“I don’t care,” Krista said mulishly. She stood up and the blanket she’d draped around her shoulders fell to the ground. “I don’t give a damn what you think. I want you to take me back right now.”
“Kris, sit down,” Max said.
“No. Just because they’re all ready to die out here doesn’t mean I am. If we’re going to die either way then I want to be with my family.” And she began to cry again.
“Artem,” Ray said. “Listen. It wouldn’t have to be a big deal. We wouldn’t have to put the whole boat at risk. We could go near the shore and tender—”
“If we go anywhere close to the mainland, we’ll risk being attacked.”
“Come on,” Duane scoffed. “Who the hell do you think is going to attack us?”
“If you were on the mainland right now and you saw a boat like this sailing a mile off shore, what would you do?”
“I’d try to swim out,” Adam said.
Artem pointed a finger at him. “Exactly.”
Something seemed to spark in Krista’s eyes. “Fine,” she said. “All of you stay here and die alone at sea, if that’s what you want. But I’m not going to stay here and die with you.” She pushed back from the table, strode across the deck, and ran down the stairs.
Cody ran after her and Adam hurried to the deck railing. Looking over, he could see them one deck below. Cody had caught Krista by the wrist and was holding her back. “What are you doing?” he demanded. “Where are you going?”
She tugged free of his grip. “If people can swim from the mainland to us, then I can swim to them.”
“No you can’t!” Cody cried, diving after her and grabbing her again, this time around the waist. “Are you crazy? We’re much too far out right now. You can’t even see the land from here. And it’s dark, Krista. You’d drown.”
“I am not going to die on this fucking boat!”
Adam ran down the stairs and grabbed Krista, helping his friend corral her into a seat. “Stop it,” he said. “Just stop it, all right? Nobody here is going to let you kill yourself.”
“What does it matter!” she cried. “I’m going to die anyway, right?”
“Just stop. Breathe.”
Adam shook his head and looked up at the balcony overhead. Artem was watching.
“This is crazy,” Adam said. “We’re going to have to take her back.”
Artem raised an eyebrow. “Stepping on the mainland is suicide,” he said. “Just as surely as jumping into the sea.”
“Maybe not,” Adam said. “I agree, it doesn’t sound like a good idea, but at least on land she’d have a chance.”
“And if you let us all off together, we can protect each other,” Max said.
Adam wasn’t so sure about that. He didn’t have a great feeling about Max and Duane’s reliability when it came to looking out for Krista. But he had to admit, she would be safer with them than she would in the water.
Artem narrowed his eyes. “What about you?” he asked Ray. “Are you sticking to what you said? You want to leave?”
“I have to find my mother,” Ray said. “I’m sorry, Artem. Really.”
“Don’t apologize to me,” Artem said. “You’re the one I’m sorry for.” He turned to Sara. “What about you?”
“No,” Sara said quietly. “I’m never going back to San Francisco. I’ll die on the boat, I guess, if it comes to that.”
“Adam?”
“I’m with you,” he said.
Artem nodded. “And what about you, Mr. Granger?”
Cody hesitated for a long time. He wiped his hand across his face. “We’re really doing this?” he asked. “Splitting up? This is what everyone wants?”
“We can’t force people to stay here against their will,” Adam said. “You see what happens.” His hand was still on Krista’s arm, but she’d ceased her struggles, and he thought she probably wasn’t going to bolt for the railing now.
Cody sighed. “I guess if this is the way it has to be,” he said.
“Are you coming with us?” Duane asked.
“No,” Cody said. “This is my boat. This was my plan in the first place, and I mean to see it through. I still think this is the safest place to be.” And he buried his face in his hands.
For the first time since boarding the yacht, Adam felt a stab of pity for his friend. Cody truly hadn’t appreciated the stakes here, he realized. He had wanted to get away from the havoc of the city, and he’d wanted to protect his friends. And he’d wanted to have a little fun doing it. Was that so awful, really? Only now everything was blowing up in his face. Friends and loved ones were dying, and the pleasure cruise had become a nightmare.
Artem spoke. “We’ll go tomorrow night,” he said. “I want us to move under cover of darkness, to provide the best chance of getting away without being seen.”
“Why can’t we go now?” Krista asked.
“Because you four are a mess,” Artem growled. “Use this time to sober up and get your heads right. You’re going to need your wits about you on land.”
“Artem.” Ray rested a hand on the captain’s shoulder. “Thank you.”
Artem shrugged Ray’s hand off. “You’re taking your fate into your own hands, Ray, and I can’t support it,” he said. “God knows I’d stop you if I could.”
Adam felt vaguely nauseous at the prospect of returning to the mainland. Things had been chaotic on the day they’d left, and weeks had gone by since then. What would the city look like now? He wasn’t sure he wanted to know.
He headed up to the third floor and into his little cabin. Up here things were quiet. Peaceful. He could almost imagine that he really was on a pleasure cruise. He went out on his little balcony and looked up at the stars, wondering whether there was anywhere left in the world that the nanovirus hadn’t touched.
Maybe, somewhere, some place was truly safe.
Chapter 9
“Who’s going to take the tender out?” Sara asked.
The eight of them sat in a circle on the lowest deck of Cody’s yacht. Krista, Duane, Max and Ray all had bags with them, although Adam had the distinct impression that none of them were taking as many personal possessions off the yacht as they had brought on. Good, he thought. More for us. They’re just going to die out there anyway.
He immediately felt sick at his own thought. What had happened to him? When had he become this callous person?
But if they weren’t even going to try to survive, how could he help it?
How many people would have given up anything to be able to live on this yacht? How many people would have considered it the opportunity of a lifetime? And these four were just going to throw it away like yesterday’s garbage and go back to the mainland, back to where they didn’t have a prayer. It was difficult to watch.
“Who even knows how to drive the tender?” Adam asked, wrenching his gaze away from the doomed.
“I do,” said Artem. “And Ray does, but that’s no help, because we need someone who’s going to bring it back.” He shot an ugly glare at his first officer.
“I know how to drive it, too,” Cody said.
“You do?” Adam asked, surprised.
Cody bit his lip. “I used to take it out when I wanted to show girls a good time but I didn’t want to get the whole yacht out of the harbor.”
“Okay, whatever,” Adam said. If his friend’s playboy lifestyle was finally going to come in handy, so much the better. “So two of us should go. Either Artem or Cody, to drive the boat, and either me or Sara to help navigate to shore and back.”
“How do we decide?” Cody asked.
“We draw straws,” Artem said. “It’s the only fair method. Whoever goes out there is going to be putting their lives on the line.” He got up and walked over to the bar, returning a moment later with two cocktail straws in each hand. “Short straw goes,” he said.
He held one hand out to Cody, who picked a straw. Artem revealed the other. Cody’s straw was the shorter of the two. His jaw jutted fo
rward and he nodded.
Adam turned to Sara. “I really don’t want to draw straws against you,” he said.
“Well, I’m going to draw against you,” she told him, and reached for the remaining straws in Artem’s hand.
Adam breathed a sigh of relief when he saw her pull the long one. He wasn’t sure he could have lived with himself if he’d been the one to stay here on the boat, watching and waiting, while she’d put her life at risk to drop off the others.
Artem led the way down to the tender boat and helped Cody lower it into the water. Cody jumped in and helped Adam crawl in after him. Together, the two of them caught the bags that Krista, Duane, Max, and Ray tossed aboard. Then they held up their hands to help them board.
“We’ll wait here until sunrise,” Artem said. “If you’re not back by then, we’re taking the yacht back out to sea.”
“Artem,” Sara whispered. “That’s cold.”
“He’s right, Sara,” Adam said. “If we don’t make it back by sunrise, we’re not coming back. If that happens, the best thing you can do will be to get yourselves away.”
Cody looked pale and anxious, but he nodded again. “Let’s go.”
There were no running lights on the tender, which wasn’t much more than a raft. Cody took the controls while Adam sat on his knees in the back and held up a large flashlight, sweeping it from side to side to make sure they weren’t about to collide with anything. More than once, the tender bumped up against something, and Adam remembered the voice on the radio talking about suicides. People jumping from the bridge into the sea below. The bodies, he thought, would probably have washed up near the shore.
Could you catch the nanovirus from a corpse? How long could the virus survive once the host was dead? Could it live in water?
He hadn’t felt this panicky, he realized, since he’d left shore.
This had been a mistake. They should have forced the deserters to stay on Cody’s yacht. Something terrible was bound to happen here, and he and Cody would never make it back. He hoped Sara would be brave enough to leave without them tomorrow. He hoped Artem would follow through on his threat—his promise—to leave them behind. There was no sense in everyone dying.
“There’s the dock,” Duane said in a low voice.
Adam shone the light straight ahead. Duane was right. It was the same dock from which they’d left, although approaching in the tender meant that they were several feet below the platform. Those getting out of the boat would have to climb up.
Adam also noticed that the rest of the boats that had been moored here on the day they’d departed were now gone. It seemed as though Cody hadn’t been the only one to have the idea to ride out the virus at sea.
It seemed strange now that they hadn’t run across any other boats. But then, their boat had just been drifting a few miles offshore while Cody and his friends got high day in and day out. Other people had probably left with a plan. Other people had probably actually gone somewhere.
Adam forced himself to take a breath. He was going to have to stop being angry and resentful about that. After all, he could have intervened at any time. He could have made a plan. Artem would have worked with him. The fact of the matter was that he had gone along and hoped things would work themselves out.
And they hadn’t.
“All right,” Duane said as the tender approached the dock. Adam noticed that he had lowered his usually booming voice, and he appreciated that. Finally, the man was beginning to show some sense. It was too bad that was only coming now, as they came to the end of their road together. But maybe Duane had enough brains in his head to survive this thing after all. Adam found that he hoped so.
“I think I’d better go up first,” Duane continued. “I’m the tallest, right? So if you guys just give me a boost, I can grab the dock and pull myself up. And then I’ll be able to help haul the others up.”
“That makes sense.” Cody agreed, sounding relieved. Adam thought he knew what his friend was thinking. If Duane was willing to go up here, that meant they weren’t going to have to motor around the harbor looking for a lower dock. They could drop their friends off and get out of here fast.
Of course, it was still far from safe. Anybody could come by at any minute and jump down from the dock into the tender. Best-case scenario, that somebody would be an uninfected person desperate to escape, pleading to come along with them. But could you really trust anyone to be uninfected these days? Adam wouldn’t have bet on it.
Or they could just be set upon by someone so eager to get away that they’d throw Cody and Adam overboard and steal the boat. Adam had no illusions about how long they’d survive if that were to happen.
“Let’s do this,” he said, eager to get back to the yacht, feeling as though—as long as they stayed quiet, as long as they kept moving—they might just get back after all.
Cody made a step with his interlaced fingers and lifted Duane up to the dock. Duane hooked his hands around the warped boards and hauled his body up and over, then rolled onto his belly and reached down. One by one, Adam and Cody helped Krista, Ray and Max jump up and boosted them toward the surface. One by one, their feet disappeared from view.
Adam dared to shine the light up onto the dock. The four of them were clustered together in a tight huddle, clinging to each other as if afraid of what the darkness around them might hold. It’s not too late to come back with us, Adam wanted to call, but they didn’t have time for a debate about who was coming and who was staying. These four had made their choice.
“Good luck,” he said softly.
“You too,” someone whispered back. Adam didn’t see who it was, but it didn’t seem to matter. The sentiment was shared by all of them right now. Let us all survive. Let us all make it through this somehow.
It seemed impossible. But then, they had lived this long. They had been lucky so far. Maybe their luck would hold.
The tender bobbed gently up and down in the water. Cody and Adam sat silently, listening to the footsteps of the others walking away.
It was Cody who broke the silence. “We should head back,” he said. “Right?”
Adam was surprised at the doubt in his friend’s voice. Cody had been confident to the point of foolhardiness since they’d set sail. In fact, he’d been that way as long as Adam had known him. But right now he sounded like a frightened child. “Yeah, we should,” he agreed. “We need to get away from the shore. It isn’t safe for us here.”
“Do you think the others will be okay?”
“I think they’re probably doing their best to get away from the shore too.” It was the best Adam could offer.
There was a moment of silence, then the rev of the boat’s little engine. They drove out from under the dock and back out into open water.
“Do you know where you’re going?” Adam asked Cody.
“I can see the yacht’s running lights,” Cody said.
Adam squinted off into the distance and found that he could see them too. It was difficult to pick out the shape in the darkness, but after a minute his eyes adjusted and filled in the gaps where the boat existed around its lights.
“Okay,” he agreed. “Full speed ahead, then.”
“Hello? Is—is someone over there?”
It was a woman’s voice. Adam clapped his hand over the beam of his light and stuffed it down between his legs. “Shh!” he hissed.
“Is somebody there?” It was a man calling out this time, a man with a deeper voice than either Cody or Adam. “We saw your light. Please—we’re all alone over here. It’s just me and my wife. Please. We’re not going to hurt you.”
Reluctantly, Adam lifted the light and shone it in the direction from which the voice was coming.
A small rowboat was bobbing along some distance away from them, carried by the current. The man had been telling the truth—it carried just two passengers. They both looked as if they hadn’t eaten in days. Their clothes hung on them, and they were rail-thin.
“Can we come ab
oard?” the man asked. His tone was like nothing Adam had ever heard before. It was true desperation. This man had nothing left to lose. “We’ve got no food,” he said. “We can’t stay ashore. It’s insane there. Everyone’s dying. Please.”
“We have water,” the woman spoke up. “We have water, and we’ll share. If you don’t take us on board, we’re going to die.” She said this matter-of-factly. Unlike her husband, she wasn’t desperate. She wasn’t begging. She was resigned. She knew she was going to die, and she’d accepted it.
God help me if things ever get that bad, Adam thought, and then realized that they very well could.
What could have made this woman so resigned? Why was she so sure she was going to die? She was in a boat, after all. She might not have food with her, but she could go back to land and try to get some.
She must be infected.
It was all he could think of. It was the only thing that made sense. Either the woman was infected or her husband was, and either way, the virus had both of them. That had to be it, didn’t it? It had to be.
“Should we go get them?” Cody whispered.
Adam felt cold all over. He didn’t want to be here. He didn’t want to be deciding this. Leaving his mother had been excruciating, but he had known she was sick. He had known there was no hope for her. And Gerard had told him to go. This was different. These people were begging him to come closer, begging him to help them.
What if they weren’t sick? What if he was the only person in the world who could help them, and he left them behind?
What if they died here, and he could have saved them?
But he couldn’t be sure.
And without being sure, he couldn’t take the risk.
His stomach turned over, and when he forced the words out, it felt like vomiting. “No,” he whispered. “We can’t do it. They might be infected. We have to get out of here right now, before they try to swim over.”
“Are you sure?” Cody whispered.
“Sir, please,” the man called from the other boat. “I don’t have the energy to row this thing anymore. I don’t know if I can get back to shore.” He took a breath that was audible across the distance between them. “You’re our last shot.”
Escape The Dark (Book 1): Dark Tides Page 7
