Phoenix Island (29 page)

She paused at the edge of the clearing, which sat empty. A trap? She didn’t have time to worry about that now.

She stepped into the open and waited. Nothing.

Across the clearing she sprinted, fear rising in her as she imagined Decker’s rage.

Be tough,
she commanded herself.
Be like Carl
. Reaching the other side of the clearing, she hammered up the hill but slowed when she passed the point from where Ross had thrown the rock. She wanted to have her full breath if she needed it. Besides, she’d be able to hear better if she walked and breathed quietly.

Scanning side to side and listening hard, she crept ahead. She hoped this was the right direction. Where was Medicaid when you needed him?

This thought saddened her. She pictured Medicaid, happy for the first time in this horrible place, bumbling along with his entourage of blue butterflies, leading them almost magically from checkpoint to checkpoint. Then she remembered his cries in the forest and went cold. What had they done to him?

A branch snapped.

She crouched behind a tree.

A large brown pig with long, curling tusks emerged from the undergrowth. The thing trotted across her view and disappeared into the gloom. She hoped it found Decker.

She stood, then dropped again into a crouch.

A loud shuffling . . .

And there he was: Decker.

Stalking through the jungle, blood on his shirt, a club in his hand, his eyes scanning side to side, he looked like some primitive subhuman out of the primordial depths of prehistory, a bloodthirsty savage that hunted its meat and ate it raw and steaming in the forest. Octavia crouched low and clutched her weapon, taking shallow breaths and praying he wouldn’t see her.

Then, like the pig, Decker disappeared into the gloom.

Moving as quietly as she could, she hurried out his back trail. Fear filled her afresh. What if she found Ross sprawled in a pool of blood? She knew only basic first aid and had no supplies.

But these were bad thoughts, panic thoughts, dangerous to her now, and she pushed them from her mind and hurried on.

She was just starting to wonder if she’d gone in the wrong direction when a voice called softly from the undergrowth, “Octavia.”

“Ross?”

A thick bush shook, and Ross emerged. She saw no new damage, but his eyes were wide. “Where’s Decker?”

“He went that way.” She nodded and then started moving in the other direction. She grabbed his hand and pulled him with her.

“Where did you get the club?”

“I’ll tell you all about it later. We have to find Medicaid.”

Ross shrugged. “Honestly? I don’t want to sound like a coward, but I don’t think there’s much we can do for him. Not here. We have to tell Stark what happened.”

She didn’t say anything. Her face still ached where Decker had slapped her, and with her adrenaline receding, she felt pain creep into her shoulders and the back of her head, where the psycho had slammed her into the ground. The day’s events didn’t seem real, but here she was, hurting and holding a club in her hand.

It was real. It was all real.

“We can’t leave Medicaid,” she said. Ross started to protest, but she stopped him. “Hear me out. Earlier, when you started to talk about Carl
and how they might’ve done something to him, I didn’t want to listen. I didn’t want to believe it. But now, after all this? Everything’s different. I believe you. The journal, all of it.”

“A step in the right direction,” Ross said, “but I still don’t see what that has to do with us putting our necks on the line for Medicaid.”

“He needs us. Decker’s ‘the sheriff’ now, right? He can do anything he wants.”

Ross made a face like he’d bitten into a rotten lemon.

And in that wavering moment, she saw it, saw all at once, what her plan would be.

Ross sighed. “Fine. We’ll take a quick look, but then we find Stark.”

She held up one finger. “Not quite. I have to do one more thing first.”

Ross waited, looking sick.

“I have to find Carl.”

“What . . . at the Chop Shop?”

She nodded. “He might need us, Ross. And if he does, I’d rather die right here and have the pigs eat me than let him down. I mean it.”

“I know you do.” He was quiet for a time after that. His mouth moved like it was working a seed back and forth. “All right. Let’s go. But I’m not spending all day looking for Medicaid. We’ll try to find him, then we’ll go looking for Carl.” He rolled his eyes. “We are so screwed.”

“Basically,” she replied. “Do you have the compass?”

He shook his head. “The map is gone, too.”

“Crap.”

They moved along through the woods, checking the sun when they could, continuing in what they hoped was the right direction. After a while, she said, “If you hadn’t thrown that rock—thanks so much, Ross. I mean, you saved me—”

He put on a cheesy smile. “That’s me, always ready to save a damsel in distress.”

She laughed. “For the first time ever, I actually appreciate you joking.”

“It grows on you.”

Seconds later, Ross hissed, and they both crouched. She heard
movement but saw nothing. Looking at her with wide eyes, he pointed downhill and raised four fingers.

She saw Decker in the distance, passing through the trees. Then came Funk and the one whose name she couldn’t remember, and finally Stroud, who limped along, holding his broken hand. The four of them headed off toward where she thought the road was. Good. Now she and Ross could hurry in the opposite direction and hopefully find Medicaid. She hoped he was okay.

She motioned to Ross, and they started moving again. Avoiding the clearing altogether, they entered the part of the woods into which Medicaid had run.

They followed a pig trail into a dim, muggy forest where so many mosquitoes brushed against them, it was like walking through a dark room filled with cobwebs. She risked a few quiet calls out to the kid. Nothing.

They moved slowly, looking behind bushes and under trees, anyplace Medicaid might hide. He was probably so freaked out that he wouldn’t trust even them.

“Look,” Ross said.

His tone filled her with dread.

Medicaid’s pants lay on the ground. One boot lay nearby. Both were bloody.

Ross cursed. “Beating him up is one thing, but why humiliate him? All jokes aside, the jungle’s no place to be going around without your pants.”

They called a few more times. Nothing.

A little further on, she spotted a drop of bright red blood lying atop the muddy pig trail, round as a screaming mouth. Seconds later, they found another drop. In this way they tracked him, like hunters following a wounded deer.

That’s how he must feel,
she thought,
terrified, like some wounded animal
.

Blood led them to another clearing, at the center of which pulsed something large and blue . . . something blue that made no sense. At first she thought it was alive, some type of shimmering alien—something—a
blue lump the size of a bathtub, wavering like a pile of blue eyes, all of them blinking. Then, drawing closer, she saw what it really was: a mound of bright blue butterflies, all of them fluttering and jostling.

“Weird,” Ross said. “There must be thousands.”

“Come on,” she told him. “We have to find him.”

Suddenly butterflies lifted into the air like an eruption of blue lava.

“Oh—oh no . . .” she said.

A few of the insects remained, their wings opening and closing rhythmically, like so many beating hearts. One sat atop his white kneecap. Another wobbled on his red hair. Still another—and this was the one she noticed just before she started screaming—perched on his open, unblinking eye.

Medicaid was dead.

S
HAKING WITH EXHAUSTION AND WILD
with fear, Octavia fought through the dense vegetation. Mud swallowed her feet. Roots tripped her. Vines clutched her. Thorns tore her flesh. Broad leaves covered her face, making her blind, trying to smother her, as if the forest itself wanted her dead.

She growled, struggling forward.

The hooting drew closer.

Just behind her, Ross sobbed. He couldn’t keep up. Whenever they hit open patches, she longed to sprint away, but she couldn’t abandon him.

Not now. Not when she knew the truth.

Decker’s gang had killed Medicaid.

And now they want to kill us
.

She and Ross had stayed staring too long at the body in disbelief, and the killers had returned to find them.

She crawled under a fallen tree, remembering things in flashes: Medicaid, the bright blue butterfly sitting atop his open eye, its wings winking at her, as if the whole thing, his death, Phoenix Island, the world . . . everything . . . was one big cosmic joke.

That’s right,
her stepfather’s voice said.
The world’s one big joke, and you’re the punch line. . . .

As she remembered the awful discovery—the screams that had ripped out of her, and the murderers shouting, coming for them—a touch of madness shivered through her again.

No. She couldn’t afford madness. Panic had already cost them enough time.

She had fled blindly into the forest and only after she-didn’t-know-how-long had finally calmed enough to head for the road. Or where she hoped the road would be.

They had to find a road and get to an adult before Decker could catch them. If he caught them . . .

“Rossy-poo!” someone yelled in the forest behind them. He sounded close. So did the laughter that followed.

Octavia jolted ahead and slammed into a thick screen of wide leaves that slapped against her face, blocking out the light of day. Their sap burned her skin, setting fire to what seemed like a thousand scratches and cuts that covered her body. She pushed at them with her hand, swiped at them with the club, and powered forward, sure that any second now, the air behind her would fill with the screams of Ross and the laughter of the killers.

“
Greg-oh-ric!
” Decker called in a mocking voice. “We’re gonna get you, baby!” It sounded like he was maybe ten feet behind her now. . . .

Driving through the blinding vegetation, she could all but feel Decker’s hand close on her shoulder.

Then she stumbled out of the green mouth of the jungle and into the light and fell hard on the packed dirt of the road. The club clattered away, and she scrambled after it, her palms burning. As her hand closed on the club, her heart surged.

The road stretched away in both directions, hedged by dark forest.

A loud thrashing sounded behind her. The vegetation shook, and Ross struggled free with one hand over his eye, wincing with pain.

Something must have jabbed him. So be it. They had to run.

Octavia grabbed his hand. “Come on, man. They’re right behind us.”

They ran as fast as they could up the road.

The hunters spilled out of the woods behind them, hooting like cannibals, their jeering loud as gunfire out on the open road.

A scream ripped involuntarily from her lungs. She pulled away from Ross without realizing what she was doing, then slowed going into a bend in the road, waving blindly with one arm for him to hurry. She
turned halfway as she ran and saw Ross struggling after her, his face a bruised mask of terror. Perhaps a football field behind him and closing fast was Decker. With the ancient terror of stalked prey, she watched Decker eat the distance.

She shouted for Ross, fear an erupting volcano in her now, unable to tear her eyes away from the terrible sight of Decker drawing closer and closer. One hundred yards . . . eighty . . . fifty . . .

And fleeing with her face turned, she nearly ran into the jeep parked in the middle of the road.

She stopped herself at the last second, throwing out a hand and catching herself on the hood.
They were safe!

“What’s going on here?” A familiar voice boomed.

Drill Sergeant Parker stood beside the jeep, glaring at her.

For the first time in her life, she was happy to see him. “They . . .” she said, fighting to catch her breath, “they killed him.”

Parker stepped toward her. “What did you say?”

One of his soldiers stepped from the forest to her left.

Ross slammed into her, gasping for breath.

“Him,” Octavia said, pointing at Decker, who stopped running and walked toward them now with a big smile on his face. Farther back, the others pumped their fists in the air and shouted. “Them. They killed Medicaid.”

“Bull,” Parker said.

His word stopped her like a punch to the gut.

Parker’s soldier gestured for her to hand him the club.

She ignored him. “What did you say?”

“Bull,” Parker said. He pointed to the club. “Where’d you get that?”

“What?” she asked. None of this made sense. She’d just reported a murder, but he—

“She took it off Stroud,” Decker said, walking up to them.

She turned and drew back the club. “Stay away from us, you murderer!”

Ross stepped between them, facing Decker. “You’re in big trouble.”

Still smiling, Decker said, “I think you’re the one who’s in trouble, buddy.”