Paradise Forbidden Read online

  The bus is sinking… slipping slowly but surely into a swirling blue-grey abyss.

  I slide the bag from my burning shoulder and reach for the window next to my seat. Luckily, the bus is older, complete with all types of antiquated amenities. The windows slide open… and I have never been more relieved in my entire existence.

  I instinctively look behind me: my eyes wild and searching… for her. She’s not there.

  I hear scraping and I look over to see where it’s coming from. She’s actually almost beside me: two seats down, opening her window in the same way that I am pulling at mine.

  She’s bleeding from multiple spots, but the most noticeable wound appears near her hairline. I gaze in amazement before I realize that I might be bleeding, too, actually.

  Hadn’t really thought about it. And I’m not going to. Not now.

  We have to go. Go. Go. Go.

  The water line hasn’t reached the windows yet, but it will. Soon. My thoughts are moving at warp-speed. It’s been about twenty seconds since my eyes have opened, and I am already kicked into high gear, shoving my bag out of the glass opening before glancing aside towards the girl.

  She is almost halfway out of the window, but she’s struggling. Her running shoes seem caught. I lean over automatically and push her jean-covered legs all the way through. And now she’s dropping the small distance down into the water. I finally notice the black backpack on her shoulder.

  Fuck, I hope she can swim.

  The driver has followed suit; he’s escaping the same way that we are, though how he manages to make any headway at his size is baffling to me.

  Soon after, I follow the route of my bag, launching roughly out of the window just as the waterline reaches its edge.

  The water is cold: ice cold. It stabs me in a thousand different places on my body… all at once. It’s like I’ve fallen onto a bed of tiny needles and each one is pricking the surface of my skin. It creates this intense shock to my system when I break the plane of the lake.

  I have to get my bearings together and recover before I even start swimming toward the water’s surface from where I’ve landed in the depths. I am gasping as soon as I reach the air above.

  And I feel heavy. My clothes are forcefully weighing on me. I sling my hair out of my eyes as I tread water… and now I am on the hunt.

  My icy girl. Where is she?

  I’m swimming frantically now, turning in circles. Come on, come on…

  Then I see a brown head of hair above the water. She’s about thirty yards away from me, swimming slowly as one hand clutches the black bag at her side and the other swipes softly at the water.

  She’s treading water. She’s ok.

  I glance over to her right and see that the bus is nearly gone now: the rounded roof and windows the only visible part of the entire mass.

  I manage, hurt and all, to reach my nearby floating bag and I lay my injured arm across it as I keep myself afloat.

  From there, I am heading straight for the girl.

  “Are you ok?” I manage to yell to her, above the still-beating rain.

  She swivels to meet my eye, gasping audibly when she sees my face. Her eyes are big, blue saucers set in the middle of a surprised and pretty face.

  “You’re here,” she says, stunned. Relieved. She looks so… happy to see me.

  Her countenance turns grave as her stare shifts to focus behind me. Her eyes scan our surroundings, performing a quick surveillance. I know what she’s looking for… and I feel sad to say… that I don’t think she’s going to find it.

  About two minutes have passed since we exited the bus. Approximately a minute ago, I saw a red knapsack surface from where I witnessed the driver drop into the lake. I’m almost sure it was his… but he wasn’t with it. There’s no trace of our chauffeur.

  I think he’s gone down. Permanently.

  I do a quick assessment, trying to wrap my mind around how to address this. A million realizations hit me all at once.

  One. We can’t go back the way we came. The embankment is too steep.

  Two. Either my ice girl is an awkward swimmer… an awful swimmer or… she’s hurt.

  Three. I’m a strong swimmer… but not in this condition. I’m in so much pain.

  Four. The other side of the lake is far… and we might not make it there.

  Fury and panic fuse violently under my skin, and I am literally huffing out of my nostrils from the unexpressed rage.

  FUCK! I can’t believe this. I should’ve known this would happen. I should’ve made the driver slow down. I should have been watching when he…

  I stop my mental self-mutilation when I see the soaking wet, icy girl looking at me. I see confusion in her irises. I see hope. Fear. Need.

  She needs me… and I need her. We’ve got to get out of this lake.

  I decide right there on the spot. We can make it. We will… make it.

  “Hold on,” I say to her. The words are practically an exhale. I extend the strap of my bag to her to hold.

  The bag is large, for sure, but not too heavy. It floats well in the water. I packed wisely.

  I turn my back on my bag and the girl to swim to that abandoned red knapsack that now floats ten yards away. It looks lonely by itself with no owner. I feel guilty even grabbing it.

  I return to the girl’s side as speedily as I can, tying the sack to my duffle. I pull roughly at a zipper on the side of my bag, releasing the garment that’s been on my mind since we entered the water.

  I extract it with care, holding it tightly. I am cautious… almost reverent. I treat the frock like gold… damn near diamonds. Under these circumstances… it practically is.

  It’s a yellow, portable life-vest. I threw it in my bag after choosing my destination. I thought I might need it. Just didn’t think I would need it like this.

  I pull the string at its side, inflating it. I flip it so that it sits upright in my hands so that I can put it on.

  But I don’t plan on putting it on me. It’s for her.

  I raise it above her head so she knows what I’m going to do. She looks up at it, then back to me, before decisively nodding her head.

  We don’t have the leverage to strap it to her midsection so we tie it underneath her armpits: just enough so that she can stay above water.

  I grab on to my floating bag. I stare at her grimly.

  “We have to make it to the other side,” I yell. “There’s nowhere else to go! Stay with me… alright?”

  With wide eyes, she gazes at me, nodding slowly, her head bobbing up and down in acceptance... or accepted defeat.

  The task is daunting, I know. And from the look on her face, she knows it, too. But I’ve already made my decision. And I’m not turning back.

  I drape my arm over my duffle, clutching it as I start to swim for the lake’s shore, with my icy girl only a few feet behind me.

  Pain is shooting like sparks through my throbbing arm, but I’m ignoring it for the most part. I can’t afford to give it more than a fleeting thought. Not with the ominous mission laid before us weighing on me.

  The rain continues to fall down on us. It is relentless. It is a thick, grey curtain that obscures the way to freedom. If you could call it that.

  We swim… and we swim… and we swim.

  There’s so much water: too much water.

  So much space to cover. It seems just never-ending.

  Wave after wave pushes us as we cover ground. We swim along the current, but it feels almost useless. Wall after wall of water pounds us. We use our bags as minor floatation devices, but every hit threatens our hold.

  The vest is not secure; our bags are not secure. And we are fighting briny breakers with every paddle.

  As we reach the halfway point inside of the lake, our gasps, which were once uneven, are now ragged: erratic from sheer exertion. And by the time we reach the three-quarters mark, we pant in panicking spurts.

  Every inhalation is rough. Every exhale: depleted.

&nbs
p; We’re running out of steam. We’re not even taking breaths anymore; we are sucking them, trying to extract every bit of oxygen that our aching lungs can take.

  I look behind me (as I’ve been doing every ten seconds) to find that the girl has stopped. She’s grimacing in pain, her pretty mouth gaping as she exhales loudly: coarsely.

  I circle back around towards her. As I draw nearer, she shakes her head, whipping brown strands of hair back and forth. She can take no more, she’s saying. She’s done.

  I glance over my shoulder at the now-nearby shore. I look back to her.

  We’ve come too far to give up now: to just quit. It was a miracle that we even survived the crash. Now for our journey to end when we are so close?

  We can’t. I won’t allow it.

  And suddenly, my fingers are moving before my brain can keep up.

  I place my bag in her arm, at her side… and I loop the fingers of my hurt arm to her life jacket.

  And while my brain is still lagging behind, I’ve already started swimming for the coast, dragging my little icy girl behind me as I close the distance between land and us.

  The water was already choppy, but it grows rougher by the minute. My entire body is on fire: my arm, especially… my legs, my lungs. It’s as if I’ve inhaled napalm, and each breath is more painful than the previous.

  I want to stop. Rest. Quit.

  Stand-still floating is out of the question. Taking a breather: not an option. The ebb and flow is too tumultuous.

  If I stop now… we’ll drown.

  My icy girl’s groans might be the only things that spur me on. Each small sound pushes me further and further, closer and closer to dry land.

  Yards and yards pass until, seemingly resurged, she starts to swim again, thrusting at the water’s surface.

  I start to feel the density of the water change. The water depth wanes. It’s getting shallower.

  Almost there. Almost there.

  Every limb is stretched to its max, reaching… reaching. My extremities are grasping for terrain, aching to touch earth. I cry out from the enormity of the pain I feel.

  Suddenly, a toe touches soil.

  In that flicker of an instant, I find strength I didn’t know I had: digging deeper, pulling my icy girl with as much force as I can muster.

  And now we are climbing: performing something closer to scaling than swimming now. Our feet and fingers now find sand and sediment mixed in our water, and we are clawing in search of anything we can clutch.

  We scrape and scramble at the lake’s shore until finally we gain a solid foothold on terra firma. I hear the heavy huffs of the girl beside me as we sink into the ground.

  We made it.

  It’s the final thought I have before I wobble my tired limbs onto the muddy coast.

  And then… I collapse… and all becomes black.

  Him

  I feel the scratch of bark against my cheek as I start to rouse from the darkness.

  Tiny pieces of wood chips are stuck to the side of my face as my eyes flutter open. I’m on the ground and my face is turned upward, but instead of finding open sky, I discover a thick green cover.

  Trees. Trees everywhere. Where am I?

  I start to sit up from where I lie, hissing at the stabs of pain through my injured arm.

  I rub the offending arm and shoulder, cradling it. As I hold it, some movement captures my attention.

  I look over and discover the brown-haired girl lying nearby, exhaling heavily: deeply. Her eyelids are clenched like fists, squeezed tightly with fatigue.

  And then I realize… she dragged me… and all of our belongings under cover. Out of the rain. Off of the shore.

  The shoreline is actually not too far from where we sit. From the sky, a huge wall of water slams down into the mud-covered coastline. If the water hadn’t drowned us, the rain just might have.

  What if we had slipped back into the water? We were barely out of the lake when I passed out.

  I have to admit: I admire the hell out of this girl’s tenacity. She’s probably a buck-fifteen soaking wet and she hauled me, and almost every earthly possession I have, to safety.

  I turn towards her, grimacing. “Are you ok?” I ask, staring at her pained face.

  She says nothing, and I watch her breathing even out: her expression relaxes and softens as time ticks away.

  She’s soaked (as am I) from head to toe. Her white shirt is thin: see-through… and I do see everything.

  Her breasts rise and fall: the black lace holding them pushed to its limit with every inhalation, barely containing them.

  My eyes trail downward over her abdomen, stopping at the piece of jewelry planted above her waistband. Her navel is pierced. A gold barbell sits in the dip of her belly button, begging for my attention.

  I tear my gaze from her body, feeling like the biggest tool. I concentrate on her face instead, seconds before she finally answers me.

  “Not ok, just yet...” she says, at last, “but I will be.” Her first real words to me… and I am not disappointed. Her voice is lilting: soft, pretty.

  I open my mouth to say something when a distant rumble of thunder interrupts my thoughts. I look skyward.

  It’s already been a dark day (in many ways) but now the sun is setting as twilight approaches. We have to set up camp. Doing anything else would be damn near impossible.

  …which reminds me…

  “Where are you hurt?” I inquire, searching her face. There is a small cut above her temple, one near her ear lobe, and a bruise starts to darken on her arm.

  I’d like to take a closer look, but I know she won’t let me. She’s already given me one of the most scathing interactions that I’ve ever had with a woman... and that was before we ever said a single word to each other.

  She opens her eyes, shaking her head as she rises to a sitting position.

  “Don’t worry about me. We need to worry about our driver. We need to see where he’s set up.”

  I blink rapidly: baffled. Where he’s set up…?

  “What… what do you mean by ‘set up’?” I say.

  She peers over at me, frustrated.

  “I mean, where he’s landed: where he’s found some refuge, some safety.”

  “Look...” I hesitate. I don’t know her name. “I think there’s some misunderstanding.” I take a deep breath and speak as calmly as possible. “The driver went down…” I emphasize the last word, stressing its significance.

  She squints confusingly at me. “No, he didn’t,” she responds. “I saw him escape from the bus.”

  I pause, true recognition hitting me. She doesn’t just think that he made it off of the bus. She thinks that he’s actually…

  I continue speaking… with caution. “Yes, he made it off of the bus, but that’s where it ended. He didn’t make it any farther than that.”

  She starts to stand from where she sits, nearly buckling at the knee. She’s hurt: somewhere on her leg. I can’t tell where…

  “But he had to have. He just… he had to. I mean, we made it out…”

  “By the grace of God...” I interrupt.

  She glances quickly at me with pale blue lasers. “We have to see.”

  “There’s nothing to see. He isn’t around anymore.”

  “But his knapsack…”

  “I grabbed that. Me.”

  She glares heatedly at me. “You stole it from him?”

  “There was no one to steal from. He wasn’t there.”

  “But we didn’t help him!” She yells, her hands outstretched in protest. “We could have helped him!”

  “We couldn’t have. It was already too late!” I retort, taken aback by her stubbornness. “We couldn’t have helped him if we tried. It was already over.”

  “Maybe if we could just go back, we’d see…”

  My voice rises again. “There ain’t a damn thing to see out there, but death. We go in there, we don’t come back,” I add grimly.

  “But if we could ju
st…”

  “He’s GONE!” I bellow impatiently. “Dead. He went under the water’s surface and never came back… ok? Understand what I am saying. And if you keep harping on following a futile mission, you’re going to find yourself in his shoes. The sooner you come to grips with that, the sooner we can work on ensuring that we’re not next.”

  I watch alarm set in her eyes before the expression collapses. A mask of icy impassivity takes its place.

  I pause before I say anything further. Sensitivity has never been my strong suit.

  She looks blankly at me for a few moments before turning abruptly, grabbing her backpack off of the ground and hobbling away. I am caught off-guard by the swift shift; I watch her back as she walks away.

  And then… I follow.

  ***

  Kat

  Dammit! This is exactly why I’ve been so crazy since I left Foxxhole.

  I limp away from the scene of the crime with as much dignity as I can gather.

  The argument with Zeus reconfirms what I’ve recently been feeling about people.

  They are not to be trusted.

  Mr. Blondie back there was amazing in the water. He literally pulled me the rest of the way to safety when I had stopped, when I had wanted to give in to pure, unfiltered exhaustion.

  He was right; the feat he pulled off was nothing short of a miracle. Our survival was nothing short of a miracle.

  In that instant, he was Zeus.

  Or maybe Poseidon. Isn’t that the name of the Greek god of the sea? Is that even the real name of a mythological god… or did I just grab the term from too many episodes of Xena: Warrior Princess? Shit if I know. Whatever.

  But almost an hour later, my fair-haired hero turns on me in what is probably the coldest, most hardhearted spiel I’ve ever heard. He rebuffed the very idea that we would even think of searching for this bus driver. He’s made his intentions clear: he has absolutely zero plans to help this man.

  I can’t believe we’re going to abandon that poor guy out there. I can’t initiate a rescue by myself; I’d drown. My ankle hurts so badly; I ache on over seventy percent of my body. If our driver has any chance of survival, he’s going to need both of our help.