I concentrate on keeping my legs high so I don’t trip. It’s no use, though. Because the men are gaining on us, and I know it’s only a matter of seconds before they take one of us down.
I glance back one more time and scream when I see a man with green face paint reaching toward me. In the same moment, I feel Madox fight against my arms and fall to the ground. The second his body hits the wet earth, he begins to shift. The man slows enough to watch Madox transform into a lion, and he stops cold when my Pandora opens his mouth and roars. I try to stop, too, but Guy grabs my hand and pulls me along.
“Keep moving, Tella,” he growls.
I try to keep running, but when the man recovers his senses and aims his spear at Madox, I stop and cry out. Madox spins away from the man and races toward me. I think he’s going to barrel into me, but instead he digs his head beneath my legs. I realize what he’s trying to do — that he intends for me to ride him — so I grab on to his mane with my left hand. My right hand is still holding Guy’s, but when Madox launches forward, we’re ripped apart.
“Guy!” I yell.
He runs after me, but Madox is too quick, and it isn’t long before I can hardly see him. The camp ahead grows closer. When I turn back, I can just spot Levi and Ransom running toward us. Behind them is the man with green face paint who almost grabbed me. He raises his spear — and throws.
Levi hits the ground.
I can still hear Ransom screaming when we fly between the torches and into base camp.
I scrabble off Madox’s back to rush to Levi, but my Pandora blocks my way. I’ve never been angry with him, but right now I’m so furious, my vision blurs.
“Move, Madox,” I scream. “That’s an order. Get out of my way.”
He either doesn’t understand or isn’t listening, because he continues to ensure I stay put. Moments later, I see Guy and M-4 race past the torches. He turns around to look behind him and gasps for air. Then he sees me.
“Are they here, too?” he asks. “Are the men inside the camp?”
I shake my head, but not because I know one way or another. But because I can’t speak, thinking about what happened.
“Tella, are you okay?” he asks, moving toward me. “Are you hurt?”
I shake my head again and begin to cry.
Over Guy’s shoulder, I see Harper, Caroline, and Dink cross into base camp. Minutes later, Titus arrives. Through my tears, I watch them catch their breaths and gather around Guy and me.
“Is she hurt?” Harper places a hand to her chest and rubs, like she’s willing her lungs to fill with air.
“I don’t know,” Guy answers.
I’m so relieved to see Caroline okay, but it does nothing to stop the things I feel after seeing Levi fall.
“Where are Levi and Ransom?” Harper asks, glancing around.
Everyone stops and looks for them. Everyone but me.
“They got him.” My voice breaks. “This man threw a —”
I can’t finish my sentence. It’s too hard. Especially when I see Ransom approaching base camp. His cheeks are streaked with tears, and his chest and arms are coated with blood that I know isn’t his own.
I rush forward to help him, but the others beat me there. Harper puts her arm around him, holding him up as best she can. Caroline gets the other side. Titus just stares at us. He doesn’t help, and he doesn’t say anything. He just watches.
Guy looks away from Ransom and back at me. His eyes run over my face, but he speaks to both of us. “You couldn’t have saved him.”
I cover my eyes and press them, but a sob still pours from my body. I feel someone’s arms around me. They lift me up and carry me somewhere warm. They lay me down and tuck a heavy blanket around my shoulders. I only know for sure that it’s him when he tells me to sleep, that he’ll be right here when I wake up.
When I open my eyes hours later, the first thing I see is Guy. He’s sleeping a few feet away on the floor. I glance around and spot several other Contenders, and a few Pandoras, sleeping, too. My heart skips a beat when I see Madox lying over my feet. I’m so relieved to find him there. Then I wonder why I’m so relieved.
When I remember what happened, I bolt upright. The girl lying in the jungle with lifeless eyes. Levi with a spear breaking through his chest. The men —
“Guy,” I whisper, shaking him. “Guy, wake up.”
He moans and then opens his eyes. They go from sleep laden to alert in a matter of seconds.
“Are the men here?” he asks.
“No. Or maybe. I’m not sure.” I gaze out a small window and see the same orange lights dancing in the night. The torches are still lit. “How long have I been asleep?”
“A while,” he answers. “Some people were already asleep when we got here.”
I look down at my hands. “Levi?”
Guy slowly shakes his head.
I expect to feel sadness or depression or even fury. But instead, I feel nothing. It’s like I’m empty inside. I came here to save my brother. But how many people have died trying to save one person? I wonder why we stay … if we could leave now if we chose to. But then I imagine returning home to watch my parents grieve and Cody die in his bed. And I know there’s no way I can stop if there’s a chance I can change that future.
“Our devices went off while you were sleeping,” Guy says. “We all listened already.” I start to dig into my chest pocket, but Guy holds out a white device. “It’s yours. I just checked to see if it was blinking.”
I feel my eyes glass over. “Can you just tell me what it says?”
He looks at me like I may suddenly break into a thousand pieces. Then he nods. “It was the woman. She congratulated us on completing the first leg of the race and for arriving at base camp.”
My face scrunches, and I turn away in disgust. People died in this jungle. Congratulations, she said.
“She said there will be a ceremony in four days when the first deadline passes. She called it Shevla.”
I hear what Guy is saying, but for some reason, I can’t absorb the information. I inspect the interior of where we are. It seems like a cabin, like something made of logs and mud from frontier days. It’s a single room with only six beds, which are more like cots. Everywhere I look, I see green-and-blue plaid blankets and fluffy white pillows. The cots remind me of home, of how secure I felt in my own bed with the cool of my pillow beneath my cheek.
I wonder how Guy secured me a bed when so many people are sleeping on the floor.
The cabin has two small windows and only one door. No bathroom, no kitchen … no electronics of any sort. Once again, we’re completely barred from the outside world, without a clue as to where we are.
“Is this everyone?” I ask Guy.
He pauses, like he’s processing that I brushed past the ceremony tidbit. “No,” he says, finally. “There are nine more cabins like this one. Most are about half full. This one has more beds than the others.”
I glance down at the cot I’m lying on. Then I remember where Levi is lying — dead in the jungle — and I’m overtaken by a wave of dizziness.
Guy stands up and then sits along the side of my small bed. He places a hand on my shoulder and pushes me back down. I don’t fight him. I just let my head find the pillow and I squeeze my eyes shut. I hear him get up and walk away, and the sound rips my heart in two. I don’t want him to leave me. I know so little about him — about the person he was before this race — but I’ve come to think of him as a source of stability. With him, we are safe.
I wonder if Levi thought he was safe.
I stuff my mouth against the pillow and cry.
Then I feel someone slip into bed behind me. My head snaps around to see Guy’s blue eyes slide over my face. He holds my gaze for a few moments, then lies down and wraps his strong arms around me. He pulls me tight and buries his face in my neck. Madox hardly stirs.
All the fears I’ve held inside rush out. It’s like he’s asking for them, saying he’ll carry them for me.
I press back against him and curl into a ball.
We lie like this for several minutes before I feel his words on my neck. “My cousin loves lemon,” he says. I can tell he’s trying to whisper, but the deepness of his voice makes it almost impossible. Over the past ten days, I haven’t learned many personal things about Guy. But I have picked up on the way he operates. And so I know that if I say anything now, he’ll shut down. I stay quiet, and after what feels like ten minutes, he speaks again.
“He has lemon everything. Lemon soap, lemon shampoo, lemon tea. He even let his girlfriend paint his room yellow because the color was called Lemon Laughter.” I feel Guy shift behind me. “My brothers and I ragged on him pretty hard about it. But after he got sick, I spent months obsessing over that same lemon crap. Sometimes … I felt like if I could find something really great for him, something lemon scented or lemon flavored or whatever, that he’d be happy again.”
We lie in the silence, and eventually, I feel his breath on my neck deepen. Before I fall back asleep, I wonder where the strange men are and if they’ll enter the base camp. But inside Guy’s arms, I imagine it isn’t even possible.
For four days, we reside inside the camp. The two men from the start of the race are here, the same ones who helped unload us from the semis. They wear green, collared shirts and gold chains with serpent pendants. Contenders try to ask them questions, but when that happens, the men just glance past as if they aren’t even there. The only thing they will do is tend to the injured. Apparently, they’re part day laborer, part doctor. The men are an odd addition to an even odder situation.
The base camp is made up of ten small cabins, and the ground around and between them has been cleared so that it’s just soft dirt beneath our boots. I’m thankful for this, because even though my ankle is improving, I imagine it’d still hurt to walk on uneven terrain.
Torches circle the perimeter, and in the center of the camp is an enormous fire pit — though the men keep us from lighting it. In one of the cabins, there are basic supplies: packs of dried fruits and meats, bottles of water, toothbrushes and toothpaste, deodorant, soap, and even TP. And across the base camp, where no windows face, are three outdoor showers that offer a bit of privacy. I don’t know where the water comes from, and I don’t care. It feels like heaven on earth.
During the day, we entertain ourselves as best we can — mostly by meeting other Contenders and gawking at their Pandoras — but at night the Contenders pull away into small clusters. Harper, Caroline, Dink, Guy, and I spend most of our time together. I keep an ever-watchful eye on Madox, who seems playful and carefree at times, and anxious at others.
Ransom has become reclusive, and though we try to include him in everything we do, he mostly stares off into space, his face shadowed with rage. It kills me to see him this way. I think the others are getting tired of me talking about it. But I can’t forget him, and I know he needs us now more than ever.
Titus also doesn’t hang around us anymore. This, on the other hand, is a relief. He seems to have found a new knot of Contenders to group with. They’re all guys, ranging from maybe early teens to midtwenties. The pack has swiftly formed an unsettling reputation, and most people stay out of their way as best they can.
Glancing around, I spot three women in their early fifties discussing something. Two of them laugh, while the third frowns. After a moment, the women disperse. Sitting close to where the women stood are a guy and girl pair a bit older than Guy. They stay close to each other, constructing something long and thin out of branches. They don’t speak; they just work. On the far side of the camp, children play. A girl Dink’s age chases a boy and girl, diving after them and kicking the ground in frustration when they narrowly avoid her grasp. Many of the Contenders have plum-colored bruises or shallow lashes across their extremities. Others seem untouched by the jungle. But they are all here, seeking some sense of normalcy.
Since it’s the last day to locate base camp, I’d expected a constant stream of Contenders to trickle in. But no one has arrived since last night. When the sun nears the middle of the sky, all the Contenders hover around the perimeter, waiting to see who will make it in at the last minute. But as the sun crosses the sky and begins to set, we know it’s over. That this is everyone.
The horizon, or what I can see of it, is splashed with reds and pinks. It’s so beautiful, and in my stomach, I feel the first twinge of happiness after four days of fear and mourning. I knew Levi for only ten days, but I won’t ever forget him. And I’ll never forget that he died fighting for his sister’s life.
I feel someone standing near me and turn to see Guy watching me.
“Hey” is all I say. Then I turn back to the painted, darkening sky. Guy feels huge next to me, and I fight the urge to lean closer. I don’t know how to explain my feelings for him — if they’re circumstantial, or something more — but I know it’s hurt that he hasn’t slept in the bed with me since our first night at base camp. It was the only time I felt any true relief — and though he always sleeps close by, it isn’t close enough.
Guy reaches his hand toward me, but when I turn to face him, he lets it fall. His jaw clenches.
“Guy —” I start to say.
“May we have your attention?” a voice booms from behind us. Guy and I spin around to see the two men in collared shirts standing near the fire pit. We glance at each other like we’re not sure they just spoke, because before now, you’d have thought they were practicing to enter a Buddhist monastery. “We will now begin the ceremony that marks the completion of the jungle race.”
The man on the right has a swollen belly and thin arms. He lights a match with his even thinner hands and tosses it into the pit. Fire bursts toward the sky and sounds of awe ripple across the Contenders. The man on the left, who’s sporting a wicked comb-over, raises his arms into the air and his voice rumbles. “Welcome to Shevla!”
I gasp as men, women, and children dressed in white robes and ankle-high boots pour out of the jungle and into our camp. The women wear huge, bright jewelry and serious faces as they carry platters of food above their heads. And as they move closer, decadent scents roll off the dishes. Every memory of being eaten by ants, of escaping chimpanzees, of being sucked on by leeches and nearly drowning and racing through the jungle with strange, painted men trying to kill me — they vanish when I smell the food.
The women set the platters down onto tables the men carried in on their backs. I laugh with surprise as small children approach the fire and sit with drums between their legs. They begin to play. The beat is contagious, and before long, the women in white begin to sing strange, seductive songs.
Guy takes my hand.
I look up at him, forgetting the trance Shevla has brought.
“Do you want something to eat?” he asks.
I nod like a child on Easter, a yard of candy-filled eggs just beyond my reach. Guy pulls me toward the tables and we get in line. Four women in white tell us about the food as we fill our stoneware plates.
“Smoked over fire,” a woman says, pointing to cooked fish. “And here, we roast these with spices from the jungle,” she adds, touching a finger to a platter brimming with glistening vegetables.
Guy and I settle in close to the fire and listen to the beat of the drums. The women continue singing, but now they add dancing to their performance. They skip and leap and toss themselves in peculiar patterns around the fire as if the music has possessed them. I glance at Guy, and notice there’s a smile on his lips fighting to make an appearance. I want to tell him to let it happen, to not be so serious all the time. But I know it’ll vanish the moment I do, so I don’t say anything. Instead, I nudge him with my shoulder.
“Pretty cool, huh?” I say, after swallowing down a bit of charred, buttery fish.
He doesn’t look at me, but the quasismile leaves his face, as I expected. “Yeah, it’s pretty cool.” He looks down at his plate. “I don’t think these people know about the race. They were probably just paid to bring us food
.”
That’s why I’m able to enjoy it, he means. Because they didn’t do this to us.
Across the fire, Caroline is finger brushing Dink’s hair. He pretends to pull away, but the slight grin on his face gives him away. Ransom is nowhere in sight, which worries me, but I do spot Harper a few feet from Caroline. There’s a guy talking to her. She ignores him completely. Even so, he continues to chat away as if they’re both participating in the conversation. Harper sees me watching and sighs heavily. Against all odds, I smile, and it actually feels authentic.
I’m not sure what Harper’s ideal type would be, but I’m pretty certain this guy isn’t it. For one, he seems way too happy to be here. Or maybe he’s just happy to be near her. The guy looks a bit younger than Harper and is extremely tall. His hair falls in messy blond curls that nearly hide his eyes. He uses a lot of dramatic arm gestures as he speaks to Harper, and I can only imagine this annoys her to no end.
“Check out the guy talking to Harper,” I say, attempting to discuss anything that isn’t the race or Levi or the fact that no one has seen Ransom today. “He seems pretty determined to get her attention.”
Guy’s brow furrows as he inspects the blond. “Poor guy.”
I laugh and punch his shoulder. “Why is he ‘poor guy’? Harper is a … is a …”
“Exactly,” he says. “There are no words.”
I roll my eyes and try to keep laughing, to hold on to this small moment of joy. An older man sitting on Guy’s other side hands him a bottle of something. Guy smells it and raises it to his lips. After he swallows, his face pulls together and he sucks air between his teeth as he passes it to me.
Taking it in my hands, I inspect the bottle. It’s round and heavy at the bottom, and flows into a long and narrow neck. The green glass is too dark to see what’s inside. I glance at Guy, and he makes a tipping motion with his hand as if to say Drink up. I remember all the things I don’t want to remember, and I stare down into the bottle. For three seconds, I wonder what Dad would say about my drinking to kill bad memories. Or about my drinking at all. But then I decide that the second I joined the Brimstone Bleed was the second I had to learn to survive any way I could. And this … this is a ticket to mental freedom.
Fire & Flood Page 15