Chapter Two #2
We’ve got seconds before he gets that gun up and takes aim.
All I could do was draw his fire onto me instead of her.
But as I dive into the protection of the trees, she’s just gaping at him like a wide-mouthed toad.
Every animal has a fight, flight or freeze response.
And lucky me, my precious baby sister defaults to the worst possible option.
Really, it’s a miracle we’ve survived this long.
“Backup! Yes, get down here!” he yells into a small black box, wasting a few more seconds he could have spent shooting us. “And you! Sally Slingshot! Stop running. Don’t give my guys something worth putting a bullet in.”
I press my back against one of the trees, teeth gritted in anger.
I don’t want to obey. If this was just about my survival, running would still be my best bet.
Like he said, bullets are expensive. I don’t know of anybody who can make new ones these days, so it’s not worth spending one on an enemy who just wants to get away from you.
But April has crawled out from behind the protection of her cedar and stepped blatantly into the open. I would ask who raised her, except this failure is entirely on me.
“Is that a walkie-talkie?” she asks, her voice strangely bright. “I’ve seen pictures, but I’ve never—”
She breaks off as two more men jump off the boat, both with guns. One heads straight for me.
“Drop the slingshot,” he says. He’s tall and wiry, with a few whisps of dark hair coming loose from a bandana.
There’s a hard line to his frown—and I wouldn’t bet on me if the two of us ended up in a fist fight.
So, I drop the slingshot, and raise my hands above my head for good measure.
He notices the knife strapped to my thigh and pulls that out, before directing me towards the clearing around the smoking signal fire.
The third guy has April, leading her forward by the hand. We all gather around the one who must be their leader, wrapping a piece of cloth around his bleeding hand. As I come within a couple feet of him, his eyes flick up to me, and I stagger backward.
It might sound odd, considering I already shot him, but I never properly looked at him. Now, he’s all I can see. My own, personal oh shit moment manifested in human form.
To start with, he’s massive—taller than Bandana Man with shoulders twice as wide.
Honestly, why did he bother bringing a gun?
A guy like this could pop my head off with one hand.
Right now, he looks like he wants to. He glowers at me, and I stare mutely, stupidly back.
He’s blonde haired and blue eyed, with a full mouth that belongs more in a pre-Quake magazine than on someone who presumably wants to kill me.
But there’s a slight twist to his features.
His nose has clearly been broken and reset at least once.
A scar cuts across his pale skin from the back of his jaw to a couple inches down his neck.
They’re potent reminders of where we really are. When we are.
I break away from his glare, only to see the blood blooming through the bandage on his hand. As the adrenaline ebbs away, what I did comes crashing in on me.
“I… I…” I stammer, unsure if I’m planning to apologize or skip straight to begging for mercy.
“You lit the signal fire?” he asks through clenched teeth.
I manage a nod.
“Just the two of you?”
Another nod.
“We’ll see about that.” He slings his rifle back over his shoulder. “Silas, you take the south. James, you’re checking the treeline. If you see any sign of additional parties, wire immediately. Do not engage alone.”
The two men snap to their orders without another word, leaving me and April to their leader.
As ever, I do the mental calculus that keeps us alive.
There’s room to run now, but while I might be able to outpace this behemoth, April won’t.
He’s not aiming the gun at us anymore, but if I made a play to grab it, he could throw me off him like a ragdoll.
Plus, he’s wearing an old RCMP vest, so a bullet wouldn’t do much to him if I did manage to fire the gun.
He is, no doubt, running his own calculations.
He spares April a glance but is considerably more preoccupied with scowling at me.
I stand like a dead bug pinned in a collection, limbs splayed out for science.
He hasn’t said I can lower my hands yet, and I don’t dare make any sudden movements.
Not when he’s clearly deciding if I deserve to be stepped on.
I can’t imagine I impresses him. None of my clothes are in good condition, all worn and stitched over a thousand times.
I’m decked out in cargo pants and a T-shirt with a rip in the centre that I haven’t had time to mend yet.
I’ve tied a polar fleece sweater around my waist—the kind that holds onto every stray twig it encounters.
My short, dark curls are an unholy mess, so I’m guessing I won’t appeal to his mercy through my feminine wiles or anything like that.
April, however, reaches up to tuck a piece of hair behind her ear, her eyes on one of his biceps. Which, I will grant her, are substantial.
“Do you want to explain to me why the hell you lit the signal fire and then attacked our team with nothing besides a slingshot?” he finally asks.
“You had guns,” I say.
“We have guns. You have a slingshot. And you thought firing on us would help in that situation?”
“I thought it would give her a chance to get away.” I gesture towards April. “And I mean, if we ran, what’s in it for you if you shoot at us? Dead women won’t do you any good. Not worth the bullet.”
“Dead women?” The furrow in his brow deepens. “So, you saw me come ashore with a gun and immediately thought we wanted to… do something to you?”
He doesn’t say it out loud, so neither do I. Nobody has to, because we all know there’s more than one kind of violence to fear in this world. In our shared silence, his expression shifts. He’s still scowling, but it feels less personal, like he’s pissed, but not necessarily at me.
He breaks the silence. “Okay. Here’s what we’re going to do. You two are going to take off your bags. Set them down, then step five paces away. We’re going to wait for my guys to come back, and if your story checks out, that’s when we’ll talk.”
“Thank you!” April drops her bag eagerly. I’m more hesitant, but I do follow suit, because what other choice do I have?
“Everything all right down there, Charles?”
I jump at the crackling of the little black box strapped to our guard’s RCMP vest. He pulls it out and speaks into it again, confirming April’s suspicion that it’s a walkie-talkie. “Situation under control for now. James and Silas are checking for hostiles. Stand by.”
“Roger.”
“So…” I watch as he clips the box back onto his vest. “Is your name Roger or Charles?”
The question catches him off guard for a second. His face breaks into a smile, as if I’ve said something funny or stupid. Probably both. “Sid, actually. Sid Charles.”
“Then who’s Roger?”
“No one. It’s just a thing people say in walkie-talkies. Means okay or gotcha.”
“Why don’t you just say that, then?”
“I dunno. Some kind of pre-Quake thing. Why does anyone do anything anymore?”
He reaches into his pocket and pulls out a bit of rolled up paper. He crouches down next to the barrel so he can reach the holes at the bottom and sticks his paper tube deep enough in to catch on the smouldering embers. When he draws it back up, I realize I’m staring at a lit cigarette.
What the hell?
I’m transfixed as he threads it between his teeth.
Cigarettes ran out years ago, or so I thought.
Granted, I also thought walkie-talkies were a thing of the past. The implications of both are staggering.
Salt Spring must have some way of generating electricity.
They must have stockpiles of old cigarettes.
For the first time, it really hits me that this man—Sid Charles, was it?—might come from somewhere that can help April. It might all be true.
“We need a hospital,” I say abruptly.
“No shit.” He takes a drag on the cigarette. “You look like a good meal would kill you.”
“No, I don’t mean both of us. I mean my sister—”
“How about we wait for my guys to come back, then we can start talking about whatever it is you want from us. Okay?”
“We can talk now. We’ll cooperate. I’ll do anything you want if you can help her.” I say and April nods. Her earlier eagerness all makes sense now. She’d picked up on the signs that I was too survival-brained to notice. “I’ll tell you whatever you want to know.”
His eyes flick over me again. Now that he’s no longer scowling, they are so, so blue. “No.”
“Why not?”
“Because on the off chance you two are some TNS ploy to get us to drop our guards…” He gestures vaguely towards the trees and all the imaginary people he’s worried about. “I would rather not be distracted.”
“Oh, come on! You’re smoking a cigarette.”
“I can smoke and fire a gun at the same time.”
“You’re not even holding it.”
“Would you like me to?”
“Kayla, it’s fine.” April waves her hands, pleading for me not to screw this up any worse than my slingshot did. “We can wait. I don’t mind.”
“It’s still pointless. There’s no one else out there and when he finally believes us, he’s going to realize he wasted his time,” I say.
“So… Kayla.” He repeats my name. “Got a last name?”
“I thought you said you didn’t want to talk. Because I’m too distracting.” I toss my head back dramatically and make sure my voice drips with sarcasm. It would work better if I had long, flowing hair, but he clearly gets the idea, because my performance draws a laugh.
“Now you’re getting it.”
“Yeah, well…” My stomach clenches as this big, blue-eyed man smiles a lopsided grin at me around his cigarette. “Fine. We’ll wait.”