Matt de la Peña - The Living

Just hearing her say his name sort of choked him up. “Carm,” he managed to say back.

She was wearing a plain white T-shirt he’d never seen her wear, baggy jeans and tennis shoes. She covered her mouth and her eyes got a little glassy, but there were no tears. Carmen was too tough for that. “Come here,” she said.

He moved toward her and she wrapped him in a tight hug, saying in a quiet voice: “I thought I lost you.”

Shy was so overcome with emotion he wanted to melt into her. He cupped the back of her head and held her against his chest, breathing in her hair. He was exhausted to the point that his knees were shaking, but he didn’t care. He was willing to stand like this forever.

She looked up at him. “I thought of you every single minute. I even tried praying.”

“I thought about you, too,” Shy told her.

Carmen reached up and grabbed Shy’s face in her hands, stared right into his eyes. “How’d you get rescued? It’s been five days. I almost lost hope.”

“Shoeshine,” Shy told her. “He found us out there in a sinking lifeboat.”

Carmen hugged him again.

Shy closed his eyes this time and concentrated on the feeling of her body against his. Being with Carmen again made it sink in that he’d made it to the other side. That he had a second chance.

When she pulled away from him this time, she said: “God, look how skinny you are, Shy. It’s like breaking my heart.”

“I only caught one fish the whole time,” he said.

She laughed a little and shook her head. “I never saw you as the life-skills type. Why do you think I was praying?”

“It was the sharks,” he told her. “For real. They scared away all my fish.”

“You smell, too,” Carmen said, grabbing him by the elbow. “Let’s get you cleaned up.”

Carmen led Shy back into the hotel and behind the reservation desk, where he picked out a change of clothes, and then she took him out back to the freshwater pool where she said everyone had been bathing.

“Go on,” Carmen said, turning away from him. “I’ll keep a look out so nobody tries to sneak a peek at your stuff.”

Shy slowly peeled off the damp clothes he’d been wearing for the past five days and grabbed one of the small hotel-style bars of soap lying beside the pool. Being rescued was a trip: one minute he’d be stressing about getting back home and finding his family, and the next minute he’d get a lump in his throat just looking at a bar of soap.

He dunked himself in the cool water and began lathering his hair and body, which felt incredible, as Carmen caught him up about her own lifeboat’s journey to the island and the island itself.

She was on the first boat to make it to the island, along with about thirty others, including Christian, who they’d pulled out of the ocean. A disheveled redheaded man in a lab coat, Dr. Sullivan, greeted them on the golf course and led them up the stairs to the hotel. Soon as they walked into the lobby, though, he had them all sit down so he could explain what was happening on the island. He’d been working in the lab on the other side, with a team of other scientists, when the first tsunami hit. In seconds, the entire lab was underwater. Only a few of them made it out alive. But that wasn’t all. The next morning, most of the people who worked on the island—in the hotel and the restaurant and on the grounds—started getting sick. Really sick. He’d been putting them all upstairs, in the penthouse, where he was giving them medication.

“Then the doc ducked behind the registration desk,” Carmen said over her shoulder, “and came back with a duffel bag. He explained that the virus going around was very contagious and that each of us would need to have a shot for protection.”

Shy had stopped lathering and was staring at the back of Carmen’s head. He knew she was talking about one of the dead people he’d found on the motorboat. And the shots they all got were the same ones Shoeshine had just given to him and Addie.

“So you let him give you the shot?” Shy asked.

“Of course I did,” Carmen said. “Only two people from my lifeboat refused it, and they’re both sick now. They’re up in the penthouse.”

Shy started rinsing himself off, debating whether or not to tell Carmen about the dead scientists. Or about him getting the shot, too. If everyone already knew about it, why did Shoeshine want him to keep it secret?

“So where’s the bag of medicine now?” he asked.

“Gone,” Carmen said, turning all the way around to face him. “That’s why I’m worried about you.”

Shy thought about ducking back into the water to hide himself. But he didn’t. He just stood there.

She glanced down at him for a quick sec, but her face stayed serious. “Shy, your chest. What happened?”

He reached up to feel it. He had a pretty big scab that was slowly healing. And he was pretty sure he’d broken a rib or two. “No idea,” he said. “Happened on the ship.”

Carmen cringed. “Anyway, Dr. Sullivan disappeared, too. The day after we got here. We don’t know where he went or what he did with the medicine.”

“Was there another doctor?” Shy asked.

“There were four of them,” Carmen said. “But Dr. Sullivan was the only one who came around the hotel. The rest of them mostly stayed on the other side of the island, except when they went to the restaurant to eat. They claimed their entire life’s work was buried underwater.”

Shy started drying himself off with one of the towels stacked near the pool, trying to decide how to tell Carmen what he knew. He didn’t want to betray Shoeshine, but at the same time, he couldn’t keep this from Carmen.

She turned away from him, as if she’d just remembered he was naked. “Everyone on the second boat is fine, too, but by the time the third and fourth lifeboats showed up, Dr. Sullivan was already gone. Same with the medicine. So none of them got the shot.”

“And they got sick?” Shy asked, putting on a fresh pair of pants. He transferred the oilman’s ring from his old ones.

“Almost all of them,” Carmen said over her shoulder. “Only Shoeshine is still fine. And a few others. It’s crazy contagious, like Dr. Sullivan said. That’s why Christian and those research people aren’t letting anyone go up to the penthouse.”

“By any chance,” Shy said, “was that duffel bag of medicine brown and blue?”

Carmen spun back to Shy. “How’d you know that?”

Shy slipped his second arm into his T-shirt and pulled it over his head. “Look,” he said, “Shoe told me to keep this quiet, okay?”

“Just tell me what you know.”

“Okay.” Shy was so tired he had to squat down. “Me and Addie stumbled into that Dr. Sullivan guy’s boat while we were paddling around out there. You said he had red hair, right?”

Carmen nodded.

“So, yeah, someone shot him,” Shy said. “Shot his boat up, too. And tried to burn it.”

The color went out of Carmen’s face. “Who shot him? Why?”

“No idea,” Shy said. “I found him that way. Some other doctor had also been shot.”

“But that doesn’t make sense,” Carmen said. “Why would anyone shoot a scientist? He was helping us.”

Shy looked over Carmen’s shoulder to make sure they were still alone. “You don’t think Shoe had anything to do with it, do you?”

Carmen composed herself and shook her head. “The reason he didn’t get sick, I think, is because he never stays in the hotel.”

“Where’s he sleep?”

She shrugged. “Outside, I guess. He spends all day exploring the other side and fishing and writing in his notebook. He’s also obsessed with that wrecked sailboat. Maybe he sleeps on that. ” Carmen shook her head again. “Nah, Shoe’s been good to us. He rescued you, didn’t he?”