by Shade Owens
The farther we ran, the safer I felt. This man, whoever he was, wasn’t native to the land—we were. I knew better than anyone that traveling through this jungle without getting lost wasn’t an easy feat. There was a reason Trim always advised us to remain on certain paths without ever straying too far from familiar territory.
Everything looked the same—dense green bushes, large crooked trees, giant leaves, and hanging vines.
This guy, whoever he was, didn’t know the island like I did.
At long last, I stopped running, leaned forward, and placed two hands on my knees. Droplets of sweat slid from my hairline, down the bridge of my nose, and off my lips.
“Think we lost him?” Coin whispered.
Swallowing hard, I nodded. “Coin, do you hear anything?”
She closed her eyes and elevated her chin as if trying to catch a scent. “No.”
We hadn’t heard a shot fired in quite some time, which likely meant he’d either given up the chase, or he’d lost us.
Biggie scooped a handful of sweat off her dark, glistening chest and stared into the trees behind us. “Who the fuck was that?”
Planting two firm hands on my waist, I stared at the jungle floor. None of this made any sense. Why the hell was some guy chasing after us with a rifle? If it was his plane he was trying to protect, he’d succeeded. Why continue to run after us?
It was almost as if killing us had been his plan all along. There had been no hesitation in his walk; the man had clearly been on a mission to hunt us down. Was it anger? Had we enraged him by almost taking off with his plane?
“Did he look military to you?” I asked, straightening my back.
Rocket tightened the knot in her dreadlocked hair at the base of her skull. “We didn’t see him, Brone. Only you did. What did he look like?”
Aiming my eyes at the sky to draw out the memory, I said, “Cargo pants, green clothes, a ball cap. I mean, it looked like he was dressed for camouflaging.”
“So he’s a hunter,” Coin said.
Chewing on the inside of my cheek, I said, “Hunters don’t hunt people.”
“Some do,” Biggie said.
We locked eyes and I felt sick to my stomach. “No, this is something else. I mean, the guy obviously has some pretty heavy-duty weapons.” I pointed at the grenade in Rocket’s hand, something that made me uneasy. What if it detonated for no reason and killed us all? “Maybe he’s military and we really pissed him off.”
“Then why set traps?” Coin asked.
For the first time in a long time, my anxiety crept in.
Something about this was eerily unsettling.
“Do you think he’s here to bring some prisoners back?” Elektra asked, no doubt wanting to believe the best-case scenario.
“Again,” Coin said, “why set the traps?”
“To keep people like us from getting too close to the plane,” Elektra said.
For a preteen, the kid was pretty smart. I supposed that explanation did make some sense.
“Maybe Elektra’s right,” I said. “We were never supposed to get that close to the plane, and it scared the hell out of him. I mean—” I swallowed hard, saliva coating the inside of my bruised throat. “This is Kormace Island, the Island of Killers. If I came here on some mission, I’d probably shoot people too if they came too close to my one way off the island. And then I’d keep shooting to scare the living hell out of them.”
Biggie, not looking too convinced by my farfetched rationalization, breathed out threw her wide nostrils and crossed her arms. “Man, it don’t matter why he’s here. How’re we gonna go back to the Village and tell everyone some guy with a gun is walkin’ around on the island? Oh, and also, we can’t use the damn plane ’cause he’s guarding it.”
“We don’t need the plane,” I said. “Right now, what matters is that everyone in the Village remains safe. Before this guy landed, no one talked about getting off the island.”
“Okay,” Rocket said, “but it did land. Now the women have hope. They’re probably all talking about what they’re gonna do when they get back to America, or wherever they came from.”
While I understood what Rocket meant, it was far better to crush false hope than to drag my women into a deadly situation.
When no one said anything, Coin said, “What if we come back?”
Biggie scoffed. “Pfft, girl. Are you insane? Why the hell would we come back? Ain’t you payin’ any attention to the situation at hand? We’re runnin’ from the son of a bitch.”
“Yeah, I get that,” Coin said. “But if we come back prepared, we could take him out.”
Her eyes shot between Biggie, who was looking at her like she was dumber than an empty tin can, and me, who stared back at her pensively, trying to generate potential outcomes in my head.
Was the idea all that stupid? What if we did manage to take him out? What if the plane could be ours? Maybe one of my women knew a thing or two about flying a plane.
“Brone!” Biggie said, scowling at me. “You ain’t seriously considering this ludicrous bullshit, are you?”
Shrugging, I said, “It’s our one option out of this whole mess.”
Biggie clicked her tongue and gave me a fierce look. “You’re talkin’ about goin’ up against a guy wit a gun. And who’s to say he ain’t got friends runnin’ around out there with him? What makes you think he’s alone?”
“He probably isn’t,” Rocket pointed out. “There was a lot on that plane. I doubt he was flying alone.” She turned her attention to me. “I know you don’t want to let your people down, Brone, but it’s not like they have to know the plane landed. We can say we never found it.”
Although I didn’t like the idea of lying to my women, Rocket was right. Sometimes withholding information to protect someone isn’t necessarily a bad thing.
She wiggled her finger at my bruised throat. “And for that, well, you can tell them about Number 73.”
I rolled my eyes. “Right, because that’s gonna go over well. Now there’s a new threat—men from nearby penal islands.”
Coin curled her fingers and then ran them through her hair. “Ugh. Brone’s right. We can’t do that either. We’ll have to say we found a drop.”
“And what?” Rocket asked. “She turned on us?”
When no one said anything, it was obvious we were all in agreement.
“Come on, let’s keep moving,” I said, pushing aside a wall of leaves.
But as I raised my foot to step into a clear opening, I froze at the sight in front of me.
CHAPTER 5
“Holy shit,” Coin breathed, slapping a hand across Biggie’s chest.
Biggie peeled Coin’s fingers off and gave her a look that said, This ain’t free.
“Is she dead?” Rocket asked.
It was impossible to tell. Up in the trees, trapped inside a giant net constructed of thinly sliced vines, was a woman wearing all black, some sort of electronic chest plate, and thick leather boots to match her outfit.
She lay still with her eyes closed as blood dripped from the base of the net.
“Is she one of them?” Rocket asked.
By them, I knew she was referring to the man with the gun. We’d already assumed there was more than one of them. On the ground beneath her, a circle was drawn out in the dirt. Around the circle, animal fur was spread here and there and wooden sticks were planted firmly in the earth. Rotting teeth and bone fragments hung from the tips of the sticks.
A sacrificial ritual? This was obviously Ogre territory, so where was the Ogre? Or the Ogres? And how long had this woman been trapped by them? I scanned the area, catching glimpses of blood smears, skulls, and what appeared to be dried patches of human skin.
At the far back, against a sharp-edged and moss-covered boulder, sat a black rifle similar to the one the man had been carrying. It was placed against the rock, which either meant the captured woman had set her gun aside to inspect the Ogre territory—an unlikely scenario—or that she’d d
ropped it after stepping on the trap, and the Ogre living here had set it aside, not quite certain of its purpose.
I stared at the blood dripping from the woman’s body. I couldn’t quite tell where it was coming from. Her chest? Her legs? The mesh netting underneath her had turned a rusty red, almost brown. A set of dirty fingers dangled through the net’s holes, along with strands of long blond hair.
“Should we help her down?” Rocket asked.
After what had happened today, I was a bit reluctant to help anyone, especially a woman who’d traveled on the same plane as the man with the gun. He’d chased us as if enjoying the hunt. How could I trust that this woman was any different? I wanted nothing more than to be a merciful and fair leader, but I also understood that surviving this island was about making difficult decisions—it wasn’t about making friends.
I thought of Number 73 and how strongly I’d felt about giving him a second chance at life. And what had he done? He’d betrayed us. But, he’d also saved us from stepping into a trap. Some days, I wished that my moral compass didn’t exist. Being a leader would have been much easier if my heart and my brain weren’t constantly arguing over right from wrong.
What if this woman decided to help us for saving her life? What if she convinced the other man that we weren’t a threat? These were all possibilities, but that’s all they were—possibilities. It was quite likely this woman was as dangerous as the man who’d chased after us, which meant saving her was a huge gamble.
For all we knew, she had a communication device on her bodysuit and she’d already called for help.
When I didn’t say anything, Rocket nudged me, and at the same time, Coin slapped my other shoulder, a loud smacking sound resonating around us.
On instinct, I turned toward her with a tight fist, but she quickly lowered herself into a crouched position and pointed straight ahead. Everyone followed suit, hiding behind thick leaves and prickly bushes.
Then, out from behind two oversized tree trunks came an Ogre.
Her posture was poor and round; her arms were thin, meatless, and covered in blue veins; her dark blond hair was full of leaf bits, insects, and webbing and was matted in unusual places, making her head look deformed; her eyes were so sunken in that she looked like a skeleton wearing a skin suit; and the way she walked with her arms dangling on either side of her made me wonder if she’d been raised by apes.
She let out a deep moaning sound and rolled her eyes up at her prize. Then, without warning, she reached for a spear on the ground and jabbed it into the air as hard as she could.
The trapped woman let out a pained holler and moved in a wild manner, the entire trap swaying from side to side. The Ogre lowered her spear, inspected the bloody tip, then shot it up again, this time, stabbing the woman right through the hand.
She let out a scream so loud that a dozen birds overhead flew away.
At the same time, Rocket and Coin tore out their knives, no doubt thinking the same thing as me—we couldn’t sit here and watch someone get tortured by an Ogre. They both stared at me with large eyes, waiting for my command.
Little by little, and as quietly as possible, I pulled an arrow out of my quiver and prepared my bow. I was about to pull on the elastic and aim my arrow at the Ogre, when something caught me by surprise. Another Ogre appeared, looking quite a bit older than the first one. I hadn’t seen her at first because she’d come running into the circle on four legs.
The two of them started making weird sounds at each other, scratching their heads, and pointing up at their new toy. Did they even understand each other?
The older one stood up on two legs, and with bowlegs, made her way over to the gun. She snatched it from the rock, sniffed the metal, and knocked on the barrel with her knuckles.
“No, please,” said the woman overhead. “You—you don’t want to play with that.”
She sounded tired. How long had she been bleeding up there? Was she afraid they’d shoot her? Did they even know how to use it? Unlikely.
The older Ogre laughed, revealing a gummy, toothless smile, and shook the gun in the air while stomping her feet.
The younger Ogre dropped her spear and moved toward the gun, swaying her head from side to side with feline-like curiosity. The two of them bickered back and forth, seemingly trying to figure out how to use their new stolen toy.
Then, the curious young Ogre pointed at the gun’s tip, stuck her finger inside, and let out a choppy cry that reminded me of a monkey. She pulled her finger out, grabbed the gun by the barrel, and stuck her eye over the hole.
Looking irritated, she pulled away, yelled something, and put her face back up against the tip of the gun, trying to see inside the darkness.
Without warning, the gun went off with a powerful bang, making me want to slap my hands over my ears. The young Ogre’s head—or at least what remained of it—shot back, brain matter and skull fragments exploding in every direction. As her body fell to the ground with a loud thump, the old Ogre shrieked, her toothless mouth wide open. She threw the gun into the dirt and dropped onto her four legs, sniffing the air around the gun. Stretching her neck, she looked at her dead friend’s mutilated body. Then, without warning, she cried out and ran in the opposite direction on all fours, straight into the denseness of the jungle.
“Come on,” I said, stepping out with my loaded bow. “Keep your eyes peeled in case there’s more of them. And let’s do this fast—that gunshot must have drawn some unwanted attention.”
While I hadn’t wanted to save the women, the least I could do was give her a fighting chance in case the Ogre came back. Aiming my arrow at the trap’s thick rope overhead, I stretched the elastic of my bow. I’d been about to let go when I saw a set of eyes on me.
From inside the hanging trap, the woman’s face was pressed against blood meshing, her eyes wide and her dry lips parted. At first, she looked terrified, no doubt wondering if I was about to shoot an arrow through her chest. But there was something doll-like about her; she didn’t blink, move, or make a sound.
“Um, Brone,” Biggie said, walking around the dead Ogre’s brainless body. With her thick finger, she pointed up at the trap, where part of the meshing had been torn apart. Part of the woman’s black suit had also been ripped, revealing bloody skin around a dark puncture hole.
There was no use trying to get her down—the bullet had gone straight through the Ogre’s head and into this woman’s chest.
CHAPTER 6
“Do any of you even know how to use this thing?” I asked, twirling the rifle in my hands.
“Don’t point it!” Coin said, shielding her face with her hands. “That’s the number one rule.”
What was she freaking out about? “My finger isn’t even on the trigger.”
“It doesn’t matter,” she said. “Give me that.”
Had it been anyone else ordering me to hand them something, I’d have whipped out my menacing look. But, Coin was my friend, and more often than not, I didn’t think about rank around my friends.
Pulling it out of my hands, she reached for something near the middle of the gun and pressed down.
“What’d you do?” I asked.
She handed me back the gun. “I put on the safety.”
It sounded so simple that I felt like an idiot. What did I know about guns? I’d never seen one in real life. The closest I’d ever come to a gun was in fifth grade when two police officers came to our school to deliver a speech about being street smart. Although they never unclipped the guns from their belts, it was all I could stare at, wondering how such a small thing could cause so much damage.
It was only later, in seventh grade, that I found out about how easy it was to get a gun. Every time I talked about it, though, Mom gave me a speech about how America was falling apart because of guns and how every other month, some kid was shooting up a school.
“You know how to shoot it?” I asked Coin.
She nodded. “Scouts.”
Handing it back to her, I said
, “Don’t go shooting it every time you hear something.”
She made her eyelids go flat as if to say, Do I look like an idiot?
I’d contemplated cutting the woman’s body loose to inspect her for identification and other items we might find useful, but after that gunshot had gone off, I wasn’t confident we were safe.
“Let’s go home,” I said, walking past a dozen frogs impaled on a sharp stick.
Over the last two years, I hadn’t seen a single Ogre. We’d reclaimed our territory, and no one other than a handful of new drops had dared step foot on our land. Whether other tribes were out there on Kormace Island was beyond me, and in all honesty, I didn’t care. So long as they didn’t prove themselves to be a threat to my people, it made no difference to me who ruled what part of the island. I wasn’t Rainer or Hawkins, and living on Kormace Island wasn’t about ruling over everyone—it was about living amicably and surviving as a society.
As we walked through the jungle, Coin inspected every inch of the gun, looking like a kid in a Halloween costume shop.
Every few minutes, she’d mumble something to herself, like, “Who the hell are these people?”
The rest of us were too busy watching out for traps that we ignored her comments.
“There!” Elektra said, pointing at the ground up ahead.
“What?” Rocket said. “What’re we looking at?”
“Oh, never mind,” Elektra said. “I thought I saw a wire.”
Biggie clicked her tongue. “Girl, how da hell do you think you saw a wire? Givin’ us a scare like that.”
“Well, it looked like—”
“Doesn’t matter,” Rocket said. “Do you seriously think they came all the way out here to set traps? I mean, we’re getting close to the Dead Zone.”
Although I agreed with her, we couldn’t be too safe. So far, we’d crossed paths with two people from the outside world—both were carrying a rifle and seemed to have advanced equipment attached to their bodies.
