Kate Brian: Endless

“Darcy!” I shouted. But she didn’t hear me. She plunged beneath the choppy waves, reemerged, and swam straight for a little girl whose arms flailed as she went under, choking. My hands flew up to cover my mouth as Darcy plunged after her. I watched the whitecaps where they’d disappeared, scanning for any sign of them. But I could only see the spot where my sister and the girl had gone under.

Where are they? I thought, clenching my jaw.

“There!” Joaquin shouted, startling me. He pointed a good ten feet to the left of where I’d been looking, and there was Darcy, gamely swimming for shore with one arm locked around the little girl’s chest. “She’s okay.” He gave my shoulder a quick squeeze. “They’re both fine.”

“Who’s that ?” Krista asked.

A sinewy, strong guy about our age was swimming toward the shore, holding a middle-aged woman tight around her chest, her chin tilted up toward the sky so she could breathe. He placed her on the shore, then raced right back out to the ferry to grab a man who still clung to the doomed ship’s guardrail. Quickly, he pried the panicked man’s fingers from the railing and brought him back to safety, then went out again, cutting through the water like it was nothing to him.

“Where did he come from?” I asked.

“I have no idea,” Joaquin said.

Darcy had just gotten back to the shore and pulled the little girl to safety. I ran to her side, slipping over the rocks until I reached the sand.

“Darcy! Are you guys okay?” I asked, dropping to my knees next to her.

Darcy flung her wet dark hair over her shoulder. She was winded but otherwise seemed fine. The girl, however, was wailing.

“She may have broken her leg, and look at her skin. She’s so pale. I think we should get her to the hospital. Where the hell are the EMTs, already? Or the Coast Guard?”

I swallowed hard. Darcy had no clue about the realities of where we were. As far as she knew, we were still alive, enrolled in the witness protection program thanks to Steven Nell, and about to get a call any day saying he’d been apprehended and we could return to Princeton, to our home and our friends. She didn’t know that a place like Juniper Landing didn’t need any personnel dedicated to saving lives, because no one here had a life to save.

“Um…maybe the weather is screwing things up?”

“Well, we have to get her to a hospital,” Darcy insisted.

Joaquin, who was now tending to a woman nearby, glanced over at me. “We don’t exactly have a hospital,” he said reluctantly.

“No hospital?” We looked up to find Super Swimmer Boy hovering over us, heaving for breath, his jet-black hair dripping water down his square cheekbones. “What do you mean, there’s no hospital?”

His skin was a healthy tan, and he had one blue eye and one brown eye. The whole package was so handsome and startling I found myself staring. Darcy rose to her feet next to me, as speechless and transfixed as me.

“Yes, they’re different colors. No, I don’t know how or why,” he stated, not amused, but not angry, either. Then he focused on Joaquin. “What do you do, then? Go to one on the mainland?”

“How would we even get everyone there without the ferry?” Darcy said, gesturing around wildly.

Now it was Joaquin’s turn to be stumped. “Um…we…”

The seconds ticked by slowly. Strangers began to gather, having overheard our conversation, the injured cradling their arms or holding torn scraps of fabric against wounds. Everyone seemed to wait on whatever it was Joaquin would say next.

“Take them to the clinic.”

An unpleasant shiver raced down my spine. I looked up at the plank walkway leading to the town and saw Mayor Parrish looking down at the rest of us.

“The clinic?” I asked.

“Of course,” she said, rolling her eyes. “The clinic.”

Then she gestured oh-so-elegantly up at the bluff, where her gorgeous, sprawling colonial mansion sat overlooking the town.

“Come now, everyone,” she said loudly. “Let’s help those who can’t help themselves. Once we’re settled inside and out of this rain, we can assess the situation.”

For a long moment, no one moved. Not that anyone could have blamed us. This was not normal procedure for a disaster, following the snappish mayor up the hill with no EMTs or nurses, no ambulances, no nothing.

But this was Juniper Landing, and I’d long since learned that nothing around here was normal procedure. It wouldn’t be long before everyone else here figured it out as well.

People scream and cry and beg around me, but for the moment, I am still. I watch the prow of the ferry slowly sink beneath the surface of the water, and then it is gone. Completely gone. This, I was not expecting. Without the ferry, there will be no new souls. The pickings will begin to grow slim, and I haven’t met my goal yet. I haven’t completed my assignment. I still need five more.

But it’s okay. I’ll just have to focus. I have to make sure that only the good are taken, not the bad. Taking the bad is fine, but, for me, a waste of time. I must fulfill my destiny before they find me, before they figure me out.

I turn away as a hand reaches out to me, and watch Rory Miller help some poor, bloodied woman up the steps to a waiting truck. Soon, it will be up to her. She just doesn’t know it yet.

“So, what’s your name?”

Super Swimmer Boy stared straight ahead as he walked, the little girl Darcy had saved clinging to him with her tiny arms around his neck. Darcy had gone ahead with Krista to get into some dry clothes. The little girl’s blond hair hung in wet hanks down her back, and she sniffled continuously, her cheek resting on his shoulder. The elderly-but-spry woman I was helping held fast to my waist, each step we took over the wind-flattened grass slow but steady. She had a deep gash on her forehead near her hairline and was holding a wad of gauze to it with her free hand, but she seemed otherwise unharmed. Out on the bay, the water slowly swallowed the bow of the ferry. I couldn’t believe it was gone.

“Liam,” he said. His tone was somehow mournful as he gazed steadily ahead. “Liam Murtry.”

“I’m Rory Thayer,” I offered.

He glanced at me so briefly I wasn’t sure I hadn’t imagined it. “Nice to meet you.”

“And I’m Myra Schwartz,” my patient offered, touching her chest. Droplets of rain dotted the lenses of her red-framed glasses. “What’s your name, honey?” she asked, tilting her head to better see the little girl, her smile kind.

“I’m not supposed to talk to strangers,” the girl said in a meek voice that broke my heart.

Myra nodded. “Good girl.” Then she winked at me as if to say, We’re in this together . I smiled gratefully in return.

“Behind you, Rory!” someone shouted.

Liam reached out and tugged me and Myra toward him as Kevin and Fisher passed, toting an old-school stretcher of canvas and wood between them. On it, a heavyset man in a suit groaned, his arm flung over his head to ward off the rain. They raced by as Liam and I watched, his strong fingers still gripping my biceps. I looked down at his hand and waited.

“Sorry,” he said, recovering himself. He released me and grimaced. “It’s just…this is some scene.”

I took a breath, really looking around me for the first time since we’d started for the mayor’s house. Officer Dorn had set up a makeshift command post near the bottom of the hill, handing out the stretchers he and Kevin had retrieved from the police station’s basement along with the other supplies. There were only a few, so he was busy assessing injuries to decide who needed one and who didn’t, his buzz-cut blond hair covered by the hood of a huge army-green poncho. Pete Sweeney and Cori Morrison passed by, supporting a limping man between them. Pete was stooping to try to even out the marked height difference between him and Cori. Bea and Ursula, the older Lifer whom Joaquin shared a home with as pseudo grandmother and grandson, carried a woman on a stretcher whose skin looked waxy and green. There were new arrivals everywhere, wincing, groaning, crying—doing the best they could to make it up the steep hill as Lifers darted around trying to help. The girl in Liam’s arms shifted her head to look at me.