Matt de la Peña - The Living

Carmen grinned. “I peeped her out a little. So what?” She climbed a few more steps and said: “Don’t start having some big deserted-island fantasy, okay? We just talked. She told me how you blasted a shark with an oar. And how some injured guy threw himself overboard when you two were sleeping.”

Shy felt the ring in his pocket as they climbed the final flight of stairs. He decided he needed to tell Carmen about Addie’s dad. The picture Addie had found in his room. How he was partners with the guy Shy saw jump off the ship on his first voyage and how there was something seriously sketchy happening on the island.

But just then they reached the top of the stairs and peeked around the corner. Two men were sitting on metal folding chairs outside the double doors of the penthouse. “What now?” he whispered to Carmen.

“Best way to deal with shit like this,” she said, “is to act like you know what you’re doing.” She popped out from behind the wall and started walking directly toward the men.

Shy followed.

Both men stood up at the same time. The heavier, balding one moved in front of the door. The other guy, who was rocking a military flattop, held his hands up and said: “Sorry guys, nobody’s allowed in there right now. Doctor’s orders.”

“Christian’s the one who sent us,” Shy said.

Carmen slowed and put her hand on the guy’s elbow. “We’re supposed to go in there and run them through the launch details.”

“Sorry,” the flattop guy said. “ Nobody’s allowed inside. Not even us.”

“It’s for our own protection,” the heavier guy by the doors added. “Plus Larry was just up here talking to them. Christian must have made a mistake.”

Shy and Carmen glanced at each other. There was no way Shy was gonna climb all those stairs without seeing Rodney. “Okay,” he said, turning back to the two men. “I guess it was a misunderstanding, then. We’ll just go back downstairs and tell Christian—”

Shy suddenly shoved his way past both men and pushed through the doors.

“Hey!” they shouted from behind him.

Shy spun around, saw that one of the men had fallen to the floor. Carmen was hurrying past them, too, and they both ran through the hall, into the main living area, where an awful smell hit Shy.

And then he saw.

Fifteen or twenty people were lying on their backs on temporary cots. Their arms and legs tied down. Some of them looked up when they heard Shy and Carmen come into the room. Others didn’t move.

Carmen covered her mouth with her hand.

The two men who had been guarding the door hurried into the room after them, shouting: “You can’t be in here! We’ll all get sick!”

But then they went quiet, too, and stared at the strapped-down bodies.

Shy pulled Carmen by the wrist and they moved from one body to the next, looking for Rodney. The patients were in various conditions. Some seemed alert and shouted at Shy and Carmen. Others had vomit all over their shirts and they moaned and twisted in pain. Others clawed frantically at their own thighs.

A few weren’t moving at all.

“No,” Shy started mumbling as he and Carmen continued through the rows of patients. “No, please.”

The men were after them again, shouting: “We have to get out of here before they come back!”

“There!” Carmen shouted. She was pointing to a cot in the far corner, where Rodney was lying, and they both rushed toward him.

Rodney’s face was turned toward the wall.

His eyes seemed open, but when Shy shook him he didn’t respond. Carmen turned Rodney’s head toward them, and Shy’s entire body went cold. The whites of his eyes were entirely red and fixed on nothing.

Carmen continued shaking Rodney and calling out his name, until Shy grabbed her by the wrists and said: “Let’s go.”

As the men dragged Carmen and Shy back through the room, Shy stared at each body they passed. Everyone in the penthouse was infected with Romero Disease. And some, like Rodney, were already dead.

And they’d been left there to rot.

After the two men led Shy and Carmen out of the penthouse, they hurried down the stairs together in shock. “How’d it get way out here?” Carmen said. “And why has nobody told us?”

“I need to get the duffel bag,” Shy said. “And find Christian. The shot we got has to have something to do with the disease. Like a vaccine.”

“There is no vaccine.”

“Then why haven’t you gotten sick?” Shy said. She glanced at him as they continued down the stairs, but she didn’t say anything. Nothing made sense. A few minutes ago they were excited to be going home. Now there were people on the island with Romero Disease. And Rodney was gone. And they’d just left him there.

“The bag had pills, too,” Shy said. “Maybe it’s the kind of medicine they gave my nephew.”

“What’s happening!” Carmen shouted. “Did you feel how cold Rodney’s arm was? Did you see his eyes?”

Shy stopped her as they got to the bottom of the stairs. “I know where Shoeshine hid the duffel. We have to get the meds on the ship or the rest of the patients will die before we get home. I’ll get Shoe. He has to know more than what he told me.”

“I’ll find Christian,” Carmen said. “He’s about to explain why everyone’s been lying to us. I’ll get Marcus, too.”

Shy looked out across the lobby, where a few passengers were lounging on the couches, talking, laughing. They had no idea that people just a few floors above them were dying. “I’ll meet you back here before six, okay? So we can line up for the ship together.”

Carmen nodded. “It doesn’t make any sense, Shy. Why would they lie to us?”

All he could do was shake his head.

Before leaving the hotel, Shy hurried to Addie’s room and knocked on the door. Her dad’s company had to know about the disease. How else would there be a bagful of the vaccine and medicine? And Shy was sure that was what he’d found on the motorboat. He remembered Addie saying LasoTech made hospital equipment. But if they had scientists who worked in a lab, it only made sense that they’d make drugs, too. Maybe they’d been working on a way to protect people from Romero Disease.

He knocked again and called out: “Addie, open the door! It’s Shy!”

When there was still no answer he hurried back through the lobby, pushed open the doors and went outside. He made his way back to the top of the stairs, where he saw the helicopter slowly lifting off the ship. He watched it lean to the side and start moving away from the island; he wondered who was in there and why they’d be leaving ahead of the ship.

Shy skipped down a few stairs and sifted through the bushes where Shoeshine had hidden the duffel bag, but it wasn’t there. Someone had taken it. Maybe Shoeshine.

He stood up again and watched the flight of the helicopter, trying to figure out what was happening. He kept picturing Rodney’s lifeless face. His blood-red eyes. And everyone else who was strapped down to cots in the penthouse. The minute he’d found those dead scientists in the ocean he’d known something bad was happening here. But he never would’ve guessed it involved Romero Disease.

Shy took the trail beyond the gazebo, which led him higher up the cliff, through dense trees and bushes, around large boulders and exposed roots. He had no idea where he was going, he just knew he needed to find Shoeshine. And the last time he’d seen the guy he’d been headed in this direction.

He came upon a few of the researchers, who were spraying the bushes and trees with some kind of squirt bottle. They didn’t even look up, so Shy scooted right past them. When the path broke off into a Y, he chose the route that led farther up the hill. His lungs burned as he climbed. His legs felt like Jell-O. But he had to make sure the duffel bag got on the ship. And he had to talk to Shoeshine.