Oasis Page 12

‘I’m coming with you. To find the second group. I want to come.’

  ‘You can’t,’ he says dismissively, but I won’t let him turn away from me.

  ‘I can help.’

  ‘How?’ he asks, and when he looks at me he seems more tired than anything else.

  ‘You’re searching for a group of people, Kole, not performing surgery. I don’t need experience.’

  Kole turns to Mark for a moment, says something too quietly for me to hear, and Mark nods, walking away.

  ‘What did you say to him?’ I ask.

  ‘You can’t come because we might meet Officers, and besides, we’re tracking them, not just mindlessly stumbling into the forest and hoping we’ll see them somewhere.’

  He turns away from me, passing through the kitchen and up the stairs. I follow him, ignoring his obvious attempt to shut down the conversation.

  ‘I can hold my own against an Officer,’ I argue. ‘I escaped Oasis the same as everyone else.’

  ‘How many Officers have you actually fought?’ he asks, looking back at me as he keeps walking up to the third floor.

  ‘Three,’ I say automatically.

  ‘Well that’s a lie.’ He smiles, actually smiles at me, like my desperation amuses him.

  ‘Okay, I haven’t fought any Officers directly, but I can help. I swear.’ I catch his arm, stopping him in front of the door to the third floor and looking directly at him.

  ‘Please,’ I say, however begrudgingly.

  He closes his eyes and sighs.

  ‘If I tell you that you can come, will you stop hounding me?’

  ‘Yes,’ I say, without hesitation.

  ‘And if I let you come,’ he says, taking a step closer to me on the stairs, ‘will you forgive me for last night?’

  I look up at him, shocked. His expression is strained and he honestly looks apologetic

  ‘Fine,’ I murmur.

  ‘Then you can come.’

  I drop his arm, nodding, and leave to get ready.

  22

  Kole heads in the direction of the old base, near the river, which means heading back in the direction of Oasis. We’re never going to get close enough to actually see the walls, and Kole hopes to stay far enough away that we won’t be in any danger, but my heart still speeds up at the thought of it, memories jostling for attention, making me feel ill.

  ‘You okay?’ Kole is walking behind me, and I didn’t even hear him coming.

  ‘Fine,’ I say, shaking my head and swallowing hard.

  He blinks at me for a moment, but he doesn’t ask questions. He looks away, off into the forest, and I take a deep breath, trying to pull myself back together.

  ‘Why didn’t you tell anyone about last night?’ I ask, so desperate for a distraction that my mind latches onto this. This of all the things I could have said.

  He has a gun in a holster at his hip, and I can see the Oasis stamp on it.

  ‘I shouldn’t have asked about it,’ he says. ‘It wasn’t my place.’

  I don’t say anything. I think I’m in shock. Of all the things I thought he would say, that is not one of them.

  ‘Everyone here has a past,’ he says, ‘and it’s none of my business what yours is.’

  ‘You’re right,’ I say. But maybe it is his business. I wonder if they knew what happened, if they knew what I did to her—

  Stop.

  I stop thinking of anything at all, just so I won’t have to think about that.

  We walk until dusk, until Kole regretfully turns us back, promising another search in the morning. He looks even more exhausted now, and I can tell by the way he’s walking he’s having trouble staying awake. I fall in beside him, thinking I can help keep him going by talking, keep his mind off how tired his body must be.

  ‘How many people are missing?’ I ask.

  ‘Six,’ he says, glancing over at me. ‘Jay and five people stupid enough to follow him.’

  ‘Did you let them go?’

  He doesn’t say anything for a long moment.

  ‘Yes. They were going to go anyway. At least this way I could tell them how to not get themselves killed.’

  ‘And that worked out so well,’ I mutter, and he looks over at me. He looks hurt, almost. ‘I’m sorry,’ I mumble. ‘I didn’t mean it like that.’

  ‘Yes, you did,’ he says, and I can’t decide if he’s angry or not.

  We don’t talk much after that, but we make progress, and we’re almost home when Kole freezes, holding a hand up to stop us all. Everyone goes perfectly still, listening.

  Everything is completely silent, but Kole twitches like he can hear something we can’t, and suddenly he’s gone from beside me and into the trees. I barely register that I’m chasing after him before I come to a screeching stop beside him.

  Kole kneels beside a girl, her dark hair spread across the forest floor, blood pouring from a wound in her shoulder and soaking into the earth beneath her. I freeze, my breath stopping in my chest, because it’s Bea’s blue eyes staring up at me from the girl’s panic-stricken face. It’s happening again. Her blood stains her hair as she watches me with the kind of fear I can only imagine you feel when you know you’re going to die.

  She knows she’s going to die.

  She can’t die.

  I can’t let her die.

  ‘Give me your backpack,’ Kole orders, pressing his hand to the wound and talking to her in a low voice.

  I haphazardly pull my pack off my shoulders, dropping it to the ground and immediately pull out a shirt and throw it at Kole, who uses it to stem the flow of blood. He gestures for me to take over, putting pressure on the wound, and I try desperately not to think about Bea bleeding out on the gravel just inside the fence of Oasis.

  Mark and the others arrive through the trees, and the minute Kole sees them he starts giving orders. He slips into this different version of himself so easily that I can’t help thinking this is more natural to him than he acts like it is.

  ‘Mark, take the girls and set up a perimeter. She’s been shot, so there are Officers out here somewhere.’

  I go still.

  ‘Quincy, keep talking to her. You need to keep her conscious.’

  ‘What’s your name?’ I ask the girl, but my voice is shaking so badly I can barely get the words out.

  ‘Lauren,’ she whispers. ‘My shoulder.’ She groans.

  ‘You’re going to be fine,’ I reassure her, but my fingers are sliding on the fabric of the shirt that’s against her shoulder, her wound gushing blood so fast it’s already bled through the cloth. Kole pulls a knife from his backpack and leaves it by my leg.

  ‘I’ll be back in one minute. Use this if you need it.’ And then he’s gone.

  The girl’s head rolls back in agony.

  ‘Hey! Lauren, look at me.’ Her dazed eyes lock back onto mine. ‘Good. You need to keep looking at me. Where’d you come from?’

  She opens her mouth, then shakes her head. Her eyes start to close.

  ‘Oasis? Did you come from Oasis?’ She nods. ‘So did I. Did you come alone?’ She nods again.

  ‘Lauren, listen to me. Just past those trees there’s a house, and we’re going to bring you there, and you’re going to be fine, okay?’ She nods, slowly, her head lolling to the side. I can’t move my hands from her shoulder, so I call her name until she looks at me again, but her eyes are distant.

  ‘KOLE!’ I’m panicking. The girl’s blood is everywhere, on my hands and across her chest and on the floor, and there can’t be this much blood. I hear someone shout in the distance, and if this girl wasn’t in front of me right now, if this girl didn’t need me right now, I would be even more terrified than I already am.

  ‘Lauren, you have to stay awake.’ I’m tempted to shake her, but I’m afraid that might make her bleed out faster.

  Footsteps sound in the forest, and my heart thunders in my chest.

  ‘We’re gonna be okay.’

  The footsteps keep coming and the closer they get, the m
ore my hands shake, the more I glance at the knife beside me.

  I see a flash of Officer blue between the trees and my heart sinks. I turn back to the girl, unwilling to take pressure off her wound until I have to defend us. I keep pressing my hands to her shoulder while I try to think of a way to get us out of this.

  I can’t move her. I’m not strong enough, but even if I was, I’m too scared of her dying to attempt it.

  The footsteps are closer, and they are behind me, and I am grabbing the knife in my blood-soaked hands and launching myself at the Officer before I can even get a good look at him.

  Kole catches my hand hard, forcing me to drop the knife.

  ‘It’s okay,’ he says, catching both my arms and holding them at my sides, making eye contact with me, trying to calm me down. ‘Breathe,’ he whispers, and my lungs obediently gasp for air.

  ‘The Officer …’

  He nods. ‘It’s okay. He’s not going to hurt anyone anymore. And he was on his own. No one else around. It’s okay now.’

  Kole looks over at the others. ‘Mark, take the girl. We need to get her back to the house,’ he instructs, but he won’t let go of me.

  I try to turn around to check on Lauren, afraid she’s bled out in the split-second I’ve left her, but Kole puts his hands on either side of my face and stares down at me.

  ‘Are you okay?’ he asks deliberately, afraid I’m too delirious to even understand him.

  ‘I’m fine,’ I say, shaking my head. ‘I’m fine. Is she okay?’

  He doesn’t say anything, just watches my face for another second, and then lets me go, picking up my bag and throwing it over his shoulder as Mark starts back towards home.

  23

  We reach the house in a matter of minutes, but the journey is torturous and the return is havoc. In our absence Lacey had stationed look-outs around the house, and when they see us coming, covered in blood, carrying a half-dead stranger, fear breaks out across the house.

  ‘Kole!’ Lacey shouts from the door, the colour draining from her face.

  We carry the girl into the house and straight to the kitchen. Kole orders everyone out of the room, and I swipe the table clear for Mark to set Lauren down.

  ‘She’s unconscious,’ I say. I think I might be going into shock, but Kole’s focus on the girl is unwavering as he starts looking her over.

  ‘I need hot water, a needle and thread. And towels,’ he says calmly, but no one moves. ‘NOW!’ His voice booms in the small room, shocking us into action.

  I swivel around, knocking the lid off the wooden box as I pull the dented kettle from inside it, throwing it onto the top of the stove. My shaking hands knock the kettle off the stovetop twice before I can fill it properly.

  ‘What else do you need?’ I ask Kole, returning to his side once the water is heating. Lacey has gone for the towels and Mark for the needle and thread, and everyone else has disappeared, afraid of getting in his way.

  ‘I can’t see anything. There’s too much blood,’ he says in frustration. ‘Get me a knife. I need to get her shirt away from the wound.’

  One of the clean hunting knives is on the counter behind me, so I hand it to him.

  ‘Do you know how to check a pulse?’ He doesn’t look at me as he asks, focused on not nicking the girl with the knife as he cuts the shirt away from her shoulder.

  Lacey and Mark return while I take Lauren’s limp hand to check her heart rate, trying to calm my own enough to be able to feel hers.

  ‘It’s slowing down,’ I tell him, and he curses under his breath.

  The kettle whistles, and I take it from the stove and pour it into a basin with some cold water for Kole to wash the wound. I throw one of the towels into it and leave it on the table beside Lauren, where Kole can easily access it without putting down the knife.

  ‘Give me that needle,’ I tell Mark, taking it from him and running it under the last of the boiling water to sterilise it.

  Kole is turning the girl over, and for a second I don’t understand what he’s doing, until he curses again.

  ‘The bullet’s still in her. I’ll try to get it out, but you have to be ready to take it from me and give me the needle. She’s going to start bleeding more heavily once it’s out.’

  ‘Okay.’ My voice shakes.

  He cleans the blood from her shoulder so he can see what he’s doing, and then he takes the knife he used to cut her shirt away from the wound, and takes a steadying breath.

  I focus on the basin, the water turning pink as the blood swirls through it, and a minute later I hear him exhale. I reach out and he drops the shell into my hand, taking the basin from me and washing the wound. He reaches out for me to hand him the needle and thread, and there is a second where his eyes meet mine, and there is fear there.

  ‘Get something clean to use as a bandage,’ he orders, beginning to sew up the wound. His hands are careful and steady, but the wound is bleeding again, and I don’t understand how he can do this. His hands don’t shake as the needle pierces her skin, pulling the thread out the other side as blood coats everything, his hands, the needle, Lauren, the table. Yet my hands are shaking as Mark and Lacey help me rip clothes into strips to use as bandages.

  When we turn around, he has the knife back in his hand, cutting the thread carefully.

  ‘Is she going to be okay?’ I ask, watching her pale face as Kole washes his hands. He takes the strips out of my hands and starts bandaging her shoulder.

  ‘I don’t know.’

  It takes him a few minutes to bandage her shoulder, but once he’s done we cover her in blankets and fold one under her head as a pillow.

  ‘Go to bed,’ he tells Lacey. ‘You’re tired.’

  ‘But what about you?’

  ‘I’ll stay down here and keep an eye on her.’ When Lacey gives him an unsure look, hovering in the doorway, he tries to brush it off. ‘Don’t worry about me, I’ll be fine.’

  ‘Promise?’

  ‘I promise. Now go.’

  Mark follows her up, clearly grateful to be getting out of the cramped kitchen, and we’re suddenly alone. Kole leans his head back against the shut kitchen door and closes his eyes.

  I don’t say anything to disturb him, because there’s nothing to say here that won’t sound stupid and out of place.

  ‘Do you want some tea?’ he asks quietly after a few minutes, finally lifting his head and peeking out from under his eyelashes at me.

  He doesn’t even ask me to go to bed. I’m glad. I didn’t want to have to argue with him, not tonight.

  ‘I’ll make it,’ I say.

  He just nods in reply, too tired to argue with me either.

  24

  We sit with our backs against the wall, staring at her chest rising and falling. For a long time neither of us speaks.

  ‘Do you think she’s going to be okay?’ I ask eventually, and I know I’ve asked him before, but I can’t help it.

  ‘I don’t know. I’m just hoping it didn’t hit an artery. I don’t think I’ll be able to repair it if it has.’

  ‘There was a lot of blood.’

  ‘There was.’

  We go silent, and I can feel Kole holding his breath so he can listen to her breathing.

  ‘What do you think happened?’ I ask him.

  He draws his legs up to his chest, balances his cup on his knee.

  ‘I don’t know.’ I watch him bite his lip, lost in thought. ‘If she was shot, there has to be Officers in the forest somewhere. I don’t trust the fact that we only found one.’

  ‘And what does that mean for us?’

  ‘I’m not sure. We might have to move again, but I don’t want to do that if we don’t absolutely have to.’

  ‘Seriously?’ I turn to face him, almost tipping over my cup in the process. ‘But you only just got here.’

  ‘Three weeks,’ he says, then lets out a quiet laugh. ‘It would be a record.’

  ‘You’re serious? You’re actually considering picking up and taking
off again? After all our work here?’

  ‘Of course I’m serious.’ He looks at me like I’m crazy. ‘How would I not be serious? If there are Officers out there, we have to leave before they get a chance to find us.’ His voice turns sour at the end, and I can tell he’s remembering the last time they had to run.

  ‘But what if you fought back?’ I ask, setting my cup down, afraid of spilling it. ‘What if you found them before they found you?’

  ‘Quincy, that’s not how this works.’

  ‘Why not?’ I ask excitedly, and I don’t know if it’s because I’m exhausted, but it feels like the best idea anyone’s ever had. ‘You could do it, I know you could.’

  ‘And risk how many lives in the process?’

  ‘How many lives are you risking by letting them hunt you like prey?’ I ask.

  I’m suddenly angry.

  ‘Why are you letting them do this to you, Kole? You’re just allowing them to take the power without question. Maybe if you just tried—’

  ‘And end up dead, like Jay?’ Kole snaps, turning to face me so suddenly, I pull back an inch. ‘You think I don’t know he’s dead?’ He catches a look on my face and laughs. It’s a dry, horrible sound. ‘I know he’s dead. They’re all dead.’

  ‘But you went looking for them …’ I feel like I’m being strangled.

  ‘Because I’m the one who has to pretend we’re going to be okay,’ he says. ‘That’s my job. If I didn’t do it, we wouldn’t be alive, and not because we starved or because of Oasis. The minute you lose hope, you’re as good as dead.’

  ‘But you …’ I trail off, my chest tight.

  ‘Exactly,’ he says, looking directly at me, and his eyes eat me alive.

  For the rest of the night we watch her, and we don’t speak.

  In my entire life, I have never pitied anyone. I had to learn not to, because pitying people was dangerous. It meant you cared too much, or maybe I was just too busy pitying myself, and my situation, to think of anyone else.

  But this. That look in his eyes, like he had painted his armour to look like skin but behind it, there was nothing.

  I can’t help pitying that.