Total pages in book: 114
Estimated words: 110757 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 554(@200wpm)___ 443(@250wpm)___ 369(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 110757 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 554(@200wpm)___ 443(@250wpm)___ 369(@300wpm)
“I can get Nova back on my own,” Marcus says. “I’ll take Ellison and send Olin here to help you guys. You’ll be able to get a lot more back with four of you.”
“Sounds good,” Pax says. “Hang on.”
He goes over to the fire and takes several cooked fish from the grate, wrapping them in paper. When he returns, he passes the fish to Marcus.
“You guys eat those. We’ll bring more back.”
Marcus nods, then locks his gaze onto me and says, “Be safe.”
“We’re right behind you,” I say.
What I really want is to curl up on the sand and go to sleep. The attack didn’t deplete me as much as the one against Ingrid’s men did, but I’m still exhausted. Just picking up my feet to walk is an effort.
I don’t let it show, though. We need these supplies. This was a small win for us, but there’s a much bigger battle ahead.
Ingrid has too many soldiers at our camp for me and Pax to take out like we did here. There’s too much risk of collateral damage.
I can’t think about it now. It’s all I can do to stay upright. I need food, water, and rest.
And Marcus. I don’t even care that we have to sleep in a cold, damp, bat-shit-infested cave. Tonight, we get to sleep there together.
41
“Only top command had access to our security codes, but that ILF terrorist group got them. We have a leak, and it must be stopped.” – Electronic message from New America Present Soren Whitman to New America Vice President Aldous Thatcher
Briar
I’m finally clean.
The supplies we raided were a gold mine. We got rice, beans, clean clothes, and soap.
I didn’t have the energy to walk to the spring near the cave to clean up yesterday. I couldn’t even stay awake until Pax and Marcus brought food back to camp.
They cooked rice and beans at the beach where we took out the Tiders so the scents of cooking food couldn’t be traced to the cave. When Marcus woke me up to eat, I could hardly stay awake long enough to scarf down several bites.
I remember him coming back to me later and moving me on top of him, my chest on his. His back was on the cold, wet cave floor all night while he was my mattress. The only other time I woke up was when the air filled with the flapping of hundreds of bats flying out of the cave. Marcus murmured in my ear that it was fine, they’d be gone soon, and I went back to sleep.
Today I feel like myself again. I scrubbed every inch of my skin and Amira washed my hair three times to get it clean. Ellison bandaged the megamantis cut on my leg. The olive-green pants and T-shirt I’m wearing aren’t a perfect fit, but they’re clean.
Marcus and I are sitting in crooks of a massive tree, using an amplifier to listen in on our camp.
I put my fingers over my earpiece, listening carefully.
“How long you think we’re staying on this shithole island?” a New America soldier asks another.
“Too long. This fuckin’ rash in my crotch keeps getting worse. I’ve got pus-filled blisters all over.”
“Gross.”
“Yeah, no shit. None of the shit in their medical area helps.”
“I miss decent food and blow jobs. Not being covered in mosquito bites.”
Marcus eases the amplifier over a couple of inches, finding another conversation to snoop on.
“...even cooked all the way through, I’m not eating that. Were the cinnamon rolls a one-time thing?”
A green-blue-and-yellow snake is wrapped around a branch next to me, and I don’t like how close it’s getting. I’m about to take out my knife and chop it, but then I remember the trees and plants asking for my help.
The snake is alive. It probably feels pain. I’m the one who doesn’t belong here, not it, and I can’t bring myself to kill it. I nudge it with the tip of my knife, trying to annoy it without hurting it.
“...don’t like it either, but here we are.” That’s Vadim. Marcus moved the amplifier again. “He isn’t himself anymore, and we’re outnumbered.”
The snake is ... getting bigger? I gape at it, wondering if I accidentally ingested a hallucinogen. Its neck and upper body are inflating before my eyes. I don’t want to kill it, but—
A thunk vibrates through the branches of the tree, making me jump. Marcus’s dagger cuts it cleanly, and he uses the tip of his blade to ease the snake’s body from around the branch.
The two halves of the snake drop to the ground.
I furrow my brow, but when our eyes meet, his espresso eyes are wide with alarm.
He mouths “boomslang”, and my jaw drops.
I should have known. I’m not great at identifying snakes, but the bright colors should have tipped me off. Boomslangs have hemotoxic venom. Their bite causes an agonizing death where the victim bleeds from every orifice for several days. They’re indigenous to Africa, but there are other plants and animals here that don’t belong. McClain seeded this island with species he wanted to experiment on.