Page 31 of The Dead of Summer

AMIOS has been transformed into a fortress of white sails and scarlet light.

We have been here for thirty hours, but it’s hard to use that word.

We. We is a bucket riddled with holes, people slipping out all the time.

Aunt Maddie, Sam, Willy—so many haven’t made it this far.

I can’t think about it for too long before I feel the drag of gravity pulling me away, too.

I hold on to whatever and whoever is left and hope our bucket doesn’t have much further to go.

The night we arrived at AMIOS, there was a smoldering glow across the marshlands and I wondered if the sun had decided to crawl back over the horizon.

Our bus, pinned within a caravan of military Hummers, rumbled past entire channels of marshland set aflame, then turned down a service road that approached the AMIOS campus from behind.

We were bound for the low cluster of science buildings that the public rarely was invited into.

The nearer we got, the thicker the scarlet glow became, until we were told to get off the bus and walk, at gunpoint, through a massive gate.

A camp of tents that is our new home waited in the lot beyond, the white vinyl bathed pink by stadium lights glowering overhead, flapping in the gentle ocean breeze. We stood under red clouds as they counted us. The marsh beyond was utter blackness speckled with flames.

What burned? Who? I asked myself.

We were safe, they said. Finally.

And then they closed the gates behind us.

At first they kept us together—it’s important to separate batches of survivors in quarantines, they said, implying there were many others already safe inside the camp.

Hearing that, I felt hope, and I shoved it away.

Just as bad as grief. I needed numb. In a featureless tent, white-suited scientists tested our spit, took our blood and urine, assigned us ID numbers, and let us scrub ourselves with cloudy water that itched in my eyes and nose.

Then, once they determined we were safe, they separated us.

It happened when I was asleep. One moment Elisa’s head was on my shoulder, and the next she was gone.

So far, people have been led away for all sorts of reasons—usually first aid. But the next time I saw Elisa, it was through a fence that cut through the encampment.

The encampment, I realized, was really two encampments. The word we had ripped apart yet again.

After two days of quarantine, we are permitted to meet the other survivors.

We’re led into a central ring of tents—taller, with heavy flaps for doors, and large tubes spilling across humming machinery that cycles the air.

Bash and I stay close to each other, expecting to be dragged apart at any moment, but when they herd us into the common area, he suddenly rushes away from me.

A woman’s cry fills the tent, sharp and joyful, and Bash vanishes into a hug.

His family—his mother, his father, his two little sisters—wrap him in a mess of grateful tears.

All around me people are crashing together, crying on one another, holding each other so tight that they fall to the ground in each other’s arms.

A memory flashes over my vision of the moment I left Willy behind, and suddenly I’m back in the mosh of all those weepers.

People, families, friends, interlocked forever in such desperate, happy embraces.

I stand still, my arms slightly lifted from my sides, ready for my own joyful reunion.

I wait for Gracie to emerge from the crowd.

“Ollie, dear, come sit with us.”

Mrs. Itani gently pulls me into their family hug.

And I know.

Gracie isn’t here.

This is all temporary.

That’s what they tell us. They, being the white-uniformed scientists who speak to us through plastic face shields.

Temporary, meaning that we will be evacuated to the hospital ship floating safely off the coast, the USNS Embrace , soon.

Soon, meaning forever. Time drags toward the moment we leave Anchor’s Mercy, and while others rejoice— we’re saved!

—I can’t share their relief. What about all the survivors still out there?

Who will save them when we go? I know we can’t be the last, but no new group ever makes it through quarantine after us.

For an hour at dusk and an hour at dawn, we’re allowed to leave the tents and sit in the courtyard.

That’s just the name people have given it, but in reality it’s a large circle of concrete at the front of the encampment, facing the gates.

It used to be the parking lot, but now the lampposts have been rigged with metal tubes and tanks that click and hiss, constantly exhaling a stream of shimmering gasoline.

I don’t need to guess what the machines do; the concrete below us is scorched black.

It’s just like Scary Mary said. Soldiers in white, like astronauts, with guns that throw fire as high as the trees, except all these guns are aimed at us.

The kids, not knowing better, use the scorch marks for made-up games.

I sit in the shade of the tent, against a fence separating the two camps. Elisa sits on the other side.

“Bash seems happy,” I tell her. I tell her this twice a day, when we meet here. I guess she has no one else on her side, either.

“Good. He deserves it.”

She says that every time, too.

And even though we never say the next part, I know we’re both thinking of our own families in the silent minutes that pass.

By now I’ve asked around for any hints about Gracie, but most of the people here were rounded up at the start of the outbreak from nearby houses, like Bash’s family.

We’re some of the only people who managed to escape town. It’s the same of Elisa’s side.

“I’m so glad my dad is on the mainland,” Elisa says, but I know she misses him. “I wonder if this is happening there, too?”

“I doubt it,” I say, looking at the AMIOS buildings looming over the camp.

There’s the nondescript science buildings where white-clad guards constantly escort frazzled-looking scientists between laboratories, and higher on the hill is the visitors center, where we used to go on school field trips.

I wonder if the fish tanks inside are still full of fish.

I remember a large room with a dropped center where all sorts of other animals were kept in a “living display” meant to simulate one of the island’s tidal pools.

Elisa must be touring her memories, too, because she asks if I remember the horrifying whale display.

“Of course,” I scoff. “Who could forget a giant fiberglass whale head half-submerged in murky green water, with blowhole misting action?”

“It had those buttons that made it sing, too.” Elisa laughs. “Remember when you broke it because you tried to use the buttons like a DJ booth?”

“Collab of the century.”

“No wonder Pfaff separated us,” Elisa says grimly.

We haven’t seen Pfaff since we arrived, but in a way she’s all around us via the guards in their strange Easter armor.

Even the scientists all look a little like her.

They say they came off the Embrace , but they don’t look like navy to me.

Like the guards, their lab coats are branded with Easter’s logo, too.

“If my dad knew I was here, he’d come for me,” Elisa says definitively.

I think about Gracie. Besides her, in the limbo of loss my heart seems to always be sinking in, she is joined by Willy.

Elisa reaches through the fence to calm my hands, which have begun playing a piano piece on the ground before me.

With a pang I realize the song in my head was yet again “Sweet Child O’ Mine. ”

“Are you thinking about Willy?” Elisa asks.

“No.”

I only lie because I know Elisa already gets why I’ve been so stuck on this the last few days.

I can’t help but read into the million moments between Willy and me that always substituted so beautifully for not having a dad.

Or not knowing one. But now, with this damn song playing in my head, I wonder if I had one all along, and if I knew him after all.

Gracie loved to say I was a treasure borne from her love affair with the sea.

I always thought this was a metaphor for some drunk mistake with a sailor, but now I’m not sure.

And it doesn’t matter. By blood or by water, Willy helped raise me.

I hold Elisa’s hand until the music is crushed in our grip. I don’t want to think about this anymore.

“Ollie, there’s something I need to talk to you about,” Elisa says right before the sun sets and we have to go back into our tents. “I’ve been asking around about why there are two camps, and it seems like most of the people on my side are from the mainland. They’re all visitors.”

“Weird. Our side is all townies.”

I expect Elisa to balk at the insinuation she’s not townie enough for the townie side, but she’s chewing on her next question.

“That’s what I noticed, too,” she says. “So I’ve been wondering: Why would Pfaff separate townies and visitors? And then I thought about Bash’s grandma. She was resistant to the infection, right? Why do you think that is?”

“Mercyfolk are a hardy bunch,” I muse.

“We both know it’s the opposite. We’ve got that poison in us already. That’s what my mom’s paper said.” Elisa lowers her voice. “Have people … have people on your side started to go missing?”

I shake my head. What is she getting at?

“It’s just that every day, they call a few names for random testing, but not everyone comes back. They pick loners, people without family mostly, like me. Why?”

“They said they were going to start transporting us to that boat. The Embrace . It’s a hospital ship.”

“I think something bad is happening to them,” Elisa says. “Experiments, maybe. I know that’s crazy, but if the scientists want to find a cure, they’d test on healthy subjects, right? People with no natural resistance?”

The red lights come on above us, and a siren announces lock-in for the night. We slowly rise, holding hands between the chain link.

“Ollie, I’m scared.”

“Don’t get picked,” I tell Elisa. “We’ll get out. I promise.”

Footsteps approach from my side. Bash stands there, a smile fading on his face as he sees us holding hands. He puts his hands on his hips, dad-style.

“Don’t tell me you guys are scheming without me.”

“Of course not.” Elisa’s laugh is painfully flat, betraying her fear. I know she doesn’t want to ruin Bash’s good mood now that he’s back with his family, but the boy hates to be excluded.

“Actually, you know what? I don’t even want to know,” he says. “Didn’t the library teach you guys anything?”

“That wasn’t our fault,” I say, but I sound just as unsure as Elisa. The truth is, I’ve replayed the events of the library so many times in my head that I’m not sure if we nearly ended the world or saved it.

“We’re finally safe, and you guys want to mess it up?” Bash asks.

The guards are calling us inside. Before Elisa goes, she gestures to the fence separating us.

“ We are not safe, dumbass. We know the truth about Pfaff. We will never be safe.”

Then she leaves.

Bash and I walk under the throbbing red lights to our own tent, but his good mood proves remarkably oblivious to Elisa’s worry.

I’m conflicted between trying to snap him out of it and just letting him coast for a few minutes longer.

After dinner (unremarkable airplane food almost certainly from the Embrace ), I take up his invitation to sit with his family.

His sisters, Lil and Yas, put our short hair into pigtails, and his parents tell me—not without a break in their voices—that they have always considered me a part of their family.

When the lights are lowered, and the world is only the dark red of the nightlights, Bash and I hang our hands off our cots and link fingers.

My thoughts drift from Gracie to Willy to Gracie to Sam to Gracie.

Back and forth, back and forth, my mind unwilling to linger too long in any one spot, as though something dark lurks just below.

Soon, though, I am too tired to tread the waters of my anxiety, and the thing below comes up to claim me.

Sinking into dreams, with my guard falling up and away, I do manage to ask: Was Willy my dad?

I sit up in bed, sweating through my sheets. Not the question, but the answer, burns in the inside of my skull. I don’t want to know, because if the answer is yes, then I just lost a parent. Another parent, maybe. My world keeps getting smaller.

I look at the cot next to me, where Bash is sound asleep with his hair still in pigtails.

His hand drifts in the emptiness between us.

I guess I let go. I tuck his hand under his sheets.

I am happy for Bash, and I’m grateful for his family, but Elisa is right.

Something here is very, very wrong. We are not safe.

What little is left of my world is up to me to save, and I can’t do that by ignoring my instincts.

At dawn, when we’re allowed outside, I go right to the fence. Elisa isn’t there. I wait, and wait, and wait, until the sun starts to burn the back of my neck, but she doesn’t show. Then, right before we’re called in, she jogs around the corner.

We grip our fingers through the fence. If we only have a few minutes, we need to make the most of it, so I try to speak fast and calm.

“I’m in,” I tell her. “Tell me what you need, and I’ll do whatever I can to help. We’ll leave Bash. Just for now. But we have each other.”

Elisa nods. The fire in her eyes doesn’t dim. “I already have a plan,” she says.

“Of course you do. What is it?”

“Do you remember when we faked those rashes to get out of square dancing in gym class?”

I remember the cartoonish pink spots we speckled one another with, and smile. “Yeah, we used my mom’s favorite lipstick.”

“It was a good plan, right?”

“We weren’t allowed back in school for a week. What made you think of it?”

“Because—”

Elisa’s eyes widen as she watches someone approach over my shoulder.

“Orlando Veltman?” a woman in a hazmat suit says, checking her tablet. “You need to come with us.”