Page 41 of The Dead of Summer
Just like Elisa says, the mist clears by the late afternoon and the sky fills with the thwap thwap thwap of helicopters.
It’s impossible to know if we covered our tracks well enough in the sand, so we make sure we’re ready for the moment Easter’s forces arrive at Sam’s house.
It happens right as the sun sets, with a centipede of vehicles rushing down the driveway and trampling the lawn to make sure we’re surrounded.
We know there’s no point in resisting, so we stand on the back porch, hands raised, and let them load us—separately—into the caravan.
Before that, we sat and watched the sunset together on the deck, pointing out every little color to one another while we told old stories.
New stories, too, like the time Bash saved my life with lemonade, and the time we watched the most powerful drag queen on earth run an apocalyptic library like the navy, and the time the staff of Pizza Monster broke their non-delivery rule to answer a distress call in the dunes that became a slumber party at the end of the world.
And even though we try to write it into a myth, none of us can get through the story about how Sam came into our lives, changed everything, and then vanished.
The injustice is too fresh, and Sam’s ghost feels too close, like at any moment he will rush in with that goofy, promising smile on his face.
But we checked every room of this big, lonely house. Sam never made it home.
Before the capture, and before the sunset, when the afternoon sun had just begun to burn away the mist, we sat on the floor of Sam’s living room and we made a plan.
Like most of our schemes, it’s a bad idea taken incredibly seriously.
It starts with spreading all of Doro’s notes around us, then bottling it all back up in the souvenir tumbler.
It ends with a walk back to the beach, a deposit in the evidently indestructible cooler, and then a spontaneous art project: First, we find branches of driftwood and construct a tiny, twisted tree, then we commence a scavenger hunt for the best stones and shells.
We use what we find to make an X , like an old pirate map.
A promise that there is something to be found here, for the next person who dares to look.
And before all that, when the mist still bearded the beach and we felt like just three kids outside time and space enjoying a snack on a cloudy day, we held hands and reminded one another of the world’s most fundamental and unbreakable rule.
Suds stick together.
Suds stick together. I repeat our motto in my head as I try to slow down my breathing. I’m in the back seat of a van, a bag yanked over my head, a gun jabbed up against my ribs.
“Orders?” a man asks. Not me, obviously.
Another man says, “Keep that hood on him. We don’t know if they’re contagious.
The director wants them brought right to isolation while we finish transferring the rest of the stock to Embrace .
Whatever you do, do not let them communicate.
The way the director talks about these three, it’s like they’re telepathic. ”
I can’t help but smile under my hood.
“These are the kids that took out Barbara and her unit in the marsh?” the first man asks.
“Affirmative. Little pyromaniac fucks lit them right up. Bashed Bab’s helmet in, too. Truly sick.”
The gun digs into my thin T-shirt. They think we killed the guards who chased us into the marsh?
“That wasn’t us,” I start to say, but something blunt slams into my temple. I awaken seconds later to laughter and a nauseating ache that fills my mouth with bile.
“Do it again!” someone up front begs. “I missed it!”
I brace myself for another hit, but suddenly the vehicle swerves and all the guards are shouting.
“Did you see that?”
“What was that out in the marsh?”
“Too big to be a tank.”
The radios in the car whisper with static and, even in my delirium, I know the answer. I can barely hear through the shouting, but if I could, I know the chorus of screams currently charging the caravan would have lyrics, and those lyrics would be full of chapels, and love, and marriage.
Shit , I think. This is not the plan.
The men are yelling at one another. The driver swerves again, and the car is suddenly rumbling over uneven terrain. Someone is shouting, “Go, go, go!” And even through the hood I can see the glaring red lights of AMIOS filling the car.
While everyone is distracted, I grab at my hood and yank it off.
We’re almost there. We’re almost inside the walls.
We don’t make it.
The jeep is crushed from above.