Trial by Fire (4 page)

T
ime was
strange here, Carter thought.

It seemed as if, all of a sudden, half the day was gone and they weren't any closer to having a fire than when they woke up that morning. How was that even possible?

He shook the sweat from his eyes, trying not to lose momentum with the stick. But it wasn't easy, with the blisters on his hands. Or the exhaustion. Every time he slowed down, or stopped to adjust his grip, it was like starting over. The whole thing was getting real old, real fast.

“You want me to take a turn?” Vanessa asked.

“Nope,” he said through clenched teeth.

He leaned into the stick, putting his weight behind it as he worked. It made him dizzy, with so little in his belly, but there was no way he was giving up. They
would
have fire before the day was over. That much, Carter promised himself.

For a long time, the only sound in the clearing was the soft scraping of wood on wood, and his own rhythmic breathing. It all kind of blurred together—hand, stick, movement, heat, sweat . . .

And then, almost as if out of nowhere, a little black curl of smoke floated up from the bamboo trough.

“Carter?” Vanessa said.

“I see it.”

His heart was already racing, but he ran the stick faster than ever. The muscles in his arm knotted and tensed. His shoulder felt like it wanted to explode. Still, there was no stopping now.

Another few wisps of smoke appeared and curled around one another. This was it! They were actually getting somewhere. Fire meant cooked food, dry clothes, warm nights, enough light to see by. In fact, it meant
everything.
It was the best news they'd had in a week.

“We got it, Nessa,” Carter said. “We got it. We got it—”

Vanessa lay flat on the dirt, ready to blow into the husk at the first sign of any flames.

Carter kept going—back and forth.

But the smoke wasn't getting any thicker. In fact, it was doing just the opposite. As suddenly as it had appeared, it started to dwindle. Already, it was down to a single gray thread.

“No, no, no, no, no. . . .”

He gave the stick one last, desperate burst of speed, but it was no good. A few seconds later, the smoke had disappeared completely.

Carter fell back, gasping for breath. A yell of pure rage came up from somewhere deep inside him. He'd never been this frustrated in his life. Not even close.

“That's it!” He hurled the stick into the woods. “I'm getting that flare!”

Vanessa answered quietly but insistently. “No, Carter. We can't. We have to keep trying.”

“
You
keep trying,” he said, and headed across the clearing for the woods.

“Where do you think you're going?” Vanessa called out, as if she thought being thirteen meant something. They were on their own here. Age didn't matter.

“Where do you think?” he asked.

“Carter—don't!” she shouted.

But he was already pushing through the brush on his way uphill, headed straight for Lookout Point.

“AUUUUUGGGGHHH! GET IT OFF ME! GET IT OFF!”

Buzz's voice echoed off the cave walls, filling his own ears. He ran his fingers furiously back and forth over the spot where
something
had just run its tiny little claws through his hair.

Then another something flitted past his ear with a soft, and eerie, whizzing sound.

He yelled out again and crouched down, covering his head with one hand and waving at the darkness with the other.

Bats.
It had to be. He'd been hearing them all along, but now two had just dive-bombed in quick succession.

“Stop moving!” Jane said. She knelt down and held the camera up between them. He could just make out her face in the tiny light. “They're attracted to the motion. It's how they see!”

“I just want out of this stupid cave!” Buzz groaned. “First, it's man-eating pigs, and now this. There're probably rats and tarantulas running around in here, too.”

“Probably not tarantulas,” Jane said. It wasn't much comfort. “But Buzz, we don't have a choice.”

“I know! That's the problem!” he practically shouted back at her. If they weren't all so thirsty, he would have been out of there a long time ago. Not to mention, Carter would never let them hear the end of it if they came back empty-handed.

“Let's just keep moving,” Jane said.

But even that wasn't so easy. As they stood up and started walking again, the ground was uneven and hard to navigate. The camera barely gave any light. All Buzz could see as they moved through was the tiny bit of rocky floor in front of Jane's feet.

With a flashlight, or a torch, the cave might have been a very cool place to explore. But not being able to see anything made it creepier than any haunted house. What if there were more boars back here? Could those things see in the dark?

“How much farther?” he asked.

“I think we're about halfway there,” Jane said.

He could feel the cavern opening up into a larger chamber around them. Jane had mentioned this part before. There was a pool, or a pond of some kind, straight ahead. They had to walk around it to get to the next section of cave on the way to the falls.

It was tempting to take the water right there, but Buzz knew better. With the sound of a million more bats rustling and squeaking overhead, this pool was just one giant rodent toilet. They'd have to boil the water like crazy to make it safe, and even then, who wanted to drink
that
?

Suddenly, Buzz bumped into Jane. She'd stopped short.

“What is it?” he asked. “I thought we were going to keep moving.”

“We were,” Jane said. “But this is taking a lot longer than I thought.”

“Yeah, and?”

“Well . . . look at this.”

She held up the camera to show him. The battery indicator on the little screen had gone from black to flashing red. And that could only mean one thing.

More bad news.

“Carter, stop!”

Vanessa pushed uphill through the woods. Branches slapped at her arms and legs, but she hardly noticed. The important thing was to keep him from getting to that flare.

It wasn't just about Carter getting mad, or striking out on his own. This was about the big picture. If they wasted their only flare, it could threaten their chances of ever getting rescued. And whether Carter liked it or not,
she
was the leader now. Not him.

Soon, she came to the base of the gravel slope that led up toward Lookout Point. Carter was already on his way to the top, scrabbling over the loose gravel and shale. Vanessa took several steps back and got a running start. As she caught up to him, she reached out, but her hand only whiffed off his heel, and she slid back.

“Nice try!” he called out, and kept going.

Everything was a competition to him. His room back home was lined with awards and trophies. But Vanessa had a few trophies of her own. She dug her toes in, lowered her center of gravity, and pushed up the slope as fast as she could.

At the top, a long narrow ridge ran along the edge of a deep ravine. The only way across to Lookout Point was the fallen tree they'd used before. It was an enormous evergreen, and it formed a perfect bridge.

While Vanessa worked her way along the ridge toward the tree, she watched Carter scramble up through its exposed roots, like climbing a crazy ladder, then out onto the trunk.

“Don't do this, Carter!” she yelled.

He didn't even look back. It didn't help that he was so fast, either. By the time she was climbing up onto the tree herself, he was almost all the way across.

It was slower going now. She pulled herself along the trunk, keeping to a low crawl on her hands and knees. One look down to the boulders and scrub brush at the bottom of the ravine, a hundred feet below, was the only reminder she needed. This was no game.

But Carter sure seemed to think it was. He'd reached the far end of the tree now and paused just long enough to look back with a grin. Then he took hold of a sideways branch and swung himself down to the ground like some kind of great ape.

It was a dumb show-off move, and it shook the entire tree. Vanessa felt the trunk beneath her tremble—and then tilt, just enough to throw her off balance. Both of her legs slipped sideways. Her feet swung wildly in the air. Her mind reeled in a blind rush of panic.

The only thing that stopped her from dropping all the way off the tree was the rutted bark itself. Her fingers dug into it, finding a painful, tentative grip. One quick glance toward the far side of the ravine showed her that Carter was nowhere in sight. He'd already continued on toward Lookout Point, not even realizing the danger he'd left her in.

A second glance—straight down—showed her the rocky ravine floor waiting below. She was alone now. She had to deal with this herself. Somehow.

Vanessa clenched her teeth and squeezed her eyes shut, trying to focus. A vision of Buzz and Jane passed through her mind, like jagged pieces of a broken picture. She had to do this. There was no choice—for Buzz, for Jane, and yes, even for Carter. She couldn't leave them alone here.

Tensing her stomach, and gripping with the last strength in her arms, she swung one leg up. The tread of her sneaker landed against the side of the tree, and found some purchase there. It wasn't much, but it was enough. With one more hard push, she landed back on top, flat on her belly. Her heart seemed to beat right through the wood.

Starting to move again was an act of sheer will. Vanessa barely even crawled now, dragging herself along the length of the tree instead. When she finally reached the far side, she climbed down to the ground and stood there on shaky legs, trying not to think too hard about what could have happened.

Up ahead, she could see Carter. He was standing near the edge of Lookout Point with his back to her. In his hand, she could see the bright orange cylinder of the flare. He'd already taken it out from inside the signal pyre where they'd stashed it earlier.

But now he was just standing there, doing nothing. It didn't make any sense.

By the time Vanessa caught up to Carter, he still hadn't turned around. In fact, he wasn't paying any attention to her at all. With no trouble, she snatched the flare right out of his hand.

“Carter!” she said. “Do you even know what you just did? I could have fallen—”

But Carter cut her off. He was staring at something off the edge of the point. “Look!” he said, his voice filled with excitement.

Vanessa's eyes flew to the horizon. “What is it?” she said. “A ship? A plane?”

The view from Lookout Point was astounding. The entire ring-shaped island spread out beneath them. It was an atoll
,
Jane had said, the top of an ancient volcano that had been sinking into the sea over millions of years. You could see where dense green jungle covered most of the land, sloping down toward a shoreline of yellow sandy beaches and black volcanic rock. Behind them, the circular shape of Nowhere Island enclosed an enormous, aqua-blue lagoon. And beyond that was the endless Pacific itself, stretching to the horizon in every single direction.

But Carter wasn't looking into the distance, Vanessa realized. He was looking almost straight down, toward their beach.

“Carter?” Vanessa asked. “What are you—”

“Just look!” he said, pointing.

There, in the clear blue water just off Dead Man's Shelf, was their boat, the
Lucky Star
. And it wasn't just the boat that made Vanessa's heart leap. It was the thought of everything on board. All the supplies they
thought
they'd lost when the
Lucky Star
was washed away.

Now—maybe, hopefully—it was all back in play.