Dark Fangs: Forbidden Fugitives

Chapter Twenty-Six

How did she even get out of her cage!? That's what I want to know! Drake conjectured frenetically. His limbs ached from having run over a mile now through rough, dark jungle, and his spine was in more pain than he could delineate, but his adrenaline kept pushing him through, and instinct was taking over Drake's muscles.

Plus, he had an irate parrot screeching and clawing at the back of his skull if he even remotely slowed his stride.

It had been some time now that the Indominus's roars had deadened into fading echoes, quieting and disappearing completely whenever she roared. All the resonant, ear-splitting cries were now a distant roll of thunder, blending with the crashes of the cloudburst itself. And it was all because of one crazy-loyal dog....

Swifty had saved him. She'd given her own life to get Drake out of the Indominus's jaws.

That's how brave and selfless dogs are, Drake thought, for the first time realizing it as a fresh wave of grief choked him. His lungs seized, making it so much more onerous to breathe. His eyes teared and he wiped the glassy droplets from the cobalt pools immediately, unable to let them flow freely, as they obfuscated his vision, only making the race through the dark, wet bush further perilous.

Altruistic. That's exactly what Swifty was.

Why is everyone around me dying? Drake asked himself cognitively. Do I deserve this? Do the people and animals who've died on my account deserve this? I can't imagine Swifty deserving anything but...but happiness. His mind still throbbed sharply whenever he thought of Swifty as a fallen creature; demised. Gone....

The worst thing was, Drake knew Swifty had died unconditionally at peace with her last noble decision. She'd gone into that fight knowing there wasn't a way she could have come back out with her life, and she had chosen resolutely to confront the imminent disaster, inexorably. Every time Drake pictured that last valiant expression on her beautiful black and white face, he felt his insides twist desperately. There wasn't anything I could have done to stop her. He told himself, contracting his jaw so that the wail of miserable torment welling up in his throat wouldn't be free to release itself.

There wasn't anything I could do to save her....

Just like Jae.

Exhaustion and waning epinephrine were rapidly reducing Drake's resilience and stamina, so it was only a matter of time until he lost consciousness. His frantic pace began to slow, and his breath rasped in his esophagus, scraping and pummeling his burning throat. Coco relaxed his impulse to urge Drake on, and settled himself on the sixteen-year-old's right shoulder. For a while, Drake walked haltingly, still committed to putting as much distance between himself and the Indominus as possible.

I know I still have a Bond with her...but that doesn't mean she's not still one hundred percent still feral. Drake deliberated.

Soon, the brush began to thin out and the knotting of trees grew sparser, the terrain dipping smoothly down. The sound of waves crashing against sand rose, and the white flashes of lightning blazed brighter and more frequent.

"I guess we're on the other side of the Island?" Drake mused, narrowing his eyes as a curtain of rain bombarded him and Coco where they stood, at the edge of the jungle and beach. He drew his hood over his head again, only just realizing it had slipped off when he'd crashed into the boulder in the descent on that jungle slope.

The wind swept the shore without a violent rage, but it was still stirring up sand, loose vegetation and a whirlwind of the showering storm. Lightning exploded far out at sea, which eased tension in Drake, but thunder still crashed loudly in every direction.