Lost: The Novels
Page 7
He smiled at her, though his eyes were busy roving the crowd. “Don’t worry, babe,” he said. “I’m sure we—”
The last part of his sentence was lost in a sudden outburst. Out of the corner of her eye, Faith barely saw something—a soda bottle, maybe?—whizzing over the heads of the crowd toward the steps.
“All right, that’s enough, then!” an Australian cop shouted, wading into the crowd toward Faith’s group with several of his comrades right behind him.
Faith gulped, wondering if one of her companions had thrown the object. It certainly wouldn’t surprise her. At least she knew it hadn’t been Oscar, since she’d been looking directly at him.
The noise from the crowd increased, and Faith glanced forward to see that Arreglo was being hurried off stage by a couple of officers. She was relieved to see that they were getting him out of there before things got any more out of hand.
“Okay, mates.” One of the officers, a burly blond with a deep tan, had reached them by now. “Anyone know something about all the commotion?”
“Look out, it’s the pigs!” Rune screamed.
Faith winced, wishing she could sink into the ground and disappear. How had she ended up here in this situation? She shrank back in horror as a couple of the police officers pulled Rune down from Junior’s shoulders and grabbed both of them.
“Don’t touch them!” Oscar cried, lurching forward.
“Wait,” she hissed, grabbing him and hauling him back as he tried to push his way toward the others. “Don’t do anything stupid, okay?”
She shot an anxious glance at Rune, who was struggling melodramatically against the cop holding her. Junior and Mo were yelling and fighting back, too, though Z-Man seemed to have faded away into the crowd. Oscar seemed ready to leap right in and get involved, but when Faith yanked at his arm again, more sharply this time, he shrugged and let her pull him away.
“Maybe you’re right, babe,” he said. “Let’s get while the getting’s good.”
They slid through the crowd, heading for the sidewalk across the street from the convention center. As things started to thin out near the back edges of the gathering, they passed a man holding a video camera and filming a pretty female reporter as she tried to interview people.
“Excuse me!” the reporter cried in an American accent, spotting Oscar. “I’d like to ask you a few questions!”
Faith cringed, certain that Oscar was going to stop. He loved nothing more than ranting to the press at any given opportunity. Usually he didn’t even wait to be asked before shouting his opinions into the nearest camera.
To her surprise, though, this time he didn’t even slow down. Grabbing her by the arm, he ducked his head and dragged her abruptly off to one side, dodging the microphone the reporter was trying to shove in his face.
A moment later they rounded a corner and reached the relative quiet of the street beyond. “What’s with you?” Faith asked breathlessly, leaning against a streetlight to rest. “I thought you’d want to talk to that reporter.”
He waved away the question impatiently. “I’d better call Tammy,” he said, fishing in his jeans pocket for his cell phone. “She can come pick us up here, and we can tell her about the others.”
Faith waited while he made the call. After he hung up, his expression turned gleeful as he glanced over his shoulder toward the corner. The noise of the crowd was still faintly audible, punctuated with screams and shouting.
“So how cool was that?” he exclaimed. “Like, everyone is against Arreglo now!”
“I don’t know if you can say everyone,” Faith murmured, as usual mildly annoyed by Oscar’s tendency to exaggerate.
She was taken by surprise when Oscar suddenly turned and stared directly into her face. “What about you, beautiful?” he demanded, sounding oddly urgent. “Can you see yet that we have to do whatever we can to stop him before it’s too late? Whatever it takes, no holds barred?”
Faith shrugged. “I don’t know,” she mumbled. “Listen, do you think we should try to find the police station and—”
“Don’t change the subject, babe!” Oscar sounded almost angry. “I asked you a question. Aren’t you going to answer me?”
“Why does it matter what I think?” she countered, suddenly feeling put on the defensive. “I’m here, right? I’m definitely against anything that will hurt the planet. But…”
She was about to go on—to admit that she was starting to think that one bad decision shouldn’t end a good relationship. After all, Dr. Arreglo had always been good to her, and she hadn’t had that many people in her life she could count on.
Think with your brain, sweetie, not your heart, Gayle’s voice reproached kindly in her mind.
Taking a deep breath, Faith knew her sister’s words made sense. This wasn’t the time or the place for a thoughtful, nuanced discussion on her feelings about Arreglo—especially since she wasn’t even sure what they were. She and Oscar were both riled up from what had just happened; the best path was to let him wind down before trying to talk to him about anything serious.
“But what?” he demanded, obviously still waiting for the rest of her comment.
“But nothing,” she said. “Sorry, guess I’m just tired or something. It’s been a long day, and I’m still kind of jet-lagged.”
Oscar shrugged. “There’s no time for rest when the world is at stake,” he chided, though he suddenly sounded more distracted than angry.
She followed his gaze and saw a familiar white van pulling up to the curb. Seeing Tammy behind the wheel, Faith guessed that she must have been waiting for their call nearby since dropping them off at the rally.
She and Oscar hurried over and climbed into the van. As soon as Oscar told her what had happened, Tammy pulled out a phone. Speaking quickly into it, she told someone to go track down the others at the local police station and bail them out if necessary. Then she hung up and turned to face her passengers.
“All right,” she said briskly. “That’s that. Any changes in the weather to report, Oscar?”
“Not yet,” Oscar answered shortly. “Still cloudy.”
Faith glanced from one to the other, feeling puzzled and left out. Why were they talking about the weather at a time like this? And what did Oscar mean, cloudy? There wasn’t a cloud in the sky. Were they speaking in some kind of protester code she didn’t understand?
Before she could screw up the courage to ask, Tammy turned to her with a warm smile. “Now then, Faith,” she said. “Since we have a bit of time until we get the others gathered up, what say I take you to have a squizz at IAL’s local bio lab? We’re doing some really fantastic research there with venomous snakes—that’s your area, isn’t it?”
Faith was a little surprised that Tammy knew that. “Sure!” she blurted out, thrilled at the invitation. Since arriving in Australia, she’d had no chance at all to see or learn about the snakes that had lured her there in the first place. “I’d love that!”
“Good! Off we go, then.”
As Tammy put the van in gear and steered out into traffic, Faith leaned back against her seat, happy about this unexpected turn of events. So far this trip to Sydney had been mostly stressful and not much fun. But being back in a lab would certainly be just the thing to help her feel more at home even in this faraway land.
9
FAITH HAD ONLY BEEN back on the beach for a few minutes when she heard George calling her name. Looking up from the bag of women’s clothes she was sorting, she saw him hurrying toward her carrying a beat-up but very familiar green suitcase.
She gasped. “My bag!”
He stopped in front of her with a grin. “One of the guys just brought it in from the jungle, and I saw your name on the tag,” he said breathlessly. “Thought you’d want it back right away.”
“Thanks.” She smiled at him uncertainly, her mind leaping immediately back to their unpleasant argument in the bamboo grove a short while earlier, and then to the spider incident the previous day.
“Oh.” Faith was touched by his apology. “Um, that’s okay. No big deal.”
That wasn’t exactly true. It would take her a while to forget some of the things he’d said. But that didn’t mean she couldn’t forgive him, especially when he was clearly making such an effort to be nice. Maybe it was best if they just agreed to disagree and left it at that.
As George hurried off, Faith moved a short distance away from the luggage pile and set her bag on the sand. Sitting down in front of it, she clicked it open and stared at the familiar, though jumbled, contents inside. She was grateful that her books seemed to have survived the crash and the rain relatively unscathed. She grabbed a pair of sandals from beneath the books and traded them for the borrowed Keds on her feet, already feeling a little more like herself.
“What are you doing?” a voice asked from just over her left shoulder.
She glanced up and found Walt standing there. “Hey!” she exclaimed, surprised and pleased to see him. “Where’d you come from? Your dad was looking all over for you, you know.”
“I know.” Walt shrugged. “He found me. I was just looking for Vincent in the woods up past the inlet there.” He gestured vaguely toward one end of the beach. “I don’t know why he had to make such a big deal about it—I was hardly even that far into the woods. I could still see the ocean from where I was!”
She hid a smile at the boy’s expression of wounded incredulity. “I’m sure that’s true,” she said. “But you can’t blame your dad for being worried about you. We don’t know much about this place, and it could be dangerous to go off alone like that.”
“I guess.” Walt kneeled down on the sand, peering into her suitcase. “Wow, you’re an even messier packer than I am,” he commented.
“Not usually,” she said. “But this time I had to pack in a hurry.”
“Why?” he asked curiously.
Faith bit her lip, wishing she’d just agreed that she was a messy packer and left it at that. To distract him, she grabbed one of the books from inside her suitcase.
“Hey, you might like this,” she said, trying to sound cheerful. “Check it out.” Flipping it open, she showed him a glossy, full-color plate of a slender yellowish snake. “See this guy? That’s a Small-scaled Snake—some people call it the Fierce Snake. It lives in Australia, and it has the most powerful venom of any snake in the whole world.”
“Whoa! I didn’t know that.” Walt seemed suitably impressed. He pointed to another snake on the same page. “What’s that one there?”
“That’s a copperhead.” Faith chuckled as she stared at the picture.
Walt shot her a puzzled look. “What’s so funny?”
“Oh, sorry.” She tapped the photo. “This just reminded me of something my older sister did once. One year for Halloween, she glued a bunch of pennies to a hat and wore it with her normal clothes. Nobody could figure out what she was supposed to be except me.”
Walt looked perplexed for a second, then his face cleared. “I get it,” he said. “Pennies are copper—she was a copperhead!”
“Right!” Faith smiled at the memory.
“Your sister sounds cool,” Walt declared.
“Yeah.”
They were interrupted at that moment by the sound of shouting from nearby. Walt jumped up immediately and ran off to see what was happening. Faith closed the flap of her bag and left it on the sand, following the boy more slowly.
When she rounded a large piece of wreckage, the only thing she could see at first was a ring of people staring at something beyond. Then she heard a muffled grunt and a few shouts of dismay. As one of the onlookers shifted his weight, she could see a pair of men tangled in combat at the center of the circle of onlookers. To her amazement, she recognized one of the fighters as Sayid, the fire builder. The other was Sawyer—Faith had spotted him several times that day poking around in the luggage piles when he thought no one was looking, though she hadn’t spoken to him since that first, uncomfortable meeting by the fire. Walt’s father, Michael, was standing just inside the circle, waving his arms helplessly to try to stop the other two men from punching each other. The rest of the fighters’ audience seemed content to stand there passively, as if watching a boxing match. Walt had already pushed his way to the front and was staring wide-eyed at the two men.
Faith stood there staring herself, horrified, as Sayid deftly ducked a punch and then landed a vicious jab to Sawyer’s solar plexus. Sawyer doubled over for a second, then straightened up and flung a handful of sand at the other man. As Sayid turned his head to avoid the flying sand, Sawyer leaped forward and tackled him. The two of them hit the ground hard, still doing their best to pummel each other. There was a sudden flurry of movement at the far side of the circle, and a second later Jack appeared, followed by Ms. High Cheekbones and the bearded British guy from the fire last night. Jack lunged forward almost immediately.
“Hey, break it up!” he cried. “Break it up! Get off!” He grabbed Sawyer and peeled him off of Sayid. Sayid seemed ready to come after him, but Michael grabbed him before he could.
As the two men continued shouting hoarsely at each other, Faith backed away, revolted by the seemingly spontaneous eruption of violence. Why couldn’t people just live and let live? She had no idea why the two men were fighting, but she was certain there was no reason good enough to excuse it. They were all in this together; why make things harder than they already were?
Deciding she’d suddenly had enough of all the togetherness of the past twenty-four hours, Faith took advantage of the distraction around the fighters to slip away. It would feel good to be by herself for a change, to relax and think without worrying about anyone else.
She skirted the edge of the jungle, moving quickly and quietly until she was out of view of the wreckage and the people on the beach. Then she slowed her step, enjoying the sound of the sea breeze rustling the leaves on one side of her and the gentle rhythm of the surf on the other. As she walked, she kept her eyes turned in toward the jungle, hoping for another chance glimpse of the Paradise Parrot.
There were plenty of birds flitting through the foliage, but none that looked anything like the one she was after. Remembering that she’d been a little farther away from the beach the other times, she took a few steps into the shade of the trees, but then stopped short. Her heart pounded as she was seized by a nearly irresistible urge to race back out to the bright, open safety of the beach.
No wonder, she assured herself. Who wants to take the chance of running into whatever was out there making those scary noises?
But deep down, she knew that wasn’t the only reason she was afraid. For some reason, the idea of roaming too deep into all that unspoiled nature by herself made her feel anxious and wary.
She frowned at the realization. Such a feeling definitely wasn’t normal for her. Some of her happiest memories of childhood involved feeling like a vital part of nature as she’d wandered all alone through the woods behind her childhood home, knowing she was lost but not really minding. As long as she could feel the dirt beneath her feet, see the sky overhead, smell the raw life flowing from the bark and the sap and the leaves all around her, she’d always known she would be all right.
No, it definitely wasn’t normal for her to be scared of being alone with nature. Some things had always made her nervous, but not that…
10
FAITH’S STOMACH CLENCHED NERVOUSLY as Tammy turned to smile at her from the driver’s seat. “Almost there,” the Australian woman said cheerfully.
Faith forced a smile, trying not to let the other woman see her anxiety. She was always a little nervous about new people and places, especially when she didn’t know what to expect. Staring out the van
window, she wondered what the IAL lab would be like. Would it be some huge, sparkling, state-of-the-art place filled with accomplished biologists that made her feel like a local yokel?
Don’t run yourself down, she thought, echoing something her sister had said to her many times. After all, she was well on her way to becoming an accomplished biologist herself. Hadn’t she been accepted into one of the toughest PhD programs in the country? Hadn’t she spent the past year studying under the world-famous Dr. Luis Arreglo?
She winced, reminding herself that it probably wasn’t the best idea to mention that particular name…
“Psyched to see the snake lab?” Oscar asked, leaning over to squeeze her shoulder.
“Sure.” She smiled weakly at him, not bothering to explain how she was feeling. Oscar wasn’t the type of person to worry too much about anything—if anything he reveled in the new and unknown.
“Good.” Oscar leaned back in his own seat, smiling at her. “I’m really glad you’re getting the chance to see the important work IAL is doing for the world. They’re a really fantastic group, you know. Totally dedicated to the cause of environmental conservation and stuff.”
“That’s right,” Tammy said cheerfully as she slowed the van and took a sharp turn into a parking lot.
Faith glanced out the window again. She hadn’t known what to expect, but it wasn’t this rather seedy strip mall with several empty storefronts and piles of trash in the parking lot.
“Um, is this it?” she asked, trying to keep her voice neutral.
“This is it,” Tammy said. “I know it doesn’t look like much, but we were more concerned with the facilities than with appearances.”
Feeling vaguely chastised, Faith just nodded. She climbed out of the van and followed Tammy and Oscar toward one of the plate-glass storefronts. The large windows had been blocked out with brown paper taped to the insides, but a small, computer-printed sign on the door identified the place as PRO HLTH LAB: AUTHORISED VISITORS ONLY.
“Pro health?” Faith whispered to Oscar as Tammy fiddled with the ring of keys she’d just pulled from her jacket pocket. “What does that mean?”