by Shade Owens
Still, it was better than nothing, and it was sure as hell better than sleeping on the ground.
Turning onto my back, I stared through the overhead trees. I never made a habit of staring upward too long—the last thing I wanted was for something to fall into my eye. Flander had once told me about a new drop—a young girl full of life—who’d spent hours stargazing every night until one night, a branch snapped and somehow managed to scratch her cornea. It was such a deep abrasion that by the time it healed, she’d lost most of her vision in that eye.
It’s that easy, I thought, for your entire life to get turned upside down.
Collins jabbed a stick in the pathetic, flickering flame, and all that did was burn it out. She kicked a pile of leaves into the air and grumbled something.
I wanted to say, “What did you expect? We don’t have enough dry material.” But I kept my mouth shut. What was the point?
“All right, shut up, all of you,” Hawkins said, sitting across from us in the darkness. “Get some rest.”
Although I didn’t want to, I closed my eyes and sucked in the jungle’s moist, earthy air. I was getting used to running on fumes, but it was getting the best of me. Rubbing my legs, I felt my thigh muscles bulging out like smooth rocks. How much weight had I lost since landing on the island? Probably a lot.
Bit by bit, the jungle sounds blended together—a musical rhythm that drew me away from reality.
* * *
“Get up,” she hissed, her breath slipping along my cheek and entering my ear.
I’d recognize that voice anywhere.
What did Hawkins want from me now? Without notice, she grabbed me by the arm and tore me out of my hammock. I tripped over a rock, but she caught me before I fell. It was still dark—dark enough that I couldn’t see the grayness of her eyes.
Where was she taking me? Everyone else, as far as I knew, was out cold. And what time was it? Close to morning? The sky, a sheet of black with bright white speckles, sat still above us, only visible in bits and pieces.
When we were far enough from the others, she pushed me against a tree trunk, and my foot slid in something slimy. Mud? Mushrooms? A dead carcass? I’d never know.
“What’re you doing?” I said, clenching both fists on either side of my waist.
If it was a fight she wanted, she’d get one. Maybe I’d win, maybe I’d lose—but I wouldn’t go down without trying.
“Listen here, you little bitch.”
Her silhouette moved, and although I couldn’t confirm it, it looked like she was pointing a finger at me.
“I don’t know what kind of game you’re playing, but it ends now.”
I tilted my head, trying to get a better glimpse of her. Why wasn’t I afraid? Why wasn’t I swallowing hard, or trembling at the knees? It was almost impossible for me to feel fear anymore, even when threatened.
Why? Did I not value my life anymore? Or, was it that everything about this fucking place seemed so surreal… so… impossible that now, everything felt like a game?
“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” I said.
“Oh, you do,” she growled, her breath warming my face.
How did she know, anyway? How did she know that I wasn’t leading them toward the Northers? Well, at least not directly. We were still headed north. It was only a matter of time before we ended up on Norther territory. All I was hoping for was that nature would take its course before we got there. Or, that we’d end up on someone else’s territory first.
So, theoretically, I wasn’t doing anything wrong.
Exercise wouldn’t kill you, I thought of saying, picturing her average-looking body. How old was Hawkins, anyways? Forty? Fifty? Exercise has its benefits, especially at your age, I said in my head, but I knew being a smartass was going to get me nowhere fast.
“How long until we get there?” she said.
Something sharp jabbed me in the throat, and she moved so close to me that her brows and cheekbones took shape—they were dark and without texture, but they were visible.
“If you don’t get us there by tomorrow night, you’re dead. You hear me?”
I heard her.
Loud and clear.
Fucking try me, I thought, my legs now trembling—not of out of fear, but out of anger; I was at once pulled back to when Hammer had held me at knifepoint in the darkness of the jungle’s night hour. I’d promised myself I’d never allow anyone to bully me like that again.
Yet, here I was, standing face-to-face with an enemy who threatened to take my life.
Did she not know who I was?
Or, was I becoming arrogant? Whatever. It didn’t matter. Nothing fucking mattered on this island.
Sighing, I pushed her knife away from my throat and stepped out of her hold as if to say, Yeah, yeah, Hawkins, don’t get your panties up in a bunch.
But she didn’t let it slide. In an instant, she pinned me hard against the tree, my head smashing against the hard surface as her fingers tightened around my jugular. The arrogance I’d felt seconds ago vanished. Although it must not have shown on the outside, I was panicking a bit on the inside.
I couldn’t breathe.
It was like being held down by a man.
How was someone of such average weight and height this strong? It had come as a surprise.
Clawing at her wrist, I tried to inhale through my nose, releasing a loud snort.
Kick her.
Fucking kick her and take her out.
The only problem was, Hawkins had a knife, and I knew she wasn’t afraid to use it. What did I have? Arrogance. Nothing more.
“Lose the attitude, you little shit.”
I couldn’t say anything, so I slapped her wrist—a submissive way of saying, Okay, okay, you win.
At last, she let go, and I fell to my knees, sucking in as much air as I could. It came in sounding like I was recovering from a bad case of laryngitis—a hoarse bark.
“Think you’re so tough,” she said, walking away. “The sooner you realize you’re a sheep, and I’m a shepherd, the easier this’ll all be for you.”
CHAPTER 8
A sheep, I thought, glaring at the back of Hawkins’s head.
Rubbing my neck, I side-glanced BluJay when I caught her staring at my throat. I didn’t need a mirror to know it was red and likely bruised.
How was I going to get out of this one? I’d spent the last few days telling Hawkins to follow the coastline. And now, what? Was I supposed to tell her, “Hey, so, guess what? I’ve been making you take the long way there. If we cut this way, we should get there in no time”?
Even if we did cut back into the jungle, I didn’t know where I was going.
Good job, Brone, I thought. You tried to outsmart a con artist… a mastermind criminal… and now she’s going to kill you.
Again, I’d underestimated Hawkins.
I flinched when something touched my shoulder, but realized it was BluJay. She walked beside me with bony, rounded shoulders and thin strands of blond hair floating over her matching eyebrows. She tried to smile, perhaps in an attempt to comfort me, but her lips barely moved.
Why was she doing that? No one else seemed to care. Collins had been quick to blurt out something stupid, like, “Whoa, someone’s into some kinky shit.”
And the rest of the women? They’d cocked an eyebrow at me and kept on walking behind Hawkins.
They were sheep.
Not me.
I clenched my fists, tempted to kick up a pile of leaves, but the last thing I wanted to do was draw attention to myself.
“Better tell me if I’m makin’ a turn, Brone,” came Hawkins’s voice at the front. She didn’t even bother to look back. Instead, she waved an arm over her head from side to side. She was getting a kick out of this—reveling in the fact that I was at her mercy.
I glanced at BluJay, who obviously didn’t say anything, though we shared a few unspoken words. It was obvious she wanted nothing to do with Hawkins, but she was too terrifi
ed to speak up. So why was she looking at me? Did she expect me to save her? Why hadn’t she joined me the first time?
“Yo, check it out!” someone exclaimed.
BluJay’s big blue eyes shot toward the sound. She was so mousey… Had Hawkins hurt her? Physically? Or, was she an abuse victim?
“Holy shit!” someone else shouted.
Straight ahead, an opening in the trees brought in a blast of sunshine. As I moved closer, the yellow streaks warmed my legs, my chest, and then my neck. In the distance, seagulls screamed overhead and waves crashed.
We were approaching a beach.
What were they so excited about? Water? It wasn’t like they hadn’t seen a beach before.
But then, I saw it.
Halfway across the shore, rotting in the sand, was the remains of a massive passenger plane. Most of its metallic frame was missing, and one of its wings were snapped in half. Its windows, all black holes along the gray, contorted frame, made it look haunted.
The sun beamed down overtop the metal bars and support beams, forcing me to look away.
But it didn’t matter.
I didn’t have to look at it to know what it was, and who it belonged to.
“Sweet!” Collins shouted, running straight ahead of Hawkins.
Hawkins shouted something, but Collins was kicking through the sand, arms flailing as if trying to swim through the air. Pops and that other foul-smelling woman followed her, running straight toward it like a bunch of excited monkeys.
“Stop!” Hawkins shouted again, but no one listened.
I’d been about to shout the same thing, knowing that this area was protected by the Northers, but then a dark thought entered my mind. Why should I try to protect them? They weren’t good people. Given the chance, they’d kill someone. They’d likely kill me. Besides, the less of them there were, the better my odds at taking Hawkins down.
Was I a monster?
I was knowingly allowing women to run straight into a trap.
In an instant, I saw Ellie’s face—I saw my mother, my best friend Melody, and all of my Hunter friends.
I wasn’t a monster; I was human, and I was a survivor.
Sticking my arm out across BluJay’s chest, I stopped moving. Hawkins must have heard the sound of impact; in one rapid motion, she swung around.
“What’re you doing?” she snapped. “Keep moving.”
BluJay took a step forward, but I stiffened my arm to keep her from following Hawkins out on shore. “No,” I said.
Hawkins’s brows came so close together they looked like one oversized caterpillar. “No?”
At that exact moment, a familiar sound penetrated the air nearby—a high-pitched whistling approaching at an alarming speed, and Collins fell toward the plane, collapsing in the sand with an arrow protruding from her chest.
“Collins!” Hawkins shouted, charging forward.
Without hesitating, I grabbed her around the wrist. She swung back, her features demonically twisted.
“Brone, what the fuck—”
“That plane belongs to the Northers,” I said.
Why the hell had I even helped her? BluJay shrank back, fingers curled up against her bottom lip, looking even more terrified than ever.
“Why didn’t you—” Hawkins said, gazing out at her women.
Pops and the blob were left standing, scrambling around in the sand like ants around a disturbed nest. They tried to run behind the plane, but they didn’t have time. Dozens more arrows came raining down, penetrating their limbs, their chests, and Pops’s throat.
Hawkins winced and turned away.
Why hadn’t I tried to stop them? As I stared at the panicked, dying women, I didn’t see the panic—all I saw were my enemies being taken out for me. What was wrong with me? I thought of my mother—something I always did when fighting a moral battle—and for the first time, it did nothing.
I didn’t feel guilty, nor did I feel like I was doing anything wrong. While my brain knew that death was wrong, no matter the reason, it didn’t eat away at me from the inside like it would have when I first arrived here.
Collins clutched at her chest and screamed as a gooey glob of blood poured out of her mouth. The other two crawled desperately in the sand, their faces scraping against the grainy surface.
Maybe I’d seen so much death that I’d stopped understanding it at all.
If I ever got off this island, I thought, I’d never be normal. I’d probably be forced into a lifetime of therapy, and for what? To live a shitty, routine life full of…
In seconds, several heavily armed women emerged from the forest and a familiar rage tore through me. The tallest of them all, a woman covered in scars who wore a crusty half-skull mask over her jaw and had piercing eyes, with animal fur padded over her shoulders and metal armor plates fastened around her wrists, stomped through the sand and straight toward Hawkins’s dying women.
Zsasz.
Hawkins tried to charge out into the open, but I pulled her back hard.
“You’ll die,” I said. “That’s Zsasz.”
Hawkins grumbled something under her breath, shoulders bouncing up and down as she breathed as if hyperventilating.
The rest of us stood still, watching in horror as Zsasz raised her leg and came down hard on Collins’s face. There was a crack, followed by silence. Then, she pulled a knife from her belt and one by one, slit the other two women’s throats, despite them begging her for mercy.
BluJay turned away, her head dug into my shoulder, and I wrapped an arm around her. She was so small, so fragile, that I felt an unusual need to protect her.
“It’s okay,” I whispered. “Come on, let’s get out of here.”
“We’re not going anywhere!” Hawkins snapped. “I came here for Rainer—”
“Don’t you see?” I snapped back. “You’ll never get to Rainer. Zsasz is a killer! Sometimes she takes in prisoners, other times she kills them for fun. She’s unpredictable! If we stay here, we have a fifty-fifty chance of ever making it to their city!”
Hawkins, now glaring at me as if I were the one responsible for the death of her women, clenched a fist by her face and bared her teeth. “I’ll take those odds.”
“What’re you gonna do?” I said. “Walk out on shore? You can’t possibly think—”
Something sharp jabbed me in the back, and the other two of Hawkins’s surviving women let out a squeal.
What was going on?
“Zsasz!” came a loud, explosive voice from behind me. In the distance, Zsasz turned toward us, soulless eyes hovering above her deathly skull mask.
“Got some strays!” came that same voice.
Behind us were three Northers, one of which I recognized perfectly.
Rebel, one of Zsasz’s goons.
When her eyes rolled toward me, I looked away and aimed my face at the ground. If she looked at me long enough, she’d see past my shaved head, my unsightly gash, and the dirt I’d rubbed over my face, neck, and shoulders during our trek in an attempt to mask my appearance. If she could identify me, I was dead.
She poked the tip of her spear into my back again and grumbled, “Get out there!”
CHAPTER 9
“Zsasz,” Hawkins said cheerfully with two arms aimed at the sky.
She was acting as if she and Zsasz were long-lost friends, even though she’d only ever heard stories about Zsasz.
Zsasz cocked a hairless eyebrow and tilted her head, no doubt trying to figure out how Hawkins knew her name.
“I’ve heard all about you,” Hawkins said, her voice calm. How wasn’t she freaking out? Zsasz held a knife to her throat, and she stood there as if conversing over tea. “You’re a big deal on this island,” she went on. “Almost like a superstar, if you ask me.” She grinned, and it looked so genuine that I found myself wondering if Hawkins was, in fact, admiring Zsasz or simply manipulating her.
Zsasz looked at her, confused. “Super… star?”
No way did she even know wha
t the word superstar meant. How could she? Zsasz had grown up on this island. She didn’t know anything about the outside world—about actors, singers, politics, none of that.
“Oh, never mind,” Hawkins said playfully, making me sick to my stomach. How could she be so chipper? “I came here to find you.”
“Is that so?” Zsasz said, pulling the knife away from Hawkins’s throat. “And why would you want to do something like that?”
“Because,” Hawkins said, “I heard about that little bitch who ran away from you. The one who took half of your people!”
I swallowed hard.
This seemed to intrigue Zsasz. With authority, she gripped her waist, and slowly, removed the mask from her face. It was even more scarred than I remembered, with fresh red scabs sitting at the corners of her lips. It was as if she’d tried to open her mouth so wide it had split the corners. Across her cheek was a brand-new cut; it was thin, long, and already starting to grow new skin. Her cheeks, lumpy pads of skin on either side of her face, slowly expanded as her lips stretched into her famous zebra-striped smile.
“What do you know of Brone?” she asked, and my stomach sank.
The sound of my name coming from her mouth was enough to make me want to hurl. My heartbeat sped up and I swallowed, my throat sticking together.
Zsasz had done something to me… broken me. How was it that I wasn’t afraid of Hawkins, who’d only hours ago threatened to kill me, yet being several feet away from Zsasz terrified me? She was my nightmare—a constant reminder of what I’d been through, and the one person I knew wanted me dead more than anyone else.
“I know where to find your people,” Hawkins said. “All of them. I can also get you Brone.”
Clenching both fists, I instinctively took a step forward, the pad of my feet sinking into the warm sand.
What was she doing? This hadn’t been her plan. She wouldn’t sell us out, would she? She wanted Rainer taken out. What good would come of her killing my people?
