Island 731

by Jeremy Robinson

  These will do the job, Hawkins thought.

  “Hawkins!” Bray shouted from the hallway. “Better hurry up!”

  He rushed back into the hallway, armed with twin clubs and ready for a fight. But when he saw what waited for him, he nearly tripped and fell. In the thirty seconds he’d spent in the closet, seven more birds had entered the hallway.

  “I told you,” Bennett said, inching away. “I told you!”

  Hawkins sized up the birds. “Talons or not, they’re still just seagulls. We’ll be—”

  The seagull at the front of the pack spread open its wings and shook them. The wing span itself was impressive. At five feet across, the wings were nearly twice as long as the average gull’s. Despite the bird’s size, Hawkins took comfort in the knowledge that these were still birds. Hollow bones break easily, he thought. A few good whacks should send them all running.

  Hawkins took a step forward. Bray shadowed him. “When we get close enough, just start swinging.”

  The big gull’s wings shook more violently. Its chest seemed to vibrate as a high-pitched vibrato rose out of its throat. The beak opened wide to allow the sound out, but then opened wider.

  And wider.

  With a pop, the lower jaw unhinged. The beak, top and bottom, separated down the middle and came apart as the jaw bones opened wide, like digits, each tipped with a dagger of yellow beak. The digits flexed and twitched, pulling farther apart, like four talons ready to grab hold of prey and pull them into the newly revealed maw. Blood red gums emerged in the widening space. The jaws snapped open, flashing stark, white triangular teeth, each the size of a dime.

  “You’ve got to be shitting me!” Bray said. “Shark’s teeth?”

  “Piranha,” Joliet corrected. “They look just as powerful, too.”

  “What kind of sick fu—”

  “Bray,” Hawkins said.

  “What?”

  “Go!”

  Hawkins rushed in and swung hard with his right-hand club. The seagull tried to lunge at him, but his sudden attack caught it off guard. The nail missed the bird’s neck, but the club struck hard, knocking it to the floor. A loud clang of metal on concrete sounded out as Bray brought the ax down, decapitating the bird. The piranha jaws twitched open and closed. The snapping sound of teeth striking teeth sounded like a pair of two-by-fours being clapped together. Hawkins had no doubt that a single bite would remove a pool ball-size chunk of flesh with ease.

  “Watch your feet,” Hawkins said as he jumped over the bird.

  The rest of the flock burst into the air. Wings flapped. Beaks sprang open. Teeth clattered hungrily. Talons reached.

  Hawkins dove and rolled beneath the rising flock. He came to his feet at their core and began swinging. He struck a wing hard. The bone snapped. The seagull fell to the floor, spinning in circles as it tried to take flight again. He caught a second bird in the side of the head with a nail. It fell and didn’t move at all.

  He turned back as Bray shouted, fearing his friend had been wounded. But Bray’s shout was actually a war cry. The big man swung the ax over his head and struck a gull in the face. Piranha teeth scattered across the floor, but the bird’s head stuck to the blade. Bray tried to shake it off, but the jaws had clamped down tight in a death grip. Before he could kick it off, two seagulls descended. With a shout, Bray fended them off with the bird-tipped ax.

  A squawk above turned Hawkins’s eyes up. A set of jaws large enough to tear out his throat dropped toward him. Hawkins shouted as he ducked away and thrust one of his clubs up. The club struck the bird, dead center of its open maw, but caused it no injury. Instead, the powerful jaws snapped shut like a bear trap. The club cracked and split. The seagull pounded its large wings, but wasn’t strong enough to pull the weapon away from Hawkins. It did, however, delay him long enough for one of its brethren to attack.

  The bird swooped down, talons reaching for Hawkins’s face. He let go of his club and fell to the floor. They’re going for my face, he realized. My eyes. Trying to blind me. If Hawkins couldn’t see, he couldn’t fight. The birds somehow realized this, or perhaps had been trained to attack this way.

  Hawkins rolled onto his back and immediately had to roll again. A seagull crashed to the floor, its jaws scraping concrete as it chewed the air where his head had just been. Rolling back toward the bird, Hawkins swung hard and crushed the bird’s head against the floor. He also snapped his club in half.

  A seagull landed next to him, wings open wide, jaws open. He pushed away from it until his back struck the wall. He kicked at the bird, but nearly had his foot taken off. He tried again from the side, but the bird spun to intercept the blow.

  It hopped closer.

  Without a weapon, he wouldn’t be able to strike the bird without losing a digit, if not a hand or foot.

  “Mark, get down!” Joliet shouted.

  Against his better judgment, Hawkins decided to trust Joliet and duck. He heard her and Bennett both grunt. Angry squawks filled the air. The thud of birds being struck, too. And then the crash of wood. Hawkins spun toward the sound and found the seagull about to make a meal of him pinned beneath a pallet. A second wounded bird writhed on the floor.

  “One, two, three!”

  Hawkins watched as Joliet and Bennett lobbed a second oversize projectile into the fray. This one struck four birds before crashing to the floor.

  Overwhelmed by the turn of events, and perhaps more than a little confused, the remaining birds made for the door and disappeared. As Hawkins caught his breath, he heard the gulls’ calls fade into the distance.

  He jumped when the bird trapped beneath the pallet at his feet shrieked. He got to his feet as Bray finally managed to pry the dead bird from the end of the ax. “Mind if I borrow that?”

  Bray handed him the ax. With one swing, he took the bird’s head off. He then systematically walked around the room and decapitated five more wounded, but not yet dead, seagulls. As the last of their cries was abruptly silenced by the ax’s blade, he leaned the blood-soaked weapon against the wall and turned to Bennett.

  Despite nearly being killed by chimera seagulls with piranha jaws, a single question burned in Hawkins’s mind. Because as bad as things just were, he knew the answer had to be worse.

  “Bennett,” he said. “Why are you here?”

  32.

  Bennett’s hands shook as he emotionally imploded, folding in on himself as he fell to his knees and began weeping. His back shook from sobs.

  Bray grunted and rolled his eyes. “I’ll put the pallets back in front of the door. For all the good they did.”

  Joliet stood behind Bennett as Hawkins approached him. Her eyes told him to be gentle, but Hawkins knew his patience would wear out quickly if the kid didn’t pull it together soon. His presence here meant something had gone wrong on the Magellan.

  “Try to raise Blok on the two-way,” Hawkins said to Joliet. She nodded and went to find it in the side room.

  Hawkins crouched down in front of Bennett. “Phil. I need to know what happened.”

  No reply.

  Joliet returned, two-way radio in hand. “Come in, Magellan, this is Joliet. Do you read?”

  In the silence that followed, Bennett’s body shook.

  Hawkins glanced at Joliet, who repeated her silent message: Be gentle.

  “Phil,” Hawkins said. “Phil. Look at me.”

  Bennett looked up, his eyes rimmed red.

  “Tell me what happened, Phil. Why are you here?”

  The tears slowed. Bennett caught his breath. And then, between the occasional emotional hiccup, he said, “It … it came back. Got on board. I—I don’t know how.”

  “Magellan, please respond,” Joliet said into the radio. “Blok, are you there?”

  Hawkins glanced back to the entryway where Bray was shoving the pallets back in place. They’d make a pitiful barrier against the person—or thing—that had taken DeWinter and bent the metal door to his quarters. “Did it follow you here?”

>   Bennett shook his head quickly no.

  “How did you find us?” Hawkins asked.

  “I—I wasn’t trying to. I just ran. Straight through the jungle. I didn’t see a path until I got to the river.”

  “And the scrapes. The cuts. They’re from the seagulls?”

  Bennett nodded. He was calming down. “I think they saw me when I swam to the beach. Somehow tracked me through the jungle and attacked when I crossed the waterfall.”

  “Did you see anything else by the waterfall?” Hawkins asked, thinking the kid was damn lucky to have not been attacked by the croc.

  “I didn’t really look around,” Bennett said. “The birds were on me pretty much the moment I stepped onto the bridge. Nearly knocked me into the water.”

  “So,” Hawkins said, hoping the kid was ready to tell him the whole story. “What happened on the Magellan?”

  Joliet spoke into the radio again. “Magellan, come in. This is Joliet. Come in, Magell—”

  “You can stop calling them,” Bennett said, picking himself up off the floor. His face was grim. His lips quivered. “They’re dead. Blok. Jones and the Tweedles. All four. Dead.”

  Joliet stumbled back, her legs suddenly weak. She held on to the window frame to support herself. “What?”

  “It killed them.”

  “You saw them die?” Hawkins asked.

  Tears returned to Bennett’s eyes. “Jones. Didn’t need to see the rest. I heard them.” Bennett nearly began sobbing again, but held his emotions in check. “And I left them. I hid. And then I ran.”

  “Sounds like you didn’t have a choice,” Hawkins said.

  Bennett sniffed and wiped his arm across his nose. “I could have fought it. You would have. I could have—”

  Joliet put her arm around Bennett’s shoulder and he fell into her embrace, despite being nearly a foot taller than her. With his head over her shoulder, he wept some more.

  Hawkins turned away. He’d heard enough.

  Bray entered, looking concerned. “What happened?”

  “Says the crew is dead,” Hawkins replied.

  “Holy shit,” Bray said, rubbing his hand over his head. “Holy shit. What are we going to do?”

  Hawkins looked back at Joliet and Bennett, then back to Bray. “Plan stays the same. We stay the night here. Haul ass back to the Magellan. And then leave. Bennett can get us moving. We’ll do our best to help him steer us out of the lagoon and then we’ll head east until we hit land.”

  “We can’t go back there,” Bennett said, stepping away from Joliet. “We can’t!”

  “Phil,” Hawkins said as calmly as he could. “Listen. Whatever it is that killed the crew and took DeWinter, it’s nocturnal. The first time it came aboard was at night. When did it come aboard the ship?”

  “I don’t know.” Bennett said. “Maybe an hour ago?”

  “So dusk?” Hawkins asked.

  Bennett hesitated and then nodded. “Yeah, the sun was below the horizon.”

  “Dusk, then. Odds are it won’t come out during the day. So we stay here until morning, wait for the sun to be in the sky, and then head to the Magellan. We can be out of the lagoon before night.”

  “There isn’t really another choice,” Joliet said. “We can’t stay here.”

  Bennett was nodding now. “It could work.” He stepped away from Joliet, rubbing his head. “It could work. If we’re fast. If—”

  “Do you guys smell that?” Joliet asked.

  Bray sniffed the air. “Smell what?”

  Hawkins took a deep breath through his nose. “Something sweet.”

  “Like flowers,” Joliet said.

  “But it’s faint,” Hawkins said. “Could be nighttime-blooming species on the island.”

  “It’s really strong over here.” Joliet sniffed the air near the window.

  Hawkins stepped up next to Joliet and sniffed. It was stronger by the window, but … Hawkins leaned in close to Joliet and smelled again. “It’s you.”

  “Maybe she got something on her outside?” Bennett said. “In the jungle?”

  Hawkins wandered the hall, sniffing like a dog. As he neared the stairs, the odor of formaldehyde tickled his nose. Definitely not coming from up there.

  He turned around again. Bennett stood on the left side of the hall, near the room where Drake still lay. Bray wandered the far end of the dimly lit hall, sniffing the air. And Joliet remained by the glassless window, watching him. The last light of day was fading. They’d need to make a fire soon. It might attract predators, but there was also nothing better for keeping them at bay. Luckily they had a large supply of very dry pallets to burn. He was about to bring the subject up when an ear-splitting blare, deep and full of bass, rolled over the entire island like an audio tidal wave.

  “What was that!” Bennett shouted, cringing.

  “That was the same sound,” Bray said. “Before DeWinter was—”

  Hawkins didn’t hear the rest of Bray’s sentence. Something moved outside the window behind Joliet.

  His mind screamed snake!, but as he opened his mouth to shout a warning he noticed the slender intruder was jointed. It had knuckles—a finger—with a sharp claw at the end! “Joliet!” Hawkins shouted, but his warning came too late.

  The long, slender finger slid beneath Joliet’s arm, wrapped around her shoulder, and lifted her off the ground.

  Joliet screamed. She pounded the large digit with her fists, but her effort had no effect. Hawkins and Bray charged forward simultaneously. Bray had the ax ready to swing, but the finger pulled Joliet halfway out the window.

  “Mark!” Joliet screamed.

  He dove for her legs as she continued to rise out of the window, but her feet slipped outside before he arrived. He collided with the wall and fell to the floor, but wasted no time springing back to his feet. He thrust himself halfway out the window and looked up. Framed by the nearly black sky, he saw Joliet being pulled up the side of the concrete building. Above her loomed a massive shadow he recognized from the Magellan.

  It’s the same thing that took DeWinter!

  “Joliet!” he screamed. “Avril!”

  And then they were gone, up and over, onto the roof.

  Hawkins flung himself back into the hallway. He snatched up the rifle as he ran for the exit. Bray followed on his heels and together they made short work of the pallet barricade. Hawkins ripped open the door and charged into the darkness.

  The night’s cool air felt like a cold winter day, causing goose bumps to rise on his skin. He ran out into the field. His sudden appearance and rapid approach sent goats fleeing. Their bleats and jangling bells blocked out all other noises.

  Hawkins spun with the rifle, looking for a target.

  Where did you go? he thought. Where did you go!

  He found his answer when he looked up.

  So far from civilization, the stars were already out in force. Every constellation imaginable filled the night sky. The Milky Way cut across the center of it. But a portion of the sky was blacked out.

  It was above him!

  The blacked-out portion of sky grew quickly larger.

  “Bray, look out!” Hawkins shouted and shoved his friend clear before diving out of the way.

  The ground shook from an impact. An inhuman roar ripped through the air—one part lion, one part crow. The creature had arrived.

  33.

  Hawkins jumped to his feet and spun to face the thing, but it was already moving toward him. His eyes had adjusted to the half-moon light and he saw just bits and pieces of the thing before it reached him. It hunched forward as it charged, but still stood at least eight feet tall. And the proportions were all wrong. The chest and shoulders looked far too vast for the tiny waist to support and one arm was larger than the other. In fact, he wasn’t sure if one of the arms was even an arm. No way this thing is human, he thought, and then it was upon him. He pulled the rifle’s trigger at the last moment, but the shot was wild and if it struck the creature, it showed
no sign. It just attacked.

  The blow was blunt, but concussive. It struck his sternum, which flexed with the strike and saved him from internal injuries, but it knocked the wind out of him and sent him sprawling into the grass. The rifle flew from his grasp, falling into the darkness somewhere out of reach.

  Clutching grass in his hands, Hawkins fought to push himself up. The thing had proven itself to be the far more aggressive predator and would no doubt finish him off quickly. When his vision tunneled from lack of air, he thought his time on Earth had come to an end.

  But the creature didn’t attack.

  Why not? he wondered between gasps.

  “Hawkins!” Bray shouted. “I have her!”

  Hawkins’s vision cleared just in time for him to see Bray walking backward toward the defunct laboratory. He held Joliet under her arms and dragged her as quickly as he could. But not fast enough to escape the creature. Even at a sprint, Bray wouldn’t have stood a chance.

  The thing proved that by taking two quick steps in Bray’s direction and then leaping clear over the man. Bray shouted and spun around, but the creature batted him to the side. He tumbled and rolled over the grass before disappearing from view.

  For a moment, Hawkins couldn’t figure out where his friend had gone. Then he heard a splash.

  Bray is in the river!

  Hawkins took a long breath, steadied himself, and stood. His head spun for a moment, but quickly cleared with a spike of adrenaline. The creature was heading for Joliet’s still form, lying in the grass.

  Hawkins unclipped his knife.

  Be aggressive, he told himself, but knew it wouldn’t make a difference. The most aggressive wasp in the world could never kill a human being. The best it could hope for was to deliver a painful sting. Hawkins charged, knife raised, hoping he could sting the creature. Even people run from a wasp’s sting, he told himself.