together. Cassandra had finally opened her mouth, standing bloodied and wide-eyed at the bow, some feet beyond the cockpit. “We could land there.”

  Silence. Apparently no one else had a better idea or even a quick rebuttal. The afternoon, which had earlier seemed so promising and simple—swimming, fishing, card games—had taken a sharp turn for the worse.

  And it was growing dark. I wanted to be alone.

  “Can we have a minute?” I asked, nudging Moritz when he didn’t respond. “Alone?”

  “Come on,” Andrea said, motioning to the cockpit. “We can check the maps and see if anything makes sense.”

  Shane relaxed when the others sidled away, his stubborn little fists easing apart. I gave him another one-armed hug, ruffling his hair with a mingled sense of relief and dread. No matter how hard I tried, I just couldn’t manage to protect him from misery. He had seen Arturo die. He had almost watched me drown … I never expected our life together to be a day at the park, but this was getting pretty wretched. Someone had failed to protect Cassandra. She cried all the time. I didn’t want that for Shane. He might always be quiet and serious, but he didn’t have to be abandoned.

  “I’m okay, bud,” I warbled unconvincingly, teetering from the cold.

  “Okay,” Shane replied. “That’s good.”

  “Your granddad taught me some stuff,” I continued, fighting through the tingling shivers in my limbs. “I know it seems tough right now but we’ll stick together and get through it. That’s not just blowing smoke. Granddad taught me to fish, to camp … I can teach you those things too.”

  Shane shrugged. He was so very good at ruining my little moments of inspiring speech.

  “Are there lots of those things in the water?” he asked quietly.

  Shit. I had hoped he wouldn’t ask that. “Some. I don’t know how many. But we can learn to avoid them.”

  “How? If they’re right there in the water…”

  “They can’t climb up onto the boat. The sides are too smooth.” I had no intention of frightening him needlessly, but maybe a bit of honesty would actually help. “I’m scared of them coming out of the water, too, we all are. We’ll just have to be smarter. We can do that, can’t we? I know you’re smarter than a zombie.”