Jeremy Robinson - Island 731

“You don’t see any steam, do you?” Joliet asked as she explored the fringe of the clearing.

“No, it’s dormant. Probably been for a long time. There’re a couple of tall hills, a lake—probably at the island’s lowest point—and a large, flat clearing, but all of it is inside a very large crater.”

“Probably multiple craters,” Joliet said. “Volcanic cones tend to shift in the ocean.”

Hawkins heard the sound of shifting vegetation.

“Hey, I found the path,” Joliet said from below.

Hawkins looked down. Joliet stood on the far side of the small clearing, holding a large-leafed plant aside.

“I think I see footprints, too.”

Something about the word “footprints” triggered a new question. “Why is Kam barefoot?”

Joliet just stared up at him.

“Did you ever see him go barefoot on the ship?”

She thought for a moment and then shook her head. “He wore sandals all the time.”

“So why is he barefoot now?”

“Maybe they fell off in the water.”

That made sense, but still felt wrong. They were missing something. “Maybe.”

What the hell aren’t we thinking of?

“Hey, look at this,” Joliet said. She held the plant up in the air. The large leaves were bound together at the bottom. “The leaves were staked into the ground. He covered the path on purpose. Why would Kam do that?”

The mental floodgates opened.

Kam wouldn’t.

“We need to go back to the ship,” he said, sliding down the dome to the edge of the pillbox roof.

“Why? It will still be daylight for a few more hours. We can—”

“It’s not Kam,” he said, lowering himself over the front end of the pillbox. He held on to a vine for support.

Joliet rushed up and put her hands under Hawkins’s foot, supporting some of his weight. “What do you mean, it’s not Kam?”

“Why would Kam—”

The vine supporting most of Hawkins’s weight tore free from the concrete above the pillbox entryway. Taking the vine with him, Hawkins fell. He and Joliet spilled onto the grass in a heap.

Hawkins pulled his legs off of Joliet and got to his feet. He helped her up and as they both brushed off their damp clothes, he continued. “Why would Kam swim to shore, run straight to a path in the jungle, come all the way up here, and then conceal his tracks?”

She had no answer.

“Exactly,” he said. “Kam wouldn’t. Someone was already here.”

“But Kam is missing,” she said.

“He might have been lost in the storm with Cahill.”

“Or he was taken,” she said.

Hawkins didn’t think so. The footprints weren’t deep enough to suggest someone was being carried, but he couldn’t discount the theory, either. Kam wasn’t very big.

“Either way, we need to get back to the ship. The island is too big to search on our own, and the presence of an unknown person… or people, changes things. We need help.” As Hawkins turned toward the path leading back down to the cover, he glanced at the pillbox and noticed something different. Something was painted above the doorway, where the vine had been.

He brushed away the moss and vine bits still clinging to the wall and looked at the writing.

“Is that Japanese?” Joliet asked.

“That’d be my guess, but I have no idea what it means.” He looked at each character individually, trying to remember them, but stopped when he heard a faint scratching sound behind him.

“Got it,” Joliet said, capping a pen and slipping a small notebook into her cargo shorts pocket. “Now, let’s get the hell out of here.”

As Joliet started down the switchback path, Hawkins took one last look around the small clearing. When thinking about dogs and cats being left behind on the island, he made the logical leap to the idea that they’d be feral after seventy years of breeding, hunting, and surviving on an island. But now he had to consider another possibility.

What would people be like if they’d been left here, cut off from the rest of the world, for seventy years?

Hawkins led the journey down the hill much faster than they’d ascended it, in part thanks to gravity, but mostly because he’d been spooked by their discoveries at the pillbox. His neck had grown sore from looking back over his shoulder as they hiked, but his paranoia had company. Nearly every time he looked back, Joliet was already doing likewise.

He’d once spoken to the survivor of a mountain lion attack; a young woman who’d been jogging a trail in Yellowstone in the early morning. She hadn’t seen or heard anything. But she felt it. The danger. Had she not unclipped her bottle of pepper spray from her belt in advance of the attack, she’d have been easily killed. Instead, the cat got a face full of liquid pepper and would probably think twice before attacking another human being.

Is that what I’m feeling? he wondered. He’d encountered wild animals on several occasions, but had never felt that advance fear. He liked to think it was because he was on equal footing with the world’s predators, and to an extent, had proven that to be true. That he was feeling spooked now only increased his building sense of doom.

Halfway between the hill and the beach, something snapped.

Hawkins froze.

Joliet stood beside him.

Neither spoke. They just watched. And listened.

After a full minute, Hawkins said, “Man, this place has me on edge.”

Joliet gave a nervous laugh. “I know, right?”

But then the sound repeated. Closer. And overhead.

Both of their heads craned up. The tall palms, mixed with other exotic, leafy trees, swayed, creaking quietly. Sunlight filtered through and the bright green leaves shimmered on the jungle floor. But there was nothing else there.

“Do rats climb trees?” Joliet asked.

“Not usually,” Hawkins replied. “Unless they’re trying to make it easy for the birds that eat them.”

“Right,” Joliet said before glancing down and seeing the hunting knife in Hawkins hand. “You know something I don’t?”

He didn’t really remember drawing the blade. “I hope not.”

Brush along the path, just twenty feet behind them, shook. He’d normally write the movement off to a squirrel. Or in this case, a rat. But he didn’t think that was the case here. They were being stalked.

“Go,” Hawkins whispered. “Run.”

Joliet seemed surprised. Did she not see the brush moving, or was he really just being paranoid? Better paranoid than dead, he decided, and said, “All the way to the beach. Don’t stop. Go. Now!”

As he raised his voice, movement swirled around and above them. He saw shifting shadows and flickering sunlight as something moved through the canopy. Nothing more. But he had learned something—the creature stalking them wasn’t alone.

There was a pack.

Joliet needed no more convincing. She took off down the winding path, moving swiftly. Hawkins took one last look around and saw nothing. Sensing the predators moving in, he followed after Joliet, knife in hand.

The trail made running easy, but it also wound a meandering path through the jungle. Fastest way between two points is a straight line , he thought, and then went off-path, cutting straight through the jungle, tearing through brush, hopping fallen trees and making a racket.

Joliet heard him coming and whipped her head in his direction. Her face was twisted with fear, but quickly turned to relief when she saw it was him.

“Don’t bother with the path!” he shouted. “Just cut through the trees!”

When the trail wound to the right, Joliet plowed straight ahead, leaping through the forest like a frightened deer. She moved so quickly that Hawkins had a hard time keeping up. Her small size let her pass by obstacles that he had to crash through, like a tank following a sports car through a slalom course.