Oops! My Croissant Started a Coup! | Complete (ONC 2021 Longlister)

14. Nowhere to Go...

Okay, full disclosure: I'm pretty sure I should have paid more attention to those stupid survival classes we had in grade school. Because, apparently, it gets cold at night even when you are super close to the equator.

Like, really cold. Especially in a tee shirt.

And, not only that, but it gets really dark. The clouds had fortunately cleared up and the stars and moon provided some light for me to hobble my way back to where I had made landfall.

Well, sort of. I'd miscalculated how easy that would be given the fact that I had been completely blindfolded at the time I arrived on the island. Spatial awareness had never been my friend.

After much stumbling around and one run in with a mangrove, I found myself standing face to face with the dark abyss that must have been the ocean. The waves lapped gently at my feet and the salt air filled my lungs, but I couldn't see anything that looked even remotely like land or civilization in any direction.

But it was exceptionally dark, so it was possible there was land somewhere that was not illuminated. So either way, there didn't seem to be any sign of civilization.

"What am I going to do?" I said aloud to myself, slowly making my way along the shore hoping to find the boat.

I must have searched for at least an hour and there was still no sign of the boat. Or any sign of movement from the camp behind me. So either my plan to run in the direction I'd come from had worked or they were really the worst captors ever. Giving everything else that had happened so far, I was going with the second one.

And while it was good not to be chased, even an hour of wandering the shortline hadn't led me to the place where we had made landfall. There was no sign of the boat anywhere. Not that I know how to drive a boat. There was something extremely depressing about not being able to actually escape even from the most inept captors.

What am I supposed to do now? Keep looking? Give up? Resigned to the fact that I knew nothing at all, I sat down on what appeared to be a log near the edge of the shore. As was exceptionally typical for me, I ended up sliding off that probably not a log and falling straight into a very shallow pit of water and mud.

What on earth am I doing here? I didn't even check if those guys back home were legitimate. They gave me my phone back and instead of thinking 'hey, call the cops on them' I just thought 'okay, let's do what they ask.' And now, instead of running with the girls, I'd voluntarily been captured again by those same people and I still didn't know if they were who they said they were. No, I did know. They weren't who they said they were. But I didn't know if they were people I should trust.

My mind was spiralling out of control so I stood up to wander around the shoreline further. It was clear that this island wasn't terribly large but was definitely terribly isolated. No matter which way I looked, there was no sign of light on the horizon.

That's probably why they weren't worried about me escaping the rickety buildings. Why am I always figuring these things out so late?

So there it was. I was stranded, lost, and cold. To top it all off, my wrists were still tied together and I had fallen no less than three times, causing my ankle to sear with pain each time I took a step. And, though this seemed like a place that wouldn't have cell reception, I would never get to find out because my cell phone was still locked in a prison. In a country I learned about like two days before.

Suddenly, the fear that had been mostly at bay this whole adventure threatened to spill out of my eyes and my body curled around itself, sliding down to the ground using a nearby tree for support. I hugged my own legs with my still-tied-together wrists and just lay on the ground, letting my tears mix with the relative moisture of the ground underneath me.

What am I going to do? Why did I agree to come with these people and then just run away for no reason. Like those buildings would be hard to escape from? And now I have no warmth and no food. Jail would honestly be better than this.

My mother would have told me to stop wallowing, so it was a good thing she wasn't there. I deserved to wallow at least a little.

Eventually, my tears ran dry and I sat up, using the tree to support my back. Crying had only made me more tired and thirsty and I realized I had nowhere to go to the bathroom. So there was really one option and it meant I had to go back to the buildings and let my captors recapture me.

Only one problem with that. I have no idea how to get back to the buildings. Why am I like this?

Finally, after wandering through the strange trees for a few minutes, I crashed right into the side of a small hut. In the vague moonlight it looked similar to the buildings I had passed earlier.

Okay, we are here. Now what? Turn myself in? Try to find an empty building?

It was becoming rather tricky to put any weight on my leg, but I hobbled around the back of the house until I came to a door. I twisted the knob and pushed as quietly as I could.

Of course. Locked.

Hobbling around through the forest, I tried several more buildings each with their own door to greet me in the same way. All locked.

Finally, I came across one with a small amount of light escaping through the rickety boards that gave the structure its shape. Clearly there was someone inside, so I hopped myself across the uneven ground and narrowly stopped myself from crashing straight into the side of the building, instead hanging off the edge of a tree like a newborn monkey.

Finally, I made my way to a shuttered window where the low murmur from inside became clear enough for me to hear.

"She won't get anywhere, Lopez," said the deep-voiced man from before. "Johnson will be here in the morning and we'll be done with it. This was supposed to be a cushy position manning the safe house. I'm not getting paid enough to chase down an escaped prisoner who looks like a large fish could defeat her in battle."

"I know but won't they be upset we lost her?"

"I didn't lose her. You did."

"I doubt they'll see it that way. Isn't she crucial to the takeover or something?"

Takeover? I thought the men in black said it was a coup. Was a coup the same thing as a takeover? And how could I be crucial to it? Weren't we supposed to be stopping it?

Lopez sounded like he was chewing the world's largest chicken wing while he talked. "And, Johnson wanted it to go down tomorrow, right? So what if it takes us too long to find her?"

Deep Voice Man aggressively set down a glass of what I think must have been hard liquor. "I said we leave her. I don't even care about this damn government. I just want to go home and get paid."

"If we don't win this, we don't have a home to go back to. And we certainly aren't getting paid. We'll be lucky if we have heads."

"And if they don't have her, we'll just come up with another way to get those idiots to assemble and make it look like a coup while we sneak in and install our candidate. Easy."

Okay. There is definitely something fishy going on here.  And then, right on cue, my ankle gave out on me and I collapsed straight into the side of the building. The sound may as well have been an atomic bomb on the silence of that island. 

I guess my choice is getting recaptured.