“Then I’ll stay with her here. The rest of you can go,” James said.
“We shouldn’t split up,” Ava cried.
“We don’t have a choice. You can’t travel right now. We have to get you better first. I’d never forgive myself if something happened to you. I’ll stay here with you, protect you, and they can come back and tell us what they’ve found.”
We all looked around, no one able to determine whether this was just a bad idea or a terrible one. Finally, Noah sighed, placing his hands on his knees and standing up.
“Well, that’s fine. Leave the real work for the adults, you two.” He clucked his tongue, stretching his arms over his head with a loud groan.
“You need to keep her hydrated,” Harry told James begrudgingly, obviously not crazy about the idea of splitting up. “Boil the water for several minutes and then let it cool before you give it to her. Wait right here. Don’t leave this area unless it’s an emergency. We’ll use the machetes to cut marks in the trees directing you to us. If you have to leave for any reason, follow that trail toward us.”
“Will do,” James agreed, his face solemn. I think we all felt like it might be the last time we saw each other.
Harry turned to me. “We should find some coconuts to take with us when we travel. Want to help me look?”
With that, we made our way toward the outskirts of the clearing while James comforted Ava, helping to ease her down next to the fire before he began filling the empty coconut halves.
Half an hour later, with coconuts and weapons loaded up, Noah, Harry, and I said our goodbyes and headed out into the woods, pointed toward the cliff in the rising, early morning sunlight.
We made our way through the tangled, strange woods in silence, as talking seemed to only make our throats drier. We spoke only when we needed to warn each other of fallen branches that may trip our step, or once, when we crossed paths with a snake slithering across the branch of a tree.
We stopped whenever anyone got too tired, which was often, and caught our breath, drinking from the coconuts sparingly.
As the cliff began to come into view, I felt a strange sense of urgency fill me. When Noah asked if anyone needed to stop for a break when we found the latest clearing, I was the first to decline, and Harry followed my lead. I just wanted to get there. This was the closest we’d been to figuring everything out, and I just wanted it to be over. I just wanted to understand what was happening, what was going on.
As we neared the bottom of the cliff, we stopped briefly, catching our breath. It was several stories high, the bottom framed with boulders of every size, and it jutted out away from the earth, straight on top, and nearly a forty-five-degree angle of a ledge where we could stand. It was covered in moss and ivy, the stone a dark gray that reminded me of pavement and made me crave home.
Once we started climbing, we’d have no shade from the blazing sun that was growing higher in the sky by the minute. Noah’s shoulders and chest were already red and blistering, Harry’s arms and face, too.
“Let’s leave the coconuts down here, and I’ll wear my sarong, that way you can have your shirt back.” I started to pull it over my head.
“No, we might need those up there, especially in the sun.”
“We could carry them,” I offered.
“I don’t need my shirt back, if that’s what you’re worried about. I’m going to burn anyway. May as well get it over with.”
“Okay, if you’re sure.”
Whether or not he was, he didn’t say. Instead, he placed his foot on a small boulder, hoisting himself up and turning around to take my hand. I did the same for Harry, and we continued the pattern, finding our footing one by one and then helping the others to find theirs.
Finally, when my muscles burned, my body trembling so hard I was sure I was going to collapse at any moment, when the sun felt as if it had baked my skin, we reached the top of the cliff. I collapsed on the warm rock with a loud groan before I’d taken the time to look over my surroundings. I was too tired. I didn’t even want to think about how much harder the trip down may be.
“We’re so high up,” Noah said, standing just in front of me, his hands resting on his hips. His chest glistened with sweat, rising and falling with heavy breaths. “What are you doing?” he asked, looking past me.
I looked up, my head rubbing painfully against the rock, to where Harry was standing near the edge of the cliff.
“Harry?”
He put a hand up over his eyes, looking out over the forest. “There,” he said, pointing straight ahead.
“What?” Noah said, moving toward him.
I turned over, standing up and making my way over.
“Holy shit, is that what I think it is?” I stared at the odd shape at the base of the mountain several miles away, the space that had been cleared, the strange rust-colored space that had replaced rock. I watched as the smoke billowed out of the top of it, an odd mix of terror and hope filling my stomach.
“Yeah,” Harry answered. “Yeah, I think so. I’m pretty sure it’s a house.”
Chapter Sixteen
“What do you think it means? Do you think that’s where the woman lives?” I asked. As far as we could see, though we couldn’t completely see the far side of the island, the entire jungle appeared uninhabited aside from the house. From where we were standing, we could see a vague outline of the beach—our beach—and the rest of what we could see was nothing but trees and mountains.
It appeared there had never been any type of civilization here, no ports, no villages. It was just us and whoever lived in the house. But whether or not they would help us wasn’t clear. My emotions kept flipping between outright terror and cautious optimism.
“I don’t know,” Harry said, still trying to look for a sign of anything else. “Someone obviously lives there.”
“We have to go there,” Noah said, his jaw tight. “We need to go and see if we can confront them.”
“That isn’t smart,” Harry disagreed. “We don’t know who it is. How many people there are. Whether they’re armed. We have to use our heads here.”
I shook my head, needing it to make sense. If someone else was on the island, which we had all but confirmed, I couldn’t just sit around and wait to learn whether they were going to harm us. I couldn’t stay on the island a moment longer if I didn’t have to. Despite all that, I knew Harry was right. He was always right. “For all we know, it’s just a random woman who lives on the island and is as scared of us as we are of her. She was there last night, and she didn’t try to hurt us. She just ran away. And she may have left us weapons. If she were planning to hurt us, why would she have armed us?” I struggled to find a sensible reason.
“Then how do you explain the note?” he asked. “You’re forgetting that people brought us here and dumped us on an abandoned island with nothing to eat or drink and no explanation, and then they left a note that said we should kill each other in order to get off the island. What part of that makes you think these people are friendly?”
“Because they haven’t hurt us,” I said, grasping at straws. “And they could’ve. If they have weapons like what they brought us, why haven’t they hurt us yet?”
“Maybe this is all a test. Maybe they want to see who’s good and who’s bad?” Noah offered, though even he didn’t look like he believed it.
“A test for what, though? And why this group of people? We’ve already ruled out any of us being connected before. It all just seems so random…” Harry paused. “Look, I’m not saying we aren’t going to go to the house, I’m just saying we have to be smart about it. If we march up to the door and knock on it today, without knowing what or who is behind it, we’re setting ourselves up to be ambushed.”
“So what are you suggesting instead?” I asked. He was being logical. I knew he was right, but it didn’t make it sting any less. I wanted answers, and I wanted them right then.
“We need to get back to the clearing and tell the others what we’ve f
ound. Then, we can start making our way toward the house, set up a camp nearby, and keep an eye on them. Sooner or later, someone’s going to come out of the house. If it’s just the woman and she’s unarmed, we can confront her. If it’s an army of people with military gear, on the other hand, maybe we take a breath and come up with a game plan from there.”
Noah swiped sweat from his forehead, breathing out heavily. “Okay, fine. Let’s do that. We just need to get down from here and out of the sun. Can I have a drink?”
I reached for a coconut from the sack and handed it over, spying my cell phone still in the pocket of the sarong.
“Hang on, I just want to try something.” I pulled the phone out and pressed the button to turn it on. Noah slurped down some of the water before passing it to Harry to finish the rest. They watched carefully as my phone lit up, immediately warning us of a low battery. Honestly, I was sort of surprised it turned on at all after days in the blazing heat, sand in all its crevices, and no time on a charger.
I went to my call log, selecting my husband’s name with my thumb, and closing my eyes to send up a silent prayer that it might work. What would I tell him? That we were still here. That he shouldn’t give up looking. What had happened. I’d spill it all in seconds, crying and trembling as I heard his soothing voice, his promise that he’d never give up. That he’d search night and day until he found me.
The vision was so clear in my mind, for a second, I almost believed it was real.
Instead, a beep sounded, and when I opened my eyes, my heart fell.
No Signal
The alert was displayed on the screen, crushing any amount of hope I may have had.
“No signal,” I read to them, breathless as new tears found my eyes. I hadn’t realized how much hope I’d pinned on being able to reach him. As if it would solve all my problems. I just wanted to feel something familiar. I wanted to hear his voice and let him hear mine. I needed to know he hadn’t given up hope. I needed him to give me a reason not to.
“We’re on an island in the middle of nowhere,” Noah said coldly, though I suspected he was trying to cover his own disappointment as he wouldn’t meet my eye. “Of course there’s no cell phone signal. Haven’t you ever been on a cruise?”
I shoved the phone back into its pocket and turned away from him. Harry put a hand on my arm gently, trying to comfort me.
“It was worth a shot.”
I nodded, unable to speak. The lump that had formed in my belly upon our arrival had begun to swell into a black hole of hopelessness. With each passing day, a bit more of my remaining hope disappeared.
“We should go,” Noah said, leading us toward the edge of the cliff and turning around slowly, easing his foot toward the rock below. I slung the sack over my shoulder like a crossbody purse, making it easier to carry than it had been on the way up, and followed his lead.
As I eased myself down, pressing it onto the rock below. I felt it slip too quickly, losing my footing, and let out a scream as I imagined the fall to my death. Noah’s hand was under my foot in a moment, carefully guiding it to a new rock.
“Easy,” he said before releasing me.
I tried to catch my breath and slow my trembling before trying to move down to the next rock. As I moved, I accidentally looked out over the forest, realizing how far up we were and how ill-equipped we were to be making a journey like this. On the way up, I’d been so determined to make it I’d hardly noticed, but on the way down, it was all I could see. We weren’t mountain climbers. Truth be told, I didn’t even really like heights. Yet, here we were, climbing this mountain in the blazing sun, half dehydrated.
Okay, so mountain was a bit of an exaggeration, I guessed, but it didn’t stop the fear from crashing into me like waves. For some reason, I hadn’t thought about how dangerous the climb was until I’d nearly fallen.
“Don’t look down,” came the warning from above. When I looked up, Harry’s dark eyes met mine, his smile kind. “You’re okay, just don’t look down. Pay attention to where your hands and feet land. We’re in no hurry. Stare at the rock in front of you and nothing else. You’re fine.”
I nodded, following his advice and staring at the rock in front of me, easing my foot down to the next rock carefully. My fingers had begun to burn, both from the temperature of the rock and from the utter exhaustion of carrying my weight up and down the rock.
I tried to ignore the tremble as I saw Harry lowering himself onto the rock above me.
“Not too far now,” Noah said from below, and I refused to look down to make sure.
I knew I had to be getting near the bottom as we started to become level with the trees, rather than towering over them. At seeing that, my nerves calmed some. It was just like climbing the trees in my backyard as a kid. I’d survived that with little more than a few scrapes and scars, so I could do this. I was smarter now. Stronger.
My foot slipped again, and I felt myself losing my grip on the rock above. I cried out, my heart pounding in my chest, my ears, and somehow even my vision as I fought to regain my grip. Tears welled in my eyes instantly, and I whimpered, my foot floating through the air, tapping and tapping for the rock I’d slipped off from.
What happened next came in a flash.
As I tried to recall it, it seemed to happen in a millisecond, all at once. I felt Noah’s hand reaching for my toes. Heard him expel a heavy breath as he said, “Hold on—”
Harry, from above, looked down in a panic, his foot flailing to find a spot to land. My scream had distracted him, and he was now looking at me. “Are you ok—” His hand slipped, or maybe his foot… It all happened so fast, I couldn’t be sure of which it was. He screamed, both hands clawing to regain control.
I remembered the look on his face as he stared down at me, his eyes wide with fear. Then in the next second, his body was off the rock, his scream filling the air. In a flash, he fell sideways, clawing and clamoring to regain his footing, to take hold of something, anything, as he tumbled down the side of a cliff. I felt Noah’s hand leave my foot, felt my own body reaching for my friend as he fell, and then I remembered nothing.
Nothing except the crunch as Harry’s body connected with the ground below.
Chapter Seventeen
My own fear didn’t seem to matter anymore as I rushed down the side of the cliff. For the most part, I didn’t remember how I got down. I only remembered the moment my feet touched the ground, just seconds behind Noah’s, as we rushed toward where Harry’s body lay.
He wasn’t dead. It was my first thought. I watched his chest rise and fall with haggard, worn breaths. He’d landed straight down, as if he were just sleeping, and there was no blood. His glasses were strewn across the forest floor, several feet from him, but aside from that, without knowing what had happened, you could’ve easily assumed he’d just stopped in for a cat nap rather than having fallen more than thirty feet.
“Harry,” I cried, my hands shaking as I hovered them over his body. His eyes fluttered open and closed, but he gave no real indication that he had heard me.
He groaned.
“Don’t touch him,” Noah warned, bending down on his knees next to me. “You could make it worse.”
“Harry,” I cried, snot and tears pouring down my face. I shoved my hair back out of my eyes, but it was no use. It fell back into my eyes as I hovered over him. “Please wake up. Please.”
“He’s not bleeding,” Noah said, but his tone wasn’t hopeful. In fact, it almost sounded worse. “Harry, can you hear us?”
Again, his eyes fluttered, and he expelled a ragged breath, but he didn’t move. I ran a hand gently over his legs, then his arms, feeling for anything out of place. “What do we do?” I demanded of Noah, though I knew from the blank look in his eyes that he had no idea.
“I…I don’t…I don’t know. Harry would know,” he said, his voice cracking at the mention of his name.
I choked back a sob, rubbing my palms over my eyes. “We have to get him back to the camp. Can w
e carry him together?”
“If his back’s broken, that could hurt him more,” Noah said, shaking his head feverishly. “We have to leave him here.”
“We can’t just leave him here. We have to go and get Ava and James. We need their help. We have to carry him to that house. Whether they’re good or bad, we have to take our chances. It’s Harry’s only hope. We can’t give up. We have to do something.”
He chewed his bottom lip, pressing his fingers to his temple. “We need to make something flat to carry him. Maybe we could find a hollowed-out log or something. Wait here, I’m going to go look.” With that, he was off in a flash. I should’ve asked where he was going or when he planned to be back, but I could think of nothing else.
“Harry,” I cried, letting my head rest on the dirt next to him. “Why aren’t you waking up? Please, please, Harry.” I clutched his hand, wiping my eyes with the back of my arm. “It’s all my fault… This is all my fault. This wasn’t supposed to happen. We can’t make it without you.” I sobbed, my cries echoing throughout the forest.
Suddenly, I felt his grip tighten on my hand. I looked up, seeing that his eyes were open. He was staring at me strangely, his eyes glassy.
“Harry?”
He coughed, his body convulsing, and I saw the blood. A small drop trailed just under his nose, the remnants of the splatter that had come out onto his shirt. When he opened his mouth, his teeth were painted crimson.
My body hurt watching it happen, the grief gripping at my organs with its cold, spindly fingers. I held his hand, using the other to dab up the blood with his shirt. As I lifted the bottom of his shirt up, my body went cold. His stomach, once creamy white, was quickly turning a deep shade of purple, like ink dots spilling onto a canvas.
No. No. No. No.
The Missing Page 13