Page 33 of One Adult, Please

Joel looks over. "Step back."

A gray, swollen hand slides over the side of the log boat and grips the edge of the loading platform with wet fingers. From inside the boat.

Of course there's a wrong person in the log. Why would the log be empty? Why would the murder soup have only three ingredients? That would be reasonable, and this park has rejected reason at the corporate level.

The head rises next. Bloated face. Park poncho stuck to one shoulder. Mouth opening and closing with a soft wet clack that makes my entire soul try to leave through my left ear.

"No," I tell it.

It keeps coming.

"I said no."

It doesn't respect verbal boundaries.

My friendship paddle comes down on its hand. The crack is horrible.

The wrong person jerks. Its other hand grabs the platform. It hauls itself higher, and suddenly the top half of it's out of the boat, dripping wrong-person broth onto the pretty fake-wood floor.

This time I aim for the head, because that's who I am now. A woman who clubs a dead man in a log flume with nautical sports equipment.

The paddle connects. The wrong person drops back into the boat hard enough to rock it.

"Grace, move," Joel says.

"I'm moving… emotionally."

"Physically."

"Wait," Beck says, and the excitement in his voice is a warning label. "The dispatch brake."

"The what?"

He points at the loading mechanism. "The thing that moves the boats forward. If we release the next boat, it'll pin that one against the bumper."

"That could work," Joel says.

"I hate that sentence," I say.

Joel grabs the manual lever beside the loading gate.

Beck plants one boot on the next log boat and shoves. "Grace, keep it down."

The wrong person surges up again. Its fingers scrape my paddle. Its mouth opens, and the smell hits me full in the face, hot and rotten and wet.

I press the paddle across its chest and shove with everything I have. The boat rocks. My shoes slide. My shoulder screams.

The wrong person reaches for me.

I hit it in the face.

There's nothing cinematic about it. I make a noise like a furious raccoon falling down stairs and swing the friendship paddle with both hands.

The head snaps sideways.

"Now," Joel says. He pulls the lever.

The station brake releases with a heavy mechanical thunk. The conveyor catches the next log and drives it forward, slow and stupid and inevitable. Beck slams his shoulder into it from the side, guiding it. The wrong person gets one hand up.