Sugar & Squall (20 page)

The cold attacked me. It bit into my back as I struggled for footing.

The rungs were coarse against my hands. A gust of wind flailed up from below and sent the ladder swinging out into the open. I held my breath as it drew away from the landing below, certain it would throw me off, but, hands outstretched, I managed to steady it.

So much for being bolted down.

I attempted to move faster. My shoes were wet and the wood offered no margin for error. My knuckles, ivory white against it, pressed painfully into the rungs.

Again the ladder swung out again. I gritted my teeth, waiting for it to balance out again before moving on.

I stepped off onto the ledge, not daring to let go until both of my feet found solid ground. I released the ladder and it swung out again. I looked to the trapdoor above and prayed the Eagle wouldn’t find it.

My options were few. There was nowhere to hide in the cave and no weapons. A loose rock would have provided something, but the walls and ground of the cave had been smoothed by the elements. It was a dead-end. I could push the ladder out and attempt to throw off the Eagle, but the ledge was so precarious I couldn’t be certain I too wouldn’t join him on the rocks below. Besides, if the ladder were to come away completely, I’d be stranded.

The trapdoor creaked open.

I ran into the cave, out of breath and ideas. I hesitated in panic before deciding to make my way to the back of the cave, to darkness. I ran until the roof narrowed to the floor and I was forced to crouch there in the black, watching the entrance to the cave, waiting.

The outside light cast an unnatural hue over the walls, like a twilight rock-pool. The Eagle appeared, with gun, silhouetted into the cave’s spherical doorway.

I covered my mouth.
He won’t see you
, I reminded myself.
You’re too far down
.

He started to walk towards the back of the cave, fifteen yards, ten.

I shuffled back as far as I could go into the rock.

He kept moving forward, slowly, savoring the hunt.

At the point where the cave narrowed, he stopped. He reached to a pocket and pulled something out, bringing it over his head. His eyes were replaced by the reflective green discs that had so haunted me in the hallways of Carver.
The goggles.

He could see me clear as day.

“Do not make me shoot you,” he boomed, his rasp reverberating off the walls. “Come out quietly. We’ll treat you well. You’ll see.”

I remained still, icy with fear.

He waited.

“So be it,” he said, and continued his walk forward.

This was it. There was nowhere to run any more.

Five yards, four.

What could I do?

Three.

I pounced up and darted around him, successfully clearing his sidestep. I could see the entrance to the cave, open and inviting, but the Eagle caught my back foot with his hand. He heaved it up and I lost all control, driving shoulder first into the ground and rolling head over heels.

I spun on the ground to face him. He paced towards me, smiling and lifting his gun.

“We can play if you like,” he laughed, firing a shot at my feet. I flinched back at the spark as the bullet ricocheted into the wall.

“We can play all night.”

He went to fire again just as my left hand pushed up against something. I realized it was a shackle, connected to a chain, what Logan had said they used to keep prisoners down here. I grasped it, whipping it around and up towards the Eagle’s face.

It took all my strength, but it was worth it. The chain smashed into the side of his head.

The Eagle cried out, falling sideways and adding pressure to the gun’s trigger to fire a string of shots into the cave’s depths.

I reached for the gun, but he held tight. I pushed him over, climbing on top and attempting to wrestle the gun free. Blood was spilling from the area around his right ear. His eyes were wide, mad.

I drove my free elbow into his chest. It was like concrete. I felt the gun slip from his fingers and into my possession. At the same time something rose up between us, and before I could react I realized it was his boot. He leveled it against my stomach and kicked out.

The impact winded me. I was flung off and onto the cave floor, the gun sliding out towards the cave’s entrance. My mouth and eyes opened to their extremity.

My chest hurt dreadfully. I couldn’t find air. It had evaporated before me. Finally, my lungs started to fill only to be stifled as the Eagle rolled on top of me.

His weight crushed me all over. His hands went to my throat. I was in trouble. There was light between us, the roar of the ocean filling the cave and his
thumbs pressing down on my windpipe. I visualized blood vessels bursting. The world would fade out into a pinprick and there’d be numbness to it all. Instead, everything was red and fiery. My muscles contorted, looking for escape as fresh blood ran down the Eagle’s crescent, dripping from his chin and onto my cheek.

I reached my arms up to his face, but he pulled back out of reach. It was useless.

I’d lose consciousness soon, and then what. He’d drag me out of here? Tie me up?

I shook beneath him. His blood, wet and warm, continued dripping onto my face. The Eagle’s eyes went inhumanly open and his grip increased until choking seemed inevitable. I tilted my head back but all I could see was the back of the cave, black.

He smiled. He was enjoying it.

I thought of Logan, and I remembered Foamhenge.

I rolled my hips and shoulders right, enough to get my left foot flat. I levered myself upwards, rolling all the while, creating a bridge just like Logan had showed me. But it wouldn’t be enough alone.

The Eagle strained to keep me down, the pressure on my throat letting up ever so slightly. I made my move, tilting my head now with enough distance to sink my teeth into his arm. I bit down, hard, tasting hair and skin, then blood.

The Eagle cried out.

The grip on my neck loosened completely, just enough for me to rise up, thrusting my palm into his chin, his teeth collecting together like broken China. He reeled to the side and I was pushed out from under his body, moving quickly to the front of the cave.

I found the gun, raised it, applied pressure to the trigger.

Bright light strobed the cave walls. I saw a string of shots strike the Eagle in his chest, moving upward toward his shoulder as I lost control of the gun. The Eagle flailed back, lifeless, into the darkness.
I could only just see the body on the floor, a shadowy heap.

My finger was still pressing the trigger, but the gun was exhausted of bullets. I let it drop to the floor and turned.

I made it to the ladder. It seemed even nature was on my side now. The wind had died down enough to keep the ladder straight. I easily made it up and into the chapel.

I traversed across the boards like I’d been here countless times before and made it into the open, sprinting for Carver, for Logan. Nothing was easy. I was sure my body had aged a lifetime, but the thought of him drove me on.

“Please, please,” I begged aloud, syllables lumpy from my stride.

I heard my name.
Something zipped past my left ear. It left a tracer of bright orange extending in a dead-straight line up the hill. It seemed like a full second before sound followed. I turned my head.

When I had extended my neck fully, I saw the Eagle, through the rain in the distance. There was a flash again.

He was alive.

He had the gun.

He had bullets.

He was pissed.

He wasn’t shooting for my legs anymore.

The gun barrel tilted left and I knew it would find its mark. It was certain. I could see his smile. He looked manic, crazed. He didn’t care about taking me hostage a
ny more. This would be the kill-shot. My life would end here.

All that existed at that moment was my heartbeat. I could hear it in my head. It blocked out everything else. My whole body was one thriving, pumping mass.

Lightning cracked in the distance and Eagle’s shoulder was thrown back. He cried out, dropping the gun. I wasn’t sure what was happening but I knew I was still dreadfully exposed. He went for gun on the ground with his other arm. I had seconds.

I ran, full speed, toward him. His right arm hung limply, but he’d picked up the gun with his left. It balanced awkwardly in his left hand. He crouched, the barrel swaying in my direction. I did not falter.

He fired. It was close, dangerously close.

He fired again, the bullet pinging past my head.

He took his time, waiting for the gun to steady. Just as he was about to shoot again I leaped into the air, driving through the rain with my foot extended in a flying front kick. It smashed into his chest, forcing him off his feet and flailing down the hill.

I
landed hard, tumbling forwards and immediately scanned the ground for the gun.

The Eagle was holding his chest with his free arm, coming to his feet.
I saw the gun, only a few feet down the hill from his position. He caught my eyes and followed them down the hill. He looked back, briefly, before turning and scrambling forwards for it.

I couldn’t reach it in time, he was far closer, but I didn’t need to.

Lightning exploded above. He turned around, smiling, gun in hand, poised to kill me. But even before he’d extended fully he’d seen the knife in my hand, the one I’d just pulled from the belt at his back, the one I’d seen glinting with light as he turned.

I stepped towards him, knocking away the gun with my left arm and driving the knife into his throat with my right.

He dropped the gun and clutched his neck. He fell to his knees, eyes full, before slowly slumping backwards.

I had to be sure. He was on his back, his head
to the side half-buried in the mud.
Drown in it
, I thought. Another bolt of lightning caught in his exposed eye, the gleam of it, but not the energy, dancing around in the irises.

His jumper was torn apart and I noticed he was wearing a vest underneath, small indents
running up it vertically. Bulletproof vest. No wonder he’d been able to crawl his way back up here.

Blood poured
the area around his throat, trailing down the hill. Thunder boomed.

I went to start back to Carver
and saw something in the distance, moving down the hill, waving and yelling, holding something, halfway between the school and my position.

Logan.

But there was something else. The sound was faint and artificial. The din of the storm was cloaking it to some extent, but there was no mistaking. I whipped my head about, searching for its origin before my eyes fell back on the Eagle.

I moved closer to the body, close enough to smell it. The sound could have been anything really, but the rapid rhythm in which it was pulsing troubled me. It sounded like an alarm.

I searched the body, checking pockets, pants, before I saw a red LED flicking in and out of life in the Eagle’s outstretched hand. I prized it free and held it to the sky in examination.

The object was metal, no bigger than a pack of cigarettes, with a pulsing red light at the top and a square button of the same color below depressed into the body. There was white text underneath, but I couldn’t read it until lightning brought it into clarity.

‘ARM’.

I looked to the school,
breath held, and ran. I focused on it, on Logan, but before I’d even made it ten feet, Carver exploded. 

15. ACCEPTANCE

The blast was intense. The air around me seemed to buckle and part. I was knocked flat to the ground by the force of it. Ears ringing, I looked between my legs and saw a giant tendril of fire and flame reach into the sky from the center of the school before another explosion blew out what was, only seconds before, the far wall of the girls’ dormitories. Most of the windows of the center building were gone, and now smoke and tongues of flame darted out and up the walls until all was a seething conflagration of fire.

The structure itself had fared fairly well. Most of the supporting beams and walls were intact, but everything inside – desks, papers, furniture – was feeding the fire so that what was once Carver was now little more than a stony volcano, erupting into the night.

I couldn’t see Logan.

A ball of ice solidified in the very pit of my stomach as I realized the hellish reality before my eyes. As if to drive it home, a great gust of honey flame belched out from the top of the school. It twisted towards the heavens like some pyroclastic plastic bag caught in the wind.

I found my legs and walked unsteadily. A foreign smell filled my nostrils. Blood seemed to be in the air itself. It settled on my tongue. I pushed my teeth across its surface, trying to rid my mouth of its iron bite. A few feet in front of me was a textbook aflame, the title,
Fundamentals of Physics
, slowly evaporating letter by letter as a black, ashen army marched across its surface.

I spotted Logan further ahead, picking himself up from the earth. He’d been too close to the school, far too close.

I pressed my tongue to the roof of the mouth and realized it was dry. I couldn’t slow my beating heart. It was racing away from me. A rush of cold filtered through my body beneath my clothes and I knew, somewhere, I’d fallen into shock.

I focused on steady breathing. The abyss that had been looming all this while had now opened up fully. I was falling and it was folding over on me.

I looked to Logan and my resolve began to grow stronger. The shock started to slip off. I moved faster up, finding a center of balance and felt adrenaline, hot as the inferno before me, flow through my veins like a molten river.

Then he was there before me, on his feet and together.

He looked terrified at first. I didn’t know what was going on. Things had been so completely nonsensical I could no longer trust my wits. I’d been seeing things all night, so was it not plausible this being in front of me was another grand illusion of my mind?

“It’s me,” he got out, his words gravelly. With that, every inch of doubt that had accumulated
was stripped away in an instant, but he crumpled from the midriff over, dropping the gun he’d been cradling. I swooped in, attempting to right his frame but feeling it fall upon me with its full weight instead.

I circled around until we were side by side, supporting him at the waist.

“Are you okay?”

“Yes,” he said, loudly, reaching to his
inner ear.

“Can you walk?” I asked,
raising my voice and suddenly terrified myself.

He nodded.

I made the snap decision we’d head towards the pier. No one could miss the fire. A column of it raged a good fifty yards into the air before another, even wider stack of smoke bellowed into the sky above. Someone would see it, and when they did, the area around the pier would be the most obvious place to be found. That was where we’d go.

The storm has passed and was now moving out into the ocean. I helped move Logan as best I could, but it was counter-productive. Every time we’d step, his weight would overpower me. With each movement, he’d wince, attempting to stifle it through clenched teeth.

I was stupefied by a different kind of pain; that of seeing a fit, active being suddenly reduced to an invalid by my own hand. Saltwater welled in my eyes. It drowned out color and clarity until all I had left was a viscous remnant of what had been right in front of me. I didn’t question him. He needed to conserve his energy.

It was slow going. To make matters worse, we were forced to skirt around the bottom of the hill because of the heat coming from the inferno above.

As we rounded out towards the front of the school, I realized I was almost completely dry again with the effort. The rain had stopped altogether.

I tried
with little success to apply as much pressure as I could to Logan’s wound when we hobbled onto the beach. We sank to the sand together as Carver burned behind us. I propped Logan against a rock. Even at this distance you could feel the warmth of the fire. I was thankful for it – for both of us.

Logan wore the same black jumper. The poncho was gone. I’d felt a wet patch on the back of his jumper when I’d led us down here, but Logan assured me the knife had not gone through completely. He reinforced this by saying, much to my horror, what I could feel was the blood of the jumper’s original owner.

I was about to settle up beside him and do something about finding a fresh cloth, as even the front of the jumper had become heavy with blood. Instead, Logan looked into my eyes and stammered breathlessly, “Go – try and find – help.”

I was confused by a moment until I realized by help he meant a way to communicate with t
he outside world, a radio, phone.

“The helicopter?”

He nodded.

“Go,” he said, brushing me towards the pier. He must have seen the way I was torn there, as if by merely leaving his side some other sinister element would rise from the ocean or earth and tear him from me.

“I’ll be fine,” he enthused, speaking more steadily. “Get help.”

With that altruism, I stood and ran towards the pier.
I didn’t look at it directly. I didn’t want to think about the guard’s body that was probably still twisted up below it.

My foot didn’t hurt anymore. My legs, however, felt solid. Pressing them continually forward through the sand almost brought me to tears. I could see the body of the pier, remembering the icy fingers that had clawed at every inch of my body when I’d hit the water that fateful night. It seemed like centuries ago.

The helicopter was maybe 100 yards away on a small patch of flat ground, invisible from Carver. Although it was some distance away, the fire was creating quite a bit more light, as was the moon now that the storm had passed and the cloud cover had, to some extent, thinned out overhead.

I climbed up and into the cabin. I could identify helicoptery bits and pieces. There was the joystick and a variety of controls and dials.

There was space for a radio, but no radio itself.
Of course,
I concluded.
Because these guys were just dying to tell the world what they were up to.

I saw something o
n the rear seat. It was a phone alright, a satellite phone perhaps. There was a white box behind it, a first-aid kit, a torch and a blanket behind that. I grabbed everything.

The phone was a brick-like object, smooth and heavy. There was a long, plastic-covered antenna attached to the top. The screen was bigger than normal and it was physically quite weighty, but apart from that it looked like any other cell. I touched the keypad lightly and the screen glowed luminescent green. There was a picture of a dish in the top-left next to it a grid with three bars illuminated out of six.
Better than none
.

Although Carver was some distance out to sea, all the emergency boards I’d read around the school listed the regular three-digit emergency number shared by the mainland. Of course, you’d be screwed considering the only phones were up in the principal’s office.

I pressed the three numbers slowly, my hands shaking all the while, watching each flicker up on the screen as I did so. Finishing, I hit the large green ‘dial’ button at the top, pressed the receiver to my ear and cupped the other so I was thrown into an eerie cone of silence.

There were three beeps in quick succession. I was surprised at the clarity. Each was loud and clear. A few seconds later another tone followed I didn’t recognize. I pulled the phone away and looked at the screen. In bold capitals it read ‘CALL UNABLE. TRY AGAIN.’

Unable? What the hell did that mean?

I punched in the three numbers again in faster succession and waited, but again, the same tone and message. Once more. Nothing.

“Shit,” I said aloud.

Panic slipped over my shoulders like a winter coat. I closed my eyes and attempted to clear my head. Maybe you had to dial out, start with ‘0’.

I hit ‘0’ and then redialed the number, once more bringing the receiver to my ear.

The three beeps came as before, b
ut this time there a short dial-tone and a voice.

“Julia speaking. What is your emergency?”

The voice was so clear. I felt like I could reach through the phone and touch her face.

“Hello?” I responded. I hadn’t thought this through. I didn’t know what to say.

“Who am I speaking with?” the voice said.

Which name, which name?

“Kat.”

“Okay, Kat. What is your emergency?

“I-, I–” Nothing would crystallize.

“Kat, where are you?”

I couldn’t remember the name of the damned island. “The Carver Institute.”

There was a pause. I heard fingers hitting keys.

“The boarding school on Centenary Island?”

“Yes.” She was right. I recalled the name now.

“Okay. Tell me slowly what’s happened, Kat.”

“I think there’s been an attack.” The words rolled out too fast.

“An attack on whom?”

“The school. I think it’s been kidnapped,” I replied, realizing at once how absurd that sounded, as if the school had suddenly been yanked out of the ground and shipped off in a hessian sack.

“Men came and kidnapped the students,” I clarified. “Maybe by boat.”

God, you sound stupid.

I waited for laughter or the flat-line of a hang-up, but Julia was the epitome of composure, repeating the information back to me.

“You’re saying someone has kidnapped the students of the school. Is that correct?”

“Yes.”

“How many
were taken?”

“Everyone.” That one word made the seriousness of the situation sink in.

“Are there any teachers with you?”

“No.
They took them too.”

“When did this happen, Kat?”

“I’m not sure, three days ago maybe?”

“Are you on the island?”

“Yes.”

“Is there anyone there with you?”

“Yes, another student,” I clarified.

“Are you injured?”

“No, but Logan, the other student, is. He’s been stabbed.”

“Kat,” the voice said, with a motherly drawl I associated with bear hugs and fresh-out-of-the-oven cookies. “I’m just getting more help. Stay with me, okay?”

“Okay,” I replied, my voice growing bolder.

There was silence, some background noise.

“Kat? Are you there?”

“Yes.”

“I have notified the Coast Guard and they are on their way.”

“The boat
they used,” I remembered. “I think it has ‘Lotus’ in the name.”

“The boat the kidnappers are using?”

“Yes.”

“Lotus. L-O-T-U-S?”

“Yes.”

“Okay, I’
ve got that. Now, I need to kno–”

The line went dead.

A battery symbol was flashing on the screen. All light and life had vanished from the device. It was dead.

Frantically, I started stabbing at the keypad, flipping the phone over and looking for some kind of on/off switch or something to jolt it back into animation.

I rifled around the cockpit.
There have to be batteries here,
I told myself.
They must be somewhere,
but all I found were clothes and a canteen. I kept pressing buttons, but it was futile. I knew that.

Screw it
, I thought. She said they were sending someone out. She
sounded
like she believed me. I couldn’t leave Logan alone. I just couldn’t do it, so I headed back.

I switched on the torch and found it was effective. Its strong beam illuminated a wide radius. Things became significantly clearer.

I could see now a low mist hung over the landscape with the rain gone. The ground was pock-marked in places where water had pooled together, cowering away from the storm that had for hours bullied the sky.

When I reached Logan I foolishly shined the light directly into his eyes. His head snapped away.

“Sorry,” I started, pointing the torch out to the ocean and assembling the contents of the bundle on the ground. “Help’s coming. I got through.”

“Radio?”

“Satellite phone, I think.”

Logan nodded silently, before adding, “Did you bring it?”

“It’s dead, and I couldn’t find any more batteries.”