Page 4 of Blue Arrow Island (Blue Arrow Island #1)

What an exciting time to be alive. Without red tape, there are no limits to what we can accomplish.

- Excerpt from the journal of Dr. Randall McClain

A woman’s primal scream cuts through the air, snapping me out of a deep sleep. I sit up in my infirmary bed and see a man and a woman each holding the arm of a very pregnant woman by the entrance.

“Breathe through it, Peyton,” the woman says. “We’re almost to a bed where you can lie down.”

“Ohhhhhh.....it hurts,” Peyton wails, panting frantically.

She looks and sounds like her baby could drop through her legs any second now, her rounded belly a bulky center of gravity.

The contraction subsides and she makes it to a bed, the woman who helped her there pulling a curtain made of bedsheets around the bed for privacy.

My headache has improved, but I’m sweaty, though I’m only covered by a lightweight sheet.

Even with the windows open, the stagnant, heavy air turns up the dial on my disgusting smell.

Blood and grime are caked beneath my short nails and my long dark hair is greasy, sand from the beach itching my scalp.

I glance around the room, finding two other people asleep and one sitting up in bed eating.

A loud gurgle of hunger sounds in my stomach. The rest of the smoked fish I left beside me in the bed is gone. It’s been so long since I've had a real meal. That was one perk of living in Lochlan’s household—I ate better than most people.

“Do something!” Peyton cries from behind the curtain. “I can’t...” She lets out a piercing moan of agony.

“Hey, you’re up.” A woman with tightly coiled, shoulder-length blond curls approaches me. “Feeling better?”

I nod, wary. Though I appreciate the food, water and rest, I’m still suspicious about this camp. About the entire island, actually.

“I’m Marcelle,” the blond says, stopping beside my bed and smiling brightly. “I’m your mentor, and this is my first time mentoring, so I’m excited.”

The green canvas pants and white T-shirt don’t match her lithe, slim figure. With bright-blue eyes and perfect skin, she belongs in a cosmetics ad campaign. Not that those exist anymore.

“Can I get some food and water?”

“I’ll check on that after you shower. Are you ready to get out of here?”

I push the sheet aside to get up, and Marcelle scoffs. Her gaze is locked onto the ink on the back of my hands, her frown disgusted.

“Yeah, they’re...prominent,” I mutter. “Guess that’s the point to Whitman, though. So people can see us nondoormats coming from a mile away.”

“Nondoormats?” She gapes at me. “You think women who bring children into the world instead of killing them are doormats ?”

Oh hell. I didn’t see that coming. I thought she was disgusted I’d been branded, but she’s...not. I should have been more guarded.

“No, that’s not what I mean. I don’t think we should be forced.”

We. As in, this could just as easily have happened to you .

This is the worst part of the new world Whitman has shaped—or actually, old world, since we’ve regressed in every possible way.

I’ll never understand how women buy into it.

It’s only been six years since we didn’t have to register our DNA into a database for genetic testing to see if we’re “optimal breeding candidates.”

Shaking her head, she turns toward the door. “Unbelievable. Let’s go.”

I slide on my worn shoes, which someone must have taken off me while I was sleeping, and lace them up.

As I walk, my hand instinctively twitches slightly, wanting to brush over the hilt of the knife I used to keep strapped at my waist. Lochlan took it away when he captured me, but I carried it for so long before then that I still remember the feeling of security it gave me.

Marcelle leads me in the opposite direction of the housing.

We pass a group of people who are all wearing packs on their backs made from what looks like wide, woven reeds.

One of them has a hat on that’s made of green grass, the brim protecting her eyes from the sun.

They all eye me as they pass, my attention snagged on their bracelets.

They’re thick cuffs worn around the wrist, a large white number placed prominently on each one. Everyone in the group whose bracelets I can see has a “3” on theirs.

The buildings we pass are all plain and well kept, some made from concrete blocks and others built with wood. Marcelle stops at a door marked “Supplies” and raps on it twice.

A small square cutout in the door slides open, a man’s face appearing in the opening. Instead of greeting him, Marcelle holds up her own cuff, which also bears a “3.”

“I have one who just got here and needs supplies,” she says.

The man slides the opening closed and we wait, the thunking sound of a dead bolt indicating he’s unlocking the door.

“Come in.”

He steps aside as we enter a building that’s much deeper than it is wide.

It has wood-plank flooring and its windows are open, though no breeze seems to be coming in.

The windows here are different than the infirmary ones; there are only two in the whole building and they have thick wooden covers with metal locks.

They’re held open with hooks that latch into eyelets in the wall.

Interesting.

“You look like a size medium,” the man says, walking over to a wall with wooden shelves lined with stacks of the pants, T-shirts and boots I’ve seen everyone wearing.

He pulls a pair of boots off a shelf and then gets two each of the other items, adding underwear and socks. Then he grabs a gray wool blanket and a square-ish block of oatmeal-colored soap. Its sweet jasmine scent reminds me I get to shower soon.

“Welcome to Rising Tide,” he says without enthusiasm as he holds out his arms to pass me everything.

“Thanks.”

Most of the shelves in the space sit empty. There are around fifty large wooden barrels around the perimeter of the room, all of them marked with the word “grain.” Around a dozen plastic barrels bear the label “sodium hydroxide.”

Lye. It’s an ingredient in soap. My mom taught my sister, Maven, and me about pH levels one summer by showing us how to make hot-process soap. It was messy but fun. I layered lavender in mine for the scent.

The man asks Marcelle for my name and writes it down. Without another word, Marcelle leads me out of the building.

“I’m supposed to tell you the rules,” she says in a level tone, not looking at me.

“Everyone starts out in group one and works their way up. You’re on probation for your first thirty days.

Our days are scheduled in four-hour blocks.

Your off blocks are ten p.m. to six a.m. Your work duty is in the kitchen, and you start at six a.m. You’ll work six to ten, train ten to two, work two to six, train six to ten. ”

My eyes lock onto a scaly, bright-green lizard a few feet away from us. With its tail, it’s more than three feet long. I keep half an eye on it as we pass it.

“Train for what?” I ask.

She side-eyes me, sneering. “Physical training. You’ll learn how to throw a punch and I seriously suggest you practice on yourself.”

I press my lips into a thin line. Unfortunately, mean girls are like cockroaches. Even an apocalypse can’t keep them down.

Sixteen hours a day of work and physical training? I don’t mind, because it’s far better than being confined to a dark, mildewed cell.

The row of buildings ends, the jungle just twenty feet away. Marcelle stops next to a crooked wooden sign on a post made of a small tree trunk. The word “Spa” is burned onto it in black letters.

“Shower.” She still refuses to look at me. “The toilets are here, too. You get two minutes of water a day for showering and if you lose your soap, too bad.” She crosses her arms and sighs heavily. “Go. Feel free to drown yourself.”

There’s a raised wood-plank walkway, showers on one side and primitive toilets on the other. I step onto it and then look back at her.

“Towel?”

Her face lights up. “Of course. Would you like it warmed? Shall I fetch a silk robe for you, too?”

Ignoring her, I glance at the toilets. They’re about eighteen inches off the ground, constructed of wooden planks built into squares. There are half-wall dividers between the toilets, but other than that, they’re open air.

The showers are about the same. Wood-plank floors, with the ground beneath them angled so the water runs off toward the jungle. There are dividers between the dozen or so showers, each one about five feet tall, but no doors.

I deliberately look at anything but the person in one of them, making my way to the stall on the very end. It’s nothing fancy, but I have water and soap, and that’s enough. I’m beyond ready to wash the filth from my skin, hair and nails.

My dad used to take us camping, and we learned to adapt, sometimes only having a creek and a bar of soap to get clean. Maven and I would spend a long time in the water, splashing, talking and washing each other’s hair.

I smile as I remember a weeklong trip in our home state of Washington, where we got to swim in a crystal clear spring. My parents said they wished we’d never had to go back to civilization, and I couldn’t have agreed more.

The showers have an ingenious system of ropes and pulleys to deliver water. The water sits in a rectangular tub a couple of feet above my head, a rope hanging down beside it.

Stripping off my shoes and clothes, I leave them on the edge of the wood-pallet floor with my pile of supplies. When I stand beneath the tub and tug on the rope, the tub tilts, a steady stream of warm water pouring down from a makeshift bamboo faucet.

I let the water flow over my hair and body for about fifteen blissful seconds before I release the rope. I lather the soap between my hands quickly, gasping in silent happiness as I rub my hands over my face.