Induction

“I can’t believe that worked,” Adam said in disbelief. Our pathetic group mustered all the joy we could, given the circumstances, and sighed a breath of relief. We were safe. We had a flushing toilet. A pantry stocked with dry and canned goods and another five cases of water. Ah, we were living the high life now. All it took was the sacrifice of Jake and all our friends.

Margie came to mind. She gave her life for the rest of us. I thought back to my last conversation with Jake. I chastised myself for acting so petty. Now that he was gone, I wish I had said more, hugged more, kissed more. I should have tied him down and demanded he stay in camp. My chest tightened and a lump formed in my throat making it hard to swallow. As the tears began welling in my eyes, I knew I needed to get away from the group. The floodgates were going to open soon, and I wanted to be alone. Up on deck, I stared down at the rippling water and thought about my husband and all those we’d lost.

The mood was somber. We were all bonded by misery and loss. Finn and Noelle sat at the table holding hands. Finn doted on his wife’s every whim. They were lucky; they still had each other. The fifty-pound anchor was dropped into the water to keep us stationary and away from land.

The boat had four bedrooms. The Jamisons took the master suite, at the group’s insistence. Seth and the other soldier, Lowell, took the kid’s room with twin beds. Meg and I, and Daphne of course, bunked together in a room with a queen size bed, while Nancy and Gabby took a similar guest room. Adam slept on the pullout sofa in the main galley. He didn’t seem to mind being without a door. In fact, I think he felt more comfortable being out there so he could keep an eye on everything.

Meg and I retired to our room and lay down to sleep. The sun hung low in the sky, sinking fast, and the window let in the fading light. She rolled over and we exchanged sad looks. “Do you think my brother is dead?”

“I don’t know, Meg. I pray every second of the day that he isn’t. But if he’s alive, I don’t know how to find him.”

“Back at Target, I kept thinking he was going to walk through the door any minute, like it was a horrible nightmare and I would wake up any minute. If he is alive, where would he go?”

I thought about it for a second. Knowing full well where he would go. “He’d go back to Target.”

“That’s what I think, too. Only, we aren’t there anymore. It’s not safe for him.” She looked at me pleadingly. I knew she wanted me to come up with an idea to find him and get him back home with us. Meg may have been twenty-one, but in that moment she looked more like five. The truth was I had nothing to give her. It was true; Jake would try for Target if he hadn’t become a member of the undead army. He’d move heaven and earth to get back there. He knew about our fallback locations, and I shuddered when I thought of him attempting the lighthouse. Even if he safely made it to both locations and realized we weren’t at either of them, he knew of the plan to find a houseboat in this area.

That’s where things got complicated. Let’s say he made it to Cape Harbour. He’d have to find the helicopter. I knew he was smart enough to know we wouldn’t be in any of the still docked boats, which meant he would look for a boat of his own to make it to us.

“I think we need to stay close to the helicopter, Meg. So when he finds us, he’ll know exactly where we are. If we can keep the helicopter in sight of us, then that means we’re in sight of the helicopter. And if Jake finds it, he’ll see us.”

I didn’t let on that I thought it was a long shot. The chances of him making it on foot all over the city, albeit a small city, were nearly impossible. Frankly, giving her hope bolstered my own.

* * *

The boat had a soft rise and fall as the ocean rippled beneath us. “That was the best night of sleep I’ve had since this whole thing started,” I said, yawning and wiping sleep from my eyes. The smell of coffee as I walked into the galley perked me up instantly, and I took a deep breath through my nose to savor the aroma. Lingering under the smell of freshly brewed coffee was the strong scent of Soft Scrub. Two empty bottles of the cleaning product sat upside down drying in the dish rack.

Seth was sitting at the table writing something on a notepad. He had a dish towel slung over his shoulder and the kitchen sparkled. Come to think of it, I didn’t see a speck of dust in the bathroom either. “I’ve made a list of all our supplies. If we ration appropriately, we’ve got enough food and water to last us almost a month.”