Succinct (Extinct Book 5)

by Ike Hamill

  She had collected wood for a fire—breaking off dry limbs and stacking driftwood that had been out of the water for a while.

  “They might not even be dangerous,” Tim said. “Sure, they’re big, but there are plenty of large fish with formidable looking teeth that aren’t particularly dangerous to people.”

  “And there are also sharks and piranha,” Lisa said.

  Tim pulled his line in, fiddled with the lure, and then cast it back out again.

  Lisa looked up to see Ashley returning from the forest, coiling string as she walked.

  “I don’t know why this lure isn’t working,” Tim said. “It’s what got me the bite when we were out there. Maybe I’m not casting deep enough.”

  “Maybe they hunt in packs,” Ashley said. “It could have been a coordinated attack. One took your bait so the other one could go for my feet.”

  “Right,” Tim said, shaking his head.

  Lisa turned back to Ashley. “Did you find anything interesting?”

  “Some greens and buffalo gourd. Maybe some oranges. We’ll see about those—they might be too bitter. I also saw down to the next bend in the river. We have rapids less than a mile downstream.”

  “Great,” Lisa said.

  “Rapids?” Tim asked over his shoulder.

  “Yeah,” Ashley said. “A line of rocks going across. Might be a gap or two that the raft will fit through without hassle.”

  “That’s good news,” Tim said. “We’ll lose the fish with the rapids.”

  “How do you figure?” Lisa asked.

  “These are deep water fish. We never saw them until we got to a deep part of the river. They won’t like the rapids.”

  Tim cast his line again.

  The oranges turned out too bitter, and the squash needed to be roasted. Lisa arranged her wood and was ready to strike the match when Ashley told her to hang on.

  “There’s plenty of sunlight left,” Ashley said. “We should get down past these rapids before we camp for the night.”

  “I’ve already set out the fire.”

  “We’ll put the wood on the raft and take it with us.”

  Lisa shook her head. They had tried to transport wood before. It got so wet from the river spray that it took forever to get it going.

  “I’m with Lisa,” Tim said. “Let’s camp here. I want to get one of these fish so we can figure out what we’re dealing with. They might make a good meal, too.”

  Outvoted, Ashley sighed and threw up her hands.

  “I’m going foraging again then. I saw another orange tree that might have better fruit.”

  Lisa struck the match and lit the tinder. As soon as it caught, she began to feed in bigger pieces and she arranged the stones to hold up a pot. For the moment, Tim had given up on fishing. He was clearing out an area for their tents on a higher plateau above the bank.

  Several evenings, they had seen storms in the distance. Clouds gathered and moved to the south. At least they thought it was south. Sometimes, lightning danced between the clouds. It was like a distant fireworks show. The sound of thunder never reached them, and the river didn’t flood. Still, they didn’t trust the river at night. They had been putting their tents as high up the banks as possible and tying the raft tight in case the water rose while they slept.

  Lisa arranged the gourds so that they would get the heat from the fire. When the rocks got hot, she would nestle the gourds between them. If Ashley managed to find young ones, they could be eaten after being cooked lightly. The older ones had to be really roasted before they could be choked down. Brushing the sand from her hands, Lisa went back to the trees for more wood.

  She climbed the bank slowly. Her legs ached with every step. All day long, they sat on the raft, floating downstream. They only got off a few times a day to search for food, portage the raft, or do their business in the woods. Still, her legs were more sore now than when they were hiking for miles and miles every day. It was either because she was sitting on the hard wood surface all day, or because her legs were simply giving out. It was possible that the trip had completely used her up and she wasn’t going to last much longer. Lisa feared that it was inevitable.

  “Maybe you should move that up here, under the trees,” Tim said.

  “What’s that?” Lisa asked.

  Tim pointed.

  The clouds had moved in when she wasn’t watching. Instead of gathering in the southern sky, the thunderheads were building directly above them. Even the quality of the light was beginning to change. The world was starting to look yellow and the edges of the shadows were blurred.

  “You think it’s going to rain?”

  “Definitely,” Tim said.

  “You could have said something before I got the fire going.”

  Tim threw up his hands. “I didn’t know. How was I supposed to know?”

  Lisa let out a frustrated sigh and went back to looking for wood. She moved fast. The threat of rain grew every moment and it helped her forget the pain in her legs and the overall weariness that had begun to settle into her body. Lisa bent and tugged at dry limbs, making a haphazard pile between the tents and then arranging the wood into a proper fire under the canopy of a thick tree. When it was all set, she took extra care to climb back down the bank to the first fire pit. It would be easy to rush and fall, earning herself a twisted ankle for her haste. Back at the fire, some of the rocks were scattered. Some of the gourds were missing. She saw trails in the sand and she pieced together what must have happened.

  “Tim! Your dog is hungry,” Lisa called.

  He answered, but she didn’t hear what he said. Lisa grabbed a couple of sticks that were only burning on one end and she carried them back toward the slope. Behind her, she heard a snapping noise that she figured must be a damp branch, popping from the heat.

  Climbing back up, she slipped and came down on her elbow. It wasn’t too bad—she would be bruised but okay. Lisa felt vindicated in a way. She had predicted that haste would cause injury and she had been right.

  “What did you say?” Tim asked as she reached the campsite. He took one of her sticks and helped her start the fire. The first raindrops began to patter on the leaves overhead.

  “Penny stole a gourd again. She seems to have forgotten that she doesn’t like the taste.”

  “That’s what I thought you said. She’s with Ashley, remember? Hunting?”

  “Oh, right,” Lisa said. She glanced back down to where the first fire was, angling herself to see past the leaves of a bush that was in the way.

  “I’m going to go see if I can catch one of those fish before the rain really starts to come down,” Tim said.

  Lisa nodded and went back to collecting wood. She wanted to bank it up as much as possible before the rain started to get everything wet. At the moment, it was still just an occasional drop, but it was getting dark quickly as the clouds thickened.

  Lisa froze with an armload of wood. Something was coming through the trees. The string—Ashley’s lifeline—was jerking. All she could think was that something had grabbed the girl and was dragging her deeper into the darkness.

  Penny bounded out of the bushes, blood on her mouth.

  Lisa’s heart nearly froze.

  “Aunt Lisa?” Ashley asked. She was winding the string around the reel.

  “You scared me,” Lisa said.

  “We caught some groundhogs. I just have to clean them and then…”

  Ashley stopped. Her eyes were focused on the distant river.

  “What?” Lisa asked.

  The girl didn’t say anything—she only dropped her bag and ran off toward the river. When Lisa burst through the leaves, she thought that the river was boiling. The surface was jumping up with splashing water. Her second thought was that it was alive with fish in a frenzy. She was half right about that.

  Down on the bank, Tim was screaming. Penny streaked past Ashley and ran into the fray. Ashley picked up one of the smoldering sticks that was at the edge of Lisa’s first fire
. She wielded it above her head and the brought it down like an axe, beating something on the ground.

  Rain splashed in Lisa’s eyes and she could barely see. She picked her way down the slope, toward the sound of Penny’s snarling, Ashley’s feral grunts, and Tim’s screams. There were things in the sand.

  Lisa wiped the rain from her eyes and blinked. The shapes on the riverbank were the disgusting, toothy fish. They were using their flippers as crude legs, pushing themselves through the sand. One was clamped on the back of Tim’s foot. Another thrashed and slapped against him with its jaws gripping his arm.

  Penny bit the tail of a fish and slung it as it whipped around to try to get her. Ashley smashed her club into the back of another and it fell from Tim’s foot.

  Lisa grabbed a stick of her own. She reached the battle just as the fish began to retreat. Ashley managed to strike the fish that was biting Tim’s arm and it let go. A fish hissed at Penny and then took a bite of a dead fish before it slithered backwards toward the water.

  “No!” Ashley screamed as she hit a fish. The thing’s back snapped with the blow.

  Tim was pushing his way backwards through the sand, away from the river. Lisa caught him before he could back right into the fire.

  “Can you get up?” she asked, grabbing his arm.

  “I think so,” he said. He pulled at her grip as he got to his feet.

  The rain began to come down in earnest.

  Chapter 36: Corinna

  Corinna smiled at Jackson. He looked like a kid, sitting on the floor, playing with the puppies. The mother was taking a nap in the whelping box while Jackson fed them little bits of meat.

  “I should get going,” Corinna said, pushing herself to her feet.

  “No, don’t go,” Jackson said. “She trusted you first. If she wakes up and you’re gone, she might get upset.”

  “You’ll be fine. You’re better with dogs than I am. Besides, I haven’t been over to the drying house in a week. If that wheat goes bad, everyone is going to hate me.”

  “Fine, but come back later, okay?”

  “Sure,” she said.

  Corinna walked out into the sunshine and squinted up at the sky as she tried to think. It had been a strange night. She could barely remember where she had left her motorcycle. The image finally came back to her—it was over by the firehouse. She oriented herself and struck off up the path that led around Fast Food Corner. There was a little park next to the Wendy’s. She cut through, remembering the French Fry Festival. It had been Liam’s idea, back when he was still an outgoing member of the community.

  Each summer, Liam would clear out the cobwebs and wash the windows of the Wendy’s and fill the big fryers with oil. He peeled and cut sacks of potatoes, using the machines that he had taken from the soup kitchen in the basement of the Unitarian church. Corinna had helped him get set up, but Liam did most of the work.

  Around noon on the first day of summer, Liam held his French Fry Festival. Anyone who showed up got a paper sleeve of shoestring fries and a cup of ketchup. People lounged around in the park for hours, smelling the aroma of frying potatoes on the wind and playing games. For years, it had been a real community celebration.

  Vegetable oil became scarce as the years went by. Even the best stored oil began to taste funny and then went rancid. People pressed their own oil, but not in the quantity that Liam needed. His operation was seen as a waste with food so scarce. The festival transformed into a simple celebration of summer. But without the french fries, the gathering got smaller and smaller until it died of natural causes.

  Corinna glanced through the windows as she walked by. Someone kept the bushes trimmed outside but nobody was cleaning the glass anymore. There were footprints through the dust inside.

  Next door, the Dunkin’ Donuts was in ruins. A light pole had collapsed into the side and its arm had smashed through one of the windows. That was enough to bring about the building’s disintegration. One of the windows on the drive through was ajar and she saw grass growing on the counter. A bird nesting in the soffit was spooked and it swooped out, making Corinna flinch.

  Her path wound between the grocery store and the townhouses next door. Behind the townhouses, in the rectangle of yard between the two buildings, a group of children were playing with a soccer ball. They shouted each time one of the kids kicked it up in the air.

  A little boy, Harold, spotted Corinna and ran over to her.

  “You want to come play? We have ten more minutes before we have to go learn about fish,” he said.

  “I would, but I have to go turn the wheat,” she said.

  “Oh.”

  He looked sad for a moment. Harold’s disappointment was short-lived. The other kids yelled to him. It was his turn to kick the ball.

  Corinna kept moving before other kids spotted her and begged her to join in. Usually, she was an easy mark. Today, she felt other issues pressing on her. The kids didn’t understand that the world was falling apart around them. The small amount of stability that had been pieced together by the survivors was now being threatened by a new inexplicable oddity. Then again, even if they did know about the strange water that refused to boil, the kids probably wouldn’t care. If they were allowed down at the outpost, the children would probably come up with a game to play that was centered around the fact that electricity didn’t work in the jungle. These were the children of chaos. Weird phenomena didn’t frighten them—it was a part of their normal lives.

  Corinna cut through a parking lot and stepped over a low fence.

  Pushing through the door, she took in a deep breath of the smell of drying wheat.

  It was going to be okay. If the wheat had begun to mold, she would smell it immediately. She turned off the fans before she went to the locker room to change her clothes.

  By the door, there were notes on the clipboard. Corinna didn’t care about the methodology behind the harvesting, drying, and processing. She was happy to be a cog in the machine, but she didn’t want to concern herself with how the whole system worked. With her jumpsuit on, Corinna let herself into the drying room. While she moved the grain around, she let her mind wander.

  Now that it was too late to do anything about it, Corinna realized that she had made a mistake. Years before, several people had approached her, asking if she wanted to be a mother. Maybe it would have been different if she had fallen in love. Instead, she assessed these people with cold indifference, trying to imagine the child that they might raise together.

  Her response to the mandate had been accepted. From her perspective, she had already raised a child. Liam had been a boy who depended on her, and he had been her contribution to the continuation of the species. Of course, that was before Liam had rejected the mandate himself, rendering her contribution to be a dead end. That wasn’t her responsibility, unless it was argued that she had brought him up without the necessary belief in the importance of humanity.

  Corinna shrugged away the thought.

  Liam had grown up a long time ago, and he was making his own decisions that had nothing to do with the way that she had raised him. At some point, she had to accept that he might never recover from losing everyone when he was so young. A part of Liam was still waiting for his real mother to come back from Burbank.

  A new baby—her own baby—would have been perfectly adapted to this world. The baby could have been like Ashley or Jim. The baby could have been like Harold. Kids born into this world didn’t have all the baggage of broken promises and unfulfilled expectations. In a lot of ways, it could be argued that they lived better lives than their parents.

  The entire community valued children above all else. They weren’t pawned off to daycare or left alone to return to an empty house. Children were cared for every minute of the day. Everyone they saw was either friend or family. There were no strangers in their world. Education for the kids wasn’t limited to stale classroom experiences. They were expected to interact with the world and contribute to their own survival. Corinna ha
d yet to meet a single child born into the new world who was diagnosed as hyperactive or suffering from any disorders. Those diseases had disappeared, either by selection or because their causes had died with the old society.

  There had been a lot of debate on that topic when the first pregnancies were announced. People worried about diseases and infections. Medicine was in limited supply and it was expiring quickly. The group had suffered a few unexplained deaths of infants and toddlers, but no serious outbreaks of anything stronger than the flu. Ty theorized that maybe those old diseases had died with the bulk of humanity. Others whispered that an outbreak was coming and it would be the death of everyone they knew. So far, Ty was right.

  She paused with the rake in her hand.

  The wheat was nearly dry. It wasn’t her place to test it, but she imagined that at some point in the near future she would be asked to scoop up all the grain into sacks so it could be taken to the mill. This fall, some of the bread she got to eat would be from her own work.

  That realization wasn’t why she stopped raking though.

  She didn’t have a child of her own, but she did have someone she was still somewhat responsible for.

  Corinna realized that she had to go see him at least one more time.

  The buzzer went off for the second time.

  Corinna yelled at the door.

  “No, Liam, you come out and let me in like a person. I’m not a machine that you can control with your little buzzer button.”

  She waited.

  After a full minute, she was sure that he was going to ignore her.

  “Okay,” she said. “I tried. This is the last time though.”

  Corinna turned on her heel. Before she could walk away, she heard the door click open.

  “Come on in,” Liam said.

  Corinna turned back around looked at him. His eyes were sunken deep into dark hollows. His skin was pale.

  Instead of following him, she clamped a hand around his wrist and pulled.

  “What are you doing?” he yelled.