“Sir,” the man with the radio said. “Action Team Beta is waiting.”
Castle looked into Hawkins’s eyes and shook his head again. He stood, pulled his mask back up, and put his glasses back on. “They’re clear to engage. No survivors.”
Hawkins looked to the sky, thinking of Howie. What advice would he give now? Take it like a man? Beg for mercy? Pray for a mira—
Hawkins’s eyes went wide. He twisted his neck one way, and then the other, feigning a last stretch. As he looked to the right, he found his miracle.
The older man drew his sidearm and pointed it at Hawkins’s head. “I’m sorry about this. Really. You’re misguided, but brave. And I respect that. You just have really shitty luck.”
Hawkins looked up, staring into the man’s sunglasses. “Makes two of us.”
The man’s face was covered, but his body language showed confusion as the gun lowered a notch. “What are you—”
“Sir!” someone shouted. “We have incoming!”
The man spun to look.
Hawkins knew he should have run right then, but his eyes were drawn back to the spectacle. The wave of turtle-shelled spiders had not only crested the hill, but had closed in on their position. The hillside shifted with living black all the way to the top, where more of the chimeras emerged over the ridge. It took them a while to scale the steep hillside, but now on the down slope, they ran and leapt with speed and agility unlike anything Hawkins, or these soldiers, had ever seen before.
“Choose your targets. Wait for them to be in range!” the older man shouted before tapping his ear. “All Eagles converge on my position. Shoot everything that is not human.” He holstered his sidearm and took his own M4 carbine from his shoulder.
Hawkins backed away from the line of men. He knew they’d forgotten him for the moment, but didn’t want to remind them by making noise. A moment later he could have sung “The Star-Spangled Banner” and no one would have heard him.
The slow pop of gunfire grew in intensity as the chimeras closed in. Hawkins saw several well-placed shots strike spiders’ exposed heads, killing them quickly. But where one fell, five more filled the gap. Hawkins doubted they had enough rounds even if every shot was a kill.
When the spiders closed in, several of them leapt into the air. That’s when the soldiers unleashed the weapon that might save them. Twin columns of flame arced back and forth. Squeals filled the air as charred spiders emerged from the other side, their burned husks twitching.
The commander tracked one of the flaming spiders as it crossed over his head. He shot it once when it landed. Then he saw Hawkins slowly backing away, fifty feet between them. He raised his M4 and pulled the trigger. But the shot went high as the man was struck from behind. He fell to the ground, a BFS clinging to his back. One of the soldiers shouted, “Sir!” and gripped the shell, yanking the creature away, but not before the creature got in three quick jabs with its stinger.
As the line of heavily armed soldiers fell to the wave of chimeras, Hawkins ran. It wouldn’t be long before the monsters turned their attention to him. An Apache helicopter appeared above, so close that the rotor wash nearly pushed his weakened body to the ground.
He looked up and saw the minigun swivel in his direction. But it didn’t fire.
The weapon then turned up and opened fire. The roar stung Hawkins’s still-ringing ears, but he was thankful for it, and for the commander’s order—“shoot everything that is not human.” The man had unknowingly saved Hawkins’s life.
A barrage of missiles launched from the helicopter, tearing up the ground behind Hawkins. He stumbled into the jungle, pushed by a continuous string of explosive pressure waves. He heard two more helicopters arrive behind him and open fire. The airborne units had nothing to fear from the chimeras, but he doubted they could kill them all.
The thick jungle tore at him, clinging to his clothes and scraping his wounds as though the island didn’t want to let him go. But he pushed through it all, numb to the pain and desperate to reach the coast. The trees began to thin, revealing blue sky ahead. He felt a flash of hope, but then saw two figures silhouetted in the light. Reno and Dolan. Action Team Beta.
Hawkins slowed his approach, opting for stealth over speed. One of the men lowered a pair of binoculars and pointed out to sea. He took a large sniper rifle from his shoulder and lay down. The second man lay down slightly behind the sniper, looking through a spotter scope.
Action Team Beta was a sniper team. Hawkins rounded the pair from the right, quickening his pace as much as he dared. He emerged from the jungle onto the solid stone of the coast and sprinted toward the men, his steps muffled by the hard stone. The ocean, covered in a layer of filth to the horizon, lay to his right. The jungle to his left. And the two soldiers straight ahead. He could hear them discussing the wind, range, and angle.
“Clear to fire,” the spotter said.
The sniper’s finger moved to the trigger.
Hawkins reached them a moment later. He put all of his energy into the kick and struck the long sniper rifle barrel with the top of his foot. The rifle flew from the surprised soldier’s hands as he shouted in pain. The kick had also broken his trigger finger. Hawkins spun on the man and kicked hard again while his partner jumped to his feet. The second kick caught the man hard in the temple, knocking him unconscious.
Hawkins turned on the man’s partner, but the soldier was too fast. He’d already drawn his pistol and was leveling it at Hawkins’s chest when a long, black tail wrapped around the man’s neck and constricted.
The gun went off.
Hawkins fell to his knees, watching the man’s eyes go wide. The soldier stumbled back and aimed the gun over his shoulder.
Hawkins looked toward the trash-covered ocean. It was a fifteen-foot drop over a sheer cliff to the water. It was preferable to facing the chimera when it was done with the soldier. But even if he made it to the water, he was done. He lifted a hand from his side and found it covered with blood. But he’d rather drown than become an incubator for parasitic chimeras. He shuffled toward the cliff’s edge.
Then he saw something strange about the BFS’s tail. It was covered in black fur. He paused, watching as a pair of small hands reached up and twisted the gun from the soldier’s hands. This wasn’t a BFS. The man’s eyes bulged as his face turned purple. He fell to his knees, and then flat on his face. Lilly clung to his back. Her yellow eyes, once horrifying to Hawkins, looked at him with concern. “Hurt?”
“You could say that,” he replied with a grunt of pain.
She looked down and saw his wound. A flash of concern crossed her face, but was quickly replaced with determination. She stood next to Hawkins, put a steadying hand under his arm, and gripped his belt with the other. With a quick tug, she lifted him off the ground and put him on his feet.
How strong is this kid? Hawkins wondered.
“We have to hurry,” she said. “I can hear them coming.”
Lilly half guided, half carried Hawkins down the sloping rocks of the coast. They soon came to a small path that led down to the water. Waves crashed against the cliff wall, but the tide was going out and the waves were small. The layer of trash began thirty feet from shore as the receding tide dragged it away.
“Hurry!” Lilly urged, and pushed him into the water.
Hawkins felt his consciousness fading as he slipped beneath the surface. But then he was yanked up again as Lilly pulled him by his shirt collar. The girl kicked with her feet, but also beat the water with her tail. Hawkins lay limp on his back, his body incapable of movement. He just stared at the blue sky above him.
When a black shape appeared above, he mistook it for a helicopter. Then his eyes focused and he saw it for what it was—a chimera spider, legs splayed open, leaping for his face. “Lilly!” he shouted.
Hawkins’s eyes remained open as he was pulled beneath the water. He saw the spider strike the water where his face had been just moments before. The creature slipped beneath the surface. I
ts legs scrambled for purchase and found nothing. Its tail twitched madly, but failed to propel the creature through the water. It sank down, spasmed twice, and fell still. The BFSs couldn’t swim.
But Lilly could. As she pulled him forward, he saw her toes splayed wide, revealing black webbing between them. She held him beneath her body, gripping his arms. Gills on the sides of her neck opened and closed.
Just like Kam, he thought as his vision began to fade.
He looked into her eyes, her inhuman but kind eyes, and smiled.
She returned his smile, flashing a pair of sharp, white canines and a contrasting duo of deep dimples. Then she arched her body and turned up. Hawkins coughed violently as they emerged into the air once more. He felt two pairs of hands reach under his arms and pull him up. He fell back with a wet slap and found himself on the deck of a strange-looking, trash-covered boat. The hard deck felt impossibly comfortable. Joliet appeared above him. He could see her speaking, but couldn’t hear her. He managed to smile up at her for a moment, and then closed his eyes.
51.
The sun flared bright in Hawkins’s eyes when they opened again. But then it faded, growing darker by the second, until it seemed like he would pass out once more. His pulse quickened, waking his nerves, filling his body with a pain so intense he knew consciousness was impossible. But his eyes … the sun … what was—
Then he saw the stars. It was night.
As his eyes continued to adjust, he saw many more stars emerge and the inky blackness of the night sky became something closer to a milky swirl of dark and light shades. The gentle undulation told him that he was on a boat. A small one. He could hear water gently lapping against the hull, but also a continuous, dull thumping sound.
We’re still in the Garbage Patch, he realized.
Hawkins turned to his left. Joliet lay next to him, flat on her back, her eyes closed. She looked peaceful when she slept. The expression on her face reminded him of the sketch he’d drawn of her. But her body, covered in scrapes, bruises, and dried blood, ruined this image. A shadow stirred and he noticed that Lilly lay in the crook of Joliet’s arm, snuggled up close. If not for the hair and feline features, she’d look like any other sleeping child. Beyond them, Bray and Drake both lay sleeping. They looked horrible, but the worst of their wounds had been tended to. An emptied first-aid kit laid at Bray’s feet.
He pushed himself up into a sitting position. His side ached and he paused to let his head stop swirling. He slid back and leaned against the hull, wondering why his wounds didn’t hurt more. Hell, he should have been dead. He looked down and found most of his chest and side wrapped in bandages. The one on his side had a red splotch in the middle, but didn’t appear to be bleeding through. Someone sewed me up, he thought, and then felt the bandage on his back. The bullet went straight through. He nearly laughed at the thought and realized he wasn’t feeling quite right in the head, either. Shock or morphine, he decided, but didn’t really care which. Both would eventually wear off and the pain would become unbearable.
A foreign sound tickled his ears and he instinctively looked to the sky. He couldn’t see a thing, but he knew it was up there. A jet. The running lights should have been easy to see in the pitch blackness, but there were none, which meant it didn’t want to be seen.
With a grunt he pushed himself to his feet. Are they looking for us? he wondered. He limped to the aft deck and got his first real look at their ship. Aside from the bare deck, the fifteen-foot vessel looked like a clump of garbage, nearly indistinguishable from the thick swath of trash surrounding them on all sides. They were still in the thickest part of the patch, which meant that they had yet to travel thirty miles from the island.
Hawkins flinched as a hand took his. He looked down and saw Lilly’s eyes reflecting the moonlight back up at him.
“What is it?” she asked, looking at the sky.
“Sounds like a jet,” he replied.
“You can’t see it?”
He shook his head no. Of course he couldn’t, but she could! “What does it look like?”
“It’s small,” she said. “Darker than the sky. Kind of a triangle.” She pointed to the sky, low on the horizon. “It’s there, moving away from us. Toward the island.”
The plane had already passed, moving at supersonic speed. The sound was just reaching them now, which meant it was really high.
“Sounds like a B-2 bomber,” Bray said. He stretched as he joined them at the back of the boat.
Joliet stepped up next to Hawkins’s right side. She leaned her head on his shoulder. “Thanks. For coming to get me.”
Pain lanced through his arm as he moved, but he managed to get his hand on her shoulder. He pulled her closer. “You owe me two cases of beer now.”
“They’ve given up,” Drake said from behind. He sat in the pilot’s chair, watching the sky. “Must have lost everyone on the island. They’re going to wipe it off the m—”
The sky behind them bloomed with orange light. The light expanded, flickered, and then shrunk in on itself. The surreal silence of the distinct explosion made it almost beautiful. Part of Hawkins appreciated the sight. It meant that the evil of Island 731 had been contained. But it also meant that those responsible would never have to answer for their crimes against humanity, just like the Japanese scientists of World War II.
Hawkins heard Bray counting softly. “What are you doing?” he asked.
Bray held up his index finger, signaling Hawkins to wait. Then it happened. A boomlike thunder rolled past them. Lilly’s grip on his hand tightened to the point of hurting.
“Eleven miles,” Bray said. “Four more and we’ll be outside the thickest part of the Garbage Patch. Then we can gun the engines until they run dry and activate the distress signal.”
Hawkins knelt down next to her. “It’s okay. You’re going to be okay. I promise.”
As he looked into Lilly’s yellow eyes, a warm breeze pushed by the explosion’s pressure wave surged past.
“Why did you save me?” she asked, looking down at herself.
“Your brother, Kam. He … was our friend.”
She smiled. “That’s what he said, too. But I’m not like you. I’m evil.”
Hawkins thought about it. “You’re not evil. The things that happened on that island had nothing to do with you. It doesn’t matter if you’re like us. You don’t just deserve to live, you deserve a better life.”
Hawkins could see she wasn’t fully believing him, probably because of what he’d said during their first conversation. “You’re not a thing,” he said. “You’re a person.”
“I’m more than a person,” she said, looking sad.
He nodded. “And that makes you amazing.”
She placed her hand on his cheek. He could feel the hardness of her retracted claws against his skin, but didn’t flinch. For her to survive in the modern world, and for him to keep her safe, they would have to trust each other. If news of her existence ever got out, the people who had just wiped out an island would no doubt come calling. “My name is Mark, by the way. I know I already told you, but figured I should probably introduce myself again. You know, so we’re not strangers.”
She smiled. “My name is Lilly,” she said and gave a slight bow. “Lilly Shimura.”
52.
ONE YEAR LATER
Hawkins lay on his stomach, looking through a pair of binoculars. “Do you see her?”
“Nothing,” came the quiet but rough voice of Howie GoodTracks. Hawkins’s mentor and surrogate father lay next to him on the grassy bluff overlooking a rolling stream far below. “She is better than you.”
“She’s better than everyone,” Joliet added. She stood behind them, leaning against one of many pine trees that surrounded their hilltop position. She took a loud bite from an apple.
Hawkins shushed her and held a finger to his lips. “They’ll hear you!” He looked through the binoculars again, finding the deer by the stream. There were three of them. They drank in
pairs while one always kept watch, wary of cougars, grizzlies, and human hunters. But no amount of vigilance could prepare them for Lilly. One of the deer was already dead, it just hadn’t realized it yet.
It had been a year since Hawkins returned to the Ute reservation. That they’d made the trip without being discovered was something of a miracle. They had been picked up by an oil tanker two days after escaping the island. The tanker’s sparse crew and lax captain hadn’t checked the contents of the heavy bundle carried by Drake when he had boarded the ship. Nor had they paid much attention to the rescued crew while they had quietly recovered on the three-week voyage to the Port of Los Angeles.
When they left the ship, Drake assumed his position as the Magellan’s captain and told a fabricated story about a storm that had capsized the Magellan. Thankfully, most of their wounds, including Hawkins’s side and Bray’s calf, had healed and didn’t require a hospital visit, which allowed Drake to leave out their less believable run-in with pirates. The police interviewed them one at a time, which allowed three of them to stay with Lilly in a cheap motel, but the interviews focused mainly on confirming their identities. Their rehearsed stories matched and once their credentials were checked out, no one questioned the validity of their story. They were free to go.
GoodTracks had been confused by Lilly—neither fully human nor fully animal—when Hawkins first introduced her and requested sanctuary for them both, but quickly decided her feline traits were a blessing. To the Ute, the puma, panther, and jaguar were symbols of strength, nobility, and guardianship. She would protect them as they protected her. She basked in the attention GoodTracks had once given Hawkins.
Joliet, Bray, and Drake stayed with them for a week before heading to their various homes. The last time Hawkins had heard from Drake was just over two months ago when he called to say he was heading to Japan to reconnect with family. “Uncle” Bray had returned during every school break. He’d blamed technical difficulties for his seeming disappearance and was now writing a book on modern bioethics, which featured several chapters focused on DARPA and a Senator Mansfield, who created and implemented the Mansfield Amendment that allowed black projects under DARPA’s umbrella to not only exist, but also to be hidden from the organization’s leadership. Mansfield had died in 2001, but Bray was determined to reveal his dark legacy and, more importantly, who had inherited it.
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