Part Seventeen

Hurley put the gun away as soon as Jack's shadow disappeared from sight and made a solemn vow not to look at it again until they had all returned. He was scared that his gaze, even his proximity, would be enough to cause the gun to go off. The bullet would miss him entirely, of course, and put a hole in some unsuspecting bystander right when they had no doctor to plug it back up again.

"I told him that he shouldn't have given it to me," Hurley muttered as he removed the gun's clip like Jack had shown him. His hands were shaking so badly that he was surprised when all of the bullets didn't just explode then and there and get it over with. He put the clip into one end of his pack and the…what was the rest of the gun called?

"Definitely told him that he should not have given it to me," Hurley went on. He put the part-that-was-not-the-clip into the opposite end of the pack, as far away from the bullets as he could manage before deciding that even that was too close. Hurley pulled the clip out and put it into Steve's pack instead, reasoning that a good scare was better than a gunshot wound any day. He sighed and stood, swiping his hand across the prickle of cold sweat that had broken out across his forehead.

The latest shift of sentries came in and a new set went out with hardly a word needing to be spoken. They nodded to one another as they passed their torches and makeshift weapons from one set of hands to the other. More than a few nodded to Hurley, too. Even if it wasn't official, most of the people in the camp still thought of Jack as their leader. If he had passed that leadership onto Hurley when he left, then that was good enough for them.

Hurley could spend the rest of the night writing a treatise on why that was not one of Jack's better ideas, but the thought that if he stayed away from the gun, the knives, rocks, or anything else that had even the slightest suggestion of an edge he might be able to make it work. The way things were standing now, the camp hardly even needed a leader, anyway. The disappearance of so many people in so short a span of time had spurred everyone into a frenzy of action that they hadn't seen since the first days after the crash. Anyone who wasn't out on a shift as a sentry or eating and resting from their last shift of doing just that was making weapons as quickly as they could, raiding Locke's stash of knives and strapping them onto the ends of sticks to make spears. Once the knives were all taken, a few people dismantled a clutch of the new spears temporarily so that they could sharpen the sticks themselves, shoving the ends of each one briefly into the fire to harden them.

Hurley saw one man sifting through the scattered bits of fuselage that they had yet to find a use for until he found a piece of roughly the correct size and shape to become a crude ax. At the moment, his biggest problem was in finding a way to attach it to something without cutting his hands to pieces in the process. Hurley tilted his head to one side as the dude with the metal continued to struggle. If he wasn't careful, he was going to cut one of his fingers right off. Hurley got to his feet.

"Try, like, notching it or something," he said.

"What?" When the guy looked up, Hurley realized that he was the same one that Jack had treated for heat rash over a month before. Other than a lingering dusting of red on the sides of his neck, he had acquired a tan since then so deep as to render him nearly unrecognizable.

"Notching it," Hurley repeated. "Splitting the wood?" He took it from the guy long enough to show him what he meant. "So that you can slide the metal down into it and not cut up your hands." He paused and looked at the remnant of the fuselage for a moment. "Might want to find one of Locke's whetstones and see about getting it even sharper, too."

"Thanks." Rash Guy took the metal back, handling it gingerly. "How do you know that, anyway?"

"I'm a practical guy," Hurley deadpanned. "Also, Xena reruns. I was all about Gabrielle."

Rash Guy leaned back and stared Hurley in the face for a long time, as if he was trying to decide whether or not Hurley was joking and kept changing his mind from one second to the next. "I liked Callisto," he said at last, leaning back over his work.

"Aside from the crazy thing, who didn't?" Hurley rose back to his feet and looked around for something to do, someone to talk to. Everyone was busy with their own jobs, though, and most of the people that Hurley knew well where either missing or out on a mission to find the missing people and bring them back. Claire was talking to Tracy on the other end of the cave, but Hurley could not forget that Tracy was the one who had nominated the potential lunatic for public office. He steered towards the infirmary cave instead. If nothing else, he would make sure that there were enough bandages if Jack should come back with injured people. A soft glow in the doorway let him know that someone was already there.

It was Sun, tending to her plants just as Hurley had thought that she would be. Jin was also in there with her, which Hurley had to admit that he had not seen coming. Jin was sitting against the far wall on the pallet that Sawyer had vacated only hours before, his knees drawn up and his hands braced across the top of them. The look in his eyes as he watched Sun move was almost enough to make Hurley wish that he had walked in on them having sex; it probably would have been less intimate. Sun and Jin, not realizing yet that Hurley was also there, continued the soft conversation that they were having in Korean, the notes dropping like ripples across water in the otherwise perfect stillness.

"Hey, guys, sorry. I didn't realize that I was interrupting anything." Hurley flushed and stared tot duck back out again before Sun told him with a gesture that it was all right. He lifted his hand in greeting to Jin. "Yo."

Jin raised his hand back and answered in Korean. Sun had brought only a single torch into the cave with her, so that deep hollows were painted into all of their faces and the corners of the cave were completely given over to shadows. Jin and Sun already had the atmosphere and, before Hurley arrived, the intimacy. All that they had really lacked was a bottle of wine and a waiter hovering around in the background. Hurley became very aware of his presence as an intruder once more and began edging back towards the door. "You guys already look like you have something going here, so I think I'll just mosey. I was really only going to make up some more bandages."

Sun pointed towards an open suitcase that had already been shoved into one corner and piled high with unclaimed clothing torn into long strips. "I was restless earlier, also," she explained. Sun threw a glance towards the side entrance as a bird cried from somewhere deeper within the jungle.

"That transparent, huh?" Hurley grinned ruefully as he, too, glanced out into the darkness. There was a glow moving through the trees from a long ways off, but the sentries had begun taking torches out with them when it grew dark. "I know the two of you were looking for some alone time, but would you take your plants into the main cavern and look after them there?" Sun looked at him in confusion. "Call me crazy, but I really don't like how easy it would be for someone else to slip in here through that door." His voice, he noted, sounded much calmer than he actually felt. There was a sense of nervousness bordering on outright panic moving through him that he could not help but associate with the increasingly hysterical months leading up to his hospitalization, though he figured that if he could survive a plane crash and close to two months on an island that liked to eat people without cracking up again he could probably call himself cured.

"All right," Sun said slowly, her eyes never leaving his, as if she wanted to ask further questions but wasn't sure where to start. She began collecting her plants, though, and that was good enough.

Jin jumped to his feet with warning and spun towards the side entrance, firing off something in fast Korean. Sun's fingers tightened to the point of bloodlessness around the pot that she was carrying.

"What?" Hurley asked. "What is it?"

"He says that he smells a great deal of smoke," Sun said tightly. At the same moment, the glow that Hurley had seen among the trees moments before flared into something too bright to have possibly come from a single torch, so brilliant that it turned all of the trees into reaching, skeletal fingers and bleached the color away from everything else. A huge booming sound reverberated through the jungle, and the sentries in their various positions began to shout.

"Everyone get into the main cavern," Hurley ordered both Sun and Jin before he leaned out and called the same thing to the remaining sentries. "Now!" A breeze blew towards him from where the explosion had taken place and a fire was now growing in earnest. The wind was already hot enough to make his face hurt.

Sun started to race into the cavern, but Hurley grabbed quickly at her arm. "No, wait a minute. On second thought, help me with these things." He gestured towards the bandages and the pallet.

"We don't need these things." Sun had jumped and lost her grip on the pot when the explosion had happened, so that there were now pieces of gourd and clumps of dirt rolling about underfoot.

Hurley felt a tight, grim smile spreading across his face. Jesus, and he was the leader of all this. "We will before it's over," he said. He pointed towards the orange glow that was growing closer and stronger by the moment. "And even if we don't, I don't want anything flammable left in here."

Though Sun's eyes were wide, she took a deep breath and nodded, making a visible effort to calm down. She slammed the suitcase closed and struggled to lift it. Jin went to help her while Hurley rolled the pallet up and threw it over his shoulder. Every time that the wind blew towards the caves now, Hurley had to fight so as not to choke on the smell of smoke and ash.

The main cavern was pure chaos when they emerged into it and threw their supplies down in the center of the floor. Hurley held up his hands for, if not silence, then at least a softening of the roar, knowing as he did so that he had about as much chance of success as a kid who stood on the beach and tried to throw the ocean back with his bucket.

While he was trying this, three more sentries staggered in. Two of them Hurley knew by their faces alone; the third was Nina, the social worker. She had volunteered for a second round of sentry duty only an hour before. All three of them were sporting minor burns across their faces and hands and smelled of singed hair. Nina was carrying one of the spears that had been made from Locke's knives, and the blade was as dark with blood as her face was white with the absence of it.

"There are people out there," she told Hurley. "And they're not crazy about us."

"That was what I was afraid of," Hurley muttered to himself, too softly for anyone else to hear even if they had been listening. He held his hands up higher. "Okay!" When he got no response, Hurley drew every bit of air that he could manage into his lungs and bellowed, "HEY!"

It wasn't an immediate silence, but it would have to do. Every eye in the caves turned towards him, even those of little Aaron, who was working himself up to a full-blown wail and being frantically shushed by Claire. Hurley took a deep breath and said, "I need everyone to get all of their clothing, bedding, and anything else that they think might catch a spark away from the entrances and put it into the center of the cave." Hurley paused for a moment, thinking of the time in seventh grade when he had tried to give a speech in English and had wound up puking across his shoes.

"Who cares?" someone yelled from the back of the crowd. Hurley could not see the person's face, but the voice sounded young and scared. "We need to get down to the beach, where at least we won't be trapped."

Murmurs of agreement began to rise up from all quarters. Hurley could already feel himself losing them. He bunched his hands into fists and stood his ground, refusing to allow any emotion other than calm to show on his face. He might not have the Insta-Hero allure of Jack or the Pied Piper skills of Locke, but for some reason the title of leader had been passed on to him in their absence. That had to mean something.

Besides, Hurley reasoned, the universe had never been discriminating in dealing out his bad luck before. He figured that it was about time that it started touching on the bad guys as well as the good. As if the forces of karma wanted to assure him that they were on the same page, there was a boom and a series of several yells out in the jungle. Hurley took a quick glance around and saw that all of his people were right there.

"No," Hurley said. He refused to raise his voice above a normal speaking volume. If he had to do that, some part of him knew, then he had already lost them. "We moved up here because we can defend ourselves better from the caves than we can from the beaches. Who wants to lay money that the Others are out there thinking the exact same thing right now?"

"Hurley, they've set the jungle on fire," Claire said. Her skin had gone so pale that she seemed to float rather than to walk up to the front of the crowd, a ghost instead of a woman. She had passed Aaron off into someone else's arms for the moment, and without him her hands were clenching and unclenching themselves into restless fists at her sides.

"Yeah, to drive us right off of a cliff." They were listening to him. Hurley felt a brief surge of triumph. "We're in a fortress made of stone," he said. "It's not going to burn easily." So maybe he wasn't the kind of leader who showed up in action movies or…any other kind of movie, ever, but he did all right.

A bullet flew through one of the cave entrances, striking Rash Guy in the throat and taking him down without a sound. Hurley decided that he had pissed off the universe so thoroughly at some point that it was going to make him continue to pay for this sin for the rest of his life. They only reason that its malice never affected him directly was because the universe was one of the spiteful, heinous jocks that he had known in high school and wanted to draw the process out as much as possible.

Finding out that the cosmos was a lot like the years that he had hated more than any other in his life was not one of the most pleasant revelations that he could have had at the moment. Hurley pressed his lips together until his jaw ached. "New plan," he announced, breaking his own rule and raising his voice just a little. "Everyone out of the caves, but no one goes back to the beach. They're trying to panic us. Fine. I am really not going to have any trouble faking that part. We haven't been making weapons for nothing, though, and I want to fight."

Hurley did not think that he had ever been looked at before like everyone was looking at him now. They began to disperse in small groups, everyone that could fight gathering homemade weapons in their hands and throwing their shoulders back in something that was either determination or the rigidity of pure fear. Hurley thought that a good argument could be made for both. He took several deep breaths until some of the fear slid out of him, or at least went to a place where he could control it.

Jin rushed past him, already holding one of their makeshift spears in his hand. "Hey, man, wait!" Jin drifted to a stop, wearing a confused expression. He threw his arm out to indicate the side entrance before he answered. "Yeah, I know. Hang on." He led Jin over to his bad and Steve's, where the gun still rested in its two separate pieces. "I want you to take this." Jin's eyes widened when Hurley tried to push the pieces into his hand. He shook his head and tried to step back, his expression becoming a little sick.

"Trust me, man," Hurley said, pushing the gun into Jin's hands again. "Very bad things will happen if I use this."

Jin said something else, his expression becoming dark for a moment, and then finally took the gun from Hurley's hands. After a moment of experimentation, he slid the clip into place with a soft click and turned the safety off. He looked past Hurley to where Sun was setting the last of the clothing into the pile in the center of the cave. She was not looking at her husband, did not see the gun in his hands. Jin nodded to Hurley and slid out of the cave.

Hurley and Sun were the only two left. Hurley paused and muttered a quick prayer to himself before he knelt to draw Rash Guy's eyes closed. He picked up the axe that Rash Guy had been making earlier and shifted it in his hands until it felt comfortable, if not precisely natural. "Are you ready?" he asked Sun.

She nodded and looked around for a moment before she picked up one of the final spears. Its end was still black with soot from being forced into the fire. Sun looked even stranger holding the spear than Hurley felt with the axe. Terrified though she looked, her hands were not shaking. They both flinched as they heard bullets thudding against the exterior wall of the cave.

"We are running out of time," Sun said. Hurley took her free hand and tugged her outside.

The jungle was always an eerie place to be at night, the bright green of the ferns and the trees transformed into inky shadows that seemed to stretch and reach for the unwary. The rich hothouse smell of things growing and things dying was thicker in the dark, when there were no day breezes to come in from the sea and bring with them the cleansing scent of salt.

Smoke obliterated even the faintest remaining traces of the ocean now, and the fire turned everything into flashes of red and yellow. By breathing very deeply, Hurley thought that he could smell rain on the horizon, but in the end he could not tell if it was real or only wishful thinking. The shadows crawling out of the furnace were very much real, though, and Hurley knew at a look that they were not his people. None of his people moved like that, like sleek animals trapped in human form by mistake rather than by intention of nature. Light flashed off the barrels of guns.

Hurley put his hand into the small of Sun's back and pushed her forward ahead of him, both of them bent over nearly double in an effort to avoid the bullets pinging off the rocks above them. The torches that they had set out in front of the caves now didn't seem like such a great idea.

A shape rose out from the darkness. Before Hurley recognized who it was, he had come very close to putting the blade of his new weapon into Jin's throat. Only Sun's cry of joy and greeting stopped his hand before he did something irreversible and terrible. Jin said something, and Sun translated, "He says that everyone is already scattered through the woods."

A bullet whined inches above their heads, striking the rock behind them and spraying both Sun and Hurley with shrapnel. They all ducked, and Hurley swore. Jin raised his arm and fired back as the three of them dove into the trees.

Hurley shifted his grip on the axe, feeling it slide around in the sweat that soaked his palms, and swung it at the first thing that came at him.

The blade never came entirely clean.

--

Claire wanted to say that she had never been this frightened before in her life, that every moment where she was able to keep herself moving and away from the edge of panic was a victory. She also wanted to say that this was silly, that of course she had been more terrified than this before. She had survived a plane crash and a kidnapping by the very same people that were chasing her through the jungle and trying to kill them all now, she had to have been more scared than this before. She had to have been.

But she still could not remember for sure, and so far as Claire was concerned there was nothing in the world that could be more frightening than that single fact.

She ran through the trees as fast as she was able with Aaron clutched to her chest, Nina flanking her on one side and Steve on the other. They were both carrying weapons. Had Claire had the time to grab the sling that Charlie had made for her before they had to flee, she also would be carrying one. The very thought of someone taking Aaron from her, hurting him, filled her with anger of an intensity that she had ever felt before. Not that she could remember, and that took her straight back to her original question.

'I've done this before,' Claire thought as something that was not quite memory, but wanted to be, ran across the surface of her mind. 'I know this.' Aaron was screaming in fear loudly enough to wake the dead, something that Claire was less willing to rule out as a possibility by the second, his tiny face scrunched and red. Claire made only infrequent and half-hearted attempts to soothe him as she followed Nina through the trees. Her temples felt as if they were being seized in a vice, while a black buzzing noise was growing louder by the second in her head. The onset of another one of her headaches, and Claire did not think that she could have picked a worse time if she had sat down and tried. She had never told Jack about the migraines that had begun to strike her with greater and greater frequency since Aaron had been born, thinking that he would only medicate them away, when every time that one stuck her she came that much closer to getting two weeks of her life back.

A bolt of pain spiraled through Claire's head, doubling her over and making her cry out. Only a split-second tightening of her arms kept her from dropping Aaron. Sensing either the near-miss, her distress, or both, he screamed that much louder.

"This isn't the right one," Ethan says, though Claire is barely even listening to him. Her stomach clenches in another spasm that she prays is not a labor pain, and Charlie, Charlie, where is Charlie?

"Then find it and get rid of it." She smells ozone and rain, something almost like the smell of freshly turned earth and growing things, and when Claire lifts her face it was to stare into eyes every bit as green as the jungle itself. "Before they replace the girl."

She shrieks, jerks backwards, and drags her hands down Ethan's face when he tries to reach for her. The small of earth dissipates as Claire spins away and dashes off through the jungle for all that she's worth.

"Is there any way to make him be quiet?" Steve asked urgently. Claire came back to herself, clutching her free hand to her temples as the pain threatened to drive her to her knees. While she had drifted to a stop, the fire was eating up the jungle at a speed that almost seemed to defy nature, coming close enough to make her skin hurt. She shifted Aaron in her arms until he was in a more comfortable position, but he did not stop crying.

"Babies don't usually work like that." Nina paused and looked over her shoulder at Claire. The most colorful things on her face were her burns, but her hands were not shaking and her voice was steady. "You're going to have to move faster than that, dear."

"Okay." Claire rubbed at her temples one final time as the pain withdrew a little farther, so that the world was at the very least no longer spinning around as if it had been tipped into a blender. Almost a memory, but not quite, and every time a new headache hit she hated it as much as she realized that she needed it. Claire found a certain satisfaction in watching the green jungle burn, though, and could not say why.

A bullet whined through the trees, catching Steve in the thigh with a spurt of blood and a terrible noise as the flesh gave way. He yelled and dropped to the ground as Claire screamed and Nina gasped. Nina dropped her spear and rushed to Steve's side, putting her hands over the wound and pushing down hard. Even so, her fingers and Steve's leg were soaked within seconds.

"Fuck, fuck, fuck," Nina moaned. Steve had his lower lip drawn between his teeth and was biting down hard, so hard that he was going to draw even more blood that he could not afford to lose if he was not careful. Though he had yet to make another sound, his face was white with pain. "I don't think that it hit an artery, but I can't tell." She looked up at Claire. "Take Steve's spear and get to Hurley. He'll keep you safe."

Nina cast a dubious look around at the flames and the jungle as she finished speaking, and Claire knew that she was wondering who would keep her and Steve safe. Claire was wondering the same thing, herself. Their shooter had still not shown himself. "Will you be all right?" she asked, taking Steve's spear as Hurley offered it to her. Holding it and Aaron at the same time was awkward, and Claire was terrified that she was going to drop either one or both of them.

Nina shook her head and began cutting up long strips from both hers and Steve's shirts so that she could wind them around his leg. "Don't know."

Another bullet flew by, striking a tree trunk only a few feet away and sending shrapnel flying out in every direction. All three of them ducked. Wincing, Steve sat up so that he could help Nina tie off his leg. "Honey, you had better shag ass if you're going to."

Claire nodded even though she hated it and spun around. She took off through the jungle as fast as she was able with lungs that were getting as much smoke as they were good air, unable to shake the feeling that she had done this before. But Ethan had not carried a gun. Claire did not know how she remembered that, and but she did, and she knew that it could not be a good thing if she was being pursued by an entirely new and fun group of people who did.

Well, Claire thought in a blend of fog and clarity that could only come from being balanced on the edge of terror, as much as being chased by people with guns could ever be said to be a good thing. She wondered how she was possibly supposed to find Hurley in this chaos, how she was supposed to tell the castaways from their enemies, and how Aaron's screaming wasn't drawing every single one of the bad guys straight towards them.

The last question was answered when a man that Claire had never seen before leaped out of the shadows and the flames as if they had birthed him. Even if there were a few among their group whose names that Claire did not know or that the memories of meeting had been stolen from her, she never would have mistaken that man for one of theirs. Ethan had moved like some unholy blend of cat and insect when he tried to take her back, that much she could remember, and this man did the same…but something was still off. Something was not right.

Shannon had struck up a conversation with Claire in the few terrible hours in which Aaron had been missing, trying in her own blunt and often inexperienced way to distract Claire and make her feel better. One of the topics that Shannon had tried before recognizing it as a bad job and giving up was that of how to tell the designer item from the knockoff. It was in the stitching, Shannon had explained, the fine details. The eye had to be trained before it could tell the quality from the trash.

Yes, Claire thought as she jumped backwards and could not halt her one small scream. It was like that. She had spent more time than anyone else on the island in Ethan's company. Even if she could not remember great chunks of it, there was an impression of Ethan that would always be driven into her subconscious, tattooed so deeply that it had become instinct. This man was not like Ethan; he imitated him, but could not stick the details. If Shannon had been there, she would have said that the new man was the Foley's clearance rack to Ethan's Gucci.

He was filthy, was one of the first things that Claire noticed through her fear. Bedraggled and dirty, with a series of burn scars dotting one cheek that looked as if they had never seen a doctor's attention and an open wound on his neck that oozed a sullen flow of pus. It clotted in the dirt caked there to create a sticky, foul mess that reeked even above the smoke. More than that, he smelled scared and desperate, but Claire was not in the mood to be kind. The new man did not seem to see her at all, his eyes focused only on Aaron.

"Yes," he said, extending his hands out to her in a gesture that would have been pleading if he was not holding a gun, shiny and much cleaner than the rest of him, in his hand. Claire wondered if he had been the one to shoot Steve, and her grip on her spear tightened. "He'll do; we can make him do. Give him to me."

"No!" Claire shouted. His voice came out high and frightened. "No, you can't have him." She lifted her spear into an awkward defensive stance, very aware of the fact that it was the first time that she had ever held one, and took a step backwards. The sky had begun to pile over with thick, angry clouds some moments before, so that if not for the flames they would both be blind.

Claire did not think that the man even realized that she was there until she spoke, so focused on Aaron was he. His gaze flicked up to her face for only a second before he went to watching Aaron again. There was a look there that was beyond calculation, beyond evil, and focused on pure human need. She clutched Aaron more tightly to herself in response. He began to wail again, after previously falling into a breathless quiet.

"We need him," the man said quietly, his free hand coming up briefly to swipe at the mess on his neck. Claire's nose wrinkled and she only barely stopped herself from gagging. "You don't understand." Again Claire got the impression that she was only accidental to the conversation, that he could just as easily be having it with himself. The hand that held the gun began to drift in small circles, as if he honestly did not know where to point it.

Claire's hand was starting to slip in sweat, but she wasn't about to retreat another step backwards. She was not sure that she would even be able to, not with how close the fire was growing. "Need him for what?" she could not stop herself from blurting out.

But the man didn't answer her, and the gun was beginning to shake wildly in his hand. He was staring at a point just beyond her shoulder and Claire knew, knew that she should not turn to look, knew that she was fulfilling every single horror movie cliché that she and her friends had enjoyed throwing popcorn at while they were still in school, but she could not help herself. She swiveled about.

The greenest eyes that Claire had ever seen stared back at her, distinguishable from the surrounding jungle only by the fact that so much of it was in flames. Her hair was long and of a dusky, nondescript brown, and her face was broad and unremarkable. Aaron stopped crying immediately and goggled, waving his hands in the air. Claire had no idea who she should be pointing the spear at. "Me," the woman said, and curved her lips into a bright smile. Aaron screamed with laughter and kicked so hard that it was all that Claire could not to drop him.

Oh. That was who she should be pointing her weapon at. It was so nice to have clarity in these kinds of things.

"You aren't supposed to be-" the man began. "You aren't supposed to be-" He kept cutting himself off, like a CD with a scratch in it. Claire didn't even know which one of them was being addressed until the woman with the vibrant green eyes smiled again. This time, she showed teeth. The man raised his gun at her, his hand shaking wildly, and Claire ducked as she heard a shot.

The man that had been menacing her dropped without a sound, one hand coming up for a moment to flutter at his temple before it fell back. There was a small, neat hold passing through his skull on one side, a larger one on the other. Claire swallowed back her scream only through an act of will.

Aaron didn't, though, shrieking and kicking at her so hard that Claire instinctively began to check him over to see in anything was sticking him, so sudden was his change in mood. She glanced over her shoulder. The woman was gone. As she was not one of their own and was just as clearly not an Other, had it not been for her own attacker's reaction to her Claire would have wondered if she was even real at all. 'Have your psychotic break later.' She spun around, clutching Aaron to her chest, as she heard her name being called. There was a crack of thunder, a strong whiff of ozone, and the heavens opened up.

Jin rushed towards her in the sudden downpour, holding a gun in one hand. Claire felt slightly better for knowing where her rescue had come from. She barely glanced at the fallen Other was she rushed towards Jin in the rain.

"Did you see her?" Claire asked as soon as they were close enough to speak to one another. Even knowing that Jin would not understand her, she could not stop herself; there was a desperate need for someone, anyone to share the experience with her and assure her that it was real. Jin's face turned from worried and angry to confused as she asked something of her, so that Claire threw her arm back behind her. "The woman, the-"

The woman who was still not there, not anywhere that Claire could see. She had come up behind them without a sound, Claire told herself firmly, and she could leave just as quickly. Never mind that the rain was beginning to put the fire out, leaving behind only long black skeletons that didn't seem capable of hiding anything. 'Psychotic. Break. Later.'

"Never mind," Claire said as she turned back to Jin. She was beginning to shiver in the wet, and Aaron's screaming and the rolling of the thunder were competing for the loudest sounds in the world. "We have to find Hurley."

Jin's face cleared at the mention of Hurley's name. He nodded, said something in swift Korean, and gestured for her to follow him. Claire wanted very badly to grab at his hand and draw comfort from it, but she wanted even less to let go of the spear.

In the pouring rain, they looked for Hurley.

--

If was an example of his competence at leadership, Hurley thought in a moment of near-panic, then Jack probably would have been better off leaving it to the flip of a coin. He had no plan. He didn't know where anyone was, or how many of them were dead. What he did know was they were outnumbered, outgunned, and in very serious trouble. If Locke's island totem or whatever the hell he called it really wanted to start bringing forth miracles, now would be a great time to get on with it.

Sun clung close to Hurley's side, shivering violently in the icy rain that had begun to fall a few moments before. It had gone from drizzle to downpour with barely a second's pause in between, putting out the fires and sluicing things that Hurley really preferred not to think about off of his arms and hands. On the one hand, without the fire and smoke obscuring everything, they could not see what they were going up against. On the other…they could now see what they were going up against.

Yep. Anytime that miracle wanted to happen, Hurley was not going to argue with it.

Nina had showed up leading an injured Steve only a few moments before, and the four of them were being backed slowly towards the caves again, keeping a distance of about fifty yards between themselves and people that the rain didn't seem to be making any cleaner and surely couldn't be making any saner. Hurley knew the look. Several of the Others were carrying guns in their hands, but in spite of the fact that Steve was sporting a gunshot wound in his thigh, they seemed reluctant to use them.

'Why?' Hurley wondered. 'They have us, it's done, why are they holding back? What do they want?'

He got his answer several seconds later as Jin and Claire crashed through the underbrush together. Both of them were leaving many small wounds across their faces and arms from the attacks of stray branches, and Aaron's terrified screaming was even louder than the building storm. Hurley watched as every single one of the Others' eyes was drawn to him like a beacon.

"Claire, get behind me!" he barked without thinking, not daring to take his eyes off of the Others long enough to do so much as glance at her as she scrambled to obey. 'They wanted them both,' he thought. 'They wanted to them both, but one was being guarded and the other was not, and now all of the leaders are gone andohshit.' As far as bad things went, Hurley didn't see how it could get much worse unless all of that thunder and lightning decided to come down from the sky and strike them dead on the spot. Hurley put his free hand back without thinking to shield Claire further.

"That's all we want!" a woman called out, wearing a face that adolescent acne or some disease that Hurley preferred not to think about had not been kind to. Scars large enough for him to put the pad of his thumb into littered her face. "Just the baby, that's all. Then we'll leave you alone."

Hurley shook his head with a determination that surprised even him and shifted the grip that he was maintaining on the axe. "Not going to happen, babe."

The eyes that stared out through all of those scars were more lucid than those of anyone else with her. That was not the most comforting thing that Hurley could have observed, especially not with what she said next. "We can control her. How long do you think that you'll last if we stop?"

"Control who?" Hurley blurted out before he could stop himself. Even if this was the worst possible place and time to pause for a chat, damn it, somebody needed to start giving out the goods.

The woman grinned at him instead, slow and resigned, and shifted her gaze slightly to the left without answering. Hurley followed it… 'That is definitely not one of my people. Also, I'm pretty sure that I should not be able to see through her.'

Hurley was not sure that he would even be able to describe the woman to anyone five minutes later, so nondescript was she, except for the overwhelming impression of green, of growing things and tremendous, chaotic life. He did not think that he would ever be able to get the smell of freshly turned earth out of his nose. She grinned at them all, so wide that it nearly split her face. The green-eyed lady had a lot of teeth.

"That," the woman who seemed to be the Others' leader said. "You definitely want us to stay in control of that."

The lady grinned again, wide and hungry, and seemed to…to swell, was the only word that Hurley could even think of to describe it, and even that barely scratched the surface. She seemed to grow plumper and to liven, to become more real before their very eyes. "Yes," the lady said, closing her eyes with a blissful expression as every last drop of blood drained from the leader of the Others' face. "It was very wise of you to do that, while you could." She showed every single one of her teeth, so brilliant and so white.

A cloud fell across what was left of the moon as Hurley spun around to shield Claire, throwing them all into a temporary darkness that was as black as pitch and about as friendly. The last thing that he saw was the grin before he heard a series of screams.

A lot of screams, and shots that seemed be coming mainly from the Others. Hurley wrapped his arms around Claire, who was shaking so badly that Hurley thought she must be fighting back an urge to shriek as badly as Aaron. Though he was holding his breath and waiting for it, by some miracle the thud of bullets striking his or Claire's body never came. When the moon came back out, Hurley raised his head.

The woman had disappeared. The evidence of her presence, however, had not, and her teeth were not metaphorical. "Mother of God," Hurley breathed. He wondered what the hell Jack's group had done on the other side of the island that had turned that bitch loose and what they were going to have to do to put her back into her cage.

A low wail came from Sun, kneeling by Jin's side, and drew Hurley's attention back from the carnage that had been the Others. Not all of their panicked bullets had missed.

"Mother of God," Hurley repeated, releasing Claire at last. She continued to tremble violently; the rain was cold, but Hurley did not think that was all or even part of the reason. He hesitated a moment until he realized that Nina was already kneeling by Sun's side and pulling her back up before he left to gather in the wounded among their own people. That was leaders did, even ones who had no idea how they had gotten there.

End Part Seventeen