Page 26 of The Dead of Summer

“No water, no water!”

“I know, I know, I know ! Use this!”

“Will it work—”

“Just do it!”

Something pours over my face, and pain sizzles into my eyes and up my nose, and I can’t stop myself; I finally take a breath. I cough it back up. The world tastes like lemons.

Hands. Hands all over me. Hands scraping at my face, my lips, my ears. Hands ripping off my clothes, my shoes. Hands dragging me across concrete.

I can’t see, pain like a scorching hand squeezing my eyeballs.

I wait to drown, but then I don’t.

I wait to cry, but I can’t.

I wait to hear Sam’s voice, but it never comes.

“Hit him again,” Elisa orders. I’m set on the ground again and lemon juice gushes over my head. Despite the burning, I keep my eyes squeezed shut.

“Open your eyes. Just for a second, Ollie.”

That’s Bash. I let him tilt my head back. My eyes flutter open. Elisa holds open my lids as Bash tips the remaining jug of lemon juice into my face.

This time, I scream. It’s a scream without sound, just a boom of anguish hurling itself out of my body. Elisa holds me upright until finally the stinging in my eyes fades, and when the tears come, they fall through the lemony stickiness, but they’re just tears. Tiny, salty beads of pain.

“You’re okay, you’re okay,” Elisa says, cradling my head.

Bash stands a few feet away, blinking back at the way we came. The empty jug falls from his dust-covered hands.

“Sam? Where’s Sam?”

We barely make it away from Main Street before the clouds crack open and lash us with rain.

Below my bare feet, the concrete turns slimy, no doubt due to the particles of fog hiding in the cracks.

Soon, we’re soaked, but I’m thankful. I stand below a leaking gutter, letting the dingy water drag the remaining slime from my hair.

Even after, I still taste lemon juice, but that’s better than a mouthful of congealed stomach acid.

I wait for my thoughts to turn euphoric, and my eyes to open wide with joyful tears, but I feel empty. That’s how I know I’m going to live. Sam is probably dead by now. The reality sinks into me with an unfathomable weight.

“We need to go back to the library.” Elisa uses her body to shield the radio parts. Bash has his arms wrapped around me, trying to warm me up.

“We wait for Sam,” I demand through chattering teeth. I’m in just my underwear because we ditched my clothes. The only thing I’ve got left is my watch and the tape recorder clutched in my hands.

“It’s been almost an hour,” Elisa shoots back.

“He’s alive.”

“If he’s alive, he’s hiding. Like we should be.”

Elisa is smart. I can feel that she doesn’t believe what she’s saying—that Sam has somehow both escaped and found a place to hide—yet she knows it’s what I need to hear.

It’s possible Sam found another way out—the door we entered through, for instance.

Maybe the fog never swallowed him. It’s not likely, but neither is the fact that I’m not a weeper right now.

“He could have gone back to the library,” Bash offers.

I love them both. They didn’t see what I saw.

The cloud of fog, the waltzing weepers, the immense tumor of coral rotting up the wall of the club.

All those details terrify me, but the thing that scares me the most was the way Sam shivered in my grip behind the DJ booth.

If I hadn’t found him there, I don’t think he would have been able to move. He was totally frozen.

Questions swarm through my mind. Would he have stayed hidden? Would hiding have been safer? Then I remember that it was me who decided to go into Scuttlebutt’s despite Sam’s hesitance, all because I was trying to hurry to Singing House. Did I kill Sam?

I step out of Bash’s embrace, feeling like no one should be touching me.

“Ollie, you’re okay,” Elisa says. “We got lucky this time.”

I can’t bear her comfort. I know she’s right, but it doesn’t make it any easier.

Whatever luck we share, it stopped just short of Sam, and I can’t escape how unfair this all is.

Sam wanted to be our friend. He tried so hard, and what did it get him?

If it wasn’t for us, he’d be out in that big house in the dunes, lonely but safe. Instead, he’s …

He’s gone.

I wonder what to even say. I wonder what my mom would tell me. Not Gracie but my mom, who put such weight into the words she spoke about those who are gone, and who are done speaking for themselves.

There are no words, I decide in this moment. Or there aren’t enough words. All we can do is keep going and make sure Sam’s sacrifice means something.

“The sooner we get this radio to Willy, the sooner we can get help,” I say.

Elisa and Bash nod.

We run as fast as we can, hoping luck hasn’t left us behind, too.

The rain pauses just as we reach the library.

I expect all the windows to be lit, a full-on search underway with spotlights lighting the sky, but all the windows are dark and the tower lights are down.

It looks like the library is asleep. I’m hesitant to wake it with the news of what’s happened.

For a few more minutes, the people inside get to steal precious sleep thinking this building will save them.

Sooner or later, though, the horrors of the island’s reality will burst through those doors.

I’m just sorry we’re the ones to have to bring it in.

We chart a course around the lawn, but not too close to the opposing houses that spill pale green light out into the night.

The back of the library is a gravel parking lot, but the only car is a run-down school bus covered in colorful graffiti, only ever in use for the parades.

Otherwise, there’s just a few storage containers. No weepers. We run for the side door.

Elisa reaches it first. The door doesn’t budge.

“It’s locked.”

The obviousness of this outcome is a shameful shock to all of us. Of course it’s locked.

I rush us around the corner, to the back door, but that’s locked, too. Obviously. With those lunatic book-ban zombies on the loose, the library would have implemented some bolstered security years ago.

Footsteps crunch on the gravel lot behind us. Human footsteps. Relief shines through my dismay. Sam, thank god! But then I hear the click of a gun cocking.

“Don’t even think about— Oh, Jesus Christ, Ollie. What are you three doing out here? Why are you naked?”

It’s Willy. He’s wearing goofy pajamas and bright yellow gloves, and a ring of keys dangles from his hands as he hefts his rifle over his shoulder. At first he looks surprised, and then he looks angry. Then, after a brief confusion as he counts us, he looks worried.

“I thought you guys always stuck together. Where’s the new kid?”

I’m back in archive-jail, but this time I’m alone. Through the door I can hear Elisa and Bash receiving the scolding of a lifetime in the hallway. “You knew the rules! You were explicitly told!” Willy’s voice presses through the wall, and I absorb it as I sit in a damp huddle.

I can’t help but think that the last time I was here, the space was cramped and hot. Sam was right beside me, on his back, arms thrown over his head, feet kicked up against the wall. Even in the dark, I could see him so clearly. It’s like he glowed.

I wipe at the tears with the back of my hand.

I don’t know why, but I keep listening to the recording I took on the dance floor.

Somewhere in the swell and crash of the weepers’ hymn are Sam’s final breaths.

If I listen hard enough, maybe I can be there for him.

As an act of exploration, I let my hands spread across the mattress in front of me and I play along.

Two hours into my sentence, the door finally opens, and a cup of water awaits me on the floor, next to another bucket of bleach-water. When my spit doesn’t turn the water to slime, Willy takes a step closer. He won’t hug me, though.

“If you die, I will kill you, Orlando, do you hear me?”

“I hear you,” I sniff.

“No one wants you three back here but me, understood? And I am furious with you. I am heartbroken for you.” Willy bends so he’s looking me in the eye.

“But, Ollie, I am thankful. The radio could be the key to everything. That’s the only reason you’re not getting voted out.

Still, it doesn’t excuse you guys taking such a huge risk.

And Sam …” Willy catches himself before the emotion can crack his voice in two.

“Just wash up, okay? And here, these are the only clothes we’ve got left. And Dr. Pfaff needs to see you.”

Willy has handed me my old outfit back—my Pizza Monster shirt, cargo shorts, and shoes that were confiscated when we arrived.

Washed and dressed, I’m back in Dr. Pfaff’s office as she finishes her notes on the accounts given by Elisa and Bash.

We must have arrived in the middle of some important work, because for the first time I see the red notebook spread open.

The pages unfold outward in a complex way, and I realize it’s not just a notebook.

It’s a scrapbook. At a glance, I see a massive map of a building, and a red line traced through it, but when Dr. Pfaff sees me looking, she folds it up brochure-style and slaps the red book shut.

“Orlando. I didn’t think I’d be seeing you back here so soon.”

She pulls on gloves—not medical ones, but the kind people use for cleaning, like Willy was wearing. I guess that’s all they’ve got. She does her tests, scraping at the tissue in my nose, shining a light into my eyes.

“It was an accident,” I finally blurt. “We were in Scuttlebutt’s and we thought it was safe, but then the lights woke up the weepers.”

Dr. Pfaff shushes me. “I’m sorry about Sam, too, Orlando, but there is the chance he survived, just like you did.

We make no assumptions. Now, do you have anything to report to me?

Your friends already told me about the radio.

That’s interesting, but is there anything you, specifically, have to tell me? ”