“I concur,” Jane said.
“This means that nothing said or done here now can be shared outside this room to anyone, under penalty of treason,” I said.
“The hell you say,” Trujillo said.
“The hell I do say,” I said. “No joke. You talk about any of this before Jane and I are ready for you to talk about it, and you’ll be in deep shit.”
“Define deep shit,” Gutierrez said.
“I shoot you,” Jane said. Gutierrez smiled uncertainly, waiting for Jane to indicate she was kidding. He kept waiting.
“All right,” Trujillo said. “We understand. No talking.”
“Thank you,” I said. “We brought you over here for two reasons. The first was to show you him”—I pointed to Loong, whom Dr. Tsao had hidden again under the sheet—“and the second was to show you this.” I reached over to the lab table, pulled an object from underneath a towel and handed it to Trujillo.
He examined it. “It looks like the head of a spear,” he said.
“That’s what it is,” I said. “We found it by the fantie carcass near where we found Loong. We suspect it was thrown at the fantie and it managed to pull it out and break it, or perhaps broke it and then pulled it out.”
Trujillo, who was in the act of handing the spearhead over to Lee Chen, stopped and took another look at it. “You’re not seriously suggesting what I think you’re suggesting,” he said.
“It wasn’t just Loong who was butchered,” Jane said. “The fantie was butchered, too. There were footprints around Loong, because of Marta and her search party and me and John. There were tracks around the fantie as well. They weren’t ours.”
“The fantie was brought down by some yotes,” Marie Black said. “The yotes move in packs. It could happen.”
“You’re not listening,” Jane said. “The fantie was butchered. Whoever butchered the fantie almost certainly butchered Loong. And whoever butchered the fantie wasn’t human.”
“You’re saying there’s some sort of aboriginal intelligent species here on Roanoke,” Trujillo said.
“Yes,” I said.
“How intelligent?” Trujillo asked.
“Intelligent enough to make that,” I said, noting the spear. “It’s a simple spear, but it’s still a spear. And they’re intelligent enough to make knives for butchering.”
“We’ve been here almost a Roanoke year,” Lee Chen said. “If these things exist, why haven’t we seen them before?”
“I think we have,” Jane said. “I think whatever these things are, were the ones who tried to get into Croatoan not long after we arrived. When they couldn’t climb their way over the barrier they tried digging under.”
“I thought the yotes did that,” Chen said.
“We killed a yote in one of the holes,” Jane said. “It doesn’t mean the yote dug the hole.”
“The holes happened right around the time we first saw the fanties,” I said. “Now the fanties are back. Maybe these things follow the herd. No fanties, no Roanoke cavemen.” I pointed to Loong. “I think these things were hunting a fantie. They killed it and were butchering it up when Loong wandered onto what they were doing. Maybe they killed him out of fear, and butchered him afterward.”
“They saw him as prey,” Gutierrez said.
“We don’t know that,” I said.
“Come on,” Gutierrez said, waving toward Loong. “The sons of bitches turned him into fucking steaks.”
“Yes,” I said. “But we don’t know if he was hunted. I’d rather we don’t jump to any conclusions. And I’d rather we didn’t start panicking about what these things are or what their intentions are toward us. As far as we know they have no intentions. This could have been a random encounter.”
“You’re not suggesting we pretend that Joe wasn’t killed and eaten,” said Marta Piro. “That’s already impossible. Jun and Evan know, because they were with me when we found him. Jane’s told us to keep quiet, and we have so far. But this isn’t something you can keep quiet forever.”
“We don’t need to keep that part quiet,” Jane said. “You can tell your people that part when you leave here. You need to keep quiet about the creatures that did this.”
“I’m not going to pretend to my people that this was just some sort of random animal attack,” Gutierrez said.
“No one’s saying you should,” I said. “Tell your people the truth: that there are predators following the fantie herd, they’re dangerous and that until further notice no one goes for walks in the forest, or goes anywhere alone outside of Croatoan if they can help it. You don’t have to tell them anything more than that for now.”
“Why not?” Gutierrez said. “These things represent a real danger to us. They’ve already killed one of us. Eaten one of us. We need to get our people prepared.”