The Island

Harper moves down and stops on the same step as me. We’re three from the bottom. “Paisley,” Harper whispers. “Why haven’t they answered?”

Good question. Here’s another: why didn’t Reeve and I hear them walk past the security room when we were down here?

“Maybe they haven’t heard us calling,” I reply, trying to make us both feel a little less scared. Though it’s pretty clear they’re not here…or they’re dead.

If they’ve been murdered too, I swear I will leap over the edge of the cliff and swim off this island.

Ava and Camilla are silent behind me, but I hear their gentle footsteps. They’re afraid to make a noise. I let go of the rail on the wall as we reach the bottom of the staircase.

“Ready?” I ask Harper.

“Absolutely not, but let’s go.”

That’s exactly how I feel.

Breathing deeply, as if I can expel every ounce of anxiety with one breath, I step around the corner and prepare myself for the worst.

“Nothing,” I say, taking a sweep of the room.

Ava walks around the back of the large boiler. “Clear. That’s what you’re supposed to say, right?”

“If you’re a cop, sure,” Harper replies.

I crouch in front of the cut wires. They’re in the exact same condition as they were when Reeve and I found them. “Hmm.”

“What is it?” Harper asks.

“Probably nothing. Gibson and Reeve said they were going to try to repair these.”

She shrugs and kneels beside me. “They didn’t have enough new wire, though, did they?”

No, but they had some. Where is it? And why not try to remove the snipped ends?

If that’s even possible.

It can’t be if they didn’t even attempt to do it.

“There’s no one down here,” I say.

Harper crosses her heart. “Thank the lord.”

“So where did they go? Camilla, where can you get to from here? Besides back up to the lobby?”

She steps around the boiler where she was hiding behind Ava. “The door in the corner leads out to the back of the hotel and into the park.”

“Excellent. They could be anywhere by now.”

But why?

“They might have gone out and we just didn’t see them. They could be looking for wire outside the hotel,” Camilla says, clearing her throat. “The door to the staff quarters is closer to the main entrance and we were almost at the end of the lobby.”

“Maybe,” I reply. It’s possible.

“I bet they’re all in on it,” Ava replies. “It’ll be the four guys against us four girls. We’re as good as dead. We should grab weapons and take them out before they get us. There must be guns here somewhere.”

I turn to her and glare. “Can you be any more ridiculous? How about, unless you have something constructive or positive to say, you shut up.” I let out a breath. “And we could take them without weapons.”

Ava rolls her eyes and turns her back to the rest of us. I feel a little bad about snapping at her. Without James, she’s completely lost.

“Can we focus? What’re we going to do now?” Harper asks.

“I don’t know, but we need to get back upstairs before we make a plan,” I say. “The lights could go out again and we do not want to be down here if that happens.”

A shudder rolls down my spine, and Harper’s eyes widen.

The darkness was bad enough in the lobby.

Ava throws her arms up. “You have got to be kidding me. We should barricade ourselves in here. I don’t want to go back up there with…James. There was so much blood.”

“I would usually agree with the barricading thing, but I like the idea of the light going out down here even less. Way less. James was killed in the dark.” Harper said all that in about two seconds. Her eyes dart between me, Ava, and the door.

“Staying is too risky, Ava. There’s not a lot to block a door with and there are two of them down here,” I say.

“Fine. Whatever.”

I’ll take that as her being with us.

“Camilla, tell me you know somewhere that’s actually safe. Preferably somewhere that we can secure. Reeve said that some of the buildings outside have their own electrical circuits. Would one of those be safer?”

“Uh, maybe,” she replies. “I think it would be safer than the hotel. Fewer entrances. Just one, actually. We would be able to control who came in.”

“Where is this place?”

“The first-aid huts would be better. Bigger. There are three spread out over the park with roughly the same distance between them. The hope was to never have to use them.” She laughs. “The worst we thought would happen would be the odd person falling over or someone getting sick.”

“Where is the closest one?”

“Follow me,” she says, walking to the door in the corner of the room. Looking back over her shoulder, she takes a breath and opens the door.

I hear it before I see it. Rain pelts the ground like bullets.

Camilla pokes her head through a small gap. “It’s bad out there. I can barely see.”

“We have no choice,” I reply.

Harper grabs my hand. “Everyone hold on so we don’t get separated.”

Camilla goes first, me second, then Harper and Ava.

It takes all of five seconds before I’m soaked right through to the bone. Water hits my eyes, but I can’t see anyway so it doesn’t really matter.

Rain flashes in front of me, blurring everything past a few feet.

I’m not sure of the time but it appears as if the sun is setting. It’s dark, even for heavy rainfall. Trees lean sideways in the wind, leaves and small branches fly past us.

“What can you see?” Harper shouts from the back.

I turn my head, or I know she’ll never hear. “Not much!”

Camilla leads us onward. “We’re only minutes away,” she shouts, tugging us faster toward our destination.

Ava squeals from the back. “Are we really doing this? It’s suicide!”

I blink the water from my eyes as I try to use the silence to hear anyone coming. It’ll be hard with the sound of the rain bouncing off every surface, but we need both senses working together to stay safe.

Whoever this is, they have a sight advantage.

Camilla leads us past the cart where Will’s blood has been washed away by the water.

I’m just glad Will isn’t still there. The image of him falling out of that cart will haunt me for the rest of my life.

We pass a roller coaster, and I can only just see the bottom of the loops.

As we’re hurrying through the park, I hear a bang like metal striking metal over the sound of the pouring rain. I jump and squeeze Harper’s and Camilla’s hands.

“Did you hear that?” I shout.

“Don’t stop,” Camilla calls over her shoulder.

“I heard something!”

Ava pushes us forward. “Go!”

Camilla walks faster, tugging us along.

My eyes are everywhere, my heart leaping at the possibility of being watched. I heard a noise but no one else seems to have noticed or they just don’t care.

Through the thick rain, I look for any sign of another person. Robert. Thanks to the missing photo, I don’t know what he looks like, but if someone shows up who we don’t know, I think it’s a pretty safe bet that it’s him.

I’m not sure I actually want to find this person after what he did to Will and James, though.

Why wouldn’t death be his plan for the rest of us?

I can barely see anything through the storm, but thankfully, I can just about make out a little hut. It’s not something I really noticed here before. I couldn’t ride it, so it wasn’t important.

“We’re here!” Camilla shouts. She punches in a code on the pad and, with shaking hands, unlocks the door.

We bundle inside like a dam bursting and Camilla flicks on a light.

The room is quite small. There are a bench running along the end of the wall, a doctor’s bed in the middle of the room, and two chairs on either side of a small table. A cabinet in the corner is decorated with first-aid stickers and a map of the park.

“I heard a noise out there,” I say.

“The wind and rain were fierce. It could’ve been one of the gates slamming,” Camilla says as she presses a button on the thermostat. “It should warm up fast.”

I thought wind was to blame when I heard a noise while I snuck out last night.

“Don’t stress, Paisley. We’re safe in here now,” Harper says.

Ava sits down on the bench and wrings her hair out. Her teeth chatter as she says, “I’m s-so cold.”

I’m dripping and my jeans are stuck to my legs in the most awful way. It makes me want to rip them straight off my body. Wet jeans are the absolute worst.

“Here are some towels,” Camilla says, punching in a code to unlock the cabinet.

Rows of shelves are stacked high with medical equipment.

She hands each one of us a small towel wrapped in plastic.

“Thanks,” I say, ripping the bag open and rubbing the soft plush cotton over my face and arms.

Camilla picks up a radio on the top shelf and tunes in to the channel Reeve and Gibson use. “This is Camilla. Come in. Can you hear me? Hello?”

She lets go of the button and gives it a few seconds before trying again. “Come in. This is Camilla. I have Paisley, Ava, and Harper with me.”

Silence stretches out as far as the distance between us and the mainland.

Please pick up.

No one is answering.

A wave of nausea makes me dizzy.

No one is there.

If they’re dead, what chance do we have?

We might really be alone now.

The four of us and the killer.