Desolation

Chapter Twenty Seven

((Desolation is almost at 3k reads omg!! Thanks so much for your lovely reads, votes, and comments! I really hope that you all are enjoying this story! Here is a gif of Ian (he is hot, am I right?), and also I will be doing some shoutouts to some of my best readers in the next chapter!))

The scream that comes out of my mouth is blood-curdling. I stand there, rooted to the ground with fear, staring at the pale, lifeless body of Alyssa.

Immediately, the others rush over and gasp when they see her.

"Oh my god..." Nikki whispers, her voice shaking with terror.

I turn away, unable to bear looking at her body any longer. Ian wraps his arms around me, pulling my close against his chest. Suddenly, I begin to cry. Hot, angry tears roll down my cheeks, burning my eyes.

They did this to her.

"It's okay," Ian whispers soothingly, running his fingers through my knotted hair.

Nothing is okay. Alyssa is dead.

I look up at him, shaking my head miserably.

"This is not okay. Nothing is okay," I sob.

I force myself to turn back around and see Tristan, kneeling beside Alyssa's body.

"She looks as if she was poisoned or something. There's no wounds or anything on her," Tristan says.

I close my eyes for a moment, shuddering.

Then, I hear Tristan shout,

"Hey, she's holding something!"

I open my eyes to see Tristan uncurling Alyssa's fingers, which are closed around something. He finally wrenches a balled up piece of paper from her hand.

"What's that?" Dylan asks, taking a step closer.

Tristan unfolds the paper then scrutinizes it.

"What is it?" Nikki asks.

"It's a map. A map of this island," Tristan murmurs.

We all instantly crowd around Tristan, peering over his shoulder at the map. I try as hard as I can to not glance at Alyssa's lifeless body because I know that if I do, I will most likely lose my stomach. The map of the island is neatly hand-drawn in black pen on a tarnished piece of paper.

"Whoa, this place is huge," Dylan murmurs.

All across the map are various locations, marked in pen. The first one that I see is a black dot with the word "CAGES" written underneath.

That's where we were.

"Look!" Tristan exclaims, pointing his finger to a spot on the map.

I look at what he is pointing at and at first, I don't believe my eyes. There, on the beach, marked under another black dot is the word "AIRPLANE."

"Airplane? They have an airplane on this island?" Nikki asks in awe.

"Well if there is one, let's go find it!" Dylan exclaims, standing up.

"Whoa, whoa. Wait a second," Ian says.

Dylan turns around, looking at Ian.

"What?" he asks.

"Stop for a second and think. What if this is just one of their traps? What if they are trying to lure us somewhere so that they can capture us?" Ian says.

I glance behind me, looking at Ian who is standing there, with his arms crossed. I have to admit, he does have a point.

"So you're saying that you don't even want to check it out? C'mon, we are trapped on this island no matter what, so we might as well check things out. And if there's an airplane on this island, we could escape," Dylan says.