“What the fuck? Why do you always have to hide on top of me?”
“Makes sense, right? To take up the least amount of space, eh? We’re blending like this.”
“It doesn’t make sense! Go find your own log,” I hiss.
“If you don’t want to share, I will toss you over to them, and then sit tight as I watch them chase you down. I mean, really, they want you more than me.”
That doesn’t sound pleasant in the slightest. “At least move a little. You’re crushing me.”
“Fine, fine,” he says as he draws back before making the loudest fucking crinkling noise. “Your bag is stuck on my belt.”
“Shhh!” I hiss as I realize that the ATVs are silent.
“I hear ya, but I’m now in this weird ass-up position. I either need to go back down or away because my arm can’t support my weight this long,” he whispers. He starts to pull back, but the plastic bag makes a hell of a racket. “Why the fuck did you pick the loudest plastic bag you could find?”
“I was in a panic when grabbing medical supplies!” I quietly retort and quickly duck down as I see a flashlight sweep our area. Tavish sinks down on me, smashing me deeper into the dirt as I realize that this is fine. This way, when they shoot him, his body will hopefully slow down the bullet.
“If I die and you make it home, tell my mom and sister how much I love them,” I say.
He’s quiet as he pushes my head down. My stomach is in knots and despite bitching about him taking up my space, I feel weirdly safer with him here, even though he’s still squishing me. Yet the weight of his body makes me feel better.
“I can’t see shit out here,” a guy yells.
“It’s not like they can even get off the island. I say we wait until it’s light enough to see,” a woman says.
The ATVs start up again and within a few minutes, the sound of them grows farther and farther from us, sadly in the direction we’d been heading.
“I don’t have to tell your mom and sister anything; you can weep all over them when you see them,” Tavish says as he gets up. “And get rid of the loud-as-fuck plastic bag.”
“I might… need it for something,” I object as I take out what I need and start sticking it in my pockets. Then I ball up the plastic bag and stuff it in my back pocket.
With nothing left to do, we start walking again.
I like to believe I’m in pretty good shape, but as light creeps up over the horizon and brightens up the island, I start to wonder if that’s all a lie.
I’m hungry after having not eaten anything since lunch the day before, and thirsty since I’d only brought one bottle of water that we used most of to flush Tavish’s eyes out. The two of us had taken sips of it throughout the night, but now it’s getting pretty low, and I’m prepared to fight this man for the rest of it even though I’m well aware I would lose.
“Your phone’s still not working?” I ask.
“Nope. On the plus side, I think I see the ocean,” he says as he nods ahead.
I squint a little and realize that he might actually be right. I trudge forward until we reach the beach, though I’m not sure what that accomplishes. The water is a beautiful blue with soft rolling waves.
If I weren’t in the middle of being chased, threatened, and possibly dying, it’d be beautiful.
“What do you think about slaughtering everyone on the island and then vacationing here for a bit?” Tavish asks.
“I think that sounds horrifically morbid!”
He looks confused. “It does? They’re bad people.”
“So they should go to prison!”
“Naaaaah. The weasel made that mistake and now he’s got some guy haunting him from prison,” he says. “I’m not a weasel, so I’d never make such a foolish mistake.”
I ignore him and wander across the beach, my shoes sinking into sand as I look around foranythingof use. There are no boats, nothing at all, and when Tavish tosses his phone back into his pocket, it becomes quite clear we’re still too close to the jammer.
Tavish sits down in the sand and fumbles for a bit as I pace while trying to think. “I guess since we’ve apparently reached the far point of the island, we should start moving along the shore, right? We don’t know what we might come across going the other way. Hell, depending on how wide the island is, it might put us far enough away that we can get out of the zone of the jammer. We also have the chance of coming across boats the closer we are to the mansion. Are you listening?”
