The Missing

by Kiersten Modglin

  She waved off my concern quickly. “Oh, I’m fine. Just fighting off a bug of some sort. Leave it to me to get sick in the middle of all of this. In paradise, no less.”

  I smiled halfheartedly, unable to compare our current location to paradise, even if it would’ve been under different circumstances. “Have you gotten sick anymore?”

  “Nope,” she said, her lips tight. “Just yesterday. I’m pacing myself with the coconut water, though; I think that was the issue. Maybe I have a slight allergy or something.”

  “I’m glad you’re feeling better,” I said, looking away from her as I heard Noah cry out in the distance.

  “Hey!” he shouted, drawing our attention to him. “Come here! Quick!”

  Instantly, the four of us began running in the direction his scream could be heard from. Please be okay. Please be okay. My internal pleas shocked even me, but after the way he’d taken care of me yesterday, albeit reluctantly, I felt I owed it to him to do the same. As we neared the tree line, I listened for him to make a noise again.

  “Noah?” Harry called cautiously. “You…you okay? What’s going on?”

  “Never been better,” his reply came from behind us. We spun around and, upon seeing him, my stomach lurched.

  “Where did you get those?” James asked, his voice practically quivering.

  “Why do you have them?” Ava demanded.

  In his arms, he held two shotguns, a pistol, and two machetes. As ice-cold fear swept over me, I watched his grin spread.

  “Things are about to get interesting…” His brow raised, sending a chill down my spine. “Aren’t they?”

  Chapter Thirteen

  “Why do you have those, Noah? Where did they come from?” I asked again, begging him to look at me. Instead, he was admiring the weapons in his arms with great care. Was he going to kill us? Was this how it would end? I needed to avoid jumping to conclusions as I so often did, but how could I not?

  When he finally looked up, it was me his eyes narrowed on. “Why don’t you tell us?”

  “Me?” I asked, startled by the accusation. “What are you talking about?”

  “These were by the shelter, and since you were the last person in the shelter, I’d assume if anyone knew where they came from…it’d be you.”

  “I…” Suddenly, all eyes were on me. I felt chills line my skin as I shook my head, trying to find reason where there was none. “I don’t know what you’re talking about. How on earth would I have come up with those? They weren’t there when I woke up.” I thought back, though my memory of waking up alone was hazy at best. “At least, I don’t remember them.” I pressed my fingers to my temples, thinking.

  “Either way, you need to put them down until we figure out where they came from,” Harry said, his arms outstretched, palms facing the ground as he tried to ease Noah into putting them down.

  As could be expected, Noah didn’t budge.

  “No, I don’t think I will. I think I’ll hold on to them.”

  “Are they even loaded?” Ava asked, staring at him skeptically.

  “Want me to shoot and see?” he asked, a brow raised.

  “No,” Harry and James said all at once.

  “We don’t want to draw attention to ourselves,” Harry added.

  “I hate to break it to you guys, but someone already knows we’re here.” He gestured toward the weapons in his hands.

  His sentence brought me back to reality. “He’s right.” The words sent chills down my spine. Someone did know we were there, and there was no room to question it any longer. “Someone knows we’re here… Someone is setting us up.”

  “It could be one of us,” Noah said, still looking at me. “Any of us.”

  “Unless you believe it was me, it couldn’t have been any of us. You were all at the beach together, and I swear to you, the weapons weren’t there when I woke up. I would’ve told you about them.”

  Noah’s brow raised, but it was slight. I knew he was thinking about the waterfall I’d kept a secret, but I brushed the thought away, going on.

  “That means someone waited until I was awake and away from the shelter to put the weapons down. They left them somewhere they knew we’d return. They wanted us to find them.”

  “Someone could be looking out for us,” Ava said, her voice nearly a whisper. “Maybe they were giving us protection.”

  “From each other, yeah,” Noah said.

  “We aren’t a danger to each other,” Harry argued.

  “Maybe we’re on TV after all,” James added in hopefully, but the longer he spoke, the less certain he seemed. “Maybe this is all a setup. Maybe the guns aren’t loaded and the knives aren’t sharp…”

  Noah laid the weapons on the ground carefully, keeping just one shotgun, and placing his body between us and the weapons. Without warning, he fired a shot into the air, causing us all to jump and scream. Harry covered his head with his hands. Ava fell to the ground.

  “What the hell is wrong with you?” I demanded once I’d realized we were still okay. I charged toward him angrily, my hands in fists at my sides. “Why would you do that?”

  “You’ve already said whoever planted these knows we’re here and knows where we are, so now we’ve also disproved the theory that the guns aren’t loaded. What should we do next?” he asked, a lopsided grin on his lips.

  “I don’t understand you…” I said, turning away from him, my belly burning with anger. “Why can’t you just take a single thing seriously? Why does everything have to be a joke?”

  “There could be animals out here,” Harry pointed out. “You could’ve just drawn them toward us.”

  “Animals who’d run toward gunfire?” Noah asked skeptically.

  “At least if he did, we could get something real to eat,” Ava said, her hand on her stomach as she stood finally.

  “We each need a weapon,” I said finally. “In case someone—a person or animal—were to attack. There are five things. That’s obviously intentional.” I reached for a weapon, but Noah stepped in front of them, wagging the gun. He didn’t point it at me, but it was enough to send ice-cold fear through my veins.

  “Ah, ah, ah,” he said, waving the gun again. “Not so fast. I’m the one who found the weapons, apparently. I’m the one who gets to decide what we do with them.”

  “Oh, give it a rest, Noah. She’s right. We need a weapon each. It’s only fair,” Ava said.

  “Who says I want to play fair?” he asked, his brows drawing down in mock confusion.

  “You can’t shoot us all at once,” James said, taking a step toward him aggressively. “You might be able to take one of us out, but it’s four against one, man.”

  Noah’s eyes bounced between us, his expression unchanging, but I caught the glimmer of fear in his eyes. “Are you really willing to take that chance?” he asked finally.

  “Yeah, I am—” James took another step toward him, now shoulder-to-shoulder with me. His hands balled into fists at his sides.

  “We don’t have time for this, guys,” Harry said, exasperation in his tone. “Come on. We need to get going if we want to explore, especially if we’re worried about someone watching us. The best form of protection is for us to keep moving.”

  “I guess we could just leave him here,” Ava said, crossing her arms. “If he won’t share the weapons, he can keep them all and be by himself.”

  “Fine by me. You all go on your little jungle adventure. I’ll be here working on a tan.” As he said it, a darkness fell across the bright sand, and we looked up to the sky where a storm cloud had crossed in front of the sun.

  “So much for your tan,” Ava joked.

  Suddenly, lightning shot down from the cloud, connecting with the horizon.

  “There’s a storm coming,” Harry said ominously as the wind began to pick up. As if further confirming his words, thunder cracked overhead, loud and booming in the otherwise near-silence. I jolted, feeling tears prick my eyes.

  Why? Why was this happening?
Why couldn’t we seem to catch a break? Why did everything seem to be working against us?

  “Looks like travel plans are canceled…” Ava whispered. “Again.”

  “This vacation is really turning into a nightmare, isn’t it? I hope they aren’t expecting a tip.” Noah winked and twirled the gun around again, but as James took a step toward him, he rolled his eyes. “Oh, relax, would you? You can all have your weapons. But I’m keeping this one.”

  “Fine by me,” Ava said, stepping forward. “I’ll take the pistol.”

  “Woah,” Noah tried to stop her. “What do you know about handling a pistol?”

  She pointed it in the air. “Want to find out?” She smirked. “I told you, my dad’s a hunter. I’ve been around guns all my life. Do you know what you’re doing with that?” She jutted a finger toward the shotgun in his arms. “How to load it? How to turn the safety on? How to clean it?”

  His eyes narrowed. “Fair enough. She gets the gun.” He took a half step back and allowed her to take the pistol. James made a move for the other shotgun, and Harry and I settled on the machetes. Okay by me, honestly. Guns had always made me nervous. I’d never grown up around them and had no desire to be around them now, let alone carrying one.

  The wind howled, reminding us of the impending storm, and another bolt of lightning burned across the sky, this time the thunder following close behind it.

  “We need to get to the shelter,” Harry warned, holding his machete awkwardly.

  “In the forest? Isn’t that more dangerous with all the trees?” Ava asked as rain droplets began to pelt us. She shielded her eyes as we all waited to see what Harry would have to say.

  “Sitting at the trunk of a tree, maybe, but under the boulder we should be safe. We should gather up the shells we had before and set them and the empty coconut shells out to catch as much water as we can, too. It won’t be much, but every little bit helps.”

  Without needing further instruction, we jumped into action as the rain picked up even more, its roar deafening as it splattered onto the sand and trees, making it nearly impossible to see each other from just feet away. My skin ached as the rain slapped my sunburn, but I did my best to ignore it.

  Harry and I split the empty, discarded coconuts while the others laid them out next to the seashells, in a somewhat neat row. They were already beginning to fill as we walked away, heading for shelter just as the storm began to rage.

  We huddled under the rock, drenched and shivering as the wind howled and the lightning lit up the sky that was filled with sunshine just an hour before. We lost track of time, no longer able to count on the sun to help us determine how much of the day passed, and most of us dozed in and out of sleep, with thunder waking us up before we found any sort of true rest.

  Hours later, when the rain finally slacked up, the shelter Harry and the others had worked so hard on had been completely knocked down, the branches shredded and splintering. We were windburned and sitting on muddy ground, soaked through our clothes and exhausted, despite the naps.

  As we made our way out of the shelter to assess the damage, Harry gasped, and I looked around for whatever it might be that he saw.

  “We’ll rebuild it,” I assured him as Ava and James went to check how much water we’d been able to accumulate. “We’ll all work together and get it fixed. With these”—I gestured toward where we’d laid the machetes near the back of the boulder—“it’ll be much easier.”

  “It’s not that,” he said, still staring blankly into space. He pointed his nose upward. “Do you smell that?”

  There were lots of smells out there in the jungle. The salty air, the stench of body odor and rotting fish bones from the night before. I inhaled deeply, trying to decide what it was he was smelling at that moment.

  “I don’t know… What is it?”

  His eyes met mine. “Smoke,” he said. “And it’s not coming from our fire.”

  “The lightning?” Noah asked from behind me, true fear on his face for the first time. Harry’s grim expression neither confirmed nor denied it, but as I took another deep breath, I smelled it too.

  Somewhere on the island, there was a fire. And if it grew to be too much, there’d be no escape.

  Chapter Fourteen

  “We have to move to higher ground,” Harry said, jumping into action and scooping up our weapons. “I need to see where the smoke is coming from. If it is a fire, we need to see where it is and if it’s still manageable. If we can put it out, we’ll have to… Otherwise, it’s going to spread like…well, wildfire.” He shoved my machete into my hands and, together, we made our way toward the beach to collect James and Ava.

  They were bent down next to each other, examining the coconuts, and I noticed a closeness between them I hadn’t seen before. They kept their voices low, their bodies practically touching as Ava picked one up and drained it. James watched her almost hungrily, and I felt my skin crawl at the sight.

  “Hey,” I said, interrupting the moment. Ava jumped, sloshing a bit of the water onto the sand, and James stood abruptly. I watched her rub her arm across her mouth and stand too, a bright smile on her face.

  “You guys! They’re all full. Fresh water!” She gestured toward the coconuts waiting for us.

  Okay, so maybe I’d misread pure happiness as attraction as they stood farther apart now, both staring at us with waning smiles.

  “What’s wrong?” James asked.

  “There’s a fire in the forest,” Harry told them. “We have to get going. No more delaying it. We have to find the highest point we can access and try to get an idea of where the fire’s coming from.”

  “Do you think other people started it? The ones who left the weapons?” Ava’s tone was high with fear.

  “Maybe, but it could’ve been the lightning, too. We just don’t know. Either way”—Harry moved toward them—“everyone get a drink and fuel up for the trip. There’s no way of knowing how long we’ll be traveling or when we’ll be able to stop again.”

  Needing no further coaxing, we made our way toward the coconuts and seashells, drinking the fresh rainwater in gulps. I’d never tasted anything so magnificent in all my life.

  Once we’d finished the water—seconds later, mind you—Harry pointed to me. “Can we borrow your cardigan-thingy?” He gestured toward his shoulders. “I’m going to tie it up and make a makeshift pack. We can use it to carry these shells. You never know when we might need them.”

  “Oh, sure,” I said, pulling my arms out of Noah’s T-shirt long enough to shrug the sarong off my shoulders. I handed it to him, and he tied the ends together carefully, loading up the coconuts and seashells and tying it one final time. “There.” He held it up, admiring his work. “It’s not perfect, but it’ll do.”

  “It’s great,” I said, taking it back from him and sliding my arm through the opening so it hung like a grocery sack. It was heavier than I’d been expecting, and there was no less-awkward way to carry it, so this would have to do.

  “Okay then, if everyone has their weapons and their…things…” He looked around, and I knew he was thinking about what few items we had—Harry’s book, our phones, my Kindle. “Our fire was put out by the storm and our shelter’s gone, so we have nothing to do here. Unless anyone can think of anything before we head out, we’ll get going.”

  With nothing to add and no reason to stay, we followed Harry’s lead as he left the shore and disappeared into the forest, walking past our shelter without so much as a glance in its direction. I couldn’t explain the sudden sadness that swept through me. It was just a rock with branches now scattered around it, but it had kept us safe. For our time here, it had been the closest thing we’d had to a home, and I couldn’t deny the grief swelling in my stomach over never seeing it again. It seemed no one else shared my sentiments as we hurried past it and into the vast, unexplored forest.

  The afternoon heat was sweltering; the humidity from the storm had recreated the intense feeling of opening the dryer door and bein
g smacked in the face by the warm, wet heat.

  God, I missed dryers.

  I missed everything. Even small things, like opening a bag of chips on the way home from the grocery store and being stuck in traffic when your favorite song comes on. I missed the big things, of course—my husband, my mom, my bed, my friends, air conditioning, but it was the little things that really seemed to get to me the most. The things that snuck up on me in the quiet, unexpected moments.

  We made our way through the forest, swatting away buzzing insects and mosquitoes and being smacked by branches, twigs, and thorny plants every few steps. My mouth felt drier than it had in our time on the island, and my legs burned as we trekked through the mud and over boulders.

  When we finally stopped in the center of a small clearing, I realized I was panting, my chest tight with haggard breaths. Harry was staring into the distance, a hand up over his brow to shield his eyes from the sun.

  “There,” he said, pointing toward the sky. I looked up, following his finger. “The mountain. The cliff up there. That’s where we’re going.”

  The cliff he’d gestured toward looked thousands of feet away, and I felt my legs shaking at the mere thought of it.

  “I don’t smell smoke anymore,” Noah said, tilting his nose upward. “Do you?”

  He was looking at me, but it was Ava that answered. “I haven’t smelled it in a while. Maybe we were just smelling the remnants of our fire.”

  “I don’t think so,” Harry said. “But the wind stopped blowing too. It’s possible the scent was being carried on the wind. If lightning did start a fire, the rain may have put it out and we just caught a bit of the smell.”

  “Well, if we’re not in a hurry, can we at least take a break?” James bent over his knees. “My legs feel like whipped cream.”

  “I think the term you’re looking for is ‘jelly,’” Ava said with a giggle. “Your legs feel like jelly.”