The Dead-Tossed Waves is a novel by Carrie Ryan. It is the sequel to The Forest of Hands and Teeth and the second book of a trilogy. The third book to make up the trilogy is The Dark and Hollow Places. It was published in 2010 by Random House Delacourte Press and is written in first person narrative, present tense from the point of view of a teen girl named Gabrielle. The novel is set in a post-apocalypse world where zombie “Mudo” wander the earth, their sole purpose to infect all living humans.
Plot summary
Gabry (Gabrielle) lives a quiet life in the town of Vista. She lives with her mother, Mary (the protagonist of the first novel), in a lighthouse isolated from the rest of town. Her best friend is Cira, and she is beginning to fall in love with Cira's brother, Catcher.
Cira pressures Gabry to sneak over the wall protecting them from the Mudo to an abandoned amusement park with other teens from Vista. Gabry is afraid that Mudo will get through the un-cared for wall surrounding the park, but she goes when Catcher asks her to. On the other side, she and Catcher go off by themselves to talk and Catcher kisses her. A Breaker Mudo attacks the group, and Catcher is infected while trying to protect her. He tells Gabry to run before the Militia comes and arrests them, and she escapes over the wall, leaving Cira and Catcher behind.
The city decides to send Cira and the others who weren't Infected to the Recruiters. Gabry visits Cira in jail and Cira asks her to sneak over the wall and make sure Catcher is okay. Later, Gabry asks her mother about her past and her father, and Mary accidentally slips and admits that she is not Gabry's biological mother. She found her in the Forest when she was very young.
Gabry sails a small boat around the walls to the amusement park. She is attacked by Mudo and rescued by a stranger named Elias. Elias knows where Catcher is and leads her there. She promises to keep coming back until he turns, despite both boys saying that he is too dangerous. Elias sails back to the lighthouse with her to help her escape a Breaker.
The next morning Mary says that after their conversation she has decided to go back to the Forest. Gabry refuses to go, but stays in the lighthouse and takes over Mary's duties, telling everyone Mary is sick. She finds Elias took the boat to prevent her from returning to Catcher, so she swims to the park. She can't find Catcher but sees Soulers, a cult that worships Mudo. She realizes that Elias is one of them because he has a shaved head and white tunic like they do. She watches as they purposefully infect a little boy due to their belief that being Mudo is a chance at eternal life. Elias sees her and chases after her but she calls him a monster and runs away.
When she swims back, Daniel is there. He is suspicious about Mary's ‘sickness’ and about the knife Gabry carries, which she got from Elias and has Souler inscriptions on it.
A storm comes the next few days, and the Militia hangs around the lighthouse to help her kill the extra Mudo washing ashore. Daniel follows her around and when they leave she goes to visit Cira for the last time. When she tries to sneak over the wall to Catcher, Daniel catches her. She stabs him to escape and leaves him, and later finds that he died from the stab wound. Surprisingly he is still human. Elias and Catcher tell her that he's immune, which is rare to the point that Gabry didn't think it was possible. Elias says that he's not really a Souler, but he tags along with them because it's the easiest way to travel from city to city, which he does because he's looking for his sister, Annah.
Catcher insists that they rescue Cira, so he releases harmless Souler Mudo in Vista. In the chaos, Elias and Gabry break out Cira and the others. Cira tried to commit suicide by slitting her wrists because shet Catcher was Mudo, and even though Gabry binds her wounds she is very weak. They make it to a gate and since Catcher is immune he scouts ahead and finds where the gates start up again. They make it safely to the paths, but the Recruiters build walls out to the gates so they don't have to risk the Forest, which buys Gabry, Elias, Catcher and Cira time. The Recruiters ut that Catcher is immune and know he would be a tremendous resource for the Recruiters because he could fight the Mudo with no danger to himself.
Gabry uses clues from Mary to get them on the right path to Mary's old village. On the way she gets closer to Elias and farther from Catcher (who still thinks he can infect her), and Cira develops a blood infection in her wrists.