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Will.
She found her voice at last. "I can't believe it's you."
"Shhh!" He stiffened, pulled back. "They'll hear us. We've got to get out of
here right now!"
"Will, they're our friends."
"Don't listen to them, Lyss," Will warned. "Everything they say is a lie.
They told me you were dead."
"They thought I was," Lyssa reasoned. "I thought the same thing about them
after the boat sank. About you too."
Clutching his torch, Will backed up a step, wide-eyed with shock. "They've
got you brainwashed!"
"No  "
She stopped herself from arguing, because, for the first time, she had gotten
a really good look at her brother. He had lost weight  they all had, but it
was much more noticeable on the sturdy Will. His hair was matted, his eyes
wild, and he had more bug bites than skin. A crude bow was slung over one bony
shoulder. He smelled terrible. He was like a savage, she thought in agony. She
had no hope of reasoning with him. In fact, she could think of only one way to
save him.
"Luke!" she cried. "Everybody! Come quick!"
Shocked by the betrayal, Will turned to run. She lunged at him, wrapping her
arms around his thin frame. He shook her off roughly. Her foot hooked on a low
vine, and she fell heavily to the ground.
He turned to face her. "I'll be back, Lyss  I promise! I won't let them do
this to you!"
By the time Luke and the others burst out of the lifeboat, he had fled into
the jungle, the flicker of his torch disappearing in the density of the trees.
CHAPTER TWELVE
Day 4, 11:10 p.m.
The jungle was becoming familiar to Will. Who would have dreamed that he
would ever know one clump of ferns from another?
But he did. No, that wasn't exactly true. The individual plants all looked
alike, especially by torchlight. It was the progression that he was beginning
to recognize: coconut palms on the right, broad-leaf whatchamacallits on the
left, big step over the fallen log, those weird crisscrossing ferns dead ahead
 he was almost home.
He felt a twinge of pride. He used to be the kind of kid who fell apart when
the cable went down, or when the family ran out of microwave popcorn. An
eight-minute power failure threw him into a panic. But now he was making his
way through dense jungle on his own, in the near-blackness of night.
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If only Lyssa could see him.
Shehad seen him, he reminded himself. Barely ten minutes ago. And she had
refused to come with him. How was he ever going to rescue her?
Torescue Lyssa , he thought,first you have to rescue yourself .
But how would he accomplish that? Where should he go? What should he do?
For a moment, the silvery fog swirled around him once more. He closed his
eyes and fought through it. And when he opened them again, he was at the twin
palms of his camp.
He brushed a few handfuls of dried leaves onto the remains of his fire and
reached down with his torch.
The kindling caught quickly, and in the glow of the sudden flare, he saw that
he was not alone.
At first, the creature looked like a small haystack. Then the massive head
swung around and whimpered.
Will jumped. It was the wild boar.
Run for it!
He stood poised, waiting for the attack. It didn't come.
The animal whimpered again.
Will squinted in the firelight. Blood stained the bristly snout where the
arrow still protruded.
His hand tightened on the bow over his shoulder and he pulled an arrow from
his pocket. He could kill this thing. Kill it and eat it.
Yeah, right. You'retoo squeamish to dig out a splinter .
He took a step forward.
Careful.Nothing's more dangerousthan a wounded animal .
But this one was dying. ,
Well, duhl That's why you shot it, right?
Cautiously, Will approached the boar and squatted down beside it. The red
piggy eyes seemed almost colorless now, sunken into the head/snout/body. He
leaned over until he was close enough to feel the hot wind of the boar's
tortured breathing. The animal regarded him suspiciously, but made no attempt
to move. He reached out a hand, and the boar shrank from him, but it lacked
the strength to get up.
When he closed his hand on the shaft of the arrow, the boar squealed in pain,
shaking its snout. Luckily, the arrow pulled out smoothly and easily  there
was no barbed head, just a sharpened point at the end. Fresh blood trickled
from the hole.
Why was he doing this? This animal was protein, and easy hunting too. Protein
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meant energy, and energy was what he needed to rescue Lyssa and figure a way
out of this mess.
Will fitted an arrow into the bow and pulled back, straining to aim for the
creature's neck.
What neck? It's all neck! Its butt is practically an extension of its neckl
He circled the boar, aiming behind its ears. It regarded him through distant,
colorless eyes.
Will was sweating now. This Guam humidity always made him perspire, but now
it was pouring off him like Niagara Falls. Why couldn't he do this? It was so
stupid. He ate bacon cheeseburgers all the time. This was no different.
Except, Will thought,when you go to McDonald's, you can't feel your dinner's
hot breath on your leg before you eat it .
He set down the bow. "Tell you what," he said out loud to the boar. "I'm
going to find some more wood for the fire. You've got till I get back to beat
it."
But when he returned with an armload of twigs, the boar hadn't moved an inch.
"I'm going to take a little nap. If you're not gone by the time I wake up,
you're dinner." [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]