Matt de la Peña - The Living

There was nothing else up there so he climbed down the three steep stairs, his heart pounding now, and peeked his head inside the open door of the cabin where the smoke smell was stronger. “Hello?” he said, but no one answered. It was so dark inside he could hardly see.

He stepped deeper into the cabin, using his hands against the wall to guide him, until the familiar smell of death hit him and he stopped cold. He saw a large shape on the ground and quickly backed out of the cabin.

Shy was ready to head right back up the stairs when he came across a flashlight in a holster on the wall. He grabbed it, powered it on and moved back into the cabin, shining the light on two men in lab coats. The one with red hair was lying on the ground, facedown. The bald one was slumped against the far wall.

Shy covered his nose and mouth with his left hand, seeing the pools of blood coming out from underneath the two men. He stood frozen for several seconds before forcing himself forward to nudge the body on the floor with his bare foot—he didn’t know why, it was clear both men were dead.

He shined his light all around the bodies and spotted a gun half covered by an open duffel bag. He kicked it free and stared at it, feeling incredibly on edge. He’d grown accustomed to death on the ship, but this was different. This looked like murder.

He used his foot to turn over the first corpse and saw bullet wounds. The redheaded man had been shot in the chest and the leg and the right arm. There was blood crusted all over his white lab coat. The other man was thinner and older and he had a large gash on the side of his face, like he’d been struck by something. He also appeared to have been shot in the stomach. It was an awful sight of blood and gore, and Shy moved the light away, trying to figure out what the hell had happened.

He kneeled down, shined his light into the bag. A few packs of syringes, like the kind they use for flu shots, and none of them broken. Some kind of code written on each label. Dozens of pill bottles, too. They weren’t anything like the illegal drugs he’d seen back home. These were from an actual hospital or a pharmacy—and he recalled Addie saying her dad’s company was in the medical field. Which meant they had to be close to the island. Underneath the packs of syringes was a beat-up blank envelope with a few folded papers inside.

He shined the light on the bodies again. The men were dressed like doctors or scientists. But why had they been shot? And who did the shooting? Shy stood up and shined the flashlight around the rest of the cabin. Bullet holes in the walls. Some of the cabin looked charred, like someone had tried to set the boat on fire. But there was no water anywhere. The boat was somehow unaffected by the tsunamis.

Eventually the smell overwhelmed Shy, and he hurried above deck, back to where Addie was waiting for him.

“Anyone in there?” she asked him right away.

“Two guys,” he told her. “They’re both dead, though.”

Her face filled with worry. “How?”

“I think they were shot.”

Addie covered her mouth and started breathing more quickly. “Was one of them my dad?” she asked.

“No,” Shy told her, shaking his head. “If I can get the motor going, we have to switch boats, okay? It’s a little burned up, but it doesn’t seem like this thing was affected by the tsunamis.”

Addie nodded. “Are you sure my dad’s not down there?”

“I promise.” Shy glanced back at the motorboat, then told her: “I don’t know what the hell happened, though. Who would shoot doctors?”

“They’re doctors?”

“I think so,” Shy said. “Or scientists. Look, lemme check everything else and I’ll come back and transfer us over, okay?”

Once he saw her nod he started toward the bridge, pointing the flashlight out in front of him. He wasn’t able to get the motor started, though, because the entire control panel had been shot up. The GPS, too. And there was no more fuel. Where were these guys going with no gas and a bagful of medicine? And who had climbed aboard and gunned them down? And where was that person now? Shy knew ship pirates were a possibility, but he didn’t think anyone would be out stealing right after the tsunamis.

There wasn’t any food or water in any of the supply cabinets. There wasn’t even rope or extra flares.

Shy weighed the options. If they moved to the motorboat they would no longer have to sleep in cold ankle-high water. And the cabin would protect them from the sun during the day. But it was much heavier, and he’d never be able to reach the water from the front end, so using the oar was out of the question. They’d have to stick with their broken lifeboat if they wanted to keep moving.

Before he went to get Addie’s opinion, he ducked back into the cabin to look around one last time. He shined his light on the bodies, the charred walls. Then he reached down and grabbed the gun, flipped open the barrel, saw that there were three bullets left. He dropped it in the brown and blue duffel, then slung the duffel over his shoulder and headed back up the stairs.

“Everything’s all shot up,” he told her. “And there’s no gas or supplies. If we transfer to this boat we’ll just be sitting here, waiting to be rescued. If we stay on the lifeboat we can keep moving. What do you think?”

They looked at each other for a while, then Addie said: “Shouldn’t we keep moving?”

“I think so,” Shy told her and he climbed down into their sad little lifeboat and undid the knot that had kept the two boats together.

They sat against the side in silence, Shy’s arm around Addie’s shoulders for warmth. Shy stared at the little bit of water they had left. And only two more flares and a flashlight. They had to reach land tomorrow or it would be over. He thought of the two dead men he’d found on the motorboat. Someone from the island must have shot them. But why? And what did that say about the island? Or what if they had shot themselves?

He looked up at the sky, thinking about the gun in the duffel bag. Would it get so bad that he and Addie would consider doing that? Using the bullets to stop their suffering? He fingered the ring in his pocket, thinking about that.

It was a starry black night that seemed to reach out forever, all the way back to the ruined coast of California. He tried to imagine all the lives that had been lost. All the families ripped apart, the property destroyed.

To believe that two kids on a boat had any special meaning was a fairy tale.

Shy listened to the change in Addie’s breathing as she slowly fell asleep, and he watched the motorboat drift away from them, into the darkness, until it was only a shadow in the night, then nothing, and still he watched.

By morning the water inside the lifeboat was several inches higher. Shy staggered to his feet and looked all around the boat, trying to figure out what had happened. He found a large, jagged crack in the hole he’d patched. It must’ve happened when the two boats collided.

He and Addie bailed as much water as possible, and he repatched the crack, praying it would take. Then he went back to working the oar through the ocean, concentrating on the sun as it slowly crept into the sky and warmed his stiff arms and legs.

Too soon it was directly overhead again, beating down on them. He put his shirt on his head to protect himself from it, though this time he resecured the life jacket over his bare chest. His lips were cracked and his stomach was cramping. Sores now blistered up and down his legs, under his jeans, and on the tops of his feet. He felt so weak he barely had the lifeboat moving at all, and his mind was beginning to slip. He stared out across the shimmering ocean with little hope of spotting land, aware of the two sharks that had returned. Like they sensed it was coming to an end.