“Shit,” Sara said. “What do we do?”
“I don’t know,” Adam said. “It’s bound to run out eventually. I guess we just wait him out. At least he hasn’t turned into a manic party animal like last time.”
“I don’t know if I’d call this an improvement,” Sara said. “He’s just as useless to us now as he was then, and he’s not doing well emotionally. Mentally.”
“Is anybody, though?” Adam asked. “Artem hasn’t come out of the control center since yesterday. I think he was really spooked by the radio broadcast.”
“What was on the broadcast?” Sara asked, turning on the stove under a kettle of water.
“You don’t want to know,” Adam said.
She hesitated. “No, probably not,” she admitted. “But I need to know, I think.”
Adam didn’t want to tell her. He hadn’t been able to get the grotesque idea out of his mind since he’d first heard it. But she would find out eventually, he thought, and maybe it was best she heard it from him.
“Mass graves,” he said. “The survivors are being asked to bring their dead to various places…dumping grounds, by the sound of it. Then volunteers are setting fire to the bodies.”
Sara shuddered. “That’s so inhumane.”
“I think the idea is that it’s the only way to get rid of the number of bodies they have to deal with,” Adam said. “And that scares the hell out of me. That makes it sound like there are more dead than alive.”
“God,” Sara whispered.
The kitchen door opened with a bang. Cody stood there, his figure silhouetted in the doorframe. “What are you two whispering about?” he demanded.
“We weren’t whispering,” Adam said.
“Yes you were,” Cody insisted. “I heard you. Were you talking about me?”
“No,” Adam said, realizing as the denial left his mouth that they had in fact been talking about Cody. “We were talking about the situation on the mainland,” he said quickly.
“We were wondering how Ray and the others were holding up,” Sara said smoothly.
She was a better liar than he was, Adam thought, but she wasn’t good at predicting what would set Cody off.
He slammed the kitchen door closed. “You’re the ones who chased them off the ship!” he said. “Now you’re worried about how they’re doing? They’re probably dead because of you!”
“Cody, hang on,” Adam said. “We didn’t make them leave. Calm down.”
“Don’t tell me to calm down!”
“We’re making oatmeal,” Sara said, the slightest tremble now present in her voice. “There’s enough to go around. Do you want some?”
“I wouldn’t want to interrupt your alone time together,” Cody said, his lip curling.
“What are you talking about?” Adam asked, bewildered.
“Stop treating me like I’m stupid, Adam. How many places on my boat have you two gotten it on?”
Adam was torn between wanting to laugh and wanting to slap his friend in the face. “It isn’t like that,” he said. “We’re not involved.”
“Just best friends, huh?”
“We’re friends,” Sara said slowly.
“You two and Artem, right? You’re a happy little trio. Well, you’d never have even met if it wasn’t for me.”
“You’re one of us, Cody.” Adam thought he could see what this was about now. “Come on. We’re all in it together. We were just saying how we wished you’d come out of your room—”
He realized his mistake a split second after the words left his mouth.
Cody’s eyes lit up with vindication. “You were talking about me!”
“But we weren’t saying anything bad!” Sara said hurriedly. “Just that we were hoping we’d see you today.”
“I know why that is,” Cody said. “You don’t actually want me around. You just want to make sure I’m not getting so fucked up that I’ll ruin your good time.”
“Oh, Christ!” Adam burst out, throwing the dishtowel he’d been holding to the floor. “Look around you! Nobody is having a good time! Yeah, we want you to clean up your act, Cody, because we want to live, and we’re going to need your help to do it. It doesn’t have anything to do with how much we like you.”
“Adam,” Sara said softly. “Don’t—”
But Adam had had enough.
“I told you I wasn’t going to ditch you,” he said. “I’m not going to ditch you. Not for Artem and Sara. Not for anything. But if you can’t see that you’re the one ditching me every time you hole up in your room with that stuff, I don’t know what to say to you anymore!”
He pushed past Cody and out the door and jogged up the two flights of stairs to his room, too angry to be anywhere near his friend anymore. His stomach rumbled, reminding him that he’d also run out on breakfast. But that would have to wait until he’d calmed down. He couldn’t be around people while he was feeling like this.
He laid down on his bed and closed his eyes, trying to put the argument in the kitchen out of his mind. Trying to focus on the positives. Cody had been up today, and that was a good thing. And maybe, now that Adam had left the room, Sara would be able to get him to eat. Maybe he had run out of drugs, and he would come back to them now. It had to happen eventually, didn’t it?
It was just that he felt as though he’d been waiting forever.
How could Cody think that Adam would turn on him? Yes, all right, he had gotten closer to Artem and Sara in the past few days, but didn’t Cody realize that they were all each other had now? The four of them were it. Artem had lost his wife to divorce, and Sara had lost her parents in childhood, before the virus ever hit. Then the virus had taken Adam’s family as well. Cody, Artem and Sara might be the only people left on the planet who knew Adam’s name, who cared whether Adam lived or died. He wouldn’t give a single one of them up. Not for anything.
Not even if one of them was being utterly impossible to live with right now.
Adam closed his eyes and breathed deeply, trying to calm himself. He could feel the motion of the waves beneath him, rocking him gently, and that was as soothing as it always was. He’d never been the kind of person to hold on to anger for very long. It wasn’t fair, he supposed, to be so upset at Cody. His friend was doing his best. He’d admitted himself that he’d led a privileged life before the virus hit. No wonder he didn’t know how to handle hardship.
Adam was just thinking about getting up and going back to the deck when he became aware of a rancid smell wafting through his balcony door. He opened his eyes. That wasn’t the smell of oatmeal gone bad. What the hell?
The smell intensified. Adam gagged. An unwelcome memory slammed into him—the bodies they’d found a month back when they’d investigated the oil tanker. This wasn’t the same smell, not exactly, but it was similar enough to turn Adam’s stomach. He still saw those bodies sometimes in his nightmares.
But no one was dead here. They couldn’t be. He’d just seen Sara and Cody. What was going on?
Though he felt like bolting from his room to the deck, he descended slowly and carefully. Even though he knew that there was no way he’d encounter another scene like the one he’d faced on the tanker, he’d been scarred enough by that experience not to want to rush into another one like it. And that smell, God, if it wasn’t the smell of death, what else could it be?
He met Artem on the second deck. “Go inside,” the captain said, but he was already turning to look away, off toward the horizon, and Adam knew he was under no illusion that he’d actually convinced him to go away.
He joined the captain at the deck instead. “What is it?” he asked, pulling his shirt collar up over his nose in an attempt to filter out the odor. “What’s that smell?”
Artem pointed in answer.
At first, Adam didn’t see anything. Then, slowly, he became aware of what he was looking at. Off in the distance, a plume of smoke was rising from the ground toward the sky, and the wind was carrying it out over the sea.
&nbs
p; It was a fire.
And if they could see it from here, it was a big fire.
“That’s where they’re burning the bodies,” Sara said quietly.
Adam turned to see her emerging from the kitchen, Cody on her heels. Both of them were staring out over the water.
“Burning the bodies?” Cody asked.
“The dead,” Artem said. “It’s a pyre. They’re having them all over the city.”
“But it’s huge,” Cody said. “There can’t be that many dead.”
“There can,” Artem said. “There are.”
“We need to move the boat,” Adam said. “We can’t…we can’t stay here and smell this.” He didn’t want to admit to Artem how much the smell was upsetting him, how easily he could picture the rotting corpses in a pile. He didn’t want the others to know that he was wondering if any of the bodies in that fire had belonged to people he knew. But the images were piling into his head now. He closed his eyes and saw the dead bodies on the tanker again, but this time one of them was his mother and another was his stepfather. Their skin was loose and falling away, and in some places their bones had begun to show through.
He clamped his hand more tightly over his mouth.
Artem nodded. “You’re right,” he said. “There’s no reason we should subject ourselves to this. I’ll go raise the anchor. The rest of you really should get inside.”
Adam turned to do just that—and stopped.
Cody was standing by the far railing, facing away from the shore and the decay-infested smog, staring out at the water.
“Hey, Cody,” Adam said. “Let’s go inside.”
Cody turned to look at him. The expression on his face was like nothing Adam had ever seen before. “You can smell it inside,” he said.
“Artem’s moving the ship.”
“Artem’s moving the ship,” Cody parroted. It was a strange voice, a mocking, singsong sort of voice, the kind Adam associated with playground bullies. “Artem has no idea what he’s doing, and neither do you.”
“I’m just trying to get us out of here.”
“Oh, wake up!” Cody yelled. A gust of wind came up and slapped Adam in the face, and for a moment he couldn’t breathe. “We’re not getting out of here, Adam. We’re never getting out of here. Look how many people are lying dead! Just a few miles away! We can see them from here! We’re going to go around and around this coastline and more and more people are going to die, and the only thing we’re doing is making sure we’ll be the last ones left alive. Well, maybe you want to watch everyone you know burn out, but I can’t fucking take it anymore.”
The chill that ran through Adam had nothing to do with the wind.
“What are you saying, Cody?” he asked, taking a step closer.
“Stop,” Cody said. “Stay where you are.”
“Cody, you’re scaring me. Just…just come here, will you? Come to my room. we can talk about it there. We can bring the vodka,” he added, a desperate last resort.
Cody’s laugh was manic. “You think you can control me? You think you can lure me back into this absolute hell of a world with vodka? I’m not that hooked. I’m getting out while I can.”
Sara emerged from the kitchen. “What’s going on? I heard voices—oh my God.” Cody had swung one leg over the railing. “Oh my God, Adam stop him!”
“Listen, Cody,” Adam said, feeling sick and panicky. “We’re safe here. We’re on the boat. What’s going on on the mainland—it’s terrible, it’s completely fucked up, and I get it, I get it, I have to force myself to get out of bed some days too. But the virus can’t get us out here. The only thing that can end it for us is if we give up.”
He risked a step closer to his friend. “I’m not giving up,” he said. “I’m still here. I’m still fighting. And I’m going to go on.”
Cody turned his head a little. Adam could see that he was crying.
“Come back over,” Adam said. “Come back over and talk to us. We’ll get something to eat, and we’ll sail out to where we can’t smell that anymore, and everything will be okay.”
For half a second, he thought his friend was going to listen.
Then Cody pushed off, tipping his body over the railing, his hands flying up at the last second as he fell forward.
Sara clapped her hands to her mouth, stifling her scream.
After a couple of seconds that might as well have been years, Adam heard a distant and painfully small splash.
Chapter 16
There was no time to think. No time to decide. There was only a split second in which he could act or fail to do so.
Even as all this ran through his head, he was already running.
“Don’t, Adam!”
The shriek that followed him could only have come from Sara, but Adam ignored it. Had to ignore it. Had to keep his mind on what he was doing, on saving his friend while there was still a chance.
He reached the edge of the yacht, planted a foot on the railing, and jumped.
He had only been on the second deck, but the fall to the water seemed interminable. He had time, on the way down, to consider the fact that this might be how he died. He had jumped without thinking, without making a plan. Would he be able to get back onto the boat?
He couldn’t have let Cody go. He couldn’t do it.
Then he met the surface of the water with a sharp slap, and all thought was driven from his head.
It was cold. That was the first thing he noticed. It was cold, and the waves were frighteningly big. By the time he swam to the surface, he had been swept a considerable distance away from the boat. He could still hear Sara’s voice on the wind, his name carrying across the water, but the swim back was going to be a nightmare, if it was even possible.
Where was Cody?
He looked around frantically, trying to locate his friend. With every turn of his head, he was afraid he’d see a body, or that he’d float into one. If he made contact with a corpse, he couldn’t allow himself to get back onto the yacht. He would risk infecting Artem and Sara.
“Cody!” he yelled.
And then he saw his friend. Cody was fighting to keep his head above the water, creating a hell of a splash zone around him. Good. That would make him easier to keep in sight.
Adam lowered his head and swam.
He reached Cody’s side and looped an arm around his friend’s chest.
“No!” Cody screamed, struggling to throw him off.
“Cody, it’s me!”
“Let me go!”
He’s not in his right mind. Adam began kicking his way back toward the yacht. The going was slow. Cody continued to struggle and at one point nearly slipped out of his arms. Adam tightened his grip and fought his way through the waves. He was getting closer. Every kick, every stroke with his free arm, brought him closer to the moment when he could climb back up on the yacht and rest.
And then he was there. He stopped by the side of the yacht, holding Cody above the water, although Cody’s struggles and kicks made it almost impossible to keep his own head over the waves.
“Help!” he yelled. “Help us!”
Hands appeared over the railing. He pushed Cody toward them. Two hands closed on each of his wrists, and then he was being pulled up, lifted over the side and back onto the boat.
For a long, frightening stretch of time, Adam was alone in the water. A wave swelled up and pushed him away from the side of the boat, and he swam back against it. He swallowed a mouthful of saltwater as another wave washed over his head. He didn’t know how much longer he could do this.
The hands lowered again. He lunged for them, grasping, and managed to catch hold. As they pulled him up, it felt like the sea was trying to suck him back down, and for a moment he thought the water was going to win—
He landed hard, sprawled out on the deck, gagging and coughing, spitting up seawater.
Gradually he became aware of a hand on his back.
“Are you all right?” Sara asked.
“Think s
o,” he said. “Cody?”
“Artem has him.” She helped him sit up. “That was really brave of you, Adam.”
He shook his head. There hadn’t been anything particularly brave about it. He hadn’t stopped to think. If he had, he couldn’t honestly say he would have made the same decision. It had been extremely foolish to jump in the water.
Cody was sprawled on the deck several yards away, held down by Artem. Even from a distance, Adam could see that his friend was struggling to get his feet under him.
“Let me go!” Cody howled. “Let me out of here!”
“You almost drowned!” Artem roared. “You’re lucky your friend decided to go after you. I wouldn’t have done it.”
“I don’t have any friends here,” Cody cried. “Did you think I wouldn’t see through it? Did you think I wouldn’t figure it out?”
“Figure what out?” Sara asked.
“Don’t bother trying to talk to him,” Artem said. “He’s raving. Get me some rope, will you?”
“This is hell,” Cody said. He was practically sobbing. “I saw the flames. I know who you are.”
Adam stared, grimly fascinated. “Does he mean literal hell? Like he thinks we’re…demons or something?”
“Who knows?” Artem said. “Sara, come on. Rope. Move.”
Shivering, Sara got up off the deck.
Adam approached his friend. “Cody,” he said quietly. “Come on.”
“Real clever, making it look like my yacht,” Cody sobbed. “I would be in charge on my yacht, though, wouldn’t I! I would have control. And if you were really Adam…if you were Adam…”
“What?” Adam asked.
“You’d let me out of this boat. You’d let me into the river.”
“What river?”
“I know about it. It goes to hell. That’s where you’re taking me, to throw me on that pyre. Don’t lie anymore.” His body convulsed miserably. “Just don’t lie to me anymore.”
“Jesus,” Adam whispered.
Escape The Dark (Book 1): Dark Tides Page 12
