The three men stand frozen, staring at me like I’m a ghost.
One of them is young, still in his twenties, with a round face and tiny bud of a mouth. The man on his left is enormous, a neat goatee covering his chin, the skin above it lined and scarred. The one on the right has a hooked nose and prominent chin that look like they’ve been carved from stone. Somehow, I know he’s Iluk–he looks like his name sounds. The one with the round face must be Koji.
All three are wearing thick jackets, and all three have rifles. I have just enough time to take this in, and then I’m face down in the dirt, my arms twisted behind me. The ice-cold tip of a gun barrel is shoved into the back of my neck, and I can feel grains of sand digging into my cheek.
All three men are shouting–two in English, and one in that strange language. The man with the rifle shouts at the others to shut up, digging it harder into the back of my neck.
I have to tell myself to breathe. This is the only way. If I want to get off this island, I have to go with them. I don’t know what happens after that, but I’ll figure it out. Somehow.
“You alone out here?” the man says. When I don’t answer immediately, he shoves the back of my head. I feel sand in my mouth, rough against my tongue. “Answer me.”
“I’m alone,” I say, the words muffled.
“You sure you’re telling the truth there, girl?” I feel the gun barrel shift, as if the man holding it is getting a better grip on the trigger. “Because if you’re not…”
I raise my head, just enough to get my mouth out of the sand. “I’m the only survivor.”
“Now I know you’re lying. There were more people in that plane of yours. It was still flying, even after Curtis shot ’em full of holes.”
The pressure comes off my back, and the man flips me over. I try to get an elbow underneath me, but then the gun is in my face. It’s hard to look anywhere but the huge black barrel in front of me.
“Where’d you come from?”
There’s no point lying to him. Unless they’ve got planes of their own, they’re not getting to Eric’s people. “Whitehorse,” I say.
He laughs. “That so? Long way to come. You want to tell me why you’re all the way out here?”
To find my friends. To kill someone.
While I’m trying to think of something to say, he lifts his foot and slams it down on my stomach.
I curl into a ball. I don’t have a choice. The pain is hot and feverish, radiating up from my abdomen in long waves. I feel Ray digging through my pockets, pulling out the contents, grunting as he stuffs them into his jacket.
“Jesus, Ray!” says Koji. Iluk spits a sentence I can’t understand–I don’t know if he’s angry with Ray, or goading him on.
“You want to come back with us?” Ray’s mouth is inches from my ear. “Fine. But you’re going to wish you’d stayed here.”