28. Chapter 25 - Marley #2
I shuffled a few feet despite the disorienting force and anchored onto an overhanging tree limb by winding one arm around a thick branch.
Stretching out my hand, I clasped Tessa’s delicate fingers, forming a human chain with her and Vanessa before another wave, far larger and louder than the first, swept through the riverbed and splashed up to my chest.
An agonized scream pierced through the din of nature’s rebellion.
Tessa’s body wrenched forward, but I crushed her hand within my own, determined not to lose her in the murky water.
My left arm, still wrapped around the tree like a snake, held on for dear life, even as a sharp pain eviscerated my shoulder socket with the pull.
My vision was less obscured by the rain under the canopy of the tree, but I couldn’t keep my eyes on any one place as another rush of water crashed toward us from upriver.
Inch by inch, I yanked Tessa closer, still screaming.
My eyes frantically scanned the roiling water for Vanessa beyond her. A moment later, I caught the unmistakable carrot-red hair floating in the water twenty feet downstream, toward the plane.
“Nessie!” Tessa screamed again as she tried to slip her hand out of my grasp. I clung to her harder, determined not to let her lose her life when Vanessa’s time was already up.
With all my strength, I hauled Tessa to the branch and forced her hands to loop around its bark.
“I need you to follow me,” I shouted and pointed along the treeline toward our outpost twenty feet away. “We’re going to use the tree branches as leverage. Once we’re in the cove, we should be protected from the waves.”
Her blue eyes held no light or life, taking on the haunted essence of Vanessa’s earlier.
“Tessa!” I barked, snapping her attention back to me. “Do you want to live? I need you to follow me.”
She nodded slowly, wasting precious time to get out of here.
I resolutely shifted my weight and reached for a subsequent branch with my free hand.
Fiery tingles shot up my other arm as I unwound it from the one I’d been clinging to.
Slowly, I propelled my body weight forward to clutch tightly to the next one, only turning once I was certain I was secure to see Tessa following.
Bitterness coated my tongue as I watched her struggle to reach me. Who was I to save her when she’d lost her reason to live? Vanessa had just died because she’d been too weak to hold on, too weak to save herself, because of me.
Why was I even trying to save myself? It would be so much easier to just let myself fall under the waves and let the rainforest take me for its own.
Water still rushed all around us, jostling my body and making it hard to get any purchase. Scrunching my eyes tight, I shook my head to wave some water droplets away before pushing off the tree behind me.
The tips of my fingers barely secured around the thinner limb. We were far enough into the cove now the water should push us toward the rest of the group.
“We’re going to let go now,” I hollered behind me. “The water will push us forward into the cove, okay? On the count of three.”
The branch sagged under our combined weight and sprang forcefully upward when we let go. The brutal strength of the river pushed me under before I could take a breath, filling my lungs with sandy scum.
Let it take you, Marley. Drowning is such a peaceful way to die.
The possibility called to me like a siren’s song, as the whirling eddies tossed me around beneath the waves. I let them carry me forward, giving in to their whims for one blissful moment of reprieve. The muffled sounds of the world above were languid and calming. Just like death would be.
“Not today, Marley.” Charlie’s voice cooed at the back of my brain, my figment fighting for me in the ways I struggled to. “They won’t survive without you.”
But they can. They will. I don’t need to be here. I was meant to die this way.
“Not today,” my twin’s voice repeated, more firmly this time. “Get a grip and get moving. You don’t have much time.”
My head pounded from lack of oxygen as black and blue starbursts invaded my vision.
Maybe I couldn’t give in. Not today, not when Tessa had just lost her lover and Ambrose still needed care. Not when it would mean leaving Nikki alone and Maddox to his own devices, and we had one percentage point of survival possibility.
As if on cue, my feet brushed the bottom. I propelled myself upward. I choked and sputtered agonized gasps when my head breached the surface.
A hand clasped around my arm and pulled me forward.
“Marley!” Nikki’s voice was high-pitched and panicked and his bruising grip was painful against my skin. “Marley, I’ve got you. Stop flailing!”
He crushed me to his chest, wrapping his hard body warm and protective around me while the raging river surged us forward into the bank.
I coughed against him, the dirty water in my lungs fighting to get free.
I fought the urge to puke all over him and turned my mouth to the side, choking up the bile stream into the river instead.
Fuck, the water had to be eight or nine feet deep by now, and rising faster by the second.
“Christ, what were you doing, baby girl?” His question caught in his throat, choking off at the end. “I thought I’d lost you. Jesus fuck, I thought I’d lost you.”
He reached a hand above my head and gripped something tight, pulling us closer up the bank.
His arm around my chest loosened slightly when we were pulled into a dense bush partially submerged under water.
Nikki released his hold altogether when another set of hands gripped my shoulders and lifted me over the scratchy brambles.
Tessa clung tightly to a jobo tree, body wracked with violent sobs. Brooks and Diaz shuffled me toward her. We were several feet above the river’s edge, and yet the murky water sat just below our ankles, still rising with every breath.
“Holy shit!” Ambrose cried out tersely beside me as a muted thwack against the water echoed from behind.
“Fuck!” Nikki’s shout carried over the splash.
Shifting my weight, I turned in time to see Danny’s bobbing body in a swirling pool just beyond Nikki’s reach.
Nikki was determined to try anyway, gripping one arm around a length of thick vine while he stretched his lean body outward to grasp the back of Danny’s shirt.
In slow motion, the horror unfolded as the vine in Nikki’s hand snapped. And another swell of water swept upward, pulling him back into the churn.
Another torrent opened up from the sky. The rainforest canopy protected us from its stream, but Nikki and Danny were helpless in the open water against it. I could barely make out the dark ringlets of Nikki’s hair floating above the water before the two bodies were forced back under the waves.
“Nikki!” I screamed into the dense air, desperate to help him despite my aching limbs. Two arms banded around me from behind, making me helpless to move.
“You can’t help him, Marley.” Ambrose's fierce tone hissed into my ear brokered no arguments. “You’ll die if you try. Don’t be stupid.”
Brooks, unencumbered, leaped up to offer help, but with the renewed onslaught of rain, the slope of the ground had become a mudslide. They scrambled for purchase, barely making it back to the waterline without tumbling into it. Clinging to an overextended tree branch, they peered into the water.
No heads, no arms, not a single indicator two people had even existed at all.
I couldn’t stifle the scream—it tore from my throat with a mind of its own as tears tumbled down my cheeks, their weight far heavier than the deluge of rain around us.
When another minute passed, I stared numbly into the pool at my feet and wished for death to take me, too.
Nikki was gone.