Fredric Shernoff - Atlantic Island

Theo worked his way up to the doorway and looked down into the bathroom and the bedroom beyond. There was nobody in either room. Theo turned back to Bill. “They aren’t here. This is a really good thing, man, they could be totally fine…somewhere.”

Bill nodded solemnly. “Okay Theo, come on back down and let’s get out of here.”

Theo sat on the doorframe, and dropped to the wall unit. His feet hit the wood and with a loud crack the side panel of the wall unit broke lose. Theo tumbled forward and fell to the angled floor, falling from there to the wall. The drywall crumbled and tore where his body hit, but Theo came to a stop.

Bill, his eyes wide with shock, helped Theo to his feet. “This place is a deathtrap. We need to leave now!”

Together, they stumbled back across the jumble of broken and misplaced furniture and luggage, and using the big red chair they were able to climb out of the room. Shaken as he was, Theo took extra time and care with each step as he and Bill worked their way down to the ground.

Ryan, Kylee and Michelle met them on the boardwalk. They wore identical expressions of concern as they took in Theo’s battered, dust covered body. Kylee ran to him. “Are you okay? What happened?”

“Just a nasty fall. I’m fine other than some scrapes and bumps. Mark and Jamie are not in there. There’s no sign that they were there when all this craziness went down.”

Theo was surprised when Michelle spoke. “That’s awesome, but where could they be?”

“I don’t know,” he said. “We have to assume they are out there and doing what they can. At this point we need to worry about ourselves. It’s getting dark again.”

The five teens left the motel behind them and returned to their penthouse. After eating some leftovers from lunch, they retired to their rooms. Ryan had kept his phone off all day to conserve battery power, but after the previous night he only had enough juice to run the LED flashlight for an hour. Before long, the teens were plunged into the darkness of night.

The next morning Theo and his friends left the condo and found that order had begun to reassert itself in the most disturbing of ways. A trash truck was parked in the center of the intersection and people wearing surgical masks and gloves were hauling bodies off the street and tossing them into the truck.

Theo turned away from the sight and the others did the same. He looked at Kylee and saw tears running down her face. With the same composure and resolve she had exhibited since this chaos began, she sniffled once, wiped a hand across her face and walked over to him.

“So,” said Bill, breaking the silence, “it looks like the authorities are finally stepping up and doing something. Maybe we can get out of here today!”

“Not to be a downer,” said Ryan, “but there’s still the small issue of us being in the middle of the ocean.”

“Dude,” said Bill, “that’s what they make planes and stuff for. We aren’t in outer space.”

Theo was happy to see that Bill was regaining a little of his former personality. Finding the empty motel room had given him a little hope. Hope is good, Theo reckoned, but escape would be better.

They walked down to the convenience store on Michelle’s quiet suggestion that finding something for breakfast might be a good way to start the day. Theo still couldn’t quite figure her out. Michelle spoke mostly in whispered side conversations with Ryan or Kylee.

For that matter, Theo didn’t really understand the dynamic of the relationship between Michelle and Ryan. Then again, he didn’t understand whatever there was with him and Kylee. Since the world fell apart at the seams the two of them had stood side by side and comforted each other, and they had shared a bed both nights, but that was it. Did that make her his girlfriend? Theo figured the fact that he was even stopping to consider this was a good sign. Maybe a little hope was helping him, too.

As they approached the convenience store, Theo saw two police cars emblazoned with “POLICE” and “Ventnor City” stationed at the ends of the parking lot. The store itself was boarded up and inaccessible. In the lot, a table had been erected and a line of survivors approached it one by one. Behind the table, two men in jeans and polo shirts were jotting down information on legal pads and sending those at the head of the line around the side of the building. Though the men were not in any uniform, Theo observed, the firearms at their sides gave them away as the officers from the police cars.

Ryan approached a couple at the back of the line. Both of them appeared to be in their thirties. The woman’s curly hair was unkempt and she had a vacant look in her eyes. The man had what might be part of a t-shirt wrapped around his calf. The shirt had red blotches staining the cotton. The man’s face was ghostly pale. He didn’t look well.

Ryan chatted with the man for a minute. The woman appeared not to see him there. The man punctuated his speech with wide sweeps of his arm. Ryan nodded repeatedly and, after giving the man a reassuring pat on the shoulder, jogged back to his friends. “So, here’s the deal. That guy, Evan, says that the cops here are rationing out food. They’ve got stuff coming from down at the casinos and all but it’s all under the control of the authorities.”

Kylee scrunched her face. “How did the Ventnor cops get their hands on stuff from AC?”

“Apparently,” said Ryan, “the departments are all combined now. At least until this all gets resolved.”

Bill scowled. His earlier enthusiasm was waning. “I don’t see how rationing out food is helping the bigger problem of getting us out of here.”

Theo had an idea. “Let’s get some food, and then we can go to the police headquarters and see who knows what’s being done.” He paused. “Anybody know where the headquarters is?”

“Not a problem,” said Ryan, his hand going to his pocket. “I’ll just… oh, wait.” He awkwardly crossed his arms, as his natural habit, to research anything and everything on his phone, was broken. It occurred to Theo that he couldn’t remember the last time he had gone without his phone for two days. He could bet it had been even longer for Ryan.

The teens got in line behind Evan and the silent woman and waited their turn. Twenty minutes later, they reached the front of the line.

“How many in your party?” asked the officer on the left.

Theo had to fight the urge to laugh. The idea of the five refugee teens as a “party,” as if they were about to dine at a five star restaurant, struck his weary mind as hysterical.

“How many?” the officer asked again.

“Five of us,” said Theo.

The officer jotted something down on the pad in front of him.

“Round the corner. Next?”

They followed the officer’s instructions. Around the back of the convenience store, they were treated to an orange, a pack of saltines and a bottle of water each. The teens decided to eat on the way to the city.

Theo looked at his “party.” None of them had showered or changed in days. Considering everything they had been through since the night of the disaster, they looked okay. The one thing he didn’t like was how each of them seemed lost in his or her own thoughts. There was no camaraderie, and something in Theo’s mind told him that survival might depend on this little group’s members supporting each other.

Theo turned to Michelle. “So… Michelle, what do you do when you’re not trapped on an island?” Michelle laughed and the others followed. Theo laughed with them. He could feel the mood lifting.

Atlantic City had suffered tremendously from the disaster. It occurred to Theo that the city might have been at the center of the earthquake. Many of the shops and small apartments were in ruins. The casinos appeared to have mostly cosmetic damage.