Matt de la Peña - The Living

“We have to help the sick people,” Shy said.

Marcus was shaking his head. “Let’s get off the trail. Maybe we’ll be able to see the ship from the edge of the cliff.”

They stepped off the trail together, Shy leading the way, until they were at the edge of the cliff, where they looked out over the ocean. Their angle was poor, but Shy saw one of the rafts at the side of the ship, and the researchers pulling the dead bodies up into the ship. They didn’t want to leave any evidence of what they’d done.

“Where’s Shoeshine?” Shy asked.

No one answered.

As soon as the last of the bodies was loaded onto the ship, the gunmen climbed aboard, too, and then a group of them pulled the rafts up.

“They’re all on,” Shy said. “We have to go get the sick people out of the hotel and down to the beach. Part of the hotel is already on fire.”

Just after he said these words a ball of fire shot across the water from the ship and crashed into the side of the hotel, and the wall exploded in flames.

More thunderous shots came from the ship, the sound exploding all around the island, the hotel taking blow after blow until the whole thing was in flames, including the penthouse where some of the patients had still been alive. Shy had never seen anything like it. The men were firing rocket launchers at the island, trying to burn everything down. He was choking on fear now.

They started running again, back down the trail, Shy leading with no idea where he was going. But then a ball of fire landed in the brush right in front of them and without saying a word all three of them spun back around and took off, back up the hill.

Every other tree and bush they passed was on fire, the flames leaping from branch to branch, reaching into the sky, lighting up everything. Smoke blanketed the path, and soon they were all coughing and covering their mouths with their shirts. There was nowhere to go, no safe place. They were going to be burned alive with everything else.

Suddenly, another man came ripping through a patch of burning bushes and fell to the ground, rolling to put out the flames on his clothes. Then he sprang to his feet.

Shoeshine.

“It’s napalm!” he shouted. “They’re torching the entire island! Follow me!”

Shy sprinted after Shoeshine, Carmen and Marcus right behind him. They took the trail up the hill, fire spreading all around them.

Shy couldn’t think, but he could run. And he was hyperaware of his surroundings. The flames and the smoke and each twist and turn Shoeshine made and Carmen and Marcus running behind him.

But the farther up the trail they went, the more it became clear to him that they would be trapped. The only way down from the towering cliff was the stairs, where they’d be in clear sight of the men on the ship. But the rest of the island would soon be engulfed in flames. There was no way out.

Shoeshine led them off the path, toward the edge of the cliff, and Shy recognized the helicopter launchpad. It was where he’d slipped and almost fallen. The four of them stood at the very edge and stared down at the water some sixty feet below, the fire already pushing up against their backs.

“What now?” Shy shouted.

Shoeshine grabbed the radio out of Marcus’s hands and the duffel bag off Shy’s shoulder.

“What are you doing?” Marcus shouted.

“I’ve got it!” Shoeshine shouted back, shoving the radio inside the duffel and zipping up. He then leaned into Shy’s ear and told him: “You make sure they follow.”

He turned and leaped over the edge, throwing the duffel out in front of him.

Carmen screamed as the three of them scrambled to the edge to watch Shoeshine falling feetfirst, arms and legs flailing, until his body exploded into the water.

“No way,” Marcus said, shaking his head. “No fucking way.”

Shy glanced at the flames surrounding them.

There was no choice.

He moved toward Marcus, holding up his hands and saying: “We don’t have to jump. We can just go back down the trail—” Then he shoved Marcus, as hard as he could, off the cliff, watched him fall screaming toward the water.

Shy took Carmen’s hand and looked at her.

Her face was contorted with fear but she nodded to him, and they both took two hurried steps toward the edge and leaped together.

In the air, Shy reached out for nothing with his arms and kicked, the air whipping past his ears and the lost feeling of weightlessness and freedom, and he saw the comb-over man falling from the ship and he saw Carmen’s bugged eyes beside him and then he smacked into the water and sank down into it, deeper and deeper, even when he fought to stop himself, and then he let his body go limp and the water wrapped its arms around him and lifted him back up toward the surface, slowly and steadily, and he fought his burning lungs, waiting until he burst back through the surface to suck in a huge breath, and then he spun around in the water, desperately, until he found Carmen staring back at him.

“Over here,” Shoeshine said, waving for them to follow him. He was in the water with the duffel bag, against the cliff.

Shy’s entire right side was numb where he’d slammed into the ocean. And his mind was numb, too. He saw Carmen and Marcus swimming up ahead of him. And he saw the sailboat with the torn sail floating off to the right. The one Carmen claimed Shoeshine had been obsessed with. It seemed impossible that he’d gotten it to the point that it could float again. But here it was.

Shoeshine was slowly climbing up the rocky cliff now, which didn’t seem like a good idea since the entire island was still engulfed in flames.

By the time Shy got to the cliff, he saw that Shoeshine was crawling toward a cave in the side of the cliff, about fifteen feet above the water. Shoeshine reached down for Carmen and helped her into the cave. Then he helped Marcus. Shy climbed up after them and Shoeshine pulled him up and in as well. Inside, the cave opened up much wider. Shoeshine walked over to a pile of life jackets, tossed one to each of them, saying: “You’re gonna need these.” They all strapped the jackets on. Then Shoeshine lifted a large folded blanket.

“What are we doing?” Carmen said.

“Getting on that sailboat out there,” Shoeshine said.

Shy was shivering as he turned to the water again.

“We can’t!” Marcus shouted. “The ship’s moving toward it!”

They all rushed to the cave opening and looked out, saw a ball of fire screaming through the air, toward the boat. It landed only fifteen feet away and quickly died in the water.

“They’re trying to burn it down!” Carmen shouted.

Shoeshine leaned out of the cave and shouted at the research ship: “Come on, you bastard! Just get up to five knots!”

Another fireball fell short of the boat.

Then a third.

Shy watched the ship start gaining momentum toward the boat and he watched the balls of fire continue arcing through the air toward it. One landed right next to the boat, nearly turning it on its side. The fire jumped up and set the tattered sail ablaze.

“Come on!” Shoeshine shouted. “Speed up for me!”

Above them, Shy heard the earth-shaking sound of fire sweeping over the island. He was so confused. “Why do you want it to speed up?” he said.

“I spent all afternoon rigging the damn thing. Just in case.”

Carmen slid up next to Shy to watch the ship bearing down on the helpless sailboat.

Another fireball missed, and then the research ship itself exploded in a burst of flames that shot into the sky. A second explosion followed on the back half of the ship and pieces of it blew out in every direction, some of them landing as far as the mouth of their cave.