The Second Wave (19 page)

His voice resonated through the tunnel system
before it faded away, not more than a distorted sound in the
distance. He chuckled.

Something yowled in the tunnel. It sounded
like a furious wolf-howl.

“What was that?” Carl tried to sound casual,
yet failed miserably at it.

“Let’s find out.” Timothy gave another shout,
this time in the direction they thought they had heard the first
yowl come from. It was followed by a second one. One that sounded
just a bit closer to them than the first one. And then deep,
guttural growling. Carl hissed. He almost dropped his torch in a
panic. “Let’s get out of here now!”

This time, Timothy sounded nervous. “Do you
remember when the captain said there were these, um, dogs living in
the forest?” Without waiting for Carl to reply to that, he answered
his question himself by adding, “I don’t think they live in the
forest.”

The growl morphed into many growls and
finally a howl. The noises were definitely coming closer. If there
were dogs living in the tunnel system, they sounded understandably
irritated for being disturbed in their own domain.

“Great insight, Tim. Let’s run!”

They fled up the stairs. Not a moment too
soon: they heard the beasts galloping towards them. Many of
them.

Timothy drew his gun.

* * * *

At the same time Carl and Timothy faced a
group of determined dogs, Simon Jones faced a group of determined
employees in the workmen’s barracks. The men had gathered around
foremen Ueno, who acted as a spokesperson for the occasion.

The angry mob had awaited Simon Jones when he
came to his office in the morning, all crossed arms and furrowed
brows.

“A temple?” he asked, already fed up with the
conversation they were having. They could have cleared up another
square mile of the woods by this hour, but, no, the men were on
strike for the time being. There were few words to sum up Simon’s
frustration.

“This place needs to be cleansed from evil
spirits,” Ueno told him. He looked like a very determined man.

“Right,” one of the men piped up. “The forest
is cursed!”

Simon looked at him with utter contempt in
his eyes. Superstitious workers. He felt a headache coming on.
“Cursed?” He managed to make every single letter of the word drip
with disdain.

Ueno, arms crossed, nodded earnestly. “First
the beasts, then Dr. Chang. Now the unholy ground. It must be a
curse.”

“The Gods are punishing us for not building a
temple for them earlier!” Erik agreed.

Simon gave a sigh, “The beasts are just big
poodles. And Dr. Chang’s death was an accident.”

Dr. Chang was bitten by a poisonous spider
whilst stripping the flesh from the mutated dog’s carcass to clean
the bones. The spider lived in an eye socket and jumped at the vet,
furious at the sudden intrusion. Dr. Chang was highly allergic to
spider venom, his death was instant.

“And what unholy ground?” Simon wanted to
know. “What idiocy is that?”

“The lair in the hill,” explained Ueno, who
wasn’t usually this talkative. “We found it yesterday.”

The men piped up. “It’s huge, and there are
strange markings on the walls.”

“Yeah. Really strange markings. And an altar
of sorts.”

“Yeah. A really strange altar!”

“Look,” Simon tried with exhausted patience.
“I told you, we’re demolishing that hill anyway to make way for the
road. So this lair, or whatever it may be, won’t be bothering you
after tomorrow.”

He couldn’t have anticipated the uproar his
words caused, or he would have spoken more carefully. The men all
talked at once. Eternal consequences, Simon heard, entrance to the
Underworld. Only Jupiter could save them, Ueno declared, they’d
need to start building a temple right away; everything else could
wait; and no demolishing of unholy grounds that might still be
haunted by livid spirits, because, obviously, that was a
sacrilege.

No religious workforce next time, Simon
decided. But it was no use arguing, and he couldn’t just send the
men back to Earth—the wormhole wasn’t due to open for another week.
A temple it was, then.

He already regretted his decision to work on
the whole colonization project—he could be in his house in Haiti
right now, making love to his deliciously young girlfriend, who was
probably already looking for an ersatz provider.

* * * *

It was a general mood of fear, panic and
confusion to which John, Eugenia and Sally returned from their
outing to the waterfall. The dogs from the tunnels had chased the
group of scientists and Mayor Rochester around the woods for a
while; the protectors took three of them out, before the rest of
the pack finally withdrew. No one got hurt, not even the beasts,
for they had only stunned them, but the shock sat deep with the
settlers. A pack of ferocious dogs in the forest wasn’t a
comforting thought. Neither was the news that the three stunned
animals were gone by the time a team around Dr. Paige and Captain
Eleven wanted to collect them for studying, despite the fact that
the stunners could have taken out an ox for two days.

Simon reluctantly agreed to suggest the
temple idea at the agora the next night, and the workmen agreed to
maybe only be on strike until then.

The news that the waterfall had ceased to
exist only added to the settlers’ distressed disposition. It made
the rounds quickly. Eleven sent Gavin and Sally into the mountains
to investigate, but they radioed back in the evening with the
message that the fount had dried up. This meant the river was going
to dry out as well and quickly, leaving the colony with no energy;
there was no contingency power station.

Mayor Rochester paced up and down his living
room, only just recovering from the dog chase, brainstorming with a
group of the villagers about how to avoid a catastrophe. Eliseo and
a handful of others headed out to search for another river, but
returned later that night with no news. Creeks and small streams
existed in abundance, but none of them big enough to power a hydro
station.

Simon Jones stayed up all night to hastily
sketch out a solar array they might be able to patch together
quickly to ensure at least a minimum amount of energy. He didn’t
know who was going to build it, though, as his employees were very
clear about their demands: the temple was paramount.

* * * *

Eugenia couldn’t sleep that night. She lay in
her bed with wide open eyes and stared into darkness. She couldn’t
help but listen to her people’s thoughts. It was her fault. If she
hadn’t almost drowned, the water would have felt no need to
withdraw, it was only protecting her after all. But until everyone
was asleep she didn’t feel strong enough to think clearly about it,
she only felt guilty. She was, after all, their Goddess, even
though they didn’t view her as such. It was her duty to protect,
not to harm. Alas, all her thinking didn’t amount to anything; she
didn’t know the right course of action. She only watched. As long
as she could think back that was all she had ever done. Maybe it
had been her mistake in the first place. Maybe that was why
everyone had left: because she hadn’t done enough for them.

When her thoughts began chasing each other’s
tails, she decided it was no use to ponder this issue by herself.
She got up and quietly sneaked outside.

The night was cold and the village was a
chaotic cacophony of dreams, wishes, desires, and nightmares. As
her people were asleep, their souls opened up and their feelings
lay bared, drifting through the universe at an unimaginable speed,
before they would return with their first blink, heavy with
memories that would fade quickly in the light of day.

Eugenia walked through the anarchy of the
villagers’ dreamscapes as if through a fog. Sometimes she barely
saw the ground beneath her feet, so dominant was a desire she
accidentally encountered, which made her stop and catch her breath.
They felt so much, all of them, and all at once, it was almost
impossible to navigate through the accumulated images of their
dreams. Some of the dreams happy, untroubled, some of them laden
with memories of past mistakes. It took her nearly half an hour to
reach the house with the number twenty-three painted on it.

The door was unlocked, but once inside it
took her a long time to find John through the nightmare she
stumbled into. Fearsome beasts lurked in it. Malicious creatures
that devoured everything. The horror she felt was real, even though
the danger wasn’t; the creatures weren’t there anymore, but their
shadows never left.

John was on the sofa, entangled in slumber,
rolled up in a woollen blanket. Lying in the only ray of moonlight
that shone through the window. He snored.

She knelt down beside him to shake his
shoulder. “Listen,” she whispered urgently. “It’s my fault.”

No reaction. John simply slept on.

“I need to do something. John. Listen.”

At last one eyelid snapped open. He made a
growling sound, then gave a sigh. “Crazy girl.” He said it as if it
was the answer to every imaginable suffering in the universe. The
eye closed again.

“Listen. John.”

“Go away.”

“It’s my fault!”

“There’s no fault,” he replied drowsily,
already slipping back into sleep, “only fate.”

But Eugenia insisted. Not only because she
felt she had to stop him from resuming his nightmare, but also
because she needed an answer. “Do you really need the water in the
river?”

This time he opened both eyes, more slowly
than she thought was even possible. “You came here in the middle of
the night to ask me that?” he mumbled with a bleak voice. She
nodded. He blinked.

“Yes. We need the river. Now sleep.” With
that he closed his eyes. He stretched out an arm, raising one
corner of the blanket like an invitation. When she didn’t react, he
grumbled impatiently, prompting her to scurry under the cover with
him. She felt his arm wrap around her waist and his body rearrange
itself around hers. The warmth of the blanket and his body made her
realize how cold it was outside. Her body gave an involuntary
shiver. His arms tightened around her.

“Your voice sounds funny when you’ve just
woken up.”

“Go to sleep.”

“You have no bed?”

“Shush.”

“I think it’s my fault the water
disappeared.”

“If you don’t shut your mouth right now, I
will seal it for you.”

She chuckled. “A mouth cannot be seal—” but
he stopped her mid-sentence by placing a finger over her lips.

His breath was scorching her skin. He rasped
into her ear, “One more word out of you, woman, and I cannot be
held responsible for my actions anymore.”

She froze momentarily. Then she turned her
body around in his arms so she was facing him. His eyes were open,
all traces of sleepiness gone. He looked dangerous like this. For a
fleeting moment she wished she could feel his heartbeat again. But
it was impossible to make out anything other than her own heart
that pumped blood through her body in a deafening frenzy, drowning
out every other sound. Yet there was something she needed him to
understand right now. Because if she didn’t tell him, she feared
she might burst and this planet with her.

With solemn gravity she whispered, “You are
sleeping with your clothes on.”

He groaned. Suddenly his lips were on hers
and every river on the planet seeped away into meaninglessness.

* * * *

When she was breathless from the kiss, John
sat them upright. In the dimly lit living room, sharing one
blanket, they huddled close together for comfort. Sleeping was not
an option anymore, so he made Eugenia tell him everything she knew
about her life.

As her story unfolded, he slowly began to
understand what was happening.

* * * *

In the small room above the wormhole chamber
on Earth, Tom and Phil deLuca were sleeping off a night of pillage,
rapine, and too many slices of extra cheese pizza. Phyllis, their
back-up computer, was still switched on, the last game score
blinking on the screen, along with the cheerful message that Elf
Lord Optimus P was now Supreme Ruler of All with an overall total
of 144,623 points.

Tom lay curled up in the upper bunk-bed, his
blanket wrapped tightly around him. A half-eaten chocolate bar took
up the space next to his head on the pillow. Phil didn’t make it to
his bed before sleep caught up with him a couple of hours before:
he just collapsed at the table. His face buried in the crook of his
arm, his whole body only propped upright because the chair was so
close to the desktop that it was impossible to slide off. The room
reeked of cold pizza.

They never heard the soft alarm chide. They
never saw the warning message that flickered to life in the bottom
right corner of the main monitor for a minute. It was but a brief
fluctuation in the wormhole’s power field, it was over before it
really began. It wasn’t the first time this had happened. But it
would be the last.

Because now was the first hour of the one
hundred eighty-third day for the second wave settlers.

* * * *

It was a quiet Sunday afternoon in the
Headquarters on Earth. The next scheduled visit with the colony on
Alternearth was in six days, and so far everything was going
according to plan. Even Gordon Smith from the budget planning
committee was as satisfied as he felt was adequate.

Elizabeth Burke was doing paperwork for
General Fatique. The general was having tea in the cafeteria, while
she was in his office, filing away reports from Alternearth and the
engineers. She liked filing; she was an organized person. Every
aspect had its own folder, and the folders themselves were
subdivided into different subjects. Nobody understood her system,
least of all General Fatique, who was sanguineous at the best of
times. It was an intended side effect on her part to prevent others
from messing things up.