Everyone starts packing up the necessities, and within four hours we're all moving along the beach to meet Peter at the boat at dawn.
The sun begins rising just as we're arriving at the dock.
Sixty percent of the group (mostly women and children) are staying in the trees to hide until we've created a safe passage onto the boat.
I'll be joining the second group who runs to the boat while the first group tries to capture the guards and covers us from gun fire.
Hagger and three other men position themselves to snipe the guards who are blocking the ship, but the problem is, as soon as one of them pulls the trigger, all the guards will know we're there, so there will be no turning back. They all will be shooting at the same time.
Two of them, one being Hagger, get a direct hit on two of the guards, but the other two snipers miss terribly.
A large guard with a small gun begins rapidly firing at the trees where one of the men who missed his shot from is now crouching behind a broken log refilling his gun.
Another guard, who's a bit smaller than the first one, starts toward the boat, knowing that's where we plan to go.
A loud noise blasts from behind me, and I turn to find Peter standing there with a gun, shooting at the smaller guard as he steps onto the dock. Peter nails him, and the guard falls off the dock into the light-blue water.
"Fancy seeing you here," I say as I run up the beach and onto the dock.
Jason, Hagger, and most of the other men from the group are in-front of us shooting at a man who obviously has some sort of bullet-proof armor. He has remained on the beach, to keep the high ground, I assume.
He continues shooting very precisely at the group, and after taking out two men and badly injuring another's leg, he's shot in the right arm. Being forced to use his left arm to shoot, he starts backing up from us, becoming afraid. His aim is also much worse since he appears to be a right-handed shooter.
"Get onto the boat! Now!" Hagger yells to the group.
The women and children start running to the boat behind the safety of the others and file into the bottom deck of the ship.
My father pushes at me from behind to get onto the boat, and I do. As I do, I hear a gunshot and try to look back to see what happened, but then my father pushes at me even harder. Eli is safely taken onto the boat by Courtney's mother. Jason's mother and his sister and brothers all made it onto the ship unharmed along with everyone else who had been hidden in the jungle.
I can see only a glimpse of the men that are still outside the boat from a small window. I'm pushed past as everyone files down the stairs to the bottom of the boat.
Victoria, knowing what she has to do, grabs the controls on the main deck of the ship and fires the engines up.
I peer out a window on the deck as I flip different switches and levers for Victoria and see the man who Hagger shot in the arm fall to the ground. Hagger and the rest of the men begin filing onto the ship. Out of the seven men who had guns, two of them were killed and one of them is injured. The rest are fine. As they enter the ship's door, I count how many come in.
One... Two... Where's Jason? Wait, where's Hagger?
Hagger comes onto the ship with the man who was shot in the leg leaning on his shoulder. Hagger then turns around and slams the door to the boat shut and bolts the lock.
"We'll be clear to leave in a minute, is everyone here?" Victoria turns to me.
"Jason is still out there!" I yell, pushing past the men who are entering the boat.
Hagger grabs the back of my shirt and pulls me back on the ship.
"Yea, we're all here," Hagger tells Victoria.
"Where is he?" I yell, banging against the door.
"Sophie, go back to the bottom deck," Hagger says grabbing my arms.
I kick the door and scream for him to let me go until he picks me up and carries me down to the bottom deck and forces me against the wall.
"He's not coming," Hagger says forcefully, then leaves me to help Victoria.
I push past Hagger and Victoria to get to the windows at the front of the boat. As we turn toward the open ocean, I catch a glimpse of the two men who were shot, being pushed by the waves back toward the shore. Then I see that there's still shooting going on. Jason is crouched behind a large canister of something that looks like explosives. Now I know why he stayed.
As the large men approach his hiding place at the end of the dock, I yell for Victoria to turn back. Then I see Jason loading his gun. He positions it toward the canister. A second later the dock is gone along with everyone who was on it. A big burst of yellow and red light explodes across the water and rocks the boat. Large waves come from the sides of what was once the dock. Now all I see is driftwood... I don't see Jason. The ship continues to turn until the island is out of view.
My hand freezes against the window; my eyes are locked on the image of the dock exploding, knowing what just happened, but wishing I didn't.
Peter, who was already hiding on the bottom deck before I came down, has heard the explosion. He knows what happened. He grabs my shoulder and forces me to sit as the ship begins moving out into the ocean.
He's not coming... The words bounce around my head for hours as we travel along the ocean. Jason... isn't coming. Tears pour from my eyes as I try to erase the image of the exploding dock from my mind.
For a full day we sit silently in the large freighter. Peter doesn't leave my side. At the end of day one when most of the people down in the bottom deck are falling to sleep, I rest my head on his shoulder and fall asleep.
In a dream I see Jason coming onto the ship with me. We sit down on the ground where Peter and I are, and I stare at him. Something is wrong with him. The face I see doesn't belong to him. I open my eyes to find Peter's finger brushing the loose hair away from my eyes. I grab his shirt and finally come to the conclusion that my dream was not real. Jason isn't here.
"Good morning to you too," Peter says, slowly taking my fingers off his shirt's fabric.
There are dark bags underneath his eyes, and I can tell he hasn't slept since the ship left the island.
"Get some rest. You don't have to watch me," I say.
"Wake me up in a few hours..." he says drifting off to sleep.
In a few days we finally reach land. When we get off the boat, there's a large blimp waiting for us on shore.
"Victoria! You made it!" A girl from the blimp yells, running toward us.
"I promised I would," Victoria answers giving her a friendly squeeze, then the girl begins showing all of us the seats and how we should buckle ourselves in on the blimp.
"He said he would kill you if we ever got back to mainland," I say to Peter as we get buckled.
"I know," is all he says.
When Victoria leaves the room with the girl to help pilot the blimp, I start wondering where we're going. But at this point, as long as it's a safe place away from the president, I couldn't care less.
"Hello!" A loud voice booms over the speakers on the walls, "We've begun our roundabout journey to district thirteen! When we get there, it is very important that we all descend underground into our new facility immediately."
The voice cuts out, and we're left in silence. Then people once again begin talking about where we're going and how so and so is afraid of heights, and about how so and so is afraid of being buried alive.