Phoenix Island (30 page)

A hand closed on Octavia’s wrist. She screamed and tried to pull away but couldn’t break the grip. Parker tore the club from her hand. “Cuff her.”

“What are you doing?” she said.

The soldier she hadn’t noticed before grabbed her from behind and slammed her up against the jeep. He pressed her hips against the grill and flattened her chest and face against the hood. “Arms back. Wrists together.”

She struggled briefly—vaguely aware of the sounds of fighting behind her, Ross’s crying out—but the soldier was too strong, and as the cold steel cuffs closed around her wrists, Parker’s face leaned in close, smiling.

“You’re just like your boyfriend, huh? An individual.” He reached out and pinched her nose like he was some playful uncle. “Well, you messed up this time, sugar britches. You and Ross killed that poor carrottop sack of crap, and now you’re going to pay.”

Then she understood. “You planned this, didn’t you? You told Decker to . . . do
that
so you could blame us. You’re crazy!”

He crossed his eyes, stuck out his tongue, and burst into laughter. Then, standing straight, he said, “Throw Ross and Mrs. Hollywood in the back of the jeep. It’s hunting season!”

T
HE RUCKSACK SQUEAKED
with every stride. Carl tugged at the chest straps, and then it stopped, leaving only the pounding of combat boots on the hard-packed forest trail, the sounds of the birds, and the easy rhythm of breathing—Stark’s and his own, synchronized as neatly as their strides. For now, he had to pretend to be completely in step with Stark’s plans and vision . . . when everything in him wanted to run in the opposite direction.

They chugged up a steep hill without slowing. For the hour or so since they’d left all that madness back at Camp Phoenix Force, they’d been sprinting up and down the twisting network of jungle trails, dressed in full-length fatigues and combat boots, a good sixty pounds on each of their backs. Despite the sparring session and heavy pack, Carl’s “new body” was well up to the challenge.

His mind wasn’t doing as well.

Stark was none other than the Old Man from Eric’s journal, a six-foot-six, combat-experienced soldier who could bench-press half a ton and who planned to cart Carl off to some war-torn corner of the world to kill people. That would mean the death of everything Carl stood for, the death of the person he’d always been, the death of his father’s son . . . and the birth of a new person, a cold-blooded killer, the son of Stark.

He
had
to escape.

The pack started squeaking again.

He tugged the straps.

Ahead of him, Stark laughed. “Welcome to the soldiering life. Since
the days of the Spartans, soldiers have struggled with equipment. We’ll doctor your pack back at the hangar. Sound good?”

“Sounds great,” Carl said. He’d never been good at hiding his feelings, but he deserved an Oscar for his recent performance.

They sprinted up another steep incline.

How
could he escape?

Armed guards watched over the boats at Camp Phoenix Force, and stowing away on the supply plane seemed impossible. He didn’t know its exact schedule, and even if he did, how would he sneak on board? Stark let him go out alone for runs and sometimes left him alone to study, but Carl couldn’t exactly time these moments with the plane’s arrival. Even if he did get on board, where would he hide?

Insanity . . .

Come on Campbell,
he thought.
Get somebody over here before it’s too late
.

Breaking his thoughts, Stark whooped, and Carl watched a small herd of pigs move off into the deeper darkness of the forest.

“Vicious animals, those pigs,” Stark said. “Run into a big boar, you better be prepared.” He slapped the large knife that rode always in a sheath at his belt. The man loved knives, a fascination likely stemming from the samurai and their Bushido code—just one more piece of his well-educated madness.

They broke from the trees onto the wide stone ridge that ran like a spine across the island. Despite Carl’s anxieties, the view here above the tree line staggered him, the whole of the island sprawling greenly beneath them, the surrounding Pacific misty in its vastness. To his right, beyond the slope they’d just ascended, Carl could see sections of road, a broken brown ribbon barely visible through the canopy. Beyond the road, a straighter, unbroken line split the jungle, dividing this half of the island from the eastern “here are dragons” side. From this height, Carl could see that the fence ran from one end of the island to the other, the trees just on either side of it cleared away. Considering this half of the island had vicious pigs and psychopaths with automatic weapons, what “dragons” were so dangerous to necessitate an electric fence like that? He didn’t even want to know. . . .

Turning to the other side, he took an instinctive step backward, his gut clenching like a fist. The ridge plummeted away in a sheer cliff of raw stone, a hundred-foot drop to the lower forest. Straight ahead, like a stone skull rising from the rocky spine, towered the tallest peak of the mountain. Beyond, the ocean stretched darkly into infinity.

“To the summit,” Stark said, waving Carl forward. “No better place to watch the sunset.”

Carl followed, sticking to the center of the ridge. He’d never really been afraid of heights, but the sharp cutaway to his left—all that open space!—felt like it could just suck him out into the void. He locked his eyes on the trail and kept putting one foot in front of the other.

At the summit, Stark dropped his pack and hooah-ed.

Maintaining his Oscar performance, Carl did the same.

Around them stretched the blunt peak of raw stone, flat as an observation deck, and roughly the size of a boxing ring. Stark went to the edge and stood, facing the void, with his hands on hips.

“Alexander the Great conquered the known world before his thirtieth birthday. Marched an army all the way from Greece to India. Destroyed the Persians, everyone. In Afghanistan, they thought he was a god. As legend has it, he scaled a mountain not unlike this, and reaching its peak, looked out upon the vast lands beneath him, and wept.” He turned to Carl. “Do you know why he wept?”

“He’d lost a lot of soldiers?”

Stark shook his head. “He wept because there was nothing left for him to conquer.”

“Wow,” Carl said, doing his best to sound impressed.

Turning to face the ocean, Stark said, “Whenever I come here, I imagine Zeus looking down from Mount Olympus and laughing at a world still punishing itself with the gift of fire.”

One push,
Carl thought, staring at Stark’s back,
would send him over the edge
.

“Prometheus’s fire has given the leaders of the free world everything they need to annihilate our enemies,” Stark said. “Satellite surveillance, drone planes, tactical nukes, genetically tailored super-flus . . . everything.
But while our citizens and soldiers die, they play Hamlet and hesitate. Why?”

He would never see it coming,
Carl thought, taking a step forward.
One push, and I could end this thing
.

“Because Prometheus’s fire also created the information age,” Stark said, “and with several billion idiots watching CNN and whining on the internet, the most powerful men on the planet are afraid to act.”

Carl stopped. He couldn’t do it. He was no murderer.

Stark turned with a smile. “But you and I, son, we’re different. We understand that progress comes at a price. It’s not ready yet, but soon, when Prometheus’s fire gives us the master chip, we’ll act very decisively. Then, when it’s our turn to look down on the conquered world, we won’t weep like Alexander. We’ll laugh like Zeus.”

“Awesome,” Carl said, and even managed a smile. What did Stark mean,
conquered world
? What was he planning to do with the master chip?

Stark checked his watch, unzipped his rucksack, and came away with two pairs of binoculars. Handing one set to Carl, he said, “Come on. I want to show you something.”

They went to the edge, where the mountainside sloped steeply away in a storm-damaged swath of forest. From a dense tangle of low vegetation jutted the splintered ends of snapped trees . . . compound fractures of the jungle that had been. Carl thought of Mitchell’s broken bone.

Stark pointed downhill. “Look familiar?”

Carl raised the binoculars to his eyes and saw an all-too-familiar scene: the ocean, the low block buildings, the ramp, the pier, the landing strip, the parking lot where Parker had stolen his medal.

“Oh, yeah,” he said, “that’s where we landed the first day.”

Stark said, “From what I understand, you got to know the pavement pretty well that afternoon.”

Carl forced a laugh. Stark knew everything.

“Keep watching. Something genuinely interesting is about to occur.”

But instead of looking where Stark seemed to be indicating, Carl’s eyes stared at what he’d just spotted.

A boat.

A lone vessel bobbing up and down on the tide, moored to a dark pier that jutted out like a finger pointing to the mainland, to Mexico, to the United States beyond. . . .

“Here they come,” Stark said. “I hear them.”

Carl heard an engine down there somewhere but didn’t look away from the ship. Hope rose within him and popped, bright as a flare, in his chest.
A
boat!
He’d thought all of them were at Camp Phoenix Force, but no—on the far side of the low buildings flanking the landing strip, the boat bobbed as rhythmically as a beckoning hand.

“Right on time,” Stark said, and glancing away from the boat, Carl saw a jeep back to the end of the pier.

Two soldiers wrestled a large drum out of the back, tilted it, and dumped a wet mash off the pier. The water went cloudy, and Carl saw things floating on the surface.

“Garbage from the chow hall,” Stark said. “Keep watching.”

All at once, the water boiled. Dark shapes thrashed beneath the surface, swirling and splashing. One of the soldiers took a step backward.

Stark laughed. “Hammerhead sharks. Some of nature’s finest killing machines scavenging our scraps.”

“Jeez,” Carl said. Even from this distance, he could see their dark, muscular bodies thrashing.

“Now for the main course,” Stark said.

Down below, the soldiers took something else out of the vehicle.

At first, Carl didn’t believe what he was seeing. It was a body. A
person’s
body.

“The price of progress runs high at times,” Stark said. “Never forget that, Carl.”

As if it were but a sack of potatoes, the soldiers swung the mass and launched it off the pier, out into the feeding frenzy.

“No,” Carl groaned, and watched in horror as the body jerked under the surface, watched as the legs wobbled back and forth, then dipped under, watched as the water turned red . . . as red as the hair of the boy being consumed.

Carl turned and puked his guts out.

P
ARKER SMILED AT HER
through the bars of the sweatbox. “How’d you sleep, Mrs. Hollywood?”

There it was again—Mrs. Hollywood—further convincing her that this was all about Carl, Parker’s way of getting back at the only person who’d been good enough and strong enough to defy him.

His smile disappeared. “I asked you a question, orphan. How did you sleep?”

“Like the dead, Drill Sergeant.”

The smile came back, wider this time. “Like the dead. Good. I like that.”

In reality, she’d barely slept, her whole body throbbing like an open nerve. Her arms and neck and face bubbled with what looked like the world’s worst case of poison ivy, an oozing red rash that burned and itched until she thought she’d lose her mind. She’d passed in and out of sleep ragged with nightmares, and spent her waking hours killing bugs, slapping her burning rash, crying, praying, and trying not to picture Medicaid dead in the meadow. Now the sun boiled overhead, cooking the sweatbox, baking the air until it seemed her flesh would crack open on her bones, steaming like meat on the grill.

“What’s that stuck in your nose?” he asked.

“Pieces of my shirt, Drill Sergeant. It stinks in here.”