Carrion Safari

by Jonah Buck

  That left her with four immediate suspects among the hunters.

  Balthazar. Jubal. Dr. Marlow. Shinzo.

  However, that was just among the hunters, though. If the islanders really and truly did not want them here, it could be them, too. For that matter, she had evidence of a previous Yersinia expedition as well. It was possible there was some survivor from that group that had snapped and decided to target the new arrivals on Malheur Island.

  She didn’t feel like she was any closer to figuring out what was happening here or who had killed Razan and nearly killed her. If anything, she felt like she was further away from the truth than ever.

  Right now, she barely trusted anyone, Gail and Harrison included. A fevered, paranoid part of her mind was all too eager to point out that she had no idea where they were when those bullets started zipping past her, and right after they’d disagreed about giving the journal about the lunar meteorites to Jubal, too.

  But that was madness. Gail and Harrison were with her when Razan was killed. They obviously hadn’t shot him.

  Although, they could have tried to kill her and shove blame off onto the original killer. It would be the perfect plan. She shut off the little voice in her brain that wanted to whisper seductive conspiracy theories to her. That voice wanted her to crawl off into the brush and shoot anyone who came too close. Survival at all costs and at any price. Anyone could be the enemy.

  “It’s about time to head off to the meeting site,” Gail said.

  “We should spread out as we move. Everyone will be there, but everyone will know just where to set up an ambush,” Harrison added.

  “Hopefully, no one will try anything. We’ll all be converging on the same area in groups. If anyone is missing, the folks who are supposed to be with them should figure it out pretty fast.”

  “Yeah, that worked out real well with Jubal earlier,” Gail said. She had a point, but if everyone ended up in the same area at the same time, it would become real obvious real fast who was missing, and that was as good as an admission of guilt.

  “We need to get tough against whoever’s doing this,” Denise said.

  “My father always said that once people start talking about getting tough on X, you should start betting on X,” Harrison said.

  Denise bit back a snippy response. This day had been far too long and confusing. More than anything, she just needed some quiet time by herself somewhere she felt safe. The only problem was, she didn’t think a place like that existed on Malheur Island.

  “Let’s go,” she said instead. They walked along the edge of the jungle just before it gave way to beach. That made the going pretty easy but also allowed them some space to dive for cover if they needed it.

  Denise felt like a soldier caught out in no man’s land, knowing that someone could be watching and waiting for her to walk into range. It was an eerie sensation, and she could feel tension bunching up between her shoulder blades as if that was the very spot some sniper was aiming at.

  The decaying cabin came into view. Balthazar, Dr. Marlow, and Jubal were already there, half-crouched near the huge stone head. Dr. Marlow waved at them when he saw them. Neither Balthazar nor Jubal bothered.

  “Leave your rifles in the hut,” Balthazar said. “Ours are already in there.”

  “I think everyone will feel a lot safer if no one is pointing long guns around,” Dr. Marlow said.

  Denise didn’t object. They all still had their side arms, and the rifles were close enough in case something went awry. Leaving them a little out of reach was probably wise in case passions flared.

  Jubal looked worse for wear. Someone, probably Dr. Marlow, had reset his nose, but it was swollen and misshapen. Wads of tissue paper were stuffed up his nostrils, and they were tinged with red. He glared at Denise, but she ignored him.

  “So, you three were separated when the shooting happened today?” She already knew the answer. Balthazar had told her as much over the radio when she contacted them. The big Boer frowned and turned his head away, refusing to answer her.

  “I was taking a short nap after setting Jubal’s nose,” Dr. Marlow said. “I hadn’t slept well after last night’s events, and we weren’t going anywhere, so I didn’t think it would do any harm. Balthazar went back to the Hookstadt, and Jubal was supposed to be there with me, but obviously I can’t really confirm that if I was napping.”

  “Oh, come off it,” Jubal said. “I was there. You know I was there. I listened to you snore the whole time. My face still hurt too much for me to go anywhere.”

  “You weren’t there when I woke up.”

  “A man’s gotta take a piss sometimes. Lay off. I was back a minute after those gunshots. It was Balthazar who was gone the whole time.”

  “And where were you?” Gail asked, pointing at Balthazar.

  “Jubal had given me the journal. I could translate a lot of it, but some of the technical vocabulary is too different from Afrikaans. I needed the Dutch translation dictionary from my trunk in the Hookstadt. I was translating the rest of the journal when I heard the shots.”

  Denise sighed. No one had an ironclad alibi here, but no one was obviously the killer, either. Dammit, she needed some hardnosed police inspector here. She didn’t know what to ask to ferret out the truth. She thought clues and evidence were supposed to go off like mental flashbulbs and all come together until they formed a complete picture. Instead, all she had was a jumble of information, none of which added up to anything more than a mishmash of speculation and paranoia.

  The sun was low in the sky. Soon, it would be dark again, but at least the full moon would be able to guide them. She wanted to be back in her basecamp before it got too dark, though. Now that she’d seen proof that ahools were real, she didn’t want to spend any more time out at night than necessary.

  Silas, Creighton, and Shinzo came through the brush a few minutes later. She questioned them about where they’d been when someone started shooting at her. Shinzo said he needed to take his bird hunting in order to feed it, so he’d been briefly away from camp. Silas and Creighton had been back at their own camp, waiting for him to return when they heard the shots.

  She eyed Shinzo. Of all of them, his story was probably the flimsiest of all.

  They all stood around the huge, carved moon rock for a moment pondering each other. A small green lizard scuttled across the surface of the lunar meteorite, stopping every few inches to evaluate the human intruders in its realm. Its tongue flicked in and out in furtive reptilian movements, tasting the darkening atmosphere.

  The moon was starting to rise as the sun went down. It crept up over the horizon like a gigantic eye spying on them. Denise reached into her pocket and pulled out the watch she’d found. She could see the moon reflecting in the scratched face of the watch.

  “There’s something else I want to bring up,” she said, holding the watch aloft. “I don’t think we’re the first group Yersinia has sent here.” There was a babble of confusion before she hushed them. “I found this in a cave on a dead body. It’s from last year, and it’s clearly from Yersinia.”

  She showed everyone the inscription on the back of the watch.

  “I wonder if this is why Hobhouse isn’t answering our hails on the radio,” Silas said.

  “That’s what I’m starting to think, too,” Denise said. “I think there was a lot about this expedition that he didn’t tell us. Truth be told, I think pretty much everything we were told was probably one long line of crap. Hobhouse should know by now that we’re in trouble, but it could well be by design.”

  “What, you think Yersinia planted an assassin in with us?” Silas asked.

  “Poppycock,” Creighton said.

  “I don’t know. Maybe. This doesn’t make a whole lot of sense to me, frankly.”

  The little green lizard continued its trek across the surface of the statue, enjoying the warmth of the last rays of the sun. The reptile slipped in and out of the crevices that formed the intricate design.

  �
�Not to crap all over everyone’s parade or anything, but I want to bring something up myself,” Jubal said. “Even if Hobhouse screwed us over, I think we’re ahead of him anyway. We’ve got these babies.” He patted the gigantic carved head, causing the little lizard to flee into the statue’s carved-out pupil for cover.

  “Yes, Balthazar was kind enough to translate for us,” Silas said. “Lunar meteorites. Most remarkable.”

  “And valuable,” Creighton added.

  “Right, so how do we want to divvy these bad boys up?” Jubal asked. “There’s no way Hobhouse has a copy of that Dutchman’s journal. Even if Yersinia wants to play games with us, we can still come out of this ahead so long as we play it straight. Some scientists or universities will pay through the nose for these.” Jubal grinned and dabbed at his own broken nose.

  “I never thought I’d say this, but I agree with Jubal,” Harrison said.

  “We are not going to just steal these things from the island,” Denise said. “We need to at least find out what the significance to the villagers first before we simply cart them off. It would be like taking all the idols off Easter Island.”

  “Listen, Denise,” Gail said, “you’re my friend, and I agreed with you on your first point. Yersinia is trying to screw us one way or the other. There’s something up. If they’re going to play dirty, we don’t owe them a single thing. No obligations to people who don’t deserve it. We can still beat them at their own game and make more money than we would have otherwise.”

  “And we won’t have to go up against an ahool. Those things looked nasty,” Harrison said.

  “You saw one?” Shinzo asked, the first thing he’d said in a long time.

  “Well, a skeleton of one. They’re big. Like, really big. I say we go for the easy money. Even if Hobhouse just sails away and abandons us, we can still hail other passing ships with our radios and hitch a ride off this island. We take these rocks with us, and we make a fortune regardless. When there’s no real guarantee that I’m going to be paid for it, I’d rather not get up close to one of these bats.”

  “These stones aren’t ours to take,” Denise said. “Maybe if we alerted a museum or laboratory, and then they negotiated with the villagers and paid us a finder’s fee, it would be fine. You all just want to snatch the meteorites up like they’re our natural bounty.”

  “You know what? I do. I do want to do that,” Jubal said. He whisked a long knife off his belt and used the handle to bash a chunk of rock off the statue. The end of a carved fang came away with a sharp snap. Jubal stuck the rock in his satchel.

  “Hey,” Denise said, knowing just how ineffectual it sounded.

  “Want to put it to a vote?” Jubal grinned. “I’m getting some of what’s coming to me no matter what. You dicks are welcome to leave the statues alone and allow me to take the full supply off the island by myself.”

  Balthazar surprised Denise. “The DeMarco woman is right, Jubal. These aren’t ours. Taking them without permission would be theft.”

  She wished Balthazar would just use her actual name instead of referring to her as the Demarco woman, but Denise was happy to have support from at least one corner. Maybe working in South Africa, where cooperation with the local African tribes was helpful in the bush, meant she and her fellow countryman shared some views on this issue at least. She’d take her allies where she could get them.

  “Oh yeah? And who’s going to stop me? You?” Jubal chipped another piece of the statue away.

  “If I have to. The problem here is that the islanders probably like their statues. Somebody put a lot of time into carving them. I’m guessing they don’t want people chipping pieces off. If they see that imbecile started defacing the statues, they might get very mad, and then they might try to kill us. They haven’t exactly been cordial so far, and you’re not improving our chances of getting off this island alive. Now, you can either put those two pieces you took on the ground, or I can snap you in half.”

  Jubal blinked. “You son of a bitch. You can’t tell me what to do.” His hand crept toward the pistol on his belt.

  Balthazar moved his hand toward his revolver.

  The group watched in aghast fascination. Denise didn’t know what to do. Surely, they weren’t about to fight to the death over this, were they? Even if she agreed with Balthazar, she didn’t want to settle the point through bloodshed. But Jubal and Balthazar continued to size each other up, each with their hand on the butt of their weapon.

  It didn’t come to that, though. Something much worse happened instead.

  FOURTEEN

  BREATH OF THE MOON

  At that moment, the full moon came fully over the horizon, shining its light down on Malheur Island. Denise felt it before she noticed anything else. It was almost as if some immense power switch had been flipped on underneath the island. The hair on the back of her arms stood on end, and goosebumps sprang up on the back of her neck.

  She had a curious sensation, as if the very atmosphere was alight with some strange energy. The only thing she could compare it to was as if something very old and very powerful had just drawn its first breath in a long time.

  Everyone else noticed it too, even if they couldn’t immediately tell what was happening. Everyone looked around except for Jubal and Balthazar, who kept their eyes locked on each other instead. Even they looked suddenly unsure, though.

  Then the noises began. To Denise’s ears, the cries sounded like the panicked shrieks of animals running from a brush fire. She looked around, but there was no orange glow that signified flames anywhere on the island. There was only the bleached light of the moon.

  The howls and screams reached a new intensity, as if every single animal on the island was being skinned alive. As she listened, the noises came from all over the island, both near and far. The whole of Malheur Island was alive with wretched noises like the full choir of hell singing a hymn of damnation.

  Near Jubal, the little green lizard that had scurried out of sight reemerged into the moonlight. As soon as it appeared, the reptile began writhing as if someone had broken its back. Thrashing and squirming, its eyes bulged and dark red blood wept from around the rim of each socket. Normally so graceful and tenacious, the lizard’s claws lost their grip on the stone, and it fell to the ground.

  The group of hunters cried out, too. “What in the hell?” Harrison asked, his head cocked to one side listening to the ungodly ruckus that had broken out over the whole island.

  On the ground at the base of the statue, the lizard jerked and thrashed. It hissed like a match dropped in a puddle. Ropes of saliva sprayed from its jaws as its body jackknifed back and forth. The convulsions looked like they would tear the animal’s body apart.

  In fact, something strange was happening to the lizard. The flesh on its body almost look as if it was boiling, barely able to contain some horrible eruption going on inside.

  Additionally, the lizard was getting bigger. The growth happened slowly at first, so slowly that Denise thought it might be a mere figment of her imagination. But then, as if overcoming some initial barrier, the lizard’s size exploded. Where before the lizard was no larger than a few inches in length, it was now several feet long, the size of a full-grown iguana.

  Bones burst through its flesh only to be reabsorbed, the skin knitting back together in the span of a second as the animal grew at an uneven rate. One leg grew far faster than the others, only to be overtaken by the other three as they suddenly swelled in size. Bones snapped and crackled as they rearranged themselves, seemingly with a mind all their own. Now, the lizard was the size of a small crocodile, and it had just as many teeth.

  Inhuman eyes glared out at the surprised hunters as the lizard’s body morphed and contorted into something that was no longer recognizable. Scales as thick and hard as dinner plates covered the creature’s back. Fangs like ten-penny nails filled its gaping mouth. The huge muscular back legs looked like they belonged to a bodybuilder with some unnatural skin condition. Arms tipped with mas
sive talons scrabbled at the dirt as the rate of transformation began to slow down.

  Shinzo shot at the thing first. He whipped a revolver off his hip and fired point blank into the beast’s armored hide. The bullet sank in with a squirt of blood, not even thick scales could stop a large revolver round, but the lizard-thing barely seemed to care. It was almost like its body ate the bullet. A second later, the skin healed over like water sloughing up the beach.

  The lizard snarled as more of the hunters pulled their sidearms out and fired off a dozen rounds at the beast in the span of a few seconds. Normally, a hail storm of bullets like that would put down almost any animal.

  But this wasn’t a normal animal anymore. This was a monster now. Denise wasn’t used to thinking about animals in those terms. She was used to thinking about the natural habits and patterns of animals. They were just another part of nature, something she’d spent her whole life studying, in her own way.

  This thing was distinctly unnatural. She couldn’t even think of it as an animal anymore. It was a hissing, spitting ball of living malevolence. The lizard monster shrugged off the wave of bullets like they were bee stings. Its flesh rippled with every new slap of brass, but the scaly skin always grew back right before their eyes.

  Rearing up on its hind legs, the lizard was almost seven feet tall. Bellowing and roaring, it grabbed at the hunters. Balthazar ducked away from the grasping claws. Creighton dodged backwards.

  Shinzo wasn’t so lucky. He tried to back up as the lizard rounded on him, but he smacked into the meteorite statue instead. A huge claw, easily big enough to grasp a large watermelon, raked out and latched onto Shinzo just below the ribcage. Two inch long claws sank into the flesh of Shinzo’s stomach.

  The man shrieked as the claws punctured through his skin like tissue paper and latched onto his guts. Roaring in triumph, the lizard lifted Shinzo up to its mouth. Shinzo screamed, his face contorted in pain and horror. The lizard stared at Shinzo for a second before opening its bear-trap jaws wide and clamping them down on the hunter’s head.