SNEAK PEEK

Blue Arrow Island

There’s a cost to what I do. It’s too heavy at times. But I’ve brought that cost on others, so I suppose the least I can do is bear it, even if it eventually crushes me.

Excerpt from the journal of Dr. Randall McClain

Chapter One

Briar

I’m alive. At least, I think so. Surely the afterlife doesn’t smell like diesel fumes and salt water. It’s been a long time since I breathed in anything but the musty decay of a prison cell.

I shift and raise my fingertips to my cracked lips, a bolt of pain zinging through one of my shoulders. When I open my eyes, overpowering light makes me squeeze them shut again. I’ve been in the dark for weeks; my eyes can’t handle the brightness.

Something nudges my leg. I ignore it, gently running my fingers over my wrists. I’m not tied up anymore. The welts left behind by the binds ache, but it’s nothing compared to my raging headache.

“Wake up,” someone whispers urgently, nudging my leg again.

I squint against the sunlight that floods my eyes, getting into a sitting position. A gust of thick, humid air blasts my ripe, unwashed scent straight into my nostrils.

I’m on the dingy white fiberglass deck of a boat, one of about two dozen people. Some of them are still sleeping.

No, not sleeping. The last thing I remember is guzzling the jug of water guards brought to my cell. My painful, swollen lips and intense thirst tell me I haven’t had water in a long time, and I’m groggy. I was unconscious. And the other people lying on the deck are too. 

“We’re here,” the person who nudged me whispers.

I turn to look at the woman sitting next to me, my eyes starting to adjust. Her black, shoulder-length hair has dried blood crusted in it and I can feel the dread in her golden-brown eyes. She glances down at my wrists, and I assume she’s looking at my rope burns. 

Then I see them in clear light for the first time—the thick black X tattoos that stretch from knuckles to wrist on the backs of both of my hands. It’s been several weeks since I was branded with the marks, but I couldn’t see them in the darkness. It’s like I’m looking at someone else’s hands, the skin familiar but the ink foreign. 

She holds out her wrist, bearing the same tattoo. “I’m Amira.” 

“Briar.”

“They’re taking us to an island.”

I fight to swallow against the dryness in my throat. I had no choice really, between exile and death for my so-called crime, but I thought exile meant a remote prison where I could plan an escape. How the hell will I escape from an island?

“Get up!” a deep male voice booms. “You shit sacks are jumping off this rig in about two minutes. Stand up so we can get a good look at you.”

I count the guards, all men wearing dark uniforms with the New America flag emblazoned on a large patch on the shoulder. The flag’s stripes are vertical now, the resemblance to a cell a fitting metaphor. The guards are a motley mixture of big and small, shaven and unshaven, fastidious and disheveled, because there are only two qualifications to serve in President Soren Whitman’s rapidly growing empire: be male and believe in Whitman’s brutal reshaping of society to serve his twisted biblical agenda.

There are eight of them, all strapped with multiple weapons. One of them, a bulky man with his finger casually resting on the hilt of a dagger sheathed at his waist, studies several of us and calls out, “I’ll do a hundred credits on the biter.”

I force myself to look down and appear demure, though it’s a little late for that. He’s talking about me—I bit the thumb of one of the guards so hard he had to get it stitched up. He was trying to carry a girl out of our cell, and there’s only one reason guards come alone to cells late at night.

I’m sure that same guard, or maybe a different one, got that girl another time. But not that night. That night, she was safe.

“Fifty on that little Hispanic one,” another guard says, leering at Amira.

“I’m fucking Egyptian,” she says under her breath.

“Don’t,” I caution her.

Whitman’s soldiers take extra glee in being cruel to women, and we can’t give them a reason to quietly cut our throats out here, where no one will ever know.

While one guard finishes taking bets, another walks around, kicking the people still lying still. Two of them groan and move. Six don’t. He kicks them again, pulling his foot back farther this time to inflict more pain.

“Six dead,” he says flatly. “You want us to throw them over?”

Why are six prisoners dead? What the hell did they do to us?

“Yeah, I’m not burying those fucks,” another guard says. “Toss ’em.”

I keep my expression neutral as guards grunt from the weight of the bodies they’re dragging across the deck. One guard has his hand wrapped around a woman’s ponytail. He pulls her to the edge of the deck and shoves her body into the water, rubbing his palm on the thigh of his pants to wipe off the grease from her hair.

What used to be cruel is now commonplace, and staying impassive to it is how I survive.

We’re approaching a large island, the shoreline ringed with pristine sand the shade of bone dust. A mountain looms on the island’s far side, an ominous sentinel overlooking a thick jungle.

“Can you swim?” Amira asks me in a hushed tone.

I flick a glance at the gently lapping teal waves. “Yeah. You?”

“Well enough.”

Nineteen prisoners remain on the deck—eleven men and eight women. If we work together, we have a better chance of finding safe water to drink and setting up a camp to protect ourselves from whatever’s in that jungle.

One of the guards holds binoculars to his eyes to gaze at the shoreline. “I see ’em. The locals are waiting to welcome you.”

His tone is amused. I close my eyes, take a deep breath in and let it out. Even though I’m weak and dehydrated, I’m only twenty-four years old and in good physical shape. I can make the swim. 

I’ve beaten the odds in the six years since the virus hit. Life in New America is brutal for women, and that brutality has sharpened my will into a deadly point.

And as long as Lochlan Murphy lives, so do I. 

The head guard gestures to the driver at the helm, and we immediately speed up. I steady my feet as a nearby prisoner falls and knocks another one to the ground.

“On our own or with the others?” Amira murmurs.

“Let’s try the others.”

She nods. We both study the shoreline, looking for the “locals” the guard mentioned.

“Shit,” a man close by mutters. 

It takes me a few more seconds to see what he does. My heart falls into my stomach when I make out a person nocking an arrow on a bow. A figure next to him is holding what looks like a spear.

“Who are they?” a prisoner asks from the other side of the deck, cupping a hand over his brows to shield against the sunlight.

“Welcome to Blue Arrow Island,” the head guard says. “Our great leader tried to take care of you fucks and you spit in his face. So now you get to play a little game.”

I cut my gaze back to the island, seeing more people with bows and arrows. Many more. Panic catches in my throat and I have to force myself to breathe. 

“We’re dead,” Amira whispers.

But it doesn’t make sense. Why would they bring us here to die when they could have just shot us back in Carson City, where we were imprisoned?

Scanning the entire shoreline, I search for options. Rock formations I can swim to for cover. A quick entrance into the jungle.

“Wait …” 

Two people are fighting on the beach. One has a spear and the other is using her fists. A swift right hook drops the spear holder to the ground, and he doesn’t get back up. The woman retrieves his spear and drives it into him, more than a foot of the weapon sinking into his stomach. Then she yanks the spear out of him and walks toward a group of people, unfazed by the murder she just committed. 

That’s one hell of a strong woman. I couldn’t drive a spear into someone that deep and then pull it back out like it’s a toothpick in a glazed meatball.

At the other end of the beach, people are yelling and gesturing angrily. I think it’s because of the man who was just killed.

“There are two different groups,” I say in a low tone meant only for Amira.

“Are they prisoners, like us?”

“I don’t know.”

If everyone on that beach is united in trying to kill us, we don’t stand a chance. There are a lot more of them than there are of us, and we don’t have any weapons. But if they’re also fighting each other … that wouldn’t be a bad thing.

The roar of the boat’s engine cuts off, the vessel rocking in the water. From its sleek design, I can tell this was someone’s prized yacht before the virus. Now it’s a charter, transporting people to their deaths.  A guard pushes a button, the links of a massive chain clanking as he lowers the anchor.

I look between the two groups on the beach again. A tall, broad man with dark hair stands at the front of the first group, his hand wrapped around a spear.

There’s a woman at the front of the other group, her blond hair blowing behind her in the breeze. She doesn’t have a weapon, but many of the people behind her are holding primitive wood spears.

A choice between groups led by a man and a woman is an easy one for me. I consider telling Amira which group looks safest, but I stop myself. She seems nice, but it’s always best to share as little as possible. I have to take care of myself; assuming anyone else will could be a death sentence.

Something arcs through the air, drawing my gaze up to the pale-blue sky. It’s an arrow, fired toward the boat by someone on the beach. The guards don’t even acknowledge it. It plunks into the water, out of range.

“Inmates, you have thirty seconds to get off this boat before we start removing you,” the head guard says.

Amira jolts forward and I instinctively put my fingertips on her arm to stop her. Her eyes bulge with worry.

“We have to jump,” she whisper-hisses.

“Wait.”

I don’t want to be one of the first inmates to reach that shoreline. If we hang back, maybe we’ll be able to see what’s going on before we get there.

Someone murmurs a prayer and the thunking splashes of people plunging into the water begin. Amira takes deep breaths as we approach the boat’s edge, nearing the gaps where a protective railing used to be.

She reminds me of Ellery, the first friend I made after the virus hit. We watched each other’s backs and survived in the shadows for more than four months until she was shot while keeping watch as I checked houses for food.

My first post-virus lesson on making friends was short. Don’t. 

Sweat trickles down my spine beneath my shirt as I leap off the watercraft’s edge, my instincts screaming to get away from the people behind me and the ones in front of me at the same time.

You’ve survived worse, Briar. Pressure builds diamonds.

For five years, my humanity has been stripped away, piece by piece. If fate wants me to die on this beach, at least the last of it will be taken all at once. I’ll be able to rest.

The cool, crisp water infuses me with new energy. I swim cautiously, keeping my head above the surface. The others are doing the same. No one wants to get within range of the arrows.

We move toward shore in a cluster until we get close enough to make a choice about where we want to exit the water. Most people are going for dead center between the warring groups, probably hoping to make a run for the jungle. 

“I’m a hunter!” a man yells from the water. “I can help you!”

My feet find sandy footing and I slow down, looking in every direction. Amira moves with me. We watch as the first person walks up to the beach, quickly going from waist-deep in the water to mid-thigh, to calf-high.

“I’m not your enemy!” he calls out, his hands in the air. 

The guy with the spear runs toward him, his brows lowered in a determined expression. Others follow.

“Shit.” Amira’s voice rises with panic. “What do we do?”

The attackers are everywhere. They’re even coming into the water after us now.

I shove my feet into the soggy sand in a bogged-down run, eager to have full control of my legs again. People are screaming. My stomach churns as hands reach for me and I barely evade them.

I grab Amira’s arm, fear clawing up my throat. “Run.”

***

If you’re taken to the ground, don’t panic. Prioritize protecting your head and finding enough space to get up as quickly as possible. Use leverage. The ground is not a good place to be.

Excerpt from a police training manual written by Ben Hollis

Chapter Two

Briar

I was five years old when my father gave me my first self-defense lesson. He taught me where to kick to inflict the most pain and how to shove my thumbs into an attacker’s eyes and push until they squish back.

And how to scream like a warrior. My voice, he always told me, is my greatest weapon. I use it now.

The raw, visceral sound that travels up my chest and out of my mouth takes the person grabbing me by surprise. I stomp on her foot and swiftly kick her knee back. She drops with a swear that’s half grunt. 

I crouch, taking in the chaos around me. A massive man with long, tightly woven braids is fighting someone, blood spraying through the air as the huge man lands a punch to the other guy’s nose. A prisoner is crawling out from between them, frantically trying to clear the sand from his eyes.

The peaceful beach has become a battlefield. I don’t even know who’s on which side. The people waiting for us are all dressed similarly. Some have their faces painted with dark smudges. 

“Come with us!” a woman cries, her expression as terrified as the prisoners’, even though she has a spear in her hand. “We’ll get you to safety!”

“Stop fighting me!” someone says, using a staff to block punches. 

“Leave me the fuck alone and I will! I got sent here for murder and you’re about to be next.”

He swings at the staff wielder and hits him square in the jaw. A flying arrow lodges in his upper thigh and he howls with pain, dropping to his knees.

“Briar!”

I turn toward the voice and see Amira taking off toward the jungle. I follow, but I only make it a few steps before a powerful arm wraps around my chest and picks me up.

“I’m here to help you,” a deep voice growls. “Don’t fight me.”

Yeah, right. The guy whose head is bleeding all over the sand a few feet away might have believed that, but I don’t.

I squirm, kicking him as hard as I can with my feet in the air. He starts to walk, my panic rising. I won’t be dragged into the jungle and violated. These people are savages, but that’s nothing new to me. The only novelty is the tropical island location. 

Wait, though. I remember another one of my father’s lessons and I reach for my attacker’s balls, my hand landing on his thigh. I feel my way there, then twist and squeeze until there’s a painful burn in my fingers from the force.

“Fuck!”

He drops me and I scramble upright, running. If I can get to the jungle, I can hide. Evading capture kept me alive for more than three years after the virus until my luck ran out when Lochlan saw me at a market. I was there to trade for food; he was there to stomp on people who couldn’t fight back.

“Listen to me! We won’t hurt you!” 

The blond woman from the second group is standing on top of a huge boulder, yelling. She’s lean and muscular, her expression earnest. I don’t know if she’s crazy or arrogant for standing up there without any weapons. Maybe both.

“Get behind this rock and we’ll protect you! You have my word!”

Words are worth as much as hundred-dollar bills in New America. An arrow slices toward her, and she dodges to the side to avoid it, somehow not falling off the rock. Another follows it and she dodges again, glaring in the direction it was shot from.

The giant man I saw earlier extends a hand to me, blood and sweat swirling together on the deep-brown skin of his face. “Come. Please. We’re here to help.”

I back away. A bearded man barrels toward him, knocking him to the ground. I take the opportunity to run, moving around a woman wailing on the ground, her arm bent at an unnatural angle. 

The jungle’s dense foliage should allow me to blend in quickly. As I race toward it, I frantically look around for Amira. Maybe she already made it into the jungle. Together, our chances of surviving are better.

I see her and my heart plummets into my stomach. The dark-haired man who had been standing in front of his group is now carrying her over his shoulder like a sack of grain. She’s punching him in the back, but it’s not fazing him. He breaks into a run, calling out orders to the rest of the group.

They’re leaving. And Amira’s not the only person they’re trying to take prisoner. Others are resisting as people work together to tie them up with what looks like wire.

Sweat rolls down my brow as I consider my options, the blazing sun a torch I can already feel burning my skin. 

I don’t owe Amira anything. I hardly know her. If I go into the jungle, I can save myself. If I go after her with no weapons, we’ll both get captured—or worse.

“No!” she screams, slapping and punching at her captor’s lower back as she hangs upside down. “Briar!”

For a single second, I close my eyes. Shit. Why did I tell her my name? There’s something so unbelievably difficult about hearing someone crying out for help from me specifically.

We’re all linked together, Briar. From the tiniest little microorganism to the impossibly vast cosmos, life is connected. It’s beautiful when you think about it. 

My mother was a scientist, and her words to me when I was young flood back. I’ve thought of them many times in the five years since losing my entire family. She felt connected to nature. So I try to sense her there when I’m at my lowest, in the canopy of shade created by massive oak trees or the peaceful birdsong at sunrise.

I clench my fists, both inked with permanent warnings to the world that I refused to be used. I’m proud of what the tattoos represent. My parents and sister would be too.

Amira is still alive right now, and we’re connected. If I don’t try to help another woman who also stood up against evil, risking her life to do so, there’s no humanity left in me.

My feet sink into the sand as I set off in a run, going after her. There’s a spear on the ground, and I bend and reach down to swipe it up. My father taught me how to use guns and knives, but I don’t know anything about fighting with spears. It’s pretty self-explanatory, though: Stick the pointy end into the bad guys.

I reel backward, the spear flying from my hand. Something powerful pulls on my midsection, the air in my lungs whooshing out in a rush. I’m lightheaded, fumbling my hands around my chest to figure out where I’m hit.

“Relax,” a deep male voice says from behind me. “I won’t hurt you. I’m here to protect you.”

My fingers find a rope. I’ve been lassoed, like a fucking farm animal. My arms are locked at my sides, immobilizing me. I turn and lunge toward my attacker, planning to headbutt him. He reacts quickly, putting a palm out to absorb the impact. My head throbs from the force of the hit, and his hand doesn’t even move.

“You’re okay.”

I scowl at him. He looks about my age, his wavy, shoulder-length brown hair and lean, muscular build making him look more like a surfer here to catch waves than a warrior capturing prisoners.

“I know this is a shit show, but the Dust Walkers will kill you. I’m saving you.”

“I didn’t ask to be saved,” I snap. “Leave me alone.”

His expression softens. “You can’t survive alone here. If we don’t take you with us, the Dust Walkers will chase you into the jungle and kill you.”

“You’re the one who just tied me up.”

A smile plays on his lips. “I get it. But you’ll be untied when you get back to our camp. I swear, this is for your own good.”

“And I swear I’ll kill you if you don’t let me go.”

It’s an empty threat from a helpless woman, once again tied up and unable to defend myself. And my throat is so dry and sore I can hardly talk. When I try to lunge at my captor, a wave of dizziness makes my world spin. I fall to my knees instead.

“She’s probably got heat exhaustion,” a female voice calls. “Let’s go!”

My captor bends down beside me. “My name’s Pax. What’s yours?”

“Eat shit.”

He chuckles lightly and scoops me up with hands beneath my back and knees. My resistance is weak, my arms leaden. 

“You can’t keep up with us in your state. Try to relax. We’re going to take care of you.”

Nausea hits like a tidal wave, making me cringe and curl into myself. I’m drenched with sweat and on the edge of passing out. As much as I want to argue with him, it takes all my energy just to breathe.

“Good. Try to relax. The worst is behind you, I promise.”

I don’t believe him, but I’m too drained to fight anymore. I got minimal food and water in prison, and I’m still groggy from whatever the guards used to knock us out. 

Fighting is all I have left, though. Every day, I silently consider all the ways I can make Lochlan pay for what he’s done to me. It’s been my driving force since the day his soldiers captured me at the market.

These people who are taking me back to their camp aren’t my enemies. Lochlan is. I have to rest up, gather my strength, and come up with a new plan. I’ll find a way to get home and look him in the eye one last time as I’m ramming a dagger into his chest.