Page 82 of Good Half Gone

Marshal wasn’t just making threats. He’s been meeting with them in his room when everyone’s asleep. I hear them talking. They’re planning on using safety rafts to get to an island with a ferry stop.

I’m forming my next question when it happens—a boom so enormous the walls tremble. Our knees bend like we’re surfing. Alma’s eyes double in size before she crouches in the doorway.

It only lasts a second. My heart is galloping. I look at Alma, who has her hands cradling her head.

“Wh…what was that?”

She shakes her head.

“Oh my god,” I say.

Alma seizes my arm and yanks it. She looks at me with pleading eyes:Don’t leave me!I tug out of her grip. I get a horrible feeling, hopeless and panicked. Something bad has happened.

I open the door and look down the hallway, and I see it. The annex is destroyed, the care station in splinters. I try to speak and I can’t. The entrances to A and B have collapsed. Everything is hazed with dust from the broken timber. Alma hasn’t seen it yet, so I back up a step to block her view. For a moment I cannot believe what I’m seeing. It’s like someone has hit the slow-motion button on my vision.

That’s when I see the bodies. Without hesitating, I wheel around and put my arm around Alma’s shoulders. “Let’s wait in the doctor’s office while this gets sorted out, okay?” Sorted out. I could scream from the horror of it.

I seat her in a chair and kneel in front of her. “Stay here. You’re safe here. I’ll be right back.” She’s trembling, but she nods obediently. I look at her one more time to make sure she means to stay in place before I close the door and run for the annex.

The chaos in the annex greets me like a slap in the face. Two things become apparent at once: there has been an explosion of some sort, and someone is screaming. The emergency lights are on, flashing red. I move at once, picking my way through chunks of plaster, holding my arm over my nose and mouth. What I thought was screaming is the emergency siren. I see the shape of a person through the dust and move faster. Leo is on his knees, leaning over a body. There is too much blood to see their face. When Leo stands up, I see gray sweatpants and the white ribbing of a bathrobe. I retch, vomiting into the rubble. I watch, stunned, as he checks their pulse. When he sees me, relief washes over his face. He pulls me against his chest without a word.

“What happened?” I ask.

Leo sways on his feet. I look up to see him shaking his head.

“I don’t know?” The walls are black with soot. The roof is caved in down A and B hall, while C looks whole but smoky.

“A bomb,” Leo says. “I was coming through the glass walkway when I heard it go off. We need to look for survivors.”

I hear myself say, “I’ll call for help.”

I look around. I don’t have my cell phone, no one does, and the landlines are buried beneath the rubble. Who do we call for help? We are on a goddamn island.

The coast guard!

I need to get my cell phone. I start toward the security door, and that’s when it hits me. No one is rushing in to help. Where are the people? George?

Before I can grab the door handle Leo yells, “Iris, no!”

I look at him.

“You can’t go out there. We don’t know what’s happening—” His face looks pale beneath the flashing red lights. He hesitates. “Alma told me that Marshal, Jude and Dalton have been planning this. They’ve cut the power. You need to get somewhere safe and hide.”

Dalton? A D unit patient. My mind scavenges for his backstory, but I’m finding it hard to concentrate.

“What about everyone else? There are people trapped here.”

“No, listen…” he says.

I do.

“There’s no sound.”

Aside from the alarm, there are no calls for help, no voices—nothing. That could mean one of two things: everyone is dead, or they’re trapped somewhere.

“The cafeteria,” I say. Leo bends over and puts his hands on his knees as he catches his breath.

“There are emergency exits. The nurses would have evacuated everyone out the back by now. We have drills. The patients know what to do.” He looks less sure than me.

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