Vicious Memories

Chapter 92

Step. Splash. Jump.

Step. Duck. Breath.

"We can make it," Alice gasped.

Specters dogged our steps through the heart of the island, phantom spirits that asked a series of 'What if's and 'Why did you's, accusing us of falling short in a thousand different ways. I tried to brush them away, but their words rang true. I should have double checked everyone's alibis for Jessica's murder, should have gone with Sirus back to the village so he wouldn't have to walk through the jungle alone, should have gone looking for Shana instead of allowing Felix to try first, should have been on guard with Perry.

Alice was effectively cut off from me during our journey. That was one of the things about running - about a lot of things, actually: you could do them with other people around you, but you still had to do them alone. I couldn't stop wondering what was happening in the village at that moment. Were they fighting, had they been captured, were they already dead?

Time melted like a crayon in a microwave, tall and solid one moment, reduced to a puddle the next. The stump of the island's giving tree shot by us. Dimly, I noticed that instead of parting to go around either side of it, we both skirted to the left, not wanting anything, even a simple tree stump, to separate us more than this run already had.

We closed in on the village.

I slowed fractionally and looked back at Alice. Her chest heaved and her entire face was lit up, a red field studded with brown freckles. She managed a smile through her heavy breathing.

We stopped in a dense thicket of trees to the north of the village. This part of the jungle was virtually soundproof. Hanging moss, snarled branches, and heavy leaves provided better insulation than any human invention. Slowly our breathing began to even out, our legs still twitching. We were so thoroughly covered in mud it looked like we'd been to a spa and forgotten to rinse off.

"What now?" Alice asked.

"We need to get in there." I strained to hear anything over the sound of the storm filtering through the trees. Huge drops of rain snuck through the layers of canopy and fell to the ground like water bombs. A painful stitch had opened up in my side. "They were supposed to hide in the cabins and come out in groups, fight in waves, then fall back to the caves. If everything went to total shit they were going to use the rope ladders to scale down the cliff to the east."

Alice closed her eyes in brief disbelief. The fact that we had to say these things, to have these conversations, seemed suddenly ludicrous. We weren't supposed to be here.

"We'll skirt the jungle on the north side until we see them," Alice said. "We can break behind the monkeypod tree to the caves. It's a short sprint."

The knife at my waist came free of its sheath with a steely whisper. "And we'll find Bev."

Alice faced me, her eyes glowing beneath heavy lashes. "And we'll find Bev."