Jeremy Robinson - Island 731

When the window to his right shattered, he spun and nearly fired. But the form of Bray, bathed in sunlight, stopped him short. He was about to chastise the man when he realized he could now see much of the room. And what he saw made him want to back up and haul ass back to the Magellan .

Like the second floor, this was one large room. But instead of being divided by operating tables, or cells, this room was a maze of shelves, each covered in glass jars of various size. Some were as small as baby food jars. Others, resting on the floor, looked large enough to hold a grown man.

And some of them did.

Many of the glass containers had broken over time and the bones of what they once held littered the floor. But others had weathered the past seventy years, blemished only by dust.

“Holy fuck,” Bray said.

Hawkins agreed with the sentiment, but couldn’t find his voice. The jar nearest him, perched on an eye-level shelf, glowed yellow, struck by the full light of day. And suspended in the amber liquid was a baby, curled up in a fetal position as though still in the womb. He stepped closer and lowered his weapon. “The baby,” he said. “It has a tail.”

“And not a vestigial tail, either,” Bray added. “I think that’s a rat tail.”

“Is it a chimera?” Hawkins asked.

Bray shook his head. “Looks like it was stitched on, maybe at birth.”

Hawkins ran a hand over his head. He knew that humanity had committed atrocities over the years, especially during wars, but this was beyond reason. What good would a human being with a rat tail be? How could someone do this to a newborn baby?

“Hey, Ranger,” Bray said.

Hawkins looked at Bray, who nodded toward the rifle.

“Mind keeping that up in case something tries to eat us?”

Hawkins’s distraction disappeared. He raised the rifle and scanned the room again. “We’ll move forward slowly and together. Break the windows as we reach them.”

Hawkins moved forward, trying hard to ignore the different animals and people of various ages kept in jars of formaldehyde. Some looked unaltered, but others had limbs, and eyes, and teeth, and digits that clearly did not belong to them.

A window shattered, spilling more light into the room and revealing more horrors. Hawkins ignored them now. He heard something a moment before the window broke.

Breathing.

“If you can understand me,” Hawkins said, “show yourself now. If you don’t, I will shoot you.”

“I don’t see anything,” Bray said.

“It’s there. Trust me.” Hawkins picked up an empty jar and threw it toward the back of the room. The sharp sound of breaking glass was accompanied by a shrill cry of surprise. And then a growl.

Bray is right , Hawkins thought, it sounds like a child .

And when their quarry stepped out from behind a shelf, Hawkins thought for a moment that it was, in fact, a five-year-old boy. But then he saw the hair covering its naked body, the tail thrashing about behind it, and the awkward way it stood. Still, he thought he saw a trace of humanity in its yellow eyes. But all doubt was erased when it snarled and showed its teeth.

“Hawkins!” Bray shouted. “Shoot it!”

The rifle’s report was contained by the thick, concrete walls, which amplified the sound. Hawkins grunted and lowered his aim. A ringing buzz in his ears drowned out the creature’s shrieks. Bray’s hands went to his ears after dropping the ax. Hawkins could see him cursing, but couldn’t make out the words. Both men were stunned and distracted by the explosion of sound, and wide open to attack. Luckily, the sharp report had a similar effect on the creature across the room.

It wailed while throwing itself back and forth, smashing into shelves. Jars of preserved bodies tipped and rolled from their perches, shattering on the floor. The sharp, tangy odor of formaldehyde filled the air.

“Smells like my dissection lab,” Bray said as he picked up the ax. “If it gets much stronger, we’re going to have to fall back. Or break more windows. Whoa!”

A glass jar sailed over his head as he ducked. It struck the wall next to him and shattered, its contents spilling to the floor. Bray jumped away before the expanding puddle of formaldehyde reached his feet. But it wasn’t the liquid that made him jump. It was the head that rolled past him. When the head stopped rolling, a woman’s face stared at the ceiling with black, hollow eyes. Her head had been shaved, revealing several scars atop her cranium. Her skin had been stained the sickly yellow tinge of formaldehyde, and face was frozen in an expression of horror, or extreme pain. Either way, it was a sight neither man would ever forget.

Hawkins tore his eyes away from the woman’s face and looked for the creature. A second jar, thankfully empty, arched toward him. He side-stepped the projectile and tracked its trajectory to its origin. The creature had slowed, but now kept to the shadows.

“Get the next window,” he said. “If I yell, ‘ears,’ cover them.”

Bray took a deep breath, tucked his nose under his shirt, and inched forward, ready with the ax.

A large jar containing what looked like sloshing intestines sailed out of the gloom. But it must have been too heavy for the small creature. It crashed to the floor, spilling its contents. The wave of formaldehyde pushed the intestines out across the floor, making the organ look like some kind of giant worm.

Bray saw the noxious pool approaching his feet. He rushed forward, swinging the ax with his last step. The window shattered and the room brightened. And the creature’s concealing shadows disappeared.

Nowhere to hide now , Hawkins thought. He lined up a shot, zeroing in on the creature’s quickly rising and falling chest. Its eyes were wide. Its limbs shook.

“The thing is terrified,” Hawkins said, holding his fire.

Bray stepped back behind Hawkins. “It’s an animal.”

But Hawkins wasn’t so sure. “It’s using tools, Bray. Throwing jars at us. And it’s hiding in the shadows.”

“Chimps throw stones, and maybe it’s nocturnal? Prefers the dark.”

Hawkins kept the thing in his sights. There was more to this creature. “The formaldehyde,” he said. “It wasn’t trying to hit us with the big jar. It saw our aversion to the liquid and covered the floor in it. That’s not just tool wielding. That’s intelligence.”

Bray’s defensive stance loosened. “You’re right.”

The creature hissed at them and Hawkins nearly fired on reflex.

“What are we going to do?” Bray asked.

Hawkins wasn’t sure. The creature might be intelligent, but that didn’t mean it wouldn’t tear them apart if given the chance. At the same time, it was clearly as afraid of them as they were of it. Normally, he’d pack up and check out, but Drake needed to rest. Like it or not, the creature had to be evicted, at least until they figured out their next move.

But the intelligent beast had other plans. With a shriek, it threw two small glass jars. Outside of a head shot, the jars wouldn’t do much damage, but both men dodged, fearful of being coated by a toxic chemical bath.

Hawkins righted himself and looked for the thing, but it was gone. A blur at the center of the room caught his eye. By the time he focused on it, the creature was upon them. It charged down the top of a shelving unit at the center of the room, knocking jars asunder as it ran. Then it leapt, arms outstretched, jaws open, sharp teeth revealed.

It was too close to shoot, so Hawkins swung at it with the rifle. But his aim was low. The creature cleared the weapon’s barrel and found Bray’s ax swinging toward it. For most people, the blow would have been impossible to dodge and, given the force behind it, impossible to survive. But the nimble creature placed its hands atop the flat edge of the swinging blade and pushed its body up and over the weapon.