Paradise: An Apocalyptic Novel

by Erik, Nicholas

  “Amanda.”

  “Clara. And this is Bobby,” the woman replied. They didn’t shake hands; both of Amanda’s were on the rifle, scouring the horizon for movement. There wasn’t any.

  But the plan was toast; no way she could climb halfway up the base of this thing and crack it open. She’d be cut down in an instant. Even with cover fire, the operation would take way too long; no way they could hold him off.

  Whoever was out there, they held all the advantages.

  “Baxter,” Clara said, “he’ll find us.” It was her way of saying that they had to move, but she didn’t know how they’d do it. “The windmills, they’re the key to the village…we have to destroy them.”

  Amanda unhooked her pack and rummaged through it, coming out with three small canisters. She handed one to each adult.

  “Throw these,” she said, pointing to various points in the windmill farm, “one minute apart. Melina goes first.”

  “When,” Melina asked.

  Amanda grabbed something else that the others couldn’t see from the bag and stood up.

  “Now.”

  Amanda darted to where the first grenade had landed. A bullet sang out from the ridge, but it sped straight into the turf. Even in the still night, it was hard to hear the hiss of the grenade.

  But everyone saw the smoke. Amanda rushed to the first windmill, setting the charge. Thirty seconds. The smoke was thick, but she knew the night would cut through soon. Up on the ridge, she thought she could hear Baxter cursing—but that could just as well have been a figment of her imagination.

  Ten seconds. The charge was set for three minutes. On to the next one.

  The makeshift plan went like clockwork; she set the charges on the next windmill and Baxter didn’t even get a shot off.

  She was like a ghost.

  But now it was time to dash back to the group. The smoke from the grenade streaming from the jungle floor, she made it, attached the explosives to the base, and then drew the final smoke grenade from her pocket.

  “There. We’re running,” she said, “so Pierre, it’s time to nut up, buddy.” He grimaced and got to his feet.

  She pulled the pin and threw the metal canister.

  Mist rose up from the ground, ethereal and wondrous, and the group charged through it, aiming for the trees—and safety—ahead. There was an empty space, though, between their destination and the smoke, where they’d be without cover.

  Amanda had her weapon loaded and aimed near where she thought Baxter was—although, in the smoke, it was anyone’s guess where she was pointed—but he’d already proven to be a decent shot. She made her peace with that, and stepped into the moonlit field first, bullets roaring from the barrel of her gun.

  No cover fire would be necessary, though.

  A lick of flame erupted from the direction of the homestead, throwing an orange glow across the greenery. At least, that’s where it looked like it came from—although Amanda couldn’t be sure.

  She just screamed at everyone behind her, and they ran. This was the cover they needed. Nothing nipped at their heels, and they dove into the jungle just as the field behind them erupted in an orange glow of its own, metal creaking and scraping as the windmills dropped to the ground.

  “Hell of a show,” Pierre said in a weak voice, the entire jungle ensconced in orange light, “now what?”

  “Now we find another way off this place,” Amanda said, and she brushed herself off before stepping forward, back towards the homestead.

  Part 4

  13

  Scorched Earth

  The group made it back to the homestead within a couple hours, following Amanda and Cooper’s path. The scent of burnt timber and ruined crops hung in the air. The ground still smoldered.

  “That bastard,” Clara said as they stepped into the house, “he’s all around.”

  “Who,” Amanda asked, setting Bobby down.

  “Baxter, maybe. Or the others. Silver.”

  Pierre stumbled on to the bed and fell asleep. Melina dressed his wounds and tended to his fevered brow. He’d be all right—if no one bothered him for a while. That seemed like a luxury that the group didn’t have.

  Jackson had recovered, however.

  “How’d it go,” he asked, eyes scanning the group. Their eyes turned toward the ground, and the lack of Captain Cooper told them about all he needed to know.

  “The windmills are gone,” Amanda said, unslinging the rifle from her shoulder. “What happened to the crops? The ground outside looks ruined.”

  “We know. We nailed one, though.” Penelope. That chick was tough, even if her diminutive frame suggested a cool breeze could break her in two.

  “You see who they were?” Clara.

  “They’re out there, if you’d like to check.”

  Clara exited, and the group sat in silence until she returned.

  “Stella.” She sounded a little bummed about it; not unexpected, since she’d lived with her for the past four years.

  “How many of you are there?” Amanda asked, glancing up from the rifle she was cleaning.

  “On the mainland? Hundreds.”

  “What about here?”

  “Me. Bobby.”

  “You don’t count.”

  Clara leaned against the door frame. “Stella, Silver, Baxter—the guy sniping at us.”

  “Only two of you left, huh?”

  “Baxter and Silver, they’re not…normal.”

  Jackson stood up, still unsteady from his illness. He walked towards Clara, and took her hands in his own.

  “The Ambrosia,” he whispered, like it was some dirty secret that could only be mentioned in hushed tones.

  “Yeah.”

  “They’ve been exposed.”

  “Most people die, but them, they…”

  “We’ve seen the animals,” Amanda interjected, finished with her cleaning duties. “They’re strong, smart.”

  “And they were smart before,” Clara said, like the group didn’t understand the ramifications. They didn’t—couldn’t, without living with the two men.

  “And Stella?”

  “She’s normal, like me. Like us.” She gestured towards her sleeping boy. His face was no longer the color of holly berries; a good sign. “She was.”

  “Can we fight them?”

  “Baxter, maybe. Silver…he’s different. I don’t think so. No.”

  “Then we figure out how to run,” Amanda said, a grim smile stretching across her lips. “Let’s get some rest. Who’s got first watch?”

  “I’ll take it,” Penelope said.

  “Go with her,” Amanda said, shoving a rifle into Melina’s arms, “and don’t get blown away.”

  “Yes ma’am,” Melina said, and the two disappeared.

  It’d been hours. A swath of flames had spread across the island. The lights had flickered and died. Still, Silver hadn’t come in. The wait was killing Maverick.

  “Your girl hasn’t come back,” Josephine said, stating the obvious. She hadn’t learned her lesson, but Maverick was too anxious to be angry. His palms dripped sweat, and his heart hammered a furious, inconsistent beat.

  “She got help.”

  “Or got killed. Looks pretty warm out there.”

  “Maybe.”

  Silence. Maverick messed with the radio, but the same message was still playing. He had to find a way off the island. The yacht, if Penelope was done for, that was off limits, a lost cause. Outside, the sounds of feral beats—and that infernal hound—interrupted his thinking.

  The Emergency Kit.

  He hadn’t thought of it in years. The spare boat, it was hidden in a cover, some seven or eight miles away. Now, to remember where he’d left the jeep…

  No need; the sound of tires and an engine was his answer. Someone wa
s driving it up to the front of the house. Footsteps. Maverick peeked out the window, but couldn’t make anything out.

  Then, his door swung open.

  “Maverick,” Silver said, and Maverick didn’t need to wheel around to remember that voice, hardened by years of bitterness and jungle survival.

  “I was wondering when I’d see you.”

  “I’m touched.” And that was the last thing that Maverick heard before a powerful fist raced through the air, connecting with his jaw.

  “What do you see?”

  Penelope glanced over at Melina, who was tapping her foot against the dirt in the makeshift foxhole. Penelope had no response. She just shrugged.

  “What, so you’re not going to talk?”

  “About?” Penelope was all business right now, her eyes scanning the horizon over and over.

  “What happened out here?”

  “They came from there and there,” Penelope said, pointing a well-manicured finger towards various croppings of trees. “We popped the girl, but the big guy, he was too much.”

  “Baxter? How’d he beat us back?” Melina peered into the distant trees, as if they held the answer.

  “If you’d been living in this hellhole for four years, wouldn’t it be a little easier to get around?”

  “Yeah.” The conversation stalled, and the cool night air nipped at their extremities. Melina shivered, pulling her thin jacket closer to her skin.

  “There.” Penelope said fifteen, maybe twenty minutes later, passing the field glasses to Melina. “You see that?”

  She saw it, all right: the unmistakable form of a dinosaur-like animal, massive, low to the ground, slinking through the ruined field. With the power out for good, and the animals—at least the smarter, Ambrosia-juiced varieties—had started to figure that out.

  “Wh-what is it?”

  “Trouble,” Penelope said, loading her rifle with a click that shattered the cool silence. Melina could see the beast stop. She would have sworn it knew the noise. “Let’s go.” Penelope dragged Melina away from the hole.

  “We aren’t going to shoot it?” Melina didn’t want to share the island with it.

  “Maybe if we want to die. We need to tell the others.”

  “It’s just an alligator,” Melina said, even if her tone said otherwise.

  “It’s a hell of a lot more than that,” Penelope said, her tone resigned, “more than a porn star and a junior associate can handle.”

  “Former.” Even under the circumstances, that seemed important for Melina to point out

  “Let’s just go.” The pair shuffled off towards the house, Melina glancing through the glasses every few steps to see if the beast was coming closer. It seemed happy with its post, although she didn’t understand why. Like it was plotting something.

  She shook off the thought and quickened her pace.

  14

  False Idols

  “You see, Maverick,” Silver said, leaning up against the wall, cool-like, cigar dangling from his lips, “vengeance is a real bitch.” He breathed deep. “I missed these. Cubans, are they?”

  “You’re dead.” Maverick knew that Silver wasn’t—his broken jaw told him that much—but sometimes it’s hard to let things go.

  “Part of me, I suppose,” Silver said, blowing a thick ring of smoke towards his pepper-haired prisoner, “but then, not most of me.”

  “You’re goddamn insane.”

  “That,” Silver said with a laugh, “is the first sense you’ve made. We’re both goddamn insane.”

  “I’m not.”

  “Killing us all instead of taking the heat?”

  “It would’ve been a PR nightmare.” The words felt slimy, inconsequential now that the world’s very survival was in question.

  “And what kind of nightmare do you suppose this is,” Silver said, leering down close, close enough for Maverick to feel his hot, stale breath, “tell me.”

  “Hell.”

  Silver sprung in the air, startling Josephine, who let out a little mouse-like squeak, but otherwise was doing her best to maintain a demure and invisible position.

  “Well, now, don’t get all biblical on me, John. What is this, then? A plague of locusts?”

  “I don’t know. I stopped reading scripture years ago.”

  “Maybe that’s where we both went wrong,” Silver said, almost to himself. “No matter.” He got up to leave.

  “What are you going to do?”

  “Nothing worse than we haven’t already. There’s a new world out there. Haven’t you heard?” Silver’s eyes told Maverick that he knew. Knew he’d heard the radio broadcast. Maybe even knew about the spare boat.

  “Don’t leave me here.”

  “That would be cruel, wouldn’t it?” Silver let the irony cling to the air, like the scent of spring on a breezy day. “Don’t worry. You’ll have company soon enough.”

  He closed the door behind him and Maverick was once again alone. His hands were shaking, hairs standing on end.

  “We have to get out of here,” he said. Josephine didn’t respond. “He won’t just let us die.”

  “No?” Josephine’s voice indicated that she didn’t like the sound of that.

  “It’ll be worse.”

  Maverick huddled up against the bed and rocked back and forth, too worried to even feel the throbbing in his jaw.

  “You,” Silver said, wagging his long-scoped rifle at Cole, like a teacher would to an offending student, “you’re a particular type of evil. Selling out your comrades? Your associates? That’s the worst.”

  Although Silver’s grin was wry, the weight of his words could be felt; treachery, above all else, was unacceptable to him.

  “I just wanted—”

  “And now what?” Silver was still the only one at the mansion from Ambrosia Team. Britt, Davey, Abel, Bebe and Mandy sulked off to the side. He was just one man. Maybe they could take him, if they hadn’t let themselves be trussed up to the fireplace like dogs outside a store. So they listened and watched.

  The old man removed his glasses and ran his hands through his wiry hair. He looked twenty years older than his birth certificate now, and his breath was labored. His heart couldn’t handle the stress, or maybe it was an act. Silver didn’t care; he waited, arms crossed, for a reply. Unmoving.

  “And now we’re here,” Cole said.

  “That is poetic,” Silver said, “you make it sound as if fate led you here.”

  “Greed.”

  “What was that?”

  “It was greed. Ego,” Cole said louder, regaining a little temerity, “all that’s bad in man.”

  “Now we’re getting somewhere. Although you, like your boss, are getting a little religious on me, don’t you think? Seven deadly sins and what not. I swear,” Silver said, walking over to the rest of the group, “it’s like we’re holding Sunday school.”

  “He’s not my boss.”

  “Ah, there it is. No more moralizing and grandstanding. I like it. This was about man-made things. Constructs, false idols.”

  “Yes.”

  “And what do you think a fair punishment for such transgressions is,” Silver said, hoisting the old man up by his lapels.

  “I don’t know.” Cole’s voice was soft, his pupils the size of pins.

  “He doesn’t know,” Silver announced, dropping him back down into the chair, “he doesn’t know. But he knew enough to help me. That he did, and I thank you for it. But the cost, the cost, the cost. My, my.”

  “What’s your punishment,” Cole said, teeth gritted, the little bit of courage left in his body fighting against the fear, “what will that be?”

  “Don’t you worry about that. It’s coming.”

  Silver brought a pistol up to Cole’s head and pulled the trigger. The others gasped, shouted,
shrieked, with the exception of Bebe, who looked onwards with a blank stare.

  Silver walked over to her and slit her ropes.

  “You’re an interesting one.”

  “Just like anyone else,” she said, and that was the end of the exchange. He shoved a pistol into her hands, and motioned towards the rest of them. She knew what to do.

  No one said anything as she lead them up the stairs and into Maverick’s makeshift holding cell.

  “You have company now,” she said, before she locked the door behind her and shoved an antique mahogany dresser against the knob.

  Outside, more dogs could be heard; when the group looked out the window, they could see German Shepherds pacing about in a makeshift pen, right below them. There would be no more escapes from this room; they were trapped.

  “So,” Maverick said, after a long pause, final cigar in hand, “how would you rate your former employer? Better than me?”

  The room stayed silent. Cowardice had failed them, but it was all most of them knew. Bad choices have the tendencies to become habits, traits, character attributes. They could not save themselves; they didn’t know how.

  Maverick sighed, looking up at the endless blue sky. If only he could fly.

  If only.

  The night passed on the homestead without the alligator—or any of its mutant friends—blitzing the small cabin. But that was just a matter of luck; it would be sooner, rather than later, when the native beasts would come and attack.

  “The Emergency Kit,” Jackson said, “it’s our only way off this damn island.”

  Amanda looked at him. “I know where it is.”

  “What’s an emergency kit?” Clara asked.

  “A spare boat.” Jackson said. Clara’s features darkened; she’d spent four years marooned on this island, and there’d been a hidden way off the entire time.

  Amanda unfurled a well-worn, large-scale map on the weathered wooden tabletop and pointed at a cove. Pierre was still resting, but the rest of their small force—or ragtag troop—huddled around, straining to see what she was talking about.