“We should go back. We can’t leave him to fight by himself!” Regan yelled.
“They’re on the dock waiting for us. We can’t go back. They’ll shoot us the first chance they get,” Fred pointed out.
“We’ll go between the islands. You can get close enough and I’ll jump in and swim. The water won’t be as rough there,” Regan said, looking at Tabitha.
“We wait. Wolf wanted us off the island. We are doing what he wanted,” RC said sadly.
Regan shook her head. “I can’t stand here and watch the island burn, wondering where he is. We have to go back!”
Yet, no one answered her. They all stood silent as the boats rocked up and down in the choppy water, the thunder now fading in the distance. The rain had done nothing to squelch the fire, and it seemed to be stopping as quickly as it had started. The lightning had only come long enough to offer fire, and escape. Now, they were left with nothing but the wind, which would only fuel the fire.
They waited for what felt like forever before RC gave the order to go in a little closer, avoiding the dock. Regan held her breath as they got closer to the south shore, praying Wolf would emerge from the trees in one piece. The flames were going to make it impossible for anyone to cut through those trees with any assurance of safety, but she felt sure that Wolf could do it if anyone could.
With her stomach churning with the realization that escape from the island was becoming less likely with every minute, Regan couldn’t stop tears from flooding her eyes as they rounded the edge of the island. The entire south side of the island was in flames. There would be no way for Wolf to get through that.
“Follow RC,” Geno ordered Tabitha.
She nodded her head and moved the rudder. The boat bounced over the water, Tabitha’s excellent sailing skills coming in handy in the high winds.
“The men with the guns are gone!” Fred shouted, pointing toward the docks.
Regan strained her eyes to see. RC steered the boat in that direction, keeping a good distance between the boat and the dock. Fred held up a hand, waving it back and forth.
“Are they gone?” Tabitha asked.
“I think we would have heard gunshots if they were still there. RC is within shooting distance,” Geno pointed out.
Regan hoped they had gone after their own boat and fled the island. That would mean one less threat to deal with. Maybe, by some chance, Virginia had fled with them. Tabitha steered the boat forward, following RC’s trek toward the dock.
“Wow,” Geno muttered as they watched the trees sparking one another and going up like a book of matches.
“Go north!” Regan shouted to Tabitha.
RC had turned the boat and was headed in the opposite direction. Regan assumed he was checking the shore for any signs of Wolf, but they’d cover more ground by splitting up.
Tabitha gently guided the boat toward the north end while Regan’s eyes focused on the beach.
He had to be okay. She wasn’t sure she could keep going without him. Sure, she’d been mad earlier and thinking about leaving, but there’d never been any chance of her actually doing it. She’d only been kidding herself—these people had become her family. Wolf had become her family. And if he was killed, what did that mean for the rest of them? He was the glue who held things together. Without him, there was no real bond. And if he couldn’t survive, who could?
Regan allowed her mind to drift as they searched the beach, but she kept having to reach up to swipe away tears—her mind couldn’t fathom losing Wolf. RC, Lily, and Fred would stick together, of that she was sure. Geno and Tabitha would probably make their own way. That left her all alone. It’s what she had thought she wanted. Now that she was actually looking at the very real prospect of being alone in this terrifying new world, though it didn’t sound appealing. And, deeper than that, she couldn’t imagine not seeing Wolf again, not sitting with him and enjoying nature or lying beside him in bed. He had to be okay. There was no other option.
“There! Someone’s coming!” Geno shouted.
24
Regan watched as Wolf broke through the trees, running down the beach and heading for the dock. She waved her arms, shouting his name to get his attention. He was going in the wrong direction.
“Wolf!” She cupped her hands around her mouth, shouting his name again.
He stopped and spun around.
“Oh no,” Geno breathed out.
Virginia had burst through the trees, her blonde hair whipping around and her arm held up in front of her face as she ran toward Wolf.
“She has a gun!” Tabitha screamed.
Regan’s legs turned to jelly as she watched Wolf put up his hands as he turned to his ex-wife. She could see them talking, but had no idea what they were saying.
“She’s going to shoot him,” Regan said flatly, her heart feeling like lead in her chest.
“Maybe not, he’s managed to stay alive this long,” Tabitha reasoned.
Regan shook her head, staring at the scene unfolding as if it were a movie. “She’s crazy. She has nothing to lose. The men are gone. They must have left her here to die. She hates Wolf and wants revenge.”
Tabitha grabbed Geno’s arm. “Hold onto the rudder,” she demanded before walking toward Regan as if she were approaching a coiled snake.
“Don’t do it, Regan,” Tabitha said in a low voice.
Regan turned to look at her friend for a brief second before kicking off the shoes on her feet. Her friend had read her mind, but there wasn’t a choice to be made here. “I have to.”
“Regan, she’ll shoot you both!” Tabitha shrieked, but it was too late.
Regan went over the side of the boat, hitting the water and allowing herself to sink before using her legs to propel her toward the shore. She popped her head up once, checking to see how much further she needed to go and to make sure Virginia hadn’t noticed her coming to shore.
Then she submerged herself in the water again, using strong, steady strokes to make her way inland. The tide was with her, and she soon felt the sand beneath her and knew she was close to shore. Once again, her head resurfaced while she kept the rest of her body under water. The dark night helping to conceal her as she crawled the rest of the way onto the sandy beach.
As quietly as she could then, she stood up, about fifty feet behind Virginia.
“We don’t have to die here, Virginia. It doesn’t have to be like this. We can both escape,” Regan heard Wolf say.
“There’s nowhere to escape to. You haven’t seen it out there!” she spat.
“You can make your home anywhere,” he argued.
Virginia’s arm was shaking as she held the gun on Wolf. Regan had been approaching silently from behind, and took a deep breath, preparing to run at the woman.
“Don’t,” Wolf said, and Regan knew he was talking to her.
She paused about fifteen feet from Virginia, wondering what he wanted her to do next. She was not going to let him get shot. There was no way she’d let him die. Lily needed her father alive. Regan needed him alive.
Wolf took a step toward his ex. “Give me the gun. This is stupid. You won. The island is burning. You took back what you thought was yours. I’ll leave if you want to stay.”
“It is mine! But you ruined it! There’s nothing left!” Virginia screamed at him, waving the gun toward the flames before bringing it back to rest on Wolf.
“It’s yours, all yours. You can rebuild. You know how,” Wolf assured her.
Virginia’s head was shaking back and forth. “Why did you take everything away, Wolf? We were happy together!” she screeched, the gun in her hand dropping a little with her movements.
Regan could hear the instability in the woman’s voice now, and could almost feel sorry for her. Mental illness was no joke, and given what Wolf had said, there was no doubt in Regan’s mind that serious illness was playing a role here. Regan had seen so many people on the streets suffering from some kind of mental illness, and those memories haunted her now. V
irginia had likely run out of pills. She was unstable because she was off her meds by force, not willingly. Frozen with indecision over what to do, the thought sent Regan down a dark rabbit hole. How many other people were out there right now, off their meds and suffering from depression or violent delusional episodes? How many other Virginias were erupting in violence right at this moment, or primed to erupt when they met someone in the near future, now that their meds or treatments were unavailable. It was a scary thought.
Virginia screamed out in rage, her words unintelligible, and Regan snapped her attention back to the present.
“Now!” Wolf shouted.
Regan lunged forward as Wolf dodged to the left. Regan’s shoulder slammed into Virginia’s back, but not hard enough to knock her to the ground. Wolf tackled her from the side, knocking Regan down with her so that she landed a few feet away, her right shoulder slamming into the ground and jarring her body sideways.
Regan heard Virginia scream. “No! Give me the gun!”
Virginia was coming to her feet, screaming incoherently as Wolf held the gun on her.
“Are you okay?” Wolf asked as Regan rolled to her back and then to her feet before taking a wide berth around Virginia and moving to stand next to Wolf.
“I’m fine,” she said, watching the woman throw an epic temper tantrum on the sandy beach.
Wolf waved the gun, grabbing Virginia’s attention. “You wanted this island so bad, have it. I don’t want it. You’ve ruined it, Virginia. You could never leave well enough alone. You always had to push until there was nothing left to give or to take.”
Regan had no idea what he was going to do as she watched him hold the gun on his ex-wife. Wolf wasn’t a killer. She couldn’t imagine him leaving Virginia there to die, though, and he wouldn’t shoot her, either—would he?
“You can’t leave me, Wolf!” Virginia screamed.
“I already did once and I’m going to do it again.”
Regan brushed the wet sand from her clothes, taking a step closer to Wolf as Virginia kept raging at them, nonsense spilling out of her with each enraged breath she took. Wolf grabbed Regan’s hand, the gun still pointed at Virginia.
“Are you ready to get out of here?” he asked in a low voice.
“I am, but what about her?” Regan asked, torn over what made sense. Virginia was dangerous. She would likely kill them if given the chance. But despite that, Regan couldn’t bring herself to wish death upon the woman.
“Wolf, you loved me once, you can’t leave me like this!” Virginia whined. “Don’t leave me here all alone!”
Wolf ignored her, and glanced instead to Regan, “Let’s go. Can you swim?” he asked.
She nodded her head. “Are you sure?”
Wolf shrugged, walking backwards from the woman who’d now fallen to the ground, intermittently wailing, laughing, and screaming at Wolf. She had seriously lost her mind. Regan wanted to put as much distance between her and them as possible. The entire island couldn’t possibly burn to the ground, she knew. There was enough beach that Virginia could survive. Wolf had said she was a strong swimmer once before, and if that was the case, she could reach one of the other islands. It was probably best if Virginia spent the remainder of the apocalypse alone.
“Let her friends come back for her. Go,” he ordered Regan. “I’ll be right behind you.”
Regan nodded and turned to walk into the ocean, diving under the water and heading for the sailboat. When she came up for air, she turned to see Wolf putting the gun in his pants pocket and zipping it closed before diving into the waves and swimming with a speed she hadn’t thought was possible in the choppy water. Regan took it as her cue to move, and swam as fast as she could to the boat dipping and swaying in the waves.
She reached the side of the boat gasping for air. Geno leaned over, extending one of his hands and pulling Regan into the boat before turning to help Wolf over the side.
Virginia was on her feet on the beach now, staring at them. Her silhouette cast a ghostly glow with the fire raging behind her, and Regan looked away rather than dwelling on the sight of it.
“What will she do?” Tabitha asked.
Wolf shrugged. “She can swim to one of the other islands or stay there. I don’t care.”
“And if she doesn’t swim away?” Regan asked, still not believing he could be so blasé about his ex-wife dying.
“Virginia is resilient. She’s a well-trained survivalist. Nothing is going to stop her from surviving. She has too much will to live. I’m sure she sees this nightmare as a game. The woman thrives on competition and drama. This is exciting to her. She’ll always want to win. This isn’t going to slow her down,” he said, a tone of disgust in his voice. “She’ll swim to another island and then to another, and soon she’ll be close enough to the mainland to reach it without issue. One way or another, she’ll be fine.”
“How can you be so sure?” Tabitha asked, her apparent need to save everyone evident on her face as she stared at Virginia’s figure on the beach.
He shook his head. “Trust me. Virginia plays to win—at all costs. Is Lily okay?”
“Yes. She’s with your dad and Fred in the other boat,” Regan replied. “Just worried about you.”
Tabitha steered the sailboat a little further out to sea before making a wide berth around the burning island. Ahead, the sound of the motorboat cut through the growing darkness as RC sped toward them. He was standing behind the wheel, his hair blowing in the wind. When he laid eyes on his son, Regan could see the relief wash over him.
“Let’s get off the water!” he shouted, pointing up to the sky. “There’s another storm coming!”
“Florida,” Geno grunted with disgust. “It’s one storm after another.”
Regan looked up and realized there wasn’t a single star in the sky. That explained why it had been so dark. Usually, they had a little moonlight to guide them. Not tonight. It was black, befitting the day’s events.
Wolf nodded his head, taking over the steering of the boat from Tabitha and heading inland.
The ride to shore was bumpy, threatening a repeat of the first time Regan had gone out on the sailboat. She sat down on the bench seat, sucking in deep breaths through her nose and exhaling through her mouth, trying her hardest to combat the nausea. Tabitha sat beside her, rubbing her back and promising her they were almost to shore. Regan simply kept her head down as Wolf followed RC to a dock that was almost a mile away from where they usually went to shore.
Once both boats were tied up and they’d gotten back onto solid land, they all hugged one another, the adrenaline and fear of the night slowly wearing off and giving way to simple relief. Even Lily doled out hugs as if she actually liked everyone.
“I’m so glad you’re okay,” Lily said, wrapping her arms tight around her father for the second time since they’d landed. She’d started with him, and then cycled back to embrace him again.
“It’s okay. I’m fine,” he reassured her again, but he was holding on to her just as tightly as she gripped him.
Regan watched the two of them and hoped this was the beginning of a fresh start for them. She knew they had been close not all that long ago and hated that they’d been at odds over the past few weeks. And maybe their island home was gone, but they had each other.
They all had each other, and Regan couldn’t believe how happy that made her.
RC patted Wolf on the shoulder, not saying a word and not needing to as his son and granddaughter embraced.
“Now what?” Fred asked after a few moments more had passed in silent relief. Regan looked at him blankly—she’d wanted a minute or two more of feeling good about surviving the day before they moved on to the next crisis at hand.
Wolf took a deep breath and shook his head. “I don’t know.”
Lily stepped away from him, suspiciously wiping her eyes as she turned her back to the group.
“Let’s get everything we brought from the island and find somewhere to hunker down,” RC su
ggested.
With the extra hands available, it didn’t take long for them to unload the boats and pull them far enough onto land that the tide wasn’t likely to tear them away.
“You guys did great,” Wolf said, looking over the haul of supplies “I can’t believe you managed to get this much stuff out of there. It was stupid to go into a burning house, by the way, but I’m glad you did,” he finished with a grin.
With their packs strapped on, and everyone carrying a bucket or trash bag, if not more than one, they walked up the trail to the public park that the dock belonged to. There, they all took a seat at a covered picnic table. Regan couldn’t help but stare out at the water. The fire burning the island glowed in the distance as a horrible reminder of everything they had lost, and she wondered what Virginia was doing. Had she swum to another island or sat down and given up? Or was she sleeping her rage off, preparing to swim off the next day?
“Can we go to one of the other islands?” Fred asked.
Geno nodded his head. “That’s a good idea. We can set up a new refuge. You said there were thousands of islands out there. We’ll find another one.”
“As long as it’s far away from Virginia,” Tabitha added.
Wolf frowned, and traded glances with RC. “With hurricane season rolling in, I don’t think it’s a good idea to try and ride out the weather without any kind of protection already in place. We have no way to cut down trees to make a safe area for us. A hurricane will topple trees, and on top of that, many of the smaller islands don’t have such high ground as the one we were on—storm surge could cover them if a big storm came in, and there’s no real way for us to know how far above sea level they are without access to records that… well, I don’t know where we’d find them now. It would be more dangerous than staying on the mainland, I’m afraid,” Wolf pointed out.
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