"Yipes!" he cried. "What's that?"
Elliott swung down the animal, smashing it against a rock. Chester didn't know if she'd killed it or merely stunned it, but it seemed to still be moving, only very slowly now.
She rolled it onto its back, and Chester saw the two appendages still flexing and its circular mouth, lined around its circumference with tens of glistening white needles.
"They're called night crabs. Really tasty."
Chester swallowed, so disgusted he thought he was going to be sick. "I swear it's just a ginormous silverfish," he groaned. He was still lying where he'd fallen. Elliott glanced at the sacks where he'd dropped them, marched over, and pushed the animal inside one.
"That's the main course," she said. "Now let's—"
"Don't tell me you're going to catch another of those things," Chester pleaded, his voice high, bordering on hysterical.
"No, that's not likely," she replied. "Night crabs are pretty scarce. And only the younger ones come this far in to feed. We lucked out."
"Yeah, score," Chester said, only now standing up and brushing himself down.
Elliott was already back in the water, this time shoving her arms deep into the mud. "And these are what the crab was looking for," she informed Chester. Thick mud covered her arms up to the elbows as she pulled them out. She held her hand out to Chester so he could see the two curved shells in her palm.
"What a treat: mollusks! I'll see if there are any more."
Chester gave an involuntary shudder at the idea that she actually expected him to eat any of these creatures.
"Go on, knock yourself out," he said.
As they made their way back along the beach, Chester had an intimation that things weren't as they should be. A complete lack of movement; no wave or call of acknowledgment from Cal. Elliott, livid, made straight for the boy. Although he was still in a sitting position, his head hung awkwardly forward as he dozed next to his brother, who was similarly dead to the world.
"Doesn't anyone listen to me around here?" she said to Chester. She was apoplectic — he could hear the breath hissing between her teeth. "Didn't I make it clear he needed to keep on his toes?"
"Yes, you did," Chester answered loudly.
"Shush!" she ordered him as she moved a small distance down the beach, where she raised her rifle to scour the horizon. Chester waited by the two slumbering boys until she returned.
"Drake wouldn't have let this go," she said tensely, pacing up and down behind Cal like a lioness about to strike. Cal remained blissfully unaware of her silent fury, his head swaying gently as he slept on.
"What do you mean?" Chester asked, trying to read the look in her eyes.
"He would've dumped him here. Upped camp and let him fend for himself," she said.
"That's way harsh — how long do you think Cal would last on his own?" Chester objected. "It would be like passing a death sentence on him!"
"Too bad."
"You can't do that to him," Chester spluttered. "You have to cut him some slack. The poor kid's absolutely knackered. We all are."
But she was deadly serious.
"Don't you get it? By falling asleep, he might have dragged us all down with him," she said as she threw a glance over the water. "We don't know what they're going to throw at us next… If it's Limiters, I probably won't even see them coming. But it could be civilians — they're often sent in as the vanguard because they're a dime a dozen — pure cannon fodder, collateral. That's how the Styx operate sometimes… the soldiers follow in later on to mop up."
"Yes, but—" Chester said.
"No, you listen. You make one mistake and you'll end up facedown in that," she said frostily, thumbing at the sea. She deliberated for a moment, then slung her rifle over her shoulder, stepped behind Cal, and slapped him hard on the back of the head.
"ARGHHHHH!" he cried, smacked wide awake. He leaped up, his arms waving wildly. Then he realized that it had been Elliott and glared at her.
"S'pose this is your idea of a joke?" he said, huffing resentfully. "Well, I don't think it's funny…"
At the sight of her stony face, his protestations shriveled on his lips.
"You do not fall asleep on watch!" she barked menacingly.
"No," he said, smoothing down his shirt and looking thoroughly abashed.
"Thought I heard voices," Will said drowsily, rubbing his eyes with his knuckles as he sat up. "What's going on?"
"Nothing, just getting dinner ready," Elliott told him. Unseen by Will, she gave Cal a last lingering stare as she swiped her hand across her throat in a cutting motion. He nodded glumly.
Elliott dug a hollow in the sand, then dispatched Chester and Cal to collect some brush, which she placed around its edge. Once everything was to her satisfaction, she lit a small fire deep in the pit. As it grew, she further adjusted the brush as a precaution against any stray light leaking out.
While she was busy tending the flames, Will staggered over to a series of rock pools by the sea's edge. He swung up the lens from over his eye and doused his face with water. Then he seemed to take forever to clean his hands, alternately scrubbing them with wet sand and rinsing them, repeating the process over and over again in a slow, methodical way.
"Do you think I should check on him? He's acting a bit strange," Chester asked Elliott as he watched his friend's compulsive behavior. "What's wrong with his hands?"
"Aftereffects," she said simply, leaving Chester and Cal none the wiser.
Both boys were actually relieved that the opportunity to talk to Will hadn't presented itself. The act of killing had set him apart, putting him in a place they couldn't begin to understand.
So how should they treat him? The question was at the forefront of both their minds. They certainly couldn't pat him on the back and congratulate him. Should they try to commiserate with him over Drake's death, to console him, when he'd been the cause? The reality was that they were more than a little in awe of Will. How did he feel about what he'd done? Not only did he have blood on his hands from shooting and killing another human being, it was Drake… one of their own… their guardian and friend… his friend.
As Chester gave Elliott a considered look, he wondered again how she was dealing with it. After her brief moment of vulnerability on the beach, she seemed to have reverted to her old self and to be throwing herself wholeheartedly into looking after them. Chester's train of thought was broken as Elliott hoisted the night crab out of the sack and dropped it onto the sand. It was just as lively as when she'd caught it, and she had to place her foot on it to stop it from escaping.
Chester saw that Will was coming toward them. His movements were still sluggish, as if he wasn't yet fully awake. Although dripping with water, he hadn't washed his face very successfully: Large sooty patches persisted under his eyes and across his forehead and neck, and dark smudges dappled his white hair. Under different circumstances, Chester might have joked that Will bore a striking resemblance to a panda.
Will came to a halt a short distance away, refusing to make eye contact with any of them. Instead he bowed his head to look at his feet and scratched at the palm of his hand with an index finger, as if trying to remove something from it with his nail.
"What did I do?" he said. It was difficult to understand him; his speech was slurred as if his mouth was numb, and still he didn't cease picking at his hand.