Winston chuckled. “I think that’s a myth.”
Mahdi found himself relaxing. He could handle rats, and it appeared Rowan had solved their problem. Nothing stirred for a full minute. Then the group seemed to collectively remember they were marooned on North Sentinel Island, exposed on a beach. Rowan and Talia quickly reloaded the raft with the med kits and bags of food. Then everyone returned to their hiding spots. Even Emmei climbed back inside the walls, but his former sleepy demeanor was missing. He looked ready to spring away.
Mahdi slid down into the bunker, lowering his head below the root wall, but keeping his feet away from the raft. He felt silly, being afraid of a dead man, and two dead rats, but he wasn’t the only one avoiding the raft. Only Talia seemed unfazed by the strange events. He didn’t know a lot about her, but what little he did know spoke of a life on the fringe of civilization, where magic and spirits still explained what science had understood for millennia. To her, this might not even register as odd. She carried herself with an air of, ‘just another day at the office,’ but perhaps it was an act?
“Back to business,” Rowan whispered once the group was settled. “No talking, no standing. The sun will be up in an hour and then we’ll—”
There are moments in life that are so off, like witnessing the martyrdom of a friend turned suicide bomber, that the mind has trouble comprehending the sensory information being transmitted by the body. When Mahdi saw the trash bags of food arc into the air, followed by the med kits, and the life raft, he watched with a strange kind of detachment. It was as though a localized portion of the world suddenly reversed gravity.
It made no sense—not until the Sentinelese man buried beneath the sand sat up.
Whispered curses in four languages punctuated the bunker’s immediate evacuation. Not remembering his frantic retreat, Mahdi found himself face down in the sand. When he pushed himself up, he knelt beside Emmei and Winston. Sashi, Talia, and Rowan were on the far side, all eyes on the man who had usurped their hiding place.
The Sentinelese man sat in his grave, coated in sand that had stuck to the blood that had drained from his chest and back.
“What the fuck?” Winston said, aiming his gun again. “What the fuck?”
This time Rowan didn’t chide the man for raising his weapon. Instead, he joined him, aiming the FN SCAR at the man’s head, panic in his eyes. The soldier had seen war, but never anything like this. Again, only Talia seemed unafraid, watching with squinted, suspicious eyes.
The Sentinelese man turned his head toward Mahdi, who scurried back until the man spoke. “Lazoaf.”
Mahdi froze, staring into the black eyes.
“What did he say?” Talia asked, appearing startled for the first time. She picked up a handful of sand and pelted the back of the man’s head. “Hey!”
The warrior’s head snapped around with unnatural speed.
Talia flinched back, but stood her ground.
The man raised his hand toward her, bent and broken.
There were no rats…
“Lazoaf!” the man shouted.
Rowan snapped into action, drawing his knife and burying it in the top of the man’s head. After the hard crunch and wet smack, Mahdi expected the man to fall.
He did not.
The man’s body locked, transformed into a living statue. Rowan’s hand came away from the knife, a disturbed look in his eyes.
“What?” Winston asked. “What do you see?”
“He’s watching me,” Rowan said. “Tracking me with his eyes.”
Winston shook his head, lowering his aim and stepping back. “Not possible.”
“Dead rising,” Emmei said.
Emmei’s superstitious beliefs seemed far less incredulous while looking at the still living man with a knife in his head, the man who had already been dead twice, who didn’t cry out when his hands were broken. But it couldn’t be possible. Couldn’t be real.
“What does ‘lazoaf’ mean?” Rowan asked. “They said the same thing to me.”
“I—I don’t know,” Mahdi said. It was a lie. He knew the word, but there was no way it shared the same meaning, even if it did make sense. There were 6500 languages spoken in the world, each with hundreds of thousands of words, all with their own unique sound. But with all that language, there were words that overlapped, combinations of sounds that even when spelled differently, or with entirely different alphabets, that sounded the same, but had different meanings.
The English word ‘gift” means ‘poison’ in German, and they are both Latin languages. ‘Kiss’ in English means ‘urine’ in Swedish. Even the same word between two different cultures that both speak the same language can have different meanings. While in London, Mahdi learned that pants, braces, biscuits, and chaps all had very different meanings from the American English he had been taught.
That ‘Lazoaf’ sounded like a word Mahdi knew in one of the seven languages he spoke, was coincidence.
“What are you doing?” Sashi asked, and Mahdi noticed she was watching Rowan, who had lifted his hatchet.
“He’s going to give our position away,” Rowan said, hauling the hatchet back. “Dead or not, there is one way to make sure he can’t talk.”
But before Rowan could swing and decapitate the man, a wet slurp stopped him, and nearly stopped Mahdi’s heart. The Sentinelese man’s face moved, as though something underneath were fighting to come out, the skin going slack, and then flexing.
With a slick tear, a long horizontal triangle of flesh peeled back from the man’s forehead. Pink goo stretched between the opening flesh and the muscly skull beneath, snapping as it spread open. A boney hook that twitched back and forth, tipped the end of the flesh.
Rowan’s arms went slack. He stepped back out of the bunker, confidence obliterated.
Six more stripes of tapered flesh tore apart and slurped open. Gelatinous sinews stretched and oozed as the man’s body began to tremble. The face beneath his face was muscle and bone; his eyes, free of eyelids, bulged.
Mahdi looked to the others, hoping to see some kind of understanding or recognition in their eyes, but he saw only his own fear reflected. Even Talia was unnerved, slowly stepping backward.
The muscles on the man’s face twitched and contorted, becoming something less than human. The flesh beneath his bulbous eyes bulged, split, and snapped open, revealing a second set of eyes that looked at Mahdi while the first set remained locked on Rowan.
The jaw dropped open, lower than it should have been able to, and a high-pitched wail rose from its chest. The sound was followed by the report of a gun, echoing out over the sea, and through the jungle. The man’s—the thing’s—head thrashed back as the bullet Winston fired punched a neat hole in the front and a fleshy geyser from the back. The body fell back, still twitching.
When the ringing in Mahdi’s ears faded, he heard the sound of feet running through sand. He looked up and found himself to be the last expedition member still standing beside the bunker. Rowan, Talia, and Sashi had fled in one direction, while Winston and Emmei ran the other way. Mahdi’s instinct was to stay with Rowan and Talia, but when he looked back for them, they’d slipped into the night.
The body gurgled and spurred him into motion, sending him after Winston and Emmei, while every living person—if they were people—living on North Sentinel Island rose from their beds, and perhaps their graves.
23
Rowan had retreated several times during his career as an Army Ranger, but each time the move had been strategic and well thought out, never once motivated by fear. But now, as he charged down the beach, wishing the shifting sand beneath his feet was pavement, he felt and comprehended little more than an all-consuming primal terror. He remembered this feeling from childhood, walking home from a friend’s house at night, leaves blowing in the wind, his imagination chasing him, breathless, all the way home. But now, it wasn’t his imagination looming behind him, and the leaves were a very real monster: a man turned thing, dead four times o
ver and still moving.
The further he got from the Sentinelese man, the more his senses returned. He glanced back, saw Sashi and Talia on his heels, and the dead man slumped back in the sand, twitching but not chasing.
Fear subsided, giving way to training.
You’re in the open, he told himself, find cover.
On North Sentinel Island, finding cover meant one thing: the jungle. The plan had been to avoid the jungle at all costs. The people living on the island would know the terrain, where every path led, and every hiding place. Their only chance was to think unconventionally. For a Sentinelese, who had no contact with the outside world, and zero military training, thinking like a soldier might be the kind of unconventional thing they needed to survive. He hoped so, because it was the best he could manage.
He wished there was another option, but since Winston pulled that trigger, their path had been set. The beach might even the playing field, but if the Sentinelese swarmed their position, and were as hard to kill as the freak show behind him, they’d be overwhelmed in seconds. And there was nowhere to hide on the beach.
A break in the foliage revealed a path that moved alongside the beach before bending away into the jungle. From the water, the path would be invisible.
Rowan stopped short of the path. Shoved a thick, leaf-laden branch up and said, “Here.”
Talia slipped into the dense jungle without a word. She looked spooked, but like Rowan, she was guided by instincts that would help keep them alive. Sashi stopped, uncertain. She pointed at the path. “But there’s a—”
“That’s where they will be coming from,” Rowan said, and he felt relieved when Sashi’s protests ended there. For her to survive what little remained of the night, the following day, and perhaps a second night, she would have to do exactly what he said and when he said it, all without making a sound. It was a tall order for someone not trained in the grueling art of behind-enemy-lines survival, but Sashi wasn’t a fool.
Not like Winston.
He’d all but doomed them the moment he pulled that trigger. The scream was loud, but it wouldn’t have carried the same distance, and Rowan had been a half second away from using the hatchet to end things silently. If anyone died on this island, it was on Winston’s head.
Rowan decided that if the expedition survived the island, and Winston managed to as well, the man would get a swift kick in the nuts. If people died, he’d get a lot worse. Rowan slipped into the jungle and gently lowered the branch back in place. Darkness swallowed him into a stomach composed of twisting roots and thick leaves.
“Can we just stay in here?” Sashi asked, a tremble in her voice.
“Too close to the path,” Talia replied. “They’ll smell us.”
Rowan would have agreed with Sashi. They were well concealed and when people ran, they usually went as far from the scene of the crime as they could get. Staying relatively close might be the last place anyone would look for them. But the island scents would be intimately familiar to the Sentinelese. His body odor mixed with hints of deodorant and Sashi’s fruity shampoo, both of which had survived their dip in the ocean, would be a fragrant beacon to any Sentinelese that passed by.
“And,” Talia put a hand on Sashi’s arm, “they’ll see you. Take off your clothes.”
“What?” Despite the night’s horrors, Sashi looked scandalized. Indian culture was modest, and the only bits of skin Sashi had shown since he’d met her were her hands and face.
“You’re dressed like a piece of fruit,” Talia said, pointing out Sashi’s maroon trousers, beige shirt, and orange scarf. “You can die brightly or let your skin hide you. What color is your underwear?”
“B-black,” Sashi said.
“Well, then we’ll match.” Talia removed her shirt, revealing a black bikini top. Her shorts, which were black, remained on. Even if they weren’t black, Rowan wasn’t sure Talia would have gone full native, as the belt held her blowgun and darts and the handgun he’d given her, and the pocket held her folding knife.
Sashi glanced back at Rowan who made no effort to look away. “You can’t be self-conscious while fighting for your life,” he told her. “And I’m not taking off my clothes because my pale ass would shine like a lighthouse.”
She smiled and shed her clothing, slowly at first, and then more quickly, not because she was resigned to the idea, but because Talia was waving her on. It wouldn’t be long before the first Sentinelese showed up, and they needed to be gone when that happened. Sashi was very skinny, but she appeared to be in good shape. Stripped down to her very conservative black bra and underwear, she was uncomfortable, but she was already harder to see in the dark.
“Just pretend you’re at the beach,” he told her.
She motioned to her discarded clothing that Talia was covering with soil. “I wear that to the beach.”
“Stay close,” Talia said, and then she climbed over a tangle of roots. Rowan felt thrown for a moment. He’d assumed charge and then lost it, but this was Talia, who’d spent a good portion of her life living in jungles like this. If she could lead them to a good hiding spot, they could assess the situation there.
Sashi glanced toward him, probably wondering who was in charge, too. He gave a nod, and she followed after Talia.
They moved through the jungle for five slow minutes, stepping as quietly as possible, which was far too loud. Talia moved with the stealth of a jaguar, somehow always finding a root on which to walk. But Sashi stepped in all the wrong places, and Rowan’s boots were merciless to the dried detritus on the forest floor. He was about to say something, when all at once, they moved in silence. It was as though the universe’s audio had been muted.
“What happened?” Sashi asked, her voice loud in the strange silence.
Talia turned back, and Rowan noticed he could see her a little easier. He glanced up. The sky, barely visible through the trees, was purple. The sun was rising.
“Forest is clear,” Talia whispered, looking down.
For as far as he could see, the jungle floor was free of undergrowth, fallen leaves, and dead tree branches. The thick canopy overhead explained the lack of small plants. They couldn’t grow without sunlight. But the jungle looked like it had been swept clean, like a Disney World garden. ‘Manicured’ was the best word he could come up with for it.
“Nothing wasted,” Talia said.
She was speaking to herself, but he understood well enough. Being trapped on an island, the Sentinelese had limited resources. Everything that fell from a tree would have a purpose, as food, shelter, weapons, or tools. It also made for quiet walking.
“Where are we going?” Sashi asked, and Rowan was beginning to wonder the same thing. Too far and they risked walking straight into a Sentinelese camp, or cutting through a trail.
“There.” Talia pointed ahead. It wasn’t so much a cave as it was a natural shelter formed by a partially toppled tree, the root system lifting up a rug of soil. It wasn’t perfect, but it was better than—
Rowan ducked before he knew why, dropping to his stomach. Talia did as well, tugging Sashi down beside her. Then he saw them, two Sentinelese men, stark naked, walking casually and carrying on a conversation as though no gun shot had been fired, no tribe member murdered, and no search was underway.
They were either ignorant to the events on the beach, which seemed impossible, they were supremely confident in the expedition’s eventual demise, which was entirely possible, or they knew something that Rowan didn’t, which given the dead man’s ability to self-resurrect, not to mention his blooming face and four eyes, was without doubt.
What the hell is this place? he wondered. He remained motionless until the men had passed. Then he crawled to the natural lean-to with Talia and Sashi. They moved to the back, pressing themselves into the roots and earth.
In the silence that followed, he heard a gentle breeze whispering in the leaves high above, and the distant thump of waves. The tide was coming in. “We can stay here. If a boat comes, we’ll he
ar it.”
Talia gave a nod and Sashi tried to make herself smaller.
As they settled in for a long stay, Rowan tried to analyze the night’s events, but there was too much and he was too tired. It hadn’t been long since the man on the beach split open and spoke, but it already felt like a bad dream, fading with each minute. Twenty minutes into their stay, all he could think about was how thirsty he was. If he didn’t have bright white skin, he’d happily shed the black tactical gear. Not only did it weigh him down, but it kept him sweating, and with the sun on the rise, it would only get hotter and more humid. He might have to undress despite his bright skin or risk dehydration.
A tap on his cheek caught his breath inside his chest.
What was that?
The tap repeated, then tickled his cheek. Something was dripping on him. He leaned back and looked up. A gnarled, twisted root came to a stop above his face, a bead of moisture dangling from the tip. He opened his mouth and caught the drip. He looked at Talia, who was watching. “Water.”
Her eyebrows raised. She was thirsty, too.
Talia opened her knife, slid closer, and cut the root, keeping her thumb over the end like she’d done this before. Then again, she probably had. Finding drinkable water was one of the biggest challenges for surviving in the wild, and in a jungle like this, some species of trees stored enough to drink. He had no idea what species of tree this was, but if it leaked water, he was going to drink it.
Rowan licked his lips as Talia positioned herself under the root. Then she moved her thumb and let the fluid trickle into her mouth. She put her thumb over the cut again, swished the liquid around in her mouth, and swallowed. “Water,” she said. “Sweet, too.”
Sashi drank next, and then Rowan, his thirst setting him on the root like a calf to an udder. They took turns until the tree had given all it could. As early morning sunlight snuck through the wind-massaged jungle canopy, Rowan started to feel good. Almost buzzed.
He was about to comment on it when a familiar smell reached his nose.
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