by Alice Reeds
“Not good? Not good?” I shot him a look that I hoped would cause him infinite amounts of pain. It didn’t of course. I sat up and backed away as much as possible, wanting to put more space between them and us. “These are fucking corpses!”
“I know,” he said, his voice flat. He turned his head, moved closer to them and leaned a little forward so he could look at them more closely, while I really just wanted to get up and run away. But I couldn’t do that, not yet. Whoever these people were, something about them was important, especially considering the bear hadn’t been interested in getting anywhere near them.
Fear nagged at the edges of my consciousness, but I pushed it away, back into oblivion, because there was no space for it in that moment. I needed to be focused, alert, and as calm as I could be, had to pay attention. I shook my head just a little to throw off that feeling, bring something clearer back into my mind. I could do this, I had to do it, and I would do it. But, no matter what, this entire situation was absolute insanity. Suddenly, exploring the jungle didn’t even seem so bad anymore. Anything to not be in that pit, to not have to look at those bodies a second longer.
After I buried the pilot I never wanted to see a dead body again. Damn it.
The four corpses were in two different states of decay. Two of them looked like they’d been around for quite a while, their skin resembling old rough leather, their teeth exposed and their gums black, but the other two seemed relatively fresh, if one could even call it that. There were three guys and one girl based on the fact that one of them was wearing a skirt, a tank top, and silver heart-shaped necklace with a few small pink stones forming an I. The guys seemed around Miles’s height, give or take, the girl, though, much shorter than me. Their skin tones were hard to make out. Then again, for all I cared, they could’ve all been violet; it didn’t change that they were dead and whoever put them into that pit could do the same to us. Nothing about them indicated where they came from, whether they were Americans like us or from somewhere completely different.
What happened to them?
“There are four of them, right? Two pairs, based on the state of their bodies?” I said, the realization painting even grimmer of a picture.
“And all of them have what I assume are bullet holes in their foreheads,” Miles said and pointed at the body closest to him. I looked over all four of them again, and just like he said, all of them had identical circular holes in their foreheads. As far as I knew only bullets would do something like that.
“Someone killed them,” I said absentmindedly, like a voiced realization.
“Never seen a bear with a gun before.”
A bear with a gun. I wanted to laugh, but it came out strangled.
“This is seriously messed up,” I said. “If not for those bullet holes, I’d think the bear was the worst danger on this island, but that’s clearly not the case anymore, now, is it? Someone actually came here and shot them, or shot them and then brought them here, whatever.”
“Let’s also not forget that something about them kept the bear away,” he reminded me, as though I could’ve forgotten that.
I got up and took a few steps back, took in all four bodies, tried to see if anything besides the bullet holes stuck out to me. Their positions were the same, all four lying on their backs, their arms parallel to their bodies, their eyes closed. It didn’t look like any kind of animal had tried to take a bite from them, but also no one had been properly buried. As far as I was aware, burying bodies was something every culture did, so why hadn’t whoever killed them bothered?
“Miles,” I said, my eyes roaming over the entire pit, realization dropping in my mind like a ton of lead. “Have you noticed the size of this pit—that there is just enough space left for two more bodies?”
Miles got up from his spot and walked over to me. He looked at the pit and the bodies the same way I had and then quietly cursed under his breath. “Are you thinking what I’m thinking?” he said.
“Yeah.” My skin tingled, electric, the way it did in the moments before I stepped into a match. “We aren’t alone. At least, not the way we thought we were.”
Chapter Fifteen
Berlin
Telling Miles about Joe’s message was a risky thing to do, I knew as much. There was a very real chance that this would blow up in my face, that I could be wrong and would then have to try and handle the consequences of my actions, but I had no other option left. This was it, the final one.
I had to trust Miles.
Everything within me screamed no, Joe’s words—trust no one—echoing in my mind again and again like they had after I listened to his message the first time. But really, what else was I supposed to do? Besides, if I truly thought about it, Miles hadn’t given me a single reason to doubt him since we’d landed in Berlin. I expected him to do something mean, at least one thing, just to remind me why I rightfully hated him, but he never did.
For all I knew, he was just as much of a victim of whatever was happening as I was, and he had a right to know this.
“Miles,” I said and got up from the floor. He turned and looked at me questioningly. “Sit down. There’s something I have to show you.”
“Unless that something is two tickets home you somehow managed to book, or perfect replicas of our passports, I doubt this is important.”
“Believe me, it is important.” Something about my tone must’ve done the trick because he went and sat down on his bed just like I’d asked him to.
I pulled out my phone from my pocket and unlocked it, then switched to my voice messages. Before I could change my mind, I held my phone out toward him and waited for him to take it. He hesitated, looked at me, not quite convinced, but after another moment or two he took it.
“Press play.”
And he did.
“Fiona, it’s me.” The now all too familiar pause stretched almost endlessly, even more than usual, giving Miles time to look at me again like he was about to ask me if I was trying to pull some kind of prank on him. I wished I were. “I don’t have long. But you have to know. They’re watching you. They’re behind this.” Another long pause. “Trust no one.”
I’d listened to those words so many times I could’ve recited them in my sleep, described every pause, his accent and intonation, which syllables he emphasized and which he didn’t. Those final words haunted my dreams and my every waking moment.
Miles pressed play once more, listened while I watched him. I looked at his face, at his eyes, and tried to read what he thought, gauging his reaction. There wasn’t much for me to go by, nothing more than a light frown and his eyes shifting a bit as he listened, nothing really useful or helpful to me in any way.
Everything depended on his reaction to that message. This was where either he’d reveal his bluff, that he’d been pretending all along, or he’d feel the way I had when I first heard it, worried and confused. Showing it to him at all, sharing this with him and trying to trust that this wasn’t the worst idea I’d had in a long time, was hard enough. Trusting, in general, was hard, trusting him even more, and after Joe’s message, basically impossible.
But there we were, he with my phone in hand, listening to Joe’s message for the third time.
“I had a feeling something about you was off, even more than usual,” he said, his voice even and calm, “that there was something going on with you. I even wanted to ask you about it but figured that if it were relevant to our situation you’d say something, or you’d only tell me off once again, but you just continued pretending like everything was fine.”
“Trust no one,” I said. Was I really that bad of an actress, that bad at masking my true feelings? He’d looked through me so easily, seemingly without even trying much, even though I’d tried so hard to not let any of my worries show. I was both impressed and freaked out by that fact. If he was with the bad guys after all, that would mean he knew I knew something all along, meaning that I was even more screwed than I thought. Please let it not be like that! “I simply
didn’t know…”
Miles remained silent at first, then handed me back my phone and sighed a little. What was he thinking? Did he believe the message, or did he think it was just a joke, that I was overreacting or something?
“Who’s the guy from the message?” he finally asked and looked at me again.
“A friend. I’ve known him for a while. He’s this homeless guy from a park not too far from my place. I know it probably makes no sense, a guy like that leaving me a message like this. But I know he would never lie to me. I mean, what reason would he have to do it, anyway?”
“If this guy is homeless, how would he know anything? What if he’s simply crazy, and that’s why he left you that message?”
Joe did have an affinity for conspiracy theories, but he’d never go this far, never alarm me in such a way. It was one thing to try and convince me that we never landed on the moon, but something else entirely to make an international call to try and make me believe I was in danger even though I wasn’t. Even he was there enough, even on his less there days, to not do something like that. He was my friend, and I trusted his words. He knew that, would never betray me this way.
“I don’t know about you, but looking at all the shit that’s happened so far in Berlin makes the message all the more believable, don’t you think?” I moved farther onto my bed until I could rest my back against the wall. “I have no idea how Joe knows anything, how any of it is possible, but he obviously has to know somehow. The message isn’t any more insane than anything else that’s happened. He just tried to warn me so I’d be cautious, wouldn’t accidentally get into more trouble than we kind of already are in.”
“And you thought what he said also included me.” I couldn’t quite tell if he sounded disappointed, or offended, or like he didn’t care, or maybe all those things combined somehow. His voice was still too calm and controlled. But his facial expression shifted slowly, turned almost a little mad, his eyes a little harder than they usually were.
“What else was I supposed to think? It’s not like we are buddies in any sense of that word, so how was I supposed to know that it didn’t, or that it did.”
“See, I can understand where you’re coming from. At least, kind of. But…” He trailed off and then sighed. “We’ve been wondering what the hell is happening for four days, tried time and time again to save our asses, and you took this long to show this to me? And sure, we might not be friends, but concluding that I was probably just here to fuck you over, that’s a little harsh, don’t you think?”
“As if you would’ve thought differently if our roles were reversed.”
“Maybe not, or maybe I would have. That isn’t the point. The point is that you withheld important information from me. I’m just as screwed as you are, can’t get away from here, either, so did it really not cross your mind earlier to tell me? As if our current situation wasn’t awful enough just yet, you were all about playing it cool and like everything was totally okay, even though all along you suspected I am an asshole just waiting to betray you.”
“To be fair, you are kind of an asshole in many cases, just not this one.” I tried to smile, at least somewhat, so he’d know I was just teasing, but his face remained hard.
But looking at his reaction, at his words, how raw and kind of mad they sounded, maybe even truly a little hurt, it was exactly what I had hoped and longed for. It told me he wasn’t lying. He couldn’t be. There was something much too honest in all of it to be a lie, some kind of trained response designed to make me think I had everything figured out, even though I didn’t.
And sure, that could still be the case. Maybe he was supposed to make me believe that he was on my side to lull me into safety and make me careless. It was an option, but I didn’t think the chances of it being true were high. Or maybe I just didn’t want to believe that it could be the case. Based on everything we’d gone through, I just couldn’t see how he could be evil enough to play me like this. He could be an arrogant jerk sometimes, but he wasn’t a psychopath. I would keep my eyes open, stay on top of my game, focused, so that if things went south, I could save my skin.
There was also the chance that if it came to it, he’d turn me into a scapegoat if it meant he’d stay alive. He was just human, after all, just like me, but I hoped we would never get in a situation like that.
But, if he was saying the truth, it meant that, in this case, I had been the asshole. He said it perfectly; I’d jumped to conclusions and left him in the dark, even though he was drowning just as much as I was. In the end, I was glad I’d told him, that I didn’t have to carry this almost burden of some sort with me, that I didn’t have to keep a secret from him anymore. All cards were on the table, the both of us on the same page.
I was relieved, far more than I ever would’ve thought I would be because of anything to do with Miles, and a part of me felt like we were just a little less screwed. It was a stupid thing to think, of course, because our situation hadn’t changed in any tangible way. We were still just as stuck in Berlin as two hours ago, but at least I knew I had someone to confide in now, that I didn’t have to watch my back anymore when it came to him—at least not as much as I thought I had to—just everyone else.
“They’re watching you,” Miles said almost absentmindedly. “Isn’t that what your friend said?” I nodded, wondering where this was going. “I don’t want to alarm you, in case you haven’t noticed, but I’m pretty sure I’ve seen the same two dudes pop up in several of the places we’ve been, and it’s been too many times for it to be a coincidence.”
I hadn’t imagined it? I’d been convinced that I was just getting so paranoid that I made that up, those two men at Siemensstadt and then at the airport, but Miles had seen them, too.
“I’ve noticed them,” I said, my heartbeat quickening.
“Considering what your friend said, his warning of them watching you, and them being behind this, I think we should figure out if it really is the same two guys, if they are following and watching us, and then who they actually are.” A smile spread across Miles’s face, one that told me he was more than ready to turn things around, to make them see that we weren’t just pawns in their game, whatever game it was, and whichever rules applied.
“What are you thinking?”
His smile grew wider. “I think I’m tired of running. Let’s make a plan.”
Chapter Sixteen
The Island
“There’s something I’d like to discuss, or rather, propose,” Miles said once we returned to the beach a few hours later. The joy I still felt over a few mangos we found along the way was almost stupid, but unlike bananas, I loved mangos. Using flat rocks with kind of sharp edges to cut them hadn’t been easy, but it worked. We sat down in the sand a few feet away from the ocean, the waves a little harsher than the previous evening. The sun was about to set, the sky painted in hues of red, orange, and yellow. The salty ocean air was a welcome change from the stench of death and the jungle.
“And what’s that?” Absentmindedly I ran my fingers through my hair, loosening the knots that formed during the day, pulling out a few dry pieces of leaves and a small broken twig. At least it wasn’t anything connected to the bodies.
“Looking at how awful our situation is, I think it’s time to, you know, officially put an end, or at least a pause, to our whole hating each other thing.”
“What?” I asked, surprised, and looked at him. I expected to see a smile, some kind of expression that would indicate he was joking, that it was just some kind of shtick of his, but there was nothing. His expression was completely serious, his eyes focused.
“It’s a known fact that we’ve never gotten along, and I’d like to change that, even though I find your sass toward me very entertaining. I’ll be the first to admit it, getting you all riled up and annoyed is fun, but while we’re here, it won’t help us.”
“So, you want to make some kind of temporary truce?”
To call me suspicious would be an understatement. But hi
s friends weren’t around, so he had no way or reason to try to trick me, no possibility of humiliating me for his amusement or someone else’s. There was only the two of us, no phones, no cameras, no internet, and no social media.
Besides, he needed me. Even if this was only about him trying to get out of this alive, I couldn’t really dismiss his help when I had the same problem. I needed him, too.
“Yes, that’s exactly what I want,” he said.
“Why?”
“What do you mean why? Isn’t it obvious?”
It was obvious, of course it was, but I wanted to hear it from him, wanted him to work for it, and I was sure that if he lied, I’d know it. I said I could see through him, and I was beginning to believe I actually did. It was easy to spot it in his eyes, at least when I paid attention. I’d never bothered before, ignored most details about him, because I never had a reason to care, to try to look beyond, but now I did pay attention. When he spoke the truth, his eyes seemed clear somehow and had this honesty in them that I couldn’t quite explain. They looked different when he lied.
“Indulge me.”
“We’re alone on a cursed island with a broken plane that might as well be just a movie prop, a giant bear playing guardian, a hole in the ground with four bodies and enough space for two more,” he began. “I don’t know about you, but I don’t think any of this is good, and the longer we’re here, the more we find out, the less I think anyone will come to save us. I could pretend none of this scares me, act like it doesn’t keep me up at night with worry, but I don’t think it makes much sense. So, looking at all that, instead of continuing to act the way we used to, to continue to be the two we used to be at school, I’d like to make peace with you. And really, if we’d try, I think there’s a chance we could even be friends.”
Miles and I being friends… It seemed as insane a concept as an actual hover board or a car in space. How would that work? How was I supposed to trust him, of all people, the personification of what you’d get if you Googled “arrogant egocentric rich boy”?
