The Terminals (10 page)

by The Foodies

10. RUSTLE AND WHISPER

by Okee Kenochee

11. LOVE RHYMES WITH SHOVE

by Lisa Ran Away

“You sizzle and pop, and you don't stop.”

After the meeting they adjourned to the beach, heads swimming and tongues wagging. They chattered as they made their way to the moonlit lagoon, except for Donnie, who marched through the sand in silence with Gwen and Owen buzzing around him. Cam couldn't help beginning to feel excited himself as they arranged themselves on a communal blanket.

The flat surface of the lagoon shone a tranquil silver. Occasional flashes of red and blue winked through it, speaking to the presence of the contented fish. The jungle noises were constant but distant and soothing, like beautiful background music.

“We should get some guns!” Wally said. “
They
have guns.”

“Blame her,” Zara replied. She nodded at Calliope. “Little Miss Fight Fire with Flowers.”

“I don't get it,” Cam said. “Why aren't we using guns?”

“I didn't sign up to kill people,” Calliope said softly.

“The gun thing was decided before you got here,” Ari explained. “We try not to kill people to save people. You can see the philosophical conflict there. And it's hard to incapacitate someone with a bullet in a nonlethal manner. We use darts filled with a local poison distilled from the lovely and hostile native flora and brewed up somewhere off-site. One dose will render you unconscious for hours, but you won't die.”

“Yeah,” Cam said. “I got a small taste of that lovely stuff in my arm, and it still doesn't feel right.”

“Two darts will put a man down for good, though,” Zara added.

“Yeah, so the extremists among us can still kill if they really want to,” Ari said. “It's a compromise.”

“We all want to do good,” Jules said.

Dinner came, and they fell to with gusto. Ward delivered pulled pork tacos he'd made from some sort of wild boar he'd killed himself. A “pakira,” he called it. They were piled high on a platter amid assorted greens, and the team passed sweet guava juice in a huge wooden pitcher. Cam drank three full glasses, and Wally sprayed a mouthful in the air all over everyone in celebration of the mission. When they'd all eaten their fill and more, they lounged, listening to the waves lap at the sand. After five tacos, Cam felt like he was part of a family of bloated sea lions.

“Now that we've got our first mission, we should go around the circle and all say why we're here,” Jules suggested.

Zara smirked. “What's this, some touchy-feely bonding exercise?”

“We all swore the same oath,” Owen said. “That pretty much covers it for me.”

Cam thought the simple oath probably did cover it for Owen. The round-eyed guy who was already balding at nineteen didn't strike Cam as an independent thinker. He didn't seem to see much past
Donnie strong
,
Zara hot
.

“No,” Jules insisted. “I mean why we're really here. Our personal reasons. It was a big decision for me to join. I'll even go first.” She picked up a spiral shell, held it like a microphone, and took a deep breath. “I always wanted to travel. I went to Europe for a year abroad. But when I was diagnosed, my doctor said I had to go home for treatment. No more than a few days away from the hospital until, well, you know. I thought I'd never go anywhere again. But now, here I am.”

Yes
, Cam thought. He'd feared the same—that he'd never leave his small hometown.

Calliope sat up and took the shell. “I want to help people. Truly help them. Through art or music or education, though. I don't like all this commando stuff.”

“We know,” Zara mumbled impatiently.

Calliope ignored her. “I talked to Pilot for hours when he came to the clinic. He promised me we would make a bigger difference in a year than most people make in a lifetime. And that I'd have a piano.” She passed the shell to Tegan, who sat beside her.

“My dad couldn't afford treatment,” Tegan said, holding the shell limply at his waist, and then he fell silent again. That seemed to be the entirety of his explanation.

Gwyneth nudged him, annoyed, and grabbed for the shell. He let her take it, and she rose to address the group, adjusting her glasses. She stood with her back very straight, Cam noticed.

“Upon diagnosis, I was presented with multiple options,” she said, her voice sharp and abrupt. “It was a simple matter of choosing the best from among them. One could attempt to prolong treatment in the hope that a cure might be forthcoming, or…”

Cam watched Gwen's mouth move, but her words seemed to run together. They were too big and she used too many of them. And her glasses bobbed up and down as she spoke them, which was very distracting. She talked for a long time, it seemed, and she repeatedly touched Donnie's wide shoulder as if to reassure herself that he was still sitting beside her. She was obviously smart as hell. And if Cam hadn't noticed, he was sure she'd have told him so herself, though without using the word “hell”—she seemed too fussy for profanity. But when she finally finished, Cam still had no idea why she'd chosen to join. In fact, out of all of them, only Calliope seemed a less likely candidate.

Gwen sat and pressed the shell gently into Donnie's palm, making sure to touch his shoulder once again.

Donnie stared at the shell. He hadn't spoken since Ari had been named team leader. He sat up and looked out past the circle of his dying comrades and spoke to the night as much as to them.

“I'm here for the mission,” he began. “I mean it. I'm all in, and I don't believe in compromise. That's how you become the best at something—you commit yourself to it one hundred and ten percent.”

“Mathematically impossible,” Ari mumbled.

Donnie paused, and Cam noticed he was panting. His face was red, and a vein in his forehead bulged like a subsurface worm. He took a big deep breath, bracing himself for his next words. “I accept that Ari is leader,” he declared. “For this mission anyway. You're smart. I get that. I'll follow you. But ultimately, I serve the mission.”

He passed the shell. Cam and Ari glanced at one another. Cam raised an eyebrow.

“Well, that's reassuring,” Ari whispered once Donnie had turned his attention elsewhere.

Zara held up the shell, then flipped it in the air and caught it between her fingers.

“Live life to the fullest,” she said simply. She looked at Cam and caressed the shell, then held her finger up in front of Owen with the shell riding atop it like an elaborate hat.

Owen plucked it carefully from her finger as though nervous that if he touched her she might practice a judo throw on him.

“I agree with Donnie…,” Owen began, and it went downhill from there, as far as Cam was concerned. Owen next repeated some things Gwen had said, then a few slogans Ward quoted over and over. In fact, Cam wasn't sure Owen said anything that was his own.

The shell passed to Ari.

Ari scooped up some sand in the shell, and then tilted it to let the sand drain out slowly. “I think it's a simple matter of what you want to get done while you're on the planet. What's the best use of your time? However much you have. I always wanted to be a doctor and save lives. That or a NASCAR driver. And once I was diagnosed I was pretty sure I could save more people's lives here than I could back home in a hospital. Ironic, eh?”

He tipped the last of the sand from the shell, and then gave it a tap to make sure it was empty before he handed it to Cam.

Cam wasn't sure what to say. It had all been said, and Owen had sounded like a moron repeating it.

“I miss my parents,” he said suddenly.

He didn't know why he said it, and he wanted to kick himself as soon as he had barfed it out.
Jeezus
, he thought,
I sound like the scared kid at camp, and I've been here one whole day.
He sounded even stupider than Owen, he decided. But when he looked around the circle he saw the glint of tears in several eyes—Calliope, Jules, and, unexpectedly, Tegan, whose dad couldn't afford treatment. At least he was not alone. He passed the shell without further comment. He didn't want to make it worse.

Ari rescued him. “So Wally, why did you join?” he said, luring both the sympathetic and disapproving eyes away from Cam.

Wally frowned and then grinned. “Why the hell not?” He laughed and leaped up, smashing the shell on a nearby rock. “C'mon, let's go skinny-dipping!”

Wally tore off his shirt and then yanked down his shorts, splashing into the lagoon nude. And alone. Even Zara didn't budge.

Wow
, Cam thought,
his tattoo really does run into his butt crack
.

 

CAM'S PLAYLIST

10. RUSTLE AND WHISPER
  

by Okee Kenochee

11. LOVE RHYMES WITH SHOVE

by Lisa Ran Away

12. BOY FEVER

by Wind Chimes and Grace

“Your friends are talking 'bout me,

but mine are talking 'bout you too.”

After his disastrous share session at the blanket, Cam snuck off and down the beach back to his condo. As was his habit, he looked for his music as soon as he walked in. He needed a song—something dark that matched his sullen mood, something to help him descend into a full wallow and hit bottom so he could rebound. But his earbuds weren't on the small desk where they should have been.

It was strange. Ari hadn't been to the hut since Cam had left the buds on the desk. And he never misplaced his music. The black buds were like a pair of glasses he rarely took off. The small Clip Chip–brand player that held all of his music had not been separated from them for nearly a year. It fastened easily to his clothing or even to the thick of his sand-colored hair in the hollow of the back of his head, if he was working out shirtless. Everyone had to know they were important to him, even after the first day. He'd worn them all over the compound. Once, Ward had even told him to “pocket the damn things” in front of the entire team. Maybe someone was playing a joke, Cam thought, or sending him a message. He began to hunt, knowing he wouldn't relax until he found them. It was a small hut, and a quadrant-by-quadrant search wouldn't take more than an hour, he calculated. He started with the floor on the south side.

The floor turned out to be a poor place to start. Fifty-four minutes later, Cam found the buds and Clip Chip at the highest point in the condo, on his suspended bunk—the last place he looked. They were tucked neatly beneath his pillow, where, if he hadn't been searching, he would have found them only when he laid his head down at night and thrust his hands underneath. At first he thought Ward might have come to make their beds and stuck them there for safekeeping. The guy seemed to provide every other service. But the covers were still disturbed from the afternoon when Cam had been lounging and chatting with Ari.

He scooped them up and pulled the telescoping wires to length. Out popped a small scrap of paper. It was not folded—the gap in the short wires was too small when they were collapsed. There was writing. A quick scribble. Hurried, it seemed.

“I'm watching you.”

What the heck?
He flipped the note to see if it was signed. It wasn't. Cam scratched his head. Was it a warning? He read it again, tracing the lines with his finger. Female writing, from the look of it, but he couldn't be sure. Donnie didn't need to leave him a note—he made his challenges out in the open. Frankly, none of the guys seemed the note-writing type.
Calliope?
Cam thought. She'd been distant since they'd bonded in the piano room. She was shy, intriguing. She expressed herself best indirectly. Through song.
Or a note.
Cam's heart fluttered. She was not unattractive. And her voice …
wow
. He wondered if a girl could sing while she kissed. Then he wondered if Calliope kissed at all.
Of course she does
, he thought.
We only have a year to live.
He tucked the note away. Even some tuneless kissing would be fabulous. The evening was definitely looking up. Cam selected music that was not sullen in the least and flopped onto his bunk.

Ari wandered in an hour later. “Are you studying the maps?”

“I'll get to it,” Cam said. “Hey, did you send me a message?” He didn't mention the note.

“Not lately,” Ari said. “Do you want one?”

Cam chuckled. “Sure.”

“It's time to start focusing on the task at hand, as Ward always says.
That's
my message for you. He isn't kidding about this being dangerous, you know. And not in the ‘you should drive more carefully' way your parents were always saying it.”

“My parents didn't always say that.”

“Don't tangent on me. This is serious business, bud. These pirates don't mess around. They're not like the Somali idiots you read about on the Internet. These guys are former coca growers who got laid off and had to reinvent themselves. They used to cut off ears, dude—now it's hands and heads. And despite our training, we're not professional commandos. Before you got here Ward said he'd be shocked if he didn't lose half of us on this first mission. And, after reading the background and intel and looking at the maps, I have to agree with him. I'll be up half the night studying.”