The Living

Shy and Carmen leave the penthouse in shock. They realize that the shot they were given must have been a vaccine for Romero Disease, which confuses them as there isn’t supposed to be a vaccine available yet. Shy goes looking for the duffel bag of medicine and for Shoeshine, and Carmen leaves to look for Christian and Marcus. They plan to meet up again at six o’clock to board the research ship that is supposed to take all the survivors home that evening.

Shy stops at Addison’s door before leaving the hotel, but no one answers when he knocks; as he leaves the building, he sees the island’s one helicopter lifting off the ship and flying away. He searches for the bag of medicine, but it isn’t there, so instead he takes a trail leading higher up the cliff to look for Shoeshine. He passes some researchers spraying the bushes and trees with something on the way. Eventually, he stops in a clearing at the very edge of a cliff, turns around, and sees Bill behind him. Shy confronts Bill about the quarantined survivors, the murdered scientists, and the bag of vaccinations, and Bill tells him he needs to show him something involving the death of his grandmother. Shy follows him to a lookout point, where he sees the remains of a flooded LasoTech lab.

Bill explains that this is where David Williamson worked and tells Shy that LasoTech created Romero Disease in a lab to profit from selling the vaccines. Jim Miller, Addison’s father, was responsible for spreading the disease: “Miller opened a free clinic in Mexico […]. For two years they treated poor border communities for everything from the common cold to breast cancer. But they also secretly infected the first few patients with their deadly disease” (278).

Bill explains that LasoTech’s plan was to generate fear in the United States, increasing demand for the vaccine that they would provide after a few weeks. The earthquakes derailed that plan, however, and now that Romero Disease is spreading rapidly, “it was determined that the best course of action was for the company to distance themselves from the situation completely” (278).

Shy flies into a rage and confronts Bill, saying “You killed my family!” (279), but Bill claims that he only learned of the plot a few days ago. Then, Bill pulls out a gun and tells Shy that he has to kill him to keep the vaccine a secret. He explains that Jim Miller has already left the island on the helicopter and that the murdered scientists were attempting to get the vaccine to California. Bill tells Shy that everyone has a role to play in life: “Mr. Williamson had a gift for science. Ego led him to create the perfect disease. Mr. Miller had the business sense to make money off that creation. My role is to protect Mr. Miller” (280). He puts the gun to Shy’s head, but Shoeshine appears—with the vaccines—just in time to shoot Bill and save Shy.

Shy tries to give Shoeshine the seven-carat diamond ring as thanks, but Shoeshine refuses. Shoeshine searches Bill’s backpack and pulls out a spray bottle of yellow liquid, tastes it, then gives Shy the duffel bag and tells him to keep the vaccines safe; he says, “there’s something else I gotta see about” (284). Shoeshine hurries away, telling Shy to stay off the ship for as long as he can.

Shy runs down the hill and back toward the hotel, pausing to hide the duffel bag in a tree. Survivors are beginning to head down to the ship as Shy searches for Addison—he kicks in the door to her room, but she isn’t there. Part of him hates her for what her father did to his family, but he wants to believe that Addison isn’t like her father. He goes looking for Carmen and Marcus next, finding them on the fourth floor. Marcus is attempting to fix a radio and tells Shy that America is in a state of emergency. The government is crowding people into stadiums and keeping them there while the disease spreads through them, infecting thousands. Shy tells them what he learned about the origin of the disease. They leave the hotel and take the duffel bag with them, heading to the ship, but pause before heading down to the beach.

Shy realizes that something is wrong as the other survivors line up; he holds Carmen and Marcus back and tells them “something’s not right” (291). Then, they see the team of researchers pull machine guns from their bags and execute the survivors on the beach. The researchers, “who were not researchers at all but LasoTech Security” (293), pile the bodies onto the lifeboats, then burn the lifeboats and aim rocket launchers at the island. Some of the men spot Shy, Carmen, and Marcus and fire at them, starting fires wherever the ricocheting bullets meet the substance that was sprayed on the trees and grass earlier. Shy, Carmen, and Marcus flee back up the trail as trees burn. They decide to attempt to rescue the sick people in the penthouse of the hotel, but a rocket fired from the LasoTech ship blows up the hotel before they reach it. More rockets are fired: The men are trying to burn down the entire island to make sure no evidence and no survivors remain.

Shoeshine catches up with them, explaining that the whole island is coated in napalm, and leads them up the trail toward a cliff over the water. All four jump off the cliff and into the ocean, where they swim toward the ruined sailboat that Shoeshine has managed to repair over the last few days. The LasoTech ship approaches and fires rockets at the sailboat, but when the ship reaches five knots in speed, it explodes. Shoeshine reveals that he “rigged their own explosives to the ship’s propeller” when he realized the researchers were planning to burn the island (299). He also tells Shy that he “may have spent some time in the military, too. Special ops” (300). The four then swim out to the sailboat.