Winston stood beside him.
“We should go around,” Mahdi said, and he took a step to the right, hoping to circumvent whatever lay ahead and get back on course for the light.
Winston grasped his arm. “This is an opportunity.”
“For what?”
“Shock and awe,” he said. “A show of force.”
“Have you forgotten the man at the beach?”
“The natives are freakshows. Hard to kill, but maybe that doesn’t apply to the little ones. They’ll get the message. Most people will give you a wide berth if they think you’re capable of wiping out entire future generations.”
“I believe you are capable of such a thing,” Mahdi mumbled.
Winston grinned. “Even better.”
Mahdi stumbled forward, driven by Winston’s meaty shoving hand. Then the jungle growth cleared. Mahdi crashed through the brush, landed on his hands and knees, and announced their presence to the people in the clearing. His heart broke when he looked up.
Sixty feet away, fifteen Sentinelese woman, all of them barely four feet tall and naked, stared at him. Each and every one of them cared for a child. They were gathered around a fire, smaller than the one in which Emmei had met his end, but bright enough to cut through the shade cast by the storm and the jungle canopy.
The ground around them was like nothing else in the jungle. It was cobbled with pale, rounded stones that shouldn’t exist on the island. The stones formed a spiraling pattern around the fire pit, which split off in three paths, winding their way through the partially cleared jungle, leading to a variety of simple huts.
It’s the Sentinelese village, he thought, and then something at the edge of the cobbled fire pit caught his attention. One of the stones at the edge was partially exposed. And then he saw it for what it was. On an island without stones, the Sentinelese had used skulls—probably those of their ancestors—to create paths.
It was an ingenious use of their limited resources.
It was also horrifying.
Some of the women were nursing infants. Some of the toddlers hobbled to their mothers, just learning to walk. A few of the children were old enough to know that Mahdi didn’t belong there, watching him with curiosity, and then worry as Winston stepped out of the jungle, assault rifle pressed to his shoulder.
“Don’t do this,” Mahdi pleaded.
“Shock and awe,” Winston said. “There’s no better way to say, ‘fuck off.’”
“That’s not what will happen,” Mahdi said. He knew from personal history, and the long history of the Palestinian people, that killing to subdue a people never worked. As long as a Sentinelese drew breath, they would seek vengeance for the crime Winston was about to commit.
Mahdi threw himself at Winston, but the man was too fast. With a quick twist, he cracked the rifle stock into Mahdi’s head, knocking him to the ground.
“I understand you had to try,” Winston said. “After what you did to Rowan, I don’t see Allah sparing any virgins on your behalf. Unless he was an infidel?” He shrugged. “Honestly, your religion is a mystery to me.”
The rifle barked, firing a single round.
The few birds twittering in the canopy fell silent.
The Sentinelese women went rigid, and then one of them dropped to her knees, a baby wrapped in her arms, a hole in her forehead.
“No!” Mahdi shouted, and then to the Sentinelese women. “The baby!”
But none of the women moved, not even as the shot woman toppled forward.
An arm snapped out, arresting the woman’s fall. But she hadn’t been caught by one of the others. She’d caught herself, still holding her nursing child to her chest.
Blood dripped from the hole in her forehead. She turned her face up, looking at Winston. A red stream ran between her eyes, down the side of her nose, around her mouth and dripped from her chin, tapping on the ground with the rain.
Thunder shook the air.
The woman smiled, blood running into her mouth, between her teeth.
Winston fired again, striking the woman three more times. Her body bucked and snapped with each fresh hole, but she didn’t fall, and didn’t drop her child.
But the baby…it stopped feeding and turned its head toward Winston, adult anger in its eyes.
“Well, shit,” Winston said, flicking the FN SCAR fire rate selector from semi-automatic to full automatic.
Run, Mahdi thought, but he wasn’t sure to whom he was projecting the thought.
The angry baby let out a shriek and the small gathering sprang into action. The women holding babies flung them to the ground. The children dropped down, their legs bending like their older siblings. Even the infants went on the attack, catching themselves on the ground and scurrying toward Winston. The women leapt forward, charging alongside the youths, some of them running upright, some of them running on all fours, and still others picking up bows and arrows.
Behind them, the jungle shook, and several louder shrieks replied to the baby. The hunting party had been tracking them and was sandwiching them between the two inhuman forces.
Run! Mahdi thought again, and he knew exactly to whom he was thinking this time. He scrambled to his feet and ran as Winston opened fire, unleashing a fully automatic spray of gunfire toward the oncoming Sentinelese. Mahdi followed a perpendicular path between the two approaching sides.
He was nearly back in the jungle when something struck him. He toppled to the ground, flung himself around and looked at his arm, as pain burst from his forearm to his shoulder. A baby, no more than a year old, was latched on, just above the wrist. He shook his arm, but the baby clung on, its wide jaws compressing.
Winston’s barrage chewed into the women and children, slowing their advance, but not stopping it. He sidestepped toward Mahdi as he fired, preparing to flee. But Mahdi wanted nothing to do with the man. He stood, baby still latched on, and ran into the jungle. Something in his wrist popped. Exquisite pain rose through his body and vented as a scream.
Propelled by pain and instinct, he slammed the baby into a tree as he passed. The impact sent another jolt of pain through his body, but also wrenched the child free. He felt a momentary pang of guilt for harming the child, but he saw it land on its hands and feet and turn toward him, blood dripping from its too-wide baby mouth.
He ran again, letting the jungle absorb him, striking out for the light once more.
Behind him, Winston shouted in surprise, no doubt encountering the infant for himself. There was a pop of gunfire that sounded more like Winston’s pistol than the assault rifle, and then nothing.
The silence lasted for just a moment.
It was broken by the sounds of pursuit.
36
Rowan pulled the trigger until the magazine was empty. He had no idea how many rounds he’d fired, but he knew that each and every one of them had struck the monstrous back. The creature had twitched with each impact. One of the long spines jutting from between its shoulders had shattered. One of the two eyes that had appeared on its back erupted with a geyser of white fluid. But the creature didn’t falter, and it didn’t remove its finger from Sashi’s chest.
Instead, it craned its head to the side, staring at Sashi like it was trying to make sense of her. She screamed in its grip, but the sound came out as a raspy hiss, her airway constricted by the giant hand around her throat.
Talia fired two more darts, each having as little effect at the previous three.
“Put her down!” she screamed, but she didn’t fire another dart. Instead, she returned the dart and the blow gun to the pouch on her belt, drew her knife and unfolded it. The blade wasn’t large, and Talia didn’t know how to fight with it, but she was ready and willing.
Rowan, on the other hand, had a five inch Ka-Bar knife sheathed on his hip, and countless hours of close-quarters combat training. He’d never been taught how to kill a twelve-foot-tall, all-seeing island demon before, but the basic concept—stab the shit out of your enemy—still applied. He didn’t think it would
put the creature down for good, but he hoped it would free Sashi.
Blade in hand, Rowan charged. Unlike Talia, he didn’t announce the attack. He just moved. The eyes in the back of the creature’s head, and the one eye still on its back, tracked him, but he had to hope the thing was more focused on Sashi, still in its grip, and on Talia, attacking from the front.
He was encouraged when Talia rolled beneath Sashi’s dangling body, and assaulted the monster’s legs. Rowan quickly realized he had been wrong about Talia. She knew how to use a knife, and where to strike. Her blade cut a deep gouge through one inner thigh and then the other. Two quick movements followed by gouts of blood, which flowed hard, and then stopped.
Talia raged at the quick healing beast, shouting and latching on to its leg, stabbing the blade in and twisting it, grinding the meat. For all her effort, the creature remained still, focused on Sashi, whose attempts to free herself were fading.
Rowan took stock of the situation as he closed the distance. The monster didn’t respond to pain. It healed too fast to bleed out. Bullets to the head hadn’t killed it in the past, and he didn’t think he could kill it now.
He focused on the neck. Too high, he thought, and then he lowered his gaze to the spines jutting out from its back. They ended in bony nubs, each of them six inches long. Perfect handholds. He pictured himself leaping onto the thing, hoisting himself up in one quick move and then burying the large blade in the monster’s spine, separating nerves and paralyzing its body. If it worked, he might even take the time to sever its head. See if it can survive that.
Seeing each of the steps he’d have to take, he followed his predetermined path, confident in his ability to follow through.
Then eight more sets of eyes opened on its back, some brown, some blue, some green, and some orange—all of them focused on him.
The great beast twisted, lifting Talia up under her arms, its long fingers wrapping around her body, puncturing her chest and side. She screamed through grinding teeth and began stabbing the arm.
The monster continued around faster than Rowan thought possible, and smashed Sashi’s body into him. He tried to roll with the impact, but it was like being hit by a car. He slammed to the ground, covered in wet decomposition, and rolled ten feet before coming to a stunned stop.
He tried to stand, but his head spun and his body ached.
The many-eyed thing focused its attention on Talia, inspecting her the same way it had Sashi.
“Let them go,” Rowan growled, dragging himself through the mud, reaching for the knife he’d dropped.
The creature spoke, its voice like the thunder rolling through the sky. “Lazoaf.”
Rowan wrapped his fingers around the blade. Acting on instinct, with no plan in mind, he climbed to his feet and responded. “Fuck you.”
Fourteen sets of eyes squinted at him, locking him in place.
Then the monster twisted again, throwing Talia toward him. Rowan dropped the knife and reached for her, but what was meant to be a heroic catch, turned into more of a collision. He might have braced her impact with the ground, but all that force was transferred to him, and it slapped him back into the mud, more dazed than before.
The creature faced him and lifted Sashi up, now holding her under her arms. Blood ran from the hole in her chest, a vertical river down her body, trickling from her toes. The monster spoke in a language he didn’t recognize, but it still sounded Sentinelese. Is it trying to tell me something? The thought was quickly dismissed as the words repeated.
It’s a chant, he thought. A ritual.
Then he shouted, “No!”
Sashi woke, her eyes going wide in time with her mouth. Had its words or his shout woken her from unconsciousness? The answer came when the creature turned her around, the thumb and index finger of its free hand poked into her back at the base of her spine.
“No,” Rowan repeated, adrenaline surging him out of his stupor. “No, no, no!”
A tearing sound filled the air, followed by the briefest of screams from Sashi, then her life was torn away along with her spine, some of her ribs, and her skull, all in one quick and unbelievably powerful yank.
The man-turned-monster held its arms out wide, each hand gripping part of Sashi. On the right, her still-connected spine lolled back and forth, pulled by the skull, leaking fluid out of the sockets from which her two eyes hung. On the left, her spineless body lay deflated over the large fingers holding it. Blood and insides poured out like globs of melting ice cream.
Rowan shook as he pushed himself up. “Talia… Talia.”
She stirred, saw what had become of Sashi, and thrashed back. They scrambled through the mud as the creature stood watching.
Brush rattled behind them.
The Sentinelese are coming.
Rowan looked for his blade. It was out of reach, half buried in mud and crushed vegetation. Talia’s was even further away.
Rowan tried to think of a way out, tried to think of a tactic that might make sense. But there was no last ditch effort and no Hail Mary play to make.
He stopped scrambling away from the monster and toward the approaching sound, determined to face his end without fear. The last time he’d been on the precipice of life and death, the bottle had fueled his bravery—or maybe it had been cowardice. This time, all that self-loathing and inner turmoil had been stripped away to reveal the man beneath. The man who could stand before death and—
The brush behind him parted.
It was Mahdi.
The stunned man looked up at the creature, and then down at Rowan and Talia.
The monster responded by dropping Sashi’s body and twelve more sets of eyes opened up along the inside of its raised arms, and its chest. It flexed forward, stretching its back wide with a crack. The six inch spines grew out and flared to either side, the beginnings of wings with no skin stretched between them.
It bellowed at them from its peeled-open skeletal face, the eyes covering its body furrowed in anger.
Mahdi trembled, but stood his ground, and then reached out his hand. “Come! Let’s go!”
Rowan took his hand and was pulled to his feet. Then he did the same for Talia.
The creature roared again, flexing once more. Fingers lengthened. Its body grew more massive. Ribs cracked and widened, giving it an emaciated, but muscular midsection. Veins twisted through its dark, tightening skin, twitching with each beat of its heart. The creature’s feet swelled, as though absorbing water and nutrients from the Earth itself.
Mahdi grabbed Rowan’s arm, and shoved him to the side. “Go, now! Hurry!”
The creature was twelve feet tall, its gait double that of a man. It could take an inhuman amount of punishment, and he doubted it would ever tire. Running away seemed like a waste of his limited energy—it would surely catch them—but all thoughts of a noble death retreated with the possibility of escape’s return.
They hobbled toward the thicker jungle, running parallel to the monster. Its many eyes watched them go, slowly turning its body. It was either confused by Mahdi’s sudden arrival and their subsequent flight, or it was simply giving them a head start.
It’s toying with us, Rowan thought, and then he considered that they’d been toyed with since arriving on the island. They were outnumbered in enemy territory. If the Sentinelese had simply been defending their territory, the entire expedition would be dead already. That they weren’t, meant that the Sentinelese were a sadistic bunch of primeval assholes.
As they entered the lush jungle, Rowan looked back one last time. The creature stood its ground, watching, but not moving. Not yet. Then he saw behind it, where the jungle was bathed in warm light. Rain water falling from the canopy above created a shroud, separating the muddy killing grounds from what looked like paradise. It tugged at his heart, and filled him with a desire that matched his dread. His run stalled.
We can’t leave yet, he thought, and then a tangle of broad leaves bulged out and gave birth to a cannonball of flesh. Rowan was hit h
ard and sprawled to the ground. When he opened his eyes again, Winston lay partially atop him. The big man was soaked through, trembling, and full of uncommon fear. Then he saw Rowan. “You’re alive?”
Winston got over his surprise quickly and pushed himself up. “Go! They’re not far behind me.” A growl spun him around and he caught sight of the creature, which had now taken a step toward them. “Oh, shit. Oh, fuck!” Then he was off and running, blazing an easy-to-follow path through the wet underbrush.
Talia dragged Rowan back to his feet again, and when he looked back at the seductive, sunlit foliage, she gave him a shove that started him moving once more.
The hiss of rain on the canopy grew louder, hiding the sounds of their flight, and their pursuers’ chase. Continuous thunder drowned out everything else, including thought. They followed the path of least resistance, left in Winston’s wake, until it faded. The man had regained his senses and disappeared.
Then they heard his voice as a whisper, despite the fact that he was shouting from ten feet away. “This way!” He slipped out of the jungle, waved them on, and then fled again.
Refocused, they paid special attention to the foliage, and where their feet fell. The Sentinelese would have no trouble following them here, but this was where the trail needed to end. Rowan went last, inspecting the path behind them, making sure that every leaf, twig, and flower appeared undisturbed. He did it for three hundred feet, and then bumped into Talia.
He turned to find her and Mahdi stopped before a wall of brown grass hanging over the side of a jungle mound, atop which stood several dead trees, the twisting vines covering them dried out and flowerless.
The grass parted slowly. Winston emerged from a small cave entrance. “They either don’t know about this, or aren’t allowed to come here. No one’s been in this cave for a very long time.”
Between crashes of thunder, Rowan heard slapping feet on the ground, and shouting voices. The Sentinelese hadn’t given up. When he felt the earth rumble beneath his feet, without an accompaniment from the storm, he knew the creature hadn’t given up, either.
Forbidden Island Page 24
