by Seth Fishman
“Wait,” I say, the thought flitting in and out of my mind. The zoom back at the Cave . . . “Brayden, wasn’t there something crazy about the last image?”
“Yeah,” he replies, remembering immediately, his face flashing hope for the first time since he touched the water. “It was a miniature replica of the entire map, a map within a map. They said there were, like, seventeen versions or something. Except that each map was a little different. The moon was shaped different. Remember?”
I’m starting to get excited, to feel the adrenaline pump through my body. “How’d we get here, huh? We went through the well into a new world. And here we are, at the waterfall. Something that takes away life. So how do we get to the source?”
“Through the killer waterfall?” Brayden says, clearly dubious.
“That’s right,” I reply, hurrying to the pool’s edge. “Or at least, through something here.” I look at the waterfall where it pours right into the pool. It’s so strong and flowing so fast, you can’t see behind it. I can’t make out a well, either.
I take a step toward the water.
“Mia, what’re you doing?” Brayden shouts. I can see from here that the aging is up to his elbow.
“It makes sense,” I reply, trying to psych myself up enough to do this.
“No it doesn’t,” he says, with more conviction than I’ve mustered. But he’s wrong.
“If you want the source,” I say “you have to take it.”
“Look what it’s done to me,” he cries, taking a step my way. “You’ll age up immediately. You’ll die.”
When I don’t say anything he hurries my way, but I take another step toward the water and he stops. Like I’m holding a grenade and any movement on his part will set it off.
I don’t know if this will work. And if it doesn’t, everything will end quickly. So I keep staring at him, needing him right now. His face is so racked with concern that I almost feel bad. His hair is shading gray and his body is beginning to shake but his eyes don’t leave me. I think of my dad, of him floating in the water, of him sacrificing himself for me. It’s not a great feeling, but it gives me the strength to turn and dive deep into the pool.
I hear Brayden call my name, muted and distant and gone.
19
JIMMY
JIMMY STANDS OUTSIDE HIS OWN HOUSE WITH Hendricks and Woods and Odessa. The day’s bright, sun reflecting off of the snow, turning top layers to ice, sending icicles dripping on all the houses down the block. He tries not to think about his healthy ninety-five-year-old dad in there. About how selfish he was buying his dad another year or two. He sucks in the fresh air, feeling it chill his lungs, trying to focus. He’s warmer now, at least, actually dressed in his own clothing. Odessa is wearing some of his mom’s stuff—a big green parka and her ski pants.
Woods is waiting on him to make a decision for some reason. He’s the cop, Jimmy thinks, he should be running the show.
“We need volunteers,” Odessa finally says, tired of the delay. “We have to go door-to-door and distribute the water.”
“The firehouse?” Hendricks suggests. “Chief Brosh called in all the volunteer firefighters.”
“Good.” Woods nods. “And I’ll get to First Baptist, and then Saint Ann’s. I know there’s a crowd there.”
“What about the quarantine? The roadblocks the soldiers got you to set up. Are they still in place?” Jimmy asks.
“Deputy Wilkshire is down off of County Road 48. Thompson’s over on 210.” Woods pauses, his voiced pained. “They didn’t set up their block with soldiers, they’re probably still out there watching the roads. I could have ’em back here in twenty minutes to help.”
“We still want the quarantine in place,” Odessa says. “Until we hand out this water. Remember, this can’t spread beyond town.”
Hendricks shudders. “Oh, God, she’s right.”
“Of course she’s right,” Woods replies. He reaches for a couple bottles from Odessa’s bag and tosses them to his partner. Odessa takes Jimmy’s arm and pulls him toward the snowmobile.
“Where you two think you’re going?” Woods asks. Odessa hops into the driver’s seat, with Jimmy behind her, his arms wrapped around her waist.
“To Westbrook,” Jimmy calls.
“No way. We need to stick together.”
“Woods,” Jimmy says. “We’ve got to. The more people we hit, the safer Fenton gets. You take the town, we’ll take the school. We know it better and that’s ground zero.”
“You’ll get hurt,” he says. Hendricks is already in the car.
Odessa shakes a bottle of water in the air. “Not with this.” She revs the engine and eases forward. “Good luck,” Jimmy calls to Woods, who seems stuck watching them leave. Hendricks slams on the horn and Woods snaps to it. A few seconds later Jimmy sees the cruiser flash its lights before zooming around the corner.
The wind is cold, sharp enough to bite. The last time Jimmy was on a snowmobile he was captured by Sutton’s soldiers and taken to Furbish Manor, the base of operations for the maniac. It also happens to be Brayden’s parents’ house.
“You think they’re still guarding the school?” Odessa shouts over the noise of the engine. They’re moving fast, taking the frozen creek up toward the lake that borders the school, the same one they skated over to escape the quarantine just a few days ago.
“Maybe,” Jimmy says in her ear. Sutton put the soldiers there to stop Mia from getting out. To make sure he could use her to get into the Cave. Once Mia fled, there’d have been no reason to leave people there at all. Except to keep the virus in.
“Let’s play it safe then,” Odessa says, getting them within half a mile before cutting the engines. “Too loud.” She points at the snowmobile.
Jimmy gestures to the bell tower on campus and the spotlight affixed there. It’s not sweeping the ground, but it’s on. Maybe it means someone’s there, but the sun’s too high in the sky to bother using it.
Jimmy carries the water and they move quickly through the snow. He finds himself surprised again at how well his new body works, how fast he can move, and with how much ease. Odessa keeps pace, and he wonders why she never played any sports. The water brought her to peak physical fitness but she’s clearly got endurance. They plow through the snow together, getting warm, unzipping their jackets and wiping snot from their noses. He realizes something with some reluctance: they might not find any guards at Westbrook because there might not be anyone left to guard.
The wall that surrounds the school greets them suddenly, a thick layer of defense just fifty yards away. He finds himself not entirely ready for this.
“Should we skirt it until we get to the lake? Then enter that way? Or try to sneak through at the front gate?”
Odessa shakes her head and keeps going, all the way to the wall. It’s tall, about twelve feet high. It’s redbrick covered in heavy snow, and its surface is spotted by slick icy runoff.
“We can climb it,” she says between deep breaths.
Jimmy looks up and down the wall. There are no trees close enough to climb, and every tree is covered in snow anyway.
“I don’t know, Dess.”
“Give me the water,” she says, and he does. She doesn’t wait a moment, just tosses the bottles over the wall. They barely make a sound on the other side. He hopes they didn’t burst open. “Now boost me up.”
It goes easier than he expected. He lifts her and she knocks the snow off the wall, peers over and then sits, Humpty Dumpty–style, facing him, her legs dangling.
“What are you doing?” he whispers.
“Grab my legs.”
“I’ll break them,” he says, shaking his head.
“No, you won’t. Grab them and use me to climb up.”
“You’re crazy,” he says.
She smiles. “You like it that way.”
; Jimmy feels a flash of warmth and jumps, grabs her legs and then she helps to pull him up onto the wall with her. For a moment they sit there, butts cold, breath like smoke, and all Jimmy wants to do is laugh. Odessa points to the ground, so he jumps, then helps her down. She grabs a bottle, takes a swig and hands it to him. The rush of the water is too good to ignore. He feels like doing jumping jacks.
They cross to the dorms, and when Jimmy crouches in the snow he can see his own room on the third floor, the lights still on.
He doesn’t see any soldiers. He doesn’t see anybody in the windows. He’s always taken for granted the music from the hallway or the laughter of his friends or the simple feeling of stuff to do that’s always on campus.
They stay low, but no one’s near. They don’t have a key card but a window’s cracked a few rooms down. “That’s Todd’s, isn’t it?” Odessa asks. He nods. Todd and Rory smoked cigarettes out their window all the time.
Jimmy looks in. Just a dorm room: dirty bed, lacrosse stick and Muhammad Ali poster. “He’s not there.”
They sneak in, climbing into the window significantly easier than scaling the wall. Jimmy creaks open the door to an empty hallway.
“Where is everyone?”
“Didn’t Sutton say something back at the Cave about them barricading themselves somewhere?” Odessa asks, peeking into another door.
They move through the hallways, opening doors, and every room’s empty. All of his friends’ rooms, their lights on or off, Xboxes loaded in some, beds made in others.
Jimmy feels a growing sense of panic. He had expected the worst, steeled himself for broken bodies, aged to death. Or evidence of foiled escape attempts. Or soldiers everywhere with their guns and flashlights. But this emptiness grates deep on his nerves, the unknown as bad as anything.
It isn’t until they reach the Castle that something strange happens.
The Castle’s the name for a part of the dorm that rises up in one section for an extra three floors. Only seniors are allowed to live there, and the only way up is a spiral staircase that runs right through the middle of this wing. Jimmy’s had his eye on the top room, the “penthouse,” for ages. He’s been to enough parties up there to know how good life is in the Castle. He’s been to enough parties up there to know that the mattresses now barricading the stairwell aren’t the norm. There’s more than mattresses. He sees a few desks and chairs and even a couch, all pushed into the tight space, blocking anyone from going up. He can the bannisters overhead. Someone could still hear him.
“Hello?” he shouts, his voice echoing up the stairs.
Odessa hits him in the arm and shushes him.
“I’m sorry,” a voice calls down. It’s a girl’s, and it’s familiar. “We’re not changing the rules. No exceptions.”
“Amber?” Odessa asks up the stairwell.
Of course, Jimmy thinks, it would be Amber who organized this. Student body president. Control freak.
“Who’s that?” she calls down.
“Odessa and Jimmy.”
Amber’s face appears over a ledge three stories up. Her black hair falls straight down, making it hard to figure out her expression.
“You’re sick,” she says after a while. “You’re aging up.”
“Not anymore,” Jimmy replies. He holds up a bottle of water for her to see. “We’ve got the antidote. We’ve come to help you.”
She snorts. “You’re a little late for that.”
Another head peers over the edge, then another. Brent and Casey. His teammates. And then there’s Sally Weathers and Lydia Yu.
“You disappeared,” someone says.
“They’re townies,” Sally adds.
“Oh, my God,” Odessa moans. “Enough of that bullshit. We escaped and got the virus anyway but found an antidote and came back here to help. Is everyone up there? Where are all the soldiers?”
“They left,” Amber says, her voice closer. She’s come down three flights and is now at the head of the barricade. She’s in sweats, her eyes baggy and tired, her face a mess. She’s her age though. Uninfected.
Jimmy and Odessa share a glance. The soldiers did leave after Mia fled.
“Then let us up!” Jimmy yells. “You’re free now and we need your help. We have to get this water to everyone possible.”
“I thought you said it was the antidote. Not water.”
Jimmy shrugs. “Same thing.”
“Is everyone up there?” Odessa asks.
“No.” Amber shakes her head, unable to look them in the eyes. She’s not moving to undo the barricade. They’re safe here, Jimmy realizes. Why would they leave?
“After the soldiers left,” she continues, “we found the teachers dead in the infirmary. The sick students volunteered to stay away from the healthy. They went to Dylan.”
Jimmy pictures the school’s auditorium: hundreds of aged, desiccated bodies slumped in the seats. His stomach curls. They went there to die.
“You need to drink this water,” he says. Amber shakes her head, sucks in a snotty breath and hugs herself. The others watch quietly from above her. There’s an air of reverence; she must have organized this place and saved their lives. She’s their leader now.
“After a while, when someone else got sick, they didn’t stick around. They got in their car and left. They just drove off. We watched them from the windows.”
Odessa gasps. “Did the soldiers stop them?”
“I don’t know.”
Suddenly, there’s a noise down the hall.
“Don’t move!” shouts a voice, and Jimmy whirls to see Gutierrez, gun raised at them, bag hanging from his back filled with water bottles.
“Gutierrez,” Odessa cries, hands raised. “You came!” She sounds almost happy. And he looks almost happy, lowering the gun with a tentative smile.
“I told you I would,” he says.
“You take care of Furbish first?”
Gutierrez’s eyes flick to the ground. “They’re gone,” he says. “They’re all gone. Some were dead. But the others took the trucks and the snowmobiles and the suits. They’re just gone.”
“Why would they do that?” Odessa asks. “They knew about the water, right?”
Gutierrez shakes his head, looking sheepish. “Sutton didn’t tell everyone.”
Fucking typical, Jimmy thinks.
“What’s going on?” Amber asks. She peers through the railing and sees the soldier. “You’re with them!” she shouts, recoiling, her eyes incredulous and betrayed, and then she runs up the steps.
Something falls and Jimmy just barely manages to pull Odessa out of the way. It’s a bottle of Absolut, and it smashes on the ground, glass flying everywhere. A lamp follows right after. They scurry out of the way, and Gutierrez raises his rifle to try to get a shot off.
“No!” Odessa yells, pushing down the barrel. “They don’t understand. They aren’t the enemy.”
“Well, neither am I,” he replies, peevish.
She looks at his gun with eyebrows raised. He lowers it, glowering.
“What do we do now?” Jimmy asks.
“Leave a bottle, Jimmy,” Odessa says. But he knew that. He meant about the ones who left, who got away.
“Let’s hope they die,” Gutierrez mutters.
“What?” Odessa says, shocked.
“Yeah,” the soldier replies, his eyes fierce. “Let’s hope those kids who got away and the soldiers in their Humvees age to death before they get anywhere or run into anyone and give them the virus. I bet they break the roadblocks—I bet they’re on their way to the nearest real hospital or town or they’re just running for their fucking lives.”
“Spreading the virus,” Jimmy whispers. He’s thinking of the richies’ parents, how they’d come with private jets and take their sweethearts back to their private doctors across the country and
the world.
“Let’s hope they all die way before that happens.”
Jimmy imagines himself driving down the highway, completely unaware of what’s going on here at Westbrook. He sees an army truck smash into a tree. He knows he’d pull over and help. That he’d put his finger to the old, wrinkled body’s neck. That he’d breathe in the infected air. That he’d catch it.
He imagines the virus even now sifting down the arteries of the country. The interstates and the cities. From Denver to everywhere.
“We’re too late,” he says, his mind reeling.
“Hey Amber,” Odessa calls up the stairs, tossing a bottle toward the barricade. “Make sure everyone drinks a little of this water.” She turns and heads back the way they came, motioning for Jimmy to follow her. “We save who we can. They’re all that’s left.”
20
THE WATER’S COLD, A STARK CONTRAST TO THE HEALING type. It presses against me and reminds me of swimming under ice. I undulate my body like I would in a race, trying to stay beneath as long as possible. When I finally break the surface and start to swim—freestyle—I immediately feel an ache twist through me. I know what it feels like to get tired. I know what it feels like to push myself so hard that the edge of my vision goes black. I know what it takes when I’m close to the finish mark, when I have to skip the breath and keep my head underwater to gain those extra milliseconds of speed. I can remember nearly passing out a half dozen times after a race, holding weakly on to the plastic blue lane dividers, letting chlorinated water fill my mouth and spitting it slowly out. But the tired I feel so suddenly, it’s different. The pool’s small, maybe thirty yards, the kind of distance I should laugh at. My arms are sluggish, my bones squeak in my body. I can feel my eyes dim. And when I turn my head to breathe, my lungs can’t get enough, can barely get any air, so I go back under breathless, and it takes my entire will to keep the rhythm and not pull up to paddle like a dog.
