Last Girls

by Demetra Brodsky

  “He’s not here,” Blue says.

  “Why would you say that?” Birdie squawks.

  Blue doesn’t answer. But I know why.

  Every inch of this camp feels abandoned, and Blue is usually right. I take off my pack and set it under Daniel’s tarp in case it rains. There are bears in these woods, and hundred-pound cougars that will eat a human if they’re hungry enough. The area is called Gemini Caves, so I’m assuming there’s at least two. I look around, pick up my bow, and sling the quiver across my back.

  “Fine,” Birdie huffs loudly. “We can just set up and wait for him to get back.” She drags her INCH bag next to mine under Daniel’s tarp.

  “Stop talking,” I tell her. “I think that’s the mouth of a cave.” I nock an arrow on my bow and use it to point fifty feet past Daniel’s campsite. I push fear aside and amble toward the five-foot opening. It sits at the bottom of a massive stone ledge, the moss-covered exterior, surrounded by piles of deadfall fighting to regenerate itself back into existence. My sisters rush behind me.

  “Why are you moving so slow?” Birdie whispers. “You’re freaking me out.”

  “Shh. Predators.” I look at Birdie sideways and see she’s holding her bow.

  My first fear is that a cougar or bear made its home in this cave and Daniel didn’t see it when he made camp. It’s dusk. A bear would have come out when it heard noises. A cougar would wait until nightfall. That’s my second fear. A predator still inside the cave, lying in wait. I scan the ground for tracks. Something was dragged over here but all the footprints look human, made by hiking boots of various sizes and tread. Enter my third and worst fear. The coalition caught up to Daniel.

  Don’t be inside. Don’t be inside. Don’t be inside.

  We move in formation to the mouth of the cave. My heart is pounding so hard I can hear the blood rushing through my veins above the background of our heavy breathing. This is the type of situation we’ve been trained to face. And yet, when presented with the unknown, my body reacts with free will.

  Blue tugs my arm, pulling me closer, “I have a flashlight,” into my ear.

  “Come around to the side and shine your light into the opening.” I whisper back. “Try your best to stay out of the way in case a cougar or bear charges us.”

  Blue shines three hundred lumens into the cave and I see him first. Sitting lifeless against a jagged, metamorphic wall, his head and upper body tipped to one side. Daniel’s entire belly is soaked in dark crimson blood. A handful of two-foot spears are scattered around him, like he spent his last hours whittling weapons to defend himself.

  When I hang my head and lower my bow, Birdie rips the flashlight out of Blue’s hand and rushes past us into the cave.

  My whole body goes numb when she screams, “No!”

  “He’s dead,” Blue says quietly. “Here, but not here.”

  I nod and sobs build at the back of my throat as I listen to Birdie cry his name then, “No, no, no,” over and over. Hoping her denial might turn back time. She lets out a scream filled with so much anguish the cave walls may start to shake and weep alongside her.

  I hold my breath and count to ten, twenty, sixty, before I dare to enter the cave. Birdie is kneeling on the cold ground, rocking back and forth, alternating between groaning and weeping. Her outpouring of grief slices through me, tearing out my heart with vicious teeth. I lean forward and put a hand on her shoulder.

  “Don’t touch me!” she seethes, her face nearly unrecognizable. “Didn’t I say we should look for him?”

  I deserve the accusation she’s leveling. “You did. But Ansel—”

  “Ansel? Ansel sent him here and now he’s dead.”

  “Tell me what you want to do. Whatever it is, Birdie. I’m so sorry.”

  I’m at a loss. Our training prepared us for how to behave in emergency situations, but not this. Not the death of a friend.

  “We can build a stretcher and carry him out,” Blue offers. “If we use the map to find the main road maybe we can thumb a ride into town and get help.”

  My ears perk up with the roar of a dirt bike. “Someone’s coming.”

  Whoever it is, they’re coming in fast. Maybe help was already on the way. I peek out and see Ansel coming to a sideways stop.

  Birdie steps out of the cave and sails an arrow right past his head.

  Ansel raises his hands. “Hold your fire. I’m here to help.”

  “Daniel is dead!” she shoots back. “Did you double-cross him? You were the only family he had left. He trusted you with his life. That’s what he told us.”

  His face screws up in disbelief, despite my sister’s distraught appearance. “What are you talking about? I switched out the maps for this location so he’d be safe, so nobody could find him.”

  “He’s not safe,” she spits. “He’s not even breathing.”

  Ansel stares at me, confused and blinking.

  “It’s true,” I tell him.

  He walks past us to the cave, and I put an arm out to stop Birdie from following. She stomps away, sits on a felled tree, and folds her tearstained face into her lap. I’m so glad Blue follows and sits on the log beside her, because I can’t. I’m not finished with what’s inside that cave. But I watch Blue put an arm around her shoulders and see Birdie start to shake and sob again until Blue says, “Let’s make a fire. It’s getting dark. Daniel would want us to, don’t you think?”

  I wait until Birdie nods before I walk my deflated heart back inside the cave. I’m trying to be strong, but when I see Ansel sitting against the wall next to his best friend, legs straight out in front, my whole body shakes. I’ve seen them sit side by side like this dozens of times around the compound, during lunch at school. Only this time Ansel is racked with grief. He wipes under his nose as my shadow passes over him, and I fight back stinging tears.

  “He’s wearing my watch,” he says, “but I never gave it to him. I thought I lost it in the woods when I was dragging your sister away from the bunker.”

  “The same night Birdie and I came home covered in dirt?”

  He looks up, long lashes soaking wet, before he swipes a hand across his face. He picks up one of the spears next to Daniel. “These are for Punji traps. The tips are usually coated with venom or poison.”

  There’s a long beat. Ansel’s face goes blank.

  I know the look. I’ve seen it on my own face on bad mirror days. “Do you remember anything else from that night?”

  “Nothing. Jesus Christ. Did I do this?” He covers his mouth in horror.

  “You weren’t alone,” I tell him. “Blue saw Annalise use Devil’s Breath on all of us. She told us to get in your truck and we did. I remember you jumping in front of Birdie and me, but then nothing afterward.”

  He shakes his head in denial.

  I have to ask the unthinkable. The thing that will wreck him the most. “What if Annalise asked you where to find Daniel that night?”

  “I don’t know. I can’t remember.” His shoulders shake from holding back the anguish he feels, knowing, suspecting he may have had a hand in Daniel’s death. And the worst conclusion of all. We may have been here once before. Ansel, Birdie, and me.

  “It’s okay.” I crouch and put a hand on his leg. “We’ll figure it out. What do you remember?”

  “Nothing from that night.” He glances at Daniel and puts his head against the cave wall, closing his eyes for a long beat. “Our assignment during the SERE training was to ambush Daniel on his hike and make it harder for him to get to his bug-out location. The problem was I had already given him a different map. The two locales aren’t that far off. The original bug-out location is on the other side of the river. Connor was getting agitated when we couldn’t find him and decided to track Daniel through the woods. When we caught up to him, I stayed farther back, watching. Letting Mateo and Connor mess with him a little, knowing I’d intervene if needed.” He goes quiet and the temperature drops ten degrees while I wait for a confession.

  “Di
d it go too far?”

  “No. We took some of his stuff. I made a big show of pushing Daniel down an embankment so I could tell him to bolt once I…” He pushes his cheek with his fingertips and gnaws the skin inside. “Once I used Devil’s Breath to get them to make camp. It worked. Daniel got away, and I was able to get back to meet you at the treehouse.”

  “You knew about the Devil’s Breath this whole time.”

  I hold my temper, stem the flow of conclusions. Because he needs to tell me the truth as much as I need to hear it. No matter how much that pains either of us.

  “I knew they were making it, but I didn’t figure out Annalise used it during the civilian interaction training mission until you said I looked right at you. I don’t remember seeing you. I remember more than Birdie, but I never … I only carried Devil’s Breath on me that one time because I knew I’d need it to help Daniel get away if we caught up to him. There’s something to be said about the size of the dose.”

  “Two times,” I correct him. “You used it on Connor at the bunker. It’s deadly in large doses, isn’t it?”

  His eyes go to Daniel’s belly. “That wound isn’t from poisoned spears. That was a gunshot or a knife.”

  “Does it make a difference? It doesn’t change the outcome.”

  “A gun is business. A knife is personal.”

  “We have to tell someone, Ansel. This is murder.”

  “We have a bigger problem,” he says. “Annalise is on her way here.”

  To kill us. To kill us. To kill us.

  * * *

  My blood runs cold. I stand and look past the mouth of the cave. “Do you think she’ll come alone?”

  “Depends on the directive. She could be with our mother, at the very least. Connor and Mateo, at worst. Daniel narced about our stockpiles of ammunition and weapons to Whitlock and look what happened.”

  “Where is Whitlock? Your father had his phone in the lab. I called and it rang inside the bunker, but we couldn’t find it.” If we’re dealing in confessions, I have to fess up on my end, too.

  “What you really mean is you couldn’t find Whitlock. It’s not as easy to dispatch of a federal officer.”

  “He’s dead?” A cold shiver passes over me.

  “He wasn’t last time I checked.”

  “We have to tell my sisters.”

  “Tell us what?” We didn’t notice Birdie until a sketchbook lands on the ground between us with a thud. “Daniel left a note. We found that inside his INCH. It’s written in cipher.”

  I swoop down and pick up the sketchbook before Ansel can grab it. The note is on a random page between sketches of the treehouse and barn, written in Daniel’s crooked handwriting. The lines are shakier than his origami note, like he was struggling to get his thoughts down before … I can’t think it. I explain our cipher to Ansel without going into detail then read the note out loud.

  It’s not your fault.

  You didn’t know what you were doing.

  It was Annalise. She made you dig your own graves.

  Tell Birdie I love her.

  Then tell her to run.

  “The Devil’s Breath,” Blue says. “Annalise must have dragged you out here to dig your own graves, like Daniel said. Maybe you literally did that, and Daniel was here, and she…”

  She doesn’t finish her assessment. None of us do. It’s unspeakable.

  But the reality is if I had shown up to the last meeting, I may have met the same fate.

  WROL

  WITHOUT RULE OF LAW

  ANSEL STANDS AND hoists his bug-out bag onto his shoulder. “Daniel’s right. We need to get you out of here.”

  “I’m not leaving him here.” Birdie points at Daniel without looking at his lifeless body. “If Annalise is coming here looking for a fight, we’ll give her one.”

  “She’s right, too,” I tell Ansel. “We have no idea where they are, but we have to get out of these woods one way or another. Preferably alive. Grab your best weapon. Blue, slingshot. Birdie, bow.”

  Blue’s eyes shoot to the sky in search of Achilles. I see him soaring in a circle. Safe. That makes one of us for now. “I also have a monkey fist,” Blue says.

  “That’ll work.” The heavy knotted ball of paracord can deliver a powerful blow, if needed.

  “I brought this.” Ansel lifts the side of his jacket and pulls out a 9mm tactical pistol. The Burrow’s standard-issue six-round Glock 43.

  “You are not gonna kill someone. Nobody else is dying because of Annalise.”

  “If you had to, Honey. If your life depended on it. You or one of them. Would you take the shot?” he asks me. “Because whoever walks out of here tells the story of what happened.”

  Our training. The drills. Hand-to-hand combat. Everything that brought us to this moment, and the thing my memory resurrects is the moment I asked Rémy if he would kill an animal if he needed to eat. But deer and wild turkey are different than human life.

  “I don’t know,” I answer honestly. “Not if there was another option. Death doesn’t feel like a suitable punishment.”

  “Then I’ll need to be extra confident about my aim.” Ansel looks at me, unblinking, and I know he’ll do his best to defend us, even if that means taking someone else’s life. My heart hurts over what Dieter might have turned his son into, given enough time. A mindless robot in direct opposition to the person Ansel is at his core. Someone loyal to what’s right in the end, sensitive, and true to his word.

  We step outside the cave with only the light from the fire to guide us back to the camp Daniel made.

  “It’s gonna be okay,” I tell them. “We’ll stick together.”

  “No matter what,” Birdie adds.

  The first arrow comes out of nowhere within seconds. Sailing right past my face into oblivion. I yell, “Scatter.” My survival instincts taking charge.

  Big R Reactive.

  We disperse in opposite directions, grabbing our bags as we bolt for the trees to take cover. My heart is swelling in my chest, making it hard to breathe.

  Together but separated. Together but separated. Together but separated.

  “Come out of hiding,” Annalise shouts. “We just want to talk about what happened.”

  I make my first threat assessments to get a handle on the situation and keep count of how many people we’re up against.

  THREAT ASSESSMENT:

  ANNALISE ACKERMAN|5’8” STRONG BUILD|NONEXISTENT SOCIAL GROUP|UNTRUSTING

  MOST LIKELY TO: pierce anyone who crosses her in the heart with an arrow.

  LEAST LIKELY TO: feel remorse after same said assault.

  1/10 WOULD IMPEDE GROUP SURVIVAL IN AN EMERGENCY SITUATION.

  CASUALTY POTENTIAL: low

  I nock one of my arrows and pull it tight, aiming for Annalise’s voice in the dark. I’ll shoot her if I need to protect myself or anyone else.

  “Like you talked to Daniel?” Birdie replies, fifty feet from my left.

  I hear the whoosh of an arrow.

  “You bitch,” Annalise seethes and steps out of hiding. I can see her in the light from the fire, her bow primed. “You’re as dead as Daniel.”

  Connor runs out from the woods behind Annalise and heads for the trees where Birdie is hiding, and I don’t know where to point my arrow.

  I hear the unmistakable shock of Ansel pulling back the slide on his Glock. He’s somewhere in the trees on my right. I know he’ll shoot. I’ve seen Ansel in training. He never misses. He fires a warning shot at the ground by Connor’s feet, making him rear up.

  Connor turns to seek Annalise’s instruction, and I wonder if he’s being manipulated by Devil’s Breath or simply brainwashed.

  THREAT ASSESSMENT:

  CONNOR CLARKE|6’1” STRONG BUILD|NONEXISTENT SOCIAL GROUP|TRUSTING

  MOST LIKELY TO: follow orders due to need to please authority.

  LEAST LIKELY TO: think and make judgement calls for himself.

  3/10 WOULD IMPEDE GROUP SURVIVAL IN AN EMERGENCY SITUAT
ION.

  CASUALTY POTENTIAL: low

  “Guns. That’s how you want to do this.” Magda makes her presence known. “If I’m not mistaken, Ansel, you’re on the wrong side of things.”

  THREAT ASSESSMENT:

  MAGDA ACKERMAN|5’8” STRONG BUILD|NONEXISTENT SOCIAL GROUP|UNTRUSTING

  MOST LIKELY TO: fool you with initial kindness.

  LEAST LIKELY TO: reserve loyalty for anyone outside her immediate family.

  1/10 WOULD IMPEDE GROUP SURVIVAL IN AN EMERGENCY SITUATION.

  CASUALTY POTENTIAL: low

  Ansel steps out from the trees and points the Glock at his mother.

  I use their conflict to get closer to Annalise, watching all points for who’s at my three, six, and nine. Annalise is at my twelve. A clean shoulder shot would be enough to slow her down, if not stop her completely.

  “You’re an Ackerman,” Magda berates her son.

  “I’m a survivalist,” he counters. “And you’re behaving within our own coalition without rule of law. Drop your weapon.”

  Magda gives a calculated grin and juts her chin. Two seconds later, Ansel is tackled from the side by Connor and pinned. “You’re not in charge yet, son.”

  Connor holds him down with one hand and punches him hard in the face. Ansel grunts and rolls Connor so they’re scuffling in the dirt, each trying to get the other in a sleeper hold. Ansel flips Connor onto his back and delivers a blinding headbutt to his face. Connor’s nose gushes blood, but Ansel doesn’t give him a second to recover before slamming him in the side of the head with his gun. Connor moans, holding his ear, and Ansel stands and shoots him in the knee. Point-blank. His scream of pain fills the air and echoes through the trees in time with Ansel swinging the gun long-arm at his mother, delivering the same shot before she has a chance to pierce him with an arrow. Magda drops, face contorted by pain, but crawls for her bow. Annalise’s war cry rings with pure rage. I’m about to let my own arrow fly to stop her from killing her brother when Blue jets out from hiding, swinging the monkey fist like a lasso. She lands a hard strike to the back of Annalise’s head before fleeing behind another tree.