by Shade Owens
I stared at Franklin, imagining how quickly she’d shut her mouth if I had an arrow pointed at her face. I was sick of people causing unnecessary conflict. We already had enemies lurking on the island. We didn’t need any more.
A high-pitched whistle pulled me out of my state.
I followed the sound and spotted Fisher walking away with a hunting spear. “Come on, Brone.”
Everyone had gone quiet. I hopped over the stream of flowing water and caught up to her.
“I need to get out of here before I kill her,” Fisher whispered, “and by the looks of it, you were having the same thought.”
I smirked.
We stepped through a bush of narrow leaves, disappearing from Redwood’s view.
“You think it’s safe to leave her alone with everyone?” I asked. “She’s got a big mouth.”
Fisher shrugged. “Not my problem. I may be in charge right now, but I’m not a mother. Honestly, I don’t know how Trim does it.”
“How she leads?” I asked.
Fisher nodded. “I don’t know how much of this I can handle. It’s like dealing with kids, and I don’t like kids.”
“Trim’s—”
Without warning, Fisher slapped a hand against my chest. Right at the tip of my toes, a red-and-white serpent slithered in and out of decomposing leaves.
“You need to watch the ground as much as anything else,” she said. “That one’s poisonous.” She jabbed her spear into the snake’s head. Its long body wagged several times before it stopped moving.
“Plus,” she added, sticking out her leaf- and vine-protected foot, “these aren’t gonna hold for long.”
I looked down at my own. They were snug with my old shoelaces wrapped around them, but I knew it was only a matter of time before they’d start to fall apart.
Fortunately, Hammer had agreed to work alongside one of the Needlewomen to build us actual boots for hunting. All she needed was skin—preferably from something large. I couldn’t wait.
“You know where you’re going?” I asked.
She appeared so confident, almost as if she’d spent her entire life in this part of the jungle.
“No clue,” she said, her voice lowering. “But that’s the whole point… We need to scope the place out.”
“You think the Northers live nearby?” I asked.
She shook her head. “I haven’t seen any human traces around here.”
“You’re telling me some women have been here for decades, and there are still areas that haven’t been explored?” I said, brushing past scratchy branches.
She stopped walking and turned to stare at me. “I think most women would prefer to stay where they’re comfortable.” She wiped a big patch of glossy sweat off her forehead. “Why go out exploring unfamiliar territory if everything you need is right where you are? Life on this island is dangerous enough as it is. Heck, I don’t even know how big Kormace Island really is. I’ve only heard that it’s huge.”
That was something I’d wondered ever since stepping foot on the island. Sure, I’d seen Kormace from a distance—that is, before those military bastards threw me out of the helicopter—but I didn’t know its actual size.
“All I know”—Fisher jabbed her spear into the ground—“is that I’m not going far north.”
“Ever?” I wasn’t sure why I asked that, but the word had slipped out. The idea of never avenging our people pissed me off beyond words, but at the same time, I knew we didn’t stand a chance against the Northers.
She smirked, her eyes squinting maliciously. “I didn’t say that.”
She spun her spear upside down, its shaft pointing toward the sky, and pressed her index finger into its sharp point.
“See this?” she said. “This’ll be shoved right through Rainer’s mouth and out the back of her skull when I’m finished with those goddamn, motherfu—”
“Fish!” I hissed, and she immediately stopped talking. “Did you hear that?”
Her round eyes shot from side to side. “Hear what?”
It had been a trumpetlike sound.
“This way,” I whispered, rustling through a multitude of bushes with small blooming bulbs. At the other end of the thick verdure was a bright light coming from a wide-open space. Had we reached the other end of the island? Had we already hit shore?
With my arm, I swept aside a branch full of leaves to form a path, but they only flew back into place the moment I let go, slapping Fisher across the face.
“Jesus, Brone!” she said.
Streaks of yellow light brightened the leaves around us as we continued toward the sound. I pushed aside one last bush and stepped forward, but Fisher caught me by the back of the shirt. Pebbles and debris trickled down a steep cliff inches away from my toes, drawing attention to us.
Dozens of heads turned our way, but we stood there like statues in absolute awe.
“Holy mother of…” Fisher muttered.
CHAPTER 3
A few hundred feet below us was a treeless open space the size of several football fields. At the center was a peanut-shaped body of brown water surrounded by dozens of creatures.
A handful of massive, clay-colored elephants had gathered and stood halfway in the water, their long, wrinkled snouts digging into it in search of something. Their bellies were wet, giving off the appearance of being black in comparison to their dry heads and backs. Underneath them were two calves, not much bigger than ponies, pressed up against their mother’s legs. Most of them had long, ebony-colored tusks, except the largest one, whose right tusk was missing entirely, and its left was cut in half.
A bit farther away were dozens upon dozens of wild dogs. At first glance, I’d thought these to be hyenas, but they were scrawny, had puffy white-tipped tails, and didn’t have any rising fur on the backs of their necks. Their ears were bearlike—round and pointed upward. Their fur was a patchy combination of black, brown, and white, resembling a jumbled version of a German Shepherd. I knew what they were only because of a fifth-grade school project I’d done specifically on wild dogs in Africa. What elephants and hyenas and the like were doing here on Kormace was a mystery.
To the right of this pack was a handful of antelopes, their curved, ridged horns pointing straight ahead as they bent down to drink water. They had white bellies, which were stained brown, and black stripes running along their sides.
Three zebras unexpectedly walked out into the open, their vivid, black-and-white-striped coat creating an illusion—blending the three of them together as one large animal.
There were also boars, one orangutan, a few lemurs, and a pack of deer.
Unbelievable.
“You’re seeing this, right?” Fisher said.
I turned to look at her. She was smiling from ear to ear.
“Yeah,” I breathed.
The numerous heads that had turned our way returned to their drinking water. I could tell by the large body of dry sand surrounding the water that the bay had once been fuller.
“You think that’s rainwater?” I asked.
Fisher nodded. “They probably haven’t had a good drink in a while.”
We stood in silence, admiring Mother Nature’s magnificence. One of the antelope’s heads perked up all of a sudden. Another head followed, and another, and another.
Within seconds, all the animals scattered in opposite directions and vanished into the jungle. We immediately dropped into crouched positions, anticipating the worst, but what came running out of the forest was neither Norther nor Ogre.
A young woman sporting a blue hoodie and a pair of torn jeans came jolting out into the open in a frenzy. She appeared disoriented, swaying from side to side and rubbing her eyes with the back of her hand.
“Is that a drop?” I asked.
Fisher slowly stood up straight. “Looks like it.”
“I thought drops only came from the west,” I said.
Fisher’s jaw muscles popped out. “I thought so, too.”
The woman fell f
lat on her face right before reaching the water.
I blinked. “Did she just die?”
But the woman’s hands came up over her head, and she clawed her fingers into the sand attempting to drag herself toward the water.
Fisher sighed. “Come on.”
We ran along the edge of the cliff, which gradually descended. As I moved down, I grabbed onto baby trees that were sprouting from the rocky terrain, careful not to miss my step. We hopped down onto the flat surface and ran toward the woman.
She’d made it to the water, her face soaked and her stringy hair full of clay.
“Hey!” Fisher said.
The woman didn’t look up. She sucked in as much muddy water as she could, gasping for air every few seconds.
Fisher glanced sideways at me, then moved in closer.
“Hey,” she repeated.
The woman took a deep breath, rolled onto her back, and closed her eyes.
Fisher walked up to her, casting a shadow over her face. The woman’s yellow-brown eyes shot open.
“You real?” she asked with a thick Australian accent.
Fisher nodded. “Real as you. Come on.”
She reached down, grabbed the woman by her sweat-stained arm, and helped her to her feet.
“How long have you been here?” Fisher asked. “I mean, since the drop?”
“The—the drop?” the woman stammered. She squinted at Fisher, the sun reflecting in her eyes.
She was completely disoriented. Did she even know where she was? Did she even remember being dropped by the government?
“How long have you been on Kormace Island?” Fisher said, her face almost touching the woman’s.
The woman missed her step, nearly pulling Fisher to the ground with her.
“Whoa, easy.” Fisher yanked her back up, and I came around to help her by pulling the woman’s other arm around my neck.
One of her legs gave out again, forcing Fisher and me to share her dead weight.
“She needs food and water,” Fisher said.
“Ins—” the woman mumbled.
“What?” I asked.
“My insulin…” she said.
My eyes met Fisher’s. A diabetic?
“She needs to eat something, now,” Fisher said, her pace quickening.
We scurried across the open land, following the water’s edge. The woman mumbled a few more times, but I couldn’t make out what she was saying.
“How the hell is she supposed to survive without insulin?” I asked.
Fisher shook her head. “You’d be surprised by how many health problems are reversed on Kormace Island.”
I stared at her.
“What?” she said, noting my stare. “Everything here’s raw and organic. You really are what you eat.”
I tugged harder, my muscles burning and my lungs aching. I was already feeling the nasty effects of inadequate caloric intake—I could only imagine what it was like to be diabetic.
“If you see any fruit, grab it,” Fisher said. She pulled upward and grunted, but the woman’s head just swayed from side to side. “Come on, wake up. You need to help us out a little here.”
I gazed up at the slope we’d come down. It looked much steeper from the bottom.
“I think she passed out,” I said quietly.
“She’s in critical condition,” Fisher said. “Feel her skin—she’s cold.”
“We can do it,” I said, eyeing the uphill path.
We took a few steps up the slope when my grip loosened and the woman’s arm fell off my shoulder.
“Hold on,” I said. I wrapped my arm around her waist and pulled up as hard as I could. Her arm flapped around my neck and her head fell back.
“She’s out cold,” I said, my attention turning to the woman’s face.
Her lips were blue and her face a translucent white. But what made my stomach sink were her eyes—they were open.
CHAPTER 4
“What do you mean, she died in your arms?” Franklin asked.
Fisher rubbed her forehead and paced back and forth. “Diabetic crash, I’m guessing. She was far gone. Her heart probably stopped. Don’t know how long she’d been wandering around on the island.”
Everyone circled us, hoping we’d brought home a carcass to feed on. The sickening part was that the thought of dragging the woman’s dead body to Redwood had crossed my mind. I was starving—I wasn’t thinking straight.
“Here,” Everest said, handing me a red mango. I quickly grabbed it with both hands and bit through its skin, its juices squirting on either side of my face.
“Ve found plenty of fruit,” she said, her Ukrainian accent still thick as usual. Inside one of Redwood’s tree hollows was a pile of fresh fruit—bananas, mangoes, oranges, pineapples, avocados, kiwis.
Hammer sat on a log with a coconut squished in between her two bare feet and some tools in her hands. It was apparent that she’d cracked open coconuts many times before.
“You said she came from the east?” Proxy asked, tucking her ratty hair behind her ear.
“Northeast,” I said, slurping my last few pieces of fruit.
“Interesting.” She rubbed her pointed chin with her thumb and index finger.
Everyone stared at her.
Johnson, the woefully average-looking woman, stepped forward the way an egotistical man does—fists closed, shoulders pulled back in exaggeration, and chin raised high.
“Well spit it out already!”
Proxy quickly glanced her way but didn’t react. She was so cool and collected I wondered if that was the reason Johnson didn’t like her—because they were complete opposites.
“All of our drops have always been picked up on the island’s western shore,” Proxy said.
“Maybe she’s a recent drop.” I let the skin of my fruit fall to the ground and continued eating. “Maybe the pilot saw The Dead Zone and decided to drop her on the other side.”
Fisher scoffed. “No way they’d give a shit.”
Franklin crossed her arms. “The helicopters rarely fly over the island. Besides, we’d have heard it. Any of you ever think that maybe she’s from a different part of the world?”
Everyone looked at each other.
“You’re saying Kormace Island is being used internationally?” I asked.
Franklin shrugged. “Why not?”
“She did have an Australian accent,” Fisher said, almost in the form of a question.
Franklin shook her head. “That doesn’t mean anything. Look at White Mountain over here. She’s from the United States.”
Everest glared at her, lines forming underneath her old eyes.
There was an uncomfortable silence. How big of an island were we talking?
“That’s concerning,” Proxy said. Everyone stared at her, waiting to hear what that oversized brain of hers had concluded. “I’m sure this woman wasn’t the first to come from the northeast, and she won’t be the last. That also means there isn’t only one drop location.”
I knew what she was getting at, but Hammer, being more of an all brawn and no brain type, stood up with two coconut halves in either hand. “What’s your point?”
“My point,” Proxy said, “is that we have no idea how many women have actually been dropped on Kormace Island. Nor do we know how many of these unknown women were dropped on the northern shore.”
“Goddamnit!” Fisher shouted. She threw her spear into the ground and circled around us.
Were the Northers recruiting more women without our knowing? Was the north receiving drops?
“What’re we supposed to do now?”
“We don’t even know how many of them there are!”
“I don’t care. I’ll kill them all if I have to.”
Everyone bickered back and forth until Coin raised two solid fists in the air and whistled.
“Guys!” she said. “Ain’t nothin’ we can do about that now. We need to focus on findin’ our own.”
I felt a gentle hand against my
back.
“Coin’s right,” Ellie said. “It’s out of our control. Fighting about it isn’t going to fix this.”
Coin sucked on her tooth and nodded, her hands resting on her waist.
Ellie grabbed my hand and tugged. I followed her to one of the hammocks Coin had built. She sat down and pulled me next to her, my body falling against hers.
With her index finger, she drew circles on my thigh. “You okay?”
I looked up at her. Where was this coming from?
“I’m fine,” I said.
“You just dragged a dead woman’s body,” Ellie said.
I thought back to the dead woman’s face—her purple lips, her chalky freckled face, and her wide-open eyes. Although disturbed by the image, I wasn’t scarred by it. Was I losing my sense of reality? Was I losing myself? Any other rational human being would probably have vomited and later suffered post-traumatic stress disorder. But I couldn’t feel anything. Was I in shock? In comparison to the horrible things I’d seen over the last few months, a woman’s dead body fell to the bottom of the disturbance scale. She was another nameless face I’d find in my nightmares.
It didn’t affect me, I kept telling myself.
I forced a smile. “I’m fine.”
She sighed. “Okay. Well, if you ever need to talk…”
I grabbed her hand. “Thank you.”
But I wouldn’t want to talk. There was nothing to talk about. Words wouldn’t take me away from this wretched place, nor would they allow me to unsee the things I’d seen.
A crooked smile curved her lips, and she patted my lap before climbing out of the hammock. I slid off my bow and quiver then stretched my aching legs and leaned back, the hammock’s stringy material wrapping itself around my body.
Just a few minutes, I thought.
“Brone.”
I stared at the trees overhead, wanting nothing more than to pretend I hadn’t heard her.
“Sleep’s for the dead,” Fisher said.
I turned my head sideways and looked at her. She was standing beside Coin, her face resting against the stone head of her hunting spear.
