THE SENTINEL (A Jane Harper Horror Novel)

by Robinson, Jeremy; Bishop, Jeremy

  Of course, that might be because she expects a polar bear to rush up and snatch her away.

  “Are we there yet?” Jenny asks.

  I cringe inwardly. I loathe when people start asking that question like it’s funny. I remember an episode of The Smurfs where one of them, probably Brainy, annoyingly asked the question over and over. It was supposed to make kids laugh, but it just made me wish Gargamel would catch and kill the little bastards. But when I look back at Jenny’s face and see her discomfort, I realize she’s actually asking the question with no humorous intent.

  She’s right to ask, too. I thought we’d reach the source of the smoke long ago, but we haven’t come across anything that looks like a campsite, occupied or abandoned. I pause and search the sky. The pillar of rising smoke is gone. I turn a full three sixty. Nothing. The smoke is gone.

  I’m too tired to care and say, “Smoke or no smoke, this is the way we have to go. If we find the source, great. If we don’t, we’ll just keep moving.”

  Jenny sighs, but doesn’t complain. As bad as the pain is, none of us wants to die out here.

  “But why is it gone?” Peach asks.

  “Whoever it was probably moved on,” I say.

  “Or died,” Jenny says.

  I give her a look that says: That’s not helpful.

  “What?” she says defiantly, “It’s true.”

  A third option tickles the back of my mind, but I’m feeling so lethargic I don’t bother to put much thought into it. I remember days in school like this—staying up late to watch TV or go to a party and then yawning my way through a test that I could have aced otherwise. I shake my head and give my face a few brisk smacks. Getting a B in school didn’t result in someone dying. Out here, we can’t make mistakes.

  So what was I missing? I treat it like a multiple choice.

  Complete this sentence: The people who created the source of the smoke…

  1. ؜ …are dead.

  2. ؜ …have moved on.

  3. ؜ …are…what? Dead or gone, what else is there?

  Jenny’s looking at me like I’m mad. I’ve been silently mouthing my thoughts and smacking myself in the face. I choose to ignore her rather than explain. With my back to the girls, I look to the south.

  A small rock skitters across my path. Had the day been windy, I might have overlooked the subtle movement, but I haven’t felt more than a tickle of wind for the past hour. Something knocked that rock loose. It was either the bear, or answer number three:

  3. ؜ …heard the gunfire, put out the fire, and set an ambush.

  Shit.

  I fling open my cloak, draw the handgun and point it at the stand of boulders from which the pebble emerged.

  Jenny stumbles back, caught off guard by my sudden action. “What are you—”

  “Come out from behind the rocks,” I command in my best Colonel impersonation. “I’ve got a gun,” I add, letting them know that I’m the one who fired it earlier. They might think I’m bluffing—I could have heard the gunshot just like they did—but all they have to do is take a peek to know I’m telling the truth. “If you don’t come out right this second I might shoot you just because you pissed me off.”

  A tall figure rises up from behind the rocks. No raised hands. No fear in the eyes. Just a pair of serious blue eyes staring me down. It’s the Viking fond of rude hand gestures. Up close I can see his blond beard is neatly trimmed and his shoulder length blond hair wasn’t cut with an axe.

  Okay, so, he’s a civilized Viking. Maybe he’ll quote Shakespeare as he pillages our womanhood? That’s not fair. You shared a smile with the man over whale meat. He’s got a sense of humor. So he’ll laugh while he pillages our womanhood? Fair enough.

  I track his movement around the boulders, keeping my weapon trained on his chest. He’s dressed in a bright orange winter survival suit, and I don’t spot any wounds on him. His face is covered in a layer of grime, which fails to conceal the fact that the Viking is also handsome.

  “Close enough,” I say. He stops ten feet from me, squinting as he looks me up and down.

  “It’s you,” he says in surprisingly perfect English, with just a hint of a Greenlander accent.

  “You two know each other?” Jenny asks me.

  “No,” I say.

  “But he recognizes you.”

  I try to think of a way to explain that I hand gestured oral sex at the man without looking like an idiot, decide it’s not possible and blurt it out. “He flipped me off, so I—” I simulate the gesture, pushing my cheek out with my tongue while gyrating my hand next to my mouth. “We had a laugh. It was just before we went into the wheelhouse.”

  “Just before they rammed us,” Jenny says.

  The man’s face goes red with anger and he takes a step forward. I raise the gun barrel toward his face.

  He stops and says, “You attacked us first. With paint and that foul smelling shit. Then you rammed us. And when we give you a taste of your own medicine, you set off two bombs. Don’t talk to me about—”

  “Two bombs?” I say.

  “One on the bow. One aft,” he says. “If we weren’t triple hulled…”

  He lets the sentence fade, but I get what he’s saying.

  “You’re right,” I say.

  The man looks surprised by the admission. “You didn’t do anything wrong.” I half expect Peach to chime in here, but she stays silent, which is good because I’d like to make peace. “What was done to your ship and your crew is inexcusable. You have every right to not trust us, but—”

  “Put the gun down,” he says.

  “Not yet,” I say, feeling incredibly annoyed that the Viking interrupted my confession.

  “I wasn’t asking,” he says.

  “Look, buddy—” I’m really losing my patience now. “I’m taking on a lot of weight that doesn’t belong on my shoulders, so if you could just shut up and listen for a minute, I can explain everything and you can ask me to—”

  He hasn’t heard a word I said. I can see it in his eyes. His mind is on something else. He tilts his head to the side, looking beyond me. I hear the voice of my father echoing in my mind as he described the tactic of distraction: Killing a distracted man is easy, you just walk up behind him and put a bullet in his head. He’d finished the statement by pointing an imaginary weapon at my head and pulling the trigger. Happy memories. But an effective memory tool. Too bad I remembered too late.

  The Viking’s eyes are back on mine. “I wasn’t asking,” he says.

  Shit.

  I don’t even need to be told where to look. I turn around without lowering the weapon, look around Jenny (whose eyes are as wide as her skin is pale) and see Peach. A wrinkly, knobby knuckled hand is wrapped around her mouth. A rusty fishing knife is held over her chest, ready to impale her.

  I turn back to the Viking. Is that a hint of a smirk I see? “I’m starting to dislike you,” I say.

  “The feeling is mutual,” he says, taking a step toward me. “Now, put the gun down.”

  He doesn’t make a threat, but he doesn’t need to. The knife over Peach’s chest says it for him: If I don’t put the gun down, they’re going to stab Peach in the heart. Checkmate. They’ve got me.

  But there are two problems with their plan. One, they’ve got a rusty fishing knife in the hands of an old coot with shaky hands, while I have a handgun in the hands of a polar bear-shooting markswoman.

  And two, I’m a girl who takes after her father.

  13

  I cock the gun’s hammer back. It’s a stereotypical thing to do, popularized by Hollywood. But seeing this moment in a thousand TV shows and movies means that most people on the planet—outside of some lost Amazonian tribe—know what the action means: I’m going to shoot your ass.

  The Viking pauses, watching my eyes. “You wouldn’t,” he says.

  “You think I fired off a round for fun, earlier?” I say. I don’t actually say I shot a person—I’m not convinced I could pull off that lie
—so I let him make some assumptions. Plant some doubt.

  “You’d sacrifice your friend’s life?” he asks.

  He’s searching for a chink in my armor, searching for doubt.

  “Who said we’re friends?” I counter.

  “You’re on the same crew,” he says.

  “Not exactly,” I say. “But that’s a long story I can tell you when Captain Arthritis back there drops the knife and joins you on the firing range.”

  The doubt I’m sowing like some frantic mind-farmer spreads to the man’s eyes. But he persists. “And if he doesn’t?”

  “I’ll shoot you both before he can work that dull blade past her sternum.”

  The Viking looks around me to Peach and the old man. He shakes his head slightly, seeing what I saw on my first glance. The knife is poised over the center of Peach’s chest. Even if he tried to stab her, he wouldn’t do more than poke through the thick fabric of her snow gear, let alone pierce bone and reach something vital. Not before I shot him, anyway.

  The Viking sighs. He was, no doubt, the mastermind behind the plan to overcome an adversary with a gun. Brains over brawn. Too bad for him, I’ve got both. But I appreciate the fact that they chose that tactic over tossing boulders on us from above, which might have actually worked. I remind myself that these men are the victims here, not the enemy. They have every right to distrust us, and I’d like nothing more than to reverse their suppositions of us, but I can’t do that until Peach is safe.

  The Viking hasn’t said a word yet, so I decide to give him a timetable just in case the old guy is secretly a Greenlander serial killer. “I’m going to count to five,” I say. “If I don’t hear the knife hit the ground before then, I’m going to shoot you in the leg.” I tilt my head back without taking my eyes off the Viking. “Hear that? You have five seconds. One…”

  “He doesn’t speak English,” the Viking says.

  “Two.”

  Clang. The knife rattles on the ground.

  The Viking shakes his head and grumbles the old man’s name, “Alvin.”

  “Apparently he knows a countdown when he hears it,” I say.

  “You wouldn’t have shot me,” he says.

  It’s tempting to fire off a round, put the fear of the almighty Glock in him. But that’s not what I want. I need the man to trust me, so I point the gun at the sky. The hammer clicks down without firing a round.

  “You saw the safety on?” I ask, wondering how he could be so sure.

  “Safety?” he says, “I’ve never been this close to a gun before. You…have a kind face.”

  Bullshit, I think. When I was a kid, I would imitate my father’s best scowl—the kind he wore for new recruits—and got pretty good at it. No way this guy saw through that. Not with a gun to his face.

  He must see my disbelief because he says, “Not now. The other day.”

  I roll my eyes. “We were fifty feet away.”

  “I have good eyes,” he says.

  “If you two are done flirting,” Jenny says, “do you think we could make nice while sitting down. I’m hungry, thirsty and I’ve got cramps in both ass cheeks.”

  The Viking looks at the sky, considering his options. He doesn’t have many. He offers his hand, “I’m Willem Olavson,” he says, then motions to the old man, now standing behind him. “This is Alvin.”

  I shake his hand. “Jane Harper.” I motion to my compatriots. “This is Jenny, and Peach. Wish the circumstances were better, Willem.”

  “Our camp is nearby,” he says. “My father is waiting for us there.”

  His father, I think, suddenly remembering the old man who stumbled out of the Bliksem’s wheelhouse after my rotten butter attack. His father was captain of the Bliksem. I try to hide my guilt, but feel Willem’s eyes watching me. But then, in a flash, he’s not looking at me—he’s looking beyond me.

  I don’t fully trust him yet, so I don’t turn around. He’s built like a true Viking and stands nearly a foot taller than me. He could overpower me and take the gun if I took my eyes off him for too long.

  When Peach says, “Oh shit, not again,” I turn around. One hundred feet away and closing is a charging polar bear. The red streak on its forehead confirms that this is the same bear. It’s stalking us.

  I step around Jenny as Peach flees to the back of the group, hiding behind Alvin, who looks just as terrified as she is. As I look away from Peach and up at Jenny, I shoot her a glance that asks, You’re not afraid?

  She understands the question and shrugs. “You’re a good shot, right?”

  I answer her by taking a shooters stance, raising the gun and looking down the sights. I line up the bear’s face. I can’t pierce the thick skull and the layers of thick fur, skin and fat, would likely keep the rounds from hitting anything vital even with a perfect body shot. So I aim for the face. A shot to an eye or its nose would put a stop to things fairly quickly. I flick off the safety as the bear closes the distance.

  Before I can fire a shot, two large hands wrap around the gun, twist it and yank it from my grasp. I expect to be shot, or punched out next, but Willem says, “Save your ammunition,” and hands the gun back to me.

  He steps in front of me, and picks up our bright yellow raft. He holds the raft up over his head, nearly doubling his height, and starts screaming.

  The bear slows.

  Jenny steps past me and stands next to Willem. She raises her hands and screams at the bear.

  It slows again.

  I see what they’re doing, and move to Willem’s other side. I’ve still got the gun and know I can quick draw if need be, but Willem’s plan will save ammo and is more humane. I open my cloak, flapping it open, and I join the others in screaming. The bear’s head cranes toward me and it stops. Maybe it recognizes me as the person who stung it earlier. Maybe it’s freaked out by the giant with a yellow head, the big red clad woman and the black pterodactyl flapping its wings. Whatever the case, it turns tail and runs away—again.

  When it’s clear the bear won’t turn and make a second run, Willem says, “You shot the bear earlier, right?”

  Busted. “He almost got me.” I look up at Willem. “But I feel much safer now that I have a Viking with a giant…raft to protect me.”

  “A Viking?” he says with a grin. I’ve just complimented the man.

  “Don’t let it go to your enormous yellow head,” I say, and head back toward Peach. “You okay?” I ask her.

  “Like it matters,” she says, surprising me with her vitriol. “I’m not your friend, remember?”

  God. “I was bluffing, Peach.”

  “Whatever,” she says, and walks away from me.

  Alvin shakes his head at me disapprovingly. “Seriously?” I say, getting annoyed. “You’re the one who had the knife to her chest.”

  Jenny puts a hand on my shoulder. “She’s just freaked out. Give her some time.”

  She’s right. Some people handle life and death situations with humor. Some with anger. And some with all-consuming fear. Peach has been doing well enough, but I suspect she’s close to becoming unhinged. Nearly being eaten by the bear the first time would have pushed some people straight to the edge, but Peach had been held hostage, too. The bear showing up again, might have finally consumed her rational mind.

  I don’t blame her. Most people wouldn’t have come this far without cracking. But I hope Jenny is right; I hope Peach sorts things out before she makes a stupid decision and gets herself killed.

  Willem steps past me. “Our camp is only a short hike from here.”

  “Why aren’t you moving?” I ask. Making camp and sitting still doesn’t make sense, unless… “You got out a distress call, didn’t you?”

  He nods. “I transmitted a distress call with our coordinates. I don’t know if it was received, but it’s something.”

  This is great news, but there’s more to it. “But…” I say.

  “That’s not why we’re not moving.”

  I look at him, waiting for the a
nswer. “You’ll probably only believe me if you see it for yourself.” He motions toward a nearby mini-mountain. “I’ll show you.” He turns to Alvin and speaks Greenlandic, then looks to Peach and Jenny. “He’ll take you to our camp. We’ll join you shortly.”

  Jenny doesn’t look pleased. “We should stay together.”

  “I won’t be long.”

  “And if the bear comes back?” she asks. “You think the prune will protect us?”

  I hand Jenny the Glock and point to the Internal Locking System safety feature in the back of the pistol’s grip. “Just switch this, point the gun at the big white target and squeeze the trigger until it falls down.”

  She takes the gun and sighs. “Please hurry,” she says.

  Peach says nothing, but given her permanent scowl, I’m happy she’s gone mute.

  Alvin moves down a stony slope. Despite being exhausted, Jenny and Peach should have no trouble keeping up with him.

  Willem on the other hand, is moving uphill fast, taking long strides with his Viking legs. I start off after him, the burn of exertion returning after just a few steps. When Peach and Jenny disappear behind a ledge, I start to feel vulnerable. I’m alone with a total stranger who has every reason to hate me. Maybe this was his new plan? Divide and conquer?

  “Just so you know,” I say. “I still have a very sharp knife, so don’t try anything.”

  He looks back at me. His forehead is coated in a film of sweat and he’s breathing heavy. He’s no more accustomed to this level of activity than I am. “Good,” he says, between breaths. “You...can fight the bear…if he…comes back.” He climbs up a five-foot ledge, turns around and offers his hand. “We’re almost there.”

  14

  “There,” he says, pointing over the crest of the small mountain.

  I’m winded, tired and more than a little turned around by the time I join him and follow his pointed finger out into the distance. I stare dumbly ahead, oblivious to what he’s showing me. “What am I looking at?”