Falling Prey

by M. C. Norris

  “Maybe the circus is in town?” Dale grinned, winking across the fire at Donovan.

  “That’s right. It’s probably the circus train. I got your ticket right here. Come over and grab it, you hillbilly. Send your ass back to Boonville where you belong.”

  Dale threw back his head and laughed like a demon. Obviously, he enjoyed every opportunity to bump a slicker like Donovan off-balance. He seemed to enjoy prodding him more than he seemed to be worrying about whatever animal had produced such an awful howl, if Dale ever worried about anything at all.

  Dr. Kimura folded his hands in his lap. He inhaled deeply through his nose, and released the air in a tortured sigh. Although the incessant banter was occasionally entertaining, the constant background noise made it difficult to think. He ordinarily worked alone, so he’d become accustomed to long hours of silence, and he hadn’t enjoyed a moment of that since he’d stepped into the airport earlier that morning. Ever since he, Margot and Sandy had crossed paths with these two men, Dale and Donovan had been polluting his ears with their constant ribbing, wearing him down into a state of cognitive exhaustion. Half-a-day without water, and those two men could still think of no better activity to occupy their minds than taking shots at one another. The constant dogging might’ve had something to do with Margot, he supposed. Although Dr. Kimura understood why they probably found the young, European model attractive, it only took but thirty-minutes to realize that she was just a pretty face, and not much more. She hadn’t lifted a finger all day except to pick at her nail beds, or to fiddle with the ends of her blonde hair.

  Donovan was the instigator. Once he learned that the only reaction he could provoke from Margot were rolls of her eyes, he grew bored with her, and began casting lazily concealed slurs in Dr. Kimura’s direction. The doctor refused to acknowledge Donovan’s bait, as he held himself to a higher standard than to react to low-brow provocation. Sandy proved to be even less fun to annoy. She was kindhearted, genuine, and sweet, everything that Donovan was not, and she’d been so distraught over her missing husband that teasing her seemed monstrous. Donovan was an underdeveloped brat who needed undivided attention, but he wasn’t a monster.

  In the end, it was Dale, the farm boy from the backwaters of southeastern Arkansas, who stepped up to serve as the shifty stock broker’s sparring partner. Dale took the abuse in stride. He actually seemed to enjoy it, and he was always more than happy to dish it right back into Donovan’s face. If Dale had one iota of pride, he’d long forgotten where he’d buried it. His lifelong dream to waste a whole week gambling in Las Vegas was already ruined before their plane fell to pieces, because he’d inexplicably managed to book the wrong flight out of Memphis, sending him off to what was nearly the furthest point from Las Vegas that the United States had to offer. He’d spent most of his life savings redirecting his connecting flights westward from Baltimore, only to end up here—wherever here was.

  “Hey, Donovan.” Dale propped himself up on an elbow, and smiled wryly across the fire. “Don-boy. Hey, I got a serious question for you, man. For real.”

  “I haven’t heard nothing intelligent come out of your mouth all day. Why start now?”

  “Check this out. If I laid my nuts across your nose, then would my pecker be on your mind?”

  “Oh, God,” Margot groaned, rolling her eyes.

  Donovan tried to stay tough, but he couldn’t maintain the charade. A smile cracked his lips. He began to chuckle, pinching at his nose. “That’s good. I like that. I’m going to have to remember that one, you bucktoothed hillbilly. Nuts on my nose and everything. Where does he get this stuff?”

  Sandy’s eyes widened, but she said nothing. Just kept braiding the princess’s hair, as if Margot was the perfect Barbie doll that she’d never owned. Dr. Kimura frowned. He felt embarrassed for her, intuiting that she probably wasn’t accustomed to such idiotic banter. He felt sorry for her, too. Only Sandy seemed to have worse luck than Dale. Her tickets to the playoffs in Oakland were the only thing that she and her missing husband had ever won, and they’d landed her here, stripped of what little she’d had going for her in life, and probably widowed. All Dr. Kimura could do was to close his eyes, shake his head, and hope that he would soon wake up between his Egyptian cotton sheets and realize that all of this was just a twisted dream.

  When he reopened his eyes, he noticed the figure of a man staggering down the beach at some distance to the north. Something about his gait didn’t look quite right. Dr. Kimura rose, clearing his throat. “There is someone coming.”

  The high cliffs beetling over their campsite afforded a natural windbreak. The same feature would also probably provide some shelter from the elements if the weather decided to take a nasty turn. Dale had chosen the location of their camp. Dr. Kimura was inclined to trust him, seeing as how he was the only one amongst them with the qualifications to call himself an outdoorsman. If anyone here had a knack for wilderness survival, it was Dale. No doubt, the cliffs would serve them well against inclement weather, but on the downside, the limestone wall also blocked their view of anything but the thinnest strip of beach. They couldn’t see anyone coming until the intruder was right on top of them. If there ever was a threat, they’d be pinned between it, a sheer wall, and the hungry sea. Strategically, it was a death trap. Dr. Kimura had voiced his concerns in this regard, but the majority of their group were more enamored by the comforting accommodations.

  “You see someone?” Sandy dropped Margot’s braid. She rose to her feet, hands clasped to her breast. “Who is it?” Her voice began to quaver. “Can you tell if it’s my husband? He was wearing a bright orange Orioles shirt exactly like mine.”

  Dale rose from the fire. He slid his thumbs into his front pockets, and bounced once on his toes. “Nope. Not so far as I can tell.”

  “Ray is about this tall,” Sandy said, holding a trembling hand in the air, at a height only slightly above her own head.

  Dr. Kimura resituated his glasses on the bridge of his nose. He scrutinized every detail of the approaching stranger, who weaved a meandering path along the beach. The drunken navigation took the man all the way down into the surf, and then back up into the powdery sand. Dr. Kimura noticed that his clothing was drenched in blood. “He is injured. He needs help.”

  Dale and Sandy were close on his heels, as he hustled toward the battered stranger. The nearer they drew to him, the more serious his wounds appeared to be. His face was featureless beneath a mask of dried blood. When they were within reach of the walking corpse, he toppled, and collapsed into the sand.

  “Don’t move him. Not yet.”

  “Can you talk, buddy?” Dale knelt beside him. “We’re here to help y—” Dale stopped mid-sentence.

  “What is it?” Dr. Kimura whispered.

  Dale pointed at the blood flowing from the side of the man’s head. Dark bubbles also spewed from a ragged hole in the center of his face. The man’s ears and nose were missing. They’d been cut off.

  Dr. Kimura placed a hand on the man’s forehead. Despite the suffocating tropical heat, his flesh felt clammy, chilled to the touch. All symptoms suggested that he was in a state of shock. The doctor turned to his companions. “We need to move him to the fire.”

  “What’s your name, buddy?” Dale asked.

  “Not alone here,” the man whispered, beginning to tremble all over. “We’re not alone.” Eyes rolling crazily in their sockets, his teeth began to chatter. One hand rose quivering toward what remained of his face.

  “Easy. You’re going to be alright now. Hear?” Dale tried to assure him, glancing uncertainly at Dr. Kimura. “We got us a doctor here, and he’s going to get you all patched up, alright?”

  Dr. Kimura pressed the blades of his hands beneath his patient’s jaws. He was relieved to find that his throat was not slashed. It was raw, and the skin was sloughed back, almost as though he’d been strangled with a cord of some sort, but most of the blood that soaked his chest had resulted from the facial mutilation. Dr. Kimura sl
id his hands down either side of the man’s ribcage, feeling around for any broken ribs, bulges, any evidence of internal damage.

  “Ho-lee cow.” A grin spread across Dale’s face. He poked the man in the shoulder with a stiff index finger. “I recognize you.”

  “No-no-no,” Dr. Kimura whispered, waving his hands. “He’s in shock. Do not excite him.”

  “Who is it?” Sandy asked, squatting down on the man’s other side.

  Dale gave a chuckle.

  Donovan staggered onto the scene, breathing heavily after his short jog. Donovan’s panting stopped when he got a look at the man in the sand. “Hey,” he said, cocking his head, “is that who I think it is?”

  “Danged right it is.”

  “Who is it?” Sandy asked, scowling back and forth at the two men.

  “It’s a damned hijacker,” Dale said, smacking the sand off his palms. “The one who bailed out in a parachute while the rest of us fell down into the sea. This here’s their leader, I think. He was the feller wearing that Baltimore Orioles cap.”

  Sandy covered her mouth. “He was sitting right across from us.”

  “Look at you now, tough guy. Don’t feel so macho now, do you?”

  “The vector,” the hijacker murmured. “Got to find him.”

  “Yeah, you ain’t talking your way out of this one,” Dale said. “Looks like some of the other folks already caught up with you, didn’t they? Doesn’t look to me like they were too happy to see you.”

  “No!” The hijacker grabbed for Dale’s shirt with a trembling hand. “The others … they want the vector.”

  “He cannot make any sense now,” Dr. Kimura said, protecting his patient from Dale with an outstretched palm. “He needs treatment, and plenty of rest.”

  “Bull,” Donovan said. “I say we roll his ass right into the sea, show him what it’s like to dodge sharks while he treads water for an hour or two.”

  “I’m with you, buddy. See how the salt water feels on all them new boo-boos.”

  “Stop it. That’s enough of that talk.” Dr. Kimura rose from the sand, squaring off against the other two men. “If you care at all to know why our plane was hijacked, or where on earth we are, then you’d better—”

  “Guys?”

  All eyes swept toward Sandy. She’d stepped ten paces away from the squabble, where she stood gaping up into the moonlit sky. One hand fluttered over her mouth. The other rested upon her heart. “I’m not sure that we’re on Earth anymore at all.”

  CHAPTER FOUR

  23-A

  “Did you hear that?” Tara leapt from the sand. She dug her fingernails into the flesh of Brett’s arm. The unearthly howl that just erupted from the jungle was the most terrible noise that she’d ever heard. “What was it?”

  “I don’t know.”

  Brett was shaking. She could feel his vibrations rippling from his core through his limbs, and his terror was only heightening her own. Like a hurricane warning siren, the howl rose from a guttural growl to an intolerable crescendo. It held the discordant climax for what seemed an impossible duration until the deafening note was finally punctuated with a series of dry coughs. Something out there had just awakened. Its intentions were made perfectly clear, and that howl seemed to be nothing if not a fair warning to anything standing on open ground.

  Run.

  That’s what the howl seemed to say.

  Run. Everything with ears to hear me, run. Dive into your burrows. Swim far out into the sea, because nothing out there in the water could be worse than me. I am coming, and I only count to one.

  “Run,” Tara whispered. “Oh, Jesus. We’ve got to run.”

  “Run where? There’s nowhere to freaking run!”

  Already, palms bowed and swayed. Treetops roiled in the moonlight. Trunks squealed, splintered, and snapped like firecrackers before toppling in the darkness with a hiss of leaves, and a muffled thud. One tree in the jungle was different than the others. Tara could discern that now. Taller, shaggier than the rest, it was the King of Trees, sentient and driven by some awful purpose. It could walk, this tree, and it was pushing its way through the jungle straight for the beach. It was coming for them.

  “What the hell is that?” Brett pointed at it, his voice climbing to higher octaves. “What the hell is that thing?”

  “Run!” Tara screamed into his ear, shaking his head by a fistful of hair. She grabbed his arm, and jerked him right off of his feet, down onto his rump in the sand.

  “Get up, you guys!” Peanut pounded past, wakes of sand flying from either side of his feet. Alex was right behind him. Peanut swerved just enough to seize Tara by the wrist, and yanked her loose of Brett.

  “Brett!” Tara shrieked. “Get up!”

  Transfixed by the looming horror, Brett seemed unable to move, as though any decision he made would be a fatal one. He was paralyzed with fright, sallow prey in the glow of those parallel moons fixed upon him like a pair of owlish eyes. Their cold appraisal seemed to see no good use for humankind.

  “Where are we going?” Tara shrieked.

  “I don’t know. Into the sea?”

  “The sea? Are you out of your mind?” She’d seen the monsters that patrolled these shores. They’d all seen them. Black as the devil’s shadow, they were lurking out there, searching for the kicking legs of swimmers through those unthinking, pearly eyes. This was their favorite game. Yes, Tara could feel their foreboding presence sliding beneath the waves just as plainly as she beheld the shaggy thing crashing through the last belt of trees.

  The howler thundered out onto the moonlit beach, where it dipped and tossed its festooned head. Bobbing, puffing, peering askance through hidden eyes, the creature was clearly intrigued by the sight of them, but it seemed unsure of how it should destroy them. With a gaseous hiss, and a fluff of black feathers, the monster lowered its head to the sand.

  “There’s nowhere else to go. We’ve got to swim for it!”

  “No!”

  A few purposeful plods, and the howler began to charge. Leveling its flattened body with the ground, it emitted a disorienting trill as it thundered over the beach. Dust showered from its shags of filthy plumage. Sand flew in chuffs behind its stabbing feet. How the thing intended to kill them was unclear, but there would be some death tonight. That much was certain.

  “Brett!”

  Alex and Peanut both grabbed her by the arms, and dragged Tara writhing into the waves. The sea was colder than she remembered. It stole her breath away. She fell, disappearing for a moment beneath the brine, but the boys did not let go. Dragging, drowning, she emerged sputtering just as the thing slammed its shaggy face to the ground. She watched it thrashing, grinding, whipping its head skyward in a fountain of sand, as it engulfed something mangled with one flip of its maw. A tennis shoe sailed through the moonlight. It hit the beach fifty meters away with a puff of white powder.

  “Oh my God … Brett!”

  “Jesus Christ! What is it? What the hell is that thing?”

  One of the boys was shouting by her ear. Tara didn’t know which of them was on either side of her anymore. They’d become a single mass, clinging and shivering in the waves. The water was up to their necks by the time the howler had finished its meal, and swiveled its massive head in their direction. The elongated body pivoted afterward. It was perfectly balanced on a pair of legs that looked disproportionately thin beneath the woolly bulk hovering atop them. With a boar-like grunt, it came for them. The howler wanted more. Sheaves of filth rained from its thatch with every thrust of its limbs. The thing was no more deterred by the ocean than by the jungle’s density. The teens clung to one another, screaming for their lives, as the monster crashed headlong into the waves.

  ###

  23-E

  “I’m looking for my husband,” Sandy whispered into the bloody hole where one of his ears had been sliced away. She peered over her shoulder to make sure that Dr. Kimura wasn’t coming. He was a good man, and she was sure that he was a fine doctor, but
he failed to appreciate the fact that if she didn’t question his patient now, then she might not ever get a chance to do so. The guy was fading fast. Wrapped in a few extra articles of clothing that their group had reluctantly donated, and resting as close to the fire as he could safely be positioned, the mutilated hijacker continued to shiver uncontrollably. His eyes were alternately closed, or confused and wandering. What hadn’t been apparent on the darkened beach where they’d discovered him was the exposed dome of skull atop his head. In addition to being strangled, and having his facial features pared away, the man had also been scalped.

  Sandy couldn’t bring herself to believe that survivors of their crash had committed these acts of barbarism. Without a doubt, he was guilty of a crime that had jeopardized a lot of innocent lives, but his endangerment of the passengers of that plane did not justify outright savagery. He didn’t deserve to be tortured nearly to death, or to be left permanently disfigured. Whoever had taken a blade to this man’s face was an even worse sort of monster than a hijacker. This was the clearly work of a psychopath.

  The hijacker’s eyelids fluttered open. His eyes dimmed, crossed, and then realigned, as though he’d bobbed back briefly to the surface of consciousness. He blinked through his mask of gore, white teeth chattering. Wild eyes rolled in their sockets toward Sandy.

  “It’s okay,” she murmured, placing a reassuring hand on his arm. “No one is going to hurt you. I promise. You’ve been rescued. Do you understand? Nod, if you understand me.”

  The man searched her face with affrighted eyes. After all that he’d been through, he seemed unwilling to believe that she really meant him no harm. He licked his teeth, and swallowed. After a moment, he gave a single nod.

  “Good.” Sandy smiled, patting his arm. She looked across the fire. The only other person within earshot was Margot, and she wasn’t paying attention. She never did. She was always in her own little world. Out of everyone stranded here, the young model was perhaps the most removed from her natural environment. Here, there was no trace of whatever wonderland she’d fallen from. Sandy imagined her riding around with a glamorous entourage, strutting the fashion runways amidst popping strobes. Here, divorced from all of that dazzle, she could only sulk like a scolded child, disconnected from the world around her, and picking at the beds of her nails. Some of them had begun to bleed.