New Year Island

by Paul Draker

  His heart sped up, faster and faster, hammering in his chest. He swam toward the center of the web.

  A great white passed alongside, its sandpaper skin brushing against his thigh.

  Ignoring it, he kicked closer.

  The whiteness looked like a dancing cloud sitting at the heart of the web, where all the chains met.

  Travis hung from the chains at one side of the white mass. The end of the scalpel still protruded from the hollow of his throat. His open eyes were milky and unseeing.

  Jacob hung on the other side, his forehead split and gaping, the skull misshapen like a stepped-on orange, his bearded face frozen forever in a silent scream.

  Juan swam between them, drawn irresistibly closer to the swirling streamers of white, as if by some terrible magnet.

  And then the current shifted. The gossamer cloud of tattered white fabric parted gently, revealing what lay at the heart of the web.

  Juan’s eyes widened.

  Bubbles exploded from his mouth as a giant, invisible hand crushed the air from his lungs.

  The regulator mouthpiece dropped from his lips, forgotten.

  Jordan wore a white wedding dress. Ribbons of lacy fabric from its tattered train swirled slowly about her slim, still figure. Her long blond hair drifted in a golden halo around her head. She hung suspended, one hand reaching toward Juan: a beautiful but cold sea queen, flanked by the silent ranks of her dark and terrible retinue.

  The bullet’s exit wound in her cheek was nearly invisible. Skilled hands had stitched it back together with delicate precision that spoke of a hate so exquisite it was almost love.

  The anger was gone from Jordan’s face. Her dead green eyes stared at Juan, filled with infinite sadness.

  The giant fingers around his chest tightened mercilessly. He couldn’t draw a breath. He clawed at his neck.

  She looked lost… So very lost.

  A terrible, strangled sound of despair tore out of his throat in a final burst of bubbles.

  He couldn’t live with this.

  Juan shut his eyes tight.

  CHAPTER 203

  “No!” Camilla splayed her hands against the screen. She watched, helpless, as Juan sank past Jordan’s bare feet. He slid from sight, hidden by the bottom of the monitor frame. A final burst of bubbles drifted up through the blue, dwindling away until there was nothing.

  She shook her head. He couldn’t be dead. He couldn’t be.

  She backed away from the monitor, unable to speak. A sob racked her body.

  Brent spoke behind her.

  “Every survivor’s got a breaking point, Camilla,” he said. “I think we just found Juan’s.”

  CHAPTER 204

  JT’s wrist was broken, he knew. She had broken one of his cheekbones, too. He held his other fist next to his cheek, ready, watching her circle him.

  A trail of blood ran from Veronica’s ear. He had caught her once, slamming her against the rocks, and she was moving funny now. Her back hitched with every step.

  “Don’t make me kill you,” he said. “Then Brent wins—he beats us both.”

  “Oh, don’t worry about Brent,” she said. “I’ll get around to him, too. Right after Mason and Juan.”

  She wiped blood from her chin, panting in excitement.

  “You know what?” she said. “I think I’ll even take care of that simpering little bitch. She’s like Mason’s little groupie.” A puzzled expression crossed her face. “I find that sort of odd. Don’t you?”

  “Your second husband was a police officer,” JT said. “He served with honor, did his duty. What would he think if he could see you now?”

  She laughed, a throaty chuckle of genuine mirth. “You’re forgetting how he met me. He knew how I was. It even turned him on.”

  She stepped over Julian’s squirming corpse, coming closer, and looked seductively up at JT.

  “He used to threaten me with it, JT. He’d abuse me, do terrible things to me. Sick, sick, beastly things.” Her nostrils flared. “Then he’d tell me how his brother officers would stand by him if I ever fought back. With my history, he could’ve made sure I went away for a long time. He thought I would just lie back and take it forever.”

  A finger-thick bloodworm looped over the top of Veronica’s athletic shoe, the bristly serrations along its sides rippling with agitation. Looking down at it, she frowned. Then she looked up at JT again.

  “Rather grotesque, don’t you think?” With a sharp laugh, she flicked the worm away and focused on him with renewed intensity.

  “Leo thought he was safe from me. But I found a way, didn’t I? You men, hiding behind your pathetic little uniforms. You think they can protect you while you do whatever you want to us. Tell me, JT, how are women treated in the Marine Corps?”

  “Some of the bravest Marines I know are women,” he said. “You’re a disgrace to everything they fight for.”

  “Look who’s talking,” she said. “I wonder what Sanchez, DiMarco, and Collins would say about you. But we can’t ask them, now, can we?”

  A weight settled over his shoulders. All of a sudden, he felt tired. Old.

  “Veronica, it doesn’t have to end this way.”

  “Oh, I think you’re wrong,” she said. “I think this is exactly how it ends for you.”

  Veronica charged him, her arms blurring in a vicious flurry of strikes.

  CHAPTER 205

  Juan’s consciousness was fading. Crushing, invisible coils pulled tighter around his body and held him immobile as he sank. He stopped struggling and settled to the seafloor, ninety feet below the surface, letting it all go away.

  A voice spoke in the blackness. In Spanish. Dimly, he recognized his brother Álvaro—laughing, happy, the way he always had been.

  “When I saw that monstruoso shark tooth, César, I knew I had to get it for you.” Álvaro’s joking voice turned serious. “I know how you love the sea, but I worry about you sometimes, big brother. Keep this next to your heart. It will keep you safe from harm.”

  Juan remembered holding the wedge-shaped megalodon fossil in his hands for the first time, marveling at its timeless perfection. It was twenty million years old, and his brother had bought it just for him. His heart swelled with affection.

  And then he remembered.

  Álvaro spoke again. His voice sounded different now. Colder. No longer a memory.

  “I understand why you left, big brother,” he said. “Our life—it was not a good life. Maybe for papá, but not for us. We would have come with you, César—I would have come with you. But you never even asked us.”

  Juan’s chest heaved. A few tiny bubbles trickled out through his nose.

  “I cannot forgive you,” Álvaro’s voice said. “Neither can Constancia or mamá. Nor can Jordan forgive you now. We are dead, and the dead cannot forgive.”

  The voice in his head changed again, no longer sounding like Álvaro.

  “But now other people need you,” it said. “If you die, so will they. Open your eyes, pendejo! This, too, is a coward’s choice. You are running away again.”

  Juan recognized the voice in his head.

  It was his own.

  He opened his eyes.

  CHAPTER 206

  Sensing a change in the room’s lighting, Camilla raised her head.

  Brent was no longer smiling. His face wasn’t lit with a blue glow anymore. She swung around to stare at the monitor.

  On-screen, the blue water had disappeared. In its place, she could see a rough tunnel, lit by an uneven row of fluorescent tubes bolted at head height to the rocky wall. The tunnel’s walls were uneven and wet. The ceiling narrowed as it climbed out of sight, shrinking to a narrow fissure in the rock. Below, the fissure dropped into a wide crack in the tunnel floor, alongside one of the walls.

  A shiny black figure came into view. Its back was to the monitor as it strode purposefully down the tunnel, holding a gun in one hand.

  Camilla’s heart leaped in her chest, filling with joy.


  The figure was Juan.

  She grabbed Dmitry’s wrist, and he put his hand over hers and squeezed.

  Behind her, Mason laughed.

  “You can’t kill a survivor that easily, Brent.”

  CHAPTER 207

  Juan’s rubber-soled scuba booties splashed through puddles on the floor of the tunnel. A rough-edged crevice a half meter wide ran along one wall, near his feet. Sea foam surged down in the crevice. Orange starfish clung to its sides. The rock beneath his feet was nearly smooth, though. The fluorescent xenon tubes lit everything with a harsh, clinical white light.

  He had followed a chain through the second ravine, and it had led him here. Emerging from the water onto a rocky ledge, inside a cave roughly the size of the cistern dome that lay above, he had seen an electric chain haul, lag-bolted to the rock, beside a portable yellow Honda generator. The chain stretched up out of the water to wrap around a steel capstan the size of an oil drum, also bolted to the rock.

  There had been two exits from the cave: the pool of water, and the tunnel that Juan now stalked through, gun at the ready. He didn’t expect to find anyone else down here, but then again, Brent had surprised him time and time again.

  His heart ached with loss. He wanted to retrieve Jordan’s body so he could bury her properly, but he couldn’t afford the delay. There was too much at stake right now. No more mistakes.

  The ones he had already made would haunt him forever.

  Reaching the end of the tunnel, Juan stopped at stainless steel double doors set into the rock with a lumpy pour of concrete. The solid-looking metal doors reminded him of a hospital morgue. A red LED blinked from the keypad of a number lock built into the handle.

  Raising the Glock, he fired into the lock over and over again, sending white sparks scattering across the steel doors. In the enclosed tunnel, the pressure waves from the gunshots slammed against his eardrums, ringing loudly in his head. Tiny bits of shrapnel peppered his arm and hand, but he ignored their burning mosquito stings.

  On the seventh shot, the lock gave way. The steel doors swung open a few centimeters. Raising a foot, he kicked them wide.

  He smelled blood.

  The gallery beyond the doors looked like a cross between an operating room and an abattoir. A sense of urgency drove him forward. Sweeping the space with his gun, he moved inside.

  A row of eviscerated seal carcasses hung on hooks from the rocky ceiling. He pushed past them, bumping some and setting them swinging.

  Piles of black wet suits overflowed from a stack of storage crates.

  A half-stuffed wet suit lay on a stainless steel morgue table. The table’s wheels were locked to prevent it from rolling. Dark liquid dripped into the fluid tray beneath.

  Three other tables lay nearby. Unoccupied now.

  His throat tightened. Brent had stitched Jordan’s face on one of these cold steel morgue tables. He had changed her into her wedding dress here.

  Juan turned away.

  He paused briefly to pick up something that looked like a handheld power drill—a thick gray plastic pistol shape with a trigger, and a heavy battery built into the butt of the grip. Instead of a drill bit, a thick six-inch cylinder projected like the suppressor on a silenced pistol.

  Captive bolt gun.

  Juan recognized the device, normally used to stun cattle for slaughter. The steel bolt penetrated the skull with shattering force to destroy the brain. This was what Brent had used on his silent nightly seal hunts… and on Jacob.

  Juan’s fist tightened on the handle and his lips pulled back from his teeth as he imagined holding it to Brent’s forehead and pulling the trigger.

  Maybe his own forehead right afterward, too. Oblivion. An end. Peace.

  He pictured Camilla’s face. She would be disappointed in him right now.

  Putting the bolt gun down, he wiped his fingers on his wet suit and moved on.

  A steel sink with high gooseneck faucet hose stood next to a wall, alongside its pressure tank and pump.

  A chain saw rested on a length of steel counter, next to a black rubber butcher’s apron and curved acrylic face shield.

  Juan moved past, taking it all in with rapid glances, seeing nothing useful.

  He knew he didn’t have much time.

  Brent would have an endgame in mind, and events were moving rapidly toward some unknown conclusion. To save Camilla and the others from whatever fate Brent had planned for them all, Juan would have to move even faster.

  The tunnel continued on the other side of the operating room. He could hear the faint hum of generators ahead. Raising the gun, he moved into the circular chamber that lay just beyond.

  The uneven ceiling of this second cave was much higher than the first. Aquamarine light filtered from cracks ten meters overhead, projecting in diagonal rays like sunbeams through the stained-glass windows of a church. Tendrils of kelp dangled from the ceiling, drying in the air.

  A row of dehumidifiers sat along the wall to his right, next to a humming yellow Honda generator. A double-wide server rack, dense with computer and network equipment and hanging loops of Cat-6 network cabling, stretched the length of the left wall. Blinking green and amber lights winked in a chaos of shifting patterns above the row of portable generators that lined the rack’s base.

  Just ahead, an array of six wide-screen computer monitors, two high and three wide, dominated the room. The monitors lined a long stainless steel desk that also supported a wireless aluminum keyboard and track pad.

  A mesh-backed Aeron office chair sat in front of the desk.

  Juan knew he had found Brent’s office. This was where the doctor spent the night shift.

  He crossed the floor rapidly. A plastic crate of foil-wrapped Powerbar energy bars sat near his feet. He shoved it aside with his toe as he passed.

  Next to the monitors, shiny chrome nozzles and stainless steel gleamed from a high-end espresso machine.

  Stopping in front of the desk, he shrugged the scuba rebreather from his shoulders and dropped it against the wall. He slid into the chair.

  A framed certificate hung from the rocky wall above the monitors. Glancing at the prestigious-looking diploma—Johns Hopkins School of Medicine—Juan smirked.

  A framed photograph sat next the keyboard. His smirk faded. A younger Brent smiled at him, one arm around a teenager Juan recognized from Julian’s first profile: Brent’s son Jonathan. Brent’s wife, Mary, stood in front of them both, beaming.

  A large coffee mug sat on the desk—a child’s hobby project painted in bright happy colors, now faded and chipped. Large, uneven letters wrapped around the mug: a child’s handwriting, saying, “World’s Greatest Dad.”

  Another framed photograph sat nearby: Jordan’s dazzling smile, laughing as she leaned over Jonathan from behind, her arms clasped around his shoulders.

  The crushing bands tightened around Juan’s chest again. He turned away from Jordan’s picture and tapped the track pad on the desk before him.

  Six monitor screens brightened, filling the room with their glow.

  Two were divided into grids of smaller video windows—live shots of different places around the island, indoors and outdoors. In one, he could see himself from the side, leaning toward the monitors. In another window, his own face loomed large, staring out at him—no doubt from the camera atop the monitor.

  In a third, he could see Camilla’s eager face looking at him. Mason and Dmitry stood beside her. Behind them, Brent glared from his spread-armed position, crucified on the wheel. But where was JT? Juan couldn’t see him.

  He looked at the remaining monitors. Video editing software ran on one, displaying thumbnail clips of the work in progress: snippets from their ten days on the island, scenes from each of the games. One small preview window showed a great white shark exploding from the surface over and over, with Lauren in its jaws. In another, Jordan balanced on one leg, aiming the speargun at a cringing version of himself.

  Seeing it sent Juan’s thoughts back to
the cattle bolt gun in the next room. An end to the pain.

  The Glock strapped to his thigh would get the job done just as well.

  He looked away.

  The next monitor displayed a directory folder listing dozens of video files:

  Camilla Profile.mp4

  JT Profile.mp4

  Natalie Profile.mp4

  Lauren Profile.mp4

  …

  Juan scrolled down the list.

  …

  Shipboard Welcome.mp4

  Seal Roundup Intro.mp4

  Seal Roundup.mp4

  Seal Roundup – penalty.mp4

  Scavenger Hunt Intro.mp4

  Scavenger Hunt – serious injury.mp4

  Scavenger Hunt – fatality.mp4

  Scavenger Hunt – multiple fatalities.mp4

  Capture the Flag Intro.mp4

  Capture the Flag – incomplete.mp4

  Capture the Flag – serious injury.mp4

  Capture the Flag – fatalities.mp4

  …

  Narrowing his eyes, he scrolled down to the bottom.

  …

  Julian’s Posthumous Accusation.mp4

  Most Dangerous Game – Jordan dead.mp4

  Most Dangerous Game – Jordan injured.mp4

  Most Dangerous Game – Jordan victory.mp4

  Closing Ceremonies – the Fog Signal.mp4

  Juan looked at the last entry. Sounding the fog signal would have certainly meant their deaths. But what would the signal have triggered? Poison gas? A cloud of some deadly virus or disease, released into the air?

  Turning to the last monitor, he could see a file transfer in progress. The progress bar filled while a digital timer counted down the remaining seconds:

  0:06… 0:05… 0:04… 0:03… 0:02… 0:01… 0:00

  UPLOAD COMPLETE

  He tapped the keyboard, and a password dialog appeared. Locked.