The thing scooped Joliet from the ground and flung her over its shoulder. It didn’t even glance in Hawkins’s direction.
Hawkins ran in silence, focusing on the creature’s chest. If he was lucky, the blade might find its heart. Believing surprise was his only chance, he stayed silent even as he dove forward and swung the blade.
But Hawkins quickly learned the creature’s indifference to his approach had nothing to do with not being aware of him. He was simply too insignificant to pay any attention to. The blade found its target at the center of the creature’s chest. The blow perfectly mirrored the attack that slew the bear so many years ago, but the outcome this time was far different.
There was a loud tink as the knife struck a rock hard surface and skipped to the side. His fist struck the hard surface next. Pain radiated from his hand and up his arm. The blade fell to the ground.
Hawkins stumbled back, clutching his hand. What the hell is this thing?
The creature turned away from him, but then paused a moment. Its ragged breathing drowned out the sound of the now distant goat bleats. While most of the giant body was still cloaked in shadow, moonlight lit the creature’s face as it glanced back at him.
His body tensed when its eyes found his.
It had the face … of a woman.
And the eyes of a goat.
A smile revealed the teeth of a tiger.
This chimera, like the panther-child, was part human. But there were three distinct species just in its face! Hawkins didn’t want to know what species formed the rest of the creature, but he couldn’t let it leave with Joliet. Not without a fight.
He stepped for the knife, but the blade was snatched from the ground. He saw the blade glint in the moonlight, held in the grasp of one of the creature’s hands—if it had hands; its digits blended into the night.
Ping! The blade snapped free from the hilt and spun to the ground.
Hawkins just stared, too stunned to take action. The thing had just snapped the knife’s blade like it was little more than a dry twig.
What could he do against that?
Before he had a chance to answer the question, the thing leapt. It landed on the other side of the river. Hawkins saw it jump twice more, clearing the razor-wire fence with little effort. When branches and leaves crunched beneath the creature’s weight, Hawkins was snapped from his confusion.
The creature took Joliet!
He ran toward the river. “Bray!” he shouted. “Bray! Where are you?” But there was no reply. Bray was either dead, unconscious on the bank, or had already been swept over the falls. Hawkins ran along the river, trying to spot his friend, but there was no sign of the man. When he reached the wooden bridge spanning the river, he vaulted across and headed for the gate he’d spotted earlier.
The chain-link fence, tucked into the jungle and concealed in darkness, was impossible to see. Hawkins reached it faster than he thought he would and crashed into it with a loud jangle. His chest and arms pitched over the curls of razor wire. Rusty blades sliced into his flesh, drawing blood. He winced as he pulled back, but did not cry out. He was beyond acknowledging the pain.
Fumbling in the darkness, Hawkins found the latch, pulled it up, and swung the gate open. He felt the smooth surface of a well-worn path beneath his feet, but after just a few steps was wading through ferns. He adjusted back toward the path, found it again, and tried his best to stay on it. He slowed, despite his panic, and soon realized pursuit was hopeless.
The goat-eyed creature could see in the dark.
He couldn’t.
It was far stronger and faster.
It knew the island.
And even if he somehow caught up to the creature, what could he do? His knife—the blade that had saved him from a grizzly bear, great white shark, and a tentacle-tongued crocodile, not to mention a draco-snake—had been snapped in two. The knife had become a symbol of his mastery of nature and a reminder of a time when he’d lost respect for the power of nature. Its casual destruction had taken his confidence.
He was out of his element. There was nothing natural about this creature, or anything on this island, save for maybe the rats.
Hawkins stopped. He cursed through grinding teeth.
He tried to focus, to clear his thoughts. He’d have to find a way back up the path. Go to the laboratory. Check on Bennett. And Drake. Search for Bray. But he probably wouldn’t find the man in the dark, so he’d have to search again in the morning. And then?
Plans had changed. He wouldn’t leave without Joliet even if it meant dying here. Bennett, Bray, and Drake could leave, but he would scour the island until he found her. Dead or alive.
Hawkins felt himself on the other side of that message for the first time. Dead or alive. Thinking it made his heart go cold. He was glad he’d never voiced the phrase to the families whose lost ones he’d searched for. So for the first time in his life, he altered the phrase.
“I’ll find her alive,” he said, and as the last syllable escaped his lips, Joliet screamed.
Close by.
Hawkins spun toward the sound and broke into a sprint.
“Joliet!” he shouted.
Within five steps he was up to full speed.
When he reached ten steps, he ran headlong into something sinewy. It clotheslined him across the throat, flipping him back. His head struck something hard and unforgiving.
Joliet screamed again, this time sounding much more distant. The sound of her voice faded, but not before lulling Hawkins into unconsciousness.
34.
Howie GoodTracks leaned over Hawkins’s prone body. “It’s broken.”
Hawkins had never broken a bone before and the sight of his bulging shin nearly made him pass out. But GoodTracks took him by the shoulders and gave him a shake.
“Hey!” the old man said. “Do not go into shock. It’s just a broken bone. These things happen. But you will die if you aren’t able to keep your mind sharp.”
That snapped Hawkins out of his pain-filled haze. “Die?”
GoodTracks nodded. “What would you do if I were not here with you?”
“You are here with me!” Hawkins shouted back.
“How many times have you done something foolish like this without me around?”
Hawkins looked up at the tall rock he’d leapt from. He had, in fact, jumped from it at least twenty times previously. Thinking he’d perfected his landing technique, he decided to show his mentor. But in his excitement, he jumped higher and farther than before. The landing was hard and all wrong. He knew the answer, but didn’t offer it.
GoodTracks continued. “If this happened to you, alone, in the forest, what would you do?”
“I—I don’t know,” Hawkins admitted as he fought the tears gathering in his eyes.
“Good news,” GoodTracks said with a slight grin. “You’ll learn today. Look around you. What do you see?”
Hawkins looked around the forest. The tall pine forest floor was mostly clear of brush, but it was littered with fallen branches. “You want me to make a splint?”
GoodTracks nodded. “And set the bone. Find some crutches. And then walk the mile back to the lodge. We’ll start with the bone.”
“You can’t be serious,” Hawkins said.
“You know I am.” GoodTracks stood back and crossed his arms. “Now, sit up.”
Hawkins obeyed. He wanted to be angry at GoodTracks, but couldn’t be. He knew his surrogate father was right. This was his fault, and it could have happened during any of his previous jumps. And it could happen again. He looked down at the leg. It hurt less now and he felt almost giddy. I’m in shock, he realized, but then decided there was no better time to try what he was about to do. If the pain got worse, or his thoughts fully cleared, or the leg swelled too much, he’d be done.
He leaned forward, reaching past the break, and took hold of his ankle with both hands. An electric zing of pain shot up his leg, but he held on tight. “What do I do?”
“Tug
your leg down, angle it back in place, and let go. The muscles will pull the bone together, but then we’ll need something to hold it there.”
Hawkins’s face screwed up with determination. In three seconds, he tugged, shifted, and let go of his leg when it was straightened, screaming for the duration before passing out.
* * *
If not for the light of day tingeing the back of his eyelids red, Hawkins wouldn’t have realized more than a few minutes had passed. His beaten body gave into exhaustion and slipped quietly from unconsciousness to sleep. His thoughts drifted to the dream, which was actually a memory. He managed to set the leg, find a single crutch, and hobble most of his way back to the lodge where they were staying. GoodTracks had helped toward the end and told Hawkins he was proud of him. It was a painful memory, but a good one.
Hawkins shifted with a groan. Every muscle ached, and would for days. His chest hurt so bad that he wondered if the creature’s strike had broken a few ribs. He opened his eyes and squinted against a shaft of morning sunlight that somehow found a path through the canopy to his face. He turned away from the light, which kick-started a hangoverlike headache. His head felt like it might explode when he pushed himself into a sitting position, but forgot all about the pain pulsing through his body when his head collided with something.
The object was soft but firm and quickly registered in Hawkins’s mind as a body standing over him. Human, animal or chimera, friend or foe, living or dead, he didn’t know. His reaction fit every scenario.
A shout burst from Hawkins’s mouth as he scuttled away from his visitor like a startled crab. Through blurred vision he saw the shape of a man standing still.
“Bray?” he asked, rubbing his eyes, willing them to focus. “Bennett?”
He would have been happy if it were either man.
Pain pounded within his head, squeezing his eyes shut. “Who are you?” he asked, but got no reply. He took several long, slow breaths, listening for the man’s approach, but he never moved. When the pain subsided, Hawkins slowly opened his eyes. The foliage at his feet came into focus. He lifted his head and saw the man.
Confusion gripped his mind for a moment as he looked into the eyes of the last Magellan crewmember he expected to see.
Cahill.
But then he saw the body. With a shout, Hawkins backed away even faster than before. He stopped in a sea of ferns, his head poking out like a frightened child beneath a blanket. But his horror was short lived. Seeing no immediate danger, Hawkins pulled himself to his feet, fought a moment of nausea, and then turned his attention to Cahill.
While the man’s bearded face and shaggy hair were intact, the rest of his body had been mutilated. Severely.
A pair of tattered boxer shorts and shreds of blood-soaked shirt clinging to his shoulders were all that remained of his clothes. His legs, while still connected to the torso, appeared to have been gnawed on. Eaten. In some places, the meat had been stripped to the bone. Whatever had taken his body from the netting around the Magellan had made a meal of him before stringing him up. As what? A message? A trap? Decoration? Hawkins couldn’t decide.
Cahill’s body hung suspended above the path, his feet just inches from the ground. His arms were propped up on the lines that wrapped around his chest and tied tree branches. The pose made him look like a mutilated Christ figure. But the worst part was the line holding up the body. At first, Hawkins thought it was a flexible rope, like thick bungee cord, but then he saw its origin: Cahill’s gut had been sliced open with surgical precision. He’d been strung up with his own intestines, wrapping back and forth between body and tree limbs before looping back into his open gut.
Hawkins felt a growing revolt as he realized that he’d run headlong into a taut line of intestine the night before. It’s what had swept him off his feet and slammed him to the ground. His hand went to his neck and found flakes of dried blood clinging to his skin. He frantically brushed it away.
With one last glance at Cahill’s body, his thoughts returned to the living. Joliet had been taken. Bray had fallen in the river. Bennett never left the laboratory building, but that didn’t mean he spent the night there—the kid was a mess. And Drake still lay on a pallet, burning from fever. Maybe worse.
He turned and ran up the path, quickly finding the gate. He tore it open and ran into the yard. “Bray!” he shouted, but his call was replied to with bells and bleats. The small herd of goats trotted to him, greeting him happily as though a monster hadn’t been in their midst the previous night. They should be terrified and jumpy, Hawkins thought, not indifferent.
He stopped at the river, searching its steep banks for Bray’s body.
Nothing.
He crossed the small bridge in two long steps. The goats followed him over the river, their hooves sounding like thunder in the early morning quiet as they tromped over the bridge’s wooden planks.
“Quiet!” he whispered at the animals, but they remained sanguine and oblivious. He wasn’t worried that they would give away his position—the island’s residents would be used to the goats’ clamor. He just wanted to hear someone if they replied to his calls.
He ran for the laboratory entrance. “Bray!”
The blockade of pallets was still pushed to the side. Not a good sign. He entered slowly, fists clenched. The goats waited by the door.
The hallway stood empty. “Bray! Bennett!”
No reply.
He checked the first room and found it empty, as expected. But when he checked the second room, where they’d left not only their backpacks and Drake, he found it equally as empty. The packs and Drake were gone. His pulse quickened as he checked the final two rooms and found no trace of their passing. He spun around, looking at the hallway again.
Even the dead seagulls are gone!
After a nerve-wracking and rushed search of the top two floors, Hawkins turned up nothing. The only sign of their passage was the destruction wrought on the top floor by the panther-child chimera.
As he left the building, he found himself looking into a sea of eyes similar to the creature that took Joliet. He had trouble matching their gaze, but the goats’ friendly greeting put him at ease. These animals, at least, were not killers. Feeling a little like a shepherd, Hakwins set off across the yard, eyes on the ground. He found what he was looking for twenty feet away. The rifle.
He picked up the weapon and checked it over. It seemed to be in good repair. He toggled the lever, chambering a fresh round and expelling the empty shell casing left over from the single shot he’d taken the previous night. Remembering the round still in his pocket, he took it out and loaded it into the weapon. Ten rounds. When he thought about the creatures he’d encounter so far, the weapon seemed wholly inadequate.
Hawkins tried to fathom where everyone had gone. He couldn’t see Bennett leaving on his own and Drake should have been immobilized. And Bray … Hawkins thought about checking the waterfall, but decided against it after applying a little logic. If Bray had gone over the falls and survived the drop and the croc, he would have come back here, or retreated to the Magellan. If he didn’t, well, he was dead.
“Bray!” he shouted one more time, as loudly as he could. The sudden shout froze the goats in place, silencing their bells. In the quiet that followed, Hawkins heard nothing. He searched the grass for signs of where everyone had gone, but the goats had trampled any tracks left behind.
So he focused on the only thing he did know. Joliet. She’d been taken and he knew the general direction the creature had fled. Rifle in hand, he set off across the yard.
He only got ten feet when a glint of light caught his attention. He crouched and picked up the broken blade of his knife. The handle was missing, but the blade was intact, and still razor sharp. Lifting it carefully between two fingers, he slid the blade into its sheath and buttoned it closed.
A shadow swept past him, drawing his gaze up. A lone seagull circled high overhead. Hawkins would almost welcome the chance to take out his frustrations.
Just try it, you son of a bitch. As he lowered his eyes again, Hawkins noticed a detail on the roof of the laboratory. At first, he couldn’t figure out what the two cylinders were. But then they moved, each rotating in opposite directions.
Cameras!
The implications hit him fast and hard. Not only did the islands occupants have access to the outside world, but they also had a decent budget. He could see the solar panel mounted behind the cameras, allowing them to operate without a direct line of power. Sending the images wirelessly to some other part of the island would be easy. Even worse, there was a strong chance that their progress across the island was being monitored. The appearance of the creature in conjunction with the foghorn also insinuated some kind of coordinated effort. Were they being toyed with?
As disturbing as it was, the discovery of the cameras changed nothing. Whether his return to the lab had been noted or not, his goals remained the same: find his friends and get the hell off the island.
The goats followed him to the gate. As he opened and closed it behind him, the goats tried to follow through the spring-powered hatch at the bottom. He pushed it closed. “Stay here,” he growled.
The first goat pushing on the gate looked up at him. It butted its horns against the chain link, clearly not accustomed to having its freedom restricted. Hawkins lost his patience and shook the gate. “Stay here!” he shouted, then delivered a rattling kick to the chain-link fence.
“They listen if you’re nice.”
The voice spun Hawkins around so fast that he fell on his ass and dropped the rifle. He twisted his head back and forth, looking for the voice’s source, but saw no one. He snatched up the rifle and continued his search, looking over the sight. “Who’s there?”
“I won’t hurt you if you don’t hurt me,” the voice said. It sounded feminine. And young.
Leaves rustled over his head. He aimed the weapon up, but saw nothing.
The goats shied away, bleating as though wounded.
Hawkins ignored them.
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