Read Online The Terminals by Royce Scott Buckingham - Free Book Online Page A

smirked, her upper lip curling like a writhing snake. “That’s the worst name for a group of extreme ass-kickers I’ve ever heard.”
    â€œYeah,” Ari agreed, buzzed on the tequila he liked so much. “We should pick a name that kicks ass.”
    â€œLike what?” Donnie spat. He seemed ready to challenge anything Ari said.
    The Bellingham hospital with its terminal illness ward popped into Cam’s head. He’d thought he would quietly expire in dreaded, sterile, empty hallway 3C. He was still housed with other terminals, only now he was at a beach party in another hemisphere, in a tropical jungle alive with color, sounds, and smells, and preparing to go on secret missions. Same concept, different setting.
    â€œLike Deathwing?” Cam said.
    Nobody protested or jeered. In fact, nobody said a word. Their silence told him it was right.
    After the rest had gone to bed, Cam sat with Ari across from Jules and Calliope, who were roommates. The group would be training early the next morning, and when Donnie had announced his own bedtime, the rest had followed like sheep, leaving the four of them alone.
    â€œMy tattoo hurts,” Cam said. He raised his unlucky right arm. It had just begun to recover from the numbing poison only to be permanently scarred by a bloodthirsty swimsuit model. The inked pattern was the same for all of them—a series of electrocardiogram heartbeat spikes, followed by a flat line. Cam’s ran around his upper arm. Calliope’s ran around her ankle, which was smart. A smaller circumference meant less torn flesh. Ari’s tat was on his chest. Jules’s was in the small of her back—she hadn’t wanted to watch. And they said that Wally’s lifeline ran straight down his spine until the flat line disappeared into his butt crack, which Cam decided he’d take their word for. The tattooing method was crude—a series of pokes with the fine point of Zara’s dagger, which was wrapped with a thin ink-soaked cloth.
    â€œI’m officially no longer turned on by her,” he declared.
    â€œI think Zara likes cutting people,” Ari said, tossing an empty Maximo can in the dying fire. “She’s done all of the tats since I got here. In fact, I think the whole thing was her idea.”
    â€œShe’s so tacky,” Jules scoffed. She turned to Calliope. “Don’t you think?”
    â€œWell, she’s very sexy. And confident.”
    â€œSexy is a spectrum,” Jules said. “Friendly, flirty, naughty, dirty, nasty, raunchy, and sleazy. Which do you think she is?”
    â€œFlirty?”
    Jules scoffed again.
    â€œ Very flirty?” Calliope tried again.
    â€œEh, you’re too nice.”
    â€œYeah,” Ari said. “Calliope is too polite to bitch about our mission. She joined hoping we’d be saving cute furry animals or the rainforest.”
    â€œI want to help people too,” she said defensively. “I just thought we’d be building schools or digging wells. Our training seems a bit violent.”
    â€œSee? All heart, no balls.” Ari smiled.
    She smiled back, not offended. Cam had a hard time imagining her bitchy or even annoyed. Her demeanor was as soft as her voice, her milk-n-freckles skin, and her wispy strawberry-blond hair, which hung over her face like a veil. Or a shroud.
    â€œWhere’d you get the cool name?” Cam asked.
    She blushed. “I picked it out.”
    â€œWell, it’s a great nickname.”
    â€œThanks, but it’s not a nickname.”
    â€œNo?”
    â€œNope. I was born Alice. It was the trendy name given to me by my dad at the time. I had two other Alices in my preschool, and I was the quietest, so I was ‘Alice three.’ But when I was six I saw a machine at the circus. It was big, a piano with pipes. Steam came out of it like it was angry, but it turned the steam into music.”
    â€œAha! A calliope