Page 16 of The Dead of Summer

In the hospital with Gracie, I remember marveling at how all minutes aren’t equal. Some pass in a flash while some stop time. And some are so dark and deep you fall into them, only to surface a few seconds later wondering where all the light went.

All the minutes in the maritime museum feel like that. Dark, deep, spiraling, and ticking the world toward a new, horrific nightmare.

At first we hid, waiting for it all to end. It didn’t. By nightfall, when that realization sunk in, we gathered the survivors—only thirteen of us—and the adults tried to make a plan. Even whispering, the tension was intense.

“We need food.”

“We need water. Dehydration kills in three days.”

“We need weapons.”

I remember a dreamy denial stopping me from feeling too much, and there was a moment I almost laughed at the strangeness of it all. These random people, and us, holding ourselves captive in the maritime museum?

Then a little girl called for help outside. I think I stood up, but one of the adults—a man, a lawyer, one of several in a group—ordered me to sit down. Or else. So I slowly sat, sinking into a tyranny that had manifested instantly from the crisis.

That was three days ago. Since then, time has broken into such tiny, dark moments. Too many to count. Too many to remember. They spread like black seashells across my dreams.

Day four. I’m tucked among the dusty displays of the maritime museum, in a grimy nest of sailcloth, curled around Bash so he can sleep.

It is utterly silent, as are the rules of my new, drowning world.

It is so silent that I swear I can hear the moment the seagulls cease their crying and abandon us for safer shores.

Then all that cries are the weepers in the street, and me.

The taste of salt in my own tears drives hungry nails through my guts.

In an hour, I can eat two more cookies from my rations and take a sip of flat soda.

Delicious. But I’m not complaining. Complaining is a sound, and this close to sunset—when the weepers still react to every little sound with childlike curiosity—it would be lethal to make too much noise.

I imagine silence as a structure. Strong but see-through, like the glass that bottles the boats around us.

Even a small sound could crack it, and even a small crack might spread, and then what?

In my dream, the sea gives no warning. She seeps under barricaded doors and climbs the steps as a glittering slickness.

When she finds me, she pulls herself through the fibers of my clothes, drips up my throat, and, all at once, floods between my clenched teeth.

Suddenly, I’m not dreaming anymore. I really can’t breathe as a humid grip tightens over my lips. My eyes bulge, seeing only shadows, and then Sam whispers in my ear.

“Ollie. It’s Sam. Don’t scream.”

He removes his hand from my mouth, and I suck in a long, low breath. The shadows halt their dancing. I am still in the model ship exhibit of the maritime museum. Bash is still asleep beside me. The light through the heavy curtains is only a trickle now.

Sam is rummaging in cloth around me. He’s frantic. “They took it. The lawyers took your rations while you were asleep. Dammit.”

I didn’t mean to fall asleep. I wasn’t supposed to.

I follow Sam’s soft footsteps out into the main area of the upper floor—a gallery of paintings depicting ships tossed by unruly seas.

The other survivors huddle in withered clusters around the light of a gas lantern set low.

The faces that peer up at me are strange, dim masks.

The factions of the survivors are clear: on one side the townies, on the other the tourists.

The biggest group, in both numbers and muscles, are the gay lawyers.

Our tiny tyrants. They face down Sam’s anger with indifference.

I notice several of them are chewing smugly.

It’s too late.

Sam turns me away.

“I told you we can’t trust them. You weren’t supposed to let your guard down,” he whispers.

“I’m sorry.” Tears prick my eyes. I’m embarrassed to cry in front of him, but it’s happened a lot these past few days.

He hugs me. “It’s okay. I have good news. Follow me.”

Sam and I slowly descend the stairs in the center of the museum.

Darkened and quiet, it feels like sneaking through someone else’s house during a sleepover.

The bottom floor is split between an expansive display of old-timey sailing paraphernalia (a blank spot on the wall marks where we got the gas lamp) and a gift shop.

Sam leads me to a hall in between, to the basement door.

The combination lock holding it shut is, for the first time in my life, open.

“How—” I begin to ask.

“Just tried numbers until it clicked,” Sam says. “It only took two days, but guess what’s down there? More food.”

“Did you tell anyone?”

Sam shakes his head.

I close my eyes. More food. I never thought I’d have to make a decision like this, between us and them, but hasn’t that divide always defined my life on Anchor’s Mercy? Some people live here, some people visit, but Gracie always told me everyone belongs. She had a saying about it, even.

When it’s dark, we swim toward one another.

Even hearing her in my head threatens new tears, and honestly I really can’t spare the moisture. I shake off the emotion.

“We share,” I tell Sam.

That night, gathered around the lamp, all thirteen survivors have a silent banquet.

It’s not really a banquet. The food is the same as what we found in the gift shop. Chips, soda, nuts, candy. It reminds me of the charcuterie board Elisa made, and thinking of Elisa makes me too sick to taste anything, so I try to think of anything else.

And it’s not exactly silent. A jovial atmosphere has somehow spawned inside the maritime museum.

I feel it, too—a near-giddiness as my body soaks up the sugar after days of eating only stomach acid.

Sam gives me a smile I can’t help but return.

Bash hunches beside me, but he won’t eat.

Before anyone can snatch his portion away, I tuck it into his lap. He murmurs a hollow “Thanks.”

“You’re from around here, right?”

One of the lawyers is talking to me. I think his name is Justin. After we barricaded the doors the first day we were in here, we did a round of terse introductions, and they all seemed to be named Justin.

I blink, for a moment forgetting how to talk. Sam answers for me.

“How do you know that?”

The lawyer shrugs. “I saw him on the ferry. And he knows his way around better than he should. Him too.” He points at Bash, then folds his hands. “So maybe you can tell us what the hell is happening.”

“You don’t have to answer him,” Sam whispers to me. The lawyer gives a patronizing smile that gets right under my skin, which of course is the point. I brush Sam off.

“Yeah, we grew up here, but I have no idea why this is happening, or what it even is.”

Is that true, though? Since we took shelter here, I’ve felt a nonstop sinking into the murk of conspiracy.

There was a chemical spill in Anchor’s Mercy in the sixties.

The townies get sick. Imogen Pfaff, her red notebook, and Elisa’s mom vanishing.

I feel dark truths slither across my brain, but they are too inky to hold for long.

And even if I could catch one, I’m embarrassed to admit to myself that even my worst nightmare—that some poison leaching into the sand gave my mom cancer—now feels childish. Reality is so much worse.

“That was your mom with you on the ferry, wasn’t it?” the lawyer asks. “I saw her. The morning after the storm. I saw her walking.”

My hunger is forgotten. All my focus is on the smug, chewing face of this man.

“Where? Please. You have to tell me. Is she okay? Is she alive?”

He’s got me on his hook and he takes his time chewing, reeling me in. I realize I’m asking him something he can’t know—how Gracie is right this moment. But it feels like whatever he says next will determine if she is still alive. I refuse to even blink.

“I’ll tell you,” he says slowly, “if you give me your food.”

Everyone stops eating. Sam tries to stop me, but I toss what’s left of my rations toward him. The lawyer passes the food to his group, and they pat him on the back. Way to go, Justin, good work.

“I was taking a run on the trails that go out to the dunes, and I saw her walking. She was heading away from town. I bet she was still there when the outbreak hit.”

For the first time in days, I feel hope. Not the emaciated reassurances I’ve been feeding myself, but real hope. Gracie is okay. She wasn’t even in town the day of the outbreak. But Sam is angry. He’s on his feet.

“You could have told him that the first day. You’re a monster, you know that, right? Ollie grew up here, and he’s our best chance of escaping when the time comes.”

Sam’s cold logic strikes guilt into the lawyer’s smug expression. I try to look tough even though I’m wondering if Sam has just told me the reason he’s protecting Bash and me. It doesn’t matter after what the lawyer tells me next.

“Your mom was walking without her shoes. But she had that blue wig. She wasn’t wearing it, though. She was holding it in her hands. And she was singing to herself, like those things outside do.”

He doesn’t know Gracie. He doesn’t know my mom at all .

I surge to my feet and exit the lamplight, stumbling up the tiny spiral stairs that lead to the crow’s nest. When footsteps follow, I turn to tell Sam I want to be alone, but it’s Bash who sits down beside me.

He puts his head on my shoulder and doesn’t say a thing until my breathing has steadied.

“You can talk to me,” he says. “I’m still here.”

I’ve been afraid to add to the maelstrom of anxiety I know is dominating Bash’s thoughts, but now the words rush out of me in a fraying whisper.

“Do you remember the night we were at Pizza Monster, when Willy came in and told us the town was dropping anchor? He said he heard my mom was okay, and that’s all I’ve been able to think about.

Where was she? Would she run away? Did Aunt Maddie infect her?

I mean, they must have been together, right?

But now I don’t know. If Gracie was walking in the dunes during the outbreak, maybe she got away, but why would she take off her shoes?

And if she was one of those weepers, she wouldn’t carry her wig around, right?

That’s a human thing to do. A Gracie thing to do. Right?”

I’m asking impossible questions that Bash seems to know not to try and answer. We stare at the dark roofs of downtown and the moonstruck bay beyond.

“I’m scared, too,” Bash says.

I rub his shoulder. “Your family is okay, Bash. They’re smart. And cautious. I bet they’re at your house right now, waiting for you to come home.”

Bash sniffs. I’ve made him cry, but he tells me, “Keep going.”

It’s always been easier to handle someone else’s pain over my own, and I feel my old self responding.

“Your dad is baking bread from scratch. Your sisters are arguing about a game they’re making up—but quietly.

They know to be quiet, because sometimes the weepers get curious.

But you know your mom. She can sense someone on their way over for lunch before the person even knows they’re hungry.

She’s guarding all of them. She wants everything perfect for the moment you make it home. ”

Bash is nodding, like it’s all real and true. Then he adds to the fantasy like it’s one of our bits, saying, “Gracie is with them. Maybe that’s why she was walking out to the dunes. She knew town was no good, and she was looking for you at Sam’s, but she made it to my house instead.”

Now I’m nodding, too.

Bash continues. “What was her saying? About making friends?”

I smile. “Be nice to everyone. You never know who has a beach house.”

“Exactly,” Bash says. “If she’s not at my house, she’s at someone else’s. Probably telling embarrassing stories about you to pass the time.”

“The true question is …” I pause for suspense. “Is she or is she not wearing her wig?”

“Oh, that wig is on ,” Bash says. “And she’s turning this way and that, going, ‘What wig? Where?’ ”

I can see it. I have to stifle a laugh. The joy is scalding and brief.

“And Elisa …” Bash trails off, but I’ve been working on this one for days.

“Elisa is the last person who needs saving. We both know that. In fact, I bet it’s only a matter of time before she saves us , and together we restart civilization in the attic of Marine Supply. No lawyers allowed.”

Bash sits up. “And her dad is on the mainland, remember? He’ll know something is up, right? He’ll come for her. And us. Maybe he’s on his way now.”

Neither of us can help but look back out to sea, but all that floats there are the faraway lights of the white boat I saw from the ferry. I’m still looking at it when a few minutes later Bash sits up.

“Ollie. Look. The library!”

The library is easy to spot. A renovated church, its bell tower shoots up from the surrounding rooftops like a cocked thumb. It’s as dark as anything else, but something ragged drifts from one of the upper windows.

“It’s a flag,” Bash whispers. He rummages around the crow’s nest until he finds the spyglass, then looks again.

“A nautical flag. Blue and yellow!”

Even at the end of the world, Bash is a boat kid. And I’m sure that flag wasn’t there earlier today. Someone put it there, and Bash knows what it means.

“I want to communicate with you,” Bash whispers. “That’s what it means. Ollie, there are other survivors. We’re not alone! We can save these people!”

Before this can sink in, something flickers in the corner of my vision.

I stare up into the night until, abruptly, spotlights come on and I’m looking at the bald head of the water tower floating over town.

At first I think I’m imagining it, but then the light spreads outward, sweeping into town, and suddenly the streets are aglow.

All at once, the town’s power has been turned back on.

Then comes the music. Not from the town, but from directly below us, as the museum’s many displays all come back online.

“Turn it off,” I hear myself whisper. The music is barely audible, yet it’s the loudest thing I’ve ever heard. And another sound is rising to match it: crying. Ecstatic, wet screams in the street below, and they’re running toward us.

The silence is broken, and the sea is rushing in.