Phoenix Island, page 28
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.”
CARL 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?”
Stark smiled. “Gratitude is a societal commodity. Men like us deal in realities.” He took a step forward.
Carl edged closer to the end of the pier. Behind him, sharks still splashed.
Stark advanced slowly. “Son.”
Carl snapped a jab into Stark’s chin. “Don’t call me that.”
Stark laughed, making a show of rubbing his chin. “Nice strike, son. But let’s stop this foolishness.” He offered his hand. “Come with me. I’m giving you another chance.”
Carl stepped back, nearing the edge of the dock. His only chance was to trick Stark into charging him, then slip under his attack, so that Stark went off the dock into the water, into the sharks. “Come on,” he said, beckoning.
Stark stepped toward him. “The orphans will be flabbergasted. Carl Freeman, returned from the dead, resurrected, larger than life, standing at the right hand of his father.”
“You’re not my father,” Carl said. He flicked out another jab. Stark batted it away.
“I could be your father. We are both warriors. We’re stronger than these others. Better. Come back with me, and we’ll rule over them together.”
“And then what? Send suicide bombers to Vegas? Assassinate the president? Set off a nuke at Disney?”
Stark’s smile widened. “It would be a start.”
“You’re crazy.”
“Perhaps. But if I am, it’s merely one more trait that you and I share.”
Carl spat blood. “Yeah, right. I’m not crazy.”
“No? What’s all this about then? Why fight your destiny, son? What do you owe the world? What do you owe these orphans? Why do you insist on denying your own talent? And why would you sacrifice a brilliant future for some silly girl? It boggles the mind. It truly does. Forget it, and so will I. You’re forgiven. Here, take my hand, and we’ll put it all behind us.” As Stark spoke, he inched closer.
Carl feinted with a jab and drilled his battered right hand into Stark’s chest. It was like punching a boulder. Pain shot all the way to his shoulder.
Stark tsk-tsked and shook his head, as if losing patience with a temperamental toddler.
Carl teetered at the edge. Sharks thrashed loudly in the water.
Stark stepped closer.
Keep coming, Carl thought. Just a few more steps.
“Come to me in peace,” Stark said, “and one day you will inherit my throne.”
“No,” Carl said.
Stark spread his arms. “If you wish to die in obscurity rather than rise to greatness, the choice is yours. But really . . . what’s your next move? Forward, into the sharks? No—suicide isn’t your style. What, then? Think maybe you could draw me out, make me fall into the sharks? The matador and the charging bull? That trick might work on Parker—the man’s a baboon—but I hope I’ve earned enough respect for you to know it would never work on me. That leaves only one way: straight down the middle.”
Stark fell into his loose fighting stance and beckoned him forward.
Disappointment crashed down on Carl like a great stone. Of course Stark had known . . . it was pointless. He was finished. So be it. At least he’d go down fighting. “All right, then.” He wiped blood from his cut eye and spat on the planks between them. “I got something for you.” He raised his fists and shuffled forward.
“That’s the spirit!” Stark said.
Carl feinted with his jab and drove a kick toward Stark’s knee.
Stark twisted, Carl’s kick missed its target, and then Stark was on him. Carl hammered hooks into the giant’s ribs, but Stark wrapped Carl’s head and arm into a lock and twisted his upper body.
Carl’s feet left the ground, his legs swung high, and his entire body spun like a clock hand racing backward. For a fraction of an instant, he reversed in the air, head nearest the dock, legs pointed skyward. Then his body cracked like a whip, and Stark smashed him into the planking.
He lay shattered on the pier. He couldn’t breathe, couldn’t move. Stark adjusted his lock slightly, and Carl felt his own arm squeeze against his neck.
Stark said, “I’m sorry it has to end like this, son, I really am. Perhaps your spirit will take the chip further, get us closer to our goal. Onward, progress, onward.”
Carl had just enough time to panic—they were going to chip him, turn him into a zombie—then Stark squeezed, cutting off the blood flow, and Carl’s vision grew strange. Darkness framed blue sky, then tightened until it was like looking down a long, dark tunnel, the sky a mere blue dot at its end. The tunnel closed, the sky winked out, and darkness claimed him.
WHEN OCTAVIA COULD NO LONGER walk, they lifted her between them—Parker taking her cuffed wrists, Decker holding her lashed ankles—and carried her into the Chop Shop. Over the span of a life that had dealt her no end of misery, she’d never felt such pain, weakness, and hopelessness. She sagged between them, limp as a corpse and wishing only that death would wash her away from all this suffering and injustice into a blissful nothingness. Tragedy had driven her beyond hope and, mercifully, beyond terror, as well . . . or so she believed until, at the end of the hospital corridor, they dropped her just inside a white room.
Misery returned at the sight of him.
Carl, Carl, Carl . . .
He lay still as a corpse on a table at the center of the room. Blood dripped from the table’s edge to a puddle on the floor.
All for her. All because he’d tried to save her.
She tried to scream but found only a moan.
A bearded man in spectacles and a white lab coat stood over her friend, speaking to someone she couldn’t see.
“Woo-ee!” Parker said. “You don’t look so hot, Hollywood!”
“What did you say?” a deep voice said, and Stark came through a door on the opposite side of the room.
Parker tried to smile. It looked like he had a stomachache. “I didn’t mean anything.”
“You didn’t mean anything?” Stark said. He gestured toward Carl. “He was the finest soldier to ever come here, and look what you made me do to him!”
Parker raised his hands, palms out. “Hold on now, Commander. You told me to push him. Told me that before he even got here.”
“Push, yes,” Stark said, “but you’re too stupid to understand the difference between pushing someone and trying to break him.”
Parker snorted. “Shoot, if I wanted to, I would’ve broke him like a promise.”
“No, you wouldn’t have.” Stark’s arm flashed out, and across the room, Parker grunted and gurgled. He staggered backward with his hands to his throat, crashed into a wall, and slid to the floor. His hands pushed away from his throat, and something clattered across the floor and came to rest a few feet from Octavia’s face: a slender knife, red with blood.
