Island 731

7.

Water lapped against sand. Sea birds called. The gentle undulation of a ship in water. Hawkins sensed all of this as he awoke, and for a moment, they combined to put his mind at ease. Memories of a two-week vacation in Bermuda, and the woman he’d met there nine years ago—what was her name?—drifted through his waking thoughts. Lazy days aboard a catamaran. Fishing. Snorkeling. Eating. Drinking. And the nights…. Where the days passed calmly, the nights burned with passion. Belowdecks. On deck with only the stars watching. Even in the water.

Water…

Memory of the crashing wave woke him fully.

Hawkins gasped and sat up straight. Pain bloomed immediately, pounding at the back of his head. He moved his hand back and found a lump matted with blood. He’d struck something when the giant wave had slammed into the ship, but had no memory of what it was.

He found himself against the back wall, his view of the wheelhouse impeded by a workstation and, to his right, a refrigerator. The fridge looked new. In fact, it was still wrapped in plastic. That’s how it had stayed afloat, he realized. The plastic had kept the water out, and the air trapped inside kept the fridge buoyant. It might have been floating in the Garbage Patch for years before being turned into a projectile. The top of the fridge was crumpled now, and smeared with rich, red blood that seemed to glow on the white surface. The blood made his stomach twist, not so much because it disgusted him, but because he knew it had come from one of the other crewmembers.

A seagull squawked so loudly that Hawkins surmised it was actually in the wheelhouse. He pushed himself up slowly, pausing to let his spinning vision focus. The first thing he saw was a blurry mix of bright green and blue. His eyes refused to focus on the distance, but Hawkins could tell they’d made it out of the storm and found themselves… where? At an island? The nearest island should have been nearly two hundred miles away. They couldn’t have covered that much distance overnight.

Turning his attention to the interior of the wheelhouse brought his eyes into focus. Bray lay on the other side of the fridge. He looked dead, but his rising chest revealed he was merely unconscious. Hawkins stepped over the fridge, into the center aisle of the bridge, and found Joliet on the floor.

The seagull stood beside her, violently tugging at her hair. What the hell? Hawkins had never heard of a seagull entering a ship, never mind trying to scavenge a meal from a living human being’s body. Was it rabid? He couldn’t be sure, but it was the biggest damn seagull he’d ever seen, a fact that didn’t slow him down as he charged the bird, waving his hands and shouting.

At first, the bird didn’t back down. It opened its wings wide and squawked at him.

“I don’t care how tough you think you are,” Hawkins said, unclipping his knife from his waist and drawing it out, “I’m not going to let you eat her.”

The seagull seemed to recognize the threat and, with one last angry squawk, spun around and flew out of the wheelhouse through a large hole in one of the big windshield windows. Given the size of the hole, the fact that it was bent inward, and the positioning of the fridge, Hawkins guessed that appliance had punched the hole.

Joliet stirred with a groan. “What happened?”

Hawkins helped her into a sitting position. “Not really sure. Just came to myself. But we’re safe now.”

He helped her into a chair where she sat, holding her head.

“I’m going to check on the others,” he said. “Don’t move.”

“You don’t have to worry about that,” she said, rubbing her temples.

Hawkins went back to Sanchez, who’d been knocked unconscious just before the big wave struck. After checking for a pulse and finding one, he shook the man’s arm. “Sanchez.” He tried to wake the man as gently as possible, but Sanchez didn’t move. Hawkins pinched the man’s arm hard. Sanchez didn’t flinch. He was out for the count.

Hawkins moved to Bray next and smacked his cheek a few times. “Bray. Wake up.”

The big man grumbled.

“Wake up, Eight.”

Bray’s eyes popped open. He shouted in surprise and tried to scramble away.

“Bray!” Hawkins said, holding his friend’s shirt. “It’s over. We made it through the storm.”

“Everyone okay over there?” came Drake’s voice.

As Bray calmed down, Hawkins looked up over the console blocking his view. Drake stood on the far end of the wheelhouse. A streak of blood ran down his forehead and face. “We’re alive,” he replied. “How ’bout you?”

“Not so much,” Drake said, his voice turning solemn.

Hawkins quickly double-checked Bray, who waved him away, saying, “Go. Go.” Then he stood and made his way toward Drake, who was helping Blok to his feet. Drake motioned with his head to the floor at the front of the wheelhouse. Hawkins steeled himself as he walked around the front row of consoles. He’d seen death before, up close and personal, but he didn’t think repeated exposure to something like that would ever make it easier.

When he rounded the corner and saw the caved-in head of Jeff Allen, he knew he was right. A pool of watered-down blood covered the floor around the body. Hawkins covered his mouth with the back of his hand and stepped back so only the man’s legs could be seen.

“Near as I can tell, that fridge caught him on the way in,” Drake said. “Would have been quick.”

Hawkins nodded. The young man wouldn’t have had time to even register the injury before he ceased to exist, which was preferable to a long, drawn-out, painful death. No one deserved that.

Joliet gasped when she staggered up to Hawkins’s side and looked around the corner. “Oh, no…”

“Where are we?” Bray asked. He stood on the starboard side, looking out the windows.

Happy to turn his attention away from the body, Hawkins joined Bray at the windows. Toward the bow he saw a crescent-shaped, light gray sand beach. Behind it was a thick, tropical jungle that eventually rose up over a string of steep hills. The beach and jungle wrapped around the starboard side, eventually dwindling down as steep, rocky cliffs rose up, blocking the view of anything beyond.

Hawkins turned aft and saw that the cliff ended nearly a football field’s distance away. The break in the wall was perhaps seventy feet wide—just big enough to allow the Magellan passage—and picked up again on the other side, where it merged with more tropical jungle. The water below them was dark blue, but toward the shore, it glowed light blue from the gray sands beneath. Had they discovered some kind of lost paradise?

“It’s beautiful,” Joliet said.

“Any idea where we are, Drake?” Hawkins asked.

Drake stood on the port side of the ship, looking out over the palm-filled jungle. “Some kind of lagoon. Beyond that, your guess is as good as mine.”

“There aren’t any islands on the charts for this part of the ocean,” Blok said, his voice more subdued than usual. He rubbed a hand over his bald head and repositioned his glasses. “It’s not supposed to be here.”

A loud knocking came from the locked hatch at the back of the wheelhouse. “Open up!” someone shouted.

“That’s Jones,” Drake said to Hawkins, who was nearest the door.

Hawkins understood the unsaid order and quickly unlocked the door. A disheveled Harold Jones, the ship’s chief engineer, stood on the other side. Blood covered the dark skin of his forehead and his thinning gray hair. “Where’s the captain?”

“Here,” Drake said, stepping into the center aisle and heading for the door. “How are the engines?”

“Functional, but not controllable. Whatever happened during the storm hasn’t stopped. Computer still has control.”

“And your crew?” Drake asked.

“A little roughed up, but we managed. I checked on the Tweedles on my way up—” “The Tweedles” was the crew’s nickname for their two chefs, brothers who were two years apart, but looked like twins. Chubby, bald twins, hence the name. Jones smiled. “Looked like they’d eaten before the storm, so they’ve got a mess on their hands. But they’re—”

Jones’s smiled faded. His eyes had stopped on the pair of feet poking out from behind a console at the front of the wheelhouse. “Who’s that?”

“Jeff Allen,” Drake said.

“He’s…?”

Drake nodded.

“Dad!” DeWinter took the stairs two at a time, arriving by her father’s side with a look of horror in her eyes. Her skin, normally a few shades lighter than Jones’s, was covered in grime. When she saw Drake, she addressed him instead of her father. “Captain…” She paused, out of breath. “We found Cahill…”

“Good,” Drake replied. “Is Kam with him? We need to get—”

“You don’t understand,” DeWinter said. “Cahill. He’s dead.”

Drake’s face reddened. “How?”

DeWinter collected herself and answered. “He’s bound up in some netting tangled off the port crane. Looks like he fell overboard. Drowned.”

“The hell was he doing outside?” Drake grumbled.

“Have you found Kam?” Joliet asked.

DeWinter shook her head. “Should have been in the science quarters with you.”

Drake rolled his neck, the vertebrae popping audibly. He pointed to Jones and DeWinter. “You two, fish Cahill out of the water. We’ll use the wet lab as a morgue. Put the dead on ice and return them to their families. Blok and I will get Sanchez to medical and Allen to the wet lab. The rest of you, find Kam. I want control of my ship and I want it yesterday.”

As the group split up, Hawkins was thankful he wasn’t in Drake’s shoes. There was nothing that could have been done to save Allen or Cahill, but Drake took his responsibilities as captain seriously. The deaths of his second mate and a deckhand had to be eating him up.

Hawkins followed Jones and DeWinter down the stairs to the main deck, where the outer hatch was once again opened. The door must have been left open by Cahill, but why had the man gone outside? It was a suicidal move. The only reason he could think of was that someone less experienced—namely Kam—had ventured outside first. The theory didn’t bode well for their search.

Jones and DeWinter stepped through the open hatch and headed for the back of the ship, where the body of Cahill waited for them.

“I’ll start looking belowdecks,” Bray said. “Don’t feel ready to see another corpse.”

“That makes two of us,” Hawkins said. “I hope you’re the one that finds Kam.”

“I will,” Bray said. “I’m sure of it.” Then he descended the stairs toward the lower decks.

Hawkins followed the father and daughter team outside, but stopped at the port rail. Joliet joined him and together they looked out at the hilly jungle. A squawk brought his eyes up to the clear blue sky. Five large seagulls circled overhead, like vultures.

Joliet put a hand over her eyes and looked at the birds. “What are they waiting for?”

A scream replied, but it didn’t come from the birds. It came from the stern.

“That was Jackie,” Joliet said and, without a moment’s pause, ran toward the stern deck with Hawkins hot on her heels.