“It died.”
“Give it here.”
Sara handed the flashlight over. Her husband moaned when he took it.
“Help me, we need to open it.”
Her fingers grazed his swollen hands, then grasped them gently. Together they unscrewed the back off the Maglite. Martin dumped the batteries onto his palm.
“Do you have an emery board?”
“No. Laneesha? You have a nail file?”
“I don’ go nowhere without one. Y’all don’ allow no acrylics, so I gotta make do with what God gave me.”
“Let me borrow it,” Martin said.
Laneesha handed Sara the thin strip of cardboard, the size of a popsicle stick. Martin pressed the batteries between his palms.
“Sand the tops and bottoms. Really rough them up. And then dab the ends in the blood on my wrists. This’ll make them more conductive, suck a bit more energy out of them.”
Sara followed instructions, then popped the Ds back into the flashlight. Light trickled out, faint yellow but better than nothing. She swept it over the trees. If she just found a single orange ribbon, they could get their bearings and get back to the campsite. Then they could use the radio, call for help, and get off this crazy island.
Sara spotted orange, but it was dead leaves, not a ribbon. The strips were phosphorescent, and glowed like reflectors when light hit them. Why couldn’t they find any?
“Where the hell are those ribbons?”
Martin put a hand on her shoulder. “We’ll find them.”
She flicked the beam from one trunk, to another, to another. Nothing.
“We must have tied a few dozen.”
“We’ll find them.”
Sara spun around, tried the other direction. All the trees looked the same. Every damn tree looked the same. They just needed to find one, dammit. This island wasn’t that big. How hard could it be to find a single goddamn…
Then Sara heard something horrible.
“Oh, god, no…”
In the distance. Faint, but obvious.
Screaming.
“Can you hear that?”
“What, hon?”
“Someone screaming.”
Martin looked around. “That’s the wind.”
“It’s not the wind. It’s one of the kids. Do you hear it Laneesha?”
The teen cocked her head. “I don’ hear nothin’.”
Sara began to walk faster. “Which direction is it coming from? We have to help.”
“Sara…you need to calm down.”
“Don’t tell me to calm down, Martin. That’s one of our kids out there.”
The screams seemed to get louder, more frantic. What was happening to that poor child? What could cause someone to scream like that? The thought of somebody hurting one of her kids was—
Sara felt herself get grabbed from behind. She went on automatic, widening her stance, shifting her body to flip the attacker. But he got his leg between hers, preventing her leverage, one hand snaking over her mouth and the other reaching for the flashlight.
Sara bared her teeth, ready to chew the bastard’s fingers off, when Martin’s voice whispered in her ear.
“Kill the light. They’ve found us.”
Sara tapped the Maglite button just as she noticed three…four…six…no, at least eight people—filthy and ragged and obviously insane—walk into the clearing just ten yards ahead of them.
Cindy watched Tom turn the gun on her, so clear and precise that it seemed like slow-motion. He aimed it at her chest. She could feel a cold spot where the bullet would enter, right next to her heart. It made her knees shake.
Growing up in northern Michigan, Cindy knew guns. Her dad had several, and when money was tight—and it usually was—he would supplement groceries with fresh rabbit, possum, and deer.
Knowing the damage guns could do, and the respect they demanded, made her understand the depths of Tom’s stupidity. Even at this distance she could see the pistol was cocked, which meant the slightest touch of the trigger, or even dropping the gun, could cause it to fire.
It made Cindy realize, with a combination of both fear and relief, that she didn’t want to die.
Being in rehab before, and being around other addicts, showed Cindy how deadly meth was. It killed you three times. First, it killed your will, making you a slave to another fix. Then it killed your looks, turning you into a toothless, underweight skeleton. Then it finally snuffed out your life, but by that point the end was welcome.
Cindy had begged, borrowed, and stolen to get high, giving up everything she cared about. She even had meth mouth, her teeth starting to rot in her head, losing three molars before being put into the Center. Her first few months at the Center, Cindy didn’t care if she lived or died. She thought she wanted to straighten out her life, but she was unsure if that was just the therapy talking.
But now she knew. Staring down the barrel of the gun, Cindy wanted to live.
“Tom. Don’t point that at me. It’s not funny.”
Tom stuck out his chest. “Who’s trying to be funny? I know what you—what all of you—think of me. You think I’m some kind of joke. You laughing at me now?”
Cindy cast a quick glance at Tyrone, his knees bent and his head slightly lowered, and figured he was getting ready to rush Tom. Tyrone was fast, but bullets were faster.
“I never thought you were a joke, Tom. I always liked you.”
“Is that why you were holding hands with Tyrone? You pretending he was me?”
Cindy forced a smile, tried her best to make it look genuine. “If you wanted to hold my hand, all you had to do was ask. But how much do you think pointing a gun at me will make me like you?”
“I don’t care who likes me.”
“Sure you do, Tom. Isn’t that why you stole that car? For attention? But there’s good attention and bad attention. This is just more bad attention.”
“Give me a break, Cindy. I’m not the loser here. How many guys you suck off to get a fix? Is that why you’re playing Tyrone? You think he’s got some ice?”
Cindy let the smile fall away, and anger replaced some of her fear.
“Do you like it here, Tom? Because if you shoot me, the place you’re going will be a lot worse, and for a much longer time. No juvee hall. You’ll be tried as an adult, stuck in general pop. Then we’ll see how many guys you suck off to stay alive.”
Tom lowered the gun, just a fraction. Then Tyrone lunged, crossing the distance between him and Tom in two steps, driving a shoulder into the kid’s chest while stiff-arming Tom’s gun hand up and away from Cindy.
Tom toppled like he was on hinges, the gun arcing out of his hand and plopping into the campfire with a puff of sparks.
Cindy’s automatic instinct was to reach for it, but she stopped. She’d gotten burned before. Second degree on both hands. That’s why she didn’t roast a hotdog or marshmallows earlier. Fire scared the crap out of Cindy.
She often had nightmares about it. The meth lab, her friend cooking a batch, the flask of chemicals exploding and setting him ablaze. He ran at her, screaming, and she had to push him away to keep from dying herself, scorching her hands in the process. They healed, with minimal scarring, but the pain wasn’t anything she’d ever forget.
Badly as she wanted the gun, Cindy knew there was no way she’d reach into fire to get it.
Instead, she ran toward Tyrone and Tom. Tyrone was straddling him, one hand on Tom’s neck, the other raised to punch him in the face.
Cindy caught Tyrone’s fist, held it back.
“Don’t.”
“Fool needs to be taught.”
“He’s off his medicine, Tyrone. Beating him up won’t teach him anything.”
Tom looked small, terrified, a big difference from the swaggering macho dipshit he’d been seconds ago.