27. Skirmish
Chapter 27
Skirmish
Zane
“ T ree,” Haley screams, her lips next to my ear.
I’m only vaguely looking where my bare feet step. I leap over a log to a large tree. It’s at least two feet around, with some low branches. “Grab hold.” I toss her at the branch and hope to hell she was good at the monkey bars growing up. She grabs the branch and swings her good leg over to another branch. It’s not graceful, but it’s effective.
“Use the stick,” she says.
I swipe it from the base of the tree where she dropped it and pivot around as the boar bursts through the ferns.
He pauses for a second, then charges. I bring the stick down on his nose. It doesn’t stop his charge. No, he’s coming for me, his dark tusks aiming for my legs. Fuck, if I had boots on, I’d give him some hard kicks. I smack him with the stick again, and he stops. Another limb lies covered in mud on the path. I pick it up so I have one in each hand. This branch is thicker. It broke when it hit the ground, so it’s sharp on the end like a real spear.
“Run, Zane,” Haley screams at me. “Go away, pig! Shoo!” And then she does a blood-curdling scream. It’s so loud birds flutter from the treetops into the sky and even the boar turns his attention away from me—to Haley. He grunts.
That second is all I need. I ram the boar with the stick, plunging it into his lower chest. I let go, and it’s hanging there. The damn boar squeals at me. It steps forward but then turns and runs back into the ferns. My heart is beating through my chest.
“What the fuck is going on?” Calvin runs to us. Scratch that. He’s holding his arms up to Haley.
“A wild boar attacked us.” Haley slides with caution into Calvin’s arms. “But Zane stabbed it with a stick.”
Easton shows up behind Calvin. “What happened? Are you okay?” Easton puts his hand on Haley’s leg.
“Yeah, Zane saved us. He stabbed the boar.”
I hold up her crutch for her. “Haley wanted to see the stream.”
Calvin turns, keeping the crutch away from Haley’s hand. “Yeah, well, that’s fucking stupid. It could have hurt her.” He kicks at the leaves. “That’s a lot of blood. Did you get a good shot in?”
“Yeah, that’s why it left.”
“This is too much blood loss for it to survive.” Calvin passes Haley to Easton. “Take her back to the beach.”
“Here’s your crutch, Haley.” I walk around Calvin to hand it to her. There’s a scratch up the side of her leg from where she clung to the tree. “Are you okay?”
“It’s just a scratch. I can walk with my crutch.” She pulls back and looks Easton in the eyes.
“Yeah, no. This is one order from Cranky Pants I’m more than willing to obey.”
Haley sighs. “Thank you.” She’s staring at me when she says it.
“No problem,” Easton says.
Calvin picks up a stick. “You’re with me, Zane.”
I use a short, stubby stick to move palm fronds out of the way until I find another good one.
Calvin has already moved down the path. “Let’s go.”
“Why exactly are we chasing down the beast that tried to kill us?”
“Have you ever hunted?”
“No.”
“Right, that’s a lot of blood back there.” Calvin touches a short fern on the side of the path, a drop of blood smeared at the top of it. “It won’t heal from a massive injury like that, and when it dies, I don’t want some scavenger taking what’s ours.”
“Or...” I’m practically running after Calvin. I’m tall, but he’s what I like to think of as stare-at-me tall. “...or we could head back to the beach and wait for a rescue plane to fly overhead.”
Calvin stops, and I have to haul back to keep from running into him. “Listen. Good move having the charts and downloading them to Swimmer Boy’s phone. Have you looked at them?”
“I have. But?—”
“But where you thought we should be, there’s no island.”
“Yeah. I mean, I didn’t leave my phone on long.”
“We turned that first night. I was watching the compass. We caught some sort of jet stream that’s not on the charts.”
My stomach sinks. “They’ll be searching the wrong area.”
“Exactly. Even if they widen the search, the tuna?—”
“It changed our speed. Not much, but enough to make the math of where we are not make sense.”
“Yup. If that’s the case, this is a big meal we can’t pass up.”
“Have you seen wild boars before? That thing was huge.” I shake my hand.
“Have I seen boars before?” He laughs.
Right, Calvin grew up in the middle of nowhere with nothing and walked to school early to pick up roadkill for dinner. At least, that’s what he told the chef last year. But then again, the two of them didn’t exactly get along.
The spatters of blood get closer and closer together the longer we walk on the path. The stream widens out too.
“You don’t think there are more of them around and the damn thing went off to tell them what an arse I am?”
“They live in groups. They don’t normally attack humans. But then again, this bunch probably hasn’t seen too many humans. If we get cornered by more of them, we climb trees. Good idea you had.”
“It was Haley’s idea.”
“She’s smart. Too bad she wasn’t smart enough to not get in the middle of Fuckhead and me.”
“She was going to distract you.”
“I know.” Calvin shakes his head. “That would have worked too. She has a fine—” He pops up a closed fist like military or SWAT do in the movies when they’re creeping up on the bad guys. Then he points silently to a small clearing near the water.
I raise my eyebrows because I can’t see anything. But then I am not a Viking who’s defeated pirates twice—like Calvin. I point.
And he nods. From what I can make out, he’s going to circle around and I’m going to stay where I am.
Calvin moves through the brush. He grunts and bends down. I can’t see what he’s doing, but when he stands up, there’s blood on his hands. “Help me carry it back.”
T he dead beast weighs as much as Calvin and me combined. I glance at the ocean approaching through the palm fronds. I want the stench washed off me, but I also want to sit down. The adrenaline from the landing and then killing the beast is gone, and I want to crawl into a bed. But I’ll settle for a spot next to Haley. Watching Easton and Calvin snuggle up against her last night made me jealous, and then waves of guilt settled around me. The girl can do whatever she wants. I just happen to want to be the one she does something with.
When we break through the jungle to the beach, Dante is sitting up and the fire is going in the pit I made.
“Put it down here.” Calvin points to a dry patch of sand downwind from the fire.
I drop the tail end with a thud.
“What the fuck, Zane?” He puts his half down gently.
I shrug. “It’s dead. I didn’t figure it would matter.”
I give up on jumping into the ocean when Haley catches my eye, and I wander over and collapse next to her.
“Come with me, Swimmer Boy.”
I glare at Calvin. He might have muscles the size of an Italian smart car, but if he called me that, I’d be swinging at him too.
Easton doesn’t move. And we all glance between the two of them.
“I need your help, Easton. Please.” Calvin shoots the word out like it hurts his throat.
“See, that wasn’t so hard.” Easton stands and slaps his thighs like he’s leaving the pub for the night. “What are we doing?” Easton takes a few steps, and the stench of the boar hits him. He shakes his head but doesn’t back down. Which I’m sure as hell happy about because I’m not exactly jumping up and down to volunteer for what I think Calvin wants.
“We need to get some palm fronds to make a clean spot to process the boar.”
“Right.” Easton shuffles off with Calvin, and I think I’ve got a moment to myself.
Calvin yells over his shoulder, “We need more firewood.”
“Right.” I stand and pull off my shorts and my shirt. And for the hell of it, I pull off my knickers too. I don’t look back at the fire, but someone whistles—Dante, I assume.
“What’s he doing?” Haley says in the wind.
I jump in the water. It’s clear. The sand under the breaking waves is light brown, and little fish dart about my feet. I’m in to my waist when I duck underwater. I can swim—I’m not an Olympian, but my mom made sure I learned to swim. The drop-off to the ocean happens slowly, and the waves are calmer. The stench of the pig and the blood coating my hands fades away. I’m floating, arms relaxed, eyes closed, tilted to the setting sun.
I open my eyes and go back to the beach. Easton is standing next to Calvin, who has his hands on his hips and his neck bent talking to Haley, still by the fire. Dante says something, his hands gesticulating to the ocean, then to Easton, and finally resting next to his head. Calvin unfolds himself to upright, then bends down and scoops Haley up. Dante’s up too, and Easton is saying something. I’m heading back to the shore, but then Dante’s got his clothes off and Easton does too.
Haley’s smacking at Calvin’s arms, and he lets her down and slides off her leggings. Her long T-shirt is covering her knickers, but then she points at them and they all turn around. I don’t, though I should. She seems like the bashful type. She pulls the shirt off, but then Calvin has her up against him again. She gives him another playful smack, and I have to head back into the water because, damn, I didn’t know I like watching so much. But the taps she gave Calvin might as well have been on my arm.
From here, the help sign and the unlit pile of brush for the signal fire look good. Even our little cooking fire is going strong, but not strong enough to set anything else on fire. I should swim over to the reef to see if we can catch fish. But I can’t stop watching them come into the water. Calvin steps up as his knees hit the waves. He’s wearing his underwear, as he calls it, and so is Easton. But Easton is helping Dante into the water, and Dante’s going natural.
Haley squeals when the first wave hits them. But soon they are beside me.
“I can swim.” Haley has her arms looped around Calvin’s neck. She’s taken her purple Rockwell bandana off. Her hair is loose and floating around her shoulders.
“I’m sure you can, but how are you going to get out?” Calvin hasn’t let her go.
“We’ll figure that out when I want to get out. You’re right, Easton, the water feels great on my ankle.” Haley swims away from Calvin and bobs near Easton. She’s like a magnet that draws us all in. I can’t leave to go look at the reef now, not by myself.
Haley floats next to me. “Feel better?” I ask.
“Yeah. That was a lot,” she says. A large wave swells, and we lift on it. When it puts us back down, we’re next to each other. “I’m glad you were there. Thank you. It could have really injured me without you. And I like to save the injuring of me to be done by me.” She laughs. The dim light catches her blue eyes, making them sparkle with flecks of green. Another wave pushes her into me.
I grab her. The water douses us both. We come up laughing. She wraps her arms around my neck, and now I’m king of the island. Our eyes are locked. I lean in to kiss her. My pulse thuds in my ears as the water surges around us. I see it then—panic. She turns her head as a wave crashes above us.