Mason shook his head. “No way.”
“It’s our only chance!” she shouted.
She clambered over the broken concrete piled at the base of the wrecked lighthouse tower, and both of them followed her down the other side.
Camilla came to a stop. This was it. End of the road.
Brent swarmed up the rubble, closing the distance between them. The awful train of ropy viscera dragged over the rocks behind him, like coils of kelp. Twenty feet away, he stopped at the top of the wreckage pile, swaying and vibrating with alien motion. He stared at her. His grin faded.
Camilla turned away from him and looked over the edge of the bluff, inches from her toes. The sand seemed so far below. The seals on the beach looked so tiny.
She reached for Juan’s arm on her left.
Took Mason’s elbow on her right.
Closed her eyes.
And jumped.
M
ason slammed into the sand with Camilla’s weight on top of him driving the breath from his lungs. His bad knee exploded sideways in a molten eruption of pain. He tried to scream but managed only a hoarse gasp. Seals scattered on all sides, yelping in panic as they stampeded away.
He clawed at the sand as Camilla rolled off him and bounced to her feet.
“Sorry,” she said. Her eyes were unhappy, but he could see no surprise in them.
She had done it
on purpose
.
The agony in his knee was no longer important. Mason stared at Camilla in fascination. She had deliberately used him as a cushion so she wouldn’t hurt her own legs. She had wanted to be sure she kept her own mobility.
Every time he thought he had her figured out, she surprised him. What was even more surprising was the aching hollowness he felt at the thought of what she had just done to him. His feelings were hurt.
That
was something new.
A few yards away, Juan groaned and rolled from side to side, holding his side. Mason grinned. At least he didn’t have broken ribs, on top of a perforated lung, like Juan did.
Just give up already, buddy.
Camilla ran over to Juan and helped him to his feet.
Mason’s hollow feeling got worse.
Juan staggered and coughed a thick stream of blood onto the sand. He wiped his lips with his wrist and looked up, scanning the top of the bluff above them. Mason followed his gaze. A dark, bulky shape stood at the edge, silhouetted against the sky. Brent’s one arm swirled spasmodically in front of his torso, coiling loops of his intestines around his fist.
Gathering himself up to jump after them?
“A little help, maybe?” Mason called.
Camilla grabbed Juan’s hand and tugged him toward Mason. Together, they yanked Mason upright.
He stood hopping, unable to put any weight on his bad leg. Below the knee, it hung loosely, his foot dragging on the sand. The knee joint was shattered.
Juan grabbed Mason’s wrist and slipped his shoulder under Mason’s arm. Camilla did the same with his other arm. Mason leaned on their support, and together the three of them staggered away from the bluff face.
One, two, three…
Mason counted their steps.
…fifteen… sixteen… seventeen…
The ground shuddered from the force of an impact behind them.
He looked over his shoulder in time to see the spray of sand dropping back to the beach, where a large black mound lay half buried in a shallow crater. The mound quivered, and then was still.
Mason waited, but nothing happened.
“That’s it, folks, he’s down,” Mason said. “Move along, nothing to see here.”
He tightened his arm around Juan’s shoulder and grinned at him.
You know, I’m getting tired of seeing how she looks at you, my friend. I think I
will
kill you, after all.
Brent shot upright like a jack-in-the-box, throwing up another burst of sand, his limbs flailing in furious motion.
The grin fell from Mason’s face.
Brent looked down at himself. His broken, crumpled left leg was twisted around completely, so that it faced backward.
“That doesn’t look right,” he said. He reached down with his good hand and grabbed the neoprene knee of his wet suit. With a savage wrench, he twisted his leg back around so it faced forward again.
The cavity of Brent’s abdomen gaped empty now; the tangled, knotted coils of entrails no longer draped his legs. He had left his intestines behind, somewhere on the bluff above them.
“This isn’t funny anymore,” Mason said. His voice sounded strange in his ears—high and squeaky.
Camilla let go of his wrist and slid out from under his arm, surprising him yet again. His weight sagged against Juan, and they both staggered.
“Help him!” she shouted to Juan. Then she ran toward the waterline.
“Where are you going?” Mason called after her in that same squeaky voice.
She didn’t answer.
Juan hauled on Mason’s wrist, shoving his shoulder harder into Mason’s armpit to support him better. They limped after Camilla, who had already disappeared over a dune.
“Now,
there’s
something you just don’t see every day,” Brent roared behind them. “Mason is scared. Who’s laughing
now
, Mason?” Brent’s gargling laughter echoed off the bluffs. “Who’s laughing
now
?”
He exploded into a jerky, lurching shuffle, far faster than even an uninjured human being should be able to move.
Mason knew there was no way they could outrun Brent.
“What a disappointment you are, Mason. You’re a scavenger, not a predator. I wanted a lion, but I caught a hyena instead.”
Mason reached into his pocket with his free hand and pulled out Veronica’s tactical knife.
He didn’t need to outrun
Brent
.
Flicking the knife open, he turned his face toward Juan’s, meeting his eyes.
Mason grinned, feeling happy and in control again.
“I only need to outrun
you,
” he said.
A loud elastic snap vibrated the swim fin beneath Mason’s arm. Piercing pain drove through his good leg.
Juan let go of his wrist, and Mason fell to the sand, clutching at his leg. His hand closed around a long, narrow steel shaft angling up from his thigh. Its barbed point jutted from the other side of his shin.
He stared at Juan’s receding back, and his mouth fell open in surprise.
Juan released the grip of the speargun that had been strapped across his back, beneath his fins. He looked over his shoulder at Mason.
“I’ve heard that joke before,” Juan said.
The beach shook beneath Mason.
He turned, and Brent was on him.
C
amilla’s breath came in gasps. Fear flooded her bloodstream with adrenaline. Her sneakers slipped and slid in the sand as she ran. Her heart pounded in her throat. She thought of Jordan, so much more graceful and athletic than she was. Camilla was nowhere near as fast. She would never be fast enough.
She sprinted up the face of the low dune and stumbled. Jamming her fingers into the sand, she pushed herself upright again.
She crested the dune, and the span of beach in front of the bluff face stretched before her. Juan stared at her, frozen with surprise.
“Get out of the way,” she yelled, frantically sweeping her arm sideways as she plunged down the other side of the dune toward him, running as fast as she could. The sand shook beneath her feet.
Juan’s eyes flicked to the crest of the dune behind her. His jaw dropped.
The truck-size animal that was chasing her surged over the dune in a spray of sand. Juan looked tiny in comparison. He stumbled aside, out of Camilla’s path, and fell to his knees as she ran past.
The sand in front of her was clear now, all the way to where Brent crouched over Mason, thrashing him against the sand with agitated motions.
Camilla ran directly toward him.
The bull elephant seal followed her, roaring in rage.
Brent’s head snapped toward her. His eerie eyes dilated, and his red-slicked mouth stretched open impossibly wide, tearing with a crack of ligament and bone. At his feet, Mason was a coiled, twisted shape, his spine bent backward, his body rolled up like a sleeping bag, looking half its usual size.
Brent popped upright and swiveled to face her.
Camilla dived to the sand and rolled aside, tumbling over and over, making herself as small as possible. The elephant seal chasing her drew up short and reared to its full eight-foot height. It shuffled in place, bobbing its head aggressively, twenty feet from Brent.
It roared a rumbling challenge.
Lying in the sand, Camilla stared in amazement. The alpha bull elephant seal
recognized
Brent.
Bellowing with rage, it faced the two-legged predator that had stalked its harem night after night, killing its females and slaughtering its young under cover of darkness. It tossed its massive body from side to side, hopping on its front flippers, and roared again.
But it didn’t come any closer.
Brent turned his face toward Camilla, and she could see that anything human in him was long gone. His doubled laugh echoed off the cliffs behind him, and he pointed toward the elephant seal’s scarred chest.
“You see? Even this thing is afraid to face a
true
survivor.”
The seal charged him, raising itself higher as it surged forward. It threw its five-thousand-pound bulk onto Brent. His body accordioned, crushed into the sand to disappear beneath the blubbery mass of its chest.
The elephant seal roared again. It swiveled its neck from side to side, looking around itself in confusion, wondering where its opponent had vanished to.
Then it shuffled backward and turned away, rippling toward the waterline. Its tail flippers slid across a flattened, unrecognizable black shape. The shape continued to twitch, soaking the sand around it in red.
Camilla covered her mouth and closed her eyes, turning away. It was over.
A shadow fell across her.
Juan.
He held out his hand.
She took it and pulled herself to her feet.
C
amilla steadied Juan as he leaned over Mason’s folded body. Neither of them said anything. She turned her head and stared across the waves as he searched through Mason’s pockets. She did not look down at the banker.
Juan found what he was looking for. He held up Brent’s phone, still encased in its Ziploc plastic bag.
She took his arm. Passing through the clusters of seals and sea lions in silence, they walked down the beach. They reached the wooden walkway, and she supported him as they climbed the steps to the top of the bluff.
They sat on the top step, side by side next to the chicken coop.
Camilla’s eyes scanned the beaches and bluffs of the mainland across the channel. Tufts of sea grass bent and waved in the breeze. A few seals lay on the sand, but the landscape was otherwise empty.
She was very aware of Juan’s knee against hers. Her shoulder brushed his bicep. He pulled Brent’s phone out of a chest pocket on his wet suit and held it on his lap.
Turning his head toward her, he touched his forehead to hers. She looked into his eyes, seeing a question.
“Eight characters?” she asked.
He nodded, his head moving against hers.
She took the phone from his fingers and tapped the screen eight times. The lock screen disappeared, and the normal display appeared. She handed the phone back.
He smiled another question at her.
“Jonathan,” she said.
Realization dawned in Juan’s eyes. He nodded. “Makes sense.”
He tapped the phone’s screen four times and handed it back to her.
She raised the phone to her ear, hearing a tinny voice.
“Nine one one. Can you state the nature of your emergency?”
She looked around her. At the mangled bodies down on the beach. The collapsed buildings. The caved-in center of the island.
“I don’t even know where to begin,” she said.
“May I put you on hold?”
She glanced at Juan.
“That’s okay,” she said. “I think we can manage to survive a little longer on our own.”
• • •
An hour later, Camilla and Juan were still sitting on the steps. She watched the boats approaching Año Nuevo Island from every direction. Blue flashers winked atop the Coast Guard cutters that circled the island. A large fireboat was anchored offshore, its decks crawling with human activity. In the distance, she could see several helicopters in the air, heading their way. Emergency vehicles streamed down Highway 1. They were hidden by the rolling headlands, but Camilla could see the splash of their red lights and hear the faint, distant noise of sirens.
Closer to where they sat, the seals and sea lions went about their daily business of survival with the usual noisy rambunctiousness. Pelicans crossed the sky in regimented trains. The air was crisp. She looked at the island all around her, marveling at nature’s resilience.
At her side, Juan stared at the water, his pale face burdened with an expression of quiet sorrow. She knew he was thinking of Jordan, still down there, unburied.
Gentle pain pierced her heart. She took Juan’s hand and leaned the side of her head against his.
“She had figured it all out, you know. Jordan was frighteningly intelligent,” she said. “When she saw her profile, she understood what Brent was trying to do to her, and she fought back the only way she knew how. I’m sorry I never really got the chance to know her.”
Juan looked down at their entwined fingers. “I think nobody ever really got the chance to know her,” he said.
“It must have been a lonely way to be.”
The sorrow on his face sharpened. “She and Brent were alike in a lot of ways. More than either of them would have liked to admit.”
A shudder ran down Camilla’s spine. “I don’t think Brent was human at the end.”
“He was human,” Juan said. “All too human. He could have been any of us.”
The first rescue boats had reached the shore. She could see emergency personnel on the beach, carrying stretchers. She didn’t feel any great hurry to go meet their rescuers. For now, she was content where she was.