Falling Prey

by M. C. Norris

  “Paradoxes? That’s a pretty big word for a kid your age.”

  Peanut shrugged. “I like science fiction, and stuff like that. He and I both do. I mean, we did. We used to talk about that kind of stuff all the time.”

  “Tell me more about these paradoxes.”

  “Well, it’s like, if a theory results an impossibility, then that makes the theory itself impossible. That’s basically what a paradox is.”

  “Example?”

  “The one I used on Alex was the grandpa-assassination paradox.”

  “That sounds interesting.”

  “If you went back in time and killed your grandpa, then you’d cease to exist.”

  “Yeah.”

  “So, if you never existed to begin with, then you couldn’t have gone back in time to kill him, so that makes the whole scenario an impossibility. It could never happen.”

  “You guys are weird,” Tara said.

  “So, you’re saying that time travel is impossible because it creates impossible scenarios?”

  “Pretty much.”

  “Hmm.” Nate walked in silence for a while. They all did.

  “What if time’s not linear?” Tara asked.

  “What do you mean?”

  “I’m not even sure what I mean.”

  Nate cleared his throat. “Well, if you think of every moment in time as being a sequential number, with the first moment being one, then two, and so on, stretching out to infinity, then that would be an expression of time in a linear sense. If number ninety-nine jumps out of place, and goes back to erase number twenty-five, then it wipes out the whole row of numbers ahead of twenty-four.”

  “Exactly, making it impossible for number ninety-nine to ever have existed.”

  “Wait,” Tara said, “what if instead of time being one single thread of numbers, it’s just a whole mess of random numbers, floating all around in time like alphabet soup?”

  “That sounds nuts.”

  “Or, even better, what if there’s more than one universe?” Tara smiled.

  “Huh?”

  “What if when you travel through time, you’re not going back linearly, you’re dropping through crack between moments, and falling into a new layer? Then, you could kill grandpa, and return safely back to your own place in time.”

  “But grandpa would still be alive in your universe.”

  “Yes, he would. But, if your mission was to kill grandpa, then you successfully completed your mission, even if there’s a billion other copies of grandpa in a billion other universes.”

  “I think I like the linear idea better,” Peanut said. “It’s less messy.”

  “Fine, but even with the linear idea, there’s no paradox. If ninety-nine goes back and erases twenty-five, then he just wiped out his whole lineage. It’s not impossible. It’s just existential suicide. Ninety-nine existed. Even if no one ever knows that he existed, he did, right up until the moment that he took out all the preceding numbers with him.”

  “No witnesses.” Peanut grinned. “The perfect crime.”

  “Twenty-four saw everything,” Nate said.

  “But no one will ever believe him,” Tara said. “Everyone will think he’s nuts.”

  “I’m telling you, man,” Peanut said, waving his arms emphatically, “this evil number from the future came back in time, and he killed my son, right before my eyes!”

  Tara giggled.

  Nate found himself smiling for the first time in what felt like forever, even as they passed a mass of what was probably human entrails. For the first hour of their walk, he obsessed over every bit and piece, wondering if it was hers. Not anymore. Some part of him was starting to come to terms with what had happened. Kids were so resilient. Nate admired that about them. Maybe he could borrow a little of that resilience from them. “How many other kids were on your class trip?”

  Tara and Peanut glanced uncertainly at one another. “Fourteen, I think,” she replied.

  “I saw other people swimming to shore,” Peanut said. “Before the current started spreading us all out, I saw like twenty people, maybe more.”

  “I hope Maureen made it,” Tara whispered.

  Despite what they all knew was swimming offshore, and what stalked the island after dark, Nate was pretty certain that there were bound to be other survivors. The front half of the plane had simply disappeared. It had all happened so quickly. One second, it was there, and in the next, the tail end of the plane was disconnected, and shredding apart. There were at least nine rows of passengers in that section who could be accounted for at the moment they all plunged into the waves. Six people per row. Nine rows. Probably around fifty people. Despite all that had happened in the twenty-four hours following the crash, some of those people surely had to be alive.

  “Smoke!”

  Snapping out of his thoughts, Nate frowned in the direction that Peanut was pointing. Up ahead, the beach narrowed at the foot of a sheer limestone wall that gently curved into what appeared to be a secluded bay. Sure enough, rising skyward from around the blind corner was a wispy tendril of gray smoke.

  “Come on!” The teens began to run.

  “Hey, wait a minute.” Nate wasn’t sure why he felt inclined to rein them back. Just being protective. “Let’s keep our cool, and all walk in together.”

  “What’s wrong?” Tara asked.

  “Nothing’s wrong, really. We just don’t know what’s around that corner, you know?”

  “Might be cavemen,” Peanut whispered, grinning mischievously at Tara.

  “You’re a caveman.”

  “Ooga-booga. Me Tarzan. You Jane.”

  As they walked into the shadow of the overhang, Nate noticed all of the tracks in the sand. There were lots of human tracks, which would’ve been uplifting if it weren’t for the other tracks stamped over them. They were immense, with three splayed toes on each foot. He’d seen these tracks before, back on there on the beach where a shaggy beast had taken two lives. Everyone halted.

  “Howler,” Peanut whispered.

  The tracks were chaotic, running in both directions. It looked as though a howler had come through here in the night, paid these people an unwanted visit, and then returned to the jungle from which it came. The implications were grave. They’d seen what a howler could do to people in a matter of seconds, and this one hadn’t been stopped. It had come, done its thing, and had departed.

  “You guys,” Nate whispered, placing his hands on the kids shoulders, “I’m afraid that what we’re going to find around this corner might be—”

  “We know,” Peanut replied, “but obviously we have to go look.”

  The kid was right, of course, but Nate had a pretty good idea of the kinds of things that they were probably going to see. They’d seen quite enough already. Another crushing blow to their hopes was not what they needed today.

  From around the corner of the wall came a single cough.

  Their eyes widened. Tara gasped, and covered her mouth. Someone back there was still alive. Nate and the teens looked to one another in astonishment, hints of smiles spreading across their faces. All at once, they began to run.

  ###

  28-D

  The two sets of tracks terminated in a spot of strange activity, and then a single set of tracks continued on into the jungle. Hart stopped in the clearing, cocking his head at the smoldering embers in the little fire pit, the heap of clothing, and a bunch of charred bones. It didn’t make any sense. Those were Lonny’s clothes.

  Hart dabbed at the clustered eggs on his lips with the tip of his tongue, frowning down at the collection of weird artifacts. He didn’t suppose that Lonny was running around the jungle naked. The lone trail of departing footprints were those of the Marine. He couldn’t think of a reason why he’d be carrying Lonny unless the boy had been injured, which was possible. Hart prodded a blackened ribcage with the toe of his boot. It crumbled to pieces. The rest of the bones were mostly burned to ash. There was part of a jaw, and some teeth. Hart star
ed at the teeth, and he felt a dark suspicion begin to flare in the depths of his core.

  Why would the Marine have done that?

  He’d trusted that man. He’d entrusted that man with Lonny’s life, and this was what he’d gone and done? It just didn’t make any sense. It didn’t make any sense at all.

  As Hart lumbered along the trail of single footprints, he could feel his friends becoming restless. They were writhing in his mind, recalculating, as though they were alarmed by his darkening emotions, his willful shift toward an insubordinate propensity. His bullet wounds suddenly began to hurt again. The worms were threatening him by showing him that their symbiotic relationship could be dissolved, thereby returning him to a helpless state of agony. While Hart appreciated their position on this matter, there were just some things that a man had to do on his own. He could take the pain. He could take all the agony that his new masters could inflict, and then some.

  Hart bellowed into the jungle, gaining speed as he lurched along the trail. Eggs spilled from his lips on swinging tendrils of drool, but Hart didn’t care. His wounded leg was screaming with pain, but he didn’t care about that either. It was no longer the worms in control. Yeah, Hart was still going to bite him. He’d keep his end of the deal. But he might have to do much more than bite that man. He might just have to go far above and beyond delivering the small injury that the worms were ordering him to inflict.

  ###

  25-B

  Dale rose to his feet as a new man, and a couple of teenagers, came running without warning around the bend, and right into their camp. They were breathless, smiling, overflowing with obvious joy to have found some other survivors. However, once they noticed the mutilated hijacker, and what was left of Dr. Kimura, their smiles faded.

  Things had changed. Not that their camp was ever really a happy place, but after last night’s events, a pall had settled over them. The constant attention that their two patients required had not only reduced their able workers to alternating shifts of two, but unless something changed with the status of the injured men, they couldn’t relocate. They were stuck in this spot. Truth be told, he and Sandy were the only reliable hands in camp. He enjoyed Don-boy’s company, but the guy was not exactly cut out for hauling firewood. Neither was the backstabbing princess. She wasn’t cut out for much of anything but shaking her booty up on a stage, and after the stunt she’d pulled last night, the whole group had disowned her. Margot sat alone, shunned to the edge of the sea. There was no coming back from that one. She was dead to them.

  Donovan didn’t even sit up when the newcomers marched into camp. He didn’t move. Looked like he might be on the verge of having a stroke, if he hadn’t had one already. He’d just finished dragging in his third log of the day, and the effort had just nearly killed him. It was the heat, the hard labor, probably just being outdoors. He was passed out in the sand, sprawled in a patch of shadow with his arm flung over his eyes. The island had drained all the piss and vinegar right out of him.

  Dale was feeling a little whipped from hauling logs out of the jungle since dawn’s break. His arms were rubbed raw from the scaly bark of the local trees, and the fancy city shoes he’d hoped to wear through streets of Las Vegas were rubbing blisters all over his feet. He couldn’t cuss them enough.

  Sandy was the one to get up and greet the newcomers, of course. Dale was really starting to like her. She was a good girl, probably the best of the whole bunch. While everyone else was hightailing it, Sandy had stepped right up to face that woolybooger all on her own, and she’d whopped it right over the melon with a burning campfire log. Blistered her hands up something awful. Dale grinned, chortling to himself over the memory. When that thing ran off squalling into the night with its head all lit up like a torch … well, he guessed that was probably the damnedest thing he’d ever seen.

  Looked like Sandy was explaining the situation, gesturing to Dr. Kimura and the hijacker with her bandaged hands. She’d been nursing them all day, treating them according to Dr. Kimura’s specifications. Odds were, that man was never going to walk again. Dale had seen enough injuries in the logging woods to know when a man wasn’t apt to return, and the doctor’s mangled legs were the worse injuries he’d ever seen. That woolybooger had really worked him over. The doc really seemed to believe in that seaweed tea concoction of his, but Dale guessed it was going to take a lot more than a sip of that juice to keep him alive. If they didn’t get rescued pretty quickly, he didn’t expect that the doctor would have much chance of lasting for any longer than a week, before some terrible infection did him in. At some point, those rotten legs were going to have to come off.

  One of the teens handed something to Sandy, and then he turned, and started walking in Dale’s direction. Eyeballing him, Dale chewed on his stick, observing the boy’s awkward gait as he plodded through the sand. Kids his age always looked like they’d just learned to walk the day before yesterday.

  “Want a sack of peanuts?” the kid asked.

  “What’s your name?”

  “Peanut.”

  “I asked you your name.”

  “That is my name.”

  “Your name’s Peanut, and you’re handing out peanuts, too?”

  “My real name’s Matthew, but everybody calls me Peanut—because I like them.”

  “Well, damn, Peanut. I guess today’s your lucky day.” He accepted the sack of airline fare from the boy, smeared his palm on his hip, and extended his hand. “Thank ye kindly. I’m Dale.”

  “Welcome.” The kid shook his hand, and then looked down at the heap of airline packages in the paunch of his shirt. “I found them all along the beach this morning. Looks like I’ve probably got enough for everybody.” The kid smiled, nodded, and then ambled in Margot’s direction.

  “Uh-uh.” Dale reached out and caught him by the upper arm. He frowned and shook his head. “None for her.” He could see Margot staring hopefully in their direction, but he refused to look her way. “She don’t get no peanuts.”

  “Why?”

  “You see that little chewed-up Chinese feller over there?”

  “Yeah.”

  “She’s the one did that to him. On purpose.” Dale studied the kid’s face as he took it all in. “She don’t get no peanuts or soda. You hear me?”

  The kid nodded. “Yes, sir.”

  “Tell you what. You sneak on over there to that sleeping I-talian, and real careful, you just lay a sack of nuts right across his nose.” Dale grinned, and winked. “You tell him I sent you.”

  The kid gave an uneasy chuckle. “Okay …”

  Dale watched the kid the slogging off through the sand in the Donovan’s direction. If you couldn’t have just a little fun now and then, then what was even the point of living? He guessed he probably ought to go over and meet the neighbors. “No nuts for that one either!” he shouted after the boy, jabbing a finger in the direction of the hijacker.

  The hijacker was finally awake. He was sitting up for the first time since they’d dragged his sorry carcass into camp. When he turned his head, Dale met his eyes with an unwavering scowl. Dr. Kimura looked pretty pleased with himself. Despite his own grievous condition, he was eager to appraise the health of the criminal he’d managed to nurse back to health. None of that was going to matter if they didn’t get enough wood collected before sundown. Dale had a sneaking suspicion that there was more than one of those woolyboogers on the island, and if they didn’t stoke up a raging bonfire in the middle of that path, then more folks were bound to get chewed on. Thanks to Sandy’s selfless act, they’d managed to learn something pretty important: woolyboogers were flammable.

  All hands were gathering around the hijacker, who seemed to be suddenly alert and responsive. Dale greeted the new man, named Nate, who seemed cut of pretty good cloth, as well as the girl he had with him. Tara was a cute one, but probably just a little young. Hard to gauge ages when everyone’s face was covered with the same layer of grime. Sandy, as Dale could’ve anticipated, was already tryin
g to baby her hijacker, offering ol’ Skinhead a sip of her seaweed tea. “Come on, now,” Dale said, shifting his feet in the sand. “He’s a big boy. You don’t got to wait on him like that.”

  “He’s dehydrated,” she replied.

  “Y’all know who this is, don’t you?” Dale looked at each of the new faces in their camp. “You recognize him without ears and a nose? This here is one of them hijackers who blew up the plane.”

  “I didn’t blow up the plane.”

  “So, you can talk now. That’s good. Wonder what we ought to talk about?”

  “Leave him alone.”

  “You know what? I’ve done left him alone. I left him alone all damned night, but now I think it’s time this feller answered a few questions.”

  “You got that right.” Donovan strolled up beside Dale to stare the hijacker down.

  Nate squatted beside the man, studying his injuries with what appeared to be a morbid curiosity. “Who did these things to you?”

  The hijacker began to breathe heavily, clenching his fists. He seemed unready, or unwilling to recall that disturbing memory. “Listen to me. We’re in terrible danger here.”

  “No shit, Sherlock.” Donovan grinned, bobbing his head.

  “There are others here,” he said, his eyes peering through the caked blood, still glazed with the residual horror of whatever he’d been through, “and they’re not other survivors from the crash.”

  “Who are they?” Sandy asked.

  “They’re savages.” The hijacker stared into her eyes.

  “Tell us about what happened,” Nate said.

  “Some of the other passengers caught up to me in the jungle. Started beating me up. Tried to strangle me with a parachute cord.”

  “Good,” Dale muttered.

  “But, there was this U.S. Marine amongst them. A little shell-shocked maybe. He saw what they were doing to me, and he just kind of lost it. Took my gun, and turned it on himself. Stuck it right into his mouth.” His hands knotted into bloody fists, squeezed and relaxed, squeezed and relaxed. “But before he could pull the trigger, those others appeared. They came pouring out of the jungle, all around us.”