Mega 5: Murder Island Read online

  “Nothing has changed except our location,” Ballantine said. “We’re on the wrong island.”

  “What?” Darren snapped. “What do you mean we’re on the wrong island?”

  “I mean, Mr. Chambers, that I have royally fucked up,” Ballantine said, the blatant admission as jarring as the heat from the overhead sun. “I read the map wrong. We’re not on the island I thought we were. I made an assumption. A bad assumption. We’re on a different island, and it is one I would never in a million years have allowed us to get within a hundred miles of. We can’t stay here. Get back to the ship now.”

  “Ballantine, listen,” Darren said, trying to sound reasonable. Thorne had moved up to the sealed door and was crouching down by the bottom, checking for a way to pry it open. Darren watched him then nodded at Kinsey. She joined in the hunt for a way in. “Shane is still inside the trailer or facility or whatever it is. We will not leave him behind. Do you hear what I’m saying? There is no way in Hell we are leaving Shane behind.”

  “But that’s where you’re wrong, Mr. Chambers,” Ballantine said and sighed. “Darren. You don’t get it. You say there is no way in Hell you’ll leave him? Well, son, you are in Hell. You are in a Hell you can’t even imagine. We all are. I should have known from the motherboards in the beetles. I should have known.”

  Thorne stood up, stepped back, aimed his weapon at the steel, and fired. A blinding blast of energy shot from the barrel and the steel glowed a bright orange for a split second before going back to its original metallic steel look. Not even a black scorch mark was left behind.

  “What was that?” Ballantine asked. “Are you trying to shoot your way in? Do not do that! It won’t allow that! Get away from the trailer now! Run!”

  “Goddammit, Ballantine, where did you bring us?” Darren yelled.

  “The wrong island!” Ballantine yelled back. “This isn’t the island where I sent corpses! This is the island where I sent the living! Get back to the fucking ship now!”

  “Vincent,” Darren said.

  “We aren’t leaving Shane,” Thorne said.

  “Daddy?” Kinsey said. “Look.”

  She was pointing towards the edge of the valley. A large opening appeared, about the size of a single-car garage door. A loud buzzing sound issued from the opening. A very loud buzzing.

  “Beetles?” Darren asked. “In the daytime?”

  A massive cloud of huge black flies swarmed out of the opening.

  “Are those beetles?” Kinsey asked.

  “Flies!” Darren yelled. “Jesus, they’re fucking blowflies!”

  “They are!” Ballantine shouted in their ears. “Run, for fuck’s sake! RUN!”

  Darren and Kinsey looked at Thorne who was busy staring at the steel plates.

  “Daddy, we have to go!” Kinsey cried.

  “I know,” Thorne said quietly. He turned around, aimed his weapon at the swarm of flies and fired.

  The swarm broke apart, fly guts splattering everywhere. Then it regrouped and shot straight at the trailer.

  “The trees!” Darren shouted. “Head for the trees! It’ll slow the swarm!”

  His voice was nothing but pure terror and that terror snapped Thorne out of his fugue.

  “Trees!” he ordered and shoved Kinsey. “NOW!”

  They ran for the density of the jungle, hoping it would be enough to keep the swarm of blowflies from overtaking them. But hope was few and far between that day and the swarm closed quickly.

  Chapter Eight: The Deep, Dank Belly Of The Beast

  Shane awoke to a pressure on his chest that made it close to impossible to breathe. In fact, the pressure was all over his body, constricting his movements, pinning his arms to his sides and his legs to the ground. A ground that was far from solid and felt like it was constantly shifting under him.

  The pressure was quickly forgotten as he opened his eye and saw the wriggling mass of beetle bodies crawling across his helmet. Even with breathing beyond difficult, he still managed a good, healthy scream of utter fear and revulsion.

  The scream ended as quickly as it had begun as the pressure on Shane’s body increased. The suit was not like a compression suit. The compression suit could take pressure. The compression suit kept the ocean depths, or even a giant dinosaur’s jaws, from crushing the wearer to death. The bright blue suit Shane wore didn’t work like that.

  But it sure as hell kept the beetles’ mandibles from chewing Shane to shreds. He was totally okay with the trade off at that exact moment.

  “Uncle Vinny?” he gasped into the com. “Sis? Ditcher?”

  No answer. He didn’t even hear the crackling of an open com channel. That would tell him they heard, but couldn’t respond. Instead, there was only dead air. The tiniest hint of white noise, dampened by the com’s tech.

  The breathing thing was getting desperate.

  Moshi couldn’t tell Shane or Thorne how the suit was able to filter air in and out. It was a happy accident of technological invention. Probably why the suit had been in a crate at the back of the Toyshop and hadn’t been put to active use before. Mysterious functionality in the field was a no no for special ops.

  But Shane didn’t care how the suit worked, as long as it worked. Yet, he debated what constituted “worked” as the weight on his body was so great that he couldn’t expand his lungs enough to get a decent breath of air.

  Slowly, so as not to antagonize the beetles, Shane turned his head. He didn’t see shit except for more beetles. Probably the same beetles, actually, that had just rolled along with his head.

  He tried to shake them off, but they didn’t go anywhere, the weight of the beetles on top keeping them in place. Shane sighed, then wished he hadn’t since he couldn’t afford the air loss, and tried to relax. There was a way out. There was always a way out.

  He was a trained Navy SEAL. He’d been held captive in Afghanistan by some very, very bad men. He’d had his eye taken out by a Somali pirate chief. He’d been attacked by giant sharks, by giant dinosaurs, by former employees of Ballantine’s, by cavemen and shit.

  He sure as fuck wasn’t going to let a bunch of bugs take him out.

  Shane was able to get his right hand to move, and he nearly wept when he realized he was still gripping his M4. Good old muscle memory. Never let go of your weapon, frogman. That had been drilled into him in BUD/S training. Drilled into him by years of service. Drilled into him by the angry, uncompromising face of his uncle.

  Shane pulled the trigger.

  His arm was jolted and it pressed tighter to his body, but the mass of squirming beetles began to disperse from his body. Shane quickly let go of the trigger, realizing that if the angle of his carbine shifted, he’d probably shoot himself in the leg. That would suck.

  The second he felt he could get the leverage, he shifted his hips and rolled to the left. The beetles had let up enough that Shane could get onto his side, but that was about it. At least breathing was much easier.

  “Okay, okay,” he said to himself. “Think it through, Reynolds. There’s a way out of this.”

  Shane lay there on his side for what he thought had to be an hour, maybe longer. It was fifteen minutes. He couldn’t think of a way out of it.

  “Fuck it,” he said and opened fire again.

  He made sure to lift his M4 as much as possible, keeping the angle of fire from pointing at his leg, foot, or any part of his body. Shane had just enough view out of the corner of the helmet to see an entire section of the beetle party disintegrate under the rifle fire. He didn’t waste a second and pushed his body up, firing the entire time until the magazine was empty and the carbine clicked dead.

  Shane was out of ammo, but up on his feet. He considered that progress.

  “Disposal ineffective,” the computer voiced echoed around Shane. “Disposal ineffective.”

  The voice sounded crackly. It was strained and tinny like it was coming out of a 1970’s car speaker that had been beaten to shit.

  “Disposal ineffect
ive,” the computer voice said one more time. “Program offline. Offline. Offline. Offline. Offline…”

  The voice trailed away, broken and weak. Shane thought he heard a sizzling noise then there was a squelch of static.

  The static seemed to get the beetles riled up.

  They came at him fast, but Shane was ready, swinging the empty M4 like a club, smashing beetles flat while also stomping and squashing them with his boots. The floor quickly became a slick and crunchy mess of beetle guts and cracked carapaces. Shane was careful of his footing, making sure he didn’t slip in the guts and end up on the ground again.

  To Shane’s surprise, the beetle attack began to slack off. Less and less came for him until it was only a stray two or three every couple of seconds flying at his helmet that he was left to deal with. The vast majority of beetles had returned to clinging against the walls

  Walls of what?

  Shane turned in a slow circle, thankful for the small bit of illumination his suit gave off. Personally, as something to be used in the field, he would have preferred a suit that didn’t glow bright blue, kinda made the whole stealth thing pointless, but at that moment, Shane was pleased he looked like a costuming reject from the last Tron movie.

  Taking care not to disturb the settled beetles, Shane walked to the nearest wall and studied it. Stainless steel, just like the walls in the trailer above. Shane glanced up, but all there was over his head was deep, impenetrable darkness. From the way his body felt, he had a feeling the drop had been a long one. He was probably only alive because of the suit and the fact he fell onto a foot deep carpet of beetles.

  Stainless steel walls. There was something familiar about that. Shane tried to recall the last time he’d been in a room where the walls were made of stainless steel. The memory was close, right there on the tip of his mind, but he couldn’t quite recall the details.

  Blood. He remembered blood. Pain, sure, there was pain. But when wasn’t there pain?

  What was it? Stainless steel walls, stainless steel walls, stainless steel…walls?

  Shit.

  The last island they’d been on. The room that he had found himself hanging from his bound wrists with Thorne, Darren, and Lucy hanging close by. It was a slaughterhouse, an abattoir, the killing floor. Easier to rinse the blood down the drain when everything was stainless steel.

  Shit.

  “Why would an island where Ballantine got rid of his giant corpses need a killing floor?” Shane wondered aloud. “Doesn’t make sense.”

  The beetles began to shift and move suddenly. Shane couldn’t figure out why, but at least they weren’t going after him. They seemed to be fleeing something. The walls began to clear of the scurrying bugs and Shane followed as they dropped to the floor and hurried off, all in the same direction.

  The stainless steel walls continued for a good twenty meters before coming to a dead end. Well, not quite dead, since there was a massive vault door in the center of the wall Shane found himself staring at. But it was certainly an end.

  He slammed a fist on the door and yelled, “Hello? Hey! Crazy computer voice? Can you hear me? I’d like to get out of the slaughter tunnel now!”

  No response. He didn’t think there would be. That voice had sounded like it was pretty much kaput.

  Shane studied the vault door, but it was as solid as it was supposed to be. He recognized the model, having seen a hundred like it at plenty of military facilities in his SEAL days. It had weaknesses, he knew that, but the weaknesses could only be exploited with carefully placed explosives. Which Shane did not have.

  Or did he?

  “Where’s my pack?” he said.

  Talking to himself was not a problem. It helped keep some of the tension at bay, and it wasn’t like he was trying to be sneaky. If there was someone in the facility, then they already knew he was there.

  Shane quickly retraced his steps to where he’d first found himself. There it was, covered in dead beetles, slimy and dripping with yellowish guts, his pack.

  He hurried to it and opened the side flaps until he found a fresh magazine for his M4. He ejected the empty one and slapped in the full one, racking back the slide so he was ready for action. But that wasn’t what he’d really needed the pack for. A bonus, yes, but the primary reason had been the two bricks of C4 like explosives he had tucked down in the bottom.

  It was C4-like because it was moldable and wouldn’t go off without a detonator inserted into the grey clay. But that was where the similarities ended. Except for the going boom part, it had that in common with C4.

  The main difference was it was about ten times more powerful yet not nearly so explosive. It was a hard concept to understand at first, and Carlos had been as condescending as possible while explaining it one day, but the principle was actually quite simple.

  The substance contained not only explosive properties, but also anti-concussive properties. It was like the old Kevlar vests. It could handle the impact of a powerful, fast moving bullet, but a slow knife blade would slide right through. The substance in Shane’s hands counted on the power of the explosive properties to activate the anti-concussive properties, directing the blast against only the surface the clay had been placed upon and not outward into empty air.

  In theory. Those had been Carlos’s last words on the subject and he said them with a smirk, like he expected Shane to ignore the warning and just go blasting away.

  Which Shane was about to do.

  He wasn’t just ignoring the warning that the function of the explosives was purely theory, and hadn’t been fully tested yet, he’d also ignored Carlos’s strict orders not to remove the explosives from the Toyshop. Shane just couldn’t help himself, so the grey bricks had somehow found their way into the bottom of Shane’s pack. Oops.

  Time for the boom-boom.

  Except for one problem: no detonators.

  Huh…

  Shane hunted through his pack, ever watchful of the masses of beetles clinging to the walls. They’d given him a respite, but he wasn’t foolish enough to think it would last for long. Only having one eye meant he couldn’t search through his pack and also keep one eye on the beetles. He was getting whiplash looking down, looking up and left, looking down, looking up and right, looking down, etc.

  Not that it mattered. There were no detonators in his pack. None. It was an oversight that was very much unlike him.

  He was off his game. They all were. Ballantine had him and Grendel rattled. The man was usually cool as a polo shirt wearing cucumber, but lately, he’d seemed fractured. That fractured vibe had spread.

  Shane stood up and kicked his pack, knocking loose a second extra magazine for his M4. He stared down at it for a second then looked up at the door.

  “Shit,” he mumbled. “Shit, shit, shit.”

  He pulled the magazine loose, popped out four cartridges, slipped the magazine back into the pack, then stared at the vault door. Four would do it. He had enough clay to punch a hole right where he wanted to, as well as weaken the hinges. There were fail-safes in a vault of that kind, but Shane had learned enough that he knew he could overcome them.

  As long as he shot perfectly and made all four shots within a second and a half. Even then, it was going to be close. Shit, he could blow himself up before he got off the second shot or he could miscalculate the amount of explosives and send a literal ton of metal flying at him. Or it could just not work.

  Shane ignored all reason and set the explosives, dividing the clay into four equal parts. He placed one on each hinge then two directly underneath and to the right of the wheel that opened the door. In the center of each glob of clay, Shane placed a cartridge. He’d taken the time to carefully remove the bullet from each so that the cartridges were open-ended. He didn’t want the bullets, just the powder inside.

  It was unconventional, had a slim to no chance of working, and may even negate the anti-concussive benefits of the theoretical explosive, but Shane didn’t have much choice. He had to get the hell out of the
killing floor before it was put to use.

  Shane went as far back as he could go and still see the outlines of the cartridge rims. He took a knee, wrapped his M4’s strap around his right hand for cushion, and steadied the barrel. The M4 was a great weapon, a multi-use carbine that was good in almost all situations. A sniper rifle, it was not. It was accurate enough for long-range shots, but for four precise shots that had to be completed in under two seconds, it wasn’t the weapon Shane would have picked.

  But it was the weapon he had and he wasn’t about to cry like a baby and give up because he didn’t have his .338. Which was a total dumbass move. He should have brought his .338 instead of the M4, but it was twice as heavy and Carlos was behind on making ammo for it. It hadn’t mattered much before, especially when they were stuck on the ship, but right then at that moment, he would have given his left nut for that .338 MacMillan. Okay, maybe not a nut, but possibly a left toe. The pinky one.

  Shane centered his breathing, taking it in slow inhales, and even slower exhales. He felt the muscles in his arms, shoulders, neck relax as he breathed deeper and deeper. When he was calm as he could possibly get, Shane placed his finger on the trigger, exhaled and fired. Then he fired three more times, in perfect, consecutive order.

  The explosives did their thing and Shane was flung backwards, even at the distance he’d given himself. Metal shards sliced at him, but didn’t penetrate the suit. The pain came when he slammed into the far back wall, sliding down to the floor in a heap.

  Slowly, with careful deliberate movements, Shane struggled to his feet. He was wobbly, but able to stay standing as he made his way back to the vault door. He smiled at what he saw.

  The hinges were damaged just the way he’d hoped. Under the wheel was a one-foot square hole that smoked and sizzled, revealing the door’s locking mechanism inside. Shane leaned forward and stared at the gears and rods.

  “Piece of motherfucking cake,” Shane said then went to fetch his pack and get the multi-tool he always kept in there. With any luck, he’d be through the vault door and on his way out of the killing floor in ten minutes, fifteen tops.