Thud.Shhhhh.
Thud.Shhhhh.
Shambling, I think. It’s fucking shambling!
And it’s coming toward me. Speaking was a grave mistake. Whatever monster wandered into our hideaway is as blind in the dark as we are. It’s hunting by sound, following our voices.
I clamp my mouth shut and sit still. I should probably move, but I remain rooted in place, afraid that any sound might cause it to pounce.
I hear a tiny click to my right and recognize the sound as Willem pressing the small LED light. When he lets go, its blue light will reveal whatever is coming my way. The problem is, it will also reveal me to it. I brace myself for action and wait.
Click.
Blue light, brighter than expected, fills the chamber. We’ve been in the dark so long that the tiny light seems incredibly bright and I squint as I dash to the side. A small rock snags my foot and I topple over, landing just a few feet from where I sat.
The shambling sound grows faster. Louder. It speaks as I roll over to face my death head-on like the Colonel would want.
The face gazing down at me is the last I expected.
“Jackson?” I say, staring up at the man. Blood soaks his face where he was bitten, but otherwise, he looks unscathed. Could he have survived?
My three male comrades must be wondering the same thing, because no one moves.
Then Jackson speaks, his voice wet. “I’m going to kill you.”
The words slowly sink in. I’m going to kill you. They were the last words he spoke before the bear crushed his skull. I look more closely at his head and notice it’s not quite as spherical as it used to be. It’s been crushed. No way he’s still alive. Not in the traditional sense, at least.
“He’s one of them!” I say.
“But he’s talking,” Chase says. He’s hiding behind the shield, crouched next to the fallen stones and the Viking body.
“‘I’m going to kill you,’ is the last thing he said before he died!” My words come in a frantic rush as I fumble for my gun. I don’t find it tucked into my waist. A quick glance reveals I dropped it when I tried to make my escape, but it’s within reaching distance. But before I can make a move, Jackson lunges.
Before he reaches me, Willem leaps toward the reanimated corpse with a battle cry. He’s got the sword raised up, ready to take Jackson’s head off, but his shout gives the attack away. Jackson moves with surprising speed, spinning around and smashing Willem in the side with a forearm. The strike knocks Willem back. He slams into the wall and slumps to the floor.
“Willem!” I shout, which serves no purpose other than bringing Jackson’s attention back to me. “Help!” I shout, reaching for the gun. I catch a glimpse of Chase on the other side of the chamber. He’s free to act. Could use that shield to ram Draugr Jackson from behind. But he remains as motionless as the unconscious Willem.
I feel cold metal and fumble with the gun. I could look at the gun and pick it up quickly, but I find myself unable to take my eyes off Jackson. As a result, I’m not ready to repel his attack. He throws himself toward me, reaching out for my head. I fall on my back, pull my legs up and plant my feet against his chest. I manage to hold him back for a moment, but he weighs more than he should and he’s using his increased strength to push himself on top of me. He opens his mouth and leans forward, straining to reach the flesh of my face just a foot away.
I wish I could say that’s as bad as it gets, but he’s got one more surprise for me. He hisses, “I’m going to kill you,” again and then sticks out his tongue. At first, I’m not sure what I’m seeing, but then a moment of clarity reveals a patch of wriggling white bodies emerging from the tip of his tongue. I can see each one clearly. They have two black specks for eyes. The mouths are small, but as they open and close, I see tiny little needle-like teeth. Their segmented white bodies writhe back and forth, pushing out of his flesh. And in a moment, they’re going to fall on my face. Maybe crawl into my mouth, or my nose, ears and eyes. A bite might not even be necessary!
I look into his dead, white eyes, hoping to see a trace of humanity left. No such luck. I thought his eyes had been whitened by some form of undead cataracts, but up close I can see that his eyes have become clear membranes. The whiteness comes from the writhing mass of parasites filling his eyeballs. Jackson no longer sees with his own eyes. Instead, a mass of tiny black eyes stare out through Jackson’s eyeballs and somehow transfer the visual data to his body.
One of the parasitic killers frees itself from Jackson’s tongue. It dangles above my mouth, held up by viscous slime, wriggling, chomping its tiny jaws.
I want to scream for help again, but can’t. The parasite could fall right into my mouth.
The parasite is just inches from my face when Jackson is yanked back. The tendril of slime stretches and snaps, dropping the parasite as I flinch away.
Jackson roars in frustration, but his voice is replaced by a sudden slippery crunching sound. The Draugr falls to the ground at my feet. Jakob lands on its back, hacking away at the spine with Alvin’s rusty fishing knife.
Knowing I’m safe, I jump to my feet, frantically searching my body. I find the mucus covered parasite wriggling down my sleeve, headed toward the cuff of my sweater. I flick the small creature to the cave floor and then crush it beneath my boot.
Jakob stands, out of breath and wipes his blood-covered hands on his pant legs.
“Will kill you,” Jackson croaks out.
“He’s not dead!” Chase shouts from his hiding spot.
“Severed the spine,” Jakob says. “Alive, but cannot move.”
I notice several white maggot-things crawling out of the knife wound in the back of Jackson’s neck, but they’re not going anywhere fast. “Keep away from him.”
“What happened?” Willem sits up, rubbing his head and looking at Jackson’s still body.
“You tried to play Viking,” I say. “Didn’t work out so well.”
He blinks hard. “Tell me about it.”
“Next time don’t scream as you attack.” I reach out my hand and help him to his feet.
“Thanks for the tip,” he says.
“Kill you,” Jackson says, his voice fading.
Chase finally finds his courage and comes out of hiding. He crouches next to Jackson. “What do you want?”
“What are you doing?” I ask.
“Trying to communicate,” he says and then repeats, “What do you want?” like he’s talking to a really old lady, one loud syllable at a time.
“Kill…you.”
“That’s not an answer,” I say. “It’s just repeating the last thing he said. Can probably trigger whatever part of the brain that is. Makes the reanimated corpse that much more believable. If Jackson had said, ‘Help me, please,’ before he died, this might have worked out differently.”
Jackson says, “Kill,” one more time before Willem drives the sword through the paralyzed Draugr’s skull and brain, silencing him for good. But a new voice, more mangled than Jackson’s, picks up where he left off, only this time the message is much more peaceful. “It’s okay, we’re friends.”
McAfee’s last words.
30
McAfee’s body defies logic. The two large holes in his chest are the least of his problems. His face is flattened and smeared with blood. The rest of his body looks compressed. I remember the large bull pounding his body into the sand. It must have broken all his ribs and crushed the rest of him. His arms look rubbery—probably filled with broken bones. His legs appear solid, but one is twisted to the side at an odd angle.
Now this looks like a zombie, I think, but the familiar image does little to comfort me.
“It’s okay,” McAfee says. He speaks out the side of his mouth, unable to open his jaw fully. It’s crooked and looks to be broken on one side. “We’re friends.”
As though to prove the truth of his statement, McAfee raises his arms toward me and charges forward. He’s faster than anticipated and nearly reaches me, but I manage to roll away.<
br />
McAfee is fast, and probably strong, but he’s not agile. As I roll to the side, he turns to watch me though his bleached eyes and doesn’t see the approaching wall. He smashes into the wall and falls to the floor.
“Run!” I shout.
Chase leads our exodus from the chamber and into the tunnel. As we run for the surface, the light in the tunnel shifts from the light blue of the LED light Willem carries, to a bright yellow. A glowing circle reveals the exit ahead of us, beaming with the promises of freedom and daylight.
The sun, I think with relief.
I’m doing it again; attributing what I know about modern vampires to the Draugar, which we’ve already seen operating in the daylight—perpetual daylight. As my legs start to ache from the uphill run, I start to think. The Draugar obviously know where we are. But only Jackson and McAfee came into the cave.
Why?
The answer comes quick. Willem and Chase were right about the cave. The others couldn’t, or wouldn’t enter. But Jackson and McAfee were new Draugar. They’d have no memory of the caves. No fear. No apprehension. But they were injured. Weaponless. Clumsy.
The light ahead blooms bright. The fresh air of day rolls past us. It feels warm, maybe fifty degrees, but it carries a scent that makes me shiver. The smell is earthy and I quickly realize why Jackson and McAfee entered the cave alone.
They were never meant to kill us, I think. They were sent to flush us out!
“Chase, wait!” I shout too late. He runs out of the cave and is bathed in bright yellow sunlight. It looks so welcome, so peaceful. And quiet. Nothing happens.
“What’s wrong?” Willem asks me.
Chase stands outside the cave, looking back and forth, seeing nothing. My fear fades as we enter the sun. “Nothing, I just thought—”
Chase turns to greet us. His head snaps up. His eyes go wide. A scream unlike anything I’ve ever heard rises in his throat. I look up and find a silhouette of something big, framed by the sun. Something swoops past my head. Chase flinches down and raises the shield. The instinctual defensive posture saves his life as a double-sided axe strikes the wood. The shield explodes into fragments and Chase is sent sailing. But he wasn’t cut in half, which I’m pretty sure was the attacker’s intent.
As the axe is pulled back up, Willem, Jakob and I waste no time fleeing out of the cave and following Chase as he slides down the hillside.
“Chase!” Willem shouts as he bounds closer to the now still figure.
As much as I still don’t like, or trust Chase, I sigh with relief when he picks up his head and curses. Willem yanks the skinny man to his feet and is rewarded with a shout of pain. Chase clenches the arm that held the now destroyed shield.
“Is it broken?” I ask.
“I don’t think so,” Chase says, giving his arm a cursory wiggle. He winces, but appears to have no trouble moving it.
“Hurry,” Jakob says, stopping next to the group. “Torstein comes.”
Four sets of eyes look up the rocky slope as Torstein jumps down from his perch above the cave entrance. The dead man is massive, at least a foot taller than Willem, but he lacks the bulk he might have once had. His body looks dried and withered. Of course, he seems to have no trouble wielding that giant axe. It, along with the horned helmet and tattered cape, make him look like something straight out of Chase’s role-playing games. In fact, as I look at our group, me with the hooded cloak, Willem with the sword—we’re all starting to look like characters out of a fantasy novel.
Torstein takes a step toward us and it’s clear he’s not going to be sprinting any time soon. His joints are stiff, and I swear I can hear them grind as he takes another step. He won’t be able to catch us in an outright race, which is good, but he’s also not going to get tired, need to sleep, or get hungry.
Well, maybe hungry—he did eat Eagon and Jenny after all—but I don’t think he needs to eat. Not like the living do, anyway.
We turn and run, not really sure where we’re headed, except that it’s away from the axe wielding Draugr. The decline takes us to a beach with gray sand and a stand of stone obelisks, rising out of the sand like tree trunks. I approach one of the natural structures and run a hand over it. The stone is smooth, polished by eroding tides. I can’t see the water, but I can hear it, somewhere beyond the tall stones.
With Torstein descending the hillside behind us at a slow, but steady pace, I step into the labyrinth of stone.
“We can’t go in there,” Chase says. “We don’t know where it goes.”
“I’m pretty sure it leads to the ocean,” I say, motioning to my ears.
“I know that,” he says, “but—”
“There isn’t time to debate, Chase,” I say and point to the lumbering Draugr following us. “As long as he can see us, he can follow us. And we’re eventually going to get tired. So unless you want to live in a B-horror movie where the casually strolling psycho killer can catch victims running full speed, I suggest we use these stones for cover and then follow the coast one way or the other before cutting back to the center, grabbing our gear and getting off this hellhole of an island.”
“There’s still a fifty-fifty chance he’ll follow us.”
“Chase,” I say, my patience gone. “Shut-up.” I enter the field of stones.
“Follow the Raven,” Jakob says, giving Chase a shove. It’s the first time I’ve seen the old captain lose his patience. He’s lost his best friend and his ship. He’s been walking and running on an injured ankle without much complaint. In fact, I forgot all about his ankle until now. I glance back and see just the slightest limp in his gait.
Chase obeys, perhaps not wanting to be left behind, or maybe just eager to please whatever captain is giving him orders.
Willem stands outside the field for a moment, holding his sword. He looks like he’s going to do something stupid and noble like waiting for Torstein so the two distant relatives can duke it out and settle things the Viking way. Instead, Willem just shakes his head and follows us.
Just fifty feet in, we lose sight of the island behind us. After another fifty, we reach the edge of the ocean. The rocks shrink in size, looking more like stalactites fallen from a cave ceiling, worn thin at the base where the water constantly eats them away. The view of the ocean and the blue sky full of white, soft clouds belies the horror of this place. The stark beauty is just a mask. Something sinister lives in the frozen north. Something old. Something evil.
I frown at the view, taunted by it. This might actually be a nice place to die, to be buried, but not like this. Not eaten alive, or turned into an ever-living abomination. Something rises from the ocean in the distance. A plume of steam reveals a whale.
Fucking whales, I think. I wouldn’t be here if it wasn’t for you. If I make it out of this alive, I determine to become a whaler and hunt the giants into extinction. I’m going to eat whale steaks, light my fucking house with whale oil, and open a fast food chain in Japan that sells nothing but deep-fried whale nuggets.
“What’s that?” Chase asks, pointing at the ocean.
I’m completely annoyed that the whale-loving idiot doesn’t recognize them and I don’t bother to follow his pointed finger to its target. “They’re whales.” Asshole.
I’m near screaming as the frustration of everything we’ve encountered and survived starts to weigh on me. All because of a pretty view.
“Not them,” Chase says. He takes my head in his hands and I nearly shove my hand down his throat and rip out his heart. But he shifts my gaze just enough so that I see what he’s talking about.
A swirl of water, like a whale’s “footprint” reveals something rising. It’s not a whale. Too close. Too shallow. It could be a walrus, which wouldn’t be good, but we could lose it in the maze, no problem.
When the thing rises from the ocean dripping gouts of water and trailing a mass of seaweed, I’m not sure what I’m looking at. But then the details resolve and I stare into the empty gaze of a bald headed, tunic clad, Viking D
raugr. This one’s skin is loose, probably from soaking in the ocean, but it’s a sickly green color and hangs in flaccid sheets that reveal he used to be a man of some bulk. The loose skin covers shriveled muscles, taut sinews and old bones. In fact, its left arm is exposed and I can see gleaming white bones and shifting ligaments. The thing is like a living puppet. But it’s loose, unlike Torstein, and it can move much faster. It charges through the water, slowed by the surf.
This is a trap, I think, but I never get to reveal my thoughts. Our group flees back into the maze, confused, separated, and inside of a few seconds—
—lost.
31
Somewhere, Chase screams. I think he must have been caught and killed, but then he shouts a warning, “There are more of them!”
Before I can heed his warning, I’m struck from the side and slammed into one of the stone spires. I right myself in time to see a short Draugr picking itself up, just a few feet away. The thing is dressed in brown, tattered leather and has long braided hair, partially peeled away from its skull. A double braided beard wiggles at its chin as the hungry mouth snaps open and closed, filling the air with the click, click, click of chomping teeth.
My head spins from the impact and I struggle to get up. The Draugr, who feels no pain, has no trouble hopping back to its fur wrapped feet. It charges again, white-spotted tongue extended, ready to inject my body with its parasitic youth.
I force myself up, but the world spins around me as my head throbs in pain. I fall back to one knee, unable to move my legs. With the short Draugr just five feet away, I whip out my Glock and fire two shots toward the thing’s head. Either the rounds have no effect, or I’ve missed.
The gun is knocked from my hand as the Draugr lunges.
I clench my eyes shut.
I hear the impact, but never feel it.
My eyes pop open and I see Willem atop the Draugr’s back. He must have tackled it at the last moment. He raises the Viking sword above his head and brings it down hard, splitting the short Draugr’s head like a melon. There’s a grating slurp as he withdraws the blade and prepares to strike again. But the monster doesn’t move.
THE SENTINEL (A Jane Harper Horror Novel) Page 16