Cassie Alexander - Deadshifted

“What’s going on?” Emily asked, looking scared.

“I don’t know—” I looked at Claire accusingly. Had she sucked the air out of him too?

Claire glared back at me and then bent over, sobbing as she ran her hands over Hal’s chest. “I can’t hear his heartbeat anymore.”

“Oh, no—” I pressed Emily to me for a second, trying to give her some wild comfort, and then moved both of them aside.

CPR hardly ever worked by itself on anyone. That’s what the TV shows don’t show you. You do CPR until someone with a defibrillator comes, and that’s what works, if it’s going to. Even then it’s doubtful. CPR doesn’t get your heart back into a working rhythm, all it does is keep your oxygenated blood moving to keep your cells alive, in case the electricity can slap your heart into working order again.

But I didn’t know what else to do. I found his sternum with the heel of one hand and started compressions.

Claire clawed at his shoulder with one hand while I pumped. “This wasn’t how it was supposed to be,” she told him. “We were supposed to make it safely to the lifeboat.”

If I talked to her, I’d slow down, and if I slowed down, there was even less of a chance he’d wake up. You were supposed to do CPR until help arrived, or the patient woke up and shoved you away.

“Please, Hal, wake up,” she begged him, sobbing against his side. She kissed his lips, and I knew what she was doing, she was trying to give him more life.

I kept going because stopping would mean I’d given up, and it wasn’t my place. I was tired and my shoulder was screaming; my compressions weren’t effective anymore, but I felt like I had to try. It kept raining, and rumbles of thunder interrupted Claire’s sobs. I didn’t know how long I’d gone for, or how much longer I had in me. I was just a machine that did this because it was easier than admitting that he wasn’t going to come back.

She put her hand out and rested it on mine. “Stop.”

I kept going for another three beats.

“I’m sure. You can stop. His heart hasn’t started up again.” There was another thunderclap, louder now; we were in the middle of the storm. It shook our bodies, and I had a foolish idea to run some piece of metal up on a kite and see if Hal’s heart could be restarted by lightning.

Emily was crying behind me, and Claire propped herself up with her arms, her legs together behind her, resting herself across Hal’s still chest, and I realized the enormity of the task he’d left me with. Now I’d need to rescue Claire somehow, too.

The lifeboats were nearer, tilting toward the body of the Maraschino as she fell into the ocean on her other side, but I did not have Hal’s strength. How would I get both of them out of here, as exhausted as I was, with a shoulder on the verge of going out? There was no way.

Claire was still sobbing. Not knowing what else to do, where to go or what to say, I stroked his wispy hair, and then awkwardly patted her.

Pressing off his chest with both hands, she rose up and howled. Her voice went from low to sonic and high, wild, a keening banshee whale-song that made my teeth ache. It was the sound of the unabashed grief of a creature that wasn’t meant to ever have what she loved die.

The sound exposed her for what she was, an alien creature that didn’t belong on this side of the waves. Where salt water sprayed up from the splashing ocean, or down from her tears, scales glimmered on her legs, and they were lengthening. Her hair grew to wreath her, damp and dark, like a spreading bed of kelp. She was wild and I had never seen anything so beautiful and frightening at the same time. She put out her hand to me, her transformation half complete.

“Give the girl to me,” she commanded, in her otherworldly voice.

Without thinking, my body obeyed. I grabbed Emily and handed her over, even as I questioned the action. “Why?”

“Because she belongs to the sea.”

“She’s human!” I protested, although Emily didn’t fight. She was looking at Claire with complete awe.

“She has no family anymore. I can give her one. She will sing forever with me.” Claire petted Emily awkwardly with one hand, leaning up to do so as her change progressed. Things fluttered at the sides of her neck now, with ridges and wicked-looking spines. I took an involuntary step back, and slid a bit, the moisture of the deck overwhelming the traction of my shoes. Her eyes dared me to challenge her—and then she grabbed Emily and rolled backward, like a shark thrashing off a bite. She pulled the little girl toward her unhuman face and kissed her.

“Wait!” I screamed, but it was done.

Emily looked stunned as Claire released her, only to take her up again, beneath one arm. Her awkwardness in her new form only made it more horrible as she clambered toward the railing, balancing between her tail and her free arm, hauling Emily. Then with incredible strength she pulled them up and over the railing. They slid down down down to the sea, leaving me alone with Hal’s corpse on the deck.

I couldn’t even process what had happened. I ran up to the top of the railing and looked down. I couldn’t see where Claire and Emily had fallen in; it was as if the sea had eaten them both whole.

A wave pushed the Maraschino sideways as I watched the ocean nearing. How much longer would we have now? There must be some time left, if Nathaniel was still risking being on board. Another wave hit, timed with a distant flash of lightning, and staring out I could see the “rescue” ship. Two more snaps of electric light and I could make out the outline of a helicopter on its bow, before the thunder hit me. It shook me—and the life rafts, dangling below. There was no way I’d try to reach for them now.

I let go of the railing, and let gravity pull me back to Hal’s body. We were both cool and clammy, only he was dead and I was alive. I still had places to be.

Going with the tilt of the ship was more disorienting than fighting against it. I stumbled through the room we’d just come through, and an overstuffed purse slid and tumbled off the bed, sending lipstick tubes and individually wrapped tampons rolling down the floor alongside me.

I made it into the hallway and then back toward the stairs. I was wet from my time outside in the rain, and the smell of the sea was still strong on me—that, plus the tilt, made it feel like the sea was coming for me, like an opening mouth. I ran up not only afraid of what I was running toward, but increasingly horrified by what was gaining behind me.

I reached the ninth-floor landing and only found doors out to the deck.

“Fuck.”

Not being Asher, or having had a chance to memorize the entire ship on my own, I’d taken the wrong stairwell up. I was half a ship away from the Le Poisson Affamé. My choices were to get across the deck somehow, or go back down.

The emergency lighting still worked, showing me all the pools that had started to drain, making the decks even more wet. And the plastic railings no longer kept the wind out; instead they acted like miniature sails, keeping the Maraschino in a slow spin. Beneath my feet the boat shuddered at irregular intervals, and I imagined room after room burping out air. I stood in the doorway trying to master my fear as a patio umbrella tumbled by outside.

But this was still somehow better than going back inside, and maybe getting trapped there. Taking my cues from Emily, I hit the deck on all fours.

It wasn’t long before my hands were numb, my shoulder agonizing, and my feet soaked inside my not-nearly-waterproof-enough shoes. The divots between the fake-wood planks were the only things I could hold on to, and they were peeling back my nails. One by one, deck chairs liberated from gravity slid past, and tables took heavier falls. It was like a horrible video game, only I didn’t have any extra lives.