Unity

by Jeremy Robinson

  A Base.

  And that tells me everything I really need to know. He might have been out here for years. Hunting, killing, eating people. He’s become a savage but he’s pretending. Like Daniel and Gizmo and Mandi—who was caught completely unaware by the man with the dog—this guy lacks the instincts that make a Point dangerous. He lacks all the qualities that have been instilled in me throughout my life. He’s a prop sword facing off with a blade hardened and tempered in a fiery forge. When I turn toward him, instead of away, and meet his eyes, I see that I’m right.

  He doesn’t back down. He’s motivated by something he fears more than a beaten and bleeding girl. But he’s gone tunnel vision. He’s no longer thinking.

  His friend on the other hand... “Duff! Use your gun!” The voice is at least fifty feet back, too far to use his own gun effectively while both of us are running.

  Rather than helping, the command just confuses Duff. What would have been a tackle, turns into a stumbling grasp for his weapon. When he reaches me, all he has to do is dive and we would both roll down the hill. It would have been over. But he’s still several feet higher up the grade and fumbling for his weapon when we collide. And it’s not him hitting me; it’s me hitting him. His legs sweep out from under him as my shoulder collides with his thigh. The impact jars my wounded shoulder, drawing a cry of pain, but it doesn’t help Duff. Newton’s First Law of Motion is on full display. An object in motion tends to remain in motion until acted on by an external force.

  Duff is the object.

  I’m the external force.

  He somersaults onto his back with a cough.

  The impact and pain slow me, but don’t stop me. Nor does it slow the second man, who is now gaining on me.

  “Get up, idiot!” the man shouts, revealing his position. Much closer. I think he would eventually catch me, even if I wasn’t injured, even if I hadn’t collided with Duff.

  They’re going to catch me.

  I’m nearing the edge of exhaustion. I was almost there when this chase began. But stopping to fight is a bad idea. If Duff has a gun, I’m sure his pal does, too, and my only weapons are an empty handgun and a knife. If I stop and turn around, it will be to stare down my killer for a moment before he puts a bullet between my eyes.

  Mix things up, I think. Rabbits evading wolves don’t run in a straight line. They confuse the wolf.

  But I’m the wolf, I think, feeling angry at having to run at all. A wolf pretending to be a rabbit, I decide, and I turn left, dropping down over a four-foot ledge. The move sends jolts of pain through my core, but I manage it without slowing.

  Feet slap the ground behind me a moment later, but the sound is followed by a grunt. If my pursuer is a former Unity member, like the others, I don’t think he’s a Point. If he was, I’d probably already be dead.

  In my mind, I’m running the obstacle course again, safe on the Unity cruiser, being watched by a cadre of adults with clipboards and stopwatches. Leap the tree. Climb the rocks. The jungle is a slalom. Back and forth, up and down. Behind me, I hear grunts of pain, whispered curses and clumsy progress. There is nothing stealthy about the man now, as he just tries to keep up.

  And then he gives up running and sends his bullets to chase me instead.

  The first four shots make me flinch. I duck while I run, putting my hands behind my head, like that will help. I’ll just end up with a hole in my hand and my head.

  The fifth shot makes me scream.

  A hot iron has been thrust through my side. It spins me around, crossing my legs and tripping me. The ground beneath me is thick with soil, but the cushion is a ruse. I land on a tangle of roots, the hard limbs grinding into me. For a moment, I’m blinded by agony, and then, somehow, I’m up and running again.

  “Oh, c’mon,” the man behind me grumbles, sounding exhausted. Definitely not a Point. I’ve been beat up, shot twice and watched a new friend die, and I’ve still got more drive than this guy. I’m also leaving a trail of blood that will be easy to follow. It oozes between my fingers, which are covering the hole in my front, and flows freely out the back. He must see that, too, because when I look back, he’s just watching me, hands on his knees, a smile on his face. And a Support brand on his right hand.

  “You can stop,” he says. “And I won’t kill you.”

  I watch him as I back away.

  “You’re going to die from that,” he says. Before this guy, who looks too young to drink, turned into a savage, he would have been handsome. His accent is slightly Portuguese, which is spoken in several countries from Portugal to Mozambique, but his skin tone, which is similar to mine, says Brazil. “We’re not like Mack. Probably good that you killed him.”

  When I just eye him and continue backing away, catching my breath, he says, “Fine,” and raises the gun.

  I dodge to the side, running behind a tree, which takes the bullet for me.

  Then I’m off and running again, spurting blood like a fountain.

  How far can I get like this?

  Not far, I decide when my vision blurs.

  I’m going to die.

  The hillside ahead becomes a cliff, stretching a hundred feet up. With a wall of stone to the right, and the ocean just a hundred feet to the left, the only direction I can go is straight. And that’s not going to save me. Because nothing can save me.

  I stumble along the cliff’s base, sliding one hand along the cool gray stone, propping myself up. Gulping air doesn’t help. So I stop. I draw the knife from its sheath, the handle still tacky with Mack’s blood, and I turn to face my pursuers. If they run around the bend, maybe I can get one of them. It’s more likely that I’ll be shot again, but that might be better than being caught. I doubt Mack was the only one of them with a questionable moral compass. The hole in my side agrees.

  But the voice that makes me flinch doesn’t come from in front of me. Or from behind.

  It comes from above.

  20

  “Hey.”

  I flinch and swing the knife in an upward arc, narrowly missing the hand that had been reaching down for me.

  “Effie! It’s me!” The voice sounds familiar, but it’s muffled by my fading consciousness. How much blood have I lost?

  Too much.

  And then I hear it. Those words. They break through my chest, grab my heart and squeeze. “Take my hand. I got you.”

  I. Got. You.

  Feeling something between relief and horror, I turn my head up and look at the bruised face of Hutch. The boy whose life I made miserable for the last three weeks, because I misunderstood his constant presence. The boy whose sister I just watched die. Whose life might have ended because of my impulsive instincts.

  “Hutch,” I shake my head like he’s just asked me something. “You’re safer without me.”

  He looks in the direction from which I came. I don’t know if he can see the men chasing me, but he seems to know they’re there.

  Gunshots, stupid. Of course he knows.

  “I won’t leave you,” he says and lowers his hand again. The hand is stamped with an orange-sided triangle. He won’t leave me. Of this there is no doubt.

  Voices wash over me. Duff is being chastised. They don’t seem to be in a hurry. They’re following my blood, expecting to find a corpse at the end of its trail.

  “Hold on,” I say, and I hobble further along the cliff.

  Hutch hisses something at me, but I ignore him. A pool of blood at the cliff’s edge will reveal our hiding spot. I take a few steps into the jungle and flick the congealing blood from my hand deeper into the foliage, creating a false path. Then I work my way back.

  Hutch’s hand waits for me. “Good thinking.”

  We lock hands, and I’m surprised by his strength, which dwarfs Gwen’s. When I’m half way up, he says, “Put your feet against the stone and walk up.”

  I’m confused for a moment, dizziness returning. Then I realize what he’s telling me. My false trail won’t do much good if I smear myself up th
e cliff’s edge. My legs shake with each upward step, but Hutch does most of the work.

  When I reach the top, I see a rockslide that has become overgrown and what looks like a small cave.

  Behind me, the voices grow clearer.

  They’re going to see me.

  I’m yanked hard away from the cliff. Hutch catches me, and we drop together. I nearly cry out in pain, but the hand clasped over my mouth and nose keeps the air locked in my lungs.

  “You hear that?” Duff asks. His voice is just below us. “Luiz, did you—”

  There’s a slap of flesh on flesh. “Shut up!”

  “Geez, man,” Duff says, and I can picture him rubbing the slap out of his arm or cheek.

  “She’s going to get away. Quinlan will—”

  “First of all, she’s bleeding out.” Luiz doesn’t sound as confident as he’s trying to sound. “Second, Quinlan doesn’t need to know.”

  “But Mack is dead. He’ll—”

  “Mack was an animal,” Luiz says. “No one will miss him. We can always say one of the three we already have killed him. But this one won’t make it far. Look. Over here. Blood goes back into the jungle.”

  Hutch’s hand slowly comes away from my face. He looks down at me, lying in his lap. His eyes look so much like Mandi’s, but kinder. Hopeful, despite the situation. Loyal puppy eyes, brown, like over-milked coffee. He holds a stone in his hand. Shows it to me. I nod, and he tosses the rock straight out into the jungle. It strikes a tree trunk and thuds to the ground.

  “There!” Duff says. His voice is followed by a crash of foliage. They’re pursuing a ghost now, which might be accurate soon enough.

  The view of Hutch above me blurs. I can feel him moving, shifting my weight off his lap. The hard cliff ledge beneath my head. His hands around my wrists. My shoulders scream out as he drags me through a curtain of green tendrils. There’s a flicker of light and then nothing.

  The nothing ends with an awareness that time has passed. How much, I don’t know, but I’m no longer being dragged, and the darkness has turned green.

  I’m leaned against the wall. The chill against my back tells me I’m shirtless before I look down. The top half of my flight suit has been peeled away. A human banana. Looking down at my exposed bra, I feel a flash of anger. Then I see the stitches in my abdomen. The skin is clean. No trace of blood remains. I gingerly feel the wound’s entry point on the side of my back. It prickles with stitches. There’s a bandage on my shoulder where Mack’s bullet grazed me.

  A face emerges from the dark, luminous green in the light of a glowstick. I lean back from it, but Hutch’s soothing voice puts me at ease.

  “Just me.” He holds up a bandage and a roll of medical tape. “Almost done.”

  I stay silent as he works. He bites off pieces of tape and secures a bandage over the exit wound, then apologizes as he turns me and does the same to the entry wound. “Went straight through,” he says, leaning back and looking me over. Had I not learned the nature of a Support from Gwen, I’d think he was checking me out, but I think he’s just inspecting his handiwork. Or both, I think when our eyes meet and he gives me a sheepish grin.

  “I’m not going to die?” I ask, embarrassed by how desperate I sound.

  “Love handles bleed a lot when there’s a hole in them, but they’re not exactly a vital organ.”

  I raise an eyebrow at him. “‘Love handles?’”

  “Minimal,” he says, his embarrassment eclipsing my own. “I think you have just the right amount of body fa—err, you know what I mean.”

  When I smile at him, he looks dubious.

  “What?” I ask.

  “You smiled.”

  “So?”

  “I’ve never seen you smile.”

  The last month of memories flash back. Before landing on this island, the last time I smiled was on the transport ride to the Unity cruiser, which I made with Sig. After pondering whether or not we’d share a bunk, she said, “After all, we are besties.” She even threw in a little valley girl accent. Five minutes later, we landed and were separated.

  But I’ve smiled since crash landing and nearly dying several times. “Surviving hell can change a person.”

  He rifles through one of three go-packs arranged along the cave wall. “Yeah...” I barely hear him as he stares blankly at the cave wall, like he’s seeing something that isn’t there. Then he pulls out a black T-shirt and hands it to me. Helps me put it on when I can’t lift my arms up high enough.

  “What happened to you?” I ask, partially because I’m interested, partially because I’m terrified he’s going to ask me.

  “We went down in the ocean,” he says. “Did you make it to the island?”

  Don’t ask!

  “Yeah.”

  He settles into a cross-legged sit, the glowstick lying on the floor between us. “Eight of us survived the crash.” He stares past me. “We were a hundred feet from shore. An easy swim. Opened the hatch. Sven—a Point, like you—led us into the water as a group. Go-packs are good floatation devices, so no one had any trouble.”

  He doesn’t need to say what happened next. I remember it. “Then the wave.”

  Hutch nods. “One minute we’re swimming, the next we were pulled out deeper. Separated. In the dark. It was impossible to see anyone, and then...” He raises his hand like he’s scooping up water. “It was like being lifted up off the planet. For a moment, I felt nearer to the stars. And then I dropped. I had the go-pack strapped to my chest. It pulled me up every time I went under. And then, there was land beneath my feet. I spent the next day on the beach, in and out of consciousness.” He motions to his cheek, which is marred by a few sunburn boils. “I found two more go-packs on the beach, but no one else. No bodies. This morning I caught fish. Made a fire.”

  “That was you?”

  “Why? What’s wrong?”

  I nearly shout at him. Nearly tell him that his fire drew those men toward the shore. That his stupid fire got Mandi killed and three others—maybe Sig—captured before we got there.

  But I don’t. How could he know this island is populated by killers? Why would he ever suspect Unity would send us someplace like that?

  “The fire is how I found you,” I explain. “And it’s how they found you.”

  “Who are they?” he asks. “Why were they trying to kill you?”

  “I don’t know who they are,” I tell him. “But I know what they are.”

  He waits.

  “We found eight skeletons yesterday.” He blinks at the word, ‘we’, but says nothing. “All murdered. Most of them shot. I’m pretty sure they were killed by the men we saw. They’re Unity. Or at least used to be. The two chasing me were a Base and Support.”

  “They weren’t acting like it.”

  No, really?

  “I think their leader is a Point named Quinlan. Mean anything to you?”

  He shakes his head slowly. “Why would Unity send us here? To a place like this?”

  I frown.

  When I do, he asks, “You know?”

  So I tell him. About the campsite. About the recording. Even about my mother. While Gwen has become my right-hand woman, Hutch is technically my Support. And now that he’s alive and with me, Gwen will let him fill that role. And I understand now that his job is to support me, physically, emotionally and psychologically. If we’re going to survive this, I need to tell him everything.

  Except that.

  I can’t tell him about his sister.

  Not yet.

  And it’s not because I think he’s not strong enough to handle it. It’s because I don’t think I am.

  When I’m done with my story, he just watches me for a moment and then pushes himself up onto his feet. The cave is a good thirty feet tall and nearly as wide. The rough stone is angled at a slight slope, descending into darkness beyond the glowstick’s illumination. He bends and picks up the chemical light. “Can you walk?”

  “I’d rather not,” I say.

>   “I think you’ll want to.” He reaches his hand down. “I got—”

  “I know, I know. You got me.” I take his hand and let him pull me up.

  “Finally figured out what we’re all about?” he asks.

  “Gwen helped.”

  “Glad to hear she made it.” He smiles, and I see a twinkle in his eyes. For some reason, it makes me a little jealous.

  “She’s one of the best,” he says, and I wonder if I mistook admiration for affection.

  “So...” I lean against the wall, feeling dizzy. “I’m down a few pints of blood. Show me what you want to show me and let’s be on our way.”

  “On our way?”

  “I need to be back at the campsite before nightfall, and—” I stop when his eyes widen a bit. “What time is it?”

  He looks at his watch. It’s an old fashioned wind-up. The kind that wouldn’t be affected by an EMP. “Eight. The sun will be down soon.”

  I want to punch something, but my anger is muted by pain. The best I can manage is a sigh. “I told the others I would be back.” I don’t even mention finding the three people captured from Transport 37. Even I know I’m in no shape to mount some kind of rescue effort.

  “First thing in the morning,” he says. “Right now, you need to eat, drink and sleep, or you’ll never get those missing pints back. And I doubt they’d leave the campsite tonight. Sounds like a prime setup.”

  “Nothing about this island is prime,” I argue, and I motion toward the awaiting darkness. I don’t bother mentioning that the campsite itself is a concern. What if Quinlan knows it’s there? What if he’s already taken the others? Voicing all this wouldn’t do any good, so I contain it.

  He leads me by the hand, helping me navigate the jagged floor. The dull green light is enough to see by, but the shadows are deep. Every few feet further, the temperature drops a little. It feels great. But it smells off. Faintly like oil. Something mechanical.

  Hutch stops and looks back at me. “Ready?”

  I flash the Point symbol on my hand. “Born ready, apparently.”

  He tosses the glowstick out in front of us. For a moment, I’m annoyed that he’s plunged us into darkness. Why not walk right up to whatever it is he wanted to show me? Then I see it, and understand.