THE SENTINEL (A Jane Harper Horror Novel)

by Robinson, Jeremy; Bishop, Jeremy

  When I look up from the now black screen, Peach is crying again, but this time her lip is quivering. She can barely speak. “You… you…” She gives up on speaking and throws herself at me, wrapping her arms around me and sobbing loudly into my sweater.

  Now I know how my father felt. He wasn’t an affectionate man and I always went out of my way to hug him. He got all rigid and uncomfortable every time I did, and I find myself doing the same thing now. But I’m not my father. My heart’s not completely made out of stone. So I force myself to give Peach a pat on her back. She covered up the murder of several fishermen, spied on me, and unknowingly helped set me up to take the fall for a murderous act of anti-whaling piracy, but she’s still human.

  Unlike McAfee. He’s a monster. And I’m going to make damn sure he hangs for the things he’s done.

  8

  We’ve been floating at the mercy of the Arctic wind and waves for nearly five hours. During the rest of the sleepless voyage, we turned our attention away from the drama of our escape and the men who left us to die. None of that will matter if we don’t survive, and there’s the possibility that they didn’t make it, either.

  We’ve just finished taking an inventory of all the supplies included with the raft, and I’m a bit surprised. The eight-person raft has included eight, 16-ounce bottles of water and eight, 1000-calorie food ration bars. So we won’t starve.

  Yet.

  But there is so much more—a first aid kit, a fishing kit, sun block, flares, smoke signals, several small packages of moist wipes, two small jackknifes, four reflective blankets, sea sickness tablets, mini-binoculars, two LED flashlights, and more. They’ve even included a deck of playing cards to keep people from going crazy and killing each other. But they’ve also included a small Bible, so maybe the last person left alive can be forgiven. When I saw it, I thought of so many jokes to make—most of them inappropriate given our dire situation—but I couldn’t decide between them, so I ended up staying silent. Which was a good thing, because when Jenny saw the Bible she picked it up, put it in her pocket and looked a little less fearful.

  As a stiff breeze rattles the life raft tent, I hold out a small magnetic compass included with the raft. I turn it side to side, watching it spin. I have no idea which direction we’re heading. It doesn’t really matter, since there isn’t much I can do about it. There are two collapsible paddles, but I don’t think they’d get us far.

  Peach finishes putting the supplies back in their individual pouches. When she turns back toward me, her attention moves to my side. “What’s that?”

  I turn around and see the backpack labeled “Survival” poking out from behind my back. I’d been leaning against it all night. “Found it with the life raft,” I say.

  “What’s in it?” she asks.

  “No idea,” I say, pulling it out from behind me.

  She sees the handwritten label. “That’s Chase’s handwriting.”

  “Open it up,” Jenny says.

  I unclip the top flap and unzip the zipper. I look in and smile. “Jackpot.” I take out ten high protein energy bars. Beneath them is a device I don’t recognize. I pull it out. “No water, but there’s this.”

  “It’s a water filter,” Jenny says, taking it from me. “Looks like it desalinates, too.”

  “Great,” I say. “So between the water filter, the protein bars, and the fishing kit we’re going to live long enough to become hairy lesbians.”

  Jenny and Peach both laugh, and Peach adds, “Hey, I can bat for both teams in a pinch,” which sets Jenny laughing enough that the life raft canopy shakes like one of those inflatable bounce houses full of sugar-high kids.

  When I reach into the pack and pull out the next item, smiles fade. It’s a big black folding military knife. I disengage the blade lock and pop out the five-inch blade.

  “Holy shit,” Jenny says, “That’s a serious knife.”

  “Mm,” I mumble, wondering why Chase would think to have a knife like this.

  “Put it away,” Peach says. “If you drop it…”

  “Right,” I say, pushing the blade back down. I pocket the knife and don’t bother looking up to see if this bothers the other two.

  There’s more in the bag. I’m surprised when the next item is soft. When I pull it out, I think it’s a big black, wool blanket, but there’s a hood.

  “A cloak?” Peach asks.

  “Looks like it,” I say.

  “You should use it,” Jenny says. I start to argue, but then notice for the first time that Jenny and Peach are both dressed for cold weather, wearing insulated, water resistant pants and jackets. They both have hats and gloves, too. In my haste to witness the hubbub on deck, I didn’t bother to grab anything warmer than a sweater. If not for the tinfoil-like thermal blankets we found, I would have been much colder the last few hours. I look at Peach and she nods in agreement.

  I throw the cloak over my shoulder and pull the big hood up over my head. “I’m Ugthar, son of Grondol, beware my magic missile.” Snickers fill the life raft. “Always knew Chase had to be a D&D guy.”

  “I think it’s WOW these days,” Jenny says.

  “Wow, indeed,” I say as I reach back into the bag, not expecting to find anything else. But I do. Its hard metallic shape is easy to identify.

  Peach sees the surprise frozen on my face. “What?”

  I take the gun by the handle and pull it out. Peach and Jenny lean away from the weapon. Neither say a word as I pop out the magazine, check the number of bullets and slap it back in. “It’s a .45 caliber Glock,” I say. “Small, powerful and accurate. Thirteen rounds.”

  “Uhh,” Jenny says. “I’m not sure whether to be surprised by the gun or the fact that you’re holding it like it’s your boyfriend’s unit.”

  I look at Jenny, then down at the gun in my hands. Was I stroking the barrel? I fight my embarrassment and say, “I’ve been to the range a few times.”

  “The WSPA arming people these days?” Peach asks, only half joking.

  “Military brat,” I say. “My father’s a colonel. Took me to the range a couple times a year.” I check the weapon’s unique safety mechanism and tuck the weapon into my belt.

  “There a reason why you’re holding all the weapons?” Peach asks. She looks more afraid than confrontational.

  “Aside from the fact that I know how to handle a gun and a knife? How about the fact that you were, until last night, in cahoots with the guys who were planning to pin a terrorist attack on me?”

  Jenny raises both hands, “Hey, I—”

  “Don’t worry,” I say, “I don’t think either of you had anything to do with it, but it takes a little more than apologies and hugging to gain my trust. So, until I trust you implicitly or there’s a reason for you to have a gun, I’ll hold on to the pointy things.”

  “Works for me,” Jenny says. “With the knife and gun and cloak you kind of look like a female Van Helsing or something. It’s pretty cool.” She leans back, stretches with a grunt and then adds, “Ugh, seriously?”

  The comment is clearly rhetorical, but Peach asks, “What’s wrong? Were you injured?”

  “Nope,” she says, “it’s six o’clock.”

  I notice she’s not wearing a watch. I glance at mine. Six o’clock. “How did you know the time?”

  Jenny sighs. “I’m…regular.”

  I let out a laugh, but Peach hasn’t understood. I look at her and say, “So, how does someone take a shit on this thing?”

  Apparently, there’s no easy way to relieve yourself on the life raft, but we work out a system that I think will work…or might result in all three of us falling into the ocean. Jenny sits on the edge of the raft with her ass hanging out over the ocean. She’s leaning forward, arms outstretching and clinging to Peach and me. We’re holding on tight, and leaning back, providing balance.

  “Can’t you go faster?” Peach asks.

  With a grunt, Jenny says, “My ass is frozen and unless you’ve got a bran muffin, this
could take a minute. How about you guys close your eyes and I can pretend you’re not here. This is embarrassing as hell.”

  I’m about to respond when a loud hiss bursts into the air outside the raft. For a moment, I’m terrified we’re losing air, but Jenny screams and dives inside the raft.

  “Something sprayed me!” she shouts.

  I inch forward and lean out of the open tent door. A giant eye stares at me from the water. It’s surrounded by dark gray skin. A whale.

  Peach joins me. “Oh my god.”

  Jenny squeezes between us and sees the humpback whale watching us. “I got bideted by a whale.”

  The whale bobs there for a moment, inching closer. I can’t help wondering what it’s thinking. Its interest is palpable, like I can feel it probing my thoughts. Who’s to say it can’t? We don’t fully understand whales. The thought of whales having some form of higher intelligence makes me cringe. If that were ever proved, there would be a lot more people like McAfee out on the oceans. Hell, I might be one of them. The encounter feels cosmic and before I know what I’m doing, I’m reaching a hand out.

  The whale dips under the water for a moment, and I think it’s leaving, but then it returns. Its nose rises and touches my hand. The skin is slippery and soft, like a freshly shelled hardboiled egg. Peach and Jenny reach out and touch the whale, testing the limits of the raft’s ballast system. But we stay upright and the three of us share this earth-shaking moment.

  The whale exhales, sending a fish scented spray hissing into the air. With a collective shout of surprise, we fall back inside the raft. Peach is the first to recover, nearly diving back to the open hatch. “It’s gone!” she says and I think she might start crying again.

  But then something strikes the bottom of the raft. It’s the whale. There’s no doubt. The strike feels violent, but by whale standards, it’s probably just a gentle nudge. Still, Jenny starts to panic. “What’s it doing?”

  “It’s just being curious,” I say.

  “Its nose was covered in barnacles,” she says. “It could pop the floats, or ruin the ballasts.”

  Damnit. She’s right.

  A second bump sends the raft spinning in a lazy circle. What the hell is it doing?

  I return to the hatch, but there’s no sign of the whale. As we continue to spin around, I search the ocean until something larger catches my attention. “It turned us around,” I say, excitement creeping into my voice. I look back and find Jenny and Peach looking afraid. “It turned us around.”

  “So?” Jenny says.

  “So,” I say, pointing out the hatch. “I think it wanted to show us something.”

  As I lean aside, they lean forward and see something amazing.

  Land.

  9

  Peach and I hang out of the front of the raft, paddling like mad. Jenny sits behind us, holding onto our belts. If she wasn’t, I’d no doubt yank myself out of the raft and into the water—that’s how hard I’m paddling. We’re within one hundred yards now and my arms are burning, but I ignore the pain and the knowledge that my arms will hurt worse tomorrow. And even worse the day after that. But the idea of being on land, even the frozen wasteland ahead, is intoxicating. There might be resources. Shelter. Hell, there might be people. The Arctic North of Greenland is fairly devoid of human population, but there are hunters and adventurers that come this way. At the very least, we’ll be able to move in the direction we want—south—rather than be at the mercy of the wind and ocean currents.

  As we get closer to land, the waves get bigger. We’re fighting six foot swells, digging up one side and falling down the other. Had I not been at sea for the past month already, I’d probably be seasick, but my body is accustomed to the pitch and roll of the ocean. What it’s not used to is the cold. Salt water sprays in my face, over and over. The air is at least forty degrees, but the wind is fast here where the ocean temperature meets the cold air rushing down from Greenland’s frozen core.

  “We’re not going to make it!” Peach shouts.

  She’s sensed the same thing I have—the waves, or maybe the tide, is fighting us. “We’re going to die if we don’t make it,” I yell back. “Now keep padding!”

  I redouble my efforts and the burn is hard to ignore now, but I didn’t fight this hard and this long to sit back and let us drift back out to sea. Peach doesn’t quite see it the same way.

  She stops paddling. “I can’t!” She’s got tears in her eyes. I’m bigger and stronger than her. Her arms are probably worse off than mine.

  Before I can threaten to shoot her if she doesn’t start paddling again, she’s lifted up and pulled back inside. Jenny says, “Sit on her.”

  I feel Peach’s weight on my ass, pinning me down. A moment later, Jenny lies down by my side and sets her paddle to the water. “I could have the biceps of Hulk Hogan and still not be able to pull my weight out of here.”

  There she goes with another wrestling comment. As we dig up and over a wave, I say, “I could go for a couple of twenty-four inch pythons right about now.”

  She smiles at my quotation of how the Hulkster used to describe the girth of his biceps. “You’re a wrestling fan?”

  “Nah,” I say. “Child of the 80’s. Hogan was everywhere. You?”

  “Child of Alabama,” she says. “I grew up on wrestling, gravy and butter. Can’t you tell?”

  I’m about to laugh when the wave crests and pitches us forward. The feeling of forward momentum is grand, but the salt water rammed up my nostrils is not. I cough and blow water from my nose as my sinuses burn. Jenny got a face-full too and our conversation ends. We grit our teeth, and tag team this son-of-a-bitch ocean like The Hart Foundation, everyone’s favorite pink tights-wearing wrestling tag team.

  Ten agonizing minutes later and we’re just twenty feet from a beach of smooth worn stones. But suddenly, we’re not getting anywhere.

  “What happened?” I shout.

  “Listen,” Peach says from inside the raft.

  A wave picks us up and pushes us a few feet closer to shore. When we drop down, there is a sudden tug like we’re caught on something, and a dull scraping sound.

  “It’s the ballast bags,” Peach said. “They’re dragging on the bottom.”

  “How big are they?” Jenny asks.

  “They hang down two, maybe three feet,” she replies.

  “So we’re only in three feet of water?” Jenny doesn’t wait for a reply. She sits back in the raft, removes her boots, socks and two pairs of pants. Before I can tell her she’s nuts, she steps out of the raft and into the knee-deep frigid water. She lets out a shriek, but takes hold of two plastic handles, leans back and drags the raft toward the shore. Five feet from the stone and pebble beach, she stops. The water is only inches deep here and our waterproof boots can handle it. Peach and I jump out and help the half-naked Jenny pull the raft all the way out of the water and over the beach.

  As the ballasts lose their water, the raft becomes far lighter and we make good time dragging the raft past the water line and up onto a flat stone in the shadow of a fifteen foot, gray cliff.

  We dive back inside. Jenny is shivering. I dry her legs with my cloak and help her back into her dry clothes. Taking them off was smart. She’d have a hard time getting warm if she had to wait for her pants to dry. Peach rubs Jenny’s still shaking legs. Jenny lies back and grunts. “This thing was a lot more comfortable out on the water.”

  I crouch next to them and say, “I’m going to take a look around.”

  Neither of them looks happy about this.

  “We should stay together,” Peach says.

  “I’m not going far,” I say. “I just want to make sure there isn’t a hotel around the corner or a ship just off shore.”

  This seems to make sense to them and they both nod. “I’ll just be gone a few minutes. Why don’t you two see about packing up all our gear so that it’s mobile?”

  “Mobile?” Jenny says.

  “We’re not staying here,” I say
. If we follow the coast south we’ll eventually make it to Thule.”

  “Thule?” Peach says. “We’re just north of the Lincoln Sea. It could take weeks to walk there. Maybe longer.”

  “We’ve got food and water,” I say. “We’ll have to ration it, but we might be able to make it. Our other option is to sit here and wait for a rescue that might not be coming. I didn’t hear anyone send a distress call before leaving the bridge, did you?”

  Neither of them say a word. They know the answer.

  “What about the Bliksem?,” Jenny asks. “They might have called for help.”

  “Maybe,” I admit, “But we don’t know where that explosion went off. We don’t know if any of them survived it. We can’t count on that. And both ships were prepped for spending a long time at sea. No one is going to miss us for a while.”

  Jenny sighs. “Well, I’ve been meaning to lose some weight. Southwest it is.”

  After taking the gun, knife and a small pair of plastic binoculars, I open the hatch and look back at them. “I’ll be an hour, tops.”

  I step out and zip the hatch shut behind me. The cold feels like pinpricks on my legs. Next to fishnet stockings, jeans are perhaps the worst possible pants to be wearing in the cold and I chastise myself for even bringing them. Then again, I wasn’t planning on being marooned north of the Arctic Circle. I wrap the long black cloak around me and I’m instantly thankful for whatever weird fetish drove Chase to stow it on board. The thick wool retains my body heat and I’m quickly warmed.

  It takes me five minutes to reach the cliff’s end where the rocky ground rises upwards like a staircase. I climb twenty feet up and my view of the land opens up. The barren landscape rises to a peak. Bigger than a hill, but not quite a mountain. Maybe a few hundred feet tall. But it looks easily scalable.

  Before heading up, I turn around and look out at the sea. The sky is deep blue and filled with wispy clouds. The ocean is a grayer blue, and full of chop. In the distance, I see a huge iceberg and know we’re lucky to not be stranded on it instead of land. But there isn’t a ship in sight, sunken or afloat.