The boy picked up the pace of his run down the tunnel, his heart racing in his chest. The Elder was close behind him along with a dozen of his soldiers. The boy was secretly grateful that there were no Clickers following in their wake; the creatures were too large to fit inside the subterranean chambers. When the march had first begun, while they were still topside and trekking through the jungle, the creatures had loomed over the boy as if to kill him, but the Elder had warned them away. The Clickers had thundered along in the rear of the procession, occasionally diverting to slay and feast on a survivor or wild animal or destroy a building or hut. Now, it was only the Elder and the Dark Ones who accompanied him. Regardless, the boy wasn’t afraid. Not anymore. His purpose was simple.
Keoni Mumea wasn’t one of them. He was descended from other island people. Samoa, probably Marshall Islands. Maybe something else. He was a mutt. An animal. Descended from the kind of people who used to invade Naranu many years ago. Naranuans had always driven off other island invaders, but they had been unable to drive off this latest wave of mainlanders, who were worse than any Pacific Islander.
Keoni was worse than the scientists, though. He was consorting with them. Helping them. The boy had simmered with a secret hate for the caretaker ever since he’d arrived on the island about a fortnight before the first wave of mainlanders arrived. He’d been so charming to the Naranuan women. He’d swept them off their feet. Had taken a couple of them to his hut to mate. Worst of all, the tribal chiefs had liked him. The boy didn’t know what everybody saw in Keoni. To him, Keoni represented everything that was wrong about anything that was non-Naranuan. He was a womanizer, a con artist, a two-faced snake. True to form, within days of his arrival Keoni had learned about the tunnels thanks to one of the tribal chiefs giving him a tour.
The tribal chief in question had been the boy’s father.
Remembering it now brought the betrayal back with a tremendous force of hate. Watching father and Keoni laugh, his father clapping the interloper on the back. The boy had been living under his father’s shadow for years, had done everything he could to get the old man to simply smile at him, to acknowledge him with a kind word. Instead all he got was disapproval. A frown, a grunt of discouragement. All Keoni had to do was crack a joke and his father laughed and smiled.
The boy hated Keoni for this.
And true to form, he was certain Keoni Mumea had spirited the surviving scientists away through the tunnel to the other side of the island.
The boy assumed Keoni would take them to Josel’s house. It was Keoni’s mission to serve and protect the researchers. His instincts would lead him there, to Josel, in the hope the old man would help them.
But Josel wouldn’t be helping them. He was probably cowering in fear back at his hut as the Dark Ones and their pets ravaged the island. He knew the Elder intended to wreak vengeance for what had happened and the boy approved of this. He understood it. He didn’t want to die, but he believed with all his heart and mind in what his people had been born and bred for thousands of years to do—be guardians of the island and Dagon—and he accepted his fate.
He would lead the Dark Ones to Josel’s hut, taking Keoni and the intruders by such sudden surprise they’d be slow to react. The Dark Ones would fall on them, tear them to pieces, and the Elder would be forced to acknowledge not only the boy’s bravery, but also his wisdom.
The boy would expose Josel for his sloth. And it was then when the boy would reveal his knowledge of the Old Ones and the Secret Order of Dagon. He would claim alliance to them. My life for you, he would say while bowing before them. And he would chant this in their language, all the while shrilling their secret chant at the top of his lungs.
Ia! Ia! Cthulhu fhtagn, N’wgi, myfgilyi, yith nga nga! Ia! Ia!
For a boy of his age to learn such a sacred and ancient chant… that had to count for something, didn’t it?
The boy reached a fork in the tunnel. The tunnel to the left would take them to the west side of the island, while the center tunnel would take them to the north shore, which would spill out to other forks leading to the homes of the tribal chiefs and Josel. The far right tunnel hugged the shore and dipped inland, leading to farther forks that would take you to the center of the island. One of the forks farther in would take you directly to R’lyeh.
Keoni had taken the scientists this way. The boy was sure of it. Logically it did not make sense. The boy had sensed that Keoni had secretly sneered at the Naranuan’s beliefs in the two weeks he’d been here. He wouldn’t know about R’lyeh, much less the Dark Ones. But the boy knew that Keoni had taken this right hand fork. He could sense it.