by Kate Brian
The ferry that had always brought new souls to Juniper Landing was on fire and sinking—fast. The entire back of the vessel had gone up in flames. The air was torn with shouts and screams, and I could see several prone figures lined up on the bay’s meager shore. Dozens of others clung to jagged shards of wood in the choppy, roiling surf or desperately swam for land, while Lifers dove in from the docks to help.
“Holy shit,” Joaquin said between gasps.
We sprinted down the hill, skidding by the library and along the west side of town toward the docks. The air here was thick with smoke. We passed a few dazed Lifers in the shopping district, each of them frozen, their eyes shot through with confusion and fear as they watched the disaster unfold before them. It was an eerie sort of stillness to pass through before reaching the chaos of the docks. The long walkway was flanked on either side by slick, steep outcroppings of rocks. Bodies of the injured were laid out on the shore, while the more mobile survivors made their way to the rocky slope or up the stairs to the docks. Everywhere I looked, my friends and fellow Lifers were helping however they could.
Darcy’s current boyfriend, Fisher Morton, tossed a person onto his broad shoulders and carried him to the sand before turning right back around and swimming out again. Bea McHenry was towing three people toward shore as they clung to a large chunk of the boat’s prow. Farther down the dock, Krista Parrish and Lauren Caldwell helped patch up scrapes and bruises and burns, while a few strangers wandered aimlessly, shouting names or pleading for help. I yanked off my jacket and ran for the water. Joaquin was right behind me.
“Stop right there.”
The sound of the mayor’s commanding voice froze me in my tracks. I turned to find her standing on the rocks near the water’s edge beneath a huge black umbrella, her blond hair slicked back in a low bun, her black raincoat cinched at the waist. Her ice-blue eyes flicked over me.
“They need help!” I shouted.
“Let them handle it,” she said, nodding at the swimmers, who included my sister. “We need more hands out here cataloging the injuries.”
Cataloging the injuries? Who the hell talked like that? But as I looked around at the wounded visitors huddled or lying on the slim stretch of sand, I saw that she was right. These people couldn’t die, of course, but we had to find the ones in critical pain and separate them from those with simple bumps and bruises.
“Joaquin! Rory! I need some help over here.”
Krista—Tristan’s “sister” in the world of Juniper Landing, and as of the last few weeks, my friend—waved us down. She stood next to a man whose arm hung limply, the bone jutting at an unnatural angle. She had on a white raincoat over her jeans, but her blond hair was lifeless, and her skin was as pale as ice. Joaquin raced to her side just as Kevin Calandro and Officer Dorn sped up on a flatbed truck loaded with boxes, stopping in the parking lot at the top of the hill.
“We have the supplies!” Kevin shouted, swinging down from the cab. His normally shaggy black hair was slicked back from his face, and he wore a black tank top that exposed the colorful tattoo of flames that danced over his arm. His pointy chin rose in determination as he yanked open the back of the truck.
“Get us a splint!” Joaquin shouted at me. “And a sling!”
I ran to Kevin and helped him unload, tearing boxes open at random. The containers were full of first aid supplies, from ointments and creams to bandages, scissors, and stitching kits. In the third crate I found a dozen blue-and-white slings and flat plastic splints. I grabbed a set and stood.
“Here. You’ll need this.” Kevin tossed me a roll of medical tape, which I caught in my free hand.
“Thanks,” I said, then sprinted for Joaquin and Krista, checking the chaos for Darcy along the way. Where was she? Was she okay?
“I need help. I need help,” a mocking voice passing very close behind me mimicked the victims.
My shoulder muscles coiled and my blood turned cold as Ray Wagner, one of my charges, stomped by in his dirty brown coat, his wispy hair sticking up on one side, even in the relentless rain. I ignored him and jumped down to the beach, but he leaned into the dock’s railing above my head and laughed, exposing his yellow teeth and a tongue that had been blackened by chewing tobacco. With the rain running freely down his face, he spat in the sand and smiled, as if settling in to watch a ball game.
“What should I do?” I asked Joaquin, who was holding a man’s arm as gently as possible. The man’s face was purple with pain, and the wrinkles on his forehead deepened whenever he moved. Krista had stepped back, watching the proceedings with wide blue eyes. She looked as if she was hanging on by a thread.
“Put the sling over his head, gently. And hand me the splint,” Joaquin ordered.
“You’ll be okay,” I told the man, slipping the white band over his head. “Don’t worry. We’ve got you.”
“Don’t worry. Don’t worry. Blah, blah, blah,” Ray mocked me, tilting his head from side to side.
I shot him a look of death, but he simply laughed.
Ray Wagner had slaughtered four people in a one-night killing spree in Richmond, Virginia, before getting shot dead in a convenience store parking lot while trying to take out his fifth victim. Normally, I would have done my best to usher him as soon as possible, but since things were all out of whack and the no-ushering policy was in place, he was still here. As were a few other unsavory characters my friends had yet to usher. Lauren had been charged with a white-collar criminal named Piper Molloy, who had swindled dozens of families out of their life savings and rendered them homeless. Bea had a woman who had stepped off the ferry two days ago looking as if she’d come right out of the Stone Age with her scraggly hair, dirty fingernails, and gnarly teeth. Her name was Tess Crowe and she’d murdered her own parents, brother, and sister before being relegated to an insane asylum. Bea currently had her locked up in the attic of the home she shared with two older Lifers. Supposedly Tess kept her hosts up at night screeching and trying to claw her way out.
There had been some talk of locking up the visitors meant for the Shadowlands in the jail beneath the police station, but it was comprised of only two tiny cells and wasn’t equipped to hold them all, so for now, we were each tasked with babysitting them as best we could—making sure they didn’t cause any trouble. Ray was the only one, however, whose sadistic heart had been drawn to today’s devastation. Lucky me.
“Oh god! That hurts!” the man cried out as Joaquin taped his arm to the splint.
“Almost done,” I said as Joaquin used his teeth to rip the tape.
Once he’d secured the arm with four tight circles of tape, we gently maneuvered it into the sling. Then I carefully helped the man sit down on one of the dock’s pylons.
“Thank you,” he said, slumping slightly.
“Just hang out here while we figure out where to take you,” Joaquin said.
“Thanks, you guys,” Krista said, stepping between us with her knees wobbling. “I had no idea what to do.”
“It’s okay,” Joaquin said. “The question is: what next?”
We scanned the water and the beach. Nearby a woman was sobbing next to her bleeding husband. A man staggered past us and collapsed onto the sand, his chest heaving for breath. Joaquin had nailed it. Where were we supposed to start? Then I saw a flash out of the corner of my eye: my sister’s dark hair as she ran for the water. She was wearing nothing but shorts and a tank top and was soaked to the bone. Clearly this was not her first time diving into the bay.
“Darcy!” I shouted. But she didn’t hear me. She plunged beneath the choppy waves, reemerged, and swam straight for a little girl whose arms flailed as she went under, choking. My hands flew up to cover my mouth as Darcy plunged after her. I watched the whitecaps where they’d disappeared, scanning for any sign of them. But I could only see the spot where my sister and the girl had gone under.
Where are the
y? I thought, clenching my jaw.
“There!” Joaquin shouted, startling me. He pointed a good ten feet to the left of where I’d been looking, and there was Darcy, gamely swimming for shore with one arm locked around the little girl’s chest. “She’s okay.” He gave my shoulder a quick squeeze. “They’re both fine.”
“Who’s that?” Krista asked.
A sinewy, strong guy about our age was swimming toward the shore, holding a middle-aged woman tight around her chest, her chin tilted up toward the sky so she could breathe. He placed her on the shore, then raced right back out to the ferry to grab a man who still clung to the doomed ship’s guardrail. Quickly, he pried the panicked man’s fingers from the railing and brought him back to safety, then went out again, cutting through the water like it was nothing to him.
“Where did he come from?” I asked.
“I have no idea,” Joaquin said.
Darcy had just gotten back to the shore and pulled the little girl to safety. I ran to her side, slipping over the rocks until I reached the sand.
“Darcy! Are you guys okay?” I asked, dropping to my knees next to her.
Darcy flung her wet dark hair over her shoulder. She was winded but otherwise seemed fine. The girl, however, was wailing.
“She may have broken her leg, and look at her skin. She’s so pale. I think we should get her to the hospital. Where the hell are the EMTs, already? Or the Coast Guard?”
I swallowed hard. Darcy had no clue about the realities of where we were. As far as she knew, we were still alive, enrolled in the witness protection program thanks to Steven Nell, and about to get a call any day saying he’d been apprehended and we could return to Princeton, to our home and our friends. She didn’t know that a place like Juniper Landing didn’t need any personnel dedicated to saving lives, because no one here had a life to save.
“Um…maybe the weather is screwing things up?”
“Well, we have to get her to a hospital,” Darcy insisted.
Joaquin, who was now tending to a woman nearby, glanced over at me. “We don’t exactly have a hospital,” he said reluctantly.
“No hospital?” We looked up to find Super Swimmer Boy hovering over us, heaving for breath, his jet-black hair dripping water down his square cheekbones. “What do you mean, there’s no hospital?”
His skin was a healthy tan, and he had one blue eye and one brown eye. The whole package was so handsome and startling I found myself staring. Darcy rose to her feet next to me, as speechless and transfixed as me.
“Yes, they’re different colors. No, I don’t know how or why,” he stated, not amused, but not angry, either. Then he focused on Joaquin. “What do you do, then? Go to one on the mainland?”
“How would we even get everyone there without the ferry?” Darcy said, gesturing around wildly.
Now it was Joaquin’s turn to be stumped. “Um…we…”
The seconds ticked by slowly. Strangers began to gather, having overheard our conversation, the injured cradling their arms or holding torn scraps of fabric against wounds. Everyone seemed to wait on whatever it was Joaquin would say next.
“Take them to the clinic.”
An unpleasant shiver raced down my spine. I looked up at the plank walkway leading to the town and saw Mayor Parrish looking down at the rest of us.
“The clinic?” I asked.
“Of course,” she said, rolling her eyes. “The clinic.”
Then she gestured oh-so-elegantly up at the bluff, where her gorgeous, sprawling colonial mansion sat overlooking the town.
“Come now, everyone,” she said loudly. “Let’s help those who can’t help themselves. Once we’re settled inside and out of this rain, we can assess the situation.”
For a long moment, no one moved. Not that anyone could have blamed us. This was not normal procedure for a disaster, following the snappish mayor up the hill with no EMTs or nurses, no ambulances, no nothing.
But this was Juniper Landing, and I’d long since learned that nothing around here was normal procedure. It wouldn’t be long before everyone else here figured it out as well.
People scream and cry and beg around me, but for the moment, I am still. I watch the prow of the ferry slowly sink beneath the surface of the water, and then it is gone. Completely gone. This, I was not expecting. Without the ferry, there will be no new souls. The pickings will begin to grow slim, and I haven’t met my goal yet. I haven’t completed my assignment. I still need five more.
But it’s okay. I’ll just have to focus. I have to make sure that only the good are taken, not the bad. Taking the bad is fine, but, for me, a waste of time. I must fulfill my destiny before they find me, before they figure me out.
I turn away as a hand reaches out to me, and watch Rory Miller help some poor, bloodied woman up the steps to a waiting truck. Soon, it will be up to her. She just doesn’t know it yet.
“So, what’s your name?”
Super Swimmer Boy stared straight ahead as he walked, the little girl Darcy had saved clinging to him with her tiny arms around his neck. Darcy had gone ahead with Krista to get into some dry clothes. The little girl’s blond hair hung in wet hanks down her back, and she sniffled continuously, her cheek resting on his shoulder. The elderly-but-spry woman I was helping held fast to my waist, each step we took over the wind-flattened grass slow but steady. She had a deep gash on her forehead near her hairline and was holding a wad of gauze to it with her free hand, but she seemed otherwise unharmed. Out on the bay, the water slowly swallowed the bow of the ferry. I couldn’t believe it was gone.
“Liam,” he said. His tone was somehow mournful as he gazed steadily ahead. “Liam Murtry.”
“I’m Rory Thayer,” I offered.
He glanced at me so briefly I wasn’t sure I hadn’t imagined it. “Nice to meet you.”
“And I’m Myra Schwartz,” my patient offered, touching her chest. Droplets of rain dotted the lenses of her red-framed glasses. “What’s your name, honey?” she asked, tilting her head to better see the little girl, her smile kind.
“I’m not supposed to talk to strangers,” the girl said in a meek voice that broke my heart.
Myra nodded. “Good girl.” Then she winked at me as if to say, We’re in this together. I smiled gratefully in return.
“Behind you, Rory!” someone shouted.
Liam reached out and tugged me and Myra toward him as Kevin and Fisher passed, toting an old-school stretcher of canvas and wood between them. On it, a heavyset man in a suit groaned, his arm flung over his head to ward off the rain. They raced by as Liam and I watched, his strong fingers still gripping my biceps. I looked down at his hand and waited.
“Sorry,” he said, recovering himself. He released me and grimaced. “It’s just…this is some scene.”
I took a breath, really looking around me for the first time since we’d started for the mayor’s house. Officer Dorn had set up a makeshift command post near the bottom of the hill, handing out the stretchers he and Kevin had retrieved from the police station’s basement along with the other supplies. There were only a few, so he was busy assessing injuries to decide who needed one and who didn’t, his buzz-cut blond hair covered by the hood of a huge army-green poncho. Pete Sweeney and Cori Morrison passed by, supporting a limping man between them. Pete was stooping to try to even out the marked height difference between him and Cori. Bea and Ursula, the older Lifer whom Joaquin shared a home with as pseudo grandmother and grandson, carried a woman on a stretcher whose skin looked waxy and green. There were new arrivals everywhere, wincing, groaning, crying—doing the best they could to make it up the steep hill as Lifers darted around trying to help. The girl in Liam’s arms shifted her head to look at me.
“Where’s my mom?”
Liam’s eyes met mine. “We’ll find her,” he assured her, running his hand down the back of her head. “Don’t worry.
We’ll find her.”
My throat constricted as we kept moving, Myra’s fingers gripping my jacket. I knew in my heart that we probably wouldn’t find her mother. Unless the girl had died along with her mom in an accident of some kind, she was here alone. Most children stayed on Juniper Landing for approximately five seconds before they were ushered to the Light, too young to have unresolved issues or to have done anything in life that would mark them for the Shadowlands. But since we’d stopped ushering people, the few kids who had shown up here these last, agonizing days were still here. One adorable boy named Oliver had wept nonstop for his parents upon arrival, until the mayor had taken him aside and worked her magic on his mind, basically making him forget he’d ever had parents. He’d jumped up and run off to the other brainwashed kids to start a game of tag. It was the first time I understood the real benefit of her powers.
“You were pretty impressive out there,” I told Liam, trying to change the subject.
He lifted his shoulders as best he could. “I’m a lifeguard. It’s what I do.”
We were making our way up the path to the mayor’s front door, the pavement lined with dead brown marigolds and piles of wet, withered leaves—things we wouldn’t have seen in Juniper Landing when we first arrived here, when even the plants could never die. A sort of traffic jam had occurred near the front of the house, and people stood on their toes, angling for a look at the front of the line. Liam’s charge started to whimper.
“This looks like it’s going to take a while,” Myra stated, her brown eyes full of concern as she looked at the girl.
“Come with me,” I whispered.
Liam raised his raven eyebrows, intrigued, and our small party stepped away from the line. I led Liam and Myra toward the back of the house, where there was a patio with a door to the kitchen and great room. We slid open the glass door and finally stepped out of the rain.
