The Lost Island (28 page)

E
LI GLINN LAY
in the sand as two medics pulled the wreckage of his wheelchair off from on top of him, cut away his shirt, and undertook a quick examination. He was vaguely aware of his injuries, but he felt detached from them, distant, as if all this had happened to someone else. He struggled to make an inventory of his condition. His shoulder, broken. His crippled arm, lacerated and bleeding. A cut on his head, with perhaps a mild concussion. Burns. They hurt already; very soon, they would hurt much more.

He could hear the roar of the fire, see its angry glow through the ruined and tattered tent fabric. This was far worse than before. There would be no controlling this fire. He could already hear the popping sounds as it moved into the jungle, branches crackling, seedpods bursting, treetops erupting in noisy flame. Fanned by a rising wind.

Painfully, he turned his head to one side. His aide lay on the ground, in three pieces, connected only by strings of tissue. The man’s surprised blue eyes stared into space. The man’s body, and Glinn’s wheelchair, had absorbed the blow. It was a miracle Glinn was still alive.

The medics finished fitting a neck brace on him. They lifted him gently, then placed him on a stretcher.

“We’re going to get you on the chopper,” the chief medic said.

“Not ahead of the others.”

“I’m doing the triage around here,” the chief medic said tersely as they headed for the door.

“I said
no
. I’m stable now. Set me down. Take the others out first. I’ll go with the last group.”

A hesitation, and then the medic nodded. “Okay, Mr. Glinn. Have it your way.” He disappeared out the door.

Glinn raised his head from the stretcher, looked around, spotted a soldier. He beckoned him over. “You’re my aide now. You’ll relay my orders.”

“Yes, sir.”

Glinn grasped the man’s collar, pulled him close. “I want an immediate general evacuation of the island. First the wounded, then the others. We have two choppers left—it’ll take four trips. The mission hospital in Puerto Cabezas, south on the mainland, will be our destination. There’s a helipad there. Do it quickly.”

“Yes, sir.”

“Second order: abandon the firefighting effort. It’s too late. The remaining soldiers—
everyone
left on the island—are to maintain the perimeter, defend against the creature, until the evac is complete. Is that understood?”

“Understood.”

“Good. Now
go
.”

“Yes, sir.” Glinn released his hold on the man’s collar. The soldier jumped up and immediately disappeared around the corner of the tent.

Glinn lay back on the stretcher, on the ground, staring upward at the canvas, bright with the light of the fire. According to Gideon, Garza had gotten one lotus root out. Just one. He hoped beyond all hope that it would be enough.

G
IDEON FORCED HIMSELF
to sit up, his head spinning. He had to get the hell out of here before the Cyclops found him. There would be no communication between them, no mercy. Glinn was right about that, at least: he’d been a fool to think otherwise.

He strained to listen. Save for the low rush of water, a deep silence had descended. Gideon waited in the darkness, trying to catch his breath. And then a slow growl came rumbling out of the black tunnel: a howl of hatred, fury, and pain. It grew in volume until it ascended into an ululating wail.

Staggering to his feet, gripped by panic, Gideon flashed the light around briefly, saw nothing, and ran down the passageway, a lava tube with many branches. He took one at random, then another, sprinting as fast as he could, using his headlamp in his hand and turning it on and off just enough to keep from running headlong into the walls. He had lost all sense of direction. He had no idea where he was. His only desire was to get away from the beast.

Silence—and then another, low growl. It sounded like it was ahead of him. Could the creature really have moved that fast? Had he himself, in his panic and confusion, doubled back? Stopping abruptly, almost tumbling into the sand, Gideon turned and ran back the way he had come, veering down a new tunnel, scrambling over the fallen rocks of a cave-in. He paused to listen again. Where the hell was it?

He could hear, faintly, the Cyclops moving: huge hoary feet biting into the sand. Again it seemed to be ahead of him. He could feel it, feel the electricity of the creature’s hatred, its desperate need to kill. And then—quite suddenly—he could smell it.

Looking around, he saw an opening in the ceiling of the lava tube and he leapt for it, pulling himself up and climbing fast. One hand found a horizontal passage leading off from the pipe and he climbed into it and paused to reconnoiter. The tunnel was small—perhaps too small for the Cyclops.

He crawled down its length for a hundred yards, cutting his knees on the rocks that jutted up from the sandy floor. He could make out a dim light ahead, a faint smear of white. As he approached he saw it was the glow of the crystal cavern, framed by a rough opening.

…And then, suddenly, the black silhouette of the creature appeared against the light, blocking his way. With a cry, Gideon fell back. The Cyclops was playing with him—torturing him. Scrambling backward, he noticed a vertical hole to one side of the narrow passage. Shining his light down it, he saw that, after a few feet, it leveled out and widened. He climbed down and found himself in a dark passageway, apparently some rear section of the necropolis. There were ancient bones everywhere, crumbling into dust, along with crude stone tools, polished pieces of obsidian, and other artifacts. But Gideon was too panicked to pay much attention. He sprinted down the passage, chose another branch at random, then another, and another, the beam of his flashlight streaking wildly across the walls.

He forced himself to stop and listen.
Get a grip
, he told himself. He had to think about what he was doing, not just run in panic, willy-nilly. If he could only get to the surface, he might be able to reach the relative protection of Glinn’s camp.

As he waited, listening in the dark, he heard a new sound: a faint calling. It was Amiko, calling for the Cyclops. Searching for it. Pleading with it. Calling it in.

He began moving again, taking a fork in the passage that seemed to head in the direction of her voice. As he ran, he could hear—overlaid by Amiko’s voice—the creature’s grunting sounds of pain as it loped along. Where was it? The confusing system of passageways, with their echoes and re-echoes, made it hard to tell. Gideon paused, uncertain whether to advance or retreat, fighting back the panic that tried to bubble its way to the surface.

A minute went by, then another. Amiko’s voice had died away. Gideon hardly dared breathe. And then he heard other sounds—that same stertorous breathing, that same growl of hatred, the same slow sounds of movement. And this time, there was no confusion: they were coming from the unknown darkness
behind
him. He spun around just as the thing came shambling out of the darkness into the beam of his flashlight, bloody eye staring.

Gasping in fear, scrambling backward, Gideon dove through a random hole in the lava tube, tumbled down a sandy slope, and rolled out into a huge space—the crystal cavern. He ran toward its exit, the Cyclops grunting and dragging itself behind him. Gasping for breath, he gained the outer cavern, ran through the entrance, and burst out through the crack in the stone into the blinding sunlight.

His momentum almost carried him off the cliff and he scrambled desperately at the edge, rocks falling away into sheer space, before pulling himself back. He raced up the trail, the Cyclops directly behind him. At the very lip of the cliff, the creature’s arm whipped out and seized his calf from behind. With a brutal roar of triumph, he plucked Gideon up from the face of rock and swung him out over blue space, preparing to fling him off the cliff. Gideon cried out as he hung upside down in the massive fist, staring at the crawling blue ocean a thousand feet below.

“No!” came Amiko’s cry as she suddenly appeared just above them on the trail. “Stop!”

The Cyclops hesitated, dangling Gideon over the precipice. Then, slowly, it looked up, toward Amiko…and past her. Its eye widened with apparent horror at what it saw. Despite his desperate plight, Gideon followed the creature’s gaze—and saw it, too.

The island was on fire. A massive firestorm swirled upward in a spiraling tornado of flame: leaves, twigs, entire burning branches lofted on the updraft, shaking the very air. As he stared, momentarily forgetting even his own predicament, a chopper flew overhead, speeding for the mainland. The fire was consuming everything, advancing at a furious pace, fueled by the wind blowing toward their end of the island. Even as the Cyclops stood, paralyzed at the sight, animals escaping the fire came flying off the cliff, wild pigs and big cats and creatures Gideon had never seen before racing out of the jungle and tumbling into the sea below with cries and yelps of terror, twisting in the air as they tumbled into space.

There was no hope for the island—none.

Staring at the conflagration, the Cyclops lifted his head and bellowed out a roar of impotent rage. It was as if his horror at seeing the final end of his world, his centuries of loneliness and pain, were all rolled up into that one horrible cry. He seemed to have forgotten Gideon, still dangling from his massive arm.

“No,” said Amiko, stepping toward him with a strange air of calm. “Please, no.”

Gideon clawed the air, trying to catch hold of something, in a perfect terror of the dizzying heights.

Amiko stood there, and the Cyclops stared at her, at the all-consuming fire, at Gideon, and then back to her. Gideon stopped struggling. Some sort of communication seemed to take place between Amiko and the creature—an understanding that almost transcended language. And then, gently, the Cyclops drew Gideon back from the brink and released him to the ground.

Gideon collapsed on the rock, breathing hard.

Amiko stepped over to the Cyclops. They turned their backs to Gideon, to the island—and stared out toward the infinite blue horizon.

The Cyclops took a step toward the cliff face. He was a ruined creature, burned, bloody, his leg shattered, blood streaming down his back. Above, the fire crackled and roared. More animals went driving and falling past them, their screams whisked away by the wind.

There was a brief moment of stasis. And then, with a motion that was almost graceful, the Cyclops joined them, leaping from the cliff. Gideon rushed to the edge and stared down. It took a long time for him to fall. At the end his body made a flower in the water…and then the blue sea smoothed over and it was gone.

Gideon retreated from the cliff face and glanced back, across the clearing to the wall of jungle. Now he could see the fire advancing in its full fury. A sucking updraft was developing as the smoke and burning detritus whirled into the sky in a tornado of flame. A tapir came charging past him, zigzagging, making a high-pitched sound of terror, before disappearing over the edge.

The Cyclops had realized it was the end of his world. Vengeance, rage, struggle were useless. There was nothing more he could do. And somehow—maybe with Amiko’s help—he had reached within, found that human core of mercy, and spared Gideon’s life.

He turned. Now Amiko, following in the footsteps of the Cyclops, was also approaching the cliff edge. As he watched, she took a slow, deliberate step—and then another.

“Wait,” said Gideon, a terrible realization dawning within him. “No. No, don’t.”

She looked at him sadly. “There’s no place for him in this world. And none for me, either.”

“For God’s sake,
Amiko
—!”

She stepped to the edge of the precipice, preparing to follow.

“Amiko,” Gideon said in desperation. He reached out a hand to stop her, then withdrew it; he sensed that any physical contact would result in her immediate plunge. He gasped, forcing himself to think. She stood there, toes over open air, glancing down at the foaming rocks that had already claimed the Cyclops.

“Do you remember that book of poetry I told you about? There was a line that stuck in my brain, from a poem by Delmore Schwartz.”

She had paused. She was listening.

“He wrote:
Time is the fire in which we burn
. That line has always haunted me—all the more so now, when I have so little time left.”

She did not turn; did not make any indication of having heard. But neither did she jump.

“I’ve got ten months. You’ve got the rest of your life. And you’re going to throw away all that gorgeous, wonderful time, time that I would love to have—but can’t. For what? Because you say there’s no place for you? Because you’re afraid?”

She seemed to sway a little, teetering on the edge.

“But you
aren’t
afraid. You’re the bravest person I’ve ever met. The way you handled those pirates with the gaff hook. The way you rescued me from the sacrifice to the Lotus Eaters, and took a spear for your pains. The way you climbed the cliff face with a raging fever.” He took a ragged breath. “Sometimes it takes courage—maybe all the courage you’ve got—to just live life. Every morning I wake up and the first thing I think is:
Oh, shit, I’m dying
. And that makes me want to make my time
count
. My condition may be the worst thing that’s ever happened to me, but it’s also done something good: I’ve learned the value of time. And here you are, about to throw your life away. Don’t do it. Listen to a man who knows the preciousness of time.”

She remained still, body quivering with anticipation, swaying out over the uttermost edge of the cliff.

“You have the courage to face death. But do you have the courage to face life? Do the most courageous thing of all. Step back from the edge. Turn around. And come with me. Please.”

For another moment, she remained motionless. And then—slowly—she turned around and took an unsteady step toward him, and another. Quickly, Gideon grabbed her hand, pulled her in, and hugged her tightly as if to prevent her changing her mind.

Clutching her to him, he turned away, looking back toward the conflagration. The island was being utterly consumed by the firestorm, sweeping away everything in its path. It was leapfrogging from tree to tree, gobbets of burning debris starting to drop around them like snow, starting fires everywhere. It would be on top of them within moments. Where could they go? Back down the cliffs into the necropolis? But the fire had cut off that route of escape and was now closing in on three sides, backing them up against the cliff. The minutes he’d spent convincing Amiko not to hurl herself over the edge had eaten up precious time. Already the heat of the fire was becoming unbearable and he could hardly breathe…

…And then he heard a thudding sound above the roar of the fire. The shadow of a chopper appeared, low and slow. It went into a hover; a rope ladder dropped. Gideon grasped it and pushed Amiko up ahead of him even as the flames swirled around. Just before they pulled him in after her, he glanced back and got a final glimpse of the island: it had turned into a rotating tower of flame.