November 15
Dawn revealed that our combination care package and house-warming gift was no longer on the shore. Not even the debris of having been torn apart by rats or cats. It was gone, as if it had never been there.
“I don’t like that they didn’t leave any sign for us,” Steve said.
Jeeza nodded. “Not very neighborly.”
“Well,” I started, “I suppose we could—”
“—we could consider going there?” Prospero asked.
We all looked at him. He was pointing high up on Ilha Rata’s wooded slopes. A curlicue of smoke was coming out of the green. White smoke. Dried wood.
I think we all stood at once.
“Well,” Rod said, “that kinda changes things.”
Chloe bent back over the telescope we kept trained on the island. “I don’t see anything else that—wait! A tree just fell. Near where you left the package.” She adjusted the scope, then smiled. But it wasn’t a happy expression. It was more like acknowledging an opponent’s clever chess move. “Oooo. Smart.”
“Care to share?” I asked.
She cut her eyes at me. “I still haven’t forgiven you.”
“Really? Because last night, it seemed that—”
“Shut up!” Her voice was half imperious, half anxious. “Look, alongside the tree.”
Most of us had our binoculars on that spot already.
“What am I missing?” Jeeza said.
“See that line draped over the rocks, leading away from the tree?”
Prospero sucked in a deep breath. “Yes. Twisted vines, I think. And yes, very smart.”
I was annoyed because I could barely make out the vine-rope and even more because I didn’t see what was so special about it. “Smart how?” I snapped.
“Geez, calm down, Alvaro!” Chloe said, eyes wide. “That rope was holding up the tree. Bet you five chocolate bars that the vine runs back from the tree line and up the slope.”
Now I understood. “So they could drop the tree whenever they wanted, and without exposing themselves when they did it.”
Prospero lowered his binoculars. “I think that’s our invitation.”
I nodded. “Let’s not keep them waiting.”
Because I’d been thinking about this situation from the moment I had turned the Zodiac away from the shore of Resurrection Cove yesterday, I had everyone’s role figured out. I had also anticipated that there would be a lot of debate—if I let that happen. So I didn’t.
Orders were issued and reasons were given. Chloe and Jeeza stayed on the boat. No, I’m not a sexist: they are simply the best sniper/spotter team we’ve got. On the other hand, while I would have liked to leave Rod as pilot for Voyager, I needed him on shore because he was our dog-handler.
Cujo was going to have to be up near our point man; otherwise, his senses were not going to give us the warning we needed. So if the folks on Ilha Rata were baiting us in, poor Cujo was in greater danger than if we’d been moving against infected. Stalkers aren’t subtle and a dog can smell them when they’re still far off. But unturned humans? They’re sneaky, will leave false scents and concealed traps. So there was no way to both rely on Cujo’s senses and keep him out of harm’s way.
Which was why we had to have two people walking point to either flank, then Rod and Cujo just a step or two behind, and finally one more person as rear guard. So with radios on and Cujo on a short leash, we passed from the rocky shore into the humid forest.
It’s not really a rainforest, but Ilha Rata’s trees grow close together, so you aren’t about to blaze your own trail and make any speed. Besides, our path was marked.
Just four or five yards beyond where the tree had fallen, we found a trail blaze. It took a minute or two of scouting around before we realized that we were being directed to one of several game trails. Or what looked like game trails, since there wasn’t any “game” in the entire FdN archipelago.
“Why all the trails?” Rod asked.
Steve nodded at the forest around us. “So that the locals don’t beat one path too often. You can’t tell which one is the main one.” He nodded at the blaze. “Not without that.”
“Except we don’t know it’s the main one,” I amended. “All we know is that it’s the one they want us to follow.”
Steve nodded. “Fair point. Want to take a different path?”
Rod was a second ahead of me. “They might be marking a safe trail. One without traps.”
Prospero nodded. “Or they could be leading us into a kill zone.” He looked up at me with a crooked grin. “Right now, I am very glad not to be giving the orders.”
I shrugged. “We take the marked trail. This doesn’t feel like someone trying to ambush us. This is someone who’s trying to protect themselves by controlling our route, keeping tabs on us. Besides, I don’t think we’re talking about a lot of people, here.”
Jeeza’s voice crackled out of my radio. “Why not?”
I shrugged even though she couldn’t see me. “We’re not dealing with hunters; the people who left these signs are used to hiding, not attacking. Remember: to get to this island, they had to have a boat, but we didn’t see one anywhere. No sign of huts, tents, or a camp when we cruised around the island yesterday. And we never saw smoke until this morning, so they must limit and conceal their fires.”
Prospero nodded. “Because, after all, it’s not as if the infected are about to come sailing out here.” He stared up the slope. “No, they are worried about real humans. The uninfected kind.”
I hitched up my web-gear. “Let’s follow that trail.”
A few hundred yards of winding uphill progress brought us to a concrete and stone building. Or rather, the shell of one. Prospero circled around to its other side, raised an index finger. “Look.”
I did. A deadfall trap: probably about four hundred pounds of shattered masonry and rock ready to collapse on anyone who went through the doorway out of the ruin. Except the trigger had been removed and chocks put in its place.
“I think,” said Rod, “that someone is trying to tell us that they could hurt us. But have chosen not to.”
“Or,” Steve countered, “they want us to think that so we drop our guard.”
“Preach it, Steve,” Chloe’s voice growled out of my radio.
“Two valid possibilities,” I agreed.
Prospero cocked an eyebrow. “Then which do we act upon?”
“Both. We stay alert but hope to meet new friends, not new enemies.” We walked around the colonial-era ruin and angled back on to the trail.
One of the weird things about surviving after the whole world has gone to shit is that there is no “normal.” I don’t just mean that the old life and ways are gone forever. I’m talking about simple, mathematical odds. As in, there is no “norm,” no “typical situation,” no “standard distribution” that governs what you are most likely to encounter, based on statistical probability. Every situation is unique, at least when you’re on these ass-end-of-nowhere islands. I guess in New York or Beijing or Berlin or London you probably can rely upon at least one probability: that everywhere you go will be swarming with homicidal, raging infected.
But still, as we panted our way up to the top of the hill upon which Ilha Rata’s old obelisk-shaped lighthouse was perched, we were surprised by a deep contralto voice that called down to us from one of the upper windows. “Hey, you don’ get it? If I want you dead, you being dead now.”
Actually, the words were a lot more garbled than that. They were English—sort of—but also something else. Portuguese, I suspected, but not like any Portuguese I’d ever heard. And while Portuguese shares a bunch of the same (or at least similar) words with Spanish, knowing the one language doesn’t mean you’ll understand the other.
We looked up at the black-shadowed windows of the poured-concrete lighthouse; it had probably been built before World War One. “Thanks for not killing us,” I said. I repeated it in Spanish.
“Yeah? Thanks your dog.”
“Our dog?”
“Sim, estúpido. I seeing your treating him. You is gentilmente. Um, amablemente?”
“Kind,” I furnished in English.
“Sim, yeah, ‘kind.’ I thinks maybe okay. You.”
I put down my shotgun. “We are.”
“Maybe yes. Maybe no. We talk.”
I indicated the distance between the window and the ground. “This way?”
“This way or no way.”
Well, that pretty much settled it. I turned to the others. “Might as well put your guns down, guys.”
While Chloe screamed about it being more important to keep our guns than our balls, Steve looked at the woods that ringed the bald crest of the hill. “You sure we’re okay?”
I nodded down at Cujo, who was wagging his tail and staring up at the lighthouse. He was interested, but that was all.
Rod’s nod matched mine. “When we walked around the tree line, he didn’t tweak to any scents.” He looked up at the unshuttered, unglazed window from which the woman’s voice seemed to be coming. “I think she’s alone.”
Steve nodded. “Yeah. Don’t know why, but…yeah.” He put his shotgun down.
I sat on the sparse grass, leaned back on my elbows. “So,” I called up, “how do you want to do this?”
“I say questions. You make answers.”
“What do you want to know?”
A pause. Then: “Ev’thing.”
Even though we boiled it down to the Cliffs Notes version, it still took about twenty minutes to hit all the highpoints of our life since climbing aboard Voyager in the Galapagos.
At the end, she let out an exasperated hoot. “You guys sure talk lots.”
“You asked lots of questions.”
For the first time, she laughed. “Yeah. I do.” The back-and-forth of our introduction-through-storytelling had led to the evolution of a three-language pidgin that was working pretty well.
I rolled up into a squat. “Now what?”
The door to the lighthouse opened. “Now we meet for real.” A woman, probably no older than those of us who had started on Voyager, came out. She was dark, about five-foot-seven and as lean as Chloe was solid. As she walked into the sunlight, she seemed ready to rise up on her toes and sprint—not in flight, but just because she was ready for action. Like an athlete. Like there was a high-performance engine idling inside her body, just waiting to go into overdrive.
Rod started and jumped to his feet.
She laughed as Cujo barked, the way dogs do when they want to meet a new person. “Watch out, I maybe bite you to death! Like them over there!” She pointed at the main island and laughed loudly.
“Not really very funny,” Prospero mumbled.
She shrugged. “If you don’ laugh at it, it make you crazy. Le’s go for walk.” She shook her head when Steve reached for his shotgun. “No guns.” He shrugged, then reached behind to remove the Browning Hi-Power from where it was concealed in the small of his back. He moved to lay it down next to his shotgun.
The woman started at the sight of the pistol, eyes wide, but then frowned. “Stop,” she said.
Steve was confused. “But you said—”
“Juz’ stop.”
We stood around while she frowned, looking hard at the ground, like it had insulted her.
“Okay,” she said finally, “you can bring guns.”
Steve looked at me, even more confused. I nodded at the High-Power. “It’s because you gave it up, even though she didn’t know it was there.”
She cut her eyes at me, looked like she was going to say something, but instead, launched herself toward a trail that led down the other side of the hill to the less-forested side of Ilha Rota. “Why you waitin’?” she shouted. She ran with more ease than we walked.
We followed.
“My name are Tainara Sartorio,” she yelled over her shoulder as the slope leveled off into a tousled sward of grass, bushes, and low, wind-tilted trees. “This my farm.”
I stopped jogging to stare around. “It is?”
Prospero did the same, panting. “Where, exactly, is this farm?”
“You standing middle of it, Inglês.” She took two steps to the left of the path, reached down, wrenched her wrist around, came up with a small green pepper. “Local plants. Most were here. Some I…I put in as new root. I, uh…”
“Transplanted?” Rod hazarded.
Tainara smiled and frowned. “That. I think. All around. But you keep feet on trail. Traps ever’where.”
I nodded. “We’ll stay on the path.”
“Smart.” She turned in a circle, smiling brightly at her mostly invisible farm. “Lots of cassava—manioc. I give you some. As thank you for the tins.”
“Tins?” Steve wondered.
“She means canned food,” Prospero murmured with smile. “Clearly, she just knows the proper word for it.”
I was shaking my head. “The tins were a gift.” She frowned uncertainly. “Free?” I tried.
Tainara shook her head sharply. “No. I don’ need free. I fine here.”
“We know. We just—”
But she was done with that topic. “Come,” she snapped and led us to a curving trail that seemed certain to bring us back to Resurrection Cove.
“You like eat peixe?” she shouted over her shoulder.
Damn: how do I answer that honestly? Sure, we liked fish. And sure we’d be happy to share a meal with her. But—more fish? Really?
Prospero found the answer that eluded me. “We like all kinds of fish, yes. Which is fortunate, since we live on a boat.”
Tainara chuckled. “Okay, okay. I compreendo. You like it, but eat too much.”
“Still,” I added, “we’d be happy to join you for a meal.”
She nodded. “Ah. Okay. Good. We do.”
We stopped in a small clearing only fifteen yards away from the shore’s tree line. Through the tight clutter of skinny trunks, we could see our Zodiac.
Tainara sat on a low rock, gestured toward others around the clearing. “Ants. Bugs,” she explained.
As we lifted or rolled stones into a rough circle, she unslung a satchel and produced a wide variety of fruits; I didn’t recognize any of them. She saw me looking and laughed. “So now I poison you.”
I smiled, gestured toward her offerings, shrugged, shook my head: “New. First time.”
“Ah!” she said. She had a wide, wonderful smile when she chose to share it. “Try. All.”
I nodded, selected some little fruit that looked like an undernourished pear, remembered Mom pointing out a bigger variety, once. A quince, I think. “Did you already know these foods? From home?”
She nodded. “Yes”—which sounded like zhass—“I come from up Amazon river. Many foods there are here, too.”
“Up the Amazon?” Prospero repeated. “Where, exactly?”
She looked at him with dead, annoyed eyes. “Listen, Inglês, even if you are interested, you won’t know it. Is a town you never heard of. On a side river—a trib’tary?—called Rio Membeca. You won’t find on most maps.”
Prospero nodded, looked sad. “You are right. I have never heard of that river.”
That seemed to mollify Tainara. “Hated life there. But prob’ly kept me alive here.”
Rod frowned. “I’m not sure I understand.”
She looked at him almost pityingly. “My home, you do ev’thing for self. Something break, you do fix. Almost no cars. Bad phones. Internet mostly off. When on, it slow.”
“But are the people—?”
“People were shit. Like ev’where.” She spat. “TV and lots books show nice living away from cities.” She sneered. “Some ways, maybe. But mostly, just diff’rent kind of bad. In small town, you only safe if your family there long years.” She shook her head. “My pai, he from sea town. Had school until he ten. My momma was from forest. No reading. She die when I twelve, having my li’l sister. Who die next day; doctor too far.”
No one said anything. Until that moment, I would never have called my childhood fortunate. I guess that was because I hadn’t known how bad it could be.
Tainara hadn’t stopped. She wasn’t angry, or sad, or detached. It was like she was telling us a story about having a flat tire or losing a pair of socks. “Pai drank. After Mãe, he drank more. I a girl. Alone.” She shrugged. “I depend on me: to fix things, to be safe.”
Rod shook his head. “Jeez, I’m—I’m sorry.”
Tainara looked at him like a pet that had done something cute. “It that way for many where I born.”
Steve had been gnawing slowly at a piece of fruit. “How did you get out?”
Tainara wiped her hands on a large frond. “Football. Er, soccer, you say it. I went to school until I sixteen, played all time. That was trouble, so Pai gave me money for boat to Belém. I knew jobs, made money, took night classes. That’s where I learn English. Whatever you do, you make more money if you talk English.”
I hadn’t meant to nod vigorously, but I did, which she noticed. “My mom,” I explained, “she got jobs because her English was so good.”
Tainara nodded back. “So you know.” She stood. “This”—she looked back at FdN, then gestured at the forest around us—“this not so bad.” She noticed the glances that went back and forth between us. “I am be serious,” she said emphatically. “Is less dangerous here than it was two miles away from my town. Any direction.”
“Because of the animals?” Steve asked.
“Yes. Both kinds.”
“‘Both’?”
“Yes,” she said with a hard smile. “With four legs and with two legs.” She threw a hand in the direction of FdN. “Them, over there: you know what they do. No surprises.” She folded her arms close against her chest. “The jungle, you never know. Always surprises.”
Although it was hard to imagine two human females who looked more different, at that moment, I realized just how many similarities there were between Chloe and Tainara. I wondered if that would make them friends, enemies, or frenemies. Or if we’d ever get the chance to find out. The silence was dragging on too long. Don’t know why, but I knew I had to keep Tainara talking. “So football is how you got out of the jungle, but why did you come to Fernando de Noronha?”
She shrugged. “Because football went shit. So I wanted away. Get to small, quiet place.” She looked around. “Everyone else flies in. Rich turistas who say ‘Oooo!’ and ‘Ahhh!’ at pretty fish and beaches.” She snorted. “I came fishing boat. Probably another reason I alive. Planes with people who have the virus, already infected. They dead and don’ know it. Me? I come working nets and sleeping on deck. No germs; just the stars.”
Her brief drift into a wistful tone snapped back into pure grimness. “But the momen’ I get here, I know is all wrong. I seen disease go through li’l towns. Is like grassfire. Fast, spread in ever’ direction.” She shook her head. “I know the island goin’ to shit. I hear the crazy talk on radio, guv’mint warning on phones. So I go to the most li’l island.” She pointed to the southwest: “Sela Gineta. Nothing there. I stay two months. Hid. Ate lotta fish.” She glanced at me and smiled. “Like you.”
“Did you go back?” Prospero nodded toward Fernando de Noronha itself.
“Not right ’way. Firs’ I watch for boats leave or arrive. Lots leave. A few go here; Ilha Rata.” She shrugged. “Then fires start aroun’ the town, Vila dos Remédios. A li’l later, I thin’ maybe a plane crashes in sea. Then nothing. Ever’thin’ stop.”
She wrapped her arms around her knees. “I knowed the big islan’d be dangerous. But before boat bring me to Baia Sao Antonio, it stop here. I saw fruit, wild cassava, people fish from cliffs. So, not lot of food, but not many went here. So I—puddled? paddled?—until I reach there.” She gestured behind us, where Voyager was anchored. “Watched, then made noise. Hoped people got here without virus.” She sighed. “But only infected come down to rocks, then into water until it over their legs. They no come out more deep.”
“So what did you do?” Steve asked.
Tainara shrugged. “I go back Sela Gineta. Rest. Then go to find ship I came on. Anchored in Baia Sao Antonio. Sad: captain sick. Rest dead. But a dive boat was empty. Spearguns still there. Got those. Came back Ilha Rata. Made noise until the infecteds come again.” She lined up an imaginary speargun with me, made a ssshhhhpt! sound: “Shot three.”
She paused, reflecting. “They don’ die right away. First, they get angry. Muy loco, I thin’ you say? And they hungry, too. I stay where they see me, they keep yelling, trying to reach me, but won’ come out. The ones I hit with spears get weak; the others grab ’em. They forget abou’ me. I paddle in. Shoot ’nother two. Same thing.” She sighed. “Took two days, but all eight gone. Last one, he jus’ can’t go ’way, not even when he belly full. He wan’ kill me so much. Took a lotta spears kill him.” Then she smiled brightly. “So after, I live here. Make my farm. An’ hide.”
Rod was smiling and frowning at the same time. “So why didn’t you send up a flare last time we were here? You must have seen us.”
“Yeah, but last time, you come and go really quick. And really sneaky.”
“Well,” Prospero explained in his I’m-extremely-reasonable tone of voice, “we don’t really want to announce ourselves to the stalkers.”
Tainara leaned forward, frowning really hard. “Did you say walkers? Like on TV? Like Dead Walking?”
“No, no,” Steve corrected, “stalkers.”
She exhaled a grateful sigh. “Graças a deus. That show bullshit. Total.”
Rod looked over his shoulder at FdN, then at the guns we were cradling. “You sure?”
“Yeah, sure I’m sure. Look, what about—?”
And she became animated reciting all of Hollywood’s undead stupidities we knew so well. That we too had laughed and railed at. All the wildly improbable head shots, all the wasted ammunition, all the people running around without so much as a leather jacket or firecoat. It’s a long list of totally moronic survival choices and tactical idiocy (if they even knew what tactics were).
We laughed, her along with us. The more she spoke, the more English she was remembering, and she was really on a roll with this topic. But best of all, it was a kind of weird bonding experience. I mean, we were all roughly the same age, had all lived through the end of the world, and so naturally started comparing our experiences with how stupid “zombie apocalypse” TV shows and movies had been. Which was a kind of back-door way to bond over how brutally different the reality had been.
“So why did you send up the flare this time?” I sighed, leaning back.
She seemed to regret the return to a serious topic, or maybe just didn’t want to explain herself. “This time, when you come back, I get a better look. That told me you were prolly okay.”
“What, specifically, told you that?”
“I already tell you; the dogs.” Then her brow lowered. “Lemme ’splain: once it all went to shit, I see how it goes with groups people. I see how it was on the ships that left, and those that came later. Women weren’t crew no more: they cargo. Cattle. You know what I mean.” She shook her head. “But not you guys. Everyone working. Everyone have guns. You eat same food, laugh together, argue together. I see it through…bin-bokulars?”
“Binoculars,” I offered with what I hoped was an encouraging smile.
“Yeah. Those. And ’nother thing; you careful. You make plans. And you clean. So this time I think chances are good that you not a bunch of filthy filhos-da-puta.”
I wasn’t certain of the exact translation, but I had a pretty good idea. I just smiled and nodded.
Steve shook his head. “Damn. How did you make it?”
“‘Make it’?” Tainara repeated.
“Survive on your own.”
She bristled. “You mean, ’cause I a woman?”
Steve just stared at her. “No, because you’re just one person. In the middle of a zombie apocalypse.”
His tone, so frank and even, didn’t just calm her; she seemed a little embarrassed. “Oh, okay.” Her smile was apologetic. “Sorry. Being woman not always easy in Brazil. Particularly if you’re—what the American term?—a Tim-girl?”
“Tom-girl,” he provided.
“Right. That. And it was more harder for me.”
Rod cocked his head. “You mean, because of where you grew up?”
“Merda, no; it was because I wanted to be soccer player.”
Prospero frowned. “That was a problem?”
“Brazil aren’t England, Inglês. When my avó was a little, little girl, were women’s team all over the country. But then, in World War Two, some government idiot made it illegal. No play sports that be ‘against woman’s nature.’”
Prospero blinked. “No.”
“But yes, Inglês. They didn’ let us play again until, like 1980, I thinks. And jus’ changing the law didn’t change the sport. Not even twenty-five percent teams were women when the virus come. And they still call us ‘big shoes.’”
“Big shoes?” repeated Rod, puzzled. “Because you kick the ball a lot?”
“No. ’Cuz they thinks we all lesbians.” She snorted. “When I was ten—maybe eleven?—the FIFA president say women’s soccer would have more fans if we wear tighter shorts. They want ‘heterosexy’ girls in tight shirts. Even say national team should pose naked for a calendar.”
“So you quit?”
“I don’t quit nothing,” she snarled. “Never. But I push back against that shit. So I miss twenty-years-old team by one spot.” She spat. “Lie. I know coach’s secretary. She tell me my rank for play and skill was eight. But somehow, I still don’ make team of fifteen. Miss by one spot.” She hugged her knees tight. “Felt like world ended. So I came here. And then the world did end. For real.”
She had curled up around her legs even tighter. I figured it was time to change topics to something less personal. “So how often have you been back to the main island?”
“Since that first time? Just once or twice. And just to the end of the wharf. The infected don’t go out there except when there no rain for a long time. Don’ like being near the sea.”
Prospero leaned toward her. “They go out to the wharf when it’s dry?”
“Yeah. Well, not because the wharf are dry. They go because they thirsty.” She looked around, realized none of us understood what she meant. “Look: is like this. When it rain, there water ev’where. On stones, in ground, in big pools and the cisternas.
“But when it dry for days, they move early in the day and go anwhere there are metal or flat stone. Because water in the air—uh, driplets?—uh…”
Rod got it first: “Oh, droplets. You mean, the infected drink the dew, the condensation.”
Tainara nodded vigorously. “Condensação. Yes, that! So I no go then. I wait until it just finish raining. The infecteds go to pools, buckets, cans in Vila dos Remédios. I paddle—yes?—over when it dark, so they don’t see the boat, tie it up on far side of wharf. I come and go; they never see. Snack foods in machines and ships. But I don’ like going into ships.”
“Why?”
“Because infecteds get there before people knew or could leave. Those ships—some really nasty. To see and to smell.”
I nodded. “Yeah, we saw. But we’re going there, anyway.”
“You? There?” She looked at us like we had transformed into wild beasts before her eyes. “You crazy? Why go if you no have to?”
“Because the friends we mentioned—the ones who are returning—may need more food than we have.”
She frowned. “Look, I help. As much as I can. But going there is louco. Total.”
I smiled and nodded. “We know. But we have to be sure we can feed everyone. And we have to get ready for what comes next.”
She looked suspiciously from one of us to the next. “An’ what is next?”
Prospero looked like he was about to start explaining, but this needed to be as simple as possible. “Steve,” I said, “you want to do the honors?”
“Me?” he asked. “I probably understand it the least.”
“Which means you’ll keep it simple and direct.”
He shrugged and laid out—with minimum digression and maximum brevity—the mission to the ESA facility at Kourou. With every passing sentence, Tainara’s initial frown deepened.
When he got to the end, she looked around at us again. Her eyes had changed; they were less suspicious, but also more incredulous. “Well, you still crazy. More crazy, I think. But at least you have a reason.” She leaned back, made to rise. “But me? I do just fine without no GPS. That world is gone, frien’s. Best you learn to do without, too.”
I gestured gently with one hand, encouraging her to stay seated. “There’s more.”
She settled back, crossed her arms. “Maybe. But what’s in it for me?”
Prospero’s hopeful smile was also a bit ironic. “Helping your fellow man?”
She shook her head. “No and no. People should help themselves. And why should I help men? They never help me.”
“It was just a little joke,” Prospero explained.
“Yeah. And not even a li’l funny.” She turned to face me. “So I ask again, pequeno chefe, what’s in it for me?”
“Well, assuming that you’re not interested in the company of other human beings—”
“You right about that!” she snorted.
“—then how about a real weapon?” I put my own Browning Hi-Power on the ground between us.
Her eyes brightened for a moment, then she raised her chin and huffed. “I seen bigger ones.”
“I’m sure you have. It’s not a big gun. But it’s very reliable and holds a lot of bullets. Question is, do you know how to use it? Or any pistol?”
Her eyes shuttered. She looked away, annoyed. At me, at herself, or both, I couldn’t tell. “No,” she finally muttered.
I nodded. “Then here’s what’s in it for you. We give you one of the bigger pistols and teach you how to use it. You help us on the main island. After that, if you decide you want to come back here, then we’ll give you forty rounds and wish you good luck.”
Prospero and Rod leaned forward; I stilled them with a look at the same moment I turned down the volume on my radio, just in time to muffle Chloe’s roared objections.
Tainara’s eyes were on the gun, but I don’t think she was really seeing it. She was looking inside herself, probably weighing the safety of staying a complete hermit against the advantages of joining us, if only temporarily. She frowned. “Okay. Deal. I’ll get you some cassava, to celebrate.” And she was up and off into the darkening woods without any warning.
As soon as I turned the sound up on my radio again, Prospero voiced his objections. “Damn it,” he hissed when Tainara was out of earshot, “don’t bloody give away our guns and ammo, Alvaro!”
I shook my head. “I didn’t.”
“What do you mean? That’s what you just offered her!”
I nodded. “Yeah. But here’s the thing: she may be tough, but she’s still lonely. She doesn’t want to stay here. She just doesn’t want anyone to see it.”
Steve arched an eyebrow. “How do you know that?”
Chloe’s voice emerged from my radio; I could hear the slowly growing smile behind it. “Because, Steve, if she wanted to be alone, she wouldn’t have shot the flare to begin with.”