Paradise: An Apocalyptic Novel (12 page)

Amanda had her weapon loaded and aimed near where she thought Baxter was—although, in the smoke, it was anyone’s guess where she was pointed—but he’d already proven to be a decent shot. She made her peace with that, and stepped into the moonlit field first, bullets roaring from the barrel of her gun.

No cover fire would be necessary, though.

A lick of flame erupted from the direction of the homestead, throwing an orange glow across the greenery. At least, that’s where it looked like it came from—although Amanda couldn’t be sure.

She just screamed at everyone behind her, and they ran. This was the cover they needed. Nothing nipped at their heels, and they dove into the jungle just as the field behind them erupted in an orange glow of its own, metal creaking and scraping as the windmills dropped to the ground.

“Hell of a show,” Pierre said in a weak voice, the entire jungle ensconced in orange light, “now what?”

“Now we find another way off this place,” Amanda said, and she brushed herself off before stepping forward, back towards the homestead.

Part 4

13

Scorched Earth

The group made
it back to the homestead within a couple hours, following Amanda and Cooper’s path. The scent of burnt timber and ruined crops hung in the air. The ground still smoldered.

“That bastard,” Clara said as they stepped into the house, “he’s all around.”

“Who,” Amanda asked, setting Bobby down.

“Baxter, maybe. Or the others. Silver.”

Pierre stumbled on to the bed and fell asleep. Melina dressed his wounds and tended to his fevered brow. He’d be all right—if no one bothered him for a while. That seemed like a luxury that the group didn’t have.

Jackson had recovered, however.

“How’d it go,” he asked, eyes scanning the group. Their eyes turned toward the ground, and the lack of Captain Cooper told them about all he needed to know.

“The windmills are gone,” Amanda said, unslinging the rifle from her shoulder. “What happened to the crops? The ground outside looks ruined.”

“We know. We nailed one, though.” Penelope. That chick was tough, even if her diminutive frame suggested a cool breeze could break her in two.

“You see who they were?” Clara.

“They’re out there, if you’d like to check.”

Clara exited, and the group sat in silence until she returned.

“Stella.” She sounded a little bummed about it; not unexpected, since she’d lived with her for the past four years.

“How many of you are there?” Amanda asked, glancing up from the rifle she was cleaning.

“On the mainland? Hundreds.”

“What about here?”

“Me. Bobby.”

“You don’t count.”

Clara leaned against the door frame. “Stella, Silver, Baxter—the guy sniping at us.”

“Only two of you left, huh?”

“Baxter and Silver, they’re not…normal.”

Jackson stood up, still unsteady from his illness. He walked towards Clara, and took her hands in his own.

“The Ambrosia,” he whispered, like it was some dirty secret that could only be mentioned in hushed tones.

“Yeah.”

“They’ve been exposed.”

“Most people die, but them, they…”

“We’ve seen the animals,” Amanda interjected, finished with her cleaning duties. “They’re strong, smart.”

“And they were smart before,” Clara said, like the group didn’t understand the ramifications. They didn’t—couldn’t, without living with the two men.

“And Stella?”

“She’s normal, like me. Like us.” She gestured towards her sleeping boy. His face was no longer the color of holly berries; a good sign. “She was.”

“Can we fight them?”

“Baxter, maybe. Silver…he’s different. I don’t think so. No.”

“Then we figure out how to run,” Amanda said, a grim smile stretching across her lips. “Let’s get some rest. Who’s got first watch?”

“I’ll take it,” Penelope said.

“Go with her,” Amanda said, shoving a rifle into Melina’s arms, “and don’t get blown away.”

“Yes ma’am,” Melina said, and the two disappeared.

It’d been hours.
A swath of flames had spread across the island. The lights had flickered and died. Still, Silver hadn’t come in. The wait was killing Maverick.

“Your girl hasn’t come back,” Josephine said, stating the obvious. She hadn’t learned her lesson, but Maverick was too anxious to be angry. His palms dripped sweat, and his heart hammered a furious, inconsistent beat.

“She got help.”

“Or got killed. Looks pretty warm out there.”

“Maybe.”

Silence. Maverick messed with the radio, but the same message was still playing. He had to find a way off the island. The yacht, if Penelope was done for, that was off limits, a lost cause. Outside, the sounds of feral beats—and that infernal hound—interrupted his thinking.

The Emergency Kit.

He hadn’t thought of it in years. The spare boat, it was hidden in a cover, some seven or eight miles away. Now, to remember where he’d left the jeep…

No need; the sound of tires and an engine was his answer. Someone was driving it up to the front of the house. Footsteps. Maverick peeked out the window, but couldn’t make anything out.

Then, his door swung open.

“Maverick,” Silver said, and Maverick didn’t need to wheel around to remember that voice, hardened by years of bitterness and jungle survival.

“I was wondering when I’d see you.”

“I’m touched.” And that was the last thing that Maverick heard before a powerful fist raced through the air, connecting with his jaw.

“What do you
see?”

Penelope glanced over at Melina, who was tapping her foot against the dirt in the makeshift foxhole. Penelope had no response. She just shrugged.

“What, so you’re not going to talk?”

“About?” Penelope was all business right now, her eyes scanning the horizon over and over.

“What happened out here?”

“They came from there and there,” Penelope said, pointing a well-manicured finger towards various croppings of trees. “We popped the girl, but the big guy, he was too much.”

“Baxter? How’d he beat us back?” Melina peered into the distant trees, as if they held the answer.

“If you’d been living in this hellhole for four years, wouldn’t it be a little easier to get around?”

“Yeah.” The conversation stalled, and the cool night air nipped at their extremities. Melina shivered, pulling her thin jacket closer to her skin.

“There.” Penelope said fifteen, maybe twenty minutes later, passing the field glasses to Melina. “You see that?”

She saw it, all right: the unmistakable form of a dinosaur-like animal, massive, low to the ground, slinking through the ruined field. With the power out for good, and the animals—at least the smarter, Ambrosia-juiced varieties—had started to figure that out.

“Wh-what is it?”

“Trouble,” Penelope said, loading her rifle with a
click
that shattered the cool silence. Melina could see the beast stop. She would have sworn it knew the noise. “Let’s go.” Penelope dragged Melina away from the hole.

“We aren’t going to shoot it?” Melina didn’t want to share the island with it.

“Maybe if we want to die. We need to tell the others.”

“It’s just an alligator,” Melina said, even if her tone said otherwise.

“It’s a hell of a lot more than that,” Penelope said, her tone resigned, “more than a porn star and a junior associate can handle.”

“Former.” Even under the circumstances, that seemed important for Melina to point out

“Let’s just go.” The pair shuffled off towards the house, Melina glancing through the glasses every few steps to see if the beast was coming closer. It seemed happy with its post, although she didn’t understand why. Like it was plotting something.

She shook off the thought and quickened her pace.

14

False Idols

“You see, Maverick,”
Silver said, leaning up against the wall, cool-like, cigar dangling from his lips, “vengeance is a real bitch.” He breathed deep. “I missed these. Cubans, are they?”

“You’re dead.” Maverick knew that Silver wasn’t—his broken jaw told him that much—but sometimes it’s hard to let things go.

“Part of me, I suppose,” Silver said, blowing a thick ring of smoke towards his pepper-haired prisoner, “but then, not most of me.”

“You’re goddamn insane.”

“That,” Silver said with a laugh, “is the first sense you’ve made. We’re
both
goddamn insane.”

“I’m not.”

“Killing us all instead of taking the heat?”

“It would’ve been a PR nightmare.” The words felt slimy, inconsequential now that the world’s very survival was in question.

“And what kind of nightmare do you suppose this is,” Silver said, leering down close, close enough for Maverick to feel his hot, stale breath, “tell me.”

“Hell.”

Silver sprung in the air, startling Josephine, who let out a little mouse-like squeak, but otherwise was doing her best to maintain a demure and invisible position.

“Well, now, don’t get all biblical on me, John. What is this, then? A plague of locusts?”

“I don’t know. I stopped reading scripture years ago.”

“Maybe that’s where we both went wrong,” Silver said, almost to himself. “No matter.” He got up to leave.

“What are you going to do?”

“Nothing worse than we haven’t already. There’s a new world out there. Haven’t you heard?” Silver’s eyes told Maverick that he knew. Knew he’d heard the radio broadcast. Maybe even knew about the spare boat.

“Don’t leave me here.”

“That would be cruel, wouldn’t it?” Silver let the irony cling to the air, like the scent of spring on a breezy day. “Don’t worry. You’ll have company soon enough.”

He closed the door behind him and Maverick was once again alone. His hands were shaking, hairs standing on end.

“We have to get out of here,” he said. Josephine didn’t respond. “He won’t just let us die.”

“No?” Josephine’s voice indicated that she didn’t like the sound of that.

“It’ll be worse.”

Maverick huddled up against the bed and rocked back and forth, too worried to even feel the throbbing in his jaw.

“You,” Silver said,
wagging his long-scoped rifle at Cole, like a teacher would to an offending student, “you’re a particular type of evil. Selling out your comrades? Your associates? That’s the worst.”

Although Silver’s grin was wry, the weight of his words could be felt; treachery, above all else, was unacceptable to him.

“I just wanted—”

“And now what?” Silver was still the only one at the mansion from Ambrosia Team. Britt, Davey, Abel, Bebe and Mandy sulked off to the side. He was just one man. Maybe they could take him, if they hadn’t let themselves be trussed up to the fireplace like dogs outside a store. So they listened and watched.

The old man removed his glasses and ran his hands through his wiry hair. He looked twenty years older than his birth certificate now, and his breath was labored. His heart couldn’t handle the stress, or maybe it was an act. Silver didn’t care; he waited, arms crossed, for a reply. Unmoving.

“And now we’re here,” Cole said.

“That is poetic,” Silver said, “you make it sound as if fate led you here.”

“Greed.”

“What was that?”

“It was greed. Ego,” Cole said louder, regaining a little temerity, “all that’s bad in man.”

“Now we’re getting somewhere. Although you, like your boss, are getting a little religious on me, don’t you think? Seven deadly sins and what not. I swear,” Silver said, walking over to the rest of the group, “it’s like we’re holding Sunday school.”

“He’s not my boss.”

“Ah, there it is. No more moralizing and grandstanding. I like it. This was about man-made things. Constructs, false idols.”

“Yes.”

“And what do you think a fair punishment for such transgressions is,” Silver said, hoisting the old man up by his lapels.

“I don’t know.” Cole’s voice was soft, his pupils the size of pins.

“He doesn’t know,” Silver announced, dropping him back down into the chair, “he doesn’t know. But he knew enough to help me. That he did, and I thank you for it. But the cost, the cost, the cost. My, my.”

“What’s your punishment,” Cole said, teeth gritted, the little bit of courage left in his body fighting against the fear, “what will that be?”

“Don’t you worry about that. It’s coming.”

Silver brought a pistol up to Cole’s head and pulled the trigger. The others gasped, shouted, shrieked, with the exception of Bebe, who looked onwards with a blank stare.

Silver walked over to her and slit her ropes.

“You’re an interesting one.”

“Just like anyone else,” she said, and that was the end of the exchange. He shoved a pistol into her hands, and motioned towards the rest of them. She knew what to do.

No one said anything as she lead them up the stairs and into Maverick’s makeshift holding cell.

“You have company now,” she said, before she locked the door behind her and shoved an antique mahogany dresser against the knob.

Outside, more dogs could be heard; when the group looked out the window, they could see German Shepherds pacing about in a makeshift pen, right below them. There would be no more escapes from this room; they were trapped.

“So,” Maverick said, after a long pause, final cigar in hand, “how would you rate your former employer? Better than me?”

The room stayed silent. Cowardice had failed them, but it was all most of them knew. Bad choices have the tendencies to become habits, traits, character attributes. They could not save themselves; they didn’t know how.

Maverick sighed, looking up at the endless blue sky. If only he could fly.

If only.

The night passed
on the homestead without the alligator—or any of its mutant friends—blitzing the small cabin. But that was just a matter of luck; it would be sooner, rather than later, when the native beasts would come and attack.

“The
Emergency Kit
,” Jackson said, “it’s our only way off this damn island.”

Amanda looked at him. “I know where it is.”

“What’s an emergency kit?” Clara asked.

“A spare boat.” Jackson said. Clara’s features darkened; she’d spent four years marooned on this island, and there’d been a hidden way off the entire time.

Amanda unfurled a well-worn, large-scale map on the weathered wooden tabletop and pointed at a cove. Pierre was still resting, but the rest of their small force—or ragtag troop—huddled around, straining to see what she was talking about.

“That’s over six miles,” Melina said, her voice a whisper, “we’ll never make it.”

“There’s a jeep at the main house,” Amanda said, jabbing a finger at the part of the map where
The Hideaway
was scrawled next to a large X, “we’ll need it.”

“Even with the five of us, Baxter, Silver, they know this jungle. It’s a longshot.” Clara bounced Bobby on her knee as she said this—caught between the sweet and sour of life, all at once.

There was no rallying cry about being the underdog, or hoots of
screw that, we’ll take them out
. No one was a soldier; the closest thing they had was Clara, and she was just a mother thrust into a crucible.

“The grids are all down, which means the animals will be roaming free,” Jackson started, tracing a finger over the curls of the map, “a straight shot to either place won’t work.” The group watched his finger arc over the rough paper. “So we head here.”

It was empty, uncharted. Just part of the jungle.

“There’s nothing there,” Penelope said, stating the obvious.

“See this,” Jackson said, drawing an imaginary line between the river and the no-man’s land spot, “that’s an incline. High ground.”

“We’re going to make a stand,” Melina asked, pacing about, “I thought—”

“It’s only a mile away. Our best shot. We get eyes on these guys, see them coming, maybe we can hold everything off. We’re screwed down here in the valleys.”

“Valley? This doesn’t look like a valley.” Penelope again.

“Penny,” Jackson said, directing his gaze into her young, burning eyes, “it is when you’re trying to win a war.”

“So that’s what we’re doing now?”

“That’s what we were doing all along.”

Everyone shuffled off to busy themselves in preparation while Jackson hung over the map, finger still on the spot that might become their permanent resting place.

“We outnumber them.”
Britt had regained a little of his composure, and was now suggesting stupid ideas to the rest of the group.

“Stop.” Davey.

“What do you mean?”

A slap told Britt what he meant. He yelped a little bit in surprise, but shut up. He knew when his ideas weren’t wanted. Outside, the dogs still stalked, back and forth, back and forth. They smelled the fear, wanted to be nearby when it was available to chomp down on, devour.

“We’re gonna die in here,” Mandy said through sniffles and smeared mascara. She wasn’t cut out for this; she’d just won a vacation.

Maverick’s last cigar had dwindled into a stub, which he tried to suck on, holding it between his front teeth. No relief was coming, but the action made him feel better, anyway. He looked about at his crew; they were his, once again—that much was apparent.

Josephine. She was useless, but wanted to live. That, by itself, was of great utility.

Davey. Strong. A little dumb, but strong.

Britt. Basketcase, coward. Would turn over on them in a second.

Mandy. Fragile, pampered.

Abel. A real son of a bitch.

And Maverick. Maverick contemplated his blurb, what his company bio would read in this situation. Billionaire turned skill-less detainee? Handsome adventurer, unfit for survival in the brave new world? Sexual dynamo that could be used to repopulate the human race—if people had a demand for babies who cleaned up their problems by mass murder, cover-ups and copious narcotics?

He shook his head. No.

Leader.

A sawing noise came from the hallway. The group perked up, curious and a little fearful of what was about to happen. A tiny slit appeared in the door, at eye level, with two whites staring through, obscured by a gas mask.

“A present for you,” Bebe said, before shoving a canister through the door and dashing down the hall. “From Ambrosia Team.”

“The hell is that—” Britt yelled, but the thing began spraying and spewing a noxious, pollen-ish substance, causing the group to cough and gag.

It took about a minute before it finished.

“What just happened?” Mandy
said, her voice small.

“I think we’re all infected,” Maverick said, glancing at the canister. It had a smiley face with its tongue out on it, with the words
Ambrosia Team
scrawled in a hyper-stylized font. “Assholes even have their own logo.”

No one said anything until Maverick spoke.

“It’s time to leave this place.”

Downstairs, Silver and
Bebe were at the table, eating whatever leftovers were available.

“I remember this,” Silver said, “this place is paradise.”

“Lost,” Bebe replied, watching him eat, “Paradise lost.”

“Yes, I suppose so.”

“Why not just shoot them?”

Silver’s eyes came up from his plate, gleaming brighter than his namesake. “Because,” he said, before stuffing the rest of a cold lobster tail in his mouth, “now they’ll know how I feel.”

“The pain?”

“The hate,” he said, before returning to his food, “that comes from the pain.”

Bebe adjusted the mask on her face and considered her options. The plastic made her nose itch, but that was better than the alternative, from the sound of it. This Silver guy was a whole new class of whackjob. He’d never lead the New World Order or whatever he was babbling on about.

Not that she wanted to be head honcho, either. She glanced over at Cole’s prone form. No, leaders seemed to get dead.