The Sentinel (22 page)

There’s a flurry of excited movement inside the Draugr’s exposed interior and the ancient man lifts the massive hammer, clutched in both hands, over his head. I nearly vomit when the thing’s flaccid bingo arms undulate like two limp jellyfish. Movement above brings my gaze back to the hammer. The weapon has a long reach and at this range, it’ll have no trouble striking my legs.

The hammer descends, then swings wildly off course. My mind registers what happened just a moment later. Willem’s sword has cut through the Draugr’s upper arm, severing it. The hammer swings right, missing my leg. But the severed arm, no longer controlled, loses its grip on the hammer and flings toward me. I cover my head just in time as the limb strikes me hard and bounces away.

I flinch away from the severed limb, looking for parasites that aren’t there.

The Draugr spins around, swinging the hammer in a wide arc that could knock a man’s head clean off. Willem ducks the blow and swings out with his sword. To my surprise, the Draugr actually goes on the defensive, taking a step back, right onto the Zodiac’s pontoon.

The weight of the Draugr compresses the pontoon, but the strong material bounces back and rolls beneath the dead man’s foot. He falls back hard, slamming onto the sand. Had he been a living man, there would have been a shout of surprise followed by an
oof
as the wind left his lungs. But the only sign that the Draugr is caught off guard is that it drops the giant hammer.

I dive to the side to avoid the falling behemoth, but can’t avoid being sprayed by sand kicked up by his fall.

“Shoot it!” Willem shouts. He looks winded. Maybe injured.

And he’s right. The thing is at my mercy. But I’ve only got three rounds left. Better to save them when there’s another option. As the thing struggles to sit up with just one arm and barely any stomach muscles to speak of, I pick up the hammer. The thing weighs a ton and for a moment, I think I won’t be able to swing it.

The Draugr sits up, but can’t figure out how to stand with the Zodiac pontoon beneath its legs.

How could something smart enough to set a trap get confused by a pontoon
? I wonder. But I don’t spend any time wondering about it. This thing’s eternal lifespan is about to be cut short. I hoist the hammer up onto my shoulder. The weight of it nearly pulls me over backwards, but I spread my feet apart, regain my balance and swing the hammer like a little kid at a “test your strength” carnival game.

The hammer finds its mark atop the Draugr’s skull and although there’s no ringing bell, there is a sickening, wet crunch. When I pull the hammer away and drop it onto the beach, I see the damage I’ve done. The Draugr’s head has been compressed down, into its body, like a turtle retreating into its shell. The top of its skull is cracked open. Gouts of white, writhing worms wriggle out. I step away from the mess, a sinister grin on my face, and say, “Give the girl a prize.”

But when I look to Willem, I see my celebration is premature. Despite the Draugr’s demise, he looks terrified as he looks over my head at a distant peak. I don’t see anything there when I look, so I ask, “What is it? What did you see?”

“I—I don’t know,” he says. “I saw something up there. Something big. Watching us. It looked—” He shakes his head like he can’t believe what he’s about to say. His eyes look disturbed as he speaks again. “It looked like a raven. I think… I think I just saw Muninn.”

32

“I think…we’ve gone…far enough,” I say, while trying to catch my breath. After our encounter with the hammer wielding, loose skinned Draugr and Willem’s sighting of “the Raven”, about which Torstein carved the warning, we fled. I’ve never run so far, so fast in my life. I felt like a kid again, running up the creaky basement stairs, certain that something would jump out and attack me at any moment. The difference is that now, my fear of monsters is justified.

Willem slows, but doesn’t stop. “We should keep moving.”

“This is an island,” I say. “If we keep moving, we’re going end up where we began.”

This stops him in his tracks. He rubs his forehead and I can tell he feels stupid. “Sorry,” he says. “I just—”

“Don’t worry about it,” I say, resting my hands on my knees. My cloak feels like it weighs a thousand pounds. I take it off and place it on the sand.

“Wow,” Willem says, looking at me.

For crying out loud
, I think. My sweater is form fitting, I know, but we’re running for our lives and he can’t help commenting on the view. “Willem,” I say, ready to deliver a verbal beat down, but when I see his eyes, I notice he’s not looking at my chest; he’s looking at my back.

“What is it?” I ask, my voice changing tone in an instant as I picture a swarm of those maggot things crawling over my back, burrowing through my flesh.

“You’re steaming,” he says.

I glance over my shoulder and see a swirling curtain of steam rising.
Warm sweat, meet cold air, and its friend dehydration
. I find some snow in the shadow of a rock, and shovel a handful into my mouth. It’s slushy but drinkable. I didn’t realize how thirsty I was until this moment. I scoop up another handful and drink it down. “You should have some,” I tell Willem. “Keep hydrated or—”

Sudden pain pulses behind my eyes. I stagger back, placing my hands on my head. Willem dashes to my side, holding me, and says, “What’s wrong? Did they get you?”

Despite the pain and circumstances, I let out a laugh and say. “Brain freeze.”

“Brain freeze?” Apparently, he’s never heard the American term describing the sudden sharp headache that can occur with eating frozen food.

“From the snow,” I explain.

“Ohh,” he says. “Push your tongue against the roof of your mouth.”

I do, and the pain subsides. When it does, I notice he’s still holding me. I glance down at his arms, and then up into his eyes. “Thanks.”

There’s a moment there. A connection. The kind teenagers first experience at summer camp or behind bleachers, or someplace else equally non-romantic. It’s that thing that makes you cramp up inside and sucks your breath away. It’s kind of a painful experience, actually, but in our minds, or maybe our hearts, we know it means something. It’s typically less intense when experienced as an adult, but this hits me hard. Maybe its exhaustion, or adrenaline, or fear, but this is intense. And uncomfortable.

I push against his arms and whatever spell that bound him in that pose breaks. He steps back looking sheepish.

But my stomach doesn’t recover from the moment. Twisting pain grips my cold gut.
It’s my stomach
, I realize. Drinking the ice water has awoken my appetite.

While Willem helps himself to a snowy drink, I take out the protein bar stashed in my pocket, tear off the wrapper and break it in half. I give one half to Willem and scarf down the rest. Tastes like cocoa powder sprinkled cardboard, but I can feel the vitamin fortified snack delivering an energy boost to my system already.

“Shouldn’t we save some?” Willem asks.

I reply through a mouthful of food. “Rationing works when you’re waiting for rescue. Not so much when you’re being chased. If we crash before getting off this island, they’ll catch us. We need to stay strong.”

“And smart,” Willem adds. “We fell into their trap like a bunch of stupid animals.”

“Speaking of stupid,” I say, “I know they’re not really zombies, so we shouldn’t expect them to be totally brain dead, and they’re not really vampires, so they’re not playing chess in some castle, either. But these things have been in the ground for hundreds of years. How do they still have brains sharp enough to lay traps?”

“Or use weapons,” Willem says.

“Right.”

“I’m not sure,” he says. “But maybe it has something to do with that slime inside the body. Did you see it? Inside the last one when, you know—”

The memory of the peeled sheet of skin falling on top of me returns and sours my stomach for a moment. “I remember.”

“It looked like the organs, the important ones anyway, had been coated in the stuff. Maybe it protects them. Keeps them from aging normally. If they do the same thing to the brain, maybe they’re still functioning at a higher level.”

“You don’t think they’re still aware? Still human in there somewhere? Can you imagine that kind of hell? Being a prisoner in your own mind forever? Having your memory and knowledge hijacked, but your will trapped? It must be hell.”

Willem pauses, chewing the last bite of his bar. My imagination has soured what little flavor it had. He forces it down with a grimace. “We need to get back to the ruins. If my father and Chase survived—”

I realize that I’ve made him even more worried. We won’t be able to leave this island if we don’t find Jakob, and if he’s already one of them… “He’ll make it,” I say with as much conviction as I can muster. We both know I’m talking about his father.

Willem shakes his head. “He was injured.”

“He’s tougher than both of us,” I say. “Now shut up about it and let’s figure out where we are.”

After another drink of slush, the cold starts to sting my back. The air is warm today, but the breeze rolling in off the ocean is frigid and saps the warmth from my body. I sling my cloak back on and hide my head beneath the hood.
Mental note, grow hair out for next Arctic trip
.
Scratch that, fuck the Arctic. Go to the Bahamas
.

I take a long look at our surroundings. Something about it looks familiar. “This isn’t far from where I landed with Jenny and Peach.” Mentioning the pair makes me cringe with survivor’s guilt. They made it off that damn boat. Why couldn’t that have been enough? Why did we have to land on this freak-show island and not the mainland?

Pushing my regrets aside, I point to an area where the stone hillside slopes right down to the beach instead of ending in a drop off. “I think that’s where I first left the beach.” I check the area and find depressions in the loose stone that could have been made by boots. “This is the place.”

I point up to the hill rising high above us. “I first saw the ruins from up there. Felt so far away, then. The backside of this hill is steep, though. Would make for a hard walk, but it’s doable.” I point down the beach. “That way is south, where we met.”

“We know the way to the ruins from there,” he says. “We could make good time.”

He’s right, but there’s one thing he hasn’t remembered yet. “But…this stretch of beach is where we first encountered the polar bear. Then again, with you. Not much further beyond that is where the bear killed—or whatever—Jackson and McAfee.”

“And the walruses,” he adds.

“Right,” I say. “So I think it’s safe to assume that living, or undead, the bear patrols this coast line.”

“Or it’s just running laps,” he points out.

“Or maybe the walruses took care of it in the end.” I know its hopeful thinking, which I’m loath to do. I prefer realism. But things are so unreal, I think a little hope will do us some good. Willem seems to disagree.

“I doubt it,” he says. “Not planning on seeing the bear again could be dangerous.”

“Okay Captain Greenland,” I say, “What do you plan to do about the Draugr polar bear that is stronger and faster than you, not to mention the fact that it has lots of sharp teeth, and claws, and the only way to kill it is by destroying its brain, which, by the way, is protected by a thick skull that already deflected a perfect .45 caliber shot.” I catch my breath, hands on hips, and wait for an answer I know he doesn’t have.

“We could blow it up,” he says.

The ridiculousness of his statement makes me laugh. “Blow it up? How are we going to do that, McGyver? You have some household chemicals I don’t know about? Maybe a bottle of hairspray and a microwave? That seems to work well in the mo—”

Shit
.
He’s right
. “C4,” I say, barely a whisper.

He’s nodding, and thank God, not mocking me.

“Jackson had a lot?” he asks.

“A ton,” I say, eyes widening with the realization that there is a weapon on this island that can not only blow up a zombie polar bear, but Draugar, and whatever the hell the Raven is, too.

“You know how to use it?” he asks.

“I have a general grasp of explosives,” I say. “And it didn’t look too hard to figure out. Blast caps. Timers. And a shit-ton of C4.”

“Shit-ton?” he says, grinning.

“What?”

“Your…unique sense of humor is coming back,” he says. I must look like I’m about to go on the defensive because he adds, “You were kind of a drag for a little while.” I’m about to lay into him when he grins. “It’s not so much unique as morbid. Borderline inappropriate.”

I can’t help but smile, despite being stranded on a giant piece of frozen crap. “Yeah, well, it seems to be rubbing off on you.”

“So it would seem,” he says, but his smile fades as he sets his mind back to the task. “So, what’s the plan? Follow the coast, grab the C4, and head for the ruins?”

“Sounds about right to me.”

“And if we come across the polar bear—”

“We blow it the fuck up.”

“You know,” he says, as we start down the beach, “Out of all of the military tactics developed throughout history, ‘blow it the fuck up’ never fails.”

“That’s why it was my father’s favorite,” I say.

“Were you two close?”

The question stings.“Once upon a time, maybe. When I was still trying to please him. He was mostly an asshole.”

“An asshole you talk about a lot.”

“I do?” I ask, but the question isn’t for Willem. It’s for me. I decide to be honest with myself and realize that the Colonel has been on my mind a lot. Much more than usual, which is none. “I guess, even though I haven’t seen him much, I miss him. Knowing I won’t see him again. Knowing we’ll never get a chance to…”

“Heal old wounds,” he says.

“I was trying to think of something that sounded less wussy, but yeah.”

“Sounds like the kind of guy that would understand.”

“
Not care
is more likely.”

“I never met the man and I know that’s not true,” he says. “Any father who spends two weeks in the woods alone with
you
must care.”