Marked

Chapter Seven

A few minutes that felt like an eternity passed.

With a quiet purr of the engine and the faint rustling of tree leaves, the aircraft glided away into the night.

Rachel let out a shaky breath and Jose laughed.

They all exchanged glances and the relief plastered on their faces was almost a palpable force.

It was over.

And the compound would be just fine.

Crickets buzzed in the silence that followed with the wind whistling through the leaves, dislodging a few in the process. Rachel placed a hand over her chest, trying to steady the manic pounding of her heart.

"We should get back," Hector advised.

She'd never heard words she agreed with more.

As they turned to leave, a crack of thunder, an explosion tore at their eardrums and a heavy force thrust them onto their backs on the cold forest floor.

Rachel's ears rang.

Her body tingled, not exactly with pain as there was too much adrenaline for that, but certainly with shock.

Her eyes drifted slowly to a spinning sky.

Then there was the familiar cloying smell of burning plants.

The smell of smoke.

Get up, she thought to herself, trying to fight off the urge to panic.

Simone's hand grasped hers, nails digging in.

She knew it was Simone because her face appeared in front of her, mouth moving quickly though Rachel couldn't hear a thing she was saying.

Pressing a hand to her ear, she groaned.

"-attacking the compound. Rachel! Rachel, get up!"

She tried to stand but wobbled.

Suddenly, Juan's large hands were there, helping her up, their feud the previous night forgotten. Because there was no room for grudges tonight, not with the scene unfolding before them.

Her eyes scanned wildly across the forest to a break in the trees where she could see a gaping hole on the side of the mountain that spit smoke mercilessly into the darkened sky.

Above the explosion site, two hover crafts deployed men clad in the standard grey city police uniform into the rock's wound, into the compound.

Rachel clung to Juan's arm, gripping it until she was sure it would bleed.

"We have to do something!" Jose barked, beating her to the punch.

Beside him, Hector rummaged through his backpack, throwing out a flashlight, a bag of cigarettes, a knife, until he finally produced a walkie-talkie, jamming a button down on it with viscous force.

"Compound, come in compound! This is Hector Hernandez. There are poachers invading the compound! Evacuate now."

But they were only greeted by a maddening silence on the other end.

Rachel worried at her knuckles, snapping each of them until she felt she might throw up all while waiting for someone to respond, for someone to tell them what to do.

She thought of her mother, the way they'd ended things...

She'd just lost Jed...she couldn't go through this again.

"Hector, we need to do something!" Jose repeated.

A cry broke through the forest.

It was a distant cry, barely audible over the roar of the aircraft and the shouts of the poachers but she knew it meant that the others had been found.