Chapter 17
Seventeen
Callan
Ihit the transmit button again, adjusting the gain knob with my thumb as I spoke. The signal had come through weak, disrupted by static, but it was a voice.
“This is the Bay City Aquarium,” I repeated into the mic. “Say again. Identify your vessel.”
Static roared.
KRSHHHHH—
Sloane had moved closer without my noticing. She was leaning over my shoulder now, so close I could feel the warmth of her arm against mine, her breath hitched every time the radio crackled.
I turned the squelch knob, lowering the background hiss.
We waited.
The radio came alive.
“…—copy that station calling—”
More static. But the voice pushed through, clearer.
“This is the SS Mariner, repeat SS Mariner, receiving you weak but readable. What is your location, over?”
Relief hit me so hard it hurt. My hand tightened around the microphone.
A ship.
Out on the water.
Still functioning.
I pressed transmit.
“SS Mariner, this is Bay City Aquarium. We are on the roof of the aquarium, waterfront side. Two survivors. Can you confirm the status of the city? What is happening out there? Over.”
I released the button and started adjusting the antenna tuning dial, trying to clean up the signal. The ocean wind cut across the rooftop. Below us, those low groans kept rising and falling, patient and constant.
Sloane’s hand rested on my shoulder. I don’t think she realized she’d put it there.
The radio hissed.
The captain’s voice came back, stronger this time.
“Bay City Aquarium, this is SS Mariner. Copy your transmission. Be advised… the situation is catastrophic.”
The word hung in the air between us.
I glanced at Sloane. Her eyes were fixed on the radio, her face drained of color.
I pressed transmit.
“Mariner, clarify catastrophic.”
The response came fast.
“As far as we can determine, the entire east coast is down. Repeat—entire east coast.”
Sloane sucked in a breath behind me.
I swallowed.
“Define down,” I said into the mic.
Static crackled before the reply came.
“Major cities overwhelmed. Communications infrastructure is failing across the board. Military is attempting containment but…” A pause. “It does not appear to be working.”
The signal wavered. I adjusted the frequency knob carefully, tightening the channel lock, keeping my hands steady through sheer willpower.
“What about ports?” I asked. “Any harbors still operational?”
A brief silence.
“Negative. We attempted contact with several harbors earlier today. No response from any of them.”
More static.
Then:
“We made the decision not to dock. Currently holding position approximately twelve miles offshore. Open water seemed… safer.”
Sloane’s fingers dug into my shoulder.
Holding position.
Waiting it out.
Like you wait out a hurricane—except hurricanes pass. Hurricanes have an eye and an eyewall before they dissipate. This thing didn’t have a shape, it didn’t have a trajectory; it was simply spreading.
I pressed transmit again.
“SS Mariner, do you have any confirmation on what we’re dealing with? Infection? Chemical agent?”
The captain exhaled audibly before answering. I could hear the exhaustion in it, the weight of a man who had spent the last twenty-four hours making decisions with no good options.
“Best information we have is a viral outbreak of unknown origin. Spreads through bites or direct blood contact. Incubation appears rapid—hours at most, possibly less.”
Sloane whispered behind me. I couldn’t make out the words.
The captain continued.
“Once infected, subjects become extremely aggressive. They do not respond to pain. They do not respond to verbal commands. They do not stop.” Another pause, heavier.
“Only confirmed method of neutralization is catastrophic trauma to the brain. Destroy the brain, they drop. Anything else, they keep coming.”
The footage Jason had shown us on his phone flashed through my mind: the way that woman had kept walking after her arm was nearly severed, how she’d kept reaching.
I keyed the microphone.
“Mariner, how long do you expect to remain offshore?”
The longest pause yet.
Then the captain answered, and I could hear him choosing honesty over comfort.
“Until the fuel runs low. Or until we have reason to believe there’s something left worth coming back to.”
The radio crackled softly.
Neither of us moved.
The wind shifted, and the groaning from below swelled briefly—a chorus of ruined voices carried up from the parking lot. I watched Sloane’s face as she listened to it, watched the understanding settle into her expression, slow and terrible.
She lowered her hand from my shoulder.
“So it’s everywhere,” she said quietly, not a question.
I didn’t answer; there was nothing to say that wouldn’t make it worse.
Instead, I pressed the transmit button one last time.
“SS Mariner, this is Bay City Aquarium. Two survivors in a fortified structure. Requesting that you maintain this channel for future contact, if possible. Over.”
Static crackled.
Then the captain’s voice came back, softer now.
“Copy that, Aquarium. We’ll keep Channel Sixteen open.”
A pause.
“You two stay alive in there.”
The static swallowed his voice, and it was just the two of us again on the roof with the wind and the groaning and the last red edge of the sun sinking below the waterline.
Sloane sat down slowly on the gravel. She pulled her knees to her chest and stared out at the darkening ocean.
I turned the volume down on the radio but left it on; the soft crackle was barely audible. I sat down beside her.
We didn’t speak.
There was nothing left to pretend. No, maybe. Noit might not be that bad. No someone will fix this.
The entire East Coast.
Communications down.
Military failing.
Ports silent.
And below us, in the falling dark, dozens of dead things circled the building with infinite, mindless patience—waiting for us to make a mistake.
I looked at Sloane, and in the silence between us, we both understood the same thing without having to say it.
No one was coming, and whatever happened next, we were on our own.
* * *
I stared out across the water. Long, rolling swells catching the last orange streaks of sunlight.
Seagulls gliding over the surface as if nothing had changed.
The disconnect was almost unbearable. Forty-eight hours ago this waterfront had been packed with tourists and kids dragging their parents inside to see the exhibits.
Beside me, Sloane hadn’t moved; her arms were wrapped tightly around herself, holding herself together.
I reached down and flipped the radio off. The static died instantly, and the silence that replaced it pressed in from every direction.
The sun slipped below the horizon. The last strip of light vanished into the water, and darkness came fast thereafter.
I exhaled slowly, picked up the radio, and turned toward the hatch.
“Come on.”
Sloane nodded without looking at me.
I went down the ladder first; the metal rungs clanged softly under my weight. When my boots hit the floor, I stepped aside and waited. She stepped down beside me a moment later and immediately wrapped her arms around herself again.
The dim emergency lighting cast long shadows down the hallway.
“So that’s it,” she said. Her voice sounded empty.
“That’s what it sounds like.”
She let out a shaky breath and ran a hand through her hair.
“The whole East Coast. That’s millions of people, Callan.”
“Yeah.”
She stared at the floor.
“My mom lives in Vermont,” she said softly.
I didn’t know what to say to that. So I said nothing.
“I can’t even call her.”
Her voice cracked on the last word, and she pressed her lips together hard, fighting it; I watched her throat work as she swallowed it down—the grief, the panic, whatever was clawing its way up from inside her. She pushed it back, barely.
Something surfaced in my own mind then. My brother Finn.
He lived up near Bar Harbor, Maine. Not on the mainland—on one of the islands off the coast. He’d bought the island five years ago in a weird tax lottery thing, and the rest of the family had thought he’d lost his mind.
A two-hundred-acre island with a single farmhouse, five small cabins accessible only by boat.
But Finn hadn’t just bought land. He’d built an off-grid bunker: solar panels, rainwater collection, a root cellar stocked deep with canned goods and dry stores, a diesel generator with enough fuel to run for months, tools, medical supplies, fishing equipment, hunting rifles, ammunition—enough of everything to sustain a small group of people indefinitely.
He’d spent years on it. Quietly. Methodically. While the rest of us rolled our eyes at Thanksgiving and made jokes about tinfoil hats, Finn had been preparing for exactly this.
I’d called him paranoid, called him crazy to his face more than once, but I wasn’t laughing now.
An island off the coast, surrounded by water on every side. Stocked. Fortified. Remote enough that whatever was tearing through the mainland might not reach it—or at least not easily.
If Finn were still alive—and knowing him, knowing the way he thought, the way he planned, his military experience, he almost certainly was—then that island might be the safest place left on the eastern seaboard.
I tucked the thought away carefully. Not yet. We weren’t ready. We didn’t have a boat, didn’t have a route, didn’t have a plan. But the seed was there now, planted deep, and I could already feel it taking root.
Bar Harbor was a long way from Bay City.
But it was a direction, and right now, a direction was more than we had five minutes ago.
“The captain didn’t say the whole country,” I offered.
Sloane looked up at me. Her eyes were red-rimmed but dry.
“You believe that?”
I held her gaze.
“No,” I said honestly.
Her eyes dropped.