Matthew Reilly: Hell Island

The gun’s trigger-guard was different: it had been elongated, as if to accommodate a longer index finger that wrapped itself around the gun’s trigger.

“What the hell is that?” Hulk said, seeing it. “Some kind of super gun?”

“Scarecrow,” Mother said, coming over. “Most of these blood splatters are the result of bullet impacts. But some aren’t. They’re… well… thicker. More like arterial flow. As if some of the dead had entire limbs cut off.”

Schofield’s earpiece squawked.

“All units, this is Gator. My SEAL team has just arrived at the main hangar deck and holy shit, people, have we got something to show you. We aren’t the first force to have got here. And the guys before us didn’t fare well at all. I have a visual on at least two hundred pairs of hands all stacked up in a neat pile down here.”

Sanchez whispered, “Did he just say—?”

Gator anticipated this. “Yes, you heard me right. Hands. Human hands. Cut off and stacked in a great big heap. What in God’s name have we walked into here?”

WHILE THE rest of their team listened in horror to Gator’s gruesome report, Schofield and Mother strode into the command center, the inner section of the bridge. It too was largely wrecked, but not totally.

“Mother, do a power-grid check, all grids, all levels, even externals. I’m gonna look for ATOs.”

Mother sat down at an undamaged console while Schofield went to the Captain’s desk and attached some C-2 low-expansion plastic explosive to the commanding officer’s safe.

A muffled boom later and he had the Nimitz’s last fourteen ATOs—Air Tasking Orders, the ship’s daily orders received from Pacific Command at Pearl Harbor.

It was mainly routine stuff as the Nimitz hop-scotched her way back from the Indian Ocean to Hawaii, dropping in at Singapore and the Philippines on the way…

Until ten days ago…

…when the Nimitz was ordered to divert to the Japanese island of Okinawa and pick up three companies of U.S. Marines there, a force of about 600 men.

She was to ferry the Marines—not crack Recon troops, but rather just regular men—across the northern Pacific and drop them off at a set of coordinates that Schofield knew to be Hell Island.

After unloading the Marines, the ship was then instructed to:

PICK UP DARPA SCIENCE TEAM FROM LOCATION:

KNOX, MALCOLM C.

PENNEBAKER, ZACHARY B.

JOHNSON, SIMON W.

HENDRICKS, JAMES F.

RYAN, HARPER R.

HOGAN, SHANE M.

LIEBMANN, BEN C.

PERSONNEL ARE ALL SECURITY-CLEARED TO “TOP SECRET.” THEY WILL HAVE CARGO WHICH IS NOT TO BE SEEN BY CREW OF NIMITZ .

So. The Nimitz had been sent here to drop off a sizeable force of Marines and also pick up some scientists who had been at work here.

Again, it bore all the hallmarks of an exercise—Marines being unloaded on a secret island where DARPA scientists had been at work.

DARPA was the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, the genius-level scientists who made high-tech weaponry for the U.S. military. After inventing the Internet and stealth technology, rumor had it that DARPA had recently been at work on ultra-high-tensile, low-weight body armor and, notoriously, a fourth-generation thermonuclear weapon called a Supernova, the most powerful nuke ever devised.

“Scarecrow,” Mother said from her console. “I got a power drain in grid 14.2, the starboard-side router, going to an external destination, location unknown. Something on the island is draining power from the Nimitz ’s reactor. Beyond that, all other electrical systems on the boat have been shut down: lights, air-conditioning, everything.”

Schofield thought about that.

“And another thing,” Mother said. “I fired up the ship’s internal spectrum analyzer. I’m picking up a weird radio signal being transmitted inside the Nimitz. ”

“Why’s it weird?”

“Because it’s not a voice signal. It sounds, well, like a digital signal, a binary beep sequence. Fact, sounds like my old dial-up modem.”

Schofield frowned. A power drain going off the ship. Digital radio signals inside the ship. A secret DARPA presence. And a gruesome stack of severed hands down in the hangar deck.

This didn’t make sense at all.

“Mother,” he said, “you got a portable AXS on you?” An AXS was an AXS-9 radio spectrum analyzer, a portable unit that picked up radio transmissions, a bug detector.

“Sure have.”

“Jamming capabilities?”

“Multi-channel or single channel,” she said.

“Good,” Schofield said. “Tune it in to those beeps. Stay on them. And just be ready to jam them.”

Gator’s voice continued to come over his earpiece. The SEAL leader was describing the scene in the hangar bay:

“ … looks like the entire hangar has been configured for an exercise of some sort. It’s like an indoor battlefield. I got artificial trenches, some low terrain, even a field tower set up inside the hangar. Moving toward the nearest trench now—hey, what was that…? Holy—”

Gunfire rang out. Sustained automatic gunfire.

Both from the SEALs and from an unknown enemy force. The SEALs’ silenced MP-5SNs made a chilling slit-slit-slit-slit-slit-slit when they fired. Their enemies’ guns made a different noise altogether, the distinct puncture-like clatter of M-4 Colt Commando assault rifles.

The SEALs starting shouting to each other:

“—they’re coming out of the nearest trench—”

“—what the fuck is that…”

“—it looks like a Goddamn go—”

Sprack! The speaker never finished his sentence. The sound of a bullet slamming into his skull echoed through his radio-mike.

Then Gator’s voice: “ Fire! Open fire! Mow ’em down!”

In response to the order, the level of SEAL gunfire intensified. But the SEALs’ voices became more desperate.

“—Jesus, they just keep coming! There are too many of them!”

“—Get back to the stairs! Get back to the—”

“—Shit! There are more back there! They’re cutting us off! They’ve got us surrounded!”

A pained scream.

“—Gator’s down! Oh, fuck, ah—”

The speaker’s voice was abruptly cut off by a guttural grunting sound that all but ate his radiomike. The man screamed, a terrified shriek that was muffled by rough scuffling noises over his mike. He panted desperately as if struggling with some great beast. Indeed it sounded as if some kind of frenzied creature had barreled into him full-tilt and started eating his face.

Then blam! a gunshot boomed and there were no more screams. Schofield couldn’t tell if it was the man who had fired or the thing that had attacked him.

And suddenly it was over.

Silence on the airwaves.

In the bridge of the supercarrier, the members of Schofield’s team swapped glances.

Sanchez reached for the radio—only for Schofield to swat his hand away.

“I said no signals.”

Sanchez scowled, but obeyed.

One of the other teams, however, came over the line: “SEAL team, this is Condor. What’s going on? Come in!”

Schofield waited for a reply.

None came.

But then after thirty seconds or so, another rough scuffling sound could be heard, someone—or something—grabbing one of the SEAL team’s radiomikes.

Then a terrifying sound shot through the radio.

A horrific animal roar.