Island 731

36.

Hawkins reeled back and fell to the soft, grassy earth between the rows of fruit trees. He sat still and silent, watching the hulking form of Jim Clifton stumble about. To say the man had been deformed was an understatement. His eyes were missing and his mouth stapled shut. A hole oozing blood from the inside of his left eye revealed the man had been lobotomized. His ears had been replaced with what looked like futuristic hearing aids fused to his skin.

While the damage done to Jim’s head was unthinkable, it didn’t frighten Hawkins as much as what had been done to the man’s body. Where hands should have been, there were now blades, like butcher knives, fused to his stumpy forearms. Two large medical bags full of pink liquid were strapped to his upper arms and connected to lines embedded in his forearms. Hawkins thought the mobile drips must be providing morphine, or antibiotics, or even antirejection drugs. Probably all three, he concluded.

A strange pressure squeezed Hawkins’s ears. He shook his head as the pressure built, but he forgot all about it when Jim’s confused countenance shifted. The man had looked confused before, like a drugged, blind, deaf, and mute man with extensive injuries and brain trauma should. But now he stood still. Focused. He turned his head down toward Hawkins like he could see.

Hawkins backed away slowly.

Jim raised one of his arms and slipped the knife blade beneath the overall straps.

For a moment, Hawkins thought the man was going to kill himself, but with a quick swipe of his arm, Jim cut through both straps. The overalls top fell forward, revealing the cook’s chest and prodigious belly.

Hawkins scrambled back while muttering a string of curses. He stopped when his back struck a tree trunk.

A single word had been carved into Jim’s chest. The lettering was intricate, created with care—the work of someone familiar with a scalpel. The wounds weren’t deep enough to kill, but swollen and fringed by pink flesh, the text was easy to read.

RANGER.

Whoever had done this knew Hawkins’s nickname. Had they been watching them so closely on the island that they overheard conversations? Did the security cameras have microphones? Or had the name been tortured out of one of the captured crew? Bennett had clearly been wrong about the fate of those he left behind. If Blok, Jones, the Tweedles, DeWinter, Joliet, and Kam had all been taken, and tortured, the person who did this could have easily learned his nickname. But why taunt him with it?

The pressure came again, this time in three quick pulses.

Jim exploded into action just as the third burst of pressure finished. He charged forward, swinging wildly with his bladed arms. The man couldn’t see, but seemed to know exactly where Hawkins sat.

Armed with a rifle, bolt stunner, and machete, Hawkins could have killed the man. Despite his modifications, Jim was still human. And killing him might have actually been the merciful thing to do, but Hawkins couldn’t bring himself to attack. The thought never even crossed his mind. A single overpowering emotion dwarfed his instincts and logic: fear.

Not just for his own safety, but for Jim’s. For Joliet’s. And Bray’s. The entire crew could have been tortured in this way. An image of Joliet mutilated in similar fashion filled his mind and he nearly failed to move clear of Jim’s first swing.

It was a wild and uncontrolled swing, as though he knew Hawkins was in front of him, but not exactly where.

The close call squelched Hawkins’s fear long enough for him to act. He rolled backward, clear of Jim’s reach, and got to his feet.

More pulses.

Jim turned toward him again, arms already swinging.

Hawkins did the only thing he could. He ran. Faster than ever before. He cut through the orchard, following the path of most resistance. If the big man tried to follow, he’d have to wade through overlapping tree branches. Hawkins scrambled under a thick group of low-hanging peach branches and glanced back. Jim stood four rows back, hacking at a tree. He’d get through eventually, but not before Hawkins was long gone.

Hawkins watched the man struggle for a moment. Intense pity for the younger Tweedle washed over him. He shook his head. Letting the man live like this wasn’t right. He thumbed off the rifle’s safety, placed the stock against his shoulder, and took aim at the capital A at the center of the man’s chest.

Pulse, pulse.

The pressure distracted Hawkins for just a moment, which was long enough for Jim to turn and run. He disappeared into the orchard.

Someone is still watching me, Hawkins thought. And somehow controlling Jim. He looked around for a camera, but couldn’t see any. The thick orchard could be filled with them and he’d never know it.

With Jim gone and no other options, Hawkins turned to leave and found the three-story-tall, curved building looming over him. He’d closed the distance to it without even realizing it. The concrete here was a lighter gray and lacked the wear that the abandoned laboratory and the pillbox displayed. The three rows of rectangular windows lining the building held clean glass that showed no signs of aging.

This building is modern, Hawkins thought.

He slid beneath a few more rows of trees and stopped at the building. Moving quietly, he followed the curved wall around the structure, wondering if he was still being watched, and if Jim was once again en route to intercept him. Part of him hoped he’d see Jim again. The man deserved a merciful death.

He reached the front of the building, where a wide-worn path led to a pair of double doors set into a much larger garage door. A pair of security cameras were mounted above the doors, along with three motion-sensitive floodlights. Hawkins flattened himself against the concrete wall and moved slowly to the door. He pushed the door and it opened easily.

Security cameras, but no locks?

Cool air rushed out of the building, quickly drying the sweat coating his body. His skin grew stiff, but the air-conditioning was a welcome change. Hawkins stepped into the dimly lit building, rifle at the ready. His eyes quickly adjusted to the lower light provided by the windows wrapping around the building and he nearly fired off a shot.

He was surrounded by monsters.

But they weren’t moving. Or even living. Like the ancient, jarred specimens at the abandoned laboratory, the figures surrounding him were suspended in liquid. Unlike the old lab, these tall glass containers were powered. The hum of electricity and air-conditioning filled the space. Bubbles rose slowly through the gel-like liquid surrounding the bodies, which were mostly concealed in shadow. Tubes dangled down from the black covers like jellyfish tendrils, some floating free, others connected to flesh. Hawkins could see that most, if not all, the specimens had once been human beings, but exactly what had been done to them was concealed by gloom.

He stepped farther in, gaping at the scope of the building and the number of horrors it contained. The circular building was open in the middle, but had three floors of metal grates around the circumference. Metal stairs provided access to each floor, as did a service elevator at the back of the space. The outer walls of each level, including the bottom floor, were lined with specimen tubes. Hundreds of them.

The center of the lowest floor held four oversize glass tanks arranged like a four-leaf clover, creating a kind of hallway around the room. Hawkins headed right, looking for cameras or a living occupant. He didn’t think he’d find Joliet here, but there might be some clue about who had been operating the facility since the Second World War.

Warped faces concealed in shadow seemed to stare at him as he passed. Who were these people? How did they get here? By the time Hawkins reached the far side of the surreal storage facility he had far more questions than answers.

A dull clunk spun him around. He nearly called out, “Who’s there?” but thought better of it. He ducked down and moved against one of the tall glass cylinders at the center of the space. It wasn’t exactly a prime hiding spot, since all the containers held clear liquid, but this one also held something large that provided some small amount of cover, though it also blocked his view of the doors.

The room lightened for a moment as the entrance swung open. Hawkins watched the light shift as someone entered. An ominous click echoed off the glass cylinders. Feet shifted over the concrete floor. Whoever had joined him was either really bad at being quiet or had no idea he was there. When a bell jingled, Hawkins was almost certain that the intruder wasn’t aware of his presence. He considered the idea that a goat had somehow opened the door and entered, but he could hear someone whispering to themselves. The words were impossible to make out, but the tone was clearly frustrated. Had he managed to elude the cameras after all?

Something clanged. A whispered curse followed the sound. And then, light.

The interior of the building exploded with light as bright as day. The sudden illumination made Hawkins squint. He looked at the floor while his eyes adjusted. When he turned his eyes up again, a face stared at him, just a few inches away.

Hawkins shouted in surprised and spilled back, dropping the rifle.

A battle cry filled the chamber as the person by the door charged around the hallway. A bell jangled with each heavy step.

Hawkins scrambled for the rifle. He snatched the barrel, dragged it to him, and spun to face his attacker.

But the man had already stopped his assault. He stood in the aisle, ax raised above his head, a look of relief spreading across his face.

Hawkins lowered the rifle. “Bray!” He jumped to his feet as Bray lowered the ax.

“You’re alive!” Bray said.

“I was going to say the same thing about you. I thought you went over the falls.”

Bray shook his head. “Woke up on the riverbank at dawn. Followed the path in the direction I saw Joliet taken. Figured that’s where you would have gone. Did you see Cahill?”

“I was unconscious beneath him,” Hawkins said. “In the ferns.”

“God,” Bray said. “I must have walked right past you. I steered clear of the path until I was beyond him. Was wicked sick. Nearly lost it.”

Hawkins looked Bray over. He looked in no worse shape than he had the night before. “How did you get here?”

“You mean, how did I get past the drakes and King Cow?” Bray held up a bell and gave it a shake. “You were right. Works like a charm. Give it a ring every few seconds and it’s like you’re invisible.”

Hawkins would have preferred to stay focused on Bray, but his attention slowly shifted back to the face he’d seen. He turned to the large tank behind which he’d hidden and felt his stomach twist.

Bray followed his gaze and jumped back. “Ahh!” After recovering from his surprise, he said, “You know, I was starting to hope I’d become jaded to this shit, but it just gets worse and worse.”

Hawkins stepped closer to the tank, trying to count the number of naked bodies jammed inside. He stopped at twenty-three. The men and women inside the tank had looked like a ball of multicolored flesh. Intertwining limbs mixed with the thin tubes descending from the tank’s top made the various people look like a singular organism. When Hawkins saw the stretched skin and thick stitching binding them together, he realized that’s exactly what they’d been turned into.

“Where did all these people come from?” Hawkins asked.

“I don’t know,” Bray said, “But they haven’t been here very long.” He pointed to a tattoo on a man’s shoulder. “That’s a Patriots logo. Flying Elvis. They didn’t start using that design until 1993. And honestly, the Pats weren’t really tattoo material until at least 2002.”

Hawkins leaned closer, looking at the faces. “Some of these people are Japanese, I think.”

“Really?” Bray put his hands against the glass. “You’re right. Why would they do this to their own—”

Pulse, pulse, pulse.

Bray rubbed his ear.

Hawkins flinched back.

“What is it?” Bray asked.

“Did you feel that? In your ear?”

“Yeah, but—”

Pulse, pulse, pulse.

Hawkins scanned back and forth with the rifle. Was something in here with them? Was Jim just outside the door? Finding nothing, Hawkins lowered the rifle and looked back at the large tank.

Twenty-three pairs of eyes now stared back at him.