Forbidden Island by Jeremy Robinson

Author:Jeremy Robinson [Robinson, Jeremy]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Breakneck Media
Published: 2017-12-02T07:00:00+00:00

23

Rowan had retreated several times during his career as an Army Ranger, but each time the move had been strategic and well thought out, never once motivated by fear. But now, as he charged down the beach, wishing the shifting sand beneath his feet was pavement, he felt and comprehended little more than an all-consuming primal terror. He remembered this feeling from childhood, walking home from a friend’s house at night, leaves blowing in the wind, his imagination chasing him, breathless, all the way home. But now, it wasn’t his imagination looming behind him, and the leaves were a very real monster: a man turned thing, dead four times over and still moving.

The further he got from the Sentinelese man, the more his senses returned. He glanced back, saw Sashi and Talia on his heels, and the dead man slumped back in the sand, twitching but not chasing.

Fear subsided, giving way to training.

You’re in the open, he told himself, find cover.

On North Sentinel Island, finding cover meant one thing: the jungle. The plan had been to avoid the jungle at all costs. The people living on the island would know the terrain, where every path led, and every hiding place. Their only chance was to think unconventionally. For a Sentinelese, who had no contact with the outside world, and zero military training, thinking like a soldier might be the kind of unconventional thing they needed to survive. He hoped so, because it was the best he could manage.

He wished there was another option, but since Winston pulled that trigger, their path had been set. The beach might even the playing field, but if the Sentinelese swarmed their position, and were as hard to kill as the freak show behind him, they’d be overwhelmed in seconds. And there was nowhere to hide on the beach.

A break in the foliage revealed a path that moved alongside the beach before bending away into the jungle. From the water, the path would be invisible.

Rowan stopped short of the path. Shoved a thick, leaf-laden branch up and said, “Here.”

Talia slipped into the dense jungle without a word. She looked spooked, but like Rowan, she was guided by instincts that would help keep them alive. Sashi stopped, uncertain. She pointed at the path. “But there’s a—”

“That’s where they will be coming from,” Rowan said, and he felt relieved when Sashi’s protests ended there. For her to survive what little remained of the night, the following day, and perhaps a second night, she would have to do exactly what he said and when he said it, all without making a sound. It was a tall order for someone not trained in the grueling art of behind-enemy-lines survival, but Sashi wasn’t a fool.

Not like Winston.

He’d all but doomed them the moment he pulled that trigger. The scream was loud, but it wouldn’t have carried the same distance, and Rowan had been a half second away from using the hatchet to end things silently. If anyone died on this island, it was on Winston’s head.

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