The Living

by Matt De La Peña

  Christian stopped suddenly. “Shy? Is that you?”

  Shy nodded, surprised at how emotional he felt seeing someone who’d been with him on the raft.

  “Jesus, man! I’m so happy to see you!” Christian hurried across the lobby toward them, gave Shy a quick hug, then hugged Addie, too. “How’d you guys get here? We didn’t think anyone else survived.”

  “Shoe found us,” Shy told him. “In the middle of the night. We thought it was over.”

  “Shoeshine. Of course. Man, thank God you guys are okay.”

  “They’re more than okay,” one of the men said, stepping forward. He had a long, dark beard and a receding hairline. “How would you feel if I told you you’re going home? Tonight?”

  “Tonight?” Shy said. “Are you serious?”

  “That’s right,” the shorter man said. He was wearing a Hawaiian shirt, khaki shorts and flip-flops. “We’re departing just after the sun sets.”

  The man with the beard smiled and held out his hand to Shy. “I’m Greg Walker, and I’m in charge of the research expedition. This is my head assistant, Connor Simms.”

  Shy gave his name and shook hands with both men. Addie did the same.

  “You two showed up just in time,” Greg continued. “We were sent here to study the tsunamis’ effects on the sea life just off the coast of the island. But that went out the window when we found all the survivors here. Our mission now is to get you back home to your families.”

  Shy squeezed Addie’s arm. He was so excited he could hardly contain himself.

  She smiled back at him and nodded, but she seemed to be swaying a little, too. Shy gripped her elbow, trying to steady her.

  “What about California, though?” he asked the two men. “Isn’t it messed up really bad?”

  “There’s a lot of damage,” the shorter man, Connor, said. “It’s terrible. But the entire country has come to the aid of all the western states affected. You’d be amazed how much people are coming together.”

  “They said the death count wasn’t quite as high as the media originally reported,” Christian added. “All we can do is pray that our families and friends are okay.”

  Greg slapped Shy on the shoulder Shoeshine had just stuck the syringe into. “We’ll be explaining everything in a few hours over lunch. One-thirty, if you’re near someone with a watch. Go get some rest. We’ll make sure everyone knows when it’s time to gather in the restaurant. I’ll be going over all the logistics of our departure.”

  “You’re safe now,” Connor said.

  Greg nodded. “And we’re thrilled to be bringing two more home with us.”

  Shy felt Addie suddenly start slipping through his grip. He caught her at the last second and lowered her to the ground. “Jesus, Addie,” he said, kneeling down to pick up her head. Her eyes were closed. “Addie? Can you hear me?”

  Christian reached into his bag and pulled out a bottle of water. He took Shy’s spot, uncapped the water and put it to her lips, saying: “Addie? Can you hear me? I need you to take a small sip of water if you can.”

  Her eyes fluttered open, and she looked up at Christian. She took a small sip and turned to Shy. “What happened?”

  “You fainted,” Christian said. “We need to get food and water in both of you.”

  Shy put his hand on her forehead. “You okay?”

  “She needs rest,” Connor said. “Let’s get her into one of the bedrooms.”

  Shy looked over his shoulder when he heard other people hurrying across the lobby toward them. “There are still plenty of open rooms on the first floor,” someone said.

  In a few seconds, a small crowd of people had converged around Shy, Addie and Christian—everyone shouting advice and asking how they’d made it out of the ocean alive. Shy looked up at all of them, recognizing a few of the faces from the cruise ship.

  And then, near the back of the group, he saw the face he’d been imagining since the moment the ship went down and he’d found himself alone in the dark ocean.

  Carmen.

  43

  Under the Gazebo

  Shy, Christian and a few others, including both researchers, helped get Addie into the closest unclaimed room, 117, and laid her on the perfectly made up king-sized bed.

  “She needs air,” someone said.

  “And something to eat,” another person said. “Look at her.”

  Shy watched them all swarming around Addie’s bed, but he kept checking the door, too. His heart pounding. Carmen hadn’t come into the room yet. She had to be waiting for him in the lobby.

  “She’ll be able to rest all the way back to California,” one of the researchers said.

  An older woman told someone to go get Addie a change of clothes.

  “Is my dad here?” Addie mumbled.

  “Who’s your dad?” the older woman asked.

  “Jim Miller. He’s tall with gray hair. He worked on the island.”

  “You rest for now, honey,” the woman said. “I’ll go ask around, see what I can find out.”

  The two researchers backed away from the bed and left the room after the woman.

  Shy and Christian remained with one other woman as everyone else began filing out. Christian looked into Addie’s eyes and ears with a tiny doctor flashlight, then he listened to her heart with a stethoscope. Shy watched, torn between making sure Addie was okay and going in search of Carmen.

  “Shy?” Addie said, looking up from the bed.

  “I’m here,” he answered.

  She let her head fall back onto the pillow. “God, I don’t even know what happened to me.”

  “You’ve been on the ocean for five days,” Christian said. “Both of you.” He turned to the woman next to him. “Mary, would you go to the restaurant and get some bottles of water and fruit.”

  “Right away,” she said, and she hurried out of the room.

  “You need to rest, too,” Christian said to Shy. “Go to one eighteen, across the hall. I’ll come see you next.”

  “Okay,” Shy told him, but there was no way he was doing anything until he saw Carmen. “You feeling a little better?” he asked Addie, squeezing her foot.

  “I think so,” she said.

  Shy nodded as Christian began asking her questions.

  When two women came in carrying a change of clothes for Addie, Shy slipped out of the room.

  The second he walked into the lobby he spotted Carmen, who motioned for him to follow her.

  As he moved across the marble floor, though, toward the doors, a few other survivors from the cruise ship approached him. Word had gotten out that he and Addie had been rescued, and they marveled at how long Shy had survived at sea.

  Shy smiled and nodded at them all, but he hardly heard a word they were saying. He was too anxious to talk to Carmen, who was now standing in front of the hotel doors, waiting for him.

  “Make sure you’re in the restaurant at one-thirty,” a man said. “They’re going to tell us when we can expect to be home.”

  “I’ll be there,” Shy said, waving as he moved past the group.

  His legs were wobbly as he followed Carmen outside the hotel and along the cobblestone path. For some reason she continued walking a few paces in front of him, like she didn’t want to start talking until they were completely alone.

  They moved around the entire exterior of the hotel. Puddles everywhere, especially out back. Seaweed strung through some of the manicured bushes like tinsel. A woman wearing an oversized Raiders jersey called to him from across the lawn: “We heard about you! Thank God you were able to survive!”

  “Thank you!” Shy shouted back.

  They walked past others who greeted Shy the same way. Finally Carmen led him under a large gazebo where they were alone. She spun around and faced him, her head tilted a little to the side. “Shy,” she said, her face breaking into a big smile.

  Just hearing her say his name sort of choked him up. “Carm,” he managed to say back.

  She was wearin
g a plain white T-shirt he’d never seen her wear, baggy jeans and tennis shoes. She covered her mouth and her eyes got a little glassy, but there were no tears. Carmen was too tough for that. “Come here,” she said.

  He moved toward her and she wrapped him in a tight hug, saying in a quiet voice: “I thought I lost you.”

  Shy was so overcome with emotion he wanted to melt into her. He cupped the back of her head and held her against his chest, breathing in her hair. He was exhausted to the point that his knees were shaking, but he didn’t care. He was willing to stand like this forever.

  She looked up at him. “I thought of you every single minute. I even tried praying.”

  “I thought about you, too,” Shy told her.

  Carmen reached up and grabbed Shy’s face in her hands, stared right into his eyes. “How’d you get rescued? It’s been five days. I almost lost hope.”

  “Shoeshine,” Shy told her. “He found us out there in a sinking lifeboat.”

  Carmen hugged him again.

  Shy closed his eyes this time and concentrated on the feeling of her body against his. Being with Carmen again made it sink in that he’d made it to the other side. That he had a second chance.

  When she pulled away from him this time, she said: “God, look how skinny you are, Shy. It’s like breaking my heart.”

  “I only caught one fish the whole time,” he said.

  She laughed a little and shook her head. “I never saw you as the life-skills type. Why do you think I was praying?”

  “It was the sharks,” he told her. “For real. They scared away all my fish.”

  “You smell, too,” Carmen said, grabbing him by the elbow. “Let’s get you cleaned up.”

  Carmen led Shy back into the hotel and behind the reservation desk, where he picked out a change of clothes, and then she took him out back to the freshwater pool where she said everyone had been bathing.

  “Go on,” Carmen said, turning away from him. “I’ll keep a look out so nobody tries to sneak a peek at your stuff.”

  Shy slowly peeled off the damp clothes he’d been wearing for the past five days and grabbed one of the small hotel-style bars of soap lying beside the pool. Being rescued was a trip: one minute he’d be stressing about getting back home and finding his family, and the next minute he’d get a lump in his throat just looking at a bar of soap.

  He dunked himself in the cool water and began lathering his hair and body, which felt incredible, as Carmen caught him up about her own lifeboat’s journey to the island and the island itself.

  She was on the first boat to make it to the island, along with about thirty others, including Christian, who they’d pulled out of the ocean. A disheveled redheaded man in a lab coat, Dr. Sullivan, greeted them on the golf course and led them up the stairs to the hotel. Soon as they walked into the lobby, though, he had them all sit down so he could explain what was happening on the island. He’d been working in the lab on the other side, with a team of other scientists, when the first tsunami hit. In seconds, the entire lab was underwater. Only a few of them made it out alive. But that wasn’t all. The next morning, most of the people who worked on the island—in the hotel and the restaurant and on the grounds—started getting sick. Really sick. He’d been putting them all upstairs, in the penthouse, where he was giving them medication.

  “Then the doc ducked behind the registration desk,” Carmen said over her shoulder, “and came back with a duffel bag. He explained that the virus going around was very contagious and that each of us would need to have a shot for protection.”

  Shy had stopped lathering and was staring at the back of Carmen’s head. He knew she was talking about one of the dead people he’d found on the motorboat. And the shots they all got were the same ones Shoeshine had just given to him and Addie.

  “So you let him give you the shot?” Shy asked.

  “Of course I did,” Carmen said. “Only two people from my lifeboat refused it, and they’re both sick now. They’re up in the penthouse.”

  Shy started rinsing himself off, debating whether or not to tell Carmen about the dead scientists. Or about him getting the shot, too. If everyone already knew about it, why did Shoeshine want him to keep it secret?

  “So where’s the bag of medicine now?” he asked.

  “Gone,” Carmen said, turning all the way around to face him. “That’s why I’m worried about you.”

  Shy thought about ducking back into the water to hide himself. But he didn’t. He just stood there.

  She glanced down at him for a quick sec, but her face stayed serious. “Shy, your chest. What happened?”

  He reached up to feel it. He had a pretty big scab that was slowly healing. And he was pretty sure he’d broken a rib or two. “No idea,” he said. “Happened on the ship.”

  Carmen cringed. “Anyway, Dr. Sullivan disappeared, too. The day after we got here. We don’t know where he went or what he did with the medicine.”

  “Was there another doctor?” Shy asked.

  “There were four of them,” Carmen said. “But Dr. Sullivan was the only one who came around the hotel. The rest of them mostly stayed on the other side of the island, except when they went to the restaurant to eat. They claimed their entire life’s work was buried underwater.”

  Shy started drying himself off with one of the towels stacked near the pool, trying to decide how to tell Carmen what he knew. He didn’t want to betray Shoeshine, but at the same time, he couldn’t keep this from Carmen.

  She turned away from him, as if she’d just remembered he was naked. “Everyone on the second boat is fine, too, but by the time the third and fourth lifeboats showed up, Dr. Sullivan was already gone. Same with the medicine. So none of them got the shot.”

  “And they got sick?” Shy asked, putting on a fresh pair of pants. He transferred the oilman’s ring from his old ones.

  “Almost all of them,” Carmen said over her shoulder. “Only Shoeshine is still fine. And a few others. It’s crazy contagious, like Dr. Sullivan said. That’s why Christian and those research people aren’t letting anyone go up to the penthouse.”

  “By any chance,” Shy said, “was that duffel bag of medicine brown and blue?”

  Carmen spun back to Shy. “How’d you know that?”

  Shy slipped his second arm into his T-shirt and pulled it over his head. “Look,” he said, “Shoe told me to keep this quiet, okay?”

  “Just tell me what you know.”

  “Okay.” Shy was so tired he had to squat down. “Me and Addie stumbled into that Dr. Sullivan guy’s boat while we were paddling around out there. You said he had red hair, right?”

  Carmen nodded.

  “So, yeah, someone shot him,” Shy said. “Shot his boat up, too. And tried to burn it.”

  The color went out of Carmen’s face. “Who shot him? Why?”

  “No idea,” Shy said. “I found him that way. Some other doctor had also been shot.”

  “But that doesn’t make sense,” Carmen said. “Why would anyone shoot a scientist? He was helping us.”

  Shy looked over Carmen’s shoulder to make sure they were still alone. “You don’t think Shoe had anything to do with it, do you?”

  Carmen composed herself and shook her head. “The reason he didn’t get sick, I think, is because he never stays in the hotel.”

  “Where’s he sleep?”

  She shrugged. “Outside, I guess. He spends all day exploring the other side and fishing and writing in his notebook. He’s also obsessed with that wrecked sailboat. Maybe he sleeps on that.” Carmen shook her head again. “Nah, Shoe’s been good to us. He rescued you, didn’t he?”

  Shy looked up at the top floor of the hotel, where the penthouse was. “I grabbed the duffel with the medicine off their boat. I don’t even know why. Anyway, when I woke up on Shoe’s boat this morning, he was sticking me with one of those syringes.”

  “Shy,” Carmen said, grabbing his forearm, “that’s really good. Everyone who got the shot is sti
ll healthy.”

  “He told me they were vitamins,” Shy said. “But obviously that was a bunch of bs. What kind of sickness is it, anyway?”

  Carmen shook her head. “Some tropical thing, I guess. Brought on by the flooding. And we were all calling the shots vitamins.” She let go of his arm. “All I know is the illness must be bad ’cause nobody’s recovered enough to come down from the penthouse yet.”

  They were both quiet for a few seconds. Shy stood and scooped up his dirty clothes.

  Carmen cleared her throat, said: “There’s something else, Shy. I wanted to make sure you heard this from me first.”

  Shy looked at her, preparing himself for more bad news.

  “Rodney’s up there. He’s one of the sick people.”

  It was like a shot to the midsection. Shy looked up toward the top floor again. His legs felt even weaker all of a sudden, like any second he might collapse like Addie had. But he wouldn’t let himself. “He’ll get better, though, right?”

  “That’s what Christian says. And the research people promised to take everyone back to California, no matter how sick they are.”

  “We can’t go see him?” Shy asked.

  She shook her head. “At least, we’re not supposed to.”

  As they walked back into the hotel, they were both quiet. Shy could tell Carmen was thinking about the same thing he was. Rodney. It killed him that the guy had made it all the way to the island only to get sick. He vowed to make sure he took care of his roommate on the voyage back home.

  Carmen led Shy right past Addie’s room and the room Christian told him to take, toward the stairs. “I think I’m supposed to be in room one eighteen,” he said.

  “Says who?” Carmen said.

  “Christian.”

  She shook her head. “You can take any room you want. Come on.”

  She led him to an open room on the third floor, across the hall from hers, and stood by the door as he went inside. He sat on the end of the king-sized bed. It was a super nice hotel room. Art on all the walls, a big window overlooking the ocean. Clean-looking bedding and pillows. But Shy didn’t care about all that. He was still thinking about what he’d just learned.