Wilder Girls(77)

Reese frowns. “Who?”

“My dad.” I wonder if he’s still stationed in Norfolk. What have he and my mother done with their lives now that they think I’m dead? “He’s Navy. I mean, not like Camp Nash, but he might know something. And at this point, I think that’s all we can hope for.”

Reese is quiet, and I look away. I know she’s thinking about her own dad, and I wait for her to pull herself out of it.

“All right,” she says at last. “Byatt and then a cure.”

I zip up the backpack while Reese goes to the boat to turn it over, and in a minute or two she has it righted and dragged to the water. I can see a rusted outboard motor barely hanging onto the stern.

“Will it work?” I ask. “Or do we have to row? Thirty miles is far.”

“Should be all right,” Reese says. “And my dad always kept a spare fuel can in the lockbox.”

I watch as she inspects the oars and lays them across the seats, just in case. A strong wave jolts the boat, and I dart back a few steps. I’m a Navy man’s daughter—boats are bigger than this where I come from. Stable, and wide, holding together without a tar patch on the stern.

   Reese laughs, the wind tugging at her braid, and I feel my heart clench. The clouds rippling above us, and the sun dipping below the horizon. The rocks moaning as the wind hollows around them, and I’ll never let go of Raxter, no matter how far away I get. It’ll never let go of me.

“Get in,” Reese says, handing me the backpack. “I’ll push us out.”

I climb in and sit quickly, facing the shore, gripping hard at the gunwale. Reese starts to shove the boat farther into the surf until she’s knee-deep in the water, and I can feel my stomach start to twist as the boat jerks from side to side.

“Okay,” she says. “Brace yourself. I’m climbing in.”

She takes one last step, pushes off as strong as she can, and hoists herself up onto the gunwale. The boat tips wildly to one side as Reese swings one leg over and then the other. I jerk back as the water hits my face.

“There,” she says, dropping onto the bench opposite me. “Okay?”

“You brought half the ocean in with you.”

She rolls her eyes. “Besides that.”

“Yeah.”

The waves are already pushing us back to shore, so Reese adjusts a lever on the engine and yanks the start pull. Nothing happens, but she tries again, and again, and at last it sputters to life, kicking up a spray as we start to hum forward.

   “All right,” Reese says. I can barely hear her over the engine. “Here we go.”

The shore drifts away. Reese never looks back.





CHAPTER 25


We stick close to the north side of the island. Reese is keeping the motor running low to save gas, and we move slowly, the coast slipping by, snow spiraling in gentle gusts. Trees lined up next to one another like matches, and then, as the sun nears high noon, the marshland begins. Just about half a mile before we reach the point of the island where the pier juts out.

The going is tougher here, with sandbars cropping up in strange places. I squint, scan the shore for the visitors’ center. Just past it, the ocean floor drops deep, and then it’s into open water.

Soon enough, there it is. The center is perched on the north side of the island, cut off from the marsh by a thick band of trees. Built to look like a house, coastal and shingled with a viewing porch, and a boxy addition off the back, from maybe a decade ago when the tourism board decided to try to go modern. But today it looks practically shapeless, draped over in some sort of tent.

   I sit up straight. Rub at my eye, blink hard, and look again. There’s the radio antenna, poking through, but the rest of the building is tented, its edges catching in the breeze.

“Stop,” I say, and Reese flips a switch so the motor idles.

“What is that?” she asks. “That place should be empty.”

The tent doesn’t seem to cover the whole building, but I can’t tell from here. I’ve seen things like that for fumigation, for keeping buildings isolated. But why would it be here?

And it clicks into place. A boat left the dock that night at the Harker house, but it didn’t make for Camp Nash. It came here.

“We always thought they were on the mainland,” I say. “The Navy, the CDC. But they weren’t. They’ve been on Raxter this whole time.” I turn to Reese. “That’s who I heard Welch talking to on the walkie. They’re the outpost. Think about it. There’s no way they’d bring infected material to the mainland.”

“So they send a unit here instead.” Reese frowns. “It makes sense. But they’re risking their own contamination.”

“A trade-off.” Their own safety, for access to materials. Access to us. “And when they’re ready to test a cure, they ask for a live subject. And they get one.” I lean forward, send the boat rocking to one side. “That’s where Byatt is. I know it.”



* * *



—

   Reese takes the boat around the point of the island and aims for the pier. The moorings are all long gone, and we don’t have any rope, so she heads for the shallows, noses it into the marsh.

She lets me get out first, says she’ll keep the boat balanced while I do. The water’s muddy here, and I can’t see the bottom, but it can’t be that far down. I get astride the gunwale, the boat tipping as I let more of my weight slide over the edge. And then there’s the water closing cold over my legs as I push off the boat and land in the reeds.