The Vines by Shelley Nolden (ebook and pdf reader .TXT) 📕

After a few awkward strokes, she managed to establish a rhythm. Her muscles burned, and her stomach felt like it was ablaze. To keep the spray from her eyes, she squinted, and every few pulls swiped at them.

The horizon blurred and the lighthouse refused to stay in view. She stopped and treaded water while reorienting herself. Blood ran from her nose. Farther away, everything seemed both light and dark. She blinked to clear her vision.

Beyond the Williamsburg Bridge rose Manhattan.

Her mother would continue to wake alone. Cora’s tears vanished with her blood into the tidal strait as she kicked her legs to spin away from the city.

The physical plant’s smokestacks came into view, and she began swimming toward them. Yanked by a current, she struggled against it. Her muscles were cramping, and she had a side ache. Soon she wouldn’t be capable of staying afloat.

Something grazed her leg.

Shrieking, she peered down but couldn’t see even her hands, just below the surface.

Another delusion, she hoped.

She grasped for a calming thought: Maeve’s giggle after she’d beaten Cora at Old Maid.

The creature banged against her thigh, and she screamed. As it glided past, it maintained contact with her skin, giving her a sense of its length.

Only she could hear her desperate, terrorized cries.

She sprinted toward North Brother. Within a few strokes, the cramping had reclaimed her muscles.

Again, something scraped against her thigh; panic locked her limbs as she imagined the long outline of a shark.

Far worse than fluid filling her lungs, her body would be shredded and consumed. The sea devil must be circling her now. At any moment its jaws would pierce her flesh. Now hyperventilating, she broke into a coughing fit. Her legs felt exposed, like bait dangling from a hook.

Again, she made for the lighthouse.

A current repelled her; she fought back. Her shoulders felt like meat beneath a butcher’s cleaver. She was tired, so tired. She craved sleep as her head went under, and she began slipping downward.

The light faded.

Soon it would brighten, and she would be with Maeve again.

The creature bumped her thigh, then her other, thrusting her upward. Her face reached the air, and she gulped it in.

That same rough skin. How could it have simultaneously hit her from both sides? Unless there were two.

Oh no! Panic seized her like a pair of jaws. They would fight over her like dogs with rotted meat.

As her mouth filled with water, she began to sink.

One, and then the other beast, prodded her. Too tired, she didn’t fight back.

Suddenly light hit her closed eyelids.

This was the end—not the one she’d envisioned, but equal in suffering to her little sister’s and those she herself had infected.

Maeve’s face appeared, with its pinched nose and playful, big brown eyes.

Acute pain shot through Cora’s bicep.

She thrashed, but whatever had grabbed her wouldn’t let go.

Her body rose, and bitter wind blasted her wet skin. Her chest hit something hard, forcing out the remaining air.

She fell into the hull of a boat and realized that she’d been dragged over its gunwale.

A blanket landed on her lower half as she collapsed.

The back of her head met the wooden bottom.

Once again, her ears were submerged in water. This time the rushing sounded gentler. Sunlight prickled her eyes, so she kept them shut. The craft seemed to be rocking less than before, though anything would feel steadier than that undertow.

This peace, was it another delusion?

She blew into her pocked palm, the crystalline vapor assuring her she was still alive.

Had that voice urging her to stay strong belonged to Mary? They shouldn’t have returned for her. Cora wanted to admonish her friend, but her head felt too heavy to lift.

The rhythmic smack of oars penetrated the whirring in her ears.

As much as her body welcomed the respite, she couldn’t allow it to last. The boat couldn’t reach Gotham with her still in it. As soon as she caught her breath and stopped shaking, she would have to dive back overboard.

Blinking away the droplets that clung to her lashes, Cora raised her head.

“She’s breathing!” a familiar voice yelled. “Praise Gott!”

Cora’s remaining scraps of strength disintegrated at that sound. Shivering, she pulled the blanket around her.

A face, enshrined in the hood of a Mother Hubbard gown, blocked the sky. Dr. Gettler’s eyes widened, and his lips parted just far enough to reveal the tips of his impossibly white teeth. His attention fixed on her, he dropped his oar handles and fumbled for his spectacles. “Mein Gott. Variola.”

“They’ve finally won,” she said with a sob, pressing herself into the stern. “Stay back.”

He leaned away, and Cora noticed Mary, Alfred, and Helmut huddled in the middle of what appeared to be a vessel twice the size of their original. A hulking form in hospital garb, whom Cora knew to be O’Toole, was sitting on the bench behind them, grunting as he labored. It must have been he who’d pulled her over the gunwale. In the bow, the much smaller Canne was rowing in sync with O’Toole. Cora wasn’t sure if his face and arms, exposed below the rolled sleeves of his soaked shirt, were red from exertion or anger. Most likely both.

They were taking her—all of them—back to Hospital Island.

The pulsating in Cora’s skull intensified, and the germs seemed to be tearing her innards apart. Out of the frigid water, the poxes, now whitened with pus, once again felt like they were searing her skin. To resist the urge to gouge them, she shoved her hands beneath her.

“What happened?!” she shouted to Mary. “We were taking on too much water.” Mary shuddered and covered her eyes, and Alfred pulled her closer. “They came up alongside, and we climbed aboard. Alfred almost fell in. If he’d died because of me . . .”

Cora’s legs slumped, and her knee banged against an oar in the bottom of the boat. Today her mother wouldn’t learn the truth, or that Cora loved and missed her.

A sob lodged in her swollen throat, and she began coughing.

“Take my oars and start