Island 731

43.

“What the hell is that?” Bray asked.

No one answered. They were too busy listening.

When the sound repeated, everyone jumped back a few feet from the source—a ventilation duct.

“They’re in the air system,” a man said.

Tapping and clawing sounds emerged all around them. Several of the things had worked their way inside the ducts and were now searching for a way out. He watched the metal duct above him bend and flex under the creatures’ weight.

Hawkins looked around the room, counting four vents, all large enough to accommodate the spider things. It wouldn’t be long before one of the creatures found the way out. “Blok?” Hawkins said.

“They’re still out there,” he replied.

Hawkins took hold of Green’s shoulder. “Is there another way out of here?”

“There are three exits,” she replied. “They’re all locked, but…”

“Right,” Hawkins said. “You can’t leave.”

He wasn’t sure what to do. They needed to leave. Not only were the creatures bound to find a way inside the room, but there was also some kind of strike force en route. If he didn’t find Joliet and get off this island soon, they would all die here. Still, he didn’t want to leave these people to die. They were wrong, and responsible for the things they’d done, but they were also pawns.

“If you can get the remote and come back for us,” Green said.

Bray rolled his eyes. “I don’t—”

“We’ll try,” said Hawkins. “But I’m not sure we’ll make it out of the—”

The sound of wrenching metal drowned out Hawkins’s voice. A vent on the far side of the room burst open and vomited a black blur that landed atop the nearest man and took him to the floor.

Screams and panic filled the room. One of the women ran for a far door.

“No!” Hawkins shouted, but she opened it to a clear hallway, turned left, and ran.

“Lock yourselves in your quarters!” Green shouted to the two remaining staff. The man and woman turned and ran for an open door at the side of the room.

Green moved to follow them, but Hawkins took her arm. “Get us out of here. It’s your only chance.”

She gave a curt nod and motioned for them to follow her. As they moved through the room to the far door, Hawkins got a look at the fallen man. The spider was just beginning to unravel its tail. They ran into the hallway. The far wall was lined with windows that looked out into an atrium complete with a koi pond and sandy Zen garden. A place for staff to go to forget all the horrible things they’d done, Hawkins thought.

Blok slammed the door shut behind him. He was aided by the force of a striking spider thing. The door shook, drawing a deep frown from Green. Her path back to the safety of her quarters had just been blocked.

“Which way?” Hawkins asked.

She pointed to the right. “Follow this hall to the end. Turn left. Then right. First door on your right is a stairwell that will take you to the bottom floor and an exit.”

A scream spun them around. The woman who’d fled tore around a corner, heading toward them, face twisted with fear. She made it just three steps when a large spider creature tore around the corner, leapt up, and tackled her. As the woman toppled to the side, the thing wrapped its legs around her torso. The tail constricted her waist. Then—crash—they struck the window together. Glass sprayed into the Zen garden and the death-locked duo spilled into the atrium. As they fell, the creature stabbed her three times, but before they hit, a loud beeping filled the air.

Then an explosion.

The blast wasn’t massive, but the force of it was contained within the small atrium. The remaining windows burst, showering the hallway with pen-size glass shards. When Hawkins took his arm away from his head, he found one such shard embedded in his forearm. He plucked it out and tossed it to the floor.

“Hawkins,” Bray shouted, pointing toward the end of the hall. Two more of the monsters rounded the corner and charged toward them. Without thought, they ran. And Green ran with them.

Thirty feet into their run, a loud beeping filled the air. Green skidded to a stop. Hawkins stopped with her. Bray and Blok slowed, looking back, but kept moving.

“If I go any farther, it will detonate,” Green said, tears filling her eyes. She had nowhere to go and her choices were limited to a three-story plunge, giving birth to more of the killer creatures, or blowing herself to bits.

“Turn around,” Hawkins said. “I’ll yank it off!”

She shook her head. “It will explode! Just… just go!”

“But—”

She looked back to the spider things. The slippery coating of glass covering the floor slowed their progress, but they were closing the distance quick enough. “Go! Now! Let me do this!”

Hawkins understood that the desperation in her voice wasn’t just fear of death. It was also fear of some kind of afterlife and a God who might judge her. She wanted to die doing something right. She wanted atonement. And he wouldn’t deny her. “Thank you,” he said, and then ran to catch up with Bray and Blok.

Green stood her ground. The device on the back of her neck chimed incessantly. As the creatures closed in, she opened her arms as though to embrace them, and in a way that’s exactly what she did. The spider things sprung up as one, striking her body with a tangle of spindly black legs, twisting tails, and jabbing stingers. Green stumbled back under their weight, but had been ready for it. Instead of falling straight back, she stumbled backward before tripping. As she spilled back toward the floor, her head and neck passed through the outer radius. She, and the shelled spiders disappeared in a bright plume of light.

The powerful explosion shook the building and sent a shockwave rolling through the hallway like a mudslide. The force of it knocked Hawkins, Bray, and Blok to the floor. They were quick to their feet, but three more of the creatures rounded the far corner at the end of the hall, blocking their path to the exit.

“Hawkins.” Kam’s voice was loud and all around them, booming from a PA system. “Take the next right. Then the second door on the right.”

“We can’t trust him,” Bray shouted back.

“No choice!” Hawkins shouted. They ran toward the creatures and took the hallway on the right, sprinting for their lives.

Blok paused at a T junction at the end of the hall. He looked left and right. “Push doors in both directions.” He started to the left, no doubt trusting Kam as little as Bray did.

But Hawkins knew they’d still be prisoners if it hadn’t been for Kam. “Go right!”

Blok hesitated, but when he saw how close the spider chimeras were, he dove right and shoved through the doors. Bray rounded the corner, right on his heels. Hawkins went around last. The door was still open from when Bray went through. He could see them, just ahead, entering the second door on the right. He could also hear the creatures right behind him.

In a dead sprint from one set of doors to the next, he knew he couldn’t make it. So instead of running, he spun.

Two of the creatures charged along the linoleum, their spindly legs a blur, their tails reaching up and over. The third was airborne. Its eight legs were splayed open, ready to grasp Hawkins’s torso. A pair of mandibles was primed and ready to clamp down. The tail whipped around, aimed for his waist. And the stinger, like some kind of sick phallus, had already emerged and was jutting back and forth in excited anticipation.

Hawkins saw all this in the second it took him to grip the door with both hands and swing it shut as hard as he could. The well-oiled, heavy metal door flew shut and collided with the airborne creature first. The door shook from the impact. Two more less powerful thuds struck the door. Hawkins couldn’t see what had happened, but thought the running pair must have collided with the stalled airborne creature before striking the door.

With his pursuer’s momentum arrested for the moment, Hawkins sprinted to the second door on the right, slipped into the more dimly lit room, and eased the door shut behind him just as the double doors burst open. He waited by the door, hand on the padlock, ready to turn it. But he didn’t dare turn it yet or they’d be trapped inside. Instead, he listened. He could barely hear the tapping of the spider feet outside the room, but they were there, unsure at first, but then scurrying again.

“Hawkins,” Bray whispered.

Hawkins held up his hand, asking for silence. When he could no longer hear the creatures anymore, he locked the door. The deadbolt snapped loudly into place. When he turned around, he found Bray and Blok standing to his right, looking suspiciously at the room’s third occupant: Kam.

But Hawkins immediately saw they had nothing to fear from Kam, one of their two Judases. A knife had been buried in Kam’s abdomen. It was a mortal wound, especially without a real doctor within hundreds of square miles, let alone a surgeon qualified to repair the damage. But Kam wouldn’t die quickly, especially with the knife still wedged in place. Whoever had done this wanted him to suffer. And here on the island, that narrowed the suspects down to one.

“I thought Bennett considered you a brother,” Hawkins said. “Why did he do this?”

As Hawkins asked the question, he glanced around the room and got his answer. There were ten LCD displays and each showed four different live-video feeds. A little more than half of the feeds were from inside the building, focusing on labs, holding rooms, and a few hallways. There were several sweeping views from high points on the island. He could see the farm, the field, the garden, and orchard, a view of the goats from the abandoned laboratory, and an alternate view that showed the old lab itself. There were even a few images of the paths leading through the jungle and of the Magellan in the lagoon. Two of the feeds were blacked out. Probably from the interior of Bennett’s now melted gallery, Hawkins thought.

“I’m sorry,” Kam said. “I’m not the person you think I am.”

“He’s not a person at all,” Bray said, pointing to Kam’s lower neck.

At first Hawkins thought Kam’s neck had been sliced open, too, but there was no blood. He leaned in close, careful not to bump the knife buried in Kam’s belly. Hawkins realized that this part of Kam’s neck would have always been covered by the tightly buttoned, high-collared polo shirts he wore. The shirt was unbuttoned now and part of the neck exposed. He took hold of the collar and peeled it back, exposing the slit in Kam’s neck, along with two more.

“What the h—” The slits flexed and opened. Hawkins let go of the shirt and stepped back.

“Gills,” Kam said. “And yes, they work.”

“That’s how you survived the storm outside,” Bray said, his voice full of accusation. “And Cahill didn’t.”

“He saw me go outside. Tried to pull me back in, but a wave took us over the side. I tried to save him,” Kam said.

“Not that saving him would have been a mercy,” Bray said. “If you’d saved him, he’d be stuck on this hellish island, too. Or maybe have his guts split open with spider things climbing out. Or maybe have his hands replaced with knives and his eyes plucked out. At least he was dead when you guys strung him up by his insides.”

Kam cringed under the verbal attack. “I didn’t do those things. I wouldn’t.”

“But you allowed them to happen,” Blok said. “Sometimes there isn’t much difference.”

Kam’s eyes fell to the floor. He looked weakened, both emotionally and from actual blood loss.

“Enough, guys,” Hawkins said. Had Kam been healthy, there would be hell to pay, but the man was clearly on his way to the next world and right now, he had questions, the first of which was, “What does Bennett want?”

“Entertainment,” Kam said. “He’s bored.”

“He’s a little more than bored,” Bray said.

Hawkins saw Kam’s gills open and close, as though taking a breath. “Is she really your mother?”

Kam winced in pain for a moment and then nodded.

“Wait. What?” Bray said. “Who is his mother?”

“The chimera,” Hawkins said. “The big one.”

Bray rubbed his arm across his forehead, which did little to remove the sheen of sweat reflecting the glow of the security displays. “Holy shit.”

“You mean the thing that took us?” Blok asked. “The one that comes with the horn? That’s your mother?”

“Her name is Kaiju. It means ‘strange beast.’ She started as a human embryo. And some of her mind is still human, though it functions at a more primal level than modern man. She was grown inside a woman with one arm—my grandmother, I suppose—who died giving birth. That’s what my father told me, anyway. Who knows if it’s true.”

“What species was she merged with?” Hawkins asked.

“Some are obvious,” Kam replied with a cough. “Her face alone contains bat, goat, tiger, crocodile, and human features. Her tail is chameleon. Her torso and arms are gorilla, as is her heart and much of her inner musculature. One hand is polar bear. The other hand is an oversize aye-aye. The protective carapace on her chest is turtle shell and the spines on her back are porcupine, though they’re also coated with a neurotoxin. But much of her is still human.”

“Including her reproductive systems,” Hawkins said.

“My father, the head of the Unit Seven thirty-one division stationed on this island and chief scientist until his death, tried for years to artificially impregnate Kaiju. But it only worked once.”

“You,” Hawkins said.

Kam nodded. “The idea was that if they could impregnate a chimera, its children might be born with similar traits without needing to be engineered in a lab, which has a very low success rate and is time-consuming and expensive. When I was born, I looked fully human. I was deemed a failure, but allowed to live because my father used his own sperm to impregnate Kaiju. I was his son. The gills and”—Kam took hold of his shirt and lifted it, exposing his belly, which was covered in shiny fish scales—“this didn’t develop until I was a teenager, when my father had long since lost interest in me. He never knew.”

“How did you end up being so different from Bennett?” Hawkins asked. It wasn’t exactly important, but he didn’t understand how Kam had turned out to be merciful and Bennett a psychotic. Because when he thought about it, Bennett was the logical end result of being raised from birth in an environment that had no moral compass or respect for human life.

“His parents both worked for DARPA, but unlike many of the recruits, they were here voluntarily. They led the research together, along with my father. They believed in the work. Maybe even enjoyed the work. But they weren’t like Bennett. They were clinical. Cold, even. But they weren’t sick. Like my father, they took pride in what they saw as progress for their country—blinded to their crimes by patriotism. They were… kind to me, but in the way a master is kind to a pet. Things were different for Bennett.

“He lived in the labs. Spent days and nights there. He’s brilliant, you know. Always has been. And his parents pushed him. So hard. He performed his first operation when he was ten. The subject died on the table. He wept afterward, but not for the patient. He was upset that he’d let his parents down. Over time, his skills increased, but so did his boredom. When my father died, Bennett was just fifteen, but felt he should take his place. Obviously, he was turned down because of his age and the fact that he wasn’t actually employed as a researcher. After that he kept to himself, working on projects few people knew about. While his parents focused on pure research, pushing the limits of what could be done, Bennett focused on controlling their creations. Including my mother.”

“He’s using sounds and smells,” Hawkins said. “Different tones in varying sequences act like commands. Three pulses might mean ‘attack.’ Two might mean ‘stop.’ And one horn blast means, what? ‘Kidnap’?”

Kam shook his head no. “My mother can understand limited instructions. He can tell her what to do. The horn just sends her into action. As will the nearly inaudible tones emitted by his handheld remote and small speakers attached to many of the island’s cameras. The horn is meant to intimidate those who hear it, but the tones allow him to act in secret, like when he took the crew who remained behind on the Magellan. When he wants someone taken, rather than killed, he marks them with a scent.”

“But why does she obey him?” Bray asked. “Why doesn’t she just crush his skull and be done with it. And what about you? Why not drag his ass beneath the water and let him drown?”

“While Bennett lived in the labs, I spent much of my time in the jungle. The chimeras don’t attack each other. They might fight over territory or mates, but they don’t eat each other. I was free to explore. To dream. It’s why I’m different than him. He wanted to control nature. I wanted to enjoy it. And during those years of exploration, my mother was my only real company. Five years ago, Bennett captured my mother, and me. He operated on both of us. Planted explosives in our chests.”

“Like the ones he used on the staff?” Bray asked.

“Similar. Someone skilled at defusing bombs could have removed those. The ones inside my mother and me would require a highly skilled surgeon and someone to defuse the bomb simultaneously.”

“So they can’t be removed?” Blok asked.

“It’s unlikely,” Kam said. “One is rigged to the other, and both to his body. If his pulse stops, we both die. If we don’t do as he asks, he will detonate the explosive in the other. The small remote he carries? The buttons on the outside trigger the tones, and horn. But it can be slid open. The two buttons inside trigger the explosives.”

“So why not just let him kill her?” Bray said.

Anger flashed in Kam’s eyes. “You see a monster when you look at her, but I see my mother.” He leaned back in the chair, exhausted from the effort. “I couldn’t let her be killed any more than you could your mother. I’m not like Bennett. I couldn’t kill my parents.”

“Is that what happened to Bennett’s parents?” Hawkins asked. “He killed them?”

“They were kind to me,” Kam said with regret. “They didn’t deserve it. None of them did.”

Hawkins’s eyes widened. “He sewed them in with the others?”

“They were at the core. He didn’t want to see them.” Tears gathered at the base of Kam’s eyes. “It doesn’t matter. We’ll all be dead soon anyway.”

Hawkins leaned in close. “What are you talking about?”

Kam turned slowly to the bank of monitors. He tapped a button on the keyboard, shifting views and revealing that there were many more cameras on the island than Hawkins first thought. Maybe hundreds.

Kam stopped on a block of four images. Two of the jungle, one of the path leading to the gallery, and one looking out at the ocean. With a push of a button, the ocean view enlarged, filling up the whole screen. The full-color image was crystal clear. “Bennett replaced the outward-looking cameras with high-resolution zoom lenses. So he can see things coming from far away.”

Hawkins leaned in, looking for something, but only saw a few random specs on the screen. “All I see is dust.”

“Not dust,” Kam said. He zoomed in on the image. The specs grew large and blurry, but quickly came into focus, revealing ten ominous-looking helicopters, eight of them Blackhawks that would be carrying soldiers and two attack helicopters outfitted with an array of deadly weapons. “They’re coming.”