by Kathryn Hore
Everything the same. Everything so damn neat.
Neil spat like he had a bad taste in his mouth. He was breathing heavier as he got closer to Atlantis. Up ahead he could just make out a couple of figures overlooking the choppy ocean. Another minute and he could recognise his son, crouching on the very edge of the retaining wall. The sight made his fists clench, unconsciously.
‘Paul,’ he hollered, ‘get back from there!’
The boy turned his head to look in his father’s direction. Neil was now close enough to notice the dreamy expression; the same slack look he wore whenever he contemplated those submerged ruins that began only metres from the shore. That was another thing that bothered Neil. Ever since they’d arrived a few days ago, and Paul had learned what was out there, it had held a deep fascination for him.
Atlantis. The lost city. More like a lost coastal suburb. But why quibble? It was an apt name, though certainly not the only place along the eastern Australian coast with such a title these days. And, of course, it wasn’t a name endorsed in any of the glossy brochures. It was only late last year when the government had prevented that company from conducting tours. Safety fears they said, but everyone knew the real reason. Made the front pages for a while, much to the premier’s chagrin.
‘Get back from there, I said!’
On the second try, Paul’s eyes snapped back into focus and he scuttled back. Satisfied — hell, it must be a seven-metre drop from the edge into the water — Neil then turned his attention to the other person. She stood only a metre or so from the edge, setting a bad example, her face also fixed on the ocean. Uninterested, perhaps even oblivious, to the exchange between father and son.
She wore a scarf to contain her blonde hair and big sunglasses — quite unnecessary, given the dense cloud cover — but from what he could see of her face, she looked young.
Early to mid-twenties, Neil guessed. Then again, in this golden age of genetics, who could be sure?
She was dressed in drab, heavy materials that concealed her body — skirt hem to her ankles, sleeves buttoned at the wrists. It went against the latest fashion. Her clothes were upmarket, as far as Neil could tell. That scarf, was it mink? Sable? Lab-born or the real thing? Whatever, Kim wouldn’t be feeling anything like that around her neck any time soon, that was for sure.
She carried a rug, or a blanket. Lime green. A great heavy thing, clutched awkwardly up high on her shoulder. It seemed to weigh her down.
He approached his son, but kept his eyes on the woman. Did she look sad, he wondered, or did the downward curves of her small mouth reflect a more thoughtful expression? Hard to tell, and what did it matter to him anyway? He was just here for his boy, and to get him inside before the storm hit, as fast as his protesting thighs would allow.
He was only a couple of metres away when she turned her head to look in his direction. He smiled and she responded with the barest of nods.
‘G’day,’ Neil offered.
‘Hello.’
She spoke softly, almost whispered the word. She raised her hand to tuck a loose strand of hair back beneath the scarf. At first, Neil thought she was offering it in greeting, so raised his own, but when he realised her real intention, he redirected, flicking his fingers in a gesture toward Paul.
‘I hope he’s not bothering you?’
She looked down at the boy, as if noticing him for the first time.
‘No. Not at all,’ she said.
‘Ah... well, okay. Well, that’s good.’
But she had already turned back to stare at the ocean. Fixated. That was the word. Worse than Paul. He couldn’t see her eyes, but he was sure of their intensity, and the thought made him shiver a little. What was it about the view from up here? He turned to look out over the violent water. You couldn’t see anything. It all came down to imagination, something Neil had never been good at. But Paul was a bright boy. That had been in the contract. Sometimes, he thought his son might be too smart for his own good, even when the specialists had promised him it was a necessity. This was a whole new world, centuries beyond the one he remembered.
Things changing. All the time.
Like the ocean, he supposed.
Neil returned to the woman. She hadn’t moved. He felt the need to say something more, some polite banality, but her posture found him lacking the words. Best just to get his son and go.
‘Paul,’ he said.
He held out his hand. Paul took it, if reluctantly. Then Neil started to walk back the way he came, dragging that slight weight behind him.
‘He’s beautiful,’ the woman said.
‘Huh,’ Neil said. More a grunt than a word. He turned back.
‘Your son,’ she said. ‘He is your son? He’s beautiful. He’s perfect.’
Neil clenched his jaw. That word. The last one. What the hell did she mean by it? And how did she say it — sarcastic or… angry?
Neil tried, failed, then managed a stutter.
‘Um… well, ahhh…?’
He had nothing.
The woman now turned her whole body, not just her head, to face him.
Confront him, it felt like.
Something in the bundled blanket on her shoulder moved. One of her hands gently patted it.
‘I’m sorry,’ she said. ‘That must have sounded so rude. I apologise.’
‘No, n-not at all…’
‘All I mean is, and forgive me for asking, if he is your son, your biological son… he must have been… altered?’
Neil felt a cold, hard brick in his gut.
‘Um… well, ah, yes, as it happens…’
He felt a heat in his face, much hotter than the sunburn. That was the new touchy subject; the one polite society never spoke about, and certainly not a topic to be discussed with a stranger.
Doesn’t this rich bitch know the damn rules?
‘Forgive me again,’ she said, as if reading his mind. Now the bundle wriggled violently, more agitated this time. She hugged it a little closer, made shhh sounds, began to rock, ever so gently.
She looked back at Neil. She gave a tiny, almost embarrassed smile.
‘Mine’s altered too. He’s a feisty one. So… independent, even at such a young age. But they all are, aren’t they? I’m sure you understand.’
Neil reached desperately for something to say, found himself at a total loss. He was unsure if he should feel angry or apologetic. He felt resentment, certainly, but she seemed politely curious, after all. There seemed no mockery or animosity in her words, her posture.
Then again, what did he really know? He was never good at this. This was what his wife was for, but Kim was a long walk away. And she’d be worried. Neil desperately wanted to go, to run in fact, but he found himself rooted to the spot.
The wind off the sea grew stronger. The clouds reached lower. Thunder was insistent.
More blonde strands escaped from beneath the woman’s scarf. This time, she didn’t bother to tuck them back away, let them flail about her pretty face.
‘Please,’ she ventured, reading his awkward posture, ‘I understand I’m being so terribly forward. But there is really no need to be embarrassed. We understand, don’t we, you and I?’
Neil just gaped at her.
‘We understand,’ she continued, haltingly, choosing her words, ‘the need to adapt… the… the urgency of the future. We only seek the best for our children, yes?’
Neil reached for his son, found his shoulder, gave it a squeeze. For a moment, he wondered if this was the right conversation to be having in front of him. Then he realised how ridiculous that thought was. His son was already smarter than he would ever be, and could explain the mechanics of his origins in such a scholarly manner, a way that made Neil uncomfortable whenever he heard it.
The procedure had begun while his son was still in the womb. It had cost a packet. They’d made the final repayments only late last year. And those endless conversations with Kim, the many arguments. She had been adamant. Slowly, with a will of iron
, she had worn him down.
She’d been right of course. Neil was now sure of that… well, most of the time. A son with a stake in the future, uncomplicated by redundant genes. That’s the word the consultant had used.
Many times.
Redundant.
And Neil. Who was he to contradict?
The boffins. They have our best interests at heart.
And now a son. A bright boy, if a little too bright, but one not prone to melancholy, only a stoic indifference that often was mistaken for it. A strong boy, no propensity to fat. A constitution shored up against the trammels of the mundane infections.
The other children. Emily and Tash?
Paul would be their shelter.
The gene for brotherly love. Neil had been adamant they wouldn’t junk that one.
Now the thunder was booming. A fat drop of warm rain spattered Neil’s cheek.
The bundle in the woman’s arms was now thrashing, clearly agitated. She struggled with it, yet her voice stayed calm, as if there was no problem at all.
‘Who knows the future?’ she asked.
Rhetorical, Neil guessed. He said nothing.
‘Can we really know, or must we only make our best predictions?’
Shit! Questions like this always found Neil out of his depth. He looked down again at his son. Paul had turned his attention to the contemplation of the churning sky.
She said: ‘The world we know is…’
And now the bundle in the woman’s arms gave a jolt. The blanket began to shred. A flailing arm broke free, made a thin red line in her neck. The rain slanted in, obscuring Neil’s vision.
Just a glimpse. Scales. Webbed digits. A grey-green complexion.
The woman fell back. Her throat was now red mayhem. Too late, Neil scrambled for her rescue. She was on the ground, the bundle undulating beside her, jerking with hidden menace.
The child emerged.
Neil bit back a surge of bile.
Slim, compact. Thin skin, lidless eyes for deep exploration. A batrachian design. Thick blood. A heart that waits.
Waits for the downfall of redundant species.
The newborn scrambled toward the edge of the retaining wall. It was ungainly, out of its element. Neil watched it flounder. The woman still twitched, but he had already forgotten her. Paul, on the edge of his gaping vision, had fallen to his hands and knees, much like a supplicant. He moved toward it, a penitent, in the wake of the new Messiah. Neil was too weak, the rain too hammering, to offer any admonishment. He was beaten. The world was no longer his world.
The phone in his pocket, ringing. Kim. Worried. He ignored it.
And Paul. The best son money could buy. The confident hope, now just a muddy, sodden acolyte. All that hard work, the soul searching, and already surpassed.
The newborn reached the brink. It paused, turned back briefly. Raised an arm. A benediction? Paul just might hope so in the years to come.
Then it slipped over the edge and was gone.
Paul might have wept, but he was made better than that. He looked to his father, that irrational prototype. That bag of junk genes. Another time, and maybe, maybe, there might have been the possibility for familial considerations.
But Paul lived on the cusp of the future. There was no time.
‘Why?’ he asked.
And his sire, a blubbering mess. Tears awash in the rain.
‘Why couldn’t you have made me beautiful?’
THE HUNT
Mark Smith-Briggs
The prints were fresh. They tracked from the muddy edge of the dam into the nearby scrub. If Todd had to guess, he’d say they were less than an hour old.
‘Holy shit,’ he said and ran his finger around the edge of the indent. The rear pad was shaped roughly like a bell and topped by four, pebble-like toes.
Josh rested the butt of his rifle against his hip and took a swig from his flask. ‘What’d you think?’ he asked.
Todd ran through his usual checklist. They were too big for a domestic cat — even the feral ones — and there were no claw marks, which ruled out dogs. Judging by the diameter and depth of the indent, whatever made them was about seventy kilos and the size of a large bulldog.
Todd smiled. After a decade of searching, they were so close he could almost taste it.
‘I think we’re about to make fucking history,’ he said.
In reply, the sky rumbled with distant thunder. Dark clouds were beginning to roll across the horizon. Josh eyed them with concern.
‘Let’s get going before that storm sets in,’ he said. ‘If those prints get washed away, we’ve got squat.’
They followed the tracks deeper into the bush. Recent rains had left the ground soft, so it was easy to follow the animal’s ascent into the mountain range. Still, it took the best part of the afternoon. The trail led them halfway up the mountain before disappearing into the mouth of a cave. Todd rested against a tree trunk to catch his breath. Overhead, the sky had turned a bleak grey.
Josh dumped his pack on the ground but kept his rifle trained on the opening in the rock face.
‘So what now?’ he asked.
‘We go in, I guess,’ Todd said.
‘Are you mad? It’s pitch fucking black in there.’
Todd shrugged.
‘We could always chuck a flare in, try to flush it out.’
‘Or scare it in further.’
‘Well, I ain’t standing out here all day.’
Josh paused, mulling things over. Finally, he bent down and fished a flare out of his pack. He held it out for his friend.
Todd shook his head and tapped his rifle. ‘You do it. I’ve got your back.’
Josh muttered something under his breath, but grabbed a lighter from his pocket and crept toward the cave anyway. He paused at the opening; close enough so that its shadow touched his shoe.
‘Do it,’ Todd urged.
He raised the unlit flare to the edge of the darkness and sparked the Zippo. A pair of yellow eyes reflected back from the darkness. Josh barely registered the rush of a shadow — black on black — before something slammed into him.
The shape hit him hard enough to knock the wind from his lungs and drove him backwards into the dirt. He groaned as the full weight of it bore down. Razor sharp claws punctured his skin. It growled and gnashed at him with long, jagged teeth.
Todd watched in a state of shock. The black cat — it was waist height at least — tore at the flesh of Josh’s chest and arms. On instinct more than anything, Todd fired.
The bullet tore into the cat’s flesh just below its shoulder. The animal shrieked in pained surprise but continued its attack. He cracked off another shot. It too hit the mark. The animal made a high-pitch sound and bounded into the bush.
Todd watched it disappear into the scrub. ‘Did you see that?’ he said to no one in particular. ‘I fucking knew it.’
Josh gave a pained groan.
‘Oh, shit,’ Todd said and rushed to his side. His friend’s shirt was slick with blood. The worst damage appeared to have been done to his left forearm, which had deep puncture wounds from where he had tried to keep the cat away from his throat. He rolled onto his stomach and hacked up a string of bloody mucus.
‘Oh, man, we’ve got to get you help,’ Todd said. He pulled out his phone. No bars. ‘Shit!’
He grabbed Josh by the arm and dragged him to his feet. Josh collapsed onto his shoulder but managed to stay upright.
‘Was it?’ he asked.
‘Yeah,’ Todd said.
‘You going after it?’
Todd scanned the scrub. He’d hit the thing twice and it wasn’t likely to make it far. If they brought back a body…
Josh coughed up a fresh wad of blood and slunk further onto Todd’s shoulder.
Todd sighed. They were knee-deep in the middle of nowhere, and if Josh didn’t get help fast, his chances weren’t so flash either. But it would take a few hours to hike back down at best. The first of several fat drops of
rain splashed onto his foot.
‘Forget it,’ he said reluctantly.
#
They came across the house an hour later. Both were drenched and close to collapse. It was a small mud-brick dwelling nestled deep within the trees. A narrow track wound its way to the front door. It was so well hidden that they would have missed it entirely had it not been for a piece of rusted corrugated roof sheeting banging in the breeze.
Josh was beginning to dip in and out of consciousness. Todd knew there was no way he was going to make it back down to the bottom without medical aid.
‘Come on,’ Todd said, leading them up the path.
The door was answered by a slender, dark-haired woman. She was attractive, in her late forties or early fifties, with olive skin and magnetic, brown eyes. She eyed the pair cautiously.
‘Please,’ Todd said before she had a chance to shut the door again. ‘You have to help me, my friend, he’s been hurt.’
Todd noticed her gaze linger, not so much on the blood but his rifle.
‘What happened?’ she said at last.
‘He was attacked.’
‘Attacked?’
‘By a black cat. A panther.’
Todd expected her to laugh, or slam the door in his face. Most people did when he brought up the topic. The Australian bush was full of tales of such sightings, but there was no real proof. He and Josh had dedicated most of the past decade to trying to find some. Today, he found it. But at what cost?
The woman didn’t laugh or slam the door. Instead, Todd noticed a genuine flicker of fear in her eyes. She stole a glance back inside the house. When she looked back, her face had softened.
‘Quick, inside,’ she said hurriedly. ‘But the gun stays out here.’
The woman took Josh’s arm around her shoulder and helped him into the house. Todd couldn’t help but notice the way her dress clung to her rounded hips.
‘Here,’ she said, helping Josh into a wooden chair. ‘He’s lost a lot of blood, yes?’
Todd nodded. ‘I guess.’
She removed the clotted jacket from Josh’s arm.
