Shore Haven

by Reynolds, Jennifer

  Jason didn’t say a word while I sobbed.

  By the time I’d finished, we were laying in the bed, wrapped in the blankets, facing each other, with Jason holding me close—a position too intimate for complete strangers. He used the sheet to blot my face. Yet, he didn’t say a word.

  “I’m so sorry. I…”

  “Don’t apologize. You have nothing to be sorry for.”

  “But I do. I’m not joking when I said you should have let me die. I’m not a fighter. I’m not cut out to live in this world. I’m just going to get you guys killed. Just like I got Maddie…”

  “I doubt you got your sister killed.”

  “But I did.”

  “How?”

  “She died the second Sadie left us on our own.”

  “Who is Sadie?”

  I proceeded to tell him Maddie and my’s story, starting from our arrival on the island up to the day Sadie left us.

  ~~~~~~~~~~

  —The early days of the outbreak.—

  Seeing the burning cities in the distance solidified for me the fact that I no longer wanted off the island. Things had settled into a calm on Liberty, and I didn’t want to enter a world full of chaos. I didn’t move from my spot on the bridge, but out of the corner of my eye, I saw Sadie’s expression harden a second before she turned away. Where she went, I didn’t know and didn’t want to know. There was no way I was following her either. She needed to come to grips with the reality of her situation. Some alone time might do her good.

  “We’re stuck here, aren’t we?” Maddie asked.

  “For now. Even if we can get the bridge down, I don’t think we want to do it until whatever is happening out there,” I said, pointing to another pillar of smoke breaking across the sky much further out, “settles down. Remember, we don’t just have zombies to worry about. We have assholes to watch out for.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “You know what I’m saying—men and women who are going to use the outbreak to their advantage. There are going to be people who revert to the raping and pillaging mindset because there isn’t a government to stop them. We don’t want those kinds of people on the island. We don’t want anyone whose goal is anything other than killing zombies and rebuilding humanity. You’ve heard some of the stories that came after the floods. Our world was seconds from imploding on itself due to people like that. The three of us haven’t let this outbreak turn us into monsters, and if we can survive it without it doing so, we’ll be lucky.”

  “Do you think people will turn that quickly?”

  “If some men can turn into rapists after a couple of beers, they can turn into worse things days into a situation like this. There were plenty of people in the world before who were merely waiting for something like this to come along that would allow them to become the animal they hid inside.”

  “I hope we’re better than that,” she said, turning from the bridge.

  “I hope so as well,” I replied, following her.

  We scoped the area but didn’t find any zombies or any other humans. For the longest we couldn’t even locate Sadie. We were about to give up on her and head back to the hotel when she came out of a warehouse a block up from the bridge, looking shaken.

  Not once since I’d known the woman had I ever seen her look like that.

  “What?” I asked, resisting the urge to pull her to me and hug her.

  She just shook her head and took off in a quick walk toward the hotel. At the time, I had assumed she’d found some exceptionally gross bodies or possibly someone she knew. I should have gone into the warehouse myself to see what she had found.

  Our trek back to the hotel was uneventful. Sadie remained unusually quiet all the way there. She didn’t even stop us when we passed a small clinic that looked relatively unscathed. I don’t think she even saw it.

  Maddie elbowed me and nodded to the clinic then to Sadie as we passed it. I shrugged my shoulders. Sadie was so engrossed in getting back to the hotel that she was utterly oblivious to our surroundings, and her behavior worried my sister and me.

  Once we settled, I tried to ask again what had happened to her, but she wouldn’t answer. She only shook her head and went to her room. She didn’t come out until supper.

  Conversations were scarce while we ate. Maddie and I couldn’t help but watch Sadie’s every move. The woman was distracted, skittish, and oddly enough, she looked relieved, as if whatever she found told her that everything was going to be all right. That last part pissed me off. If she’d found out what was going on or that help was on the way, she should have told us.

  Finally, that night, I’d had enough of her behavior and snapped.

  “Okay, what the hell happened in that warehouse,” I demanded.

  Shock surprised her for a second, but annoyance quickly masked it. “Nothing,” she replied with a snap in her voice.

  “Something happened. You’ve been an entirely different person since you came out of there.”

  “I haven’t.”

  “You have,” Maddie said, joining the conversation.

  “I have?” she asked, sounding as if she truly hadn’t known she’d been acting differently.

  “Yeah,” Maddie said.

  Without saying another word, Sadie burst into tears. Maddie and I assumed the tears were from sorrow, so we hugged her and didn’t press her anymore. We let her go to bed without talking. In hindsight, I should have made her talk. Maybe if I had, I would have seen that the tears might have meant something else.

  Sadie was her usual self the next day and in the days and weeks after that, but she would disappear on her own for hours at a time or at night when she thought Maddie and I were asleep. We knew something was up because she made no mention of exploring the other bridges, but Sadie continued to act as if nothing was different.

  One morning a few weeks later, we woke to the sound of the bridge lowering. I didn’t think. I just reacted. I ran straight to the roof of the hotel. Maddie was right on my heels. Neither of us noticed that Sadie wasn’t with us.

  “Shit,” I said once we were on the roof because I didn’t think about how small our hotel was. I couldn’t see the bridge from the roof through all of the larger buildings around us.

  “We’ll have to go out,” Maddie said, turning to head back down the stairs.

  I cursed again.

  “I can’t believe Sadie didn’t hear that,” Maddie said, as we dressed.

  “I can’t believe she didn’t either,” I said, zipping up my boots.

  I looked from our open door to Sadie’s closed one. When after a minute Sadie didn’t emerge, I stood and went to her room.

  “She’s already up,” I said when I opened the door to an empty room.

  “Really?”

  We searched the hotel but didn’t find her. Fearing the worst, I went back to her room and discovered that her pack and most of her things were gone.

  “She left us,” I told Maddie.

  “She wouldn’t.”

  “She did. Her stuff’s gone.”

  “Why?”

  “I don’t know. But I bet it has something to do with that bridge coming down.”

  “But why wouldn’t she tell us that she knew the bridge was coming down and that she’d found a way off the island.”

  “Because she knew I was scared to leave. And she didn’t think you would have gone without me.”

  I honestly wasn’t sure if the latter was correct. I think what would have happened was that Maddie would have wanted to go, and I would have gone with her. I wouldn’t have wanted to, but I would have.

  Maddie looked at me for a long time, then said, “The bridge is down. What do you want to do?”

  “I don’t know. I think we should see what’s happening. See if Sadie’s still there. If she found more people. If people are coming here from the mainland. I’ll decide after that.”

  “Okay,” Maddie said.

  We were out the door five minutes later, but we didn’t make it
to the bridge. We got close enough to see the horde of zombies ambling across it before we ran back to the hotel.

  “What the hell,” Maddie said, once we were inside and barricading the door.

  “I have no idea.”

  “Do you think Sadie knew that was going to happen?”

  “I hope not.”

  We hid inside the hotel for nearly a week after that, watching from the roof as the horde invaded the city.

  Chapter 12

  ~~~Samantha~~~

  —Inside the decontamination room.—

  “Jason, you awake?” a disembodied voice asked, breaking through my story and startling me.

  “Yeah, Uncle Jasper, we’re awake,” Jason said, not moving from where he lay on the bed with me cradled next to him.

  “We? Does that mean the woman is awake, then?”

  “Yes, the woman is awake,” I said, letting a bit of annoyance seep out of my voice. “My name is Samantha.”

  “Great,” Jasper said, not acknowledging my irritation. “How do you feel?”

  “Tired. Sore. Cold. Ready to leave this room.” That last one was a lie. If leaving the room meant I couldn’t stay cuddled next to Jason I didn’t want them to ever let us out of there.

  “I can’t do anything about most of that, but know that you won’t have to be in there much longer. We should be able to let you out first thing tomorrow morning.”

  Hiding a smile, I turned my face into Jason’s chest and closed my eyes. I was glad to have one night with him that I would remember.

  “Could you send Tera down with a few more blankets and lunch please?” Jason asked his uncle.

  “Yes. Your blood work came back negative for the virus, but I think one more night in there is for the best. Zombie blood covered every inch of both of you. I want to be sure that you aren’t going to change before I allow you into the building.”

  “We understand,” Jason said, answering for the both of us. The hand he had wrapped around me, rubbed my arm to tell me that we were going to be okay.

  I felt in my soul that I wasn’t infected, and I prayed he wasn’t either. Having said that, I couldn’t blame Jason’s uncle for being overly cautious.

  “Any new news from the outside,” Jason asked, sounding as if he’d asked that question one too many times in the last few days or possibly month.

  There was a pause before Jasper said, “No.”

  “Don’t lie to me,” Jason snapped and unconsciously gripped me tighter.

  We heard the man sigh before he said, “There are more rumors—and I’m stressing the word rumor—that Germany is readying a fleet of frigates and subs to cross the ocean. There is talk of them bombing us to keep the virus from spreading. I’ve tried communicating with anyone outside the U.S. who will listen to tell them that there are people in this country that haven’t turned and that the zombies die on their own over time without food. So have others, and we think we’ve gotten through to them. We believe that our missives are the only thing that has stopped them from coming sooner, but if this virus spreads too far, manages to jump the ocean, we’re dead.”

  “If that happens then the entire planet is dead,” Jason said.

  “This is true,” Jasper said.

  “Any word on a cure or vaccine?”

  I poked my head up from his chest at those words. I’d been listening in fascination that there was still communication with the outside world. Maddie, Sadie, and I hadn’t talked to anyone but ourselves for so long that I’d nearly forgotten that there was an outside world until Sadie had left us. The words “vaccine” and “cure” had been an even larger fantasy.

  If those two things were out there, then I had a reason to leave the island. I could find someone with one of them and get them to my parents and my husband if they were alive. I wouldn’t allow myself to believe they were otherwise.

  Without thinking about it, Jason moved his hand from my arm to play with my hair as we waited for his uncle to answer. My entire body wanted to stop thinking about my husband and Jason’s hands on me and pay attention to the man speaking, but both kept trying to leap into my mind at the same time.

  I should have felt guilty for lying next to Jason, for allowing him to comfort me, for enjoying his attention, but I couldn’t. So much had changed that summer that I was no longer the person who’d come to the island with her little sister for a summer vacation and graduation celebration. Even if the zombie apocalypse hadn’t happened, I would have been leaving the island with the intention of getting a divorce.

  Before my brain could follow that train of thought, Jasper spoke. “There are rumors. Nothing I can substantiate, but if you’re up to it after you get out of there tomorrow, I thought you, Russ, and Tera might want to investigate a few of them. The closest one comes from a supposed C.D.C. lab about three day’s walk northwest of here. I don’t know anything about this lab, but that isn’t saying much considering so many such labs went underground after the earthquakes and floods. So many diseases popped up during that time, those centers appeared everywhere, but once things died down, they went silent. The woman on the radio who says she is from there and that she has a vaccine could be lying, but I think it’s worth checking out.”

  “Why would she lie about something like that?” I asked.

  “There could be any number of reasons why she would lie,” Jason said, not looking at me, but up at the ceiling. “The biggest reason is to rob people of their supplies. Anyone coming to her for a vaccine will hope they are finding safety as well and will take all their food, water, and other needed items with them.”

  “Why rob them? Why not give survivors safety and hope and share the supplies?” I asked. I feared I sounded naive again, but my mind couldn’t wrap around wanting to steal from someone like that.

  “You’ll find that in times of crisis like this most people start looking out for themselves, and don’t care who they hurt to survive,” Jasper said. “One would think after all we’ve been through, we’d understand that a life like that doesn’t work, but people are callous and selfish by nature.”

  I didn’t want to believe that about people, but after what Sadie did to us, I couldn’t deny his logic. With a sad sigh, I laid my head back down on Jason’s chest and tried not to cry.

  “Get the information together, and we’ll check out the lab the day after tomorrow.”

  “I’ll get on it. Tera should be there any minute with your blankets and food,” Jasper said.

  “Thank you.”

  “Are you okay,” Jason asked me after a long pause where I assumed he was making sure that his uncle was gone.

  I nodded. I was trying not to think about the events that had landed me in that department store fighting off my sister.

  Before he could press me further, the intercom buzzed, letting us know that Tera was there. I jerked off him as if I’d been doing something wrong. He gave me a puzzled look, but crawled from the bed and went to the door. I couldn’t see them from the bed, which I hope meant that she couldn’t see me.

  Jason didn’t act as if he was in a relationship with anyone, even Tera, with the way he’d been holding me, but that didn’t mean anything. I was married, and I was laying all over him and thinking about doing more than that with him if he was willing.

  Without moving off the bed, I shifted so that I could hear what the two said to each other. The words they shared were pretty much the same conversation we’d had with Jasper. She told him about the possible vaccine and about how she and Russ were preparing for the trip.

  A part of me that surprised even me wanted to go with them—with him—but the gash in my leg would prevent it. The zombies would smell the blood, and my limp would slow us down. The wound wasn’t horrific, though, so it should heal quickly, maybe fast enough that I could convince them to take the vaccine and me to my home to see if my family was still alive.

  Jason came back to the bed a few minutes later with some house shoes and a few more blankets. He helped me put them on the
n to my embarrassment told me to pull down my pants.

  “I need to check your leg,” he said as his cheeks flushed the same shade of red I was sure mine had at his words.

  I’d known what he wanted, but that hadn’t stopped the words from mortifying me. He’d have seen my thick thighs before that since he had to have been tending the wound while I slept. That also meant that he was the one who had changed my clothes. Hell, he’d had to bathe me, so he’d seen every inch of me.

  That knowledge nearly brought tears to my eyes. He’d seen my flawed body, which meant that I could give up on him wanting me in any sexual way.

  The realization sobered me, and all self-consciousness left me. I shimmied the sleep pants down to my calves and settled back to let Jason examine the wound. I didn’t want to watch him. Didn’t want to see any disgust or revulsion that might slip across his expression. I winced and flinched, but I didn’t cry out, as he removed the old bandage, put more medication on the wound, and re-bandaged it.

  “You’re still cold,” he said, helping me pull the pants back up.

  “A little,” I said, not making eye contact with him.

  “Why don’t we sit up against the wall for a little while, then after lunch, we’ll try walking,” he said, cleaning up the medical supplies before piling pillows against the wall at the head of the bed. He helped me scoot against the pile before covering me with the blankets we already had and one of the new ones.

  He didn’t join me on the bed but went to the kitchen area to make us some hot tea.

  “Are you going to tell me what’s wrong?” he asked, looking over his shoulder at me.

  I was still brooding over the shame of him seeing my body. I couldn’t tell him that, though, so I said I’d been thinking about my sister and how she’d died.

  ~~~~~~~~~~

  We waited…every day we waited for Sadie to come back. She never did. After a while, Maddie started to blame me. Of course, I was at fault. She had every right to make our situation my fault. I’d brought us to Liberty Island. I hadn’t wanted to find a way off the island after the outbreak. I hadn’t even wanted to leave the hotel.