Jake Morrison's Arc

Chapter 33 of 54

At first light they loaded the military boat. Jake counted the gear twice: rifles, ammo, water, rope. Marcus checked the engine. Frank came down the ramp with a shotgun on his shoulder. Frank had lived on this island longest, with his wife and two kids, and he knew the water better than anyone. Four more armed men climbed aboard. Jake looked at the black caves fifteen miles out and knew the truth. "We don't land until we know what's in there," he said. "Walk in blind and we don't walk out." The boat crossed the open water in an hour. Pine trees crowned the cliffs. Cave mouths gaped along the shore, dark as open throats. Jake killed the engine and let the boat drift close. Nothing moved. Frank pointed at the sand below the largest cave. "Tracks," he said. "Something lives here." They beached the boat and climbed out with rifles up. Jake led. The first cave was empty. So was the second. Then something shrieked from the dark. A wretch burst out, all claws and torn flesh, sprinting on bent legs. Marcus dropped it with two shots. Another came behind it. Frank fired and it crumpled in the sand. "How many?" Jake yelled. Screams answered from three caves at once. His men formed a line and fired as the creatures poured out. Jake worked the trigger, reloaded, worked it again. Bodies piled at the cave mouths. Then the shooting stopped. Smoke drifted. Blood ran into the tide. But the worst had not come yet. From the deepest cave crawled a thing that made Jake's stomach turn. A woman once, her neck stretched long, her jaw hanging wide. Tentacles grew from her belly and dragged her forward across the rock. She was the mother of the nest. Jake felt it in his gut. Kill her and the island was theirs. "Aim for the head," Jake said. The men fired together. Bullets tore her chest and she still came. A tentacle whipped out and caught one man's leg. Jake stepped in and put three rounds through her stretched skull. She dropped and did not rise. The tentacles went slack. They searched every cave after that. No more creatures. Just cold stone rooms, dry and wide, dozens of them. Jake walked the largest chamber and pictured cots, families, fires. Room for a thousand people, easy. He climbed the cliff and saw the smaller islands ringing the water, more land than the crowded rock behind them. Frank stood beside him, breathing hard. "This place could hold everyone we can't fit," Frank said. Jake nodded. "It needs a leader we trust. Someone to hold it and keep faith with our island." Frank looked at the caves, then back at Jake. "Then it's mine," he said. "My family comes here. We keep the treaty, both islands as one." Jake gripped his hand. The land was clean. The door had opened, and now they had someone to hold it.