The Lost Island

by Paul Kearney

  The pilot blinked the sweat from his eyes and tried not to look at the blinking red of the fuel warning light. He could still make it in; they would have this wind behind them on the way back. They would be all right.

  “Talk to me!” he grated into his helmet. “Dave, are we secured?”

  His copilot’s voice sounded extremely odd as he replied. “All secure, Skipper. Take us home. Returning to cockpit.”

  The nose of the Sea King lifted and it barrelled away to the east with the wind behind it. The airspeed climbed and the turbines roared. They would make it. The Irish coast was less than a hundred miles away. They would make it.

  “Bantry, this is alpha one zero,” the pilot said, his voice clipped and professional now. “We are returning to base with one casualty recovered. Request medical assistance on landing. Wait out for word on casualty’s condition, over.”

  A hissing, faraway voice came back to him.

  “Alpha one zero, roger your last. Will stand by for further sitrep, out.”

  The copilot made his way into the cockpit and strapped himself in. Then he sat wordlessly for a moment, staring sightlessly out of the Perspex of the cockpit windows.

  “He didn’t make it, did he?” the pilot said heavily.

  “No Jeff, he didn’t.” The copilot wiped his face with one gloved hand. “Jesus Christ, he was — he was cut in half, Skipper.”

  “What? God Almighty. Poor bloke. Must have been caught by the prop blades.”

  “I guess.” The copilot hesitated, and then said quietly, “Between you and me Jeff, it looks more like he was bitten in two. By bloody great teeth.”

  The pilot was silent a moment before he responded.

  “Well, I don’t know about that, but it’s for the medics to figure out. Or the coroner. Any ID?”

  “He was from the Cormorant all right. The name on the suit was Mackey. He was young — must have been the son.”

  “Well, at least now his mother will have something to bury.”

  “Not much, Jeff. There’s not much left of him to fill a coffin.”

  The Sea King roared off before the storm, its three crewmembers all silent now. The winchman sat on the pitching deck of the rear compartment and stared at the severed torso which lay before him. Then he leaned out of the open hatch and was sick into the wind.

  FOUR

  They turned off the blaring Klaxon, but the red warning lights set around the well of the ARC continued to flick on and off, bathing them all in bloody, garish light.

  “Come on Connor,” Cutter was saying, eyes wide with urgency. “Clamp it down — find it.”

  “I’m trying, I’m trying,” Connor replied. His fingers flew over the keyboard. He frantically scanned the blue screens before him, while Lester, Jenny, Abby and Stephen stood nearby, rapt and silent.

  “It’s not mainland UK, Professor. It’s out to the west.”

  “It’s in the sea,” Stephen said. “In the Atlantic. This is a first.”

  “Yes, how marvellous,” Lester drawled. “At least we don’t have to worry about the general public chancing across it. Seagulls perhaps. The odd school of cod.”

  “I have it!” Then Connor was almost bouncing up and down in his chair. “Professor, I have it! It’s southwest of Ireland, 200 miles or so out in the sea, it’s — it’s —” he stopped.

  “What is it?” Lester demanded testily.

  “It’s more than one,” Connor told him. “It’s two, three, four — my God, Professor, there’s at least half a dozen open anomalies out there.”

  “Let me see.” Cutter leaned close, jaw set, pale-blue eyes wide and intent on the screen before him. After a minute he straightened. “Can you up the resolution on this thing?”

  “I’ll try. She’s creaking a bit already. This is so awesome!”

  Lester looked away, impatient and coldly angry.

  “This is a nightmare,” he said. “Then Peru wasn’t a coincidence — it’s really gone international. Inevitable I suppose. Jenny, you realise what this means?”

  Jenny nodded, “Things get complicated.”

  “That’s a restrained way of putting it.”

  Cutter looked up from the monitor.

  “They’re not in the sea, not all of them anyway.”

  “What do you mean?” Abby asked him. “That’s just a big ocean out there, the whole Atlantic.”

  “He’s right guys,” Connor said. “With all the clutter on this screen, it’s hard to make out, but I think there’s an island of some sort out there, and the anomalies are clustered around it.”

  “Get out of the way.” Lester pushed Connor aside and stared hard at the detector screen. After a moment he said, “We need maps and charts for the whole of the North Atlantic. Jenny, I want a line opened up to our friends in the Royal Navy.” He straightened and sighed. “By the look of this, we’ll be dealing with the Irish on this one.”

  There was a fizzing sound, a gentle pop, and the anomaly detector went dead for a second. Then the screens flickered into life again.

  “Connor?” Cutter asked. The young man just shrugged.

  “It was just a temporary pulse. I haven’t yet been able to wire the thing up permanent, like. Shouldn’t have done any damage. Might need to go offline again just to make sure, though.”

  “At times like this, the term idiot savant comes to mind,” Lester said grimly. “Cutter, what are the implications of an undersea anomaly?”

  Cutter blew out his cheeks.

  “Huge,” he said. “In a way, it’s far worse than a land-based one. As long as the anomaly stays open, water will be travelling through it, and whatever is in that water will make its way into our oceans. Our only consolation is that the North Atlantic is very cold at this time of year — colder than the ocean of most ancient epochs. If warm-water creatures come through, they shouldn’t last long, not long enough to cause any large-scale ecological damage anyway.”

  “Well, that’s reassuring, for once. And if the land-based ones are all on this little island, then the problem is at least contained.” Lester took out his mobile phone, stared at it, then raised his head and glared at the white-coated technician who was still hovering, fascinated, behind them, holding a pot of cooling coffee in his hand. “I believe I asked for some maps, some charts. Do you think you can handle that, or shall I just go and start rooting through cupboards myself?”

  As the man hurried off he pursed his lips.

  “International waters perhaps,” he said in a low tone. He tapped his phone against his upper lip. “That could be interesting.”

  “I’ve got it,” Connor said.

  “Got what? Haven’t you got enough for one day, Temple?”

  Connor had opened up his personal laptop and propped it on the console of the anomaly detector. There was a map on the screen, and Cutter leaned over Connor’s shoulder.

  “It’s called Guns Island,” he said. “Scroll down a bit. Yes, fifteen hectares in size, surrounded by sea cliffs. An important nesting colony for gannets...”

  “Gannets. Wonderful,” Lester said. “Let’s hope all we have to worry about is the RSPB getting their knickers in a twist over a few dead birds.”

  Now Jenny was leaning in close to the laptop, as well.

  “Google Earth,” she said. “Brilliant.”

  Cutter shot her a sidelong glance. Her face was quite close to his, and he could smell her perfume, the scent of her hair.

  “We have a problem, James,” she said, and straightened up again. Cutter found himself staring not at Jenny’s exquisite ear but at Connor Temple’s shiny face. Connor smiled nervously, his Adam’s apple convulsing up and down his throat.

  Cutter frowned.

  “The island’s sovereignty is disputed between Ireland and France,” she continued. “Apparently there are large natural gas reserves in the seabed around it, so whoever claims the island gets the gas.”

  “In other words,” Stephen said, striding forward, “our presence there would take a
bit of explaining.”

  “It gets better,” Connor said. “Look at this, guys.”

  “Wikipedia?” Abby said scornfully. “Do you know how much of what’s on that thing is rubbish?”

  “A lot of it’s pretty accurate,” Connor protested. “Including this, I think.”

  Cutter read out the scrolling text on the screen.

  “During World War Two, Guns Island had a small observation post built on it to look out for German U-boats. In the early years of the Cold War, Britain expanded this post into a small base, and it was rumoured that biological weapons tests were performed on the site. When the Cold War ended, the issue of the island’s sovereignty was handed over to international arbitration. Britain has given up all claims to Guns Island, and now the ownership of the place is being debated through the international courts, the two claimants being —”

  “France and Ireland,” Lester interrupted him. “So now we have our European partners involved. This just keeps getting better.”

  “The Foreign Office —” Jenny began.

  “Don’t worry about them. They’ll be at their clubs, reading the paper and bemoaning the loss of the Empire,” Lester said with a bleak smile. He tapped the screen of his mobile and set it to his ear. “Yes, Sir Charles Morley please,” he said, looking off into the air. “James Lester speaking, Home Office. Yes, I’ll hold.”

  He looked around at the rest of them.

  “I suggest you wrap up warm,” he said to Cutter. “The North Atlantic can be bitter at this time of year. Or so I’m told.”

  The Quartermaster’s stores of the ARC were a white-painted concrete sepulchre with iron doors. The team filed inside and Cutter banged the heavy door shut behind them. Connor at once walked down the aisles of shelves and racks with a wide grin on his face, his hands running over the mass of neatly arranged equipment and weaponry. He looked like a toddler let loose in a toyshop.

  “I love this place,” he said. “It’s like that scene in the Matrix, when Neo says, ‘We’ll need guns, lots of guns.’”

  “James Bond, eat your heart out,” Stephen said. “Even Q would have been impressed by this lot.”

  Connor lifted up a gleaming black rifle from its rack. “Can I have this?”

  Stephen walked over to him, a smile on his face.

  “That is an M4 carbine with folding stock and a SUSAT scope, 5.56mm calibre. It’s nice and light, isn’t it?”

  “Yeah!” Connor said happily, hefting the black rifle in his hands.

  “You can’t have it,” Stephen said. He took it out of Connor’s grasp, replacing it in the rack.

  “Aw, guys,” Connor complained, “even Abby gets to have a gun.”

  “Even Abby?” Abby said. She blew a blonde hair from in front of her face. “That, Connor, is because Abby can use a firearm to hit what she aims at. She does not fire wildly, she does not treat these things as toys — and she tends not to shoot her friends!”

  Connor bent his head.

  “That was just the once,” he muttered.

  “Think small,” Cutter said, walking up and down the shelves. “We’re flying into a foreign country on this one, so we can’t go wild.”

  “We’re also going to a deserted island hundreds of miles from anywhere,” Stephen told him. “We’ll need to load up on survival gear, prepare for the worst.”

  “I’m always prepared for the worst,” Cutter told him sharply. The two men looked directly at each other, and the air between them seemed almost to fizzle with tension. They were both thinking of Helen — Cutter was certain of it — though neither would say her name.

  “Sleeping bags, karrimats, stoves, mess-tins, boil in the bag stuff. It’ll be like going camping,” Abby said brightly, interrupting the face-off and hauling a huge black rucksack out of a locker. She walked up and down the stores humming to herself and stuffing things into the sack like a shoplifter with nothing to fear.

  “More like a safari,” Connor said. He picked up a long-bladed hunting knife, looked at it with wide eyes. When he thought no one was looking, he tucked it into its sheath and down the back of his trousers.

  “How will we get there?” Stephen asked. He, too, was pulling out a rucksack and a set of webbing from a locker. He was careful to avoid Cutter’s eyes.

  “That’s Lester’s problem,” Cutter said. “He and Claudia should be seeing to all the diplomatic niceties.”

  The other three stopped and stared at him. He glared back.

  “What?”

  “Boss,” Connor said diffidently, “it’s just that —”

  “I did it again, didn’t I? Damn. All right, all right. Don’t worry about it. Slip of the tongue.” Cutter ran his hands through his red-gold hair, spiking it up so that he looked like a deranged punk rocker. He began slamming equipment into his own Bergen with unnecessary force.

  “It’s all right, Professor,” Abby said, and he glanced her way. She almost put a hand on his shoulder, then thought better of it.

  “No it’s not all right,” Cutter snarled. “I had a life, before; we all did. A life that was different, before we mucked it up with all these anomalies, all this running from world to world. The only thing is, I remember the life before, what it was like, who was in it.” He paused, looked at Abby. “I’m quite sane, you know.” He smiled at her. She smiled back, uncertain, and now she did grasp his shoulder and gave it a squeeze.

  “Do we go there to trap, or to kill?” Stephen asked. He was holding an L-96 sniper rifle with infrared scope and integral bipod, a heavy, serious-looking piece of kit.

  Cutter looked at him. “There are at least five anomalies on that island. God only knows what has come through them, or what eras they lead back to. Guns Island is at this moment potentially the deadliest place on earth. We go there to protect our own lives, and to try to limit the inter-species swapping as much as possible. We go there to kill them, this time.”

  Stephen nodded.

  “I never thought of it like that,” Connor said, his expression aghast. “Five anomalies, all on one little island! It’ll be like Jurassic Park.”

  “It could make Jurassic Park look like Disneyland,” Abby told him. She lifted up an MP5, a small, light, elegant machine-pistol, and sighted down the barrel thoughtfully. “I think I’ll take this. It’s more ladylike.”

  “Ladylike!” Connor sputtered.

  Cutter’s phone went off. He stared at it, looking suddenly tired.

  “We have an update. It seems the Atlantic may not have been as empty as we had thought. I have to go and see —”

  He stopped. With their eyes on him, he stomped out of the stores, glowering.

  Jenny Lewis’s office in the ARC was a small cubicle with a window out onto the corridor. She had made it her own with a pair of potted ferns and a photograph of her fiancé, a muscular, handsome, smiling man. Cutter disliked him on sight, but smiled at Jenny as she sat behind her desk, sipping coffee, and waved him in. He shook his head when she offered him the pot.

  “So tell me the good news,” he said. He felt large, awkward and clumsy in this neat and trim little office — it was entirely too constricted a space for him to be in with her. He could smell her perfume again. Maddeningly, it was the same one Claudia had used. Claudia Brown, who was no longer here — who had now never existed. And yet her twin sat sleek and lipsticked in front of him, with her eyes, her voice, even her smile.

  It was enough to drive a man mad.

  “Bad weather in the North Atlantic,” Jenny said. “That’s not exactly news, but this is a succession of storms which are rolling east, becoming more violent as they come. We may already have our first casualties.” She handed Cutter a sheet of shiny fax paper.

  Cutter scanned it, then raised his head.

  “Not necessarily,” he said. “Trawlers are lost at sea all the time. These poor guys were probably just swamped by a freak wave.”

  “They brought back a body this morning from the area where the boat went down,” Jenny told him, l
ooking suddenly grim. “Irish Coast Guard helicopter. It’s not generally known yet, but the body had been badly mutilated.”

  Cutter stood and rubbed his chin with one hand.

  “How big do trawlers get?” he asked absently, his mind turning over.

  “They’re not small. This was a coastal vessel, too far out for its own good. It had a crew of five though, so it was no cockleshell. Cutter, what could sink a boat like that — what kind of creature?”

  Despite himself, Cutter felt a thrill of excitement as his mind ranged over the possibilities. It was like this every time — it was what kept him here. What would it be? What would they encounter? With Helen off on her insane sojourn through the anomalies, and with Claudia gone, lost to him, all he had for a life was this frisson, these walls and the promise of what was going to pop into their world next.

  It was all he had left.

  “Some kind of Mosasaur perhaps, or a Pliosaur, like a Liopleurodon. Even a large Ichthyosaur.”

  “Terrific,” Jenny sighed.

  “Until we get out there, speculation isn’t worth much,” Cutter said. He smiled at her. She looked strained, a tenseness lurking behind the carefully coiffured façade she presented to the world. “Lester getting to you?” he asked kindly.

  “What? No, no.” She seemed to pull herself out of some momentary reverie. She looked at the photograph on her desk, and a frown seemed to flit across her face for a second. Then she smiled brightly. “No — just the nature of the job in hand. This will be a complex one. Lester is calling in every favour he is owed, and pulling strings I never knew existed. We’re trying to keep this thing under wraps from two governments this time, and that’s not the same as fooling Joe Public.”

  Cutter nodded.

  “We’ll need backup on this one,” he said. “Military.”

  Jenny leaned back in her chair. “It’s not like you to go asking for an armed escort. Usually you like to steer clear of them.”

  “This is different. There are several anomalies on that island. The place could be swarming with God knows what kind of predators. And there’s nowhere to run to, once we’re there. This time around, I want firepower with me.”