Island 731 (34 page)

When the jagged teeth of the bone saw bit into the base of the creature’s tail, the thing started twitching. By the second stroke, it struggled to break free from Hawkins’s embrace. He could feel the tail struggling to unwrap from his body, but it was pinned beneath them, and the spider legs, while strong, were no match for Hawkins’s rage-filled grip.

The high-pitched whine of the defibrillator charging filled the air. A moment later, Blok shouted, “Charged!”

“Bray?” Hawkins said.

“Almost there!”

Hawkins looked to his left and saw Blok, live defibrillator paddles in his hands. “Get ready!”

With a grunt, Bray pushed hard and cut through the forearm-thick tail.

The creature convulsed, lost in a torrent of pain. Hawkins let go, slid his hands beneath the carapace, and shoved. The forty-pound monster flipped through the air and landed on its back. Eight legs twitched madly, searching for purchase that wasn’t there. Its oozing stump of a tail shifted pitifully back and forth. Then Blok descended on the creature, placing the paddles on its softer, blood-soaked underside and triggered the shock.

All eight legs went straight and riqid for the duration of the jolt. The overloaded paddles began to smoke and Blok pulled them away. The legs fell flat on the floor.

The monster was dead, but there was no time for back patting. Jones’s belly looked ready to burst, but he looked different than DeWinter. Where she had one bulge, Jones had three smaller ones. Hawkins’s mind replayed the attack. Jones had been stung three times, with each sting inserting a new parasite into the host.

One of them was bad enough. He didn’t think they’d survive three.

Hawkins scrambled to his feet, picked up the machete, and ran for the door. He tried the handle, but it was locked. Bray arrived and started viciously kicking the door. Despite putting all his weight into each kick, the door held.

“They’re coming!” Blok said.

The door and its frame were solid. “The door is steel,” he said to Bray. “You can’t kick it down.”

“We have to try,” Bray said.

“I have a better idea.” Hawkins reached into his cargo shorts pocket for the captive bolt stunner and was surprised to feel several spare cartridges still in his pocket.
Kam left us a way out.
He pulled the bolt stunner from his pocket and placed the muzzle against the flat inner-door lock. He pulled the trigger. Two inches of stainless steel exited the barrel traveling at the speed of a bullet. The impact didn’t sound like much—just a cough of air and a single whack, like a hammer on the head of a nail—but when Hawkins stepped back, the lock was gone, launched into the hallway on the other side.

Hawkins flung open the door and ran into the hallway, thinking there might be at least a chance they would survive for at least a few more minutes. That hope disappeared when he looked to the right and found the long, white corridor filled by the immense and deformed girth of Jim Clifton.

Whatever signal Bennett used to send Jim into a murderous rampage had clearly already been sent. The moment Hawkins’s feet fell on the hallway floor, Jim was in motion. He wasn’t a fast man, but there was no getting around him, or the swinging blades extending out of his wrist stumps.

Bray was halfway out the room when he caught sight of Jim. His eyes went wide and he managed to turn himself around in time to remove himself, and Blok, from the giant man’s path. At the same time, he also brought them dangerously close to Jones’s body, which looked close to bursting.

Hawkins backed away, matching Jim’s pace and using the machete to parry any swing that got too close. He flinched when the machete struck flesh instead of stone, but Jim showed no reaction. He just kept coming like he could see out of those hollow eye sockets. Hawkins wanted to turn and run, but couldn’t leave Bray and Blok behind. He also had no idea what was behind him. There could be another creature lying in wait. Hawkins took one fast step back, intending to look over his shoulder. Instead, he collided with something solid.

A wall. The hallway was a dead end!

With just ten feet separating the pair, Hawkins wedged the machete between his legs and held it there. He fumbled with the captive bolt stunner, looking for a way to open it. He found a small button lock, pushed it in, and slid it forward. The bolt stunner snapped opened.

The sound of the stunner opening focused Jim on Hawkins’s position. The big man swung wildly, and with renewed vigor, but the swings were broad and slow. Despite Bennett having turned Jim into a mindless killer, he hadn’t done anything to improve Jim’s health. The big man was tiring.

Hawkins slipped a new cartridge into place and closed the stunner. The blades attached to Jim’s arms whooshed past Hawkins’s chest. Dangerously close. He could charge forward and attack with the stunner or the machete, but didn’t think he’d manage a killing blow without also being skewered. So he aimed to immobilize.

Jim swung and missed by mere inches. While he was overextended, Hawkins brought the machete down on Jim’s arm, cutting through the tube feeding him morphine—he hoped—into the man’s ravaged body.

Hawkins ducked Jim’s next blow, the blade zinging across the concrete wall over Hawkins’s head, leaving a trail of bright orange sparks in its wake. Hawkins swung for the other arm and connected, successfully severing the second liquid-filled tube. Jim staggered briefly and Hawkins took the opening to dive past him.

But instead of running, Hawkins got back to his feet and turned to face Jim as he bumbled around.

“Hawkins,” Bray yelled. He and Blok stood in the hall, holding the door to the surgical suite/cellblock shut. The door shook from impacts on the other side. The other spider chimeras had emerged from Jones’s body. “Let’s get the hell out of here!”

“I won’t leave him like this,” Hawkins replied.

His voice drew Jim toward him. Hawkins backed away, hoping to tire the man even further. Jim’s swings slowed more and he began to grunt, at first from exertion, but then in pain. Whatever drug had killed the pain was wearing off without a constant supply.

After one last big swing, Jim’s energy seemed to disappear. He fell to his knees, heaving with each labored breath. He tried to raise his arm to swing at Hawkins again, but failed.

The door shook from a heavy impact. “Hawkins!” Bray shouted.

Jim didn’t react when Hawkins stepped closer. Whatever fire had burned inside the man had gone out, at least temporarily.

“I’m sorry, Jim,” Hawkins said.

Jim turned his head up toward Hawkins’s voice and moaned. He sounded desperate and tired.

Hawkins placed the bolt stunner against Jim’s head and pulled the trigger. With a puff of air and stab of metal, Jim collapsed to the floor at Hawkins’s feet, just short of the door.

Bray looked at Hawkins like he was crazy. “Can we go now?”

The door shook again.

“They’re hitting the door all at once,” Blok said.

“How long between strikes?” Hawkins asked.

Bray leaned into the door. “About ten sec—”

The impact caught Bray off guard. The door opened for just a moment, but long and wide enough for Hawkins to see the three creatures on the other side. One for each of them. It would be a short fight, but the same drawn-out, horrific, and painful ending shared by Jones and DeWinter.

Hawkins put his hands against the door and pushed. “After the next strike, just turn and run. If we’re lucky, we’ll get a ten-second head start.”

“Ten seconds isn’t going to mean much against these things,” Bray said.

Hawkins agreed, but wouldn’t say so. “Have any other—”

The door shook from an impact. Before Hawkins and Bray could continue the debate, Blok was up and running. Hawkins and Bray quickly gave chase.

As they sprinted down the plain white hallway, Hawkins counted down the seconds. At eight, the door exploded open. He looked back and saw all three spider chimeras spill out into the hall.

But they didn’t give chase. Instead, they pounced.

On Jim.

Hawkins stopped and watched.

Each creature stung Jim’s corpse three times. The man’s bulbous rolls of flesh immediately began to shake.

Nine more
, Hawkins thought.
In just over a minute, there will be nine more of those things
.

Finished with the corpse, the spider chimeras spun their attention back to the fleeing prey. Seeing Hawkins in the hall, the black tails rose into the air, shaking with excitement.

Bray’s hand fell hard on Hawkins’s shoulder and yanked him around. “Ranger, let’s go!”

Hawkins turned and ran, following Bray down a side hall.

The
tick-tack
of twenty-four oversize and frenzied spider limbs followed.

42.

The smooth, linoleum floor squeaked under Hawkins’s feet as he ran. The sound, heard throughout the world’s shopping centers on rainy days, would have normally been a minor annoyance, but here, it might get him killed. The eight-legged chimeras didn’t have a direct line of sight on him—they’d woven a confusing path through the facility’s many hallways—but the ceaseless squeaking made them easy to track. Had he time to pause, Hawkins would have removed his shoes and gone barefoot. Howie had taught him to hunt in silence and sometimes that meant giving up modern comforts, but now it would mean giving up his life.

Even without pausing, he could hear the clacking of the spiders’ claws growing louder. And since he had no intention of allowing one of those things to leap on his back and inject him with their young, it was only a matter of time before he’d have to turn and fight. The outcome might be the same, but at least he’d have fought.

Ahead of him, Bray and Blok ran like men possessed. Neither knew where they were headed, but they moved without pausing, like there was a yellow brick road guiding them. And nothing stood in their way. Bray had twice run into trays of equipment and neither had slowed him down. Hawkins, on the other hand, had to leap over the debris. As a result, he was ten feet behind Bray. Yellowstone rangers often joked with visitors that the best way to survive a bear attack was to be faster than your companion. It got good laughs, but Hawkins never found it funny, mostly because it was the truth.

The clacking of tiny feet on the floor grew louder. Hawkins looked back. The things had rounded the corner behind him, just fifty feet back.

“They’re gaining on us!” Hawkins shouted. “We need a barricade!”

Blok started checking doors to rooms as he passed them. All were locked. Given the sheer size of the building, Hawkins thought it would have been easy to find a hiding spot. But all the hallway doors swung both ways and had no handles to wedge something in, nor locks. They’d passed a large number of windowless doors labeled with letters and numbers, but all were locked.

Hawkins looked back.

Forty feet.

A shout turned Hawkins forward in time to see a pair of hands reach out, grab Blok, and yank him into a side room. Bray stopped, raising his weapon to strike, but then followed Blok into the room, shouting, “Ranger, in here!”

Hawkins didn’t need to be convinced. Whatever and whoever waited for him in the room couldn’t be worse than being turned into a living incubator. He slipped on the floor as he rounded the corner and barreled into the room, colliding with Bray and spilling to the floor.

The door slammed shut behind them. A heavy lock
thunk
ed into place.

Several impacts shook the door a moment later, but they stopped within seconds.

Hawkins pushed himself up and Bray’s bone saw came into focus beneath him. Another inch and the blade could have carved through his face. He rolled away from Bray and found a feminine hand extended toward him. For a moment, he thought it was Joliet, but then saw how long the fingers were. The woman leaned forward. Her aquiline face gave her the appearance of a hawk about to attack. But she wasn’t angry. She was terrified. He took the woman’s hand and got to his feet.

There were four more strangers in the room—two men, three women total—all dressed similarly in tan slacks and white buttoned shirts, which were stained with sweat and blood. The room was like a small cafeteria, with several long, benched tables, a kitchen area, and cabinets lining the walls. The space was modern, lit by recessed ceiling bulbs and air-conditioned. It felt as though they’d been transported from a tropical hellhole to an office building in Anywhere, USA.

Hawkins turned to Blok, who stood at the door, looking through the small, rectangular window. “What are they doing?”

“Just standing there,” Blok said. “Three of them.”

“Just three?” Bray asked.

Blok craned his head back and forth, looking down the length of the hallway in both directions. “Just three.”

“Where are the rest of you?” the woman asked impatiently.

“The rest of us?” Hawkins replied.

“You mean our friends who gave birth to those spider-turtles?” Bray said. “Or do you mean the big guy your boss turned into a walking Ginsu knife?”

“Eight,” Hawkins cautioned, “you don’t know that they—”

“Look at their clothes,” Bray said, taking a step away from the woman. “They’re wearing uniforms. They’re employees. The ones that Bennett didn’t turn into a living blob.”

“It’s not them,” one of the men whispered to another.

Bray pointed to a line of lab coats hanging by the door. There were five. “One for each of them.” He took a lab coat off the hook and inspected it.

“You’re not here for us, are you?” the woman asked.

“What’s your name?” Hawkins asked.

“Doctor Celia Green,” the woman replied.

“Well, Doctor Green, we are not here for you. We were captured. We’ve lost a lot of people, but we’re getting our friends back and getting the hell off this island. If you’re willing to fight, you can come along. If you can’t keep up, you’re on your own.”

She crossed her arms. “We’ll wait.”

“For who?” Hawkins asked.

When she didn’t answer, Hawkins drew his machete slowly. “Listen, lady, we’ve just watched three of our friends give birth to those monsters outside the door. The things that have happened on this island are reprehensible, and I’m not just talking about what Bennett is doing.”