New Year Island (35 page)

JT’s other fist clutched a handful of hair at the back of Travis’s head, yanking his neck backward. He pulled the hand holding the blade away from her and twisted it up behind Travis’s back. Lifting Travis and stepping back, he held him off the ground.

Travis’s boots kicked helplessly above the floorboards. One struck Camilla in the knee. The knife dropped from his fingers and rattled onto the floor. She scooted forward and kicked it away, sending another rain of red droplets from her face onto the floorboards. Staring up at JT, she cupped a hand below her nose, feeling her palm fill with blood.

JT’s expression was serene. Shoulders flexing, he yanked Travis’s wrist higher and higher between his shoulder blades until a wet, ugly tearing sound echoed through the silence of the room, followed by a liquid pop.

Travis gasped, and his face went slack. JT released him to fall facedown onto the floorboards. He curled onto his side, his arm twisted behind him in an impossible position. “Oh Jesus, my shoulder,” he moaned. “You broke my shoulder.”

Camilla took a deep, shuddering breath, followed by another. The image of that vicious rusty spike hovering inches from her belly chased away all other thoughts.

So close.
She had almost died here. It had been so close.

The shakes hit her hard.

Wrapping her arms around her shoulders, she threw her head back, trembling so violently her teeth chattered. Her lower lip curled into a grimace, making her injured face hurt. Feeling the rivulets of blood from her nose running down her chin and neck, she had to fight to keep from crying. People were talking to her, kneeling next to her. She shook like she was on a bike bumping down a rocky trail. There were hands on her shoulders, concerned faces leaning into her own. She stared at the ceiling, unable to talk without breaking down, hugging herself and shaking like she’d never be able to stop.

B
rent held the cold pack against Camilla’s nose, making a light-blue blur in the center of her field of vision. Around its edges, she could see people leaving the room. The first-aid kit lay open at her feet, filled with bandages, syringes, and phials neatly laid out in their compartments. Sitting with her back against the wall, she was surrounded by discarded gifts from the abandoned game. The shakes had tapered off to an occasional shudder now. Her nose hurt, but the pressure in her swelling face bothered her more than the pain did.

Veronica knelt by her other side and squeezed her shoulder—another caring gesture—and again Camilla felt like crying. Jordan had walked out without a word, without even checking to see how she was doing, but Veronica had been there for her. The woman who had embarrassed her in front of everyone, who had patronized her and treated her so coldly, had also been the first to help her. She had hugged Camilla and held her until she stopped shaking, then helped her stand.

Veronica spoke to Brent now, over Camilla’s head. “She needs an X-ray.”

“I can see that.” He sounded irritated.

“Doc, when you’re done helping her, I think I might need a stitch or two over here.” Mason’s tone was cheerful despite his own facial injuries. “Don’t worry, I promise not to sue.”

Camilla turned her face away from Mason’s voice. This was mostly his fault. Why did he derive so much enjoyment from antagonizing people—even dangerous people? As a kid, he must have gotten beaten up constantly.

Brent glowered at Mason from under his brows. “You’re a real comedian. How’s that working out for you, friend? I don’t see anybody laughing here.”

From the corner, Travis groaned and muttered something Camilla couldn’t hear. Brent had immobilized his arm against his chest with a sling and given him a shot of something. JT and Lauren stood over him, arms crossed, watching him like prison guards.

But Travis didn’t seem to be in any shape to do further mischief. His face was drawn, and cold sweat sheened his forehead. “Doc,” he called in a weak voice. “Got something stronger? This ain’t doing all that much for me.”

“What’d you give him?” Veronica asked.

“Clindamycin.”

She snorted. “Nothing for the pain, then. What about fentanyl? That might shut him up, and we seem to have a lot of it in there.”

Brent frowned, and closed the first-aid kit with a snap. “Do you want to risk his going into respiratory arrest?”

Veronica’s mouth pursed. “I could care less if he did, really.”

The conversation back and forth over Camilla’s head was starting to bother her, making her feel like a child. She was a responsible adult; it was about time she started acting like one. This wasn’t really Mason’s fault, as obnoxious as he had been, or even fully Travis’s fault. The true blame for what had happened rested elsewhere.

“I want to talk to Julian,” she said. “In person. Right now.”

Brent nodded. “Something we should have done much sooner.” With a crackle of knee joints, he stood up and faced the monitor screen.

“Okay, Julian, fun and games are over,” he called out. “We’ve got a dislocated shoulder here and a nose that’s almost certainly broken. Let’s get some transportation double-quick and get these folks to a hospital. I also suggest you call this entire ill-conceived show a wrap right now, before you have something even worse on your hands to deal with.”

The monitor remained silent. Their scores stared back at them.

Brent raised a hand to scratch the side of his head. “Did you hear me? I said we have a medical emergency here. You can be legally liable for withholding medical care from the injured—one of whom, I might add, has also demonstrated repeatedly that he poses an ongoing threat to the lives and safety of others here.”

The monitor remained mute.

Holding the cold pack against her face, Camilla pushed to her feet, catching first Lauren’s eye and then JT’s. Making sure she had both their attention, she pointed toward the north end of the island, where the locked factory buildings stood. They looked at each other and then walked over to join her. Together, the three of them headed for the door.

“Hey!” Brent called after them. “Somebody needs to watch Travis.”

“Just sedate him,” Veronica said, and she walked over to join Camilla and the others. “Or JT can do his other arm, too.”

Brent turned back to face the monitor. “Julian, you can’t just ignore this situation and hope it goes away. Last warning.”

“Forget it,” Veronica said. “The idiots are back there panicking about this. Calling lawyers. That’s why Julian isn’t answering: they don’t know what to do.”

• • •

“Open up!” JT shouted. “Open the motherfucking door.” He slapped the wood, but the panels were solid, tight, and flush against the frame.

Lauren held the four-foot length of pipe she had found yesterday. The heavy plug of concrete on one end made it a crude sledgehammer. Hefting it, she stared at Camilla expectantly. Whatever had scared her earlier, she seemed to be over it. She just looked angry, eager to confront Julian.

Camilla scanned the boarded-up windows of the first factory structure. No little bottles of water on the doorstep today. Instead, the blank facade seemed to be mocking them all. She nodded to Lauren. Sounding like she had a bad cold, Camilla raised her voice, loud enough to carry into the building.

“Break it down.”

Shouldering JT out of the way, Lauren raised the pipe and swung it sideways two-handed, slamming it against the wood with a splintering thud. The door shuddered on its hinges, but it held. She swung again.

A crowd had gathered behind them now. Everyone was here, except for Travis. Even Juan and Jordan stood on the edge of the group, watching. Camilla faced them all and lowered the hand with the cold pack, not really liking what she was seeing on their faces.

“We’re all together on this, right?” she asked. “Even if they take Travis away, it’d be crazy to go on.”

Nobody said anything. Some of them wouldn’t meet her eyes.

“Natalie,” she said, shocked. “
You
can’t seriously be thinking of staying.”

“Nobody is staying.” Brent powered on his phone, frowning as Lauren swung another sledgehammer blow. “It’s time we involved the authorities, instead of escalating the situation ourselves like this.”

He tapped at the screen, waited, then shoved it back in his pocket. “God
damn
it!” he shouted. “Right now, can
any
of you get a signal on your phone?”

Lauren wound up again, raising the pipe over her shoulder, and slammed the concrete plug against the wood. The door sagged, giving way.

“Be careful,” Brent said. “We don’t know who else is in there. Julian might have security people, too. They could perceive this as a threat.”

“That might be smart of them,” Lauren said, and swung again.

JT eased Brent aside. “We’ve got it from here, Doc.”

With a splintering crash, the door swung wide.

Lauren stepped into the doorway.

And stopped. And stared.

The steel pipe fell from her fingers, ringing loudly against the concrete at her feet.

L
auren wasn’t exactly sure what she had been expecting to find on the other side of the door. A nervous Julian, probably, pacing back and forth with a satellite phone to his ear. Frightened camera operators sitting in front of screens showing different views of the island. Maybe even the security crew Brent was so worried about, rushing toward her.
Some
kind of activity, at least. But most definitely not the still, silent space that lay in semidarkness before her. Motes of dust floated in the air, dancing in the rays of light from the open door. The sound of her dropped pipe echoed through the emptiness within, fading into silence. She could smell a musty, closed-up odor like an old attic—the smell of long abandonment.

People were gathering in the doorway behind her. She stepped forward, moving deeper into the building’s single room. Her eyes were adjusting now. She could make out some sparse furnishings: a pair of tube-frame cots and an old drainboard counter with a hole for the missing sink. Along the counter, she could see ring binders and composition notebooks, shelves of bound reports, stacks of loose papers. Rolled posters or maps lay on the tables, next to a scattering of pens and pencils. An animal skull, vaguely like a dog’s, stared from atop a shelf: probably a seal. A much larger skull sat beside it, three times the size of a grizzly bear’s: clearly an elephant seal. The bigger skull was strangely misshapen, fractured as if crushed in a giant vise.

Lauren’s mind swirled in confusion. This was bad, finding the buildings empty.
Really
bad. After what she had found this morning, how was it even possible?

She picked up a quarter-inch-thick report from the counter, flipped open the light blue cover, and tilted the pages to catch the light from the door. A scientific report—a survey of some kind of marine wildlife. Useless. Dropping it to the floor, she headed for the back of the room, to a doorway that led into the neighboring building. She could hear a murmur of conversation rise behind her as the others examined the room she was leaving.

There
had
to be somebody in here. Maybe they were hiding.

The second building was even emptier than the first. Pencil-wide stripes of bright sunlight angled from between the boards on the windows, slicing across more cots and a rickety table with beat-up chairs.

If, the whole time, nobody had been in here…

Lauren’s forehead tightened in confusion. She tried to think past the noisy static that was filling her head now: the voice of the fear monster, the rush of blood in her ears.

It had been lying there on her mattress, right in front of her face, blurring into focus as soon as she opened her eyes this morning. The memory of it hit her again like a punch in the gut, scattering her thoughts. Prickles ran up and down her arms and legs.

A doorway at the back of the second room led through an empty alcove and into the largest building: the two-story factory structure. She stepped through as crashing and splintering noises echoed from the rooms behind her—JT probably, breaking the boards away from the windows. Staring into the large space before her, lit only by pencil beams of light from the holes in the roof and walls, she saw dark rows of machinery.
Old
machinery—probably from a hundred years ago or more.

A cavernous two-story space lay in front of three narrow aisles running between ceiling-high clusters of gears, pipes, vents, glass-fronted needle gauges, and metal tanks like the vats in a brewery. It all looked ancient, covered with layers of dust. Nothing here had been used in decades. A ladder of wooden steps led up to a loft above the machinery, shrouded in darkness. A six-foot metal valve wheel, meant for cranking the machinery by hand, was mounted on the central block of gears, pipes, and gauges. She had no idea what it was for. But none of it mattered.

Julian wasn’t here. Neither was the crew. There was no one here at all.

As the implications hit home the prickles racing over her arms and legs intensified, racing down her back, freezing her where she stood.

Her breathing locked up.

Lauren turned and pushed blindly past the others coming through the doorway. Someone asked her something, but the words were just noise without meaning now. She shoved her way back through the other two buildings, all the faces and rooms she passed registering as only a blur.

She needed to get away from the others.

She couldn’t trust any of them now.

“W
hat do you think this was?”

Brent was looking at JT, as if he should know.

JT rubbed his palm across his chin. It was dark in here. He walked up to the nearest block of machinery, where the giant valve wheel was mounted. Leaning close, he looked at the round, glass-fronted gauges and wiped the dust off one of them with his hand.

“Somebody should go get a light.”

Brent handed him a phone, and he used the screen to light up the gauge.

“Pressure gauge,” he said, ticking a fingernail on the glass cover. “Needle shows PSI.” He stepped back and pointed. “That big tank in there’s a boiler. This part’s a pump.”