Island 731

40.

“Dammit,” Bray said as the blade slipped from his fingers and fell to the floor by Hawkins’s feet.

The knife nearly struck Hawkins’s foot, but he jumped away in time to avoid being impaled. He picked the knife up and sat on the floor with his back to the cell bars.

Jones saw what they were doing. “Hurry up! Get me out of here!”

Hawkins ignored the man’s pleas. He knew Jones just wanted to get to his daughter, but the real ticking clock was however long it took Bennett to reach whatever room received the camera feeds. Could be a few minutes, or maybe right next door. Bennett could be watching them right now.

Hawkins placed the blade between his feet with the dull side against the floor and the sharp side facing up. He positioned his wrists to either side of the blade and brought them down fast. The plastic cuffs came apart with one smooth cut. A moment later, Hawkins was on his feet and opening his cell. He moved to Bray’s cell next, unlatching the door.

“Get me next!” Jones shouted. “Hawkins! Let me out!”

Hawkins focused on Bray. It was a tactical decision. Hawkins knew the big man would fight if Bennett returned. But Jones was going to be all but useless with his daughter undergoing some kind of transformation. He could hear her starting to groan. Whatever was happening inside her belly, it wasn’t good—for her, or for them. Hawkins felt sure that Bennett would be watching by now and that he wasn’t returning meant he believed they still weren’t a threat. He cut through Bray’s bindings and hurried to Jones’s cell.

As he unlocked the cell door, Hawkins glanced at Blok. The man stared past Hawkins, watching DeWinter. His face slowly contorted into a mask of fear. Hawkins realized that Blok and Jones had been taken from the Magellan and brought straight here, possibly without even seeing the big chimera. Their exposure to the island’s horrors had been minimal. And while Blok responded to DeWinter’s condition with paralyzing fear, Jones’s actions were fueled by one part appropriate concern for his daughter and one part naiveté. But he couldn’t stop the man, any more than one of them could stop him if it had been Joliet strapped to the gurney.

Jones shook his bound wrists at Hawkins as the cell door slid open. “C’mon!”

Hawkins cut the plastic cuffs. “Jones, listen. You need to—”

Jones shoved Hawkins aside and ran to DeWinter. Hawkins didn’t watch. He moved to Blok’s cell and unlocked the door. Blok’s stare remained unflinching.

“Blok,” Hawkins said. “Blok!”

The man snapped out of his daze. Hawkins held the blade out and Blok seemed to register for the first time that they were breaking out. He held up his wrists and Hawkins set him free. “Thanks.”

Hawkins nodded, but didn’t say a word. If Blok knew the kind of hell they’d soon be facing, he might have opted to remain a prisoner.

“Ranger,” Bray said as Hawkins turned around. He handed the machete and captive bolt stunner to Hawkins. “At least he left us with an arsenal.”

Hawkins looked at the pegboard holding an array of surgical tools. Bray had taken a knife that looked like a long fish filleting blade and a frightening thick-toothed bone saw. Hawkins was satisfied with the machete and attached it to his belt before motioning to the tools. “Blok, grab something to use as a weapon.”

“Are we going to have to kill something?” Blok asked with a shaky voice.

Jones’s desperate voice filled the room. “What’s happening to her!”

“Probably,” Hawkins said and then turned to DeWinter for the first time since escaping his cell. Jones leaned over her, blocking most of his view, but what little he could see of her belly was severely distended.

And moving.

He stepped closer and got a better look. Her whole body twitched and her light brown skin looked washed-out. “Harry,” he said, his tone half-apologetic, half-warning.

Hawkins placed a hand on Jones’s shoulder and tried to pull him back, but the man shrugged away. “No!”

Bray stepped over and put his fingers on her neck, searching for a pulse. “Jones, she’s gone.”

“She’s still moving!” Jones said, clinging to DeWinter’s shoulders.

“That’s not her,” Hawkins said, stepping back. The convulsions grew more violent. “It’s what’s inside her.”

“Shut up!” Jones screamed, waving them all back. “She’s my daughter.”

Hawkins drew the machete.

Bray stood ready with the bone saw.

Blok backed into his cell, unarmed, and slowly pulled the door closed.

Hawkins raised the machete. He could end this now. It would feel wrong—awful—but he could stop whatever was about to happen with one swing. “Jones, step back.”

“Stay away!” Jones said, eyeing the machete. “Don’t touch her! She’s—”

The convulsions stopped. But DeWinter’s torso was swollen to the point where light-colored stretch marks had streaked across her flesh. Jones moved toward her head, cradling her cheeks in his hands. “Open your eyes, baby. I’m here.”

Her belly shifted in response to Jones’s voice.

“Jones,” Bray whispered. “Back the hell up.”

Jones clenched his eyes shut, squeezing tears onto his face. “Bray, I swear to God, if you—”

Hawkins had only just registered the tearing sound when an explosion of movement burst from DeWinter’s belly. Long black limbs, coated with thick, pointy hairs and dollops of flesh, reached out and locked on to Jones’s upper body and face.

Jones let out a shriek and reeled back, pulling the creature free. The thing had the head and limbs of a giant spider, the spiky protective carapace of a snapping turtle, and a long, black prehensile tail, which had already wrapped around Jones’s waist. Hawkins had only just begun to recover from his surprise when a stinger emerged from between the tail and shell and jabbed Jones three times in the gut.

Jones shouted in pain and fell to the floor. The creature’s tail unwrapped and it jumped away, landing on the operating table. The entire attack had taken just seconds. Jones convulsed. His eyes rolled back. And his belly began to expand.

The time between DeWinter drinking the water offered by Bennett and the emergence of this fully formed monster was just over a minute.

“It must be genetically engineered to crank out growth hormones,” Bray said. His eyes were locked on the creature, and the bone saw was raised to strike. “I think it ate DeWinter from the inside, metabolized her flesh, and grew fast. Really fast.”

The creature studied them, shifting its four eyes from one man to the next.

“But here’s the thing about animals that grow too fast,” Bray said. “They’re fragile. I doubt that shell is even solid yet.”

That’s all Hawkins needed to hear. When the creature turned back to Bray, Hawkins charged and swung with the machete. The spider eyes turned back toward him with impossible speed, but the monster couldn’t avoid the descending blade. In fact, it didn’t even try to.

The eight long legs and head snapped back inside the body just as the blade struck the carapace and deflected away. The blade struck the table hard, sending a painful vibration up Hawkins’s arm.

Just as quickly as the head and legs disappeared, they shot back out and took action.

Bray charged, but was too slow. The creature leapt at Hawkins, eight arms splayed wide. Hawkins dropped the machete and caught the thing on the underside of its carapace. He tried to fling it away, but the tail had already wrapped around his waist. When the weight of it struck him, he fell back and stumbled into a glass cabinet. Shattered glass rained down as Hawkins and the monster fell to the floor.

“Bray!” Hawkins shouted, but his voice was barely audible over Jones’s rising shrieks. Unlike DeWinter, Jones was fully conscious when the parasitical spider thing started to eat him from the inside out.

Bray appeared overhead and started swinging with the saw, but it had no effect on the hard shell.

“The tail!” Hawkins shouted. Despite shoving up with all his strength, he could feel the tail constricting, pulling the body—and stinger—closer to his gut. Once that stinger got close enough to strike, Hawkins would be finished. “Cut off the tail!”

Bray adjusted his aim. He swung hard.

And missed.

Hawkins’s hands slipped across the blood-covered carapace and the creature lowered into striking range. The tail tightened, squeezing Hawkins’s stomach. Hawkins shouted in fear, knowing that in just over a minute he’d be dead and giving birth to yet another of Bennett’s chimeras.

And then it happened.

With a quick twitch, the stinger rose and struck three times.