New Year Island (82 page)

She licked her teeth in excitement. “I’ll leave you flopping around on the ground in your own shit, just like a seal. What do you say to that, you sick animal?”

Mason stopped limping away.

“Shoot her, Juan,” he said.

Seeing no reaction, Mason laughed. He raised a hand and gave a patronizing little wave, as if to get Juan’s attention. Then he made a gun with his thumb and index finger and pointed it at Veronica, pantomiming shooting. He grinned, raised his eyebrows, and lifted a finger to his chin in a mocking
a-ha!
of realization.

Juan’s expression went icy with dislike. Camilla put a hand on his wrist and pushed his gun arm down.

“Veronica, you don’t have to do this,” she said. “Let’s help each other, instead. That’s what survivors do.”

“Survivors?”
Veronica gave a sultry laugh. “What a crock of shit.
Live
, and you’re a survivor.
Die
, and you aren’t. Everything else is just foreplay.”

A loud metallic boom, felt as much as heard, rolled across the island.

Veronica’s mouth snapped shut.

Camilla stood stock-still, listening as the echoes died away. She scanned the terrain around her, trying to locate the source of the sound. Mason and Veronica were doing the same. Juan squeezed her arm again, and she raised a silencing finger to her lips.

The boom rolled across the island again, bouncing off the bluffs.

She slowly turned her head to stare at the wreckage of the fog signal building. At the near edge of the shattered heap of wood and metal, a section of shiplap wall lay inclined like a giant cellar door. It quivered and slid six inches.

Camilla stared at it, her scalp tightening. The others stood frozen in place, staring at it also.

Seconds ticked by as she held her breath.

The boom sounded a third time, and the section of wall burst open, falling aside with a crash to reveal a rectangular opening into darkness.

Icy fingers gripped her insides.

Oh god. What else was down there with me?

A six-foot metal wheel flew out of the gaping hole, trailing broken chains. It bounced once, landed on its edge, and rolled by Camilla, passing between her and Mason.

Thirty feet beyond them, it wobbled and fell over with a metallic thud, oscillated a few times like a spun coin winding down, and came to rest with a clinking of chains on rock.

Her head turned slowly back to face the opening.

Just beyond the edge of the light, something glimmered in the shadows.

Heart pounding, she strained her eyes, trying to see.

An asymmetrical black silhouette lurched up the ramp of rubble inside, moving with nightmarish speed.

In a frenzy of churning motion, it exploded into the light.

Camilla stared, and her hands rose to twist themselves into her hair. She shook her head in denial.

“Oh
god
no!” she screamed.

B
rent stood on the threshold of the rectangular opening, rippling with spastic energy. Even standing still, his entire body jerked and shuddered as the muscles contracted and contorted independently.

Drawn by Camilla’s scream, his head snapped in her direction, like a raptor spotting prey. The white Frankenstein bolt of a syringe protruded from the side of his neck, vibrating in time with the machine-gun staccato of his pulse. A half-dozen larger syringes, like the one he had revived Natalie with, projected in a cluster at the center of his black neoprene-clad chest.

His pupil-less blue eyes—the merciless eyes of a crocodile—focused on her. He grinned a smeary red grin.

“The doctor is in,” he said.

Camilla stared in utter disbelief at the thing that used to be Brent. Gorge rose in her throat. She clutched Juan’s arm blindly, unable to tear her eyes away.

“How can anyone be alive like that?” she screamed in a voice shrill with horror, hurting her own ears.

Listing to one side like a broken tower, Brent tilted his chin down to look at himself. His left leg was oddly crumpled. Splintered bone projected from the side of his upper thigh, emerging from his wet suit.

His brow furrowed in puzzlement.

Both his legs were entangled in a ropy mass of soft, knotted coils and spongy lumps that hung from a gaping, crescent-shaped cavity below his chest. The train of blood-slick entrails stretched behind him like a tail, glistening wetly through a coating of dirt and soot.

He turned his neck to look at it.

Camilla followed his gaze to where the ropy coils of his intestines trailed out of the darkness of the opening, ten feet behind him. She sucked in a choking breath.

“Oh god!” she screamed. “Why doesn’t he bleed to death?”

Brent’s eyes met hers, and confusion crept across his face. He raised his left arm. Two gleaming white bones projected from a flapping sleeve of torn flesh where the arm ended, just below his elbow. He scratched the side of his head with the bones of his forearm, thinking about her question. Then his expression cleared.

“Epinepherine is a vasoconstrictor,” he said.

The crescent-shaped opening below his sternum was lined with the jagged points of splintered ribs, like a shark’s mouth. It sagged wider, disgorging more of his insides. They slid to the ground at his feet. Deep inside his chest, a purple lump shuddered with jackhammer speed and intensity, making the dangling coils jiggle and dance. Brent’s heart.

Camilla gagged.

His head snapped away from her, jerking from person to person. He stared at Juan, Mason, and Veronica in turn.

“I’m afraid I have bad news for all of you,” he said. “I see malignancy. You survivors are a cancer metastasizing through the human race, destroying the normal, healthy cells.”

The twin bones of his forearm jerked through the air like pincers or prongs, their splintered ends tracing restless patterns in front of him. Brent’s grin widened. His nose, cheeks, and jaw were coated with slick red from ear to ear. She recoiled in horror, realizing just how the doctor had freed his pinned arm.

“Excision is our only option,” he said, “Surgical removal is necessary to save the patient.”

He exploded into horrific, shambling motion, humping toward them with unbelievable speed, his arms and legs jerking spastically in a way the human body was never designed for.

Camilla knew they wouldn’t be able to outrun him. He looked inhuman, like a terrible broken machine. Unstoppable.

She stood frozen.

The gun came up beside her shoulder, gripped in both Juan’s hands. A litany of mumbled Latin spilled from his lips.

“
Sáncte Míchael Archángele, defénde nos in proélio…”

She stared at him in surprise.

“…cóntra nequítiam et insídias diáboli ésto præsídium…”

The Glock roared in Juan’s hands, making her ears ring.

Brent drew up short, rippling and jerking in place. He looked down at his chest, where Juan had shot him.

“Tuque, prínceps milítiæ cæléstis…”
Juan pulled the trigger again. A second red bullet hole popped onto the chest of Brent’s wet suit.

Brent looked up with surprised amusement spreading across his face.

“Sátanam aliósque spíritus malígnos…”
Juan’s next shot struck Brent near his collar.

Brent grinned, shaking his head apologetically.

“…divína virtúte, in inférnum detrude.”
The Glock roared a fourth time.

Brent raised his shoulders and spread his arms in a perfect imitation of Juan’s usual shrug. His grin widened with malevolence.

Camilla shook off her paralysis. She grabbed Juan’s arm, and he swung his face toward her, expression tight with fear.

Camilla pointed at her forehead as Brent exploded forward again.

Juan nodded. Turning to face Brent’s charge, he raised the gun higher.

The Glock barked one last time in his hands.

The bullet caught Brent above the right eye, knocking his head back in a pink spray of tissue and bone fragments.

The gun’s slide locked back. Camilla knew what that meant. Out of bullets.

Brent stood swaying, his head hanging back, chin pointed upward. He lifted both arms to embrace the sky above him, raising the bones of his forearm high.

Camilla covered her mouth with a palm. She held her breath, waiting for him to fall.

He roared a gargling laugh.

His voice changed, turning warped and discordant, doubling, as if two people were laughing at the same time. His head jerked forward again to stare at her. The upper right side of his forehead was missing, and the top of his eyeball gleamed white and wet between the grayish furrows of exposed brain.

“Why don’t you just die?” Mason’s voice held amused wonder.

Camilla was surprised to find him next to her, and Veronica a few feet away on Juan’s other side. Instinctively, they had all pulled together in the face of an even greater threat.

“I guess I was wrong,” Brent said. “It seems I’m a survivor, too.”

His horrible doubled voice sent a chill down Camilla’s spine; the bullet must have damaged the part of his brain that controlled speech.

She grabbed Juan’s arm and took a step backward, dragging him with her.

“Change in plans.” Brent’s eyes were bright with happy malice. “After I kill all of you, I’ll recruit more survivors. I can keep doing this again and again and again.”

Veronica gave a throaty chuckle. “Don’t be ridiculous. You should see yourself.” She shook her head slowly in disapproval. “You look bad, Brent. Really bad. You’re falling apart.”

“Don’t worry about me, I’ll be fine.” That eerie doubled voice made Camilla cringe. “I’m a doctor, remember?” He threw his head back to scream insane doubled laughter at the sky. “Physician, heal thyself!” he roared.

Camilla pulled Juan back several more steps, and Mason retreated with them. Veronica stayed where she was, crouching, ready. She raised her arms in front of her.

“You shouldn’t have brought Natalie here,” she said. “Maybe the rest of us deserved this, but she didn’t.”

The remaining half of Brent’s forehead wrinkled, and he looked momentarily confused. Then his mouth stretched in a grin of pure malice.

“Natalie ruined my plans for Jordan, so I made her suffer,” he said. “
How
I made her suffer…”

He laughed a spine-chilling gargle and rippled forward. “I didn’t know I was capable of doing something like that to another human being. You weren’t there for her, Veronica. You weren’t there to protect Natalie, and I made her pay for it, in the worst ways possible. She
begged
me to kill her—”

Veronica’s features twisted in torment. “You fucking monster,” she gasped, standing her ground.

“Run!” Camilla yelled. “Oh god,
run,
Veronica!”

“Natalie wanted to be like you,” Brent said, “and you made her into a killer. She hated you, you know.”

Tears spilled down Veronica’s cheeks. Her voice hardened.

“I’ll rip your fucking heart out. Let’s see you survive that.”

“Run!” Camilla screamed again.

Ignoring her, Veronica lunged forward to meet Brent’s charge.

Brent swung his good arm at her with inhuman speed. She managed to duck it, bobbing upright directly in front of him. He towered over Veronica, dwarfing her. She grabbed his jaw with one hand, driving two fingers inside his mouth and hooking her thumb into the softness under his chin. Thrusting her other arm upward, she plunged her hand into the open maw of his chest. Camilla saw Veronica’s fist close around something that pulsed and vibrated between her fingers.

Veronica’s face twisted in a triumphant snarl.

Then her pale eyes widened in terror.

Brent pistoned his truncated left arm into her face. The twin prongs of his jagged forearm bones drove through Veronica’s eyes, obliterating them. The sharp ends of his radius and ulna punched out through the back of her skull.

Veronica went limp like a rag doll. Her arms dropped to her sides. She hung loosely from Brent’s forearm, her legs dragging sideways across the ground as he surged toward Camilla.

Camilla screamed. Hands grabbed her arms—Juan on the right and Mason on the left. They dragged her up the hill, toward the fallen lighthouse tower.

Brent laughed. He flicked Veronica away, tossing her toward them with a sound like splintering sticks. Her body flew fifteen feet through the air to land in front of Camilla’s feet with a boneless thump. Veronica rolled onto her back, mouth open, slack face staring up at the sky.

Camilla stared down at her in shock, too stunned to process what she was seeing: the broken bones of Brent’s forearm still jutted from Veronica’s ruined eyes.

Camilla shook her head in denial. It seemed impossible that Veronica, so deadly herself, was gone. Brent had snuffed her out effortlessly.

Mason and Juan pulled at her arms, and Camilla stumbled after them.

Behind her, Brent lurched toward them all with inhuman speed.

She struggled to shake her mental paralysis.
Think! Oh god, think, or we’re all dead.

She remembered Brent’s impromptu brain-chemistry lecture, and a mental picture popped into her head unbidden: a propane tank spewing a yard-long jet of blue flame from its broken neck. Brent’s damaged amygdala would be flooding his body with a lethal torrent of pure adrenaline right now, jetting it out just like that broken tank valve, streaming catecholamines and cortisol into his blood. How long until his chemically fueled reserves ran empty and he collapsed?

Camilla knew he would survive long enough to kill them all.

Beside her, Juan coughed and stumbled, holding his side. Mason limped awkwardly on his broken knee. She was pulling them along now. They were too slow.

She gritted her teeth.

Brent seemed invincible, indestructible. He was dying, and they still couldn’t kill him. But maybe they could disable him instead. He was a lot bigger and heavier than they were. They could use that against him to slow him down.

“Come on,” she said, changing direction.

Juan saw where she was headed and his eyes widened.