The Living

35 Unexpected Good-Luck Charm

Shy woke up the next morning to the sound of his own chattering teeth, and he was surprised to find himself holding Addie. Her eyes were open, too, and he followed her gaze down the boat to where the oilman slept, except the oilman was no longer there, only his empty life jacket.

“What happened?” Shy said, struggling to his feet.

“I don’t know,” Addie said. “I woke up, and he was gone.”

Shy sloshed through the ankle-high water to the life jacket, picked it up, looked over the side of the boat. No sign of Mr. Henry. He remembered the strange conversation from the night before. The hug. He must’ve known all along that he was going to throw himself overboard.

Just like the comb-over man.

When Shy saw how upset Addie was, he dropped the life jacket and made his way back to her, saying: “At least he doesn’t have to suffer anymore. You saw how bad it was getting.”

“I know,” she said, rubbing her temples. “It’s not just him, though. It’s everything. I want to go home.”

“So do I,” he said.

As Addie looked up at him, Shy noticed how much thinner she looked than when they’d first met on the Lido Deck. And her hair was a blond, tangled mess. Her face sunburned and peeling. For the first time since the ship went down, Shy wondered what he looked like, how much his own appearance had changed.

Tears started spilling out of Addie’s eyes and running down her cheeks. She brushed a few off and said: “We’re not gonna make it, are we, Shy?”

The look on her face killed him, and he leaned over and patted her shoulder, awkwardly. “Listen…,” he said, but then he trailed off. He wanted to say something important, something reassuring, but nothing like that came to him because it wasn’t true.

“All I know is this,” he finally said. “We’re gonna spend the day paddling. Same direction as yesterday. And I’m gonna catch us a damn fish this time. You hear me, Addie? Even if I have to dive my ass in there and choke one out with my bare hands.”

He thought she might smile at that last part, but she only nodded and looked to where Mr. Henry used to sit, wiping more tears from her face.

The sun climbed slowly into the cloudless sky, warming the air around them. Shy’s hands were blistered, and his back and shoulders ached. He had so little strength now, he could only make the boat creep forward a little at a time with the oar. But he kept working. And he kept thinking about Mr. Henry and Addie’s dad, and he kept remembering the man in the black suit, Bill, asking all those questions in the Luxury Lounge and then hurrying away from Carmen’s cabin after the ship alarm went off. There was something he wasn’t understanding, something bigger than just a man jumping overboard. But his mind was too slow to put it all together.

After a few hours, they switched places. Addie took the oar without a word, and Shy moved to the back of the boat, and when he bent down to rebait the hook, he felt something scratch his upper thigh. He glanced down, expecting to find some kind of ocean bug biting him. Instead he found a small bulge in the pocket of his jeans and reached his fingers in for it. He was shocked at what he pulled out.

The oilman’s seven-carat diamond ring.

He stared down at the massive diamond, then glanced at Addie, who was already busy working the oar.

The guy must’ve slipped the ring into Shy’s pocket during that weird hug. It was probably the reason he hugged Shy in the first place. Shy dropped the fishing line and moved toward the edge of the boat. He held the ring over the side, thinking he should drop it in, let it float down after Mr. Henry. He didn’t want someone else’s ring. Didn’t matter how big the diamond was. That kind of shit didn’t matter out here. Plus, what if someone discovered them in the boat, long after he and Addie died. They’d probably think he was a thief.

But he couldn’t drop it.

Couldn’t let go.

“It’s been two days,” Addie called out, startling Shy so bad he almost dropped the ring by accident. “And we still haven’t seen anything.”

He slipped the ring back in his pocket and turned around, saying: “We will.”

“No, we won’t,” she said, throwing the oar at the floor of the boat. “This is a waste of time. We’re probably going the exact opposite way.”

Shy scooped up the baited hook and sloshed his way to the front of the boat. “What do you wanna do, Addie? Give up?”

“I want to go home!” she shouted.

“So do I,” Shy told her. “What do you think we’re trying to do?”

Addie sat down in the boat and covered her face with her hands, but she didn’t cry. She just stared at the water inside the boat.

Shy reached down for the jug of water, uncapped it, held it out to her. “Feeling sorry for yourself isn’t gonna help you survive.”

“You think I don’t know that?” she said, snatching the jug out of his hands. “God, you’re like the worst person to be stuck with.” She took two baby sips of water and handed it to Shy, who did the same. After re-capping it, he held the jug up to see how much was left. About an inch high at the bottom.

Addie was looking at the same thing.

Their eyes met for a second, but she quickly cut away and reached down for the oar, then she stood up and turned away from him and dug back into the ocean.

Shy moved to the opposite end. He cast his line back into the ocean, wondering why he didn’t want to tell Addie about the ring.

He’d only been standing there ten minutes, max, when he felt a sudden tug on the line. He grabbed it with both hands and stood up straight to look over the edge of the boat. There it was, deep below the surface, a thin yellow fish caught on his hook, jerking to get away. He got a rush of energy and started pulling in the line, fast as he could.

Shy heard Addie splashing down the boat, toward him. “What is it?” she said.

“Told you I’d catch a fish,” he said.

Addie leaned over the side of the boat, said: “Oh my God.”

When it was close to the surface, he reached down, pinched the line between his thumb and forefinger, only inches from the fighting fish, yanked it out of the water and flung it into the boat.

He and Addie watched the thing thrash around in the ankle-high water at their feet, still connected to his line.

“You actually did it!” Addie shouted.

“You doubted me, didn’t you?” he said.

“Never again,” she said, on the verge of laughter. “You’re the fish master.”

He wanted to tell her it was because of the oilman’s ring. It was their new good-luck charm. But on the other hand, maybe it was only good luck if he kept it a secret.

“What do we do now?” she asked.

He looked down at the flopping fish, shaking his head. He hadn’t thought it through this far. They couldn’t eat the thing when it was still alive. He looked around, then went and got the oar, raised it up over his head, and brought it down on the fish.

It went still.

“Jesus,” Shy said, staring at the gash he’d opened up on the thing.

“Here,” Addie said, picking up the dry pack Mr. Henry had carried with him from the raft. “Put it on this.”

Shy lifted the wet, scaly fish and tossed it on the pack. Wiped his hands on his jeans. They both stared at it.

The fish was a dull yellow and thin, but sort of long. Its eyes were seemingly fixed on Shy.

Addie surprised him when she reached down suddenly, removed the fish from the hook and then used the hook and her bare hands to split it down the middle, blood dripping through her fingers. She held out the bigger half to Shy, who looked at her like she was crazy. “What?” she said.

“I didn’t know I was out here with a damn cannibal,” he said, looking down at his mangled portion.

“I knew you weren’t going to do it.”

“I was getting around to it,” he said.

“Yeah, right.” She looked at the half a fish in her hand and said: “We just have to imagine we’re eating sushi.”

When Shy didn’t answer right away, she looked up at him and said: “Oh, my bad. You’ve probably never had sushi in your life, have you?”

“I’ve had sushi,” Shy lied.

They both cringed as they ate, sometimes pulling bones out of their mouths, chucking them into the ocean. It didn’t taste like anything more than warm, fleshy iron, but the thought of it made Shy nauseous. He had to force himself not to throw it right back up. What felt good, though, was having something in his stomach, and soon he was skipping the chewing part and just swallowing his bites whole.

Half the fish worked out to be very little meat, but his stomach had shrunk up so small it was still satisfying.

Addie tossed the scaly skin overboard and rinsed her hands in the water by their feet. Then she looked up at him with a full-on smile—the first he’d seen from her since the ship went down.

He smiled back and picked up the oar. As he started toward the front of the boat to get them going again, he fingered the ring in his pocket, wanting to believe it was good luck for more than just catching fish. Maybe it could keep them alive, too.

36 Face of Corruption

As soon as the sun started dropping below the horizon, Shy and Addie staggered to Addie’s section of the boat, completely exhausted, and sat beside each other against the side. It wasn’t cold enough to need each other’s body heat yet, so Shy didn’t put his arm around her.

“Sorry about earlier,” Addie said.

Shy frowned like he didn’t know what she was talking about.

“My tantrum,” she said. “I just—I don’t want this to be it. And when I think about it too much I start freaking myself out.”

“I’m the same way,” Shy said. “I just keep it inside.”

She shook her head and stared at the setting sun like she was thinking about something.

They were both quiet for a few minutes, and Addie leaned her head back against the side and closed her eyes. Shy thought they were done talking for the night, but then she bumped his knee with hers and opened her eyes again. “I’ve been thinking about you and LasoTech, by the way,” she said. “It honestly doesn’t make sense that they were so concerned about you, not if all you did was see David going overboard.”

Now it was Shy’s turn to lean the back of his head against the side. “They had to think I did something to him, right? But that Bill guy told me they knew it was a suicide.”

“Yeah, that can’t be it,” Addie said. “I think they wanted to find out how David was acting before he jumped. Or maybe they thought he said something to you. Something that could get them in trouble.”

Shy thought about that. He fingered the ring in his pocket, trying to remember the exact conversation he’d had with the comb-over man. Again. The vacation homes. The cofounding of his own business—with Addie’s dad, he now knew. Tell me I’m fat.

“Can you think of anything important he might’ve said?” Addie asked.

“You think I haven’t been trying?” Shy asked.

It was bad enough to think about all this stuff on the ship, when he believed he’d be home in eight days and he’d never have to think about it again. But then something occurred to him and he turned to Addie. “This was kind of weird,” he said. “At one point he said I was looking at the face of corruption. You think he was talking about the whole company?”

Addie sat up. “Wait, he said that?”

“Yeah,” Shy said. “At the time I just figured he was drunk—”

“Of course they were asking what he told you, then,” she interrupted. “I bet the company’s doing something illegal, and they thought David explained the whole thing to you. Like he was trying to clear his conscience before he jumped.”

“I see what you’re saying,” Shy said. “Too bad he didn’t explain anything to me.”

Addie shook her head. “I wonder what they did. What my dad did?”

Shy watched the sun as it slowly dropped behind the water to the west of their boat, taking a good amount of light with it. “He also said he was my betrayer,” Shy said, turning back to Addie. “Or something like that. Like he’d messed me over personally. Which obviously doesn’t make sense because I’d never seen the guy in my life.”

Addie stared at Shy for a few long seconds. “Maybe it has something to do with poor people, then.”

Shy frowned at her.

“No offense,” she told him.

“Yeah, right,” he said.

“What if they charge poor people way more than they’re supposed to?”

“But if they make hospital supplies,” Shy said, “they wouldn’t sell shit directly to people—”

“Or, wait,” Addie said, “maybe it’s some kind of insurance fraud. You can get in really big trouble for that.”

Shy didn’t know much about insurance fraud, but he was pretty sure Addie thought he was from some homeless family who picked through the trash for their dinner. Whatever. It didn’t even matter anymore. “Or maybe your dad’s company was just being paranoid,” he said.

“God,” Addie said, staring at the palms of her hands. “What if my entire life was stolen? My house, my car, my school. Imagine if all of it was paid for with fraud money?”

Shy realized how hard this conversation must be for Addie. She had no idea if her dad was dead or alive, and now they were talking about him possibly being a criminal. He was about to make a comment about that when Addie climbed to her knees suddenly and squinted, like she was looking at something in the distance.

“What is it?” Shy said, pushing up from the side, too.

She pointed directly in front of their boat. “I think I see something.”

Shy’s whole body started tingling as he scanned the darkening horizon, hoping to find land. What he saw was far away, but it definitely wasn’t land. The longer he stared, the clearer it became, the dusky sky maintaining just enough light to see. “Is that a boat?” he said, turning to Addie. “That looks like a boat.”

“I think it’s a boat,” she said, her face now lit up with excitement.

Shy stood and sloshed across the boat to the supply cabinet, where he flung open the door and grabbed the flare gun.

37 The Boat

There were four flares left. Shy loaded the gun and stood up. He knew from training to fire the first one straight into the air, then follow with another, five seconds later, so that any potential rescuers would see where the first flare had come from.

He aimed the gun at the sky and fired.

The flame shot up above them, and Shy turned his attention to the distant boat.

“Over here!” Addie shouted, waving her arms.

Come on, Shy thought as he hurried to load the gun with a second flare. In the distance, however, the boat just floated there.

He aimed the gun above his head and fired a second time. Watched the glowing ball of fire arc across the dim sky, then fall toward the water, where it landed in a soundless splash, maybe twenty yards from them. It fizzled into a tiny puff of smoke that lifted off the water and drifted apart.

Still nothing from the boat.

“Should we go to them?” Addie asked.

Shy stared ahead. There was no way they hadn’t heard or seen the flares. What were they waiting for? Or was it someone who didn’t want to help? He glanced down at the small amount of water they had left. There was no choice. They had to go.

“Hand me the oar,” he told Addie.

She reached down next to her feet, held it out to Shy, and he hurried to the front of the boat.

The closer they got, the more it became clear. They were definitely approaching a boat. But it was just sitting there. He ignored the bad feeling in his stomach and kept digging through the water with his oar. Every now and then Addie would call out to the boat, to try and get some kind of response; otherwise they kept quiet as Shy moved them through the calm ocean.

Soon they were right in front of it.

It was a brown motorboat, about twice the size of their lifeboat. The engine turned off. A cabin underneath the surface with tinted windows and “Number 220” written on the side. There was no sign of anyone on board.

“Looks like it’s abandoned,” Addie said.

Shy called out toward the boat: “Hello? Anyone in there?”

Nothing.

Addie pushed her hair out of her face. “Why would an abandoned boat be way out here?”

“The tsunamis might’ve torn it away from its dock.” Shy pulled the oar from the water and let their momentum carry them toward the motorboat. “Maybe we’re closer to land than we realize.”

“God,” Addie said. “The tsunamis. What if the entire island’s underwater?”

“We’re not gonna think about that,” Shy told her as he reached out for the front end of the motorboat to lessen the impact. Still, the lifeboat crashed into the bow of the thing. Shy grabbed the metal bar extending off the motorboat and called out “Hello?”

Still no answer.

“You coming with me?” Shy asked Addie.

She shook her head. “I’m waiting here.”

Shy reached down for the length of rope he’d grabbed out of the supply cabinet and tied the two boats together. Then he stepped onto the jagged side of the lifeboat, balancing carefully, and pulled himself up onto the bigger boat. He walked around the perfectly dry deck, having no idea what to expect. He saw two empty life jackets. A folding chair on its side. He opened the tackle box near the stairs. Instead of fishing gear, a few shattered vials lay in the top tray, which seemed strange. It also smelled a little like smoke.

There was nothing else up there so he climbed down the three steep stairs, his heart pounding now, and peeked his head inside the open door of the cabin where the smoke smell was stronger. “Hello?” he said, but no one answered. It was so dark inside he could hardly see.

He stepped deeper into the cabin, using his hands against the wall to guide him, until the familiar smell of death hit him and he stopped cold. He saw a large shape on the ground and quickly backed out of the cabin.

Shy was ready to head right back up the stairs when he came across a flashlight in a holster on the wall. He grabbed it, powered it on and moved back into the cabin, shining the light on two men in lab coats. The one with red hair was lying on the ground, facedown. The bald one was slumped against the far wall.

Shy covered his nose and mouth with his left hand, seeing the pools of blood coming out from underneath the two men. He stood frozen for several seconds before forcing himself forward to nudge the body on the floor with his bare foot—he didn’t know why, it was clear both men were dead.

He shined his light all around the bodies and spotted a gun half covered by an open duffel bag. He kicked it free and stared at it, feeling incredibly on edge. He’d grown accustomed to death on the ship, but this was different. This looked like murder.

He used his foot to turn over the first corpse and saw bullet wounds. The redheaded man had been shot in the chest and the leg and the right arm. There was blood crusted all over his white lab coat. The other man was thinner and older and he had a large gash on the side of his face, like he’d been struck by something. He also appeared to have been shot in the stomach. It was an awful sight of blood and gore, and Shy moved the light away, trying to figure out what the hell had happened.

He kneeled down, shined his light into the bag. A few packs of syringes, like the kind they use for flu shots, and none of them broken. Some kind of code written on each label. Dozens of pill bottles, too. They weren’t anything like the illegal drugs he’d seen back home. These were from an actual hospital or a pharmacy—and he recalled Addie saying her dad’s company was in the medical field. Which meant they had to be close to the island. Underneath the packs of syringes was a beat-up blank envelope with a few folded papers inside.

He shined the light on the bodies again. The men were dressed like doctors or scientists. But why had they been shot? And who did the shooting? Shy stood up and shined the flashlight around the rest of the cabin. Bullet holes in the walls. Some of the cabin looked charred, like someone had tried to set the boat on fire. But there was no water anywhere. The boat was somehow unaffected by the tsunamis.

Eventually the smell overwhelmed Shy, and he hurried above deck, back to where Addie was waiting for him.

“Anyone in there?” she asked him right away.

“Two guys,” he told her. “They’re both dead, though.”

Her face filled with worry. “How?”

“I think they were shot.”

Addie covered her mouth and started breathing more quickly. “Was one of them my dad?” she asked.

“No,” Shy told her, shaking his head. “If I can get the motor going, we have to switch boats, okay? It’s a little burned up, but it doesn’t seem like this thing was affected by the tsunamis.”

Addie nodded. “Are you sure my dad’s not down there?”

“I promise.” Shy glanced back at the motorboat, then told her: “I don’t know what the hell happened, though. Who would shoot doctors?”

“They’re doctors?”

“I think so,” Shy said. “Or scientists. Look, lemme check everything else and I’ll come back and transfer us over, okay?”

Once he saw her nod he started toward the bridge, pointing the flashlight out in front of him. He wasn’t able to get the motor started, though, because the entire control panel had been shot up. The GPS, too. And there was no more fuel. Where were these guys going with no gas and a bagful of medicine? And who had climbed aboard and gunned them down? And where was that person now? Shy knew ship pirates were a possibility, but he didn’t think anyone would be out stealing right after the tsunamis.

There wasn’t any food or water in any of the supply cabinets. There wasn’t even rope or extra flares.

Shy weighed the options. If they moved to the motorboat they would no longer have to sleep in cold ankle-high water. And the cabin would protect them from the sun during the day. But it was much heavier, and he’d never be able to reach the water from the front end, so using the oar was out of the question. They’d have to stick with their broken lifeboat if they wanted to keep moving.

Before he went to get Addie’s opinion, he ducked back into the cabin to look around one last time. He shined his light on the bodies, the charred walls. Then he reached down and grabbed the gun, flipped open the barrel, saw that there were three bullets left. He dropped it in the brown and blue duffel, then slung the duffel over his shoulder and headed back up the stairs.

“Everything’s all shot up,” he told her. “And there’s no gas or supplies. If we transfer to this boat we’ll just be sitting here, waiting to be rescued. If we stay on the lifeboat we can keep moving. What do you think?”

They looked at each other for a while, then Addie said: “Shouldn’t we keep moving?”

“I think so,” Shy told her and he climbed down into their sad little lifeboat and undid the knot that had kept the two boats together.

They sat against the side in silence, Shy’s arm around Addie’s shoulders for warmth. Shy stared at the little bit of water they had left. And only two more flares and a flashlight. They had to reach land tomorrow or it would be over. He thought of the two dead men he’d found on the motorboat. Someone from the island must have shot them. But why? And what did that say about the island? Or what if they had shot themselves?

He looked up at the sky, thinking about the gun in the duffel bag. Would it get so bad that he and Addie would consider doing that? Using the bullets to stop their suffering? He fingered the ring in his pocket, thinking about that.

It was a starry black night that seemed to reach out forever, all the way back to the ruined coast of California. He tried to imagine all the lives that had been lost. All the families ripped apart, the property destroyed.

To believe that two kids on a boat had any special meaning was a fairy tale.

Shy listened to the change in Addie’s breathing as she slowly fell asleep, and he watched the motorboat drift away from them, into the darkness, until it was only a shadow in the night, then nothing, and still he watched.