Phoenix Island (35 page)

Henshaw, the unofficial comedian of Phoenix Force, popped the rifle off his shoulder and brought it around with lightning speed.

“Whoa!” Carl said, forcing a chuckle. “Henshaw, take it easy.”

Henshaw lowered the barrel and offered a puzzled smile. “Killer Carl?”

“Yeah, it’s me,” Carl said, trying to keep his voice natural. He recognized Henshaw’s rifle from his trips to the range with Stark: a 7.62mm AK-47—a big, no-messing-around machine gun with a fat banana clip full of ammo. He remembered Stark saying how, if the crap ever really hit the fan, he’d prefer an AK over just about anything.

“Carl,” a girl with an English accent called from the tower twenty feet overhead. “What in the world are you doing here?”

Carl looked up. Cheng’s rifle lay across the rail, not pointed at him, but not slung over her shoulder, either.

He waved, saying, “Stark sent me,” and then moved toward Henshaw, out of Cheng’s direct line of sight. Nodding toward Octavia, he said, “This girl’s a friend of mine. He said I could bring her to the duel.”

Henshaw shrugged and slung the rifle onto his shoulder.

Carl tried to look relaxed.

“What’s with the face paint?” Henshaw said. “You plan on sneaking up on Parker?”

Carl forced a laugh, hoping it sounded better to Henshaw than it did to him. “Stark thinks it might psych him out a little.”

“Hope so. Hey—do me a favor and kill the guy, okay? I came through here, he really gave me a hard time. Broke my arm, threw me in the box. Dude, it sucked.” He grinned. “Besides, I got fifty bucks on you.”

“My man,” Carl said. He put out his fist, and they pounded it like old buddies. Octavia slumped into him, and for a second, he feared she might pass out.

“I’m pissed to be missing it,” Henshaw said. “Of all days to have guard duty. Talk about drawing the short straw.”

“Oi, Carl,” Cheng said. “Need a jeep? She doesn’t look capable of walking very far.”

“No thanks,” Carl said. If Cheng called in a jeep, everything would come crashing down. “Stark specifically told me to walk her back. Who knows? I’m around him all the time and I still can’t figure him out.”

“Me, neither,” Henshaw said. “The man’s deep. Like middle-of-the-Pacific-Ocean deep. There is no second-guessing the Old Man.”

“You got that right,” Carl said.

Henshaw slapped him on the shoulder. “Don’t let us hold you up.”

“Yeah,” Carl said. “I don’t want to be late to Parker’s funeral.”

Henshaw laughed. “Killer Carl! I should have bet a hundred.” He reached for the red button that would open the gate but paused when Cheng leaned over the rail and called down.

“Hold on a tick,” she said. Her voice sounded different. Edgy. Carl tensed. “Something doesn’t quite add up here. How come nobody called this in?”

“Why bother?” Carl said. He slipped his arm from Octavia’s waist and spread his hands in a gesture of harmless puzzlement. “Stark knows you guys know me.”

Henshaw’s eyes narrowed. He tilted his head a little. “Now that I think about it, how did you get in here, Carl? We’ve been at this gate all night.”

Overhead, Cheng quickly said, “Hold the gate, Henshaw. I’m calling this in. I’m not getting burned over it.”

Carl drove a hard right into Henshaw’s face. Henshaw never saw the punch, and he fell back against the tower and slid to the ground, unconscious before he even realized he’d been hit.

Carl slapped the red button. With a metallic click, the gate began to swing slowly open. “Come on,” he said, grabbing Octavia by the arm.

Cheng yelled, “Down on the ground, Carl! Facedown or I’ll blow your bloody head off.”

Carl pushed Octavia against the guard tower and plastered himself against the wall beside her, out of Cheng’s line of fire, but from where they stood to the forest stretched forty yards of flat, open space, an absolute kill zone.

“What are you talking about, Cheng?” Carl called up. “Everything’s cool.”

Cheng didn’t respond. Then he heard her speaking into the walkie-talkie. “All ears! All ears! This is Cheng at Training Base One. We have a break in progress. Freeman and the girl from the sweatbox. I repeat—”

Carl felt frozen. He’d come all this way, put it all on the line, and now everything was falling apart. He looked again at the stretch of open ground, the kill zone. There was just no way. Cheng would cut them in half.

“Carl, can you use that thing?” Octavia pointed to the rifle lying beside Henshaw, who remained unconscious.

Carl nodded and scooped the rifle off the ground. It hadn’t even occurred to him to pick it up—he’d never wanted to shoot anyone—but he had to use it now. After pushing the selector to full auto and racking the charge handle, he risked a quick lean, looked up, and saw the dark line of Cheng’s barrel jutting out from the tower railing. Carl leaned out just far enough to put the sights on the black line of her barrel and pulled the trigger.

The noise was incredible. The machine gun kicked his shoulder five times, ten, fifteen—it was impossible to tell—and a spike of bright flame
jutted from its muzzle. Bullets whined off metal, and sparks exploded overhead.

“Run,” he told Octavia.

She staggered to the gate, and Carl, having no idea whether he’d hit the barrel of Cheng’s rifle, sent another spray of bullets into the air.

Do not lean out,
his mind begged the Phoenix Forcer.
I do not want to kill you
.

As he looked back toward the road, Octavia disappeared into the darkness of the forest. Good. She’d made it. He ran backward out from under the tower and squeezed off several more rounds.

Back toward the barracks, the flat crack of a single gunshot cut the air.

Carl saw a drill sergeant, maybe seventy-five yards away and running straight at him, arm held out straight, pistol in hand.

The drill sergeant fired again, and a bullet thwapped off the tower.

Carl blasted the ground between them, and the drill sergeant hit the dirt.

Backing through the gate, Carl fired over the tower to discourage Cheng from approaching the railing. The air was an explosion of noise and blinding flame and gun smoke and the smell of cordite. He was halfway to the trees when the bolt locked to the rear and he knew the magazine was dry. He dropped the rifle and sprinted into the darkness.

Just as he hit the trees, gunfire exploded behind him, and bullets tore the ground to his left and slapped loudly into the trees, one hitting so close that bark flew off it, making him squint. He charged deeper into the forest. Gunfire chewed the trees behind him, not so close this time, and then stopped. Carl could see Octavia up ahead, weaving through the woods, looking like she might drop at any time.

He caught up to her and took her hand, and they shuffled along side by side. She was making some kind of moaning, gasping noise, but he couldn’t tell if she was winded or crying. A terrible thought occurred to him.

“Are you hit?”

“No,” she said. “I don’t think so.”

He squeezed her hand. “You did awesome back there.”

She said nothing, just stumbled on.

He pointed into the darkness. “There should be a trail up ahead. They’ll expect us to go the other way, toward the road. This’ll take us straight uphill. It’s pretty steep.”

“Steep? Carl, I’m sorry, but I can’t do it.” All at once, she stopped running. “I’m done.” She started to fall, but he caught her.

“I’ve got you,” he said. He dipped low and scooped her into his arms. “I’m sorry if this hurts. But they know now, and we have to go as fast as we can.”

And he started running.

She was very light. His arms felt strong, his legs fast. Even his eyes felt sharper, and he found he was able to navigate through the forest with just the dim morning light falling through openings in the trees.

It was time for Plan B.

Plan A—sneak in quietly and steal Octavia away without alerting anyone—never really had a chance. He supposed he had only deluded himself into thinking it might work because without that shred of dubious hope, he never would have had the nerve to attempt her rescue. And feeling her in his arms, he was oh so glad he had. If they were going to die now, at least they would die on their terms, free, fighting, together.

So Plan B it was. He would throw off pursuit by attempting the unexpected and carrying her straight over the ridge and down the other side, where he would help her hide at the shoreline. Then he would go for a boat. And if he got to it in time—
Oh, please don’t let this be another delusional plan,
he thought—he would swing around the island for her. It was their only chance.

He ran on.

The ground angled steeply upward. Far behind, he heard gunfire and shouting.

By now, Parker would be ranting and calling him a coward, and Stark would be burning with white-hot rage at Carl’s betrayal.

Now they would distribute weapons and pour into the forest.

The hunt was on.

C
ARL LAID OCTAVIA GENTLY ON
the ground beside the fallen tree. His muscles throbbed with exertion, and he was soaked with sweat, but he’d done it . . . he’d carried her over the ridge and back down the other side. A mere fifty feet away, jungle gave way to a narrow strip of sandy beach, beyond which the sparkling blue ocean stretched away into beautiful infinity: a cruel joke. Its gentle susurration beckoned Carl, invited him in his exhaustion to lie down beside his friend.
Relax,
the tide told him.
Sleep . . . forget . . .

Not a chance.

Octavia’s face was flushed with fever, but her gray eyes were hard as twin stones. “You have to go. They’ll be here any second. Listen.”

Hooting voices drew nearer. Were these the same hunters he’d lost going up the slope? Or another group?

“I’ll hide you here,” Carl said, “under this tree. I’ll go to the boat, and when I have it, I’ll loop around the island and pick you up.” He pointed to a long arm of rocks that stretched like a natural pier into the water. “That’s how I’ll find you.” He forced a smile that he hoped showed more optimism than he felt. At least his time with Stark had given him
that
ability.

“Okay, Carl,” Octavia said. “That’s good.” And there was something in her face and her voice, something calm and content yet sad and reserved that reminded him of the tone his mother would take when he was very small and she was sick with cancer, and the two of them would talk about the future, chatting idly about Christmases they both knew
they’d never share. Its recurrence in Octavia’s voice saddened him deeply.

More hooting sounded in the woods.

Desperation flooded him. He covered her over with palm fronds, trying not to think of spiders. He gave her his remaining canteen, held her hands, and looked into her beautiful gray eyes, feeling a lump come into his throat. She was all he had left in the world.

“I’ll come back for you. Okay? I promise. I’ll get you off this island. All right?”

She nodded, looking very sleepy. “I know you will. Now go. They’re almost here.”

It sounded like they would break through the forest at any time. He heard someone calling his name.

Madness.

He ran a thumb across her cheek. There were no tears. “I’ll see you again. I promise.”

“I know.” Her smile was as forced as his. “Now go.”

He ran back into the woods at a sharp angle, flanking the hunters and heading once more toward the mountain. He had to let them know where he was, where he was going, had to draw them away from Octavia’s hiding spot.

Their cries were close.

He waited.

Seconds later, he saw the first of them coming through the trees. A shirtless boy—he was too distant to identify—carrying something . . . a walking stick or spear . . .

“Leave us alone!” Carl shouted in the boy’s direction. He paused just long enough to be sure the boy had seen him and then started running again.

Their cries multiplied and turned in his direction.

Scrambling once more up the steep grade, he could hear the excitement in their shouting as they chased. Good. Now that he was sure they were on his trail, he would really sprint. He could beat them all on the obstacle course before he’d even received the blood virus. Now he’d leave them behind like they were jogging in place.

And that’s just what he needed: space. His only chance—and Octavia’s only chance—was misdirection. He’d drawn them away from her; now he had to trick them again.

He would sprint all the way up the mountain to the ridge where he and Stark had trained. It was a risky move—he’d be far more visible out in the open than he would be moving through the forest—but it was the fastest way across the island, and he needed to reach the boats before Stark figured out exactly what he was up to.

Behind him followed a chorus of bloodthirsty howls. It sounded like he was being hunted by a pack of werewolves. And wasn’t that what they were, really? Two months ago, they’d been a bunch of hard-luck kids; but this place had turned them into beasts of another sort.

Up the mountainside he scrambled, using the trunks of small trees like ladder rungs to pull himself along. The uphill sprint with Octavia in his arms had taken its toll, but he scaled the mountainside as quickly as he could, burning lungs or no burning lungs, and he took solace in the fact that the others would be dropping ever farther behind.