Furious by Jeffrey Higgins (top 10 novels to read TXT) 📕

Fighting for my life and using my wits against my enemy, against nature, had empowered me. I had turned my mind into a weapon and won—not the war, but a minor battle.

Hope existed.

I leaned back in the seat, which dangled as high as before, but this time, I felt safer, more secure. I examined the horizon to the southwest. It took a minute, but I caught flickering sunlight reflected off the other boat’s mast. I had three flares. A flare may not be visible during daylight, but if I waited until night and the sailboat disappeared, I would regret missing my chance.

I swung the case under my arm, rested it against my waist, and hooked the mast with my feet. I would not drop the flare gun after I had almost died retrieving it. I drew the gun, opened the breach, and set it inside the case. I pulled a flare from the opened package and loaded it into the gun. I snapped the breach closed and held the gun in my hand.

The wind carried Brad’s high-pitched screams to my ears. He balanced on his injured leg and swatted the mast with his hand, sending vibrations into my legs. I ignored him and swiveled in my seat to face the distant light.

I raised the flare gun over my head. I had never fired any kind of firearm before, and my heart raced, either from fear of the gun or the possibility my signal would go unnoticed.

I inhaled, held it, and squeezed the trigger. The metal dug into my raw finger, but the gun did not fire. Hunger and dehydration had weakened my grip, and I could not pull the trigger all the way back. I wrapped my left hand over my right and used two fingers. The trigger inched back.

The hammer snapped forward, and the gun exploded. A red flare rocketed from the barrel, high into the air at the tip of a fiery red tail. The flare rose higher and higher. It exploded in a starburst, a thousand phosphorous fragments burning through the sky—the Fourth of July in the Indian Ocean.

My eyes followed the flare as it plummeted and disappeared into the brine, leaving a trail of white smoke behind. I searched for the green light but saw nothing. I waited for a full minute. And another. My eyes burned and my throat tightened. A tear ran down my cheek.

The ship had vanished.

CHAPTER FIFTY-FIVE

The afternoon sun burned my skin, turning it cherry red. I hung in the seat with the gun case secured against my hip. Brad had paced the deck for hours after I fired the flare, incensed by either the explosion or my escape. Maybe the rabies made him sensitive to loud noises, but his own incessant shrieking did not seem to bother him. For me, it was another story. His manic growling tore at my nerves and chilled my bones.

He wanted to tear the flesh from my body.

Brad stayed on the deck and monitored me. He did not appear to have anything human left inside him, but he knew enough not to leave me alone again. His primitive brain recognized he had cornered me, treed his prey. He knew I had to come down, and when I did, he would slaughter me.

He bared his teeth like a grizzly and scratched his nails across the deck.

I looked away. I pulled my tee shirt off and fashioned a turban to shade my eyes from the sun. My tongue swelled, but I continued to sweat—a positive sign—because once I stopped perspiring, heat exhaustion came next, followed by heatstroke and death. My stomach rumbled from hunger. I had not eaten in days and my strength waned.

The halyards clanked rhythmically against the mast, calming me, and I drifted at the edge of sleep, fighting to stay awake. I could not lash myself to the mast, unless I untied the gun case and used the strip of bed sheet, but I would risk losing the flare gun. I forced myself awake.

My thoughts drifted to Eric. Shy Eric. Kind Eric. Brilliant Eric. He exuded an inner peace, a quality Brad pretended to have, but never did.

I had doubted Brad’s suitability from the beginning, but once I had married him, I committed. I never cheated on him, never flirted, never entertained romantic thoughts about another man. Loyalty meant everything to me, but somehow, Brad’s raging below—waiting to kill me—had freed my mind to think about Eric and an alternate future. If I made it through this, I would tell Eric what his friendship meant to me. The fantasy kept me going.

I spotted the sailboat again, catching glimpses of its mast in the distance, at least ten miles away. If I saw it after dark, I would try another flare. Either it would work, or it would not.

My life depended on the outcome.

Far to the east, the horizon darkened with clouds. Another storm. How strong would the winds be and how violent? The rain squall seemed distant, but if it hit us, we would be in trouble. I could not deploy the sea anchor or steer, and our chance of capsizing would become all too real.

The sun took a lifetime to reach the horizon; a lifetime of sizzling flesh; a lifetime of thirst; a lifetime listening to Brad below. Furious Brad. Rabid Brad. I could not think of him as my husband anymore. He had morphed into a devil, a demon from my nightmares. The sun touched the horizon and spread out, shimmering at the edges of the earth. It melted into the ocean and the sky changed from pewter to black.

I slid the case onto my lap, opened it, and loaded another flare. Two shots left. I aimed the gun toward the distant mast light and pulled the trigger. The flare rode high into the sky and burst like another sun, much brighter than before. I allowed myself to hope.

I stared at the green mast light flickering in the distance as