“Fiir!”one of the girls at the rail shouted. Ayaan and I pushed forward and stared into the mist. We could make out most of Liberty Island now and the shadow ofEllis Island beyond. The girls were pointing with agitation at the walkway that ringedLiberty, at the people there. American clothes, American hair exposed to the elements. Tourists, perhaps. Perhaps not.
“Osman,” I shouted, “Osman, we’re getting too close,” but the Captain just yelled for me to shut up again. On the walkway I saw hundreds of them, hundreds of people. They waved at us, their arms moving stiffly like something from a silent movie. They pushed toward the railing, pushed to get closer to us. As the trawler rolled closer I could see them crawling over one another in their desperation to touch us, to swarm onboard.
I thought maybe, just maybe they were alright, maybe they’d run toLiberty Island for refuge and been safe there and were just waiting for us, waiting for rescue but then I smelled them and I knew. I knew they weren’t alright at all. Give me your tired, your poor, your wretched refuse, my brain repeated over and over, a mantra. I was butchering Emma Lazarus but I couldn’t stop, my brain wouldn’t stop. Give me your huddled masses. Huddled masses yearning to breathe. “Osman! Turn away!”
One of them toppled over the side of the railing, maybe pushed by the straining crowd behind. A woman in a bright red windbreaker, her hair a matted lump on one side of her head. She tried desperately to dog-paddle toward the trawler but she was hindered by the fact that she kept reaching up, reaching up one bluish hand to try to grab at us. She wanted us so badly. Wanted to reach us, to touch us.
Give me your tired, your so very, very tired. I couldn’t take this, didn’t know what I had thought I could accomplish coming here. I couldn’t look at another one. Another dead person clawing for my face.
One of the girls opened up with her rifle, a controlled burst, three shots. Chut chut chut chopping up the grey water. Chut chut chut and the bullets tore through the red windbreaker, tore open the woman’s neck. Chut chut chut and her head popped open like an overripe melon and she sank, slipping beneath the water without a sound and still, pressed up against the railing onLiberty Island, a hundred more reached for us. Reached with pleading skeletal hands to clutch at us, to take what was theirs.
Your huddled masses. Give me your dead, I thought. The ship heeled hard over to one side as Osman finally brought her around, nosed around the edge ofLiberty Island and kept us from running up on the rocks. Give me your wretched dead, yearning to devour, your shambling masses. Give me. That was what they were thinking, wasn’t it? The living dead over there on the island. If there was any spark left in their brains, any thought possible to decayed neurons it was this: give me. Give me. Give me your life, your warmth, your flesh. Give me.
David Wellington - Monster Island
Monster Island
Chapter Two
Shattered light and pale shadows swirled beforeGary ’s eyes. He couldn’t remember opening them, could barely remember a time when they weren’t open. Slowly he was able to resolve the image, could see that he was looking up from underneath at a molten drift of ice cubes. Something hard and intrusive was pushing air into his lungs in a rhythmic pumping that was not so much painful-no, he didn’t feel any pain at all-as it was incredibly uncomfortable.
He reared up so fast that spots swam before his eyes and with cold-numbed fingers tore at the mask taped across his face, tore it away and then pulled, pulled at an impossibly long length of tubing that came out of his chest, from somewhere deep down with a tugging sensation then a tearing but still there was no pain.
He looked around at the bathroom tiles, at the tub full of ice and yellowish water. At the tubes attached to his left arm. He tore those away too, leaving a deep gouge in his arm when the shunt there tore open his rubbery wet skin. No blood seeped from the wound.