Savage (36 page)

Sidney thought of that night, probably the first time since it had happened, as she stared up at the dirt-and-rock face of the cliff and the jagged opening that she could just about make out from where they were standing.

“He's up there,” Cody said, pointing.

“I hope he's careful,” she said. “That whole area is pretty rocky and unstable, especially after a heavy rain.”

They began to climb toward the opening, being careful themselves on the rocky incline. The rain had loosened the dirt and rocks, and it crumbled beneath their weight as they moved.

“So what are you expecting to find up here, besides Isaac?” Rich asked.

“I don't know,” Sidney answered, stepping up onto a more solid ridge and reaching back to help Cody up. “Isaac appears to be drawn to the bad radio, whatever that is.”

“And you think it's up here somewhere? In the caves?” Rich asked.

“Can you think of any better place to hide?”

“Do you seriously think that someone's doing this on purpose?”

Sidney was already on the move again. “I don't know what to think,” she said breathlessly.

“I could wrap my brain around this being some kind of disease, but that shit is just too much,” Rich said with a shake of his head.

“What I don't get is why?” Cody asked. “If what you suspect is true . . . that there's some kind of signal being broadcast to make animals go crazy . . . why? What's the purpose?”

Sidney didn't have an answer and didn't even want to risk trying to come up with one. She was certain that a lot of people had died on the island during the last several hours, and if what had caused their deaths was something intentional . . .

Maybe it was as simple as that.

Maybe it was all about death.

They found Isaac kneeling beside the chain-link fence that had been placed before one of the cave entrances. He was moaning, crying, and mumbling to himself, hands holding on to the fence, face pressed to the links, unable to go any farther.

“Isaac,” Sidney said as she carefully approached him. “We were worried about you, bud.”

Snowy ran over to the young man, sniffing at his face before giving him a kiss and covering his cheek with slobber. Isaac actually looked stunned, his red-rimmed eyes going wide with shock.

Sidney grabbed the dog and pulled her back, just in case.

“She kissed me,” Isaac said, the glazed look in his eyes slowly seeming to dissipate.

“She certainly did,” Sidney said, still holding on to the animal. “Are you okay, Isaac?”

He seemed to think about that for a minute before answering. “Yes. Right now I'm okay.” He turned his attention back to the cave opening beyond the fence. “But I don't know for how long.”

“Is it in there?” Rich asked as he squatted beside Isaac and tried to see into the cave. “What's causing the problems on the island, is it in there, Isaac?”

The young man seemed confused, his hand again fluttering around his ears. She could see the bloody scratches that he'd dug in the sides of his face.

“It's quiet,” Isaac said. “Right now it's quiet . . . but I . . . I can still feel it . . . close . . . so very, very close.” His voice had dropped to a whisper as he looked through the holes in the chain link.

“I'm not sure about this,” Rich said, standing up and backing away from the fence toward Sidney.

“Aren't you the least bit curious?” Sidney asked, peering into the cave mouth.

“Yeah, but . . .”

“How do we get in?” Cody asked, walking closer to the fence to inspect it. It had been bolted to the rock on either side of the cave entrance, leaving only a small opening at the top. “I guess we could climb.”

He wrapped his fingers through the holes of the chain link and started to look for a foothold for his boot when Isaac lost it.

He jumped to his feet with something that sounded more like a roar than a scream, grabbed hold of the fence in both hands, and pulled. Cody leaped out of the way, and Sidney stumbled back, nearly tumbling from the ledge as her neighbor unleashed his fury upon the fence, actually managing to rip the obstruction from where it had been bolted and tossing it into the woods below.

They were all frozen, unsure of how to react—unsure of how Isaac was going to act.

He looked at Sidney, breathing heavily, before turning and plunging into the darkness of the cave.

She immediately began to follow, both Rich and Cody reaching out to stop her.

“You can't be serious,” Rich said.

“Don't you think we should have some sort of plan before—”

“How about we go in and bring Isaac out,” Sidney said, shrugging off their hands. “Anything else, we'll just have to figure out as it happens.”

She didn't say anything more, not wanting the courage that came with this latest adrenaline surge to pass before she was able to act.

The first thing that she noticed as she entered the cave was the temperature. Even after all this time—

It was as cold as she remembered.

The last place Sidney wanted to be was inside the pirate cave.

But something drew her forward.

She could hear breathing, the shuffling of feet upon rock, and the occasional whimper from the darkness somewhere ahead of her.

Her phone's charge was low, but she had to see where she was and turned on the light to illuminate her surroundings.

The cave was just as she remembered it: cold and damp, showing signs that civilization had stopped by for a party or two. The phrase “Shit happens” was spray-painted on a nearby wall, and at the moment she couldn't have agreed more. An empty vodka bottle and some rusting beer cans littered the floor along with some old candy wrappers. It didn't appear that anyone—
anything
—had been inside the cave recently.

Rich and Cody were suddenly beside her, holding up their phones as well. Snowy sniffed the piles of trash, making soft mewling sounds that told Sidney she had caught wind of something that made her nervous. She reached out and ran her fingers across the dog's white flank. Snowy leaned in to her, nuzzling her hand nervously.

“It's all right, girl,” she said softly, wanting to reassure herself as much as her dog.

She wasn't doing that great of a job.

“Are you sure about this?” Cody asked, shining the light from his phone to the back of the cave where it curved downward into darkness.

Her free hand slipped to her belt, where her fingers found the wooden handle of her knife. “Yeah, but let's keep moving before I change my mind.”

“You know, it's perfectly all right to change your mind,” Rich offered. “In fact, it says you've put a lot of thought into a particular topic and—”

“Shut up, Rich,” she and Cody said in unison. They looked at each other in the sickly glow from the phones and briefly smiled before turning away.

Not wanting to waste the battery, Sidney turned off her phone's light. Cautiously she approached the back of the cave, practically pulled by the mystery of what she might find. To say that she wasn't terrified would have been absolute crap; she doubted that she'd ever been so afraid, other than after learning of her dad's stroke, but this was different. This fear had substance—it had teeth—and if she wasn't careful, it would most definitely kill her.

She moved as close to the curving cave wall as she could, gradually following it around the corner, preparing for even thicker darkness as she moved away from the meager light of the cave's entrance. But there was no need.

A soft light glowed from somewhere in the distance.

She stopped. She couldn't remember if Isaac had a phone with him or not. She watched the light as it seemed to pulse, reminding her strangely of the beating of a heart.

“Where's that coming from?” Cody asked very close to her ear, making her jump.

She shook her head to let him know that she had no idea.

Rich peered around them, swallowing nervously. Snowy stood beside him, gazing at the throbbing light as if hypnotized by it.

She felt Cody's eyes on her, a silent question of whether or not they should go on. The answer was obvious, at least to her, and she headed down the tunnel passage, careful not to step on any of the loose stones that littered the descending floor. She sensed Snowy coming up alongside her and put her hand down to slow the dog's progress. She did not want her getting anywhere before them.

They were drawn toward the pulse, the gradual curve of the tunnel passage promising revelation somewhere up ahead.

Sidney hadn't known that the cave was so large and went so far back into the cliffs. No wonder town authorities wanted to keep people out. She could just imagine the danger of somebody getting lost or injured within the vast cave system.

The passage was becoming noticeably wider, and the greenish-tinged light brighter, signaling that they were close.

But to what she did not know.

The rocky floor of the passage dipped dramatically, leading into what appeared to be a cavern, and hopefully the answers to what had happened in Benediction.

And to the mystery of the bad radio.

She moved even quicker down the natural corridor, the intensity of her curiosity allowing her to shuck off the blanket of exhaustion and giving her a second wind.

The strands of cobwebs that stretched across the passage tickled her face, causing her to recoil in disgust. Sidney stepped back, bumping into Cody and Rich behind her as she wiped the gossamer threads from her hair and the front of her clothes.

Snowy started to bark crazily then.

Something quite large skittered across the ceiling toward them, lowering itself down on thick, silken strands to block their way.

“Oh God,” she heard Rich say behind her.

Her own voice had been stolen away by the shocking sight.

At first glance, in the shifting gloom and eerie pulsing light, she thought it was a cat, but then she noticed the number of legs was all wrong. It hissed at them, but she still couldn't figure out what it was, even as it crawled closer across the rocks.

She took her phone out and lit up the corridor for a better look and immediately wished she hadn't. It was like nothing she'd ever seen before. It certainly had aspects of a tabby—the orange-striped fur, with large white paws—but also very noticeable characteristics of a spider. Long, spindly insect legs protruded from its side covered in thick black hairs. It also had multiple sets of green, bulging eyes, as well as a swollen, rounded abdomen from which the thick webbing that crisscrossed the cave corridor was emitted. The animal was like something out of the worst of nightmares, two completely different species crammed together to form something very unnatural.

The monster advanced on them, moving awkwardly as if it was still getting used to the horrible absurdity of its body. Sidney could do nothing but watch as it skittered over the rocks, screaming as razor-sharp pincers shot from its mouth.

Cody pushed Sidney aside and went for the hellish animal, pinning its cat-spider body to the floor of the corridor with his makeshift spear. The monster shrieked in pain, its multiple, spindly limbs clawing at the ground as it attempted to free itself. Snowy surged at the thing, her jaws snapping menacingly. The monster continued to yowl, its pincers dripping venom as they snapped, streams of liquid webbing covering the floor of the passage.

Sidney couldn't stand the sounds of its cries and removed the knife from her belt loop. She stabbed down with the blade, catching the monstrous cat's forehead and penetrating its skull. Its body trembled and thrashed all the harder, actually almost succeeding in freeing itself before it went still.

“What the hell is that thing?” Rich asked, his voice trembling with fear as Cody pulled his spear from the body with a horrible squelching sound. “That isn't right . . . that isn't right at all.”

A watchdog,
Sidney immediately thought, having no idea where the bizarre idea had originated but feeling like it might be right.

“Y'know what?” Rich continued, his words spilling from his mouth like vomit. “I draw the line at monsters. I draw the freakin' line at spider-cats or whatever the hell that is.”

Sidney's mind was on fire, and she found herself wondering if this was somehow the next step. At first it was the individual life forms, and then those life forms merging to form one dangerous single organism, and now this—an amalgam of different kinds of animal life.

She squatted down next to the thing to examine it.

“Sid, I wouldn't get too close,” Cody warned.

“It's dead,” she said, checking out the twisted thing's body. Yes, there was most certainly spider and cat there, but on closer inspection she saw signs of other life forms as well. It had a thick shell covering parts of its body and feathers growing the length of its spine.

“What could have caused something like this?” Cody asked.

She looked up from the corpse of the impossible animal and down the length of the tunnel that still glowed with the eerie, throbbing light.

“I think we're going to find out,” she said.

“Great,” Rich said. “Just great.”

The strange light up ahead was thrumming faster as if attuned somehow to the beating of her heart, and she found herself again proceeding down the descending stone corridor. She was careful this time, eyes scanning the walls of the passage for signs of webbing or anything that might do her and her friends harm.

But there was nothing to hold them back, and she charged to the end of the natural stone passage into the chamber of the pulsating green light. She tightly clutched her knife as she found herself standing upon a ledge, looking down into the rounded sunken chamber.

Nothing could have prepared her for what she saw. Not even the events of the last hours. Her brain always searched for the rational, but what she saw now was in no way rational. What was below her on the cavern floor was totally, inexplicably . . .