She let her body relax, accepting her fate.
You tried. You gave it your best.
The cries came again, whimpering now, like a baby. Ada opened her eyes and picked up the bottle again to take more, to make sure she had enough in her to finish the job.
Then she saw the paper on her thigh. It wasn’t instructions.
She blinked and picked it up, holding it in the glow of the flashlight.
Ada,
Never give up.
I didn’t, and I lived.
You will, too, if you don’t give up.
When I was in a dark place, I always came back to these words:
Ada stared at the note. X had put that in the bottle knowing she might use the pills for exactly this. He had known.
He did care. He did want her to survive.
Otherwise, he wouldn’t have sent you out here.
She had thought he’d doomed her, but he had given her a chance, and now he was offering her a second chance.
Several minutes had passed since she’d swallowed the five pain pills. She found herself wondering why.
Why give up?
She had a broken toe and a bellyache, and there were monsters outside. Big whoop.
“Coward,” she muttered.
She had seen plenty of boats on the beach that could be seaworthy. All she needed was one with a sail. The excuses and fear had made her a coward, but no more.
Without another thought, she jammed her finger down her throat. She leaned over the crates and vomited into the bilge. Then she did it again. She gagged herself until there was nothing left in her stomach but pale-yellow foam.
When she was finished, she wiped her mouth. Her throat burned from the acid. For the next few minutes, she pulled out the supplies she needed to get her head back into survivor mode, starting with antibiotics to fend off the infection in her toe, and then the antinausea pills.
Next, she ate one of the energy bars she had salvaged, filling her stomach. She stuffed the rest of the bars in her vest pocket. Finally, she drank several swigs of water.
By the time she was done, she felt like a new person. Not quite confident enough to take her machete outside and fight the leeches, but confident enough not to piss herself worrying about them.
She grabbed the machete. If they came for her, she would make it expensive for them.
It was this thought that made her realize that the crunching had stopped, and the wailing had subsided to a whimper.
She put her ear against the bulkhead again. There was a new sound—something moving outside in the sand.
Ada eyed the hatch. She would have to get back down into the bilge water to reach it. She hadn’t planned on doing that until the leeches were gone, but the only way she could know was by checking.
Using the utmost caution, she lowered herself into the calf-deep water with the machete and the flashlight. The waterproof boots sloshed through to the hatch. Once there, she switched off her flashlight and calmed her breathing.
Just one look. Only one.
She slowly pushed on the broken hatch, using her shoulder to open it. Lightning streaked through the sky right when she did, illuminating the concrete walkway connected to the pier in the distance.
She waited for another strike, giving her eyes a chance to adjust to the darkness.
All she could see were amorphous shapes.
She focused on the beach, where the whimpering seemed to be coming from. But the sound was on the other side of the capsized boat. To see what it was, she must leave the shelter.
Another jag of lightning lit up the beach.
She didn’t see any leeches out there, or any sign of what they had eaten during the night.
Curiosity brought her out of the cabin.
The irony hit her then. Only minutes ago, she had tried to kill herself. Perhaps she was trying to again. But she had to see whether the leeches were gone.
Only then could she move on to plan B: find a boat with a sail and get the hell off this godforsaken island.
She ducked under the hull of her boat. Bringing up her flashlight, she turned it on and raked it over the beach.
Nothing.
Machete in hand, she moved out onto the sand. Using her light as a guide, she walked around the other side to search for the source of the wailing.
When she saw it, she froze.
A hairy face with wide eyes stared back at her.
It was some sort of small primate with dark-black hair and an almost humanoid face. But unlike the creatures on the ghost ship, this one didn’t have any robotic parts, and it didn’t try to kill her.
The creature looked away from Ada, uninterested in her. She followed the big brown eyes to the beach and shined the light on bloodstains in the sand.
The leeches, it seemed, had consumed this creature’s friend or perhaps parent. The small monkey-like creature was crouched on a rock, its back slightly hunched. It reminded her of Jo-Jo, a stuffed toy she’d had as a kid.
Unlike most of the mutant creatures she had seen, this one was cute. But looks could be deceiving. It could have a mouthful of sharp teeth, and retractable claws hidden on those hairy fingers.
Everything that had adapted to live out here had weapons.
The creature sulked, whimpering again, black lips quivering.
Ada couldn’t help but feel bad for the baby monkey.
She pulled an energy bar from her vest. Then she pulled back the wrapper and broke off a chunk. She tossed it to the creature, but it just looked at it in the sand and went back to crying.
Ada took a step closer. The creature jumped away. She took a step back and looked at the beast.
It wasn’t really a beast at all. Standing about two feet tall, it was the size of a rather skinny toddler with black fur covering its humanlike body. Definitely some sort of monkey.
But how had it survived?
According to her wrist computer, the radiation was minimal here, but if humans couldn’t survive, how could these creatures? One thing she was still learning out here was that life continued to find a way.
“It’s okay,” she said. “I’m not going to hurt you.”
The monkey crouched back down. It whined, opening its mouth. It didn’t appear to have any sharp teeth or claws, but she was still waiting for it to reveal something horrifying.
Perhaps it would split down the middle, and a much nastier beast would jump out. Or it might spit acid on her, or perhaps…
Relax, Ada. It’s just a baby monkey.
The creature jumped again, making a new noise much like what she remembered monkeys making in the documentaries she’d watched as a child.
It jumped back and forth, suddenly agitated. When she moved her light, it raised a hand to shield its eyes from the glare. Then it turned and hobbled away.
“No,” she whispered. “No, come back.”
The animal darted into the vegetation crawling down the beach. Ada tried to find it with her light, but it was gone.
Lowering her beam, she heard a noise over the crashing waves on the beach. She whirled with her machete, knowing that she wasn’t what had spooked the baby monkey.
The leeches had returned, surging up the beach with the tide. They squirmed toward her, their gleaming spiked backs closing in like a school of demonic fish. A dozen of the slimy creatures snailed toward her.
One raised its head as it approached, opening sucker lips rimmed with teeth. Her brain screamed at her to run, but instead of flight, the fight instinct kicked in.
She strode forward, swinging the machete. The blade cut through gristly flesh, and purple blood ran out.