Matt de la Peña - The Living

Shy continued around the deck, looking for Carmen and trying to decide what the captain meant by “rough seas.”

On the other side of the deck Shy found Paolo and several emergency crew members prepping the lifeboats. Paolo turned to Shy, shouted: “Why are you out here? You need to be inside with your group of passengers! Get back to the theater!”

“How come you’re doing the lifeboats?” Shy asked.

“Standard emergency procedures! Now go!”

Shy backed away, watching the emergency crew climbing in and out of the boats. Near the glass doors he bumped into someone and spun around.

Vlad. “You shouldn’t be out here!” he yelled.

“Just tell me why they’re doing the lifeboats,” Shy said.

Vlad looked toward Paolo and his crew, then turned back to Shy. “The problem is our location!” he shouted over the storm. “We’re too close to the Hidden Islands! The water is very shallow!”

“What does that mean?” Shy asked.

“And this wind!” Vlad shouted. “They’re worried how the ocean will react!”

Vlad looked back at Paolo again, then pulled Shy down the ship a ways, just outside the sight line of the emergency crew. He clicked on a high-powered spotlight and shined the beam on the raging ocean surface. “Watch the sea life!”

At first Shy only saw furious whitecaps and waves, but then a heavy swell rolled past and in the light he spotted a pod of dolphins racing past the ship, in the direction of the wind.

“They’re trying to get away from something!” Vlad shouted. “Don’t you get it? It’s likely we’ll encounter a tsunami!”

The word was a punch in Shy’s stomach.

But the scared look in Vlad’s eyes was even worse. It told Shy the ship was in serious danger.

Just then they heard the deep revving of the massive engines, and the ship slowly started moving again—not away from whatever the dolphins were fleeing, but toward it.

Vlad’s eyes grew even bigger as he stared into the wind. “Oh my God.”

“What?” Shy shouted.

He looked again, but didn’t see anything.

“They’re trying to make it over!” Vlad shut off the spotlight, spun around and started toward the glass doors.

“Everyone inside!” Shy heard Paolo shouting. “Now! Let’s go!”

Shy followed Vlad, looking over his shoulder at all the emergency crew members leaping down from the lifeboats, racing across the deck toward the doors.

Shy’s last thought before ducking back into the ship with everyone else was of Carmen and how he still hadn’t found her.

When Shy made it back to the Normandie Theater and his group of passengers, he found everybody seated except for Kevin, who was standing in front of a window. Shy made a beeline to the railing and scanned the lower theater for Carmen, but she wasn’t there either, so he hurried up to Kevin, saying: “There’s gonna be a tsunami.” He looked over his shoulder, making sure none of the passengers had heard him.

Kevin stared back at him wide-eyed and pointed out the window.

Shy saw it now.

The slight rise in the distance.

It was subtle and far away, but the ship was moving directly toward it.

“What if we don’t make it?” Kevin said. He looked terrified.

Shy turned to the crowded theater seats, thinking for the first time that he might die out here, in the middle of the ocean. His heart climbed into his throat, and he felt like he was about to gag or faint. Dying had never crossed his mind in a real way before. Not like this.

A pack of passengers were now gathered at the balcony railing, and Kevin was moving toward them and shouting: “Sit down, please! Everyone needs to be sitting down!”

Shy hurried to his group, making sure they were all secured in their life jackets, and he double-checked his own jacket; then he sat himself in one of the theater chairs and gripped the armrests and closed his eyes and told himself they’d be okay, they’d be okay, they’d be okay, the ship was huge, the bottom indestructible like he’d told his grandma. All they had to do was sit in their muster stations like the captain said, because the captain had probably seen it all and knew what he was doing.

Shy clasped his hands together as if to pray, but he didn’t know how to pray because he never went to his grandma’s church, and he was making shit up when he told her the bottom was eighteen feet thick and made of pure steel, he had no idea how thick it was, or what it was made of, and what if this was his punishment for lying or for not going to church?

Shy was up again, moving through the balcony seats to check the rise on the ocean through one of the windows.

It reached higher now.

And it was closer to the ship.

And they were charging right at it.

He heard voices over his shoulder and turned around. Scattered passengers were now gathered at the window behind him. They were at every window. All of them pointing at the rise and holding each other and panicking. Kevin was shouting for them to get back to their seats, but nobody was listening.

Shy tried shouting, too, but all the screaming drowned him out, so he went to the railing to look for Carmen again, his heart slamming inside his chest, his breaths too fast, because they were only seconds away from living or dying. He understood this. And what if Carmen was outside somewhere? What if she didn’t know what was coming?

He circled his group of passengers again, pleading for everyone to sit down.

Some did, but most of them still crowded the windows trying to get one last look, and Shy shoved his way to the window where Kevin stood and peered outside.

He froze.

A massive wall of water, almost twice the height of the ship and climbing still, and coming directly at them. It was clear they had no chance of making it over, but the ship continued plunging forward.

Everyone at the windows was screaming, even men, and Shy realized he was screaming, too, and a heavyset middle-aged man slumped to the ground holding his chest, and Shy’s entire body started to tingle and he lost all strength in his arms and legs and had to hold on to the window to stay standing as he stared at the cresting wave—this beyond all his understanding except it was the end of everything, and no person could change this fact, and no God, and the wave was directly in front of them now, and all Shy could see through the window was the roaring wall of ocean water.

He turned to run just as it slammed into the ship and all the small windows exploded with glass and water, and the floor shot straight up, and he found himself in the air—and in his slow-motion flight Shy saw bodies thrown from chairs, bodies crashing into other bodies, into walls, bodies toppling over the theater railing, falling onto the stage, onto chairs, onto the backs of other passengers, the ship alarm once again blaring in Shy’s ears, and the spray of cold ocean salt water in his nose and mouth and eyes, blinding him, and then he was somehow slammed headfirst into a chandelier and was lost….

Shy came to in front of the open balcony door as the ship was slowly starting to right itself. Fallen passengers lay all around him, battered and twisted, faces frozen in shock or facedown, ocean water raining down on all of them from a gaping hole in the theater ceiling, and everything smelled of brine and seaweed.

He looked down at himself, saw that he was covered in blood and searched in a panic for where he was hurt—then he saw the woman lying next to him, her throat pierced by a thick shard of glass. She was choking on her own blood, coughing, her wild eyes staring directly at him as she vomited more blood into his lap.