Island 731

27.

The goats scattered in a panic, their collar bells issuing a frantic jangle, like a platoon of Salvation Army bell ringers. Bleating loudly, the animals parted for Hawkins, allowing him to sprint for the building. As he ran, he noticed a slightly worn path through the grass that led to a gate in the chain-link fence. It was on the opposite side of the yard from the one they’d entered through. He made a mental note of its position and continued past. A small, well-maintained wooden bridge allowed him quick passage to the opposite shore, where he kept running.

Bray, the slower man, had fallen behind, but Hawkins didn’t wait for him. Joliet’s solitary scream was either a good thing or a very bad thing. He couldn’t wait on Bray to find out which.

Hawkins had no idea where he was going, so when he entered the half-light dimness of the building’s entryway, he shouted. “Joliet!”

“Here!” Her voice came quickly and full of dread. “Hurry!”

“I can’t hold her much longer!” Drake shouted.

Hold her?

The entryway held empty lockers along the back wall. A row of coat hooks ran along the outside wall to his right. A single tattered and stained white lab coat hung from one of the hooks. A black rubber apron hung on the hook next to it. A row of rotting wooden boxes were lined up beneath the hooks. The box beneath the lab coat held a pair of black rubber boots and black rubber gloves. Hawkins saw every detail as he pushed through the room, cataloging them for later.

He charged through the open doorway to his left. A metal door hung askew, clinging to the last of its three hinges. It was bent in the middle as though something had pounded its way through the door. Hawkins recognized the damage as being similar to the door to his quarters, but again passed by with little thought.

The hallway ahead followed the octagonal shape of the building, wrapping around at sharp angles to the right. Debris littered the floor, but there was nothing large to slow him down. He ran around the corner and found a long, straight hallway with glassless windows lining the left side wall. The windows looked out over the jungle with a view of the river, and ocean beyond, but he barely noticed. The view inside the hallway drew his focus. “Joliet!” he shouted and sprinted ahead.

At the center of the hallway, a large rectangle of floor was missing. Drake lay next to the hole, his muscular arms reaching down.

“Mark!” Joliet’s voice came from the hole, coupled with a recognizable roar.

Drake’s arms shook. It seemed impossible that the muscular captain couldn’t just pluck the much smaller Joliet from the opening without breaking a sweat. That he was struggling just to hold her spoke volumes about his condition.

“Losing her!” Drake said, his voice something like a growl.

Hawkins flung himself at the hole. He slid on his stomach, stopping at the edge, and thrust his hands down. With his head poking down through the opening, Hawkins could see the river below. Joliet’s toes splashed in the water. Ten feet downstream, the water fell away. Hawkins suspected Joliet might survive the fall into the deep waterfall basin, but she’d be back in croc territory and there was no way to know if the crocodile had come back or been joined by friends.

Joliet let go of Drake with one hand and took hold of Hawkins’s wrist.

“I have you,” Hawkins said, locking his fingers around her wrist.

As though the phrase gave him permission, Drake let go of Joliet. The sudden drop caught both Joliet and Hawkins off guard. Joliet yelped as she swung over the river, closer to Hawkins.

He reached down with his other hand and caught her. She wasn’t heavy, and he could hold her for a while, but he had no leverage. Pulling her up would be nearly impossible. “You’re going to have to climb up my arms.”

Hawkins thought most people might balk at the idea of climbing up another person like a ladder, but Joliet gave it a try. Unfortunately, Hawkins’s arms where bare and slick with sweat. She slipped back down to his wrist.

With a grunt, Hawkins pulled her as high as he could. “Can you grab the edge?”

“I think so,” she said, moving her hand quickly to the linoleum floor. But the smooth floor offered little purchase. Her fingertips slowly neared the edge.

Hawkins got ready to catch her again, but before he did, Bray’s thick hand reached down and took hold of her arm. Together, the two men quickly pulled her to safety.

“The hell happened?” Bray asked, standing back from the opening in the floor.

Joliet sat against the wall, catching her breath. “What’s it… look like? I fell through the hatch.”

Hawkins leaned over the opening and looked down. There were two rusted metal doors hanging down. “Was it a trap?”

Joliet sighed. “No. They were held shut with a pipe.” She pointed to the pipe lying on the floor next to her. “I stubbed my toe on it.”

Hawkins tried to suppress a smile, but failed. “You know, I’ve nearly been killed by a poisonous flying lizard-snake, and came close to becoming a squid-croc snack. And you nearly died from stubbing your toe?”

“Shut up,” Joliet said. After a moment, she smiled. “It would have been a pathetic way to die. Why do you think they put a door in the floor? Seems a little dangerous to me.”

As soon as Hawkins had seen the river below the doors, he knew their purpose. “There are skeletons under the waterfall. In the basin. Hundreds of them. They threw the dead through here. Let the current take them over the falls.”

“They must have only incinerated the ones they infected with diseases,” Bray said. “Fed the rest to Sobek down there.”

“Sobek?” Hawkins asked.

“Egyptian crocodile god.” He shrugged. “I like naming things.”

“I noticed.” Hawkins spotted two long metal rods with hooks on the end lying on the floor beside the open hatch. “Get the pipe,” he said to Bray. He used the hooked rods to pull the two doors up. They were thick, and heavy, but manageable. Once he had them both up, Bray slid the pipe back in place.

Hawkins tested his weight on the doors. They held tight. “Just watch your step next— Where’s Drake?”

Bray ducked inside one of four doorways evenly spaced along the hallway across from the windows. He came back out a moment later. “Not in here.”

Hawkins checked the doorway closest to him. The windowless room was dark, but the light coming in through the hallway’s window provided just enough light to see. The large room was divided into ten small cells separated by metal bars. Open metal gates led into each cell. The room smelled of copper, rust, and ammonia. The odor was made bearable thanks to the fresh air pouring through the glassless windows at his back.

Each cell held a wooden pallet that must have served as a bed—a very uncomfortable bed, which might have been the point. A hole had been drilled in the floor of each cell, serving as a drain. For blood? For waste? Maybe Unit 731 hosed down their victims? Hawkins didn’t linger on the drains long enough to decide. Old rusted shackles hung from a few of the bars. Hawkins tried to imagine what it would have been like, chained to these bars, maybe listening to the weeping of your fellow captives, smelling death all around and hearing the splash of bodies being discarded—fed to the crocs. And through it all, knowing your turn would soon arrive, and that no one would come to your rescue. The hopelessness of the place nearly brought tears to his eyes. But the knowledge that someone was still on the island, still maintaining this horror show; that made him angry.

They had missing people. Drake was wounded and ill. But he was beginning to suspect that the island’s demons were still alive and well. And if that were the case, and they found the people responsible—Hawkins gripped the rifle. Howie GoodTracks didn’t believe in the death penalty. He thought people deserved a chance for redemption, a chance to turn their negative contribution to the world into something positive, before they left it for good. It was a little too Zen for Hawkins, and most of the Ute tribe for that matter, but he had experienced GoodTracks’s grace and forgiveness firsthand. It was a powerful thing. Redemption might actually be the right choice, but this…. He looked at the drain again. This was too much. Someone had to pay, now or later.

He scanned the cells one last time. If the operation were as big now as it had been then, they would be outnumbered and outgunned by an enemy with a severely skewed moral compass. They wouldn’t stand a chance. They’ll pay later, he decided, unless they get in my way.

“Here!” Joliet shouted from the next room over.

Hawkins felt a weight lift as he left the room, but it returned in force when he followed Joliet’s voice into an identical cell. Drake lay on a pallet in the cell nearest the door. Despite the cool respite provided by the thick concrete and the breeze created by the waterfall, sweat covered Drake’s body in a sheen and dripped from his forehead.

Joliet had a hand on Drake’s cheek. “He’s on fire.”

“It’s a bacterial infection,” Bray said, standing behind Hawkins. “I’m telling you. It’s from the croc’s tentacle hooks.”

Hawkins looked at Drake’s leg. Joliet had already bandaged it. “How did the wound look?”

Joliet leaned back on her heels, but stayed next to Drake. “Like it would hurt like hell for a few days. Some of the puncture wounds were deep. Could probably use a stitch or two. But it could have been worse. Squid tentacle clubs aren’t designed to kill. Just grip. I don’t think the wounds are life-threatening. I covered them with Bacitracin.”

“Doesn’t matter if it’s in the blood already,” Bray said. “He needs an antibiotic. Like now.”

“We can’t just leave Kam and DeWinter here,” Joliet said.

Bray thrust a finger at the captain. “He’s going to die if we don’t.”

“Leave me,” Drake mumbled. He didn’t open his eyes or move, but there was no confusing the voice. “Find the others. Come back for me.”

“Captain,” Bray said. “If you don’t—”

“That’s an order!” Drake tried to sit up as he shouted, but flopped back down on the wood and once again slipped into unconsciousness.

The silence that followed Drake’s command stretched for nearly thirty seconds. Hawkins thought about all the possibilities, but each and every one included someone dying. There was no way out of this. Like Captain Kirk, he was facing the kobiashi maru—the unwinnable scenario.

Joliet stood and leaned against the bars of Drake’s prison cell. “What do we do?”

The answer came from above in the form of running footfalls.

Three heads snapped up.

“What was that?” Bray asked.

“Another rat?” Joliet offered.

“Rats have four feet, not two. And they don’t run on the balls of their feet.” Hawkins took the rifle from his shoulder. “We’re not alone.”