Vicious Memories

Chapter 42

Clouds rolled in thick and fast, shock troops in advance of the storm.

Smiles remained in place for a while as we ate. We were wet and damp already, so what was the worst the rain could do to us?

I laughed at a joke Cooper made; Tana punched Neema in the arm for telling a lewd story; Bev and Felix chatted quietly across the circle; Alice wolfed her food down faster than I had ever seen another human eat. The clouds changed, the way batter changes when you bake a cake, growing thicker and darker by the minute. The first raindrop smacked my forehead with glee.

"Hey, where's Shana?"

I swallowed the last bit of my banana and put the peel down. A general hush fell over our group.

"Relax, guys, relax," Felix said. "I'll go find her. I have to pee anyway."

He got to his feet and brushed his hands off on his pants, looking down with comical surprise to find he had just gotten them even wetter on his bathing suit. He frowned, shook his head, and reached into his pack for his dry t-shirt.

As it generally seemed to do on the island, this storm seemed to be moving forward in a solid curtain; you could be perfectly dry in one spot but soaking wet fifty yards away.

A large green fern rustled as Felix walked through it.

The silence stretched luxuriously after he disappeared into the jungle. The genial atmosphere dissipated. I fought against the urge to stand up and start pacing. I'd learned to trust the little alarm in my head by now, and it was ringing insistently.

Three minutes felt like thirty. We pretended to continue eating, but nobody took more than one or two bites. All ears strained toward the jungle.

I closed my eyes to take a deep breath.

Felix screamed.

We shot up like prairie dogs - Alice, Cooper, Tana, then the rest. Bev looked from person to person with wide eyes. My vision sharpened, a familiar sensation by now, and all the details around us crystalized.

Felix came staggering out of the jungle. He walked straight through the same fern he'd trampled when he left.

"I couldn't..."

Blood poured from a shallow cut on his head, mixing with water to form a red curtain that flowed over his cheek. He stared at us in horror. I could see the whites of his eyes all the way around the iris.

"What happened?"

Rain fell in earnest. Felix's eyes found me, and as they did I noticed his torso was covered in blood. Angry red splatters slashed back and forth across his body.

"I don't know," he said. "I called for her, but she didn't answer. Then somebody hit me over the head. When I... I blinked and... she was on the ground there. There was blood everywhere." His breathing hitched and he shuddered. "Oh god. Oh god, oh god, oh god. She's dead. I tried to stop it but I couldn't. She's dead!"

Alice and I locked eyes for the tenth time that day. We both sat down to pull on our socks and shoes.

It was the sort of premeditation that not everyone in the world possessed. Modesty could be overlooked in an emergency, but function couldn't. The knack of forethought was something most people never learned.

"Who attacked you?" Tana asked while I tied my laces. "Are they still out there?"

"I... don't know. I didn't see anything."

"When you woke up, you didn't notice anyone around?"

"No."

"Show us the way," I said, popping up.