Fredric Shernoff - Atlantic Island

The city had been packed with residents and tourists two nights earlier. Now the streets were full of corpses, most of who, it appeared, had drowned as the tidal wave had flooded the streets. Some of the bodies were bloody and beaten. Theo felt light-headed as he considered the probability that some of the survivors had attacked the others.

The police were out in force, both in uniform and out. Trucks were being loaded with the deceased on every street. The casinos Theo and his friends passed were barricaded. Among the contingent manning the barricades outside Caesar’s Palace was Officer Menendez. Bill saw him first and waved as he approached.

Menendez looked more nervous than when they had first met him. He recognized the teens and gave them a weak smile. “Hi kids, listen, you can’t go in the casino right now.”

“Why not?” asked Bill.

“There’s some… government meetings, I guess you’d say.” Menendez’s eyes darted away as he said this and Theo wondered what it was the officer was keeping from them.

Theo gestured out to the street behind him. “So we hear all this is under some combined police force. Does that mean that someone is figuring out how to get us home?”

Menendez shrugged. His eyes were doing their nervous dance again. “Beats me. Look, you guys are in a tough spot, no doubt. I’m gonna give you some advice. Stay clear of the city. If you’ve got a place to hunker down, do it and wait til somebody gets you when all this is figured out. This place is wild right now, and dangerous, and the guys in them casinos…” Menendez’s voice trailed off as he looked away.

“What guys in the casinos?” asked Theo.

“Nothing,” said Menendez, “didn’t mean to say that. Now just get out of AC, you got it?”

With that, he turned and walked back to the other officers stationed at the barricade.

“What the hell was that?” Bill asked as the teens walked up to the boardwalk.

“He’s hiding something,” said Kylee.

“Oh most definitely,” said Ryan. “There’s something in the casinos that’s got him spooked.”

“He seems pretty spooked by everything,” said Michelle.

Theo listened in silence as they walked. Despite Michelle’s valid point, he agreed that Officer Menendez appeared to be keeping something from them. He had almost said too much and then pulled himself back at the last second. Still, what did it matter? As far as he was concerned, Theo thought, the head of North Korea could be holding meetings up there, and if the end result was that he got to leave this place and go home, it would be just fine.

The teens spent the rest of the day exploring the island. There wasn’t much to see. Most of the city had remained but Ventnor was just a thin strip that went a few streets into Margate and then ended abruptly. The broken avenue ran straight into the ocean. If there was anything left of the towns and barrier islands farther south, Theo and his friends couldn’t see it.

The combined police force was everywhere on the island. By late in the day it seemed all the bodies had been removed from the streets and, presumably, from the buildings. More than once, Theo had shuddered as his gaze went out over the ocean and he thought about the likely final resting place of those poor victims.

Dinner that night was fruit, tuna and a bottle of water. Theo wondered how long he and his friends could continue on such a reduced diet. His stomach gurgled as they climbed the stairs back to their penthouse apartment. He climbed into bed and stared into the darkness as he waited for Kylee to arrive. Finally, he felt her climb into the bed next to him.

“Hey,” she said.

“Hey to you.”

“Well this was an exciting day.”

Theo smiled. “They just get better and better. Island living at its finest.”

Kylee laughed. Theo wished he could see her face. He shifted over in the bed and extended his arm to the side. His hand brushed her hair and she rolled toward him, maneuvering so his arm was supporting her neck.

“So,” Kylee said, “what are you thinking about?”

“I don’t really know. I guess I’m still wondering why nobody has found us. We haven’t seen one plane, and you know the military has satellites that could find us no matter where in the ocean we’ve ended up.”

“I don’t even know how this makes any sense,” said Kylee. “I mean, how could we be out in the ocean? How could all this land just float out like that?”

Theo thought for a moment. “It could be that we didn’t go anywhere. Maybe the water just washed over a bunch of stuff, like maybe global warming made the oceans rise or something like you hear people say might happen.”

“But then that comes back to your point,” said Kylee. “Nobody has found us yet. Even this authority that’s fixing things up and has Officer Menendez all twitchy has no clue where anybody else is or how to get in touch with them.”

“I definitely didn’t plan to spend my summer in a mystery novel,” said Theo.

“Me neither,” said Kylee. “I miss my parents.”

She was silent for a while after that. In the dark silences could stretch on for a long time. Theo’s thoughts turned to his own family. He tried to focus on the best possible scenario, that this disaster hadn’t had any impact near Philadelphia and that all his loved ones were okay. He knew they had to be worried about him and the fact that he couldn’t reach out to them frustrated him endlessly. He decided to break the silence before his thoughts consumed him.

“So… where do you want to go to college?” he asked.

“I’m not sure. I’m supposed to go look sometime in the fall. I was thinking of going out west, just to do something a little different. I might major in journalism. How about you?”

“I haven’t given it too much thought,” Theo said. “It would help if I knew what I wanted to study. I like so many things but I don’t love any of them, you know what I mean?”

Kylee laughed. “Have faith, young man, you’ll figure it out.”

“Thanks for the support,” Theo smirked.

Suddenly, the world went white. Theo shut his eyes against the blinding intrusion. When he opened them, slowly, carefully, he saw that the light fixture above the bed was on. He heard his friends stirring around the apartment and his confused brain finally registered that the power was back.

He sat up and Kylee sat up next to him. She was smiling her radiant smile. “Say what you will, whoever’s in charge knows what they are doing!” She got up and walked toward the door.

“What are you doing?” Theo asked?

Kylee raised an eyebrow. Her smile hadn’t faded. “I want to celebrate,” she said. She reached out and turned off the light.

The next few days went by in a blur. Theo felt more and more of his attention and thoughts shift to Kylee. The craziness and loneliness of the island was lessening, as the repetition of the days became the new “normal.” Each day followed the same pattern: meals at one of the police ration stations set up around town, the rest of the time spent exploring and hanging out. Two days after the return of the power (which appeared to have heralded the return of working plumbing) Bill found a Frisbee. Though it wasn’t the one they had lost and though it made them think once again of their missing friends, the teens were soon lost in the fun of running around the beach, diving in the sand for near misses and chasing each other into the waves.

Two weeks after what the survivors had begun to call “the Event,” the teens lined up for lunch outside what had been a clothing store. A man at the front was conversing with one of the officers. The man’s clothes hung on his slender frame; a testament to the limited calories available for the survivors. He was clearly agitated. The officer answered him calmly but Theo noticed the cop’s hand was in close proximity to his firearm.