The Sentinel (20 page)

“Toxoplasma,” I say. The word spills out from some recess of my mind. “It’s a parasite that infects thousands of different warm blooded species, including people. And when it infects people, it changes the way they think. Men become more aggressive and jealous, while women become more outgoing and receptive to the opposite sex. And both men and women had slower reaction times and became more accident prone.”

“So it’s a parasite that makes people have lots of sex and die young?” Chase asks. “If that’s the case, I know a lot of people who might be infected.”

“That’s not the point,” I say, growing frustrated with his Devil’s advocate routine. “The point is, there are parasites that can control the human mind. And there are parasites that can keep a caterpillar, which should be dead, alive and animated. Maybe we’re seeing something that can do both? Maybe the parasite drives the host to consume blood, or brains, providing nourishment to the young living in the gut, who then mature and are passed on to the next host through a bite? I mean, they ate Eagon. And Jenny. But the rest were killed by single bites, allowing the young parasites access to a new host.”

Chase speaks slowly. “That actually make some kind of sick sense.”

“It would explain why Peach and the bear were both infected,” Willem says. “If the only requirement the parasite has is warm blood, then species doesn’t matter. All mammalian brains can be controlled by certain chemicals, right?”

“I think so,” I say. “Which is why shooting them in the head works. They still need the brain to operate the body.”

“But what about that Torstein guy?” Chase asks. “He’s been dead for a really long time. His brain should be as dried and shriveled as his skin.”

“I don’t know,” I admit. “Maybe they secrete something that protects vital organs from decay, or even modify our genetic code so that the cells don’t degrade? Who knows? I’m just trying to make sense of these things. I don’t think we’re going to get all the answers.”

“She’s right,” Jakob says, his deep voice rumbling through the dark chamber. “We know everything we need to know: how to kill them, and what they want.”

“Uhh, I missed the ‘what they want’ part, I guess,” Chase says.

“Two things,” Jakob says. “To control you or to eat you.”

“Right,” Chase says. “Bad and worse. Got it. So what’s the plan, then?”

“Same as always,” I say. “Get the hell off this island.”

No one knows exactly how we’ll do that, though, and silence returns to the cave. I’m sure we’re all conjuring up scenarios of escape, but only one of them works. I have no doubt we’ll all agree that we need to go back to the Viking ruins—where anything on the inside of the island can see us—retrieve our gear, the raft and the engine, and then make a run for the southern coast. There is no other possible scenario for escape.

So I try to shut off my mind and get some rest. I lie on the stone floor, head leaning on my arms. It’s about as comfortable as a bed of broken glass, but exhaustion soon claims my mind like a parasite and puts me to sleep.

I dream of death.

I wake to screams.

29

Sudden fear wipes the sleepiness from my mind like a mannequin family subjected to a nuclear blast. The problem is, when I sit up, looking for danger, I can’t see a thing. But I can hear.

There’s a repetitive shuffling sound sifting through the chamber. Somebody’s moving.

“What’s wrong?” Willem asks from my right.

“Something touched me!” It’s Chase. The high-pitch of his voice means he’s horrified.

Jakob shushes us. Chase is making a lot of noise now, stumbling away from whatever threat he’s imagining.

“Chase,” I hiss. “Be quiet!”

Somebody grunts in reply to my voice. The sound comes from where I imagine Chase to be, but it isn’t his voice. Nor is it Willem or Jakob. The shuffling sound begins again, getting louder. The sound comes in starts and stops.

Thud
.
Shhhhh.

Thud
.
Shhhhh
.

Shambling
, I think.
It’s fucking shambling
!

And it’s coming toward me. Speaking was a grave mistake. Whatever monster wandered into our hideaway is as blind in the dark as we are. It’s hunting by sound, following our voices.

I clamp my mouth shut and sit still. I should probably move, but I remain rooted in place, afraid that any sound might cause it to pounce.

I hear a tiny click to my right and recognize the sound as Willem pressing the small LED light. When he lets go, its blue light will reveal whatever is coming my way. The problem is, it will also reveal me to it. I brace myself for action and wait.

Click.

Blue light, brighter than expected, fills the chamber. We’ve been in the dark so long that the tiny light seems incredibly bright and I squint as I dash to the side. A small rock snags my foot and I topple over, landing just a few feet from where I sat.

The shambling sound grows faster. Louder. It speaks as I roll over to face my death head-on like the Colonel would want.

The face gazing down at me is the last I expected.

“Jackson?” I say, staring up at the man. Blood soaks his face where he was bitten, but otherwise, he looks unscathed. Could he have survived?

My three male comrades must be wondering the same thing, because no one moves.

Then Jackson speaks, his voice wet. “I’m going to kill you.”

The words slowly sink in. I’m going to kill you. They were the last words he spoke before the bear crushed his skull. I look more closely at his head and notice it’s not quite as spherical as it used to be. It’s been crushed. No way he’s still alive. Not in the traditional sense, at least.

“He’s one of them!” I say.

“But he’s talking,” Chase says. He’s hiding behind the shield, crouched next to the fallen stones and the Viking body.

“‘I’m going to kill you,’ is the last thing he said before he died!” My words come in a frantic rush as I fumble for my gun. I don’t find it tucked into my waist. A quick glance reveals I dropped it when I tried to make my escape, but it’s within reaching distance. But before I can make a move, Jackson lunges.

Before he reaches me, Willem leaps toward the reanimated corpse with a battle cry. He’s got the sword raised up, ready to take Jackson’s head off, but his shout gives the attack away. Jackson moves with surprising speed, spinning around and smashing Willem in the side with a forearm. The strike knocks Willem back. He slams into the wall and slumps to the floor.

“Willem!” I shout, which serves no purpose other than bringing Jackson’s attention back to me. “Help!” I shout, reaching for the gun. I catch a glimpse of Chase on the other side of the chamber. He’s free to act. Could use that shield to ram Draugr Jackson from behind. But he remains as motionless as the unconscious Willem.

I feel cold metal and fumble with the gun. I could look at the gun and pick it up quickly, but I find myself unable to take my eyes off Jackson. As a result, I’m not ready to repel his attack. He throws himself toward me, reaching out for my head. I fall on my back, pull my legs up and plant my feet against his chest. I manage to hold him back for a moment, but he weighs more than he should and he’s using his increased strength to push himself on top of me. He opens his mouth and leans forward, straining to reach the flesh of my face just a foot away.

I wish I could say that’s as bad as it gets, but he’s got one more surprise for me. He hisses, “I’m going to kill you,” again and then sticks out his tongue. At first, I’m not sure what I’m seeing, but then a moment of clarity reveals a patch of wriggling white bodies emerging from the tip of his tongue. I can see each one clearly. They have two black specks for eyes. The mouths are small, but as they open and close, I see tiny little needle-like teeth. Their segmented white bodies writhe back and forth, pushing out of his flesh. And in a moment, they’re going to fall on my face. Maybe crawl into my mouth, or my nose, ears and eyes. A bite might not even be necessary!

I look into his dead, white eyes, hoping to see a trace of humanity left. No such luck. I thought his eyes had been whitened by some form of undead cataracts, but up close I can see that his eyes have become clear membranes. The whiteness comes from the writhing mass of parasites
filling
his eyeballs. Jackson no longer sees with his own eyes. Instead, a mass of tiny black eyes stare out
through
Jackson’s eyeballs and somehow transfer the visual data to his body.

One of the parasitic killers frees itself from Jackson’s tongue. It dangles above my mouth, held up by viscous slime, wriggling, chomping its tiny jaws.

I want to scream for help again, but can’t. The parasite could fall right into my mouth.

The parasite is just inches from my face when Jackson is yanked back. The tendril of slime stretches and snaps, dropping the parasite as I flinch away.

Jackson roars in frustration, but his voice is replaced by a sudden slippery crunching sound. The Draugr falls to the ground at my feet. Jakob lands on its back, hacking away at the spine with Alvin’s rusty fishing knife.

Knowing I’m safe, I jump to my feet, frantically searching my body. I find the mucus covered parasite wriggling down my sleeve, headed toward the cuff of my sweater. I flick the small creature to the cave floor and then crush it beneath my boot.

Jakob stands, out of breath and wipes his blood-covered hands on his pant legs.

“Will kill you,” Jackson croaks out.

“He’s not dead!” Chase shouts from his hiding spot.

“Severed the spine,” Jakob says. “Alive, but cannot move.”

I notice several white maggot-things crawling out of the knife wound in the back of Jackson’s neck, but they’re not going anywhere fast. “Keep away from him.”

“What happened?” Willem sits up, rubbing his head and looking at Jackson’s still body.

“You tried to play Viking,” I say. “Didn’t work out so well.”

He blinks hard. “Tell me about it.”

“Next time don’t scream as you attack.” I reach out my hand and help him to his feet.

“Thanks for the tip,” he says.

“Kill you,” Jackson says, his voice fading.

Chase finally finds his courage and comes out of hiding. He crouches next to Jackson. “What do you want?”

“What are you doing?” I ask.

“Trying to communicate,” he says and then repeats, “What do you want?” like he’s talking to a really old lady, one loud syllable at a time.

“Kill…you.”

“That’s not an answer,” I say. “It’s just repeating the last thing he said. Can probably trigger whatever part of the brain that is. Makes the reanimated corpse that much more believable. If Jackson had said, ‘Help me, please,’ before he died, this might have worked out differently.”

Jackson says, “Kill,” one more time before Willem drives the sword through the paralyzed Draugr’s skull and brain, silencing him for good. But a new voice, more mangled than Jackson’s, picks up where he left off, only this time the message is much more peaceful. “It’s okay, we’re friends.”

McAfee’s last words.

30

McAfee’s body defies logic. The two large holes in his chest are the least of his problems. His face is flattened and smeared with blood. The rest of his body looks compressed. I remember the large bull pounding his body into the sand. It must have broken all his ribs and crushed the rest of him. His arms look rubbery—probably filled with broken bones. His legs appear solid, but one is twisted to the side at an odd angle.

Now
this
looks like a zombie
, I think, but the familiar image does little to comfort me.

“It’s okay,” McAfee says. He speaks out the side of his mouth, unable to open his jaw fully. It’s crooked and looks to be broken on one side. “We’re friends.”

As though to prove the truth of his statement, McAfee raises his arms toward me and charges forward. He’s faster than anticipated and nearly reaches me, but I manage to roll away.

McAfee is fast, and probably strong, but he’s not agile. As I roll to the side, he turns to watch me though his bleached eyes and doesn’t see the approaching wall. He smashes into the wall and falls to the floor.

“Run!” I shout.

Chase leads our exodus from the chamber and into the tunnel. As we run for the surface, the light in the tunnel shifts from the light blue of the LED light Willem carries, to a bright yellow. A glowing circle reveals the exit ahead of us, beaming with the promises of freedom and daylight.

The sun
, I think with relief.

I’m doing it again; attributing what I know about modern vampires to the Draugar, which we’ve already seen operating in the daylight—perpetual daylight. As my legs start to ache from the uphill run, I start to think. The Draugar obviously know where we are. But only Jackson and McAfee came into the cave.

Why?

The answer comes quick. Willem and Chase were right about the cave. The others couldn’t, or wouldn’t enter. But Jackson and McAfee were new Draugar. They’d have no memory of the caves. No fear. No apprehension. But they were injured. Weaponless. Clumsy.

The light ahead blooms bright. The fresh air of day rolls past us. It feels warm, maybe fifty degrees, but it carries a scent that makes me shiver. The smell is earthy and I quickly realize why Jackson and McAfee entered the cave alone.

They were never meant to kill us
, I think.
They were sent to flush us out
!

“Chase, wait!” I shout too late. He runs out of the cave and is bathed in bright yellow sunlight. It looks so welcome, so peaceful. And quiet. Nothing happens.

“What’s wrong?” Willem asks me.

Chase stands outside the cave, looking back and forth, seeing nothing. My fear fades as we enter the sun. “Nothing, I just thought—”

Chase turns to greet us. His head snaps up. His eyes go wide. A scream unlike anything I’ve ever heard rises in his throat. I look up and find a silhouette of something big, framed by the sun. Something swoops past my head. Chase flinches down and raises the shield. The instinctual defensive posture saves his life as a double-sided axe strikes the wood. The shield explodes into fragments and Chase is sent sailing. But he wasn’t cut in half, which I’m pretty sure was the attacker’s intent.