The mercenary hears his thud and turns back in a conditioned reflex. But the Asian guy is on the ground, he’s no longer a threat, while the others are fleeing. The armed man’s about to shift his aim when another scream calls him back.
“Take me!” Is the cry of a girl.
Aiko has seen Yu fall; she’s running with tears in her eyes, but instead of following the others in their escape, she goes to meet the man in black. “Take me!” she cries desperately. I won’t let him die alone.
The mercenary shoots again.
Burning nails into her chest.
From a distance, other voices. The backup is coming.
Aiko stomps and falls, feeling heavy like a boulder. She falls beside her Yu. Her last gaze is for him. She holds out her hand. Smiles to his glassy eyes.
Until my last breath.
It’s been only a few moments but they seem hours.
The others are out; they have crossed the line between horror and freedom.
Hideo leads the group. He has never been good at sports but has never run so fast in his entire life. Fah is on his heels, he has long legs and good lungs.
The girls are a little behind.
Sophie runs with her brown hair blowing in the wind, whipping her cheeks; she holds Aruna by the hand. The shots resound behind them. Aruna squeezes her fingers until it hurts, and suddenly it becomes increasingly difficult to drag her along.
Aruna falls. Loses her grip.
Sophie turns, stops. She sees her friend on the ground who tries to get up, coughing. Spitting blood.
She would like to take her, help her up, but a couple of strong hands grab her, drag her away.
They’re sticky, and leave red stains on her arm. Sophie is confused, disoriented.
“Run!” yells Sasha, to make her come to her senses. He pulls her with violence.
Sophie feels the tears burn in her eyes. Fear, confusion. She squints to free herself from the image of her friend.
There’s no time, the mercenaries are shooting on sight. There’s nothing else to do. And Sasha is too strong to oppose him.
She follows him in the race.
She sees him panting, limping, but not giving up. He too is injured. Sophie tries to focus on him, between a stride and the other, she sees the blood on his lips, yet he seems to feel nothing. As if nothing happened, they keep running; they enter the greenery surrounding the school.
It’s a real jungle.
24. Out There
“Alpha One. A few students have left the perimeter,” his voice betrays the embarrassment of the moment. “I ask permission to leave my position...”
“Go get them, dammit!” yells the leader.
Other men have reached him, recalled by the gunfire.
After exchanging gestures, they go on pursuit.
Running at breakneck speed between the dense vegetation, the students move in a zigzag pattern to confuse their tracks.
It’s like in her vision, Sophie fleeing in the wilderness. But she doesn’t feel light and free at all.
Sasha’s sticky grip doesn’t leave her, but now the boy seems to breathe better and run straighter. How the hell did he do?
“Which way do we go?” she asks, all that green makes her lose orientation.
“This way, to the coast,” responds Hideo slowing down, looking over his shoulder to see if anyone is following them.
They go on and on, their muscles in agony, burning lungs, to the exhaustion.
They are young and fit, how long can they run?
The mercenaries scatter in the jungle, they have lost sight of them and are now looking for tracks through the low bushes, footprints in the soft earth, broken leaves, everything can be a trail.
Hideo stops to catch his breath, leans against the trunk of a tropical plant, it seems a safe place for the moment, and they all need to breathe, to rest their legs, except for Sasha, who seems he could run forever. He’s the champion of athletics at the school. Yet at that moment it all seems so irrelevant, there is no school where to return.
“Where do we go now? How do we leave the island?” asks Sophie with her messy face, soiled with sweat and tears.
They didn’t think this out in their brilliant plan.
“We have to find a boat,” says Hideo. “We’ll go to the bay; there will surely be a boat.” He’s so desperate and confused that he sounds almost convincing.
Fah nods and believes him unconditionally. Sasha is silent; he looks around to see if someone is coming.
Sophie trembles. Collapses to her knees. Because the awareness has caught her, sudden and sharp as the blade of a knife stuck in her chest.
We’ll never make it.
“Let’s go! Come on!” says Fah and seems excited. What else can they do?
They look at each other in silence, breathe deeply and then it’s time to move again. This time they walk, they will do less noise for sure. They have a couple of miles of travel before reaching the coast.
The wind rustles through the leaves. They can’t tell whether it’s just the wind or something else. They must go forward. Fah turns back, smiling, to make sure that Hideo is following him. A shot echoes in the forest. And he remains like that, motionless, with a smile on his face and a hole in his forehead. Unaware until the last second, the dear Fah. He collapses to the ground.
Sophie shouts a desperate cry.
“Let’s run!” Screams Hideo, without taking the time to commiserate his poor friend, and begins to run like crazy through the trees. The team spirit has gone to hell, everyone thinks for himself.
Instead, Sasha grabs again Sophie; he has this natural instinct to protect her, perhaps because she’s cute or maybe just because she looks so frightened and helpless. This time, he doesn’t need to insist too much to make her move.
But now the mercenaries have found them, and they’re trained, and have good lungs too.
Now there are no more black shadows, but open-faced men, with facial expressions and eyes wide in the agitation of the moment. The tall and massive one behind Hideo is an African with his head shaved; he reaches him in a few strides, grabs him and makes him fall, landing on him.
Hideo hears a crack of something breaking inside him, a sharp pain in the arm with which he tried to absorb his fall; he’s lacking some air and an unbearable burden oppresses him. In his head the awareness that his life has come to an end. His last stupid thought is not even a real thought, it’s merely an observation of the smell of sweat of that foreign body. He waits for a gunshot or a stabbing but none of this happens. Two large, calloused hands grab him for his forehead and shoulders; a sudden jerk.
Snap.
And the world breaks in the dark.
Sophie stumbles into one of those damn tropical plants that grow everywhere and trap your feet as if the forest never wants you to leave.
She collapses to the ground, bruising her elbows, slamming her nose into the damp earth.
Sasha’s mind shouts him two contrasting alternatives: leave her there and run away or stop and help her.
What’s the point in continuing alone?
So the Russian stops and reaches out for the American girl.
But two mercenaries are already there. One each.
Sasha wonders how it’s going to happen this time.
Sophie instead hasn’t noticed anything, because now that tingling is back and her mind is filled with a new vision. Now she knows how it’s really going to end. She raises her face toward the boy, gives him a half smile, before a burst from behind smashes to pieces her cerebral cortex.
Sasha closes his eyes as the first shots begin to pierce his chest. He falls down.
So it really ends this way?
25. Future & Hope
A sickening smell, pungent, irritating, tortures his nostrils.
Not again. Stop. I had enough.
How many times do I have to die today?
But it’s not the smell of blood and dead bodies, it’s more penetrating, almost familiar,
it makes him think of home, the cabin in the woods, dad’s old truck. It’s smell of fuel.
Sasha returns conscious, sore but alive. He knows that his body has regenerated. A fucking miracle that seems more like a curse. He’s again in the school gym. They brought them back.
Next to him are all his escaped classmates: Sophie, Hideo, Fah, Aruna. However, they no longer breathe.
The stench of petrol is nauseating, but why... and then return to his mind the words – the thoughts – of Yu. They’re going to burn down the gym.
From the entrance, someone throws a match.
Shit.
The fire spreads immediately. Just a few seconds and the flames flare up, hungry. The students’ bodies light up like paper dolls.
No, anything but that. I don’t want to burn alive.
Sasha wants to run away, but he can’t risk being spotted on the move, they’ll shoot him again.
He crawls away from the others, retreating toward the bleachers.
The fire has followed the trail of the fuel and now surrounds him, the flames have become higher and roaring, it looks like a live animal.
Behind him, the path leading to the locker room opens like a tunnel toward salvation.
But in between there are the bodies of his classmates in flames. He will have to pass through them.
Now or never.
Sasha gets up and sprints, he leaps into the fire. The petrol they poured on him does its job and in a second he becomes the Human Torch. He would make a great attraction in the Russian circus.
The heat is intense, unbearable; the fire consumes his spring uniform and begins to gnaw his skin. And God how it burns.
Sasha runs, crying in pain, but the fire dries his tears even before he can spill them.
I can’t stop now.
He enters the locker room, slips into the shower. He’s limping, about to faint.
I can make it.
He grabs the handle blindly, turns it fully open.
A shower of cold water falls on him, liberating.
From Hell to Heaven in two easy steps.
Sasha collapses on the tiles and lets the cold water kiss and wash him for an infinite time, until the burning becomes almost sweet and he’s cradled to unconsciousness.
He stays there until the night falls, until his skin is back anew.
The fire is out, it didn’t reach the back. He doesn’t care what’s left of the gym.
He changed clothes – since his were reduced to shreds – with those found in a locker. They belonged to someone from class 2A who was at gym class when it all started.
It’s time to say goodbye to the school, although a few months in advance.
It’s been some time now; he no longer hears any noise. Probably the mercenaries are gone. What would be the point on guarding a building full of corpses on a remote island in the middle of the Pacific?
Maybe they are housed in the dormitory area, provided they have still something to do there. Maybe they’re enjoying the tropical wonders after work.
Sasha slips out through the same window. Another déjà vu. Honestly he’s tired of repeating the same things over again, and hopes to get out of that infinite loop of death.
He walks sneaky in the quiet courtyard; the gate is closed. He wonders why close the gate now that no one is left, but actually doesn’t care. With patience, he climbs on it, jumping to the other side. He resumes his way through the tropical jungle.
This time there is no one who pursues him – he can walk peacefully.
He feels drained, while the humidity of the night caresses his skin, yet his body is like new, his uniform spotless, just a little tight around the shoulders, and short at the bottom of the pants, after all it’s not his size. The only sign of all he’s gone through is his burned hair, but even that is not a problem, it will grow back.
The only thing that will never get fixed is the scar he’s going to carry at the bottom of his heart.
At the end of the walk, before him opens the ocean at night, as black as ink.
He’s come on top of a cliff.
And now?
He can’t stay on the island. He doesn’t want to stay on the island. But there are no boats which can take him elsewhere.
For a moment, he wonders how would it feel ending up in the belly of a shark and a shiver runs through his spine.
And then he realizes that, in the end, dying is not that bad, and after a while you get used to it. So he makes a couple of steps into the void and a flight of too many feet, and dives into the ocean, which welcomes him into its cold embrace. He begins to swim, and then, who knows.
A few days later, on the coasts of Babuyan, the ocean has spat back a white boy.
His name is Aleksandr, Sasha for his friends, but he hasn’t any, and speaks a good English. He comes from a school that no longer exists and is the only witness to a massacre that the world will never know.
He’s not a hero, even if he survived four times. He doesn’t even know why, maybe a matter of genes.
He doesn’t know what he would do, he doesn’t know where he will go.
Of only two things is sure Sasha: he’s alive, and he can’t die.
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Tropical Weird Page 6
