Doctored Chance #NaNoWriMo2019

3 | Deathday

The island is important and will appear once more in this memoir after the next handful of miserable and unpleasant chapters—which will no doubt make you want to put this book down and find something more pleasant. I visited the place myself after Tobias MacClain's escape from the penitentiary, thinking he had returned there to hide. It was empty then, and at this point of the story, it felt empty to the three heroes.

The plane, branded as one of Peregrine's Flight's fleet, circled above the blackened mess. The jagged spire of the central volcano jutted from the Earth like a barnacle, its mouth wide open, its insides devoured by black smoke that chugged upwards like the cough of a coal-driven train. A small beach encircled the place with barely five feet of black sand circumference, dotted with no more than five widely interspaced coconut palms.

A large black mass pooled in the sea where a stream of hot magma flowed out and cooled.

Tobias couldn't look out the window to see the great black mass of land, for he had closed the shade and clung tightly to both his seatbelt and his parachute. His eyes were shut. He never flew with them open, nor did he ever fly without taking every safety precaution there possibly was.

There was, after all, always a chance of the plane crashing, and Tobias could always see that chance. On that trip, the heat draft from the volcano caused and upward air current which had made staying on course more turbulent than usual in the little water plane.

It ploughed down, kicking up spray, and slid its barrels onto the beach. Poppy stretched out and secured her whip and poison beads to her belt before exiting. Benjamin followed, squeezing through the small doorway while shaking out his golden gloves. Tobias made sure his glasses were safe in his medical bag and strapped the thing around his shoulder before he joined his team. He cleansed the fog from his prescription goggles and fixed them over his eyes. The ash in the air gained resolution.

Fists in the middle, fists to the sky.

"Let's do it, Defiance!" Benjamin cried, fully decked in the blue spandex that his fans fawned over. He pulled his own goggles down, the team's signature "tie-together", due to Tobias's impaired vision and aversion to taking the chance of losing a contact lens on duty. He started to lead the way towards the volcano, throwing large boulders and chunks of hardened magma aside to clear a path.

Poppy, in her green and brown "peace-inspired" mesh, loped after. Leather tassels swung from her waist and ribs as she walked, keeping close to him. She had painted small flowers at the corners of her goggles' lenses.

"When's that volcano going to erupt, PJB?" Benjamin asked over his shoulder.

"It's Tobias," Tobias returned, climbing awkwardly over the large rock that the great Mr. Might had rolled inadvertently into his path. "The volcano is volatile, and the chances that it will erupt in ten minutes are the same as the chances that it will erupt in fifteen, twenty, or even thirty. I'll let you know when I know."

The island shook and the trio stopped to spread their arms and hold their balances. The earth trembled underfoot and the volcano growled like an animal. A stream of lava dripped over the mouth's edge and trickled down the volcano's side, slow and thick as honey.

Three pairs of eyes locked on the red-hot glow.

"Toby?"

"There's time," Tobias insisted. He looked uneasily at the volcano and scurried to catch up with the others. "But it would be best to hurry."

"Right."

Benjamin started smacking rocks aside faster, ploughing through the hardened land like snow. Black chunks of basalt flew around them. Ash rained from the sky and made it hard to breathe. It fell across their goggles so that they had to continuously raise their hands to clear the lenses.