Chapter Five: The Path to Fear
Sawyer gritted his teeth, trying not to stumble over the uneven ground. His shoulder hurt like a bitch, and it was making it hard for him to concentrate on where he was going. Freckles kept plunging ahead, acting like she knew where she was going. He was having a hard time keeping up, but damned if he was going to say anything. He'd go with her as far as the caves, stock up on water and find a weapon, then he was going to find the kid.
And he was going to take pleasure in finding the bastards who'd done this to him and making them pay.
He looked up as Kate shrugged out of her pack and dropped it on the ground, reaching up to rub her shoulders. "Let's take a break," she said.
"Run out of steam?"
"I thought we could use something to eat." She pointed upward, and he saw some kind of fruit hanging from the branches of the tree she'd stopped beneath.
Admitting—to himself—that he was hungry, he sank down to the ground and leaned back against a tree. The rough bark scratched his back, but he ignored it. He sighed deeply, enjoying a bird's-eye view of Kate's ass as she began climbing the tree. If he wasn't so damn tired, he'd make some smart-ass comment, try to get some of her righteous anger brewing. It'd be a lot more fun arguing with her than just trudging aimlessly through the jungle.
He figured they'd been hiking for three, maybe four hours now, though it seemed like a hell of a lot longer. They'd conserved their water, not knowing when they'd find more, but still they were down to about half a bottle between the three of them. It didn't help that he and Jin had both swallowed several mouthfuls of salty sea water last night.
Kate had made it about ten or fifteen feet up in the tree and was bracing herself against a thick branch, reaching out and snagging pieces of fruit from further out. She stuck each piece in her bag, stopping when she had about a dozen.
He watched as she leaned back against the tree trunk and wiped sweat off her brow. She looked down at them, then climbed halfway back down and dangled her pack. "Here," she said. "Take it."
Jin hurried over and took the pack, and they watched as Kate began climbing...back up the tree.
"The hell you doin', Freckles?" he called out.
"I'm going to see if I can see anything!" she shouted, sticking close to the heavy trunk and reaching up for higher branches to boost herself up.
"So you're admittin' we're lost?"
"We were lost to begin with," he thought he heard her say.
"That's just great," he muttered, and though there was no way she could have heard him, she shouted back, "I didn't hear you suggesting any other way to go."
Huffing out a breath, amused against his will, he watched as she climbed higher. The branches swayed under her weight, a few leaves floating to the ground, but she didn't stop. He held his breath as she nearly disappeared in the leaves. He caught occasional glimpses of her as the upper branches shook. It was a fairly tall tree, the branches less stable the higher she went. His heart thudded dully, picturing her falling and breaking her neck.
He held his breath, his pain momentarily forgotten as he watched her edge out away from the tree's trunk. Her feet slid along one branch as she held onto one above her with both hands. She made it to the middle of the branch and stopped. The branches swayed precariously.
She took one hand off the branch she was holding onto and pushed a couple higher branches out of the way. She strained to see above them, and to his disbelief, she began lightly bouncing on the branch, boosting herself up, then down, then up again.
"You're gonna get yourself killed!" he shouted up at her.
"I think I see something!"
Adjusting her single-handed grip on the upper branch, she bounced again, boosting herself higher than before.
Then he heard the crack.
Kate froze. The branch she was holding onto—the one keeping her upright—had just cracked. Not all the way through, but she was afraid that if she moved an inch she'd plummet to the ground. And as far up as she'd gone, the results wouldn't be pretty.
She glanced up. The crack was halfway down the branch, three-quarters of the way through the thickness. It wouldn't take much to snap it. She heard Sawyer and Jin shouting something at her, but she ignored them. She took a deep breath. If she slowly edged along the branch, she'd be able to grab the piece still securely attached to the tree. She could do this. She'd climbed hundreds of trees before. This was no big deal, she kept repeating. No big deal.
She moved her feet an inch, not daring to put her other hand back on the branch for balance. One inch, then another. The branches shook and swayed as she fought to keep her balance and put as little strain on them as possible. She only had about two feet to go. Just two more feet and she'd be able to climb down safely.
She moved again, and the branch snapped.
She screamed as she fell, reaching out and grabbing the branch she'd been standing on purely by instinct. She caught hold of it with one hand, swinging back and forth before reaching up and catching it with her other hand. After a seemingly endless moment, she stopped swinging and was still.
Squeezing her eyes shut and taking a deep breath, she released her grip with one hand and swung herself forward, toward the trunk. The branch dipped lower, bending but not yet breaking. "Come on," she murmured under her breath. "Come on, come on." Her feet swung back and forth beneath her, searching for another branch to stand on, but she couldn't find one.
She swung one arm in front of the other, then stopped, waiting for her body to stop swinging and the branch to stop shaking. It was just like the monkey bars, she told herself. All she had to do was swing one, maybe two more times, and she'd be able to reach the trunk. She'd be safe.
Taking a deep breath, she leaned back, then swung forward as hard as she could, reaching out and catching the trunk. She grabbed it with both arms and held on for dear life as the branch she'd been hanging from broke off and fell away.
For several long moments she clung to the tree, her eyes closed, her breathing heavy and erratic. Only after she felt a little more under control did she look down to find a foothold below her. With shaking limbs she climbed down, finally dropping down to the ground and sinking back against the trunk. She leaned her head back with a sigh and closed her eyes again.
"That was the stupidest damn thing I've ever seen," Sawyer grumbled.
"I'm fine," she said.
"Dumb luck."
She cracked her eyes open and looked over at him. "Is that your way of saying you were worried about me?"
Not waiting for him to answer—or maybe she was just afraid of what his answer would be—she reached for her pack and pulled out a piece of fruit. She wasn't even sure what it was, but it was something to eat, and that's all she cared about. "There's a break in the canopy a couple miles that way," she said, pointing. "I think it might be the caves."
"So if the caves are that way, which way is it to this dark territory you been talking about?"
She shook her head. "We need to go to the caves first."
He glared at her. "You ain't even gonna tell me which direction it is?"
"I'm not an idiot. As soon as I tell you where it is, you're going to run off and get yourself killed."
"And why do you care about that?"
She met his gaze, unable for several moments to tear her eyes away. She wasn't about to answer him, even if she had an answer to give. There were all kinds of power, and she wasn't going to let him have that emotional power over her. It would give him too much of an advantage. Finally she looked away, tossing the remains of her fruit into a large bush and standing up to stretch. She kept herself in good shape—it had been a necessity at times to literally outrun the authorities—but the combination of running through the jungle, her fall down the hill, and now the stress of climbing and nearly falling out of the tree were taking their toll on her. She was right at the edge of her limits, and didn't know how much further she could go.
But she wasn't about to tell anyone. Not only did they need to get back to the caves for water, and to see if Jack had left behind any antibiotics that could help Sawyer, but she was also determined to reunite Jin with Sun. She knew from conversations with Sun that she truly loved her husband, and that his leaving on the raft had torn her apart. And now, she must be scared to death, Kate thought, to have no idea what was happening to him. To have no way of knowing if he was still safely on the raft, or if something had gone wrong.
She looked over at Jin as he scrubbed his hands over his face, and she vowed to herself that she would do whatever it took to bring them back together. She might not have admitted it to Jack, but the thought of an open spot on the raft had occurred to her when she suggested that Sun put the poison in Jin's water. Of course it had. But her motives hadn't been completely selfish. She'd seen the love in Sun's eyes and had been compelled to try and help her. But it had backfired, leading to her blowup with Jack and her rash decision to go off on her own.
Of course, she thought, her rash decision had also inadvertently led her to Sawyer, Jin, and Michael.
She reached out a hand to help Sawyer back up, but he waved it away and grumbled under his breath as he got to his feet on his own. She tried not to think about how much his shoulder must be hurting. She wished she knew something about plants, something about herbal remedies that might help him. Sun would know, if they could manage to find her.
She wasn't going to think about why she was so concerned about how Sawyer was feeling. That would just open a door she wasn't ready to go through.
As they started off, each of them taking a swig from the water bottle, it came to her again. That feeling of being watched, the uncomfortable sensation of hidden eyes crawling over her skin. As casually as she could she looked around, scanning the jungle for any sign of another person watching them. She didn't see anything, but the feeling persisted. Just an animal, she told herself. It was just some animal hiding in the brush, watching them pass. The Others weren't out there, waiting for the best moment to strike.
She rested her hand on the butt of her gun, just for reassurance.
Apparently Sawyer noticed her action. "What's going on?" he asked quietly.
She shook her head. "Nothing."
"Don't lie to me, Freckles."
She glanced back at him. "It just felt like someone was watching us, is all."
She felt more than noticed him glance from side to side. And it could have been her imagination, but she thought he might have taken a step closer to her. "I don't see anything."
"You can think I'm paranoid if you want," she said in a hushed voice, hurrying along the narrow path. If someone or something was out there, she wasn't eager to have a confrontation here, when they were boxed in by vegetation on either side. She wanted open space, a direction to run if they had to.
A gust of wind swept through the jungle, and Kate looked up through a break in the canopy to see that in the short time since she'd climbed out of the tree, clouds had rolled in across the sky. Another storm was coming. She remembered what Arzt had said, that they were nearing monsoon season. She wondered how long it would last, how bad the storms would get. The rain here already tended to come down heavily; she couldn't imagine how much worse it could be. Would the rains come heavier, the winds faster? If she made it back to the beach, would she find the camp washed out by the tides?
She shook her head, telling herself not to borrow trouble. She had enough of it already.
She shivered in spite of herself. The day had started out warm, edging toward hot, but the wind was bringing a chill into the jungle's interior. Something told her that this storm was going to be a bad one. She wondered if they'd be able to keep moving through it, or if they'd have to take shelter until it passed. She hoped for everyone's sakes that they could keep moving, while another part of her knew that if they didn't take a break, get some rest for a few hours, they'd burn out and be physically unable to continue.
She looked up at the sky again, squinting as the rains came suddenly. She wiped a hand across her face and quickened her steps even more as the brush thinned out. They were almost there. She'd been right. Those quick glimpses she'd gotten while up in the tree had been the caves. Her heart sped up, but she didn't celebrate yet. They may have reached the shelter of the caves, but what worried her was the sense of abandonment hanging in the air.
A shiver crawled up her spine, raising the fine hairs on the back of her neck. She glanced back at Sawyer, who was staring ahead as the outer walls of the caves revealed themselves. There were tight lines around his mouth, from fighting the pain in his arm, she assumed. He wasn't paying attention to her. She turned forward again, moving the gun from the back of her waistband to the front, within easy reach. They left the cover of the trees and came around the side of the rock into the mostly-open mouth of the caves.
"What the...?"
