“Over here!”
She saw me and stopped. A spray of bullets seethed through the vegetation all around, followed by an answering shot from Mark’s assault rifle. Andrea fell sideways, collapsing into the undergrowth. Without thinking, I jumped up and ran downhill toward the place where Andrea had disappeared. I saw her lying on the ground and threw myself at her like a football player going for the line.
She was alive. In pain, but alive. She had been hit just below the left elbow. By the way the arm was hanging, it looked like the bone was broken. There was a lot of blood.
“Dad?” said a panicky voice behind me. “Where you go, Dad?”
I turned, horrified. David was wandering around in the open with a look of terror on his face.
“Get down!” I called.
His face collapsed and he started to cry.
“Can you move?” I asked Andrea.
She shook her head.
“Go back to your son. You were doing fine until I butted in.”
“So were you, until I started yelling and waving. I’ll go get David, then we’ll fix you up.”
I crawled back to find David. He was terrified by now, though more by my sudden disappearance than by what was happening all around us, and I had a hard time getting him calmed down. We slowly made our way over to where Andrea was lying, going on our hands and knees. I foraged around until I found a reasonably straight length of fallen wood, which I lashed to Andrea’s forearm using strips of material torn from my undershirt. I did the work, while she gave me directions through clenched teeth. She had taken a first-aid course at some point and knew a lot more about it than I did. David looked on with interest.
“What are you doing here anyway?” I asked Andrea. “Did Sam throw you out?”
She shook her head.
“I walked. He sent Terri and me to get water. I saw you running up the hill, and-Ow! That’s too tight.”
I loosened the binding.
“It’s like I’ve been under a spell all this time,” she went on. “Somehow you set me free again. It wasn’t anything you did, just you being here. I guess it could have been anyone. Ow!”
“Sorry.”
“I don’t understand what I’ve been doing all these years. It’s like I turned into someone else.”
“Someone and anyone,” I said. “We’ll make a great team.”
She touched my face with the back of her hand.
“It doesn’t make any difference, anyway,” she said.
“What doesn’t?”
She glanced at David, who was watching and listening attentively, and fell silent.
When Andrea’s arm had been bound to her breast, we moved off. She obviously couldn’t crawl, so I got up on one knee, ready to provide covering fire if necessary, while she ran the remaining distance to the edge of the woods. There were only a few sporadic shots, none of them directed our way. It sounded as though the two warring parties had settled down for the long haul, and were trying to conserve ammunition.
Once Andrea had reached the cover of the trees, David and I set off, crawling the whole way. The ground was hard and hostile, full of sharp shoots, jagged branches, bumpy roots and thorny plants, and we had to move on our hands and knees, keeping as low as possible. We were soon covered with cuts and abrasions, but David was a good sport about it. The sight of Andrea’s bloodstained clothing seemed to have impressed him more than anything I could have said.
Once we reached the cover of the trees, the ground became softer, a spongy mass of dead pine needles and velvety moss. We crawled another few yards, and then at last it was safe to stand up. After that, it was downhill through the trees until we found the path running along the coast. The sun had broken out from behind the clouds, flooding the scene with a soft, warm light. The water glinted and bristled, the outlined islands receded like flat cutouts in a theater set. The contrast between that tranquil beauty and what was unfolding just over the hill was almost more disturbing than anything else.
The sight of the ocean gave me an idea. I told David that I had to go and get something, and that he was to stay there with Andrea. He agreed with surprising ease. Andrea herself was harder to convince, but I was adamant. It was our best chance, I told her, and we couldn’t pass it up.
I left them there and set off back along the path. It took me about five minutes to reach the bay where the pier was, and as long again to reconnoiter the area. Once I was sure that it was safe to break cover, I made my way down to the trail. Then I saw the body stretched out on its back, arms outflung, a huge red stain on the shirt. It was Andy.
This was the first evidence of violent death I had seen, and it changed everything. I had somehow convinced myself that Sam’s talk was just that, the ramblings of a bar-room philosopher whose portentous pronouncements get more and more extreme as closing time approaches. But this was real.
I looked down to the pier, searching for the boat which had brought Mark and the others to the island. It was nowhere to be seen. Then I noticed that the whole pier was tilting to one side, and saw the taut mooring ropes leading down into the water. Once on the pier itself, the submerged launch was clearly visible. Either Andy had managed to sink it before he was killed, or Mark had deliberately scuppered it to prevent anyone escaping. Whichever, my plan was in shreds.
When I got back, Andrea was telling David a story. He was calm again, and even seemed mildly annoyed to have the story interrupted. I took Andrea aside and told her about the boat.
“But it’s OK,” I went on. “All we have to do is lie low somewhere until the police arrive.”
Andrea looked at me with surprise.
“The police?”
“Someone’s bound to hear all this shooting and call the cops.”
She shook her head.
“The islands around here are all uninhabited, except for Orcas, and hardly anyone lives on this side. Anyway, no one’s going to think twice about hearing shots. We used to have gun practice every morning until you got here. People figure this is some kind of survivalist group. They think we’re crazy, but Sam pays his taxes and the guns were all bought legally. No one’s going to come after him.”
She looked over her shoulder. David was busy stomping on a line of ants making their way across the path.
“But someone’s going to come after us,” she continued. “That’s what I meant when I said it made no difference.”
“What do you mean?”
“Just listen. The shooting’s almost stopped. Mark’s made his point. Pretty soon now he and Sam will start talking. They’ll work out some deal together.”
“But Andy’s dead!” I exclaimed. “I saw him lying back there by the pier.”
She nodded in a cool, detached way I found terrifying, a peephole into a psychological abyss.
“Andy was the cause of the whole thing,” she said. “Melissa told me the story last night, while I was trying to find out about David. She and one of the guys called Dale were an item for a while, so she was the first to hear. We were all told that Dale had killed himself. But Mark and Rick went to work on Andy the other evening and he confessed that he shot Dale. Sam made him lie to the others. That’s what Mark couldn’t stand, the idea that Sam was deceiving him. But now Andy’s dead, they’ll be able to patch things up.”
I shook my head.
“There’s still a corpse down there by the pier. They can’t talk their way out of that.”
“They’ll bury him in the woods somewhere. No one will ever know.”
“I know!”
Andrea looked at me.
“They’ll just have to make that grave in the woods a little larger,” she said.
“What you guys talking about?” demanded David.