“Starting to wish I could trade spots with the goats,” Hawkins said. He was starting to feel a little more like himself, but his foot struck something hard. He winced and hopped away.
“What happened?” Joliet asked.
“Stubbed my toe,” Hawkins replied while he looked for what he’d kicked. He expected to find a rock, but instead found a cylindrical concrete tube sticking out of the ground. It stood only an inch taller than the grass and was six inches in diameter. He knelt down to look at it.
“What is it?” Joliet asked.
Hawkins shrugged. “No idea.”
Joliet pointed to the grass around them. “There’s more.” She walked in a circle, pointing and counting. “Eighteen of them. Looks like they’re arranged around that divot.”
Hawkins hadn’t noticed the divot. Concealed beneath a layer of grass, the five-foot-wide indentation was hard to spot.
“There are three circles,” Joliet continued. “Each one a few feet farther away from the center.”
Hawkins was about to say he’d rather not know what this spot had been used for when Bray spoke.
“The concrete cylinders were for replaceable wooden posts. They made them that way because the explosions sometimes broke the posts. So they used strong bases and made the rest replaceable.”
Hawkins cringed when Joliet asked, “What explosions?” He didn’t want to know.
“Bombs,” Bray said. “And grenades. Chemical agents. Biological, too. They bound test subjects to posts at varying distances and then detonated the explosives. The few who survived with nonlethal shrapnel wounds would be operated on and saved. The rest went to the morgue for dissection. They were the lucky ones. The people who survived would be experimented on again.” He turned toward the building. “There’s more inside.”
Hawkins felt the blood drain from his head. More. God, could it really get worse?
“Don’t really want to see more,” he said. He wasn’t sure if it was from the knowledge of what went on here or from the adrenaline wearing off, but he felt queasy.
“I don’t want to be here any more than you,” Bray said. “But I know way more than I want to right now, it’s scaring the shit out of me, and I need someone to help make sense of it. Besides, know your enemy, remember?” Bray said.
Hawkins took a deep breath. Bray was right. “Okay, Sun Tzu, point taken. Just give me a minute. Why don’t you go in with Eight,” he said to Joliet. “Check on Drake.”
Joliet began to protest. “But—”
“I need a minute to think,” he said. “Just leave the rifle with me.”
Joliet took the rifle from her shoulder and handed it to Hawkins. “You’re not thinking of heading out on your own, are you?”
He shook his head no. “Impulsive, dangerous decisions are more your style than mine.”
She smiled and headed for the door.
“If you spot anything,” Bray said, “or need help, fire off a shot and I’ll come running.”
“Somehow that’s not comforting,” Hawkins said.
Bray didn’t smile. “I’m serious, Ranger. We’re going to be lucky if we get off this island alive. You know that, right? Half a day and we’ve nearly been killed how many times?”
“I know,” Hawkins said. “This place is wicked scary.”
Bray couldn’t help smiling in the face of Hawkins’s mimicked Massachusetts accent. “Bastard.”
“I’ll be fine,” Hawkins said as Bray headed for the open door. Bray gave a wave over his shoulder and retreated to the building.
Alone, Hawkins turned and looked at the rings of cement post braces. He knelt down and looked into the top of the nearest hole. Two feet down, water reflected the blue sky above. He suspected the hole was at least another two feet deep—deep enough to securely hold a post and the struggling person bound to it. But that’s not what had him on edge. After just a few years of disuse, the hole should have been filled with dirt and debris. This only held rainwater. And that meant someone was maintaining the site. The building had clearly been abandoned, but the ring was being maintained, as was the fence gate, and the goats with their bright red, plastic collars.