“The Midnight Robber was probably experimenting with you,” Jinx said, overhearing our conversation. It was hard not to overhear since we were all so close together. “He does do that sometimes.”
“Experimenting?” I gasped
“Yeah. The last time I hear he experiment on somebody he put a bomb in her head.”
I gulped.
“I wouldn’t worry too much,” Jack comforted, his voice deep and manly. “If the Midnight Robber wanted to kill you he woulda do it already.”
I stayed quiet for a while and then decided to change the topic. “I’m sure that your siblings are safe and sound somewhere. I won’t be surprised if we bounce them up on the way back to Caura.”
“We’re going to Caura?” Sara asked.
“We could. It would be a nice place to camp out for the night. The towns will be infested with jumbies,” Jack said.
“We can’t afford a night,” Ronald said. “If the Midnight Robber is on his way to Mas Camp we need to help defend we people.”
“You don’t rush into battle. You will just add to the bodies on the floor with your own. We need a plan of action. You forget how hard it is to reach the coast or what?” Jack said.
“We could try looking for Justin and Saraya while we’re there,” Sara suggested.
“We will find them,” Jack said with a comforting nod.
Jinx placed her hand over Sara’s shoulder in an attempt to comfort her. Sara wasn’t crying but the worry in her face was evident. She must have had a lot of time to cry since she was locked up for over three months.
The trip was quiet. We were in the belly of the sunken city of Port of Spain for most of it. The abandoned buildings towered high into the sky; the metals rusty and the glasses shattered and dirty with vines and bushes growing out of them. The whole visual of the sunken city haunted me. Giant corbeaux perched themselves throughout the ruins making the atmosphere even more dreary to endure. Jack and the rest of the gang saw the corbeaux but they didn’t seem to be fazed by them, even though they gazed down at us with hungry eyes. I was terrified. I looked at Sara thinking that she would have been terrified too and as I expected, she was. Her breaths were shallow and her eyes wide and alert.
“Don’t make any sudden movements,” Jack whispered. “And whatever you do, DON’T BLEED!!”
The number of corbeaux began to pile up from the dozens to the hundreds, occasionally flapping their heavy wings causing small gusts. For the most part they remained quiet eyeing us down on the boat. There were about a hundred of them all around us, enough to kill us all.
I saw Jack’s hand trembling and that in itself caused me to become more and more afraid. I couldn’t move.
The trip out of Port of Spain felt like the longest journey ever, but luckily enough we made it out alive.
“That was a close one,” Jinx said, looking back at the ruins of the sunken city.
“Don’t get fooled. They may be bigger but they is still just scavengers. They won’t attack unless you bleeding or dead,” Jack said.
The water level decreased and the shoreline appeared in a sea of garbage that smelled so awful my nose felt like it wanted to fall off.
“Here is smelling even worse than that prison,” Jinx said, holding her nose.
“No joke,” Jordan agreed.
“We almost reach. Calm down,” Jack said.
But the horrible smell wasn’t the only terrible thing that greeted us when we came off the boat. It wasn’t night time yet but there were a couple dozen jumbies combing the area.
“Don’t make eye contact,” Jack said.
“Too late,” Johnny said.
We caught the attention of all the jumbies before we even noticed them and they were coming towards us from all around. Jumbies got out of abandoned cars, rose from the watery depths and some from beneath the sand. They looked hungry and they were heading directly at us.