Mark Adams had lost his daughter on this island, and now the thing that hunted her had her scent. He knelt on the dark gray sand outside the cave, splitting bamboo with a stone. His Hawaiian shirt hung in rags. His beard had grown wild. He needed a boat to carry his family off this place. But first he needed something to kill with. Eva crouched beside him at the worktable, a rough thing of bundled bamboo and rock. She was his wife, and she worked like a woman running out of time. Her hands bled where the stone edges caught them. She did not stop. "Sharper," she said. "It has to punch through." Mark dragged a flat stone across the bamboo tip. The point took an edge. He held it up. Thin, ugly, deadly. "It heard her last night," he said. "It knows where she went." Eva's jaw tightened. She wound cord around a spearhead and pulled it tight with her teeth. "Then we don't sleep," she said. "We find her first." They worked through the gray light. Mark's fingers cramped. He thought of Sarah alone in the trees, her pink backpack, the pocket knife she hated to use. He drove the stone harder. One spear. Two. Then a cluster of them, bound together, tips bristling. A sound came from the treeline. Not wind. A slow drag of feet through leaves. Mark froze. Eva grabbed a finished spear and stood. Between the trunks, a gray shape shifted. Tall. Wrong. It wore a rotted shirt and a necklace of bone, and it turned its ruined face toward the cave. It lifted its head and breathed in, tasting the air. It had the scent. It was following it. And the trail led toward their daughter. "Now," Eva whispered. Mark seized two spears and rose. His legs shook. The creature saw them and its mouth opened. It came fast, faster than a dead thing should. Eva threw. Her spear caught its shoulder and spun it sideways. It shrieked and kept coming. Mark met it. He drove his spear into its chest with everything he had. The stone tip punched through. The creature staggered, clawing at the shaft. Eva stabbed again, into its side. It fell against the worktable and crashed to the sand, twitching. Then it went still. Mark stood over it, breathing hard. His hands would not stop trembling. Eva touched his arm. Her face was pale. "We did it," he said. But Eva was looking past the body, at the ground where it had crawled from. She crouched. Small footprints ran through the sand there. Sneaker prints. Fresh. Leading away into the dark trees. Sarah had come this close. In the night, while they slept. And she had turned back into the forest alone, not knowing they were here. Mark grabbed the bundle of spears. "She's out there," he said. "Right now." Eva was already moving toward the trees.

They found Sarah in the abandoned store, crouched behind a shelf with her father's pocket knife in her fist. Mark went down on his knees. His daughter stared at him like he might not be real. Then she dropped the knife and hit his chest hard, both arms around his neck. "You came," she said. Just that. Eva wrapped them both. For one breath, the island did not exist. "There's a boat," Sarah said. She pulled back and wiped her face with a dirty hand. "By the water. I saw it. It floats. I checked." She said it plainly, the way she said everything, and Mark believed her. A boat meant off this island. It meant the thing that hunted them could not follow. Sarah led. She moved fast through the trees, her pink backpack bouncing. On the ground near the path lay a child's doll, its stuffing spilled from torn seams. Sarah did not stop for it. Mark did not ask. The trees broke open onto black sand and gray waves. There, half in the surf, sat a little boat built from driftwood. Ropes lashed the planks. A rough mast leaned from the middle. "That's it," Sarah said. A storm was coming in fast. Wind flattened the waves and drove rain sideways. Mark grabbed the bow. "Push," he said. Eva threw her weight against the hull. Sarah shoved from the stern. The boat scraped, then floated. Cold water climbed to Mark's waist. He lifted Sarah over the side. Eva rolled in after her. Mark heaved himself up last, gripping the wet wood. The current took them. The island shrank behind the rain. Mark grabbed a plank to paddle and looked at his wife and daughter, both soaked, both alive, both here. "We did it," he said. His hands shook, but this time from cold, not fear. Then a sound cut through the storm. Barking. Sharp and fast, from the beach behind them. Mark turned. On the black sand stood a chained German shepherd, straining against its pole, snapping at the water. It was not barking at the boat. Beyond the dog, the treeline moved. Gray shapes came out of the forest. Not one. Many. They shuffled onto the beach and turned their ruined faces toward the water. Toward the boat. "Row," Eva said. Mark drove the plank into the waves. But the storm had them now. The wind pushed one way, the current pulled another, and the little boat spun. Water sloshed over the side and pooled around Sarah's sneakers. She started scooping it out with both hands. "It's coming in," she said. "Faster than I can bail." Mark paddled harder. The boat rode up a black wave and crashed down. A plank in the hull cracked. Cold sea rushed in through the gap. They were off the island. And they were sinking.