The Lost Island

by Paul Kearney

  Stephen lay drenched in sweat and pale as bone, but he was breathing more easily. Doody seemed hardly less shattered. He dressed the wounds.

  “Make him tea,” he said. “Lots of sweet tea. He needs to get fluids down him now.”

  Abby dried Stephen off, tears streaming down her face. He managed to smile for her, but could not speak. Connor sat watching it all with a face of chalk, gripping Jenny’s hand tightly.

  “That’s got it for another day or two,” Doody told Cutter and Willoby, “but he has to get to a hospital ASAP, or he’s not going to make it. And we’ll have to rig up a litter if we’re to move him — there’s no way he’s walking out of here.”

  “Anything you say, Dood.” Willoby smiled, shaking the younger man gently by the shoulder. “That was a hell of a job you just did.”

  Doody wiped his mouth. He nodded, then broke away from them both and, running from the campsite, he bent over and was violently sick into the ferns.

  As night came upon them they built up the fire and laid in a store of firewood so those on stag wouldn’t have to go looking for more in the darkness. They had been lucky during the day, sighting the grazing herds of herbivores, but no predators. Once, a Pterosaur — they couldn’t see clearly enough to identify it more specifically — had swooped low over the camp with its sail-like crest glowing scarlet in the sun. It had been like being buzzed by a small aeroplane.

  Twice before the dusk settled into complete darkness, some kind of animal circled their camp warily. They could hear it stepping through the bracken, and they swept the wood surrounding them with the ragged beams of their head-torches, but could make nothing out in that silent forest. Whatever it was, it wasn’t large in the present sense of the word and as night came on, it seemed to leave them be.

  They huddled around the fire. Most had slept for several hours through the day and so the ever-present tiredness was a little less pressing than usual. Up here in the hills, the night seemed noisier, or perhaps it was the proximity of the trees around them that seemed to magnify every sound they heard.

  Obsessively, Willoby did a kit and ammo check, and when this was done he subsided moodily with his M-4 on his knees. The sheer sense of wonder which had affected them all upon entering this world had begun to wane. They were more conscious now of their real predicament, and this knowledge put a damper on conversation. Plus, most of them couldn’t help but keep stealing looks at Stephen as he lay sleeping fitfully close to the fire, propped up on a pillow of rucksacks.

  He woke up, as though their guilty looks had nudged him out of sleep. Cutter knelt beside him and handed him a water bottle. He drank gratefully.

  “Maybe you should start a sing-along,” he said to Cutter in a low croak.

  “Sure thing. You break out the guitar and we’ll give it a go.” They smiled at each other.

  “It’s been an adventure, it truly has,” Stephen said.

  “It’s not over yet.”

  “If I die, Cutter, I want you to bury me deep.”

  “Don’t talk shite,” Cutter snapped.

  Stephen smiled. “Seriously. I’ve been thinking about it. If you do the job right, someone may well be digging up my fossilised bones by the time you get home. That would really put a cat in with the canaries. Can you imagine? ‘Homo sapiens found alongside dinosaur’. The tabloids would flip.”

  “Nah, it has to be a double-decker on the moon for them to get excited,” Cutter said, smiling. He leaned closer to Stephen and looked the younger man in the eye.

  “You’re not going to die. That’s a promise.”

  “This is no good,” Willoby was saying. “That machine of yours, Temple, isn’t picking up a thing, and it’s not likely to as long as we stay in one spot — there’s just nothing in range. We have to go out and look for these things while we still have the strength.”

  He glanced at his watch.

  “All right, here’s the plan. We catch a couple of hours’ kip, and then I take out a patrol with that device, and we try and cover an arc around the camp before dawn, extend our range a bit, as it were. Cutter, do you agree?”

  Cutter nodded. “Take Connor along — he’s the only person who really knows how to get the best out of that detector.”

  “Me, out there in the dark, wandering around?” Connor protested. He opened and closed his mouth once or twice, then sighed. “All right.”

  “McCann, you come with us,” Willoby said. “Sergeant Fox, if you need us back here, fire a few shots.”

  Fox raised his eyebrows. “If we need you back here I’m sure you’ll be hearing more than a few, boss.”

  The three of them set out soon after, having given up on any attempt to sleep — they were too keyed up. Before they left camp, Abby took Connor’s arm and handed him a pistol.

  “There’s five rounds left in it,” she said. “Be careful, Connor — and don’t use it unless you really have to!”

  “I won’t. Thanks. Thanks, Abby.” He looked very young in the firelight, not much more than a boy. When Abby kissed him on the cheek he blushed and stammered. It was like a scene from a school play. The only jarring note was the 9mm pistol he held in his hand.

  “See you at dawn, with any luck,” Willoby said as he led his little group out of the firelight and into the prehistoric night.

  NINETEEN

  “Brace, brace!” the pilot yelled in French as they came zooming up the mighty black cliffs.

  The helicopter careered to one side and its occupants were slammed into their harnesses and then back again. The Puma raised its nose and the turbines strained deafeningly as the machine fought the updraft.

  “Merde!” one of the marines beside Lester spat. “Ça, c’est le bordel!”

  I couldn’t agree more, Lester thought. This is indeed a shitty place. He kept his face carefully blank though, cultivating the stiffest upper lip he thought he had ever been called upon to wear. It would be so typical if this thing crashed here. Such a bloody bore.

  They were above the cliff edge now and for a few minutes were flying through thick cloud. The stuff drifted in the open door of the aircraft and was salty on the tongue.

  All around him, the team of marines sat stolidly, lashed to the walls of the interior with their rifles between their knees, muzzles resting on the floor. Their commander, a young Lieutenant called Desaix, looked as though he was about to be sick. Beside him, the ship’s doctor, Ramis, was blessing himself.

  Lester smirked a little, but not for long.

  Oh, Christ.

  The helicopter swung through the air like a leaf. For a moment it was on its side, and Lester, hanging in his harness, saw the ground directly below him, a desolate, sere landscape of rock and withered grass.

  “Une minute!” the winchman shouted, and he held up one finger for the Englishman in case he should not understand. Lester smiled coldly at him and wiggled his toes in the ill-fitting boots. He was dressed in French military fatigues, something that annoyed him mightily, but he at least had possessed the presence of mind to cut the tricolour off the shoulder before leaving the ship. He was damned if he would die with a foreign flag on his arm.

  The helicopter righted itself, shuddering, and swooped down with a speed that brought Lester’s stomach up against his diaphragm. He opened his mouth in a wide O to make his ears pop, and then there was an almighty thump as they hit the ground.

  “Allez, allez-vite!” the winchman shouted as the marines cast off their harnesses and leapt out of the doors of the helicopter. As they piled out, the winchman kicked their rucksacks out after them. Lester jumped with the rest and landed heavily. In front of him, a heavy green rucksack hit the ground. Another foot and it would have brained him.

  He straightened, ignoring the roaring backwash of the rotor, and dusted off his hands. His ankles and feet ached with the landing. The helicopter rose, tearing away to the south as though helpless before the wind. As the roar of its engines died away into the distance, so it was replaced by the howl of the storm
. Lester felt sleet sting his face, hard as sand.

  Well, he thought, I’m here at last. Perhaps now we’ll be able to make some sense out of this debacle.

  The marines retrieved their gear, hefted their Famas rifles, and shook out into all-round defence. It seemed a needless precaution. The island was deserted, not so much as a seagull popping its head up to vie with the storm.

  Their officer, the absurdly young Desaix, consulted his GPS, and then raised his hand in a chopping motion. The heavily armed little band of men set off at once, and Lester, wincing, had to puff as he kept up with them.

  I’m a little out of shape, he thought as their fast pace ate up the ground. I really should try and fit in a few more squash games of a weekend.

  The storm, fearsome though it still seemed, was fading. The wind was steadily slipping down the Beaufort scale and a ridge of high pressure was finally beginning to move over the island from the Americas. Had it not been for this, the Puma wouldn’t have been able to effect a landing.

  As the French team came upon the crash site of the Irish aircraft, Lester felt a momentary pang of pity for Jenny. We might as well have sent her up in a bloody biplane, he thought, staring at the remains of the little Westland Scout.

  The helicopter lay on its side, the central frame seemingly intact, but the ground about it was littered with wreckage. The earth was cut up with bootprints and other tracks. The marines set up a cordon about the wreck whilst Lester, Desaix and Ramis examined it more closely.

  “It is as you said. Someone came upon this after the crash,” Desaix said. He had been educated at Oxford as well as Saint Cyr, and his English was correct and formal. “You see here, the seat belts have been cut with a knife, and the copilot’s door has been levered open. Plus, look at the ground. There were quite a few people around here after the helicopter came down.”

  Lester caught sight of a perfectly formed footprint which had been made by nothing human. He quietly stood on it and ground it into the mud.

  “Yes, yes, they were rescued by the team that arrived before them. There’s nothing more to be done here, it seems to me. Shall we move on, gentlemen?”

  The two Frenchmen looked at one another and shrugged.

  “C’est vrai,” the doctor said quietly, pushing his black spectacles up his nose.

  “Very well,” Desaix said. “We shall continue to this base of yours. Sergeant, allons-y!”

  The team moved out, scanning the desolate plateau for signs of life. Up at the front, one of the marines stood staring at the ground, following tracks in the mud. The snow was melting fast, and the whole island was reverting to a kind of highland bog. Desaix fell back down the line to join Lester.

  “My orders are also to investigate the site of the strange lights seen by our reconnaissance,” he said.

  “Of course,” Lester said smoothly. “But one thing at a time, Lieutenant. You can investigate all you like once we’ve ascertained if any of my people are left alive. We need to locate them, before anything can happen to them.”

  Desaix nodded. He marched along in silence for a few seconds, before speaking.

  “They should be our top priority, it’s true, though I can’t see what could possibly threaten them in a place like this. There’s nothing here, nothing at all.”

  Let’s hope it stays that way, Lester thought.

  Connor hunkered down in the brush and switched on the anomaly detector. The little device vibrated slightly in his hand, and there was a sharp beep as it powered up. He screwed his eyes shut for a second, trying to keep his thoughts together. Never in his life before had he been so tired and so tense at the same time.

  “Well?” Willoby asked impatiently.

  “Give it a second.” He straightened and began to sweep the detector in an arc starting at the sea shore to their left, and continuing back across the endless plain that ran from the foot of the hills.

  “Nothing.”

  “Right, switch her off and let’s be moving again. Come on McCann, lead off. Axis is that big crag down at the foot of the slope, with the trees in a line to its right. Seen?”

  “Seen,” McCann agreed. He brought his rifle into his shoulder and stepped off.

  Moonlight flooded the world around them, revealing a vast, monochrome, quiet wilderness where anything could be lurking in the shadows and hollows where the moonlight did not reach. They were three kilometres out from the camp, and would not be able to travel much further if they were to make it back before dawn.

  That’s what mammals are in this world, Connor thought. Nocturnal scavengers who creep around when the monsters are asleep. The adventure had worn thin some time ago. Now he simply felt as if they had no place here, and the longer they stayed, the lower their chances got. Man simply did not belong here.

  They descended from the hills to the plain again, to the north of the camp this time, and were swallowed by the tawny sea of ferns that extended up from the coast. There were trails through the ferns, beaten down and littered with massive piles of droppings. A truck could have been driven along some of them. Those they avoided, and they laboured instead through the tall ferns, the sharp edges of which sliced their hands and soaked their legs and feet. Connor was about to try the detector again when McCann held up a hand.

  “What’s that?” he whispered.

  He pointed ahead. Before them the plain rose in smooth undulations to the horizon, rising steadily until it met the brim of the sky, and the fantastic, luminous masses of the distant stars. But there was another star to be seen, separate from the others. It glittered in the darkness, a spangle of distant, inexplicable light.

  “Turn that bloody thing on,” Willoby said, the words clicking in his throat.

  The detector whined slowly to life. The battery indicator was down to its final bar, an alarming amber warning.

  “It’s an anomaly!” Connor exclaimed. “Honest to God it is, dead ahead!”

  “Thank God,” Willoby said, and beside him McCann wiped his hand over his grinning face.

  Connor’s own grin began to fade.

  “Captain, it’s a very weak signal. That anomaly is on its way out. It’s fading.”

  “How long do we have?” Willoby demanded.

  “No way of telling. Usually it’s just a few hours, but the ones on the island seem to behave differently. Cutter thinks it might have something to do with the storm, that they’re connected somehow.”

  “That’s pretty much par for the course then,” Willoby said through gritted teeth.

  “Maybe we should go through it now, ourselves, and make sure it leads to the right place,” McCann said.

  Willoby studied the distant flicker for a long moment, then studied the sky. Dawn wasn’t far off.

  “No,” he said, reluctantly. “Either we all go through it together, or we all stay put. We’re not going to split up. We’ll go back to the camp and get everyone out here ASAP. We’ll have to run it. Ready?”

  “I’m not running anywhere,” McCann said stubbornly. “If we go all the way back, and then march everyone out here, that thing will be gone — you heard the boy. I say we save ourselves, while we can. We go through it now. The rest will have to look out for themselves.”

  “We’re not going to do that,” Willoby said with dangerous softness. “Your officer is back there too, McCann. You want to leave him behind?”

  “It can’t be helped. Besides, they got me here under false pretences in the first place. You think before we flew out to that bastard island they told us we’d be fighting dinosaurs? No way. Nobody gives a shit about us — if we don’t look after number one, we won’t make it. I say we go, right now, and if you won’t go with me, I’ll do it myself.”

  “You’ll stay here with us and obey orders,” Willoby insisted.

  “Whose orders — yours? You’re a Brit, for Christ’s sake! What right do you have to be ordering me around? You go to hell.” McCann raised the barrel of his rifle and backed away from them.

  “I warn you
,” he said, “don’t try and stop me, or I’ll plug you where you stand.”

  “For God’s sake!” Connor said. “You can’t just run off on your own!”

  “Just watch me. You take it easy son — once I get to the other side I’ll find some way to get help for you. You’ll see.” He turned and began running.

  “McCann, you bloody fool!” Willoby shouted after him, but he had already disappeared into the tall growth, a mere shadow in the moonlight.

  A wind picked up, moving the ferns in waves and bringing in clouds from the south. It looked as though it might rain. Connor and Willoby stared for a while, wondering if McCann might change his mind, but he had gone.

  “We’d better get back,” Willoby said. He sounded beaten somehow.

  Connor stopped him, setting a hand on his arm.

  “Captain, wait. Listen.”

  Something was moving in the tall ferns around them — more than one something. The moon had become hidden in a rolling mass of high clouds, and now there was only the starlight to see by. They stood frozen while on both sides of them things went by in the dark, not fifty metres away. Connor saw large, swift-moving shadows. There was a grunt, and then a sharp bark, a kind of snarl.

  His insides turned to water.

  The creatures passed by, heading up the slope that McCann had taken. They were visible as moving furrows in the fern prairies, eating up the ground at a fearsome pace.

  “Let’s get the hell out of here,” Willoby said in a whisper.

  “What about —”

  “Screw him. He made his choice. Come on, Connor. This is not a good place to be.”

  They took off back to the camp at a run.

  John McCann jogged steadily up the incline, breathing easily with his rifle held at the slope. He felt a pang of regret about the boy, Connor — he had been a decent sort. But he hoped that arrogant SAS bastard got what was coming to him.

  This whole thing, it was insanity itself, a nightmare from the moment the helicopter had left the ship. Well, he had signed up for many things in his life, but this wasn’t one of them. When he got back to the island he’d sit tight and wait for rescue. The rest of those poor souls back at the camp were doomed. With Hart and Brice both injured, they’d not make it back to the anomaly for many hours, and by that time it would be broad daylight, and God knows what would be roaming these fern prairies.