Sugar & Squall (17 page)

I kept on. My legs were buoyant gelatin. I no longer felt the cramps that came with lactic acid buildup. I’d left that back on the hill to be replaced with numbness and nothing. It was hard to even believe they were part of my body as they scissored below.

We headed towards a distinctly rocky section of the island to the east, somewhere between the beach and the pier. It was one of lowest areas on the island with a mottled assortment of stone outcrops I assumed would provide sufficient cover to hide.

At one point it felt like the rain had subsided, but then it came back stronger than ever. I started to slip as the ground became harder.

When we made it to the rocks, the first thing I thought of was that we were in some kind of cemetery. Most of the rocks were smooth and square, sticking out from the ground like they’d been hurtled from the sky by Thor himself. They stood in rows, furthering the impression we’d inadvertently stumbled upon some pirate necropolis.

Logan darted behind a rock. I followed. It was conical-shaped, unusual, and I had a crazy thought its distinction would somehow point our pursuers to our position.

“How many?” I questioned, once we’d squatted.

Logan shook his head. “I don’t know for certain, but definitely one. One for sure, in the head.” He’d said this last statement to hammer it home, solidify it.

“The others are going to come, and now they know we’re armed… It’s not a good situation. I’m sorry.”

“It’s fine,” I muttered, but it sounded disconnected, like I was annoyed he’d forgotten to pick me up for a date.

“What are we going to do?” I asked, the question of the hour.

Logan dipped his head inward, rain dripping from his forehead. “I don’t know. There’s no point hiding. They’ll see us in the dark.”

“You’re saying they can see in the dark with those goggles?”

“Right.”

Great.

“We can’t hide. We’ve got to do something. I have maybe one or two more flashbangs, a spare magazine, but we’ve got to use them care
fully. We’ll make a trap, start–”

“I can’t do this,” I cut in. “I’m not a soldier. I don’t even know how you–”

Logan grabbed me by the shoulders, touching his forehead to mine. We breathed in sync, rising and falling.

“You have to be,” he said. “These people aren’t here for a picnic. They’re trying to kill us, or maybe just me.” He shook my shoulders. “Do you trust me?”

“I do, completely, but how do you know all this stuff, and why was that backpack in the safe?” It seemed like a logical-enough question.

“I can’t go into it now.” He roughly realigned the backpack on his back. I squirmed away in fear what was collected inside might suddenly go off.

“Understand I never wanted to use any of this. It was just my own backup in case something happened. This wasn’t what I was expecting, and it’s definitely not my doing. But I’ll protect you with my life. Do you believe me?”

I nodded once to show I did. I wanted to kiss him again, but it didn’t feel right anymore.

A volley of rain shuttled through the maze of stone around us.

Logan breathed out before speaking again. “If something happens to me, I want
you to know something. I’ve nev–”

The word caught midsentence. He winced, bending forward. He was looking through me, eyes vacant. Something had hit him in the back.

I heard a staccato ‘click, click, click’. I saw his body shake, vibrate, and he went to the ground, immobilized.

“Log–”

I tried to go to him when something struck me in the chest.

I looked down to see what looked like a fishhook protruding from my body. There was a whistle in the air and then I felt the electricity ent
er me, each muscle pulling tight, everything pulsing together. I crumpled to the ground, stiff, unable to move, the pain relentless. I cried out, leaning over, as everything around me slid into oblivion.

As I lost consciousness, I could see two of them looming in the distance, slowly disappearing until they were just four green dots and then nothing.

#

I’m dead.
This was my first thought. My second was the knife. I could feel it digging awkwardly into my lower back, pressing against my butt. My world was swaying, or my vision, one or the other.

Mental fog clearing, my senses honed in. They were uncannily sharp. Every droplet falling on my skin was distinct. My ears found new sounds through the damp. Each step of our captors sounded out clearly against the bluster.

There was pain radiating from my stomach, but I saw the fishhook was gone. My body tingled and I was being dragged, by my hair.

I reached up, weakly, to grab my captor’s hand, break the connection, but I didn’t have the strength. They brushed it away and I submitted, sure I’d be left, scalped and bald by the side of the track.

The pain was excruciating. My eyes rolled sideways and I saw another pulling Logan by his arm as his head hung limply to the side.

We stopped. A hand reached under my armpit and I was powerless to stop it. Strands of hair fell freely to the ground.

My pants were rags, falling off in strips. Gravel tore through them, the dress tearing away above. I started to feel an odd dissociation from myself as we neared the school. I wondered if Logan felt the same. Did he too feel as if he were looking down upon himself, carefully guiding his body with some malevolent god hand?

We were steered over to the far left of the back of the school. Like the kitchen on the far right, there was a door here that led out into the open. I heard it being opened, swung wide until it flapped on its hinges. Another figure moved into the doorway. Math was not my strong suit, but this was a simple sum.
Three of them,
I
thought.
Shit.

We were dragged inside and dumped on the floor. The door was left open, but it didn’t matter, as the stone walls silenced the bulk of the storm, leaving only the tomb-like resonance of it sheeting across the roof.

Logan had come to, he was trying to crawl over to me when he was kicked in the stomach. I flinched. This was hell. We were dead, surrounded by devils, come to watch us burn.

There was new pain in my head I had never felt before, but I was almost completely conscious now, strong. I reached to my stomach, prodding it and then wincing away.

We’d been Tasered, I surmised.

I scanned around. The room was at the back of the auditorium behind the stage. I took it for a green room or preparation area, perfectly square with a large skylight keeping it unnaturally bright in the conditions.

“Stand,” a figure said from the shadows. The green eyes were gone and I could see each figure clearly. They were wearing balaclavas, goggles flipped up onto the top of their heads. Each wore the same black poncho, glistening with wet. They held modern-looking rifles with two hands, pressed up against their torsos.

Reluctantly, Logan and I stood, next to each other, one goon behind us and one flanking a larger individual standing in the corner, the dark. Clearly, he was one in charge, the ringleader.

Three. That meant we’d got at least one of them. They hadn’t killed us on spot, or when we were on the run. They’d definitely had the chance, so what did they want?

Shakes and twitches ran through my body. A fine film of sweat was starting to develop on my face that almost made me retch on the spot.

The ringleader turned to the goon beside him, whispering into his ear. The goon walked to me, grabbed my arm and dragged me to the ringleader. He lifted my head up, holding my chin.

The ringleader pulled out a piece of paper, unfolding it next to my face, examining me. He nodded to the other goon, who nodded back. I saw a flicker of what was on
the paper, a print of Dad and me at his inauguration speech, grainy and pixelated.

The ringleader looked to one of the goons to his left, pointed to Logan and made a short, linear gesture at his neck.

The goon approached Logan, grasping him by the arm and leading him away into an adjoining room.

He was fighting, moving towards me, but the goon shoved him with the barrel of his gun, striking his across the back of his head with the butt when he didn’t relent.

Logan shouted my name.

My real name.

He knows
.

I reeled. I knew what was happening. It was coming on too fast, not real. Was I going to stand here while it went down? Was I that weak and
pathetic? Was I just going let them kill him?

“Wait!” I looked to the ringleader, pleading with my hands outstretched. The goon to his right braced his gun against his hip.

“Logan!” I screamed, trying to split my attention between the two. A crack of thunder drowned out my cries. “Logan!” I screamed again, but the end trailed off as my voice broke up. All my attention was focused on him as he was forced out of sight into the room beyond.

I moved closer to the ringleader. The other goon struck out with the butt of his gun, striking my shoulder. I fell backwards onto my back, the impact knocking the wind from my lungs. My vision went extra-wide without oxygen. I drew in air like my throat was a straw, coughing and trying to stand simultaneously.

I found my feet and made for the room, but a firm hand held me back from behind. There was a gunshot, a flash of light around the doorframe and then the muted thud of something heavy falling to the floor.

No.

I said it to myself again.
No. Not this
. I said it until it become concrete, unquestionably finite.

No. No. No.

This was not going to happen.

I dropped down into a squat, turned, lined my elbow up with the groin behind me and swung into it, a battering ram of bone.

It connected brutally. I could feel the goon’s testicles, his genitals, smash against his body. He folded in half with the agony of it, breath escaping his mouth in a single punctuated explosion.

I turned on the ball of my right foot, pushing the blood that had congealed at the bottom of it up against the side of the shoe, and sprinted for the outer door.

My legs were heavy and my clothes were weighted down by the wet, yet I flew out the back door and into the open before anyone realized. Whether it was immediate grief or adrenaline driving me on, I didn’t know, but at that moment I was flying, flying out into the night and its cloaking arms.

12. THE UPWARD TURN

I once read there are five stages of drowning. The first is surprise, and God knows I’d had enough of that for one week. The second is involuntary breath-holding. It’s the body’s way of protecting itself, a kind of autopilot, and it all happens without a single sound. It’s not a pleasant way to die, nothing calm in it. Running through the rain, cold closing in from every side, and my Logan,
my
Logan, lying dead, I was drowning.

I didn’t know where I was going. But if I was to run off a cliff would it really be the worst thing that could happen? Would it not be better than being gunned down like a deer in the wild?

How did he know my real name? Had he known all this time? Why not tell me? Why keep the façade?

There was something on the ground just ahead. With no light I couldn’t tell what it was, only that it was square. It could have been an anvil or an anthill, but that was of little consequence. My right foot smashed into it. Sharp pain feathered its way up my leg, lacerated maybe, or worse.

I was falling, rolling, the sky and ground alternating in spin-cycle. The centrifugal force of it flayed my arms out and they collected dirt, grit and grime as I descended.

Dry turned to wet. Everything seesawed in front of me. There was mud in my mouth. It was gritty between my teeth. Cold and wet creeping up my legs, over my back and up my arms, I knew I was face-down in a pool of the stuff.

Rain droplets were impacting the surface of the scum in front of my eyes. They forced it down, indenting it, before it fired them back up again. Squinted as my eyes were, it wouldn’t have been such a stretch to imagine it was raining upside-down. I pondered on this as I laid there, the mud and water collecting over my body in a sloppy, earthy soup.

Something snapped behind me. It was a stick, and it hadn’t snapped by itself. Someone was coming.

I slowly rolled my head to my left and surveyed the immediate surroundings. I’d managed to tumble down from the top of the hill into this puddle at the bottom. Whoever it was chasing me can’t have been far behind.

There was a pile of leaves to my left. I used my left arm as a rake, pulling them over myself so I was covered completely with only slim cracks via which to view the world. I smiled. It was better this way.

I lay still, so still. I couldn’t believe they hadn’t seen me. It made me question whether I was, in fact, really there at all.

A boot came into slanted view. It looked far too new. No battle-hardened soldier I’d ever seen ran around with boots so sharp and glossy.
It’s all a show,
I told myself.
It’s all part of one big act and soon someone will turn on the lights. There’ll be cake, with butter icing, and I’ll shove it into my face without a spoon.

The figure walked past me down the path. Their head was sweeping back and forth, but even as they turned, they didn’t see me in the hollow. I imagined myself outside of my body and I again wondered how I had come to this place. Questions mingled upstairs, or argued rather. They keep coming until my whole brain was hemorrhaging memories, whats and whys. Nothing I could do stemmed the flow, the emptiness filling the cracks, so I laid there in wait until even time left my side.

The sound of Logan’s body hitting the floor was on repeat. The horror of it, of what it meant, kept me pinned to the spot. I considered the curiousness of my actions.

Forget why they’re here and who sent them.
They
need
you,
I reminded myself.
That’s why they didn’t just gun you down. That’s why they’re out looking for you instead of leaving you to rot out in the open. They know who you are.

Each of these thoughts was spliced with a visage of Logan dropping to the ground, eyes void. I imagined it in every way, exploring every tangent and avenue in my mind, prodding it for holes of improbability, but it always had the same outcome.

I should have listened to Dad,
I mused.
A team of bodyguards would have come in real handy about now
.

I noticed through the curtain of rain a light had started sawing its way through the trees ahead. It was scanning the ground, sweeping back and forth rhythmically, searching.

A quick calculation put it maybe twenty or thirty yards in the distance, which meant that, if it continued on its current course, what, or who, would soon stumble on my position.

Fresh fear swept away everything else. I was about to be caught. The paper-white that was my skin would practically beam under the light. The mud would just further contrast the distinction. I had to move.

The light fanned out in front of me. It was drawing closer. I’d always thought in these situations adrenaline forced you into action. When my legs didn’t react, I started to think I’d already used it up.

I watched the light sway back and forth out of one eye, the green one. The rain began to ease off and in its place rose up an organic, mossy stench. The pendulum of light was chopping its way towards me. I’d have to wait until it was to the far left. Then I’d run for the trees to my right using the darkness as cover. I didn’t know where I was going to go. But if I could run fast enough, they’d struggle to catch me.

I licked the corner of my mouth. It was salty and warm. Another tear impacted into the apex of my tongue as I pushed my fingers into the mud, preparing to launch up and into the open. I tried to pull every tendon and string tight together to increase the effect, but my body was ravaged and worn with all the elasticity of a wet pillow.

The light swung out just a few feet away. When it drew away to the side I saw it was mounted to the top of a gun. If whoever was behind it were to raise it even an inch I’d be discovered. I started to count.

The light moved to the side once, dipping in front of me and then far out to the other side. I breathed through my nose, the shady water in front of me rippling out in miniature to accommodate it.

Again, the light drew to the far side. I was flooded in darkness. As it paused to start its journey back, I snapped upwards. Water, leaves and mud splashed out in a giant arc, but I moved fast. I was aware of the light almost instantly tracking the source of the sound, but by the time it had caught up to me I had already smashed through the undergrowth on the right and into the
tree line.

The slope of the hill made my progress rapid. My clothes were soaked through and weighty, but this only added to the pace, forcing me downwards. I pushed off over a rock and was airborne for a precious few seconds, gliding through the trees.

Behind me the figure was in pursuit. I could hear them crashing through the growth. Light whipped past me, dissected by trunks. I tucked down as low as I could to avoid detection.

I imagined Logan running ahead. I was at his back, mirroring his stride. A beam of light cut through me, jolting up into the sky. Almost at the same time a single shot rang out somewhere behind, echoing away into the distance. Birds flitted into the air far to the side.
It’s a warning shot, to halt you up.
I didn’t even flinch, powering down the hillside and scaring myself at the speed I’d begun to accumulate.

A slip or sprain would have serious consequences. I thought of myself tripping and being knocked out. I’d awaken in some whiter-than-white space. Sterile people would be whisking in and out. Logan would be at one side and Dad at the other. They’d be telling me how I’d been found on the island alone and unharmed. Logan would laugh when I told him I thought he’d been killed. Everything would be tied up neatly with little bows.

Fresh tears rolled up and across my face, battling gravity, yet through the painful nullity of the present my legs continued to pump with abandon. They drove me out and into a small clearing.

It was a path I’d trod many times during my short span on the island. Trees, shrubs and vegetation lined each side, subtly directing you down towards the water.

Carrying too much speed, I slid across the gravel, righting myself just before the edge. Turning and running towards Carver would be counter-productive considering it was uphill, so I kept heading down the hill towards the ocean.

The path snaked around a corner. I caught the light of my pursuer swing past me to the side, which meant they were still some way up the hill and yet to round the corner. I knew the path opened up a little just before the rat’s nest. I’d be hard to pick it out in the dark. The trees rose up either side to more or less channel unsuspecting students into the pit, and that was it.

Now with purpose, perspiration edged its way across my brow before being cooled by the night air. My heart was frantic. My head thudded along in rhythm, my senses alert.

I glanced back and saw my pursuer was gaining rapidly, perhaps no more than thirty yards behind me, crashing through the edge of the
trees. I knew what I had to do and summoned my burning legs to push harder.

Sound drifted further back and the ground between us lengthened until all I could hear were distant, nonchalant noises and the sound of my own breath
ing cutting through the night.

It wasn’t far now. The path narrowed. I flung myself to the trees on the right, twenty feet or so away from wide, circular mouth of the rat’s nest. I pressed myself up against the body of a tree
trunk as my chest expanded and contracted.

It seemed like hours passed before I heard heavy boots stamping down the track. Above, the moon wasn’t much more than a thin stain in the sky, which meant little light. If you didn’t know the hole was there, it would be almost impossible to avoid it.

A sheet of lightning broke out over the horizon, flashing everything into pin-sharp focus just as the figure was about to plunge into the nest’s depths. They pulled up just in time, teetering on the edge.

I made my move. I leapt out from the tree, arms locked in front, and pushed them hard in the small of the back with a double palm strike.

And there it was. A gasp, like air escaping a bag, a rush of wind as they fell and a sickening crunch below. Like the cracking of twigs. But I knew as well as anyone there were no twigs to be found at the bottom of that hole.

Silence.

Forty-nine percent of me didn’t want to look down there, but morbid curiosity won out. It was too dark and far too quiet for anything to be alive, and given that, I was thankful the searchlight had gone out.

I stared down and began to question whether there was really a bottom to the whole thing at all or if it was just some
Journey to the Center of the Earth
sinkhole full of proto-human apes and arachnids.

I wondered if all this rain was collecting down there, slowly pooling around the body. Drowning on land in some God-forsaken shithole wouldn’t be the best way to go, but I reminded myself it was me or him, him or us, maybe all of us, or some other grammatically defunct justification.

It was then I noticed a sheet of paper on the ground to my left, presumably from the soldier. I picked it up, wet and soggy, holding it towards the sky.

It was a map of the school, schematics
, with the same foreign characters as I’d seen on the one on floor in the girls’ dorm. I let go, watching it float down into the hole.

I stood there for a while. Truthfully, it may have been that the humanness in me wanted to hear some sound filter its way to the top. At least then I would not have made the transition to murderer. I would not be crossing River Styx with a heavy conscience weighing the boat down into the waters. I would not drown.

Bloody Ms. Pearson. I could not shake her from my memory. In my head night gave way to day and once again I was staring at the mess in its entirety. The glass was broken, her body was broken on the grass outside the classroom, but her eyes bore into my soul, smashing it into something completely unfamiliar.

I saw
Mom in the same position, a rosy bloom expanding from her torso, her hand reaching out to me but her eyes empty – gone. I couldn’t put her face together. I was starting to forget what it looked like. How could I not remember her? My own mother.

It all coagulated together, the rat’s nest and my memories, until I couldn’t be sure that I was staring into the rat’s nest, hell or some metaphysical portal into myself.

A puddle collected on the ground in front of me where whoever-it-was had stood. In-between the square mesas created by boot print were canals of black water. A sheet of lightning rolled its way across the ocean and suddenly it was like looking into a mirror. I didn’t see myself. I saw a monster.

Spooked, I turned toward Carver. I didn’t quite know what I expected to see, but it was just as I’d left it – a giant, stony headstone on the hill.

I stood there against the elements watching it and waiting for light. I imagined Logan in there, cold on the floor. Alone.

I made up my mind. I would go back. I had to be sure it was really him and not some mirror-image doppelganger do-gooder who had the real Logan locked away. Screw the others. Clearly they weren’t about to shoot me anytime soon. I was the God-damn President’s daughter.

Everything seemed green and glassy at that moment. Treetops shivered with a fresh gust of wind, heaven itself groaned and new rain began to fall, but I was going back to Carver. I was going back to school, to see my Logan.