Authors: Erin Bowman
She races belowdecks to retrieve it while the rest of us return our attention to the last two Order members on shore. No sooner have we taken them out than the threat behind us gets worse. The Order ship is now close enough to fire bullets, and they ping against the
Catherine
’s deck. I can even make out the faces of the shooters. There is a man in the forefront, shouting savagely. He has a thick beard, a bald scalp, and livid eyes, one of which is as foggy as morning mist. Marco. Frank’s go-to man. A man I eluded when I ran from Taem, and again when I returned for the vaccine. A man I’m terrified I may not elude a third time today.
He smiles, as if to say hello, and then aims his handgun directly at me.
He fires.
I don’t know where my father comes from. I don’t even remember him being near, but he is in front of me now, and then falling against my chest. His hand goes to his jacket and it comes away bloody, so bloody that I know even if I get him to shore there is nothing Emma can do to make this right.
Owen coughs out my name.
“Pa?” I shout, shaking him, but he can barely keep his eyes open. “No. No-no-no, don’t do this, Pa!”
His bloody hand grabs at my jacket; his breathing grows ragged. I hear myself screaming, feel Sammy dragging me, his arms hooked at my elbows; but I see only my father, lying on the deck and gasping for air. I need to get him to shore. I need to put pressure on his bleeding chest. I need to send an arrow directly between Marco’s eyes for taking him from me.
I struggle against Sammy, but somehow he is stronger. I’m lugged away from the bullets, away from a man I only met a few months ago, a father I’ve never been able to truly know. He is going to die alone on a sinking ship, end up at the bottom of a watery grave. I won’t even get to bury him.
“We have to jump,” Sammy shouts. He climbs the railing of the
Catherine
and I realize for the first time how unnatural its angle is. “Gray! Are you listening? Now!”
I glance away from my father, toward the stairwell. “Bree.”
Sammy’s face is blank and I know what he’s thinking. But I’m not about to lose two people in a matter of minutes.
“I have to try.” I tell him. “I can’t
not
try.”
His mouth hardens. He gives me a quick nod and jumps, plummeting into the icy water. I make for the stairs, sliding from the severe angle of the ship. I have only managed to descend half the flight when I am greeted by water.
The
Catherine
is flooding.
IT IS COLD.
Freezing.
I am shaking by the time the water crosses my ankles.
Every instinct tells me to turn around, but I force myself forward. My breath comes in short, panicked gulps as the water gets deeper, covering my knees, waist, now chest. I shout Bree’s name but I hear only the sound of rushing water forcing its way into the ship, swallowing it whole.
I head for the storage closet, not knowing where else the raft could be kept. The heavy sliding door is still open on its tracks. I wade up to the frame and there’s Bree against the far wall, the water creeping toward her chin. She’s convulsing with cold and tugging at something beneath the surface. A half-submerged shelving unit has fallen right in front of her.
“The raft stuck on it?” I shout, heart sinking.
She looks up. “No, I g-got it already.” She lifts a compact, yellow bag from the water, its shoulder strap already looped over her chest. “You p-pull the tab t-to inflate it.”
“Whatever, let’s get off this thing.”
She tugs again at something beneath the water. “My leg. The shelves. Wh-when the ship went s-sideways.”
I realize then how close the unit likely came to hitting her when it toppled. How its metal frame nearly has her pinned against the wall, and how beneath the water, where I can’t see, it’s somehow holding her in place like an anchor. I take a deep breath and dive. The water is so cold I can’t control my exhale and I shoot back to the surface.
“Gray, just g-go,” she says, teeth knocking. “T-take the raft and—”
I dive before she can finish. This time I make it to the floor, feel along the shelving unit’s frame. It’s lying right across her ankle—not crushing her foot, but pinning it so that she can’t twist or rotate her leg enough to free herself. I grab the edge of the unit and pull upward. It’s heavy.
Too
heavy. And I’m running out of air.
I resurface. The water level is at Bree’s lips now, her head tilted back so she can breathe. “G-go,” she says. “Before it’s—”
“Pull with me this time.”
Down again. I plant my feet against the floor, grab the edge of the shelving unit, and push off, like I’m trying to take it to the surface with me. The salt stings my eyes, and my lungs burn in my chest, but when Bree helps pull, we manage to raise the shelves a fraction of an inch. I can feel her twisting her leg beside me, trying to free her ankle. My lungs are screaming. Static darts into the corners of my vision. I pull harder, push off the floor with all my remaining strength, and the unit lifts a bit more. It’s enough. I feel Bree slip free, let go of the shelves. I drop them as well and resurface, gasping.
With the raft still slung over her shoulder, Bree lunges at me, hugs me around the neck.
“Gray, I—”
“Come on.”
I grab her hand and head for the hallway. I know what she wanted to say, and even if I didn’t, we don’t have the time to spare for thanks.
When we reach the main stairwell, the water is surging in so aggressively it feels like we’re walking against a wall. I can barely move my legs. Bree can’t take another step. I help her, but she’s suddenly so heavy. I pull. And I pull. And we somehow make it onto the deck.
Here the flurries have become a full-blown blizzard. If the Order vessel is still nearby, it is impossible to tell. The world beyond our ship is a whirlwind of thick flakes, the sky now dark. We crawl against the awkward angle of the deck, climb over the railing of the
Catherine
, and after hooking our arms together, we jump.
My feet hit the water so hard I feel it in my back. We plummet as though we wear extra weight. The water is biting my lungs again. I can’t tell which way is up. Bree has stopped kicking. She’s become an anchor and she wants to bring me to the bottom.
I fumble with the raft on her shoulder, my eyes burning. I can’t find the tab she mentioned. My boots are too heavy. My clothes tug me south.
We are trapped. Water is everywhere.
Ice.
Freezing.
Frozen.
We are going to die here. Drowned. The two of us. Going down with my father. With Isaac and his ship.
I find something protruding from the flattened raft—a loop large enough to hook my fingers through. I pull it.
The water around us fills with bubbles and we’re jerked upward as the raft seeks out air. We break from the surface and I am gasping, shaking uncontrollably. Bree isn’t breathing. I somehow manage to roll her into the raft, somehow manage to get myself into it as well.
I blow air into Bree’s lungs. I push on her chest, which is pointless in the soft-bottomed raft. I try to revive her again, cursing her, shouting at her. She must hear me calling her a coward for dying because she coughs a mouthful of water onto me. Her eyes flutter open and she is shaking once more. She looks like she wants to say something but her lips are trembling too violently. I turn my back on her and begin paddling toward the sound of breaking waves because the snow is too thick to see land. By some miraculous stroke of luck, we wash ashore. The team is nowhere in sight.
“Bree, come on,” I urge, my teeth knocking. “We have to move.”
“C-cold,” she stutters. “Too c-cold. Can barely move.”
“That’s why you have to.”
She shakes, trembles.
“Dammit, Bree. Move your feet!”
And at the order, she does.
Flames still eat at the two destroyed cars. We stumble toward the undamaged one, which sits before a crop of trees. I pull the back open, my hands shaking against my will. The vehicle is loaded with gear: sleeping bags, blankets, Order packs, spare uniforms. These cars weren’t planning on returning to the lookout point.
I go to the front. There are keys dangling near the wheel. I watched Bo drive before, and we don’t have to go far now, just enough to be safe for the night. I’ll have to manage. We’ll freeze to death if we waste time looking for the others, and for all I know, the Order is already on our tail.
“Get in,” I tell Bree. She does.
I turn the key as I saw Bo do in Taem. The car roars to life. I step on the pedal. The vehicle growls, but doesn’t move. I press my foot down harder.
“Sh-shift,” Bree says. “Shift it to
drive
.”
I follow her eyes to a lever between our seats. I move it as she instructed, and this time, when I put pressure on the pedal, the car lunges forward.
We drive—no, lurch—following the Order’s tire tracks from when they first ambushed us. I take a sharp turn, leaving their path, and head into a field of stiff, tall grass. Everything is gray and lifeless under the snowfall. I watch a compass mounted near the shift lever so I’ll know how to find the beach again later. There is hot air blasting from vents behind the wheel, but it feels like the most feeble form of heat, too weak to penetrate the icy shell that is settling over my body.
I don’t stop driving until the field dips low enough to keep us hidden from anyone passing by way of the Order’s original tracks. The snow and wind should cover our own in time, making us invisible. I get out of the car, hands still shaking, and pull the gear from the back. My teeth chatter. My body wants to seize up, stop working, but some innate drive orders me to hurry, tells me what to do and in what order.
I blink, and I’ve lined the back of the car with sleeping bags. I blink again and I’ve turned the vehicle off, shut all the doors to lock the heat within. I blink a third time, and I’m stripping off my jacket.
“Take your clothes off,” I order Bree.
She’s just standing there shaking, her hair wet against her neck, her face so pale she already looks dead.
“Bree!”
“C-can’t . . . I can’t.”
“You
can
. You can do anything I can do.”
And something in those words wakes her. She pulls off her jacket and tugs her shirt overhead. And then another layer, and another. She fumbles with her pants but her trembling fingers can’t manage the buttons. I help her out of them. I take her boots off, too. And her socks. I dry her hair as best I can with a blanket, help her into one of the spare Order uniforms, and send her into the warmth of the car.
My fists are cramping up. I can barely move, barely breathe. I’m so cold I think my lungs might freeze solid, shattering when I take my next breath. I pull off my shirt, my pants, everything. I force my cramping limbs into dry clothes and crawl back into the car.
I lie down alongside Bree. She is shaking uncontrollably. I’m shaking, too.
“Bree?”
There’s something else I want to say, about body warmth, and staying near each other, but I can’t form the words. I nudge closer to her, pull her into my chest, wrap us in the blankets. I hold her until our convulsions turn to trembles, which turn to shivers that finally fade.
It takes a very, very long time, but I finally feel warmth. It starts in my chest and spreads to my torso, then knees, then toes, and it is as I fall asleep that I no longer fear I won’t wake up.
WE RISE WITH THE SUN.
The storm has left no more than three inches of snow on the ground, meaning it must have arrived in a hurry and died out nearly as fast. Our clothes, which I draped over the front seats last night to dry, are still stiff and damp with salt water. We’ll be wearing the Order uniforms for a while longer.
Bree nurses a fire to life, a blanket pulled tightly around her shoulders, while I dig through the car and assess supplies. Our personal gear—bags, tents, weapons, additional clothes, matches, flashlights,
everything
—was in the lifeboat that Xavier and the others escaped on. I find some wanted posters with my face on them in the car and pass them to Bree. She adds them to the fire, which is smoking from the mostly green wood she’s had to use for the base. Still, it’s emitting warmth, and for that I’m grateful. A blanket, no matter how you wrap it, is not terribly warm. We need jackets. Underwear wouldn’t hurt either, given how damn stiff the uniforms are.
“Do you think they made it?” Bree asks.
“They had to. If we don’t believe they did, we’re already doomed.”
“And Sammy?”
“He jumped when I went back for you. If he got to shore and found the others, he might have had a chance. They had extra clothing, could have started a fire and made sure he was dry. If not, I don’t see how he would have survived the night.”
Bree bends to blow on the flames. I’m glad she hasn’t asked about my father yet. I don’t have the strength to even think about him. When she glances back at me, her face is softer than I’ve ever seen it. There is no scowl on her lips, no harsh angle to her brows.
“Last night,” she says. “I was so cold my hands wouldn’t work. And it hurt to breathe. I couldn’t . . . I’m sorry I wasn’t—”
“Stop it. You were fine. You were perfect.” She messes with the fire a bit more, avoids my eyes. “I mean it, Bree. I wouldn’t have made it through last night if it hadn’t been for you.”
“Me?”
She straightens up, scoffing. “You were the one who did everything. You got me off the ship, you revived me on the raft, you set up the blankets—”
“And you kept me warm. All that stuff I did earlier? It would have been pointless if I’d frozen to death during the night. I kept you alive, and then you kept me alive. We kept each other warm. We got through it together.”
She forces a smile, a tiny lopsided one. Her braided hair has dried in an odd manner, half of it clumped at the side of her neck in a mangled knot, but she somehow still manages to be stunning. It’s her lips in that smile. Her chin, held defiantly high. It must require her to stifle every ounce of her pride, because she’s frowning viciously when she adds, “I’m glad we’re talking again.”