This could support a small village, Hawkins realized, and in this part of the world, the vegetables would grow year round.
Standing out in stark contrast to the farm was a building beyond the orchard. It stood at least three stories tall—all concrete-lined like the other World War II-era structures—was round, and sported a domed room. Square windows wrapped around the building, giving it the look of a Roman coliseum, and perhaps that’s what it was. Knowing what Unit 731 had done on the island already, an arena where their victims, or perhaps creations, fought to the death for their entertainment, or even research, wouldn’t surprise him at all.
His first instinct was to head away from the building, but Joliet might be there. He had to check it out.
Halfway across the garden, his stomach growled and ached. He knelt down and yanked a carrot from the ground. After brushing it off, he placed the tip in his mouth, took a bite, and stopped midchew.
The scarecrow was gone.
He’d only seen it from a distance, standing still, dressed in overalls, arms outstretched. Given its posture, immobility, and position in the garden, he’d assumed it was nothing more than an inanimate scarecrow. But he’d been duped by the serene setting.
He spun around with the carrot in his mouth and the rifle in his hands. But the scarecrow, or whatever it was, had disappeared.
Moving fast and wary, Hawkins crossed the garden and slipped into the cover provided by rows of apple, pear, and orange trees. The sweet scent of fruit made his belly grumble again. But he forgot his hunger upon hearing the shuffle of feet and a dull, grumbling voice.
Leading with the rifle, Hawkins skirted a Honey Crisp apple tree and aimed it straight at the back of a very tall, very round man. The overalls identified the man as the scarecrow. But the thick neck and bald head and hunched shoulder revealed the man as Jim Clifton, the younger Tweedle brother.
Hawkins lowered the rifle.
Bennett said the crew had been killed. But he hadn’t actually seen it happen. He heard them die. Which means they might still be alive. Jim was proof of that.
As gently as he could, Hawkins said, “Jim.”
The man spun around fast, startled by Hawkins’s voice.
Only the towering figure wasn’t actually Jim Clifton.
Not anymore, at least.
36.
Hawkins reeled back and fell to the soft, grassy earth between the rows of fruit trees. He sat still and silent, watching the hulking form of Jim Clifton stumble about. To say the man had been deformed was an understatement. His eyes were missing and his mouth stapled shut. A hole oozing blood from the inside of his left eye revealed the man had been lobotomized. His ears had been replaced with what looked like futuristic hearing aids fused to his skin.
While the damage done to Jim’s head was unthinkable, it didn’t frighten Hawkins as much as what had been done to the man’s body. Where hands should have been, there were now blades, like butcher knives, fused to his stumpy forearms. Two large medical bags full of pink liquid were strapped to his upper arms and connected to lines embedded in his forearms. Hawkins thought the mobile drips must be providing morphine, or antibiotics, or even antirejection drugs. Probably all three, he concluded.
A strange pressure squeezed Hawkins’s ears. He shook his head as the pressure built, but he forgot all about it when Jim’s confused countenance shifted. The man had looked confused before, like a drugged, blind, deaf, and mute man with extensive injuries and brain trauma should. But now he stood still. Focused. He turned his head down toward Hawkins like he could see.
Hawkins backed away slowly.
Jim raised one of his arms and slipped the knife blade beneath the overall straps.
For a moment, Hawkins thought the man was going to kill himself, but with a quick swipe of his arm, Jim cut through both straps. The overalls top fell forward, revealing the cook’s chest and prodigious belly.
Hawkins scrambled back while muttering a string of curses. He stopped when his back struck a tree trunk.
A single word had been carved into Jim’s chest. The lettering was intricate, created with care—the work of someone familiar with a scalpel. The wounds weren’t deep enough to kill, but swollen and fringed by pink flesh, the text was easy to read.
RANGER.
Whoever had done this knew Hawkins’s nickname. Had they been watching them so closely on the island that they overheard conversations? Did the security cameras have microphones? Or had the name been tortured out of one of the captured crew? Bennett had clearly been wrong about the fate of those he left behind. If Blok, Jones, the Tweedles, DeWinter, Joliet, and Kam had all been taken, and tortured, the person who did this could have easily learned his nickname. But why taunt him with it?
The pressure came again, this time in three quick pulses.