by Jack Kilborn
Sara studied the walkie-talkie, a Core-Sea VHF One Way Radio. On its face were an LCD screen, which was empty gray, a tiny red light near the base, and half a dozen buttons including wx band, 16/9, band, hi/lo, and mem. She had no idea what any of that meant. There were two equally confusing dials on the top, and a large black call button on the side. Sara hoped Captain Prendick already had it set to his unique channel or frequency, so she pressed call.
“Um, I’m calling for Captain Prendick, or the Coast Guard, or anyone who can hear me. This is Sara Randhurst. I’m stranded on Rock Island in Lake Huron with my husband and six children. We’re under attack, and one of my children was…” The words wouldn’t come out. “We need immediate help.”
She released the button and waited for a response. There was only silence.
“Please, we’re fighting for our lives. Can anyone hear me?”
More silence. Sara stared at the buttons, wondering which one to try, and then the radio squelched at her.
“Mrs. Randhurst, this is Captain Prendick, I read you, over.”
Sara felt like crying in relief.
“Captain, thank God, there are people on this island. They’re trying to kill us. You have to call for help.”
“Did I hear you correctly, Mrs. Randhurst? Someone is trying to kill you? That’s an uninhabited island, over.”
“Not anymore. Please. You have to hurry.”
“Is this some kind of joke, Mrs. Randhurst. There are stiff penalties for using a marine radio for pranks.”
“This isn’t a joke, Captain. I swear. We’re under attack. You have to believe me.”
Sara waited, hoping he would believe her.
“Do you know how to work the radio? Can you call the coast guard?”
“No. I don’t understand what any of these buttons mean.”
“I’ll do it. I’m in the area, only a few miles away, so I should be able to get there quickest. Can you make it to the spot I dropped you off?”
Sara glanced into the black void of the woods, her hands shaking. “I don’t think so. We’re lost.”
“Do you have a compass?”
“Yes.”
“Follow it north-east. That’s where the beach is. If you reach the cliffs, you went too far north, so go further east. I’ll meet you there in an hour, maybe less.”
“Thank you, Captain. Please hurry.”
“I will. Over and out, Mrs. Randhurst.”
Sara held the walkie-talkie, wondering what to do next. Though she had a responsibility to Cindy and Tyrone, and a duty to get them to safety as soon as possible, Sara wasn’t going to leave without the others. But she couldn’t go after Martin and the kids by herself. She needed the Coast Guard, or the police, or a whole Army platoon to do that. And she certainly couldn’t do it dragging Cindy and Tyrone along. She had to get them on the boat before she searched for anyone else.
Hopefully, Captain Prendick would arrive with the cavalry.
Sara considered turning the dials, pressing a few buttons, to see if she might be able to raise the Coast Guard herself, but she was afraid she would change the setting and no longer be able to contact Prendick. Besides, there wasn’t time to play with the radio. Three cannibals had already found their campsite. Sara didn’t want to spend any more time here than necessary.
Just in case any of the others showed up, she found a notebook and left a message.
We went north-east, to the beach, to wait for the boat. Captain Prendick is coming with help. Hide nearby and wait for us to return. Sara, Tyrone, and Cindy.
She left the notebook open to that page, sitting on the ground near the fire. For a few seconds she wondered if maybe she should use a stick to point north-east, but her time in the woods had shown Sara how easy it was to lose your sense of direction.
Sara took a last, lingering look at John, his head askew and his red eyes staring off into infinity, and told the kids it was time to go.
Captain Edward Prendick considered himself a good man. He loved his mother, and visited her on every holiday, Labor Day and Valentine’s Day included, even though she lived out of state and it cost a fortune. He treated other people with decency and respect. He had an aquarium on board his boat, which contained a single goldfish, named Goldie, which he’d dutifully taken care of for more than five years.
That’s why the distress call from Mrs. Randhurst was, well, so distressing.
Rock Island was a bad place. It even had an aura about it. An evil vibe. And something shady was definitely going on there.
He’d tried to warn them, to get them to camp elsewhere. But they’d been insistent.
Now he was forced to head back there. Something he didn’t relish at all.
“Mama told me not to become a sailor, Goldie.”
Goldie was asleep in his tank. Or her tank. Prendick didn’t know if it was a boy fish or a girl fish. Actually, he didn’t know if Goldie actually slept, either. She certainly didn’t close her eyes and start snoring. But sometimes she’d stay in one place for an extended period of time, not even moving when he fed her, and Prendick assumed she (or he) was sleeping.
He glanced from the tank to the locked cabinet next to it. A gun cabinet, containing two revolvers and a rifle. Prendick checked the GPS and turned the wheel, silently praying he wouldn’t have to use them.
Tom didn’t think he could possibly be more frightened, and then the giant kissed him.
His first reaction was shock. Not only was the act totally unexpected, but it was so frickin’ gross, so frickin’ sick, that Tom didn’t know what the hell to do.
The obvious answer—push the freak away—scared Tom even more. This guy was so big and scary that rejecting him didn’t seem like an option.
So Tom closed his eyes as the psycho explored his mouth with his tongue, nibbling on his lips with those horrible needle teeth and making an awful, moaning sound in his throat.
Worst of all, this was technically Tom’s first French kiss. Yuck.
It was almost as bad as realizing he’d eaten Meadow.
Tom endured it, staying stock-still, praying for it to end. Eventually it did, and this crazy Lester person looked down at Tom and patted him on the head.
“Mmm,” Lester said. “Tom tastes yummy.”
Lester moved in closer, like he was going for another kiss. Tom leaned away and quickly said, “Uh, are you the one that cooked my buddy?”
The giant shook his head. “Lester doesn’t cook people. He likes to eat his raw.”
That was enough for Tom. He shoved Lester as hard as he could, then broke the land-speed record for sixteen-year-old white boys and ran the hell out of there. It was too dark to see, and the trees were everywhere, so he stuck his hands out ahead of him to avoid busting open his head. When he did finally hit the tree, he was spared a concussion, but it hyper-extended his pinky, which hurt worse than just about anything Tom ever felt before.
He was cradling his injured finger, wondering how to get it to stop throbbing, when someone grabbed his shirt from behind.
“Tom shouldn’t have run from Lester,” the giant whispered in his ear. “Now Lester is taking Tom back to his playroom.”
“My finger,” Tom said, whining. “I think I broke my finger.”
Lester grabbed both of Tom’s wrists, encircling them like handcuffs. He raised them to his lips, and then—oh god no—he put the jutting pinky into his mouth.
Tom felt like throwing up again. Lester swished the finger back and forth in his mouth, causing such incredible waves of pain that it made the darkness come alive with orange and blue flashes. Tom began to beg, and when that didn’t stop the manipulation he fell to his knees and alternated between crying and screaming. There was no possible way the pain could get any worse.
Then the biting began.
Kong Zhi-ou placed the keycard into his the slot on the door to his suite and waited for the red light to turn green. It didn’t. He removed the card and tried again.
Still red.
/> He closed his eyes, feeling the rage simmering just beneath his skin. The flight had been unbearable, the delays unacceptable, and the airport loud and smelly even at this hour. If he didn’t release some of this stress soon, he was going to burst.
“Zhi-ou xiānshēng?”
The voice was meek, female, coming from inside the room.
“Shì.”
The door opened. Standing there, in a pink kimono with her head bowed, was an Asian girl. He pushed her aside, then locked the door behind him.
Spread out on the bed were a new shirt, slacks, underwear, and socks. Kong hated to travel with luggage. He was sure—if his orders had been followed specifically—the bathroom would contain fresh toiletries, as well as a kimono for him and something for the girl. But first things first.
He ordered the whore to kneel down. She cowered but didn’t move. Didn’t she understand Mandarin? He walked to her, roughly tilting up her chin to look at her face. She certainly looked Chinese. Seventeen or eighteen years of age. Too old for his taste, but he’d make do.
“On your knees,” he said again, this time speaking Cantonese.
She bowed, then knelt. Kong sneered. How he hated Americans. This girl was undoubtedly raised in Chicago’s Chinatown and had never been to the home land. She probably thought Cantonese was the language all Chinese people spoke, rather than just an insignificant seven percent minority. Stupid, ignorant whore.
He ordered her to disrobe. She obeyed, and the sight infuriated Kong even further. On her shoulder, the size of his fist, was a hideous port wine birthmark. Word of Kong’s treatment of prostitutes must have preceded him, and he’d been sent an expendable one. Someone would be punished for this insult.
“Do I please you?” she asked.
He struck out, slapping her in the cheek, ordering her to not speak again unless she was spoken to. Then he loosened his tie and went into the bathroom.
His toiletries were there, as was the requested forty centimeter length of bamboo. Kong picked it up, tested its flexibility. The switch was thin and firm, with just enough spring in it.
He cracked his neck and undid his collar button, walking back to the girl.
“You may cry, but don’t you dare make a sound,” he said, raising the stick.
The whore couldn’t even do that right, and ten minutes into the beating Kong was forced to gag her.
God, how he hated Americans.
Tyrone hurried through the woods alongside Cindy, three steps behind Sara. His palms were slathered in burn cream, which contained a topical anesthetic. It didn’t really kill the pain, just sort of turned some of the throbbing into tingling. He could manage.
Cindy had a finger stuck in his belt loop, which was a poor substitute for holding hands. But the persistent tug made him feel closer, connected. After they’d dressed, Cindy had been the one to apply the burn cream. It hurt, and the ointment smelled foul, but her tenderness and dedication touched Tyrone. For a moment, he actually felt like a kid again, way back when safety was taken for granted, and love was given freely, and life had possibilities.
“Do you think we’ll get out of here?” Cindy had asked, not meeting his eyes.
“We will.”
“How do you know?”
“Because I won’ let nuthin’ happen to you.”
Then she looked at him and all at once Tyrone felt nervous. Because he knew what he wanted to do, and the risks involved. Funny, there they were, surrounded by cannibals, and the thing that scared him most at that moment was leaning in for a kiss and being rejected.
But he did lean in. Cindy’s eyes got wide, then closed, and his lips lightly touched hers.
For ten beautiful seconds, all was right with the world.
Now they were trekking through the forest, heading for shore. That kiss had felt so right, but it had raised the stakes. Tyrone had spent so long just caring about himself, he’d forgotten all the pressure that came with caring about someone else. He couldn’t let anything happen to Cindy. Not now. He’d die first.
Sara got slightly ahead of them, even while limping, so Tyrone picked up the pace. She kept the light cupped in her hand, only flashing the beam occasionally to check the compass.
Tyrone always liked Sara. She was one of those people who actually wanted to help. She didn’t pretend to understand all the things the kids at the Center were going through. She didn’t make the mistake most adults did, trying to relate. Unless you were bangin’ and jackin’ and scoring drugs and hootchie mamas and livin’ day by day, how the hell were you supposed to know what the thug life was like? But Sara never fronted like that. She just showed the kids how they could change their lives if they tried, and that was cool.
But Tyrone hadn’t known how strong Sara actually was. He watched when she broke that guy’s neck. That was some tough as hell shit. Tyrone felt better knowing she had his back.
Sara stopped again. When she shined the light on the compass, Tyrone saw a face behind her. A crazed, snarling, charred and bloody face, the long hair and beard half-melted away, the burned lips and swollen to twice their size.
The cutlery man.
He lunged at Sara, his knife and fork raised. Tyrone shot forward, pulling Cindy off her feet, straight-arming the cannibal in the shoulder. The shock of the impact made Tyrone stagger back, and it knocked the cutlery man sideways. Then the pain came, starting off slow like a distant train, speeding in to become huge and loud and unstoppable.
Tyrone fell to his knees, staring at his right hand. The skin on his palm, already blistered and loose, had sloughed off.
A roar, almost like an animal, drew Tyrone’s attention upward, and he watched the cutlery man’s attack, the knife slicing down through the air, a perfect angle to bury itself into his neck.
Then, just as fast, the cutlery man was knocked to the side, the knife spinning harmlessly in the air and dropping to the ground.
Sara pivoted and brought her other foot around, landing this second kick on the cannibal’s face. Another inhuman roar escaped the burned man’s ruined lips, and even though his face looked like one of those Picassos in the art book Martin made them read, he continued to come at them.
The cutlery man dashed forward, and Sara turned slightly, bumping out her hip, flipping the cannibal over. She immediately followed up by dropping her knees onto his chest, and raising her fist back.
But she paused.
Why wouldn’t she hit him? Why didn’t she kill the fucker?
The cutlery man used the advantage, flailing at Sara’s bad leg, stabbing it with his fork.
Sara cried out, knocking his hand away. She hit him twice more. First in the nose, snapping his head back. Then in his bare neck.
The cutlery man’s eyes rolled up. He clutched at his throat, bucking Sara off and rolling onto his knees. Tyrone saw that the cannibal couldn’t breathe, that Sara must have broken something in his neck.
Cindy crouched next to Tyrone, her arm around his back, burying her face in his shoulder. Sara got to her feet, limping worse than before, then touched Tyrone’s head.
“We need to keep going.”
Tyrone didn’t move. The pain wasn’t what immobilized him. It was the terrible spectacle of watching the cutlery man desperately try to gasp for breath. The madness and evil in his eyes had been replaced by a very human look of raw panic. Seeing that made Tyrone understand why Sara had hesitated.
This wasn’t a monster. It was a human being. A suffering, dying, human being. And it was horrible to watch.
Then the cutlery man brought his rusty fork up to his own throat, stabbed it in, and tore a big hunk out.
The blood sprayed in Tyrone’s face, accompanied by a sound not unlike the whoosh of a fire extinguisher. Then the cannibal raised the fork again, a piece of him still hanging from it, and leapt to stab Sara, who was turned away.
Again Tyrone reacted, both hands up, blocking the cannibal’s attack. Again Tyrone’s raw palm hit the cutlery man’s filthy shirt.
Sara noticed the movement and spun around, dodging the thrust, striking at the cutlery man’s throat and temporarily losing her fist in the hole. She pulled away with a sucking noise, and the cutlery man fell to his knees, then onto his side, convulsing.
The pain built, getting stronger and stronger, and this time when the train hit Tyrone couldn’t handle it and everything went blurry, then black.
Conflicting feelings assailed Sara so quickly she felt like she was playing emotional ping-pong. Rage and pity, fear and triumph, disgust and elation, concern and regret. She wasn’t sure whether to scream, weep, or laugh. Sara held everything back, including the pain in her thigh, and went to Tyrone, lying on his back. She sat next to him, stretching her leg out, and checked his pulse.
Tyrone’s eyelids fluttered, then opened, his wince expanding into a rictus of pain.
“Cindy, the med kit is in my backpack. We need to wrap his hand up.”
Cindy dug into the bag. Sara held up Tyrone’s wrist.
The boy’s palm looked like he’d dipped it in red paint. His whole arm was shaking, and he had a far-off look that made Sara question his connection with reality. She touched his forehead. Cool and clammy.
“Tyrone, can you hear me?”
“Huh?”
“It’s Sara. You need to stay awake. Cindy, when you’ve got the kit, put the pack under his feet to elevate his legs. Also, give me that vial of ammonia.”
Cindy handed over the bottle. Sara avoided looking at the cannibal, who was still twitching. She pulled the stopper and waved it under Tyrone’s nostrils. He tried to turn his head, but she kept it close until he lifted up his good hand to push the ammonia away.
“We have to get going,” Sara said. “Can you understand me?”
“Hand hurts bad,” he mumbled.
“Can you understand me, Tyrone?”
“Yeah.”
Cindy raised Tyrone’s feet, increasing the blood flow to his brain.
“Can you wrap his hand?” Sara asked.
Cindy nodded and got to work. Sara took the time to examine her new injury. It was just a few inches below the previous one, and not bleeding as badly. Sara found an Ace bandage in the kit and wound it tight around both her wounds. Then she checked her watch.