Authors: Scott Sigler
He grabbed it and managed one swing before he went down under the weight of two creatures.
ANDY MOVED HIS king back to king-2. He was on the ropes, unable to keep up with Magnus’s methodical attack. The game was already over, but they played it out anyway. Not like there was anything else to do on this fucking island other than choke the chicken, which Andy had already done twice that day.
Juggs
magazine this time. His
Gallery
collection was getting a little old.
They sat in the lounge, Magnus on his leather chair, Andy on a couch, the chess set laid out on a coffee table. Whisky glasses sat on either side of the board, one for Magnus (with ice) and one for Andy (without ice, the way that shit was meant to be). The bottle of Yukon Jack was just under half empty. Andy’s buzz made him wonder if he could fall over while still sitting down.
Magnus reached out, his thick right hand hovering indecisively over the pieces.
Andy let out a disgusted sigh. “Come on, Mags, it’s boring enough without you pretending you don’t know exactly what piece to move.”
“The play’s the thing, Andy.”
“What is that? Another one of those quote-thingees that’s supposed to teach me something about life?”
Magnus smiled. “You already know the important stuff, like how to shoot straight. The rest of it? All philosophical bullshit, really.”
Magnus moved his queen to king-3, right on top of Andy’s king. Andy couldn’t take the queen without putting himself in check thanks to Magnus’s rook, which sat on queen’s-bishop-3.
“I’ve never liked you,” Andy said. It pissed him off to no end that he couldn’t beat Magnus. Ever. “Chess is for faggots, anyway. So what now, Mags?”
“Looks like you lose again.”
“I meant with the whole plane and everything.”
“Oh,
that
what now.”
Andy nodded. Sometimes Magnus told him what was going on, sometimes not. All full up with Puke-Jack, maybe he’d let out some secrets.
“Now it’s a waiting game,” Magnus said. “We declare the C-5 missing. There will be a search, but nothing will be found.”
“Without a flight plan? Crash report, anything like that?”
“They know we have a C-5,” Magnus said. “Colding ordered it to take off over the big water, and we haven’t heard from it since.”
Maybe it was the buzz, but Andy couldn’t put all the pieces together.
“Colding
ordered it?”
Magnus nodded.
“But what about Fischer? He’s got a real hard-on for you and Danté.”
“The research is gone,” Magnus said. “That’s what the governments really wanted. They don’t care about Fischer’s hard-on for us. Once we fire up the lawyers, make a stink, the governments tell Fischer to back off, and that’s that.”
“Huh. Is it really that easy?”
Magnus picked up his glass and took a big swallow. “We’ll find out, won’t we?”
We’ll find out
. Magnus knew how to plan ahead, how to put pieces in play when others thought he was just standing still. That brand of thinking had kept Andy alive at least a half-dozen times, and in situations far more severe than this. A lot of people had died under Magnus’s command, but a lot more had survived when the situation dictated they had no right to do so.
“What about Jian’s body?”
“It will be found.”
“By who?”
“By us.”
“Wait a minute. Then why did you have Colding bury her?”
“So we could dig her up. Part of her, anyway. We leave enough buried so that Fischer’s cronies find Colding’s DNA all over her. Hair, skin, fingerprints, shit like that.”
Andy shook his head. Magnus was just amazing. “So
Colding
gets fingered for Jian’s murder?”
Magnus nodded.
“And we found the body?”
“That’s right.”
“And we knew Colding killed her … how?”
Magnus sighed. “Because of his deathbed confession. Which came right after we shot him in self-defense.”
Andy moved his king to queen-1. “And Colding attacked us … why?”
“You and I were in Manitoba. We’d lost contact with everyone on the island. Clayton, Sven, the Harveys, the scientists. Bobby flew us out here to see what was going on. We discovered Colding had sabotaged the C-5, then killed everyone else after it flew off. He had to make sure there were no witnesses, you see. When we confronted him, he tried to murder us as well.”
“Wow,” Andy said. “That Colding is a regular psycho.”
“Sad, but true.”
“Just so I’m tracking here … Colding did all of this … how come?”
“Because you were fucking Sara.”
“I was?”
“You were.”
“Sweet
. Would love to pound on that vaj.”
“Jian found out you were doing Colding’s girlfriend,” Magnus said. “So, like a good friend, she told Colding. Bubbah snapped, killed Jian on the spot. Turns out the boy has a history of losing his temper. He wanted Sara dead, so he sent the C-5 up, put a bomb in it. Then he tried to cover his tracks. Killed everyone. Bobby brings us out here, routine shit, Colding tries to kill us.”
“’Cause he’s psycho.”
“Exactly. But we defend ourselves. As he’s dying, he tells us the whole story, including where he buried Jian.”
“What a shame,” Andy said. “The whole project, wiped out. The only people left are you, me and Gunther.”
“Lucky for Gunther he was pulling extended duty up on the fire watchtower. Phone lines were down as well. Crazy how it happens like that. Gunther manned his post like a good soldier, had no idea any of this was going on.”
“Will Gun play along with that?”
“Considering his options if he doesn’t, yeah, I think he’ll play along.”
Andy nodded. Gunther was no dummy. “All of this human tragedy, this loss of life makes me sad. Exactly when did Colding snap and kill everyone left on the island?”
“Tomorrow,” Magnus said. “You don’t mind doing some wet work for me tomorrow, do you?”
“Does a dog mind licking his own balls? I’ll get things done. But what does Danté think of all this?”
“Sometimes my brother needs people like us to help him, even if he never knew he needed that help in the first place.”
Magnus moved his rook to queen’s-bishop-1. Checkmate.
Andy shook his head. “Did I mention I never liked you?”
“You did. Just be grateful that I like you. At least, more than I like Colding.”
Magnus refilled his tumbler with Yukon Jack, and Andy set the pieces up for another game.
CLAYTON COULDN’T PUT it off any longer. He had to take his chances. He’d dragged out fixing the phone line breaks, hoping Magnus and Andy would hit the trails for a snowmobile run. No such luck. They weren’t leaving the mansion, so he had to figure out how to work around them.
He rolled his mop bucket into the lounge. Magnus sat in his leather chair that faced the big picture window. Andy the Asshole was relaxing in a neighboring chair. A chessboard sat on the table between them.
“Hey, Clayton,” Andy said. “Get in here and clean up this pigsty, will ya?”
Clayton looked around the lounge. Dirty plates were everywhere, as were empty beer cans and two empty bottles of Yukon Jack. The jerks hadn’t bothered to pick up one damn thing all day. They’d just tossed their trash around as if this were some flophouse.
“You boys even bother to get up to hit da crapper? Or did you just fling your poo around like da fucking gorillas you are?”
Andy raised his whisky glass. “Maybe that can be arranged.”
“Maybe you can kiss my ass, you little freak.”
“The place
is
a bit dirty,” Magnus said. “You sick or something, old man?”
Clayton snorted, his fear forgotten in a brief burst of anger. “I’ve been freezing my nuts off all goddam day, and I come back to this. I think I’ll clean up da rest of da place first so you two rump rangers can sit in your own stink for a bit more.”
Magnus slowly turned in his chair to look back at Clayton. “I think you’re getting old,” he said. “Might have to get someone out here to replace you.”
“You wanna fire me, fire me. Until then, I got work to do. I’ll start in da security room.” Clayton rolled the mop bucket out of the lounge and headed straight for the stairs. Maybe they’d keep playing that chess game,
keep drinking. He had to take a shot now, when he knew exactly where those two were.
He carried the heavy mop bucket down to the bottom of the back stairs. Once there, he rolled it to the security room and opened the door. Gunther was sitting in the swivel chair, feet up on the counter, eyes closed in a catnap. The eyes fluttered open when Clayton walked in.
Gunther sat up quickly, as if he’d been caught doing something wrong. When he saw Clayton, he smiled, a smile that quickly turned into a yawn.
“Shit, Clayton, you scared me. I thought you were Magnus.”
“Don’t worry about it. He’s up in da lounge getting hammered with Andy. Hey, I finished
Hot Midnight
. Best of all da three books.” Gunther smiled. “You finished it already?”
“Yah. I liked it. Your main character chick reminded me of Liz Taylor. Liz was a hot one, let me tell you. Liked da backdoor action.”
Gunther laughed and shook his head. “Whatever, Clayton. But thanks for reading my book.”
“No problem. You’ll have da common decency, of course, to not mention to anyone I’m reading a vampire romance novel?”
“Of course.”
“You got talent,” Clayton said. “More than those fuck-stains you call your friends.” He lifted his head to the ceiling, indicating the lounge.
Gunther rubbed his eyes. “Those aren’t my friends, Clayton. I served with them, but this is just a job. Man, I’m beat. Been doing sixteen hours a day.”
“What, down here?”
“Magnus has me and Colding taking ten-hour shifts up on the fire watchtower, eyeballing for anyone flying in. Andy only has to do four hours at a time, the damn brownnoser.”
“Is that right. So, Colding’s up in da tower right now?”
Gunther nodded. “Yeah, probably freezing his ass off. Nothing quite like being thirty feet off the ground in a tin shack in the dead of winter.”
“Why is Magnus making you guys do that?”
Gunther shrugged. “He thinks Danté might arrive at any second, wants to make sure we talk him in.” Another huge yawn opened Gunther’s mouth.
“Jeez, author-man. Go grab some coffee from da kitchen. Magnus will never know you’re gone. I’ll keep an eye on da screens for you, eh?”
“Yeah, coffee would be great. You sure you know how to work this stuff?”
“Who da hell do you think used it before you all got here?”
Gunther smiled, stretched, then stood and walked out of the room, shutting the door behind him.
Clayton sat at the desk and moved the mouse. On the screen, the spinning Genada logo disappeared, replaced by the desktop’s blue background and a log-in window. Clayton typed in his user name and password.
The computer let out a sudden beep. The words
INVALID PASSWORD
flashed on the screen. He closed the window and accessed the administration program. Clayton loved Black Manitou, but never for a moment forgot that if something went wrong his son was his only reliable connection to the outside world. Because of that, Clayton made sure he fully understood the secure terminal and the jammer controls—everything that had anything to do with communications on the island.
“I’m not as old and dumb as I look, you big bald fuck.”
Clayton had long ago used the admin program to make himself a superuser, able to override any password protection. He logged in with the password 0-0-0-1, his
fancy
password, and the system came to life. He kept an eye on the security screens: Gunther was walking to the kitchen, Andy and Magnus were still hard at whisky-fueled chess.
Now or never. He clicked the icon marked
Houghton
and waited.
“Come on,” Clayton whispered. “Be home, son,
please
be home.”
After an agonizing ten seconds that seemed a silent eternity, the screen flashed once, then showed Gary’s face.
“Dad? What’s up?”
“I need you here right away.”
“The weather’s bad, Pops. I don’t dare take the boat out now.”
“Magnus blew up da plane. He’s killing people.”
Gary blinked a few times. “This better not be another one of your tall tales, Dad.”
Clayton shook his head. “Most of da crew is dead. Sara and Tim made it out. He finds them, they’re dead, too.”
Gary’s eyes narrowed and his jaw muscles twitched.
“Tell me what to do, Dad.”
Clayton felt a sudden swell of pride. Gary didn’t look like a little boy anymore, or like a stoner—Clayton’s son suddenly looked like a man.
“I hid them in da church,” Clayton said. “Come in quiet with no lights, get them, take them back to da mainland.”
“Will you be with them? I gotta get you out of there.”
“Never mind about me, eh? I’ve got to watch out for some other people. Get Sara and Tim off da island, and I’m not going to listen to another word about it, you understand?”
Gary nodded. “Should I call the cops?”
Clayton scratched his beard. “Not yet. Do it when you get them two back. If da local cops show up, even if da fuckin’
army
shows up, Magnus could do anything.”
Gary took a deep breath, then let it out slow. “Okay, here’s the deal. I can’t come tonight; that’s just plain suicide. Storms are tearing the lake up. We’re talking ‘Wreck of the
Edmund Fitzgerald
’ weather out there. It’s supposed to die down a little tomorrow, not much, but I’ll risk it. I’ll time it to arrive just after dark. Can you wait that long?”
Gary knew boating, knew the weather. There was a limit to how much risk Clayton expected out of his son. “Yeah, that’ll have to do. Be careful. Magnus has da jammer on full-time, so you won’t be able to radio in, and I won’t be able to warn you if someone is waiting for you. It could be dangerous.”
“Dangerous? You really think so?”
“I think you’re a smart-ass.”
“Your
face
is a smart-ass.”
The kid was making jokes, jokes for Clayton’s sake. Gary was the one acting like a parent, trying to ease a child’s fear.