It wasn’t even enough to see their fingers, just enough to keep them from going insane.
Some time later, a woman came to the door, as she always did, and slid some food towards them. Melina’s eyes burned from the influx of light, even though the fire was now just a heap of orange embers.
“Here,” she said, quiet, unlike the three others, “I’d make it last. They’re not going to give you anything tomorrow. Think you’re holding out.”
“Thank you,” Melina said, then her arm shot out, grasping the woman’s hand. She could feel the woman pull back in shock, but she didn’t flee. Melina’s grip was weak from exhaustion and hunger. The woman squeezed her hand, and Melina said, “Please, let us go. You’re one of the good ones.”
The woman just shook her head, red hair bouncing along her shoulders. At one point, she’d been young. It might have only been a couple years prior; but time, experience, it had weathered her face with a certain hardness. Not wrinkles or crow’s feet, just the weight of what she’d done to survive. The woman turned back and locked the door behind her.
“At least tell me your name,” Melina called as the woman walked away, “please.”
She turned around, and, as if thinking it over, paused in place. “Clara,” she said, like it’d been awhile since she’d said it aloud, “my name’s Clara.”
“Nice to meet you, Clara,” Melina replied, “I’m Melina.”
“That’s a pretty name,” the woman responded, and then hurried away, as if she’d already said too much. Clara. Melina rolled the name around on her tongue, whispering it in the darkness like a weird mantra. Someone with that name couldn’t be bad—right?
She went to sleep, comforted by this delusion. She didn’t touch the food. For now, the name would be enough to keep her alive. Pierre groaned and tossed around on the dirt floor nearby. His wounds were dressed—an act of cruelty, more than anything else, so that he could keep taking more punishment. It was almost impossible to sleep with the pain, but the fatigue took him anyway.
Sleep is egalitarian like that; no matter what your troubles, it’s always willing to whisk you away and allow you to forget reality. But only for a moment.
Silver stole a hasty glance at the rising sun and murmured something underneath his long, powerful breath. He’d long ago given up the luxury of a watch; the sun now told him everything that he needed to know.
And he needed to hurry.
The rifle slapped against his back as he ran, slivers of light cutting through the forest canopy. A clearing lay ahead; Silver dove into cover atop a ridge overlooking the entire expanse. A heavy whirring sounded above, loud enough that it was difficult to talk.
He signaled to the bald man, but his companion wasn’t paying attention. Silver screamed in his ear.
“Baxter. Ahead.”
Baxter nodded in response and knelt down, staring through a pair of binoculars. He was the spotter, but he just as well could have been the gunman—his demeanor suggested that he was well-versed in both roles.
His eyes scanned the horizon, amidst the whirring blades and metal trunks of the windmills. There was no sign of anything. Baxter shook his head, then jammed the binoculars back to his face. They would wait; this, both men were good at. Masters.
This was a daily routine when guests were on the island. The windmills were the lifeblood of Shadow Village—though the group could survive without them, doing so would make their already difficult lives hellish. The windmills generated the power, the power that fueled their dreams. Without hope, a man is not a man.
He is just an animal.
The pair sat in focused wait for hours, until the sun began its descent on the other end of the horizon. This day, they were pleased to discover, had been like all the others. There was peace out here, standing guard. As they were about to leave, Baxter tapped Silver on the back, pointing at a movement on the edge of the clearing.
A deer.
The bullet zipped through the air, clean and true, and the men strapped dinner to their backs, smiling despite the miles that lay between them and camp.
The scent was intoxicating; Melina didn’t know that seared flesh could smell so delicious. Not that she or Pierre got any, but the breeze carried in sounds and other tidings of the feast that was transpiring only feet away.
“Do you smell that,” she whispered, “my God…”
Pierre groaned, acknowledgment that he, too, was tortured by things that were not his.
Melina’s thoughts turned to the mainland. Sam, delirious and dying, had murmured some serious things as he slipped in and out of consciousness. Over a million confirmed deaths—in Los Angeles alone. It seemed like half the world had vanished.
There was no vaccine, but a few people were immune. Why, the experts didn’t know. There wasn’t a vaccine, and there was no correlation between these folks—old, young, male, female, poor, rich.
Some people’s systems just rejected the virus, and no one had a real reason why. It’d been days since the outbreak—and Melina shuddered to think that she had only been in this prison for about that same time. It already seemed like this was the way things always were, always would be.
Humanity was doomed.
Then again, Melina considered, they always were. She knew that well enough—what depraved lengths people would travel to, all under the guise of civilization. Freedom wasn’t free, and civilization was anything but civil. Now, the makeup was just stripped off, and the truth, when hopes and opium dreams were a thing of the past, was brutal: everyone was doomed, just as they always had been.
When she thought this, she sucked in her breath. The pain from the rifle butt stuck in her side, like a letter opener jammed between her ribs. She’d get out. Cassie needed her—and she was alive. Her daughter was alive.
She just had to find her.
And to do that, she needed to get out of this cage.
Melina ran her hands along the wood, catching more than a few splinters in her cracked, dirty hands. The small pinches didn’t even cause her to wince. The cabin, though, was bare—and solid. No way to escape, and nothing to do it with.
Help would have to come from the outside. Melina put her eye up to a crack in the logs, staring at the hint of a fire that lurked just out of her grasp.
They’d all burn. All of them.
Bobby was running a high fever. The vaccine hadn’t been tested on kids, and it was enough of a kick-in-the-face to adults; a child’s immune system was another matter. Stella didn’t want to say it, since Silver’s mandate was clear—everyone was going to get it, no exceptions—but it was a bad idea.
Clara held her son’s hand as the boy sweated underneath the rough blanket.
“It’s going to be okay, baby,” she said, stroking the child’s flush face, “it’s going to be okay.” The kid was only three years old, had been born out here, in the middle of nothing. He was tough, but the vaccine seemed to be winning.
“You should get some rest,” Stella said, resting her hand upon Clara’s shoulder, “I’ll look after him.”
“What’s this all for,” Clara said, “what was it all for?” She’d been bitter. They all were—left for dead out here, when all they’d wanted was a nice getaway, see the then-new place that Maverick had built in the wilderness. But here she was, with a dying kid—his dying kid—and she was sick of it.
Too much death, too much sadness, too much pain. They say that these things make life sweeter, that tragedy is the essence of the human condition. But if that’s all there was, Clara reasoned, then it wasn’t worth living.
Bobby stirred.
“What is it, honey,” Clara said, rubbing the sweat away from his forehead.
“I’m thirsty,” he said in a thin, high voice, “why am I so thirsty?”
Clara couldn’t explain it to him. She knew, but it wouldn’t make any sense. It wouldn’t m
ake any sense to a child. She clutched his hand and squeezed it.
“You’re just sick, honey,” she said, “and the water will make you better.”
The little boy nodded, but he didn’t open his eyes. She tilted back the canteen, and he drank and drank, not satiated even when the heavy metal canister was empty. Clara sighed and wiped his chin.
This life had been too much for too long. It had to stop.
8
4 Years Ago: The Ambrosia Incident
“You have a game preserve on this place,” Silver said, “my god, man, this is like some sort of little kid’s wet dream.”
Maverick grinned and cheersed Silver from across the table. This was the first group of people that had made it to The Hideaway. It’d been a year in the making, this trip, getting all the legal stuff and logistics nailed down. But now, the island retreat was open.
Maverick felt damn good. Cole sat to his right, Josephine to his left, and the dozen guests he’d brought were all in varying states of intoxication. There was no wait staff, no one else to speak of, besides Amanda, and she was off at the homestead.
Maverick got a look in his eye, and everyone seemed to fall silent at once. It was uncanny, how he could communicate his intentions without even uttering a word. Cole, in particular, was in awe of this—more jealous, if one had to be honest, but he respected the way Maverick could hold a room’s attention. Everyone held their breath.
Three fateful words.
“Let’s go hunting.”
This would be fun, like camping in the woods—if your tent cost a hundred million dollars, and you were hunting with high powered rifles. The night was bright, the stars shooting beams of light through the sky above. It was cool—cool, but comfortable.
No one said much, but they passed a look down the line, one to another. It wasn’t disbelief, just a simple man, that’d be awesome. Maverick was a visionary, always had been—and hunting big game in the middle of the night in a scenic jungle paradise, that was an experience that only he would think of putting on the docket.
When it seemed like the room would burst from pent-up excitement, Maverick grinned and nodded his head towards the gear cabinet. The weapons were kept upstairs, out of the safe room. That would change, after The Ambrosia Incident, but for now, it was happy go-lucky.
Josephine stayed behind, as did Cole; they weren’t into this type of thing, and the old man couldn’t get excited about gunning down game if he tried. Boris shadowed the group, not part of it, just keeping a wary—if somewhat drunken—eye out for trouble.
Baxter’s smooth, chiseled face lit up when he saw the guns. He’d never fired one before; most of them hadn’t. They were fitness gurus and scientists, not marksman or murderers. In the arena of savagery, they were mere vacationers, dilettantes.
The group strapped clips and ammo to their belts and set out. This was going to be fun.
It was because of him. And her, but it started because of him.
The pair was like a hellacious version of Adam and Eve, the origin of all the sin, sorrow and bloodshed that would torment Maverick in the years to come. Silver and his cohorts had long since forgotten their names—or tried to, but the thought, it seemed, was a good start.
Him and her—they were the reason that, four years ago, everything changed.
How fast it shifted: the edge of excitement had worn off, reality traipsing over the group. This hunting, it was hard work—it wasn’t laconic, like lounging by the almost-finished pool.
Silver was stopped with Maverick, the two of them sharing a cigar by a tree, grinning about the good life. Boris waited somewhere behind, drawing from a flask. He carried the heavy artillery—an assault rifle that would rip up a tank, if given the chance, grenades, the whole outfit.
“Not bad, huh,” Maverick said, in between gasps, “what do you think?”
Silver could only shrug. This is where the Ambrosia Project had landed him: on the private island of a free-wheeling eccentric almost billionaire. He puffed on the fine tobacco and passed it back.
“It’s all great,” he managed, thinking of nothing else to say.
“How’s the project coming along?” It was coming, but Silver knew that it wasn’t coming along as fast as Maverick wanted. Maverick didn’t want to be old and live forever—he wanted to be young, locked-in to a fit, adult body. It was already ten years past his ideal prime.
“Still testing,” Silver said, “but I think—”
Maverick waved him off. “Don’t worry about it,” he said with a flourish, smoke trailing through the air, “it’ll be fine. Just don’t tell anyone. This one isn’t for the shareholders.” His tone wasn’t malicious—just greedy, maybe even concerned.
Immortality wouldn’t be good for the world—it’d mess with the natural order of things. Maybe that was why, Silver reasoned, it was so damn difficult to figure out how to trap it, bottle it. They’d run through hundreds of tests, each one failing. The most recent one, the girl, she’d tested it once—and gone silent.
He’d have to ask her about that.
But he never got a chance, because of that damned shot.
Him and Maverick heard it rip through her, even from two hundred yards, stop her still-beating heart, suck the life from her body. They heard it all, and even if they couldn’t, they felt it, knew when that everything was different.
He shot her. Adam shot Eve.
She had the vial on her—the test vial. The Ambrosia prototype. Why she brought it along, no one could figure out—but it’d be years before the surviving team members figured out all she’d done. No one knew the ramifications—not at that point.
Neither man knew all that, not right then. But one ran towards the shot, the other stayed still—and that, as the proverbial saying goes, made all the difference. Two hundred yards away, Silver stood over the young woman, her eyes pointed at the sky. The man who shot her, he was standing to the side, staring at the gun, as if wondering how it had torn the life from her body. It had all been fun, a noise-making expedition until a second ago.
And now, life and death interjected, and the man just stared, like if he could just figure out where it all went wrong he could fix it. But she was dead, and there was no bringing her back, and even if he had figured out how it happened—how he’d mistaken her movement for that of an animal, because she blended right into the fauna—he’d still have been just as screwed.
But he never got that chance, because Maverick uttered two more fateful words to Boris, off in the trees.
“Handle this.” And then Maverick threw up, all over himself, putrid, vile, like a plague.
Boris looked at him, almost amused, and just nodded. He’d handle this PR nightmare.
And the man who started it all—the Adam of this tale—he didn’t get a chance to figure it out, or make it right, because Boris came in—a minute thirty, two minutes, after the first shot—and fired a clip into his brainstem.
And then, for the rest of the team, the chase was on.
Behind them, the dying scream of that girl—close to a woman, smart as a whip, but far too young to die—had brought all the creatures in the jungle on their position. The blood, the fear; the predators lusted for that, survived on it. But the humans, they were just trying to survive; they all had guns, but Boris would cut them down before they could even get a clip loaded. The only option was escape.
Silver leapt to his feet, his fingers still wet with hot blood and the stickiness of the undiscovered Ambrosia prototype. He darted through the foliage, trampling over the once-serene landscape. Bullets zipped by his head, and he could hear the cries of his compatriots. Whether they’d been hit or were only surprised, scared, he didn’t know.
Blood rushed through his ears like a torrent of water through a narrow gorge, his legs pumping as he dove over a fallen log. He reached the river, and it stood in front of him, menacing,
but not as dangerous as what lay behind him.
He was reminded of that by an explosion, the sound of cracking timber and the anguished cry of someone caught in it all. Then a single burst, and the cry stopped. Silver looked over his shoulder for a moment, could smell the smoke and taste blood, maybe even adrenaline in his mouth, and then he jumped.
As he fell, he thought it was strange that crimson droplets were trailing behind him. Then it all went black, the rush of water pounding him in its grasp, keeping him below the surface.
Silver washed up on shore and vomited.
Again and again, until his stomach hurt, screamed for him to stop. The dry heaves wouldn’t cooperate, though; his body was determined to rid itself of this foreign substance, this unwelcome invader.
He gagged and a little river water came up. Silver sprawled out; his arm was throbbing, wispy streams of blood trickling down into the wet bank. Either Boris had lost it, gone haywire, or something else happened.
Above him, way up on the overhang from where he’d leapt, he could hear faint gunshots, the sounds of a chase. He’d have to keep moving. That was the only option. He gazed at his wound; a through-and-through, clean. It hurt, but he’d manage; he grabbed some leaves from the bank, prayed they weren’t poisonous, and wrapped them around his arm inside his shirt.
With a pained grunt, Silver rose to his feet and went into the jungle. Alone.
Maverick’s words had been soft, but there was no mistaking the tone: no survivors. Boris wasn’t paid to ask questions, even if that seemed a little extreme. But he figured the company’s stock price, or something else, couldn’t withstand this type of scandal. Maverick would be through.
It was either him or the others, and Maverick was the one on the high ground. Might as well use it while the going was good.
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