Island Fire Page 8

  “Probably right in front of you.” A flare of flame from the barbeque lighter in Jaden’s hand banished the darkness, illuminating Sam’s rumpled dark head emerging from a sleeping bag. “You’re next to him. I’m by the door.”

  Bea located her sleeping bag, unzipping it and sliding inside. The light went out and Jaden climbed into his, a rustle of nearness. Bea could tell by Sam’s deep, even breathing that her brother was asleep, but now she was keyed up, adrenaline from being startled jangling her nerves.

  “What happened with your dad? Did my brothers help?” Jaden whispered.

  “I went by myself. The truck was crashed in a gulch on the way to the harbor, and Dad was gone.”

  “Was he hurt? Where’d he go?”

  “I don’t know. He was alive, and he got out. I thought he’d be here at home by now.”

  They lay there in silence.

  “Why didn’t you get my brothers to help? I didn’t want you to go alone,” Jaden said.

  “I was fine.” She didn’t want to say how she hadn’t wanted to break up their family dinner, how she’d been struck dumb and motionless by the beautiful moment she’d witnessed, by the closeness that Jaden’s family had. “How many people are in the house?”

  Jaden told her about his reconnaissance and where Rainbow was and Sam’s bravery in getting the mare what she needed. “I wouldn’t have thought of it,” he said. “He knew what to do.”

  “Sam’s a good kid,” Bea said. Her hand crept over to touch her little brother’s shoulder in the smothering dark. His shoulder blade felt bony as a bird’s wing.

  “I’m wondering what we should do tomorrow,” Jaden said. “We’ve got supplies here, but they won’t last long if the people in the house find out about them.”

  “I know. We just have to wait and see what we see.” Bea’s eyes were finally getting heavy. “Thanks for looking out for Sam.”

  “He’s like my brother, too,” Jaden said.

  Bea felt a stab of disappointment, wondering if he thought of her as a sister, but sleep pulled her down before she could figure out how to ask.

  Chapter Twelve

  Sam awoke, floating up from deep sleep into waking. He opened his eyes and realized he could see—light leaked in from the doorway of the cave, and it fell morning-soft across a shape beside him.

  Bea.

  Her hair was still in the braid from yesterday, curling bits of it escaping around the back of her head. Beyond her, a third sleeping bag with a humped shape blocked the narrow opening—Jaden.

  Relief, a feeling like filling up with cool water, rose up in Sam. Thank you, God, for letting us all get back here safely.

  A cramp in his bad foot and scrapes and bruises competed with the hollowness in his belly. His stomach erupted with a growl, telling him that one granola bar hadn’t been enough. Bea rolled over toward him. She was smiling, smoky green eyes sparkling.

  “Was that your stomach?”

  “Yes.”

  “Good thing I saved you something.” Bea dragged a dirty cloth shopping bag over and reached inside. “It’s a little battered, but it will still taste good.”

  She took out a small, white first aid kit, a black plastic emergency roadside kit, a Leatherman tool, and a pair of gloves. “Here we go.” She took out a rounded shape the size of a tennis ball, wrapped in a paper towel. “Bet you can’t guess what this is.”

  Sam narrowed his eyes and sat up. “An apple?” Apples came all the way from the Mainland and were a big treat. Bea shook her head.

  “Orange?” Those were even more expensive and special.

  “Guess again.”

  “A dinner roll?” Jaden had sat up in the doorway. “Spam musubi?”

  “You wish. Actually, I had a second one, but I ate it last night—got too hungry. One more guess, Sam.”

  Sam closed his eyes and inhaled. He could smell something sweet, like a doughnut, but it was round. “Malasada?” His sister knew how much he loved the treats the Blue Ginger Restaurant in Lanai City made in its all-purpose kitchen.

  “Third time’s the charm.” Bea handed the sphere to Sam, and he unwrapped the squashed Portuguese pastry. His eyes widened, and he grinned as he bit into it.

  “Thanks,” he said, his mouth full.

  Jaden climbed out of his sleeping bag. He’d taken off his shirt and was wearing just his trunks. He rolled up his sleeping bag.

  “Where’s the rest of the food?” he asked.

  “Shelves. We put all the seeds in the coffee cans so nothing can get at them.” Bea sat up. She straightened her clothes self-consciously, smoothing her hair back from her face. Sam wondered what she was worried about. She looked fuzzy and nice like she always did in the morning. “The food’s in boxes or cans over there.”

  Jaden walked over to the shelves and rustled around, opening one of the boxes and taking out a slightly mangled loaf of bread. “We might as well eat the stuff that’s going to go bad first.”

  They made and ate sandwiches of peanut butter and local honey. Sam was still hungry, so Bea gave him a mango. “These are definitely going bad without the fridge.”

  The three of them clustered in the opening, eating and listening for the people in the house. Jaden had propped the lumber back over the doorway, and Sam felt safe in the cave. Unless the people in the house really went looking, they weren’t likely to find them. But there was also a problem with that.

  “We’re kind of stuck in here.” Bea was the one who said what Sam was thinking. “We have to go out. I mean, if just to go to the bathroom.”

  That had been getting obvious to Sam. He crossed and uncrossed his legs with a need to go.

  “I think they’re awake in there,” Jaden said. “But how do we keep the food and the cave hidden from them?”

  “Let’s sneak into the trees, then approach the house from the front. After all, it’s our house. Say we went looking for our dad and stayed in town overnight, and what are they doing in our house? Play it like that.” Bea seemed to be warming to this idea, standing up to brush crumbs off her clothing.

  “I doubt they’re mean,” Sam said. “I think they’re scared, just like us.”

  “We’ll have to find out. But what if we can’t get back into the cave? Like, they aren’t nice and they chase us off, and then we’re cut off from our supplies.” Jaden’s dark brows had a line of worry between them. “I know my family is hoping to come out here if things go bad in town.”

  “I don’t know. That might not be an option. We just have to see how it goes,” Bea said. “I still have the rifle, and you have your spear gun. We might be able to drive them off, if we have to.”

  “But—is that right? I mean, they crashed. They need somewhere to shelter, too,” Sam said. He hated to imagine what it would have been like to live through that plane crash and have to try to find food and shelter. How perfect their house must seem!

  They might have kept discussing it awhile longer, but noise broke out in the house. Yelling. Scuffles and thumps. A scream. A gunshot rang out from the house, so loud Sam clapped his hands over his ears.

  More screams.

  Someone burst out the back door, running out into the yard—a young man in a gray hoodie. He looked around frantically and spotted the pile of wood covering the opening to the cave. He ran toward them and dove into the narrow cave opening, landing on his hands and knees. His mouth opened and blue eyes went wide at the sight of them.

  Recovering faster than they did, he turned and reached back behind him to move the wood back over the opening he’d made.

  “Don’t make a sound,” he hissed, “or they’ll find us.”

  Chapter Thirteen

  Sam felt frozen. Bea pulled him into her arms, and Jaden backed up against them so that they huddled together, staring at the intruder and listening to the mayhem in the house. They could hear a loud male voice shouting inside.

  “Get out! Or one ’nother one goin’ get it!” The voice was harsh—pidgin English marking it as so
meone from Hawaii.

  More thumps. More scuffling. The angle of the house kept them from seeing what was happening, but Sam could tell the movement inside was toward the front of the house. If the people inside were leaving, they wouldn’t be able to see them go.

  Silence fell.

  “What’s going on in there?” Jaden whispered. “Who are you?”

  The stranger held up a finger to his lips. He turned his head to listen, his ear close to the lumber covering their hiding place. Sam looked around for the old rubber traffic cone he’d found last summer and handed it over. The invader reversed the cone and held it toward the house, the small side to his ear as a makeshift amplifier.

  “I can hear them talking inside,” the young man whispered. Sam realized he wasn’t as old as he’d first seemed—down on his cheeks and a wobble in his voice showed he was still a teenager. “It’s a gang. They burst in, were waving guns around, shot my friend Kevin for no reason. Seems like they’ve kicked my friends from the plane out.”

  “Oh my God!” Bea’s hand covered her mouth. Seeing his sister’s alarm, Sam’s bladder clenched painfully. “You’re from the plane?”

  “Yes. My name’s Nick. Thanks for letting me hide in here.”

  Like they’d had a choice.

  “Jaden, Bea, and Sam,” Jaden said, gesturing to each of them. “I bet it’s the LCBoyz. We only have one gang on Lanai.”

  The LCBoyz were a group of meth heads and small-time burglars whose claim to fame, until now, had been hanging around the low-income housing area wearing red bandannas and a bad attitude. No one took them seriously—but it seemed like it was time to.

  Sam needed to pee really bad now. He got up, rummaging around until he found a coffee can without any holes in it. He faced into a corner and used the can, feeling his face flame, embarrassment cramping his bladder so badly he could hardly do what he needed to.

  The LCBoyz had a gun. They’d shot someone.

  He set the can on the ground and put the lid back on.

  “Good idea, Sam,” Jaden whispered, giving him a shoulder squeeze. “My turn next. We’ve been in here awhile,” he said to Nick by way of explanation. He stood up and shook out a tarp, stringing it between two shelves as a makeshift curtain. He went behind it for his appointment with the coffee can.

  Sam was relieved about the curtain, but it was still embarrassing and the can wasn’t going to be enough for long. Clearly they couldn’t stay in the cave forever. Nick pretended not to see or hear what they were doing, all his attention on the house.

  Someone came out on the back porch. Sam could hear the creak of the screen door. He and Bea craned to see past Nick through a crack in the lumber.

  Two young men stood on their back porch, wearing the baggy drop-waisted black jeans and red bandannas the LCBoyz sported. One of them took out a packet of cigarettes, shook one out and tapped it against the railing. He lit the cigarette, took a drag, and exhaled a stream of smoke at the ceiling.

  Sam had always hated that smell. Dad used to smoke, before Mom died. She’d gotten on him about it, but it wasn’t until she was gone that he’d quit.

  “Good thing the guy you shot no stay make,” the other one said. “We don’t need no cops sniffin’ around, nailing you for murder.”

  “Cops are plenty busy in town, too busy to come after us,” Smoker said. He was taller and heavier. Older. Tattoos of coiling snakes on his arms seemed to writhe and move as he lifted the cigarette. “We’re the ones with guns.”

  Guns. Not just one gun.

  Sam felt like he needed to pee again, but that couldn’t be right. He sidled closer to his sister, and Bea draped an arm over him. Jaden moved in close behind them. Nick stayed perfectly still. “What’s make?” Nick whispered.

  “Dead,” Jaden said.

  “I guess Kevin was only injured, then,” Nick said, relief in his voice. Sam saw the older boy’s shoulders relax a little. “I can hardly understand their accents.”

  “Pidgin, it’s called,” Bea whispered.

  “Seems like there should be more food,” the younger gang member said, from the porch. “Old man Whitely, he kept his kids out here working. The girl, she brought stuff into town. But there’s, like, nothing in the kitchen.”

  “Where those kids stay?” Smoker said.

  Younger did a slow survey of the backyard, and Sam knew what he would see: a metal toolshed. The rocky cliff face, towering fifty feet in the air. Patchy grass they’d barely kept alive in the summer. The grove of trees, butting up against the rocky wall. The pile of lumber they hid behind.

  “They had a horse,” Younger said. “Maybe they took the food and the horse, hid somewhere. The haoles from the airplane said no one was here when they found the house.”

  “Whatevahs.” Smoker stubbed out the cigarette. “This our place now.” They went back inside. The screen door slammed a period on the end of that sentence.

  Nick turned back to them. “Is this your house?”

  “Yes.” Bea straightened up, narrowed her eyes at Nick. “And you were trespassing.”

  Nick put his hands up in a “surrender” gesture. “Six of us came in late at night. We were just looking for help.”

  “We saw your plane go down,” Bea said, and Sam shut his eyes against the terrifying memory. When he looked at Nick, he saw the shadow of that same horror in the older boy’s stark blue eyes.

  “A group of us went all the way to the top of the island looking for help at Lanai City, and we saw it burning. We knew we weren’t getting any help last night, so we came back down here. We knocked and called. No one was there, so we scrounged some food and water and slept in the house. I was up already, trying to make some coffee, when the gang busted in and surprised us. I’m sorry we were in your place, but you’ve got more serious problems now,” Nick said.

  Sam crawled over to his sleeping bag and climbed in. They weren’t going anywhere, and there was no one who could help them. He turned his back on the older kids, focusing on not crying by pressing his fists hard into his eyes.

  “What should we do?” Bea whispered, but he could still hear her just fine. He thought of putting his fingers in his ears—but he wasn’t a baby. Shutting it out wouldn’t help.

  “I don’t think we can get past them in the daytime.” Jaden sounded apprehensive. “They’re on alert for anyone moving around. We’ll have to wait until nighttime and then try to sneak by. I think we should go back to town and see if we can find the police and get help. They’ve shot someone—they’re dangerous.”

  “Don’t you think the police will be just looking out for their own families? I mean, do you think anyone’s doing the jobs they’re supposed to be doing anymore?” Bea asked.

  Sam hadn’t thought of that and wished his sister hadn’t said it. A world where no one was doing what they were supposed to do—everyone just looking out for themselves. This wasn’t a world he wanted to know.

  “I know this situation is bad, and we’re cut off here on Lanai. And I know the LCBoyz are bad news—but our town is a good place where everyone knows one another and cares about one another. Your dad kept you out here by yourselves too long,” Jaden said.

  “Shut up,” Bea flared at Jaden. “Just shut up.”

  Nick didn’t say anything.

  Sam could feel Bea and Jaden glaring at each other. Sam pulled the sleeping bag up over his head, put his fingers in his ears, and closed his eyes. He willed himself to sleep. He didn’t want to be here anymore, and if that made him a baby, so be it.

  Bea stood up and turned away, paced the length of the cave, working off adrenaline from the gunshot followed by discord with Jaden. She hated the feelings that flooded her: anger and fear, intimidation from a stranger in their space. Nick seemed to take up a lot of room, even though she could tell he was doing his best not to offend.

  Jaden took the rubber cone from Nick and lifted it to his ear, ignoring both of them. Bea hit the end of the cave and walked back. Six more lengths of the cave, and
she felt her pulse coming down, the hot flush of anger in her cheeks cooling. She glanced at her brother in his sleeping bag. He’d pulled the cloth up over his head.

  Poor kid. This was a lot for him.

  He needs you to be strong. Beosith’s voice rang in her mind. Dig deep. Find your courage.

  Suddenly a picture filled her mind—a group of five of the LCBoyz sitting around the battered coffee table in Bea and Sam’s living room, playing cards. One of them was standing, watching out the front window.

  Another one was putting together a meal in the kitchen, boiling some rice she’d left in one of the cupboards.

  That made seven of them—seven armed and dangerous thugs in her house. Bea did another length of the cave.

  “I can’t believe there are so many of them.” Bea came up behind Nick as he sat in the doorway. “Can you hear them talking?”

  “I can only hear a murmur. How do you know there are many? We’ve only seen two,” Jaden said.

  “I saw at least five,” Nick said. “And there might have been a couple more outside on the porch.”

  “They’re playing cards, getting comfortable.” Bea pulled the rubber band out of her braid, combed her long hair nervously with her fingers, feeling Nick and Jaden watching her as she rebraided her hair.

  “How do you know?” Jaden angled a sharp, dark glance at her.

  “It just makes sense,” she said lamely. She sat beside Jaden, wrapping the end of her braid with the rubber band. “I’m sorry for snapping.”

  “And I’m sorry you didn’t get to spend more time in town. It’s not fair, how your dad kept you out here.”

  Bea frowned at Jaden, irritated he was sharing this personal business in front of Nick, a stranger. Nick had resumed his stare out at the house as if he didn’t hear them.

  “It doesn’t matter.” Bea’s shoulder lightly touched Jaden’s. “It’s going to be a long day with nothing to do.”

  “We can’t stay here. We have to plan on sneaking out and carrying all the food we can. If we can bring the police back and get those guys out of the house, there might be some way we can keep the food you’ve got stored. But I think we should organize, pack everything we can carry, and plan to sneak out tonight,” Jaden said.