Milly felt her mother’s Glock 19 pinch her back where it stuck from her jeans. She hung the binoculars on a peg and went about checking their supplies again: water in skins, food, and their personals all wrapped into packs. Two bows and arrows, six club-swords with steel points, and Tye’s rock and bark rope bolas. With the voyage done, Milly packed away the watch, binoculars, and Jerome and Vera unscrewed the mounted compass.
Milly taught the others how to use the Glock, but she had no intention of giving it up. Tye said the bullets might be bad, so she’d tested the weapon right before they left with two hundred people looking over her shoulder. She’d pulled the trigger, and the gunpowder caught, and expanded, unleashing a crack the likes of which hadn’t been heard on Respite since the night Ben found Peter’s condom. There were twelve bullets left in the magazine. The weapon was the Hendricks’ family heirloom and her mother had taught her how to clean and care for it.
Milly felt better now that her monthly menstrual friend had departed. Personal matters of every kind were an issue onboard a thirty-two-foot launch packed with five other people and supplies, and only one small bathroom. Factor in sanitary pads made of coconut fiber soaked in coconut oil, the constant roll of the sea, and the relentless sound of the ocean, and it all made her nauseous, homesick, tired, and afraid.
“You OK?” Peter said. One thousand yards away was the small beach.
“I miss my family. Curso didn’t want me to come, but Randy didn’t seem to care,” Milly said. “I guess that bothers me most.”
“That’s not true. Randy loves you.” Peter took her hand, then let it drop and looked around at the rest of the crew who paid them no mind.
“I ever tell about the first time Hazel came to our place?” Milly said.
He shook his head no.
“Randy was more interested in running around with your little girl than anything I was up to. Of all the kids on the island, my boy had to ask your daughter over to play. Granted the odds had been good, with there not being many kids on the island, but it still felt wrong given our family history. I couldn’t take my eyes off the poor kid the entire time she was at our place. Tris dropped her off and seemed stand-offish. That’s what happens when a woman thinks you’re trying to steal her husband.”
Peter said nothing.
“And here we are. Will Tris be waiting for you when we get back?”
Peter said nothing, but turned a light shade of pink.
He’d come on this trip for her. Given up his family, betrayed his fire guard oath, the only thing that had ever been important to him other than her, and she treated him like her tool. She’d come to understand this as she got older and the guilt ate at her.
The boat crunched on sand and everyone jerked forward. A spray of birds, their feathers a mix of every color, burst from the trees, tossed about, and disappeared back into the vegetation that encroached right up to the beach. They squawked and yapped, and the party stood frozen. Milly had never seen that many living things together. Except for maybe ants and maggots.
Tye was the first to jump from the boat into the shallow water, and he tied the launch off on a tree using bark rope. His bolas dangled from his belt, and he held his club. One by one they climbed from the ship that had brought them almost three thousand miles. A painful knot twisted Milly’s stomach as she left the boat. It had been her home. It had protected and cared for her, and now she was leaving the old aluminum launch behind.
“What are we going to do with the boat? Just leave it here?” Robin said. She looked better already, her color returning to her face.
“We’ll pull it in as tight as we can, tie it off good, and cover it with branches. That’s all we can do,” Tye said.
They planned to come back and use the boat to get home. If it wasn’t there, or had been damaged, she didn’t know what they’d do. “How will we mark our location?” said Milly. They hadn’t discussed that.
“I’ll leave markers along the way until we reach a permanent landmark,” Tye said.
Vera said, “You want me to mark trees?”
“Yeah, that’s a goo…”
Robin screamed with pain as an arrow impaled her leg. The bolts came from everywhere, swooshing through the trees and slicing leaves and breaking branches. An arrow stuck in the ground next to Milly and another hit Robin, this time in her right shoulder. She fell, and her second wail scattered the birds, and it was like a cyclone as hundreds of birds, big and small, fled from the disturbance.
“Down!” Tye yelled.
Milly dropped and lay face down on the sand, her nose in the lapping sea water. Robin whimpered beside her, and Tye crawled toward the tree break. She didn’t see Jerome and Vera, and she hoped they
