“It’s toying with us,” Rob said. He dug his palm around the blunt end of the pipe, leaving dark smears of blood behind.
Sestra nodded. “I think it is.”
“Filth,” he said. “Devil thing.”
It wasn’t a devil. It was mean, but it wasn’t evil. Not even she would dare to venture into that minefield, though, not when Rob was shredding his hand without noticing.
“So, what do we do, Rob?”
His shoulders tightened, ready to explode, then sagged, defeated. “We wait. We watch.”
“And if we see it?”
Rob was quiet for a moment. “Promise me, Ses, that you’ll let me try to kill it. Even if I can’t.”
Sestra hunched over the rail. The water looked like paint. “Is that what you’ve been doing in the engine room?”
“Sometimes.”
“Thinking?”
He nodded. “Too much thinking.”
“Okay,” she said. “Kill it if you want.”
Rob stared alongside her, not moving. “One more thing.”
Pushing herself off the rail, she instinctively pulled her hands to her chest, arms tucked and crossed.
“Watch yourself around that boy,” he said. “He’s not a toy.”
She stayed awake that night. No reason to check on the boy. If he ever left at all after this, she’d be surprised. It had almost happened again. Almost. This time she’d stopped him before he’d been taken. There’d been too many already, and the only thing they’d all had in common was that look in their eyes right before it happened, so disturbingly calm.
It bothered Sestra because she’d never in her life felt so calm, as if the ones who were taken knew something about the water foreign to her, beyond her. She felt strange emotions like envy. These deranged people leaning overboard, unafraid of the danger or of dying, and she was actually envious of them. Why them and not her? Even in this world where everyone had died or was dying, where she and Rob and a few bloated bodies were all that seemed to exist, there was still something more to which she wasn’t privy, that she didn’t know.
She stayed awake, thinking about what she might have done had Rob not awoken. Would she have kept the boy under her knees, interrogated him? Would she have thrown him overboard if that’s what he wanted so badly? She might have, and this churned her insides to think about. She might have simply beat him until there wasn’t anything alive left to beat. Why you why you why you? Why do I care? If you care so little about living, why are you here? Why now, after all this time? After all this hope? After all this terror and perseverance?
Why did she care?
And every time that fear of herself welled up to unbearable amounts, she’d focus on the steadying waves and Rob’s methodical marching in search of the enemy. Eyes closed, she knew the sound of the impending dawn. The ocean quieted then, almost silent, nothing more than a breeze in the trees. Sestra could hear her old life in the dawn. It was the only time her memories allowed it, only when the waves hushed.
She dozed off sporadically, with eyes-open alertness, laying across the deck and facing the sea. It was one of those sleeps that rolled across her vision like an old film reel. Water evaporated into a thin crystal film of salt left on the wood deck like a Rorschach ink blot. Her stringy strands of hair crunched with more salt, audibly peeling away from the floor as she sat upright. The sun was teasing, invisible but making the black night sky turn purple with its presence.
The posy had left sometime within an hour of its appearance. The waves changed once it finally fled, nothing more to lap against. It was big; she thought it must have been huge. The girth of it had encapsulated their stupid little boat. She’d hadn’t seen it all laid out, but she didn’t have to. Posies were never small. They were never seen in totality, but certainly never small.
Stomach grumbling, head pounding, and cotton-mouthed, Sestra descended into the cabin, favoring her unbitten leg. The wound still stung from the water, inflamed and angry. Infection would be bad, as if there was anything to do about it now.
She wasn’t sure what to expect with the boy, but him sitting cross-legged on top of the floor hatch door wasn’t it. His back was erect, shoulders rolled back. He didn’t seem at all terrified. Sestra paused at the bottom step.
He’d almost died, and now he sat there watching her like an entirely different person. Maybe he was.
“What are you doing?” she said, speaking English and forgetting for a moment that the boy did not.
Considering her words, the boy bent his head to one side and said, “¿Quién es?”
“Shit, kid. I don’t remember Spanish class all that well.”
“Shit?” He pointed at her.
“What? No. I’m Th—Sestra. I’m Sestra.”
“Thestra?”
“No. Soy Sestra. Llamo a Sestra or something like that.”
He smirked; innocence hidden behind his teeth. He thought she was stupid.
“Llamo Sestra,” she said, then pointing at him. “You?”
The boy shook his head. “No.”
Little fucker. “I just saved your life, you know.”
“No.”
“Why not? Por qué?”
“No.”
She was beginning to think she liked him better under the floor. “Familia?”
“Se han ido.”
Sestra had no idea what that meant.
“Madre?”
The boy shrugged, but his gaze receded. “Conmigo, mijo.”
That was what he’d been saying last night. The word mijo struck a memory—he was talking about a child. Himself maybe? Or a sibling? The boy was clearly remembering something he’d prefer to forget.
What had happened to his parents? It hadn’t crossed her mind that whatever had happened to them might not have been recent. She and Rob could have been the first people he’d met in months—first people since the flood. How long had it been since he’d seen anything besides water and wood laminate and fucking monsters?
There used to be more people. At the time of the flood, she kept thinking, “This is it? This is all that made it?” And every day that followed had been a mix of hope at the prospect of finding civilization again and dread as they’d floated farther and farther between the remaining scraps of humanity. There had to be a secret government base somewhere. Someone had to have seen this coming. Where were the fucking doomsayers when you needed them? Someone had to have survived, bound together, and made an honest go of this garbage life.
But soon the dread had overwhelmed the hope, and then it had shriveled into itself and filled her full of a protective numbness. Eat, sleep, float, shit off the side of the boat, repeat.
“Mijo,” she said to the kid. He shook his head. It wasn’t his name, but it was something, at least. “I’m gonna call you that from now on.”
“Donde está el monstruo?” Mijo asked.
Donde está—where is. Where is the monstruo?
She asked, “Monstruo?”
He locked his fingers together, prying them apart like a mouth. “Monstruo.”
“Oh.” Monster, he meant. “It’s gone.”
He copied her. “Monster.”
“Posy.”
“Poh-zee.”
“Yeah.”
He nodded. “Sí.”
A shadow covered them both. “What’s going on down here?” Rob hovered at the top of the steps, still clutching his pipe.
Sestra kept her eyes on Mijo. “He’s talking.”
Rob relaxed his grip, rubbing the exhaustion from his eyes. He leaned against the door frame. “I can see that.”
“Maybe the near-death experience snapped him out of it, whatever it was.”
He sniffed and wiped his nose with his fingers. “His whole life has been a near-death experience.”
“He’s
, like, twelve years old. He remembers the before.”
“That boy ain’t twelve.”
“Well, whatever. Ten. He remembers, anyway.”
Rob snorted. “You think you’ve won him, do you? He’s not a dog to lick your feet and make you feel good about yourself.”
Only then did she strike her gaze away from Mijo, who impassively watched the exchange unfold. “Jesus, Rob, what the fuck you want me to do? Drown him? He’s finally talking to me. You’d think that’d be good news.”
“He’s finally talking to somebody, Ses. Don’t forget that.”
“God damn it, just go kill something, will you?”
He left, but not without a complimentary, dissatisfied grunt.
“So,” she said, returning her attention to the boy. “Food?”
Sestra sat cross-legged on the deck, the boy perched next to her. Both stared out at the water as it swelled and lurched over the sides. The sea had been unsettled lately, as if warding away demons or bad takeout, roiling in ever-present pain.
Even after all this time, deep ocean swells like these made Sestra nauseous.
“¿Qué?” she asked, gesturing to the endless ocean.
“Agua. El mar.”
It was nature day. They’d already scoured the inside of the cabin, naming and explaining every one of the meager components inside. It passed the time. It kept them both busy learning shit and not thinking about dead family.
Rob had hardly shown himself to them in the past few weeks, preferring to sharpen tools in the cramped engine compartment or pluck at the fishing line at the stern. Food had been scarce in the days since the posy had revealed itself. Starvation loomed over them, beating away any other sensations. It wouldn’t be so bad if not for a third mouth. Rob hadn’t said it, but he thought it every time he side-eyed Mijo scrambling past him on the deck or peeking his head out of the floor hatch. Rob scrutinized the boy’s every move, but still maintained his most critical gaze for Sestra. She wished he’d just say what he was thinking. His sideways looks were like rubbing shark skin the wrong way—they had teeth.
“Agua,” Mijo said. “Azul.”
“Blue,” she said. “Azul.”
She thought she heard a bird and looked around for it, but it wasn’t a gull or a pelican or any other bird because they’d all died. Or she assumed they had. She hadn’t seen one in months.
Looping her thumbs together, she flapped her hands like wings. “Bird.”
“Pajaros.”
He might have understood her, or he could’ve been saying bat or butterfly or hands. “Manos,” she said, remembering the word for hands.
Mijo fidgeted and went to stand, but Sestra grabbed him by the ragged shirt and pulled him down again. “Where are you going?”
He didn’t answer, because he couldn’t. Maybe he didn’t know, but Sestra was certain he wasn’t going near the rails again by himself. She’d make damn sure of that.
“Okay, vámanos,” she said. Mijo stood and glared over his shoulder at her as she followed him. Just as he settled on a spot, he’d glance at her, as if waiting for something. Then he’d be off again. They continued like this for minutes, circling, footfalls thudding hollow on the deck, frustrated creaks of the old wood snapping at them. Go, stop. Stop, go. Round and round until Mijo finally stopped for good.
As he stepped to the edge of the deck, Sestra again clawed her fingers into him, gripping his shoulder so hard his pointed bones jabbed into her palm. He yelped, but then fell back, conceding to her will.
Then he dropped his pants and shit right there on the deck.
Finishing, he drew up his pants and shrugged at her. Now what, lady?
And she laughed. It pained her abs to do so, but she laughed, more and harder and louder, and it was wonderful. The smell of his shit wrenched at her nostrils and was horrible, but still she couldn’t stop.
Peeking topside from his underground lair, Rob piped obscenities from behind. “Oh, sweet hell,” he said, then sank below once more.
“Go,” Sestra said to the kid, whose expression cracked with confusion. “Go. I’ll clean it up.”
She listened to the rhythm of Mijo’s feet as he plodded out of sight, the heavy thop thop thop of his bare feet stepping one after another on the well-worn track to his safe space below the floor.
Just her and a pile of feces and a problem to solve. Sestra couldn’t help but feel comfortable, as if she’d been in this kind of predicament before. Hundreds of times, even.
“Are you telling me that kid ain’t even potty trained?” Rob said. His voice was muffled by the things between them.
“It’s fine,” she said, because it was. With one side of her lucky shoe, she swiped the shit across the deck toward the rail, shaking it off the boat and into the sea.
She couldn’t help but pause as she did, shit clinging to her like it always had. The sea behaved today. It glittered blue, rippling with the tug and pull of the tides. For a moment she could imagine that this was nothing more than a pleasure cruise. Just her and a few buddies spending an afternoon at sea before heading back to land for a nice meal and comfortable bed. Mijo’s parents would be there, and he’d run to them, babbling about his day. He’d have seen some seagulls and maybe a stingray. It would have jumped out of the water as if it were flying. Rob would have told him that they often did that to shake off parasites clinging to their skin. He would have been careful not to mention that they also jumped like that to avoid predators. No one would have mentioned that to a little kid. He didn’t need to imagine what sort of horrors lurked just under the surface. He was just a kid. No kid needed to think about stuff like that.
Except that Mijo did need to think about stuff like that. Every minute of every day. It pervaded everything they thought, said, and did.
Everything.
Sestra gazed at the sea, a chill creeping up her body. A posy could be anywhere. It could be here, right now, staring back at her and she’d never know. Not until it threw its tentacle upward and seized her.
There was a splash behind her, on the other side of the boat. Whether it was a confirmation or coincidence, she suddenly lacked the urge to check.
Let the fucker come and get her.
“It’s fine,” she said again, trying to forget the stench of shit as she returned to Mijo’s side.
CHAPTER NINE
It started as a cough—a deep rattle in her chest that spasmed into hacks. Sestra got it, and then she got better. Rob got it and recovered in equal measure. Then Mijo caught it, just as she’d expected, and days passed with everyone expecting him to improve, but he didn’t. Then he did, and for a day, it seemed he was finally on the mend. He climbed out of the floor hatch even and joined her on the deck, and they watched Rob untangle some kelp out of the fishing line. She’d fallen asleep with ease that night, a knot unwinding as Mijo got stronger. Soon this would all be a bad memory.
Until a fresh coughing fit arose her from her slumber. She held him in her lap as blood from his lungs splattered onto the floor. She held him while Rob watched from above deck, whispering under his breath about things like pneumonia and real sick and not good.
But he would get better. This was bad, sure, but he would get better because he was a kid and kids were resilient. If it hadn’t taken out a former addict and an old-boned curmudgeon, it didn’t stand a chance against the blinding vitality of youth.
Clouds masked the sunrise. The boat rocked and dipped. Mijo slept through it, limply lolling about in the sway. Sestra braced his little body against every wave. The muscles in her back and thighs were on fire, but she would remain that way as long as necessary. He needed rest more than she needed comfort.
This happened sometimes—large ominous waves that threatened bad weather, then suddenly flatlined into glass. If she could have gone topside, she’d have seen the wall of melting black clouds just to the eas
t. The air smelled of earth. It was the only time it smelled that way besides her dreams. It was as if the clouds were so strong, they sucked the swollen dirt right up from the bottom of the ocean. But still she didn’t acknowledge the incoming torrent. Storms still scared her, and she didn’t have time to be scared right now.
Unable to ignore the present situation any longer, Rob tramped down the stairs, one heavy foot at a time, and stopped just inside the doorway.
“You need to put him back in the floor.”
Mijo’s chest rose and fell only slightly, so rapid and shallow it mightn’t have moved at all. Sestra sweat through her shirt as she clutched at him. He was warm, and it wasn’t just her or the rising day. The heat came from his fever.
“I can’t leave him in the floor. He’s barely breathing.”
“Storm’s coming, and it’s going to be big. You can’t keep yourself safe when he’s unconscious like that.”
Sestra swatted sweat away from his hairline. “What if he needs help?”
“Your holding him is the worst damn place for him to be now.”
“We can’t just leave him in the dark. I can’t do that.”
“Then he can drown in good company.”
She wanted to keep quiet, didn’t want to wake Mijo or startle him, but just like that, she couldn’t. “Why are you such an asshole all the time?”
He cocked his head to the side, about to loosen a year’s worth of clogged frustration when the boat kicked to one side.
Rob tumbled forward, landing on his face. Both he and Sestra stared at the stairs as if they expected something to come crawling down it.
“What the fuck was that?” she asked.
“Storm.” His eyes were way too big to believe what he was saying.
Sestra pulled herself up, Mijo in her arms, just as they lurched again. The motion jerked her against the wall. The boat tipped. Mijo slammed on top of her like a sack of bones.
“Grab him!” She waved for Rob’s attention, but it had grown dark and it was difficult to see his features. The floor vibrated with motion. Her stomach dropped the way it used to before she’d gotten used to the water.
A Flood of Posies Page 13
