Island 731

Joliet screamed again, this time sounding much more distant. The sound of her voice faded, but not before lulling Hawkins into unconsciousness.

34.

Howie GoodTracks leaned over Hawkins’s prone body. “It’s broken.”

Hawkins had never broken a bone before and the sight of his bulging shin nearly made him pass out. But GoodTracks took him by the shoulders and gave him a shake.

“Hey!” the old man said. “Do not go into shock. It’s just a broken bone. These things happen. But you will die if you aren’t able to keep your mind sharp.”

That snapped Hawkins out of his pain-filled haze. “Die?”

GoodTracks nodded. “What would you do if I were not here with you?”

“You are here with me!” Hawkins shouted back.

“How many times have you done something foolish like this without me around?”

Hawkins looked up at the tall rock he’d leapt from. He had, in fact, jumped from it at least twenty times previously. Thinking he’d perfected his landing technique, he decided to show his mentor. But in his excitement, he jumped higher and farther than before. The landing was hard and all wrong. He knew the answer, but didn’t offer it.

GoodTracks continued. “If this happened to you, alone, in the forest, what would you do?”

“I—I don’t know,” Hawkins admitted as he fought the tears gathering in his eyes.

“Good news,” GoodTracks said with a slight grin. “You’ll learn today. Look around you. What do you see?”

Hawkins looked around the forest. The tall pine forest floor was mostly clear of brush, but it was littered with fallen branches. “You want me to make a splint?”

GoodTracks nodded. “And set the bone. Find some crutches. And then walk the mile back to the lodge. We’ll start with the bone.”

“You can’t be serious,” Hawkins said.

“You know I am.” GoodTracks stood back and crossed his arms. “Now, sit up.”

Hawkins obeyed. He wanted to be angry at GoodTracks, but couldn’t be. He knew his surrogate father was right. This was his fault, and it could have happened during any of his previous jumps. And it could happen again. He looked down at the leg. It hurt less now and he felt almost giddy. I’m in shock, he realized, but then decided there was no better time to try what he was about to do. If the pain got worse, or his thoughts fully cleared, or the leg swelled too much, he’d be done.

He leaned forward, reaching past the break, and took hold of his ankle with both hands. An electric zing of pain shot up his leg, but he held on tight. “What do I do?”

“Tug your leg down, angle it back in place, and let go. The muscles will pull the bone together, but then we’ll need something to hold it there.”

Hawkins’s face screwed up with determination. In three seconds, he tugged, shifted, and let go of his leg when it was straightened, screaming for the duration before passing out.

* * *

If not for the light of day tingeing the back of his eyelids red, Hawkins wouldn’t have realized more than a few minutes had passed. His beaten body gave into exhaustion and slipped quietly from unconsciousness to sleep. His thoughts drifted to the dream, which was actually a memory. He managed to set the leg, find a single crutch, and hobble most of his way back to the lodge where they were staying. GoodTracks had helped toward the end and told Hawkins he was proud of him. It was a painful memory, but a good one.

Hawkins shifted with a groan. Every muscle ached, and would for days. His chest hurt so bad that he wondered if the creature’s strike had broken a few ribs. He opened his eyes and squinted against a shaft of morning sunlight that somehow found a path through the canopy to his face. He turned away from the light, which kick- started a hangoverlike headache. His head felt like it might explode when he pushed himself into a sitting position, but forgot all about the pain pulsing through his body when his head collided with something.

The object was soft but firm and quickly registered in Hawkins’s mind as a body standing over him. Human, animal or chimera, friend or foe, living or dead, he didn’t know. His reaction fit every scenario.

A shout burst from Hawkins’s mouth as he scuttled away from his visitor like a startled crab. Through blurred vision he saw the shape of a man standing still.

“Bray?” he asked, rubbing his eyes, willing them to focus. “Bennett?”

He would have been happy if it were either man.

Pain pounded within his head, squeezing his eyes shut. “Who are you?” he asked, but got no reply. He took several long, slow breaths, listening for the man’s approach, but he never moved. When the pain subsided, Hawkins slowly opened his eyes. The foliage at his feet came into focus. He lifted his head and saw the man.

Confusion gripped his mind for a moment as he looked into the eyes of the last Magellan crewmember he expected to see.

Cahill.

But then he saw the body. With a shout, Hawkins backed away even faster than before. He stopped in a sea of ferns, his head poking out like a frightened child beneath a blanket. But his horror was short lived. Seeing no immediate danger, Hawkins pulled himself to his feet, fought a moment of nausea, and then turned his attention to Cahill.

While the man’s bearded face and shaggy hair were intact, the rest of his body had been mutilated. Severely.

A pair of tattered boxer shorts and shreds of blood-soaked shirt clinging to his shoulders were all that remained of his clothes. His legs, while still connected to the torso, appeared to have been gnawed on. Eaten. In some places, the meat had been stripped to the bone. Whatever had taken his body from the netting around the Magellan had made a meal of him before stringing him up. As what? A message? A trap? Decoration? Hawkins couldn’t decide.

Cahill’s body hung suspended above the path, his feet just inches from the ground. His arms were propped up on the lines that wrapped around his chest and tied tree branches. The pose made him look like a mutilated Christ figure. But the worst part was the line holding up the body. At first, Hawkins thought it was a flexible rope, like thick bungee cord, but then he saw its origin: Cahill’s gut had been sliced open with surgical precision. He’d been strung up with his own intestines, wrapping back and forth between body and tree limbs before looping back into his open gut.

Hawkins felt a growing revolt as he realized that he’d run headlong into a taut line of intestine the night before. It’s what had swept him off his feet and slammed him to the ground. His hand went to his neck and found flakes of dried blood clinging to his skin. He frantically brushed it away.

With one last glance at Cahill’s body, his thoughts returned to the living. Joliet had been taken. Bray had fallen in the river. Bennett never left the laboratory building, but that didn’t mean he spent the night there—the kid was a mess. And Drake still lay on a pallet, burning from fever. Maybe worse.

He turned and ran up the path, quickly finding the gate. He tore it open and ran into the yard. “Bray!” he shouted, but his call was replied to with bells and bleats. The small herd of goats trotted to him, greeting him happily as though a monster hadn’t been in their midst the previous night. They should be terrified and jumpy, Hawkins thought, not indifferent.

He stopped at the river, searching its steep banks for Bray’s body.

Nothing.

He crossed the small bridge in two long steps. The goats followed him over the river, their hooves sounding like thunder in the early morning quiet as they tromped over the bridge’s wooden planks.

“Quiet!” he whispered at the animals, but they remained sanguine and oblivious. He wasn’t worried that they would give away his position—the island’s residents would be used to the goats’ clamor. He just wanted to hear someone if they replied to his calls.

He ran for the laboratory entrance. “Bray!”