Sadie Walker Is Stranded (22 page)

Even Moritz, like the chosen cuisine of the evening, was coming out of his shell. And despite a bad mood flickering on the horizon, at least I could see that Andrea was looking healthier. With food and water in abundance, her face was looking less gaunt and desperate. She smiled more. She looked pretty. Everyone did, the raging fires giving us a healthy glow, the weather holding out to bless us with a perfect, mild evening. The clams and booze didn’t hurt, either.

But Whelan and I, like fidgety, sober parents overseeing a prom party, hovered on the fringes of the celebration. I didn’t enjoy casting my crotchety shadow over the festivities, and the clams really were excellent and fresh, but some worries you just can’t shake off.

“Something up?”

I nearly dropped my bowl of clams. Banana stood right next to my shoulder. I should’ve smelled the Aquanet. At least if the undead ambushed us Banana would have a badass supply of flame-throwing materials at the ready. I wouldn’t light a match in her presence.

“Just a little distracted,” I said. “And tipsy!” I made a flailing stab at lightheartedness. Banana wasn’t impressed. In the firelight, the silk handkerchief bundling up her hair sparkled; so did her eyes.

“You look like someone pissed in your drink.”

I looked down at my half-empty cup. “What a delightful figure of speech.”

“You can be coy or you can come clean,” she said. “I’m only offering a service.”

“I didn’t think the transition would go this smoothly,” I said, gesturing to the others. That was true, even if it wasn’t really what was weighing heavily on my mind.

“The sky ain’t always falling.”

I should have grabbed onto that sentiment and clutched it for dear life. But instead I went on sulking and let Banana wander over to Moritz and Noah, who seemed happy to have her company. I felt like making a speech or at least giving everyone a warning, but every time I worked up the courage to open my mouth, I saw Whelan brooding over his drink. I didn’t want to encourage panic and, selfishly, I didn’t want to be the one spoiling the party. But I couldn’t keep quiet. Not this time.

“Would everyone mind gathering around for a minute?” I called, clearing my throat and waiting for the chatter and laughter to die down. Whelan shot me a look, but I ignored it. With so many happy faces staring at me, it was hard to find the right words. “It’s been great getting to know you all and I’m glad we’re all having a good time, but there’s something I wanted to say. It’s going to be a downer, so I apologize for that.”

“Boo,” Andrea heckled, chuckling.

“I know, sue me.” With a shrug I continued, “I’m sure we’re all aware that it’s important to be safe and cautious but…” I hoped Andrea wouldn’t hate me too much for bringing it up. “We suffered a tragedy on the way here because we didn’t know any better. It’s scary to think about and it sucks, but we realized that the water is just as dangerous as land.”

“What Sadie is trying to say,” Whelan cut in abruptly, “is that they could attack us from the water. We have to adjust accordingly.”

“What?” Banana asked with a gasp. “The water? I can’t believe it.”

“Believe it,” I replied. “We saw it happen.”

“Life of the party, these two,” Andrea muttered. But she nodded when I looked at her, agreeing with the decision to tell the others. Danielle joined Banana in voicing her outrage and surprise. I sidled back toward Andrea, wishing I could disappear for being the doomsayer. But Shane gave me a nod too, and his acceptance made the bitter pill go down easier.

Later, the night took a turn for the pleasant, for all of us. Banana gathered us together, teasing good-naturedly until we all agreed to sit in a lopsided circle. She stood in the middle, clearing her throat and sipping her drink for courage before announcing the night’s entertainment.

“We’re all going to sing,” she said, pointing significantly at each of us in turn. “And I don’t want to hear any complaining. And if you don’t sing loud enough well then you’ll just have to do a solo, got it?”

Shane shifted nervously, looking to me for help.

“It’s okay,” I said in a conspiratorial whisper. “I’ll sing extra loud for both of us.”

He smiled, his shoulders lifting a little as he turned his attention back to Banana.

First came, “I’ve Got a Lovely Bunch of Coconuts.” It turned out the kids didn’t know that one so well—which was probably a positive, considering the slightly bawdy lyrics—and it fell to the adults to pick up the slack. Poor Moritz struggled, baffled by the lyrics, joining in only when we reached the memorable chorus. Isabella and Teresa laughed along, drumming first Stefano and then Danielle on the shoulders.

“Hakuna Matata” proved a much easier choice for the kidlets, although Moritz found himself similarly stymied and Banana mercilessly chose him to sing a solo of about half the song. Teresa, taking pity on the man, got up and helped him, swinging his hand in time to the rhythm and singing louder to drown out the times he blundered the words.

“One more song,” Whelan cautioned as Moritz was allowed to sit down again. “Since I think we’ve already alerted every walker from here to Addis Ababa.”

He stalked the perimeter of the circle, turning on a flashlight to sweep the sand and the area surrounding the campfire for any unwelcome guests. Isabella and Teresa were quick to pull him back, one falling on his ankle, the other launching onto his shoulders. Whelan put up a valiant fight against their giggling, slogging back to the song circle with Teresa clinging like a barnacle to his ankle. He pretended to go down, grunting dramatically as they pushed him down into the sand.

Whelan’s punishment for leaving was a song of his own. The group came to the conclusion that “YMCA” was suitably humiliating, but the girls were kind enough to act as his backup dancers, twirling, forgetting half the time to make the usual letters with their arms.

Looking around, listening to the laughter, seeing that even Cassandra was getting into the spirit of things and that Danielle, for once, wasn’t seething at me, it made me think that maybe Banana was right. Things could be permanent here. Maybe Shane wouldn’t get to go to school like other kids and sure, a place like Liberty Village would afford more opportunities for a “normal” upbringing, but there could be fuzzy, good things happening here too. And even if it wasn’t permanent, Shane might take away memories that weren’t all about struggling to eke out an existence or just get by.

So when, the next morning, I woke up to screaming, I wasn’t only surprised but also deeply disappointed. We had been so close to …
something
. Something that made the fright of fleeing Seattle and the danger of the boat seem worth it.

Suddenly, I wondered if I’d open the cabin door to see the beach flooded with zombies. But the campsite was exactly as we’d left it the night before, a little dirty and scattered with dishes, but otherwise familiar. The only noticeable difference was the screaming.

Andrea and I woke at the same time and together we stumbled out of the cabin, bleary-eyed and half-dressed. Shane tumbled out after us, both fists buried in his eyes as he tried to wake up. We fit right in with the others, who stood in a semicircle around Stefano and Danielle’s cabin. They, too, were in their pajamas, barefoot and staring.

“They’re gone! Fuck,
fuck,
how could this happen? They know not to wander off!”

“Who’s gone?” I whispered, silently slipping into the half-circle next to Whelan.

“The girls,” he murmured. His voice was hoarse. “Isabella and Teresa.”

“Gone as in dead, or gone as in—”

“Vanished,” Whelan finished, shooting me a black look. “Disappeared.”

Oh, no. At least we had warned about water zombies, but that wasn’t enough. Stefano broke down into tears, hiding his face in Danielle’s shoulder. She stroked his spiky forest of bleached hair, giving Andrea, and especially me, a stabby glare. Right. Just by virtue of being new, we were somehow responsible for two little kids wandering off in the night. I couldn’t help it; I crossed my arms over my chest defensively.

“So where are they?” Danielle asked. Her voice was high-pitched and whining, like hot pink manicured nails on a chalkboard. If she were one of those weird, acid-spitting dinosaurs her rainbow-colored lizard collar would be flaring up around her pointy face. I wasn’t actually certain I could take Danielle if we came to blows—I’d probably ricochet right off of her bouncy-castle chest.

“Really? You want to start this?”

“Calm down,” Whelan said, addressing both of us. He turned to Stefano. “Kids are curious. Sometimes they get frightened by dreams or maybe a sound and they wander and get lost.”

“Not Isabella,” Stefano wailed, “and not Teresa!”

“He’s right,” Danielle said, turning up her nose. “They’re smart girls. They know better.”

Another pointed look in my direction. Oh, Danielle was a smooth operator, all right—she knew just how to push my buttons. One more snotty glance and I’d be pleased as punch to wring her neck.

“As much as I’d love for this to turn into
Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome
, we should make up search parties,” I said. “
Quickly
.”

Whelan nodded. Banana and Nate had come to investigate the trouble, the others bringing up the rear behind them. Poor Noah looked like he was still asleep, shuffling forward with his eyes almost completely closed, his dark hair mussed and sticking up in every direction. Cassandra still wore the pink T and white shorts from the night before. She went to stand next to Danielle.

“Good, you’re all up,” Whelan said. “We’ve got work to do.”

I was asked to join the group going, presumably, into the most dangerous part of the island. Whelan would be going in this group, along with Moritz and Andrea. Nate was the other team leader, since each group would need someone who was handy with a rifle. Banana volunteered to stay behind at the camp and guard Shane. Unsurprisingly, Cassandra refused to go with anyone but Danielle. I had no complaints about that. I wasn’t the only person to notice their budding friendship.

“Looks like our girl Cassandra’s fitting in,” Andrea muttered. Danielle and Cassandra joined Nate in the search party going southwest along the beach. Andrea and I stuck close behind Whelan, letting him go first into the dense wall of trees. He did, after all, have the rifle. Moritz had been given Nate’s knife and helped cut a path through the bushes clustered around the trees.

“I’m gonna go ahead and say that’s a good thing,” I replied. I was all nerves, chattering aimlessly to keep from dwelling too much on the missing girls. “I was starting to worry about her. Building sand castles? Those nasty-ass scrubs? I sort of expected to return to camp and find her prancing around naked in the surf, wearing your guts as a fascinator.”

“That Danielle chick’s got a way with her, I guess.”

“The lord works in damn near confounding ways.”

Whelan shushed us over his shoulder. From the rigid line of his shoulders, arms and back I could tell that he was nervous too. He had volunteered to take us straight to the heart of the island and I was absolutely certain that was no coincidence. Still, there was no time to plumb his motivations. As I had discovered during my Will Scarlet phase, the forest had a way of eating up certain sounds and intensifying others. Birds shrieked and it sounded like they had swooped down right next to your ear. But footfalls disappeared, softer than they had any right to be. It made me feel tiny, at the mercy of so many cloaking leaves and clever hiding places.

But there was no sign of the girls, no crumb trail of shoes or ponytail binders. I hadn’t spotted one snagged piece of cloth or any of that other exciting bullshit that makes you think you’re on the right path. As we cut deeper into the forest, I felt a clammy sweat spring up around my neck and ears. It was hard work navigating the trees, fallen stumps and uneven, shifting ground. Nobody spoke. Our shoes trampled down the brittle grasses and Moritz’s knife slashed at branches here and there, but otherwise we said nothing and let Whelan lead the way.

I felt a small seed of insecurity in my brain, a seed that didn’t take long to sprout and flower. How well did I really know Whelan and his cohorts? Hadn’t he faked a zombie attack to get me in the water? Hadn’t that led to my feet being torn to pieces? And now those two girls were missing, but there was no trace of them at the camp. We had split up, going into the wild with Whelan and Nate, both of whom carried serious weaponry. What had begun as a search party, I realized with a jolt, could easily turn into a cold-blooded execution.

“They’re not out here,” I said, shuffling to a stop. Inside my boots, my feet were beginning to throb. Whelan turned at the waist, shooting me a look that said plainly: Keep moving.

“This doesn’t look good, Whelan,” I added, glancing around helplessly. “Shouldn’t we have found something by now? A shoe? Something? Maybe we’re going the wrong way, or … I don’t know. It’d be better if we fanned out but we shouldn’t get separated…”

“There’s something up ahead,” he said, drawing a damp hand across his forehead. His dark brown hair shined with sweat. “Something through the trees. If we don’t find anything there we’ll try a different direction.”

Andrea lifted her right foot to go on but I grabbed her hand and squeezed. When Whelan had his back to us again I slowly shifted my head from side to side. We hung back, Moritz and Whelan forging ahead while Andrea and I did our best to trail without being too obvious.

“What are you thinking?” she whispered. Her hand grew slick in my grasp.

“Split us up? Take us into the woods? What does that remind you of?” I asked in an undertone.

“Should we run?”

“No, not yet. Let’s wait it out.”

I hoped desperately that those wouldn’t be my last words. I had seen with my own eyes Whelan’s cop-trained skill with that gun. That SPD polo clearly wasn’t a hand-me-down. If he decided to turn on us we’d be dead in a heartbeat. Speaking of, my pulse had risen to the point where I was sure everyone, Whelan included, could hear the drumming. The forest, which moments ago had simply felt strange and vast, now felt oppressive. I nearly collapsed with fright as gunfire erupted in front of us. But Whelan was firing at something through the trees, a lone zombie. Our pace quickened. I could see now that there really was something beyond the trees, a clearing. I heard rushing water, like a fast-moving stream or waterfall. We four came to a stop just before breaking through the tree line.