Mahdi’s only apprehension came from the fact that Emmei’s path seemed to be headed inland, or at least across a portion of the island. So far, he’d been walking steadily uphill. The island, at its highest point was just four hundred feet above sea level. Mahdi estimated he was currently at about half that height, but surrounded by trees, with no clear view of the coast, there was no way to be sure.
A rich aroma filled the air. It was unlike anything Mahdi had smelled in Palestine or London. The closest comparison he could think of was Kew Gardens. The botanical gardens in London housed an astounding array of plant-life, smelling of earth, decay, flowers, and pollen. He’d left with a headache, and a sense of wonder. He’d felt something similar upon arriving at the Sandal-Foot Resort, but the smell there was dominated by the ocean. Here, there wasn’t a hint of salt. Here, the air smelled of lush green life and organic decay that had been missing from the cleared jungle floor.
Mahdi slowed as Emmei’s trail turned right, following a steeper grade that led to a wall of green. The canopy ahead thinned a little, allowing more light to reach the forest floor, resulting in a tangle of leafy plants, ferns, and vines. Steam hung in the air, alive with streaks of sun that shifted in time with bird songs as the wind picked up. The sudden magic and beauty of the place brought a tear to his eye and stumbled him back.
“I don’t belong here,” he whispered, voice shaky as a deep sense of the forbidden slipped through his pores and invaded his body. He felt like a child again, trespassing in his neighbor’s yard, despite the signs, despite the warnings from his friends. He shouldn’t have been there, and he had paid a long and hard price for his curiosity. He felt the same thing here, only magnified.
The shush of a body slipping through foliage snapped him from the past and sent him scrambling for cover behind a tightly bunched stand of trees that rose a hundred feet before branching out.
Standing still, breath held, he heard voices. The fluid sounds were casual, unconcerned. Maybe they didn’t know? Maybe they hadn’t heard the gunshot on the beach? That didn’t seem likely. Then why weren’t they agitated?
He listened to the syllables, the cadence of the language. There were brief snippets of recognition followed by sounds he could only describe as ancient. Whatever language it was, it resembled nothing else on the planet in that it sometimes resembled everything else on the planet.
A proto-language, he thought. Something spoken by humanity’s ancestors, something pre-Sumerian, and still spoken on North Sentinel.
The idea was enough to tamp down his fear and reignite his curiosity. It could change the world of linguistics, and if the world’s languages could be traced to a unified dialect, it could help bridge cultural divides. Not that he could ever publish on the subject, or take credit. The public attention would make him an easy target.
A pseudonym, he thought, and then he dismissed the hopeful thinking. A name without a face or a degree would be quickly disregarded. And he still needed to survive the island. When the voices faded, he leaned out from around the tree. The men who had passed through were gone, headed in the same direction Emmei had been going before veering right into the lush garden.
He spent a few minutes listening for more signs of life, heard nothing, and slipped from his hiding spot. There were now two sets of footprints, both barefoot, and two shallow troughs between them.
They’re dragging someone, Mahdi thought, and as his body turned around to flee the area, he realized the person being dragged must be Emmei.
Leave him. Find the beach. Wait for help.
Mahdi took two steps and went rigid, a robot without power.
He had run away once before. Could still feel the sting of the scars in his back, the scars that were not from bullets, despite what he told the others. He didn’t believe in an afterlife or eternal judgement, but he did believe in the sanctity of life, of helping people. Against his better judgment, or perhaps because of it, Mahdi turned around and snuck across the patchwork of roots, following the path left by two men dragging a third.
Ten minutes later, Mahdi found himself on the crest of a valley. He lowered himself to his stomach and slithered toward the edge. Blue light to his left drew his eyes. The valley was clear of trees. He wasn’t sure how the Sentinelese, lacking modern tools, could clear so many trees, but they had. The valley formed a channel of earth leading toward the beach, where a thin layer of trees created a wall. Thanks to the tall trees growing on either side of the valley, their branches arching high overhead, the geographical feature would be invisible to satellite imagery. The deep shadow created by the canopy would hide it from the beach. Mahdi was confused by the odd valley until he reached the precipice and looked down.
The valley came to an abrupt end, like a scoop had been carved out of the earth, covered by a ceiling of roots, soil, and moss. At the center of the shallow cave was a smoldering fire pit, partially covered from either side by two large sheets of metal. From the Primrose, Mahdi thought. He’d read up on the ill-fated ship and he knew that it had been later dismantled and removed, but apparently not before the Sentinelese had raided it. He couldn’t imagine how they freed the metal panels, removed them from the ship, and took them to shore. But here they were. Gouges in the ground showed where they could be pulled back to reveal the large fire pit, or slammed shut to snuff a blaze.
It explained some of the light show they’d seen the night before.
Movement in the cave. Mahdi held his breath while his eyes adjusted to the darkness. He could see movement within, but the Sentinelese were all but invisible in the shadows, as was Emmei. If this is where they brought him.
A gunshot echoed through the jungle, distant, behind him. His body tensed, teeth clenched. Two Sentinelese men burst from the cave, long bows and arrows in hand.
Before Mahdi could consider fleeing, they charged down the valley to where the sheer walls became gentle grades, and ran up.
Mahdi froze, hoping immobility would hide him. But the men never glanced in his direction. They slipped silently into the jungle without making a sound. Whoever fired that gun, probably Winston—had company coming, which meant there would be many more gunshots to come.
Mahdi knew from experience, both personal and generational, that violence escalated violence. The island would soon become a warzone, arrows against bullets. There was little doubt about who would survive. If the rest of the tribe was anything like the man on the beach, there was little hope for any of them. But until he knew that for sure, he’d try to survive, and do the right thing.
When he was sure the two warriors were gone, and the shadows below showed no signs of life, he crept to the sloped edge, slid down and headed for the shadows, surrounded by the fragrant scent of smoldering ashes.
26
Rowan’s plan to leave Winston behind evaporated the moment he felt the distinct vibration of footsteps in the roots beneath his feet. He couldn’t see whatever was approaching, but he got the distinct impression that it wasn’t small. Before they landed on the island, the largest living thing in the jungle should have been a five-foot-tall Sentinelese man. Since landing, Winston should have taken home the blue ribbon for girth. But it took a heavy foot to shake the ground. The vibration was subtle, pulsing through the network of roots.
He had no intention of making himself known to Winston, but from a tactical perspective, he wanted to see what was coming.
Know your enemy.
Talia crept to him, slid her face next to his. In a different setting their closeness would have been intimate: cheeks touching, warm breath on his ear. For a moment he became distracted by it, nearly aroused. But a fresh vibration returned the soldier to the battlefield.
What the hell is wrong with me? he thought, and then he focused.
“Wait here,” he whispered.
“Not a chance,” she replied, her hushed words tickling his ear.
“I just need to see—”
“We can’t let him die.”
Rowan closed his e
yes. He didn’t know how to explain.
Efficiently, he thought, as branches cracked and Winston said, “Step out, motherfucker.”
“We were never here to save the Sentinelese,” Rowan whispered. “We came to kill them. Well, not us. We’re sacrificial lambs. The coconuts were for the Sentinelese. Infect them. Wipe them out. And then kill us, prove to the Indian government that any survivors needed to be dealt with harshly.”
“Why? What’s the angle?”
“Right now, doesn’t matter,” he said, “but I think we’re the only ones out of the loop. And if Winston makes it off this island alive, we won’t.”
She leaned back, looked him in the eyes, her gaze intense. Then she nodded.
A gunshot made both of them flinch. It was followed by a string of curses the likes of which Rowan hadn’t heard since Basic, the kind spoken by someone who knows they are without a doubt, seconds away from excruciating pain.
Rowan scaled the small hill again, Talia by his side, moving in tandem. She wasn’t a soldier, but life in the jungle had given her similar instincts and skills. It made him appreciate her the same way she did him for being a willing participant in her aberrant anthropology. He still didn’t understand why he had performed the haka, or had what was basically public sex—illegal in most of the world. Both were out of character, but maybe she just brought that out of him?
All thoughts of Talia fled his mind when he peeked up over the rise. On the far side stood Winston, pistol raised, angled up. He was backtracking, stumbling over roots, face coated in sweat. The cool and collected fighter they’d watched just a minute before had taken a back seat. He was caught in a fight-or-flight purgatory, unable to move in either direction.
When Rowan followed Winston’s aim, he understood why.
A Sentinelese man, eight feet tall and stark naked, stalked toward Winston. He moved with the slow, steady gait of someone who had no fear of guns or their deadly potential. Winston had already fired once. The giant man wasn’t ignorant of what the weapon could do, he just wasn’t afraid of it.
No way Winston missed, Rowan thought. The man was a professional shooter. Overweight, sure, but not looking like a threat was part of what made him dangerous.
“How are you alive?” Winston asked, taking another step back.
Did Winston shoot this giant already? Rowan remembered the bullet holes in the dead and swallowed up warriors. The shots matched the wounds. So when did Winston kill this man? Had he been to the island before?
Rowan could only see the tall man’s backside, but given the man’s height, was sure he hadn’t seen him before, from the boat or on the beach.
And then, with a slurp and a tear of flesh, he understood.
Folds of skin bloomed from the man’s face. They snapped back, folding around the back side of his head, bony hooks digging deep, fastening the flesh in place.
This was the man from the beach.
The man they had killed four times over.
He’d been three feet shorter then.
Rowan had seen horrors during his life, had even been the cause of one of them, but he had no frame of reference for a thing like this. He glanced at Talia and saw that the woman who lived on the fringe, where the world was still mysterious and ancient, was just as confused.
Then the thing spoke, its voice fluttering through the air like a subwoofer dialed all the way up, pulsing through his chest. The words were unintelligible, but felt old. And angry.
The gun fired again, the bullet punching into a tree. The shot was wild, fired accidentally by shaking fingers, but it propelled Winston out of purgatory, into fight, followed quickly by flight. Winston lowered his aim, fired five times in rapid succession, each of the rounds striking the man-thing’s left knee. The leg buckled. The monster dropped, but it wasn’t stopped. Death only seemed to make it more and more horrible upon its return.
Winston did what Rowan and Talia should have done already; he ran. Rowan watched him barrel away, leaving an easy-to-follow trail of footprints in his wake. The giant would have no trouble tracking him.
The monstrous man grew still. His head cocked to the side.
It knows we’re here, Rowan thought.
A third set of eyes, lodged in the skin wrapped around the back of the creature’s head, snapped open. They stared at Rowan. The moment of eye contact felt like an electric shock.
Rowan toppled back, sprawling over roots until he reached the hill’s base.
When he recovered, Talia was already there, yanking him up. “It saw us! Move!”
They sprinted. Within ten seconds, Rowan was lost, each towering tree looking like the rest. But Talia seemed to know where she was going, so he followed, happy to put as much distance between them and the monster as possible.
When Talia stopped, Rowan urged her on, but she shook her head and tapped her ear. Listen.
He paused, hands on knees, breathing deeply. Talia didn’t seem winded. During his time in the Rangers, a run like that would have been a warm up. I let myself go, he thought, standing up straight, stretching a cramp. “I don’t hear anything.”
“We heard it walking,” she said. “We’d hear it chasing us. I don’t think this will be our last run. Better to save our energy.”
“It could be,” he said. “Our last run.”
She squinted at him.
“We hit the beach, recover the raft, the food, whatever we can fit. Take our chances on the sea. Hell we could tie ourselves to a reef with gauze and wait for Ambani to send help.”
“What about the others?”
“We’ll take Sashi. It’s a two man raft, but the two of you aren’t that big. I don’t trust the others, and they wouldn’t fit. There’s a good chance Winston has already come up with the same plan, so we shouldn’t wait.”
“What about Mahdi?”
“I…don’t know. But I think Sashi does.” He turned to start walking again, strident and determined. Paused. “I have no idea where we are.”
Talia pointed. Managed a weak smile. “That way.”
After a few minutes of cautious walking in silence, Rowan asked, “Have you noticed anything different about yourself?”
“What do you mean?”
“Your personality. Since arriving at the island?”
She mulled the question over. “Can you give me an example?”
He didn’t really want to say it, but she was there for both events, and a participant in one. “Doing a naked haka ritual and having sex on a boat, bare ass to the world, isn’t something I would normally do. And I’m easily distracted.” He didn’t say by what, but the hint of a smile she wore said she knew.
“Life in the jungle has a way of eroding inhibitions. Look at the Sentinelese.”
“They’ve been living here for thousands of years,” he said. “We’ve been on the island for less than a day, and the events in question took place before we ever set foot on the island.”
She shrugged. “Taking off my clothes is par for the course for me.”
“And the sex?”
She smiled. “That…was new.” She fell silent again, brow furrowed, so he let her think. Another minute passed before she said, “Drinking from the tree was stupid. I would never have done that in the Amazon. There are ways to figure out if something will make you sick. Chugging from a tree nipple isn’t one of them. What are you thinking?”
“That we should make sure we’re thinking when we make decisions. Trust our instincts a little less. Question things a little more.”
“Like should we have run from that…thing?”
“Hell no. Running was the right choice.” He stared at the ground, lost himself in the twisting coils of roots until he saw the shape of an eye amidst them. He blinked. Looked up. “Any ideas about what we just saw?”
“I’m an anthropologist. I’m not even sure what scientific field that thing would fall under. Cryptozoology? Mythology? I’m not a slouch in those subjects. Part of my job is to understand ancient cultures and the
myths that fuel them, but this… Well, it’s not a myth. But visually?”
Rowan wiped his forehead dry with his shirt. The day was just getting started and it was already humid. In an hour, dressed in black, he’d be soaked through. But if they were lucky, they’d be sitting in a raft, out of reach from Winston, the Sentinelese, and the creature. A memory flitted through his mind, just out of reach. “It reminds me of something.” He glanced behind them, half expecting to see the giant man or a Sentinelese hunting party closing in. All he saw were trees and shifting light. “I can’t place it, but it feels…familiar somehow.”
Rowan snapped forward again when Talia gripped his arm. The natural lean-to formed from tree roots and earth was straight ahead—and empty.
27
Talia crouched beneath the shelter where they’d left Sashi, while Rowan stood guard with his assault rifle. She saw no signs of struggle. No blood. “See anything?”
“No footprints aside from ours and Sashi’s from earlier,” Rowan said. “If someone took her, they did it without leaving a trace.”
Talia heard the doubt in Rowan’s voice, but she knew it was possible. She had seen similar feats of stealth and cunning. She climbed out from under the fallen tree. “Let’s have a look around.”
“And then?” Rowan asked.
“You know the answer,” she said. “We survive.”
She didn’t like the idea of abandoning Sashi to the Sentinelese, but they couldn’t wage war on the island, or the monster protecting it. If the Sentinelese had her, rescue would be impossible, even if they could locate her, which was unlikely. And if she had wandered off, she was a fool. Talia knew the opinion was harsh, but Sashi had hired them, brought them to this place, and very likely knew what they now suspected: that she and Rowan were human sacrifices to justify genocide.
She scanned the manicured jungle and saw nothing out of the ordinary…if she ignored that everything in sight was cleared of detritus and rot. The only thing aberrant about the perfectly clean forest was the tipped-over tree, its still-living branches leaning on its neighbor, leaving a gap in the canopy.
Forbidden Island Page 18
