6. I Didn’t Commit a Misdemeanor to Leave
I DIDN'T COMMIT A MISDEMEANOR TO LEAVE
GRACE
Iwake up after drifting off again, to Joel saying "we should talk" which is the worst combination of words in the English language, ahead of "some assembly required" and "per my last email" and trailing only slightly behind "the test came back positive" depending on context.
"I'm asleep," I say, which is obviously a lie. I open one eye. Blue light. Fish. The tunnel. Joel sitting on the bench across from me with his protein bar wrappers in a neat little pile next to him. "What time is it?"
"Around seven. I checked the pump system an hour ago."
"You left?"
"Briefly. Locked the door behind me. You didn't move."
"Joel, you can't just leave me alone in the fish tube with a body doing laps."
"You were asleep. And the body can't get through the reinforced acrylic."
"That's not the point. The point is I could have woken up alone in an underwater tunnel with a floater and no context and my brain would have assumed I died and this was the weird afterlife I got assigned. I'd be sitting here trying to figure out what I did to deserve fish purgatory."
He does the stare. "I'll leave a note next time."
"Thank you. That's literally all I ask."
He's quiet for a second. "I've been thinking," he says. "We should leave."
The words hit my chest and knock over all the tiny emotional furniture I had arranged overnight.
"Leave," I repeat.
"The park. The emergency broadcasts were directing people to county checkpoints before the radio went down. If one is still operating and we can find a vehicle with keys, we could reach a checkpoint by…"
"No. Hard no. Cement-dry no. No that has been laminated and framed and hung on the wall no."
He shifts on the bench. His wrench rotates in his hands, a slow quarter-turn. "When the generators die, circulation and life support stop. The animals start dying. The emergency valves and sump pumps go offline. If the damaged intake line gives way after that, Celestial Bay floods. I can't keep…"
"Then we stop powering things we don't need. Rides. Lights. Music. Whatever's still draining the system."
"That buys time. It doesn't make this place permanent."
"Time is what we need first. You know the systems. We ration power, clear the park, inventory everything, and figure out permanent after we survive today."
He looks at me the way he did last night when I said I didn't want to be alone.
"I didn't jump the hip gate, skin both knees, steal emergency churros, and become the subject of Craig's fruit-purse incident report just to go back out there.
" I gesture toward the ceiling, toward the surface, toward the enormous, ruined outside.
"Out there is highway and wrong people and towns that don't have a Target.
And you want us to just... drive through that?
In what? My Kia Soul? With a wrench and a stabby fork and good intentions? "
"The stabby fork is foam."
"I know it's foam, Joel. That's my point."
He blinks.
I realize I'm standing. I don't remember standing up.
"This place has walls that go all the way around.
It has fences. The whole point of a theme park is crowd control with snacks.
Lines, gates, ropes, signs, funnel cakes.
You make people shuffle through a maze and then charge them nine dollars for lemonade.
That's infrastructure. Evil infrastructure, but infrastructure. "
He's watching me and his face is doing something I haven't seen before.
"The food courts," I continue, because stopping now would imply I have doubts.
"Every zone has restaurants. Kitchens with walk-in freezers.
Industrial refrigerators. Canned goods, dry goods.
Enough napkins to survive a winter. The gift shops have water, ponchos, batteries, overpriced socks, and the kind of plush inventory that could become insulation if we stop respecting it.
The band-aid houses have supplies. The maintenance rooms have tools.
You said you keep the whole building alive. So keep it alive for us."
"Band-aid houses," he says.
"You know what I mean."
"The first-aid stations. I do."
"Of course you do." It comes out soft, which is rude of my mouth. My mouth has been unsupervised for twelve hours and apparently it's making tone choices now.
Joel is quiet for a long moment. "The park has four zones," he says slowly. "Celestial Bay, Mythic Frontier, Wonder Garden, Solar Plaza."
I nod for him to keep going.
"Solar Plaza is the main hub. Open. Exposed. No defensible position."
"Then we skip it. Or we clear it last."
"Mythic Frontier is the largest zone. Roller coasters, themed buildings, a lot of open-air exhibits. Multiple entry points."
"So we close the entry points. You know where the gates are. You know which ones lock."
"Wonder Garden is partially outdoor. Animal enclosures, botanical areas. Harder to secure."
"We figure it out. We close gates. We lock doors. We clear the wrong people. We inventory snacks. We keep what's left." I look at him. "We keep it, Joel."
He sets the wrench down on the bench. "You want to fortify a theme park."
"I want to make a home out of the place I chose. I saw the logo on the highway sign and I put on my blinker and I came here and I'm not leaving. We're not leaving. We're keeping this place."
"With what resources?"
"With the ones that are already here. With the ones we find. With whatever we have to work with, which right now is a crescent wrench and a stabby fork and a man who knows every pipe in this building and a woman who falls down a lot but always gets back up. That's the team. That's what we've got."
"Mythic Frontier first," he says.
I stop. "What?"
"If we're doing this. If." He holds up a finger, like he's heading off the celebration he can see building in my face. "Mythic Frontier has the most enclosed structures. A warehouse for ride maintenance. Backstage storage. If there are supplies worth consolidating, that's where they'll be."
"So we're doing this."
"I said if."
"Your mouth said if. Your face said yes."
"My face doesn't say things."
"Your face says so many things. Your face is a whole novel. It's just written in very small font."
He stands up. "We need supplies before we go anywhere. More water. Bags. Something better than a foam trident."
"Don't disrespect the stabby fork."
"Grace, you nearly called every infected person in the wing with it."
"That was a one-time noise incident and I've grown as a person since then."
He doesn't argue. He just turns toward the tunnel entrance and starts walking and I grab my tote bag, my strawberry purse, and the stabby fork and I follow him.
The tunnel entrance is ahead. The locked door. The boundary between the safest room in the building and everything else.
"Wait," I say. "What if there are wrong people in the corridor? Between here and the supply bedroom?"
"The gift shop."
"That's what I said."
"I did a sweep at six. Corridor was clear. But they move. We'll need to be quiet."
"I can be quiet."
He looks at the tote bag slung over my shoulder and my shoes, which are the wrong shoes and make a squeaking sound on the rubber floor that's roughly equivalent to a small animal being stepped on.
"What?" I say.
"Nothing." He unlocks the door. "Stay close."
The corridor is clear. It's dim, emergency lighting only. A jellyfish display pulses its slow purple rhythm. A seahorse hangs in its tank like a little comma with a face, completely unbothered.
I want the seahorse's peace. But the seahorse doesn't have a theme park to secure and a crescent wrench boyfriend to keep up with.
Not boyfriend. Wrench companion. Wrench-adjacent person. Man I've known for twelve hours who happens to be very competent and have cheekbones and translates everything I say without pause.
The corridor ahead bends left toward the supply bedroom. Joel raises one hand for quiet.
I nod. My gummy sharks choose that exact moment to scream in plastic.
Joel closes his eyes.
"Sorry," I whisper. "They're under stress."
Stay close is easier said than done when my legs operate on separate government agencies.
Joel moves through the corridor like it was part of his theme park training. He holds up a hand when he wants me to stop and I stop and I only bump into him once, okay twice, the second time wasn't my fault because the floor was wet from condensation.
The gift shop materializes out of the blue-lit hallway like a retail oasis. Celestial Bay Gifts & Treasures.
"Okay," I say, surveying the aisles. I've watched enough survival shows to know that preparation is everything. "Tote bags first."
There's a whole wall of them. Canvas, nylon, varying sizes.
Wondie in sunglasses. Wondie in a scuba mask.
Wondie surfing. Wondie doing a yoga pose that looks structurally impossible for a sphere.
I grab four of the largest ones, the kind with handles that look like they could tow a small boat, because if we're raiding Mythic Frontier I want bags that won't betray me mid-crisis and these have a lifetime guarantee, which I realize is a corporate promise from a company that may no longer exist, but I'm choosing to honor the warranty emotionally.
Joel starts loading them with water bottles from the cooler. He moves through the gift shop the way I imagine he moves through his entire life: a man on a mission, allergic to browsing, the kind of person who's never once thought 'but what if I need this later' about a clearance item.
I, on the other hand, am browsing. Because I'm a person with curiosities and you never know what's going to be useful.
"Grace, what are you doing?"
"Gathering intelligence." I'm standing in front of the brochure rack near the entrance. Show schedules, dining guides, a pamphlet about conservation efforts that has a baby sea turtle on the cover and is making me feel things I don't have time for. I grab two park pamphlets and unfold one.