by Megan Crewe
And then he turned and walked out into the snow.
The next morning, the wind had died down. We got a sprinkling of snow, but by the time we’d eaten lunch, that had cleared up too.
“We should wait until tomorrow and leave first thing if it’s clear,” Gav said. “We want to get as far as we can on the first day.”
I could have left right then, but he made a good point. And it gave me a little extra time with Meredith before I said good-bye. We all ended up tramping out to the backyard with the ferrets.
The back of the house faced the strait, and the yard led down to the shoreline. Fossey scurried to the edge of the water, Meredith scrambling after her. I loosened my grip on Mowat’s leash as he trundled over to join them. Behind me, Leo and Tessa stood together, Tessa’s arm hooked through his. I was trying not to pay attention to them, but every time Leo moved, I felt it like a prickle over my skin, as if I had a new extra sense tuned specifically to him.
Since that moment in the garage, he’d pretended nothing had happened, so I’d pretended the same. Even though part of me was furious that he could lean into Tessa and peck her cheek so casually, like he hadn’t been kissing someone else yesterday, like he hadn’t betrayed her. Even though every time Gav smiled at me, guilt welled up inside me, as if I were the one who’d done something wrong. But my head was full of gnawing little questions I couldn’t shake. How long had he wanted to do that? Had he been agonizing over me the whole time I’d had what I thought was a hopeless crush on him?
What would it have been like if I’d let myself kiss him back?
I closed my eyes, shoving those thoughts away. Leo had been through a lot. Maybe he wasn’t thinking straight. I shouldn’t be angry—I should just get over it, the way a girl who’d been kissed by her best friend, who promised it wouldn’t happen again and for whom she had no romantic feelings whatsoever, should.
“It’s funny how they don’t get cold,” Meredith said as the ferrets tumbled in the snow. She grinned at me, and a different sort of ache filled my chest. The thought of telling her I was leaving was almost as painful as remembering the night I’d had to carry her into the hospital. I couldn’t even promise her I’d be back soon.
“There’s someone on the water,” Tessa said. She pointed to the opposite shore.
A small boat was pulling away from the mainland harbor. It veered a little north, then a little south, as if the driver wasn’t used to handling it, but it was definitely headed toward the island.
Tessa’s parents, I thought. Drew. Someone from the government, finally. “Hey!” I shouted, even though there was no way anyone could have heard me at that distance, and waved my arm. Meredith spun around. As soon as she spotted the boat, she started jumping up and down, waving eagerly.
“Come over here!”
“They’ll go to the harbor where they can dock the boat, Mere,” I said. As the boat drew closer, I saw it was a speedboat with no cabin, just a wide glass windshield with a lone figure behind it. My initial excitement dampened. It could be anyone. It could be a mainlander hoping the island would make for easy pickings.
“Maybe that isn’t someone we want on the island,” Leo said, echoing my thoughts.
“We could meet them at the harbor, be ready in case they try something,” Gav said, and then paused. “Except I think they are coming this way.”
The boat was bobbing on the waves, but it had definitely turned away from the harbor, toward us. I eased closer to Meredith, resting my hand on her shoulder. After a few minutes I could make out the man driving well enough to tell I didn’t recognize him. He took his hands off the wheel to wave both his arms at us, the way Meredith had, but he looked more frantic than happy.
As the boat approached the shore, Gav stepped to the water’s edge. “Everything all right?” he called.
The man drew the boat as close to us as the shallower water allowed. His face looked pale and thin, engulfed by the padded hood of his coat. “You have to get out of there!” he hollered, cutting the engine. “Tell everyone! You have to get off the island!”
“What?” I said. “Why?”
He might not have even heard me. “They’ll be here any minute,” he said. “They want to destroy the whole town.”
The breeze brought a faint sound to my ears: the warbling rumble of a helicopter in flight. We hadn’t seen a food-drop or a news chopper in ages. I made out a small dark shape in the northern sky, and when I glanced back at the man in the boat, my pulse stuttered. He was looking at the shape, too, and his expression was like that of a mouse in the shadow of a hawk. Pure, undeniable terror.
Whatever he was talking about, he obviously believed the danger was real.
“Who’s coming?” I said. “What are they going to do?” But my words were lost as the boat’s engine roared.
“I’ll meet you at the harbor, for anyone who doesn’t have a boat,” the man yelled, reaching for the wheel. “Hurry!”
“Hold on!” Gav shouted. The boat turned toward the docks and sped away.
“Do you think we should listen to him?” Tessa asked.
“He could be in the hallucinating stage of the virus,” I said, but I’d never seen someone that sick who’d still be capable of handling a boat. My heart started to thump. “But maybe we should do what he said, just in case.”
“I can swing by the hospital and tell them something’s up,” Gav said.
“I’ll go with you,” I said. “Tessa, Leo, can you get Meredith to the harbor? We’ll meet you there.”
Tessa nodded, grabbing Meredith’s hand. I scooped up the ferrets, let them leap through the back door, and closed it behind them before hurrying after Gav. He had hopped into the SUV. The growl of the helicopter’s engine was getting louder.
“What do you think’s going on?” I said as I scrambled into the passenger seat.
Gav hit the gas. “I don’t know. Let’s hope he’s just a lunatic.”
I hugged myself as we followed Tessa’s tire tracks through the thick layer of snow on the road. Her car vanished around a turn up ahead. We were just rounding a corner, halfway to the hospital, when the shadow of the helicopter slid by overhead.
A second later, the block of houses next to us exploded.
I shrieked, clutching at the door as the ground rocked beneath the tires, the blast ringing in my ears. Beside us, roofs were crumpling, flames spurting through shattered windows. A sharp chemical smell filled the air. Gav drove on, faster, his jaw clenched, his arms trembling.
“Not a lunatic,” I said shakily. “What the hell are they doing?”
Another explosion thundered somewhere to our right. I cringed. Gav leaned forward to peer through the windshield.
“I think it’s a military helicopter,” he said. “They’re bombing us. After all the other ways the army’s screwed us over, they’re fucking bombing us!”
Tears I hadn’t felt forming were leaking down my cheeks. I wiped my eyes and tried to breathe steadily. Then a single panicked thought jolted through my mind like an electric shock.
“The vaccine,” I said. “Gav, what if they hit the research center?”
“Maybe they won’t,” Gav said. “We should go to the harbor—get out of here, like that guy said. I’m pretty sure no one in town needs to be warned that something bad’s happening now. We’ll come back when the chopper’s gone.”
“No!” I said. “We can’t leave behind those samples. If we lose them…”
If we lost them, we were maybe losing our only chance to beat the virus, to get back the world we used to have.
“Kae—” Gav started.
“Please,” I said. “We have to get them. If you won’t drive there, I’ll jump out of the car and run for it.”
I was serious. He must have been able to tell. He swore under his breath, but at the next intersection he turned toward the research center instead of the harbor. We’d already missed the hospital. As the SUV careened down the lane, the ground shuddered with a third explosion.
I clutched the keys in my coat pocket.
The research center was still standing when we reached it. The car skidded to a stop, and I leapt out. Gav left the engine running as I scrambled over a snowdrift to the door.
I fumbled with the keys and shoved the door open. My boots slid on the smooth floor inside. The cold-storage box and the supplies I’d set aside were all where I’d left them. I stuffed the sample vials and the packs from the freezer into the cold box, and dropped everything else in on top to make sure I didn’t lose anything.
Smoke was billowing up over the trees as I dashed back outside, so thick the whole town could have been burning. Not the hospital, I pleaded silently. I hauled myself into the car.
The whole way to the harbor, I clutched the cold box on my lap, my eyes squeezed shut. The acrid smell of burning filled my nose. The helicopter rumbled by overhead, and I winced, bracing myself. I couldn’t tell which of the tremors I felt were bombs and which were buildings collapsing or something else I couldn’t even imagine. Gav’s breath started to rasp as he yanked the steering wheel one way and then the other.
Tessa’s car was parked by the harbor. We pulled up beside it and I tumbled out, dragging the cold box with me. The speedboat was bobbing by the far end of one of the docks, Meredith and the others sitting in it. Gav and I ran together, his hand on my back. Tessa took the box from me and helped us in.
“He wanted to leave without you,” Meredith said, a sob in her voice, looking accusingly at the driver. “We said we’d throw him off the boat if he tried.”
The driver—our savior—was too busy staring at the sky to look guilty. “We’re going now,” he said, grasping the wheel. “Before they notice us.”
“But other people from town might come here to get away,” I said. “The rest of the boats are wrecked. We have to wait and see—”
“No,” the man said. “We’re lucky we’re not already dead.”
He tugged the wheel, and the boat swerved away from the dock. As it sped toward the mainland, I turned. The town I’d spent most of my life in was hazed with smoke and flames, growing smaller as the strait stretched between us and the island.
When we reached the mainland harbor, we all scrambled onto the end of the longest dock, watching the strait in case someone else came. There was still the ferry, and those boats on private docks that hadn’t been destroyed in the soldiers’ rampage two months ago. But none of us could quite believe what we saw. So we stared, minds blank with shock.
That was our island burning. Our island flaring bright as the helicopter dropped another bomb. A faint glow flickered amid the distant shapes of the buildings. Billows of smoke were replacing the clouds. Meredith shuddered against me, and I wrapped my arm around her.
After what felt like ages, the helicopter turned and whirred north again. It dwindled into a dark speck and vanished. The waves smacked against the dock’s supports. Drops of icy water splattered my already numb face. And still, I couldn’t make out anyone in the island harbor or along the shore.
Maybe, despite the chaos, the most important places had gone untouched. Maybe Nell and the others were just fine and all we’d lost was a bunch of already abandoned buildings.
Or maybe we were the only ones who’d survived the attack.
It still didn’t make any sense to me. Turning, I realized the man who’d driven us here had left. Anger sparked through the haze in my head. I picked up the cold box from where I’d set it by my feet and marched down the dock.
“Hey!” I shouted as I stepped onto the concrete loading area beyond the docks. “Hey, guy with the boat!”
The door to the harbor office opened, and our rescuer stepped out. He’d drawn back his hood, revealing a narrow face topped with a pale sheen of recently shaved hair. His lips were badly chapped, and his blue eyes twitched nervously. He couldn’t have been much older than twenty. I wondered if he had any more authority here than we did.
“What’s going on?” I demanded. “You knew that helicopter was coming—what it was going to do.”
“I tried to get here sooner,” he said. “I really did. The snow—the roads were just choked. And then I had to find the keys to one of these goddamned boats.”
The others had come up behind me. “Who are you?” Leo asked.
“Rawls,” the guy said, and grimaced. “Tobias Rawls.”
“So you drove here,” I said. “From where? How did you know the helicopter was coming?”
Gav took a few steps past Tobias toward the office. He stiffened. “Is that what you drove here in?”
Tobias jerked around, but Gav was already striding forward, to a vehicle parked just beyond the building. It looked like a cross between an SUV and a delivery truck, boxy and sharp-cornered. And it was covered in splotches of camouflage paint. My heart sank.
“You’re a soldier,” Gav said, spinning around to face Tobias. “You’re one of them.”
Tobias gave a laugh, short and bitter. “If you had any idea, you wouldn’t say that.”
“Then why don’t you tell us what the hell happened?” I snapped.
Silence reigned until Tessa said, in a soft voice, “We just saw our home destroyed. You’re not even going to tell us why?”
“You don’t know what it’s been like,” Tobias said, looking away. He bit his lip. “We have a base a couple hours north of here.”
“I didn’t think there were any military bases in the province,” Gav said. “Not anymore.”
“It’s not official,” Tobias said. “It’s supposedly been inactive for decades, but the government reinstalled a contingent there shortly after nine-eleven. At least that’s what the commanders told us. There were eighteen of us, but a few got sick, the major got sick, and a bunch ran. Me and a couple other guys figured we were safer hiding out there until the virus situation was under control. Lots of rations, lots of fuel for the generator; we were pretty much set.”
“Good for you,” Gav said. Tobias winced, but he kept talking.
“We thought it was just going to be for a few weeks. But the news kept getting worse. The other guys got restless. We didn’t want to go outside the compound because we were scared of getting sick, but they couldn’t take staying inside all the time. They started going out and doing target practice through the fence: birds, deer, trees. Then, two days ago, this guy shows up—I don’t know how he made it there—hollering about how we had to help him, how he just took off from the god-awful island where the whole thing started, and the virus got him, and someone there would have shot him if he’d stayed.”
Tobias paused, looking at us, his expression vaguely accusing.
“We weren’t shooting anyone,” I said. “He must have been—there was a group that started killing anyone they found who was infected. He must have been with them.”
So stupid. If he’d just walked into the hospital, someone there would have done whatever they could for him. He must have thought we’d know he’d been part of the gang, that we’d turn him away.
“Well, running didn’t do him any good,” Tobias said. “He ended up shot anyway. He was coughing and sneezing as well as hollering, so there wasn’t any way we were letting him in. Moore did him in with his rifle like it was a little more target practice. And then he and Donetelli got talking about your island, about the place where the virus got started being so close, and after a bit they’d worked themselves up into a real rage. Saying if people had stayed on the island, the rest of us would have been fine, and it’d be fair punishment for them to take the chopper over and unload a few missiles. Bigger target practice.”
“There were kids,” Gav said. “There were old people who couldn’t have gotten out of their homes if they’d wanted to. We were just trying to hang on, like everyone else.”
“I know,” Tobias said, sounding miserable. “I wasn’t up in the chopper, was I? After I heard them talking, I got one of the trucks and came down as fast as I could. I didn’t think they’d do it right away. I was hoping maybe they’d simmer
down and forget the whole thing. But they must have noticed I’d gone and decided they would beat me here. Which they did.”
“You knew what they were planning and you left,” Leo said. “You didn’t even try to talk them out of it.” There was no question in his voice.
“They wouldn’t have listened to me,” Tobias said. “They never did. They—I swear, you don’t know what it was like.”
“We know they blew up most of our town,” I said. “You couldn’t have said something?”
Tobias’s shoulders hunched. “Look,” he said. “I screwed myself over coming here. You think they’re going to let me back on the base now? I did what I could.”
Meredith squirmed beside me. “Kae,” she said, “what are we going to do now? Are we going back to the island? What if the helicopter comes again?”
“Of course we’re going back,” Gav said before I could answer. “Whoever survived that, they’ll need our help.”
I glanced toward the strait, then down at the cold-storage box. Every muscle in me balked at the idea of bringing the vaccine back to the island. We’d had no idea any of this would happen. What else was coming that we couldn’t see? Going back suddenly felt like a far bigger risk than leaving.
“You can,” I said. “But I’m not. We could have lost the vaccine. I have to get it to someone who can use it, while I still have the chance.”
“You want to just abandon them?” Gav said, gesturing toward the island.
My throat tightened. “Of course I want them to be okay,” I said. “But I’m not a superhero, Gav. What can I do that they can’t figure out on their own? Anyone who’s okay knows where the food is, how to find shelter, and anyone who isn’t, I couldn’t help anyway.”
“It’s true,” Tessa murmured. “We’re not doctors.”
“But I can do this,” I went on, nudging the cold box. “I have to do this.”
“We can’t go anywhere without supplies—without a car,” Gav protested.
“I know,” I said. The SUV could have been blown up. Even if it hadn’t, I didn’t think I could set foot on the island, even for a few minutes. Once I saw the wreckage, I might not be able to leave again. “Maybe I can use the boat. The St. Lawrence would pretty much get me there.”
