The Second Wave (17 page)

She was blood smeared but beaming when
Rochester and Simon, accompanied by Captain Eleven, came by early
the next morning. Eleven was furious at first because nobody had
told her earlier, but Rochester calmed her down considerably before
they entered the lab.

Dr. Paige waited until the others had
gathered around the carcass, like medical students around a
patient. “First of all, we need an entomologist to study and
classify all the bugs I found in the corpse; they'll have a field
day with this! And then I want a second opinion from Dr.
Chang.”

Xiaobo Chang was the colony’s veterinarian, a
bitter, obese man with the sense of humour of a wet cat, but an
exceptionally gifted doctor.

“Essentially the basic DNA structure is
canine.” The doctor grinned cheerfully.

Rochester tried to avoid looking at the cut
open corpse on the table, or the blood on Dr. Paige’s hands and lab
coat. “It really is a wolf, then?”

“Not a wolf, no,” clarified Dr. Chang two
hours later, after studying Dr. Paige’s results closely.

Summer had taken off the bloody lab coat, but
had neither bothered to eat nor to freshen up—she was too excited
to share her findings, or rather her and Dr. Chang’s findings.
Rochester and Eleven were now joined by Simon Jones, who was keen
to find out whether more of these things were about in the
forest.

Dr. Chang pointed at a chart Summer hung up
on one wall. It showed numbers and strains of DNA nobody but he and
Summer understood. “What we have here before us is a highly mutated
life form. This heap of bones and fangs, ladies and gentlemen, was
no doubt a
canis lupus familiaris
not a few centuries
ago.”

When nobody reacted to that statement
satisfactorily, Summer repeated in layman’s terms, “It’s a
dog.”

Simon gave a theatrical sigh. “Mutated Shih
Tzus in the forest? Really?”

Dr. Chang didn’t grace this remark with a
reply.

“We scanned the whole planet before we sent
the first wave of settlers!” Eleven hissed. “We didn’t register any
wildlife. How is that possible?”

Summer shrugged. “Maybe they have a natural
protection field, or a habitat that’s secluded enough to have
evaded the scanners. In any case, I don’t think they’ll bother us
much—they’re nocturnal and they seem to live on roots, insects, and
small animals mostly.”

“Then why the gigantic fangs?” Eleven pointed
out.

“Maybe they’re decoration,” Paige assumed.
“We’ll need someone to study them further, if we want to learn any
more about them.”

In the meantime they just had to be careful
not to wander about the woods at night. The one thing that
seriously worried Captain Eleven about this new species of animal
was that it hadn’t died of natural causes. Which meant there was a
good chance of something bigger, and probably a lot more dangerous,
roaming the surroundings.

* * * *

As everybody slowly adapted to life in the
colony, or village as most of them called it by now, the daily
challenges subsided. More and more people stopped missing the
comforts they used to have. The well near the canteen became the
gossip hot spot, as it was crowded every morning and sometimes in
the evening as well, when people came there to get fresh water. The
teenagers learned to accept that outhouses were as modern and
advanced as toilets would get on this planet for a long time.
Chucking wood for the fireplace became the number one past time
among the kids who were old enough to swing an axe. And the first
recipe book containing melapple pies and prinpick flower salads
began circulation.

All in all, life was peaceful. Even the
parents whose children had aged a year didn’t leave Alternearth,
but accepted what had happened and learned to live with it. The
mayor held a meeting to warn everyone not to leave the village
after dark, at least not until they learned more about the
creatures in the forest. Emily Eleven scheduled herself and her
team for nightly watch duties. And John woke up one morning to feel
he had got dangerously used to the smell of fresh tea before
daybreak. It was time he pushed forward his plan of leaving, or he
feared he wouldn’t be able to anymore. Not with Peter constantly
encircling him. Not with Tyson, the wunderkind chef, making it his
habit to come by the house every other night for a game of chess
and yet another story. And certainly not with the crazy girl who
was rapidly becoming just Eugenia to him.

He needed to get out of here.

So the next morning John went to see Dr.
Paige in her office before his visit to Eugenia. It wasn’t actually
her own office, she shared it with the other staff of the hospital,
but she was alone when John dropped by.

“To be honest, I don’t see why not,” she
answered when he asked, or rather demanded, that Eugenia be
released into his care for today, so they could take a walk. “She’s
been cooped up in here for too long, anyway.”

He had to promise to take a protector with
them, and only asked it wouldn’t be Sally Sheldon, who admittedly
was perfectly right in assuming that he was a con man and would
take the first opportunity he’d get to leave and escape
prosecution. He tried to stay away from her.

Eugenia was overjoyed to hear the news. She
had her own set of clothes now, as the hospital had become her home
rather than her sick room, but until this day she hadn’t been
allowed to leave; she hadn’t tried to run away again, either.

“I will love to see the outside! What color
does it mainly have?” she asked, sitting on the edge of her bed.
John knelt down before her to help her tie her boots.

“Mostly green,” he admitted. When she didn’t
react to this, he tugged at the bandana he was wearing around his
neck to show her. “Like this, but in different shades.”

Sometimes he forgot that although she knew
almost every word in the dictionary, she often didn’t know what it
meant or looked like.

“I like green, then,” she decided. “Would you
like to know what my favorite color is?”

“Yes, I would like that.”

“You are my favorite color.”

He raised his head to look at her, now that
the shoe laces were tied, but she never got to explain it to him,
because a knock on the door announced the arrival of protector
Rett. Their excursion could begin.

* * * *

John didn’t want Eugenia to draw glances from
the other settlers, so he led her out the back door to the North
gate of the village. His consideration astounded him, mildly
disturbed him even. He didn’t usually care about other people. But
then again, ever since he had got here, he started to notice the
smallest changes in his behavior and thoughts.

Eugenia, wearing a light dress suited for
this day, looking very much like a girl, walked a few paces behind
John. With careful steps she followed him through the gate and past
the stables over the grass. She was busy taking everything in,
looking here and there, sometimes stopping to bend down and touch
the ground. They moved forward rather slowly; but John didn’t mind.
As long as protector Rett stayed where she was, at a polite
distance, he didn’t care how far they’d make it today. As long as
they kept moving.

They made for the woods. Not to where the
workmen were busy erecting a new colony, but in the direction where
the subway station lay, which Peter had shown him on their first
night here. If he was lucky, the sight would trigger some memory in
Eugenia, because as much as she talked about wanting to get home,
she had no clue what she even meant by it, let alone where home was
for her.

“You’re thinking of leaving again.” She
caught up with him at the tree line and took hold of his arm as if
touching him came naturally to her.

“I’m not leaving before I get you home,
Eugenia.”

She made a face, prompting him to dare her to
read his mind to verify that he was speaking the truth.

“That’s not it,” she declared. “I like the
name better you use for me in your mind.”

He laughed. “Crazy girl? Really? You like
crazy girl better than Eugenia?”

“Neither of them is my name, but since I have
no choice but to have one, I prefer the one you prefer.”

“It is but a description, and an
inappropriate one at that.”

She shrugged. “It is honest. Do you know what
my favorite name is?”

“Could it perhaps be John?”

Her laughter was contagious. “It is
indeed.”

John felt a smile spreading on his face. A
real one, not one he faked to blend in or make people feel at ease.
That hadn’t happened in a while; he was sure he shouldn’t like it
as much as he did that moment.

Neither Peter nor John ever went back to the
relics of the subway station after they had first encountered it.
John was, to be perfectly honest with himself, amazed he even found
the way again. But then they stepped over the little creek and
there it was: ancient and majestic in the golden rays of the autumn
sun. He heard Mandy Rett gasp for air when she caught up with
them.

They climbed through a hole in the outer
wall. John helped Eugenia up onto a protrusion from where they
could overlook the ruins of the station; it unfolded before and
beneath them like a picture or a map.

“So this is what it looks like,” Eugenia
whispered. Her eyes were wide with curiosity.

“Do you know what it is?” John asked. But she
cocked her head.

“I think it’s a subway station,” he told
her.

“They called it differently. Many people came
here every day and sometimes at night. They talked loudly. Their
thoughts were scattered. Sometimes terrible things happened here.
Sometimes beautiful thoughts were made. Other creatures live here
now. Over there.”

She pointed to an opening where a staircase
led further downwards. If John remembered correctly, it was the
same opening where he had heard the growling sounds the last time
he stood in that exact same spot.

Eugenia, not content with merely standing and
watching, not now that she was free to touch and smell, sat down on
the edge of the jetty they were standing on and carefully lowered
herself down onto the next landing. It took her longer than it
would any other person; she wasn’t used to more complicated
physical challenges than walking to and fro. But she refused John’s
help. She scrambled further down and in the end landed soundly on
her feet on a mattress of moss.

“Green,” she mumbled, more to herself than to
John, but he nodded anyway.

“Yes. Green.” He let her sort out the marvel
of the moss by herself and wandered along the rails. They were
overgrown and corroded; although they undoubtedly looked like
rails, they were also slightly different. As if someone who had
never seen either train or rails had tried to build them from
hand-me-down hearsay. More graffiti was on the walls down here,
most of it unreadable, with parts missing because vines were
growing on the material.

“Do you know who built this?” he called over
to Eugenia, who was petting a patch of wildflowers. Without looking
up from the plants, her answer came matter-of-factly, “My people
did.”

“
Your
people? Do you mean to tell me
there are more of you?”

“No.” She got up. “They all left me.”

Between the colorful flowers and the subway
station’s ruins, she looked like the last human in existence with
her frilly dress and her uncombed curls. He couldn’t imagine why
anyone would want to leave her. A warm smile appeared on her face,
a far more beautiful one than the first time she had attempted to
mimic this expression; she was getting better at it.

“Thank you.” A soft shade of pink flowered on
her cheeks. “To answer your question: They didn’t know they were
leaving me behind. They just,” she tried to shrug it off, but John
could see a deep hurt in her eyes, “forgot about me.”

“Where did they go, crazy girl?”

She padded over to him. “I don’t know. Away.
They only thought of leaving and finding better places in the end.
We didn’t make them happy enough.”

“And yet you wish to go home,” he said, a
faint trace of disbelief in the back of his mind. Faint, yet
distracting enough to not make him recognize the sudden plural in
her speech.

“I don’t belong among you. I’m not like you.”
She took his hand in hers and gazed into space. “My head never
stops aching. Everything is so overwhelming and much too slow. In
the end, John, you will leave me as well. You will all leave again.
You always do.”

Before he could think about it and perhaps
discard the notion, he dragged her close and into a soft embrace.
Her arms wrapped themselves around him instantly; she buried her
face in his shirt.

“Close your eyes for a bit,” he suggested.
“It might help your headache.”

She did and gave a deep sigh; her breath warm
on his skin through the fabric of his shirt. They stood in the
bright sunlight, in the middle of the abandoned subway rails. For
the first time John realized he heard birds in the distance and
gusts of wind in the tree tops. He felt her smile against his
chest.

“I can feel your heartbeat,” she announced,
eyes still closed.

“As I yours,” he confessed quietly.

“It is beautiful.”

John didn’t know what to reply to that, so he
said nothing and just held her a little tighter.

* * * *

The next time they went out, he took her to
the waterfall. One of these days he was going to have to talk about
payment with her; perhaps a nice setting would work in his
favor.

Peter had told him all about the time pocket
and John made sure to stay away from the cave. The water and the
lake were harmless enough, though, he decided.

“Who’s Peter?” Eugenia wanted to know, no
doubt because John was thinking about him. She had taken off her
shoes and socks, and was standing up to her knees in water, the
skirt of her dress floating on the surface around her legs.