Phoenix Island (37 page)

The gunfire stopped. Carl risked one look back through the trees and saw them coming for him. Two Phoenix Force soldiers, one of whom, Carl was distressed to see, was their toughest, Agbeko, who was nearly as large as Stark. The other looked like Nachef. They both carried rifles and sprinted his way with what seemed like impossible speed.

He had a lead on them, but they’d also had supersoldier treatments, and they crossed the sand as fast as Olympic sprinters. Coming into the forest, they paused to fix bayonets to the ends of their rifles, which looked like standard-issue M-16s.

He swallowed his pain and rushed farther uphill. Only when he topped the embankment did he realize his mistake.

Lost to pain and terror, he’d run straight back to the dim beach where he’d escaped the pigs. How could he have been so stupid?

He saw the barrel-shaped shadows moving just uphill in the thicker foliage, heard their grunts and something like a whistle.

“I will tell you what is going to happen,” Agbeko’s deep voice called up to him. “You will come out to us now, Carl, and we will let you live.”

Nachef’s laughter fluttered up in the wake of Agbeko’s words.

They were coming up the embankment.

Maybe I should just wait for them here,
Carl thought.
Surprise them as they come over the edge
. But there was no way they’d be stupid enough to come side by side, especially with his blood trail marking the way, not when they’d been trained by Stark. These two weren’t like the thugs back at camp; they were combat-experienced mercenaries who’d already survived Phoenix Island and gone off to fight Stark’s battles. They’d killed. They’d survived. There would be no outrunning them.

Carl picked up a rock.

A rock versus two machine guns. Long odds.

They were close—coming up the slope, nearing the embankment. Any second now, it would rain lead.

A pig squealed uphill. Soon the whole herd would charge. . . .

Wait,
Carl thought.
Wait
.

The big boar strutted out of the trees and snorted at him, its eyes burning with pig rage. Other boars popped from the trees with choppy pig motions, the unlikely speed of their stout bodies and stubby legs making them look like video on fast-forward.

Carl smiled at their tusks, which shone like highly polished knives of bone, and knew what he had to do.

“You’re beautiful,” he said, and charged straight at them.

He sprinted dead at them for ten feet, then spun. The massive animals launched as one. He gave them perhaps half a second, then sprinted downhill.

With the pigs right behind him, Carl leapt over the embankment and whipped the rock at the nearer soldier—Agbeko—who towered just to the left of him, fewer than ten feet downhill. The stone cracked him in the chest, and Carl saw the hulking soldier tip, his rifle firing lead death up into the canopy.

Carl tucked into a tumble just as Nachef, who stood directly down slope from him, sprayed bullets in his direction, his aim bad because of his surprise. Carl’s move took him under the rounds, and he rolled straight at Nachef, launching out of the movement at the last second, just as Stark had taught him during combat gymnastics training, and tackled Nachef at the waistline.

It was a hard tackle.

The soldier folded with a grunt. The force of the impact lifted him off his feet and into the air, and Carl was aware of his rifle spinning away, where it hit and fired once before bouncing downhill, lost to the tangled growth. He slammed Nachef hard into the ground. His own ribs and bullet wound roared in protest, but there wasn’t time to worry about pain. He lurched forward and drilled three hard right hands into Nachef’s panic-stricken face. The Phoenix Forcer’s eyes rolled back in his head as he lost consciousness.

Then the air exploded with screaming, squealing, and gunfire.

Carl scampered instinctively across the ground, waiting for the bullets to strike. He whipped his head around and saw Agbeko firing not at him but into the pack of boars. He saw boars skid away, spouting fountains of blood, heard screams and squeals, saw large slashes open in Agbeko’s legs, saw him lose his footing, and saw the battle-scarred boars descend on him, slashing with their razor-sharp tusks.

Carl hauled himself to his feet. It had worked! He turned to run—then hesitated at the sound of Agbeko’s shrieks.

Get out of here,
he told himself. Run
while you have the chance
!

But the boars were butting the fallen trooper from all sides, ramming their tusks into his body like so many knives.

Agbeko screamed and screamed.

They were killing him.

You are so stupid,
Carl told himself,
too stupid to even live!

Then he was sprinting . . . not downhill, as he should, but uphill, straight into the bloody thick of things. A primitive scream fueled by anger and fear and wild savagery—a caveman’s battle cry—exploded unbidden from his lungs as he drove kicks first into one boar, then another, and the pigs, either shocked by his attack or startled by his subhuman cry, scattered as one, fleeing into the forest.

When he turned back to Agbeko, the Phoenix Forcer was on his feet again, swinging the rifle around, not at the pigs but at him.

No,
Carl thought, and launched himself desperately at Agbeko just as the gun boomed.

Carl’s head jerked, and a line of fire burned across his cheekbone. Then he slammed into Agbeko, hoping for another tackle.

It was like running full-tilt-boogie into a brick wall. Agbeko was six-four or six-five and packed with muscle. Carl fell back on the ground, skidded a few feet, and growled as a fresh eruption of pain filled him.

Agbeko caught his balance and smiled. “That was good, the pigs. You planned it?”

“I kinda hoped it would work,” Carl said.

They were both bloody and breathing hard now.

“You’re a sturdy guy,” Carl said, pointing at the slashes in Agbeko’s legs. “You’re all cut up, and I still couldn’t knock you down.”

“My brothers always called me the Rhino.” He raised the rifle to his shoulder and pointed it at Carl. “But they are all dead now.”

“Wait,” Carl said.

“You saved my life,” Agbeko said. “Surrender and I will let you live.”

Carl thought of Octavia, of his promise to her and what would happen to her if he gave up now. “Let’s talk about this.” He stood. Agbeko was still several feet uphill . . . too wide of a gap for Carl to try anything.

“Last chance,” Agbeko said.

One of the bloodied pigs thrashed on the ground at Agbeko’s feet. He swung the rifle around and fired. Blood arched into the air. The pig jerked once and lay still.

Then Carl saw it: the M-16’s bolt locked to the rear . . .

The rifle was empty. Agbeko had spent all his rounds on the pigs.

He knew it, too, because the massive Phoenix Forcer smiled and said, “Well, Carl . . . you were good enough with sparring, but we are not boxing now.”

Carl moved forward, not straight at Agbeko but to the left. He wanted to get uphill from him, take away some of the big soldier’s height advantage.

Agbeko lunged at him, thrusting the rifle like a spear.

He was fast. Really fast.

Carl dodged the bayonet and sidestepped farther uphill.

Agbeko looked him up and down and shook his head. “You are covered in blood, Carl. Give up this game. Save yourself.”

Carl started to tell him what he could do, but Agbeko charged him, thrusting the blade at his face.

Carl jerked his head to one side, away from the bayonet . . . and straight into Agbeko’s real attack.

The blade had been a feint, and Carl had fallen for it, jerking away just as Agbeko brought the butt of the rifle around in a sharp arc that smashed into his brow. His head snapped backward. He felt the brow split open, felt the cut—a bad one—open over his eye.

Agbeko twisted and brought the butt of the rifle around again, like a puncher throwing the second hook of a double-hook combo, and Carl clamped his arm to his side. The rifle butt slammed into him, but he took it on the arm, not the ribs. He twisted with the blow, just as he would have twisted against a hook to the body, and, out of that twist, he sprang around, countering with a hard left hook.

It caught Agbeko on the point of the chin and dropped him on his butt. Just as he had during sparring, Agbeko started to push straight up again, only this time, Carl stomped his wide face with a kick that stretched the giant onto his back and sent him skidding downhill.

Knowing he had to finish this, Carl ran and jumped on top of Agbeko, riding his skidding body like a sled until it crashed into the base of a tree. Agbeko opened his eyes again and roared at Carl, who rained down lefts and rights on him at full extension, turning his shoulders with every blow and watching his would-be killer’s face come apart. He watched the nose squash like a tomato, spraying blood, watched frowning red mouths open over both eyebrows, watched the heavy jaw go askew, watched the eyes roll back, finally losing consciousness. . . .

Then Carl was up again, moving once more uphill. The bullet wound in his side, his broken ribs, and his damaged ankle pulsed pain. The spear wound burned, as did the bullet wound that had creased his cheekbone. He pawed at the blood running into his eye, trying to clear his vision. Now his hands throbbed, too, their split knuckles already swelling, sharp pains shooting up his wrists all the way to the elbow.

None of that mattered now. All that mattered was getting the boat, getting Octavia, and getting off this awful island. Then he had to warn the world about Stark. There’d be time for hurting and healing and dying, if necessary, after that.

For now, he had to push on.

He hoped Agbeko and Nachef were the only guards posted at Camp Phoenix Force, hoped he could make it to the boats. . . .

Nachef.

Carl heard him first, then saw him . . . far below, down at the tree line, shouting out onto the beach. “He’s here! Freeman’s here!”

Out on the beach, voices shouted in gleeful response.

More hunters. They would come for him now.

Why couldn’t they just stop?

He bent and picked up Agbeko’s rifle—it was empty, but he could still use it like a club or a spear—and found himself staring straight into the glazed eyes of a dead pig.

He remembered the similar emptiness in Ross’s eyes.

That
was the only thing that would stop these hunters, these children-turned-monsters: that same glaze in Carl’s eyes.

They would keep pushing until they killed him. Or until the pigs killed him. Or he fell off a cliff and smashed his skull on boulders. Or he jumped in with the hammerheads. They wouldn’t stop hunting until they were certain he was dead. . . .

At this thought—his mind firing with all the speed that is a survivor’s prerogative in the most desperate moments—he looked into the pig’s glazed eyes, and the plan dropped wholesale into his mind, like a gift from God. It was yet another long shot, but he was getting used to surviving on slim odds, and he’d learned as a boy fighting in the streets and as a young man battling in the ring to make split-second decisions, to turn his entire game plan in the blink of an eye.

He did so now.

Dropping the rifle, he picked up the heavy carcass of the pig, once again swallowing his pain and fighting through his fatigue, and stumbled uphill, away from the shouting voices entering the forest below. He hurried straight up until he heard another pack of kids hooting nearby, another pack of bloodthirsty hunters closing in from the right. He cut left and headed downhill again, not toward the boats of Camp Phoenix Force but down a lateral hillside toward his original point of arrival: the landing strip, beach, and lot where Parker had stolen his medal and started the whole thing. The spot where he was supposed to have dueled to the death. The spot where they’d dumped Medicaid into the mouths of monsters.

In his haste, he slipped and fell several times, crying out with the pain. Yet each time he fell, he picked up the pig again and kept moving. Pain burned like a fire in him. Fatigue squeezed his lungs flat. Cramps
seized his muscles, and blood leaked everywhere, blurring one eye into functional blindness.

When he could no longer run, he shambled. When he could no longer shamble, he walked. When he could no longer walk, he limped. And as he reached the base of the hill and broke the forest’s edge, the howls of the converging hunters merged with such urgent nearness it seemed the jungle itself screamed for his blood.

O
CTAVIA PRESSED THE SHARP SHELL
into the flesh between her thumb and forefinger until she came fully awake again. Lying there in the hollow beneath the tree, covered over by palm fronds, she struggled against sleep.

She had to stay awake. Carl was risking his life for her. What if he came around the island with a boat, and she was asleep? She pictured it happening: imagined hearing a puttering sound just audible over the lapping waves, then louder and louder, and pictured herself looking out and seeing the boat. This image blurred with the memory of another boat, one she’d seen long, long ago, when her father—her real father, when he still lived and she was just a happy little girl—took her to the Seattle waterfront, down to the docks. She remembered how warm and nice the sun had been that day, rare weather in coastal Washington, and how small her hand had felt in her father’s and the smell of fish and a dog barking on a boat, a little dog and—