It was getting dark by the time they entered the villa. They’d passed a few others on their way here but Mbabi wanted to make sure he put some distance between them and the first villa where he hoped the attacker would stay. With half a dozen different villas to search, it was unlikely Mbabi and his team would be found in this one. All the same, they moved cautiously and made as little sound as possible.

The gates to the villa were unlocked and they moved inside, Kess going in first, followed by Mbabi, with Sheza bringing up the rear. It was an expansive miniature town with high walls surrounding the entirety. Once inside the villa, they were in a sort of inside/outside space with a few doorways that led into the buildings within the villa. There were awnings over the doorways that would keep most inclement weather out. A narrow street wound its way through the villa in a serpentine fashion.

“Kitchen’s and the store house will be toward the back on the left side,” Mbabi muttered as he remembered the villa’s layout that he’d studied before they came to the island.

None of the streetlamps were illuminated and the buildings were all dark. Mbabi and the others didn’t bother trying to turn on any of their own flashlights as they made their way through the villa. That would only serve to draw attention to where they were.

The road curved sharply around one of the many ponds and was lost from view behind the palms and shrubberies that surrounded the water feature. The waterfall in the pond still flowed and the splashing water made it difficult to hear beyond their immediate area.

Kess held up her hand to signal the others to stop. She turned, her nose wrinkled and motioned with her hand as if to show that she was smelling something foul. Mbabi smelled it too, as did Sheza judging from her expression.

They each readied their weapons and when they moved again they did so with greater care. The smell was growing stronger with every step until it was nearly as potent as when Mbabi and Sheza had found Johan’s face.

Mbabi began to fear that this was not the work of one, or even a few individuals. The smell was getting so strong that he knew they were close to at least one of the psychopaths. It was impossible that Mbabi and the others had been followed here, and so he was left with the assumption that these people were just living here. Maybe each of the villas was occupied, or maybe Mbabi and his team were just unlucky in picking this villa. It didn’t matter now.

He was about to signal for them to leave when Kess pointed behind them, her eyes growing wide. Before Mbabi could turn, he heard it. The splashing of the pool was growing more erratic, more frantic, and it was only then that he wondered at why the fountains and waterfalls would still be functioning when the power in the rest of the villa seemed to be out. It was far more likely that the splashing wasn’t from the waterfall at all.

Sheza cried out and Kess began to open fire on whatever it was that she’d seen. Mbabi only just had enough time to turn and see Sheza, eyes wide with terror, being dragged off into the underbrush surrounding the pond.

“Sheza!” Mbabi shouted as he dove in after her.

She was screaming in pain as Mbabi fumbled in the dark for her.

“IT’S – GHAA! IT’S STABBING…NO…NO…IT’S IN MY SKIN!”

Mbabi found her hand and he gripped it tightly, bracing himself against a cluster of palms and pulling hard.

“I’ve got you Sheza! Hold on!” He shouted. “KESS! KESS SHOOT THEM!”

Kess’s face flashed into view with every shot but still Sheza screamed and Mbabi felt himself being slowly dragged along with her. His grip on Sheza was weakening, not because he was tired, but because something else was moving around beneath his grip. Beneath her skin. At first he thought he was imagining it but soon he could feel the distinct, muscular lines that were sliding between his and Sheza’s hand. It felt as though a dozen worms or snakes were pushing their way between the two of them and no matter how hard he tried he couldn’t stop them from invading his grasp.

Sheza’s cries began to sound more strangled, as though her mouth was being filled with something.

“SHEZA!” Mbabi shouted out to her. He was so close, and yet between the growing dark and the thick plant growth he couldn’t see what was happening. He didn’t think they were close enough to the pond for Sheza to be drowning in, but what else it could be he had no idea.

Suddenly, Kess was leaping passed him, a large machete in her hand, and she began hacking away. Sheza’s cries renewed but before too much longer Mbabi found that the writhing things between him and Sheza’s grasp were retreating and he was soon pulling Sheza free. Her legs were gone below the knees.

“RUN!” Kess shouted as soon as they were all back on the road.

Mbabi still hadn’t seen what all had been happening but he trusted in Kess’s assessment and, scooping Sheza up and throwing her over his shoulders, turned and followed Kess. He’d expected her to make for the exit of the villa but instead she cut through a few of the buildings and eventually made her way back to the store house.

Once inside, Kess and Mbabi wound their way to one of the back rooms. There were no windows in the room and, once Mbabi had shut the door, Kess turned on one of her portable lamps. A long metal table sat in the center of the room and Mbabi laid Sheza down onto it. Her legs, or what was left of them, were bleeding profusely. Kess and Mbabi set to work at once, binding her legs and stopping the bleeding. Sheza was only semi coherent throughout it all. As they worked, Mbabi couldn’t help but notice two particularly unsettling aspects about Sheza’s wounds. The first was that her skin on much of her body appeared to have been pried up so that it now looked like a slightly oversized piece of clothing rather than her skin. The second was that her legs had clearly been chopped off by Kess’s machete.

After they’d bandaged Sheza as best they could, they slumped down onto the floor to rest.

“What…what happened back there?” Mbabi finally asked.

Kess closed her eyes and she shook her head.

“I don’t know,” she whispered. “I just saw…I don’t know.”

She looked as though the memory of it caused her physical pain.

“What do you mean, you don’t know?” Mbabi demanded. “I was face down in the dirt trying to pull Sheza out of there but you saw them! You shot them!”

“It,” Kess said. “I saw it. And for all the good it did I shot it.”

“What, was it an animal, or some sort of trap?”

“I don’t know what it was,” Kess sighed wearily, “All I do know is that it…it wasn’t…natural. The thing…I think it was alive but, well, it…”

She trailed off and then gave off an involuntary shiver.

“It was forcing its way beneath her skin,” she said at last. “That’s why I cut her legs off.”

Mbabi looked back over to Sheza. She was unconscious, maybe just sleeping. She might wake up she might not. The amount of trauma she seemed to have endured was far more serious than he thought possible to survive.

“We’ll hold here until morning,” Mbabi said. “Hopefully Sheza will be awake by then. We’ll gather what supplies we can and then get back to the jetty.”

Kess’s face blanched.

“I’m not going back out there,” she stated. “Not after…”

She looked back over to Sheza and then down to the ground.

“We stick together,” Mbabi told her, “No one’s staying behind.”

Kess didn’t respond. Instead, she curled up on the floor and closed her eyes as though trying to sleep.

“We stick together,” Mbabi repeated but Kess still didn’t respond.

He left her alone after that. She was clearly in shock and him pushing her wouldn’t help. He’d let her rest and then in the morning they’d head back out. He shut off the lamp and then sat in the dark, listening for any sounds.

It was a long night, but at last he checked his watch and it displayed half past six. He turned the lamp back on and set about checking on Sheza. To his surprise, she was awake. She was pale and shaky but otherwise aware. Much of her skin was deeply bruised and the edges of those bruises were in the form of snake-like ribbons.

“How are you?” he asked her.

Her breathing was ragged as she tried to speak. Her lips didn’t fit onto her face properly anymore and she had difficulty forming words.

“Ev’ryfin hurds,” she murmured.

“Well, you’re one tough woman,” Mbabi told her. “We made it to the supply house,” he added to change the subject somewhat. “We’ll get some food and water, maybe see if they have something to dull your pain, and then head back to the jetty.”

“Nuh!” Sheza gasped. “Nuh, vee can’d!”

Mbabi frowned. Sheza had the same sort of panicked tone to her voice that Kess had had the night before.

“She’s right,” Kess, who was obviously awake now as well, said from behind. “We’ve got to stay here. Just hide and hope it doesn’t find us!”

Neither of them was making much sense.

“This room is hardly a defensible position,” Mbabi said, “and even if we did stay in here, how will we know when the helicopter gets here?”

Neither Kess nor Sheza looked convinced.

“Look, we’re grabbing what we can and then we’re heading back to the jetty. End of discussion.”

He turned, switched off the lamp, and opened the door to leave. As the door opened he was immediately hit by the acrid stench and he leapt back, expecting to be attacked at any moment. However, nothing happened. The morning light from outside gave a faint illumination to the space beyond the room and after a moment his eyes adjusted to the low light. There, hanging in front of the doorway were a pair of lower legs. They’d been stripped of their skin and then strung up with their own connective tissues.

He stared at the legs for a good long while. The others were silent though he was certain they had seen them as well. Finally, he walked over to Kess and held out his hand.

“Give me your machete,” he ordered and she complied.

He strode back over to the doorway and with a few strokes the doorway was clear.

“Get up, now,” he told Kess.

When she still didn’t move he walked over to Sheza on the table and picked her up. She tried to resist him but lacked the energy and the strength.

“They, or it, knows where we are,” he said pointedly, jabbing the machete towards the remains of the legs. “You stay, you die.”

He left the room, expecting to find Kess following after him at any moment.

She never came.

Mbabi found a pantry and filled his pack with as much as he could carry. It would be enough to last him and Sheza several days at least. He also found a first aid kit and used much of it to more fully clean and redress Sheza’s legs. There were also some basic painkillers in the first aid kit. Mbabi doubted they would be strong enough to have much of an effect on Sheza but he gave them to her all the same. That task completed, he made for the exit.

The villa was silent and in the morning light it looked almost welcoming. The only thing that marred the vision was the trail of dried blood left behind from the night before. There was no shortcut that would allow them to avoid the pond but as Mbabi strode around it the water was still and quiet. At every moment he was half expecting to be attacked. It was with immense relief that he finally came into view of the jetty. Even Sheza seemed to relax a bit.

Once at the jetty, Mbabi set Sheza down on a wide, flat rock before starting work on constructing some basic shelter. He gathered palm fronds and lashed them together along with some driftwood. It wasn’t much, but it would help keep the Sun off of them.

“How you doing?” Mbabi asked Sheza as he sat down beside her and offered her a drink of water.

“Vee’re go’n die eere,” Sheza whispered in her slurred voice.

Mbabi frowned. Her eyes stared off at nothing and she seemed to wilt even as he watched her.

“Hey, don’t say that,” Mbabi chided her. “We’ve got food, we’ve got water, we’ve even got a roof over our heads. We just get to sit here and relax a bit while we wait for the helicopter.”

“Do you weelly thin’ id’ll come?” Sheza asked, though it was not a hopeful question. “I thin’ they knew,” she went on. “Maybe hobed vee’d be enough to sadisfy id.”

“That’s ridiculous,” Mbabi replied.

“Den vy nod send a bode? Vy dwob us off and leeb?”

Mbabi didn’t have an answer for her. They could have sent a boat. That would have been easier, would have allowed them to send more supplies, have an easier mode of escape should things go wrong. Sure, the helicopter was faster, but that only saved them a day at most. They could even have sent both. Use the helicopter to scout the island, make sure there weren’t any immediate threats, and then allow the team on the boat to make the call as to whether or not they needed to hurry up ahead on the helicopter or else continue along on the boat.

As night fell, Sheza grew noticeably more uncomfortable and worried.

“It’s going to be alright,” Mbabi assured her but his words had little effect on her.

They watched as the island began to fade from view until only the stars above shone. Mbabi wanted to sleep. He knew he needed to sleep. He’d only had a few hours of sleep over the last few days and lack of sleep meant slowed reactions. Unfortunately, Sheza was in no fit state to keep watch and he didn’t dare sleep without someone keeping watch.

As the night deepened, the winds began to shift. The ocean water held onto the heat from the day much better than the island and so the air began to flow down from the island to fill the void created by the rising air over the ocean. As the winds shifted, Mbabi caught the first hints of the acrid stench.

“Nuh,” whined Sheza beside him as she, too, had clearly smelled it as well.

Mbabi scanned the darkness but could see nothing. Soon, however, he could hear something. A sort of wet, flopping sound. It wasn’t a regular sound, like the lapping waves on the shore. Rather, it was a sporadic, almost convulsive noise that made him think of wet towels slapping the ground.

“Id’s comin’ for me,” Sheza was becoming hysterical and she grabbed at Mbabi, clinging to him as best she could.

Mbabi had no response for her. He was too focused on trying to pinpoint where the sound was coming from. It was still somewhat distant; he could tell that much. If he had to guess he would have said that it was pacing back and forth along the shoreline near to where the jetty met the island.

Just as Mbabi was beginning to wonder if it had lost their trail, or was somehow unable or unwilling to come out onto the jetty, the noise began to draw nearer once more. Sheza’s breathing was growing more rapid and Mbabi feared she may black out from hyperventilating.

“It’s alright,” he allowed himself to murmur and he ran a comforting hand over her head.

Mbabi pulled a glowstick from his pack and quickly wrapped a small cloth over it. That done, he gave the rod a quick snap and a shake. The cloth kept the light obscured until he threw it down along the jetty towards whatever was approaching them. His plan was to allow the glowstick to illuminate it and then shoot whatever it was with everything he had.

The glowstick landed and, as planned, illuminated the thing that was stalking up towards them.

Mbabi froze.

Words utterly failed to describe what it was that he was looking at. With limbs that were sometimes jointed, sometimes not, it pulled itself along. Countless appendages, some of them belonging to itself, hung at odd angles from its central mass and writhed as though in constant pain. It’s skin, for want of a better word, was slick and appeared almost oily. Worse of all, though, was how just looking at it seemed to fill Mbabi’s mind with the knowledge of all the terrible and painful things it intended to do to him, to them all. He could even feel slivers of it already pressing its way into his flesh, digging around and strangling him, carving him, tearing him apart, all while it expertly managed to keep him alive and aware for as long as possible.

Gunshots began to ring out and Mbabi was faintly aware that it was him who was shooting. He could see where the bullets impacted but the substance that formed the thing flowed back in to fill every new bullet hole.

As it drew nearer the terror in Mbabi’s mind grew until he lost all control. He threw himself into the ocean. A moment later he heard Sheza beginning to scream. He swam on, fear driving him even as the shame for abandoning Sheza welled up inside of him. Still, he could not get himself to turn back. He followed the coastline for some time until a villa came into view and Sheza’s screams could no longer be heard.

*

A floorboard outside creaked and Mbabi’s mind snapped back to the present. He was alone in the dark closet, his handgun clenched tight to his chest. His back and legs ached from standing for so long and his hands felt weak and shaky but still he managed to remain quiet. He’d been hiding in the closet for so long now. Where exactly on the island he was, he didn’t know. After leaving Sheza he swam for what felt like hours. He stayed near the island, knowing that swimming into the open ocean would mean certain death, though perhaps that would have been preferable to what he’d ended up with. All he’d been able to really think about that whole time was the need to find a place to hide. He must have staggered around in the dark for a few hours, dashing from one hiding spot to another, before he found this closet.

He was the last one of his team left alive. He’d heard Kess’s screams over the radio just the night before, and now it was coming for him.

His grip on the handgun was slippery with sweat. The weapon was a small comfort, but a comfort nonetheless, even though he knew firsthand just how useless bullets were against whatever it was that was hunting him.

There was a thump outside in the room connected to the closet and Mbabi let out an involuntary gasp. He was terrified beyond anything he had ever known. He wanted to run, to cry, to throw up, and yet he was rooted to the spot and unable to act on any of those urges.

Suddenly, with a violence and crashing he had not expected, the door to the closet was wrenched out of the doorway and innumerable tendrils began lashing out at him. They stabbed into him, forcing their way beneath his skin before thrusting inward. He screamed and fought back, firing his gun pointblank into the creature. Like every time before, it proved useless. Soon it was filling his mouth, his ears, his nose, and his eyes with itself, smothering him and depriving him of all sensation besides his pain. He choked and gagged on the rancid flesh as it poured down his throat.

In a final bid for freedom he bit down on it, breaking it off in mouthfuls that he spat out onto the floor before going back for more. To his utter astonishment, the creature reeled back and withdrew from him. For a moment he had the clarity of mind sufficient to run. He shouldered his way past the creature, ignoring the searing pain all over his body, and tore away from that place.

He was mostly blind from the creature forcing its way into his eye sockets but his left eye still functioned enough for him to avoid most of the larger obstacles. Sunrise was just a few moments away and the warm, fresh air was a gentle relief to him. As he ran, a welcome sound reached his damaged ears. It was muffled, again from the damage caused to him by the creature, but he was almost certain he recognized the droning, chopping sound.

The helicopter was returning.

With newfound strength born of desperation and hope, Mbabi pelted through the villa and out into the forest of the island. He ran in as straight a line as he could manage towards the sound. He had to get there before the helicopter left. Surely they’d wait, surely they wouldn’t leave the moment they arrived just because Mbabi and the others weren’t there waiting for them, would they?

He reached the top of a hill and he recognized it as the hill they had camped out on that first night on the island. He must have been hiding in the first villa, he realized.

From his vantage point he could see the jetty and there, on the helipad was the helicopter. However, as he started to begin making his way towards it, he saw several people clambering out. They had several large packs and supplies, as though they meant to remain on the island for some time. Then, as soon as they had hopped out, the helicopter took back to the air.

“NO!” Mbabi screamed but with the noise of the helicopter and the distance between him and the others he knew it would be impossible for them to have herd him.

He had just begun to rush back down the hill, still believing that he could somehow get on that helicopter, when something lashed out and pierced his leg. Mbabi stumbled and fell. He didn’t need to look to know what it was that had caught him. There was no escaping this place, no hope of rescue.

“Sheza,” Mbabi groaned as he felt the all too familiar pain of tiny piercing appendages driving themselves into his flesh, “you were right. They never meant for us to escape. They knew…they knew….”

Down below the new arrivals to the island were beginning to make their way inland, a voice full of confidence shouting orders and Mbabi wondered just how much like that he had sounded when he first arrived. It didn’t matter now. These new arrivals would learn soon enough.

Everything else faded from Mbabi’s mind as he was once again, and for the last time, consumed with the pain inflicted by the creature and he gave himself over to the awaiting darkness.