The Pouakai

  We stopped every few minutes, and two of the SEALs peered over the rocky ridge, recording the view for later analysis. There were more charred huts around the lake. Nothing moved, and no Kakamaku were visible.

  “Look at this,” Lee whispered at one stop, showing us the video from his binocular recorder. “A pile of logs along the beach where the lake meets the ocean.”

  “Some of them are split,” Colin added, pointing. “Like the ones used on those boats we found.”

  “I’m not sure I want to be out on that beach,” I said. “If the Kakamaku find us there, it would be a long fight to get back to our dive gear.”

  “One step at a time,” Lee said. “We won’t do anything to give our position away.”

  We made slow progress. There wasn’t a trail along the ridge, so we had to pick our way through difficult terrain. The ridge followed the curve of the island as it descended from our starting point on the eastern side of the island, down to the south shore. Halfway around, we stopped for a water break, and to plan our route.

  “There’s a plateau about a quarter mile farther,” Lee whispered, as we gathered around the chart. “It’s on the inside of the ridge, and should give us a pretty good look at the whole interior and lake.”

  We continued our hike down the ridge. When we stopped again, we were fifty yards from the plateau we hoped to use as a vantage point. The chart showed a grassy plain on the plateau, but if we kept low, we could probably stay hidden from most of the island. At the edge we’d get a great view of the entire crater and lake, and hopefully find some signs of what was going on here. Lee and one other SEAL peeked over the ridge to scope out the plateau. He came back shaking his head.

  “There are a lot of trees on that plateau,” Lee whispered, “and it’s not flat. There’s a big hump in the middle.”

  “It’s supposed to be flat and grassy,” another SEAL said, looking the chart.

  Lee cocked his head toward the ridge. We worked our way up, and peeked around the rocks on top. The plateau sat just below us, on the other side of the ridge. Lee waved us all back down and fished around in his backpack. He pulled out a pencil-sized video camera and set it up on top of the ridge, pointed at the plateau, and then plugged it into a monitor.

  “Those trees look odd,” Colin whispered, looking at the screen. “They’re not a normal color. And that plateau’s hump is too even.”

  He was right. All the trees were exactly the same size and color. The ground rose twenty feet straight up, and then curved into a low dome, perfectly round, at least a couple of hundred feet in diameter. The trees were spaced evenly on top of the hill, as if someone had been trying to grow a garden. The rest of the plateau away from the hill was covered in grass.

  “Zoom in on one of those trees,” Colin said. Lee obliged. The leaves were too regular, the branches too slender. “They look fake.”

  “What the hell is that?” I asked, pointing at the bottom of the screen. Lee panned down. A bird lay on the ground, dead. Several other birds were scattered across the grass, all the same distance away from the dome, twenty feet from its edge.

  “Zoom out.” When the view widened, we saw more dead birds, along with two dead pigs, all of them scattered along an arc, twenty feet from the dome.

  A bird flew overhead, squawking at us, before circling over the ridge toward the dome. It fluttered away from us, until a bright spark flashed in the air, and the bird fell dead to the ground, right where the others had landed.

  “Son of a bitch,” Lee whispered. “What the hell happened?”

  “There has to be an electronic shield stopping any animals from approaching that dome. And those trees don’t look real either. There is something very wrong here,” Colin said.

  “We need to be real careful here,” Lee said. “Let’s back off and assess the situation.”

  He inched up the ridge to retrieve the camera. I was looking at the monitor when I heard a soft hum. At the same time, a shaft moved upward from the center of the low hill. Shiny and metallic with a big black ball on the top, it moved smoothly upward. The ball stopped just above the tops of the trees.

  “Lee!” I whispered loudly. He turned toward me.

  CRACK.

  The rocks at the top of the ridge exploded. The shock knocked us down the hillside, where I lay flat after I bounced to a stop. A big semi-circle was cut out of the ridge where Lee had been standing, and the edges of the rocks were smoking. Lee wasn’t anywhere to be seen.

  “Cover!” One of the SEALs yelled.

  CRACK.

  Another explosion took out a chunk of the ridge next to the first one. I covered my eyes from the dust and gravel flying around.

  CRACK.

  Each hit sounded like a lightning bolt striking a few feet away.

  Colin hugged the ground next to me, his eyes shut. I didn’t want to move, in case one of those shots came in low enough to get us.

  “What the hell is that?” I said out loud.

  “It’s the beam that hit the periscope,” Colin replied, his eyes still closed.

  “I saw something on the monitor, something came out of that hill.”

  Colin nodded. “Me too. That has to be the beam projector.”

  “What the hell is that hill then?”

  “I think that’s what we’ve been looking for.”

  CRACK.

  Another near miss by the beam. Son of a bitch, that was close. We had to do something, fast. The three remaining SEALs were on the ground, along the protected side of the ridge to our right. Colin and I inched our way toward them.

  “How do we get out of here?” I said to the nearest SEAL.

  “Back the way we came. It’s the only way out of here.”

  He was right. A hundred foot cliff fell away just below us, and that weapon sat on the other side of the ridge. We’d have to backtrack to where we’d originally climbed the ridge before we could head downhill to our dive gear.

  We crawled back up the hill, staying behind the ridge. We’d only gone about a hundred feet when we heard the hum again, and then silence.

  “What’s that?” one of the SEALs asked.

  “Sounds like that beam weapon again,” Colin said. “Maybe it’s retracting.”

  “We need to see what’s going on.”

  “I’m not going to stick my head up there. Are you?”

  “No, but hang on a moment.” He pulled another pencil-sized video camera from his backpack, and wedged it into a vee in a long branch he picked up from the ground. Then he raised the branch up in the air, and over the ridge. The rest of us watched the monitor. The shaft had retracted, but now the side of the dome was opening up.

  “Those trees are camouflage,” a SEAL said. “What the hell is that thing?”

  “Some sort of weapon, or base, or maybe a home to the Pouakai and Kakamaku,” Colin said. “I don’t know yet.”

  One section of the dome rose slowly upward while the vertical sidewall underneath it moved down. A bright blue-white light poured out from inside. The sidewall thumped to the ground, forming a ramp.

  “Oh shit, this can’t be good,” the SEAL said.

  With a horrific scream I remembered from Anuta, Kakamaku ran out of the opening. They were carrying long spears, and this time the spears looked like they were metal instead of bamboo.

  “Get to cover!” one of the SEALs yelled.

  The SEAL holding the camera dropped the branch, and unslung his rifle.

  Colin and I dove behind a big boulder while the SEALs found their own hiding spots. The first Kakamaku leapt over the ridge where the beam had shot at us, and turned our way. It heaved its spear, which flew in a wicked arc toward one of the SEALs. He saw it coming and rolled out of the way as it clanged onto the rocks where he had been. Another SEAL opened fire and the Kakamaku fell to the ground. I didn’t have a rifle like the SEALs, but both Colin and I had our .45’s out and ready.

  More of the ebony monsters jumped the ridge and headed toward us. I counted nine befo
re the next spear flew. It overshot us, but not by much. The solid metal shaft crashed onto the bare boulders behind us.

  The closest Kakamaku was fifty feet away when the SEALs opened fire. Colin shot at the horde too, but out of fear of using all my ammo, I held back. The SEALs fired with deadly accuracy; in seconds, the Kakamaku were all on the ground, their pale yellow blood draining down the hillside, unthrown spears lying next to them.

  Silence filled the jungle again, and the smoke quickly blew away. I knelt behind the rock and took a deep breath. My mind screamed with both terror and confusion. The attack didn’t make sense. They had a beam weapon that could vaporize rocks and people in a flash. Yet when they came out after us, they used spears and didn’t seem to know what men armed with rifles could do to them. Why didn’t they send Pouakai out against us? The big birds would have had the advantage of being able to fly, and would move a lot faster than us as we scrambled through the jungle.

  If that dome was the origin of these creatures, how had it gotten to Tikopia? If any animal that got too near the dome was killed; why were the Kakamaku not being killed? Why hadn’t the beam weapon started firing again? The SEALs backed out of their hiding spots, rifles aimed at the pile of dead Kakamaku.

  “Let’s go,” one of them said.

  I started to scramble after them, but then stopped, my mind in a whirl.

  Colin had said it: ‘That’s what we’ve been looking for’. There were way too many unanswered questions, and I had to know what it all meant.

  “Boonie, come on.”

  “Hang on, just a minute.”

  “Sir,” one of the SEALs said, “what are you doing?”

  I took a deep breath. I wasn’t sure what I was doing either. “We’re so damn close. We can’t just leave without knowing what it is.”

  “Boonie,” Colin said, “what are you talking about?”

  “That dome. The place the Kakamaku came from. We can’t go back to the sub now. We’re too close to the answer.”

  “What are you going to do? Go up and ring the doorbell?”

  “I don’t know, but we can’t just go without trying something…”

  “Sir, we really have to get moving,” the SEAL said. “There could be more of those monsters coming out any second.”

  “Then where are they?” I said. “Why haven’t they come out already? Why hasn’t that beam weapon started shooting at us again? None of this makes sense.”

  “Sir…”

  “Look, when we get back, what are you going to tell the Captain to do?”

  “Do? I don’t know. We’ll tell him what happened, and let him make the decision.”

  “I know, but if it were up to you, what would you do?”

  The SEAL looked at me for a moment, glancing back to the pile of Kakamaku every few seconds. “I’d back off a hundred miles, and drop a pile of nukes on the island.”

  “Exactly. Then what would we know about this thing? Nothing more than we do now. We don’t even know if it could knock down those missiles before they got here, or survive the attack. Then what would we do?”

  Colin stepped up next to me. “Boonie, come on. You can’t go any further. It would be suicide. There’s no way into that thing.”

  I opened my mouth to say something angry, but then his words hit me. The Kakamaku had come out, so there had to be a way back in. There had to be. In that moment, I thought of a way I might do it.

  “Colin, I can’t stop now. They’ve destroyed my life. I have to find out why. I can get in there. I know I can.”

  “Jesus, Boonie, what the hell have these things done to you?”

  “It’s not them; it’s me. I’m still me, but I have to do this. If I can find out what these things are, we’ll be a lot further along than if we ran away and nuked the island. Right?”

  “Sure, we would. But how will you let us know if you’ve found anything? What happens if Captain Baker decides to launch a nuke this way while you’re still here?”

  “One step at a time, remember? Stay flexible, and adapt to changes, you said. I’ll figure it out as I need to.”

  Colin glared at me, shaking his head. I’d seen that look before.

  “Sir,” the SEAL said to Colin, “we can’t let him stay. He has to come back with us.”

  Colin looked me in the eye. “No, he’ll stay. You won’t force him to come. Those are my orders. Remember,” he said, turning to the SEAL, “I have final authority as to what happens on this mission.” He flashed a grim smile at me. “Right, Boonie?”

  I nodded. “I need one of those survival kits,” I said to the SEAL, “and a radio.”

  He shrugged, and handed me his backpack. “It’s your funeral.”

  “Not yet.”

  The smile dropped off of Colin’s face. “Boonie, be careful. I don’t know what you’re thinking, but remember, you still have family and friends out here, and back home too. We want you to be safe. We want you alive.”

  He reached out to shake my hand, and I took it. One of the SEALs pulled him by the shoulder, and they took off along the ridgeline, going back the way we’d come. In a few seconds, they disappeared into the brush.

  Everything before this moment now seemed hazy; Jennifer gone, my career gone, my old life gone. I’d followed the scent of the Pouakai across the Pacific with an intensity I hadn’t recognized at first. Colin and the others might have called it an obsession, but not me. It was simply a question that had to be answered: Why?

  I shouldered the survival kit, and jogged toward the pile of dead Kakamaku, making sure to keep my head below the ridgeline.

  10

  The dead Kakamaku were spread out along the outer side of the ridge, out of sight from the dome. Wary of any movement, I edged up to them, counting heads as I approached. I got ten.

  If the Kakamaku had run through whatever killed an animal that got too close, then to get inside the dome, I had to become a Kakamaku. The idea had formed just moments after the SEALs fired on the horde of approaching monsters. Making that idea a reality however, would be the challenge.

  I remembered how easily Colin had sliced open the Kakamaku on the beach on Anuta. It reminded me of skinning and dressing elk with my uncle on vacations at his place in Montana.

  It was definitely a long shot. As I crouched there, I remembered Jennifer’s voice, from that day on the beach, telling me that I always did what I wanted, without listening to others. What would she have said now, watching me inch along a line of dead aliens while my friends headed back to safety?

  I crawled along the rocks, past gouges cut by the beam weapon, to the last Kakamaku that had jumped over the ridge. I thought the two on the end had looked smaller than the rest, and I was right. These weren’t more than seven feet tall, a good two to three feet shorter than the rest. That would help with my plan.

  I set the backpack on the ground and opened it, listening for the hum of the beam weapon mast, or for the sound of the big doors moving. Some of that bright blue-white light reflected off the trees on the other side of the ridge, telling me the dome was still open, waiting for the Kakamaku to come back. I set the .45 on the ground next to me. Not that it would stop another dozen Kakamaku, but it gave me a little comfort being there.

  From the SEAL’s backpack, I pulled out a large survival knife. The nearest, and smallest, Kakamaku had several bullet holes in its chest, which worked well for my plan. With a lot of effort, I rolled the thing onto its back, and placed the tip of the knife where a human’s Adam’s apple would have been. From there, I sliced down the center of the chest, all the way to its sexless crotch. Then more cuts down the front of its legs, and along the arms. In a few minutes I had most of the thing’s skin laid out on the ground. I pulled out its guts and muscles, a mass of white fibers. The skeleton stayed in place, but the skin wasn’t attached to it.

  The head proved to be more difficult. As I worked my fingers under the skin, the acrid smell of the monster’s blood gave me a twinge in my gut. It wasn’t all that strong o
r vile, but different enough to cause my stomach to flip-flop. Eventually I pried the skin away from the bulletproof skull.

  The rubbery skin was close to an inch thick. Soaked through with the Kakamaku’s blood, the combat pants and T-shirt I wore dripped the pale yellow fluid. The skeleton was even heavier than I’d expected.

  I shoved with my feet, and the bones slid off the skin. Carefully, I picked up the Kakamaku hide, draped it over my back, and stood up. It was damn heavy. The arms and legs flopped uselessly around me. I wouldn’t be a convincing Kakamaku that way. I untied my boots and removed the laces, using them to wrap the arm skin around my wrists. I cut two straps from the backpack, and tied the leg skins around my ankles. Its legs were longer than mine, and I had to cut off a foot of the skin below my boots. With everything in place, I slipped the backpack between the hide and my back, mimicking the humpbacked torso of the monsters, and stood up.

  I was a grotesque copy of a Kakamaku, but this was the best I could do.

  As I stood, I heard the growl of a Kakamaku from the other side of the ridge. In a panic, I flopped on the ground again, covering my gun. The skin over my head flopped down, preventing me from seeing out. I propped it up with one finger, and watched the ridgeline. With all this weight on me, playing dead was my only option.

  A Kakamaku jumped over the ridge with that weird gait, then another joined it. Both were smaller than the others, no bigger than the one I’d sliced up—maybe seven feet tall as they stood, legs bent, ready to leap. Their domed heads swiveled, taking in the scene of their murdered comrades. My heart beat a thousand miles an hour, waiting for one of those things to jump on me and tear me to pieces.

  Instead, they looked up at the path the rest of my team had taken, before jumping that way, following the ridgeline upward. I hoped Colin and the others would hear them coming.