The Smugglers of Stock Island

Lower Keys Medical Center, Stock Island

...this morning reiterated that they do not believe Bontragers can be spread through casual contact. “So far, every case has been traced through fluid transmission. And I want to make this clear....”

“Anything new?” Reagan asked the woman seated at the cluttered nurse’s station. Since the night the power went out on the islands, and almost went out in the hospital, none of the stations in the Lower Keys were transmitting, but they could still get public radio from the station up in Marathon, and the AM stations from the mainland.

The woman shook a defeated head. “They haven’t even mentioned us all morning.”

Reagan walked back to the Strattons’ room and muttered to himself, “Good.”

Charles Stratton was seated on the bed. His punctured left lung had collapsed, and the severed vein under his arm had nearly killed him, but he was healing. He could walk three flights of stairs. If he could stay on his feet for the rest of the morning, he just might make it out of the quarantine zone. After that, his survival would depend on his wife.

His wife... from what he had gathered, theirs was a shotgun wedding that Charles had regretted for the rest of his life. Something about Mary Stratton rubbed him the absolute wrong way. Still, while Charles grew increasingly quiet and sullen as the world he knew crashed down around him, Mary took it all in stride. It was not that Mary Stratton accepted the idea of collapse, it was more that she could not seem to fully process it.

For the last thirteen days, the presumptive fall of mankind had progressed according to its own schedule. Part of it he’d anticipated—a hastily erected set of barriers had let thousands escape the island, which had provoked a much tighter, much more violent cordon. Reagan thought it would prove too little, too late, but it still held for now—boats, jets, helicopters, spotters on the adjacent islands.

Part of the fall, however, he had not anticipated—two weeks and the island still had not been overrun with cases of this Bontragers disease. He’d only seen a handful of infections outside the hospital, but not all were violent, and no one at the hospital was using the word zombie. The radio reported suspected cases all over the country, but right now, the vast majority of the reports had proven false. If hysteria could kill, the nation was surely doomed. If not, then Reagan Castaneda would soon find himself in the awkward position of attempting to justify the impressive list of felonies he’d committed in the last two weeks.

All thoughts for later.

If the rest of the country remained safe, then the Lower Keys stood in sharp contrast. Unless something drastically changed, Reagan’s mental simulation worked out the same no matter how he crunched the data: dwindling resources, increasing violence, inevitable slaughter. The disease might simmer below the surface for a time, but the sheep were beginning to roll to an impressive boil. At that moment, the major obstacle to getting the Strattons away to safety was the healthy—the people still on Key West and Stock Island who were turning mean.

Mary knew little of all this, but what she did know, she filtered through a mind that only recognized her duty to her husband and daughter, and anyone she could touch with her motherly care and sunshiny disposition: Are the main lights going to go off again? We should get candles. We wouldn’t want any of the old folks to stumble finding the bathroom. The government just cut the satellite feeds? I better check on the Moores in room 226. Their son Travis is stuck up in Islamorada. They’re probably terrified.

In a few minutes, Reagan and the Stratton family would run the government blockade, and Reagan had no doubt that if she could, Mary would have packed them all lunches with a brownie wrapped in cellophane and a sticky note of love and smiley faces. Yet motherly did not mean impractical: How deep is the water in the channel? Will my blouse get wet? She even pushed her daughter’s head down, away from the window, during last night’s bombing, stroking her hair while the missiles struck.

Unfortunately, Krissy Stratton took after her father, not unlike many of the people that Reagan had encountered in the hospital and on the islands—nervous, emotional, weighted down with uncertainty. “Do they think I’m dead?” she would say, out of the blue, for the twentieth time, oblivious to the fact she’d asked the same question to the same three people only a few hours before.

Her parents couldn’t understand, and even Mary had become short. “A few more hours, Sweetie,” she said, frustration turning her soft voice hard, “and you’ll tell them how you’re doing yourself.”

Reagan understood. He only had a Facebook page starting his senior year in high school, and had only been on Twitter since a sophomore in college. On Sunday nights—his planning nights—he would set reminders.

Tuesday afternoon: notice something on the West lawn. Friday night: guys’ night out. Post something. Two of each. Look everyone. How normal am I?

But Krissy Stratton was normal, depressingly so, and her life had been lived in an echo chamber of posts, tweets, pics, and vids. Her life had been happy, shallow, and endlessly reassuring. Her life had ended the day they cut the feeds.

“They can’t do this!” she had screamed. “They can’t keep us here like this. We’re Americans!”

She hadn’t been on Mallory square when two boats full of them had tested the tightened cordon. Reagan had. She had no idea what was happening. He did. Reagan was not the only person who would have things to answer for when this was over. The world was changing—every day changed, and they were long, each day now feeling like two or three. So much happened that, by nightfall, Reagan remembered the mornings as if they were yesterday. Two weeks had felt like two months.

They weren’t Americans anymore. That much was clear. Three days after they’d arrived in the hospital, two jet fighters had blown the bridge between Stock Island and Boca Chica—US 1, the only road in or out. Key West, and its little eastern neighbor Stock Island, had been isolated from the United States—nothing in and nothing out. No one in the hospital, no one inside the blockade, had any rights or representation. The old rules had vanished, just as he knew they would. Anyone trying to escape would be shot, their boat scuttled.

Reagan and the Strattons were at ground zero, and that was the problem. Every good prepper knew how to survive a disease, the same way the wealthy Europeans had survived the Bubonic Plague.... Just leave. Get as far away from ground zero as possible and wait for nature to take its course. The hospital was the worst place to be.

Lower Keys Medical, the only hospital inside the quarantine zone, had been built to look like a Caribbean merchant house, as if with each hall you might turn the corner and find a concourse selling woodcuts and jerk chicken. They’d painted the walls the color of sand, with accents blue like the ocean. Sky lights and large windows let in the bright sun, casting a glow on the island-themed paintings in the halls, and the manila paper drawings from the nearby elementary school that hung in the waiting rooms and the cafe. Two weeks before, the ambiance was at least distracting, if not healing. Now, the hospital had become a shipwreck populated with desperate castaways.

Last night, they’d barely managed to get to sleep when the missiles struck, but even on the other nights, they’d slept only a little. The pallets they’d made on the floor provided thin comfort, and now that their phones and even the televisions had died, they had only each other to take their minds off the constant sounds of voices and footsteps in the hall. They could always hear the sound of crying. Always.

Reagan had been deputized, with some of the other men, as a sort of bouncer/orderly. This meant he knew how things were progressing with the outbreak. It also meant that nurses were calling on him for help at all hours of the night. Between that and his daily excursions to gather intel and prepare their escape—and now, for the last six days, his work with the smugglers—Reagan Castaneda had grown weary, near total exhaustion.

“The guards, the ones that come up and talk to you, are in big plastic suits,” he said, his voice low and serious. “They look like astronauts with guns. It’s kinda nerve racking, but you can’t look startled. Remember, it’s got to look like you’ve seen this before.”

On this morning, Krissy had dressed in capris and a thin white shirt that would be see-through once they entered the channel. Reagan had almost groaned, until he realized that her attire might serve as a moment’s distraction, if they encountered soldiers on the opposite bank.

“But why can’t we try for the yacht once we have the ID cards?” Mary stepped out of the bathroom and over the collection of clothes and towels that had served as a bed for Reagan. She snapped a rubber band around a ponytail on her light brown hair. With flat canvas shoes and cargo shorts, her arms hugging herself, and a look of girlish concern, she appeared hardly older than her daughter. “How do you know the highway will be any safer? If we could just get Charles to his boat, he could hide us in all those little islands. I’m sure he could.”

“Even if we could get to the yacht,” said Reagan, shaking his head, “and trust me, with all the ships around the harbor right now, we can’t. But even then, he might be able ditch the boats, but we would still have to deal with the aircraft that are all over the place. There are no civilian boats in the water. If we’re going out, we’re going on land.”

“Let’s just do what he says.” Charles Stratton had been sitting up in his hospital bed for the last several minutes. Dressed in another of his collection of Bermuda shorts and an aloha shirt, with a pair of Birkenstocks that Mary had helped him step into, he looked like the gaunt captain of a fishing rig, complete with the scraggly beard of a man who hadn’t shaved in half a month.

“You remember the story, Charles?” Reagan stood with arms folded like an inquisitor pronouncing sentence.

Stratton looked up with sunken eyes, each breath rattling in the back of his throat, and held the bandages where the knife had punctured his lung. “I’m going to let you do the talking.”

“If you don’t say anything, it will look suspicious.”

“Reagan,” Mary pleaded, “every breath is hard for him. I don’t even know how we’re going to get him across. If he has to say more than a few words, he’ll start panting again, and won’t that look suspicious?”

“No, you’re right. You’re right. Okay, Charles, save your breath. One-word answers. What have you been doing? You say fishing. If they ask where you, say Bahamas. I’ll be standing next to you at the registration table. I’ll try to do as much of the talking as I can.”

“You’re sure we can’t wait until he’s stronger.”

“After last night....”

Krissy whimpered, “This isn’t right. None of this is right. I’m going to tell everyone, when I get out of here—the news, YouTube, everyone.”

“Girls, it’ll be scary,” Reagan said, “but this is perfect. All the smoke from those fires... but even if it clears, it’s still got to be today. We’re going to be some of the last people registered on Boca Chica. If we can find the lady I talked to yesterday, our chances improve. I tried to set it up by saying that you guys had already left by car. We need to be sitting at the marina when they put out their tables this morning. We find her, and you guys just say that you spent all day getting the run around after you showed up at the checkpoint without your registration cards. If we do this, we have to do it today.”

“And if it’s already too late?” Krissy said.

Reagan shrugged. “Then we most likely get herded into a FEMA camp, and have to spend a week or two trying to use your dad’s connections to get out.”

Reagan put on his paper ‘orderly’ scrubs over his jeans and shirt, did a final inventory check, then repeated in half a dozen different ways why none of them could take anything more than a single change of clothing. “Wallets and cell phones in the bag. Everything else either fits in a pocket or stays here.”

“My Chambray button-down takes up almost no room.”

“Mary,” Reagan and Charles said in near perfect unison.

The hallways had devolved into the very opposite of peaceful or therapeutic, littered with human detritus. People lay on the floors outside of rooms. Nurses and doctors wearing masks and gloves shambled from one patient to the next. A little girl cried as she walked, but no one asked what was wrong or tried to help. Shouting, moaning, and sobbing contributed to a scene of fear and despair, layered on a foundation of utter fatigue, as if just outside a war had been lost and now they were waiting, one and all, to find out what fate would bring when the invaders came.

A nurse noticed Reagan in scrubs holding a black trash bag. “They’re going to need you in 214.”

“I’ll check on it in a minute, Rose,” he said, then nodded over his shoulder. “Gonna take the family outside for some air.”

Once they loaded into the elevator, Krissy asked, “What’s in 214?”

“Gunshot wound that’s acting funny.” He met Krissy’s gaze. “Doc Morenz has this test he gives, memory and reflexes and stuff. If the guy fails, some of the other orderlies will move him to the outbuilding.”

“What do they want you for?”

“The family.”

The first light of dawn showed through the smoke. The front parking lot, now free of cars, had become a single, extended triage center. Two open-air medical tents dominated the space. They had a few cots, but most of the injured lay on pallets no more comfortable than what Reagan and the girls had been using. The staff working the tents had passed out blue face masks, which nearly all the civilians wore. Everyone showing signs of dementia were housed in the outbuilding to the west. Doctors in flimsy, paper suits, most so weary of the routine that they no longer wore the masks, came and went.

On each side of the gate, they’d erected a wall of tent posts sitting in traffic cones, with tape wrapped between the posts—a visual barrier more than a physical one. Tendrils of smoke from what had been the Stock Island Marina seeped between people, trees, and buildings, trapped in the sticky, humid air, as if a disgusted giant were fumigating the island of all its loathsome humans. Even on the other side of the island from the marina, visibility had dropped to no more than three hundred feet.

“Perfect,” Reagan muttered to himself.

Two other orderlies were walking back from the parking lot entrance. One of them held a pump-action shotgun. The other dangled a flashlight. “Hey, Reagan,” said the bald one with the thick, dark beard. “Can you get my afternoon for me. Lights were on in the Community College. We spent the last two hours checking it out.”

“Nothing?”

He shrugged.

The one with the flashlight said, “Kids maybe. Hey, where you going?”

“Need to get these guys back to their condo. I’ll be back by the afternoon.”

The orderlies turned back to the hospital as Reagan and the Strattons walked toward the road.

The girls looked frightened. Charles watched his own feet as he walked, his steps uncertain.

The black LeSabre had parked on dirt next to the road. Reagan opened the passenger door and motioned for the others to get in back. While the girls settled Charles into the backseat, Reagan stripped off the scrubs and pitched them into the grass.

Inside the car, the driver smiled. He was young, with short-cropped reddish hair, light complexion, a set of mismatched teeth visible with every one of his smiles, and a tattoo of a playing card on the right side of his neck.

Reagan nodded. “Everything ready?”

“Sure is,” said the tattoo boy with a slow southern accent. “Beatty and Grant are up on the bridge in case we need to get their attention, like we did yesterday.”

“Their attention?” Mary asked from the back.

Reagan turned to her. “They threw some... um... some garbage off of the end of the bridge, kept the spotters looking while we crossed. We probably won’t even need that today.” Then, turning back to the driver and in a far more serious tone, he said, “Grant’s solid. Serious little bastard, but solid. Who’s Beatty? Do I know him?”

“The guy who had words for you that first night.”

Reagan leaned in. “The little fucker who almost got his teeth kicked out?”

The driver smiled all the more.

“Where are my manners?” Reagan turned around in his seat. “Strattons, this is Spade. Spade, this is the Stratton family.”

“Hi.” Spade looked at Mary, then at Krissy. His smiled faltered for half a second.

“Hello, Spade,” said Mary.

“Just start the car,” said Reagan.

Spade started the car.

“Spade,” Mary said, “is your family still on the island?”

His smile was uncertain. He turned back to his passenger. Maybe a woman as attractive as Mary Stratton had taken an interest in him at some point in his life, and maybe not. Either way, he’d seen what Reagan could do.

“No, Ma’am, it’s just me. I work on a shrimper. I’m sorry, Ma’am, on a shrimp boat, and my captain kinda made it sound like all of us would lose our jobs if we left. So, I stayed.”

“Well, that wasn’t very nice. I bet he wishes he had let all of you go now.”

Spade chuckled. He started to speak, but then noticed Reagan, who was looking at him and shaking his head. “Uh, yeah... yes, Ma’am. I’m ‘bout certain that’s true.”

When they reached Highway 1, Spade slowed nearly to a stop in order to navigate through the abandoned cars. The south side of the highway looked deserted. Once, Reagan saw someone wearing a surgical mask crawling out a house window, but otherwise, he saw no one. Some of the houses were shuttered, and some had sealed their windows with tarps. Cars sat with their doors opened, bicycles lay on the grass, trash cans lay on their sides, surrounded by the trash that never got picked up—this surrounded by hungry seagulls—and children’s toys lay strewn about a front yard. All this stuff of the “old world,” no one in the new world could be bothered to care about.

They drove through the neighborhood to the very southeast point of Stock Island.

Reagan had begun again to give advice for the crossing. “When we get to the other side, we have to change out of the wet clothes fast. If we get caught, just do what they say. They’re not going to shoot you.” He now had an echo. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw Spade looking at him as much as he was looking at the road. Spade had started coming in midway through Reagan’s sentences and finishing them in unison, as if he wished he had said them himself. “They change shifts right about sunrise.”

“...about sunrise.”

“That and this smoke are going to make it easy, a lot easier than yesterday.”

“...easier than yesterday.”

Reagan stared straight at him, and Spade held a smile that said he had no idea what he was doing.

The car stopped in front of a house that looked just like the others around it—single story, plain brick, of the sturdy blue-collar sort that dominated this part of the island. Spade turned to Reagan, and his smile never faltered.

Reagan twisted in his seat to look at where the Strattons sat, Mary and Krissy pressed against Charles, whose head was down. “You guys wait here.”

Mary looked as if about to say something, but only nodded.

A woman answered the door. She looked nearly fifty, her hair tight-cropped brown curls, her leathery face knotted in a look of suspicion. She wore a yellow raincoat over a paisley nightgown, and appraised at each of them up and down in turn. “Get inside.”

They followed her down the hallway at a respectful distance.

Two young men sat on a tweed sofa, both with guns—one a rifle, the other a shotgun propped up against the sofa. The one with the rifle was spooning beans out of a can, while the other nursed a beer. Neither one bothered to look up for very long.

The woman stopped suddenly.

Reagan stood at the mouth of the hallway with Spade in front of him, walls close on either side. If he had to move, his only escape would be back out the front door.

“I hardly got any sleep last night with all the noise,” said the woman, her voice a chain-smoker’s growl. “You ready for another crossing, Spade?”

“Yes, Momma.”

She looked over at Reagan with a little sneer that was somehow both a flirtation and a warning.

“So, this is it?”

Reagan lifted his gaze from the floor. “Sure is, Momma.”

“You not even gonna let me meet this little family of yours?”

“No, Momma. We’re a little pressed for time.”

Her smile showed yellowed teeth. “Rude. You’re a rude boy, Reagan.”

Reagan reached into the front of his waistband. He pulled out his pistol. From a pocket he drew the spare clip. “Two left in the mag. Nine more in the extra clip.”

“I’m supposed to accept this as your payment?”

“That and...” Reagan met her withering gaze flush on. His smile was both a flirtation and a warning.

“... And you not beating the shit out of any more of my boys. No, I get it. Rude boy.”

The two toughs on the sofa were now glaring up at him.

“You’re lucky you’re so God damn good looking. What do you think boys?” she called over a shoulder. “Do I have a shot?”

Her boys laughed momentarily. The one with the can of beans returned to his breakfast.

“Get him on his way, Spade.” Her voice was not angry. Even so, Reagan took his first three steps backwards before turning his back on the one they all called Momma Chic.

The street ended just north of the Marina. What had once been the marina. There had only been four boats left at the dock. Nnone of them serviceable. Still, the military took no chance that any of them would ever become that way again. At 1:30 that morning, rockets had destroyed the four boats and one of the buildings. All of the wrecks and part of the pier still smoldered. No one had come to put out the fires. The building fire had jumped to a neighbor overnight, since Reagan had first run to the sight and surveyed the damage. Both now billowed thick black smoke. In the distance, the water ended in a cloud of soot, like the crossing from some ancient Greek myth.

Perfect.

There was no sand at the water’s edge, the shoreline here a rough concourse of rocks and mangroves. Spade and Reagan got down on their knees and crawled to a mangrove stand more sparsely limbed than the others.

The girls helped Charles onto his knees, which took over a minute. The elder Stratton moved like a marionette with one of its strings broken. When he finally got down, he flinched at the touch of the gravel. His face flashed discomfort and something else.

“Is he okay?” Reagan asked.

“Not really,” said Krissy, her tone bitter and sardonic.

“We’ll be all right,” said Mary. “We’re going to take it slow. I’m worried about the water.”

The wind had started to pick up. For long seconds at a time, Reagan could now see the other side of the channel. He turned to Spade. “We push the raft out a few feet, and give the family time to crawl under.”

Spade nodded, smiled, then reached out to the thin mangrove stand, grabbed a branch, and pushed the entire knot of limbs out into the water. He then grasped a limb in each hand and slid down, his back rubbing against the rocks as legs, torso, head, and lastly hands disappeared beneath the leaves and branches.

Reagan checked the knot he had tied into the garbage sack one more time. Then he started into to the water and turned. “I’m going to be in the front. Krissy, we’re going to lift the raft. When we do, you get under quick. We’ll guide you into your spot. Mary, you’re coming last with Charles. We’ll give you two a few moments to get used to the water. Okay, Spade?”

“You’re the boss,” answered a muffled voice from the center the mangrove raft.

“When you guys are ready, say the word, and we’ll lift up the raft again. You’ll have to move fast. We don’t want to leave any part of this thing out of the water for more than a few seconds.” Reagan looked over to where the ominous section of demolished bridge would be if it were not obscured by smoke.

“C’mon,” he said to himself. “Just a few more minutes.”

Reagan slid down over the rocks, down into the cool water, and onto the bed of turtle grass that covered the shallows. He felt his way under the rear inner tubes, then worked his way into a squat, until his head touched the chicken wire. He floated the garbage bag into a tube in front of him. The mesh of wire had been bent out above the tubes, giving just enough room for Reagan to look through the collection of cut limbs jutting out of the wire.

Spade moved around a limb so that one eye and half a smile became visible. He flashed a thumbs-up.

They moved in unison, lifting.

Reagan said, “Krissy, go.”

She felt the water with a foot. “This is dumb. This is so dumb.”

“Just get in.”

She took two steps, then splashed in up to her waist

Reagan propped up the back, then grabbed her arm and pulled her down.

She sputtered water when her face appeared inches away from his. “Jesus, Cas.”

He paid no attention. “Gentle, gentle,” he said to Spade.

They set the rear tubes back on the water.

“Think of it like school,” he said without looking at her. “You’re sneaking out with the girls. It’ll be an adventure. Just like sneaking out with the girls.”

Back on shore, Mary helped her husband into the water.

Krissy looked on the edge of tears. “I think you’re lying.”

“Lying? What would I be lying about?”

“You don’t sound like you’re....” Her face curled up, disgust punctured with fear. “...sneaking out. You sound like this is dangerous. Really dangerous.”

“Of course, it is. We don’t want to get caught.”

“They shoot people, Cas.” She almost spat the words. “Everybody in the hospital talks about it. People are dying trying to get off the island.”

“Hey, Reagan—”

“They shoot at boats that don’t stop when they order them, Krissy. That’s what you’ve been hearing. If they find us, we give up. We stop. They won’t shoot if we stop.”

“Reagan—”

“But they won’t find us. This thing looks just like a clump of mangrove to the spotters. We go slow, and they’ll never even—”

Spade kicked him.

Reagan turned to see Mary and Charles up to their chests in the water, with Mary urging Charles farther and Charles flinching at the raft—the raft and the water. Even the pressure of Mary’s grip seemed to send him into a panic.

“He’s okay,” Mary reassured. She whispered into his ear, and he settled noticeably. After a moment, they moved again.

Reagan and spade lifted the raft, and Reagan pulled at Krissy. “Closer to me. Leave her back there with your dad.”

When they were all in, Reagan said, “Okay, everyone, just hold on to your tube and lift your feet. It’s real shallow through here. Most places you can touch bottom, but in a few spots it’s a little deeper. Just keep your feet up. Remember to keep your noses just above the water. Spade and I will do all the swimming.”

Even in the front, Reagan could hear Charles breathing. “It’s only a few hundred feet, but we can’t go too fast. If Spade and I stop, just try and be quiet. There’s a pair of poles running through the mesh. We’ll take them out and dig them into the bottom to keep the raft still. Just do what we say. It’ll turn out all right.”

When Reagan pushed up onto his toes, Spade began to paddle with one arm. Shortly after that, the two started to paddle in unison.

“I’m cold,” Charles said.

“A little loud back there,” Reagan hissed. “Mary?”

“We’re okay.” Then she said to her husband, “Sweetie, we’re okay. We are.”

The water grew deep, and Reagan paddled... slowly—a few seconds, and a powerful stroke with one arm. The raft drifted toward open water, and after a few more seconds, another stroke.

“I’m cold,” Charles said again.

“Mary?”

“He’s having trouble holding on. We’ll be okay when we get him out of the water.”

“I hate this,” Krissy said in a fevered whisper. “This stupid thing feels like a coffin.”

“Quiet down, Sweetie,” Mary said.

“Spade,” Reagan called out. “Speed up. We gotta take the chance. With me... faster.”

Spade’s smile wavered. “This ain’t nothin’,” he whispered loudly to the Strattons. “We took three kids over with us yesterday. Kids! They was just children. You guys shouldn’t worry.”

The whole raft bucked, and Reagan and Spade stopped paddling.

Charles disappeared under the water, and Mary stifled a cry. When he reappeared a second later, he took in great breaths as if he’d been drowning. Mary struggled to support him while holding her tube. “Reagan. Oh, Reagan! I think he’s going into shock.”

“What do we do?” Spade said.

Reagan motioned Spade for silence.

“She says he’s going in to shock.”

Reagan watched as Charles, breathing jackhammer breaths, looked at his surrounding as if seeing it for the first time. Stratton’s eyes narrowed and the skin around his nose pulled tight. For a moment, it looked like a wince, and then the older man bared his teeth.

“That’s not shock,” Reagan said.

“We gotta do something,” said Spade, his voice high-pitched with fear. “We ain’t even halfway and this whole thing is shaking.”

“Take them back.”

“They’re going to see, even with the smoke. They got drones and shit!”

“Take them back!”

“What?”

“Get them out of here.” Reagan grabbed Spade’s arm and snarled, “Get them back to shore.”

“We won’t make it. They’re going to be on us if he keeps this up. We got to get that guy to stop thrashing.”

“Like hell, they will. Mary,” Reagan called out. “Mary, Spade is going to take you and Krissy back. Charles will be with me.”

Spade craned his head to the water like an Indian in an old western listening to dirt for the sounds of approaching horses. When he spoke, his voice was pure fear. “I hear something. I think it’s a motor. I think it’s a motor!”

“If you hear shooting,” Reagan said, “ditch the raft and make them swim for it.”

“Reagan—”

“Stay with them. Now!” Reagan turned on Spade, his eyes filled with rage. “Move!”

Then Reagan went under. With a single thrust he shot into Charles Stratton legs, clutched the man’s ankles savagely,and ripped him down into the water. Even submerged, he could hear Mary shout. He spun the flailing man’s body around and dug both hands into his throat. When they touched the bottom, Reagan thrust up and back with both legs, driving them to the surface on the far side, outside the raft. He swam them both to a large copse of mangroves in the channel, the sounds inside the raft growing weaker. The entire way, Charles clawed at him with fingernails. Still twenty feet from the shelter of the mangroves, but now able to stand, Reagan spun him around, face to maddened face.

“I’m going to kill you, boy! I’m going to fucking kill you!”

Reagan simply clenched his teeth as hands that had laid brick for the last eight years squeezed.

Stratton’s face turned bright red and his eyes grew fish-large.

Reagan backpedaled the both of them up to the mangroves. When the water was waist high, he lifted Stratton up out of the water and said in voice that was steadied and resolved, “You lying sack of shit.” He gave Stratton enough of his throat to breathe.

The man gasped for precious air as, still thrashing, his movements began to slow. Part of his mind seemed to be considering his options but gave no answer.

Reagan gazed at him fiercely. “How many times did we talk about this? How many?”

Stratton turned his eyes to the water, and pulled his arm in to his chest around his bandages. “I’m not infected,” he said, the emotion draining out of his words. “I just need to get out of this water.”

“Not infected. Your memory is going. You know it. That’s why you don’t want to talk. That’s why you haven’t said two words these last couple of days. It’s not your breath. It’s not the lung. Your mind is going, and you don’t want to give it away.”

“I need a hospital.”

“You need a fucking firing squad!” Reagan nodded viscously to the raft. “That’s your family, asshole. You put them both at risk. You might have just gotten them killed!”

“You don’t know what’s wrong with me. You don’t know what I have. I don’t feel... I don’t feel....”

“What? Sick?” Reagan could hear a motor in the distance, steadily growing louder. “That’s how this thing works. It starts slow. Then you’re like a ninety-year-old who doesn’t know what day it is. You’re walking around one minute trying to remember what you were doing, and then out of nowhere something flips a switch and you’re in kill mode.”

Charles shook his head. “Not me.” He looked Reagan straight in the eyes. “I was going to tell them when I was sure, after we made it out—after I wouldn’t be strapped down in that little room with the others on this damn island. I was going to protect them.” He shook his head again. “Get to a real hospital. I didn’t lie. Not really.”

Now, through the smoky air, the boat’s engine grew louder.

“Real hospital, huh? You can’t buy you’re way out of a plague, Stratton.” Reagan looked in all directions, frantic. “We’re out of time. Act like you’re drowning. I’m going to pretend to save you. I don’t know if they’ll buy it or not—”

Charles Stratton’s lips puckered and he started to cry. “Let me go.”

Reagan laughed bitterly. “C’mon. Where you gonna go, Chuck?”

“Trust me,” he said softly.

Reagan considered him, his face lucid, and, with absolutely nothing to lose, Reagan set him on his feet.

Charles gently pushed Reagan’s hands away and began backing into the water. “You’re wrong about me.” His chest disappeared into the water. “Whatever you think of me—” He raised his hands in appeal, his shirt puffing out with water as it rose to his neck. “—I’m not a monster.”

And then he swam away towards the far shore, his strokes slow at first, then faster, then slapping at the water with his hands, smacking down on the surface, drawing up little fountains with each strike.

A nearby voice rang out from the other side of the mangroves. “There!”

Sharp realization Struck, and Reagan filled his lungs, his throat, his cheeks, and dove.

He fought against panic, maintaining steady strokes. He could hold his breath and swim for over a minute. He’d done it a hundred times. This was just another breathing exercise.

Steady strokes.

He told himself it was not his lungs burning from lack of oxygen, it was just his mind.

The water shook. High-caliber bullets pulsed through the channel with one tiny shockwave after another. He surfaced, gulped some air, and the current carried him down toward open water. He caught a quick glimpse of the shore, and went back down. He needed to reach the gap and get to the girls, to get them to cover.

Mangrove roots.

He pulled himself hand over hand around the stand of roots. More shots came and the water quivered ahead of him.

They’re shooting at the girls!

Reagan dug his hands into the bottom of the channel and came up with a stone. He could see the boat, so he gulped air and threw with all his strength.

The heavy gun spun toward him. In front of where he stood, not even waist-deep, bullets connected with water. Each strike sent up a shaft ten feet into the air, and a line of columns streaked towards him.

He dove again as the water quaked all around.

Steady strokes.

More shots, but these were farther behind.

Charles?

Then he felt a long stream of continuous gunfire, all of it near the boat.

What the hell?

He ran the last of the distance up to the gap. With legs driving and water splashing off his body, he turned and dove behind the shoreline mangroves. He could see the raft drifting down the channel. The car started, and Mary ran to him. When they met, he brought her low, but the shooting had stopped.

She opened her mouth, but nothing came. Then, “She’s shot.”

They ran slumped-over back to the car.

“Where?” he said.

“She in back,” Spade said.

“No... where’s she hit?”

“H-head.”

“Oh Christ.”

Reagan threw open the door. A headshot from the boat’s big gun would turn a pretty girl into a hideous corpse.

“We were crawling up the bank,” Mary said through tears. “She turned around, tried to get the sack from out of the water.”

Krissy lay across the back seat, the right side of her face covered in blood, hair stuck to the wound. Reagan looked a question. Her head was still intact. No way did this come from the mounted gun. Maybe it wasn’t even a bullet.

Root fragments?

Blood covered any holes that might be there, but the shape of the right side of her face was wrong now. Her eyes opened, and he startled.

“Alive. Son of a bitch,” Reagan mouthed. “Okay, Mary, we’ve got to get pressure on this. Get in back with her.” He pulled off his shirt and handed it to Mary. “Spade, get ready to drive.”

The back of Spade’s head shook. “I’m sorry,” he stammered, while Reagan helped position Krissy’s head on her mother’s lap. “I thought we was clear. I really did. Then she went back for your garbage bag and I was yelling, but she got back in the water and that’s when it happened. It’s my luck. That’s how it’s always been.”

“Shut up, Spade!” Reagan closed the rear door behind Mary, and climbed into the front seat.

“It’s like I told you that time we was loading them bodies up in the van and all of the sudden it wouldn’t start,” Spade said, tapping at his neck tattoo. “They don’t call me Ace, Reagan.”

“I’ve got you,” Mary whispered, taking her only child in her arms and gently shushing at the girl’s sobs. “It’s going to be all right now.”

“We tried and tried it,” Spade said, “and every time it worked, and I was like, with my luck, the time we go with your family it’s gonna all go to shit. You just watch.”

They started again to the hospital, Spade driving through debris, Reagan ignoring Spade’s confession, all the time looking over his shoulder at what had come of his careful plans.

Mary held Reagan’s shirt against the side of Krissy’s head, stroking her hair and crying with her. When they serpentined through the car shells past Highway 1, Mary finally managed the words. “Where is he?”

Reagan said nothing.

“Reagan, where is he?”

“Mary—”

“You said you would take care of us.”

“Mary—”

“You said everything would be all right.”

“...be all right.”

“He was infected, Mary.”

“You said we would make it.”

“...make it.” Spade nodded his head knowingly, and Reagan glared.

“He was going to snap,” Reagan said, still looking at Spade’s pained smile. “He was hiding it from us, and pretty soon he would have—”

“What happened to my husband, Reagan?” Mary cried softly. There was no venom in her words, only sadness and disappointment.

He turned around slowly. “He drew their attention.” Reagan looked away from the woman, lovely in her sorrow. Into his lap, he said, “He kept them off of us... the best he could.”

Spade stopped the car in front of the coned-off driveway. He turned in his seat and looked from Mary over to Reagan and then back again, nodding as if this were exactly how he had always known it would end.

“We’ve gotta get Krissy inside,” Reagan managed. “I can’t tell how bad it is. She’s conscious so... I don’t know.”

Krissy looked up at Reagan with her one good eye. With only half her face, she still flashed bitter resentment.

“Ah... shit.”

“...shit.”