Island 731

much less gracefully than it was accustomed to.

“Hawkins, get down!”

He obeyed the voice, ducking quickly. He heard an impact above him. A large stone fell to the ground next to him, accompanied by one of the lizards. It was stunned, but far from dead.

Hawkins turned toward the voice and saw Joliet, armed with another stone. He ran to her. “I told you to leave.”

“And I just saved your life,” she said before turning and making a beeline for the beach.

Hawkins thought Joliet’s claim was a little exaggerated, but kept it to himself. Now was not the time for arguing the details, and he couldn’t deny he owed her a “thank you.” Still, she should have listened. In a different situation, she could have been killed.

Spurred by the knowledge that the jungle’s denizens really did want to maul them, the pair charged toward the beach, blazing a new path through the jungle. The chirping behind them grew louder. Frantic. And then, all at once, it stopped. The jungle fell silent.

The sudden silence was so powerful that Hawkins and Joliet actually stopped. Hawkins spun around, knife at the ready. “What the hell?”

“Where did they go?”

Where he expected to see dozens of flying lizards, or at least several clinging to trees, he saw nothing. Not a living thing. The jungle was just as empty as it had been the first time they’d entered it.

Still, he knew they were there.

He backed away, toward the beach, which was just a few feet behind them now. He could hear the faint lapping of waves, smell the salty air, and feel the hot sun on his back. Did the creatures sense the beach? he wondered. Do they not like the light? Or is there something else about the beach that frightens them?

When Joliet stepped out onto the beach and let out a shout of surprise, he feared his last guess was correct. He charged out after her, ready for action. The first thing he saw was Bray, shirtless, filthy, and covered with sweat. Then he saw what lay at Bray’s feet and for the first time since they left the pillbox, he thought he might prefer the jungle to the beach.

14.

Hawkins remembered what it felt like to look at a corpse. Fresh or long since decomposed, the sight of a human being with the life drained from it left a mark on his soul every time, even more so when the evidence of a violent death was plainly visible. He kept his resolve while on the job, but occasionally found himself washing the images from his mind with alcohol. He’d never abused the substance, but had no trouble using it to forget, at least for a few hours, the poignant reminder of his own frailty.

The scene on the beach reminded him how easily human life could be lost.

Fifteen times over.

Bray stood at the end of the line of uncovered bodies—skeletons, really—out of breath and soaked with sweat. His eyes were swollen and red. Had he been crying? The man had exhumed a mass grave on his own, after all. And from where Hawkins stood, it appeared each and every one of the dead had been murdered in the same fashion as the first they’d stumbled upon.

“Oh my God,” Joliet said. “This is a mass grave?”

“This is just the top layer,” Bray said. “There are more underneath.”

Hawkins saw a body with what looked like a third arm and came to the same conclusion as Bray. Other bodies had been buried below. After quickly scanning the jungle behind him and finding no shifting shadows or striped reptilian skin, he knelt down at the head of the nearest body. The skull had been caved in by something blunt, and powerful. Death would have been quick, at least, he thought, assuming this was the one and only wound these people suffered.

Joliet walked down the line of bodies, stopping to look at each one. “Who are they?”

“Three of them were Americans,” Bray said. “World War Two sailors. I’m not sure about the rest.”

Joliet turned to Bray. “Americans?”

Bray held out his hands and let three sets of dog tags dangle from their chains. He separated one from the others and read the name. “Coffman.” He pointed to the body at his feet. “He’s this one here. Just finished clearing him off.”

Hawkins moved down the line to Coffman’s body, his eyes jumping back to the jungle every few moments, looking for motion.

Bray read the rest of the tag. “Coffman. J. P. 452386 C. That’s his serial number. The ‘C’ means he was Catholic. ‘Type A.’ That’s his blood type. They didn’t do positive or negative back then. Next line is the date of his last tetanus shot. 4/1942, which is how I dated them. ‘USN’ for United States Navy. And I suspect that’s all his interrogators got out of him, too, considering his wounds.”

Hawkins had just noticed the multiple breaks in the man’s ribs. It’s possible he was punched repeatedly or just whacked a few times with whatever crushed his skull in. Straight nicks and scratches covering his arms, legs, and face; the kind caused by blades or, in the wild, claws and teeth. There was no denying the man had been tortured before he died.

“We need to cover them back up,” Bray said.

“I thought you wanted to remove the body?” Joliet asked.

“When there was just one body,” Bray said. “This isn’t simply a murder anymore. It’s a mass grave. Evidence of war crimes. Some of the guys who did this stuff during the war are still alive. Barely, but that doesn’t mean whoever did this should escape justice in the history books. Someone is going to have to search this whole island for more.”

Bray straightened suddenly as though waking from a dream. “What happened with you two? You didn’t find Kam?” He squinted at them. “And why were you running?”

Hawkins offered Bray a bullet list of everything they’d discovered: the rat, the pillbox that supported evidence of the island being populated during World War Two, the size of the island, and finally their flight from the flying lizards.”

When Hawkins finished, Bray eyed the jungle nervously. “Flying lizards? Geez. Can you describe them?”

“I can draw one for you back at the Magellan,” Hawkins said. While far from an artist, he sketched in his free time and, according to Bray, he was a “regular Picasso.” But Picasso represented the extent of Bray’s knowledge of the arts outside of the multiplex movie theater.

Hawkins stood and took the two-way radio from his pocket. He pushed the Talk button and said, “Captain Drake, this is Hawkins. You read?”

After a moment of static, the captain’s voice came from the speaker. “I read you, Hawkins. Didn’t think I’d hear from you so soon. Did you find Kam already? Over.”

“No, sir. It’s a long story and I’d prefer to give you the details in person. But the short version is that we think Kam either fell overboard… or he was taken. Whoever fled the ship and left those footprints in the sand knows this island well. Over.”

“That doesn’t sound good,” Drake said.

Hawkins looked out at the pale blue hull of the Magellan. If he didn’t look at his feet, or back at the foreboding jungle behind him, the scene appeared picturesque. Real postcard material. But the beauty of this place was cosmetic. Beneath the stunning views lurked a dark and bloody past. “It’s not, sir. How are things on your end? Over.”

“Making some progress actually, hold on.”

The line went silent. During that time, Hawkins’s eyes lowered to Coffman’s body. He looked at the legs and saw that both had been fractured multiple times and allowed to heal incorrectly. He couldn’t imagine the kind of pain this man endured. What could he have known that would make him endure this kind of torture? Unless, Hawkins thought, this wasn’t torture.

Coffman had been tortured. Of that there was no doubt. But were they trying to extract information from him