Paradise: An Apocalyptic Novel

by Erik, Nicholas

  The cutters.

  She slumped down, over the body, beginning to contemplate what it all meant. Her arms shook and her face reddened as tears continued to drip down on Matt’s wetsuit. Through the blur, she could see where the shot had entered, straight through the head. He hadn’t felt a thing.

  And he hadn’t felt a thing about her, either.

  It got lonesome on the island. They’d been more than friends. And she wasn’t the princess type, full of romantic wishes, but she’d still hoped that maybe, just maybe, he felt the same way about her. It was clear that he didn’t even value their friendship much—at least not as much as who’d sent him.

  There could only be one person who did that, maybe two. Amanda didn’t trust Cole, couldn’t stand him, his placating smile and limp. But Maverick, he still held the keys to the treasury, and if there was one thing she knew about activities on this island, it was that money talked—and everything ran through him.

  That was why, after all, she was here alone, mining foodstuffs for idiots and fools. The pay was too damn good. Halfway to seven figures type of good.

  And, she wondered, kneading the wet sand beneath her knuckles, if it was all worth it. With a grunt, she dragged the body towards the ocean. The tide would sweep him away, or it wouldn’t. Either way, she wasn’t going to bury him.

  She chucked the bolt cutters far away. No one needed to know about this but her. And Jackson.

  Morning came, and everyone’s spirits dampened.

  If only they knew what was going on in the world, and on the island, they would be more concerned; but their concerns were more immediate and physical.

  They’d hit the bottle—and whatever other substances they could find—a bit too hard. And the morning light, let in by the big bay windows splashed across the house, didn’t help the painful hangovers. The night before, everyone had been infuriated by the cocaine running out at the height of the proceedings; now, it seemed like a good thing.

  Britt groaned and cupped his head in hands. He looked to his right. A naked girl asleep in his bed. He shook her.

  “Hey,” he said in a slow, deliberate way, “did we, you know?”

  “Sure, I guess.” She went back to sleep.

  Must not have been very good.

  Pride smarting, he went downstairs. Even though it was almost noon, no one was awake, save Maverick. He looked like hell, but not from drinking.

  “Tough night?” Britt asked, grabbing a muffin from the breakfast assortment on the table. “I think I had one too.”

  “Just a little under the weather,” Maverick said, forcing a grin. Even Britt, who couldn’t perceive anything, knew that something was up.

  “Yeah, I think everyone is. You sure know how to throw a party.”

  “Thanks.”

  “Didn’t see you last night, though,” Britt said, pushing the issue a little further, “I’ve heard that—”

  “Just taking the night off,” Maverick said, meaning piss off and go away. Britt got the message; with a conciliatory grunt he grabbed another handful of baked goods and walked back upstairs.

  Maverick hadn’t slept. If it’d been because of the party, he’d feel much better. Josephine had quizzed him all night about his pacing, complained to him that she couldn’t sleep. If only she knew; if only they knew. This place would be a madhouse.

  He wanted to bring Jackson into the mix. He’d understand why some of the satellites had gone offline, and maybe what this whole virus meant for the mainland. Maverick hadn’t tried to phone LA; he was scared that they were all stranded here, that the call wouldn’t go through.

  That he’d messed up good this time. Real good.

  Maverick couldn’t buy much more time. People would find out about the boat—if they didn’t know already—and when the parts for the craft didn’t come in, everyone would have questions. He could only put that off a couple days.

  When you’re a billionaire, overnight delivery to the middle of the ocean is standard—and when it takes longer, people talk. More worrisome, they begin questioning you, whether you deserve to be at the top of the heap.

  He couldn’t have that; he’d fold underneath that type of scrutiny.

  Josephine came down the stairs and shook him by the shoulder. He had nodded off, catching a few winks of elusive, glorious sleep.

  “What, dear,” he said, making it clear that this interruption wasn’t appreciated.

  “What the hell is going on,” she said, “I just listened to the radio, and they’re saying that there’s a virus eradicating everything? That boils people from the inside?”

  “Yeah, I think it’s a hoax or something.”

  She slapped him. “Don’t treat me like I’m stupid.” She acted stupid, but it was for a purpose. Here, she couldn’t force herself to submit to such a weak lie. Her voice rose. “I can’t believe you treat me like this, like some whore who you won’t tell anything to, keep secrets from. We’ve been married eight years, damnit, eight goddamn years—”

  “Shut your mouth.” The words were swift, and with them, the conversation was over. Her eyebrows arched, and she stammered, trying to form words. The mild-mannered Maverick had never talked to her like that; sure, he was often carousing with other women, but he’d always been nice, at least. “You won’t tell anyone about this, understand? And if you do…”

  His tone made the threat clear. She nodded, her throat dry, before she retreated up the stairs. She faced him the whole way, going up backwards, just in case he decided to do the deed then.

  Maverick didn’t know where that outburst had come from, but he was a little pleased. More scared, but still pleased. Maybe he had what it took to brave the storm and see it through. Maybe.

  After a few moments, he followed her up the stairs. There must have been another broadcast; the boiling bit was a new, unsavory and unwelcome twist. He’d have to get Cole in the room, and they’d listen together.

  Jackson awoke to the warm afternoon sun caressing his face. He had a nice room—the only one nicer was Maverick’s master suite—but this had been his modus operandi since his second visit to The Hideaway. All the signs of the storm were gone; the day was beautiful, full of possibility.

  Back then, there wasn’t even a full house. It’d been a quarter of the size, maybe less—a beach bungalow more than anything else. Construction was going along on the rest, and there wasn’t enough room inside. Rather than sleep on the couch, Jackson made a bed of palm leaves and other various jungle foliage, and made his home near the border between the homestead and Maverick’s mansion.

  Amanda would come visit him, and they’d reminisce about the old days—university and such, when she’d first met Maverick, him, and they’d become a trio of best friends. Those days were far away, and while the nostalgia remained, and perhaps they paid lip service to the ideal, the fact was that they weren’t best friends any more.

  Or perhaps they were, only because they had no better friends in the world, as alone as they were.

  Amanda shook him awake, and even with his eyes half closed, he could see that she had blood on her clothes.

  “What happened,” he asked, and she didn’t reply. “What’d Coop say? You’re covered in blood.”

  “Matt died,” she said, then said no more. After a half hour, maybe less, she got up and walked back to her homestead, leaving Jackson alone, with more questions and fewer answers. But with the light above, even with his reservations, Jackson felt refreshed. After arriving on the island, Jackson had remembered why he’d come: to get away from this damned project, the stress. The sun was doing wonders for that.

  It was time to call in those repairs. Hell, Maverick would be pissed that he waited this long—which he could handle, since Maverick was hiding something from him about the whole situation.

  A lot, seeing as how there was a body count on the island.

&nbs
p; He headed towards the house to get something to eat, but the sound of voices caused him to stop. They were flowing from the window above; from Maverick’s room.

  “Not all of the satellites are offline,” he heard Cole say, “a few of the stations are still broadcasting.”

  “But for how long?” Maverick sounded strung out.

  “Anyone’s guess. Do you have stocks of ice?”

  “Here? A little.”

  “The guy says that’s the only cure to keep from getting boiled alive,” Cole said, like they needed to prepare for doomsday, “best get to it.”

  “But how, without everyone noticing? And aren’t we safe?”

  There was a pause. Jackson strained, standing on his toes near the window. He wasn’t missing anything; nothing was being said.

  “Safety is always an illusion, son,” Cole said.

  “They said the r-nought is 25. The hell does that mean?”

  Jackson almost fell down.

  “It sounds bad, is what it means. I wouldn’t want to be on the continent right now.” Cole didn’t seem to understand the gravity of the situation.

  Jackson, however, knew: there was full-blown pandemic coursing across the mainland, with infections spreading and cooking people from the inside, like some sort of super-flu. He remembered one of his professors talking about r-noughts, explaining that it was how fast a virus spread—and the higher the number, the more screwed everyone was.

  While Jackson only remembered this particular lecture because the professor had cursed, the knowledge was now very useful—and chilling.

  “There’s no way we can keep this under wraps.” Maverick said.

  “Then we prepare until it comes out,” Cole said. His voice was cold, calculating. Jackson knew this was the real Cole—but how many others would see it?

  He rushed to the homestead, away from the window, to find Amanda.

  No one would be calling the mainland for repairs, it seemed, for a while.

  Sam had brought his cell phone, and the group wasn’t happy about it; their entire pay was at stake.

  “Sam,” Melina said, trying to reason with him, “I love you, but you need to get rid of that. I need this money.” She had a three year old son back at home, caught in limbo between two warring parents. Her sexy past wasn’t doing her any favors, and her bank account was doing her even less.

  “You guys need to see this,” Sam said, calling down from the tree. They’d chased him up there, all the way from the guest house. He had no idea how he’d managed to climb so high, but no one else seemed able to reach him. He panted; his adrenaline had somehow propelled him up the rough bark and into the canopy.

  “Damnit, Sam,” Pierre said, and his tone wasn’t as sweet, “if you don’t come down, I’m going to burn this thing down.”

  “People are getting sick on the mainland,” Sam said, “I got a picture right here. But you have to promise to look at it.”

  “We promise,” Melina said, “now, can you come down?”

  Sam hesitated, then stayed put. They were going to smash the phone the instant he set foot on terra firma. Each staff member got paid forty grand for this excursion, complete with an iron-clad NDA and a list of rules that, if broken, would result in expulsion from the island, legal action and forfeiture of wages.

  Sam had just wanted to email his girlfriend. Flashes of signal broke through—spotty, but somewhere, it seemed, there was a tower close enough to get a bar or two. Enough to access the news.

  And the news wasn’t good: a million dead, no cure, and massive ice shortages. Reports of murders over freezers and other sources of cold—the only cure for a progressive viral infection that raised people’s body temperatures until they boiled. Doctors were working on a vaccine, but they seemed to be succumbing quicker than they could study the damn thing.

  Plus, people seemed to have a bad tendency to break into their labs, to enjoy the cooling freezers and other amenities, in a desperate attempt to save their lives.

  “No way,” Sam said, “I’m not coming down.”

  Below, Pierre threw up his hands, and dropped his voice.

  “What do we do?” He cared about Sam, about all of them, but there was a significant payday at stake. Something like this got out, and they would all have been treated like excrement for nothing.

  “We’ve to get rid of him,” Bebe said. All business, straight to the point: she wanted the money, and she wasn’t bashful about it.

  Melina shook her head, and Pierre agreed.

  “No,” Pierre said, “we can’t do that. You crazy?”

  “You’re crazy,” Bebe replied, raising her shrill voice, “he’s going to screw us all over.” She stormed off, back to the staff’s quarters.

  “Tell us about this problem,” Pierre called up, “and then we’ll talk about it on the ground, all right?”

  “You guys will just get rid of this thing as soon as I come down.”

  “Just tell us, and we’ll go from there.”

  “Fine.” And Sam began recounting the chilling tale from the mainland.

  Cole left, and Maverick breathed a sigh. He wasn’t sure about the old man’s advice. Cole wasn’t trustworthy, had only ever been trustworthy because he’d entered the game when he was a little old, a little feeble. He couldn’t become head honcho, at least not in public.

  But in desperate situations, Maverick knew that people’s opinions and loyalties could change. Maybe Cole would sell the rest of the group a bill of goods, try to wrest the reins of power away.

  That’s why Maverick still held a key piece of information back.

  There was a cell tower.

  And someone had been using it. More than one.

  He’d drummed up the courage to call the mainland, only to find that everywhere wasn’t a disaster zone. The phone company—which he owned—had notified him of the pings off the island’s cell tower.

  More concerning, however, was that it wasn’t Amanda. He’d shut down all her communications accounts—cell phone, satellite phone—once news of the virus had hit. He wanted an airtight information stream, with him holding the keys to the kingdom at the top.

  But there was other activity, and no one else lived on the island.

  He set out towards the homestead in search of some answers.

  “We’re gonna be stuck here for a bit. So I’d say we need more guns.”

  This was all Amanda said after Jackson was done relating what he’d heard eavesdropping. It’d been Maverick, she was sure, who’d sent Matt, although killing him was another step. Did he do that? She thought back, to when she knew him—twenty years ago, longer.

  She wasn’t sure.

  They needed to arm themselves. She led Jackson to the arsenal, which was kept under heavy padlock. She noted to herself that she’d need some help keeping it safe.

  “More guns than this?” Jackson was looking at a crazy collection of rifles, shotguns, handguns, like the arsenal of a small paramilitary operation. “Why do you have all this?”

  “The island has things on it that don’t play nice.” She said things like it meant demons. Jackson didn’t press; maybe Maverick had airdropped in some tigers or carnivorous jungle life. “The main house has a panic room that runs underground. Makes this look tame.”

  “You sure it’s going to get violent?”

  “Matt’s dead. Radio’s down. No communications to a world going to hell. It’s been a day, and this is what’s already happened? You can sure as hell believe it’s going to get real bad around here when everyone hears.”

  “I guess.” Jackson didn’t know how to operate any of the weapons, but now seemed like a good enough time to learn. “What’s the plan to break in?”

  “Well, the lock is biometric…” Amanda started, and it only got more complex from there.

  A single shot ripped t
hrough the palm trees, and like that, Sam fell to the ground.

  Pierre and Melina whipped around to see Bebe with a hunting rifle, and a what, me? look plastered across her pretty, conniving face.

  “What the hell!” Melina rushed over to Sam, who was sputtering and blubbering, red streaks streaming from between his teeth, down his shirt. “He’s going to die.”

  “Good.” Bebe walked over, and she ground her heel into the phone, crushing it into the sand. “Now we’ll all get paid. And if anyone says anything, other than he ran off, or got bit by some crazy animal, then, well…” She left the warning open ended and headed back to the quarters.

  Sam was crying; he was just a kid, a good kid, who needed the money—for what, Melina or Pierre didn’t know.

  “It’s true,” he fought out, between heaves and spurts from his chest, “I swear it’s true, Mel.”

  “I know, honey,” she said, brushing back his hair, wiping the sand from his cheeks, “I know.”

  “I don’t want to die,” Sam said, saying what everyone, everywhere, is always thinking, “I just wanted to give them some money, you know? My folks…” His voice trailed off, and his breath became distant, faint.

  “Christ,” Pierre said, ripping his apron from his waist, “we have to do something.” He bound the wound as best he could, and then picked up the young man’s shoulders. “Lift.”

  “Where do we take him,” she asked, “we can’t take him to the house, or the quarters.”

  “To the homestead.”

  “He’s not going to make it that far,” she said, and Sam groaned a little bit, just enough to indicate that he was still awake.

  “Well, he has to.”

  They set off, the mile and a quarter a marathon-like distance.

  “So, it’s done,” Cole said, eying up the buxom blonde, “both of them?”

  “Yeah, old man, it’s done.” Bebe popped her gum and twirled it, which hid her cold assassin-ness.

  “I’m glad you decided to come along,” Cole said with a grin.

  “Yeah, well, when you said you were going to shit all over the modern world, I didn’t have a choice, did I?”

  “Want a drink? To toast our success.”