by Russ Watts
Tobias had seen it. She remembered how he had pushed himself away from the tree he had climbed. Somehow, he had seen it coming and tried to escape it. The monster must have plucked him right from the air as he fell. That meant it had quick reflexes. No matter how huge this thing was, she was going to have to outsmart it. All her pain and nausea from the journey here had gone. She was in survival mode now. It was odd. She had never been in a dangerous situation before. She’d never been in a fight, even at school, and had backed away from difficult situations at all times. Her brothers had teased her throughout childhood, but they also protected her. Now she was going to have to learn how to fight for herself.
With the monster crunching Tobias’ bones, it seemed to be distracted. Whilst it was apparently watching them from the hidden sanctuary of the trees, it wasn’t moving and it wasn’t coming for them. Jane thought logically. They had a chance to get out of this. She wanted to go home. She wanted to find the probe, but more than that she wanted to live. Jane looked around her. There was no path, no escape. She was surrounded by trees. She kept her body still and ignored the throbbing pain in her hand, using only her eyes to scan around her. The grass. The tall grass would give them some cover from the creature. If they could get to it before the thing, they might have a chance. They could hide, perhaps find an uprooted tree and hide in its roots. Perhaps they could squeeze in between the rocks on the far side of the ridge where it couldn’t reach them. Jane knew she had to try. As the monster lifted Tobias up to its mouth again and snapped off his other arm, she knew they didn’t have much time. Tobias wasn’t going to keep it busy much longer. She doubted his body was much of a meal. They had to go now.
Jane slowly turned her head to Ricardo. “Look at me, Ricardo,” she whispered. “We need to run to the tall grass.”
Ricardo turned his face to hers. He looked ruined. He looked more scared than she had seen anyone before in her life. He shook his head from side to side.
“No. Play dead. It’ll leave soon.”
Jane glanced at the creature. Its head was poking through the highest branches of the trees and its blue eyes were firmly fixed on them. “No. It knows we’re here. It’s watching us. We have to go. We stay here and we die.”
Ricardo swallowed as flies swarmed around his feet. They were drenched with blood. Tobias’ blood. He shook his head again. “No, I’m staying here. It doesn’t want us. It got… it got Tobias. Let’s wait.”
Jane felt despondent. She couldn’t do it without Ricardo. She couldn’t leave him and yet she didn’t want to wait. She knew that would mean a horrible death. She had to make him understand that running was their best option, their only option. Carefully, she felt around her on the flat ground. Her machete was close, and she gently wrapped her fingers around the shaft. Her left hand ached and was slippery with blood so she kept her eyes locked on the monster as she maneuvered the machete to her right hand. The monster continued to mangle Tobias body, ignoring her. As she watched it chew on his dead body, she was reminded of her cat Ginger. On the lucky occasions that he caught a mouse or a bird, he would chew on it just like that. Eating it was only part of it. Ginger did it because he could, as if he wanted to prove he was king of the jungle. This thing was the same. It was playing a game with then, teasing them into doing something, or nothing. It didn’t care. It oozed superiority. Whatever it was, it was king of the jungle here. They were no more than a bird to be broken, killed and eaten.
“Ricardo, in ten seconds, I am getting up and running for that tall grass.” Jane pulled her knees up and prepared to jump up. Once she was on her feet, she knew she had precious little time to make the line of grass. There was only a few feet between her and it, and she could make it in only a couple of seconds. But the monster was huge, and no matter how large and heavy it was, it was probably quick on its feet. She didn’t know how much time she had, but she had to take the chance she had. She would have a head start on it, and those extra few seconds might mean all the difference between living or dying. “You can come with me or you can wait here to die. What are you going to do?”
She meant every word. Her fear had given her an adrenalin rush. She wanted to see her brothers again, to go back to the farm she grew up on. She was going to run for her life, with or without him.
“What is it?” whispered Ricardo.
“What are you going to do?” asked Jane again. She nudged his body with the machete and glared at him. “Well?”
Ricardo slowly nodded. She saw that he still had his machete in his hand. Whether he accepted their situation or not, she knew he was ready to run. The sound of Tobias being eaten was too much. She pointed to the tall grass, just a few feet away and then glanced at the monster. Its blue eyes still seemed to be watching her, but she had no choice. She couldn’t sit back and wait. She had to do something. She looked at Ricardo.
“We go together. Ready?”
Ricardo nodded and she saw tears fall from his eyes. They might have been for Tobias or for themselves, but she thought they were probably for his family. He had a wife and a child. It was good that he was thinking of them. They would give him a reason to run faster than he ever had before. She had no husband or children, but she sure as hell wasn’t about to give up.
“Three,” she whispered.
She didn’t feel like crying. She felt like fighting. This island had quickly turned into a nightmare. The clear blue sky and white sandy beach they had arrived on was barely a memory. Jane prepared to run.
“Two,” she said as she looked at Ricardo.
She remembered the happiness on Tobias’ face when he told them he had found the probe. How quickly things could change. One minute he was part of a team bringing the most important scientific discovery to mankind, the next he was dead, his corpse in the mouth of a terrifying monster. His blood was splattered all over her, over Ricardo, and the jungle floor. Jane gripped her machete. That monster wasn’t going to take her. She eyed the tall line of grass. She was going to run. She was going to get out of this. She steeled herself and stared at Ricardo.
“One.”
Jane jumped up and pulled Ricardo to his feet. “Go!”
Jane began to run. Her feet smacked loudly across the jungle floor flattening the grass and ants, and she felt the ground shaking. There was a deafening roar behind her and the sound of branches snapping. Sweat stung her eyes as she ran for the grass, her heart pounding so fast she thought she might just die of a heart attack. Ricardo was next to her and she saw a shadow fall over him. From the corner of her eye, she saw the monster. She felt its warm breath behind her and tried to run faster. Her legs were pumping as hard as she could. The tall grass was only three feet away when she saw Ricardo lifted into the air. He screamed and she felt more blood shower down over her. Jane frantically ran for the grass, tears surprising her as they flowed from her eyes. There was a scream, a high-pitched wail that she realized was coming from herself as she charged into the tall grass. The shadow that had encompassed Ricardo fell over her and she pushed apart the first thick blades of grass. As she thrust herself into the thicket, she remembered Ginger and how he had enjoyed chewing on the dead bird’s mangled body. Even as the bird twitched, the cat had begun to chew on the delicate meat. Jane cried out and swung her machete around her, hoping that her own death would be quicker and less painful.
CHAPTER 2
The room was stifling. The air-conditioning unit had broken down, again, and Phoenix could feel the sweat rolling down her back. She had spent time in the Middle East—and way too much in the shithole they called Tikrit for her own liking—trekked through the Syrian Desert, trained in the jungles of Borneo, and even spent a little downtime in the Northern Territory of Australia. Yet nothing seemed to compare to the heat of the briefing room aboard the ship currently churning its way through the Pacific Ocean. The humidity, almost ninety-five percent, was so thick that she felt like she couldn’t breathe. She untucked her shirt from her khakis. To hell with appearances. It was what she said
to them that mattered, not what she looked like. Karl, Alex, Justin, and Darius already knew her and she knew them. They had served together for a few years now, with Alex, the youngest member of the team. They knew she would be focused on the mission and unconcerned with what she looked like. She never had. Prom dresses and curlers held little appeal to her. Ever since she was fifteen, she had found herself drawn to the military. She had cut her hair short, much to her mother’s disappointment, taken to wearing plain slacks and T-shirts and hefty boots, and watching old black and white war films on cable. Her parents tried to tell her she was beautiful and that she shouldn’t cover it up, that she should go out with boys, to the football, to the mall; do all the other things her friends did. But Phoenix refused to buckle. Her two older sisters followed the party line. Virginia had predictably married an accountant and settled down to have four kids as soon as she could. Tacoma disappeared off to college, found a nice boy-next-door type, all strawberry-blond hair and strong shoulders, and rented a loft in New York where they could plan their Sunday mornings around brunch and runs through Central Park. Phoenix had been out with a few boys but not many had gone beyond the first date. She was too closed, too controlling, too damn masculine. That’s what she had been told anyway. The military? That was a career for men, not girls from Oklahoma trying to prove a point.
She pinned the map to the white board behind her, securing each corner with a soggy blob of blue-tac. The corners of the map were curling up, wilting in the heat, and she felt like doing the same. The window behind her was open, but there was no breeze coming in, just the sweet smell of aviation fuel. It was a reminder of the exhausting journey they had taken. The memory of sitting on the plane reminded her that this journey wasn’t over yet, not by a long shot. Had they had time to plan it, they would’ve taken a flight direct to Pago Pago. A nice cruisy eight-hour flight to American Samoa sounded much better than the torturous eighteen-hour journey she had just finished.
From Guam, they had flown to Port Moresby, Papua New Guinea. A hot four-hour wait had ensued before they’d connected onto a flight through to the private airstrip outside of Townsville, Australia. The heat had increased as they had spent another two hours there waiting for the military helicopter that took them to the USS Ronald Reagan, currently on maneuvers in the South Pacific, its precise location undisclosed.
“Damn flies,” said Phoenix as she batted another one away.
The ship rolled slightly, but the weather was good; the sea was quite calm, which was more than could be said for her stomach. Phoenix hadn’t eaten much in the last few hours. Now she was about to deliver her briefing on the mission ahead, after only learning of it herself since landing on the Reagan forty-five minutes ago. In one hour, they would all be on a Sikorsky. Such was life in the military. Part of her wished she could be more like her sisters, to just settle down and give this up. But a part of her enjoyed it. The travelling and suddenness of it all, the secrecy and operations that would come up unexpectedly was all a part of it. She was still young and had plenty of time to settle down when she was older.
Her body had no idea what time zone it was supposed to be in anymore. Her mind was sharp, and she had no problem with the secrecy of what was happening. It was part of the deal. She had trust in the system and her immediate superiors. The toll on her body from so much travelling though often left her feeling nauseous, so she skipped meals, snacking on power bars now and again. That only made her more nauseous, and until the mission was over, she had a feeling she was just going to have to agree to disagree with her stomach.
She felt a fly crawling on the nape of her neck, its black legs wading through the sweat like a pig digging for truffles. Slapping her hand on her neck, she knew she had missed it, and the fly disappeared. She looked at the map and tried to forget how much her body craved a decent meal and sleep. This was up to her now. The operation and the lives of her unit were reliant on her figuring out just how badly things could go. There was a dullness behind her eyes, and she knew a headache was threatening to burst like a thundercloud inside her head. It would have to wait. She had no time for anything now but to get ready for what lay ahead. The problem was she didn’t really know what that was.
The door swung open and four soldiers entered the room, bringing a wave of hot air with them. In turn, they acknowledged her and sat down on flimsy plastic chairs that had been placed to face the front. Phoenix watched them find a seat and then chatter amongst themselves. They had a lot of nervous energy to expel and were eager to get on with it, whatever “it” was.
“Walker, you make sure everyone got a good feed?”
“Yes, ma’am, the chow was pretty damn good.”
“Then take a load off and listen up. At ease, everybody. We’re all friends here.”
Karl Walker, second-in-command, was a good man and a good soldier. Phoenix had to remember that physically he was more than just a stereotype, capable of almost anything. He was a walking, talking cliché in combat boots. Every shirt he wore seemed too small to hide his bulging muscles and recently he had taken to sporting a moustache, as if he needed any more proof that he was full of testosterone. Despite his natural physical authority, he seemed to have a problem serving under her. Phoenix still hadn’t worked out if it was because she was a woman or if he simply didn’t like her. Still, he knew how to play the game. For all his barbed comments about her leadership, he was biding his time, performing whatever tasks were asked of him to the letter. He would follow her to his death if it meant he got a shot at taking command one day.
“Right, we’ll get started then.” Phoenix leant back against the metal desk and looked at her crew. Only four soldiers. The next twenty-four hours were supposed to be simple. No danger, just a quick rescue operation. Yet she was worried they might be underestimating the situation. She had tried to reason with her superiors that they should send a full unit, yet it was impossible they had told her. The operation was not exactly above board. The less people involved the better for everyone, she was told. So here she was, facing four of her best men with a million questions that she wasn’t sure she would be able to answer.
“I want you all suited and booted in thirty minutes. We’re scheduled to depart at 0530 and we’ll be airborne for approximately twenty-eight minutes. Our ride is that sweet little number outside on deck, the DCX4539. She’ll be a little cramped with the six of us, but she’ll do just right. We will be landing on a small atoll, just east of the main island.” Phoenix pointed to the map she had pinned up. There was a vast expanse of blue and a small dot in the center that represented the island. “The island is uninhabited, and we do not expect to encounter any hostile forces. We will land at sunrise and leave at dusk. We have a period of nine hours, maximum, to find and retrieve our targets. This is a rescue operation. The terrain could be hostile which is why they need us. We are going fishing for three US citizens who have got themselves into a little trouble it would appear. We are the cavalry.”
“You said six of us.” Karl looked around the room. “Maybe math isn’t your best point, Phoenix, but there’s only five of us.”
“I realize that we’re one short, but I’m—”
Right on cue, the door opened and a man dressed in light blue cotton trousers stepped in. He had an open-necked shirt and sunglasses hanging around his neck on a black cord. He pushed a pair of wire-rimmed glasses up his nose and took a seat quietly at the back of the room.
“Let me introduce you to Max,” said Phoenix. “He’ll be joining us on this fishing trip. I’m sure like all of us that he’s hoping to catch his people alive and well.” She pointed to Max who was sat at the back of the room and he stood up to introduce himself. “Max has worked at Space54 for over five years. He is well aware of our operation and briefed on what is expected of him. He will help us to find these people. I expect you all to cooperate fully.”
“Space54? What the fuck is that?” asked Karl.
“Nerds,” said Darius to his right. “I think they’re
some kind of private operator trying to send man to Mars or something.”
“We prefer the term scientist, but nerd just about covers it, I suppose. And yes, you are quite correct, we are trying to send man to Mars.” Max cleared his throat and pushed his glasses up his sweaty nose. “I’m Max Hudson. I’ve worked at Space54 for over seven years actually. Before that, I was at NASA. I can tell you that I am just hoping I can help you find our people. They are very important to us, and I’ll do what I can to get them home. All three of them are sorely missed. You can imagine how distraught their families are.”
“Max is a doctor, and I’m glad we have him with us,” said Phoenix, indicating that he should sit down. She wasn’t glad about having him at all, but Space54 had insisted they have one of their own go to the island and there was no getting around it. Orders were orders. Phoenix returned to face her unit as Max sat down. “The fact that we’ve been unable to establish the whereabouts of these three employees or their status means we have to assume one or more of them is injured, possibly seriously. I know we have basic medical training, but Space54 wanted one of their own on this. He can help us identify the… scientists.” Phoenix caught herself from saying victims. She had to keep the vibe positive. Nobody wanted to waste their time going looking for three dead bodies. “I am assured that we have your full co-operation, Max.”