Uncharted (25 page)

Not only was the island small, but he’d found no source of fresh water. By all rights, the vegetation should be as shriveled as a worm on a hot sidewalk, but the plants’ root systems must tap into seawater that’d been filtered by the sand.

He stood at the edge of the sea, shadowed now by the clouds that had moved in to block the blue of the sky. What was he going to tell the group? He had told them he could find water; now he wanted to prove he could make good on a promise. He’d been a goof-off in college; he’d sold fewer of John’s books than any of the others. Now he was a man of substance and power, but his friends weren’t easily impressed by substance. And he couldn’t reveal his true power.

Not while he was still in the running for Bundy’s title.

He rubbed his hand across his face and heard the faint rasp of his stubble. At least he hadn’t exhausted every hope. No one had examined this side of the island, so he might yet find something useful.

He was walking with his head down when he realized that the shadows had grown thicker. As apprehension erupted between his shoulder blades and adrenaline fired his blood, he raised his arm and looked up to see the profile of a towering skull that loomed above the beach. Like the mother monster in a stream of Alien movies, the skull’s elongated head extended toward the center of the island, while the yawning jaw rested on a rocky promontory.

He blew out a breath and shook off his anxiety. If the landscape held the power to spook him, he was more tightly wound than he realized.

He moved farther down the beach and tilted his head at the towering formation. The circular dome, the sharply planed edges, the caverns cut by wind and surf at the lower and upper ridges—even a child would recognize this outcropping’s resemblance to a human skull.

In all the years of his murderous hobby, Mark had seen only one naked skull. He wouldn’t have found that souvenir, but one afternoon when he was trimming weeds at the edge of the lake, he thought he saw an abandoned football helmet in the reeds and bent to pick it up. The domed shape, stained greenish brown by the muddy lake water, had belonged to one of his victims—which one, he couldn’t say. Judging by the advanced state of decomposition, he’d estimate it was one of his first, though he couldn’t be sure with all the scavengers in the area.

He had been tempted to clean the skull and keep it, but his unerring sense of self-preservation forced him to drill it, quarterback style, into the center of the lake. As much as he would have enjoyed a keepsake, he could not risk being caught. Let someone find it long after Mark had moved on.

Not even a phantom lived forever.

He tilted his head and studied the ledge, which rose at a steep angle. The sea and weather had created hundreds of pockets and crevices, turning the cliff into a ragged fretwork. The highest point loomed at least thirty feet above the beach, and from this angle Mark could see that the formation wasn’t heavy stone, like granite, but some kind of porous rock. He was familiar with coquina, a soft limestone common in Brevard County, so perhaps this was a similar composite of coral and crushed shells.

He grinned up at the craggy face and wondered what secrets it held. Who else had been inside, and what had they done in those caverns? The interior caves, however many there were, could serve as protection from the biting wind and relentless heat.

The women might not like the idea of sheltering in a skull, but if the wind began to bluster again, they’d scurry inside quickly enough. And many a natural cistern had been discovered inside a cave.

Whistling in self-congratulation, he climbed over the rocks and walked toward the mouth of the cave.

Kevin dropped the sandy Frisbee and stared at the trench he’d been digging for what felt like hours. He’d moved more than twenty-four cubic feet of heavy sand without encountering a drop of water. The guy on the Discovery Channel had struck seawater after only a few minutes, so Kevin figured he must have done something wrong.

He looked up at the clouds that had turned gray and still refused to spit even a drop of rain. He was beginning to think the trench was a stupid idea—if rain did fall, what would prevent the rainwater from seeping into the sand? And if they
did
manage to fill this infernal hole with water, how would they start the fire to heat the rocks? Mark had said he could build a fire, but Kevin no longer trusted his old friend.

A muscle clenched along Kevin’s jaw as he thought of Mark’s actions on the boat. Morris had lashed the captain to the rail with duct tape and knocked John on the head when the old man protested. Kevin had been about to object, but he’d backed down when he saw the maniacal look in Mark’s eye.

He didn’t ever want to see that look again. So if he had to dig from here to China to keep Mark happy, he’d do it, because he had to pro tect Karyn and Lisa and Susan . . . and himself. Mark had always been unpredictable, but last night his behavior had been unimaginable.

Feeling restless and irritable, Kevin straightened, stretched out the kinks in his back, and groaned when his bones protested the movement. Susan lay a few feet away with fabric over her head, useless. Lisa and Karyn were out looking for rocks. He might as well join them.

Before leaving, he looked down at Susan, who hadn’t spoken in some time. Lisa had mentioned that Susan was depressed about that awful cut on her face, so if sleep was her escape from brutal reality, he didn’t want to disturb her.

But he couldn’t walk off without a word.

He sank to his haunches. “Susan, you asleep?”

“No.”

“You okay here? I’m going to search the beach.”

When she didn’t answer, he peered through the golden material covering her face. Her profile was still lovely, and when viewing her from this angle, he couldn’t see any injury at all—

Her lashes fluttered and lifted. “You go on,” she said, her voice slow and flat. “I want to . . . just lie here.”

“Okay, then.” He squeezed her shoulder, which was as warm as the sand. “Maybe you can get some rest.”

Since Lisa had gone east, he headed west, stepping gingerly over a firm, wet section of ground. He followed the curve of the beach, then stopped and stared. The rock formation that had appeared to rise from the center of the island now stood before him, jutting from the island’s interior to the shore. From this angle, the stony outgrowth bore an uncanny resemblance to the profile of a human skull.

To the left of the rocks, safely beyond the reach of the tide, someone had scattered clothing, books, and pieces of broken electronic equipment—random ruined reminders of prosperity.

Another
dump site?

He halted when something winked at him from the rocks near the water. He stepped closer and spotted the black plastic shell of a portable television, the glass screen broken out and missing. Too bad. They could have used a good-sized piece of glass as a blade.

Another gleam caught his eye. Nestled among the rocks along the far edge of the jutting ledge was a strip of chrome—a bumper, he realized with a shock, probably from an old car. A steel bumper would have a sharp edge.

He strode forward and barely noticed the shimmer on a puddle in his path. Unexpectedly, the surface of the puddle shivered in rebuke at his first step. He cried out as the sand gave way beneath him. He grasped at empty air as his wrapped feet scrambled for purchase and found none. His fingers crooked around a crushed Pepsi can as the watery sand seeped into every crevice of his clothing . . .

He struggled to move back to solid ground, but his legs felt like they were covered in wet cement. The ooze crept up to his chest; in a moment he’d be up to his neck.

Quicksand
. His mind filled with the black-and-white images of Tarzan movies he’d watched as a kid. Quicksand had devoured unwary European hunters in seconds, swallowing them alive as they screamed and struggled vainly for help. He wasn’t sure how much of that impression was Hollywood hype, but he didn’t want to find out the hard way—

“Help!” Surrendering to a feeling of empty-bellied terror, he threw back his head and screamed. “Lisa! Mark! Anybody!”

At the sound of splashing, he tried to turn toward the waves. “Kevin!” Karyn called. “Don’t move; stay still!”

He tilted his head and saw Karyn, with Mark trailing behind, and for once Kevin didn’t care if Mark took charge. They were approaching from the opposite side of the skull-like ledge, scrambling toward him over a stretch of rocky beach.

“Careful,” he called, coughing as the wet sand squeezed his chest. “I don’t know how solid the ground is over there.”

Karyn stopped in midstride, clinging to a slick boulder as her eyes fastened on his. “Don’t move,” she called. “Morris will know what to do.” Her eyes darted toward Mark. “You do know, don’t you?”

“Yeah,” Mark said, satisfaction in his voice. “I know.”

He crept forward, carefully threading his way between the sharp stones. He stopped at the edge of a man-sized rock, leaned forward, and extended a hand toward Kevin. “Can’t come any closer.”

Kevin stared in disbelief. “I can’t reach you. Can’t you throw me something?”

Mark shook his head. “Don’t have a rope. But I can talk you through this if you stop struggling. Quicksand is permeated with water, so you can float in it. Take a deep breath, fill your lungs with air, and lean back. Unless that’s extremely dense quicksand, you’ll float.”

Unless?
Kevin wasn’t in the mood to hear about exceptions to the rule and even less inclined to intentionally lower his head into the muck that seemed intent on having him for lunch. But he couldn’t ask Karyn to risk her life, and Mark seemed to know what he was talking about.

On the other hand, at one time Mark had believed aliens assassinated JFK and the Apollo moon landing was an elaborate hoax.

Kevin closed his eyes and inhaled a deep breath, consciously expanding his lungs. Then, grimacing, he tilted his head back, glimpsed gray sky, and tried to remember how it felt to float in his neighborhood pool.

“That’s it, Kev!” Karyn called, relief in her voice. He could barely hear her through the wet sand trickling into his ears.

“Now,” Mark yelled, “make slow backstroke movements, and reach for solid ground. Try to move back to where you were before you fell in. We’ll come around and pull you out.”

He wanted to tell them not to move; this entire island felt like a yawning trap, but he didn’t dare waste his breath. The sound of his pulse echoed in his ears; his arms were weighted with sludge. His chest had risen to the surface, but his legs were still imprisoned in the muck. How was he supposed to backstroke through this mess?

He heard the sound of more splashing, then a shadow fell across his face.

“Come on, baby.” It was Karyn, speaking an endearment he hadn’t heard on her lips in over a decade. “Come on, Kev, pretend you’re in the club pool. Swim to me.”

He struggled to lift his right arm, felt the heavy tug of the sand, heard the
thwap
of the broken suction as he pulled free. The sludge at his side settled into a wet, smooth shimmer as he clawed at the air and hoped for contact with something solid . . .

A firm hand gripped his; sheer strength tugged him forward. For a moment he was convinced the greedy quicksand would win; then Mark grunted, the quicksand retreated, and Kevin slid free of the imprisoning womb.

When he tipped his head back, he saw that Mark and Karyn had collapsed on the sand too. Then Karyn lifted her head and gave him the first real smile he’d seen since their arrival.

Kevin lifted his hand and weakly flapped it in their direction. “Thanks, guys.”

Karyn grinned and sat up. “As they say in New Yawk,
noprollem
.”

“Yeah.” Mark rose on one elbow. “Anytime.”

Karyn’s smile faded. “Good grief. What if there are pockets of quicksand all over this island?”

Mark lifted his shoulder in a matter-of-fact shrug. “It’s possible. Quicksand can occur anywhere you have a mix of sand and water, but it’s especially common on beaches and riverbanks. We’ll have to warn the others.”

Kevin rolled onto his stomach, grateful for the solidity of even this awful black sand, then rose to his elbows and looked from Karyn to Mark. “I don’t know what would have happened if you hadn’t come along.”

Mark waved the remark away, but Karyn reached out and flicked a clump of mud from Kevin’s shoulder.