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And by the time the drone said, “Six,” I was placing my bloody, bare feet back on my well-worn cliff trail.
“Five.”
I ran down the path so quickly that I slipped and fell on my arse, sliding the last few meters down to the capstone.
“Three.”
I didn’t know what to do. I’d been so focused on getting back to the cave that I hadn’t thought about the fact that the drone could simply follow me in.
Then, I glanced out at the open sea and heard a familiar voice whisper the same word that had saved me the night before.
“Jump.”
Clinging to the straps cinched tightly over my shoulders, I took a deep breath and a running leap as the drone robotically announced my last second on earth.
I dived in headfirst, blowing all the air out of my lungs as the weight from the pack propelled me toward the bottom. The thwip-thwip-thwip of bullets piercing the surface pushed me to kick faster, swim harder. Once my ears began to ache from the depth, I turned and swam back toward the hidden inlet that cut into the side of the cliff. It was infinitely harder to do with a sack full of dead weight on my back, and between the extreme cold of the water and the sting of the salt in my abrasions, I felt as though I’d been beaten with a hammer and skinned alive. Pain consumed me as I forced my bruised, contracted muscles to keep moving, as I struggled to hold my breath long enough to make it to the end of the narrow channel. But I did. And when I finally broke the surface and sucked in a lungful of damp cave air, the sound of machine-gun fire had stopped.
I should have been relieved—proud even—but as I pulled myself out of the freezing cold sea for the third time in less than twenty-four hours, all I felt was the absolute mortification of failure and a seeping, oozing, smothering sense of dread. I’d accomplished nothing by leaving the cave, other than almost getting myself killed—again; letting the Russians know that there was a survivor on the peninsula; scraping, cutting, and/or bruising most of my body; losing my only means of self-defense; and soaking the last of my earthly possessions in seawater.
Actually, I had accomplished one thing: I’d learned that escape was not an option. I was stuck in that cave, with that monster, indefinitely.
And the sooner he died, the better.
CHAPTER 10
CLOVER
Ididn’t look at my new roommate when I got out of the water. I didn’t trust myself to. Instead, I stayed on my side of the inlet, hidden behind the family of boulders, as I removed the contents of my bag and laid them out to dry.
I must have assumed the otherworld would have plenty to eat and drink when I was a kid because the supplies I’d squirreled away in the event that I ever escaped from this reality were embarrassingly inadequate.
Three bottles of water.
One bottle of whiskey that I’d stolen from my da.
An out-of-date pack of vanilla custard creams.
A handful of smooshed granola bars, also out of date.
Some sopping wet child-sized clothes that I’d taken from the lost and found in primary school.
A previously framed picture of my mother that Da had broken and thrown in the bin after she died.
Three cigars and a pack of matches.
And four books, all sealed in plastic zip-top bags.
I couldn’t survive on books and stale biscuits for long.
My heavy heart plummeted deeper into the black hole of failure that was now eating me from the inside out.
But then I pictured the little girl who’d packed that bag, and I felt even worse. She wasn’t a failure. She was resourceful. She was hopeful. And because of her, I still had a chance. What would that girl have done in this situation?
Besides hallucinate an imaginary friend? Already did that.
A clap of thunder rattled the cave walls, just before the sky went dark and the sound of raindrops drumming against the metal wreckage outside drowned out my negative thoughts.
My prayer for rain had finally been answered. A day late, but right on time.
