The Living

Carmen is one of Shy’s fellow crewmates and friends. She is an 18-year-old half-Mexican girl who grew up in a town near Otay Mesa, where Shy is from. She is the one person on the ship whom Shy feels he can truly connect with, especially after he learns that she also lost a loved one to Romero Disease. Shy and Carmen quickly form a close bond, but Shy’s romantic feelings for her—despite her engagement to someone else—cause friction in their friendship. Carmen is confident and pragmatic, and although she regularly endures derogatory comments from the premier class passengers, she is adept at ignoring them. Carmen escapes Jones Island with Shy, Shoeshine, and Marcus on the final day.

Addison, the daughter of Jim Miller, is a rich, snobby white girl. She treats Shy like a second-class citizen when she first meets him on the cruise ship, but she later opens up to him when she is stranded on a lifeboat with Shy and William Henry. As the social barriers of race and class become irrelevant in their fight for survival, Addison and Shy become close friends and rely on each other to stay alive. Addison matures during her time on the lifeboat and displays an aptitude for survival that takes Shy by surprise. Her friendship with Shy is complicated by the conspiracy surrounding her father and LasoTech; Shy wants to believe that she had no idea about the truth behind Romero Disease, but he struggles to fully trust her again. By the time Shy finally decides that she can be trusted, Addison has already vanished from Jones island, possibly leaving with her father on the helicopter.

Rodney is a six-foot-four offensive lineman with crooked teeth and a bad haircut. He shares a cabin with Shy on the cruise ship, and the two becomes good friends during the voyage. Shy describes him as “an enthusiastic hugger who didn’t know his own strength” (195). Rodney spends most of his free time reading romance novels, and he works in the kitchen as an assistant to the head chef. He dreams of someday becoming a world-renowned chef in New York. Shy is devastated when he learns that Rodney is one of the sick survivors quarantined in the penthouse on Jones Island, then later finds him dead of Romero Disease.

Shoeshine is an enigmatic older Black man who works as a shoe shiner on the cruise ship. Nobody is entirely sure what his background is, and he is often seen writing in a notebook. Shoeshine saves Shy’s life several times: He finds Shy’s sinking lifeboat and takes him to Jones Island, gives Shy the Romero vaccine, kills Bill before he can shoot Shy in the head, rigs the LasoTech security ship to explode, and finally sails Shy, Carmen, and Marcus away from the island on a sailboat he repaired by himself. He eventually reveals to Shy that he was once “special ops” in the military, which accounts for his varied skillset and fearlessness.

William Henry is a larger-than-life Texan oil tycoon whom Shy originally resents for making racist and sexist comments toward Carmen in the early days of the cruise. After he, Addison, and Shy are stranded together, however, William shows another side of himself, becoming humbler and more compassionate. He confides in Shy about the fact that he knew his girlfriend would never accept his marriage proposal and gives Shy his seven-carat diamond ring before throwing himself off the lifeboat in the night. Shy comes to believe that the ring is good luck and holds on to it for the rest of the book. William is a good example of one of the arrogant, rich premier class cruise passengers who realize they are no better than people like Shy when the trappings of wealth and privilege are taken away.

Bill, also known as the man in the black suit, is a hired personal security officer for Jim Miller. Jim hires bill to join the second cruise and stalk Shy to find out whether he knows anything about LasoTech’s involvement with Romero Disease. To keep word from getting out about the vaccine, Bill orders the murder of a scientist who attempted to flee to California to distribute the vaccine and stop the spread of the Romero Disease. Shy saves Bill’s life when the first tsunami hits the cruise, and although Bill is grateful to him for this, he still attempts to kill Shai to keep the world from learning the truth about LasoTech’s crimes.

Jim Miller, father of Addison Miller, is the owner of LasoTech and responsible for the creation and distribution of Romero Disease. He helped spread the virus through Mexican border towns, knowing that the disease would spread to America and generate fear, raising demand for the vaccine that he would then provide for a profit. Jim is therefore responsible for the death of Shy’s grandmother and the illness of his young cousin, Miguel, as well as the death of Carmen’s father. He escapes Jones Island by helicopter after ordering his security team, disguised as researchers, to execute the surviving passengers and destroy the island.