But there was nothing he could do to prevent the explosion.
Instantaneously, a loud blast overpowered the roar of the ATV motors as an invisible force slammed into the backs of the bewildered drivers. In a moment of confusion, the three men skidded to a stop then turned to locate the source of the shock wave. It was the plantation house, and it glowed like Mount Vesuvius.
As they stared at the destruction, a second explosion tore through the remnants of the eighteenth-century structure, sending antique meteorites in all directions. Fireballs sprang into the air like popcorn, spreading the inferno to the nearby trees and cabins, igniting them like they were made out of gasoline.
“The detonation was too precise to be an accident,” Payne screamed over the din of the blast. “That means either the house was on a timer or the explosion was set off by hand. And if it’s the latter, that means our friends are still on the island.”
Blount and Jones turned from the fireworks display and studied the surrounding terrain, using the glowing nighttime sky as a giant spotlight.
“Is that the truck over there?” Blount shouted.
Jones looked in the direction that Bennie was pointing and identified the object. “I don’t know if it’s the truck we want, but it’s definitely a truck.” Like a sheriff from the Wild West, he patted the weapon that hung from his hip. “Let’s saddle up, fellas, and teach them boys a lesson.”
DESPITE
Tornado’s barking and the loud rumble of the truck engine, Holmes heard the house’s detonation and stopped to investigate. Looking back, he saw the bright orange flames as they shot toward the sky and felt the concussion of the blast as its shock wave rolled across the island like an invisible stampede.
With a smile on his face, Holmes climbed from the vehicle and strolled toward the back of the truck. Tornado emerged from the front seat as well, and the two of them gazed at the light. “Did you like that, boy?”
The dog remained silent, staring at the horizon.
“You liked that, didn’t you?”
Tornado answered with a low, menacing growl. Then, after a few seconds of displeasure, it began pacing back and forth across the grass of the open field.
Holmes stared at Tornado with fascination. The only time he had seen the dog act this way was when Ndjai was preparing him for an attack. “Hey, fella, it’s gonna be all right. The fire isn’t gonna hurt you. It’s too far away to bother us.”
A guttural moan emanated from the dog’s throat as it continued its movement. Back and forth. Back and forth. Again and again.
“What’s spooking you, boy?”
As if answering the question, Tornado hopped onto the truck and growled at the nearby trees.
“What’s wrong, boy? Is there something . . . ?”
Then Holmes heard it. Softly, just below the whisper of the wind, there was a rumble. It wasn’t the sound of fire as it devoured the evidence of the plantation house. No, the sound was more man-made-like a machine. Like an engine that was headed his way.
Without delay, Holmes jumped behind the wheel of the truck and hit the accelerator. Driving as quickly as the terrain would allow, he glanced in his sideview mirror and searched the darkness for his enemies’ approach. He hoped that they wouldn’t be back there. He prayed that he was just being paranoid. But the mirror gave him indisputable proof.
The MANIACs were behind him, and they were gaining ground.
“Son of a bitch!” He turned back and looked at Tornado, who was still growling fiercely at the noise. “Hang on, boy. This could get messy.”
“DAMN!” Blount shouted from the lead ATV. “I think he saw us!”
Payne nodded, even though he had no idea what Blount had screamed. All of Payne’s concentration was focused on the driver of the truck. Not Blount, the explosion, nor the pain in his arm. Everything-every thought, every breath, every beat of his heart-was devoted to the man that threatened Ariane. Payne would make him pay for his transgressions.
But he had to catch him first.
Little by little, second by second, Payne gained ground on the vehicle. He wasn’t sure how it was possible-the pickup truck had more horsepower and quicker acceleration than his ATV-but he was getting closer.
“I’m gonna make my move,” Blount yelled. “I’m gonna cut him off.”
Jones nodded in understanding as Blount pulled ahead like a marathon runner using his final kick. Five feet, then ten. His lead lengthened while his dreadlocks flapped in the wind like a tattered flag. Jones stared in amazement as Blount inched closer and closer to the truck.
“He’s gonna catch him!” Jones shouted. “Holy shit, he’s gonna catch him!”
HOLMES looked in his sideview mirror with great displeasure. Even though he drove the fastest vehicle, the trio was still gaining on him. “Come on, truck! What’s wrong with you?”
He pressed the gas pedal even harder, but it was already on the floor. There was nothing else he could do to increase his speed.
“Tornado!” he called through the back window. “Attack those men!”
The dog, who’d been watching the approach of the four-wheelers, barked in response. After locking its gaze on the nearest target, Tornado obtained top speed in three quick strides, then launched itself from the back of the truck with as much force as its legs could generate. The dog flew through the air like a white missile, aiming its sleek and powerful body at the closest threat it could find: Bennie Blount.
Tornado crashed into his face with such force that it shattered Blount’s nose and cheekbones on contact, knocking him from his vehicle at a nasty angle. As he fell to the ground, his leg snagged on the underside of the handlebar, forcing his vehicle to turn sideways. The awkward movement was too extreme for his Yamaha to handle, causing the Grizzly to flip over in a series of exaggerated somersaults until the spiraling vehicle burst into a massive ball of flames.
Luckily for Blount, he was thrown free of the ATV before the explosion occurred, but his broken body skidded helplessly until it came to a stop in Jones’s path.
Reacting quickly, Jones leaned hard to the left, slipping past his ally by less than a foot. Unfortunately, as he surged around Blount, he found himself heading for a different catastrophe. Blount’s out-of-control vehicle, still tumbling in a pronounced spin, sprang sideways and landed squarely in front of him. The two ATVs smashed together with a metallic scream, launching Jones over the handlebars of the Grizzly and onto the hard ground beyond the fiery wreck.
Payne saw the accident out of the corner of his eye-the gruesome collision of the two vehicles and his best friend’s violent spill-but realized there was nothing he could do to help. As much as he wanted to return to the crash and offer his assistance, he knew he couldn’t afford to. It pained him to be so selfish, so uncaring toward Jones, but he realized if he turned around now, he might lose track of Ariane forever. And he just couldn’t risk that possibility.
***
DESPITE
the thick layer of fog that clouded his mind, Bennie Blount was able to recall many details of the accident. The truck, the ATV, the vicious impact of the dog.
God, he suddenly realized, it was a miracle that he was even alive.
While giving his body a moment to recuperate, Blount tried to clear the cobwebs in his brain but was unable to snap out of his accident-induced haze. His head throbbed with every beat of his pounding heart, and his vision came and went at unannounced intervals, making it all but impossible to concentrate. He tried to focus on something simple-the names of his family members, his childhood home, what he ate for dinner-but his concentration was distracted by the warm sensation that slowly engulfed his face.
The feeling, unlike anything he had ever experienced, started in his cheeks and gradually crawled toward his eyes at a slow rate. At first, Blount wasn’t sure what was causing it. A swarm of insects? The blowing wind? A hallucination? But in time, he realized what was happening. His entire face was filling with fluid.
As he lay there
, twisted and grotesquely mangled, Blount could feel his cheeks as they swelled at a hideous rate. Blood flooded his taste buds as the copper-flavored liquid surged from his nose like a waterfall and drained into his open mouth below. It quickly filled with the warm fluid. As it did, he tried to purge it with a quick burst of air but realized that he was unable to. Unfortunately, he had bitten his tongue during his fall, and the severed tip floated in his mouth like a dead fish in a crimson pond.
Blount tried to roll onto his side by using his arms and hands, but nothing happened. His limbs didn’t respond, and he remained stationary. Next, he tried to pull his knees toward his chest, hoping to see or detect movement of any kind, but his legs remained planted on the ground. In a final test, Blount tried to wiggle his fingers and tap his feet, but they remained lifeless.
He wanted to prove that he was making a mistake, that he was simply overreacting and wasn’t paralyzed, but his body was unwilling to cooperate.
Sadly, it kept letting him down, over and over again.
CHAPTER 55
DESPITE
the agony in his arm, Payne managed to close the gap between himself and the surging truck to less than five feet. Once he matched the truck’s speed, Payne pulled his right leg from the ATV and placed his foot on the vehicle’s seat. After doing the same with his other leg, Payne found himself steering the Yamaha in a catcher’s stance, a position that would allow him to leap onto the back of the truck.
But Holmes wasn’t about to let that happen.
Using his passenger-side mirror, Holmes spotted Payne in pursuit. In an effort to thwart him, Holmes swerved the truck violently to the left, trying to shake free of the highspeed pest, but Payne adjusted quickly, gliding adjacent to the right edge of the pickup. Without delay, Holmes whipped the steering wheel to the right, trying to flatten Payne with the violent impact of the two vehicles, but the maneuver backfired.
Since Payne was anticipating Holmes’s move, he used the truck’s approach to his advantage, jumping from the Yamaha a split second before impact occurred. Holmes laughed when he heard the metallic crunch of the two vehicles and glanced in his mirror to examine the wreckage, but the darkness prevented him from grasping what had really happened. The only thing he could see was the spiraling glow of the ATV’s headlight as it turned over in a series of violent flips.
“It was nice bumping into you!” Holmes howled.
Little did he know that Payne was still along for the ride.
THE initial sound came from behind, and it made Blount’s heart leap with fear. It wasn’t a distinct noise like a bark or a howl, but Blount still knew what had produced it. It was Tornado, the hound from Hades. The bloodthirsty dog had paralyzed him and was coming back for more.
Blount knew if he remained stationary he wouldn’t stand a chance against the blood-crazed beast. The dog would pin him to the ground with its thick, muscular body and thrash him to death with its razor-sharp teeth. He had seen the animal in action during its training sessions with Ndjai, so he knew what it was capable of doing. If he was to survive, Blount needed to get to his feet and find some kind of weapon to defend himself. But how? He couldn’t run or even twitch. What chance did he stand against something like Tornado?
Realizing he couldn’t put up a fight, Blount tried to scream for help, hoping that Payne or Jones would hear him, but his severed tongue and mouthful of blood restricted his effort. Instead of a shout, all that he could produce was a muffled whimper. And no one was close enough to hear it except Tornado, who heard the plea and sprang forward to investigate.
IF he had wanted to, Payne could have killed Holmes immediately-all it would take was a bullet to the back of his head-but there was a slight problem with that approach: Who was going to stop the truck? The vehicle was going too fast to stop on its own, and since Payne was in the back of it, the thought of it ramming into a tree or plunging into a swamp wasn’t appealing.
No, if Payne was going to take out Holmes, he had to do it from close range with a great deal of finesse. It was the only way to guarantee his own safety.
Payne pulled the Glock from his belt and studied the back of the truck, hoping to find something useful. The bed was bare except for a tool chest, a tire, and a thick military blanket. Payne thought for a moment, trying to figure out how he could use any of these things to his advantage, when an idea hit him. He could use the blanket to obscure Holmes’s vision.
With a quick tug, Payne slid the blanket across the bed and readied it for use. All he needed to do was toss it over the front of the-
“Oh, my God!” Payne mumbled.
He stared at the object on the other side of the truck and couldn’t believe what he was seeing. How had he been so blind when he first climbed aboard? How could he have missed such a large lump under the blanket? It just didn’t seem possible.
But there it was. Or more accurately, there he was. The captive who’d been pulled from the Devil’s Box before Payne had been placed inside. The man was handcuffed, unconscious, and lying no more than five feet away.
Payne crawled across the truck bed and tried to examine him, hoping he was still clinging to life. His skin was red and blistered, not only from severe sunburn but also from insect bites. Even though his eyes were responsive, they were lethargic-possibly from dehydration or an illness of some kind.
“Hang in there,” Payne whispered.
He glanced at the open terrain of the surrounding field and realized that he needed to make his move immediately. He didn’t want to abandon the sick prisoner, but if he struck now, he knew there was no chance of the truck slamming into anything solid.
“Everything’s going to be fine.”
Stretching the blanket in his two hands, Payne crawled toward Holmes. Although pain ripped through his biceps as he worked, he realized that he had to use his left arm to complete the job. There was no other choice.
Taking a quick breath to ease his agony, Payne thrust his arms through the broken back window and arched the blanket over the face of the stunned driver. Holmes instantly released the steering wheel and used both of his hands to tear at the thick blanket, but Payne wasn’t about to give in. In fact, he felt like a rodeo champion clinging for life on the back of an angry bull.
“Stop the truck!” he demanded. “If you want to live, stop the truck now!”
Holmes responded by pushing on the gas pedal even harder while screaming, “Fuck you!” through the rough cloth of the blanket.
The vehicle’s speed continued to increase until Payne yanked on the blanket again, this time in a series of rapid bursts. “I . . . said . . . stop . . . the . . . truck . . .
now
!”
Realizing that he had to do something, Holmes finally gave in to the request, but not in the way that Payne had been hoping for. Instead of easing his foot from the gas pedal, Holmes slammed on the brakes as hard as he could, trying to free himself from his captor. The sudden shift in the truck’s momentum did the trick. Payne flipped over the top of the roof like a drunken gymnast, legs and arms flailing in every direction while trying to stop his slide. But nothing could prevent him from tumbling in front of the screeching truck.
WHILE shaking off the effects of the ATV crash, Jones pulled himself to a sitting position and studied his immediate surroundings. He saw two four-wheelers, both of them damaged and overturned, and the closest one to him was on fire. Using the light from the blaze, Jones checked himself for blood but was surprised to find very little. He had an assortment of scrapes and bruises, but he didn’t have any open gushers like he had feared.
After rubbing his eyes for several seconds, Jones climbed to his feet and looked for the other driver. He wasn’t quite sure who he was looking for-his head was still groggy from the accident-but reasoned if there were two vehicles, there should be two bodies.
At least, that seemed to make sense in his current state.
Jones wandered to his left and stared at the flaming wreckage, making sure that no one was
on fire. “Hello? Can anybody hear me?”
There was no response.
Jones limped to the second ATV, the one that he’d been driving, and pushed it over onto its wheels. Although it was dented and scratched, Jones didn’t notice any major damage. There were no obvious leaks or stray parts lying on the ground, and despite the collision the wheels seemed to be intact.
“Takes a licking and keeps on-”
A deep growl broke Jones’s concentration. He immediately stared in the direction of the noise and searched for the source.
“Hello?” he shouted, but this time with a little more apprehension.
Once again, there was no response.
As he studied the darkness, Jones placed his hand on his belt and felt for the cold touch of his gun. He was thankful when his fingers curled around the rough texture of the handle. It gave him a burst of confidence.
“Who’s out there?” he demanded.
Another growl. Softer, angrier.
Jones took a few steps forward, holding his gun directly in front of him. He was in no mood for games and planned on punishing the first person he came across. “If you’re out there, I recommend you answer me. Otherwise, I have a bullet with your name on it.”
He took another step, moving closer to the source of the sound. The light of the fire helped show him the way. In fact, he relied on it.
“I’m telling you!” he warned. “You’re really pissing me-”
But Jones wasn’t able to finish his statement. In fact, he nearly choked on the words as he tried to say them.
Bennie Blount was sprawled on the ground, twisted and contorted in a puddle of his own blood. Hovering above him, like a monster from another world, was Tornado, its face and claws dripping with the liquid that surged from the open wounds it had created.
When the animal saw Jones, it lifted its head and growled in an effort to protect its dinner, and when it did, chunks of flesh dropped from its mouth and fell onto the red dirt below.
The bloody display made Jones nauseous, yet it only added to his determination.
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