“Just keep going,” I say. “I’m more interested in how you came to look like Charles Mason after brunch.”
Jenny groans. The others look at me like I’m the one covered in blood. “Sorry. Sick sense of humor, I know.” I turn to Chase. “Continue.”
“By the time we reached the shore, Jenkins was gone. We don’t know when we lost him. But the sea was rough and we were moving fast…I don’t know—”
That Chase was getting choked up over the loss of a man scored him bonus points. It means he cares about people, too, not just whales. “We found a cave and hid inside. In the morning, Mr. Jackson and Captain McAfee went to check out where we were. I stayed with Eagon. He had a broken arm. Maybe some broken ribs. Jackson and the Captain never came back, so Eagon and I spent a second night in the cave. Everything was fine when we fell asleep. But when I woke up, he was…he was screaming. I’ve never heard someone scream like that before. Like his voice was being forced out of him by something physical. There was a loud crunch, and I felt something. It was…warm. Wet. When I stumbled out of the cave, I saw the blood covering me clearly. Then I heard something scraping toward me. I thought it was Eagon. I called to him.”
Chase pulls his knees up close and hugs them tight. I don’t know many grown men who can pull their knees up tight like that, but even if they could, they probably wouldn’t. It makes him look like a sad little schoolgirl. Someone to be pitied. And as he finishes his story, I do pity him.
“I heard breathing, too. Wet. Deep. I wanted to run, but I couldn’t. I wanted to. I just couldn’t. Like my legs were gone.” He looks up at me, his eyes pleading me to believe what he’s about to say. “It was his head. Someone threw Eagon’s head at me.” He shakes his head back and forth, as though disbelieving it himself, but keeps his gaze on me. “Harper, I don’t think we’re alone.”
18
“It’s the polar bear,” Jenny says to Peach. “Has to be.” Jenny paces, occasionally offering a theory. But Peach just stares at the snow, clutching herself.
Willem, Jakob and Alvin whisper to one another, their conversation private, but their body language easy to read. They’re on edge, disturbed by Chase’s presence, and his story.
I’m crouching in a corner of the stone foundation with Chase, who is leaning back against the wall, eating half a protein bar and drinking a quarter of a water bottle. Our meager supplies are dwindling faster with each addition to our band of survivors.
Chase tips the bottle up and chugs a little too fast. I take it, tip it down and remove it from his hands. “Slow down, Aquaman.”
“Sorry,” he says. “I haven’t had anything to eat or drink since we arrived.”
“You could have melted snow. Or Ice,” I point out.
He looks at all of the snow around us. “Good point. Is…there really a polar bear on the island?”
“We’ve run into it twice.” I twist the bottle cap back on the bottle and put it in Chase’s survival backpack. He sees the bag, and twitches his lips. He’s probably not sure if he should claim ownership. I make up his mind for him. “We know this belongs to you—belonged to you. It belongs to all of us now.”
He grins and motions to the cloak gathered around me. “Looks better on you, than me, anyway.”
I think he’s about to hit on me again, so I steer the conversation back to the bear. Somehow talking about a man-eating bear is less offensive to me than the idea of a romantic encounter with Chase. “Do you think what you saw could have been a bear?”
He leans his head back against the cold stone behind him. “I didn’t see anything. Just Eagon’s head…”
There’s a really big, “but,” implied by his tone. I say it for him. “But?”
He speaks softly. “I left out a detail. I—I wasn’t sure about what I saw. Or if you would believe me.”
“And now?”
“I remember it clearly, and you’re being…fair.”
Damn straight I am. “So what is it?”
“Eagon’s head,” he says. “It had been cracked open. His…brain was missing.”
My crouch turns into a cross-legged sit when this news staggers me. “Missing?”
“I don’t think it was a bear,” Chase says. “Bears don’t throw heads. And they don’t eat brains. Not first, anyway.” He picks up some snow and rubs it between his gloved hands, rubbing away the dried blood. “There is blood on my face, right? You lied to calm me down?”
I nod, still too stunned to talk.
He removes his gloves, picks up fresh snow, lets it melt some and scrubs his face with the slush. The blood comes away, turning the snow next to him red. “You’d make a good captain,” he says. “You’re a natural leader. You know how to handle a gun, too. Did your father teach you?”
For a moment, I’m enraged that Chase has brought up my father. They knew who I was all along. They strung me along in order to set me up. But…Chase didn’t know about the planned attack. Which means he didn’t know I was going to be a scapegoat. “He did,” I say.
“Teach you about leadership or guns?” he asks.
“Both,” I say. “You know who I really am?”
He nods.
“Why did you think McAfee allowed me on board?”
He pushes his glasses up. “Because you had potential. You did good work for whales. You led groups of people. You handled confrontations well. And your background—your…father—meant you’d be taken seriously.”
“Wait, you were grooming me? For a position on the Sentinel?” I laugh before he can answer. “How can you not know?”
“Know what?”
“I’m McAfee’s scapegoat.”
“Scapegoat?For what?”
I find this incredibly funny. How can Peach know, but Chase is in the dark? “For the explosion. That’s why Peach was spying on me.”
“She was observing you,” he says. “That’s a little different than—”
“She read my journals. Set up a spycam in our quarters. They weren’t observing my behavior. They were gathering evidence. Framing things so that I would look like an eco-terrorist.”
He looks dubious. “How do you know?”
“She told me,” I said, motioning to Peach, who is staring right at us. She must have heard her name. More than once. And the tone in which it was said. Her gaze makes me uncomfortable and, in a flash, I see the truth. Peach is part of the inner circle. Even more than Chase. He’s dedicated, smart and tactical, and despite owning a gun, knifes and a creepy cloak, he’s not insane. I force a smile at Peach and turn back to Chase.
He must have come to the same conclusion as me because he looks like a man who has just been betrayed. Again. “I’m sorry,” he says. “I didn’t know. I swear.”
I try my best to shrug it off. We’re all here now, and we’re all equally screwed. We can figure out who betrayed who when we make it back to civilization. Until then, we’re all on the same team. I hope.
“Jane,” Willem says from the other side of the structure. He waves me over.
I give Chase a reassuring smile. “Try to rest.”
Willem meets me half way while Jakob limps to a large stone and sits down. Alvin sits in the corner, brushing snow off a rectangular stone.
“How is he?” Willem asks.
His concern surprises me, but then, nearly everything about these Viking whale hunters has defied my stereotyping. “Better,” I say. “But…he doesn’t think the bear killed that man.”
“Neither does my father,” Willem says.
“He doesn’t?”
“He said a bear wouldn’t throw a head, it would eat it. And he says that Chase runs slow. The bear would have caught him.”
“Then what killed him?” I notice I’m saying “what” instead of “who.”
He shrugs. “No idea. What I know is that we need to get off this island. My father thinks we can repair the ruined ballast by tying large rocks to the plastic still hanging from the bottom.”
“But the channel is mov
ing too fast,” I complain. “We’d be swept out to sea before making it across.”
“Which is why we need him—” He nods toward Chase. “—to take us to where the Zodiacs landed. If we can salvage an engine, we might be able to hold it over the back while using paddles to steer.”
“That’s…nuts,” I say.
“I’d rather die fighting for my life,” he says.
I grin. “The history professor has some Viking in him after all?”
“A little,” he says.
“Good for you,” I say. “But we also need someone up there.” I point to the tall peak at the southwestern area of the island. “If your distress call was heard, and they send someone to look, we need to be looking for them, too. We have flares and smoke signals. We shouldn’t be hard to find if someone is in the area.”
I take his slow nod as agreement and continue. “I originally wanted you and me on the hilltop and everyone else here, but if we can recover the engine, that changes things. Chase said they landed on the north end of the island. You, me and Chase can try to recover an engine. It’s going to weigh a lot and you and I are the strongest.”
“Don’t let my father hear you say that,” he says with a smile.
“Peach and Jenny will have to keep watch,” I say. “Your father and Alvin can stay here, organize our supplies and work out a ration system. The food is disappearing too fast. Sound good?”
Willem snaps off a salute. “You’ve done this before?”
My mind flashes back through time. Twenty years. I’m in the woods, a swamp really, with the Colonel. “With my father,” I say. “He told me we were going camping. What we were really doing was surviving. Two weeks in the woods, gathering food, hunting, making our own fires and shelters. And I did most of the work.” The memory, like most about my father, is bittersweet, though a little bit sweeter now that what once seemed like torture might save my life.
When I relay the plan to the others, no one looks happy. Despite their age, Alvin and Jakob aren’t accustomed to letting others do the heavy-lifting. Jenny and Peach fear the bear. Chase fears whatever tried to play volleyball with Eagon’s brainless head. Those are all valid concerns, which I share, but we’re going to have to risk our lives a little to save ourselves. And I nearly say that, but decide it sounds too much like cheesy dialogue from a SyFy original movie. Instead, I say, “Here are your choices, do what I say and maybe get off this island, or don’t do what I say and get left behind when I get off this island.”
Whether or not they believe I’m capable of getting them, or myself, off the island, I’m not sure. But my words have the desired effect. A few minutes later Chase and Willem are waiting for me while I speak to Jenny and Peach. They’ve got a flare gun with two flares, and two smoke signals. “You know how to use them?”
Both nod. I hand Chase’s black knife to Jenny.
“Why are you giving that to her?” Peach complains.
I speak without much thought. “Because, I don’t trust you.” It’s not very diplomatic of me, and only widens the divide in my group, but I have an issue pulling punches with someone who conspired to send me to jail for life.
She looks more angry than hurt by my words, which proves I made the right choice.
“If you see the bear, or…anything else,” I say to Jenny. “Don’t screw around. Just haul ass back here.”
“Don’t worry,” she says. “I will. You better go, Van Slowpoke.” She surprises me with a quick hug. “Be careful.”
“You, too,” I say and then add, “Both of you.”
Chase and Willem are already heading north. I send Jenny and Peach southwest, wave goodbye to Alvin and Jakob and then strike out north, toward two wrecked Zodiacs…and whatever ate Eagon’s brain.
19
The flat plain to the north of the island’s center ends in a steep valley between two sharp looking peaks. It’s just four feet across and rises twenty vertical feet on either side before tapering to a forty-five degree angle. I enter first, weapon at the ready. If we encounter the polar bear here, I’ll have no choice but to kill it. Or it, me.
“Jane,” Chase says.
I turn around to find him frozen at the entrance. He looks frail and terrified.
I hold the handgun up for him to see. “I’m a good shot. We’ll be fine,” I tell him.
He points to the snow in the narrow pass. “This is the way I came.”
A trail of bloodstained footprints covers the trail. I can see a spot where he must have fallen, too. His frantic escape is frozen for all to see.
“Look at me,” I say. When he does, I continue. “We’re going to get off this island, Chase. But the only way we can do that is with one of the Zodiac engines. We’ll go as fast as we can, get back to camp and then haul ass to the mainland. We could be out of here inside of six hours.” It’s a guess, really. We might have to spend another night here. But I really just need him to keep moving.
Unfortunately, it’s not working.
“I can’t,” he says.
“Chase,” Willem says in a voice that’s so kind and gentle, I think he’s about to tell an inspiring story from his childhood—standing up to a bully, or wild animal, or whatever hardships Greenlander kids have to face. Instead, he says, “If you don’t go, I’m going to throw you over my shoulder and carry you. And if the bear shows up, I’m going to drop you before running away.”
Chase slowly cranes his head toward Willem. He sees the same seriousness in Willem’s eyes that I do. Chase takes a slow step into the gorge. Then another. And soon we’re on our way again.
Five minutes later, we’re moving at a steady clip. “I misjudged you,” Chase says. I think he’s talking to me, so I turn around, but he’s looking at Willem. “It’s not often that someone can out maneuver me. At least, not whalers.”
“I’m a history professor,” Willem says with a grin.
“Ahh,” Chase says. “That explains it, then. The whale meat. It was…” I can tell he’s still offended by the memory, but his words don’t match his expression. “…inspired.”
“Thun L’Évêque, France, 1340 AD,” Willem says. “British attackers launched dead animals into the defending castle. The defenders reported the stench was so bad, that they quickly agreed to a truce and abandoned the castle.”
“Is that what you wanted?” Chase asks. “A truce?”
“And for you to abandon your attacks.”
“Killing whales means that much to you?”
Chase’s words are framed in anti-whaling speak, but his tone says the question is earnest, not a taunt. So I stay out of it and keep my eyes forward, waiting for a bear to rise up out of the snow or a head to come sailing my way.
“I care about my father,” Willem says. “Attacking the Bliksem meant you were attacking my father. The paint was bad enough, but the rotten butter… I couldn’t let that stand.”
Chase laughs.
“What’s funny about that?” Willem asks.
I realize the answer a moment after he begins to explain. “It’s ironic is all. That the first real shots fired in our navel encounter were made by the one person who didn’t really want to be a party to it.”
Thank God Willem already knows I threw those bottles. This would be a really bad time to divide—my bullshit meter suddenly goes off the chart. Chase is trying to divide Willem and me. I remember Chase’s last visit to my quarters. His smitten eyes weren’t an act. This isn’t about whalers versus anti-whalers. This is about Chase putting a wedge between me and Willem—the competition.
For the girl.
I’m about to turn around and give Chase a verbal kick in the nuts, but Willem beats me to the punch.
“I know,” he says. “She’s got a good arm.”
With those words, Willem takes the wind out of Chase’s sails. Not only does Willem know about my treachery, he compliments it. I glance back. Chase looks dejected. Score one for Willem. Behind Chase, Willem grins and gives me a wink. Son-of-a-bitch.Him, too?
>
“For the record,” I say, picking up the pace. “This isn’t a B horror movie, so I won’t be shagging anyone while the threat of death looms—”
If there is a God, I know without a doubt that he’s got a sick sense of humor because as the words, “death looms,” come out of my mouth, I glance up and see a naked, headless and limbless corpse impaled on a sharp rock jutting from the gorge wall. A tattoo of a breaching whale on the chest helps identify this as Eagon’s body, or what remains of it.
Chase screams, but he’s cut short when Willem clamps his hand over the panicked man’s mouth. They struggle for a moment as Chase tries to run, but when no bear—or anything else—appears, Chase calms, though he doesn’t look up again.
“It’s Eagon,” I say. I’m not a forensic expert, but I’m pretty sure I can identify wounds inflicted by wide polar bear claws and big ass polar bear teeth. So I ignore the fact that I knew this man, and step closer. The stomach cavity has been ripped open. The tear is jagged, and it’s dangling strings of stretched out skin. The flesh wasn’t cut. It was yanked. My stomach starts to protest. If the cold hadn’t kept the body from rotting, I’d probably be retching right now. But I keep it together and look closer.
“The organs are missing,” I say upon seeing the empty cavity. But that’s not the most disturbing revelation. A bear could probably tear a man open, eat his soft insides and take a few limbs for the road. What a bear could not do was slice those limbs clean off. The flesh and bone, where the one arm and both legs have been severed, are cut clean. There are no claw marks. No signs of chewing. No stretched flesh. I speak the only logical conclusion aloud. “His limbs…they were cut off.”
“What?” Willem says, letting Chase go.
Both of them are drawn forward by curiosity. Willem examines the wounds while Chase takes a quick glance and stumbles away clutching a hand over his mouth. “A bear didn’t do that,” he says though his hand.
“Chase,” I say. “Did McAfee or Mr. Jackson have any weapons?”
“You mean like an axe, or a sword? Because that’s what you’d need to do that!” He’s starting to crack. Tears fill his eyes.
THE SENTINEL (A Jane Harper Horror Novel) Page 10
