The Sentinel (25 page)

“We get them here and make a run for the gorge. When they follow us inside, we bring down the walls with the C4 and bury them.”

The boldness and simplicity of the plan surprises me. It requires some close up contact with the Draugar, fending them off at the walls, but it’s as good a plan as any. “That could work,” I say.

Chase looks surprised. “Really?”

“Assuming there aren’t too many more Draugar on the loose,” Willem says. “Even if we don’t get them all, we should get a few.”

“And have C4 to spare,” I say. “But we need to do this soon, before they come up with something better.”

“So the last question is,” Chase says. “How do we want to get their attention?”

As though in response to his question, a shrill, high-pitched shriek blares. The sound echoes in the valley. It’s so close, that I flail and dive to the side. When the sound repeats, I recognize it for what it is.

A telephone.

36

The pulsing ring of the phone is a double edged sword. On one side, it means we can contact the outside world and arrange rescue. On the other, I fear the sound will attract the Draugar before we’re prepared for them. But these thoughts are fleeting as I pinpoint the source of the noise—Jackson’s backpack.

I pick up the pack, rip it open and overturn it, shaking its contents out. The bag of detonators falls out, followed by five bricks of C4 explosive. And then, a sight that seems more surprising than the Draugar, a phone about four times the size of the average cell phone, sporting a thick black antenna on top.

“A satellite phone!” Chase cheers.

I accept the call, feeling surreal as I put the receiver up to my ear and say, “Hello?” like I’ve just answered a call in my kitchen.

The man on the other end speaks in Greenlandic.

I interrupt him with, “English. Speak English, please!”

“Apologies,” says the man in heavily accented English. “This is the Greenland Coast Guard cutter,
Odin
, responding to a distress call from a…Michael Jackson.”

I nearly laugh, but contain it.
No wonder Jackson hated my Jackson family taunting
.
His first name was actually Michael
.

“We have reached the coordinates provided,” the man says over the phone, “but see no vessel in distress. We also called before, but received no answer.”

I remember the strange monotone sound Willem and I had heard earlier and attributed to Muninn.
It was the phone
! If only we’d recognized the sound for what it was, we might be stepping aboard a ship right now instead of reenacting a World War One trench warfare scene.

The
Odin
crewman continues, “May I please speak to the man who called in so that I might verify this number.”

“Yes,” I say. “I mean, no. You have the right number, but Mr. Jackson is…indisposed. He can’t come to the phone.”

“To whom am I speaking?”

“Jane Harper. I was a crew member aboard the
Sentinel
.”

The man is silent on the other end.

“The call we received was for a ship called
Bliksem
.”

What the hell
? Had Jackson placed the call before the
Bliksem
sank?
Of course he did
. Making the call for the
Bliksem
would make Jackson and McAfee look like the good guys. They called it in before the explosion went off, beating the
Bliksem
crew to the punch.

I hear paper shuffling, and then the man’s voice grows suspicious. “What did you say your name was?”

“Look,” I say, “Both ships sank. The
Bliksem
and the
Sentinel
. The surviving crew are stuck on an island.”

“There are no islands on our charts,
Miss Harper
.” The man goes cold, saying my name like it’s bile in his mouth. Whatever Jackson told them in his first call must have framed me by name as the eco-terrorist responsible. They no doubt claimed to have subdued me as well.

The phone is yanked out of my hand. Jakob puts it to his ear. “This is Jakob Olavson, captain of the
Bliksem
. To whom am
I
speaking?”

He listens for a moment, beard twitching as he grinds his teeth. “Yes,” he says. “Hull identification number?” He sounds incredulous, but then rattles off a twelve digit code starting with three letters. He listens for a moment, face turning red, and then says, “Jane Harper did no such thing. No.”

And I have proof
, I think, remembering the video. I throw open the destroyed life raft and quickly locate the now ruined video camera. I eject the memory card and hold it up victoriously. “I have proof!”

Jakob pulls the phone away from his ear. “They want to know where we are.”

Chase offers his hand. Jakob hands him the phone. Chase puts the phone to his ear and switches to his official-sounding first mate voice. “
Odin
, this is Greg Chase, first mate of the
Sentinel
. Please confirm you are at last known location of the
Bliksem
.” He listens. “Okay, about a mile north of your position is an island—” I hear the squawk of a voice interrupt him. “I know it’s not on the charts. You’ll see it as a peninsula. It was connected to the mainland by an ice bridge that has melted. Right. No, listen…”

Chase takes the phone away from his ear and pushes a button. For a moment, I think he’s hung up on the man and tightness grips my chest.

“Can you hear me?” Chase asks.

“Yes,” the man replies, now on speaker phone.

Chase hits a few more buttons on the phone and the reads off a series of coordinates to the man.

“Okay,” the
Odin
crewman says. “Okay, we have you. We’re under way.”

“Copy that,” Chase says. “What is your estimated time of arrival?”

“Uh, one hour. The sea is getting rough.”

“Hold on,” Chase says to the man. He turns to Willem and me. “Is the south shore clear now?”

“Yeah,” I say. “Last time we saw it, there weren’t any walruses. The polar bear is dead.”

“Did she say polar bear?” The crewman says. I forgot the speakerphone is on.

“There was a polar bear on the island,” Chase says. “It’s not a problem, now. The south shore between the island and the mainland is the safest place to land a small boat. It’s a sandy beach with no rocks. The rest of the island is much more dangerous.”

“South shore,” the crewman says. “Copy that. How many survivors should we prepare for?”

Chase looks at the group. He doesn’t need to count, he just doesn’t want to give the number. “Four,” he finally says.

“
Four
?” The man sounds stunned.

“There were more than sixty lost,” Chase says. “Most at sea. Some on the island.”

The crewman clears his throat, regaining his composure. “I see…”

“The men you send to pick us up,” I say, “make sure they’re armed.”

“
Armed
?”

My voice coupled with the request for an armed pick-up has the man on edge again.

“We…have hidden from the polar bear,” I say. “But it’s still here. And dangerous.” It’s a lie, but the truth might make them think the whole thing is a prank.

“Thanks for the warning,” the man says. “Is there anything else?”

“Just hurry,” Chase says.

“Copy that. We’re on our way.”

“See you in an hour.” Chase hangs up the phone. His eyes glow with excitement as he looks at the three of us. “Our plan stays the same.”

“Shouldn’t we just run for the coast?” Willem asks.

“We’d get there too soon and would be defenseless with our backs to the ocean,” Chase says. His voice is followed by the sound of metal being dragged over stone.

They’re coming.

“We stick to the plan,” Chase says. “Get them all here. Make a run for the gorge. Blow it and bury them. And then we’ll follow the west coast down to the south beach.”

I’ve been down the west coast of the island several times now and feel confident we can make decent time, especially without having to worry about the polar bear. “Let’s do it,” I say, picking up my gun.

As the others reach for their weapons, a shadow cuts across the floor of the ruins. A shadow…from above.

37

The four of us dive away from the middle of the ruins like a grenade had fallen there. Of course, that wasn’t far from the truth. The last remaining Draugr dog lands, but is far from graceful. With one of its legs already ruined, it takes all the weight from its upper body on its single forelimb. With a crack, the leg breaks and the dog falls forward. But the thing isn’t fazed by the injury. With its ass in the air, the Draugr dog runs with its back legs, pushing its body around in circles, biting at everything around it.

The thing comes around toward me and I jump over its head. If the dog could leap, or even turn quickly it might have gotten a bite, but it’s stuck in a counter clockwise spin. I could probably shoot it, but its moving fast and wouldn’t be an easy target. I’m about to suggest someone with a blunt object put the thing out of its misery when Willem steps forward and swings a well timed strike. The sword blade separates head from torso.

Momentum and perhaps the dog’s nervous system keeps the body running and spinning for two more laps. As it spins, white blood oozes from the body and head. Then the body falls limp next to the head and I get a good look at the blood.

It’s not blood.

It’s a pool of white, larvae-like parasites. And they’re on the move, squirming toward the four of us, slowly but surely.

“They’re outsmarting us again!” I shout. “They
wanted
us to kill the dog!”

My assessment is greeted by three frowns.

“Get anything flammable you can find and throw it on top of them!” Chase shouts. He digs into his survival pack and pulls out a flare. Understanding the plan, we toss useless supplies, wrappers, space blankets, and anything else that might burn atop the spreading army of parasites. The dried out dog will burn best, but the rest should help the flames spread.

Chase takes the plastic cap off the flare and then strikes the ignition surface against its rough end. The flare works a lot like an oversized match, and like a match, doesn’t take on the first try. Chase quickly strikes the flare against the sandpaper-like cap again and it catches. Red flame blooms from the end. Instead of throwing the flare down, Chase eases forward, squishing a few parasites, and places the flare on a patch of fluffy fur still attached to the dog’s side.

The hair bursts into flame so bright it makes me squint. The fire quickly spreads out to the rest of the carcass and then to the human detritus we’ve spread around it.

The heat and smell of burning hair and melting plastic pushes us to the walls, which might have also been the purpose of the Draugr version of Monty Python’s cow catapult. As though to prove me right, the wall shakes from an impact. A stone falls and nearly strikes my head.

A gloved hand reaches over and nearly catches my hood, but I duck down beneath it. I recognize the hand as the dog-master’s.

“Raven!”Jakob shouts, and I think
where?
But when I turn to the man, I see he’s speaking to me. Talk about an unfortunate nickname. He holds up the blacksmith hammer. “Take it!”

He tosses the hammer to me and I catch it by the handle. The hammer’s head is a little smaller than a modern sledge hammer, and the handle is about the size of the average nail hammer. That means it’s heavy as hell, but I can hold it in one hand, which I do. I put my whole body into the swing and crush the dog-master’s hand. The bone-crunching impact must register with some small part of the Draugr’s mind as a bad thing, because he quickly withdraws his hand.

Or he’s changing strategies now that they’re all around us. Through swirling smoke I see a thin shadow moving beyond the wall to my left where Chase crouches. He’s quickly packing up the C4, detonators and Sat-phone.
Good thinking
. Willem stands to my right. Beyond his wall is the clinking of metal tools. The blacksmith. And behind the wall opposite me, where Jakob repeatedly yanks the Zodiac’s start cord, I see two large horns. They seem to be rising up in the air, but I realize they’re just getting closer.

Torstein is coming. And he’ll be tall enough to look over the top.

A shift of light to my left tears my eyes away from the approaching Viking. The shadow flickering between the gaps in the wall by Chase is moving.

Up.

Whatever this is, it must be the Draugr that entered the ruins earlier and destroyed the life raft.

“Chase!” I shout as the thing rises up above him. The Draugr leaps to the top of the wall and nearly loses its balance on a loose stone. But it rights itself and looks down at Chase. Despite being severely disfigured by time and dehydration, I can still tell that this was once a boy. Maybe a young teenager. He’s dressed in furs, like the others, but has a thick black belt around his waist and a single tool hanging from it. A hammer.
The blacksmiths apprentice
, I realize.

The apprentice steps to the side where the stone wall is stronger. His body tenses as his eyes watch Chase’s feeble attempt to scramble away. It looks like a cat about to pounce.

I draw my arm back and throw the blacksmith’s hammer with all the strength I can muster. I feel the
tink
,
tink
,
tink
, of muscle’s pulling in my arm. But my throw is good, though slightly off target. I had hoped to strike the undead teen in the head, but the weight of the hammer pulls it down prematurely and strikes the boy in the center of his chest. The impact knocks the boy back. His feet slip out and when he falls, his legs catch the wall and spin him ass over tea kettle. I can’t see the entire fall, but I imagine it’s the kind of unceremonious and embarrassing spill, that if videotaped, would end up on Youtube and Tosh.0. What sucks is that when the boy falls, the hammer, which I see is actually embedded in his chest, goes with him.