Phoenix Island (26 page)

“Tell me now. I don’t care about—”

Abruptly, she walked back to Medicaid—not one but two blue butterflies fluttered around him now—grabbed him by the shirt, and shook him. He shrieked.

“We’re having a private conversation,” she told him. “Keep your nose out of it, or I’ll kill every butterfly I see. Got it? I’ll rip their wings off and crush their little heads.” She demonstrated, rubbing her thumb and forefinger together, crushing an imaginary one. “Got it?”

The kid’s eyes went wide and scared. “You don’t hurt the little butterflies!”

“I won’t—unless you get nosy.”

Medicaid shook his head.

Octavia went back to Ross.

“Remind me not to get on your bad side, all right?” he said. “That was—um—kind of twisted.”

Octavia ran a hand over the stubble atop her head. “I know. This place is getting to me. What were you saying?”

They glanced back. Medicaid followed at a distance, hands pressed to his ears. The poor kid was crazier than a soup sandwich. Maybe she’d been mean, but there wasn’t time to be nice. This place punished you for being nice.

“Well, it’s just . . . I’m afraid they’re going to . . .” Ross said, halting his stride. “I’m afraid they might have already—”

And then Ross really surprised her. The eternal comedian started sobbing.

“What is it? Are you all right?” She put an arm around him. It was awkward. She’d never been a touchy-feely person. His shoulders felt really, really small under her arm. In that second, it came clear to her all over again just how warped Decker and his buddies were. Ross was the size of a twelve-year-old.

Ross wiped at his tears, cursing. “I hate crying. I mean, I really, really hate it.”

“Don’t worry about it. Just tell me.” The cold feeling in her stomach intensified. A part of her was worried that it knew what he was going to say and didn’t want to hear it.

“They blacked out his f-f-face.”

“What?”

Ross rolled his head back and blinked away tears. “The platoon photo. Parker blacked out Carl’s face.”

“So?”

“I’m afraid they killed Carl.”

As a reflex, she looked over to make sure Medicaid had stopped at a distance from them. “That’s stupid. Nobody killed Carl.”

Ross just looked at her. Then he started walking again and she followed, but she felt like shouting. “Stark
saved
him. What are you talking about?”

“We found this journal. Well, Carl found it, and it told all about Phoenix Island.”

“What—wait—why did you say that about Carl?” Panic rose in her, melting the cold spot in her stomach and bringing it to a boil. Any second, she’d start shrieking like a teapot. . . .

“I’m trying to tell you, okay?” He glanced at Medicaid, then leaned toward her, whispering, “We found somebody’s diary. This guy Eric. He used to be book man. During a previous cycle, I mean. He talked about everything that happened then. And it’s all been happening to us the same way.”

“So?”

“When Eric’s platoon reached Blue Phase, the drill sergeants started killing people.”

“Wait.” She shook her head. “What?”

“Don’t look at me like that. I’m serious.”

She took a deep breath. He certainly looked serious . . . but no . . . this couldn’t be real. “Killing people?
Actually killing?
”

“Parker started it. Then . . . others joined in.”

“Well, Parker wanted to kill Carl, but Stark stopped him.”

“True, but then he sent Carl to the Chop Shop.”

“Don’t call it that,” she said, grimacing. “I hate when they call it that.”

Ross gave a slight bow. “I hate it, too, but whatever its name, that’s where Stark sent him.”

She spread her hands. “Duh—where else would they send him? He was hurt.”

“They do stuff there. That’s what the journal said. This guy Eric, he didn’t know just what they did, but he was suspicious. He said people went there and never came back. Then he went past and saw people walking around like zombies. Carl and I saw some kid like that on the first day.”

She held out her hand like a traffic cop stopping a car going the wrong way. “Slow down. You’re not making any sense.”

“I think they do stuff to people’s brains there. Operate on them or whatever. Lobotomize them.”

“Loboto . . .”

“Lobotomize. It means they take something sharp and poke it into somebody’s brain.”

“And kill them?”

“No. They used to do this back in the old days. I mean doctors. Psychiatrists. They saw it as treatment. They poked it in there and jabbed around the frontal lobe, and—”

“Enough,” she said. She felt sick. Just the thought of someone doing something like that to anyone, let alone Carl . . .

“Anyway, the operation pretty much wiped them out, made them like zombies.”

Octavia shook her head. This was crazy. “Stop, all right? I don’t want to hear anymore. You’re wrong, okay? Carl’s fine—he’s fine!” Unbidden laughter tumbled out of her—and she wasn’t entirely comfortable with the slippery hilarity even she heard in it. “Tell butterfly boy to quit his hear-no-evil monkey routine, and let’s find that checkpoint.”

“Wait. Don’t shut me down. This is important.”

“No.” She pulled away from him. “This is over. I never should have listened to this crap.”

His hand grabbed her arm. “Octavia, please.”

She spun and pushed him with both hands. He fell hard onto his butt. “Mistake, Ross! Do
not
touch me.” Her hands shook, and she breathed hard, as if she’d been sprinting. Suddenly, she felt like she might cry, too. She marched deeper into the woods.

For the rest of the hike, Ross stayed ten feet behind her. Medicaid stayed even farther back. He still had his hands on his ears, but he was smiling now and singing some kind of gibberish song.

They dipped into a wooded ravine. Thick vines and heavy undergrowth forced them slightly off course, but then things opened up, and they entered into a section of the forest straight out of a children’s book. The kind of children’s book with witches. And palm trees. That kind.

Five minutes later, she kicked a tree.

“We’re lost, aren’t we?” Ross said.

She rolled her eyes skyward. “Yes. I was so upset, I—crap. No breakfast, no lunch. I don’t want to go without dinner.”

Ross approached slowly and tugged at the map. “May I?”

“Go ahead.” Map reading had been so easy in class. Then again, her brain hadn’t been under this kind of stress.

Ross worked loudly, trying to flatten the map on uneven ground and fumbling with the compass. “Um . . .”

She closed her eyes and pinched the bridge of her nose. On top of everything else, a killer headache was carving a tunnel through her skull.

“All right,” Ross said, trying too hard to sound cool, calm, and collected. “We just have to walk back to the road and start over again.”

She growled. “That will take too long. There has to be a landmark, something.”

Ross shook his head. “I’m lost. Completely lost.”

“Crap!” she shouted.

A flight of birds lifted, squawking into the canopy.

The trees, bigger here, taller, rose limblessly up like so many columns, branching out far overhead to block most of the light. Down on the ground, everything was dim and cool and damp. Here and there, light fell in heavy shafts, standing out in sharp contrast with the gloom.

“We,” Ross said, shaking his head, “are officially screwed.”

A mosquito buzzed in her ear. She swatted it.

Medicaid waddled up, leaned over Ross for perhaps two seconds, and kept walking.

“Hey,” she said. “Don’t wander off.”

“This way,” Medicaid said, and kept going.

“Wait!” Octavia called after him, but he disappeared into the darkness beyond a thicker copse of trees. “Grand,” she said. “If he gets lost and we waste time searching for him, we’ll come in dead last.”

Ross took forever folding the map.

“Come on,” she said, and they trotted off in the direction Medicaid had traveled.

But he was gone. They saw only trees and vines, shadows and mosquitoes.

“Medicaid?” she called. “Where are you?”

Off to the left, something big moved through the forest, snapping branches. She heard a grunt.

“Uh-oh. Not good,” she said. “Hey, Medicaid? Medicaid!”

“Hey! Wait for us,” Ross said.

She scanned the forest. Nothing.

Ross shook his fists in the air. “Why does everything suck?”

“Wait,” she said. Something—she heard something. . . . “Be quiet.”

There.

“I hear it,” Ross said.

“His nonsense song,” she said. Relief swept over her. “Come on. Let’s find him before he stops singing.”

They hurried, pausing several times to try to locate his singing, turning back twice. The jungle did weird things to sound. It was easy to see how people got lost, with so little light, the grinding sameness of the forest, and no long views whatsoever.

At last they found him in a small clearing, leaning on a post with a box nailed to it.

Ross pumped a fist overhead. “Yes! The checkpoint!”

“Medicaid, you found it!” Octavia said. She ran forward to where Medicaid stood squinting at a butterfly that had inexplicably landed on his finger. She was so relieved, she nearly gave him a hug . . . but then saw the blood and snot on his face and smelled urine again and gave him a soft pat on the back instead.

Medicaid cringed. “Don’t hurt the butterflies.”

Octavia stepped back. “I won’t. Really. You did great. I’m not going to hurt the butterflies.”

Visibly relieved, Medicaid started walking again.

“Wait,” she said. “We have to write our names in here and get the coordinates.”

“This way,” he said, and kept walking. The butterflies followed, flitting in circles around his head.

Ross scribbled furiously in the book and put it back in the box.

“Go after him,” Octavia said. “I’m going to check the map. Just call out every minute or something, and I’ll catch up.”

Ross nodded and jogged off.

All right,
she told herself.
Focus. You can do this
.

She looked at the map, noted the coordinates, and circled the next checkpoint. Using the compass and protractor, she marked the azimuth.

In the distance, Ross called out to her.

All right,
she told herself.
See it
. She glanced at the topographic lines. There was the depression from the map, the rise, so that meant . . . they had to go
that
way. . . .

Exactly where Medicaid had gone.

Could it be? No—it had to be luck, coincidence . . .

Didn’t it?

Ross called again. This time it was faint.

Octavia ran after them.

N
O SOONER HAD STARK CALLED
time than Carl’s first opponent was across the “ring”—they sparred outdoors, in a cinder-packed square at the center of Camp Phoenix Force—and Carl was tasting blood.

Stark had only just introduced him to the members of Phoenix Force that were on the island when he announced an impromptu boxing exercise, a round-robin sparring session with Carl facing a fresh opponent at each turn.

Carl covered, slipped to the side, and retreated to the center of the ring—then dipped away as the Phoenix Forcer blurred past, swinging wildly.

The guy was sloppy but fast.
Crazy
fast. And not just his hands. His whole body.

So was the next guy. And the girl who followed. All of them were fast and strong and aggressive, gunning for Carl as soon as Stark called time.

Their speed messed up his rhythm and ruined his sense of the gap, that space between an opponent and yourself, which Carl had learned to control by watching Philadelphia legend Bernard Hopkins. Somebody wanted to fight at a distance, you stuck on his chest. He wanted to in-fight, you stayed an inch outside his range and played gatekeeper.

Those first three rounds, Carl couldn’t even gauge the gap, let alone control it. He ducked a lot and kept his hands high.

Then he adjusted. The others were fast, but once his mind and body synced, he realized he was, too. He found his old rhythm, only everything
had sped up a beat. His body had been ready. He just hadn’t recognized it.

After that, he had let them know, dropping them, one after the other, some with headshots but mostly digging to the body.

And they’d loved him for it.

Now he sat in the front row of a Phoenix Force classroom, the sweaty platoon gathered around him, talking over one another, vying for his attention.

The light swelling under his eye, combined with the swelling in his upper lip, made him feel like he had a goofy grin pasted to his face. He took another drink of water from the canteen, loving that buzzy, empty-headed feeling he always got after sparring hard. Back home, boxing had helped him put his troubles in perspective, and here it was, helping again. So what if Stark was the Old Man? That didn’t necessarily mean the journal was true. After all, these troopers weren’t exactly bloodthirsty savages. They were treating him like a celebrity, the undisputed, undefeated, pound-for-pound champ of the world.

“I caught you with that hook,” Cheng said, leaning in from behind him. She’d been his fifth opponent. She looked Asian and sounded English. “Lucky for you I didn’t land the right cross as well.”