When he was finally able to sit up, Christian put one arm under his shoulder and helped him to his feet. To his foot, Mason corrected, not for the first time. The kid was in agony. His face was red, his eyes streaming tears. Mason wondered if it was from the pain or if his body had tried to put itself out when it realized it was on fire. The human body did such odd things in extreme stress.
Then Mason saw there was something wrong with him. The veins on his neck were standing out. His eyes had taken a decidedly milky tone, and his movements… they were strange in some way he couldn't describe. Nicholas, after all, had been wounded before any of the rest of them, hadn't he? And so Doctor Grey had been right: The Carrion were claiming him.
With Christian's help, the boy hobbled over to stand in front of his commander. “What the hell is going on here, sir? I was up there, and… and you shot at them. You shot at Gideon and the others. You're trying to kill them, aren't you?”
“Yeah,” Mason said. He had no more use for lies.
“I won't be a part of this! I—”
But that was as far as he got. Mason's knife was suddenly in his stomach, the blade buried to the hilt. A lot of guys preferred the armpit or tried to go through the chest wall, but that was too difficult. As for the throat, that was too messy. The gut was soft and pliant. It was intimate. A placed cut to the abdominal artery would kill you just as quick if done right, and Mason knew just the spot.
The kid's mouth opened in an O, and then his body slid to the floor.
“I told you to leave him.”
Mason wiped the knife on his jacket, then turned back to the rails, not waiting to see the reaction from the others. His men were either with him, or they weren't, and if they weren't, then they'd all die out here. Maybe it didn't matter and they would die anyway. They were only four now.
Four of nine.
They were battered and torn. Mason himself was shot in the leg. They had no food, no water, and no way off of the platform. Nothing but the will to survive. Beyond that, Mason hadn't been oblivious to what the good doctor had told them; he knew what being wounded meant, even if they did manage to survive the fire. The Carrion had an in now, didn't it? It was reproducing itself at this very moment, the spores climbing through the holes in their bodies, through the cuts on their skin. Christ. Since this morning, things had developed a habit of going downhill, and the worst was yet to come. They'd all be like the RDF soon, skin blackening, body temperature escalating until the mind was in permanent fever dream.
Mason wondered if he had made the decision to kill the kid because he was infected, or because he was about to become insubordinate. Because right now, insubordination didn't count for a whole hell of a lot. As for the other reason… well, that would mean Mason was the biggest hypocrite in the world, wouldn't it? He could feel The Carrion moving through his own bloodstream, pushing its way through his circulatory system like a rude guest.
“What now?” Christian asked. He was calm, eerily calm. They all were. They weren't docile. No, that wasn't right. There was something bubbling beneath the surface in them, something like pale fire, just as it was with him. They'd watched him kill Nicholas without the slightest protest or the slightest surprise, and he could sense they wanted more. At the end of the day, there wasn't any better way to shrug off defeat than bloodshed, was there?
“The primary objective is lost due to circumstances beyond our control.” He spoke without turning to them, still staring at the sea. “But we still have our secondary objective, don't we?”
“Sir?”
“They're going to the island, like I said. I for one am not going out without making sure they're buried there. The Marine Corps didn't raise me to be a quitter. The same with you, Vy. And the same goes for the army for you, St. Croix.” He did turn around then, sensing the need in them and feeding off of it. “No one's coming out here for us. I think we all know that by now. At least, not by the time this place collapses. So if we have any chance at all, it will be getting to the island, and getting that goddamned boat back. If we can't do that, then we can at least track down the ones responsible for this. I want to watch what happens when we wipe that fucking smile off of their faces. Because believe me, they are smiling. They're smiling because they think they've won.” He looked at them in turn, seeing the hunger and hate in their eyes and loving it. Hunger and hate would keep you alive.
“How we gonna get there, Boss?” Melvin asked.
“I don't know, but I'll think of something,” Mason said, and he would. In spite of the terrible pain in his leg, he was feeling… well, he was feeling good. Or perhaps energized was the better word. He thought he could run a hundred miles, even on an injured leg. Hell, he could run on the surface of the water if he had to. Bullet or no, infection or no, he wouldn't be stopped, not before he had his say. No goddamned tentacle or spore or creature from the black lagoon was going to keep him from paying his old pal AJ one last visit. AJ might think he could run, but the island wasn't far enough, not nearly far enough.
For the first time since that morning, Mason found himself thinking inexplicably of his retirement. He thought of the countryside, an old church, and an old groundskeeper who would tend the garden and plant the flowers. It had been a nice dream, as foolish as it was, as soft as it was. No, this is where he belonged. He belonged here in the shit, fighting for every last inch, fighting for every last breath before the darkness closed in. He wanted to stay alive just long enough to wipe the smile off of AJ's face. And to find a cure, if there was one. Ha! Now there was a laugh.
No more use for lies, he thought again.
The only thing that might hold him back was his leg. In spite of how good the rest of him was feeling, the sonofabitch still hurt. It was a weird thing, but as he gazed down to the surviving tentacles, he thought about how soothing they looked, how good it would feel to just settle down and stick his leg into one. He was quite sure it would feel warm, like draping your thigh in a hot tub.
Then, he pushed the notion away. It was a strange, strange thought. And even if he had nothing to lose, the idea was still pretty goddamned weird.
Around him, The Aeschylus creaked and groaned as the fires raged. Like Mason, it seemed to know that its end was coming.
2
The walls emerged from the mist like enceintes on a castle, barring entry from the sea as surely as any mountain or reef. When AJ saw them, he half-expected to be fired upon, as if there might be a legion of soldiers hiding inside. That was foolish, of course. He had seen maps of the island and knew it was full of dead men. Its purpose had long since departed, its inhabitants swallowed by an age long gone.
Hadn't they?
“I found a hole as big as my dick in the back wall,” Dutch said, wiping his grease-smeared hands on his shirt. “We're leaking.” He looked tuckered out. They all looked tuckered out. AJ knew it had been less than twenty-four hours since he'd slept, but it felt like days. The constant, gray sun made the twilight seem endless.
“I guess we should be glad we're not headed towards the mainland.”
“Think we'll make it to the docks? I'd say we have five minutes before we're dead in the water.”
AJ looked at the coastline and tried to gauge the strength of the motor. “We'll have to ground her. If we're lucky, she'll hold together and we can repair the leak on dry land.”
“Where do you plan on getting the tools?”
AJ shook his head. “Don't know.”