Island 731

26.

Hawkins stopped at the chain-link gate. Most of the fence was rusted, but still solid enough. It looked old, but not World War II old. More like 1970s old. He tapped his finger on the razor wire curling along the top of the fence. “Still sharp.”

“Still sharp?”Bray said. “That’s your big observation? Ranger, this is modern. And those”—he pointed to the field on the other side of the fence, and the goats that stood there watching them—“those goats. A shit-ton of goats. What the hell is going down on this island?”

“I know,” Hawkins said as coolly as he could. He sounded calm and collected, but on the inside he was freaked out. The draco-snakes he could handle. The croc was worse—horrible in so many ways. But this serene scene? The fence. The goats. It was all so normal. And something about that put him on edge worse than nearly being eaten.

The gate was latched shut, but not locked. Hawkins tapped a hinged section of the lower gate with his foot. It swung back and forth like a doggie door.

“That explains how the goats get in and out,” Joliet said. She sounded calm, too, but he could hear the tightness in her voice. She was tense. “There have to be at least twenty of them here.”

Hawkins looked at the field of trim grass. The expanse, through which the river cut, stretched at least five acres. The sound of ringing bells drew his eyes to the animals. The goats, all similar in size but a variety of black, white, and brown patchwork of fur, foraged, wandered, and occasionally butted heads, oblivious to the dark history of the island. A history that Hawkins feared they were about to get another dose of inside the newly discovered building.

The three-story structure was shaped like half an octagon, but with a square indentation at the core. The river flowed beneath the indentation, turning the lowest floor into a bridge. The roar of the waterfall on the other side of the building was dulled by concrete and forest, but it served as a reminder of the crocodile that lurked nearby.

Every instinct in Hawkins’s body was screaming at him to turn and run. Get off the island. But he fought against the urge to flee. He forced himself to unlatch the gate. It squeaked loudly, like a wounded animal, causing the hairs on his arms to rise up.

Joliet stepped through slowly. When Hawkins paused before following, he noticed Bray was looking at his arm and the hair standing on end. Bray leveled a serious stare at him. “Try to hide it all you want, we’re both a goat fart away from pissing ourselves.”

Hawkins grinned, thankful for Bray’s humor. “Let’s hope they haven’t had too much fiber.”

Bray stepped through the gate. “You know that’s like all they eat, right?”

Hawkins stepped through and latched it behind them, but it didn’t feel like enough. If that croc was out for revenge, it might be able to make short work of the fence. Alligators in Florida seemed to work their way into people’s backyards, pools, and houses without too much trouble.

Despite Bray’s request that they join them, Hawkins wasn’t quite ready to face whatever waited inside. The adrenaline rush of his brush with death still had his muscles twitching. He was on edge and didn’t feel ready to deal with more disturbing revelations. He strolled out into the field with Joliet at his side. He closed his eyes and turned his face skyward, absorbing the sun’s warmth on his face. Relax, he thought, let the tension go.

“We’ve been spotted,” Joliet said.

Hawkins opened his eyes and saw the goats staring at him. One by one, they trotted up to Hawkins and Joliet, sniffing, licking, and bleating. And then, as though satisfied with their inspection, the animals went back to their ignorant lives.

“Starting to wish I could trade spots with the goats,” Hawkins said. He was starting to feel a little more like himself, but his foot struck something hard. He winced and hopped away.

“What happened?” Joliet asked.

“Stubbed my toe,” Hawkins replied while he looked for what he’d kicked. He expected to find a rock, but instead found a cylindrical concrete tube sticking out of the ground. It stood only an inch taller than the grass and was six inches in diameter. He knelt down to look at it.

“What is it?” Joliet asked.

Hawkins shrugged. “No idea.”

Joliet pointed to the grass around them. “There’s more.” She walked in a circle, pointing and counting. “Eighteen of them. Looks like they’re arranged around that divot.”

Hawkins hadn’t noticed the divot. Concealed beneath a layer of grass, the five-foot-wide indentation was hard to spot.

“There are three circles,” Joliet continued. “Each one a few feet farther away from the center.”

Hawkins was about to say he’d rather not know what this spot had been used for when Bray spoke.

“The concrete cylinders were for replaceable wooden posts. They made them that way because the explosions sometimes broke the posts. So they used strong bases and made the rest replaceable.”

Hawkins cringed when Joliet asked, “What explosions?” He didn’t want to know.

“Bombs,” Bray said. “And grenades. Chemical agents. Biological, too. They bound test subjects to posts at varying distances and then detonated the explosives. The few who survived with nonlethal shrapnel wounds would be operated on and saved. The rest went to the morgue for dissection. They were the lucky ones. The people who survived would be experimented on again.” He turned toward the building. “There’s more inside.”

Hawkins felt the blood drain from his head. More. God, could it really get worse?

“Don’t really want to see more,” he said. He wasn’t sure if it was from the knowledge of what went on here or from the adrenaline wearing off, but he felt queasy.

“I don’t want to be here any more than you,” Bray said. “But I know way more than I want to right now, it’s scaring the shit out of me, and I need someone to help make sense of it. Besides, know your enemy, remember?” Bray said.

Hawkins took a deep breath. Bray was right. “Okay, Sun Tzu, point taken. Just give me a minute. Why don’t you go in with Eight,” he said to Joliet. “Check on Drake.”

Joliet began to protest. “But—”

“I need a minute to think,” he said. “Just leave the rifle with me.”

Joliet took the rifle from her shoulder and handed it to Hawkins. “You’re not thinking of heading out on your own, are you?”

He shook his head no. “Impulsive, dangerous decisions are more your style than mine.”

She smiled and headed for the door.

“If you spot anything,” Bray said, “or need help, fire off a shot and I’ll come running.”

“Somehow that’s not comforting,” Hawkins said.

Bray didn’t smile. “I’m serious, Ranger. We’re going to be lucky if we get off this island alive. You know that, right? Half a day and we’ve nearly been killed how many times?”

“I know,” Hawkins said. “This place is wicked scary.”

Bray couldn’t help smiling in the face of Hawkins’s mimicked Massachusetts accent. “Bastard.”

“I’ll be fine,” Hawkins said as Bray headed for the open door. Bray gave a wave over his shoulder and retreated to the building.

Alone, Hawkins turned and looked at the rings of cement post braces. He knelt down and looked into the top of the nearest hole. Two feet down, water reflected the blue sky above. He suspected the hole was at least another two feet deep—deep enough to securely hold a post and the struggling person bound to it. But that’s not what had him on edge. After just a few years of disuse, the hole should have been filled with dirt and debris. This only held rainwater. And that meant someone was maintaining the site. The building had clearly been abandoned, but the ring was being maintained, as was the fence gate, and the goats with their bright red, plastic collars.

Hawkins stood and placed the rifle against his shoulder. With his finger next to the trigger and the barrel pointed to the ground, he walked the perimeter of the fence. Had this been a fenced-in backyard, it would have been picturesque. Flowers bloomed along the fence line. He wasn’t sure why the goats hadn’t eaten them, but suspected the orange petals didn’t agree with the animals. He walked around the yard until he reached the river. The chain-link fence had been expanded into the water and was attached to two severely rusted but still solid metal posts. The chain link in the water looked newer, as though replaced in the past few years. The newness unnerved Hawkins, but the barrier, coupled with the calmly grazing goats, meant that there were no squid-tentacled crocodiles inside the fence’s perimeter.

The river here was deep and fast moving, but just five feet across. Hawkins backed up and prepared to jump the distance. Two steps into his run, something darted out of the brush at the fence line. Hawkins flinched back in surprise, raised the rifle, and nearly squeezed off a shot. He recognized the creature a moment before removing its head. A rat. A very large rat, but still a rat.

The rat saw him at about the same time, spun around, and retreated through a hole in the fence.

Hawkins caught his breath and muttered obscenities at the rodent. He collected himself, double-checked for the rat, and this time made the leap to the opposite bank without any trouble. He continued his inspection of the fence, looking for holes, gates, another path, or some sign of passage. The trail they’d followed to the gate ended in the grass. Whoever made the footprints had either left through some other route or never left—a possibility that had him finishing his inspection quickly. As he neared the concrete building once more, he came across the ruins of a brick-and-mortar structure. It looked like an oversize wood fireplace, but much of the chimney had crumbled and the rest had been claimed by vines.

The hair on his arms began to rise again. He was sensing danger from every direction, but thought it was just his shot nerves, or his growing knowledge about what had happened on this island. And might still be happening, he thought.

Soot stained the bricks in the fire pit itself, along with a collection of little white bits. He reached down and picked up a fleck of white.

“That’s probably bone,” Bray said from behind.

Hawkins jumped and stumbled back. “Son of a bitch, man. Quit sneaking up on me.”

“Sorry.” Bray stared at the fireplace. Sadly, he added, “They called them ‘logs.’”

“What?” Hawkins asked.

“The test subjects. The prisoners. Victims. Whatever you want to call them. Unit Seven thirty-one called them ‘logs.’ Didn’t see them as anything more than wood. They’d collect them, cut them apart, and eventually most would end up here, in the fire pit to be cremated. The people brought here had their humanity stripped away long before they were killed.”

“You’re still sure this is a Unit Seven thirty-one outpost?” Hawkins asked.

“There’s more evidence inside,” Bray said. “Old notebooks. Patches on clothes. Stamped-on doors. Drake is looking at one of the notebooks now, but between you and me, I don’t think he’s doing so well. Hard to tell with the heat, but I think he’s starting to run a fever.”

“A fever? Is he sick?”

“Worse,” Bray said. “If I’m right. It’s possible the squid-croc had a second reptilian feature we couldn’t see.”

“Three species in one?” Hawkins asked. “Is that possible?”

“In theory,” Bray said. “Sure. If you can figure out how to keep the disparate parts from rejecting each other, you can combine as many different species as you want. In this case, I think species number three might be a Komodo dragon.”

Hawkins nearly balked until he remembered how Komodos killed their prey. They didn’t disembowel, suffocate, or snap their prey’s neck like other predators. They simply got in one good bite and then backed off. The potent mixture of lethal bacteria in their saliva did the rest. If Bray was right, Drake would be fighting for his life without even setting foot in the jungle again.

“Also,” Bray said, “I came to get you because it looks like someone stayed inside. Recently. And we haven’t checked the top two floors yet.”

Hawkins discarded the flake of what might be a human bone and set off toward the building at a jog.

When Joliet’s scream rolled out of the open door, he ran.