Cassie Alexander - Deadshifted

He’d splashed—not like an Olympic diver, but like a kid, cannonball-style, disappearing beneath the waves. Everything had happened in silence. I hadn’t screamed. Screaming would attract attention—it would wake up Emily, and then where would I be? Explaining that her father’d just flung himself overboard?

But I was screaming on the inside. I watched the ocean in horror, biting my lips. I stepped back from the balcony’s edge and into the room, backing up until my knees were caught by the foldout couch where Emily’s dad had just been.

That wasn’t right. It simply was not right. He’d been here, and then he’d just thrown himself overboard—why? Grief? Panic? Why?

I took two deep breaths, and then I picked up the phone to dial guest services for whatever good it would do. I was sent to a messaging service, and I set the receiver down without leaving one.

I crept back to my own cabin, and touched Emily’s cool forehead again, just in case. How would I tell her? Should I? I generally wasn’t in favor of lying to children, but if I didn’t tell her, who would? Everyone else in her family was dead. It could wait until morning at least; she deserved one more night of sweet dreams.

She was alone in the world now.

As for me … I wrapped my hand around my stomach, where Asher’s hand was supposed to be. Was he, in some small distant way, partially responsible for all of this? I didn’t know. I could figure how to deal with that later.

For right now, I just wanted him back.

I would have cried but I was too tired and too frightened. Crying would have been like admitting defeat. So I didn’t, I just lay down and watched Emily dream.

I must have gone to sleep after that. Too much crazy, not enough to eat—I woke up and didn’t remember anything for a blissful second and then, ushered in by the sound of Darth Vader breathing nearby, it all came rushing back.

I opened my eyes and found Emily three inches from my face, with the N95 mask on.

“Jesus Christ!” I yelped. She jumped back, as startled as I was.

“I found this!” Emily explained, her voice muffled. “It’s like a bridle!”

“It is,” I agreed with a pant—and I remembered that I’d seen the last remaining member of her family float away the night before. God.

“You look sad,” she said.

“I’m just tired is all.” I sat up, blinking, and checked the clock. It was 10 A.M. Emily had watched TV quietly and helped herself to another sandwich while I’d slept in. Asher hadn’t returned. My note to him last night sat tented on the desk, mocking me.

I rocked back in bed and nodded to myself. This was it. He’d had his twenty-four hours and more. I was going to have to go look for him.

“Neeeeighhhh?” Emily said for attention, pawing at the ground with a foot like a horse.

I gave her a half smile. “Here, let me show you how to wear your bridle right.”

I folded the mask’s metal bridge around her nose. It wouldn’t seal—it was the wrong size for her. But she still didn’t have a fever. I didn’t think she’d contract whatever had taken the rest of her family down, due to either luck or natural immunity. While I tied the elastic bands to fit tighter around her head, I looked around the room.

All of my belongings that I liked were in this room with me, with the exception of Minnie, my cat, who was being boarded back home. The silver cuff Asher had given me a Christmas ago, to help protect me from vampires. The glamorous shoes I’d bought on super-sale that I’d carefully broken in, that I’d been waiting to get the chance to dance in. The blue shirt that I’d worn on our first real date that had felt like a date, a normal date, just us going out to see a movie, like normal people do. I had the feeling if I left this room I would never see any of it again.

And that was okay, as long as I found Asher.

“Are you going to be sick again?” Emily asked, her voice hushed by the mask. Her glasses fogged up with her breath.

I shook my head. “There’s no time for that anymore.”

I took Emily out into the hall and knocked politely at Hal and Claire’s door, trusting Claire’s ears to hear us. I heard a grunt behind the door as Hal spotted us through the peephole, and noticed when he opened the door up that he’d set down his cane nearby. All the better to beat us with.

“Hi again,” I said, and he nodded, letting us into their room. I looked from him to Claire, who had an expectant look. “I need to ask a big favor of you.”

“What?” Claire asked.

“Can you watch Emily?”

“What?” This time Emily spoke. Her voice rose, and she grabbed for my leg. “Noooooooooooooo,” she began yelling, in an air-raid-siren squeal.

“I’m sorry, Emily. I’ve got to—”

“What’s changed?” Claire asked, with a sideways glance toward my nonshowing belly.

“He said he’d be back by now. He’s not.” I realized that for anyone who didn’t know Asher or me, what I was going to say next might sound foolish, but—“My fiancé. He’s never made a promise he didn’t keep.”

Claire frowned. “It’s probably not safe yet, dear—”

But who was it safe for? Waiting around wasn’t going to change anything, not while people were acting crazy and flinging themselves overboard. And if the captain was really going to do something about it, there’d be a fleet of helicopters overhead by now, airlifting us off.

Somehow Nathaniel was using the Maraschino as his personal petri dish—and Asher’s attempt to stop him hadn’t worked. It was up to me, first to find him, and then to figure things out.

“I’ll be careful,” I said, before she could dear-me again. I held my room key out to her. “There’s plenty of food in my room still. I ordered up at the first sign of trouble.” Emily was still sobbing, sliding down my leg.

“Why does everyone always leave me?” she yelled, each word louder than the last.

She didn’t know the half of it. But I steeled myself. I couldn’t go back in time and bring her family back—I needed to find the other half of mine.

Claire watched Emily’s meltdown then sighed. “All right. I’ll keep the girl here.” She reached out and took the key from me. “But you should take Hal with you. He’s good in a tight spot.”

I was shaking my head before she could finish the words. “I believe you, but I’m sorry—I can’t. I need to do things in a rush. I appreciated your help earlier and your help now, but—”

Claire frowned—she was unused to being told no. All the same, I wasn’t going to take a lumbering elderly man with me who might slow me down on my search. “Your loss,” she warned. “Do you at least have a plan?”

I nodded. As plans went, it wasn’t a great one, but it counted. “I’m going to go volunteer.”

Emily’s screaming was awful. Even though I knew it wasn’t so much at me as it was at the continuing and escalating unfairness of her situation, it made me feel bad.

Not bad enough to stop and console her, but bad.

I let myself out of Hal and Claire’s room and walked down the hall. Asher had gone down to interrogate Liz—he might still just be trapped down there by the quarantine for all I knew. But given that Emily’s dad had been able to come up somehow, and that Asher was who he was—the chances that he’d been stopped by mere guards was very, very low. Something must have happened to him. The medical bay was as good a place as any to start figuring out what.

I reached the stairway, where two new crew members were stationed outside. “Hi. I’m a nurse. I came to volunteer, like the captain announced last night.”