Vicious Memories

Chapter 76

Sharing the news went as badly we feared.

Thirty minutes ago we'd settled on the message we wanted to deliver: We were about to have the fight of our lives, and we would come through it together.

But beneath it all, like a tick buried deep in my skin, a black nugget of information sat waiting. It was a tiny chunk of radioactive metal slowly poisoning my body. I would have to get it out soon - would have to do something, tell someone - but the time wasn't right yet. First I had to be sure about what I was sharing, and second I had to know what drove this person's actions. I didn't want another Felix on our hands, dead before he could talk. I had to know why.

"We should leave!" someone cried at the town hall. "We can't stay here."

"It's an option," Arun said levelly, "but in the end we'd be worse off than before. This is an island and there's nowhere to run. Better to stand our ground in a place we know well, a place we can fortify and defend, than run into the jungle where they can get to us while we're lost and wandering."

"What about rafts? We can try getting off again."

"There isn't time. It took us weeks to build the first one, and it only carried two people."

Arun and Gabriel shared a long look.

"This is our home," Arun said with a confidence I didn't feel, "and I'll be damned if we're going to abandon it because a bunch of Strangers threatened us. If they want us to leave, they can try to make us. Our best chance at survival is to stay here and give them a bigger fight than they bargained for. Someone once said that 'strength does not come from capacity, it comes from an indomitable will.' We have that will, and we will not give up our home."

Now that we all knew we would be staying here the only thing left to decide was how to prepare.

We broke into groups. Some people worked on selective fortifications, some distributed the weapons we had, some taught others the abbreviated basics of self-defense. A large group set out to gather and prepare as much long-lasting food as possible, just in case. Bev led a session on basic first aid and what to do if you were injured, a refresher on a class she had run a long time ago as a matter of survival here.

I watched as people scurried around like a colony of ants dislodged from their hill. It was heartening to see the effort and teamwork on display, but at the same time it was discouraging to think about what was to come. What would we accomplish, really? We weren't soldiers - we had no business preparing for a large scale fight of any kind. We were playing a game of Risk when all we'd ever done in life was play Monopoly.

That was the nature of a crisis, I supposed - you did what you had to do to survive, no matter how ridiculous it seemed or how far out of your element it threw you.

Gouts of red light splattered the sky as the sun touched the western horizon. I stopped what I was doing for a moment to watch the dazzling colors, astonished at the way they managed to transform our simple blue sky into a brilliant masterpiece. The damp smell of oncoming night wafted up from the ground.

Eventually I had to get back to work. We had less than twenty-four hours left.