Island 731

She returned his smile, flashing a pair of sharp, white canines and a contrasting duo of deep dimples. Then she arched her body and turned up. Hawkins coughed violently as they emerged into the air once more. He felt two pairs of hands reach under his arms and pull him up. He fell back with a wet slap and found himself on the deck of a strange-looking, trash-covered boat. The hard deck felt impossibly comfortable. Joliet appeared above him. He could see her speaking, but couldn’t hear her. He managed to smile up at her for a moment, and then closed his eyes.

51.

The sun flared bright in Hawkins’s eyes when they opened again. But then it faded, growing darker by the second, until it seemed like he would pass out once more. His pulse quickened, waking his nerves, filling his body with a pain so intense he knew consciousness was impossible. But his eyes… the sun… what was—

Then he saw the stars. It was night.

As his eyes continued to adjust, he saw many more stars emerge and the inky blackness of the night sky became something closer to a milky swirl of dark and light shades. The gentle undulation told him that he was on a boat. A small one. He could hear water gently lapping against the hull, but also a continuous, dull thumping sound.

We’re still in the Garbage Patch, he realized.

Hawkins turned to his left. Joliet lay next to him, flat on her back, her eyes closed. She looked peaceful when she slept. The expression on her face reminded him of the sketch he’d drawn of her. But her body, covered in scrapes, bruises, and dried blood, ruined this image. A shadow stirred and he noticed that Lilly lay in the crook of Joliet’s arm, snuggled up close. If not for the hair and feline features, she’d look like any other sleeping child. Beyond them, Bray and Drake both lay sleeping. They looked horrible, but the worst of their wounds had been tended to. An emptied first-aid kit laid at Bray’s feet.

He pushed himself up into a sitting position. His side ached and he paused to let his head stop swirling. He slid back and leaned against the hull, wondering why his wounds didn’t hurt more. Hell, he should have been dead. He looked down and found most of his chest and side wrapped in bandages. The one on his side had a red splotch in the middle, but didn’t appear to be bleeding through. Someone sewed me up, he thought, and then felt the bandage on his back. The bullet went straight through. He nearly laughed at the thought and realized he wasn’t feeling quite right in the head, either. Shock or morphine, he decided, but didn’t really care which. Both would eventually wear off and the pain would become unbearable.

A foreign sound tickled his ears and he instinctively looked to the sky. He couldn’t see a thing, but he knew it was up there. A jet. The running lights should have been easy to see in the pitch blackness, but there were none, which meant it didn’t want to be seen.

With a grunt he pushed himself to his feet. Are they looking for us? he wondered. He limped to the aft deck and got his first real look at their ship. Aside from the bare deck, the fifteen-foot vessel looked like a clump of garbage, nearly indistinguishable from the thick swath of trash surrounding them on all sides. They were still in the thickest part of the patch, which meant that they had yet to travel thirty miles from the island.

Hawkins flinched as a hand took his. He looked down and saw Lilly’s eyes reflecting the moonlight back up at him.

“What is it?” she asked, looking at the sky.

“Sounds like a jet,” he replied.

“You can’t see it?”

He shook his head no. Of course he couldn’t, but she could! “What does it look like?”

“It’s small,” she said. “Darker than the sky. Kind of a triangle.” She pointed to the sky, low on the horizon. “It’s there, moving away from us. Toward the island.”

The plane had already passed, moving at supersonic speed. The sound was just reaching them now, which meant it was really high.

“Sounds like a B-2 bomber,” Bray said. He stretched as he joined them at the back of the boat.

Joliet stepped up next to Hawkins’s right side. She leaned her head on his shoulder. “Thanks. For coming to get me.”

Pain lanced through his arm as he moved, but he managed to get his hand on her shoulder. He pulled her closer. “You owe me two cases of beer now.”

“They’ve given up,” Drake said from behind. He sat in the pilot’s chair, watching the sky. “Must have lost everyone on the island. They’re going to wipe it off the m—”

The sky behind them bloomed with orange light. The light expanded, flickered, and then shrunk in on itself. The surreal silence of the distinct explosion made it almost beautiful. Part of Hawkins appreciated the sight. It meant that the evil of Island 731 had been contained. But it also meant that those responsible would never have to answer for their crimes against humanity, just like the Japanese scientists of World War II.

Hawkins heard Bray counting softly. “What are you doing?” he asked.

Bray held up his index finger, signaling Hawkins to wait. Then it happened. A boomlike thunder rolled past them. Lilly’s grip on his hand tightened to the point of hurting.

“Eleven miles,” Bray said. “Four more and we’ll be outside the thickest part of the Garbage Patch. Then we can gun the engines until they run dry and activate the distress signal.”

Hawkins knelt down next to her. “It’s okay. You’re going to be okay. I promise.”

As he looked into Lilly’s yellow eyes, a warm breeze pushed by the explosion’s pressure wave surged past.

“Why did you save me?” she asked, looking down at herself.

“Your brother, Kam. He… was our friend.”

She smiled. “That’s what he said, too. But I’m not like you. I’m evil.”

Hawkins thought about it. “You’re not evil. The things that happened on that island had nothing to do with you. It doesn’t matter if you’re like us. You don’t just deserve to live, you deserve a better life.”

Hawkins could see she wasn’t fully believing him, probably because of what he’d said during their first conversation. “You’re not a thing,” he said. “You’re a person.”

“I’m more than a person,” she said, looking sad.

He nodded. “And that makes you amazing.”

She placed her hand on his cheek. He could feel the hardness of her retracted claws against his skin, but didn’t flinch. For her to survive in the modern world, and for him to keep her safe, they would have to trust each other. If news of her existence ever got out, the people who had just wiped out an island would no doubt come calling. “My name is Mark, by the way. I know I already told you, but figured I should probably introduce myself again. You know, so we’re not strangers.”

She smiled. “My name is Lilly,” she said and gave a slight bow. “Lilly Shimura.”

52.

ONE YEAR LATER

Hawkins lay on his stomach, looking through a pair of binoculars. “Do you see her?”

“Nothing,” came the quiet but rough voice of Howie GoodTracks. Hawkins’s mentor and surrogate father lay next to him on the grassy bluff overlooking a rolling stream far below. “She is better than you.”

“She’s better than everyone,” Joliet added. She stood behind them, leaning against one of many pine trees that surrounded their hilltop position. She took a loud bite from an apple.

Hawkins shushed her and held a finger to his lips. “They’ll hear you!” He looked through the binoculars again,