New Year Island

by Paul Draker

  Natalie stood at the side of the door frame, watching him.

  Juan returned his attention to the map, and she came into the room with shy, hesitant steps to stand alongside him. He pointed at the pen marks he had made at different spots along the shoreline.

  “The cave where I found you,” he said. “It might not be the only one.”

  But Natalie was not interested in conversation, it seemed. She raised her arms and draped them around his neck, molding her body against him and raising her face to his.

  Juan broke the kiss and shook his head. “I don’t think—”

  Natalie clung to him, her mouth soft on his neck, his ear. He took a step back, bumping the edge of the cot with his calves. Placing her hands on his shoulders, Natalie pushed him back onto the cot. She stood in front of him, and her eyes held his, dark and serious, as she slowly pulled down the zipper of her jeans.

  Juan remembered what Veronica had said about Natalie’s history. She was probably trying to express her gratitude, thanking him in the only way she knew how.

  He shook his head again. “This isn’t a good idea.” He reached for her wrists but she stepped backward, reaching behind her to lean against the table.

  Natalie wriggled her hips, and the jeans slid a couple of inches lower.

  Juan kept his eyes on her face, refusing to look down but unable to avoid noticing the stark whiteness of skin in the open V of her zipper.

  “No, Natalie.” He kept his voice gentle.

  Unsmiling, unblinking, she held his gaze for several seconds.

  It suddenly occurred to him what the past half minute would look like to Jordan, played on the monitors for everyone to watch, perhaps even interspersed with footage of him and Jordan making love.

  What could she possibly think of him then?

  Juan closed his eyes and lowered his head. Unable to speak, he waved Natalie away.

  He listened as she rezipped her jeans, slid away from the table, and backed toward the door. Then he looked up.

  Standing in the doorway again, she watched him with no discernible expression on her face. And then she was gone.

  He stared after her, realizing with a sinking feeling that he had allowed himself to get distracted. He had let his guard down.

  He reached under the map for the Glock, and his fingers brushed across empty tabletop.

  The gun was gone.

  Day 7

  Thursday: December 27, 2012

  CHAPTER 161

  The storm had broken a few hours before dawn. Camilla was surprised that she felt alert, without the brittle, spacey feeling she remembered from college all-nighters. Standing outside the dripping walls of the station building, she looked around in the dim gray early-morning light.

  Mason stepped out to join her, looking oddly cheerful. She glanced at the shattered lens of his glasses, at the cuts and bruises on his chin, and touched her own broken nose. They had to get ready; Julian could arrive anytime.

  Would he come by boat? By helicopter? How many others was he bringing? Had people paid for the privilege of hunting Camilla and her fellow contestants? The thought sickened her, and it made her angry, too.

  “Let’s go up by the tower,” she said. “I want to see if we can spot Jordan anywhere.”

  “Did Julian look South American to you?” Mason asked, walking beside her. “Like, maybe, Colombian?”

  She shook her head. She was no expert, but Julian’s features told her he maybe had some French or Italian ancestry.

  “No,” she said. “But last night I realized there is something else we all have in common, besides being survivors. I think it’s significant.”

  “All of us were dumb enough to let ourselves be marooned in a place we didn’t know in the middle of the night?”

  Exasperated, she rolled her eyes at him. She just couldn’t see him being Julian’s spy.

  “Normally,” she said, “reality shows pull their contestants from all over the country, don’t they? The diversity tends to make it more interesting—you root for your hometown heroes and all that. But everybody here is from California.”

  “I’m from New York.”

  “You’re from California now.”

  “That’s actually quite interesting,” he said. “It means the candidate selection process couldn’t have been this big, anonymous nationwide search Julian indicated it was.”

  She nodded. “Could there be some other connection between all of us? None of us seem to know each other, but Julian got hold of our names somehow. And he knew enough about each of us and our stories to get him interested in digging further.”

  “News,” Mason said. “If I was looking for proven survivors, that’s where I’d start. California news stories. Lauren’s accident would have been in the news. Your Loma Prieta earthquake, obviously. Veronica’s first husband would have made the news, although it wouldn’t have been a big story. Same with Juan, because there’s no way the Coast Guard uncovered his identity.”

  She nodded. “‘Billionaire Drug Lord’s Sons Kill Each Other at California Resort Island’? Juan would have been an absolutely huge news story if they knew who he was. They never found out. JT would have also been in the news—local Marine in helicopter crash. But what about you?”

  He frowned. “My name did appear in some articles, but who would look for survivors in the financial news? And then there’s Natalie. Sad to say, but child abuse isn’t really newsworthy.”

  “What about police reports, though?” Camilla brightened with excitement, but then her enthusiasm faded. “No, that doesn’t really work, either. Brent’s cancer was hardly a police matter. Or your SEC and IRS shenanigans.”

  “IRS…?”

  “I know you, Mason.”

  “Okay, fine, but Jordan wouldn’t have shown up in news or police reports, either. How did Julian find her? Based on his profile, she’s easy to dismiss as a rich-kid overachiever with a short romantic attention span—”

  Camilla grabbed Mason’s wrist in shock.

  At the top of the hill above them, a meaty dark lump had been spiked atop a red-stained pole.

  “Oh god…” She covered her mouth.

  From the top of the seven-foot pole, the head of an elephant seal stared back at her with eyes like dull marbles. The severed head was as big as a rhino’s—clearly an alpha bull, one of the five-thousand-pound monsters that ruled the beach below. A zigzag scar marred the hide beneath the right eye, and a pale patch stood out on its rubbery trunk of a nose.

  Camilla stared at it in horror. Jordan had done this. The woman she had once wanted to call her friend was having some kind of breakdown. Why else would she take such a risk, challenging a dangerous animal alone and in the dark for no reason at all? What kind of mental state was she in, to do a thing like that?

  It wasn’t right for Jordan to be abandoned and alone now.

  Camilla felt a wave of sorrow wash over her.

  “Jordan’s totally lost it,” she said. “We have to find her and help her. Something’s happened to her mind. When we get back, she’ll need counseling. Professional care.”

  “This head is for the beast.” Mason chuckled. “It’s a gift.”

  “Not funny, Mason. Not now.”

  “You’ve got this all wrong,” he said, pointing at the grisly banner. “Jordan’s telling us something here. Trust a Stanford communications major to do it with a literary reference.”

  “Mason, please. Julian’s coming and we don’t have a lot of time.”

  “I’m disappointed in you. It won the Nobel Prize for literature, and you haven’t read it?”

  “What’s she telling us?”

  “Lord of the Flies,” he said. “Maybe there is a beast… Maybe it’s only us.”

  CHAPTER 162

  “More caves is logical.” Dmitry stood next to Juan in front of the table in the blockhouse, looking down at the map. “Because of faults—lots of faulting in this part of coast.”

  “Show me.” Juan handed him the
pen.

  Dmitry tapped the table at a spot beyond the eastern edge of the map. “San Andreas Fault.” With the back of the pen he traced a long course. “Big 1989 Loma Prieta earthquake, caused by San Andreas Fault.”

  He drew a line on the map, along the mainland near the coast, which cut past Año Nuevo Point. “San Gregorio Fault, part of Alquist-Priolo Earthquake Fault Zone. Branches off San Andreas Fault up in north, runs down to here.”

  Moving his pen closer to Año Nuevo Point, he added another, shorter line, connecting to the first. “Año Nuevo Creek Fault.”

  Closer to the point and the channel that separated it from the island, he added yet another. “Frijoles Fault.”

  Two more, each shorter and closer to the channel than the last. “Green Oaks Fault. Año Nuevo Thrust Fault.”

  Dmitry added another fault line, which ran through the channel separating the island from the mainland. “At least one fault in middle of channel. Probably more, here under island, also.”

  He tapped the island with his pen.

  “That’s why finding cave is not surprising. Probably lots of cave under island. When Coast Guard built lighthouse hundred forty years ago, they block some cave with cement to keep water out, control erosion.”

  Juan thought about it, but he couldn’t concentrate. Jordan’s rolling travel bag was still next to her cot. Why had he let her go? He should have gone after her. He pictured Jordan’s beautiful expressive face, her myriad expressions: Jordan happy. Jordan thoughtful. Jordan serious. Jordan moving above him, looking at him with a half frown of concern on her face. Jordan in the throes of ecstasy, eyes open and vulnerable, sharing herself completely with him.

  Jordan’s face at the end, so angry, so utterly furious with him. He had deserved it. He had treated her so badly. He had ruined everything.

  He was missing what Dmitry was saying.

  Face tight, Juan forced himself to concentrate. He studied the map. Año Nuevo Island sat at the juncture of a converging network of geological faults. The fault lines increased in density the closer they came to the island.

  “So this would be a really bad place to be when California’s big one hits?” he asked.

  Dmitry nodded. “Bad place for earthquake. Very bad.”

  CHAPTER 163

  Camilla stood on the elevated walkway, watching the elephant seals on the beach below. She needed to find Jordan and speak with her, get her to rejoin the others before it was too late.

  The sun was climbing over the horizon now. They would be face-to-face with Julian soon. They didn’t have much time, and they needed Jordan’s help.

  Camilla scanned the crowds of seals. There seemed to be fewer than before, which made it easier to spot what she was looking for.

  Despite the dread that weighed her limbs and sat like a brick in her gut, she couldn’t help feeling a certain awe as she watched Jordan move among the seals. Her motions mimicked those of the animals around her: long pauses, languid stretches, followed by short bursts of shuffling, limping forward motion. The elephant seals that Jordan passed did not react even when she brushed against them or pushed them as she went by. They seemed to accept her as one of them.

  She did not look like a person who had lost her mind.

  Relieved, Camilla let out the breath she had been holding and lowered herself to drop from the walkway to the sand.

  The seals around Jordan scattered at Camilla’s approach. Jordan stood up from her crouch, balancing storklike on one leg. She leaned on the speargun, using it as a crutch. Neither friendly nor unfriendly, her face was set in an expression of stony indifference. She didn’t say anything.

  Camilla found herself at a loss for words. She swallowed.

  “Julian’s coming.”

  Jordan looked away, and her lips twitched in annoyance, as if she was disappointed in Camilla.

  “Don’t shut the rest of us out this way,” Camilla said. “We need your help. Maybe together we can figure out who Julian’s spy is, before he gets here.”

  “Oh, that.” Jordan turned away and limped along the beach, giving a dismissive wave behind her. “We’ve had the answer to that ever since the first presentation on the ship.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  “The company name. Vita Brevis.” Jordan’s pace was brisk, despite her limp.

  Camilla hurried to keep up. “What was that quote again?”

  “Ars longa, vita brevis, occasio praeceps, experimentum periculosum, iudicium difficile.” It was strange to hear Jordan pronounce the rolling Latin syllables, tossing them over her shoulder with indifference.

  “But what does it mean?”

  “It’s not important.”

  Camilla grabbed her arm. “Please, Jordan!”

  She answered in a bored monotone. “Art is long, life is short, opportunity fleeting, experiment dangerous, judgment difficult.”

  “So this is a sick experiment of some sort? Or we’re being judged somehow? What does it mean?”

  “What isn’t important. Who is.”

  “Who is what we’re trying to figure out here,” Camilla said. “I’m mystified. How does the quote tell us that?”

  Jordan just shook her head. But then she stopped for a moment and looked at Camilla—really looked at her. And smiled.

  Her wide, dazzling smile lit Camilla’s face like the sun, and she felt a burst of hope as the knots in her heart started to loosen.

  Jordan reached out and touched her forearm.

  “You don’t give up on people, do you?” she said. “I’m really sorry he brought you here, Camilla, because you don’t deserve this.”

  “Julian’s coming to kill us all,” Camilla said. “It’ll be much easier for him if we’re all separated like this, angry at each other. We need you with us right now, Jordan. I need you. Juan needs you.”

  At Juan’s name, Jordan’s face changed, turning ugly. Her fingers gripped Camilla’s forearm like a claw.

  “Juan needs me?” Her attempt at a sarcastic laugh sounded more like a choked sob. “Juan doesn’t need anybody, sister. Don’t you forget that. And don’t you dare trust that bastard.”

  Pushing Camilla’s arm aside, she turned and limped away down the beach with fast, angry strides.

  Watching her receding back, Camilla closed her eyes.

  “Oh god,” she said to the empty beach. “We’re all going to die here.”

  CHAPTER 164

  “Did you find JT?” Camilla asked.

  Brent shook his head. But he didn’t stop—just continued wagging his head back and forth much longer than would be normal. Camilla looked at his eyes, and her heart sank. His blue irises were wide and almost without pupils—he had injected himself again.

  She threw Mason a questioning glance that asked, Why didn’t you stop him?

  Mason shrugged and gave her a rueful grin. Then he pointed toward the narrow, bridgelike causeway of rock separating the northern part of the island—the seahorse’s head—from where they now stood.

  “We found an orange line in the sand,” he said.

  Camilla had gathered everyone she could—Mason, Brent, Juan, and Dmitry—near the fallen lighthouse tower to come up with a plan. Tamping down the rising panic inside that screamed at her to run, run, run because Julian was coming to kill them all, she thought about what Mason had just said.

  “Orange was JT’s paintball color,” she said. “He’s alive.”

  “But a line in the sand means only one thing,” Mason said.

  She nodded. “Cross at your own peril. He’s over there, in hiding, telling the rest of us to keep away or else. But that’s no good. We need his help.”

  “Unless he’s with Julian,” Mason said.

  Camilla walked over to the middle of the causeway, and the others followed. An irregular orange line, marked every few feet by a crushed orange paintball, cut across the narrowest section of dirt and rock, running its full forty-foot width.

  Heart pounding, Camilla hesitated for a moment. Th
en she stepped over the line and strode to the northern end of the causeway. She scanned the rocky ground beyond, seeing only emptiness.

  “I know you can hear me, JT,” she shouted. “We need your help. Julian’s coming to kill us all.”

  Silence greeted her in response.

  “Please, JT. Protect us. We need you.”

  Nothing but echoes.

  JT had abandoned them to die. Camilla tasted bitterness in her throat. This must have been how his wounded teammates felt in Afghanistan.

  Juan laid a hand on her shoulder. “The orange line may be a decoy. He could be behind us. Anywhere.”

  She stared at him, tense with doubt. Had Juan draw this line?

  “I know what you’re thinking, but I didn’t kill him.” Juan took his hand off her shoulder. “I’m not a killer, Camilla.”

  What about your brother Álvaro?

  And now Juan had given himself the last name Álvarez. Oh god. If JT was still alive, maybe he was hiding from Juan.

  She was going about this all wrong—trying to pull her team together, when they were probably the people she should be most scared of. Maybe Veronica, JT, and Jordan had the right idea, and Camilla, too, should be getting as far away from the others as possible.

  Brent cleared his throat. “What you were reading last night, about the history and archaeology of this place? Well, I read a little of it, too.”

  “Maybe your book club can meet a little later, then?” Mason said. “Right now isn’t a good time.”

  Brent ignored him and pointed out to sea. “When Spanish explorer Sebastián Vizcaíno sailed past here four hundred years ago he was already losing his crew to scurvy. Not a whole lot of medical knowledge back then.”

  “Yeah,” Mason said. “No modafinil to get them so high that they’d babble to each other about history instead of coming up with a plan.”

  Brent frowned at him. “I guess you didn’t take any of the pills, or you’d know there aren’t any euphoric effects associated with modafinil. My pupillary constriction and general feeling of well-being comes from other things—fentanyl and hydrocodone, mainly.”