The Extinction Series | Book 3 | Brink of Extinction

by Ellis, Tara

  “So, let’s go see what we can find out,” Amisha said with a brave attempt at an encouraging smile. “Though, I have to admit I’m still totally freaked out by those jaguars.”

  The reminder of the scene from the night before caused Jess to glance nervously at the dense jungle surrounding them. “We’re fine,” she said without a whole lot of conviction. “Jaguars are nocturnal hunters.”

  Amisha rolled her eyes at Jess. “I know that, but since they’re already behaving abnormally, I don’t think we can assume they’re not going to change their hunting patterns, too.”

  Jess hadn’t really thought too much about the cats, and the very sensible observation had her studying the overhanging branches more closely. She might have to admit that the trek wasn’t one of the most brilliant ideas she’d ever had. At least they only had about a mile more to go.

  Without saying anything, both girls picked up the pace until they were jogging. In less than twenty minutes they reached the edge of the rainforest and emerged out onto the normally manicured grass of the resort that was already overgrown. Jess sighed a breath of relief when they were bathed in full sunlight, although it was uncomfortably warm.

  Stopping just shy of one of the smaller springs on the outskirt of the resort, Jess gazed across the vast expanse of the thoughtfully organized grounds. She could see several vehicles parked in the gravel lot, in front of the main building. Two men were busy unloading what looked like pallets of water from the back of one of the trucks. A woman stood watching, holding the hand of a child that was uncharacteristically still.

  It caused Jess to have a horrible thought. What happened to children who woke up from the Kra Puru? Were there any? Was the small boy one? What kind of life would a child have if they weren’t capable of experiencing laughter or love? While Jess wouldn’t mind not being so scared all the time, she’d never trade it at the cost of feeling nothing.

  The sound of a shovel scraping against rock drew her attention to another group of individuals gathered nearby, behind a storage shed midway across the estate. A man and woman were both scooping dirt into a large hole. A third man was squatting alongside the fresh soil, and Jess couldn’t tell what he was doing. He had something dark in his hands.

  Several voices deep in conversation drifted to them from close by, causing the girls to react and duck back to the cover offered near the tree line. Jess wasn’t entirely sure why they didn’t want to be seen. Her dad had never directly threatened her or anyone else. Not even Kavish when he went against his orders. But Amisha felt it, too. A guttural instinct Jess couldn’t quite explain. It was the same way she felt when the jaguars were looking at them, or the time she’d come fact-to-face with a caiman. She’d been fishing with her dad a couple of years before, when the huge alligator had slid up less than ten feet away and stared at her with it’s black, lifeless, unblinking eyes.

  That was how she’d felt the last few times her dad looked at her. When he stared down his nose with hardly any expression and spoke to her the same way he would a stranger. Like she was the prey.

  “Come on,” Amisha whispered, pointing to their left, toward the Libi Nati. “I think they’re over this way.”

  With each step, Jess’s doubts grew, until she was ready to tug at Amisha’s arm and tell her she was chickening out. Thanks for the support and all, but this was where she was going to bow out. Her hand was actually reaching out when Amisha suddenly stopped and raised a finger slowly to her lips for silence.

  Jess’s skin crawled and her internal meter screamed at her to run away. Instead, she took a steadying breath and lead the way through the underbrush so they could get a better view of the group gathered around the main Libi Nati hot spring.

  “Why collect it if we have nowhere to send it yet?” someone was asking.

  Jess pushed a fern frond aside and saw a woman was less than ten feet away from them. She was sitting on the wooden boardwalk, screwing lids on mason jars before stacking them in a wooden crate. Beyond her was the pool, and her father with another man and woman.

  What in the world?

  Jess thought of her own mason jar, still sitting in the back of her closet. She wasn’t sure why she’d kept it. Maybe to hold onto a piece of something she never thought she’d experience in the same way again.

  “Your endless questions don’t seem to serve a purpose,” her dad replied, his voice becoming clearer as they slunk away from the woman and closer to the hot spring. While the thick underbrush provided good protection, it also made it hard to see, but she could tell that her dad was crouched down near the edge of the bubbling pool.

  “What does that mean, Dr. Davies?” the man countered, sounding more curious than mad. “You’ll silence me the same way we did Van?”

  “Don’t be ridiculous,” Eric answered, pushing at his glasses. “We share the same goals, Shawn. Unfortunately, it was impossible for Mr. Van to do the same.” He stared off toward the jungle for a moment, in thought. Jess froze, certain he would spot them. “But at least we know now that even with extreme exposure, those with immunity are still resistant.”

  The other man considered her dad’s answer while Jess tried to understand what in the world it all meant. “So, what are we going to do with it, then?”

  Eric handed him another jar and then focused back on the Libi Nati. “I’ve already reached out to the scientist who attempted to contact me last week. I’m certain it’s the best means to take the first steps of contacting other cured from various locations around the world. Together, we can move forward with ensuring our survival. And this will help us achieve that quest.”

  Jess watched as her dad leaned forward and filled another jar with the smelly water, ignoring the fact that the contact would produce an irritating rash on his hands. Holding the jar up to the light, his expression was the closest to normal that Jess had seen since he woke up. It wasn’t exactly a smile, but there was a faint ghosting of emotion, and she felt a sharp surge of hope.

  “With this pure form of The Kuru,” he stated, taking a few steps and handing the jar off to the woman. “We can help complete the purge that’s necessary to propel the human species to its next level of evolutionary existence.”

  Jess’s smile was replaced by a twisted expression of horror, as Amisha pulled her backwards. As they fled, she looked again toward the fresh hole in the ground. The man had moved away and was gathering the tools, revealing what looked like a crude headstone.

  Mr. Van.

  Blindly reaching out, she spun around and allowed her friend to lead her away from the man who only looked like her father. Away from a place that used to be special because of its power to heal, not destroy.

  “I don’t understand,” she whispered, barely able to speak as they ran hand-in-hand back down the trail. “Why kill Mr. Van? Why do they care so much about the water?”

  Amisha tugged on her hand, dragging her to a stop. “The scientist.”

  Jess stared cluelessly at her while clutching at her chest. It hurt to breathe. “The what?”

  “The scientist that he said was trying to contact him!” Amisha hissed, on the same edge of panic as Jess. “I think I talked to her. She called the resort.”

  “What?” Jess babbled. “When? Why?”

  Amisha’s brows scrunched together and she gazed past Jess for a moment. “Last Monday. I was waiting for my mom to pick me up, after the resort was shut down. This weird lady called and paid me a crapload of money to go scoop up some water and send it to her.”

  The water again. The water that had changed on the first day of the big eruption out in the ocean. The day everything started to change. “Why did she want it?” Jess asked, afraid of the answer.

  Amisha shook her head. “She didn’t say, exactly. Only that it was super important. Your dad was talking about The Kuru, what they call the Kra Puru in the states. You don’t think…” her voice faded and they stood staring at each other, neither of them willing to finish the sentence.

  “The Soul
Takers,” Jess whispered, unable to deny what they had heard and seen. Akuba’s childhood story was coming true and she was terrified they were about to find out how far their reality would mimic the ancient stories of soulless monsters.

  Chapter 28

  MADS

  Lassen National Forest

  Northern California

  Her eyes opened slowly, her pupils reacting sluggishly to the murkiness of the room.

  The air was thick with the cloying smell of feces and rot. She lay there for an unknown amount of time, allowing her senses and the feeling in her limbs to return, until it became overpowering.

  With a grunt, Madeline rolled onto her side and stared at the faint light leaking from in between the slats on her bedroom window. She knew where she was, though she wasn’t sure when. How many days had she been unconscious?

  Her thoughts faded and sharpened, an odd mix of confusing imagery and sounds that she couldn’t sort out at first. What was real, what was a dream, and how did she fit into it all?

  The smell.

  Madeline opened her eyes. She was on her back again. She must have passed out. She could feel the heavy, cold dampness pooling under her and bile rose in her throat. It took all her strength to shift onto her side again, and did so just in time to vomit onto the bedspread, adding to the growing mire she was simmering in.

  I was sick with The Kuru. I was dying.

  Madeline stared at where she remembered leaving her laptop. It was gone, but the bottle of whiskey was nestled in the covers. Narrowing her eyes at it she reached out a shaking hand and weakly pushed it aside, taking instead the plastic container of water next to it.

  Bringing it to her cracked lips, Madeline didn’t care how warm and stale it was. She had to be severely dehydrated. Aside from the miraculous fact she’d survived the infection, it was another miracle she’d done it without IV fluids. Feeling her heart hammering in her chest, she knew she wasn’t out of the woods yet.

  The bathroom. She had to make it to the bathroom where she could lay in the shower and wash off at the same time that she drank from the faucet.

  I’m not scared.

  Her vision greyed around the edges as she slowly sat up, but she considered the implications in a detached state. Madeline had always been good at sorting through her circumstances with a sort of clinical indifference, but she recognized her current state was exceptional, even for her.

  She was as close to death as she’d ever been, but she wasn’t afraid. And Doctor Madeline Schaefer had plenty of reasons to fear the unknown realms of her demise. In fact, as the memories of her most recent endeavors came flooding back, she wondered about the sort of person she’d been.

  Been.

  “Huh,” Madeline huffed, growing more curious about her own observations.

  Scooting to the edge of the bed, she ignored the slimy trail left in her wake and concentrated instead on the task at hand. Water, cleanliness, liquid food, and then…

  Cocking her head, Madeline twisted her arm so she could see the face of her watch. Sunday. It was Sunday night, three days since she had settled herself onto the bed, ready to face her death.

  In spite of her physical discomfort, her mind was already racing ahead to the next steps that must be taken. Someone had been inside her house. She looked at the nightstand. Yes, both the laptop and the Glock were missing.

  Though disturbed by the invasion and interference, Madeline didn’t have her typical childish, angry outburst. No throwing of items or senseless cursing. She simply accepted the fact that it had happened and then thought of what the most appropriate reactions would be.

  “Interesting,” she said to the empty room. “How very, very interesting.”

  Tentatively, she pressed first her right foot against the floor and then the left, testing to see how stable she was. Another wave of dizziness threatened to put her on the ground, so she paused and drank more water. She sat that way for some time, watching the light grow thinner outside as night fell over the landscape, cocooning her in the smelly room that was supposed to be her tomb.

  But she wasn’t scared. She wasn’t…anything. No. that wasn’t quite true. She was aware she was still Doctor Madeline Schaefer. She just didn’t feel anything. Not anything that really mattered to her before, such as: hate, anger, love, rage, jealousy, envy and lust. Or empathy. Madeline found she lacked even empathy for herself. For the frail, lonely woman who was left to die by herself in her own filth.

  Instead, she was consumed with an assuredness that had escaped even the great Mads when she was at her best. Because that woman had always had the heavy burden of self-doubt lurking in the furthest recesses of her over-inflated ego, constantly threatening to topple her mountain of power.

  Not anymore. Madeline was free of those chains, and left with nothing to hinder the cold, calculated intelligence that had earned her the envy of the scientific community.

  Her goals hadn’t changed. On the contrary, they had become clearer. So much clearer.

  Madeline stood as the sun dropped behind the mountains and the room was plunged into darkness. Looking down at her hand, she squinted at the locket still entwined with her fingers. The last physical keepsake she had of her sister. Spreading her fingers, she let the chain slip through her hand, and watched as the necklace fell to the floor.

  Then, Doctor Madeline Schaefer walked away, and toward her destiny.

  THE END

  EXTINCTION Book 4

  Available Here

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