Every cell in my body focuses on moving the van. Muscles that I have not used in years tense for a final exertion. Should I fail to move the van I will not have the strength to try again or do much of anything else, for that matter, so I tap whatever hidden stores of strength I have.
Sucking the air between my teeth, I push and the van begins to move.
“It’s working,” Gwen can barely contain her elation. “Keep going.”
The wheels do a full rotation; momentum kicks in. The lead dog lifts his head. We keep pushing. The van picks up speed.
“He’s coming,” Gwen cries.
The lead dog sprints towards us, and the rest of the pack, caught off guard, hurry to follow.
“Phillip, we’ve got to get back in the van!”
While still pushing I peer around the side of the van. “We’re still too far from the drop off.”
The dogs charge at full speed, teeth bared.
“Dey coming!” Dellas screams out the obvious.
“Get in the van, Gwen,” I say.
She hesitates.
“Go, I can keep us moving by myself,” I add.
She still lingers, looking again at the charging pack.
I yell, “Go!”
She dashes for the passenger side door. I know she is in the car because the weight of the vehicle shifts. Suddenly, as we reach the drop off the van rolls so fast that I must turn around and run at full speed to keep up with it. Gwen is at the back window, screaming for me to jump onto the van. I turn for a second and see a mass of fur and fangs hurtling towards me. I jump, grab a railing on the back of the van, and turn around.
The German shepherd—eyes filled with murderous fury—snaps at my feet. Racing down the long, steep hill, the van widens the distance from the pack. The subordinate dogs refuse to let their prey slip out of the trap, but the leader of the pack knows better and quits the chase.
Laughing like a lunatic, I let out a loud cheer, echoed by the women inside the van. Wind blows threw my hair and my heart fills with glee. Sun baked hills slide past us and the dog pack disappears in our dust.
Moonlight illuminates our path. The van lies far behind us. We trudge onward, not stopping for a second, lest the dogs catch up to us. Torches glow ahead of us. At the welcoming center for the resort, two men spot our approach and step forward with torches and makeshift weapons.
“It’s us,” Gwen calls out to them. “We’re back.”
“Where’s the cart?” One of them asks. I recognize the questioner as Robby.
We lumber into the light of their torches.
Robby is incredulous. “Where’s the old man?”
“My husband is dead,” Pamela does not look at him, her voice devoid of all feeling.
Robby and his comrade glance at each other and then back to our rag tag group.
“And who’s this?” Robby nods to Dellas and her child.
“They helped us survive,” I am weary of the interrogation. “We’ll answer all your questions, but first, food, and water.”
We push past the two men and walk across the narrow lagoon bridge. Behind us, Robby blows on a conch shell to alert everyone else in the resort of our arrival. Torches flash in the darkness and I glimpse figures rushing towards the bridge. Alexandra, Jonas, Conner, Don, Amy, and many other guests anxiously await us.
I smile when I see Jonas. “Food,” I say to him, and he swiftly takes us to the restaurant and rummages in the stock room for supplies. While we tear into bowls of dried cereal and gulp bottles of warm soda, the guests gather around us expectantly.
Finally, I wipe my mouth and let out a loud belch.
“What happened to you?” Conner demands.
I look to Pamela. Her face is downturned. She seems too spent to go into details on what we faced.
I relate everything we endured, leaving out nothing. The crowd listens in stunned silence.
The moment I finish my tale, as though to put an exclamation mark on everything I just said, someone at the back of the crowd yells, “What’s that—over there, across the bay? They’re lighting a bonfire.”
We look across the sea to the other, larger resort.
“It’s not a bonfire,” Gwen realizes. “The resort is on fire.”
The main tower is ablaze, flames leaping upwards. Fire light flickers on the rippling waters of the bay. We rush down the deck stairs to the waters edge.
“Sweet Jesus, it’s burning to the ground,” Don remarks.
I spot tiny figures running back and forth before the burning building. Some figures appear to chase the others. The faint sound of screams floats across the bay.
“It’s Action and his crew. They’re killing everyone at the resort,” I say.
Several women begin crying. Powerless to intervene, we form a line along the beach, watching the fire engulf the tower and listening to the screams.
Chapter Thirteen
As flames from the other resort leap into the sky, some of the people around me panic.
“They’ll be here next,” one of them exclaims.
A few of the spryer guests hurry back to their bungalows, and emerge clutching hastily packed suitcases, running in mad circles like molecules of boiling water.
Don hobbles past me as swiftly as his bad leg will allow.
“Don, where are you going?” I ask.
Without stopping, he shouts over his shoulder, “The hell out of here. I’m not going to wait for them to chop me to bits.”
Conner rushes ahead of the people running back to their bungalows, and holds up his hands for them to stop. “Listen to me! If you leave this resort you will die.”
Don shakes his cane in frustration. “They’ll kill us if we stay here. I’ll take my chances outside the resort.”
“Think about it. Remember what he said,” Conner gestures to me. “If the murdering islanders don’t get you then the wild dogs will. You want to live? Then stay here. We can defend this place.”
Don and the other panicky guests hesitate. No one consults Jonas. He stands to the side, impotent and forgotten, and it is clear that Jonas has lost control of the resort.
Conner paces back and forth like a general before the frightened crowd, striking his palm with a fist for emphasis. “Look around you. Cliffs protect the resort on three sides. Let the islanders try to climb over them. It’s a straight drop to the bottom—at least a hundred feet—if they do. They’ll need the lagoon bridge to reach us. No problem—we burn the bridge.”
“But then we’ll be trapped here,” Amy remarks, with a few murmurs of agreement.
Conner holds his palms up, asking for patience. “We can create a raft to float across the lagoon if someone really needs to get to the rest of the island.”
Pamela steps forth from the crowd. “And what’s to prevent Action and his men from creating their own rafts to cross the lagoon and attack us?”
“We are,” Conner responds with a flinty smile.
Despite their obvious dismay, the other guests respond to Conner with timid nods. Most of them make poor warriors, and they seem to know it, but they have no other option if they want to survive.
“We’ll need to make weapons,” I say, brainstorming ideas. “We can use gasoline to make Molotov cocktails, and steak knives taped to the ends of sticks to make spears.”
Conner rubs his hands together in approval. “Exactly. Right, and the sooner the better.”
Jonas snaps to attention now that he has the chance to assists our plans. “Come, we have cans of gasoline in a storage shed—we can make those cocktails you spoke of.”
“And everyone else, look around the resort—gather anything that can be used as a weapon. Rocks, sticks, knives—anything,” Conner decrees.
As we disburse on our errands the tower across the bay collapses into a blazing heap.