Page 34 of The Dead of Summer

We found it.

We actually found it.

The mythical report—the research Doro D’Oliveira lost her life trying to protect—now has a name: The Slow Water Report .

Floating in the dark, our breaths loud in the shell of the whale skull, I hear the echo of what Scary Mary told us behind the library.

I was there when the water went slow in the pipes.

The two pieces of the puzzle ping against each other, fitting together in my mind to form a theory.

Doro’s research into the past of Anchor’s Mercy would have brought her to the few surviving elders of the island, including Scary Mary.

I’m desperate to tear through the pages, but first Elisa and I need to focus on the much more important problem: getting out of this animatronic death trap.

One at a time, we slide from the slimy whale lips.

We hang in the murky water, listening to make sure no one is in the aquarium with us, and then we heave ourselves out of the tank.

Even if we’re alone right now, those guards are likely to circle back any moment.

Whatever we do next, we’d better do it quickly.

And we’re not going to get anywhere fast, soaking and shivering like this.

I point with my eyes. Gift shop.

We peel off our prisoner uniforms, exchanging them for the finest merchandise AMIOS has to offer. The only shirts that fit are cheesy T-shirts featuring marine life and puns. Elisa reads mine aloud.

“ All Is Whale? Really, Ollie?”

“I think the little embroidered humpback is cute.”

Elisa laughs as she puts on a bucket hat.

Despite the tension, it’s clear she’s in a good mood, or maybe just an excited one.

I feel it, too. Our search took us all the way through the end of the world, down into the gullet of a horrifying whale puppet, but we now hold between us the long-awaited answers to the greatest mystery of our childhoods.

Or at least some answers. Despite Elisa’s bolstered mood, I can’t help but feel like the report will contain more questions than keys.

“We need something to protect these documents,” Elisa whispers, clutching them to her own shirt (it shows an embroidered crab and reads NO HUGS CLUB ). “The bin my mom put them in is about to fall apart.”

“What about this?” I hold up one of the giant metal AMIOS-branded tumblers. The kind that can survive everything from a blowtorch to being run over by a tank.

With care, Elisa rolls up the documents and slides them into the tumbler, screwing on the lid.

She keeps the lighter in her hands, though, clumsily popping it open every few seconds.

The years have shrunk it in her grip, but she manages to get a few sparks out of it every other try.

When she does, her eyes crackle with satisfaction.

Somewhere in the building, a door bangs shut.

Elisa and I lock eyes, and a silent discussion occurs.

What do we do? We’re both eager to read the report, but the clues inside won’t do us any good if we get caught.

Hiding is out of the question—they’ll find us eventually no matter where we go.

So, outside? The only windows in the building look out over the coast, but the activity down in the bay seems to have halted as jeeps race up toward AMIOS.

My ears pick out a siren rising distantly. An alarm, maybe.

We nod. It’s decided. First run, then read.

We grab a backpack from the shop (shaped like a shark, of course) and shove whatever we can inside—a towel, a lobster bottle opener, two hermit crab key chain flashlights, and granola bars.

Then we slink to the front doors. Thank god they lock from the inside.

Through the glass we glimpse the dusk settling on the marsh beyond.

“Ollie, I hear people,” Elisa whispers.

We crouch behind the front desk, which is shaped like the bow of an old fishing boat. In the dark I notice the red lights blinking on the security cameras in the corners. Then, with a buzz, the lights of the lobby burst to full brightness. All of them.

That’s our cue. Time’s up.

We dash through the glass doors just as the world outside turns a dusty blue.

The sunset is nothing but a glowering ribbon wound through immense black clouds, but it’s still not dark enough to hide us.

We only make it ten steps on the main road before someone shouts, “EYES ON TARGETS! MAIN ENTRANCE! THEY’RE ON FOOT! ”

The shout comes from the roof. Bullets bite the pavement at our heels as we sprint for the marsh.

In the final scarlet light, the expanse before us is a maze of cordgrass hills and channels carved into the glittering black silt.

The tide is out! That’s just the luck we need.

We dive right in and it’s not long before the flashlights follow.

More men, more shouting, but they don’t know the marshland like we do.

One wrong step and your entire leg is swallowed by the stinking mud.

The shouting turns to cussing, and I allow myself to smile as we scuttle along the grassy edges where the mud holds best.

We manage to put some distance between us and AMIOS, but we’re not safe yet. The edge of the forest is nothing but a black mound in the distance, and anyone with a map will know where we’re running. Our only hope is to get there first, and get there fast.

Something else is bothering me, though. Where are the weepers?

I shove the thought down. I focus on staying low.

Slime fills my shoes, sand grits between my knuckles.

Our path can’t be a straight one if we don’t want to get shot, and in the moonless night it’s almost impossible to figure out which way to go.

We use the red lights of AMIOS to orient ourselves as we carve an unsure path to freedom.

Soon we’re passing the perimeter of torches I saw the night we were escorted here, and that’s when I catch the gleam of a smooth helmet hiding in the grass.

Between us and the distant forest, five guards rise from the dark.

“Stop running. We have you surrounded.”

The voice is firm. A woman behind a white Easter helmet, leading the ambush.

Elisa and I back against each other, breathing hard.

The guards raise guns like the ones we saw before—flamethrowers exhaling gasoline that causes the air to twist. It makes the guards look like wraiths of the marsh as they close in on us.

Elisa hugs the souvenir tumbler to her chest. The report will survive the fire, but we won’t. It will be swallowed into the silt of the marsh, melted into our blackened skeletons.

“Target’s secured. Awaiting orders,” says the leader.

In the silence that follows, I hear a far-off keening, and it’s coming nearer.

At first I think it’s a bird, or many birds, but at our feet the pools of seawater shiver, and the wind curls with a familiar aquarium rot I’ve come to associate with weepers.

Something is approaching on foot. Something massive.

“We need to run,” Elisa whispers.

“No.” I hold her still. “We need to vamp.”

“They’re gonna melt us like marshmallows.”

“Just trust me.”

The leader must receive her orders because she repeats them in an emotionless bark.

“LIGHT ’EM UP! DIRECTOR’S ORDERS.”

“Wait!” Elisa thrusts the tumbler into the air. “Tell Pfaff we have something she needs.” The guards halt, keeping their flamethrowers on us as they wait to see what their leader says. Elisa repeats herself. “Tell your director we have found the report of Doro D’Oliveira.”

The leader raises a hand, stretching the moment into an excruciating eternity. All we can hear is the throaty gasp of the flamethrowers breathing their acrid exhaust. I try to see into the dark, and I think I catch something passing in front of the torches. It’s close now.

“Get ready to run,” I whisper.

“Oh, so you want to run now —”

A guard to the left suddenly falls back, her cry crushed from her lungs with a wet thud.

The guards nearest to her turn, letting forth plumes of fire that catch in the cordgrass, but nothing hides behind them.

Then, from the right, there’s another shout and another thud.

The squad whirls around, baffled, and all at once the night explodes with fire and screams. Human screams, and the screams of something else.

Something crying out from many mouths at once, all fused into obliterating unison.

I grab Elisa’s hand. “Run!”

We only make it a dozen steps before one of the guards—the leader herself—tackles me, but it’s two on one.

I drive the leader into the mud, pinning her weapon between us.

Elisa cracks the tumbler against the leader’s perfect white helmet, shattering the faceplate inward.

Blood joins the stink of gasoline, but before I can see if the woman is dead, a cord of pure pain ensnares my leg.

I scream, reaching for Elisa. I know this pain.

It’s the stinging tendril of a jellyfish, but I have never felt it like this.

I see that a translucent tentacle clings to my bare calf, extending back twenty feet into flaming marsh.

It squeezes, as tough as a tongue, oozing venom down my skin.

Pulling is pointless; whatever on the other side is reeling me in with a steady, unstoppable strength.

I roll, thrusting my leg into the nearest patch of fire—anything is better than the white-hot sting soaking through my nerves—and the tentacle releases me.

Flailing, it clings to the next nearest body.

The leader. Instantly, she’s yanked into the marsh, her scream crushed into her throat by whatever catches her.

Elisa pulls me up, and together we drag my throbbing leg out of the fire’s reach. The seawater puts out the worst of the pain, but I can see angry blisters already forming on my calf and knee.

“All is not whale,” I groan into Elisa’s shoulder.

“We’re almost there. We’re almost at the road,” she huffs.