The Last Hunter - Descent - Jeremy Robinson [27]
The first thing I did after coming back inside was wash the blood off my hand. It wasn’t a matter of erasing the evidence. I had no intention of denying the truth...but I didn't fully know the truth, either. Someone was out there. Someone attacked me. But telling them that—well, it will just make me look crazy.
Crazier.
Aimee is lying on a cot in the living area. Dr. Clark and my mother are tending to her. The rest of the crew stands around waiting like sentinels. Mira kneels by her mother’s side, her eyes wet and closed. Is she praying? I wonder. My father stands behind me, hands on my shoulders, but I’m not sure if he’s comforting me or restraining me.
Aimee moans and blinks for a moment, but doesn’t regain consciousness. Dr. Clark looks back at me, his face a mix of anger, sympathy and fear. As the rest of the eyes turn toward me I know the question is going to come again. “What happened?”
The tone of his voice tells me I better answer this time.
“I’m sorry,” I say.
“Don’t be sorry,” Dr. Clark says. “Be honest.”
“I didn’t mean to hurt her.”
He gives me a long hard stare. “I believe you.”
Some of my tension dissolves with those three words. I’m not sure why I assumed they would all treat me like some kind of untrustworthy criminal. They know me.
I take a deep breath and then spill my emotional guts. “There was someone else out there.”
Dr. Clark looks skeptical and I know why. He saw the blood on my hand and is wondering if I’m trying cast the blame on someone else. “I’m not saying I didn’t do this, I did.”
Collette gasps.
“But I didn’t know it was Aimee.” The next words are hard to say because even I know they sound ridiculous. “I was attacked.”
“In the middle of the Antarctic night?” Collette asks, her voice steeped in a thick tea of doubt. “Were any of you outside tonight?” she asks the crew.
The universal answer to this question is, “no,” of course. Even I know that, and I tell them so. “It wasn’t any of you.”
“Then who?” someone asks.
I meet Dr. Clark’s eyes once again. He seems to understand something unusual happened outside. For a moment, I think he’s trying to tell me not to speak, but write his expression off to confusion. “It was a man,” I say. “I think he had red hair. Long red hair. Maybe closer to maroon. And...and I’m not sure he was wearing clothes.”
“What a piece of work,” Collette says before letting out a laugh that lets me know she’s not buying a word of this. But I don’t care about what she thinks. I need Dr. Clark to believe me. I need Mira to believe me. And my parents. I can feel my father’s grip on my shoulders tightening. His anger is building with the ridiculousness of my story.
“I’m telling the truth,” I say, surprised that I’m standing up to the tank-sized woman. “Someone was out there. He punched me. Knocked me down. I thought Aimee was him.”
“Solomon...” the doubt in my father’s voice stings with betrayal. How could he believe I did this?
I try to shrug away from my father, but he holds me tight. “I’ve never hit anyone in my life.”
“Could’a fooled me,” Collette says. “She’s out for the count. Might have a concussion.”
“Is that true?” I say, a rising panic making me sick to my stomach.
“Most likely,” Dr. Clark says.
Before the interrogation can continue, the roof rumbles. I instantly remember the sounds I heard upon waking. I’d assumed it was part of a waking dream, but I’ve been awake for too long for that to be the case again. I know for sure when I see everyone in the room look up.
One of the crew, a man I haven’t met, dashes to the laptop. I can’t see the screen, but I’m sure he’s checking the weather. My suspicions are confirmed a moment later. “Holy hell. Wind speed is up to seventy miles per hour!”
The roof shakes again. Louder this time. “Eighty miles per hour!”
My dad takes his hands off my shoulders and enters the