“Shut up, the pair of you!” I snap at them. “Listen.”
In the insect-filled murkiness, a distant shout can be heard. It’s hard to tell if it’s male or female. The weak sound is far off, carried through the sweltering air.
“Use your phones.” Axel pulls his out, lighting up the torch. “Better than nothing.”
Hyland follows suit, gesturing for me to follow. “Cover us, Warner.”
Unholstering my pistol, we all take off, using the shout as a homing beacon. With the track winding and barely lit by their phones, leafy roughage pulls at our arms and legs as we move through the vegetation.
When the shouting falls silent, I take a leaf out of Axel’s playbook and yell at the top of my lungs. We’d know about it by now if any assailants were out here searching with us.
The voice comes again, louder this time.
“That way.” Hyland points to the left.
Gun locked in both hands, I follow them through the swaying crops. We move painstakingly slow, dodging roots and thin branches, until the sound of gasping is clearly audible.
Tucking my weapon back into my side holster, I gesture for Axel to hand me his phone. The light beam offers a little visibility into the plants that whisper with quiet cries.
“Wait here.”
“You sure?” Hyland frets.
“Yes. I don’t want to scare her.”
Both nod, allowing me to advance alone. My raging heartbeat roars in my ears, pumping unease and anticipation into my nervous system.
“Em? You out here?”
There’s a sniffle in the barely lit din.
“It’s Warner. Come out, Em. I’m here.”
Swinging the light from side to side, I search for any signs of life in the gloom. The first rustles of movement on my right cause me to whip around, my heart a frantically flapping hummingbird locked in my chest.
“Warner?”
“Yeah, it’s me.”
“Is it… s-safe?” The voice trembles.
“Yes, Em. We’re here now. You’re safe.”
A long-limbed shape limps through two coffee plants. The phone’s light offers me the first glimpse of brilliant, flaming-red hair, a far cry from the expensive bleach-blonde job she used to proudly wear.
Six years of grief, anguish and absolute fucking hopelessness hammers through me at breakneck speed. Every night I’ve laid awake, wishing I could save the girl I once knew and alleviate my best friend’s pain. That I could give him the one person he needed.
Ember.
The inflamed expanse of her oval-shaped face is obscured by violent, dark bruises. Ember’s almost unrecognisable beneath the evidence of fists pummelling her to a pulp, she’s so swollen.
Even when I illuminate her blood-spattered, scantily clad frame, I’m struggling to recognise her. The girl that I grew up with got into plenty of scraps, but this looks like a life-threatening beating.
With one black eye clamped shut, a single blue-grey orb fixes solely on me. She’s wearing a loose sweatshirt and tight spandex shorts that leave her scratch-covered but muscular legs on display.
While working as a personal trainer, Ember was always trim. Yet the muscles that I can see in her thighs and calves now seem bulkier than before. Different. Just like the blonde tips of her outgrown hair.
“Warner,” she whimpers.
