by Jonah Buck
“No. I think it was from somewhere closer to the coast, but I couldn’t give you an exact location.”
“Whoever it is, they know where we are a lot better than we know where they are.”
“If we try to flush them out, they’re a lot more likely to gun us both down before we even get a chance to get close.”
“That’s what I was thinking.”
“So what do we do?”
“I say we try to make our way to the village. It’s close, and we can move low through the jungle most of the way, which gives us a lot of cover. If we stay here, it’s only a matter of time until something finds us, either animal or human. I’m guessing that neither one will be friendly.”
Denise noticed the shard of bone stuck in her cheek and plucked it out. “Sounds like a plan,” she said. “Then we can wait for the Shield of Mithridates to pick us up.”
“What about the others?”
She was thinking the same thing. One the one hand, she very much wanted to tell Hobhouse to hoist the anchor as soon as they made it aboard. Hauling away from Malheur Island sounded like a good idea. As far as she knew, the only other person aside from Harrison she could definitively say had survived the night was the shooter. Leaving him behind wouldn’t be any great loss. Let him fend for himself on the island of freaks.
On the other hand, Denise didn’t know for sure that the shooter was the only survivor. If both Jubal and Balthazar were alive somewhere on the island and they were also trying to get to the Shield of Mithridates, how would she positively identify which one was the assassin? She didn’t have any real evidence against anyone. It would take a ballistics expert and a medical examiner to even begin to determine who was responsible, and neither of those was readily available anywhere near Malheur Island.
If they both demanded to be let aboard, how would she stop either one of them? How would she stop the right one? She certainly didn’t want to be trapped on a small ship with the killer. That might be even more dangerous than remaining on the island until dawn, when things would presumably revert back to normal. How was she supposed to figure out what to do?
She cast those thoughts aside for now. Thinking too much about problems that hadn’t arisen yet would only slow her down now. And she still needed all her attention and skills just to survive the next ten minutes. Instead, she broke the most immediate problem down into steps.
Gazing out at the village wall, she plotted a course through the trees that would minimize their exposure. She put together a point A to point Z map in her mind, figuring out how to cover the distance while still staying low. There would be only one major point of difficulty.
The village was located on a spit of land branching off from the beach, a narrow peninsula that isolated it from the rest of the island. To get to that little panhandle of land, they’d need to cross the open sands of the beach. Denise didn’t see any crabs loitering in the surf, but that wasn’t her only concern.
If the shooter had his peepers ready to follow them, something that wouldn’t be impossible with the swaying of grasses and bushes that would be involved with traveling through the underbrush, he could pop them both when they started across the sands. There were still ahools in the sky as well, and they might think that two humans scurrying across the sand looked like tasty meals.
And there still wasn’t any guarantee that the villagers would want to let them inside the gates.
“The way I see it, we don’t have a ton of options,” Denise said. “We can either hunker down here and probably end up dead one way or the other.”
“And the other option?”
“Quite possibly end up dead somewhere between here and the village, trying to get to some semblance of safety.”
“Well, I for one would rather see an outcome where we make it to safety, and then I shove my foot so far up that sniper’s ass that he can trim my toenails with his teeth. Let’s see if we can get to the village.”
“I was hoping you’d say that.” A few seconds later, they crawled through the grass and briars. Thorns and thistles clawed at Denise’s face and hair, but she brushed them aside the best she could.
She couldn’t hear any human noises in the rest of the jungle. There were animal shrieks and howls as beasts never intended to live in the natural world clawed and eviscerated one another. However, Denise was more worried about the rogue hunter trying to shoot them. Her ears strained for the sound of stealthy footfalls, the snap of a twig as someone walked closer, or the jangle of a bandolier. Even though she knew it didn’t make any sense, she was also listening for another gun shot. If the killer was as good as he seemed to be, she would never hear the shot before it struck home. But she couldn’t help but try to listen for it anyway.
A large tree loomed ahead. Denise looked around just to double check that its branches weren’t loaded with fat-bodied spiders or gigantic, bald-faced monkeys looking to eat her alive. She didn’t see any immediate horrors, so she slithered up to the tree and moved into a crouch.
Peeking up above the large, gnarled roots, she looked to get her bearings to the next spot they needed to find to stay out of the killer’s sights. Hopefully.
They skittered between low-lying patches of ground, turning natural divots in the earth into temporary foxholes. The tall grass became camouflage, and the sturdy boughs of trees became shields. Denise had used the same strategy to sneak back to their base camp earlier that day. With luck, it would work again.
Finally, they reached the ragged, bare edge of the jungle. From there on out, it was just a low clumping of hardy shrubs, and then the earth gave way to hard, packed sand. Moving across that would be the riskiest part of the whole venture.
If they were lucky, the rogue hunter wouldn’t even know they had made it to the beach. They could just slip through the village wall without being shot at. That would be nice. Very nice indeed. Denise wasn’t counting on it, though. This wasn’t shaping up to be a nice night.
She could see the wall that cut the village off from the rest of the island maybe one hundred yards away. It looked well-made. The wall was primarily made of large logs, about thirty feet tall, that had been sunk vertically into the ground. They were placed side by side so that there was barely an inch of space between any of them. Each of the logs had a coating of pitch, preventing rot and probably making the surface more difficult to climb.
At the top, each of the large logs had been sharpened to a brutal-looking point. Anyone who slipped while attempting to scale the wall could find themselves impaled like a butterfly on a pin at a museum.
Even reaching the top of the wall would be difficult, though. Boreholes had been hammered through the logs at a steep angle near the top, and sharpened wooden spikes had been inserted through. In profile, the wall would look something like an upside-down “7,” with the foot of the letter slanted to an acute angle. Maybe it wasn’t as effective as a coil of barbed wire along the top of a chain-link fence, but it served a similar purpose. Even animals that could climb up the vertical siding of the wall wouldn’t be able to surmount the angled spikes very easily.
Finally, the base of the wall was surrounded almost six feet high with a mound of compressed and dried clay and mud. Gravel and boulders had been added into the matrix to provide further stability. The simple cement would provide increased stability for the wall, making it harder to tip over.
Denise had to admire the engineering that went into the wall, even if it was the very same barrier between her and safety. A lot of work and maintenance had gone into the making and upkeep of the structure.
She could only see two entrances, places where there was no mud retainer buttressing the wall up. The first was clearly the main entrance. A wide double gate sat closed. No doubt the people who lived here normally carried firewood, captured game, and waste in and out of that gate. It was wide enough for a horse and carriage team to completely turn around in the space.
The other entrance looked like a more promising way to get inside. It was closer and much narrowe
r. Only one person could walk through the gate at a time. Essentially, it was the back door. Opening that would be a much less time-consuming endeavor than rolling open the gigantic front gates, which looked like they were made of several tons of wood in their own right. Getting in fast would be a top priority if they had someone shooting at them.
“Alright, here’s how we do this,” Denise said. “On the count of three, I say we run for the smaller gate over there. Ready?”
“What if they don’t let us in?”
“We’ll find a way in one way or the other. I’m not going to take no for an answer on this one.”
“Okay. One.” Denise felt her muscles bunch up, preparing for the all-out sprint to the gate.
“Two.” She slung her elephant gun over her shoulder by its strap so it wouldn’t bounce against her side as she ran. She wanted both hands free to move as fast as she could.
“Three.” Both Denise and Harrison were up and moving before she even finished the word. In the space of a few feet, the dense jungle foliage turned to open sand, like an oasis turning to desert. Her feet kicked up little geysers of white, postcard-perfect sand as she moved. So far, there wasn’t any rifle fire spitting at their heels, which was a good sign.
Her heart thudded in her chest like an abused bongo drum. Breathing in sharp pants, she hurled herself across the beach. The sand almost seemed to glow the same silvery color as the moon under the accursed light from overhead.
What couldn’t have been more than a few seconds later but felt like all of eternity plus another week, they reached the small gate. Denise barely slowed down. She slammed directly into the side of the wood and started pounding on it with the flat of her hand.
“Hey! Hey, we need someone to let us in. Please help. We’re stuck out here. Open the gate.” She tried again in Afrikaans, smacking the wood. Throwing a glance behind her, she didn’t see anything. Neither the glint of a rifle lens or the approach of a huge, slavering beast, but that didn’t mean that either threat was off the table. “Help us,” she called.
No one came to the gate. No one opened the way in for them. Denise stuck her eye to a gap in the wood.
She didn’t see anyone on the other side, no one at all. Not even a guard. Everyone must have retreated to some inner sanctum for further protection against the beasts that roamed during the full moon. She could see a number of large structures that looked like they were designed to shelter the island’s population.
What she was really interested in, though, was how the door was locked. As she expected, there was a big black streak across her vision along one section of the slats. There was a thick wooden log serving as a bar on the door. Even if the wall itself was quite sophisticated, the main lock on this door was pretty simple. There were just a couple of supports on both sides of the door which the log rested on, preventing the door from opening.
Maybe she could use the rope she had, slip it through a crack, wrap it around the log, and jimmy the support a little loose.
A loud whump sounded behind her. She turned around and saw an ahool sitting on the ground not twenty yards away. Its fangs glistened in the moonlight as it stared at them with hungering eyes. The creature must have seen them scamper across the beach but couldn’t just swoop down and snatch them up when they were pressed tight against the side of the wall.
Whump. Whump. Whump.
Several more ahools landed in the sand behind the first. They gazed at the humans cornered against the wooden palisade for a moment, and then they started forward. While they could soar with the majesty of eagles in the air, they moved in an ungainly crawl while on the ground. They walked like commandos trying to infiltrate under a string of barbed wire after ingesting a slew of powerful drugs. The massive bats clearly weren’t comfortable moving on the ground, but they didn’t need to be when their prey was so conveniently cornered.
“Uh, Denise? Please tell me you have a plan.”
“Working on it,” she said. She unslung her Nitro Express, but she didn’t aim it at the ahools. She didn’t want to kill them if she could help it, and she suspected the scent of fresh blood would only draw something worse in a matter of seconds.
Instead, she aimed it at the door and the bar keeping it closed from the other side. A pull of the trigger, and the elephant gun roared loud enough to deafen Denise. Behind her, the bats all flinched as the noise assaulted their sensitive, oversized ears, but they didn’t stop coming. They hissed and squeaked at each other, but all Denise and Harrison could hear was a high-pitched ringing noise.
Denise looked at her handiwork. She’d blown a fist-sized hole through the door and taken an equally large chunk out of the bar holding it closed, but that wasn’t enough to push the door open. She needed to saw all the way through the bar, or to at least blow a big enough hole in the gate that she could stick her arm through and shove the bar aside.
She reached into her pocket and pulled out two more shells. The Nitro Express released a little puff of smoke as she snapped it open and removed the spent casings. Slapping the new rounds into place, she closed the rifle back up and raised it again.
The bats were less than ten yards away now, within lunging distance. Denise fired the elephant gun a second time, and the closest bat backed up a step. It shook its head as if shrugging off a painful injury. The monster’s ears flattened against the back of its head, and it shrieked at the hunters.
Denise shoved at the gate, and the last few centimeters of the bar that were still holding together disintegrated with a snap. The bar fell away where she’d cleaved it in two. She grabbed Harrison and practically heaved him through the now open door, following immediately behind him.
Realizing that their prey was about to escape, the ahools surged forward. Denise’s vision filled with the sight of hundreds of flashing teeth all coming for her at once as she turned around and slammed the door shut.
With the bar destroyed, there was nothing to lock the gate with, though. Denise braced the door with her body a second before the impact.
The first ahool slammed into the door with its full weight. Denise suddenly found herself airborne as the door banged open even against her attempt to stop it. She landed on her chest, barely getting her hands out in time to cushion her fall and prevent her from smashing her face directly into the ground.
With a cry of victory, the ahool stuck its head through the now open doorway. Glaring at Denise, it tried to fit the rest of its body through, too.
“We’re the only party crashers coming through here tonight,” Harrison said. He leveled his own heavy rifle next to the ahool’s head, a few inches away from its ears, and fired a round into the night.
The bullet whizzed harmlessly off into the jungle, but it did its job anyway. Startled by the deafening noise, the ahool leaped backwards and clawed at its ears. The roar of such a large rifle so close must be like an explosion directly inside its skull.
With the space suddenly clear, Harrison threw the gate closed and slapped his rifle in place where the bar had been. A second later, the gate slammed on its hinges, but the metal barrel of the rifle was just as strong as the thick log it had replaced to keep the gate closed against such intruders. Enraged shrieking issued from the other side of the gate as the ahools all spat and bit at the gate and at each other.
Harrison rubbed his palms together in apparent satisfaction. “Eh? Eh? What do you think of them beans?”
Denise picked herself up off the ground. She found her own rifle a second later and grabbed it, too. Her whole body felt like it had been laid out on a road and run over by truckers all day, but they’d finally made it.
“Thanks for not killing them, Harrison. It really means a lot to me.”
“Yeah, well, you’re welcome, I guess. But if I had to choose between being eaten and protecting myself, I’ll shoot anything on this island.”
“I know. I would too, if I had too. I’d just regret it later if there was some other way.”
“Look, I know you don’t like the
idea of hunting anymore after what happened with those elephants, but nature isn’t always all fun time and cuddles. Nature red in tooth and claw and all that jazz. Things eat other things to survive.”
“Right. I know. That’s the natural order of things. I just don’t want to kill anything unless I absolutely have to. I might consider an exception for whoever shot Gail, though.”
“I’ll hold that son of a bitch down while you shove that rifle barrel up his nose. Here’s the thing, though. Between the two of us, you’re the only one with the heavy weaponry now. I just want to make sure where we both stand. If it comes down to me or some freak of nature, I want you to shoot whatever it is that’s coming after me. I can respect your principles even if I don’t share them, I just don’t want to end up dead for reasons I don’t agree with.”
“You won’t. You’re my friend. You just saved my life, and I’ll do whatever I can to return the favor. We’re in this together. I’ll do what I have to in order to keep it that way.”
“Alright. I can definitely get behind that. I don’t want to make you choose between your ideals and me, but it’s that sort of night.”
“No. I agree. I think in a weird sort of way, this night has shown me some things. I like being out in the field, even when things are rough. I almost need it, and I have a bad time of things when I just hole up somewhere. But at the same time, I’m not worried that I’ll revert to being the same person I was before. I won’t be going on any more sport hunting expeditions. I can assure you that, but I can do what I need to do to survive. And make sure my friends survive. I just prefer to do things my way from now on.”
“Good. Good. I’m not sure I see things your way. I’d probably set this whole damn island on fire and be done with it myself, but you have your own path. That’s fine. So long as we both end up alive long enough to see dawn, I’m fine with that. Do you know what you want to do with yourself if you won’t be going on hunting trips?”
“Yeah, I think so. I’ll tell you later once we get inside somewhere safe.”