The binoculars lower from my eyes and I turn to Willem. “It’s Torstein,” I say.
Willem snatches the binoculars from me, looks at the ancient man for just a moment, and issues a command that we are all getting accustomed to hearing. “Run.”
27
We leave everything behind. Our supplies. The raft (which is also our shelter). Food. Water. Everything. Our only gear is what we carry—one knife, the Glock with five remaining rounds, a protein bar in my pocket and the clothes on our backs. In short, we’re screwed, and all of us know it, but no one brings it up. Because it could be worse. That horrible…zombie Viking thing could be chasing us. But it’s not. It hasn’t moved from its perch high up on the distant hill. I can’t see it clearly from the other side of the clearing where we’ve fled, but I can feel the thing watching us.
And this disturbs me greatly because it doesn’t fit the zombie profile that’s been ingrained in my mind by popular culture. Shouldn’t it be shambling after us? Moaning and maybe calling for our brains? The fact that it’s not, that it’s simply observing us, means its thinking, which means this thing is closer to a vampire than a zombie.
Stop trying to make sense of it, I tell myself. If we base our actions on what we know about modern incarnations of zombies or vampires, we’re going to make a mistake. This thing is neither zombie nor vampire. It is their predecessor, the reality that spawned two modern fictional monsters. It is Draugr, the Viking undead; a big, strong, thinking, six hundred year old animated corpse.
Shit.
I slow down as we enter the gorge on the northern end of the island. This is where Chase originally fled from, where we found and then lost Eagon’s body. “It’s already been here,” I say. “It’s not going to have any problem finding us.”
Willem and Chase, who have been leading the charge, pause near the mouth of the chasm. “We have a plan,” Chase says.
Somehow the idea of these two working together strikes me as odd, but mortal enemies sometimes join forces to defeat a third, common enemy, so anything is possible. I raise my eyebrows, signifying that someone should fill me in.
“We’re going back to the cave,” Willem says. “With the raven symbol.”
“The cave where Eagon was killed?” I ask, my voice oozing sarcasm and doubt. “That’s a great idea. Hey zebras, the lion is going to catch you eventually, so why don’t you just go to the den and get it over with.”
“Jane,” Willem says, “the cave wasn’t a den, it was a prison.”
“And the last thing an escaped prisoner wants to do is go back,” Chase adds, pushing his glasses up. “Trust me, I know.”
My sarcastic streak has a thousand insults lined up, but my rational side manages to keep my mouth under control. Mostly because they’re making sense. There’s no way to be sure. These things might not have any emotions at all. But if there is any emotion—or even logic—involved in the Draugr’s thought process, it won’t want to enter this cave, or any other cave for a very long time. I bite my lip, trying to come up with something better, but can’t. “Fine,” I mutter.
We enter the gorge and leave the clearing, and the lone Draugr watchman, behind. Ten feet in, I stop. The others look back. “What now?” Willem asks.
“I just want to check something.” I say, creeping back toward the entrance. Low and out of sight, I peek over a boulder just in time to see the Draugr’s horned helmet disappear over the top of the hill. “It’s leaving,” I say.
“So?” Chase asks, eager to leave.
“So, that means it was watching us.”
“Raven,” Jakob says. “Do you know why Vikings were so successful in battle?”
His question catches me off guard. I stay silent, in part because I’m confused, but also because I don’t know the answer.
“Intimidation,” he says. “They attacked from the ocean and made no effort to hide the fact that they were coming. Their ships looked like dragons. They chanted and beat war drums. And they looked…” He looks motions toward the distant hill. “You saw for yourself. Many villagers fled before the Vikings attacked, allowing the Norsemen to ravage villages and monasteries at their leisure. Those who stood their ground often trembled with fright by the time the Vikings arrived and they were easily defeated.”
“You’re saying that thing is trying to intimidate us?” I ask.
He nods. “Is it working?”
How Jakob is thinking so clearly is beyond me. He just shot his oldest and closest friend in the head to keep him from becoming a man-eating monster and here he is, revealing Viking tactics. What he says makes sense, too, which I find infuriating because it means that I’m allowing myself to be manipulated. And that’s something I won’t allow. I squash down my fear, and say, “Not anymore.” I push past the three men. “Chase, which way to the cave?”
We find the cave ten minutes later. The raven carving on the stone matches the one I saw on the Draugr’s shield. This is where they buried the raven, which is something none of us have yet to see. We descend into the hollow slowly. Willem has one of the small LED lights from the raft in his pocket. The small blue light reveals a craggy, naturally formed cave, which is essentially a large crack in the stone. The path descends at a twenty-degree angle. We follow the path for five minutes, stopping when we reach a dark brown stain on the floor. The place reeks of death, and something earthy I can’t identify.
“This is where Eagon died?” I ask.
“I don’t want to stay here,” Chase says. He doesn’t answer the question, but I can see my assessment is right by the look in his eyes.
“We can’t go back,” Willem says. “The further we are from the entrance, the better.”
“Down,” Jakob says. He heads down into the dark, fearless and determined.
We follow, happy to leave the outside world, and all that remains of Eagon, behind. But the tunnel ends fifty feet later in a small chamber the size of an RV. Willem sweeps back and forth across the space, leading with the small LED light. I stand behind him, ready to blast anything I see with the Glock, but I’d really rather not have to. Firing the weapon in an enclosed space like this would likely make all of us deaf.
As we near the back of the chamber, a reflection catches my eye. “There,” I say, pointing to the light before realizing that no one can see me pointing. But Willem must have seen it, too, because he heads for the glint of light shining back at us. I crouch down next to Willem, as he brushes some loose stones away revealing a blade.
“It’s a sword,” he says. He quickly clears away more debris, exposing three feet of polished metal.
“An iron blade,” Jakob says. He takes a careful grasp of the blade between his fingers, lifts it up and gives it a tug. The sword slides out, pulling a hand with it.
The four of us jump back, expecting a Draugr to rise up out of the rubble. But nothing moves. The mostly skeletal hand isn’t attached to a body.
Willem shines the light on the blade revealing an ornately carved hilt. The handle is wrapped in dried, cracking leather and ends in a curved hunk of bronze that looks like a mushroom top. He picks it up, sliding the weapon out of the hand’s loose grip.
“Why hasn’t it rusted?” Chase asks, eyeing the sword the way he did me just a few days ago.
“Arctic air is dry,” Jakob says. “Like a desert. Frozen water can’t rust.”
“And this island probably thawed out in the last year,” Willem adds. He feels the blade edge with his thumb. “Still sharp.”
Fueled by the discovery, Chase attacks the pile of rubble, lifting up stones and tossing them to the side. He stops for a moment and says, “The rest of the body is here.”
Fearful that the dead man isn’t quite as dead as we would like, I ready my gun. Willem raises the sword, ready to strike, and I nearly smile because he looks even more like a genuine Viking.
“Careful,” Jakob warns, standing back. He’s probably the smartest of all of us.
A moment later, his fears prove unfounded. C
hase reveals the body dressed in the tattered remains of a tunic and various furs. A helmet sits crooked on his head. None of the telltale Draugr signs are present. He’s a smallish man, perhaps five foot six, maybe a little taller with hydrated meat on his bones. There is also no hay, no scissors, no sewn toes. Nothing to indicate this was one of Torstein’s infected men.
“He died sealing the raven inside,” Willem says. He lifts the helmet from the back of the man’s head. The skull is crushed.
I look at the ruined wall behind the man. It doesn’t take much to figure out that the man had been thrown, with great force, against the stone wall, which then crumbled and buried him. I would like to avoid whatever did this.
“Found something!” Chase says, still excited. He yanks a shield from the stones. A chunk is missing from the round, wooden shield, but it looks in good shape. I don’t think it will do much against that double axe, or the rabid polar bear, but it will probably make him feel safer. And while his perceived safety might be an illusion, I still envy it. I’m not sure I’ll ever feel safe again.
28
Several hours’ worth of adrenaline begins to wear off as we sit on the cave floor. My muscles twitch all over my body. Willem shut his small light off to conserve the battery, so it’s pitch black. The only way I know the others are still here is because I can hear them breathing. We’ve all gone silent, processing the horrors of the past day in our own ways.
But the ceaseless tickle of twitching, adrenaline-deprived muscles in my arms, legs and stomach is so intense that I can’t think of anything else. On one hand, this is a blessing. I don’t want to think about the things I’ve seen. On the other hand, it feels like something is crawling inside me. The image sticks and I imagine small white larvae moving about my body. But I can’t take credit for the horrible daydream. I’ve actually seen it.
In Alvin’s leg wound. The small white maggot-like things. But did I really see them? I picture them in my body again, wriggling their small bodies beneath my skin and I realize my subconscious has already figured it out. The little creatures didn’t disappear, they entered Alvin’s body. But where did they come from? The only answer I can come up with is awful.
“Willem,” I say.
Someone gasps with surprise from the sound of my voice.
“What’s wrong?” Chase says quickly. He sounds half-asleep.
“Just had an idea,” I say. “Were you sleeping?”
“I don’t know,” Chase says. “I think. Maybe.”
“I’m here, Jane,” Willem says. His voice is so close that it’s my turn to be startled. I’m beginning to hate the dark.
“Tell us,” says Jakob. I can tell by the direction of his voice that he’s near the cave entrance, defending us from anyone, or anything, that might decide to enter our sanctuary.
I clear my throat, looking for the right way to say this. “When you were pulling Alvin...did you see anything…unusual?”
“Everything was unusual,” he says. “Can you be more specific?”
“When Peach, you know, bit him?”
“I couldn’t see it from where I was,” he says. I can’t see him, but I can hear he doesn’t like the direction this conversation is taking. “Did you see something?”
“So much for sleeping,” Chase grumbles.
I ignore him, replaying the moment in my mind. “After she bit him, I saw the wound. There was something there. Something moving. Like insect larvae, or maggots. I don’t know. They were small, and white. But I only saw them for a moment before they disappeared.”
“Disappeared?” Chase says. “C’mon, Jane.”
“Quiet,” Jakob says, his serious voice directed at Chase.
“Disappear is the wrong word,” I say. “I’m pretty sure they went inside him.”
Silence follows for a moment, broken by Willem’s voice. “So these maggots appeared when Peach bit his legs. And then they crawled into his body. He started showing signs of infection shortly after that.
“So you think…what?” Willem says. “That maggots transfer the infection?”
“I don’t know,” I say. “Maybe. If it’s an infection, blood or other bodily fluids seem to be more likely.”
“That’s how it works with zombies and vampires,” Chase says.
“But these aren’t zombies and vampires,” I say. “And this isn’t a movie. Wooden stakes, crosses and holy water won’t help us.”
“Shooting them in the head seemed to do the trick,” Chase notes. “So the movies got something right.”
“Anyway,” I say with a sigh, “there is another possibility. That the maggots are some kind of parasite that hasn’t been discovered before now.”
Chase coughs up a mocking laugh. “You think those tiny creatures can control people? C’mon.”
“Parasites take over the minds of their hosts all the time,” I say. My knowledge comes from a documentary, but they don’t need to know this. “There’s a wasp that lays its larvae inside a caterpillar. The larvae then eat their way out of the caterpillar and attach themselves to a plant. But the caterpillar doesn’t die. It survives and defends the larvae with its life, not because it wants to, but because one or two larvae stay behind and control the thing’s mind.”
“That’s a caterpillar,” Chase says. “The human mind is far more complex.”
“Toxoplasma,” I say. The word spills out from some recess of my mind. “It’s a parasite that infects thousands of different warm blooded species, including people. And when it infects people, it changes the way they think. Men become more aggressive and jealous, while women become more outgoing and receptive to the opposite sex. And both men and women had slower reaction times and became more accident prone.”
“So it’s a parasite that makes people have lots of sex and die young?” Chase asks. “If that’s the case, I know a lot of people who might be infected.”
“That’s not the point,” I say, growing frustrated with his Devil’s advocate routine. “The point is, there are parasites that can control the human mind. And there are parasites that can keep a caterpillar, which should be dead, alive and animated. Maybe we’re seeing something that can do both? Maybe the parasite drives the host to consume blood, or brains, providing nourishment to the young living in the gut, who then mature and are passed on to the next host through a bite? I mean, they ate Eagon. And Jenny. But the rest were killed by single bites, allowing the young parasites access to a new host.”
Chase speaks slowly. “That actually make some kind of sick sense.”
“It would explain why Peach and the bear were both infected,” Willem says. “If the only requirement the parasite has is warm blood, then species doesn’t matter. All mammalian brains can be controlled by certain chemicals, right?”
“I think so,” I say. “Which is why shooting them in the head works. They still need the brain to operate the body.”
“But what about that Torstein guy?” Chase asks. “He’s been dead for a really long time. His brain should be as dried and shriveled as his skin.”
“I don’t know,” I admit. “Maybe they secrete something that protects vital organs from decay, or even modify our genetic code so that the cells don’t degrade? Who knows? I’m just trying to make sense of these things. I don’t think we’re going to get all the answers.”
“She’s right,” Jakob says, his deep voice rumbling through the dark chamber. “We know everything we need to know: how to kill them, and what they want.”
“Uhh, I missed the ‘what they want’ part, I guess,” Chase says.
“Two things,” Jakob says. “To control you or to eat you.”
“Right,” Chase says. “Bad and worse. Got it. So what’s the plan, then?”
“Same as always,” I say. “Get the hell off this island.”
No one knows exactly how we’ll do that, though, and silence returns to the cave. I’m sure we’re all conjuring up scenarios of escape, but only one of them works. I have no doubt we’ll all agree that w
e need to go back to the Viking ruins—where anything on the inside of the island can see us—retrieve our gear, the raft and the engine, and then make a run for the southern coast. There is no other possible scenario for escape.
So I try to shut off my mind and get some rest. I lie on the stone floor, head leaning on my arms. It’s about as comfortable as a bed of broken glass, but exhaustion soon claims my mind like a parasite and puts me to sleep.
I dream of death.
I wake to screams.
29
Sudden fear wipes the sleepiness from my mind like a mannequin family subjected to a nuclear blast. The problem is, when I sit up, looking for danger, I can’t see a thing. But I can hear.
There’s a repetitive shuffling sound sifting through the chamber. Somebody’s moving.
“What’s wrong?” Willem asks from my right.
“Something touched me!” It’s Chase. The high-pitch of his voice means he’s horrified.
Jakob shushes us. Chase is making a lot of noise now, stumbling away from whatever threat he’s imagining.
“Chase,” I hiss. “Be quiet!”
Somebody grunts in reply to my voice. The sound comes from where I imagine Chase to be, but it isn’t his voice. Nor is it Willem or Jakob. The shuffling sound begins again, getting louder. The sound comes in starts and stops.
THE SENTINEL (A Jane Harper Horror Novel) Page 15
