Jake Morrison's Arc

Chapter 20 of 54

Jake stared at the map's six marks. Marcus stood ready to build. Sofia had counted every tool. But the boat shed held no lumber and no fencing yet. Marisol lowered the radio. "They asked how many we are," she said. Jake understood the real problem. Night was coming, and six weak spots still stood open. They could not seal a shore with empty hands. But they could put people on it. Jake made the call. He would not wait for boards. He would gather every survivor on the island and set them to watch the coast tonight. Frank had said strangers walked here. Those strangers were bodies who could stand a post. Jake grabbed the radio. "Tell the shelter we'll answer soon," he told Marisol. "First I need to know who's already ashore." They walked the cabins in the last light. Jake knocked on weathered doors. People came out slow, hungry, wary. He counted eleven strangers Frank had let land that month. Jake gathered them by the docks, near the boats tied along the pilings. "Six spots," he said, and held up the map. "Creatures climb from the water. Tonight we don't build. Tonight we watch." Marcus split the crowd into groups. "Two people per spot," he said. "You spot a shape in the water, you bang this." He handed out empty tins and pipe. Sofia walked the line and matched each pair to a landing point on her list. She gave them water and marked their names. "Whoever's still standing at dawn," she said, "gets fed first." Before Jake sent them out, he checked each stranger himself. He rolled up sleeves and looked for bites. He watched their eyes. A creature's bite turned a person, and one turned man on the shore would open the wall from inside. Two people he pulled aside. One had a healed scar, not a bite. The other laughed too easily and would not meet Jake's eyes. Jake kept that one near the docks, watched, not trusted. Dark fell. The groups took their posts. Jake walked the shore twice. Tins clinked in nervous hands. At the broken dock, a shape rose in the shallow water. A stranger banged his pipe. Marcus and Jake ran. The creature clawed at the rotted ladder. Jake swung his bat and Marcus drove his wrench through its skull. It slid back into the black water and did not rise. Dawn came. Eleven strangers still stood. No wall, but no breach either. The shore had held on bodies alone. Jake gathered them again by the docks. "We watched," he said. "Tonight we start building." Sofia already had the boat shed on her list for lumber. But the laughing man was gone. His post at the far cove stood empty, his tin dropped in the sand. Jake looked at the treeline. One stranger had slipped inside the wall, and Jake didn't know what he'd let in.