Her words trailed off as a sudden gust of wind swept a mist of brine from the sea.
“What?” Bradley asked. “What about them?”
“They could be nothing…or they could be building up to something. The earth can only store so much energy before…”
“Before what?”Reaves asked.
Libby turned to face him, her eyes wide, her face stark white.
“Before it has to release it.”
Reaves raised his stare again to the east, where more dark smoke furled into the sky above the tops of the trees that ringed the mouth of the caldera.
Fifty-Seven
Courtney winced with every step. With all of the cuts on the soles of her feet, even the spongy moss felt like beds of nails. She was starting to wonder how much farther she was going to be able to go. At least the pain served to focus her mind on something other than the realization of what her brother had become. The biologist in her had run around and around in her mind, trying to figure out a solution to his problem, but she always came back to the scarlet tube worm. When the chemosynthetic organisms in its gut died, so did the worm. She wished she knew more about the bacteria themselves. Ty was the expert on thermophiles, but he was currently in no position to help them. She again forced her brother from her mind in an effort to concentrate on the here and now. If there was a way to save him, she would find it. First, however, they needed to put more distance between themselves and those from the beach, who were surely trudging toward the same destination that they were. Bishop was right. They needed to ensure their own safety from the human element before they could even think about helping her brother.
Over the course of the last several hours, they had been slowly creeping downhill to the west as they continued north. Every now and then she caught a glimpse of the distant shimmering waves through the canopy and prayed to see a ship heading toward the island. At least the rain had stopped for the time being, but with the way the clouds were darkening to the east, she knew it was only a matter of time before another storm commenced. With any luck, they’d be indoors in the village long before then.
Another mini-quake shook the ground and she had to grab Bishop to keep from stumbling.
“There’s more smoke this time,” he said.
With each of the increasingly frequent quakes, they had taken to looking toward the caldera. Where initially there had been a few twirls of smoke nearly indistinguishable from the clouds, it now looked like a wildfire raged somewhere inside the mountain. They smelled burning wood, and beneath it, a faintly sulfurous scent. The volcano had been dormant for thousands of years, despite the constant tectonic activity all around it. What were the odds that it would come to life after all of this time?
The sun slipped behind the leading edge of the storm clouds before emerging once again. In that fleeting moment, she thought she saw the bellies of the clouds closest to the cone glow faintly orange.
“We need to keep moving,” Bishop said. “I want to try to reach the village before the storm hits. If the people from the boat are following us, it’ll slow them down.” He attempted a smile. “Besides, now that I’m finally dry, I really don’t feel like getting drenched again.”
They started forward again through a grove of ceibas that grew just far enough apart that they could nearly walk side-by-side.
“There’s something we haven’t considered,” Bishop said. He reached back and took her by the hand to hurry her along. “If there’s a radio at the mission, then it’s possible that someone on the Huxley could have called ahead, and Lord only knows what they might have said. We could find that they won’t exactly roll out the red carpet for us.”
“What do you propose then? It’s our only option.”
“It’s not our only option, but it’s by far the best we’ve got right now. I’m not suggesting we avoid it. I’m just saying that we need to be really careful how we approach it.”
“And what if it does play out that way? What if they think we’re some sort of criminals?”
“I don’t even want to contemplate our backup plan yet.”
Courtney had to nearly jog to keep pace. To her left, the waves booming against the rocks became quieter, and she could have sworn she almost heard the shushing sound of waves spilling onto sand. Seagulls called from ahead of them, a riot of squawks and squalls. The ground gently descended to the north. Bishop’s grip grew tighter on her hand and he slowed his pace.
“Wha—?” she started, but he silenced her by pressing his index finger to his lips.
A path cut through the groundcover directly ahead of them, a line of choppy mud where the detritus had been packed into the earth. He led her slowly toward it and stopped several paces away. She couldn’t clearly discern any footprints between the puddles, but it was readily apparent that it was a frequently used trail. It wound down through the forest toward the origin of the gull racket before vanishing into the trees.
“We’re close,” he whispered into her ear. “I want you to stay right behind me and do exactly what I do.”
He looked her in the eyes and waited for her to nod her understanding.
She followed him across the path and to the east, where they worked their way into denser forestation. They eased cautiously from behind one tree trunk to the next, all the while descending toward the rising sounds of the surf and the shrieking gulls. She was reminded of the Jersey shore of her youth in the evenings when the fishing boats were returning to the docks with their day’s catch, where clouds of the birds whirled around the schooners in anticipation of feeding on guts and leftover chum.
Bishop lingered longer and longer behind each trunk. He peeked around them several times before guiding her quickly downhill and behind the next. Through the branches, she caught an occasional glimpse of wooden constructs, gray with age and exposure to the elements, but never a clear look. Above them, hundreds of gulls wheeled against the sky.
A new scent reached to them on the breeze. She crinkled her nose. Bishop’s posture stiffened and he stopped dead in his tracks in front of her.
The infernal racket grew louder, and through the branches, she saw a riot of white feathered bodies nearly colliding and beating each other back down to the ground.
Bishop lowered himself to his haunches and advanced in a crouch. Mimicking his movements, she clung to the cover of the shrubs as she trailed him. The seagulls were so loud it felt like they were inside her head. Onward they crept until Bishop finally stopped behind the buttress roots of a monster kapok tree. Through the gaps between the slanted roots and the bushes on the other side, she saw a pair of wooden huts with thatch roofs, built on stilts. Every inch of air space between them was packed with squabbling gulls, which made it nearly impossible to see the ground—
Courtney gasped and closed her eyes, but there were some things that once seen could never be erased from memory.
Fifty-Eight
Pike had been driving the survivors as fast as he possibly could. None of them wanted to fall behind for fear of becoming lost and alone in the jungle. The civilian cattle whined and complained and whimpered behind him, but he didn’t care how tired they were or how much their feet hurt or how frightened they were. He would sooner abandon them than lose any more time, which he could feel flying past as the shadows and columns of light continued to shift around him. The occasional glimpses of the sun through the canopy made it appear to lurch across the sky in jerky stop-motion animation. The hell if he was going to still be on this island when it sank into the ocean to the west.
He attuned his body to the jungle until he felt every noise as much as heard it and became a living extension of the soft earth underfoot. Birds startled then silenced at the sound of their approach and unseen animals darted away from them through the branches. Condensation on the broad, leathery leaves high above them dripped to the ground. The ocean pounded the shoreline in time with his metered breathing.
His best guess was that they were within a kilometer of the village, so he w
asn’t surprised when he found the first hint of a trail.
He signaled for the others to stop behind him and surveyed the area with his pistol before finally shoving through the bushes toward a hardly visible line through the ferns and shrubs. Anyone else would have missed it, but not Pike. To him, the faint path might as well have been paved. The bent branches and broken stems showed the direction of travel, and while the spongy loam and ferns had begun to spring back up, he could still tell exactly where each footfall had been placed. Someone had passed through here, and recently. Not more than half an hour ahead of them.
Had the creature somehow swung around and outflanked them from the steeper jungle to the east?
He turned, locked eyes with Brazelton, and communicated what he had found without words. Brazleton nodded and pushed through the others so he could cover Pike with his weapon.
“What’s going on?” Bradley asked.
Pike silenced him with a glare and knelt down in the bushes. He carefully brushed aside the leaves and groundcover until he found a decent print.
Behind him, Brazleton hushed the nervous whispering of the civilians.
The footprint was human, presumably from a male, approximately size twelve. The same as the other tracks they had found, but this one was distinctly different. The heel was wider and the impressions left by the toes were ovular rather than teardrop-shaped. Where the ball of the foot touched, the imprint was clearly defined by either excessive weight or fatigue. He leaned closer and something caught his eye. Carefully, he excised a blade of grass from where it had been squashed into the mud and raised it to his face.
Blood.
The tip of the broad blade was smeared with blood.
He turned to his right in the direction from which the trail led. The slope of the volcano rose up into the miasma of clouds and smoke. The angle of the trail was shallow, as though whoever had made it was working slowly westward toward the sea.
Again, he looked down and isolated a second set of prints. They were much smaller, perhaps size six or seven, and while he couldn’t be completely certain, he was comfortable working under the assumption that they belonged to a woman. Just like the first, they were bare and it only took him a moment to find the blood now that he knew to look for it.
Pike rocked back on his heels and scoured the area. The tracks were definitely different than those he was convinced had been made by the creature, but why were they bare? And what was the source of the blood? Had they happened upon a path left by natives returning to their village or had they been left by someone else? The fact that the path had been recently forged through the foliage suggested that someone other than the natives had made it. After countless generations on the island, surely the villagers had well-worn paths leading everywhere they needed to go. But if not them, then who? There were still two survivors from the liferaft on the Mayr for whom they had yet to account. Was it possible that they had finally caught up with them? And if so, what happened to their shoes?
He followed the line of prints with his eyes. The small spots of blood were in the same locations. The wounds had to be on the soles of feet unaccustomed to traversing such terrain barefoot. Either the last of the survivors from the Mayr had miraculously made it this far or he supposed it wasn’t entirely impossible that two of those who had vanished in the chaos on the beach when the creature attacked had managed to navigate the jungle on their own. He cursed himself for not taking the time to properly inspect the remains he had found hidden under the branches, but he undoubtedly wouldn’t have been able to recognize all of their faces considering he had never really gotten a good look at them in the first place.
“What did you find?” Bradley asked.
Pike stood and walked back toward the group.
“Two sets of tracks,” he said. “Whoever left them can’t be very far ahead of us.”
“They aren’t—?”
“No. These show no signs of physical…malformation.”
“Who do you think…?” Bradley started, but Pike had already turned his back on him. He was weary of talking and tired of all of the questions, especially those he couldn’t answer.
But not for much longer.
The trail they now followed was still fresh and those who had left it were surely slowed by their wounds. If he set a fast pace, it wouldn’t be long before they overtook them somewhere in the vicinity of the village.
The ground trembled again and he glanced to the east. He could no longer see the caldera through the smoke, although there was a reddish flicker where it should have been. The storm clouds had eclipsed it on their westward journey. Beneath them, the air above the highest trees was hazy with rain.
There was a loud rumbling sound as boulders broke away from the slope and cascaded down into the forest.
He returned his focus to the path and the thinning forest, and started forward at a jog.
Fifty-Nine
Bishop had known what they would find the moment he smelled the comingling aromas of blood and decomposition, but he still couldn’t believe his eyes. He had seen the bodies strewn in the debris surrounding car bombs, in markets where men had strapped explosives to their chests before detonating themselves in the crowd, and lying in courtyards below an impromptu sniper’s nest, but this…this was a massacre without reason. He had anticipated problems gaining entry to the village from suspicious natives or difficulty negotiating the use of the radio with some foreign priest. Never once had he considered the possibility that they would arrive at the village to find everyone dead.
He glanced over at Courtney. Her pale face was drawn into an expression of horror.
When he looked back into the village, it almost appeared as though the bodies had multiplied. They were everywhere, cast aside on the ground like refuse. He was thankful that the ghastly details were hidden by all of the gulls that hopped on the remains, skewering the rotting flesh with their beaks before tossing back their heads to choke the morsels down into their gullets. The formerly bare dirt was nearly white with the staggering amount of bird feces and feathers. Whenever one of the scavengers took to flight, another dropped from the churning flock to take its place. They lined the thatch roofs of the lashed wooden huts and flew in and out of the open doorways. In all of his years at sea, he had never seen so many of the vile birds in one place, even as the commercial trawlers docked near the processing plants with their decks piled high with several months’ worth of fish.
He wished he had a gun, if only to fire it into the air to scatter the seagulls and salvage what little dignity remained for the dead. The fact that they were left to rot on the ground without even a halfhearted attempt at burial told him everything he needed to know.
There was no one left alive to bury them.
Who could have done something like this?
His first thought was of the men on the Huxley who had been prepared to kill them to protect the secret of their terrible discovery, but even they couldn’t be this cruel. And unless they had done this prior to extracting them from the Mayr’s sunken carcass, they wouldn’t have had the time. These people had been dead for quite a while now. This level of carnage was beyond the devices of man. It was savage…inhuman…
Goosebumps rippled up the backs of his arms and prickled his neck.
He remembered the screams in the confusion on the Mayr and the video from the diver’s helmet that showed all of the bodies trapped underwater in the hold.
There was no longer any doubt in his mind. Whatever had slaughtered everyone aboard their ship was on this island, and it had been in this very spot not long ago.
For all he knew, it could still be here now.
“Stay here,” he whispered as he ducked out from behind the tree.
Courtney grabbed him by the wrist and jerked him back.
“Where are you going?”
“I need to find the radio.”
“I’m not staying here alone.”
“You can’t come with me, Courtney. Just look down th
ere. What if whoever did this is still here?”
“That’s precisely why I’m going with you.”
“Damn it, Courtney. We can’t take the chance—”
She lunged forward and stepped out from behind the cover of the trunk and the bushes before he could stop her. He hurried to take her by the hand and tried to pull her behind him so he could at least shield her with his body if he had to.
She was going to be the death of him.
Most of the seagulls leapt up when they entered the clearing and joined the frenzied flock swirling over the rooftops, shrieking so loud he could barely hear himself think. Other brazen individuals held their ground, webbed feet balanced on the corpses as they continued to spear strips of muscle like worms. Bishop wanted to shout to scare them away, but he feared betraying their presence, if by some slim chance all of the squawking hadn’t done so already. In their absence, he could see all of the flies crawling on the bodies. What little clothing was still draped over the remains was shredded. Some wore shirts and shorts surely donated to the mission, while others wore skirts of woven reeds.
All of the bodies had dark skin, most of which was black and livid with putrefaction. Not that there was much flesh left. The majority had already been plucked away to expose knots of tendon and connective tissue covered with feathers. The occasional tattoo of odd geometric shapes and puffy scars that appeared to have been deliberately inflicted for aesthetic reasons stood out from random sections of body parts. Their abdomens were hollowed out to reveal broken rib cages like the mouths of so many Venus flytraps that held puddles of rainwater and bodily dissolution. Their eyes and cheeks were gone. The black holes in their orbits and their bared teeth made them appear enraged.
Bishop tried not to look at them as he picked his way across the clearing. There had to be at least twenty of them sprawled on their backs and sides inside the ring of huts. Men. Women. Children. All gutted, decomposing, and partially consumed. Instead, he focused on the open doorways of the wooden domiciles, through which he could see little more than shadows. Anything could have been hiding at the back of the single rooms, staring right at them, and he wouldn’t have been able to see it until it leapt into the light mere feet away. Between those to the west, he could see the ocean over the treetops farther down the slope near the beach.
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