THE SENTINEL (A Jane Harper Horror Novel)

by Robinson, Jeremy; Bishop, Jeremy

Willem looks from the two halves of the body to the axe. “Did he?”

  “Some part of him remembers,” I say. “Family is important to you Olavson’s.”

  Understanding flashes on his face. “Áshildr the witch. Her last name was recorded as daughter of Torstein.” He looks at the skeleton.

  “Also an Olavson,” I say. “The body is wrapped in red fabric. The raven crest is at the center. I think he recognized the body. So did Áshildr.” Torstein’s words come back to me. “Kona.”

  “What?” Willem looks surprised by the word.

  “Kona,” I repeat. “He said it when he saw the body. He called Áshildr datter. And before he…you know. He said, ‘Forlate, Datter.’ Do you know what it means.”

  “Wife,” he says. “She was his wife.”

  “You said the skeleton was a man,” I say.

  “I’m a history professor, not a CSI,” he says, rubbing his shoulder.

  “Torstein’s sentinel told of six men in his party. We met them all. Why didn’t he mention his wife?”

  “Honestly?” he says. “Because she was a woman. Just the way things were back then.” He looks up at the Viking. “Seems pretty clear that his feelings for her were powerful, though. And Forlate Datter. Forlate means ‘forgive.’ Datter is—”

  “Daughter,” I say, understanding. “He was asking her for forgiveness. Not for what he was about to do, but for what he didn’t do six hundred years ago.”

  “Willem,” Jakob groans as he sits up. He seems totally disinterested in how things have resolved when he says, “How much time?”

  Willem’s eyes go wide. “I don’t know.”

  I think they’re talking about the boat and say, “I think they’ll wait.”

  Willem stands, but winces when he does. He pulls Jakob up onto his one good foot. The attempt to put Jakob over his shoulder is pitiful. His wounds are too severe.

  “My wrist is broken,” I say, holding up my left hand. “But I can take him on my right side if you can get him on the left.”

  Willem and Jakob both agree to the arrangement and then we’re moving. We’re almost jogging when I say, “We need to slow down. I can’t—”

  “Here!” Willem shouts, then directs us to a large boulder. We set Jakob down behind the stone. Willem looks back to Torstein. We’re at least a hundred yards away, but the man still looks huge. He stands like a statue, his horns rising high into the air, his braided hair and beard caught up by the wind. He’s a legend, in the flesh—zombie, vampire, Viking.

  And then, he’s nothing.

  A fire ball rips him to pieces and rises up into the air.

  Willem grabs me and yanks me behind the stone as the boom and shockwave hits us. The impact is powerful, but nothing compared to what we experienced in the gorge.

  “What just happened?” I ask, searching my mind for some memory of an explosive being planted. Then I remember it. Willem. “You had C4 in your hand,” I say. “When you punched him?”

  Willem nods slow and sure and when he does, I see a little bit of Torstein, Son of Olav in him. As much as I should fear the name, I realize that despite nearly killing all of us, Torstein is a hero. He cleansed Greenland of the plague and probably saved the rest of the world from exposure. His only mistake was loving his family. And in the end it was that same love that gave him the strength to set things right, once and for all. I see that same strength in Willem and think the Olavson family line is worth preserving. With that in mind, I kiss Willem on the lips.

  Jakob clears his throat. “Listen,” he says. “Our ride approaches.”

  The high pitched buzz and rhythmic whump of a boat engine tearing over ocean waves reaches my ears and brings a smile to my face. It’s time to get the hell off this island.

  43

  I get that feeling again, like I’m a kid fleeing the basement. But it doesn’t make sense. We’re home free, making good time along the coast and our ride is no doubt waiting for us at the south beach. I no longer hear the sound of the engine, so they’ve definitely stopped.

  So what has my subconscious all riled up?

  The raven is dead, as is the Queen.

  Torstein is dust in the wind, literally.

  All of his original six man party is accounted for: the blacksmith, the apprentice, the dog-master, bingo arms, the short fry and Torstein himself. All five dogs are dead, too.

  We pass the familiar spot where we found Jenny’s body.

  Jenny’s now missing body.

  But it wasn’t here when we came back for the C4, I realize. How I missed that then is beyond me. But it could have easily been the polar bear, or the raven, or Torstein who took the body. Eagon’s body disappeared, too. Maybe Draugar have a waste not, want not personality?

  The beach is just ahead. I can hear the waves breaking. When we reach the five foot drop to the beach, Willem goes down first. His shoulder feels better now and he’s able to help Jakob down. I sit on my ass and push myself over the edge, landing on my feet.

  I should be running over the sand, looking for our ride, getting aid for Jakob. But I take my post under his shoulder and the three of us start for the water. We’re just fifteen feet from where the outcrop of island stone ends and we’ll get a clear view of the beach, and our salvation.

  But before we get there, my thoughts turn toward that feeling again. It’s probably paranoia, but I can’t stop it.

  Peach, I think. I don’t remember seeing Peach’s body. “What happened to Peach?” I ask.

  “We threw her over the wall,” Jakob says with a wince as his bad foot hits the sand. We’re having trouble keeping him lifted up on the loose ground. “She was outside the ruins before you two returned. Why?”

  “Nothing…” It’s a lie, and he knows it, and doesn’t like it. But not even Jakob’s disapproving eyes can distract me.

  Eyes, I think, remembering Jackson’s eyes. How the parasites moved inside his head and stared out at me. I’ll never sleep without Ambien, I think. But Jackson died right before McAfee—

  “Oh shit,” I say. “McAfee!”

  “What?” Willem says, stopping just a few steps from the main beach.

  “McAfee is still running loose. We never killed him.” I look at Jakob. “Did you?”

  He shakes his head slowly, offering a solemn, “No.”

  “Stop!” The voice is different, and new, and very human. But it sounds angry, and maybe afraid.

  I slide out from under Jakob’s arm and leave father and son behind as I charge out onto the beach.

  I should be surprised by what I see. I should be terrified, and fall back before running away. But I don’t.

  Instead, I charge toward the bloated form of McAfee as he lopes to the red Greenland Coast Guard Zodiac and three terrified looking crewman. One of them has a 9mm pistol aimed at McAfee’s chest.

  “Stop, or I’ll shoot!” The words are spoken with a thick accent, but would have as little effect in any language. When McAfee is just a few feet from the raft, and reaching out for the crewman, three shots ring out. When McAfee isn’t fazed by the bullets, the man empties his clip. But it does no good. You can’t kill the undead by shooting them in the heart.

  “You have to aim for the head!” I shout, drawing the .45 Glock. The man, and McAfee both turn toward me.

  “It’s okay,” McAfee says, sounding like he’s got a mouth full of steak. “We’re friends.”

  Ignoring everything my father taught me about how to shoot, I charge forward, take aim and just ten feet from McAfee, I pull the trigger.

  A divot with a hole in the center appears on McAfee’s already ruined forehead. An explosion of brain, blood and white parasites blossoms from the back of his head. He falls back, hitting the sand with a wet thud. The last of the Draugar is dead, and none of them deserved it more than McAfee, who was more of a monster in life than he was undead.

  The crewman points his 9mm at me. Eyes wide and face pale, he says, “Who are you?”

  “Jane Harper,” I say. �
�You’re expecting us.”

  Willem and Jakob hobble up behind me.

  The crewman points his gun at them. “Who are they!”

  “You know you’re out of ammo, right?” I say.

  The man looks at the gun and then lowers it.

  Jakob extends his hand. “Captain Jakob Olavson of the Bliksem.”

  Relief floods the man’s face. He points to McAfee. “What the hell was that?”

  “Long story,” I say. “Help us on board.”

  As the three man crew help Jakob on board. The crewman says, “I thought there were four?”

  I feel sad for a moment, thinking about Chase and the way he died. But I still feel proud of him. He overcame a lot and became a better man. I’ll remember him differently than I would a few days ago. “He died,” I say. “Well.”

  And the strangest thing about this moment isn’t that I said, “He died well,” like I’m some sort of Klingon. It’s that the five Greenlander sailors listening to me nod like that’s good enough for them.

  Then we’re all on the boat, launched and zipping over the waves. The air feels much colder as we cruise over the ocean, but my tension and fear are already slipping away. We survived. We made it.

  Fifteen minutes later, we climb off the Zodiac and onto the deck of a bright white Coast Guard cutter. It looks a lot like the Coast Guard ships in the U.S. except that it has a green stripe instead of a red one. We’re given dry blankets and cups of hot cocoa.

  The Captain greets us with a wave and offers his hand to Jakob. Before either man can introduce himself there’s a dull thud beneath our feet. The Captain only looks mildly concerned. “Iceberg?” he asks a crewman as he looks over the side rail.

  There is no doubt that this vessel is an ice breaker, and I’m maybe a little desensitized to fearing for my life, so the issue barely registers. That is, until the crewman flinches away from the rail and shouts, “Captain!”

  As we all rush toward the rail, the crewman points to the ocean below and shouts, “They’re killing each other!”

  You’d think that nothing would surprise me now, but this… This is horrible. The sea is red with blood. Sleek black bodies slide up and out of the water, moving fast. I count at least twenty dorsal fins. The orcas. But they’re not alone. Scores of large walruses are in the water with them, and they’re not running away. As the orcas swim in to attack, the walruses fight back, thrusting their tusks into the whales’ skin. An orca breeches, its body writhing. The thirty foot mammal strikes the side of the cutter, shaking the vessel.

  The Captain storms away, shouting orders in Greenlandic.

  The battle continues as we get underway. And that’s when I notice it. The whales aren’t attacking the walruses, the walruses are attacking the whales.

  These are the walruses attacked by the polar bear.

  Like walruses, and people, orcas are mammals. They’re warm blooded.

  And the perfect home for the parasites.

  The Draugar have survived, too.

  Water churns behind the boat, as its two powerful screws propel us away from the horrible scene. Someone needs to come up here and kill them, I think, but then I realize it’s too late. There were at least a hundred walruses on the beach, and there are maybe fifty in the water. If the orcas are infected, they could be half way around the world before someone returns to this island. And they’ll likely infect any mammal they come across on the way.

  As though to prove my worst fears valid, a herd of ten walruses breaks away from the battle and follows the cutter.

  Willem and Jakob stand on either side of me, watching the Draugr walruses give chase. As I lean my head on Willem’s shoulder and he puts his arm around me, Jakob turns to me and says, “We must tell the world about this, Raven.” He turns his gaze back toward the island that nearly claimed our lives. “We are the sentinels now.”

  Epilogue

  A week after escaping from the island, I find myself under guard at a hospital. Willem and Jakob are both here, too, in the room across the hall. We communicate mostly by shouting back and forth, because we’re not allowed to leave our rooms. “So you can heal,” the doctors say about our confinement, but the policeman outside the door says otherwise. Of course, an armed cop is far better than a parasite controlled Draugr, so I don’t complain.

  Our wounds are healing. Our spirits are lifting. We’re happy to be alive. We’re prisoners, I suppose, for now, but it’s not bad actually. The food is good and I feel safe. Really safe. The problem is that no one seems to be taking our story seriously. We’ve been interviewed by a number of government agencies, some from Greenland, some from the U.S., and despite our stories matching, the investigators’ noses crinkle every time like they’ve just smelled a corpse.

  Having just finished a chocolate pudding, I lean back in my bed and look at the TV, which is muted. It’s a local news show, but it’s happily in English. I see a photo of the Sentinel and sit up straight. This is the first time I’ve seen any mention of the shipwrecks or our rescue. As I turn up the volume, the image changes to my face and the pretty newscaster smiles as she says my name.

  “Our sources say that Jane Harper, one of three survivors of last week’s tragic collision between the whaling ship Bliksem and the anti-whaling vessel, Sentinel, has come forward with a claim that sounds like it’s straight out of a Hollywood zombie movie. There are parasites, she claims, that are able to take over the mind of the host and turn them into killers. The parasites mature inside one victim and are spread to the next through a bite. Harper went on to describe, in graphic detail, how several other survivors were killed due to encounters with these parasites.

  “Though Harper was once a champion of the anti-whaling community, she now believes that Greenland’s local walrus and whale populations should be exterminated due to parasitical infection. The anti-whaling community has cut all ties with Harper, who will be undergoing a psychological evaluation along with her fellow survivors, Jakob and Willem Olavson, who support her claims.

  “Authorities believe it is likely that all three survivors might be suffering from shared hallucinations brought on by the cold, starvation and dehydration, but they haven’t ruled out other possibilities such as contaminated food and water, or a natural toxin of some kind. But they are also looking into the possibility of foul play. A team of forensic investigators will be returning to the island next week to search for bodies and any evidence that might indicate a crime had been committed.

  “While Greenland’s Oceanographic Institute confirms that whale populations are migrating differently this year, they blame the behavior on global warming, which, it seems, is a much more urgent, and real, matter than parasitic zombies.”

  The newswoman giggles, regains her composure and says, “In related news, an orca off of Nuuk, attacked a man today. This attack is the first on a human outside of captivity. Experts say that the whale likely became confused in the murky waters of Nuuk Bay where it accidentally struck the man’s small fishing boat. If the man fell atop the whale, it’s likely the creature acted instinctually to defend itself. They say that the whale merely bit the man’s leg, and then pulled him to shore, showing the orca realized its mistake and then saved the man’s life. The victim was seen leaving the scene, on foot, and has not yet been identified.”

  “Orcas don’t bite people,” says Charlie, the officer stationed at my door. He’s a nice enough guy, serious about his job, but friendly. He must have heard the volume come up and peeked in. “Not ever.”

  I turn to Charlie, frowning, and say, “No Charlie. They don’t.”

  ###

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  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  Jeremy Bishop has, by all outward appearances, lived a normal life. He grew up
in a nice home, in a friendly seaside town. But, as is often, the pleasant facade seen at first glance conceals a darker side. Throughout childhood and early teen years he encountered malevolent entities that whisked in and out of rooms, moved furniture and haunted his dreams.

  At second glance, the seaside town was only miles from where the puritans tortured innocent women and hung them as witches, a history and culture that permeated the area. A closer inspection of the nice house revealed past evils of previous owners—bullet holes in windows and a five foot square, red, white and black Swastika painted on the basement wall—a basement that terrified Bishop and his two brothers, even as adults.

  He processed these encounters through drawings of monsters and devils, expunging horrible images from his mind. As an adult, he continues to expel the monsters of his childhood through his novels, the first of which, TORMENT, is based on a dream. Enter the mind of Jeremy Bishop if you dare. Share his nightmares. Experience the fear that shaped his life. You may never be the same.

  Visit Bishop online at www.jeremybishoponline.com

  © 2011 Jeremy Bishop. All rights reserved.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are products of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously and should not be construed as real. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, organizations or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

  No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews. For more information e-mail all inquiries to: jeremy@jeremybishoponline.com

  Visit Jeremy Bishop on the World Wide Web at: www.jeremybishoponline.com

  —RECOMMENDED READING—

  TORMENT by JEREMY BISHOP

  Available for $2.99 on Kindle – Click here to buy.