Page 83 of Blue Arrow Island
“Why?”
“To deal with Vance.”
“What are you going to do?”
He puts his hands on his hips. “You can come see, if you’ve got the stomach for it.”
My single note of laughter is bitter. “That won’t be a problem.”
He opens the door and I follow him into the hallway. Vance looks between us.
“Hey, I’m willing to let this go. It was a misunderstanding.”
Marcus ignores him, looking at Nova instead. “Tell teams two and three to meet us at the oak tree. Bring shovels.”
“No!” The color drains from Vance’s face. “You can’t. Marcus?—”
“Shut the fuck up,” Marcus says.
The door of another room opens nearby, someone peeking into the hallway.
“Close it and lock it,” Nova orders.
The door is instantly closed. Niran and Nova each stand on one side of Vance, who’s still yelling about me trying to escape. He refuses to move, so they pick him up.
We leave the tunnel, Marcus in the lead, Nova, Vance and Niran next and me last. Ellison comes up to me, a medical bag in hand. She’s wearing a long white nightshirt, pants and work boots, her long hair braided.
“I’m not going with you,” I say. “I’m going with them.”
She looks me up and down. “You’re okay?”
I nod, and she falls into step beside me.
The camp is engulfed in inky darkness, the only glow coming from a few lights mounted on tall posts. We walk past the Hub, an outdoor housing block, and two other buildings, and then we’re walking on ground that’s been cleared but doesn’t have anything built on it. After about ten minutes, we reach a big, old oak tree.
There are about a dozen people here already, some of them holding bright flashlights like the one Nova had. This reminds me of the circle at Rising Tide, spectators gathering to watch something big go down.
“Don’t do this!” Vance yells. “I didn’t do anything wrong!”
When the people gathered see Marcus, they group up in a semi-circle around him. Some of them look like they got out of bed to come here.
Marcus gestures to the ground on his right side and says, “Start digging.”
My chin drops and I look over at Ellison. She presses her lips together and takes my hand in hers.
Vance is frantic now, his eyes wide. “No! You guys know me! He’s setting me up!”
“Anybody bring a stick?” Nova calls out.
Someone brings her one of the long metal poles I first saw when Pax and I encountered the group of Dust Walkers at the waterfall. At its tip, it has a bundle of wires that crackle and buzz with electricity.
Vance shuts up immediately, switching to crying softly instead.
Ellison and I look on, stoic as Marcus and five other men quickly dig. Marcus’s bare feet are muddy, but he doesn’t seem to notice. His muscles cord as he buries a shovel in the soil and hauls a shovelful of dirt into a pile.
Other people jump in to dig, too, and it takes them about twenty minutes to complete a hole that comes up to Marcus’s shoulders. He digs a foothold into one side of the hole, steps into it and reaches up, two large men each taking a hand to help pull him out of the hole.
He’s breathing hard, sweat pouring down his face as he looks at Vance and says, “Get in.”
