Then suddenly, she stopped. Slowly she lifted her hand and held it in front of her face. It was shaking. Nothing had happened but everything was wrong.
It was completely silent.
She went cold. Her breath quickened, wheezing past her open lips.
And then she was tackled from behind.
Everything went black. Was she even conscious? Through the blackness Grunt snarled into her ear, his lips pressed close, muffled against her lobes. “Finally got y’bitch. Now you’re DEAD!” His shout pierced her eardrum, jump starting her brain.
His hand was squeezing the tendons in her neck, as he shoved her face into the dirt violently. He’s going to smother me. He’s going to kill me.
The clay pot. Where was it? Oh please be to the right.
She swung her arm frantically back and forth over the ground, the dirt and twigs scratching and tearing her skin. Her hand nudged the edge of the bowl. She shifted her body, but it was just out of reach.
Grunt began punching her ribs. She felt herself sinking, her mind separating from her body, falling away.
Suddenly the impact moved her body and the roughness of the clay pot was between her fingers.
THWAP!
“Gaaah!” Grunt shouted as she brought the bowl around with all her strength, whacking him in the head.
She pushed herself to her feet, turned and brought it around again, this time striking his temple. THUNK! He didn’t fall but blood spewed down his face, splattering the wet leaves.
She ran away, but he recovered quickly and was right behind her. As she burst through the trees, into the garden, she realized she forgot about the canvas. Bending at the waist she didn’t slow, but ran underneath across the loose dirt. Grunt, on the other hand, tore straight through the quilt of leaves entangling himself. “Get back here slut!”
She was almost out of the garden but then the structure collapsed, pushing her to the ground.
“Aah!” She landed hard, and tried to get back up, but her foot was entangled in the weaving. Grunt was only an arm’s length away rustling under the leaves, ripping them away.
Mevia dropped the pot and untied her foot. Finally free, she jumped up and ran away leaving Grunt still struggling.
She raced to the Clearing, gathering her voice to call out a warning, but it was too late. The scene before her was an ambush—a violent, bloody ambush.
Poachers were everywhere, cloaked in dark animal fur. Growling and thrashing with such a primal thirst they looked like bears in a mauling. Mevia recognized each of them: Slit, Roach, Drain, Spider, Crow. Their silver machetes flashed through the air.
Mevia screamed, a guttural call that sounded foreign and horrible even in her own ears. Telly was face down in the mud, sliced open, her spine exposed, the blood turning pink over white bone. The large pot lay on its side, white, boiling hot stew curled around her body in a halo.
Mevia started to go to her, but then she heard her name.
“Take it!” Kurt shoved a spear into her hand. Then he ran at Crow who was swinging his knife at Henny. She was weaponless. Kurt raised a machete he must have stolen and brought it down with a sickening crack directly across Crow’s collar bone.
“Naaah!” He reared back in anguish giving Kurt an easy target. Another swipe and Crow’s head was rolling across the ground his black, beady eyes staring at Mevia.
She gripped the spear in one hand, balancing the other end with her stump. Spider had his back to her, his bald head matted with muddy scars. Pointing the end at his kidneys, she sprinted.
In mid-run she was knocked off her feet. “Ugh!”
“Bitch!” Grunt cursed straddling her, the rain washing down, dripping mud and blood from his body onto hers. He held the butt end of the spear while the blade was pierced in the dirt next to Mevia’s head.
She stared up in horror, and didn’t dare move, knowing that if she tried he would take the rusty knife in his left hand and slice her throat where she lay.
Grunt was lean from his travels. His gut was gone, leaving rounded muscles. She didn’t think it was possible but he looked more terrifying now than in her nightmares.
She was still clutching the spear, looking up into his hate filled eyes and snarling teeth. He was smiling. He was actually smiling. Grunt wasn’t planning to kill her. He wanted to take her back.
Her adrenaline surged. Acrobatically, she flicked her body into a backward roll. She scrambled away, barely able to stay on her feet in the slimy mud. She looked back. Grunt was fighting Wil who swung his long knife like an expert.
Just a couple feet away lay a large, jagged edge of the broken bowl. She picked it up, looked around and then ran at Spider again who was now on top of Dila. He had both his hands around her neck and she was writhing madly.
“Rrrrrraa!” Mevia sprang upon him, landing the jagged clay edge directly into the back of his neck. He fell to his side, but she didn’t stop. She mounted his chest, holding his shoulders down with her knees and hacked into the soft of his neck.
With every strike, a stream of warm blood bubbled out, soaking his black fur pelt.
Mevia stopped, exhausted and breathing heavy. She reached over to Dila, but her eyes were rolled into the back of her head. “Dila?” Mevia moved to her side and placed her mouth over Dila’s lifeless lips and blew into her lungs again and again, trying to revive her but it was useless. Had she gotten to her just seconds earlier, maybe it would have been different. A few feet away Henny lay on her back, a machete sticking straight up from her chest. He had gotten both of them.
Blood drenched the muddy ground, frothing in the puddles, creating a scabby foam.
Kurt and Wil were taking on Grunt and Roach, the four of them holding their weapons, circling one another.
Mevia ran to the mountain edge, cupped her hands around her mouth and yelled. “James! James!” He was only a speck in the distance but she could tell he heard. “HELP! HELP!” She waved her arms back and forth frantically. He waved back and began to climb down.
“Cree,” Mevia said, remembering he was working on the boats. She took off to the shore.
She pumped her exhausted legs, tearing through the jungle shrubbery until she came to the beach where there was a completed small boat and the skeletal beginnings of another. Cree was nowhere in sight. Where’s the big boat?
She began to panic. If she couldn’t find Cree then she would have to go back to the clearing alone and help Kurt and Wil.
From the distance a voice was calling, muffled by the waves.
“Mevia!”
It was Cree. The big boat bobbed up and down against the white waves as he rowed into shore. Mevia ran out into the water, fighting the current.
“Help! They’re here! Help!” She was out of breath, and fell into the waist deep water. The waves pushed her under. Burning salt water went up her nose and into her eyes. She pushed herself up, gasping for air. Cree had left the boat behind and was swimming past her.
“Machetes!” was the only word Mevia had time to call out as he hurled himself out of the water. Her heart sank as she watched him disappearing behind the wall of jungle with no weapon.
Mevia struggled back to land, her limbs shaking with adrenaline. She crawled across the wet sand and was met by James. He was death white. “Go help the others.” She was out of breath. “Get a weapon!”
James took off. He called over his shoulder. “Bring in the boat! She’s the best we got!”
Screw the fucking boat! Mevia was about to run after him until it struck her that the boat might be their only escape if the Poachers overpowered them.
She swam out to sea. The boat was seesawing violently against the waves, churning in the white water. She treaded alongside, and timed her approach. Then when the nose bobbed down with the ebb, she sprang up and wrapped her arm over the edge, pulling herself in. The boat was alive with breadbringer fish flopping against the damp wood, their white scales glinting. Positioning herself with her back to the shore, she grabbed an oar, and
rowed in.
Because she only had the one hand, her approach was clumsy and diagonal. As soon as she hit the friction of sand she jumped out, grabbed the rope and pulled the boat in.
Mevia took the oar—the best she could do for a weapon—but just as she was about to run back, she saw two figures emerging from the trees further down the shoreline where the other boat was waiting.
She replaced the oar and sprinted toward them. It was James and Cree. They were covered in blood, staggering across the white sand, leaving a red trail behind.
“Mevia help!” James yelled. He had Cree’s arm around his neck and they were struggling.
Mevia gasped upon seeing Cree coated in blood. From rib to rib an open wound splayed like an eruption. He looked at her frantically, the whites of his eyes yellowed and cloudy.
“Grab the water,” James barked, straining from the weight.
“Water?”
“The jug.” He nodded toward the other boats. “We’re leaving now. Hurry before they catch us!”
“But—“
“Everyone’s dead Mevia! They’re all dead.”
Chapter 58
Mevia grabbed the jug of fresh water and two canvas bags filled with dried beans, but halfway to the boat she dropped a bag. If it were the water she would have gone back.
“Hurry!” James yelled, already pushing out. Against the canvas of grey sky and frothing white water, the boat looked dark, like an almond rocking in the rough sea. James had somehow managed to struggle Cree inside, and that was when it really started to rain. The drizzling mist turned fat and sloppy spattering them from all directions.
Mevia fought through the knee deep water, tossing in the supplies. Then she gripped the side of the boat and pushed.
At waist deep they hopped in at the same time. Mevia was almost manic. “How many are left?”
“Two of ‘em. Big guys.”
“Where’s Lin?”
“I don’t know.”
They each took an oar and rowed, trying to get into rhythm. Every turn of the paddle lifted a cold, salty spray of ocean, stinging Mevia’s hot face.
The water was choppy, fighting them the entire way, lifting the vessel upon its crest until almost airborne, and then dropping it back down sending slops of opal-green water over their feet.
Mevia dug in and pushed against the current, squeezing the splintery handle as it ripped into her tenderizing skin. They rowed and rowed into the open water until their arms gave out, and they had to stop.
Cree groaned from the flat of the boat. His dark hands clutched the gaping wound.
Mevia handed James her oar. She crouched and checked the shoreline, her legs moving with the trampoline-like surface of the boat. “I don’t see anyone,” she said loudly through the rain. “We’re almost safe.”
“Safe,” James said breathlessly, mocking the word.
Mevia found a pile of cloth laying in the bow. Gripping one end in her teeth, she ripped it into thin strips. Carefully and timidly, she wrapped the bandages around Cree.
“We just need to stop the bleeding right now. We’ll clean you up later,” she said softly.
His face didn’t change, as if he were wearing a mask, permanently recoiled in pain. The rain streamed down the crinkled skin of his eyes. Even through the drops she could see he was crying. She tried not to look at his face, not wanting to see his forever smile gone.
“There. That should do it for now,” she said after securing the bandage and wiping Cree’s forehead. Shifting over, she squatted next to James.
He stopped rowing and allowed his arms to hang. The handles drooped loosely in his fingers. His brown shirt had darkened to the color of coffee. His ropy arms were shaking from the cold or exhaustion or both. “Can we rest a little before we go again?”
Mevia checked the beach which was now over a mile away and empty. “Sure.” They secured the oars and sat across from one another. Cree lay between them among the flapping fish, their pearly scales iridescent next to his black skin.
Mevia’s adrenaline was dwindling leaving her lethargic and with arms as heavy as sandbags.
“When you’re ready,” she said, “we’ll row around and circle back.”
James frowned. “Back? What for?”
“For Sandra and Thomas. They’re in the hideaway.”
“Then they’re fine.”
“You don’t know that! I’m not just leaving them there.”
“Are you crazy?” James’ voice raised, his brow deeply furrowed. “We’ll be sliced like fillets before we even get there.”
“Then you can stay in the boat if you’re scared.” She grabbed an oar.
“Mevia--!”
Cree placed his hand upon her knee. “He’s right, Mevia. They’re safe.”
She gazed out to the crooked beach dancing on the clumsy horizon. She pictured Sandra and Thomas huddled together in the safety of the hideaway, and realized they were right. The Poachers would think they killed everyone and wouldn’t bother looking. They’d be safe from now on. “At least they’re together,” she said softly.
Cree held his hand over the bandage. “This is how they would want it. They never wanted to leave the island.”
James was still breathless, his arm flung limply over the side of the boat like a parallel oar. For a split second she was furious at him. He was supposed to be keeping watch and he lost them, but then she turned the anger on herself. She was the reason they had come in the first place.
She looked back to shore. “James!” In the distance emerging from the trees were three dark figures. “Row! We gotta row!” She turned and positioned herself, grabbing the oar.
“Shit!”
They fought against the rough sea, struggling to stay synchronized. The island quickly disappeared, tucked just behind the horizon, but they kept going until their arms refused to move and they had to quit again.
Mevia and James panted like a pair of steam engines. Blisters were forming over the pink, raw skin of their hands. Cree’s eyes were closed, his breathing slow, but Mevia doubted he was sleeping.
“You think they saw us?” James asked.
“Don’t know.” She craned her neck.
“God,” he whispered.
The rain stopped.
“James?”
“Yeh?”
Mevia shielded her eyes. “Did you grab the tracking device?”
“No,” he said almost inaudibly.
Mevia sighed. “Neither did I.” The new silence of the open water pressed down upon her. The recognition of the absoluteness of being cutoff clenched her heart as if stone cold fingers were squeezing. They were completely surrounded by grey water, restless and foreboding in its inhabitable vastness.
They kept their weary eyes trained toward the wavering horizon where the island was sitting just over its edge. Neither was saying so out loud, but both dreading what might come rowing over.
Chapter 59
Eli
The moon was pink that night. The Solar Squad chose the color to honor the victims of some extinct cancer. Once a year, they changed it to green in remembrance of Medusa. Eli always thought this was a strange choice of color. The stars that evening were multi-colored lights: teal, fuscia, and yellow—bright as a highlight marker.
Eli sat at his bedroom desk, facing the window, working in silence. There was no pitter-patter of typing, just the sound of a gentle breeze, cascading against the sheer white curtains. For once, Eli wasn’t programming, he was reading, receiving instead of manipulating.
Kilt was out. He said sitting around in the apartment had “gotten old” and he would just risk getting caught. Eli gave him some of his casual clothes and didn’t even bother with a lecture on being careful. He still felt guilty for being gone so much. He didn’t tell Kilt about Hersche’s murder the night before, or explain why he didn’t come home until dawn, preferring to keep his sorrows to himself.
Eli sat with his back to his closed bedroom door. He had extracted the file
s transferred from Dr. Hersche’s computer to Nino and was now sitting quietly before his halo screen reading things about his parents that nobody in the Corps, especially Villus, ever wanted him to know.
Eli sat motionless, but a storm was brewing. Before Hersche’s murder, he never had any interest in his parents. At least that was what he told himself. He pushed away every childhood memory and had abbreviated their role in his life down to the most simplistic label his subconscious would allow: “My parents committed suicide.” And he took that phrase which summed up their place in his life and he filed it away into a dark corner of his brain. From time to time under necessary circumstances—like polite questions about being an orphan—he would extract the file and as emotionless as possible, read its short contents. “My parents committed suicide.” And then he would promptly return the document and shove it into the junk drawer of his memories.
How had the Executive GovCorps not known this information was still out there? If Dr. Hersche had kept it hidden for this long, right under their noses, he must have been more data savvy than Eli thought.
The most disturbing thing Eli read was the details about his parents’ lab experiments. He had always been told they were solely responsible for the virus, that they were no better than serial killers. But there was no evidence that his parents created any virus, much less one as powerful as Medusa.
He rubbed his eyes with the heel of his hand, trying to remember his mother and father. Did they seem like killers? How do killers seem?
Although he remembered their faces clearly, his mother’s thin lips, his father’s absent eyes behind smudged glasses, their character, their true selves remained a mystery, enigmas in the place of guardians.
He had no disillusions that they were part of the reason he was so drawn to hacking. If your parents were psychopaths then who else out there was hiding something? Was there any security? Whenever he heard the word “secure” he always envisioned a wall made of a giant sponge. There were thousands of holes to worm his way through, he just had to find the right one. And sometimes, if he got stuck, all he would have to do was begin digging, and soon he’d chew his way through the pithy, “secure” wall. The world was not secure. It could not be trusted. One might think that because he was a hacker he’d be happy at finding so many holes, but on the contrary, the more he found, the more they reestablished his distrust. It was better to be aware of the holes out there and know how to manipulate them—the better for ensuring his own security.
Children of the Kradle (Trilogy Book 1) Page 36
