Page 28 of The Quiet
A camouflaged figure stood over her as she lay prostrate on the beach. She turned her scalp into the sand as she caught a glimpse of a jungle hovering behind the white bank. The woods were rife with nooses that hung like ornaments through the trees.
Ella eased onto her elbows as the gun drew back, as if her oppressor were giving an invitation to see the world waiting for her. A fortified stone wall circled the camp and extended into the water with metal grates, designed to funnel trespassers toward the shore.
Two more soldiers waited behind her higher up on the steep bank, rifles in hand. “Welcome to the other side,” one of them said and Ella was surprised to hear that she wasn’t facing foreigners. These were Imperiamen. “You should have listened to the ghost stories.”
Ella noticed Kay’s bag lying nearby. The contents had been tossed and scattered out. In his planned and meticulous ways, Kay had wrapped each item in plastic to protect against the water. Her sight traveled beyond it as she saw them dragging Kay to a scaffolding before looping a noose around his neck.
She made eye contact with him and saw his fears, Kay rolling his wrists against ropes that bound his hands in front of him. There was another gunman standing by as one pulled on a crank that began tightening Kay’s rope over a tree branch high above him.
The gap between her heartbeats extended with the infusion of adrenalin. The world melted into long pauses as she prepared to move at the risk of her life. She felt her thoughts dissolve, leaning into her senses and years of training she trusted. She knew where to strike, her body called to the places on instinct.
Something stopped her. Through the window between his legs the sea stirred behind her opponent. It swirled and twisted against the urging of the waves. Like a sea monster laden in moss and vines, the ROSE lifted from the ocean.
The water filtered out of the grates in his mask as one step after another brought him closer to the beach. The steadiness with which he emerged from the waves was hypnotic, Ella feeling the trance of his movements.
A gun fired behind her and the first shot ricocheted off the mask and left a small gray arrow marked on the edge.
The man in front of her turned and Ella grabbed his ankles and used her legs to flip him back into the water, propelling herself on top of him as she wrestled his gun away.
A swarm of bullets rained over her and splashed through the water. One burned through her right arm, forcing her to drop the gun as another silenced the man drowning under her.
She expected to feel another wave of bullets rain across her back, but a rusted dagger whistled overhead, Ella turning to see it plant in the gunman’s neck and send him tumbling down the bank.
Another man materialized on the ridge over the bank, but Ella was already there, yanking him down by the cuff of his pants before stealing his gun and crawling over him to mount the ridge. She raced toward Kay, hearing her opponent thrash behind her as the ROSE dragged him into the water.
She dodged behind a tree as gunfire pattered over the sand in front of her, before directing return fire that killed the gunman overseeing Kay’s execution. The corpse toppled back over the wall where he and the other soldier worked the crank to the gallows. The second soldier dropped into the woods for cover as Kay suffocated against the rope. Even if she managed to reach the wall, she knew she wouldn’t be able to climb it in time to free him.
Steeling herself, Ella darted from the trees and fired a shot at the rope, leaving her back exposed to another soldier coming toward her from the woods. He was yards away, Ella taking a cool breathand blocking him from her focus as she aimed with her left arm at the large, swinging rope. Kay struggled against suffocation.
She fired again, unsure of the result of her bullet before turning and shooting her attacker. The soldier who’d worked the crank was close behind, and she shot at him. The gun clicked emptily. He assaulted her with a knife, Ella rolling through the sand with the force. They hurtled back toward the bank as she blocked the blade jolting dangerously closer to her throat with each roll.
They struggled over the blade, the knife closing in quickly as his two hands pushed against her one. She bucked him forward with her hips and rolled him, using the momentum of the movement to redirect her grip and twist the blade away enough to delay a lethal blow.
She sunk her teeth hard into his forearm as he threw them over again, Ella knowing that if he made his way squarely on top of her again, she might not escape a second time. He rolled her but she kept the momentum going and tossed them off the ridge. They crashed down the bank and into the red water, bloodstained from the ROSE’s last conquest.
Ella sunk the knife into her attacker’s chest with a well timed roll, standing up out of the water with the ROSE facing the opposite direction beside her. She drew the knife out as she stood, prepared to plunge it again if the man survived the first sloppy blow.
She didn’t have time to check.
Another shot rang out, Ella looking over her shoulder and relieved to see Kay standing there, trembling with the cut noose still looped around his neck. His hands were bound but hewas holding the gun pulled from his pack. Ella saw where it was pointed and shouted before he pulled the trigger again. It clicked against the plastic covered magazine. Kay had forgotten to unwrap it from his waterproofed bag, already firing the bullet loaded in the chamber.
The ROSE moved from beside her, another rusted knife at the ready. Ella whipped around with her own blade, the ROSE catching her hand and Ella stumbling back as he re-directed his weapon. She barely dodged as it hooked her sleeve and sliced through.
Kay was scrambling to remove the wrapping from the magazine.
“Kay, stop!” Ella shouted. Her arm screamed in agony, but despite the damage she jumped on the ROSE’s back as he prepared to throw the blade at Kay again. She hooked her legs around him, adrenaline buffering the dizzying pain as it surged through her. She sank down and buckled his knees with a sharp kick, both of them falling into the bloodied water.
Ella was crippled under his weight, holding her breath under the water as he thrashed like an animal. She felt his strength in every push, losing hold before he slammed his knee into her stomach and propelled himself out of the waves. He yanked her up next, wrestling her against him with the rusted dagger at her throat.
They both faced Kay as she choked back the bloodied water.
Kay’s gun was at the ready now, a panic in his eyes as the three of them stood there in a tense silence.
“Kay,” Ella coughed, “put the gun down.”
“He’ll kill you,” Kay said, the gun barrel trembling.
“Breath,” she instructed. “Listen to me.”
