Human

by Hayley Camille

  A macabre parody of a stork delivering a bundled baby in children's stories came unbidden to Ivy's mind. The size of this bird in that fairytale whim might be accurate, but instead this creature was terrifying and highly likely to eat the baby, were it dangling from its beak. As if to amplify this truth, the stork snapped once more at Ivy's face and she scuffled backwards on her hands. Then it turned back to its cornered prey, instantly tearing at the shivering fur with a twist of its beak. The giant rat split open. The stork’s beak thrust into its body cavity pulling out flesh and gulping it. It threw the ragged remains into the air and swallowed them down a long, gangling neck. A strange sac of skin and air wobbled from its throat as it ate and the bird's wings stretched sideways for balance. They unfurled in great arcs, no less than eight feet across.

  Ivy shrank back, horrified and mesmerised by its potential power. I know you. The bald head was marked with ugly black spots of skin, now flecked with blood. No. Not here. Not now. You can’t be. The stork ruffled its feathers, finishing the meal, then turned and strode back into the forest leaving Ivy trembling and Kyah still screeching above with fear.

  The warm, heavy air drenched Ivy’s lungs and sweat stained her face and t-shirt. Her jacket and long-sleeved shirt were now a burden around her waist catching claws of vegetation. She travelled steadily upwards. Strong, pungent odours of fermenting fruit wove in and out of the thick air, sometimes sickening, other times appetising. Her stomach growled and she and Kyah shared the water remaining in her bottle until there was none left.

  Ivy’s ankle began throbbing. Blood soaked through the scarf and she pulled it tighter, cursing loudly and sending a handful of startled birds into the canopy.

  She found temporary refuge on a fallen trunk covered in vines next to a magnificent red flower that bloomed a meter across. Ivy reached out to touch it. Fleshy petals were curled back, each as big as dinner plates, boasting white decorative boils on their surface. The centre of the flower was enormous, like a bowl of spikes. It was incredible. A growing uneasiness settled in her chest as Ivy tried to recognise it. It can’t possibly be… she thought. No. Definitely not. Rafflesia. Wrong continent. She pushed the unpleasantness of that thought as far down as she possibly could. But regardless, the hairs on the back of her neck stayed pricked in protest of her own denial. It’s just not. Or maybe it is… replanted. An introduced species. An accident.

  Botany had become something of a niche skill for her, as plants usually ended up as food on the stone tools she analysed. Ivy leant forward to breathe it in. Oh my god! A stench like rotting flesh assaulted her nose and she scrambled away, choking and dry-retching. Grabbing her walking stick, she took off through a haze of flies.

  Nothing but pure exaltation swept her as Ivy finally found herself on the edge of a rocky outcrop with a faint breeze on her face. A lookout. A way out.

  Dr Neil Crawford woke. A shaft of high noon sun broke through the leaves above him and pierced the forest, streaming his eyes. He lay between buttressing roots in a damp, earthy alcove. Mulch and broken branches covered his suit. He was completely hidden from view with the exception of the bright blue logo embroidered on his suit pocket –a sphere encircling a silhouette of the Australian continent, sliced by seven parallel pinstripes. CSIRO.

  Reeling, Neil struggled to sit, but the twisting motion churned his insides and brought a wave of nausea. He emptied his stomach into the leaves around him and dove, dizzyingly back into unconsciousness.

  Pain sought him out hours later. His shoulder burned and his left arm hung sickeningly low and limp by his side. In the now dim undergrowth, Neil shuffled up and back against rough bark. He struggled to place himself. Slowly, the pieces fell together in his memory.

  “Now listen to me Chancellor, this is entirely unacceptable. One of your researchers is up to something. I need to know what the hell is going on here! “

  An elegant glass office swam into view. Seated behind a chrome plated desk, a woman eyed him over reading glasses. The name Chancellor Reshma Thandi was engraved on a marble nameplate which sat neatly to one side. Her peppered hair was swept back and she was poised and calm in the face of Neil’s increasing aggravation.

  “I’m sorry Dr Crawford, but as I've said, all research conducted within our facilities are undertaken with the utmost care. All experimental practices are outlined clearly before they’re undertaken in comprehensive proposals by staff and students. If there were any untoward activities, they would have been picked up immediately by the review board upon application.” Her strange international accent, a bastardization of American, Australian and Indian pronunciation, grated on Neil’s nerves.

  “Well maybe your review board aren’t tracking this one, Chancellor,” Neil said. She raised an eyebrow at his insinuation. Neil continued, “Surely you don’t need me to remind you that a large number of your research students are funded by our scholarship opportunities…”

  She leant forward, entirely unaffected. “And of course, you are most welcome to contact those students directly and review their research at your leisure, as per the scholarship guidelines,” she said. “Regarding all other research within the Physics department, however, you have no authority or jurisdiction to request anything of me. Regardless of legalities, gathering this scope of information would require at least a week. Many of our senior staff are currently offsite visiting collaborative institutions.”

  “No, it’s someone here. They are conducting their experiments here, now,” Neil pushed her.

  “Well, even if that is the case Doctor, I would still need a minimum of forty-eight hours to get even basic reports on what experimentation is currently underway within each office,” she said. “This is a very large department Dr Crawford; we occupy three separate facilities as well as a number of interfaculty areas. And with such little information from yourself… ‘Experimental research involving energy field manipulation’ – well, that describes a good third of our department. I’d like to help you, Doctor, really I would. I certainly wouldn’t condone undisclosed research proceeding within my department…” She smiled with closed lips. “However, I’d need much more information to narrow the field of inquiry. Perhaps we can come to some sort of arrangement?”

  Neil Crawford seethed. Antagonistic bitch. Even if you don’t know what’s going on here, you’d lay claim to it the instant it was worth something to you.

  Neil's blunt finger hit her glass desktop. “Begin your enquiries Chancellor, you will be hearing from me. I’ll show myself out.”

  The elevator bell chimed softly and he stepped out. Neil surveyed the empty ground floor of the Physics headquarters.

  Someone in this department is manipulating that lunar energy pulse. They're playing with fire. His eyes narrowed. My fire. I need to shut them down, use their data to find out how they are controlling these field bursts, store them, and direct them. Unlimited energy. This is bigger than me; this is a god-damn national resource.

  The glass doors stood closed and silent, reflecting shards of light from the water fountain outside. Students chatted as they passed by, content in their triviality.

  It’s time to make my own enquiries, Neil decided.

  He slipped into the first empty room, finding nothing of interest. Quickly, Neil stole his way up the corridor, letting himself into any room he found vacant and searching the equipment for anything suspicious.

  Laboratory 1-79. The silver door handle closed softly behind him and he was faced with the sterile white walls of a laboratory. They were plastered with high resolution LCD screens and patterns flickered on them enticingly. Suspicious; that’s a bloody understatement. Energy measurements, wavelength frequency, sound and light monitors. Something wasn’t right. Even the effing plants are hooked up. Neil crossed the room silently.

  Behind a closed door on the back wall, he could hear quiet conversation. In the furthest corner, an impressive arrangement of spectrographic equipment was set up. A tesla coil took centre stage. Neil could tell that it was h
ighly powered enough to provide a significant pulse of ionized voltage within the room. A lightning laboratory. Neil was only slightly surprised by its presence in the lab and scanned the room again. A Faraday cage made of conductive mesh screening was against the back wall near the servers, just large enough to protect one or two men inside from the electrostatic charges released from the Tesla coil. But why protect the men, and not the equipment? Intrigued, Neil looked closer. Bizarre. A silver trolley of labelled samples stood nearby. Cobalt. Iron. Nickel. Magnetic elements. The whir of server fans smothered his clicks on a keyboard nearest to him. Huge screens betrayed his prying fingers as he ran a search of the computer’s data log. What are they up to? He reached into his pocket, searching for the usb cable he always carried. If I can just steal a minute to download the data into my phone -

  Suddenly, Neil heard the main door handle twist. Someone was coming in. No time to hide. Neil threw his shoulders back, preparing to greet the incomer with his usual serve of intimidation.

  A woman walked in. Red hair. He froze, losing his scowl. She was carrying a monkey? A fucking big one. Its long, black fingers were gripping the dark cardigan she wore, pulling it down from her neck. Neil saw a flash of black stone against the white skin on her throat, before it pulsed electric blue like a neon light, stunning his eyes.

  The walls caved in around him. Screams followed him as he fell.

  And then there was nothing but pain.

  The memory of that shredding pain combined with the agony Neil now felt in his arm and chest were enough to send him again into a fit of nausea. He scowled at the infusion of green that surrounded him. The air was solid and oppressing.

  “Where the hell am I?”

  Huge trees surrounded him in all directions and night was falling fast. He leaned back against the trunk cradling his loose arm. Sweat glistened in his pores. With an almighty wrench, he pulled his dislocated arm out from his body, twisting and lifting it back into its socket. He grunted and cursed with agony and effort, then tucked it against his body. For a few minutes all he could do was breathe. Finally, he pulled himself up and staggered a short distance. There was no sign of human life.

  “What the fuck?”

  He searched his inner pockets. Wallet, lighter, half a packet of cigarettes, mobile – the screen was cracked across the top. Shit. Full battery but no reception. In the trees behind him a bird shrieked. Neil ducked, instinctively evading the potential threat. Stupid bloody bird. He straightened up.

  “Where? What the hell is this place?”

  Nowhere I’ve been before.

  His survival instincts ran deep. Neil eyed the canopy, far too high to climb with his damaged shoulder. He scrutinized the forest floor as he explored further. Someone’s been here. A space had been disturbed about twenty meters away, the leaf litter dug up and strewn about. Footsteps mottled the soil. Human. Small. Heading North-East. The redhead? She was the last person Neil had seen before he’d collapsed and woken here. Lost and disoriented with a bloody useless arm and gut full of nerves. Jesus Christ. The woman with the monkey? She barely looked at me. What could she possibly have done to knock me out so fast? The pulsing neon blue radiating from the black stone at her throat burnt Neil's vision as he remembered her. He reeled, clutching his knees. The nausea hit him again and he vomited at his feet, his anger rising exponentially with his own weakness. Bastards! Had there been someone waiting behind him, and the redhead was merely a distraction? Had they caught him snooping on their filthy little secret in the laboratory? Thought they’d be exposed? Taken offline? Shut down? Well they're damn right they'll be exposed. I’ll fucking hang them out to dry!

  But if that redhead was here now, Neil considered, why was she on her own? Had she been a threat to them too? Why the hell did she leave me covered in shit in the middle of nowhere? He wanted answers so badly it hurt. He wanted action even more. Whatever had been going on in that lab was way below board. And then this. This was bullshit. Did they knock me out? Did they dispose of my body to protect their control over this energy field? Well, the joke’s on them. I’m not dead.

  Neil followed the footsteps a small way across the earth. Wet leaf litter was pressed into the mould of a shoe print, almost half the size of his own. Definitely a woman. The redhead then. The sharp end of a fat stick shadowed the right track. And she’s hurt. With night closing around him, Neil had no choice but to stay put until morning.

  “They obviously don’t know who they’re dealing with”, he said through gritted teeth. He traced the wet shoe prints with his fingers.

  I’ll track her. Whoever she is, one way or another, she’s going to tell me what she knows.

  Ivy's heart plummeted. She stood on the pinnacle of a great mountain ridge, running a hundred kilometres across and dropping in sharp peaks and sprawling valleys. The midday sun beat mercilessly across a landscape so wild and untouched, it screamed prehistoric. In every direction, ancient volcanic rifts jigsawed the landscape into a blur of yellow ridges, rich emerald forest and dark barren earth. Narrow rivers snaked the jungle mass. Through the canopy below, gargantuan hardwoods broke into the sky nearly 300 feet tall supported by massive buttresses. Epiphytes clung to them like parasites - lianas, vines and strangler figs coveting the sunlight they dominated. Below, a suffocation of greenery competed for life-giving sunlight. Elongated crowns angled their leaves to best capture the sun’s rays, rotating on swollen joints to follow it greedily across the sky. Ivy knew that under the canopy more layers existed. Beneath the tree mass, ferns, orchids and fungi dominated the ground clutching the shallow nutrient surface.

  Far into the distance volcanic peaks jutted the skyline in a mist of thick white cloud. A blue ocean glittered in all directions. Her legs gave way beneath her.

  “I don’t think we’re in Kansas anymore, Toto,” Ivy breathed.

  There’s no way out. No civilisation, no help. Kyah crawled into her lap, curling close. Ivy stared ahead, unseeing. There were no tears. Simply disbelief. They were unequivocally, undeniably lost.

  How can I possibly survive this? Earlier, in her delirium, the concept of death had seemed a mercy; a reprieve from agonising pain. Death had offered an embrace, loving and kind. But not now. There was no kindness in this death, Ivy knew. How easy nature could take her; a victim to the elements and an easy target for predators. Soft, naive and inviting.

  Despair tumbled out of her as dry sobs into Kyah’s soft hair. At least I have you. Immediately, Ivy hated herself for the thought. Kyah doesn’t deserve to be here, lost in some god-forsaken jungle in the middle of god-knows-where. She’s as easy prey as I am. Ivy hated the human part of her that suddenly craved comfort from the very creature that deserved this misery the least.

  Surely someone will notice that I'm gone? Old Tom would notice, thoughtful and lonely as he was. But would he report her missing? Or would her belongings collect dust, as he waited in vain for Ivy to return home as he had waited for his own son so long ago? Jayne and Liam would notice, but would they care? Karl Ellery would only notice when the unmarked papers began piling up. Dad won't notice for at least a year. By then I’ll be gone. I’m already gone.

  Suddenly, the possibility of letting someone else help her, save her, even just comfort her seemed appealing. I pushed everyone away. I did this to myself.

  Strangely, it was the thought of Orrin that hurt the most. She clung desperately to the loss she had only just begun to possess. Orrin had been real. He seemed so important now. His interest in her was so important. It was no longer just amusing or flattering – it was vital. The memory of Orrin's hand curling the hair back from her face drew an aching sob from her chest. She brought her fingers to her lips, tracing the soft kiss that had been interrupted. I pushed him away too.

  Ivy stared across her island prison. For a long while she sat tall, her eyes searching desperately for a plane on the horizon, a ship in the distance, any sign of help. She tried to rouse herself into action, but with no purpose, it quickly ebbed. Then sh
e sank into self-pity. It was Kyah who finally forced her hand. The bonobo was hungry. She screeched and tried unsuccessfully to drag Ivy back into the forest by her arm. When her attempts were ignored, Kyah chose provocation instead. The bonobo slapped Ivy on the head grinning playfully, mouth open with lips pulled down over her teeth. Then she skittled back to the tree line and began systematically flinging rocks at Ivy's head. When a particularly sharp rock found its mark, Ivy rewarded her efforts with a scowl, then a reluctant laugh. She took Kyah’s hand.

  “I’m being useless aren’t I, Ky,” Ivy sighed. “We’re here, wherever here is, and we’re alive. For now. Let’s find some food and shelter. Then we’ll figure out what to do.”

  In the heart of the forest laid far out before her, a large cave mouth was nestled high on a ridge overlooking a wide river terrace. It looked dark and uninviting, but fresh water was nearby and it would be nightfall soon. Ivy tried to judge the distance but gave up. Spatial mapping was way down her list of skills.

  Several more hours of walking proved fruitful, literally. Kyah found a tree dripping with giant spiky fruit that smelt almost too bad to eat. The bonobo knocked a few to the ground and Ivy grabbed one.

  “Ouch!” Ivy said, dropping it just as quickly. She rolled it over looking for a better way to hold it. The heavy weight of it forced the spikes into her hands no matter how she tried to pick it up, making it impossible to open. Her stomach ached with hunger and her hands had begun shaking. Dark blotches were beginning to invade her sight and a cold, clammy feeling flooded her skin. She recognized the precursors to unconsciousness and couldn’t risk letting herself go. With unknown predators lurking in the forest, she might never get the chance to wake up. Ivy tried to pick the fruit up once again and dropped it, this time earning herself scraped arms and bruising her good foot. “Damn it!” She rung her hands and smacked the obstructive fruit with a stick. Ivy grew more furious, kicking the thing against the base of the tree in both punishment and hope it might crack open. She kicked it again, punishing her own foot further. “Aah!” Ivy fell hard on her backside, half laughing and half crying in a fit of pure frustration. “I hate you!” she yelled at the durian fruit.