"Oh my goodness," said George, crunching through the gravel to the nearest crate. He paused in front of it and looked down on a human skull, dried skin drawn tight across the bone beneath, a few wisps of reddish hair still clung to the scalp. Shrunken eyelids were almost closed over empty eye sockets, drawn tight with age.

"Hello?" From the skull came a wheezing, rasping voice that sounded as if it came from the bottom of a well. "Hello! New faces, Hiroshi! What is happening?"

George cried out in suprise and stepped back, his heel catching in the gravel, tripping him. Falling backwards, he landed heavily on his backside. Carmen screeched and ran to him. "Dad, Dad! What happened? Are you all right?"

The skull began to cry out too, "Hiroshi? Hiroshi? Are you there? Who are these people?" As it continued to talk it sounded more and more distressed, so much so that it was soon joined by other voices. Some spoke English, some spoke what Charlie presumed was Japanese, but all were crying out in such a clamour that the room soon filled with an unbearable wailing.

"Hush! Hush, my friends, I am here!" yelled Hiroshi over the hubbub. "Calm yourselves, I am here!" He walked over to the nearest crate, the one George sat in front of, and caressed the skull with one hand, soothing it like that of a mother with a wailing child. He moved on, progressing around the room, calming each screaming skull in turn.

Rick and Charlie stood aghast. "What is this place, Dad?" Charlie said.

"I genuinely don't know, Charlie, but I would like some answers," said Rick and he strode over to Suzuki. "What gives, Suzuki? What is this place? What's this got to do with janjanbi or oni in cages?"

Suzuki turned and faced him. Fully a head shorter than Rick, the little, old Japanese had to look up at him to meet his eyes but he answered calmly, "This is a cemetery, Mr Bravo. Solitude is a cemetery, an island of the dead, and I am its custodian."

"But these...these things aren't dead!" Rick protested.

"That is the problem, Mr Bravo. That is the problem I have been trying to solve since 1943 and I think that you can help me."

***

Savanarolova was furious. Nothing had gone right since putting that idiot Winthrop-Smythe on this island. How on Earth had he found Rick Bravo of all people? She catalogued all the problems that had occurred on the mission and concluded that when she got out of this bunker she was going to lay all this poor planning on Winthrop-Smythe's flayed body. Munro would see to the dirty work, whilst she would simply appreciate his artistry with a blade.

However, she had more than enough to deal with at present. The door to the production floor was firmly closed and resisted all efforts to open it. What made it all the more frustrating was that on the first attempt to open it, the door had actually opened part way. A gap of almost a foot had developed as the sliding door was pushed back by Munro before the heavy door suddenly slammed shut, back into its frame, as if pushed by a giant hand. The Production Floor had been tantalisingly visible to her for almost thirty seconds, allowing her to see the banks of machinery, the great pipes snaking across the vast room, bending down into floor, disappearing into the heart of the volcano. Lastly, she had glimpsed the containment vessel. A drab, dark, grey block, the size of a small house, that gleamed dully, was placed exactly in the centre of the circular room, the source of the low hum that could be heard throughout the bunker. The primary objective had been so close but then the door had slammed shut, resounding up and down the semi-circular access corridor, sealing the objective from view.

To make matters worse, she and Munro were cut off. There had been no radio contact with the base camp since the appearance of the shadow people. The gunfire that had echoed across the volcano could only have come from the patrol but who they were engaged with goodness only knew. It could have been the shadow people, it could have been the mortar crew that the patrol had been sent to find. Either way, the overnight fighting had only increased her pace the following morning. She had decided that it would not be prudent to linger on Solitude once the objective was secure.

Then that blasted man had shown up with his fat oaf of a friend and their brats. At first she had not been able to believe it but then memories of losses past screamed for vengeance. She had been desperate to pay him back in kind for what he had done to Huw. Having him standing there, facing her, with the fat oaf daring to deny their responsibility for Huw's death had reawakened her desperate urge to plunge her hands, wrist deep, into Rick Bravo's life-blood. She would seek no rest until Bravo's cold corpse was lying at her feet.

Her problem now, apart from the door and the shadow people, was how to get the primary objective out of the volcano without a team to call on. Unlocking it would not be a problem, nor would the transfer. She had read the documents, the design blueprints, the working manuals and the testimonies buried deep, deep within secret archives in both Japan and the United States, so she felt confident about handling the primary. Transporting it would be an issue though. It would be hard work for two people. Would it even be possible to get it down the volcano?

Smiling grimly, she stood up from where she had been sitting, gazing at the Production Floor's door. She checked her watch to see it display five a.m. How time flew when you weren't having fun. She roused, Munro who had been sleeping since Savanarolova had ordered a break in their efforts. It was time to make an alarm call. First, she had to get the door open. Next she would send Munro to secure some willing hands. She turned to Munro, watching him stretch muscles cramped and sore from a night on the concrete floor of the access corridor.

"Mr Munro, would you unpack the demolition charges? It's time we stopped mucking about."

***

They all stared at Suzuki in disbelief. He had finished telling them the story of how he had been stranded on Solitude all these years. Partly due to tragic accident, partly the tragedy of war and partly through choice, Suzuki had remained to look after the undead remains of the soldiers slaughtered in fighting on Solitude in 1943.

The story of the attack would wait for another day, suffice to say that United States Marines had landed on the island in 1943 to conduct a simple reconnaissance, not expecting a Japanese presence so far from the frontlines of the Pacific War. Savage fighting over several weeks, as well as the loss of the USS Mason Dixon - the supply ship the Marines had arrived in - had resulted in countless deaths. Every one of the attackers was killed, and the Japanese defenders had suffered such horrific losses that barely a handful had survived.

Those tattered survivors had gathered at the crater to be met by nine of the surviving bunker staff. Scientists and engineers - Suzuki amongst them - had begun to treat the wounds of the injured when the final tragedy had struck. Without warning, the Chief Scientist, who had been helping a shell shocked infantryman with a canteen of water, attacked the helpless man. Screaming, frothing at the mouth, the other men had been unable to hold him back, as his limbs seemed to have the strength of ten men, and he had plunged his hand straight through the poor soldier's forehead.

Suzuki had been so horrified that he had been frozen to the spot. One by one, around the lake, the other scientists and engineers succumbed to this murderous rage and attacked the recuperating soldiers. Shots were fired, wounds blossomed bloodily on the bodies of the attackers but they were not slowed in their ferocious assault. All around him as Suzuki watched helplessly, the maddened bunker staff massacred the exhausted soldiers, who with a few exceptions, meekly surrendered to the appalling slaughter.

At last, Suzuki had been noticed. Shaking, the man who had once been the Chief Scientist advanced towards him. Tendrils of a weird blue luminescence wafted around his head and arms, at the end of which glistened hands gloved in fresh blood. His skin began to smoke and blacken as if burning; cracks developed revealing red raw flesh beneath. He collapsed to his knees and screamed. Eventually, The Chief Scientist paused and struggled to speak, forcing out a command in a strangulated growl, "Go, Hiroshi! Go, now! You will never again have another chance!"

With that command, conditioned as he was to obey his superiors in everything, Suzuki ran. Terrified, he had run for his life up through the crater forest, tears of fear mingling with the sweat of his exertions, under the dome of the blue tropical sky.

Over the weeks, months and years, Suzuki had become accustomed to life on Solitude. He learned how to avoid the things that the scientists had become - the janjanbi as he called them. He had discovered that they could not enter the bunker and so he had taken up residence there, finding a degree of comfort at last. Within the bunker he had found that the Production Floor had been sealed and nothing he had tried over the years had allowed him to open it. As the years passed he realised that the project had been forgotten about and he despaired that he would ever return to Japan.

It was during one particularly lonely day that Suzuki had resolved to kill himself. He had taken himself out into the forest and had loaded his Nambu automatic pistol. Sitting in a glade, surrounded by tall grasses, face bathed in warm sun, he had made his peace and was about to put the pistol to his temple when he had heard anguished sobbing. Curious by nature, he paused in his suicide preparations and investigated the source of the crying. He quickly realised that it lay in the long grass and after a quick search he had uncovered the scattered skeletal remains of an American Marine. It was now five years since the fighting in 1943 and Suzuki reflected to himself how it was odd that he had not discovered many bodies in his regular expeditions around the island.

The Marine was quite dead but what shocked Suzuki to his core was that the skull, which was attached to a terribly mangled torso, was the thing that was making all the noise. He had watched, fascinated as the hard remnants of lips crawled over the skull's teeth in an attempt to form words.

"Help me!" it had whispered in torment. "Help me!"

And so he did. Suzuki could not find a way to put the shattered corpse to rest so he did the next best thing. He kept it company. Clearing an office in the bunker he created an oasis of peace to lay out the marine's remains in. Spending time with the Marine began to heal the scars of isolation for both of them.

Over the years, more human remains were laid out in Suzuki's "undead cemetery". The skulls welcomed each new arrival with a smile, something they really could not avoid, and gently helped the very distressed recover from their solitary confinement on Solitude's forest floor. The office filled up quickly and so Suzuki expanded further into the bunker complex, creating a vast necropolis of the restless dead. He had found his calling: Suzuki became a sexton for the living dead, tending their "graves" and ministering to the sick in mind.

"Oh my God!" said Rick when Suzuki finished telling his tale. "You've been here all this time doing this?"

"Who else was there who could help?" Suzuki replied. "A few years back a fishing boat stopped here with engine trouble. I could have gone to the beach and left Solitude but then what would happen to my...my family?"

"You could have got help!" Rick replied.

"And who would understand, Mr Bravo?" Suzuki said sadly. "Are you sure that they would not have been treated like some travelling freak show?"

"You never explained the secret behind the door. What is on the Production Floor? What is it about the Production Floor that does this, Mr Suzuki?" Irritated by the Japanese's hints and stories, Rick gestured with his arm at the array of chests sitting on the gravel. "Why the janjanbi? Why the living dead? Why the regeneration of man-made objects from the war? How is it that a man who must be over one hundred years old can bounce around as spry as a gazelle?"

Suzuki looked up at Rick seriously, "Everything about Solitude is on the Production Floor. Everything that happens here is because of what we, in our arrogance, chained there in 1938."

"An oni?"

"No, not an oni! That was simply an experiment back in Japan. No, not an oni!" Suzuki laughed but without any real humour.

"We didn't chain an oni. We chained a dragon!"

***

Savanarolova watched approvingly as Munro slid the detonator into the soft plastic explosive. Now she could get some work done. She had a feeling that this explosion could resolve a number of problems for her in one fell swoop.

"We better get under cover, Miss Savanarolova," Munro said as his huge fingers pinched the explosive around the detonator. He quickly clipped the firing lead to the detonator and followed the line back to where he had prepared his ignition switch.

"Let's just get on with it, shall we!" she ordered. It was time to get a move on.

"Fire in the hole!" Munro shouted up and down the passage.

Oh please!Why does every meathead with a bomb think he's fighting the Vietnam War? she thought dismissively. I mean, who is he warning? I'm right beside him!

"Cover your ears, Miss Savanarolova," Munro flicked back the firing switch's red plastic safety cover to reveal a rather cheap looking toggle. With a casual flick he tripped the switch.

Even for a small charge the noise it made in the enclosed space of the corridor was impressive. It was like a flat metal clang, only much, much louder. The reverberation could be felt in the air and through the ground. Savanarolova gasped as the shock wave hit her. Smoke quickly poured up into the ceiling and floated out across their heads in an undulating wave.

Ears ringing from the concussion, she clambered to her feet and ordered Munro to follow her, "Let's go to work!"

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