Foolish, they had been, all of them. Spoiled. Trained to rely upon a predictable enemy with predictable tactics. And that business in the machine shop with Dutch and Gideon, well, that had just been bad luck.
A bad luck day.
“Boss,” Christian insisted.
Mason reached out and steadied him. Soon, they would be through with this terrible place, and they would sleep. They were in this together.
To the end.
The tentacle stood before him, still oozing, still calling to him with its soft, inaudible whisper. He pulled the knife from his belt. They came to protect themselves, wasn't that right? They had come when Whitman's friends had tried to scrub them off of the ballasts. They had come when Jin had sliced one on the lower decks. They had come and taken the people in the long ago when an explosion had destroyed their kind.
Certainly, they would come now.
He cut sideways, creating a wound as long as his arm. A cloud of brown spores wafted into the air, a black tar ooze dribbling onto his boots. Seconds passed. And then, he felt it: a trembling, an anticipation. The whole of the island began to shudder and waken.
3
AJ came bustling out of the supply bunker door and dumped the leavings of his final haul to the ground: an old flame thrower, several boxes of ammo, and an MP38. The submachine gun looked like it had never been fired, and it probably hadn't. The rest looked in almost as good a shape, but it would be impossible to tell whether or not any of them would work until they were put to the test. All in all though, it was a damned good stash.
In the bunker next door, Kate was cleaning Dutch's wound with a bottle of alcohol. Like the guns, the bottle had probably never been used, but unlike the guns, it was probably useless, long since turned to water. Still, it was better than nothing. Dutch's wound looked bad.
Kate prodded him with a piece of cotton. “How could this happen? Where did they come from?”
“Out of nowhere,” Dutch said. “I didn't hear them.”
They both looked up as AJ waltzed in, grabbing a seat on a cot opposite.
“Are they like the others?” he asked. “They are, aren't they? It's the only way they could have survived.”
His friend blinked and then nodded.
AJ checked the pistol in his belt, then picked up a Karabiner rifle he had left on the floor. The flare gun Dutch brought was already tied to his waist. “I'm going to check the boat. Clean that gun there, and check the thrower. Make sure it works.”
“There's no fuel for it,” Kate said.
“Forget it, then.” He pointed to his friend. “Listen, he's in no condition to go back to the docks on foot, even if we help him. Maybe I can fix the RDF boat enough to get us there, though. If Dutch is right about that dory in the machine shop, we'll make the switch when we get there. All right?”
Before she could say anything else, he turned and headed out the door.
Once he reached the open air, he threw the rifle to the ground and barely stopped himself from slamming his fist into the bunker. But he didn't need a broken hand, not now, not with them counting on him. He settled for stomping the ground instead, kicking up earth hard enough to feel the pain in his feet.
I think we should split up.
He had known it would be dangerous. He had known there were risks. Dutch could always handle himself, but if there was one thing they had never expected, it was this.
Mason.
The sonofabitch was still alive, and he had waited for them to break apart. Bruhbaker might be changing, but he wasn't far gone enough to forget how to divide and conquer. Because of that, Gideon was gone, Dutch was wounded, and now, they needed him. In a million years, he would never have wanted this. He would never have wanted the weight of another person's life on his shoulders again. It's why he left his old life to begin with. It's why he put as much distance between himself and his military buddies. It's why he had spent so much time…
Drifting.
That's what Kate had called it. He had blown her off, but thinking about it now gave him pause. The truth was, he wasn't really good at anything he'd tried in the last fifteen years. Sure, he could work with his hands, he could guard an empty stretch of mine up in the shit-ass Andes. None of those things were him, though. AJ knew he wasn't put on this earth to fix things, to run an office job, or even to run security. What he was good at was fighting. What he was good at was survival. Maybe he didn't want to be responsible for anyone else, but his friends were counting on him, and so he would get them out, and he would help them survive. That's what he was put here to do. Maybe it was the only thing he could do.
Spitting bitterly on the ground, he picked up his gun and began heading towards the shore. It was time to get the hell out of Dodge.
4
Kate was a quick learner. She'd never picked up a submachine gun before in her life, but with Dutch's help, she had the thing disassembled and cleaned in minutes. She wondered if she should be doing something more for him— sewing his wound, for instance — but without a needle and thread, he would have to survive with a tight wrap and disinfectant.
As for Dutch himself, he hadn't given up. While she worked, he began loading rounds into the spare magazines. He had a handful packed and ready by the time she finished. Kate thought she had finally begun to see that flippant shell of his for what it was, though. It was armor. Not because he was sensitive, but because Dutch had seen some seriously scary shit in his day, and the flippant side was just his way of coping. He wasn't using that armor now; it looked like that armor was all used up.
She was about to go to him, to comfort him, when Dutch looked up with something like alarm. He turned towards the door and sniffed the air. “Oh no.”
5
The boat was on fire. AJ stood on the beach and watched it burn, the smoke disappearing into the dark. They were already here. As soon as he saw the flames, he knew. Worse, he knew the chances they had done something similar to the boat in the machine shop were good. But like it or not, they had to chance it. They had no choice now, no way out.
It felt too quiet. He thought he could see movement out along the edge of the sea, and he reached for the flare gun at his waist. Popping a round into the chamber, he looked up and down the beach. “Fuck it,” he said, and fired a round over the sands.
What he saw in the glow, some thirty feet away, was not a shape or an animal or a single member of the Black Shadow team. What he saw was an army of Carrion, a swarm of blackened figures, all padding up the shore as if some greater intelligence had commanded them not to be heard. The one in the lead was not Mason, but a disfigured, burned man AJ barely recognized. His skin was blotchy-black, his stomach cut and distended as if with child. The figure opened its mouth and shrieked.
And then they were all sprinting up the shore, tumbling and spitting and hissing as they ran towards him.
6
His body fell in a mass of arms and legs, rolling into the sand. Then all at once he was up, dashing towards the hole in the fence. He could hear their horrible footsteps behind him, splashing through the water as they ran up the beach. His mind flashed to Kate, to Dutch, to what he could do to protect them. What could he do with those things coming? He found himself screaming their names, calling to them as his feet pounded dirt. He stopped and fired a round from his rifle into the oncoming crowd, but it had no effect. They kept coming, sprinting and hurtling and charging up the beach.