Phoenix Island (38 page)

She jolted upright.

No!
She’d drifted into sleep again.
You have to stay awake
. She pressed the shell into her hand until she had to grit her teeth.

No sooner had she pulled it away than sleepiness settled once more upon her like a heavy fog. She just needed a little rest. That was all. Just a quick nap. She’d been in the sweatbox for days, enduring heat exhaustion and hunger, thirst, and the unbelievable stress of all
that had happened. She was worn out from crying and weighed down by incalculable sadness over the deaths of Medicaid and Ross. Now she was stretched out on her back, and the shadowy recess beneath the fallen tree was cool and dark, and the sand was soft as a fine bed.

Her lids drooped, and her vision blurred. Her head settled into the sand. Her eyes closed.

The sound of the boat woke her. The boat shone white as an angel out there in the water beyond the trees, idling beside the long arm of stones Carl said he’d use to find her.

He’d found her.

But then the boat was pulling away.

Panic seized her.

She’d fallen asleep, and Carl had come and called for her, but she hadn’t responded, and now he thought she was dead or gone or captured, and he was pulling away, and—

“Wait!” she cried, struggling upright and scrambling from her hiding spot. She tripped over the fronds and fell into the open, struggled once more to her feet and staggered toward the departing boat, waving her arms. “Carl, wait!”

The boat kept going.

She ran screaming to the water’s edge, and just as she was ready to drop down and cry, the boat turned and came back toward her.

He had seen her.

She clapped her hands and shouted with joy and then did sit down—fell was more like it—her legs going weak as she plopped onto the sandy shore and surrendered to the tears, letting them obscure her already blurred vision.

It was okay to cry now. She was finally safe, finally leaving this horrible island.

The boat pulled in. She heard splashing—Carl coming for her through the water—and felt guilty for sitting, for making him come all the way in.

Then she heard more splashing. And hooting. And laughter.

Her heart nearly stopped as she looked up and saw the blurry shapes moving toward her out of the water.

It wasn’t Carl at all.

The hunters had found her.

Decker’s blue eyes leaned close. “Oh, baby, you are so screwed.”

C
ARL LIMPED OUT OF THE
jungle, the dead pig heavy in his arms. Its wiry fur pressed like so many bristles into the naked flesh of his arms, which shook with the effort of carrying the dead animal. The cloying, coppery smell of its blood filled his nose and mouth. He struggled across the soft sand, his body roaring with pain and trembling with exhaustion. His eyes burned with fatigue, one of them currently useless with the stream of blood still draining into it, and his ankle screamed with every step, feeling as if the bones there had been replaced with shards of broken glass. Where the first bullet had drilled a hole through his side, the blood flow seemed to be slowing, but the pain hadn’t let up at all, making it hard even to breathe.

Coming out of the thick foliage, he squinted against the bright sunlight, his good eye temporarily blinded by the day, and struggled onto the beach. Though he couldn’t really see, he trudged on toward the sound of breaking waves, pushing through soft sand that clutched his feet and ankles as if the island itself were in league with Stark.

Through sun-blind eyes, he made out the black mass of the parking lot and, further off, the landing strip. He willed his feet to keep moving as he went around the hot pavement to the right, toward the long pier.

He staggered and fell, sprawling hard across the pig. His ribs screamed with pain, and the cut over his eye spilled fresh blood, further blurring his compromised vision. It would be so easy to stay down. So easy to lie there and rest. So easy to just give up and wait for Stark and his savages to either kill him or drag him off to the Chop Shop. Either
way, it would mean an end to the suffering, an end to the struggle, and in his battered condition these endings sounded almost impossibly sweet.

But he couldn’t do it. He couldn’t quit.

Quitting would also mean the end of Octavia. And quitting would put Stark one step closer to his twisted dream. Quitting here, now, would mean the death of thousands, perhaps millions.

He needed to get back to the compound, back to the boat, but the island between here and there was crawling with soldiers.

His only chance now was the pig.

Growling against the pain, Carl rose from the sand and hoisted the dead pig once more into the air.
Move,
he told himself.
Last round
.

Behind him, in the forest, the hunters’ cries drew louder. They would break from the trees any second.

Please, God,
Carl thought, and allowed himself a prayer request:
Give me time. Let me make it to the water
.

All his life, he’d wanted to feel the ocean. . . .

And then his feet left the sand and entered the swirling foam of a broken wave. He hurried along the water’s edge toward the pier. The salty ocean water rushed in again, almost toppling him, and the spray of the broken wave burned his open wounds. Then he lurched into something hard—the pier—and could have whooped for joy but instead scrambled onto it with his heavy load and hurried out its length, the wooden planks so hot in the tropical sun he could feel the heat coming off them.

Shouting tumbled across the beach. Had they spotted him?

Hurrying, he slipped and nearly fell again, dropped the pig with a heavy thump, bent to retrieve it, and with blurred vision saw the heavy red trail—his blood mixing with the pig’s—following him out to the burning planks of the pier. He smiled.
Good. Let them find my track and follow it all the way to the end.

Grunting with effort, he once again picked up the pig and started moving. Behind him, the shouting grew louder, and someone farther back stitched the air with machine-gun fire.

Reaching the end of the pier, Carl filled with conflicting emotions: joy at having made it this far and fear of what lay ahead. This was it. All
or nothing. Finding one last burst of strength, he heaved the pig out into the water.

Then, summoning all his courage, he jumped off the dock.

One dark corner of his mind laughed. In all those years of dreaming about the ocean, he’d never quite imagined his first swim like this. . . .

He swam as fast as he could back under the pier, his wet clothes and boots and the pull of the tide working against him. Salt water stung his eyes but washed the blood from them, and in the shade provided by the dock overhead, his vision returned fully . . . just in time to see the surging wave that lifted him and slammed him hard against one of the concrete supports. He screamed involuntarily at the pain but swam on, and before the withdrawing wave could pull him out, he grabbed hold of a support nearer to the shoreline and clung there beneath the dock, waiting for killers to converge from land and sea.

He didn’t have to wait long.

He heard the hunters break free of the jungle, their voices so loud in the open air, they seemed like weapons in and of themselves. Bright and vicious. Full of bloodlust and devoid of mercy.

“Carl,” a deep voice called across the expanse. It was Stark. “It’s over. Come out now. Face me like a man, and I’ll order the others to stand down. We’ll settle this ourselves—just the two of us, face-to-face in single combat, two warriors—and I will give you the honorable death you have earned.”

Stark meant it. He was offering a duel.

The idea of one last fight tempted Carl, but even if he were whole, he couldn’t beat Stark. The man was too strong, too fast, too well trained. Broken and exhausted as he was, Carl would stand no chance at all.

His only chance was the pig. . . .

“Blood trail!” someone yelled.

Teens cheered. Men bellowed.

Stark’s voice: “He went toward the water.”

Carl heard the sounds of many feet clambering onto the pier and his heart hammered in his chest.
Come on,
he thought, willing the pig to bleed more, bleed faster.
Before the hunters look under here. . . .

Boots strode directly overhead. Shadows eclipsed the strips of light that had shone between the planks.

“The footprints go all the way to the end,” someone said.

“He’s under the dock.”

No,
Carl thought. To have come this far only to be discovered now. He pictured Octavia, her gray eyes staring, waiting forever. . . .

“Fools,” Stark’s voice said. “Look.”

“Sharks!”

In front of the pier, gray fins waggled above the surface, which churned with the great thrashings of the sharks. A rush of joy surged through him—
Yes, pig! Yes!—
but then, suddenly, he was very much aware of his own wounds, of his
own
blood scenting the water. But there was nothing to do about that now. He could only wait and hope that the pig would satisfy them, that he had made it far enough back toward shore, and that hunters would fall for his trick.

“The nutter tried to swim for it,” someone said. A girl’s voice, British . . . Cheng?

“Hammerheads got him.”

“Told you I heard him scream.”

“They’re eating him.”

Someone laughed. “Yes! That’s friggin’ awesome!”

A loud crack silenced the laugher, and someone fell to the planks overhead.

“You dare to laugh?” Stark said. “Carl Freeman was ten times the warrior you’ll ever be. Any of you!”

Silence.

Carl clung to the pier support, waiting.

Something big passed in the water. Something huge. Close. Twisting, it gentled past him with a sliding caress.

A shark had smelled his blood . . . and oh, they were coming for him now.

“He didn’t deserve this death,” Stark went on.

The shark passed again. This time it bumped lightly, almost lovingly, into Carl. He chilled with its probing, knowing he would soon feel its teeth.

“He deserved an honorable death. In combat.” Footsteps marched toward the end of the dock. “He deserved a warrior’s death. Not . . . this!”

Gunfire exploded overhead. Bullets tore into the water, and Carl saw sharks thrash with their impact, saw their blood roil to the surface, joining that of the pig.

The shark that had bumped him hurried toward this fresh slaughter.

Carl shuddered with relief.

Overhead, Stark bellowed.

The others were quiet.

“You failed, all of you,” Stark said. “Carl determined his own fate and threw himself at the sharks rather than face the disgrace of losing to you. With no chance of victory, he made for himself honor.”

Silence.

“Tonight,” Stark said, “we will feast in honor of Carl Freeman. We’ll have a pig roast, here on the beach, and if any of you speak ill of him, I’ll cut off your head and burn it on a stake like a tiki torch. For now, we march back to Training Base One. Phoenix Force, ride tail. Hooah?”

Phoenix Force roared in response.

“On your lead, Boudazin.”

“Yes, Commander.” And Boudazin, who had, what seemed to Carl a thousand years ago, given him a kiss for luck, started shouting with authority, and Carl heard the kids forming it up on the sand. “All right, orphans! Double-time back to base, hooah?”

“Hooah!”

“Maintain formation. Cadence on me. C-one-thirty rolling down the strip . . .”

“C-one-thirty rolling down the strip!”

“Phoenix Island orphans take a little trip.”

“Phoenix Island orphans take a little trip!”

Their singing faded into the forest. So great was Carl’s fear of the sharks, he found it nearly impossible to remain under the dock, but he waited until the singing died away before wading to the edge and peeking at the sandy beach. It was empty.

He sighed with relief.

The pig had saved him.

He’d given the hunters what they’d wanted—his death—and now he was free to slip like a ghost the rest of the way to the boats. In fifteen minutes, he’d pull into Octavia’s cove, and they would finally escape.

He emerged from beneath the dock, and something yanked him out of the water, into the air. . . .

Laughter boomed like thunder.

Carl crashed down hard on the pier in another explosion of pain.

Stark towered over him. “The prodigal son returned!”

No. It couldn’t end like this. He’d fooled them.

Stark took a step forward and held out his hand.

Carl crab-walked backward and struggled to his feet. Half-mad with fear, anger, and dismay, he weighed his options and found them nearly weightless. Behind him fed frenzied sharks; before him loomed a battle-hardened giant.

“Very clever, Carl. Very resourceful. I wondered when I saw pig bristles in the blood trail. Then it occurred to me . . . you have a true will to live, so you most likely had only made it
seem
you’d been eaten. Very impressive. So impressive I decided to spare you from the mob.”

“Am I supposed to thank you?”