THE LAST SURVIVOR

Chapter 7: The Iron Cage

The world dissolved into a nightmare of noise and motion. Jake‟s “Run!” was a raw, ragged sound. They scrambled back from the ridge, thorns and branches tearing at their clothes and skin. The guard‟s gunfire was deafening, bullets snapping through the leaves around them, chewing up the dirt at their heels. “Don‟t run in a straight line!” Leo yelled, his mind, for a terrifying second, blanking of everything but historical accounts of infantry tactics. Zigzag. Make yourself a hard target. He threw himself behind the thick, gnarled trunk of a banyan tree, his heart trying to beat its way out of his chest. David, with a roar of pure fury, didn‟t run. He turned and charged the guard, his oar-club held high. It was a move of brute, desperate courage. The guard, startled by the sheer insanity of the charge, hesitated for a fatal half-second. David

swung the oar, connecting with the man‟s rifle with a loud crack, sending it flying. But the victory lasted only a moment. Two more armed men burst from the foliage, their weapons trained on David. He stood his ground, chest heaving, a cornered bear. “David, no!” Jake screamed. It was too late. One of the men slammed the butt of his rifle into David‟s temple. The big man crumpled to the ground without a sound. “They‟ll kill him!” Maria‟s voice screamed in Leo‟s memory. Don‟t be a hero. Jake made his choice. “Leo, go! Get back to the beach! Warn them!” He didn‟t wait for a reply. He lunged from his cover, not at the men, but towards a rocky outcrop, yelling and waving his arms. “Hey! Over here! You want a chase? Come and get it!” He was a diversion. A magnificent, suicidal diversion.

The guards took the bait, two of them peeling off after Jake as he crashed down a different slope, leading them away from Leo and the unconscious David. Leo was frozen, pressed against the tree, the smell of gunpowder and damp earth filling his nostrils. He saw Jake, swift and agile, disappear into the green. He saw David, a still, massive form on the jungle floor. The part of him that was a teacher, a thinker, screamed that this was all wrong. That they should surrender, talk, reason. Then a hand grabbed the collar of his shirt and yanked him backward. He stumbled, falling hard. A boot connected with his ribs, driving the air from his lungs. The sky, seen through the canopy, spun. Rough hands hauled him to his feet, binding his wrists behind his back with a plastic zip-tie. The same was done to a groggy, stumbling David.

They were shoved down the slope, towards the compound. Leo‟s last sight of the ridge was empty. Jake was gone. The walk into the valley was a descent into hell. The armed men around them were not soldiers in the traditional sense; their discipline was ragged, their eyes cold and devoid of any empathy. They jabbed Leo and David with their rifle muzzles, barking commands in that same guttural language. They were paraded through the center of the camp. Men stopped their drills to watch, their expressions a mix of curiosity and contempt. Leo‟s mind, reeling, still managed to catalog details: the well-stocked armory, the generators humming, the satellite dishes. This was a permanent, well-funded operation. They were thrown into a makeshift cell—a repurposed storage container with a heavy door and a single, barred window high up on the wall. The door slammed shut, plunging them

into near-darkness. The lock clanged into place with a sound of terrible finality. David slumped against the wall, holding his bleeding head. “Jake?” he grunted. “He got away,” Leo whispered, the words feeling like a lie. “He led them away.” It was a small, fragile hope in the stifling darkness. Hours passed. The heat in the metal box became oppressive. They had no water. The sounds of the camp outside were a constant reminder of their captivity. Then, the door screeched open. Two guards dragged them out, into the blinding afternoon sun, and forced them to their knees in the dusty center of the compound. The man from the porch stood before them. The Jackal. Up close, he was even more intimidating. He was older than Leo had first thought, with fine lines around his eyes and a stillness that was more threatening than any

bluster. He held David‟s multi-tool, turning it over in his hands as if it were a museum piece. “You are a security breach,” The Jackal said. His English was precise, lightly accented, and utterly cold. “An anomaly. You do not exist on my maps.” He looked from Leo to David. “Where is the third one?” Leo said nothing. David just glared, his jaw set. The Jackal smiled, a thin, bloodless expression. “It does not matter. He is one man in a very small cage.” He gestured to the jungle around them. “This island is the cage. You will tell me why you are here. You will tell me who sent you.” “We were on a boat,” Leo said, his voice hoarse. “A storm wrecked us. We‟re just tourists. We don‟t know where we are.” “Tourists,” The Jackal repeated, as if tasting a strange and unpleasant word. He looked at Leo, his gaze seeming to strip away layers, seeing the teacher, the intellectual, the softness. “You are

a poor liar.” He turned his attention to David. “And you. You have the look of a fighter. You attacked my man.” David spat on the ground at The Jackal‟s feet. “Let us go.” The Jackal‟s smile didn‟t waver. He gave a almost imperceptible nod to one of the guards. The guard raised his rifle. Time seemed to slow. Leo saw the glint of the sun on the metal. He saw the bored expression on the guard‟s face. He saw David‟s eyes, wide with a final, defiant understanding. The shot was deafeningly loud in the confined space of the compound. David jerked backward and collapsed, a dark, spreading stain blooming on his chest. His big body was still. A scream was trapped in Leo‟s throat, frozen by a terror so absolute it was paralyzing. He stared

at his friend‟s body, his mind refusing to process what his eyes had seen. The Jackal knelt down in front of Leo, his voice a soft, intimate whisper. “You see? This is not a holiday. This is a lesson. You are a lesson to the others. You do not escape. You do not fight.” He leaned closer, his breath warm on Leo‟s face. “You will watch your friends die, one by one, until you tell me what you are really doing on my island. Or until there is no one left to die.” He stood up, brushing dust from his trousers. “Put him back. And find the other one. The cage is about to get smaller.”