“ALEX,” I SAID AS I moved closer to him. “Can you hear me? Can you talk?”
His hand squeezed around mine, but he didn’t speak. Could he hear me clearly? His eyes were open and blinking up at the clutch of palm trees shaking in the wind above us. His skin and his clothes were soaked, and it appeared to me that the blood stain at his throat was spreading through Tank’s shirt, which worried me to no end.
“In fact, don’t speak,” I said. “You have a gash at your throat.”
“I’m here,” he said in a voice that was so rough, I didn’t recognize it. “But I don’t know for how much longer. I love you, Jennifer. I’m so sorry.”
“You can come through this. Do you hear me? You can beat this.”
“I don’t want to die.”
“Then don’t. Not if you love me. Don’t you dare die on me.”
He took a breath and closed his eyes. “Then I won’t. I’ll fight.”
“That’s what I want to hear.”
“Our baby,” he said. “Did we lose it?”
The question cut through me like a blade held long over a searing fire. I wasn’t sure whether I’d miscarried, but in my heart, I felt that I might have, and it devastated me.
Still, right now, I needed to give this man hope, so I didn’t mention the severe cramping I’d experienced after the crash, and was still feeling now to a lesser degree. “We need to hope for the best,” I said. “We need to pray for our child. We need to be well and healthy to protect it. So, no more talking. We need to conserve our strength. Tank is helping Barbara and Alexa now. Cutter is trying to get whatever supplies he can off the plane in case it explodes. That’s all you need to know. There is a black box on that plane that will save us. It’s sending out signals right now letting people know that we’ve crashed, and where we’ve crashed. You know that. Help is on the way. So rest. Not another word.”
Not that one was coming. With his hand still in mine, Alex drifted off—but he wasn’t gone. I could feel his pulse beating in my palm. I leaned over, kissed him on the lips, told him that I loved him, and then sat up and took in my surroundings.
It was daytime, but with the storm raging, the sky was dim with the hail of rain sweeping across the beach in front of me. The ocean was to my right. The plane was to my left, a smashed shell of its former self. I could see the long, deep rut in the sand where we’d crashed, which led straight to the jungle that had stopped our momentum. Though we were sheltered from the worst of the rain, a good deal of it was still beating down on us, but at least it was warm. I lifted a hand to my eyes and looked at the tail end of the plane, which had lost its right wing just at the edge of the beach. The left wing was intact, but the engine was still active, smoking, and sending its high-pitched whine like a curse of dread into the air.
I prayed for Cutter at that moment. I shut my eyes tight and prayed to God that he would leave the plane unharmed and come back to us.
“What’s going to happen to us?” Daniella asked. “What’s going to happen to Mom? To Alexa?”
She was farther off to my right, just beyond Alex, and when I turned to her, I saw that she was cradling Lisa’s head in her lap.
“How is she?” I asked.
“She’s breathing. I think she’ll be OK. She stirred a moment ago. But what about Mom and Alexa? They aren’t moving, Jennifer. Tank has been working on them for five minutes now. Why aren’t they awake?”
“All we can do is pray that they’ll make it, Daniella. We hit the ground hard. I saw something strike your mother’s head when we were going down, so she might just be unconscious. So pray with me. Pray that somehow all of us escape this. Tank is doing his best. He’s trained for just this sort of situation. Are you all right?”
“My head hurts.”
“How is your vision?”
“As clear as the weather.”
Her sarcasm alone told me all I needed to know about Daniella. She was one of the lucky ones. For now, at least, she was going to live. I looked over at Tank, who was kneeling between Blackwell and Alexa. With his shirt off, his back was bright and gleaming in the rain. He didn’t appear to be doing anything to help them, which gave me a start.
“Are they all right?” I asked him.
Before he could answer, there was a rushing sound in the jungle behind us. Immediately, Tank stood and faced the sound.
“What the fuck was that?” Daniella said.
“Quiet,” Tank whispered. He looked around him, found a heavy branch next to Alexa, and picked it up with one hand. It must have been four-feet-long, and yet he did it with such ease, it was as if it weighed nothing. With haste, he stripped away the smaller twigs as if they were matchsticks, quickly whittling the larger branch down into something that resembled a club. Or a massive baseball bat.
A weapon...
He stood completely still and listened over the piercing sounds coming from the plane’s engine to what the jungle had to say to us. The look on his face was focused. Intense. It looked as if he was preparing himself for a fight. What in the hell was near us? Were there people on this island? Was it some sort of animal?
My answer came at once when something rumbled in our direction and unleashed one ferocious mother of a squeal.
CHAPTER THREE
“THEY’RE ABOUT FIFTY feet away,” Tank said to us quietly. “Do nothing. Don’t move. Don’t do anything threatening. If we have to, I’ll choose that moment. We’re out in the open. That’s on our side. When they show themselves to us, they won’t feel cornered. They might just be curious.”
“Who are ‘they’?” Daniella asked.
“Wild boars. There are several of them. Probably a mother and a few juveniles who were feeding near here when we crashed. There’s a good chance an adult male also is with them, but they are shy. The mother is a different story—she’ll fight if she has to. Worse, the young ones will be more aggressive than her because they don’t know any better. They heard us land, they’ve caught whiff of our scent, and now they want to know what they’re dealing with. The question is whether they’re hungry. What you need to know is that they have poor eyesight, which isn’t good for us.”
“Why?” I asked.
“Because, until they’re close to us, they won’t know what or whom they’re up against. I need all of you to be aware that their bite can be deadly. If they feel threatened, they will raise their hackles, which is a good indication that they’re about to charge.”
Alexa started to moan.
“Alexa,” I said as quietly as I could. “She’s alive.”
“And about to give us away,” Daniella said.
With deftness I’d never seen in him before, Tank scooted down next to Alexa, gently shook her by the shoulder, and made eye contact with her. He said something in her ear before he stood again, this time with his finger to his lips. I looked around for Cutter and saw that he had left the plane and was moving boxes of supplies far away from it onto the beach. He had no idea what was happening to us now, and I wasn’t about to call out to him because it would just attract those animals to us. Tank could handle this. I watched Cutter drop off another bundle before running back to the plane again, hoping in my heart that he’d stop before it exploded.
If it exploded...
If it didn’t—if the engine just died out—that plane could serve as shelter for us. If it did explode, what would become of us then? It was still early in the day. If it did explode, we’d need to create some sort of cover for ourselves before night fell. And how would we do that in this weather, and with so few of us healthy and able to assist?
“What’s happening?”
It was Lisa—thank God it was Lisa. I felt a thrill and an overwhelming sense of relief when I heard my best friend’s voice. “Tell her to be quiet,” I said to Daniella. “Tell her not to move.”
“She’s out of it.”
“No, she’s coming into it. Tell her to say nothing. Tell her to be still.”
But the jungle wasn’t still. I
could hear the boars moving toward us at a quick clip. They were crunching through the wet forest, grunting and squealing as they closed the distance between us. My instinct was to protect my husband, so with an effort and despite the pain in my abdomen, I stood in front of him so that I could shield him from any harm that might come his way.
When Tank saw that, he shot me a warning look.
“Stand down,” he hushed.
“Nothing is touching Alex,” I said. “They can have at me first.”
“Are you seriously willing to take that chance?”
“Wouldn’t you do the same for Lisa?”
That caused him to pause.
“If you’re going to stand there, I need you to look confident when they appear. Assured. Don’t look afraid no matter what gestures or sounds they make. Stare them down, but don’t move. If we’re lucky, they’ll move on.”
“What if they don’t?” Daniella asked.
“Then I’ll deal with them,” Tank said.
“With one stick? Against how many, Tank? Listen to them,” she said. “They’re almost upon us. We should call Cutter.”
“If you do that, Daniella, I swear to God that I will beat the shit out of you myself,” I said. “Just sit there, shut up, and do what Tank says. This isn’t any time to fuck around like you did on the plane. Are you hearing me, girl? Because you’d better be.”
And Daniella, clearly shocked by how I’d spoken to her, shrank away from me to console Lisa just as the grunts and snorts came within mere feet of us. I stood still and listened. I prayed for Blackwell, who had yet to move. Was she dead? Was she alive? Tank had said nothing to us about her condition. Was there a reason for that? As concerned as I was, I knew that I had to focus on the moment, and when I did, time slowed. There was an excruciating moment of dead silence in which the seconds seemed to pass like minutes. And then, with a sudden burst of rage, the tall foliage in front of us suddenly blasted open as if someone had just slammed a wrecking ball through it.
Only this ball was a boar, and it revealed itself to us just twenty feet away.
I looked at it in horror. This pig didn’t look like a piglet to me. This pig was a beast. It swept us with its gaze, lifted its broad snout into the air, and then let out one horrific, menacing squeal that shook me to my core.
I felt faint, but I stood motionless. Panic had a stranglehold on my heart, but I managed to keep my features neutral. I heard more movement scrambling toward us in the jungle, and then three smaller pigs appeared from between the folds of the dripping wet greenery. Somehow, they seemed even more agitated than the larger boar, which had to be their mother, and which would protect them at any cost, as any mother would. One of them turned toward me and stomped its hoof on the ground while my heart started to thrash in my chest.
And then the best thing—and the worst thing—happened at once. Blackwell stirred. She was alive! But how would we ever keep her in check now? She didn’t know where she was, what was happening. Who knows what would come out of her mouth? I looked at Daniella, but with the pigs upon us, there was nothing she could do.
“Where am I?” Blackwell asked in a groggy voice. “Why am I on the ground? And why am I soaking wet? And what in God’s name is that rancid smell? Somebody needs a goddamned mint.”
She started to push herself up into a sitting position, but Tank smoothly nudged his foot against her shoulder, pressed her down, and told her in a low voice not to move. “Our plane crashed,” he said in a calm, measured voice meant to reassure her and not to startle the animals. “We’re in a jungle now, Barbara. Four wild boars are challenging us. I need to you stay down, not move, and keep quiet. Do you understand me?”
She sounded delirious when she spoke. “How in the hell am I supposed to understand that?”
The larger pig shook its wet coat, let out a deep grunt, and took a menacing step forward. Tank turned to it and stood firm, the branch at his side. They stared at each other, each waiting for the other to make the next move.
I watched Alexa reach for her mother’s hand and say something I couldn’t quite hear. In the plane, I thought for sure that she’d been impaled by a tree limb, but it was the chair she’d been sitting in that must have taken the damage, not her. Like most, the crash had rendered her unconscious, and I could see by the look on her face that she was fighting for clarity. Unlike her sister, Alexa somehow understood the direness of our situation, even in her foggy state of mind. She knew that she had to keep her mother quiet—if that was even possible.
“Pigs,” Blackwell said. “The last time I saw a pig, it was Immaculata Almendarez. What’s she doing here?”
“Mom, you’re not well. You might have a concussion. You need to be quiet. Please. You have to stay silent for all of our sakes.”
One of the smaller boars charged toward me, only to be stopped dead in its tracks by its mother, who let loose perhaps her loudest squeal yet. Unable to move, I looked at her offspring—now just ten feet away from me—and saw that its hackles were up, just as its mother’s were.
I narrowed my eyes at it, and stood my ground. Anything to show it that I was unafraid of it, even though that was far from the truth. Could it smell my fear? Sense it? Use it against me? I wasn’t sure, but the tension between all of us was becoming so great, I felt that something was about to break—and that this standoff was unsustainable. As weak as I was, I’d fight that sonofabitch if I had to, even though I knew in my heart that if it did attack me, the others would as well, and I’d lose against all of them—just as Tank would. There was no possible way that he and I could protect everyone, let alone ourselves.
“Go!” Tank shouted at the mother boar in his baritone voice. “Get out of here! Leave!”
There was a crashing clap of thunder when he shouted those words, and then lightning lit the dim sky in a way that surprised all of us—including the boars. They lifted their heads to the sky and retreated a bit. The smaller one, who had come close to me, turned in a circle, and went back to its mother’s side while the other juveniles spread out to the left and right of us.
“What do we do, Tank?” I asked.
“Wait them out.”
But there was no waiting. At that moment, the mother boar decided to rush Tank, who swiftly moved as far to the left of us as he could in an effort to protect us. He swung the branch hard and bashed it against the side of the boar’s head. She let out a kind of heaving gasp, tottered sideways away from us, and then fell onto her side. While she lay there, struggling to catch her breath, her piglets swarmed around her. Nuzzled her. Snorted into her ear and nudged their noses against her face in an effort to get her on her feet.
It worked.
It was a struggle for her, but the mother boar stood while her piglets turned toward the rest of us with unbridled fury in their eyes.
“Tank,” I said.
“Quiet—they might leave.”
For a moment, the mother was unsteady on her feet, but with a brisk look at Tank, it was clear that it wasn’t out of the game just yet. If anything, she was more in it than ever. She lowered her head at Tank and let out a furious cry, which caused Daniella to scream as the boar lunged toward Tank again.
This time, Tank swung the branch against her rib cage, likely hoping to break bones, but when it connected with her flesh, the branch snapped in half. Then, the pig, looking unfazed, rushed him again. Tank dropped what was left of the branch and took hold of the boar’s head. Together, they wrestled in a mad skirmish while two of the three piglets directed their attention at me. The third moved to Tank’s right, raised its hackles, and prepared to strike. Tank rained down blows on the mother boar’s head as she snapped her jaws at him, each time coming dangerously close to taking a bite out of one of his thighs. Behind me, Alex came to and called out my name just as one of the juveniles punched toward me, followed by the other.
I shrieked in fear, and kicked the boar in the face when it was within striking distance—and then everything stopped when another explosi
on of light and sound shook the sky with such force, it could have rattled the stars and the moon.
Only this time, it wasn’t lightning or thunder. This time, a wave of heat rolled over us that was so searing, it frightened the boars to the point that the juveniles stopped dead in their tracks and their mother broke away from Tank. She reared backward in a kind of awe and looked above him, and in her large, liquid brown eyes, I saw the twisting curls of bright-orange flames. It was the plane. It had exploded.
And then it exploded again.
Frightened by the commotion, the pigs turned on their hooves, and ran into the jungle.
I whipped around, saw that the plane’s engine was on fire, and knew that the worst was yet to come. In a flash, the flames reached out for the main fuselage, found it half-filled with fuel, and happily ignited it.
When the plane blew apart, the eruption was enough to lift the plane high into the air as if it were made of tin.
“Get down!” Tank shouted at me. “Everyone cover their heads!”
Both of us fell to the ground—me on top of Alex, and Tank spreading himself over Lisa, Blackwell, Alexa, and Daniella. Wreckage shot onto the beach, splintered into the jungle, and soared on fire high above us, where it smashed through the jungle in smoking shards of metal and debris that leveled plants, trees, and limbs. When it was over, I sat there in disbelief, holding onto Alex and searching the beach for Cutter.
But there were no signs of him. I couldn’t see him anywhere, and the very real possibility that he was gone was too much to bear.
CHAPTER FOUR
“I NEED TO GET TO CUTTER,” Tank said as he stood.
“I don’t see him out there,” I said, pushing myself up. “Earlier, I saw him stacking supplies over there on the beach, but he’s nowhere now. I’ve been looking for him.”
“Then you haven’t been looking in the right place,” he said with an edge. “He could have been thrown. I need you and Daniella to care for everyone. The boars won’t be back—I’m certain of that. But Cutter is alive. He has to be. I’ve already lost one brother today. I’m not about to lose another.”
Annihilate Him (Volume 2) Page 2
