Page 25 of Blue Arrow Island (Blue Arrow Island #1)

Three Weeks Later

I hope by semester’s end, you’ll never look at a field of grass or an ancient oak tree the same way again.

- Excerpt from a lecture given by Dr. Lucinda Hollis in her Introduction to Plant Biology course

“Mornin’, Briar.” Felix touches the wide brim of his hat as I walk into the garden.

“Morning.”

I turn and raise my palm in a cursory wave at Vance, who will return for me later.

It rained for a few hours last night, and the air in the garden this morning is lush and heavy. I breathe deeply, the rich, loamy scents of wet earth and vegetation infusing me with a sense of calm.

I’ve been working in the garden for more than two weeks. Every day, I wake up excited about coming to my personal idea of paradise. I spend eight hours a day surrounded by plants—what could be better?

Felix is in charge, and the workers here say he runs the garden with a potting-soil fist, because he’s easygoing. He’s quiet, preferring to be wrist-deep in dirt. For a week now, Vance has been allowed to leave me under Felix’s supervision for the workday.

I haven’t wandered outside the garden because I don’t want to lose that freedom. Vance watches me too closely for my comfort. Even when we’re alone together in my small room at night to sleep, his eyes are always on me.

In my short time working here, I’ve learned a lot. I’ve ached to share this experience with my mom, who would have been blown away by it. The vegetables and fruits have been genetically modified in ways I never thought possible.

The garden is made up of raised beds built from lumber, laid out in rows that seem endless.

Some of them stretch more than two hundred feet.

There are lots of island critters that would get into the beds if they weren’t raised.

Protective screens arc around many of the beds, keeping birds and other flying pests away.

I’m starting my day harvesting sweet potatoes, and then I’ll move on to lettuce and spinach.

There are several varieties of lettuce in the garden: Batavian, Jericho, romaine, Boston Bibb, and buttercrunch.

Like everything here, it’s been bred to be extremely heat tolerant, require less water to grow, and regrow very quickly.

The lettuce I’m cutting away would normally take at least two weeks to regrow. But this lettuce will be fully regenerated within forty-eight hours.

This is the kind of breakthrough that could have helped many hungry people, both before and after the virus. This hardy garden is a scientific marvel, but I can’t forget the others on this island who are starving while I’m surrounded by food all day, every day.

“Hey, how’s it going?”

My garden coworker, Ray, kneels beside me. I murmur a quick hello and don’t look at him. This isn’t the first time he’s left the work he’s supposed to be doing to come talk to me. He’s wiry and muscular, and he looks like he’s in his thirties, his short hair and beard both the shade of rust.

“You think this place is kinda bullshit?” he asks in a low tone.

“The island?” I scoff. “That’s one word for it.”

“No, this camp. Marcus calls all the shots. He’s just like fuckin’ Whitman.”

I bristle, worried someone will overhear this conversation and think I share his opinion. Whatever thoughts I have about Marcus, I’m not stupid enough to say them out loud. Especially not to someone I don’t even know.

“This camp’s a lot better than the one I was at before.” I use my T-shirt to mop sweat from the back of my neck. “They’re starving there and they work or train sixteen hours a day.”

Ray sighs deeply, considering. “So it’s like this place, then? One leader who makes the rules?”

“Two. And no, it’s not like this place. I didn’t feel safe at Rising Tide.”

He looks over both shoulders before continuing. “I want to get the fuck off this island. I have a wife back home. It doesn’t matter how nice this camp is, I’m not spending the rest of my life here.”

“I get that. I don’t want to either.”

His eyes light with hope. “Which camp do we have a better shot of getting out of here with? Does anyone at the other camp want to try?”

I shake my head, alarmed by his use of the word we . “I didn’t hear anyone talk about it. They train and work and that’s it. Rising Tide is not a pleasant place. They’re starving. And they fight each other to the death.”

“No shit?”

“Anyone can challenge anyone to a fight in a circle. One person lives, the other dies. No one is safe.”

“So someone could even challenge the leaders?”

I bark out a note of laughter. “Yeah, someone did while I was there. He’s dead.”

Felix is approaching, and even though I’m working and not doing anything wrong, I don’t want him to think I want Ray here.

“I have to work,” I say sharply. “You should do the same.”

“Pfft. I’ve fuckin’ had it with shoveling piles of cow shit. I’m finding a way out of here.”

He leaves. I hope he doesn’t come back. Even though I still want to get off this island, I plan to be smart about it.

I’m okay biding my time. Whitman is building something here—a force of enhanced people—and whatever he plans to do with them, it’ll strengthen his hold on New America.

I won’t stand by and let it happen, even if it takes time to make a feasible plan.

It takes me a couple of hours to harvest and clean more than one hundred sweet potatoes. Even though I’m wearing the wide-brimmed hat everyone who works in the garden wears, my face is flushed and my skin is warm when I walk to the covered shelter we use for water breaks.

My canteen here is about twice the size of the one I had at Rising Tide.

The room I was assigned to is in the underground area.

It’s slightly bigger than the one I shared with Rona, but this one has a foam mattress, a light fixture, and a shelf.

I have nothing to put on the shelf, but sometimes I look at it and imagine what framed photos of my family would look like there, if they were alive today.

Dad would have even more gray in his hair.

Mom would have more “silver streaks” because she refused to use the word gray for her hair.

Thinking of what Maven would look like hurts the most. Would she have a partner beside her in a photo?

Someone who saw her and loved her the way she deserved?

She never got a chance for that, like our parents did.

After my water break, I grab the handle of the steel wagon I loaded full of potatoes and pull it down the mulch-covered walkway toward the garden’s entrance.

I deliver produce to the kitchen every day, a job no one else in the garden wants to do. I don’t mind it at all.

As I walk, I pass people doing their jobs. A guy who barely looks eighteen years old carries two heavy pails, sweat dripping from his chin. Two women pass with a cart that looks like a wheelbarrow with a swinging lid, one of them nodding at me.

I’m almost to the kitchen when I spot Marcus and Nova. It’s too late to pretend I didn’t see them; my eyes went straight to Marcus’s. When the butterflies in my stomach wake up and flutter at the sight of him, I get a flare of annoyance.

After nearly a month here, the aromium should be completely out of my system.

But I still feel a powerful pull toward Marcus every time I see him.

It’s similar to the way aromium made me want Pax, but it’s also different.

With Pax, there was a frenzied need to fuck him as quickly as possible.

I felt like an alcoholic—if I could just get the fix my body wanted so badly, the madness would subside.

With Marcus, though, it’s not just sexual. He and Nova questioned me two more times, and we exchanged some information about both camps, but I still refused to tell him anything more about the knife I found.

I’m not proud of it, but I secretly like how much he wants something from me. His gaze locks onto me anytime we’re in range of each other. That isn’t often, which makes it that much more delicious.

He intimidates me, though I’d never admit it.

It’s not just his imposing physical presence, but also his intensity.

There’s nothing light about him. Whatever his mood, his expression is always the same—a partial scowl.

The scowl deepens when he’s angry or frustrated, but it never disappears.

Even when I see him with other men on the security team, including Niran, the one he spends a lot of time with, he never laughs or cracks a smile.

While I’m gaping at him, a wheel of my cart rolls into a hole in the ground. I walk into it and bang my knee as the cart tips slightly and a few potatoes fall out.

I wish I had my hair down so I could hide my flushed face behind it, but it’s secured in its usual inferno-survival bun on top of my head.

“You okay?” Marcus stops and bends to help me pick up the potatoes.

“I’m fine.”

My knee hurts, but it’s nothing major. I just want to pick up the potatoes and get away from him. Even in the apocalypse, I’m still a woman, and I don’t like how much I enjoy his closeness.

Rationally, I know I need to keep my head down and avoid him. But when we both reach for a potato at the same time and his fingers brush mine, my heart thrums in a chaotic rhythm and any sense I had vanishes.

I pull my hand away like his is a scorching hot stove, grabbing the final potato from the ground and then standing.

He looks at my injured knee, frowning even though he can’t see it beneath my pants.

“Let me,” he says, coming around the take the handle of my cart.

“No, you don’t have?—”

He ignores my protest and I step back. The cart is lopsided, one of the front wheels half buried in a hole. The potatoes are heavy, making the cords of muscle on his arms stand out as he pulls the cart back to get the wheel free.

“Thanks.” I force myself not to look at him, because I don’t want him to see the stars in my eyes.

It’s ridiculous, feeling such a powerful pull to a man who wanted to leave me to die in the jungle. He’s not a good guy, and I need to remind myself of that more often.

“I’ll have someone fill that hole,” Nova says.

Oh, that’s right—other people exist. I had forgotten. My gaze flicks to her and I murmur my thanks.

Marcus starts moving the cart, and I furrow my brow and say, “I can get it from here.”

“Going to the kitchen?” he asks, still holding on to the cart’s handle.

I narrow my eyes, aggravated. “Yes, but I’ve got it .”

“You need that knee looked at?”

He pulls the cart with one hand, like it weighs nothing. It takes everything I’ve got when it’s full of heavy produce to move it—both legs, both arms and the occasional break to swear and catch my breath.

“No.” I fire the word at him like a weapon. “I’m capable.”

“I know that.”

“Don’t patronize me.”

I look to Nova, hoping for some female support, but she’s examining something nonexistent on her arm.

When Marcus turns, the familiar stitching on the leather sheath of the knife secured at his waist catches my eye. It makes me want to hiss like a pissed-off cat.

“That’s my knife.”

He just shakes his head, Nova jogging ahead of us to open the door to the kitchen. I despise that a man who would so openly taunt me gives me butterflies. My type is kind. Happy. Generous.

Marcus is none of those. I fall into step beside him.

“Tell me where you found it,” he says.

“You’re carrying it just to get to me.”

He arches a brow. “I’m carrying it because it belongs to someone who means a lot to me and I want to keep it safe.”

Everything stops, including my breathing. Someone who means a lot to him. The knife belongs to a woman. That’s why he’s so worked up about it. She’s not here anymore, and he wants to find her.

I feel an intense jealousy for someone I don’t even know. Could it be residual aromium? I’ve never experienced this, and I don’t like it.

I step aside, letting him push the cart into the kitchen. When I follow him, the kitchen workers are all looking at him, frozen.

“Vadim.” Marcus nods at the head chef.

His gaze shifts to mine for a brief second, and then he leaves. My pulse is still erratic, which makes me want to cap my other knee. I can’t afford this weakness.

“Getting the boss to make your deliveries?” Vadim cracks, smiling widely.

The mood in the room relaxes now that Marcus is gone, and everyone returns to work.

Vadim is the man I first met on the beach the day I got here—the one who tried to save me by taking me with him. He’s even bigger than Marcus at six-six, his shoulders wide and his legs like tree trunks.

But Vadim would rather have a whisk in his hand than a spear. He has dark skin and warm caramel eyes, and he’s usually smiling. The apron he wears looks child-sized on him. He always wears a bandanna around his long braids, and today it’s a red one.

“The cart got stuck outside the door,” I say defensively.

A woman named Meg helps me unload sweet potatoes into a pile on a counter. Vadim walks over to us, wiping his hands on a towel.

“Those will do nicely,” he murmurs.

“What are you doing with them?” I ask.

“They’ll go into a stew that’s a lot like chili.” Vadim’s eyes sparkle with enthusiasm. “Vegetarian, but loaded with smoky spices, ripe tomatoes, peppers and onions and sweet potatoes. It’s thick and hearty.”

“Sounds delicious.”

Tomatoes shouldn’t thrive here, but thanks to the modifications made, the vines are heavy with deep-red, softball-sized fruits pretty much every day. They’re a staple on the menu.

Once the potatoes are all unloaded, I close my eyes and take a deep breath in and out, enjoying the smell of baking bread. The ovens are wood-fired, and they’re outside the kitchen, but the scent carries.

“Are we getting bread with lunch?” I ask Vadim.

“Indeed. Bread, fish and papaya with a honey glaze.”

“Can’t wait.” I give him a quick grin. “I’ll be back with lettuce and spinach.”

“Don’t let your cart get stuck again,” he says with a deep, rich laugh.

He thinks I did it on purpose, which is so much worse. I’m not a woman who wants to be rescued by a man. Especially not Marcus. He’s attractive—I’m not oblivious to that. But if he didn’t want something from me, I’d just be another woman here, who didn’t even warrant a second glance.

It’s obvious his heart—tiny and shriveled as it must be—is spoken for. Someone in this camp has to know who that knife belongs to, and I’m going to find out.