onto his clothes, and a gaping bloody crater glared from a sightless socket.
Dylan swore and ripped off his shirt, wrapping it around her thigh, high up near her groin, and she screamed in pain as he tightened it, and wound a piece of driftwood through the knot. He twisted it like a valve. She almost lost consciousness, struggling noiselessly and her eyes rolling up in her head as she gasped. My love, I’m sorry… stay with me.
“Good…” she cried, “it’s…”
She passed out and Dylan closed his eyes against his own tears and kissed her lightly on the lips. They tasted like salt and ash. Another shot, this one coming through a small hole in the driftwood above Sarah’s head. He growled. The bleeding looked like it had stopped but he couldn’t be sure.
“Time to finish this,” he said resolutely to himself and stood up, gripping the stock of the gun and cranking another shell into the barrel with blistering complicity.
He came out in full view and heard one of the poacher’s bullets whizz past his leg. He was screaming indecipherable curses, a burbling mess of pain and adrenaline. Even if Dylan left him now, he’d probably perish from the blood loss.
“Come on!” Arthur taunted, stumbling to one side and shooting. The sand exploded in front of Dylan’s feet, but his eyes were stapled on the poacher.
Calmly, Dylan raised his own gun, even as Arthur expelled the last bullet in his magazine, and several other empty clicks signaled he was fresh out of ammo. Dylan let out a slow breath and let the poacher’s face come into view on the scope. He squeezed.
Down the beach, a flock of seagulls jolted into the air, alarmed by thunder that issued from the cloudless sunny sky. In moments, they had forgotten about it, and returned, chattering against the sand. The beach churned with waves, an endless cycle of ebb and tide.
Half an hour later, they would rush in a flock to the warm kill of a body, staining the beach with a slow runnel of blood that leaked like a tributary back into the ocean, darkening with the tide. If they had cared, the seagulls would have noticed the lack of eyes, as if some great force had scooped them from both sockets. They would have also noticed the wide expression, lips curled back in an endless scream. But these were seagulls, and they had no interest in such things.
Waves lapped against wood, and for as many times as she could remember in recent memory, Sarah woke up not certain of her surroundings. The sky was above her, a fractured pounding of clouds and bitten light, like ice-floes scattered against the firmament. She blinked, trying to ascertain if she were really alive. She felt a chill rush over her chin – that felt real enough.
She tried to speak, but her throat felt constricted, dry with the effort. Whatever she was lying against wasn’t solid, and it took her several moments to realize that she was in a boat. The white painted ribs of the boat crept up on either side of her like the inward ribs of some monstrous wooden fish. She could smell fish, that lake-bottom smell. And blood.
“Dyl…” she muttered.
The boat rocked again and a familiar face loomed over. He had on a bright knowing smile, despite the scrubbed side of his face, here a lingering dark umber marked dried blood. His black hair was like a dark sickle over his eyes, and the blue underneath seemed to have reclaimed its splendor. They shone down on her, and felt safe.
“You’re awake, that’s good… I thought you’d sleep the whole way,” he joked.
“Whole way… where?”
He took a moment and looked up. Then she realized that there was a humming in the air, and it died suddenly as there was another shuffling and he knelt down beside her. The boat rocked with the capricious currents and she could smell the ocean like an augury, something that was trying to tell them something, if only they had the presence of mind to listen to it and try to understand whatever deeper meaning was borne by it.
“Home,” he said at last, “but we’re still a good half day out. It’ll be many hours. You just sleep.”
“No,” she struggled against the heavy blankets that were layered over top of her, preventing her from moving. It was warm, but she wanted to sit up. “Tell me…”
A grim shadow passed over his face.
“Don’t move. Your leg is still injured