Island 731

31.

“Don’t shoot!” screamed a high-pitched voice.

For a moment, Hawkins thought it might actually be DeWinter, but her voice sounded more husky than this.

“It’s me!” The voice dripped desperation.

Hawkins rubbed the sweat from his eyes. He held his fire, but kept the weapon aimed. It could be any number of people he didn’t want to shoot, but it could also be a crafty local. With the sweat gone, Hawkins saw the figure stumbling in the shadows at the end of the hallway. The last light of day filtering in through the hall’s open windows did little to illuminate things.

We’re going to need a fire, part of Hawkins’s mind thought, while the rest tracked the intruder.

“Me, who?” Bray asked.

“Phil! It’s Phil!”

Hawkins lowered the rifle as Bennett spilled into the light. His freckled face and brown hair were coated with mud. Bleeding scrapes covered his bare arms and legs. His eyes, wide with panic, darted around the hallway, hypervigilant.

Joliet ran forward and caught the young man as he fell to his knees. He leaned forward and placed his head on the cool concrete. His back rose and fell with each labored breath.

“Look,” Joliet said, pointing to his back. The fabric of his green T-shirt held three tears where claws had struck.

“Is this from the draco-snakes?” Hawkins asked.

“What?” Bennett said, still catching his breath.

Hawkins tapped on the torn shirt. “The tears in your shirt. Were you attacked?”

“No. I mean, yes. But not by the dracos.”

A loud, angry squawk came from the door.

Bennett yelped and pushed himself up. “They’re here!”

“What are they?” Hawkins demanded, taking aim with the rifle.

The squawk repeated, this time sounding very familiar.

“Can’t be,” Bray said.

A loud flapping filled the hallway. Bennett cringed and shrunk away from the sound. He hid behind Hawkins.

When the large seagull emerged from the gloom, it landed and cocked its head from side to side, regarding them with a sort of puzzled expression.

“You’ve got to be kidding me,” Joliet said. “This is what attacked you? A seagull?”

Bennett said nothing. He just watched the bird with wild eyes.

“The seagulls here are aggressive,” Hawkins said. “I found one picking at you on the deck of the Magellan before you woke up. For a moment, I thought it was actually going to fight me for you.”

“But how could a seagull—even a big one—do that?” Joliet asked.

“It’s a chimera,” Bray said. “Look at the feet. They’re webbed, but they also have talons. Like an eagle.”

“Kind of a minor feature to add to a seagull,” Hawkins said, looking for more, but he found nothing.

“Just shoot it,” Bray said.

“Not going to waste a bullet on a bird,” Hawkins said.

The seagull took two steps forward, its head bobbing.

“Can you believe this thing?” Bray said. He raised the ax. “Come to Bray, little birdie.” He stopped in his tracks when a second seagull flapped into the hallway and landed next to the first. They squawked at each other, nipping with their beaks, but then Bray stepped forward again and they gave him their full attention.

“Hold on,” Hawkins said. He lowered the rifle and handed it to Joliet. “If things get out of hand, be ready to give that back.” He ran toward the storage room at the back of the hallway.

Bennett whimpered. “Don’t leave us!”

“I’m not leaving,” Hawkins said. “I’m getting weapons.”

Hawkins opened the storage room and stepped inside. Dim light from the single small window lit the space. He had no trouble finding the clubs he’d seen earlier and reached for them a little too quickly. One of the rusty nails pricked his thumb. He winced, pulled back the finger, and sucked on it for a moment. He was up to date on his tetanus shots, but who knew what else might be encrusted on the tip of that nail. Blood. Chemicals. Biological agents. Any of the above seemed possible. He spit, shook his hand out, and picked out two clubs, each with a nail driven through the end. The wood felt strong and heavy.

These will do the job, Hawkins thought.

“Hawkins!” Bray shouted from the hallway. “Better hurry up!”

He rushed back into the hallway, armed with twin clubs and ready for a fight. But when he saw what waited for him, he nearly tripped and fell. In the thirty seconds he’d spent in the closet, seven more birds had entered the hallway.

“I told you,” Bennett said, inching away. “I told you!”

Hawkins sized up the birds. “Talons or not, they’re still just seagulls. We’ll be—”

The seagull at the front of the pack spread open its wings and shook them. The wing span itself was impressive. At five feet across, the wings were nearly twice as long as the average gull’s. Despite the bird’s size, Hawkins took comfort in the knowledge that these were still birds. Hollow bones break easily, he thought. A few good whacks should send them all running.

Hawkins took a step forward. Bray shadowed him. “When we get close enough, just start swinging.”

The big gull’s wings shook more violently. Its chest seemed to vibrate as a high-pitched vibrato rose out of its throat. The beak opened wide to allow the sound out, but then opened wider.

And wider.

With a pop, the lower jaw unhinged. The beak, top and bottom, separated down the middle and came apart as the jaw bones opened wide, like digits, each tipped with a dagger of yellow beak. The digits flexed and twitched, pulling farther apart, like four talons ready to grab hold of prey and pull them into the newly revealed maw. Blood red gums emerged in the widening space. The jaws snapped open, flashing stark, white triangular teeth, each the size of a dime.

“You’ve got to be shitting me!” Bray said. “Shark’s teeth?”

“Piranha,” Joliet corrected. “They look just as powerful, too.”

“What kind of sick fu—”

“Bray,” Hawkins said.

“What?”

“Go!”

Hawkins rushed in and swung hard with his right-hand club. The seagull tried to lunge at him, but his sudden attack caught it off guard. The nail missed the bird’s neck, but the club struck hard, knocking it to the floor. A loud clang of metal on concrete sounded out as Bray brought the ax down, decapitating the bird. The piranha jaws twitched open and closed. The snapping sound of teeth striking teeth sounded like a pair of two-by-fours being clapped together. Hawkins had no doubt that a single bite would remove a pool ball-size chunk of flesh with ease.

“Watch your feet,” Hawkins said as he jumped over the bird.

The rest of the flock burst into the air. Wings flapped. Beaks sprang open. Teeth clattered hungrily. Talons reached.

Hawkins dove and rolled beneath the rising flock. He came to his feet at their core and began swinging. He struck a wing hard. The bone snapped. The seagull fell to the floor, spinning in circles as it tried to take flight again. He caught a second bird in the side of the head with a nail. It fell and didn’t move at all.

He turned back as Bray shouted, fearing his friend had been wounded. But Bray’s shout was actually a war cry. The big man swung the ax over his head and struck a gull in the face. Piranha teeth scattered across the floor, but the bird’s head stuck to the blade. Bray tried to shake it off, but the jaws had clamped down tight in a death grip. Before he could kick it off, two seagulls descended. With a shout, Bray fended them off with the bird-tipped ax.

A squawk above turned Hawkins’s eyes up. A set of jaws large enough to tear out his throat dropped toward him. Hawkins shouted as he ducked away and thrust one of his clubs up. The club struck the bird, dead center of its open maw, but caused it no injury. Instead, the powerful jaws snapped shut like a bear trap. The club cracked and split. The seagull pounded its large wings, but wasn’t strong enough to pull the weapon away from Hawkins. It did, however, delay him long enough for one of its brethren to attack.

The bird swooped down, talons reaching for Hawkins’s face. He let go of his club and fell to the floor. They’re going for my face, he realized. My eyes. Trying to blind me. If Hawkins couldn’t see, he couldn’t fight. The birds somehow realized this, or perhaps had been trained to attack this way.

Hawkins rolled onto his back and immediately had to roll again. A seagull crashed to the floor, its jaws scraping concrete as it chewed the air where his head had just been. Rolling back toward the bird, Hawkins swung hard and crushed the bird’s head against the floor. He also snapped his club in half.

A seagull landed next to him, wings open wide, jaws open. He pushed away from it until his back struck the wall. He kicked at the bird, but nearly had his foot taken off. He tried again from the side, but the bird spun to intercept the blow.

It hopped closer.

Without a weapon, he wouldn’t be able to strike the bird without losing a digit, if not a hand or foot.

“Mark, get down!” Joliet shouted.

Against his better judgment, Hawkins decided to trust Joliet and duck. He heard her and Bennett both grunt. Angry squawks filled the air. The thud of birds being struck, too. And then the crash of wood. Hawkins spun toward the sound and found the seagull about to make a meal of him pinned beneath a pallet. A second wounded bird writhed on the floor.

“One, two, three!”

Hawkins watched as Joliet and Bennett lobbed a second oversize projectile into the fray. This one struck four birds before crashing to the floor.

Overwhelmed by the turn of events, and perhaps more than a little confused, the remaining birds made for the door and disappeared. As Hawkins caught his breath, he heard the gulls’ calls fade into the distance.

He jumped when the bird trapped beneath the pallet at his feet shrieked. He got to his feet as Bray finally managed to pry the dead bird from the end of the ax. “Mind if I borrow that?”

Bray handed him the ax. With one swing, he took the bird’s head off. He then systematically walked around the room and decapitated five more wounded, but not yet dead, seagulls. As the last of their cries was abruptly silenced by the ax’s blade, he leaned the blood-soaked weapon against the wall and turned to Bennett.

Despite nearly being killed by chimera seagulls with piranha jaws, a single question burned in Hawkins’s mind. Because as bad as things just were, he knew the answer had to be worse.

“Bennett,” he said. “Why are you here?”