I don’t know, even with years to think about it, how the world ended so fast for us. We went into the gym and the world was one thing. We left it, and it was on fire. In the space of a minute, I went from not believing in monsters to seeing them firsthand. I clenched and unclenched my sticky, blood-soaked hands. The blood dried and cracked.
There were bodies in the street as the Vessels stalked down the road. The barricades shut off roads, funneling everyone directly into the wave of Vessels that walked down the highway.
They thought they were protecting us, but they just damned the whole city, my dad said.
Helicopters and jets sounded overhead, and someone said something about the National Guard.
It gets fuzzy here. The smoke and the screams and the awareness that we were inches from something cataclysmic.
We can get to your mother’s by boat, my father’s voice said to my mom. He was right. The roads were too congested—we would never get anywhere.
We pulled up next to the dock. A man stepped out of the shadows next to us, knocking on my mom’s window.
Excuse me, he said.
It was polite. I remember that. It didn’t sound like death.
And we didn’t know then what we know now. The Crimson had just bled across our city. It wouldn’t be until a couple weeks later that we understood how it was transmitted.
Sometimes I stall the memory at this point. Sometimes I imagine that I knew then what I know now and screamed at my mother to close her eyes. I tell my father to close his. I tell him to punch the gas.
We pull away, and no one dies. No one turns. My family is still whole.
But that’s not what happened.
I saw it—the moment the man leaned down and looked at my mother. His eyes were the color of a radiant Southern California sunset—the kind that turns the sky all different shades of purple.
This is where everything in my memory deepens—where the ink is still wet, all these years later.
For a second, I was relieved. His eyes were violet, not red. I thought the red eyes were the only ones you had to look out for. The man flicked his eyes to my father.
My mother started screaming. She put her hands to her face, muffling the cries and somehow making them more terrifying.
My father gasped in pain and leaned over the steering wheel, flooring the gas pedal. The man fell back as we lurched forward, disappearing into the shadows once more.
He stepped in, ruined our lives, and then disappeared. There was no warning. No follow-up. And sometimes that just happens. A collision—no sense to it, no purpose.
“Get to the boat!” my father yelled, his eyes shut tight.
Vanessa tried to lean forward, but Harlow pulled her back, something like understanding slinking across her face. My mother curled up in the passenger seat, sobs racking her shoulders.
I heard the click as Harlow opened the door. The sounds of the shrill terror wafting over the city rolled into the car like a thunderclap.
“Mom? Dad? Come on!” Vanessa yelled as Harlow pulled her from the car.
My parents didn’t move. His eyes still closed, my father reached over and grabbed my mother’s hand. He squeezed once. Harlow reached into the back seat, pulling me, digging her hands into the collar of my jacket and yanking me out of the car.
I tried to fight back, but she shoved me. I don’t know how she knew, or how she stayed so strong.
The shuffling of feet sounded on the street beyond, and Harlow and I looked. Hundreds of Vessels walked toward us, filling the marina.
“Go!” my mother cried from the front seat. She opened the door and stumbled out, her eyes still shut. Then she turned and opened them, keeping her eyes fixed on the Vessels walking down the street.
My father stepped out of the driver’s side. “We will buy you as much time as we can.”
I didn’t want to comprehend what was happening.
“We can get help!” I yelled, reaching for my mother’s hand. She pulled back.
Vanessa sobbed harder, and the Vessels creeped closer. I knew they were fast when they wanted to be. They could have overcome us by now, if they chose to. But this wasn’t about overcoming us quickly. They were having fun.
I backed away, following Harlow while still walking backward, but Vanessa refused to move. I heard the boat engine start behind us.
I pulled Vanessa toward the dock, ignoring how she clawed at my arms. Harlow helped me heave her into the boat, and we jetted away from the dock, the force of the engine knocking us back. None of us said anything then.
It could have been minutes or hours. I don’t remember.
“We have to go back,” Vanessa yelled, standing. Harlow didn’t even look back, but kept her eyes on the dark water ahead. Above us, the moon turned inky. The blood moon—a total lunar eclipse that casts the moon in a red shadow. I’d seen one once with my dad, but this one felt different. The dark around us felt thick—alive somehow.
Harlow turned her head, just slightly, and spat over her shoulder. “There is no back, Vanessa. Mom and Dad are . . .” She didn’t finish, and I was grateful.
“We can find a way to fix it!” Vanessa yelled.
“We don’t even know what the hell is happening, Vanessa!” The boat jumped a wave, and Vanessa lost her balance for a moment before steadying herself.
I shut my eyes, letting the stain of the bloody night wash over me.
I should have said something. I should have reached for Vanessa when the boat hit another wave and I saw her lose her balance once more. I should have yelled at Harlow to look out as Vanessa lurched forward, knocking Harlow sideways and sending the wheel careening left.
The world spun.
And then there was darkness. Cool, all-encompassing darkness as I sank down, and down, and down into the water. The boat had thrown us all at the abrupt turn.
The water wrapped me up as it had a thousand times before. I waited for the comfort—for the peace. But the hands that once embraced me tightened. And tightened.
There was no sunlight rippling in a refracted dance above me. No laughter skidding over the waves like a pebble.
There was only darkness.
Darkness and death.
I kicked my feet, but I didn’t know which way was the surface and which was the fathoms. I didn’t know if I wanted to know. Nothing in the surface world would make me feel any better, and while I knew that—self-preservation took over and I started thrashing as heat bloomed in my lungs. I needed air.
I needed air.
I needed the surface, no matter what horrors awaited me.
But the air didn’t come.
My lungs screamed, and they felt like the sound Vanessa made when I wrenched her from our mother.
A current pulled me sideways, yanking my hair out of the elastic band. I kicked harder, and black spots filled my vision.
They were dead.
I was dying.
I scrambled, letting out a scream that sent little bubbles spinning past my face.
Then, just as the black on the edge of my vision pulled in toward my pupils, I broke through. Sputtering and coughing, I thrashed against the waves.
“Char!” I heard my name and turned. Harlow was swimming next to the boat, her hand tight around the rope secured to the bow.
“Where is Vanessa?” she cried.
A new vise spun tight around my lungs as I twirled, treading water.
Vanessa. There was no Vanessa.
“Nessa!” I shrieked.
“We have to find her!” Harlow yelled before she dove under the surface. She disappeared, and terror spiked through my chest.