Page 19 of The Dead of Summer

We’re brought right to the basement, to the archives. After an hour sitting in the dark, Wendy finally returns.

She sits in a chair, her back to the open door, and though she’s just a drag queen, she might as well be a dragon blocking our path.

She tells us we’ll be here two days, maybe longer, so use our camping lantern sparingly.

Then she points out the mattress in the room’s farthest corner. Near it, there’s a bucket.

“I’m sorry, I know it’s not much,” Wendy says. “It should go without saying that I’m glad you’re all safe. I would hug you if I could, but we have to be careful. You’ve seen what’s out there. It’s imperative that we never let it get inside the library. There are children here. Families.”

I turn from the bucket and face her. “Why is this happening?”

Even in the dim light of the lantern, even under the makeup, I can plainly read the battle behind Wendy’s eyes. I have seen that look all my life, anytime I push too far or ask too much.

“We don’t know, Ollie.”

“Bullshit,” I push back. “The adults have always hidden something. What’s left to protect? How come you won’t just say it?”

Another figure steps into the doorway. Just a shadow against the dim light.

They place a hand on Wendy’s shoulder, and the hesitance vanishes from the drag queen’s stare.

She attempts to look reassuring, but she just looks sad.

Before she even says it, I am ready to hear the words that deaden discussion.

“It is what it is, Ollie. We’ve just got to figure out how to survive.”

I squeeze my fists tight. For a second I forget my fear, and I just feel a familiar resentment. Even in ruins, this world is a lie.

“We can handle it,” I insist. “We’re not kids anymore.”

“Once there is something to share, we will share it. With everyone. But for now, we must do what we can to stay organized, and alive. Please, put your weapons in the bin.”

There’s no choice here. I lay down the harpoon gun.

Bash relinquishes the pizza paddle. Sam reveals a short dagger with an ornately carved handle that I immediately recognize from the maritime museum’s scrimshaw display.

Smart. The figure stays hidden while Wendy collects the bin and heads for the door. Then Bash finally says something.

“Is my family here?”

Wendy again seems to hesitate, but then she says, “No, I’m afraid not. But there are safe houses hidden throughout the town. Probably across the whole island. Don’t give up on them.”

“What about my mom?” I ask.

“She’s not here, Ollie.”

I knew this, but there’s an emotion in Wendy’s voice that scares me. I can’t place it, but it’s somewhere between sadness and terror. It’s gone when she turns, and her fake smile almost confirms the worst for me.

“No more questions for now, okay? Just rest. We will all be safe together soon.”

“Where are you going?” Sam asks.

Wendy laughs lightly. “To do the hardest job of all, of course. Someone’s got to keep all those kids entertained. You came in the middle of Wendy Pretendy’s Bendy Hour.”

The adults leave us locked in the archives. After a minute, I grab the lantern and head for the shelves of boxes.

“What are you doing?” Sam asks as I start scanning the alphabetical organizational system.

“We need to look for whatever we can find about a chemical spill that happened in the sixties. Look for anything about sickness or Easter Energy.”

“The company that owns that old ruin?”

“Exactly. If the adults don’t want to talk about it, we’re just going to have to figure out how to ask the right questions. We should hurry. I don’t know how much light we have. Bash?”

Now that a plan is forming, I expect Bash to bound through the shelves with his usual rambunctious enthusiasm, but he is on the mattress, curled on his side.

“Let him rest,” Sam says.

I nod.

We turn toward the archives and begin our hunt.

After two days in the archives, we find nothing. In fact, we find less than nothing. A suspicious lack of anything surrounding Easter Energy’s work on Anchor’s Mercy. It’s like the silence between the adults has swept ahead of us, erasing any trace down here long before our arrival.

The lamp lasts longer than we do, flickering out the evening of the second day so that we sit in pitch black on the mattress. Bash has barely moved the entire time. I keep a hand on his shoulder, rubbing gently.

When the door finally opens, it’s not Wendy like I expect, or Elisa.

It’s the person from before, but this time they hold up their own flashlight to light a face entirely out of place in the public library.

Without the white coat I almost don’t believe it’s her, but the cat-eye glasses are unmistakable, as is the red notebook tucked under her arm.

“Congratulations, you’ve been cleared of quarantine,” says Dr. Imogen Pfaff, director of the Anchor’s Mercy Institute of Oceanographic Studies. She drops bundles of clothes at her feet. Then she heaves in a bucket of soapy, sharp-smelling water.

“Sponge bath first. Then get changed and meet me in the office. First door at the top of the stairs. One at a time. Sam, you first.”

We take turns with the sponge. The water burns my eyes, and my skin prickles until it’s raw beneath the scraping sponge. We help scrub each other’s backs, then dress slowly. My entire body is sore from being curled up.

Sam stretches next to me. “You know her?”

“Yeah. I’ll explain later.”

Sam goes into the office first—it’s just the front office of the library. He’s inside for a long time, and then it’s Bash’s turn. He’s in there for only a few minutes. When I sit down, Dr. Pfaff says, “Your friend is in a state of shock.”

I nod. I know Bash. The boy curled beside me these past days is someone else.

“He will be okay,” Dr. Pfaff says. “Or he won’t. Honestly, I know more about nudibranchs than I do teenage boys.”

Dr. Pfaff has transformed the tiny office to suit her needs.

She has notes and papers everywhere, and countless books spread around her on multiple desks.

Her red notebook remains shut, under her folded hands.

For a few minutes she just examines me with a penlight.

Up my nose, down my throat, into my ears.

Then she makes me tell her every tiny horror that’s transpired the last few days.

When I describe the people we left behind at the maritime museum, she pinches her lips together.

“Did you tell them where you were going?” she asks.

“No. We just left.”

“Well, hopefully they don’t follow you.”

“They won’t. But … shouldn’t we attempt to get them? There was a family there, with children.”

“Townies or visitors?”

“Visitors.”

“How unfortunate” is all Imogen says, and then we sit in silence as she takes notes.

“Can I ask something?”

“No.” She spares only a glance over the rim of her cat-eye glasses before returning to her notes.

I ask anyway. “Do you know what’s happening outside?”

“Of course.”

“No, I mean, do you know the cause?”

“Why would I know something like that, Orlando?”

Dr. Pfaff looks at me for longer now, and even though I’m the one asking the questions, I can’t help but feel she is studying me instead.

I try to find my words, but I’m desperately thirsty.

And hungry. And the smell of bleach is still making my eyes water.

Every little sound in this building makes me squirm where I sit, and I suddenly want to crawl back into the dark.

Still, I do manage to say one thing.

“It’s coral, isn’t it?”

Dr. Pfaff halts in her note-taking but doesn’t respond. She asks her own question.

“You were on the mainland until recently, I’m told. You were with your mother, Grace Veltman. Where is she now?”

“We got back a few days ago. Or last week, maybe? Last Friday.”

“So she’s on the island, then?”

I nod.

“Do you know where? William told me she likes to collect shells. He said you were looking for her at a beach the day before the outbreak.”

I feel the terrible drift toward a conclusion I refuse to face. Dr. Pfaff reads the fear in my expression easily and offers a rare smile of sympathy. “I see. You don’t know.” Then it’s back to her notes.

Thinking about Gracie is painful. A blister on my heart. I tear my thoughts from her— she is fine, she is fine, she is fine —and drive the conversation back to the coral.

“I saw something else,” I realize aloud. “The day before everything happened, my aquarium exploded.”

This gets Dr. Pfaff’s attention. She sits back an inch and snaps off her glasses.

“My aunt was taking care of my aquarium while I was away. It was mostly corals. But I woke up the day after I got back, and it had exploded. And the coral inside was growing up the walls. And it seemed … aware of me, like it could sense me as I moved.”

I can still picture those tiny, translucent polyps opening up to my hand.

Reaching. Reaching. What if I had let them touch me?

Then I remember the slobber from Aunt Maddie’s eyes.

Did she infect me? I would know, right? Should I tell Dr. Pfaff?

No, I decide in an instant. My chant for Gracie becomes my chant for myself.

I’m fine, I’m fine, I’m fine.

“Listen, Orlando. You’re curious. I respect that,” Dr. Pfaff says.

She’s rooting around in her desk. “If I had information to share, I’d share it, but science is rarely a solo endeavor.

To that end, I’d like to give you something.

” She places before me a tiny machine I at first think is an old cell phone.

“It’s a voice recorder,” Dr. Pfaff says.

She shows me how to use it, hitting record so that a red light comes on.

“This is Dr. Imogen Pfaff, the time is 7:43 p.m. on July twenty-seventh. Anchor’s Mercy Public Library.

” She plays it back and we listen to her tiny, digital voice crackle from the speaker.

“See? Simple,” she says. “I understand you’re close with William. Or Wendy. I don’t know what you call him. And I know you can tell much is being hidden from you. I was wondering if you might accept a mission for me, in the name of science.”

She holds out the recorder until I take it.

“Listen. Observe. Report back. I know all too well that you and your friends are experts at being where you shouldn’t.”

“You want me to spy on Wendy Pretendy?”

Dr. Pfaff’s smile is cold, her eyes lightless. “I want you to spy on all of us. Who knows, your ears might hear things mine cannot, but all data matters if we have any hope of surviving. Don’t think of it as spying. Think of it—”

“As science,” I finish for her. Whether she knows it or not, she has confirmed my long-held suspicion that there is more to Anchor’s Mercy than the story we like to tell our guests. The recorder goes into the pocket of the hand-me-down shorts I’ve been given.

“Now come with me,” Dr. Pfaff says. “It’s time for you to meet our apocalyptic ecosystem.”