Bray saw the confusion on Hawkins’s face. “Highlander, the movie. ‘There can be only one.’ No? Nothing? Forget it. When they couldn’t get a lot of spiderwebs from the spiders, they made a chimera from spiders. And goats. Instead of producing milk, the goats now squirt out spider silk. How fu—”
A second thud, louder than the first, reverberated from the floor above.
“What’s going on up there?” Bray asked.
Hawkins said nothing. He sat up in bed, listening. But the sound did not repeat. He slid his feet onto the floor. “I’m going to check it out.”
Bray once again shrugged off the interruption, but had finished his lecture. He picked up the sketch pad from the desk and flipped through the images. Most were quick sketches of wildlife, sometimes landscapes or random images of whatever happened to be in front of Hawkins at the time.
Hawkins stood to leave, but Bray’s next words froze him in place.
“Oh ho!” Bray said, stopping his rapid-fire page flipping. “Nice.”
He turned the sketch pad around so Hawkins could see the drawing. It was a detailed sketch of Joliet. In a bikini. She’d been tanning on deck when he came across her. He had realized she was sleeping when he spoke to her, but got no reply. After finishing the sketch, he woke her with a cough so she wouldn’t get sunburned. But he never mentioned the drawing. Not to Joliet. Or Bray. “Say a word about that and I’ll make you afraid to close your eyes at night.”
Bray laughed and turned the pages again. “Fine. Fine. Just say something to her soon. Your pining is killing me.”
“I don’t pine,” Hawkins said.
“I work in a high school,” Bray replied. “I know pining when I see it.” He stopped flipping pages again. “What’s this?”
Bray showed Hawkins the image. It was a sketch of the pillbox he’d done from memory before drawing the draco-snakes.
“That’s the pillbox,” Hawkins said.
Bray pointed to the text above the entrance. “Looks Japanese.”
“Know what it says?” Hawkins asked.
“I think we’ve established that neither of us reads Japanese, or maybe you think I just struggle with the word ‘broccoli’? Drake might know, though. He’s been around the world a few times.”
A third loud bang sounded from above. This time, the boom was followed by rapid-fire bumps moving across the ceiling.
“Someone’s running,” Bray commented.
Hawkins looked at him. “Where’s Joliet?”
17.
Hawkins went for the door as the thumping sound overhead moved quickly away. Someone’s running, he thought as he twisted the door handle. But why? He pulled the door open to an empty hallway. The stairwell on the right side of the hall was also empty.
But he could hear someone descending the stairs two at a time. The light step and quick puffs of air revealed the runner as Joliet. Running a treadmill in calm or rough seas never gave her any trouble and she breathed the same way when she exercised.
“Joliet, what are—”
“Back!” she shouted before reaching the bottom. “Get in your room!”
Joliet emerged from the stairs a moment later. Blood ran from her forehead over her cheek.
Hawkins stayed frozen in place, trying to comprehend why Joliet was running and how she’d been injured.
Joliet, on the other hand, barreled toward him like a Pamplona bull. “Get back!” She shoved Hawkins back inside the room.
Hawkins was about to ask her what the hell was going on when he heard a second set of footfalls coming from the stairwell. And those feet sounded much heavier. Joliet was being chased, by someone large. He clenched his fist and headed for the door. “Bray.”
“I’m with you, Ranger,” Bray said, coming up behind him.
But Joliet stopped them in their tracks by slamming the door closed. She pushed the button lock, but didn’t look relieved at all. “We need to block the door!”
“Blok the door?” Bray said. “Who the hell is out there.”
“I don’t know! Just block the door!”
Loud footsteps approached the door. Hawkins thought he could actually feel each footfall vibrating through the floor.
“Joliet,” Hawkins said, taking her shoulders in his hands. “If it’s anyone from the crew, we can handle them.”
She shook her head, eyes darting back and forth. She shrugged away from Hawkins and darted across the small room. She picked up the metal desk chair and ran back to the door. She wedged the chair under the doorknob and stood back.
Bray smiled and shook his head. “Okay, so now that we have a locked metal door with a chair, would you mind telling us what—”
An explosive impact pounded the door from the other side. It shook, but remained intact. The very loud and sudden sound made Joliet, Bray, and Hawkins jump away from the door.
“Hey!” Bray shouted, his embarrassment about being frightened turning quickly to anger. “Who’s out there! Cut the shit or I’m going to—”
The second impact bent the top of the door inward. The bend was slight, not quite an inch, but the strength it would require to bend the metal door wasn’t lost on Hawkins.
Or Bray. “Goddamn, is he using a sledgehammer?”
Hawkins took Joliet’s face and turned her eyes to his. “Who is it?”
“I—I don’t know. I only saw a shadow. But he’s big.”
The door shook from another impact. The chair slipped free and fell to the floor.
“Really big,” Bray said. He quickly put the chair back into place and leaned against it, holding it in place.
“I went to medical,” Joliet said. “To check on Sanchez. I think … I think he’s dead. The lights were out. Broken. But I could smell blood.”
Bang! The door bent a little more.
Bray grunted as the impact shook the chair. “Hawkins, be ready if this guy gets through!”
“When I called for help, I saw him. Just a shadow. And when I ran, he chased. That’s all I know.”
Bang!
Hawkins went to his dresser, opened the top drawer, and took out his knife and sheath. He quickly buckled the sheath around his waist and drew the blade.
Bray did a double take when he saw the knife in Hawkins’s hand. “Sure you want to use that? We don’t know for sure that Sanchez is dead. If this is just Ray on a bender—”
“It’s not Ray,” Hawkins said. “It’s a local.”
Bray and Joliet both stared at Hawkins, digesting his deduction. Bray finally nodded. “After the next strike, he’ll be winding up for another. I’ll open the door, you—”
“Hold on,” Hawkins said. “Listen.”
The thump of heavy footsteps receded and then pounded up the staircase.
“He’s leaving.” Bray let go of the chair and stood up.
Hawkins pulled the chair away from the door.
“What are you doing?” Joliet asked.
“I have to warn the others.” Hawkins grabbed the door handle and spoke to Bray. “Lock the door behind me.”
Hawkins could see that Joliet and Bray were both about to argue. “This isn’t a request.” The words were spoken with enough force to startle the pair. Neither argued when he opened the door and slid into the hallway. He listened as the door closed, the push-button lock was engaged, and the chair wedged into place. Satisfied his friends were safe, Hawkins tightened his grip on the hunting knife and started up the stairs.
Halfway to the top, Hawkins paused. Thumps reverberated through the ship, but he couldn’t tell if they were coming from above, or below. He was about to turn around and head to the lower levels when a gunshot rang out.
From above.
He charged up the stairs, knife in hand, ready for a fight. The outside door at the top of the stairwell lay open. Indistinct shouts filtered in through the warm nighttime air. He stepped onto the main deck of the Magellan and was greeted by a shouting voice.
“There he is! I see him!”
A rifle b
last was immediately followed by a loud ping as a bullet ricocheted off the metal wall just above his head. Hawkins ducked down. “It’s me! It’s Hawkins!”
Footsteps pounded toward him. “Hawkins. God. Are you all right?” An out-of-breath Jim Clifton stopped next to him.
“Wouldn’t be if you had better aim,” Hawkins said, eyeing the hunting rifle that was kept on board in case they came across an animal that needed to be put down.
“Sorry ’bout that,” Jim said. “Thought you were him.”
“Him, who?” Hawkins asked.
“Somebody’s on board. Knocked Blok on his ass.”
“Port side! At the bow!” This voice belonged to Captain Drake and Hawkins responded immediately. He snatched the rifle from Jim’s hands and sprinted toward the bow.
When he arrived on the starboard side of the bow, he scanned the area. The ship had been cleaned of debris, but the large net that Cahill had been entangled in lay at the center of the bow deck, folded into a large square.
A large shadow shifted on the other side of the deck. Hawkins raised the rifle, but didn’t pull the trigger. He wouldn’t shoot at a target he couldn’t clearly see. It could be Ray, for all he knew, and he wasn’t about to make the same mistake Jim had. Keeping the rifle raised, he stalked forward. “Stop where you are! Identify yourself!”
The shadow paused and Hawkins felt a pair of eyes looking at him.
“Who are you!” Hawkins shouted.
In a blur, the figure disappeared. At first, Hawkins wasn’t sure what happened, but then he heard a splash. “He went over the rail!” Hawkins ran to where he’d last seen the figure standing.
Footsteps pounded up behind him.
“Where’d he go?” Jim asked.
“Someone get a good look at that son of a bitch?” Drake barked.
Hawkins aimed the weapon toward the water. The half-moon provided a little light, as did the Magellan’s remaining outside lights—it seemed several had been broken by the intruder—but Hawkins couldn’t see anyone. Water sloshed near the shore and he saw a shape emerge.
How the hell did he swim so far so fast?
Didn’t matter. He wasn’t about to let him escape. He aimed low, hoping to hit the man’s leg and incapacitate him. Ignoring several more sets of approaching footsteps, Hawkins wrapped his index finger around the trigger.
He exhaled. Held his breath. Applied pressure.
“Hold your fire!”
The voice was ragged and wet, but Hawkins recognized Jones’s voice and didn’t fire. The man sounded wounded, physically and emotionally. He turned toward the voice.
Jones stumbled into view. “It took her. It has Jackie!”
The old man fell to his knees where light illuminated his face and torso. He was soaked with blood. His eyes rolled back.
Drake ran to Jones and caught him as his body collapsed.
Hawkins quickly scanned the beach. The intruder had escaped. Again.
“We’re going to find her,” Drake said to Jones, whose body had gone limp. “We’re going to get your girl back.”
Hawkins knelt next to Drake, who for the first time seemed overcome with emotion. He checked Jones’s neck for a pulse and was relieved to find one. As he pulled his hand away, Drake snatched his wrist in a tight grip. “You’re going to get that son of a bitch. You hear me? This is an island. He can’t run forever.”
Hawkins knew only one reply would be accepted, so he nodded and pulled his arm away. But he wasn’t so sure. First, they didn’t know if the intruder was alone. There could be an entire population on the island, for all they knew. Second, Jones’s warning about Jackie kept repeating in his mind.
It took her. It has Jackie.
It.
Not he. Not she.
It.
18.
Hawkins followed the barrel of the hunting rifle like a donkey behind a carrot. If anything in front of him so much as twitched, it would get a .44-caliber round before Hawkins bothered to introduce himself. The only other person wandering the ship was Bray, and he stood just behind Hawkins, brandishing a fire ax. Everyone else was locked inside the ship’s lounge on the first deck.
After the attack, Drake and Blok had run around the Magellan’s upper decks, closing and locking outside doors. Since the wheelhouse window had been punched in by the refrigerator, they’d locked that interior doorway, too. With the crew sealed inside, they had gathered in the lounge. Hawkins and Joliet had tended to Jones’s wounds—a bump on his forehead and a few scrapes—using the ship’s lounge as a makeshift medical room. While Drake fumed, pacing back and forth, deep in thought, Hawkins had offered to search the ship, level by level, to be sure they were alone. Drake agreed, but sent Bray along for backup.
They searched the first deck first, making sure that the lounge level was clear. Then they headed down to the lowest deck so they could work their way up. It had taken them twenty minutes to inspect the third deck, which housed a large generator room, laundry facilities, and several storage rooms including large dry, cool, and frozen food stores. They’d moved up to the second deck, searching from stern to stem. They’d found a few spots of blood—presumably Jones’s—in the prop motor room where the attack had taken place. They still didn’t know exactly what had happened. Jones had gone in and out of consciousness, but had never stayed awake long enough to give an account of what happened. And Bennett had been in the generator room. The winch room, upper generator room, and switchboard were all clear, as were the workshop, exercise room, and empty crew quarters. As they neared the front of the ship, Hawkins and Bray grew tenser. The science crew quarters were just ahead. This is where they’d had their own encounter with whoever, or whatever, had taken DeWinter.
As Hawkins nudged open one door at a time, sweeping the room with the rifle, he replayed the events in his mind. The invader had smashed their door, nearly knocking it in. After giving up, he ran straight to the rear of the ship, disabled Jones, and took DeWinter. He then ran up to the main deck, rounded the port side of the ship to the bow, and jumped into the water, crossing the distance to shore like an Olympic swimmer, all while holding an unconscious—or dead—woman over his shoulder. And he did all of that fairly quickly, sprinting to the back of the ship, up, and then back again.
But why? Why come after Joliet on one side of the ship and then run all the way to the back to take DeWinter? Something nagged at him. The answer was there, at the fringe of his thoughts. But other questions rose up, vying for attention. The horn that sounded before the attack. They had all heard it, but it didn’t originate from the Magellan. Did it come from the island? Or perhaps a passing ship? There was no way to find out, or even attempt to communicate. The idea that rescue might have passed by the island infuriated him. Made him want to punch something.
Then he rounded the corner and saw the door to his room. “Oh my God.”
“I told you,” Bray said. “It’s crazy.”
Hawkins had a hard time taking his eyes off the bent metal door, but dutifully checked the two rooms and single head on the way to his room. With the way clear, he searched his own room and then turned his attention back to the door. The top right of the metal door was bent inward. When closed, a two-inch gap separated the door from its frame. But the bent metal was just part of the picture. Large dents pocked the white door’s surface. At the center of each dent, the paint had chipped away to reveal the gray metal beneath.
“These dents are at least an inch deep,” Hawkins said, rubbing his fingers over the surface of the largest of the dents.
“I’m telling you, the guy had a sledgehammer,” Bray said. He raised the ax over his head and pretended to strike the door.
Hawkins shook his head. “The angle is wrong. The dents wouldn’t be so straight.”
“Maybe he used it like a battering ram?” Bray offered.
“The shape would be more rectangular.” Hawkins traced a finger around one of the nearly circular indentations. “You’d lose a lot of force using a
sledge like that.”
“Then what do you think?” Bray asked.
Hawkins stood to the side and motioned Bray closer. “Feel this.” He pointed to the largest dent.
Bray rubbed his hand over the surface of the dent.
“Feel the ridges?”
Bray nodded.
“Three of them, right?”
Bray felt the ridges with his fingertips. “Yeah. So?”
“Make a fist,” Hawkins said.
Bray looked dubious, but complied. Hawkins directed Bray’s fist, placing it in the hole.
“Your hand is a little smaller,” Hawkins said. “But it fits.”
“Geez, he was punching the door?” Bray said. “The guy must have been huge. And there’s no blood? How could someone do this without breaking their hand to bits and not opening a wound?”
Hawkins shrugged. “A glove?”
“An armored glove,” Bray added.
Hawkins could have spent a long time looking over the door and trying to theorize how it had been decimated, but they weren’t here to play detective. They had a ship to search. After clearing the next room, the pair headed up to the main deck, which held most of the ship’s labs—hydro, wet, computer, biology, and more—as well as a machine shop, the ROV bay, specimen freezers, which currently contained the dissected sea turtle, and the medical bay.
They searched stern to stem once again. Not because it was more efficient or had some kind of strategic value, but because of what they might find in medical. Sanchez. Joliet hadn’t gotten a good look at his body, but she’d been positive the man was dead. Had there been any doubt, she would have been the first person back to check on him. So after checking the rest of the interior main deck and coming up empty, Hawkins and Bray slowly approached the door to medical.
The metal door lay open. Darkness concealed most of the room. The only light came from the open door, which created a cookie-cutter streak of light across the white tile floor. But it was enough. A pool of dark red lay at the end of the light’s reach. The scent of blood hit Hawkins so hard, he could taste it like a mouthful of pennies.
Hawkins covered his mouth with his arm, stifling the odor and a groan. He paused at the door. The dark room would be the perfect place for an ambush. But he had no choice. He stepped into the room, cutting the beam of light with his shadow, and reached for the light switch. He flipped the switch and nothing happened. “Lights aren’t working,” he said. “Must have broke the bulbs.”
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