Clayton handed Tim the rest of the gear, then walked out and shut the creaking doors behind him. Sara and Tim gathered up the blankets, the case and the heater and walked toward the altar.
Tim stopped at the altar and knelt, head dipped in a silent prayer.
“Never figured you for the praying type,” Sara said.
“I’ll take whatever I can get right now,” Tim said. “That includes voodoo. Got a chicken I can sacrifice?”
Sara shook her head.
“Well, then this will have to do.”
Sara didn’t mind waiting for him to finish.
DECEMBER 2, 8:23 A.M.
JAMES HARVEY SLID on his thick Otto Lodge parka. Happily whistling “Cowboy” by Kid Rock, he laced up his snowshoes and started toward the barn. Storm or no storm, there was work to be done.
The morning sun blazed through the blowing snow and reflected brilliantly off long white fields. He guessed another ten inches had fallen during the night. Knowing Clayton, the trails and roads would already be groomed. As soon as he finished the morning’s chores, he and Stephanie could take their sleds for a spin or two around the island.
He started the twenty-five-yard trudge to the barn, but stopped when he heard the whine of a dog. He followed the sound around the corner of his house to find Mookie, Sven’s dog, cowering and shivering.
“Good God, Mookie … what happened to you?”
The poor girl’s left shoulder was torn open, bloody and exposed. She held her left paw in the air, as if it hurt to put any weight on it. A long gash on her forehead oozed blood. Snow clumped in her fur, icy bits hung from her whiskers. Mookie limp-hopped to James and leaned her weight against the man. Her whines increased.
James gently brushed the snow off Mookie’s face. “Take it easy, girl. It’s okay now.”
In answer, a low, evil growl burbled forth from Mookie’s closed mouth. James pulled his hand back: the dog might be rabid.
Then he realized that Mookie wasn’t growling at him. She was growling at something out in the pasture. He stared out across the blazing snow, saw something black and white and red. No, the something was black and white; the snow was red.
Red with blood.
A dead cow. Was it one of his? Could a wolf have swum over from the mainland? Attacked and wounded a cow, then left? James raised his hand to block the snow’s morning-sun glare. Maybe it wasn’t dead—the prone cow moved a little with an unnatural, herky-jerky motion.
A head popped up from behind the big body. James couldn’t make out much other than some black-and-white fur, marred by the bright red of the cow’s fresh blood. Hard to tell from this distance, but the head looked … strange.
“What da hell is that thing?” he mumbled, squinting his eyes tighter. Didn’t look like a wolf. Had that thing also torn up Mookie?
The cow’s carcass blocked any view of the second creature’s body. All James could see was the wolf’s big, oddly shaped head.
Then the wolf raised its fin.
James blinked a few times, his brain trying to register what his eyes saw. A fin, rising out of the head. The wolf turned slightly, giving James a flash of bright-yellow skin streaked with reddish orange.
That’s no wolf. And that sure as FUCK ain’t no cow.
James turned and walked slowly toward the house, keeping an eye on the creature the whole way. The thing stayed behind the downed cow. Just as James watched it, it watched James. The fin lowered, raised, then lowered again.
What the hell is that thing?
He looked for Mookie, but the dog was nowhere to be seen. James reached the house and walked inside, shutting the door before kneeling to take off his snowshoes. Through his living room window, he could still see the thing in the field. It remained behind the cow, staring back.
Stephanie stood there looking at James, her hair in curlers, a white terry-cloth robe around her and a steaming mug of coffee held in each hand. Her expression was half confusion, half amusement.
“Hey hon weather looks great outside I bet da wind is dying down I made you some coffee maybe after you finish with da cows we can go for a walk in da woods and—”
“Get my Remington.”
Her half-smile faded. For once, she didn’t say anything. She set the coffee cups down, turned and ran into the den.
James tossed the snowshoes away, scrambled to his feet and followed his wife. She met him at the den door, handed him his Remington Model 870 shotgun and a box of shells.
“James, what’s happening?”
A sentence with just three words. For Steph, that had to be a record. “Something out there brought down a cow.” He quickly pumped shells into the weapon.
“What is it then a wolf ’cause there ain’t no wolves on da island anymore we haven’t seen one ever.”
“This ain’t no wolf. Call da lodge.”
Stephanie moved to the end table and picked up the handset. She looked at James, fear in her eyes. “It’s still out.”
“Fucking Clayton.”
Stephanie’s scream nearly made him shit his pants. She stared out the living room window. James turned to look and caught a glimpse of the creature he’d seen in the field—huge, all-white triangular head, bloody mouth full of long, pointed teeth, narrow black eyes and that strange fin sticking straight up in the air. Only a glimpse, because he instantly shouldered the shotgun and fired.
The window shattered outward. The creature’s head snapped back. It fell like a sack of potatoes, a misty cloud of red settling down on the snow around it. Wind blew the curtains inward, accompanied by bits of snow and a blast of frigid air.
James pumped a shell into the chamber, then strode forward.
“James, don’t!”
Just two words. Apparently Stephanie found brevity only in danger. He kept the gun shouldered and ducked past the flapping curtains to look out the window, squinting his eyes against the wind. Blood poured from the thing’s head, staining the snow, bright crimson on bright white. Despite a hamburger-red hole in its head, the creature struggled to rise. James leaned out the window, aimed carefully, and fired again from only three feet away.
The creature fell, limp and lifeless.
He cocked another shell into the chamber and peered out at the dead animal. He’d never seen anything like it. Long front arms ended in large paws tipped with wicked claws. Black-and-white fur, just like the Holsteins out in his barn. The thick creature had to weigh at least 350 pounds. Looked kind of like a cowhide-covered cross between an orangutan and an alligator. To have looked in the living room window like that, it would have had to stand on its hind legs and lean those big, clawed paws on the sill.
“James honey I’m scared like crazy and it’s freezing in here we gotta close that up right now.” Stephanie shivered, her terry-cloth-covered arms wrapped tight around her shoulders.
A subzero gust rolled through the window and caught the table lamp’s shade like a sea wind filling a sail. The lamp tumbled to the ground, the bulb breaking on impact. The curtains billowed up around his face. James brushed them aside and rested the Remington against the window-sill.
“Come to da basement with me and help me get a piece of plywood.”
Stephanie followed him downstairs. “Honey,” she said, “I ain’t never seen anything like that just what da hell was that thing?”
He heard the fear in her voice and realized just how protected their life on the island had been until five minutes ago. No crime, no threats from animals, no danger at all as long as you respected the power of nature and winter.
“I don’t know what it was, Steph.”
James pulled the piece of plywood from the stack, carefully handing Stephanie one end so as not to give her a splinter.
They heard another crash from upstairs—the wind had knocked something else over. They needed to get that window boarded up fast before a half inch of snow covered the living room carpet.
They brought the plywood upstairs. James walked backwards, guiding them towa
rd the window, but stopped when he heard the muffled crunch of glass beneath his feet. He looked down to see a few pieces of glass lying on the living room carpet.
But the glass would have been blown outward …
A sudden blast of cancerous realization hit him hard. He dropped the plywood and turned.
In the broken window, the huge head of a second creature, this one with a white head and a black patch on the left eye. A mass of pink scar tissue sat where its left ear should have been. It was just a few feet away, so close James felt the heat of its breath.
Smelled like puppy breath.
James kicked out hard. The thing started to snap, but moved a split second too late. James’s boot smashed against its mouth, knocking the head back, out of the window.
James reached for his shotgun.
But his shotgun wasn’t there.
He stopped short, knowing damn well he’d left the gun there, wondering where else it could be, then Stephanie started screaming again. Not a scream of terror this time, but a scream of pain, the pain of long, narrow teeth puncturing through terry cloth and into soft skin.
James had one brief moment to realize that there were more of the creatures, inside the house. The spotted one scrambled through the window with a speedy urgency, big mouth opening wide, long claws reaching out. James reached for the fallen lamp.
He grabbed it and managed one swing before he went down under the weight of two creatures.
DECEMBER 2, 3:45 P.M.
ANDY MOVED HIS king back to king-2. He was on the ropes, unable to keep up with Magnus’s methodical attack. The game was already over, but they played it out anyway. Not like there was anything else to do on this fucking island other than choke the chicken, which Andy had already done twice that day. Juggs magazine this time. His Gallery collection was getting a little old.
They sat in the lounge, Magnus on his leather chair, Andy on a couch, the chess set laid out on a coffee table. Whisky glasses sat on either side of the board, one for Magnus (with ice) and one for Andy (without ice, the way that shit was meant to be). The bottle of Yukon Jack was just under half empty. Andy’s buzz made him wonder if he could fall over while still sitting down.
Magnus reached out, his thick right hand hovering indecisively over the pieces.
Andy let out a disgusted sigh. “Come on, Mags, it’s boring enough without you pretending you don’t know exactly what piece to move.”
“The play’s the thing, Andy.”
“What is that? Another one of those quote-thingees that’s supposed to teach me something about life?”
Magnus smiled. “You already know the important stuff, like how to shoot straight. The rest of it? All philosophical bullshit, really.”
Magnus moved his queen to king-3, right on top of Andy’s king. Andy couldn’t take the queen without putting himself in check thanks to Magnus’s rook, which sat on queen’s-bishop-3.
“I’ve never liked you,” Andy said. It pissed him off to no end that he couldn’t beat Magnus. Ever. “Chess is for faggots, anyway. So what now, Mags?”
“Looks like you lose again.”
“I meant with the whole plane and everything.”
“Oh, that what now.”
Andy nodded. Sometimes Magnus told him what was going on, sometimes not. All full up with Puke-Jack, maybe he’d let out some secrets.
“Now it’s a waiting game,” Magnus said. “We declare the C-5 missing. There will be a search, but nothing will be found.”
“Without a flight plan? Crash report, anything like that?”
“They know we have a C-5,” Magnus said. “Colding ordered it to take off over the big water, and we haven’t heard from it since.”
Maybe it was the buzz, but Andy couldn’t put all the pieces together. “Colding ordered it?”
Magnus nodded.
“But what about Fischer? He’s got a real hard-on for you and Danté.”
“The research is gone,” Magnus said. “That’s what the governments really wanted. They don’t care about Fischer’s hard-on for us. Once we fire up the lawyers, make a stink, the governments tell Fischer to back off, and that’s that.”
“Huh. Is it really that easy?”
Magnus picked up his glass and took a big swallow. “We’ll find out, won’t we?”
We’ll find out. Magnus knew how to plan ahead, how to put pieces in play when others thought he was just standing still. That brand of thinking had kept Andy alive at least a half-dozen times, and in situations far more severe than this. A lot of people had died under Magnus’s command, but a lot more had survived when the situation dictated they had no right to do so.
“What about Jian’s body?”
“It will be found.”
“By who?”
“By us.”
“Wait a minute. Then why did you have Colding bury her?”
“So we could dig her up. Part of her, anyway. We leave enough buried so that Fischer’s cronies find Colding’s DNA all over her. Hair, skin, fingerprints, shit like that.”
Andy shook his head. Magnus was just amazing. “So Colding gets fingered for Jian’s murder?”
Magnus nodded.
“And we found the body?”
“That’s right.”
“And we knew Colding killed her … how?”
Magnus sighed. “Because of his deathbed confession. Which came right after we shot him in self-defense.”
Andy moved his king to queen-1. “And Colding attacked us … why?”
“You and I were in Manitoba. We’d lost contact with everyone on the island. Clayton, Sven, the Harveys, the scientists. Bobby flew us out here to see what was going on. We discovered Colding had sabotaged the C-5, then killed everyone else after it flew off. He had to make sure there were no witnesses, you see. When we confronted him, he tried to murder us as well.”
“Wow,” Andy said. “That Colding is a regular psycho.”
“Sad, but true.”
“Just so I’m tracking here … Colding did all of this … how come?”
“Because you were fucking Sara.”
“I was?”
“You were.”
“Sweet. Would love to pound on that vaj.”
“Jian found out you were doing Colding’s girlfriend,” Magnus said. “So, like a good friend, she told Colding. Bubbah snapped, killed Jian on the spot. Turns out the boy has a history of losing his temper. He wanted Sara dead, so he sent the C-5 up, put a bomb in it. Then he tried to cover his tracks. Killed everyone. Bobby brings us out here, routine shit, Colding tries to kill us.”
“’Cause he’s psycho.”
“Exactly. But we defend ourselves. As he’s dying, he tells us the whole story, including where he buried Jian.”
“What a shame,” Andy said. “The whole project, wiped out. The only people left are you, me and Gunther.”
“Lucky for Gunther he was pulling extended duty up on the fire watchtower. Phone lines were down as well. Crazy how it happens like that. Gunther manned his post like a good soldier, had no idea any of this was going on.”
“Will Gun play along with that?”
“Considering his options if he doesn’t, yeah, I think he’ll play along.”
Andy nodded. Gunther was no dummy. “All of this human tragedy, this loss of life makes me sad. Exactly when did Colding snap and kill everyone left on the island?”
“Tomorrow,” Magnus said. “You don’t mind doing some wet work for me tomorrow, do you?”
“Does a dog mind licking his own balls? I’ll get things done. But what does Danté think of all this?”
“Sometimes my brother needs people like us to help him, even if he never knew he needed that help in the first place.”
Magnus moved his rook to queen’s-bishop-1. Checkmate.
Andy shook his head. “Did I mention I never liked you?”
“You did. Just be grateful that I like you. At least, more than I like Colding.”
Magnus refilled his tumble
r with Yukon Jack, and Andy set the pieces up for another game.
DECEMBER 2, 7:10 P.M.
CLAYTON COULDN’T PUT it off any longer. He had to take his chances. He’d dragged out fixing the phone line breaks, hoping Magnus and Andy would hit the trails for a snowmobile run. No such luck. They weren’t leaving the mansion, so he had to figure out how to work around them.
He rolled his mop bucket into the lounge. Magnus sat in his leather chair that faced the big picture window. Andy the Asshole was relaxing in a neighboring chair. A chessboard sat on the table between them.
“Hey, Clayton,” Andy said. “Get in here and clean up this pigsty, will ya?”
Clayton looked around the lounge. Dirty plates were everywhere, as were empty beer cans and two empty bottles of Yukon Jack. The jerks hadn’t bothered to pick up one damn thing all day. They’d just tossed their trash around as if this were some flophouse.
“You boys even bother to get up to hit da crapper? Or did you just fling your poo around like da fucking gorillas you are?”
Andy raised his whisky glass. “Maybe that can be arranged.”
“Maybe you can kiss my ass, you little freak.”
“The place is a bit dirty,” Magnus said. “You sick or something, old man?”
Clayton snorted, his fear forgotten in a brief burst of anger. “I’ve been freezing my nuts off all goddam day, and I come back to this. I think I’ll clean up da rest of da place first so you two rump rangers can sit in your own stink for a bit more.”
Magnus slowly turned in his chair to look back at Clayton. “I think you’re getting old,” he said. “Might have to get someone out here to replace you.”
“You wanna fire me, fire me. Until then, I got work to do. I’ll start in da security room.” Clayton rolled the mop bucket out of the lounge and headed straight for the stairs. Maybe they’d keep playing that chess game, keep drinking. He had to take a shot now, when he knew exactly where those two were.
He carried the heavy mop bucket down to the bottom of the back stairs. Once there, he rolled it to the security room and opened the door. Gunther was sitting in the swivel chair, feet up on the counter, eyes closed in a catnap. The eyes fluttered open when Clayton walked in.