Vaguely, the captain heard the shouts of his other group members as they tried to pry the big man off him, but it was no use. Calvin seemed to have the strength of ten men. Suddenly, Calvin dropped to his knees and fell to the ground in a crumpled heap. Shuler looked up at Calvin and saw a great stone-tipped spear thrust through his heart from behind. Then the captain saw Marion standing behind him, looking shocked.
The rest of the group just stared at Marion.
“Holy shit, man.”
Chapter 22
Neither Abbie nor Kala were light sleepers, nevertheless they both woke up immediately at the sound. They didn’t know what it was, since it had ripped them from sleep, but it was loud and close. Then they heard a scream. It was Kala’s mother. The scream was coming from her parents’ bedroom, right above them.
“Mom!” Kala gasped, and threw the covers off her and Abbie.
There was another scream followed by a loud crack that thundered through the walls. Something had just been slammed into a wall above them. The scream stopped abruptly.
“Oh my God, Kala, there’s one of them in the house!”
The girls were scrambling out of bed and Kala headed out the door.
“Kal, wait!” Abbie shouted after her. “We need a gun!”
Kala either didn’t hear her, or just ignored her. Abbie knew what that was like. When her sister was killed, Abbie’s mind had gone completely blank for what seemed like minutes.
“Shit,” she cussed, and scooped up the closest gun to her, then groaned as she recognized the heavy weight of the Smith and Wesson 500. The darn thing weighed five fricken pounds once they put the bullets in it.
Abbie bolted out of the bedroom hauling the enormous revolver with her. She was in the hallway in a flash and prepared to sprint down the hall and up the stairs of the bi-level after Kala. She didn’t make it far before she ran into Kala standing still in the middle of the hallway. Then she saw why, and shrieked.
“Oh. My. God. Kala?”
Kala wasn’t answering. Standing at the end of the hallway, right where it turned and became the stairs into the kitchen, was Kala’s dad. Sort of.
Jack Wolfgang was a very big man, and he stood at the end of the hallway, slightly hunched over. He was naked. Totally naked. His arms were thick with muscles and ended in huge hands. His chest drooped a little, age does that to a man, and his belly was rotund from many good meals. His privates hung loose and limp between his thick legs.
Abbie blushed at seeing her friend’s father like this and tried to avert her eyes, though she could not. Covering Jack’s drooping chest and ape-like arms were dark red splashes of something. His fingers were also dark with dripping scarlet goo. His eyes were hooded and seemed unfocused.
“Oh God.” Abbie breathed.
“Daddy, what’s wrong?” A small voice rang out in the silent hallway.
“Lukie, no!”
Oh God. The situation just got even worse.
Before either girl could grab him, Luke shoved past them and ran toward his father.
He stopped in front of his dad, then grabbed one of his legs and shook him. “Daddy, dad! What’s all over you? Why are you naked? Did you cut yourself shaving again?”
“Kala,” Abbie screamed into her ear, “do something!”
Then Jack struck the child. It did not take much as Luke was a small boy with a sensitive heart and a big brain.
Jack lashed out with a backhand that sent Luke flying into the wall of the hallway. Abbie heard his shoulder and collarbones crack with the impact, and little Luke fell into a heap on the floor. Jack let out a coarse bellow then reached down and picked Lukie up by the throat.
At the same time, Kala reached him and started beating on the arm that held her brother.
“Dad, let him go! Dad!” She was screaming and tears were pouring down her face at the same time.
Jack did not let go. Kala bit down on the arm as hard as she could. Her teeth sunk deep into the flesh and Abbie saw blood ooze out around her mouth. Luke’s face was turning blue. Then Abbie remembered she had the gun. She didn’t know if she could hit Jack without hitting the other two, but from this close distance she would try.
“Daddy Daddy Daddy!” Kala was screaming. “You’re killing him!” Then Jack moved his arm quickly, and hurtled Lukie’s rag-like body into the wall opposite him. Kala went flying as well, and Jack advanced, kicking a naked foot out and into the side of her head. Kala went limp just as Abbie pulled the trigger.
A fraction of a second. That’s how long she was unconscious. Kala’s head hit the oak baseboard of the basement hallway and the light switched off in her brain. Then it was back, and the world was filled with a deep roar, a crack that seemed to shake the very air around her. Her eyes flew open and she saw Abigail flying backward. In her hand, which was waving wildly now, was the big Smith and Wesson revolver.
Abigail fell backward as 2500-foot pounds of energy left the barrel, sending a huge, flat-point shell ripping through the hallway. Kala lifted her head and turned. Her father was falling, too. There was a giant hole in his right shoulder. She could see where the 440 grain round had blown through him. The hole it left was impressive, over an inch in diameter.
Kala stood and her father’s blood squirted all over the hall, along with whoever else’s blood he had on him. Kala thought it was probably her mother’s. She ignored her father and ran to Luke. He was not moving.
“Lukie, Lukie,” she whispered over him. “Get up, baby boy!”
There was no response from Luke. Kala scooped him up and carried him back to where Abbie was getting up.
“Holy shit that gun kicks.” Abbie’s eyes found Luke’s and her face dropped. “Jesus Kal, is he...?”
“Don’t!” Kala snapped. “Don’t say it.”
“Oh shit, Kala!” Abbie was looking past her.
Kala spun and saw that her father, or the thing that was once her father, was charging down the hallway at them. His body drooped heavily now, and he was losing blood fast. He would be dead soon, she knew, but he could kill them before he bled out.
“Move!” Kala shouted at Abbie. Kala lugged Luke another ten feet to her bedroom, laid him inside, then slammed the door. Abbie hadn’t gotten up fast enough. Jack caught her by the foot and dragged her toward him, then he bit down on her calf, which was bare all the way up to the boy shorts she had worn to bed.
“Ahhh!” Abbie screamed, but that only enraged him more and Jack swung his fist at her mouth. He only caught her with a glancing blow, but her head whipped around and she fell silent to the floor. Jack stood over her and raised his leg, ready to smash his foot down and crush her skull.
“Daddy,” Kala said. She wasn’t loud, but Jack heard her and looked up.
Kala had scooped the big revolver off the floor. She stood directly in front of him, eight feet away. Her feet were spread and her knees slightly bent. Both arms were extended straight out in front of her, with one hand on the grip of the gun and the other cupped underneath.
“Goodbye Daddy.”
Jack started to stomp his foot down on Abbie, but Kala fired first. The hard-cast lead bullet roared through the air again, faster than the speed of sound, and then connected. The round hit him between the eyes. For a moment, Kala thought there was a shocked expression on her father’s face, then the large bullet blasted through him and his brains exploded out of the back of his head. A rain of blood and brain and skull fell onto everything in the hallway.
Kala dropped her hand to her side. The gun fell to the floor. Abbie stared at her in shock and relief. Then Kala bolted for her bedroom door. Lukie was still lying there, motionless. Kala dove down next to him, sliding one hand under his head, and wrapping the other around his tiny chest.
“Lukie, Lukie, wake up. Lukie, come on baby, Kala is here.�
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Lukie did not respond. She felt no heartbeat in his chest. His eyelids were somewhere between open and closed and Kala could barely see his pale blue irises. Kala began to rock back and forth on the floor, Lukie in her arms.
“Wake up Luke, wake up!” she shouted at him, tears starting to stream down her face. “I’m here now. I’m going to sing you a song, remember?”
Lukie’s half-closed eyes revealed nothing. His small hands still hung limply at his side. Kala rubbed her hand back and forth over the back of his soft head. She let out a wail when she came across the fracture – a large, dented spot where his head had hit the wall. “Oh Lukie!”
Tears were soaking her t-shirt now and her voice was a warble, but Kala started to sing. She had to; she promised Lukie she would sing to him.
“You are my sunshine, my only sunshine. You make me happy, when skies are gray.” As she sang the words Lukie loved so much, Kala let her head drop back, let the tears pour from her eyes. “You’ll never know dear, how much I love you. Please don’t take, my sunshine, away.”
Kala collapsed on top of him, sobbing violently onto his small chest. Her face was covered with tears and blood and mucous, and soon she had smeared it all over his Iron Man pajamas. She took great heaving breaths, trying to right her upside down world. It did not work.
Finally, she stood. Abbie was not in the room with them. Lukie was still warm, and Kala gently picked him up and slid him onto her bed, making sure he had a pillow beneath his head and that the covers were pulled up tight. She looked around with bleary eyes and then went out into the hallway. There she found Abbie, sitting against the wall, bleeding and crying.
“Abbie, Lukie is dead.” Her voice was hollow, like death.
Abbie said nothing but nodded softly. Tears continued to fall down her face.
Kala bent over and vomited.
Chapter 23
The trip back to the ship on board the RHIB was almost as terrifying as the leap from the cliff. They were all soaking wet and Kuma had the throttle on the rigid hulled inflatable maxed out. They plowed through ocean waves at 50 miles per hour, the spray battering their faces like windblown diamonds. No one spoke, but the captain held Magda on his lap.
She was dying, he knew she was. Her body was burning hot, uncomfortable to hold, and she had stopped sweating. Dr. Connel spared her worried looks occasionally, but the captain thought she was terrified for herself as well. They had no idea to what extent this infection was spread over the island, and since they arrived they had all been bitten by all kinds of insects, possibly spreading the deadly disease. And what the hell happened with Calvin? Captain glanced over at Marion, who hadn’t said a word since putting a spear through the biologist’s chest.
Captain Shuler didn’t tell the guys on the RHIB what happened to Calvin, but Kuma told him they witnessed Stephen attacking Joe in a mad rage. It hurt his head to think about. He wasn’t a scientist or a genius like these kids, but everything in his gut told him that the madness was also related to this deadly new illness and that if they didn’t get the hell out of here they’d all be dead too.
“It’s been brewing for years?” Connel said absently.
“What’s that, Doctor, this disease?”
“This disease, the next disease, it doesn’t matter which. The next big one. It’s out there, being cooked up by nature, being coaxed along by deforestation and overpopulation. It’s waiting for us.” She sounded hollow, a little distant.
Maybe she’s in shock, the captain thought. It would be understandable. He didn’t question her further, but her words echoed in him. The next big one. Could this – whatever this is, really be the next ‘big’ epidemic? He didn’t know, he doubted Connel knew either, but he was scared, scared to damn death, to be truthful.
The engineer had brought the ship to them within thirty minutes and they were soon hauling each other aboard. When they were all safely on the ship, the captain left Magda and the others in Connel’s care and sprinted for the fly bridge. Flinging open his maps, he flash-charted a course and radioed down to the engine room to tell Andi to keep an eye on the engines because he was going to push as hard as he could. He slammed the throttle all the way forward, dialed in the autopilot coordinates to the nearest port on the South American mainland, and said a prayer. The GPS told him it would be over three hours to port.
It was clear that they did not have nearly that long.
Ninety minutes went by with the ship steaming over the ocean at 20 knots before a loud clang shook the ship and the engines abruptly stopped.
“What the hell,” the captain muttered to himself. He picked up the radio and dialed the engine room but Andi did not answer. Shit. He rushed out and ran down through the deep ship into the engine room. He stopped short as soon as he opened the door. The engine room was covered with blood. There was a leak of some type of gaseous liquid fogging up the air, and Shuler smelled an electrical fire.
He hesitantly took a few steps into the room.
“Andi!” he shouted. There was no response. The blood grew thicker the deeper into the engine room he traveled. Then he saw the source. “Oh Christ, Andi, oh Jesus.”
Andi lay on the floor of the engine room. In one hand was an enormous pipe wrench, the type used to tighten fittings on big engines and transmissions. He hadn’t been changing fittings, though. It looked like Andi had used the big wrench to smash everything around him, including the engine’s electronic control module, the computer that operated the entire engine and transmission system. Without it, the ship was dead, as was Andi. His head was caved in on the top, in the shape of a pipe wrench. After he destroyed the ship, he took the wrench to himself. Captain rubbed the bridge of his nose then sat down on the floor next to Andi. His hope was dying, maybe dead, just as dead as Andi was.
“Why did you do it, Andi?” he asked the dead body. He saw a bloody blistering lesion on Andi’s neck, just like the one on Magda’s shoulder. Or Calvin’s arm. A fly or bug must have flown to the ship from the island and bitten him. On the other hand, maybe a spider hitched a ride on the RHIB. The inflatable boat had made many trips back and forth from the island to the ship two nights ago when they first made landfall.
The captain did not know what to do from there, so he just continued sitting with the big, dead, angry, engineer for a few minutes. He watched his face, expecting him to wake up and sling an insult. Andi’s eyes were wide open and the Captain reached out two fingers to close them, however, when he touched the man’s eyelids and started to close them, he felt movement beneath.
“What the...?” Captain Shuler quickly withdrew his hand, and then reached it out again. He placed it over the partially closed eyelid and felt it again, bumping against his fingers like a fetus in a mother’s womb. The captain pushed the dead man’s eyelids back up so that he could look into Andi’s eyes. He didn’t see anything right away. He bent down close, his face only inches from the Norwegian’s. Then he saw it, a bumping, a thumping, maybe a tapping, coming from one of Andi’s eyeballs.
A moment later, he gasped when a black spine burst out of the sclera of Andi’s left eyeball. Oh God! The black spine waggled back and forth, then reached out and tore a hole through the white of Andi’s eye. From the new tear in his eyeball emerged a small, angular spider.
The captain screamed and scuttled backwards as more spiders tore themselves free of Andi’s dead eyes. Soon there was nothing left but mush in his eye sockets, like gelatinous pink hummus. The captain stifled a gag and clambered to his feet as a dozen or more small arachnids swarmed over Andi’s body and started toward him.
He made it to his feet and tore off down the hallway. He screamed again. There were no words in it, just a confused, wounded sound as he fought his way through this illogical nightmare. He ran back to the bridge and started broadcasting an SOS, although he didn’t know if the broadcast was transmitt
ing or not with the ship’s power station destroyed.
He flipped out his notebook, and to the best of his abilities, recorded what happened on the island. Someone would find them, and they had to know what happened, so that no one would ever venture out to that island again. The captain was shaking when he finished and fighting back uncomfortable tears.
He had one last line to write. He was going to write, “If you find this ship, destroy it immediately, for it is infected. Before he had a chance to write it, there was a banging outside the bridge.”
He opened the door and Magda was there. She stood in the doorway staring at him. Her shirt was torn mostly off and blood covered her torso. Her hands and her arms up to her elbows were wet and red with deep scarlet.
“I am ready,” the captain said, maybe to her, maybe to himself. All he could see were her burning red eyes before she leapt at him.
Chapter 24
Emily’s fingers were trembling. She had just finished the journal. It was nearly four in the morning, but her mind was wide-awake and tack sharp. Her eyes were bleary and bloodshot from hours of reading with nothing in her stomach but wine and then coffee into the early hours.
I have to tell the Feds, they have to know that it’s more than just spiders. Emily was no epidemiologist; she had not studied pathology, except a short segment in her college biology class. Nevertheless, she knew what she had read. Those people in the cave had been safe from everything except the flying insects, and that meant that it wasn’t just spiders that could carry this - disease. Whatever it was, it could migrate to mosquitoes and flies, too. I never should have taken the journal home. They could have had this information yesterday morning; they could have done something about it. Her stomach was unsettled and the thought that she had screwed up on a massive scale prickled through her.
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