Not a single word.
Tatiana wheezes.
“So there’s a fuckin’ body in there?” Kellen asks, eyes widening.
“Yeah, a man by the looks, and it has been there a while,” Ace informs them for me. “But, we just gotta focus on the boat because it could save us.”
A long silence holds us all, until Kellen asks, “What do we do about the dead dude?”
Aggie smothers a giggle, and we all try to ignore just how cold yet hilarious Kellen can be.
“He could hold vital clues and give us answers on the fact that we might not be alone on this island,” Adrian whispers, and his eyes dart from left to right.
Fuck me, he is too much sometimes.
I bite my lip so I don’t laugh.
Ace glances at me, then back to the group. “We need to get rid of it. Because we’ll need to get inside the boat if we want to move it. Zeke, Kellen, you help me with the body issue. Girls, you start packing up camp. We need to move to the other side, it is far better cover, and you can see a lot more.”
“Plus, we need to be close to that boat,” Rachel says, a sudden flash of life on her face.
We get moving.
The guys leave to remove the body, refusing to take Adrian who is more than fascinated with the whole situation. Instead, they send him on a hunt to find them some items they can turn the boat with. They can probably do it with sheer strength, but they are just wanting him to go away. Us four girls start hauling things on our shoulders so we can get moving, too.
“You really saw a dead body?” Tatiana whispers, eyes wide.
I nod.
“Like, up close?”
“Yep,” I mutter. “It was really bad.”
Rachel shudders. Aggie comes over and puts her arm around my shoulder.
“I can’t believe we’re going to try and fix a boat to get out of here,” she says.
We all feel a kind of hope we haven’t experienced yet.
Like maybe this isn’t the end of our story.
“We should get going,” Rachel says, cutting through the silence of hope we are all holding onto.
“Yeah, we should,” I agree. “It’s a decent walk.”
“I hope they have gotten the body away by the time we get there,” Tatiana shivers. “That scares the life out of me.”
“I kind of want to see it,” Aggie shrugs, throwing a blanket over her shoulder.
“There is something very wrong with you,” I grin in Aggie’s direction.
She laughs.
We set off, heading towards our new home.
We reach the new location just as the afternoon sun drops low, letting us know we only have a few hours to set up for the night before the sun goes down. The boat sits on the shore, and the guys are working around it. I don’t bother to go and see, not until I’m certain that it’s safe. I don’t ever want to see something like that again.
Ace only comes over to inform us that they found a good spot about thirty meters away, with a large overhanging rock and soft sand.
