Mbabi, Kess, and Sheza sat quietly in a clearing overlooking the first villa on the island. Mbabi and Sheza had spent several minutes searching for their gear and Johan’s body without success. Neither had they found any sort of trail to show them where the attacker or attackers had gone. After that, they’d come and joined Kess up in the clearing on the hill.

“Any chance one of you grabbed the sat-phone?” Mbabi asked.

The others just shook their heads.

“Well,” Mbabi said, “when we don’t check in with them this evening they’ll send the chopper back. We’re unprepared to press further into the island so we’ll wait here, keep watch, and get out of here as soon as that helicopter arrives.”

The others nodded. It was always affecting whenever a teammate was injured or killed, and the manner in which Johan’s face had been left for them to find only added to their unease. The silence and speed with which the attack had happened was also unsettling. At most they would have had perhaps ten minutes in which they could have acted. Mbabi didn’t intend to abandon Johan, but he needed to regroup and resupply before he could do anything. It was clear to him now that whoever was behind all of this was an expert. They were also clearly deranged. A dangerous and unpredictable combination.

It was pretty standard for them to each carry a single canteen of water and a few energy bars on them at all times so they would be alright for the one day they would need to wait. In the meantime, they took it in turns to keep watch while the other two played cards, rested, or just sat quietly. As night drew near they huddled in towards one another ever closer. There were no lights on in the villa below and they all knew better than to light a fire or use their flashlights. With luck, their presence here on the hill would go unnoticed.

“Going to be a New Moon tonight,” Mbabi observed as he scanned the darkening sky above, “and it looks like some clouds are rolling in so I doubt we’ll see many stars either.”

A dark night would work in their favor if whoever attacked Johan was using their natural senses to track them. If they had more advanced technology like night vision goggles then it was Mbabi and his team who would be in trouble.

The sound of night began to rise from all around them. Insects and frogs were the main noisemakers, but there were also flapping wings above from time to time. Whether these creatures were native to the island or brought there by people, Mbabi didn’t know. He assumed it was probably a mix of the two.

As he’d suspected, the night was intensely dark with no sources of light to provide any illumination. With so little to see, they relied more on their other senses to keep them aware of what was going on beyond the clearing. One of them was always on watch, but none of them ever slept. Mbabi wished he could have fallen asleep but the image of Johan’s stretched and smiling face, hanging from the branches kept playing in his mind. Sheza didn’t seem to be able to sleep either and Mbabi wondered if she, too, was being kept awake by that image. Every once in a while he thought he caught a whiff of that same acrid stench he’d smelled before when they found Johan’s face but he wasn’t sure if it was real or imagined this time around.

At last the Eastern horizon began to shift into shades of gray and blue. The tension in Mbabi’s neck and shoulders began to lessen as his anxiety began to ease. With the morning would come the helicopter and–

A crackle of static came over their radios and all three of them started. In the faint light Mbabi could make out Sheza and Kess as they, like him, began fumbling for their radios. Perhaps Johan had survived, been taken captive, and then escaped? Or maybe the attacker was trying to use the radio to locate Johan’s companions. In either case, they wanted to make sure they could catch any messages being sent to them without risking being overheard by anyone unfriendly towards them.

As they sought to turn down the volume on their radios, the crackling began again. It lasted a few moments before being abruptly replaced by a terrified, painful scream. They heard it over the radios but they also heard it coming from somewhere down below, perhaps in the villa. The nature of screams made it difficult to tell for certain, but Mbabi was all but certain it was Johan screaming. Why else would the attacker play it over their radios?

The screaming lasted for what felt like an eternity but eventually the voice grew weaker, choked, and gurgling until it finally went silent. A moment later the radio static cut out as well and everything was quiet once again.

It was a trap, of course. Whoever they were, they wanted to lure Mbabi and the rest of his team out of hiding. In a lot of ways that was a good sign that Mbabi and the others were safely hidden for the time being. That knowledge was little comfort, though. Johan was most certainly dead now and the person or people behind this would be coming to search for the rest of them.

“Mbabi,” Kess muttered quietly some time after the screams were ended.

“I’m here,” Mbabi muttered back.

It was still too dark to easily pick one another out from among the rest of their surroundings.

“There’s something on the Eastern slope, moving slow,” Kess told him as she knelt down beside where he sat. “I can’t see what it is, just picking up on the movement, but it’s sweeping back and forth and coming up towards us. Could be a large animal, maybe a deer or something, but…

She left it at that. It would be a stretch to assume it was a deer. If the owner of the island had imported any such larger animals it would have shown up in their research prior to coming out here.

“Make for the jetty,” Mbabi told Kess and Sheza. “We’ll slip down onto the far side among the rocks. They’ll have to come out into the open if they want to get at us there.”

As quietly as they could, they slipped back down the opposite side of the hill and Kess led the way back towards the jetty. The hike down wasn’t a difficult one. The ground sloped gently down and the underbrush wasn’t terribly thick. Since most, if not all, of the trees had been planted by the island’s owner a decade or so ago there wasn’t much in the way of fallen trees or branches either. It was slow going all the same as they wanted to make sure their passing went unnoticed.

“You smell that” Kess asked as they walked.

Mbabi sniffed the air and he picked up hints of that acrid stench once more.

“Yeah,” he replied. “Same smell when we found Johan’s face, only it was a whole lot stronger then.”

“I think I also smelled it last night,” Sheza said.

“Me too.”

“Any ideas what it is?” Mbabi asked them.

Sheza shook her head but Kess nodded.

“It sort of reminds me of lion piss,” she said.

“Lion piss?” Mbabi wasn’t sure he’d heard her correctly. “You think somehow a lion got onto the island?”

“No,” Kess replied at once, “it just…it has that same sort of tangy, bestial smell, you know? Lots of large predators use urine to mark their territory.”

“If this is what this psycho’s urine smells like,” Sheza said, “they’ve got some serious issues.”

“I don’t think it’s theirs,” Kess said with obvious impatience at Sheza’s small attempt at brevity. “I just wonder if they’re using something like an animal’s piss to mark themselves or their kills or something like that. Some sort of twisted new take on going tribal or feral or whatever. Maybe they think it gives them strength or whatever.”

Mbabi nodded. It made some sense. Maybe one of the famous movie makers had gone a bit off the deep end or something, or maybe it was the guy who owned the island.

They reached the jetty just as the sky was becoming light enough to see more than a few feet in front of themselves. The island looked just as it had done the day before when they first arrived. They settled themselves down onto the edge of the jetty that faced away from the island. This provided them some cover and gave them a clear view of both the island and where the helicopter would be coming from.

Just a few more hours and they’d be able to leave.

They waited.

The Sun rose over the island.

“Where’s the helicopter?” Sheza asked as the afternoon waned.

The same question had been running through Mbabi’s mind as well. It should have been there by now.

“How’re we doing on water?” Mbabi asked instead of answering Sheza.

Kess and Sheza held out their canteens and gave them a rattle. The faint sloshing of water within hinted at their low levels.

“Probably enough water for today,” Kess said. “I’ve got a couple more energy bars left.”

“Let’s hold off on eating anything for now,” Mbabi told them. “Eating food makes your body use up more water. You can go weeks without eating. It’s not fun, but it’s possible.”

Sheza looked up at the sky. The clouds from the night before were all but gone now and the sun glared down on them.

“We’re going to get baked if we stay here,” she said.

It was an uncomfortable truth. There was no shade out on the jetty and the lapping salt water by their feet would only serve to enhance their awareness of their thirst.

“Thoughts?” Mbabi asked. He had his own ideas of what they ought to do, but in situations such as this he knew the value of getting input from the others.

“The hills offer a good view,” Kess said, “but after this morning I think it’s safe to assume they won’t offer much in the way of a good hiding place.”

“If we’re going to be here for any length of time,” Sheza said, “we’re eventually going to need more supplies. The villas probably have plenty of food and water, but…

She trailed off and Mbabi found himself glancing down to his radio, remembering the screams they heard.

“We know the lower villa is occupied,” Mbabi said, “but there’s several others deeper into the island. Let’s make for those, see if we can resupply there, and then return to the jetty. If we can do that, we could last here for a whole week if needed and we know they’ll be sending the helicopter then.”

Sheza and Kess nodded their agreement and they set out once again into the island. They had several hours left before night fell once more. Even if they could only reach the villas on the far side of the island it would be enough. They could hunker down for the night and then head back to the jetty in the morning.