Paradise: An Apocalyptic Novel (7 page)

“Thirty seconds,” Jackson said, almost unable to get the words out, “we’d better hurry.”

Amanda was less winded, working with her hands all day, and sprinted ahead with a renewed vigor. Jackson tried to keep up, but his toe caught on the floor, his clumsy feet not acclimated to the rhythm of running. He crashed forward, only yards from the door, and began to crawl.

Amanda was on the other side by now, and she turned around, began to run back in the hall.

“No,” Jackson said, through groans and winces of pain, “stay there.”

The alarm began its warning descent, punctuating the tense air with terse beeps.
Ten. Nine. Eight
. Jackson crawled closer to the door, elbows scraping the smooth ground, muscles straining to raise his body towards the opening.
Three.
It was only a foot or two away—and Jackson leapt through the opening with a final burst of energy, crashing to the ground on the other side.

The door came down with startling force.

Jackson screamed.

7

Shadow Village

Silver whipped the
prisoner.

“This is the harshness of The Hideaway,” he said, relishing each strike, “feel it in your bones.” The man whimpered as Silver raised the lash once again, but the next beating didn’t occur. “Now,” Silver said, adopting a sympathetic tone, “is that all you know?”

“Yes, I swear,” the man said, through tears and pain, “I’ve told you everything.”

“And they don’t know anything more than that? Where the virus came from? Or about us?” Silver said
us
like it was a clandestine operation, trading in shadows and secrets, like the Illuminati.

“I don’t know who you are. Why are you doing this…?” The man’s voice trailed off, knowing that he wouldn’t receive an answer.

“Now, now, Pierre,” Silver said, patting the cook’s open wounds, “it’s all right. Everything’s going to be all right in a few minutes. You’ve been very helpful, even if you didn’t know that much.” Silver gestured to his bald buddy, whispering something in his ear. Blood dripped from the ridges in Pierre’s back, pooling on the ground around his knees.

Off to the side, Melina stood, the tip of a rifle planted in her back. She couldn’t say anything; the first time she’d protested, her captors had responded with a fierce coldcock to the temple. Her head still hurt, and that was five days ago.

She could still see it—her and Pierre darting through the brush, surrounded by strange cries and rustles, searching for the homestead. They weren’t sure if it was exhaustion, or the weight of Sam, but it seemed like they’d run for miles. In their confusion and haste, they’d gotten lost in the jungle, were so far from Amanda’s homestead that it might as well have been a whole different world.

What they discovered, upon stopping to take a breath, was that they were overlooking a village, a small encampment of palm tree huts and cabins, rigged with a makeshift string of cords and various other technological anachronisms. A palisade crafted of rusty wire and jungle thorns surrounded the outpost. A thick canopy of trees shielded the sun from striking the ground, and prying eyes in the sky from seeing all the way to the floor.

It
had
been miles—the pair had ran more than six miles, fear and adrenaline pushing them forward, all the way to the edge of the island. They’d found Shadow Village.

And Shadow Village didn’t want to be found.

Sam’s breathing was faint by that point, and the group—five ragged looking survivors, two men and two women, along with a child—didn’t even hesitate with their decision. A single pistol shot to the head, and then an unceremonious burial in an unmarked grave, off in the jungle wilds.

Blew his brains out there, right in the middle of camp, blood staining the ground, then dragged him off, like it was nothing.

It was nothing.
There used to be twelve of us
, Silver told Pierre and Melina,
we’re family
.
We don’t have use for anyone else
.
We don’t trust anyone else
.
And that’s why we’ve survived.

And so it began: five days of questions and torture. They were relegated to an empty cabin—
he died three years ago, the last one to die,
Silver had said, like it was a shrine, a religious mecca.

They wanted to know about the virus. How they knew about the virus was anyone’s guess—Melina couldn’t see how they knew, although they seemed to be connected to the grid somehow, which was an impossibility in and of itself.

Each day, this man who called himself Silver dragged them into the center of the huts and questioned them.

She remembered all this, her teeth grinding together, still starting at Pierre’s ruined body, the shallow, halting breaths wracking his frame.

“You okay?” she asked in a low voice, which seemed like a stupid question. He was half-dead, but somehow he still managed to look up at her and smile.

“Screw ‘em,” he said, “I’m fine.” This was loud. The group had heard Melina’s question, but at least it was respectful. Pierre had thrown gas on the fire; now they’d both pay. The whip came crashing down, and the rifle butt smashed into Melina’s spine.

Two grunts of pain tore out across the jungle, but they fell on deaf ears. Again the blows came, like droplets in a rainstorm—incessant, powerful, driving with a purpose unknown to anyone but the hands of the men who gave them.

“Stop,” Pierre gasped, after a minute, two, maybe ten—time stood still out here, and the only way they knew the days were flowing by was from the group’s constant updates and status reports. “Please.”

Silver slammed the whip down one last time, and then threw it into an open cabin door.

“You’ve learned your lesson, I see,” he said, gleeful that he’d broken Pierre. “Take them away.” The bald man dragged Pierre’s quaking body into the makeshift prison, and Melina’s guard followed suit. The door thundered shut, and the two were enveloped in almost total darkness. The windows had been boarded, and the fire outside cast little slivers of shadowy light through the cracks in wood.

It wasn’t even enough to see their fingers, just enough to keep them from going insane.

Some time later, a woman came to the door, as she always did, and slid some food towards them. Melina’s eyes burned from the influx of light, even though the fire was now just a heap of orange embers.

“Here,” she said, quiet, unlike the three others, “I’d make it last. They’re not going to give you anything tomorrow. Think you’re holding out.”

“Thank you,” Melina said, then her arm shot out, grasping the woman’s hand. She could feel the woman pull back in shock, but she didn’t flee. Melina’s grip was weak from exhaustion and hunger. The woman squeezed her hand, and Melina said, “Please, let us go. You’re one of the good ones.”

The woman just shook her head, red hair bouncing along her shoulders. At one point, she’d been young. It might have only been a couple years prior; but time, experience, it had weathered her face with a certain hardness. Not wrinkles or crow’s feet, just the weight of what she’d done to survive. The woman turned back and locked the door behind her.

“At least tell me your name,” Melina called as the woman walked away, “please.”

She turned around, and, as if thinking it over, paused in place. “Clara,” she said, like it’d been awhile since she’d said it aloud, “my name’s Clara.”

“Nice to meet you, Clara,” Melina replied, “I’m Melina.”

“That’s a pretty name,” the woman responded, and then hurried away, as if she’d already said too much.
Clara
. Melina rolled the name around on her tongue, whispering it in the darkness like a weird mantra. Someone with that name couldn’t be bad—right?

She went to sleep, comforted by this delusion. She didn’t touch the food. For now, the name would be enough to keep her alive. Pierre groaned and tossed around on the dirt floor nearby. His wounds were dressed—an act of cruelty, more than anything else, so that he could keep taking more punishment. It was almost impossible to sleep with the pain, but the fatigue took him anyway.

Sleep is egalitarian like that; no matter what your troubles, it’s always willing to whisk you away and allow you to forget reality. But only for a moment.

Silver stole a
hasty glance at the rising sun and murmured something underneath his long, powerful breath. He’d long ago given up the luxury of a watch; the sun now told him everything that he needed to know.

And he needed to hurry.

The rifle slapped against his back as he ran, slivers of light cutting through the forest canopy. A clearing lay ahead; Silver dove into cover atop a ridge overlooking the entire expanse. A heavy whirring sounded above, loud enough that it was difficult to talk.

He signaled to the bald man, but his companion wasn’t paying attention. Silver screamed in his ear.

“Baxter. Ahead.”

Baxter nodded in response and knelt down, staring through a pair of binoculars. He was the spotter, but he just as well could have been the gunman—his demeanor suggested that he was well-versed in both roles.

His eyes scanned the horizon, amidst the whirring blades and metal trunks of the windmills. There was no sign of anything. Baxter shook his head, then jammed the binoculars back to his face. They would wait; this, both men were good at. Masters.

This was a daily routine when guests were on the island. The windmills were the lifeblood of Shadow Village—though the group could survive without them, doing so would make their already difficult lives hellish. The windmills generated the power, the power that fueled their dreams. Without hope, a man is not a man.

He is just an animal.

The pair sat in focused wait for hours, until the sun began its descent on the other end of the horizon. This day, they were pleased to discover, had been like all the others. There was peace out here, standing guard. As they were about to leave, Baxter tapped Silver on the back, pointing at a movement on the edge of the clearing.

A deer.

The bullet zipped through the air, clean and true, and the men strapped dinner to their backs, smiling despite the miles that lay between them and camp.

The scent was
intoxicating; Melina didn’t know that seared flesh could smell so delicious. Not that she or Pierre got any, but the breeze carried in sounds and other tidings of the feast that was transpiring only feet away.

“Do you smell that,” she whispered, “my God…”

Pierre groaned, acknowledgment that he, too, was tortured by things that were not his.

Melina’s thoughts turned to the mainland. Sam, delirious and dying, had murmured some serious things as he slipped in and out of consciousness. Over a million confirmed deaths—in Los Angeles alone. It seemed like half the world had vanished.

There was no vaccine, but a few people were immune. Why, the experts didn’t know. There wasn’t a vaccine, and there was no correlation between these folks—old, young, male, female, poor, rich.

Some people’s systems just rejected the virus, and no one had a real reason why. It’d been days since the outbreak—and Melina shuddered to think that she had only been in this prison for about that same time. It already seemed like this was the way things always were, always would be.

Humanity was doomed.

Then again, Melina considered, they always were. She knew that well enough—what depraved lengths people would travel to, all under the guise of civilization. Freedom wasn’t free, and civilization was anything but civil. Now, the makeup was just stripped off, and the truth, when hopes and opium dreams were a thing of the past, was brutal: everyone was doomed, just as they always had been.

When she thought this, she sucked in her breath. The pain from the rifle butt stuck in her side, like a letter opener jammed between her ribs. She’d get out. Cassie needed her—and she was alive. Her daughter was alive.

She just had to find her.

And to do that, she needed to get out of this cage.

Melina ran her hands along the wood, catching more than a few splinters in her cracked, dirty hands. The small pinches didn’t even cause her to wince. The cabin, though, was bare—and solid. No way to escape, and nothing to do it with.

Help would have to come from the outside. Melina put her eye up to a crack in the logs, staring at the hint of a fire that lurked just out of her grasp.

They’d all burn. All of them.

Bobby was running
a high fever. The vaccine hadn’t been tested on kids, and it was enough of a kick-in-the-face to adults; a child’s immune system was another matter. Stella didn’t want to say it, since Silver’s mandate was clear—everyone was going to get it, no exceptions—but it was a bad idea.

Clara held her son’s hand as the boy sweated underneath the rough blanket.

“It’s going to be okay, baby,” she said, stroking the child’s flush face, “it’s going to be okay.” The kid was only three years old, had been born out here, in the middle of nothing. He was tough, but the vaccine seemed to be winning.

“You should get some rest,” Stella said, resting her hand upon Clara’s shoulder, “I’ll look after him.”

“What’s this all for,” Clara said, “what was it all for?” She’d been bitter. They all were—left for dead out here, when all they’d wanted was a nice getaway, see the then-new place that Maverick had built in the wilderness. But here she was, with a dying kid—
his
dying kid—and she was sick of it.

Too much death, too much sadness, too much pain. They say that these things make life sweeter, that tragedy is the essence of the human condition. But if that’s all there was, Clara reasoned, then it wasn’t worth living.

Bobby stirred.

“What is it, honey,” Clara said, rubbing the sweat away from his forehead.

“I’m thirsty,” he said in a thin, high voice, “why am I so thirsty?”

Clara couldn’t explain it to him. She knew, but it wouldn’t make any sense. It wouldn’t make any sense to a child. She clutched his hand and squeezed it.

“You’re just sick, honey,” she said, “and the water will make you better.”

The little boy nodded, but he didn’t open his eyes. She tilted back the canteen, and he drank and drank, not satiated even when the heavy metal canister was empty. Clara sighed and wiped his chin.

This life had been too much for too long. It had to stop.