The Pouakai

by Sperry, David;

  Nothing moved toward the east, and the guys behind me, looking west, were silent. Then a blur of movement in the trees, and something whistled toward us.

  “Incoming!” the SEAL next to me shouted. He pushed me back from our vantage point, and rolled out of the way. The spear jabbed into the sand right where we had been crouching.

  “On my mark,” Lee said, “heavy fire into the jungle.” The rest of the SEALs nodded.

  Before he gave the order though, that horrible scream came from the jungle, and a horde of creatures poured out from behind the trees.

  “Fire!” Lee shouted.

  The noise was incredible and painful. Alan, Mina and Steve crouched down, hiding behind the rock. Colin and I stood behind the SEALs, watching through the cloud of smoke. We had the advantage of being behind the rock, and the creatures didn’t. Maybe they didn’t understand the way rifles worked, but the SEALs mowed them down long before they made it to our rock. One spear whistled overhead, coming from behind the rock. Lee stood up and fired several dozen rounds that way, and then crouched down again. At least a dozen creatures lay in the sand between us and the jungle, a few still twitching. The rapid pace of firing slowed, until it was down to a couple of sporadic shots. Then silence.

  “Squad A, status,” came the voice over the radio.

  “We came under attack and returned fire. We’re secure. No injuries.” Lee stood up, and quickly surveyed the scene. “About two dozen creatures dead,” he said as he crouched again. “No movement now.”

  “Copy. We are one minute away, above the tree line to your east. No sign of creatures here. Wait, got one on the ground. Good shot. Stand by, and don’t fire this direction.”

  We waited as Squad B made its way toward us. Within a minute, birds started chirping again.

  “Squad B is moving out to the beach,” came the voice in my earpiece. “Hold fire.” Seconds later, four SEALs moved smoothly onto the beach, covering the jungle with their rifles. They jogged toward us, stepping over the fallen monsters. There really wasn’t enough room behind the rock to provide protection for everyone, but when they reached us, they crouched for a minute.

  “How many of those things do you think there are?” Lee asked Colin.

  “I don’t know,” he said with a shrug. “If those boats are what brought them here, probably no more than a couple of dozen. But if they’ve been here a long time, there could be hundreds holed up in a cave somewhere. There’s no way to tell since we don’t have access to older satellite photos. That may have told us how thickly populated the island was.”

  I crouched down, waiting. Mina sat in a tiny ball, knees pulled up under her chin, shaking badly. I took the water bottle from her backpack and gave it to her. She took a sip but didn’t look at me or say anything. It was shock, of course, from the noise and violence of the attacks. I sat next to her, and put my arm around her shoulder. I hoped a warm, quiet presence would help. She didn’t move, but she did relax.

  “Squad C entering the beach, east of your position,” squawked the radio. “Lee, we have the Lieutenant. Meet you at the rock.”

  A team of SEALs appeared to the east, carrying a hastily made stretcher—two bamboo poles lashed together with vines—with Lieutenant Hanson. His backpack and rifle bounced on his stomach as the other SEALs carried him toward us. Petty Officer Lee opened his medical pack as the others set the Lieutenant down on the sand. Hanson’s left pant leg was stained dark red with blood, his face pale and sweaty. Lee cut away the bloody pants, and started to work on the Lieutenant’s leg. Hanson laid his pack in the sand next to him.

  “Squad A, stay here with the science team,” the Lieutenant said, his voice rough. “Squads B and C, sweep the island. I didn’t see very many of those things after the first attack. There can’t be that many more left on the island, and I want them gone. Sweep the island clean.”

  The other squads took off into the jungle, leaving us with our original protectors.

  Drained, I sat on the sand between Mina and Colin. Lee had said that Steve would be out for a while because of the drugs he’d given him. Alan stared into the distance, probably also in shock.

  The merciless sun scorched us, but we needed the protection of that rock more than the shade of a tree. Every few minutes we’d get an update from the SEALs. So far, nothing. Fifteen minutes after the others had left, Colin stood up.

  “I need to look at one of those things,” he said to the Lieutenant.

  “Not a chance. You’re gonna stay here.”

  “Lieutenant, this is why we’re here, to learn about these things. Remember?”

  The Lieutenant sighed, grimacing as the medic pulled another stitch tight.

  “Fine. Moss, Jackson, provide cover. These guys are going out to check on one of the creatures. But,” he said to Colin, “if these guys say get back to this rock, do it. No questions, no delay. Got it?”

  “Got it.”

  Two of the SEALs moved out from behind the rock and up the beach. Colin motioned for me to follow, and I nodded, glad to have something to do. We stayed behind the SEALs, watching for any creatures. Nothing moved in the jungle. Colin knelt next to the nearest creature, dead on the sand, and pulled the case of surgical tools from his backpack.

  “They’re not melting,” I said, kneeling next to Colin.

  “No. Not like the Pouakai.”

  This creature had a large wound in the center of its head, and Colin poked around in the hole for a moment. The skin was gone, but the skull remained intact. One iridescent blue eye stared at me, the other blown away by the bullet that had smashed into the creature.

  “I’ll need to find one that isn’t hit in the head after this.”

  “Whatever you say, doc,” one of the SEALs said.

  Colin took a scalpel, and slit the creature’s torso open, starting at the neck. A flood of pale yellow, watery liquid poured out for a moment, and then slowed. Two more quick incisions across its chest, and Colin opened up the torso like a pair of saloon doors. There weren’t any ribs, just a mass of the same white fibers I’d seen in the Pouakai.

  “Colin, should I get Alan?”

  “No, he’s in shock. He wouldn’t be much help right now.” He didn’t even look up. “Go grab Mina’s camera.”

  I ran back with the camera, and took pictures where Colin directed.

  “It’s got bones,” he said, pointing, as I snapped a photo. “Or, at least I think they are. More like a mix of bones, and the fiber stuff the Pouakai have. ”

  They didn’t look like any bones I’d seen before. Metallic gray in color, a pair of rods ran parallel to each other up the center of its body. The guts looked like the Pouakai’s, all whitish fibers and yellow fluid. A few larger white bags and bulges sat low in the opening. Colin sliced into the thing’s legs next, and found more fibers surrounding a single thick bone. Its arms looked about the same, on a smaller scale. After ten minutes of probing, Colin wanted to move on. He found another without a head wound, and carefully sliced away the skin on its huge domed head.

  It was too odd to be repulsive. I wanted to see more. I wanted to watch Colin peel the skin from these things, see them broken. Even though part of me wanted to see what they were made of, part of me wanted to hurt them. Badly.

  Was that really why I’d come all this way?

  “Boonie, here, please?”

  Colin had been calling me, but I hadn’t heard him. I snapped several shots of the partially exposed skull, and eye. It wasn’t an eyeball like ours, but a thin, flat area on the creature’s face, harder than the surrounding skin. It almost looked like a sensor, or even a reflector, glued to its skin. Colin carefully cut around an eye, and peered underneath.

  “Hmmm. Interesting,” he mumbled.

  “Yes?”

  “I don’t see any connections under this eye. There are no nerves going into the skull.”

  I looked where Colin had pulled up the skin, and took a picture of it.

  “Maybe the nerves are in the skin,
and go into the skull somewhere else,” I said. “Or maybe it uses Bluetooth. Blue-eye.”

  “Could be,” he said blandly, not getting the joke.

  He sat back and looked at the skull for a moment.

  “Where is the mouth?” I asked.

  “Doesn’t have one.”

  “How does it eat?” I asked, and then stopped. “Oh, solar power, like the Pouakai?”

  Colin nodded. “Probably.”

  “I wonder how it makes the grunting noise, or that scream.”

  He reached into the tool kit, and took out a shiny steel saw. The wickedly sharp teeth glinted in the sunlight.

  “Let’s see what’s inside the noggin here…”

  He placed the saw on an exposed area of the skull, and gently pushed forward. Nothing happened to the skull, so he placed it on the same spot and repeated the motion, pushing harder. Still nothing.

  “Come on…” he grunted, and bore down hard as he pushed the saw. With a staccato ping, the saw zipped across the skull, sending little bits of metal flying in all directions. The teeth had ripped right off the bone saw. Not a mark showed on the skull.

  “Well,” I said. “That’s nice.”

  “We’ll need to find out what these bones are made from.” Colin stood up. “Not a lot of time here to be subtle, so...”

  He pulled the .45 from his holster, and aimed at the creature’s head.

  “Colin, I don’t think you should…”

  Blam. The bullet ricocheted off the skull, and into the jungle. I’d never seen two people move faster than our SEALs did, diving to the ground and covering us with their rifles.

  “Sir-drop-your-weapon!” The blood drained from Colin’s face, and he dropped his gun, knees shaking, sinking to the sand.

  “Colin, it’s okay,” I said. “You didn’t know that would happen.” I stepped over and picked up his gun. “It’s okay guys, I’ve put the safety on.”

  “Sorry,” Colin whispered, still shaking. “I didn’t know it would do that.”

  “I understand sir,” one SEAL said, standing up and aiming his rifle skyward. “Next time, let us know if you’re going to do that. Maybe have us do the shooting too. We’re the experts here, you know.” A grin crossed his face, the first I’d seen all day.

  “Yeah, right,” Colin said weakly. “Your turn next.”

  I helped Colin stand, and felt a smile cross my face too.

  We looked at the creature. “Son of a bitch,” Colin said softly, as he reached down to touch the bone. There wasn’t a mark on it.

  “There’s one headed your way,” the radio blared, just as a loud crashing sound came from the jungle down the beach. Several rifle shots echoed across the island, and one of the creatures bounded over the last row of trees and out onto the beach, a hundred yards away. Both SEALs dropped to one knee and took aim. Another group of SEALs appeared out of the jungle, behind the creature, so our guys held their fire.

  “Take cover!” someone shouted, and I heard the rest of our group running toward the rock.

  The monster moved a little like a frog, but more fluidly. It didn’t have a spear in its hand, but that wouldn’t stop it from hurting whoever it ran into. Who knew what other protection might have; poisonous fangs? Laser vision?

  Another group of SEALs poured out of the jungle, just ahead of the first group. They pounded down the beach, their rifles aimed our direction.

  “Don’t fire,” Petty Officer Lee said into the radio. “We’re in your line of fire. We’ll send up a warning shot, try to stop it.” Our SEALs aimed their rifles skyward. The creature jumped closer, covering twenty to thirty feet with each soaring leap.

  I gripped my pistol, heart pounding. The creature was fifty feet away, bounding right toward us.

  “Fire.” The SEALs fired skyward. A huge crack echoed across the beach, and the creature skidded to a stop, frozen in place at the edge of the water. The SEALs behind it caught up and stopped, fifty feet behind the monster. Some of the soldiers moved closer to the jungle, cutting off its access inland. Surrounded, its back to the water, it didn’t move an inch.

  “What’s it going to do?” I whispered to Colin.

  “I don’t have a fucking clue.”

  Petty Officer Lee looked over his shoulder at the Lieutenant, still in the sand, leaning against the rock. “Sir?”

  “Hold your position,” Hanson said, over the sound of the surf. “Wait and see what it does.”

  It wasn’t doing anything. Stock still, it stared into the jungle. The SEALs were puffing hard after the chase down the beach, but this creature didn’t appear to breathe.

  The standoff held, motionless for nearly a minute, a dozen rifles aimed at the creature. How much longer would it remain there?

  Without realizing what I was doing, I stood up, and walked toward the ebon monster with my .45 in hand, pointed down toward the sand.

  “Boonie, what the hell…” Colin yelled.

  “Sir, get back!” A couple of SEALs shouted at the same time.

  The sand felt soft beneath my feet, the sun an intense heat on my head, and the ocean a roar in the distance. All I could see though was this monster. It finally moved, rolling its big domed head toward me, as if on ball bearings.

  “Boonie,” Colin hissed again. I ignored him.

  From thirty feet away, it tracked my every move with its head. Its skin had the same glossy black sheen as the Pouakai. Was there any sign of intelligence? I slowed, and then stopped, less than twenty feet from the monster. It towered over me, even from that distance.

  I took a deep breath. “Why are you here?”

  It stared at me with those blue ovals on its head. Would it understand me? Could it even hear me?

  Louder now, I repeated, “I said, why are you here?”

  There was no movement from it, or the SEALs. I sensed all those rifles pointed so close to me, though. Then the thing’s hands moved slowly. Too many long fingers, like a spider’s legs. The fingers rolled up and down, as if it were practicing on an imaginary piano.

  “Do you understand me? Those soldiers will kill you if you move against me. Is there any way you can communicate with us?”

  Its fingers drummed faster, and for a split second it crouched down slightly. I started to raise my pistol, but it leapt too fast. Instantly, the SEALs fired. The concussion hit me from all sides, and the creature plowed into the sand, just a yard from my feet. Pale yellow fluid poured out of multiple holes in its body.

  The SEALs dashed up the beach toward me. A couple pulled me away as the rest covered the monster. Lightheaded, I sank to the sand, and started to shake

  Colin ran up the beach, and crouched in the sand next to me.

  “Boonie,” he said quietly, “are you okay? What the hell were you thinking?”

  “I had to know,” I replied, voice quavering. “There has to be something in there that could give us answers.”

  “Answers? What was it supposed to do, Boonie? Sit down for a philosophical discussion? It’s an animal.”

  “It made those spears, it could make tools.”

  “Chimps make tools. If there was real intelligence there, we would have seen something more.”

  He was right. There hadn’t been any sign of intelligence behind those blue ovals. It had been an animal trapped on the beach, and it reacted like any animal backed into a corner would; it lashed out at the nearest object. Me.

  “Sorry,” I whispered. “I was angry. I thought if I could just find out what made it tick…”

  Alan and Mina walked up to us, and stood next to Colin, looking at the dead monster.

  “You hurt?” Mina asked.

  “No, just…weak.”

  Colin reached out a hand, and helped me stand.

  “What the hell was I thinking?”

  “The same thing all of us were,” Colin said, “but you weren’t just going to wait to find out.”

  “It may not have been in the most logical way,” Alan said, “but you did try communicating
.”

  “Yeah, well, that’s why you guys are the brains, and I’m the brawn.”

  “Did you get anything out of this?” Colin asked.

  I shook my head. “No, you’re right. It’s an animal. We’d backed it into a corner, and it lashed out. It couldn’t answer my questions.”

  There were no answers on that beach. Colin brought out his surgical kit again, but didn’t find anything different in this monster than in the others.

  We retreated to the protection of the rock while two squads of SEALs swept the island again and again. Eight hours later the sun was setting, and no more creatures had been found alive. There weren’t any caves or other hiding places, and by the end of the day we were pretty confident that we’d killed all the creatures on the island. The original nest we’d encountered was just an area of flattened grass. There were no clothes, food, or any other signs that these were anything but animals. The SEALs found the remains of a few people scattered across the island, but they’d been dead for years.

  They also found the stand of bamboo where the creatures had made their weapons. The spears were hacked off and sharpened with a few shards of volcanic rock. No other tools were found. There wasn’t anything to show they were much further up the evolutionary ladder than chimps. The big questions left were what were they, how had they made the boats, and where had they come from, if not Anuta? Those questions were added to the long list we were already had from the Pouakai, but of course, there were no more answers to be found here.

  Colin saved several samples of the creature’s tissue, including one eye, in some specimen containers. Hopefully they would reveal something about these creatures that we couldn’t find from the Pouakai. The creature’s bones didn’t yield to any of our tools, so he got a sample by the crude but expedient method of hacking off one of the creature’s fingers at a joint, and putting it whole into another jar.

  When the inflatables arrived to take us away from this nightmare island, it took longer to get going than when we arrived. Two SEALs carried Steve with his bandaged leg. The Lieutenant, in an inflatable cast, hobbled through the waves and heaved himself into one of the boats. The rest of us piled in, too weary to complain about the cold water.