That caught him off guard. “Of course. Shouldn’t I?”
“You wouldn’t have, once.” She got off the bed and leaned on the desk beside the window. “It used to be us against the world, remember? Our crew and anyone along for the ride were the only people that mattered. You’d have died for any of us. We’d have died for you. And fuck the rest of the world. So what happened?”
Sked sat heavily on the chair beside the desk. “I’m not sure you’d believe me if I told you.”
“Try me. I’ve seen some crazy shit.”
“Not this crazy.”
She waited in silence, eyes scanning him, moving up and down and side to side in that way she had.
“I’m not the guy you used to know.” He watched her face to see if there was any reaction.
“That’s what I just said,” she replied.
“And that’s not how I meant it. I’m literally not the man you first met. Brown. HappyHack. Fredling. Whatever he was calling himself when you met him, it isn’t me.”
She raised an eyebrow. “Don’t tell me you’ve found religion.”
“Not at all.” How to explain? He decided to blurt it out. “Something happened to Brown on one of his missions. As far as I can tell from my very fragmented recollection of that period, someone downloaded another mind, my mind, onto the one that was already there. We fought for control. Brown lost.”
“So who are you?”
“It’s pretty confusing. But I think my name was Luca. I used to be a personal trainer.”
“A personal trainer?” She laughed. “Sorry, I can’t really see that.”
“The memories are muddled. It’s like I have one man’s thought patterns and another man’s memories and skill set. I know it sounds crazy. Hell, I would think I’m crazy if it weren’t happening to me and I didn’t know that I’m not crazy.”
“Well, crazy people never know they’re crazy.” She stared out the window for several seconds. “Was this just before Hong Kong?”
“Yeah. I don’t know how I managed to get home. If you hadn’t been there…”
She nodded. “You were in bad shape.”
“I didn’t know who I was. I didn’t remember anything about what I’d done before that trip. You showed me the ropes and then it all came back in a flood… but not my real memories. I got Brown’s memories.”
“You are Brown.”
“You need to believe me on this. I might act like Brown and remember the things he did and knew, but he’s not me and I’m not him. I don’t remember how they did this to me, and I’m not sure where, even though I remember trees, a jungle like the one around us.”
“You never mentioned trees when we were putting you back together.”
“It only occurred to me after we reached this island. The trees, the humidity… I don’t know. Something jogged my memory.”
“Don’t you remember where you were?”
“Not remotely.”
“And your passport…” she let the words die away. She knew as well as he did that in their line of work, passports were either not used at all or used once and discarded.
“No help. Hell, I don’t even have one under my real name. But I’m starting to think this happened in Central America.”
She shrugged.
He went on. “But you want to hear something interesting?”
“I dunno. Every time someone tells me something interesting, I end up with another price on my head.”
“That’s because you run off and either steal or sabotage the interesting thing they tell you about. Just listen, this one shouldn’t get you in trouble. You know those people on the lifeboat?”
“What about them?”
“They say the island’s crawling with killer dinosaurs.”
“Oh, come on. They’re probably drugged out of their minds. I mean, how else do you manage to shoot one of your friends in the neck with an arrow?”
“I think they’re telling the truth.”
“That’s…” she gave him the fisheye. “All right. Spill it. What gives?”
He explained about the Buddha and the gene labs.
“What else?” Akane said.
That startled him. He hadn’t thought there was anything else. But now that she mentioned it.
“I think I remember something. Something about the place where they overwrote my mind. The guy who did it…”
“What about him?”
“I think he was in the crazy animal modification game. I think there were monsters there.”
Akane rolled her eyes. “You know what I think? I think you went to some party somewhere, you went on one bad trip after another and now you’ve got your brain so fried that you’re confusing your nightmares with reality.”
“You know I don’t do that.”
“Lately, I don’t know what I know about you. Changing your handle to Sked out of the blue, suddenly growing a conscience you don’t need. Just about the only thing you treat the same as always is me.”
“You sound jealous that I’m being nice to others for a change.”
“No. I’m wondering if I can still trust you.”
Chapter 6
Jana cowered in the makeshift cage. The natives had stripped off her bikini and she feared the worst.
She was surprised that they hadn’t done more than stare at her and poke her with spears while they’d pushed her inside the wooden stockade which they’d tied with grass-like leaves. It looked like the leaves wouldn’t hold against a determined attempt to escape… but she decided not to test that while the villagers were about. If they left her inside, an opportunity might arise when they went to sleep.
Only a handful of the men and a couple of equally naked women remained in the clearing they’d dragged her to. The men were either older than the ones that had tracked her down or mere boys, not even into puberty. But it made little difference: the spears they held would cut her to ribbons. She’d already seen what had happened to Isabel.
No. She wouldn’t think of that. Not now. She could mourn her companions later, once she survived the ordeal.
“Listen,” she said in English. “This is some kind of mistake.”
The tribesmen chattered among themselves in a language she’d never heard. In fact, she’d never heard anything like it, not even in the cosmopolitan melting pot of Prague, one of the places in Europe where east truly met west. This language didn’t consist merely of words but of clicks and gutturals she couldn’t even follow, much less understand.
In her experience, though, everyone spoke English… or at least one of them would. Even in the smallest Czech village, there was always someone who had some English, and he was the one the villagers would come and get when some clueless tourist misread their GPS and got lost. She knew because she’d been the one for her own hometown, a tiny farming hamlet near the Austrian border.
But either these people really didn’t speak any English or they pretended not to.
Jana reflected that if she’d murdered a bunch of tourists, she’d also pretend not to be able to understand a word anyone said. Everything would be much more convenient that way.
She knew they’d killed them. She’d seen them dragging the bodies away, stripping them down and…
No. She wasn’t going to think about that.
“Let me out!”
The tribespeople ignored her and went about their business, which seemed to consist of inspecting the clothes they’d removed from the dead. Jana watched a bloodstained white uniform passed from hand to hand as the women made appreciative noises… just like her mother and grandmother would have done after a market day.
Except her ancestors wouldn’t have killed anyone for their prizes.
“Please, let me go!” Though her voice filled the clearing, none of the locals paid Jana any heed.
Suddenly, they disappeared. She didn’t even see where they went. One minute the clearing was filled with all the natives who hadn’t been part of the ongoing hunt and the next… no
thing. They hadn’t even made any noise she could hear. It was like they were all ghosts.
“Hey! Where’d everyone go?”
Though being the prisoner of murderous natives was not something she would have chosen for herself, the suddenly empty clearing was spooky. Even the birds and the insects had gone quiet.
Something cracked in the distance, the soft sound of a twig breaking which, in the silence, sounded like a gunshot.
The noise brought Jana back to her senses. The islanders were gone, which meant that she had an opportunity to get out of the cage. She attacked the grass tying it together.
It was much tougher than it looked. The natives obviously knew what they were doing.
It wasn’t, however, indestructible, and after rubbing it against the wood of the pole, she managed to wear through a single strand. With a little more play in the structure, she was able to wear down the next one a bit quicker. She needed to hurry—who knew when the islanders would be back.
She looked out to see if anyone was returning.
“Oh God,” she whispered.
The clearing was full of animals that looked like dinosaurs. Small ones, even smaller than the velociraptors from the first Jurassic Park… but dinosaurs. She couldn’t believe what she was seeing.
The top of their heads barely reached her waist, but there were a lot of them. She retreated from the door of the cage, moving as quietly as she could to the back.
They must have heard her. Small mouths with disproportionately large teeth began to snap at the stockade. The little monsters pushed against the walls of the cage. One, behind her, managed to get its head in through a gap between the floor and one of the fence posts. She stomped the snout with her bare foot… but wasn’t able to smash it. At least she had the satisfaction of watching it pull out with a shriek.
Now, however, her own work was conspiring against her. The frayed grass ropes holding the stockade door together creaked and strained.
“No,” Jana breathed as the door popped open. She tensed for the onslaught.
For a moment, nothing happened other than the occasional face peering into the enclosure.
Then three of the creatures stormed in at full speed.
Jana covered her face, but none of them hit her there. She felt fire rake across the back of her leg and fell to the ground, unable to stand.
Teeth tore her hand away from her face and she saw a mouth snapping closed on her neck.
As the blood flowed onto the dirt, and the light in her eyes dimmed, Jana’s final thought was that she was going crazy.
She was sure the dinosaur that had torn her neck was wearing a collar.
Hooked to the collar, she was certain she saw a webcam.
Before she could process that, the lights went out forever.
***
The bodies were fresh, but a black cloud of flies took off when they approached.
“That isn’t good,” Cora told Lai. “Let me go look.”
But when she approached, the Malaysian man matched her step for step. She raised an eyebrow. “You sure you want to do this? It doesn’t look pretty, and probably has nothing to do with us.”
“I may be getting old,” Lai replied, “but my eyes are better than most people’s. And they tell me that those bodies are wearing a uniform identical to the one the sailors on the Vanarisa wear.”
Cora sighed. She hoped he hadn’t noticed, and that it might be coincidence. But now that he’d said it, she knew they would be the men from the ship. She wasn’t superstitious, but the fact that her fears had been uttered meant they’d come true. Any Marine could tell you that.
The corollary to that truth was that she’d failed. People she was responsible for had died on her watch. That Cora hadn’t been anywhere near the action meant nothing; her decision to evacuate had been the root cause of whatever happened—and she’d find out what that was if it was the very last thing she did. And once she was done, her resignation would be on Lai’s desk as soon as they got back to civilization.
The two men. Lens Van Rijn and Khatri were barely recognizable. They’d been torn to pieces by…
By what? She looked around, trying to read the footprints on the sand. It was too churned up, but whatever had done this had emerged from the woods, and there were a buttload of them. Her hand unconsciously went to her hip, where for a decade and a half, her sidearm had resided.
To her surprise, she found it there, which startled her just as much as not finding it had when she’d first returned to civilian life. She remembered putting it there before boarding the lifeboat, thinking it might come in handy if they ran into a dangerous animal.
She’d been thinking along the lines of shooting a crocodile if they came on it—or whatever—but now it looked like the only thing she’d be able to do with a sidearm would be to make a lot of noise and try to scare off the pack of whatever was in those woods.
Still, the gun felt comforting. She turned to Lai.
“I recommend we stay on the beach, but if you don’t want to follow my recommendations anymore, I would understand.”
“We’ll stay on the beach,” Lai said. There was neither accusation nor absolution in his gaze.
They gathered the rest of the group and walked past the grisly remains. It was interesting to see how the executives kept their eyes straight ahead, pretending there was nothing to look at, while the rest of the crew stared. More than once, the first mate made as if to speak.
“Don’t worry,” Cora said. “I’ll make sure someone recovers them and gives them a proper burial.” She knew it would likely be her last official act as Lai’s Head of Security.
They trudged along for a few hundred meters more. Cora kept her eyes on the forest the entire time, occasionally glancing backward. If there was anything ahead, the people with her would see it.
Lai held up a hand. “Wait.”
Cora’s hand went to the holster again. It was incredible how quickly the old habits returned. “What?”
“Can you smell that?”
“Smell?” She wasn’t expecting that, but she sniffed the air and was suddenly hungry. The faint odor of burning wood and cooking meat reached her over the scent of sea. It was a relief: she’d expected Lai to have discovered more decomposing bodies of their shipmates. The wind was coming from inland, which meant that the smell likely had the same source.
“Decision time,” Cora said. “Do we keep walking and eventually arrive at the resort or cut into the woods and find the people having the barbecue? My vote is the barbecue, guys, because I’m not certain how far we need to walk to reach the resort or how safe this beach is. But I’m also not sure walking into those woods is a good idea.”
“Let’s go,” Lai replied. Then he held up a hand. “And no, I won’t hold it against you if it’s the wrong choice. Listen, I hired you to use your experience and your judgement to keep me and my people safe. You’ve done that so far, and I can’t really expect anything else. This isn’t the time for you to have a meltdown, we need you more than ever.”
She nodded and nearly saluted. “Thank you, sir. I’ll do my best.”
“That’s what I expect.”
They turned towards the greenery bordering the beach and found a path through the undergrowth that got wider as they entered the trees. “Well, someone is using this anyway,” the sailor who’d been driving the boat noted.
“Yes, but I’d like to scout ahead to see that the way is still clear. Does anyone know how to shoot one of these?” She held out her gun and the sailor took it.
“I was in the Philippines Navy,” he replied. “I know my way around a handgun.”
“Good. Don’t shoot unless you absolutely have to and if things go to hell, climb the trees. A lot of ground predators can’t, although, to be honest, I have no clue what might live on this island. Either way, at least you won’t get swarmed by major numbers.”
She set off through the woods, moving as silently as she could but knowing that any recon Marine would
have laughed at her.
Hopefully, whatever was out there wouldn’t be as good as a recon Marine. Few were, human or animal.
The path wound between the trees for about fifty yards as the crow flies—the distance was longer on the sinuous path—until it came to a sandy bowl surrounded by trees. The clearing was about fifty yards wide and occupied by several naked people she assumed were the villagers native to the island. The smell of meat cooking was stronger there, strong enough to make her drool, but something, some sixth sense, kept her from calling out to them.
What was it? What was wrong with the scene? The only thing she could point out was that the people around the firepit were not dressed in civilized fashion. Most of them were butt-naked wearing nothing but a tan belt around their upper waists.
But that wasn’t it.
Then she spotted the pile of sticks—bows, arrows and a spear or two—on the ground behind them. Had her subconscious seen the weapons?
Probably not. There was something else she wasn’t quite focusing on. Something that had to do with the firepit the crowd was milling around.
A couple of the natives shifted and she got a clearer look at the meat on the spit. It was a good-sized animal, but there was nothing surprising in that. The bodies on the beach had already confirmed that there were large predators present. And large predators had to eat something.
She was about to go talk to the islanders when two of the men got their shoulders under the spit and shifted it to another pair of forked sticks stuck into the sand. This had the effect of moving the meat around ninety degrees so it was head on to Cora’s position.
“Holy shit,” she whispered, and backpedaled away without thinking. The action of moving the spit had positioned the barbecue so that its head was directly in front of her.
She found herself looking straight into the open mouth of one of the bunnies. Her expression told Cora that her death had been painful, and she wondered if the villagers had even bothered to kill her before impaling her onto the stake and cooking her alive.
The islanders were cannibals.
Or at least they were when they were able to get meat from outside the island.
She shook her head and attempted to focus. The first order of business was to get the hell out of there.
Lost Island Rampage Page 6