As she headed away from the campfire now, she fumed at herself for failing the test. But there was still a bounce to her step. After only
a few weeks with these lunatics, she was glad to be off the island. It was a rugged, beautiful setting, but she had grown weary of the backbiting, the manipulation and general sneakiness in which a contestant had to indulge for the dubious honor of being hunted down like a rabid dog.
Beyond the "Gate to Valhalla," an arbor made of plastic whalebones, was a large house trailer that was the quarters for the production crew. While the clan members slept in skin tents and ate bugs, the crew enjoyed heat, comfortable cots and gourmet meals. Once a contestant was thrown out of the game, he or she spent the night in the trailer until a helicopter picked him or her up the next morning.
"Tough luck," said Andleman, who met her at the door. Andleman was a sweetheart, the complete opposite of his hard-driving boss.
"Yeah, real tough. Hot showers. Hot meals. Cell phones."
"Hell, we've got all that right here."
She glanced around at the comfortable accommodations. "So I noticed."
"That's your bunk over there," he said. "Make yourself a drink from the bar, and there's some terrific pate in the fridge that'll help you decompress. I've got to go give Sy a hand. Knock yourself out."
"Thanks, I will."
She went over to the bar and made herself a tall Beefeater martini, straight up. The pate was as delicious as advertised. She was looking forward to going home. The ex-contestants always made the rounds of the TV talk shows to rake over the people they'd left behind. Easy money. She stretched out in a comfortable chair. After a few minutes, the alcohol put her to sleep.
She awoke with a start. In her sleep, she had heard high-pitched screams like the sound of seabirds flocking or children in a playground, against a background of yells and shouts.
Peculiar.
She got up, went to the door and listened. She wondered if Sy had come up with yet another means of humiliation. Maybe he had the others doing a wild savage dance around the fire.
She walked briskly along the path that led to the beach. The noise grew louder, more frantic. Something was dreadfully wrong. These were screams of fright and pain rather than excitement. She picked up her pace and burst through the Gate to Valhalla. What she saw looked like a scene from a Hieronymus Bosch depiction of Hell.
The cast and crew were under attack by hideous creatures that seemed half man, half animal. The savage attackers were snarling, pulling their victims down and tearing at them with claws and teeth.
She saw Sy fall, then Randy. She recognized several bodies that were lying bloody and mauled on the beach.
In the flickering light from the fire, Jodie saw that the attackers had long, filthy white hair down to their shoulders. The faces were like nothing she had ever seen. Ghastly, twisted masks.
One creature clutched a severed arm which he was raising to his mouth. Jodie couldn't help herself, she screamed ... and the other creatures broke off their ungodly feast and looked at her with burning eyes that glowed a luminous red.
She wanted to vomit, but they were coming toward her in a crouching lope.
She ran for her life.
Her first thought was the trailer, but she had enough presence of mind to know she'd be trapped there.
She ran for the high rocky ground, the creatures snuffing behind her like bloodhounds. In the dark, she lost her footing and fell into a fissure, but unknown to her the accident saved her life. Her pursuers lost her scent.
Jodie had cracked her head in the fall. She regained consciousness
once, and thought she heard harsh voices and gunshots. Then she passed out again.
She was still lying unconscious in the fissure the next morning when the helicopter arrived. By the time the crew had scoured the island and finally found Jodie, they had come to a startling discovery.
Everyone else had vanished.
MONEMVASSIA, THE GREEK PeLOPONNESE
IN HIS RECURRING nightmare, Angus MacLean was a staked goat being stalked by a hungry tiger whose yellow eyes stared at him from the jungle shadows. The low growls gradually grew louder until they filled his ears. Then the tiger lunged. He could smell its fetid breath, feel its sharp fangs sinking into his neck. He strained at his collar in a futile attempt to escape. His pathetic, terrified bleating changed to a desperate moan ... and he awakened in a cold sweat, his chest heaving, and his rumpled blankets damp from perspiration.
MacLean stumbled out of his narrow bed and threw open the shutters. The Greek sunlight flooded the whitewashed walls of what had been a monk's cell. He pulled on shorts and a T-shirt, slipped into his walking sandals and stepped outside, blinking his eyes against the shimmer of the sapphire sea. The hammering of his heart subsided.
He took a deep breath, inhaling the perfume like fragrance of the wildflowers that surrounded the two-story stucco monastery. He waited until his hands stopped shaking, then he set off on the morning hike that had proven to be the best antidote for his shattered nerves.