by Paul Draker
Uncurling her body, she crawled toward the light. It receded, guiding her forward, drawing her into a narrow tunnel that led up. At the end of the tunnel, radiance pulsated, sparkling white.
Camilla crawled up the tunnel, drawn toward the light. All her pain and confusion fell away, dropping from her like cut coils of rope. She left them behind. She shed her sorrow and her terror like a butterfly pulling free of its constricting cocoon.
Calm contentment washed over her. She smiled with joy.
She drew nearer, and the white light expanded to aching brightness, filling her view. A gentle, welcoming breeze caressed her face.
She was at peace.
She remembered now. The light had been there for her twenty-three years ago. It sang to her when she was a frightened child. It had always been there for her.
It was a part of her.
She closed her eyes against the blinding brightness and pushed forward.
Camilla went into the light.
CHAPTER 222
Eyes still closed, Camilla raised her face to the warm sun. The coastal wind lifted her hair and made it dance around her cheeks. On her hands and knees, she took a deep breath of cool ocean-scented air.
She smiled to herself in pure contentment, wrapped in the sheer joy of being alive. Crossing her legs under her, she sat back on her haunches. Leaning back on her hands, she opened her eyes wide and looked around her, taking it all in.
Birds swooped through the blue sky overhead. Seals swarmed on the rocky slopes in front of her and the beach down below. A cacophonous symphony of animal noises greeted her ears: the sounds of life. She felt a deep connection to the vitality all around her, filling her heart and running through her veins, bathing her in warmth. She was a part of this, and she always would be. She didn’t have to be afraid anymore.
Kneeling on the island’s highest point, next to the wreckage of the lighthouse tower, she looked back at the circular opening behind her. The metal fog whistle lay close by, fallen on its side. She stared in wide-eyed wonder at the tunnel’s narrow mouth. She had crawled through the steam pipe that they had cleaned and refitted—all of them working together to rebuild Año Nuevo’s fog signal. Her eyes followed the pipe down the hill to the flattened wreckage of the fog signal buildings. The buildings had been leveled completely, slumping into the massive crater that now deformed the island’s surface.
Her joy turned bittersweet. Dmitry was still down there. And Brent.
She would track down their families, the families of all the dead. She would share their grief with them. But that wasn’t the only unhappy duty she had to attend to now. Looking at the empty chair that stood nearby, she shook her head sadly.
“You should turn yourself in,” she called out. “A judge might count that in your favor.”
A grinning Mason limped out from behind the wreckage of the tower.
“First Juan crawls out from under a rock, and now you do, too,” he said. “I guess I shouldn’t be surprised, by now. It looks like there’s something to all this ‘survivor’ nonsense after all.”
Camilla stood and walked over to Mason. She didn’t like the way his smile had changed when he said Juan’s name. Narrowing her eyes, she prodded him in the chest.
“What did you do to him?” she asked.
He looked away.
“Where is he?”
“Well, he was in pretty bad shape already—”
“Mason!”
“So I let him get some rest.” He laughed. “Don’t worry, I didn’t hurt your precious hero. I left him down there, in the shade next to the blockhouse.”
She shoved past Mason and scrambled down the slope, rounding the corner of the blockhouse. A wet suit-clad body lay sprawled on the ground. Black dive fins splayed from beneath his shoulders, like broken wings.
She dropped to her knees by Juan’s side and touched his face. Mason hadn’t been joking. He looked terrible: bruised and bloody. He was breathing, though. She closed her eyes in relief.
“I think your boy toy is broken,” Mason said, leaning over her shoulder. “He doesn’t hear so well anymore.”
Then his face turned thoughtful. He pulled Brent’s phone out of his pocket and tilted it toward Camilla. “I saw him on here, you know. Juan was still down below when everything blew up. I think he managed to disarm a lot of the explosives before it did. It could have been a lot worse.”
Camilla brushed her hair behind her ear and stared down at Juan’s pallid, unconscious face.
“He did it for us, Mason.” She blinked back tears. “He was willing to sacrifice himself to save us.”
Mason stiffened at her side.
Then the hair on the back of her neck stood up.
A familiar velvety voice, edged with ragged steel, froze her in place.
“Jesus Christ, how very fucking touching,” it said. “I’m getting all watery eyed, listening to you idiots.”
Veronica stepped out of the blockhouse.
CHAPTER 223
Veronica walked with a hitch, holding her back with an odd stiffness. Blood ran from her hairline and encrusted her forehead. One of her eyes was a crimson, bloodshot orb.
“Young lady,” she said, “you’ve made some poor decisions about the company you choose to keep.”
Mason was no longer at Camilla’s side. Out of the corner of her eye, she saw him back away, limping.
Veronica turned toward him. “How’s the knee?” she asked sweetly.
Leaning forward, Camilla grabbed Juan’s shoulders and shook him, hard.
His eyes opened. His hand clutched at his thigh and came up with the Glock. He shook his head as if to clear it, his eyes narrowed, and he sat up fast, aiming the gun at Veronica.
“Where’s JT?” he asked her.
“Oh, he couldn’t make it,” Veronica said. “But he says hi.”
Juan looked at Camilla, and the confusion on his face sent a pang through her chest. He had no idea what Veronica had said.
He couldn’t hear.
She shook her head at him slowly. Sadness flickered across his face, and a weight seemed to settle over his shoulders. He held the gun on Veronica.
“Put that away, you cretin,” she said. “I’m not interested in you right now.” She pointed a chipped fingernail at Mason. “It’s that animal I need to talk to. About Natalie.”
Frowning, Juan rolled to his feet with feline grace, despite his injuries. His gaze followed Veronica’s finger to the retreating Mason, who grinned.
Juan turned back to face Veronica and spoke with the exaggerated diction of the deaf.
“I can’t hear you,” he said, “but I think you’re confused. This was all Brent’s doing.”
She growled a throaty noise of frustration. “Morons. Why do I even bother talking to you? It’s a waste of time.” She stalked toward them with hitching steps.
Holding the gun on Veronica, Juan took Camilla’s arm with the other hand and tried to tug her away. She gently pulled free and stood her ground.
“Mason didn’t take Natalie,” she said to Veronica. Then she hesitated. “Well, okay, the first time it was him. And he did kill Heather…”
“Thanks a lot, Camilla.” Mason said.
“…but the second time, it was Brent that took Natalie. Not Mason…” Her voice trailed off, because Veronica was staring at her with an incredulous expression.
Camilla swallowed.
“What the fuck is wrong with you people?” Veronica asked. “I swear to God, you’re all fucking crazy.”
Juan gripped Camilla’s arm again, and she turned to see wide-eyed surprise on his face. His gaze swung between her and Mason, and she realized he had caught some of the conversation. Juan gave her arm a squeeze and tilted his head toward her, questioning.
“It’s complicated,” she said.
He looked at Mason, then back at her again, and shrugged. Then his gun hand moved, panning back and forth between Mason and Veronica.
“Get out of my way,” Veronica said, shoving
past them.
“Don’t kill him,” Camilla called after her. “I want him to turn himself in.”
Mason laughed. “Not very likely. Sorry, Camilla.”
“Don’t worry, I won’t kill him.” Veronica stalked after Mason with hitching strides. “No, I’ll just finish the job on your knee, Mason. I’ll destroy your other knee, too. I’ll break your elbows, hyperextend them backward. And then I’ll break your back.”
She licked her teeth in excitement. “I’ll leave you flopping around on the ground in your own shit, just like a seal. What do you say to that, you sick animal?”
Mason stopped limping away.
“Shoot her, Juan,” he said.
Seeing no reaction, Mason laughed. He raised a hand and gave a patronizing little wave, as if to get Juan’s attention. Then he made a gun with his thumb and index finger and pointed it at Veronica, pantomiming shooting. He grinned, raised his eyebrows, and lifted a finger to his chin in a mocking a-ha! of realization.
Juan’s expression went icy with dislike. Camilla put a hand on his wrist and pushed his gun arm down.
“Veronica, you don’t have to do this,” she said. “Let’s help each other, instead. That’s what survivors do.”
“Survivors?” Veronica gave a sultry laugh. “What a crock of shit. Live, and you’re a survivor. Die, and you aren’t. Everything else is just foreplay.”
A loud metallic boom, felt as much as heard, rolled across the island.
Veronica’s mouth snapped shut.
Camilla stood stock-still, listening as the echoes died away. She scanned the terrain around her, trying to locate the source of the sound. Mason and Veronica were doing the same. Juan squeezed her arm again, and she raised a silencing finger to her lips.
The boom rolled across the island again, bouncing off the bluffs.
She slowly turned her head to stare at the wreckage of the fog signal building. At the near edge of the shattered heap of wood and metal, a section of shiplap wall lay inclined like a giant cellar door. It quivered and slid six inches.
Camilla stared at it, her scalp tightening. The others stood frozen in place, staring at it also.
Seconds ticked by as she held her breath.
The boom sounded a third time, and the section of wall burst open, falling aside with a crash to reveal a rectangular opening into darkness.
Icy fingers gripped her insides.
Oh god. What else was down there with me?
A six-foot metal wheel flew out of the gaping hole, trailing broken chains. It bounced once, landed on its edge, and rolled by Camilla, passing between her and Mason.
Thirty feet beyond them, it wobbled and fell over with a metallic thud, oscillated a few times like a spun coin winding down, and came to rest with a clinking of chains on rock.
Her head turned slowly back to face the opening.
Just beyond the edge of the light, something glimmered in the shadows.
Heart pounding, she strained her eyes, trying to see.
An asymmetrical black silhouette lurched up the ramp of rubble inside, moving with nightmarish speed.
In a frenzy of churning motion, it exploded into the light.
Camilla stared, and her hands rose to twist themselves into her hair. She shook her head in denial.
“Oh god no!” she screamed.
CHAPTER 224
Brent stood on the threshold of the rectangular opening, rippling with spastic energy. Even standing still, his entire body jerked and shuddered as the muscles contracted and contorted independently.
Drawn by Camilla’s scream, his head snapped in her direction, like a raptor spotting prey. The white Frankenstein bolt of a syringe protruded from the side of his neck, vibrating in time with the machine-gun staccato of his pulse. A half-dozen larger syringes, like the one he had revived Natalie with, projected in a cluster at the center of his black neoprene-clad chest.
His pupil-less blue eyes—the merciless eyes of a crocodile—focused on her. He grinned a smeary red grin.
“The doctor is in,” he said.
Camilla stared in utter disbelief at the thing that used to be Brent. Gorge rose in her throat. She clutched Juan’s arm blindly, unable to tear her eyes away.
“How can anyone be alive like that?” she screamed in a voice shrill with horror, hurting her own ears.
Listing to one side like a broken tower, Brent tilted his chin down to look at himself. His left leg was oddly crumpled. Splintered bone projected from the side of his upper thigh, emerging from his wet suit.
His brow furrowed in puzzlement.
Both his legs were entangled in a ropy mass of soft, knotted coils and spongy lumps that hung from a gaping, crescent-shaped cavity below his chest. The train of blood-slick entrails stretched behind him like a tail, glistening wetly through a coating of dirt and soot.
He turned his neck to look at it.
Camilla followed his gaze to where the ropy coils of his intestines trailed out of the darkness of the opening, ten feet behind him. She sucked in a choking breath.
“Oh god!” she screamed. “Why doesn’t he bleed to death?”
Brent’s eyes met hers, and confusion crept across his face. He raised his left arm. Two gleaming white bones projected from a flapping sleeve of torn flesh where the arm ended, just below his elbow. He scratched the side of his head with the bones of his forearm, thinking about her question. Then his expression cleared.
“Epinepherine is a vasoconstrictor,” he said.
The crescent-shaped opening below his sternum was lined with the jagged points of splintered ribs, like a shark’s mouth. It sagged wider, disgorging more of his insides. They slid to the ground at his feet. Deep inside his chest, a purple lump shuddered with jackhammer speed and intensity, making the dangling coils jiggle and dance. Brent’s heart.
Camilla gagged.
His head snapped away from her, jerking from person to person. He stared at Juan, Mason, and Veronica in turn.
“I’m afraid I have bad news for all of you,” he said. “I see malignancy. You survivors are a cancer metastasizing through the human race, destroying the normal, healthy cells.”
The twin bones of his forearm jerked through the air like pincers or prongs, their splintered ends tracing restless patterns in front of him. Brent’s grin widened. His nose, cheeks, and jaw were coated with slick red from ear to ear. She recoiled in horror, realizing just how the doctor had freed his pinned arm.
“Excision is our only option,” he said, “Surgical removal is necessary to save the patient.”
He exploded into horrific, shambling motion, humping toward them with unbelievable speed, his arms and legs jerking spastically in a way the human body was never designed for.
Camilla knew they wouldn’t be able to outrun him. He looked inhuman, like a terrible broken machine. Unstoppable.
She stood frozen.
The gun came up beside her shoulder, gripped in both Juan’s hands. A litany of mumbled Latin spilled from his lips.
“Sáncte Míchael Archángele, defénde nos in proélio…”
She stared at him in surprise.
“…cóntra nequítiam et insídias diáboli ésto præsídium…”
The Glock roared in Juan’s hands, making her ears ring.
Brent drew up short, rippling and jerking in place. He looked down at his chest, where Juan had shot him.
“Tuque, prínceps milítiæ cæléstis…” Juan pulled the trigger again. A second red bullet hole popped onto the chest of Brent’s wet suit.
Brent looked up with surprised amusement spreading across his face.
“Sátanam aliósque spíritus malígnos…” Juan’s next shot struck Brent near his collar.
Brent grinned, shaking his head apologetically.
“…divína virtúte, in inférnum detrude.” The Glock roared a fourth time.
Brent raised his shoulders and spread his arms in a perfect imitation of Juan’s usual shrug. His grin widened with malevolence.
Camilla shook off her paralysis. She grabbed Juan’s arm, and he swung his face toward her, expression tight with fear.
Camilla pointed at her forehead as Brent exploded forward again.
Juan nodded. Turning to face Brent’s charge, he raised the gun higher.
The Glock barked one last time in his hands.
The bullet caught Brent above the right eye, knocking his head back in a pink spray of tissue and bone fragments.
The gun’s slide locked back. Camilla knew what that meant. Out of bullets.
Brent stood swaying, his head hanging back, chin pointed upward. He lifted both arms to embrace the sky above him, raising the bones of his forearm high.
Camilla covered her mouth with a palm. She held her breath, waiting for him to fall.
He roared a gargling laugh.
His voice changed, turning warped and discordant, doubling, as if two people were laughing at the same time. His head jerked forward again to stare at her. The upper right side of his forehead was missing, and the top of his eyeball gleamed white and wet between the grayish furrows of exposed brain.
“Why don’t you just die?” Mason’s voice held amused wonder.
Camilla was surprised to find him next to her, and Veronica a few feet away on Juan’s other side. Instinctively, they had all pulled together in the face of an even greater threat.
“I guess I was wrong,” Brent said. “It seems I’m a survivor, too.”
His horrible doubled voice sent a chill down Camilla’s spine; the bullet must have damaged the part of his brain that controlled speech.
She grabbed Juan’s arm and took a step backward, dragging him with her.
“Change in plans.” Brent’s eyes were bright with happy malice. “After I kill all of you, I’ll recruit more survivors. I can keep doing this again and again and again.”
Veronica gave a throaty chuckle. “Don’t be ridiculous. You should see yourself.” She shook her head slowly in disapproval. “You look bad, Brent. Really bad. You’re falling apart.”
“Don’t worry about me, I’ll be fine.” That eerie doubled voice made Camilla cringe. “I’m a doctor, remember?” He threw his head back to scream insane doubled laughter at the sky. “Physician, heal thyself!” he roared.