Jeremy Robinson - Island 731

Joliet looked horrified. “You can’t be serious.”

“He’s right,” Bray said. “Once again, you’d know this if you read my book. Widespread Japanese cannibalism was proven during the War Crimes Trials after the war. Japanese soldiers could eat POWs and locals, but not Japanese dead. It was policy . Like what I was saying to Bennett before—they dehumanized human beings outside their race. Eating people became no different than eating a cow.” Bray shook his head. “And that was just the regular military, never mind Unit Seven thirty-one. The Nazis did similar experiments, sure. Tested the effects of chemical and biological agents. They froze people’s limbs and rapidly heated them. But they were also fond of performing live vivisections. Liked to see working organs. Beating hearts. Nasty shit. They’d remove the organs, or limbs, and the victims had to watch . Test subjects were usually Chinese since the unit was based in China, but they also experimented on POWs, including Americans, and women, and children. Even pregnant women. Nothing was off limits.”

“The people on the beach,” Joliet said.

“I don’t know why I didn’t think of it then, but Unit Seven thirty-one also experimented with repositioning limbs, and switching limbs, and organs between bodies, including animals. If it were just the numbers, I might be able to write it off, but when you take the bodies into consideration—”

“And the chimeras,” Hawkins said.

“And the sea turtle,” Joliet added.

“This island must have been a second Unit Seven thirty-one base that was never discovered. Given the sophistication of the Drakes—”

Drake cleared his throat.

“The dracos, I’d say they kept operating for some time after the war.”

“Considering we’ve got two people missing,” Drake said, “I’d say they never stopped operating.”

Bray’s face contorted with a look of extreme confusion.

“What now?” Drake asked.

Joliet stepped toward Bray. “Bob?”

“You feeling okay, Eight?” Hawkins asked.

Bray raised a hand and pointed past the three of them, toward the opposite side of the clearing.

Hawkins spun around fast. He raised his rifle, braced it against his shoulder, and took aim at the creature standing there. But he didn’t pull the trigger.

“Umm,” Bray said. “Was that goat here before?”

The goat returned the group’s silent stare, slowly chewing on a long strand of dry grass like a hillbilly named Bubba sitting on a front porch. Hawkins half expected the thing to say, “Git off my land,” but the goat just offered a feeble bleat and went back to chewing, pulling the grass into its mouth, inch by inch, with its tongue. As a child, Hawkins had always felt unnerved by goats’ rectangular pupils. He’d overcome the fear as an adult, facing down far worse than goats, but when this goat craned its head slightly and locked eyes with his, Hawkins felt the childhood paranoia return.

The all-white goat with five-inch-long curled horns stood just three feet tall and sported an impressive potbelly and full-looking udder. Hawkins glanced at the udder and remembered Bray’s story about spider silk-producing goats. Knowing goats could jump great distances from an idle position and having witnessed the flying draco-snakes, he half expected the goat to leap up and swing around on spiderwebs shot from its swollen udder. But it just stood there, chewing.

The goat took a step forward, jangling a small bell attached to a red plastic band wrapped around its neck. Hawkins focused on the collar. It looked familiar. It looked… “Just like the one on the turtle.”

“What?” Joliet asked.

“The collar,” Hawkins said. It looks like the plastic band we found around the loggerhead’s midsection.”

Joliet shifted, but her movement brought the goat’s attention to her and she couldn’t get a better view.

Bray started calling to the goat the way someone might call a dog, with clicks and squeaks. He knelt down on a knee. “My uncle owned a farm in New Hampshire. Alpacas, llamas, and goats. Weird combination, but they did okay.” He opened his pack and began rummaging through it. “Lots of goat’s milk products. Soap. Cheese. Stuff like that. My parents sent me there for a few weeks. To teach me how to work hard. But all I really learned is that I hated farming”—he began unwrapping something—“and that goats have an affinity for oats, sugar, and anything sweet.”

Bray held out the unwrapped chocolate-chip granola bar and started clicking at the goat once more. “Come on, girl.”

“Don’t think a goat living on an island in the middle of the Pacific will know what a granola bar is,” Drake said.

“Doesn’t need to,” Bray said. “Goats have an excellent sense of smell. Eyesight, too. Those rectangular pupils give it crazy night vision.”

The goat cocked its head to the side, flaring its nostrils. Then, with a sharp bleat, it trotted to Bray and began nibbling on the end of the crunchy snack. Bray pet the goat’s back. “Good girl.” He looked to Hawkins. “She won’t move until the bar is gone.”

Hawkins wasted no time inspecting the collar and quickly confirmed his suspicions. “Same red plastic. Japanese text, too, though the characters are different. Definitely doesn’t say ‘broccoli’ again.”

“Broccoli?” Drake asked.

Joliet knelt next to the goat and stroked its side. As her hand passed over the goat’s fur, the skin beneath it rippled, as though twitching with excitement. “It’s what Kam said was written on the plastic band we took off the turtle.” She gave the goat a gentle scratch behind its ear and it paused eating to let out an ecstatic bleat. “I don’t think this goat has ever been petted before.”

“Let me have a look,” Drake said, stepping up next to the goat.

Something about Drake put the goat on edge. It shifted away from him, but the granola bar kept it from fleeing. When Drake stood still, hands on knees looking at the collar, the goat relaxed and focused on its meal.

“Goat three hundred fourteen,” Drake said.

Bray turned to the captain. “Huh?”

“That’s what the collar says,” Drake explained.

Bray looked doubtful. “How well do you speak Japanese?”

With a sigh, Drake explained. “Passable, but not fluent. I met my wife in Japan. Learned the language so I could speak to her parents. Ask her father’s permission. Do things right.”

“Didn’t know you were married,” Bray said.

As soon as the words escaped Bray’s mouth, Hawkins saw the subtle change in Drake’s expression and knew the truth before the man spoke. “I’m not. She died ten years ago. And before you ask, it was cancer. The fast, merciful kind. If there is such a thing, but it took her just the same.”

Bray lowered his eyes to the ground. “Sorry.”

“Ten years ago,” Joliet said. “That’s when you became captain of the Magellan .”

Drake gave a nod. “Called in a favor.” He looked at Hawkins. “Needed to escape.” He stood and stepped away from the goat. “Now, if we’re done with our trip down memory lane, what’s the big deal about the collar, other than the fact that it confirms the island is populated by people with access to the outside world?”

Hawkins hadn’t thought about the ramifications of the people here having plastic. Drake was right. Whoever lived here hadn’t been isolated since World War II, but that didn’t mean they weren’t off-their-rockers crazy. “I’m not sure.”

“I know what it means,” Bray said, petting the goat. He waited for the others to look at him and then said, “It means Kam lied. The band around the turtle didn’t say ‘broccoli.’”