“We’re all secondary priorities,” Ridge said, sharing a nervous smile. “The existence of these things creates so many questions that deserve answers, but pest control is job one, right, Alena?”
Dr. Boudreau nodded. “Unfortunately. But don’t worry, Paul. I’ll give you what time I can.”
Ridge turned to look out the window at the island as the helicopter flew lower. “Not nearly enough time.”
“I don’t get what’s so fascinating about this place. What makes it so different?” Tori asked.
Ridge, a handsome man to begin with, became even more so as soon as the topic turned to his chosen science. “On the surface, not much. Most Caribbean islands are volcanic or part of a system created by volcanic activity. The ridges and protrusions of black rock are volcanic, a combination of basalt and andesite. Lava flows formed the ridges when they cooled, and the rocks you see jutting out of the sand or the water are … well, chunks that were literally shot from the volcano during an eruption.
“But the samples that David has shown me also have trace elements that make the geology here quite different from the typical volcanic formations. There’s a hydrologic chemistry at work that must be a factor related to the bio-forms — the sirens, I guess we’re calling them — making the fissures and caves in the island’s foundations habitable for them.”
Tori smiled. “I think I only got about half of that.”
Ridge began to reply, but Dr. Boudreau interrupted.
“You won’t have time for the other half, Tori. I’m afraid I need you now. We’re going to make several passes over the island and I want you to point out the locations of any caves you remember, including the grotto you talked about—”
“The sweep team must have found it by now,” Josh cut in. “They’ve been on the island an hour or more.”
Alena Boudreau nodded. “They’re fairly certain they have, but I want to be sure we’re in the right place and there isn’t another similar location.” She looked back to Tori. “Dr. Ridge is going to mark everything on a chart. If you have any observations, definitely share them. Any detail could be important in ways none of us understand as yet.”
As she spoke, Ridge opened a sleek silver laptop and, with a touch of a button, pulled up a map he had already made of the island. The shape did not match entirely — apparently it was based on information the combined Navy/Coast Guard sweep team had gathered so far — but now Ridge would get to work refining it, starting with whatever Tori could tell him.
For the next quarter hour they circled the island and she shared what she remembered of the spots she had seen caves or any other protrusions of that black rock, including those that seemed to have split open the small mountain at the island’s center — what had once been an active volcano but now lay dormant save for the traces of steam that lingered above those openings. If the others who had been on the island with her — Bone and Kevonne and Pang — had been alive, they could have provided much more information. Tori had not even set foot on the half of the island they had explored.
“What about the two bodies you and Captain Rio found yesterday?” Dr. Boudreau asked, her tone neutral. “The men from the Mariposa? Can you show us where they had been left?”
Tori frowned. “Why? Didn’t you find them?”
“No. I’m afraid we didn’t.”
Frigid fingers seemed to trace along her spine and she shivered. “You mean they took the bodies away?”
Josh leaned forward, catching her eye, making her focus on him. “Hey. It’s okay. The tide could have moved them.”
Tori shook her head. “No. It was high tide when we found them, or near enough. They were well above the tide line. And those guys had been dead since at least the night before, so the sirens didn’t take them just to … to eat. They wanted us to find the bodies yesterday, maybe to freak us out or confuse us or whatever. But then last night, when they attacked us, the bodies had served their purpose, so then they took them.”
“Come on, Tori,” Josh said. “These things are animals. They’re primitive. They’re not smart enough to want to just mess with your head.”
“How do you know?” she demanded.
Josh had no reply to that. Neither did Dr. Boudreau, and that scared her most of all.
73
David Boudreau couldn’t think of a damn thing to say.
He stood in the open hatchway, pipes hissing steam so quietly it almost sounded like they were breathing, just over his shoulder. Lieutenant Stone and his strike team had cleared the room, leaving one sailor — a tall, formidable woman whose eyes were emotionless behind her gas mask — to watch over them. Turcotte, O’Connell, and Voss stood in respectful silence around the pile of bones as though they were at a graveside funeral, and in some ways that was exactly what it was. No trace had yet been found of the Antoinette’s crew except for spatters and puddles of blood in various spots around the ship. But these bones came with shreds of clothing, bits of hair stuck to the skulls, and among them were at least two guns. Turcotte had said he suspected they would find others as well.
“It’s a warning,” Rachael Voss said, staring at the bones of her dead colleagues — members of Turcotte’s Counter-Terrorism squad.
“Is it?” O’Connell asked. “’Cause it seems to me it’s more a big ‘fuck you’ than anything else.”
“Jesus,” Turcotte whispered, raising a hand to his forehead as he turned away. “Jesus Christ.”
David had gotten a close look at the bones when they had first been led into the junction area, but he had retreated to a corner to give the FBI agents space to move and to grieve. Now he watched them and wondered if he should have left the room entirely, though it seemed too late now. The container ship creaked and hissed and pinged, and David felt claustrophobic, as though the freighter had begun to constrict around them. No matter what the FBI had wanted, he now regretted having brought these three on board, and part of him wished he had not come himself.
No matter how thick the metal hull of the Antoinette might be, he did not feel safe. If he had voiced his fears, others might have labeled them irrational. But they had not encountered the creatures up close before, and they did not wake in the dark with his nightmares. The last time Alena had led a DARPA team into one of these creatures’ habitats, David had been an unofficial member of the expedition. At seventeen, he had already accomplished more than most other members of her team and Alena had been grooming him for a leadership position. But, though he pleaded with her, she refused to let him come ashore on the South Pacific island where the creatures nested.
Alena and her colleagues thought they had learned from their first encounter with the creatures in 1967. They kept all ships at a safe distance overnight, and even during the day would not allow even the largest vessels nearer than half a mile from shore. The Gryphon, an elegant refurbished schooner that Alena used as a research vessel, floated a full mile from the island, and David had been left behind with the Gryphon’s crew and half a dozen scientists, most of them people David had known all of his life.
Safely out of range.
Or so they’d thought until the things began to batter at the hull, splintering wooden beams, and the water started to rush in. And with the water, the monsters came. Even with the sun still shining outside, the creatures invaded the ship. The screams still echoed in David’s head, even now, and the desperate cries of his dying friends lingered. Only a handful of those on board made it to the deck as the Gryphon took on water. The things would not come out into the sunlight, but with the ship listing, sinking, it would not be too long before they were all down in the dark together.