Quinn followed, but Dallas held back, staying with Herm. “Obviously Gino can be an asshole about it,” he said quietly, “but he’s right. Got to keep it together. We all do.”
“I’m well aware of what I need to do, Dal.”
“Not looking for a fight. Just trying to be your friend.”
Embarrassed, Herm looked at the ground.
“What’s got you so rattled?” Dallas asked.
Rather than answer, he asked a question of his own. “You think they’re still looking for us?”
“I hope so. You were sure of it yesterday. What happened?”
“I guess I’m not so sure of anything anymore.” Herm motioned to the camp. “Whatever the Japanese were doing out here, it wasn’t anything good. Whatever they were up to, it was something they were trying to hide, something they didn’t want anyone else to know. There’s no other reason for them to have been out this far, or to have built that kind of structure on an island that’s uncharted to this day.”
“What do you think it was?”
“No idea. But I’m not so sure us going in there and disturbing things that have been left undisturbed for decades is the way to go.”
“Look, whatever went on here happened decades before you and I were even born. The people who were here and whatever the hell they were doing are distant memories now. Ghosts, man. Just ghosts.”
As a warm breeze drifted across the lagoon, Herm offered the saddest little smile Dallas had ever seen. Neither spoke again. Instead, they told themselves as many lies as they needed to hear, then headed back into the waiting jungle.
***
After the screams, the confusion and terror, after the shock, tears and denial, an eerie quiet fell over them as they struggled to make sense of what they’d come across upon their return to the other side of the island. They were now faced with a harsh and horrifying reality they could no longer dismiss or attempt to explain away. They were not alone on the island, and whoever—whatever—was here with them, was anything but friendly.
Harper was in such shock she could barely speak, and had been unable to explain what she’d seen or what had happened. She simply sat beneath a nearby tree and stared off into space, tears streaming her face. Since Gino was fixated on the body rather than Harper, Quinn had tried to comfort her, but holding her only seemed to make the crying worse, so she left her alone and returned to the carnage in the sand.
Murdoch’s body had been cut clean in two, diagonally above the waist. There was so much blood it almost looked staged, as it didn’t seem possible that much could have come from a single body. At first glance the corpse didn’t even look human, rather more like a mannequin that had somehow come apart. But an exposed section of severed spine protruding from the top half of the body, combined with a trail of viscera and entrails slimy and slick and soaked in even more blood, left no doubt that what they were looking at was not only a dead body, but one that had been slaughtered.
Quinn joined Gino, who had crouched down closest to the horror, his hand over his nose and mouth to ward off the stench, and forced herself to take a closer look at the massacred corpse that had once been John Murdoch.
“Ask her again,” Gino said evenly.
“She’s in shock,” Quinn explained. “She’s not speaking at all.”
Murdoch’s intestines were strewn across the sand like a pile of bloody dead eels, his arms stretched out in front of him as if still trying to ward off whatever had attacked him. His head was turned to the side, and what had been his good eye was wide open and vacant. A repulsive combination of blood and bodily fluids he’d vomited coated his chin and neck.
“I said ask her again.”
“Give it some time, she—”
“You see what I see, don’t you?”
“Of course.”
“Then you tell me what could’ve done this.”
Quinn wiped perspiration from her eyes with a shaking hand. “The spinal column’s severed so cleanly, it—it could only have been done with a weapon that’s incredibly sharp and strong.”
“Yeah,” Gino said, finally taking his eyes from the carnage long enough to look at her. “Wielded by someone with an incredible amount of strength and skill. I’m talking about precision and power that’s almost beyond belief.”
Since they’d returned, Herm had spent most of his time pacing back and forth in the sand, muttering to himself. “I told you we weren’t alone on this island!” He moved closer. “Did I or did I not tell you we were not alone on this fucking island! Whoever did this to Murdoch did the same thing to Andre, and—”
“Ask her again, Quinn,” Gino said, ignoring him.
“She’s in shock. You’ve got to give her some time to—”
“We don’t have any fucking time!” Standing, he lumbered over to the palm tree Harper had collapsed under. “Hey! Look at me!” Gino grabbed her by the shoulders and shook her. Until that moment Harper hadn’t even noticed him, but the force of his grip seemed to snap her back into the present. She looked up at him with an empty stare that looked as if something deep inside her had broken. “Tell me what happened! Who did this to him? Talk, goddamn it! We need to know what happened!”
Quinn ran to them, grabbed Gino by the shoulder and pulled him off her. “Are you out of your mind? Leave her alone!”
Dallas had tried to stay clear of everyone for the last several minutes, but realizing this was no longer possible, hurried over and moved his wife away from Gino, gently taking her around the waist and walking her a few feet back. “Easy.”
“We need to know what happened,” Gino said, “and we need to know now!”
“Screaming at her isn’t going to—”
Harper silenced everyone by slowly raising an arm and pointing at the jungle.
In unison, everyone looked to the area she’d indicated, unsure if something was coming through the jungle toward them or if she was trying to tell them something else.
When nothing appeared, Quinn slipped between Gino and Harper and crouched down in front of her. “Harper, it’s me, okay? It’s Quinn. Can you tell me what you’re pointing at, honey?”
She continued pointing, her eyes larger now and filled with fear, as if she’d suddenly begun to relive what had taken place.
“He came from that direction?” Quinn guessed. “Is that it?”
Harper’s eyes shifted and slowly locked on Quinn. She nodded.
“Just one man?”
Her bottom lip quivered as more tears spilled across her cheeks. “There was only one,” she said in a tiny voice. “But it didn’t look like a man. Not…not exactly.”
Despite the heat, a chill throttled Quinn, settling at the back of her neck. “What did it look like then?” she asked. “Can you tell me?”
“It came up out of the ground,” Harper whispered, as if fearful the killer might hear her. “There.” She pointed to the same section of jungle, but more emphatically.
Quinn looked back over her shoulder at the others.
“What the hell does that mean?” Dallas asked, nervously eyeing the jungle. “What does she mean?”
“Harper,” Gino said, “baby, what do you mean by it didn’t look like a man?”
She kept pointing and staring through her tears at the jungle.
“This isn’t happening,” Dallas mumbled. “This can’t be happening.”
Quinn turned back to Harper. “Honey, listen to me. I know you’re frightened. We all are. But it’s very important that you tell me exactly what you saw, do you understand?”
“It came up out of the ground.”
Herm moved toward the jungle, hesitantly approaching the area she’d indicated.
“Get away from there!” Gino called to him. “Stay over here with us, moron.”
Without bothering to look in Gino’s direction, Herm again flipped him his middle finger and continued studying the edge of the jungle.
“Where were you when it happened?” Quinn asked Harper.
“In the water. I was in the water.”
“That’s a bit of a distance, are you sure you—”
“It wasn’t there and then all of a sudden...it was.” She finally lowered her arm. “I saw it come up out of the ground and then…after…it just…disappeared.”
“Disappeared how?”
“Back into the ground.”
“What was it, Harper? What did you see? What did this?”
While the others watched her, Dallas scanned the jungle, watching for whatever might come charging through at any moment while also trying to keep an eye on Herm and whatever the hell he was up to.
“If it wasn’t a man,” Quinn asked her, “then what was it?”
“It was like a man,” Harper eventually answered. “But it had...”
“Tell me. It’s okay. Tell me.”
“Horns.” She trembled with terror. “And it was covered in like…metal or…”
Quinn glanced at the others with uncertainty.
“It looked like a…”
“Like a what?” Quinn asked, gently rubbing her shoulder.
“Like a monster.”
CHAPTER NINE
Gino looked as if he were about to come out of his skin at any moment. His fear and confusion was manifesting as rage, and it was barely contained. “We need to know what’s happening,” he said through gritted teeth. “Or there’s no way to defend ourselves against it. Until we can get her to tell us exactly what she saw, we need to stay put, keep the jungle in front of us and the ocean behind us. It’s the only way to see what might be coming at us.”
Looking back at the palm tree, where Quinn sat watching the jungle and beneath which Harper had curled into a fetal position, Dallas said, “She’s in rough shape, I don’t know how much more we’re going to get out of her for now.” He’d managed to get Gino a short distance from everyone else in an attempt to talk him into a calmer state. Problem was, Dallas was right there with him, teetering precariously on the razor’s edge separating sanity from absolute panic and blind terror.
“Yeah, well we need to get that fire a lot bigger and a lot brighter before night falls. Darkness is going to be our enemy now. We can’t—I don’t—fuck!”
“Look, man, Quinn said it’s probably going to be a while before Harper starts making more sense. She says the trauma’s been too much for her and—”
“We’re all traumatized, Dal. This is bullshit. Weak-ass bullshit we can’t afford right now!”
“Not everybody’s you. Try to remember that.”
“She needs to get over it and put her big girl panties on. This is a life or death situation we’re dealing with here! Whatever the fuck’s out there cut a grown man in half! In half, Dal, you fucking hear me?”
Dallas grabbed him by the arm and pulled him closer, the way a parent might just before disciplining their child. In all the years they’d known each other, he’d never done anything like that, and it stunned them both. “Take a good look at her, Gino. She’s a fucking child, and she wasn’t exactly splitting the atom before all this. What the hell did you expect? The rest of us are way ahead of her and we’re barely holding it together as it is. And we didn’t see Murdoch die. You fucking hear me?”
This seemed to reach him, as Gino relaxed his posture somewhat, unclenched his fists and pulled his arm free before offering a quick nod. “Yeah, I—it’s just—what the hell’s happening, man? This is a goddamn nightmare. And now on top of it we got her talking crap about someone popping up out of the ground?”
“It’s not crap.”
Herm stood a few feet away, scowling at them.
“What are you talking about?”
Motioning them to follow, Herm returned to the jungle’s edge. As they arrived, Quinn joined them as well.
“When Harper said the killer came up out of the ground,” Herm told them, “this is what she was talking about.”
A foot or so beyond the edge of the beach, he kicked at some dirt with his sneaker. A whirlpool formed, drawing earth into its spiral before finally ceasing to reveal a ragged opening in the ground roughly the size of a manhole.
“What the hell?” Quinn muttered.
“Best guess, it’s part of a tunnel.”
“A tunnel? Jesus Christ, what—”
“I don’t have all the answers, okay?” Herm explained through a lengthy sigh. “But I can tell you this. The Japanese built tunnels on almost every island they occupied during the Second World War. They were known for their intricate tunnel systems. They used them to move around undetected, but also as a way of literally digging into their positions. Like ticks on a hound. From the looks of the opening it hasn’t been used in a long time, which means it was mostly grown over, so when the killer came through it, he had to break and sort of burst right through the earth. From a distance, it would’ve looked like he appeared out of nowhere and just popped right up out of the ground, because that’s exactly what he did.”
“After all this time that hole would’ve been completely grown over,” Dallas said. “Wouldn’t it be impossible to burst through it like that? That’d take inhuman power.”
“You mean like the kind of inhuman power it’d take to cut a grown man in half with a single swing of a weapon, most likely a sword? That kind of power?”
Everyone remained quiet a moment.
“So you’re saying these tunnels are all over the island?” Gino asked.
“Without exploring them there’s no way to know for sure how extensive they are, but yeah, that’s the likeliest scenario. There’s probably an entire network of them.”
“Okay, wait,” Dallas said, hands to his head, “you said the math didn’t work, that—”
“It doesn’t. There’s no way some leftover or forgotten Japanese soldier from that era could be responsible for this,” Herm said. “Matter of fact, I’m not sure anything human could cut a man in half like that.”
Quinn looked around, as if to be certain they were still alone. “Of course it had to be human. What else would it be?”
“I don’t have a fucking clue.”
“Gino,” Dallas said, “is it possible?”
Still mesmerized by the tunnel opening, he continued staring at it even when he finally answered. “If it was a sword, maybe. It’d have to be incredibly sharp and—I don’t know, I—he’d have to be really skilled and so strong, I—”
“Come on, Quinn,” Herm interjected, “you’re the one with the medical experience. You’re telling me even a very strong, very skilled human being, using a very sharp and strong sword, could cut a man Murdoch’s size clean in half with a single stroke? Is that what you’re expecting us to believe?”
“I’m not expecting anyone to believe anything. But if you want me to believe there’s some sort of psychopathic supernatural monster—”
“No one said—”
“—running around on this island, I’m going to need a lot more proof.”
“Your proof’s lying over there in two goddamn pieces.”
“Maybe it’s someone who was stranded here, like us. Maybe he’s gone crazy. Maybe he found the tunnels and uses them, maybe—”
“Maybe that’s highly unlikely.”
“As unlikely as a supernatural explanation? Seriously?”
“My point is—”
“It doesn’t matter,” Gino said suddenly. He’d finally taken his attention from the tunnel. “None of it.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“It means I don’t give a fuck if it’s the Easter Bunny. Whoever—whatever—it is, it’s already killed two of us, and it’s only a matter of time before it comes looking for the rest of us.” Gino gazed out at the jungle. “So for now, we cover this hole as best we can and keep a close eye on it, we arm ourselves with whatever we can lay our hands on, we get that fire blazing big and bright as possible, and we ride the night out here on the beach.”
“And then?”
“First light, we go back to the other side of the island and s
et ourselves up in a better, more easily defendable position, maybe in one the buildings. It’s a smaller area, so there’s not as much we have to keep an eye on. From there we figure out what the hell it is we’re dealing with here. That camp holds the answers. It has to.”
No one spoke again for what seemed an eternity.
The island and the ocean whispered to them, filling the silence.
“What about Murdoch?” Herm asked.
Gino turned and walked away. “Bury him.”
***
As the daylight hours wound down, the fear only increased. In solemn and workmanlike silence, Dallas and Quinn buried Murdoch’s remains not far from where they’d entombed Natalie, making sure to keep an eye on the jungle as they did so. Upon moving the body to the hole they’d dug, Dallas stopped and retched violently. Just dry heaves, he was unable to bring up anything, but it took a horrible toll on him physically, leaving his gut aching and his throat sore. In all the years they’d been together, this was something beyond anything he or Quinn could have imagined, much less thought they’d find themselves doing. But at least she’d seen her share of dead bodies and carnage in the past, Dallas had never witnessed anything like what had happened to Murdoch, and it left him rattled and deeply disturbed in ways he never realized were possible. One moment Murdoch was a living, breathing human being. The next he was mangled, split into two halves, a thing that had been butchered. Despite the horror of it all, it refused to compute in Dallas’s mind, so with robotic motion, he did what needed to be done, and for the time being, left his mind the flat-line of shock it had become.
“You okay?” Quinn asked.
Dallas responded with a sideways glance as he continued moving sand and dirt.
“I know it’s a ridiculous question at this point,” she admitted. “But it’s all I’ve got.”
“I know it’s just beginning, but I want this to be over. I’m not cut out for this shit, Quinn. I’m a schoolteacher, for Christ’s sake.”
“Nobody’s cut out for this.”
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