“Nova needs stitches,” Marcus says.
“You guys want to get her back to the cave and Amira and I can raid their supplies?”
Marcus flicks a gaze to me, then looks away quickly. He’s thinking the same thing I am.
Pax has kept his word to us so far. But knowing what he’s capable of, I’m not leaving him alone with Amira.
“I can get Nova back on my own,” Marcus says. “I’ll take Ellison and send Olin here to help you guys. You’ll be able to get a lot more back with four of you.”
“Sounds good,” Pax says. “Hang on.”
He goes over to the fire and takes several cooked fish from the grate, wrapping them in paper. When he returns, he passes the fish to Marcus.
“You guys eat those. We’ll bring more back.”
Marcus nods, then locks his gaze onto me and says, “Be safe.”
“We’re right behind you,” I say.
What I really want is to curl up on the sand and go to sleep. The attack didn’t deplete me as much as the one against Ingrid’s men did, but I’m still exhausted. Just picking up my feet to walk is an effort.
I don’t let it show, though. We need these supplies. This was a small win for us, but there’s a much bigger battle ahead.
Ingrid has too many soldiers at our camp for me and Pax to take out like we did here. There’s too much risk of collateral damage.
I can’t think about it now. It’s all I can do to stay upright. I need food, water, and rest.
And Marcus. I don’t even care that we have to sleep in a cold, damp, bat-shit-infested cave. Tonight, we get to sleep there together.
41
“Only top command had access to our security codes, but that ILF terrorist group got them. We have a leak, and it must be stopped.” – Electronic message from New America Present Soren Whitman to New America Vice President Aldous Thatcher
Briar
I’m finally clean.
The supplies we raided were a gold mine. We got rice, beans, clean clothes, and soap.
I didn’t have the energy to walk to the spring near the cave to clean up yesterday. I couldn’t even stay awake until Pax and Marcus brought food back to camp.
They cooked rice and beans at the beach where we took out the Tiders so the scents of cooking food couldn’t be traced to the cave. When Marcus woke me up to eat, I could hardly stay awake long enough to scarf down several bites.
I remember him coming back to me later and moving me on top of him, my chest on his. His back was on the cold, wet cave floor all night while he was my mattress. The only other time I woke up was when the air filled with the flapping of hundreds of bats flying out of the cave. Marcus murmured in my ear that it was fine, they’d be gone soon, and I went back to sleep.
Today I feel like myself again. I scrubbed every inch of my skin and Amira washed my hair three times to get it clean. Ellison bandaged the megamantis cut on my leg. The olive-green pants and T-shirt I’m wearing aren’t a perfect fit, but they’re clean.
Marcus and I are sitting in crooks of a massive tree, using an amplifier to listen in on our camp.
I put my fingers over my earpiece, listening carefully.
“How long you think we’re staying on this shithole island?” a New America soldier asks another.
“Too long. This fuckin’ rash in my crotch keeps getting worse. I’ve got pus-filled blisters all over.”
“Gross.”
“Yeah, no shit. None of the shit in their medical area helps.”
