But destiny had its own ideas. Megaira took her arm and shoved her to the side, her gun trained on her.
“Don’t get any brave ideas. I’m not going to shoot you, unless you force me into it. You don’t belong with us. You endanger us ... you don’t want to endanger Leander, do you?”
She could shout out for Leander, but knew the moment she took a breath to do so, a bullet would be in her. She did not blame Megaira, she only did what she believed best for the soldiers. And considering Nyx’s own confusion toward Leander, perhaps this was best for her as well. Never, not even in her forgotten life, had she ever felt such connection with another. It scared her this unknown, it should not have, she thought, but it did. Megaira was right. She did not want to harm Leander. She did not belong.
“This is where you part,” Megaira said, her gun motioning for Nyx to go into the forest away from the soldiers’ path. “Do not come back.”
Nyx hesitated. No matter the fear of her feelings, she did not want to leave, but right now the choice was not hers to make. She could not refuse nor fight against Megaira and turned wordlessly and left. She could do nothing to prevent her forced departure, not yet anyway, and within her heart she felt again the beckoning of the wild, of the solitude, of what was known and familiar to her.
Shadows rose from between the maple and spruce trees; the dark gaps encompassed a lure as seductive as sirens. Black holes, they were, that threatened to swallow one from existence if they came too close. And as a black hole, the shadows relentless pull acted as gravity to Nyx, pulling her further from the soldiers into their event horizon.
Birds called their chorus down to her as the distance grew between herself and the Thalassicians. Cardinals in their scarlet crowns, their song a beautiful array of whistles. In their melody was the charm of the forest and of nature. But a distinct vocal offset their song, a scratchy overture from above. It was almost as if the disease began to rise, interrupting life in the skies as it did below. Yet it was only a blue jay. The sapphire plumage just as stunning as the cardinals’, even if its vocalizations did not ring as beautiful. As they sang, she wondered what had happened to the animals in the wake of society’s demise. Prosper? Or find the new predator, the Chaots, to be worse than the humans. Though it seemed the birds flourished as did the fish seaside, untouched by the monstrosity that had befell the law of the land.
Flourished, maybe. But still hunted nonetheless.
There was one feathered presence that did not sing in the cheerful croons of the others. It stalked the songbirds. The peregrine falcon—she mused it was the one she had seen from the beach and she wondered if it had found the meal she left for it the night before. In the sunlight she could see the chocolate colored back and streaked feathers, hiding a small amount of down, marking it as juvenile. She caught the view of the silent presence every so often, either sitting in the branches or flying above. Or now, where it hunted the brightly colored targets. High in the sky, the falcon tracked the flying blue jay. With sudden, incomprehensible speed, the falcon dove as a guided missile cutting through the air towards its mark, offering no hope of escape. At first with closed talons it rammed into the bird, before circling back and taking the jay. The prey lashed out—pitifully so—it had no chance against the bird-eating raptor. A bird eating a bird: was this cannibalism? No said the voice of facts, the voice of reason and scientific understanding. Cannibals feed on the flesh of the same species. And the falcon was far removed from the songbirds. A predator, not weak as its prey.
Were the Chaots cannibals then when they preyed upon the humans?
The voice remained silent.
She roamed deeper into the forests; her footsteps took her further and faster away from the group as she tried to track the falcon. Soon she was lost within the maze of backwater trees. Calls from behind her escalated as Leander must have realized she no longer walked behind him. The soldiers shouted her name, even risking their own location as they did so, in hopes that she would return. She wished to go back to them, but what would she return to if not Megaira’s bullet. If not immediately, then surely come night.
“Nyx!”
Her name again called by the soldiers. A tremble came across her, a shiver in the summer’s heat. Her spirit tore. Part of her wished to return. Megaira was a problem, yet not one that she feared, for she feared more Megaira’s prophecy of putting them in harm’s way. But then she heard something in the distance, drowning out all else. A mismatched sound, not of the forest nor soldiers’ calls, indicating more than trees. And part of her became determined to stay her path, to investigate the idiosyncrasy she heard.
The noise grew clear. Low, but audible, a guttural chorus whispered between the maple trees. The words were not words; the meaning was meaningless. But together it strung a harmony that had deeper implications than surface value. Closer she came to the source. Staying low, she moved some branches to peer out and into the abyss—and now she stood facing the event horizon.
The falcon’s hunt still vivid in her mind, but replacing its image was the predator of the lands: the Chaots.
A gathering of at least thirty appeared to her sight. And how many more were hidden in the trees, she thought. The Chaots she could see stood in a crescent clearing of the forest. Unlike the twelve she had seen in the city, these did not engage in any salacious acts, at least not now. Instead they stood. Humming. The whimsical chanting grew powerful, the tide of time present in their voices.
Physically they emulated the town’s Chaots. In ailment they withered, covered with festering sickness. Almost akin to lepers did they live; as legs, fingers, eyes were lost and incomplete in each human form—victims to raging viruses of rot or self-fulfilling bouts of cannibalism. But internally they appeared different. She saw more. They hummed in an unified group, focused on an act that brought no ultimate reward. She could even see disparity amongst those of the forest gathering. A distinction in awareness presented itself as some were inspirited in their incantation while others lagged and struggled at the chore. But what was clear was that some remnants of the scope of human intelligence must have remained to invoke such a gathering.
The added dimension of Chaot behavior confused her, for before she believed these beings were without an advanced awareness. A complete slave to the disease. But now? Did the pathogen affect its victims each differently in its prognosis? The town’s twelve Chaots acted in the ways of the singularly insane. Separate in mind, unaware of the wants and needs of the other, and deviant in their group individualism. Conversely, this hive that she stumbled upon revealed another layer. The Chaots acted as a cohesive whole. There was always a chance that their conformities were indeed not unique but instead the Chaots were progressing beyond the initial pandemonium.
The Chaots faced the same way, to the west. Away from Mecca, away from Olympus, away from the rising sun. Their blank eyes stared out at the horizon, but for the life of her she could not see what the Chaots saw.
But she also knew what she did not see. No beds, no hearth, no altar, no shelter. She could not tell if this place was their permanent habitation, or some kind of ritualistic place of worship. It seemed to be just another part of the forest to an outsider’s eye; the trees, the plants—all stood the same. Nor could she guess if this was a kindred clan of Chaots, or if once the humming ceased, they would disperse as seeds to the wind. Something told her this was more than simply a sporadic meeting though, that coincidence could not bring so many Chaots to the same place at the same time. There were more than appearances to this symphonic conclave.
Look beneath, and you will see.
She remembered the justification Leander gave for not killing her when she was chained in the abandoned playground. She spoke. It was what set her apart from the Chaots, the control of communication, being able to voice her desires rather than simply act on them. The Chaots chanting composed of various sounds proved otherwise; these creatures did have forms of communication. But what did they chant to? Why did they chant?
>
It could be the birth of a religion, the ancestral makings of a prayer to the unseen immortals. Soon the nonsensical hums would become words, giving birth to language, and then to form tales of gods and myths distinct to the Chaots. The humans soon would fall to extinction and would live on only as a legend to the Chaots. Perhaps it was beyond religion, beyond atheism, and into another realm. Or it was a ritual done without knowledge of why—even to them—but rather just a vestige of humankind. An echo of whom they once were, awaiting to disappear like all the other mannerisms of the civil.
Lines of good and evil, right and wrong, were ever blurred inside her mind. She did not know how to interpret this scene for she was led to believe the Chaots were absent of sanity. But as she looked out from hiding to observe the gathering of the wild creatures, she could not help but see a society at its roots. In the aftermath of war, a group—not civilized by any means—nonetheless spawned a new civilization. A manifestation of conformity amongst the crowd. A new species stood before her, rather than ‘sickness’, it now became a dawn to a new age. Not something warped and perverted as the soldiers would see. Not something to cure, for they did not start the final battle between humans. The Chaots did not cause the end of the human’s rule upon the Earth, but we did. It was not their apocalypse but our own.
She understood why the soldiers fought: self preservation. But it was more than that, they also desired the Chaots death because of fear. Fear of the unknown and known. The Chaots were too close a reflection of what they knew, reminding them of the end of Homo sapiens. The soldiers struggled to prevail against the odds, but they did not realize the victor had already been chosen. The new reign of Homo ferus begins, with her a witness to it.
The wild replaces the wise. Nature triumphs the logical.
But will it end in one generation? Genetics were not at work in this evolution; Mendel’s laws of inheritance could not prevail. Look to Lamarck, the voice of scientific reason echoed, inheritance of acquired phenotypes not by way of genetics. Once absurd. But not with prions, prions are the exception. They are heritable. They will act in conjunction with evolution.
It would not end. Even now, she could see an infant held in one female’s grip, a living testament that nature endures. Its teeth dug with vigor into its mother’s arm. Not human, never was. Born Chaot.
Nyx saw the beginnings of a new species in the infant. But like so many other ape species, there needed to be more. Though she was not sure what she looked for until she saw it.
In the midst of the group, one Chaot stood out, one Chaot above the rest. His hair a dusky brown. His skin tanned and coated with dirt like the others. But unlike those that stood around him, his arms and face were spared the full extent of corrosion. Only ample scars were visible, marking the battles he had fought—and apparently won. He stood as if he had a direction, a path to follow, where the others just ran sporadically without goal. But with him, came a cohesive direction. They surrounded him as if he was the central force, venerated and in control: the deep seeded order behind all chaos.
He was the leader. The alpha of the Chaots.
The Pathfinder.
Pathfinder, she mused for the name felt like it was meant for him. A memory, she wondered. But his goal and purpose seemed to be to reign. Emerging from the aftermath of one era, he would lead into the next.
Turning as if in answer to her unspoken question, the Pathfinder looked past his followers to find her. She could see his bronze eyes as he stared into her soul, and she pulled back behind the tree—more in fear of fantasy than what was real. His stare was pervasive as if forged in the fires of Hephaestus. To be caught in it, one surely would be thrown in the same flaming hearth.
He had taken the reins and stood before the Chaots. And now that he had sighted her, he could pull those reins to guide the Chaots to her. Destroying her, ending the journey. But the Pathfinder made no move. She began to question whether he had even seen her, or if it was her imagination alone that believed such.
She risked looking out from her hiding place once more. Though the Pathfinder no longer stood amidst his followers. Where had he gone?
Just a figment, as the Fisherman had been. A mirage. The order the Pathfinder imposed in this chaos was as likely as an oasis in the desert. Believe the mirage, drink the sand, and die.
“Nyx!” Leander called out through the forest.
The chanting noises stopped; heads turned from the west toward the soldier’s voice. She ducked underneath several low-lying leaves for cover, cursing Leander. He put himself at risk for her. She had to get back to the soldiers and warn them, despite Megaira’s threat.
But her decision came too late.
A hand reached out, stopping her by tightening around her shoulder. Intrigue piqued, she wondered if the Pathfinder had come to her side, not as a mirage but as reality. She turned to face him, but met disappointment. It was not the leader, but another Chaot. Blonde hair and fair skin shone beneath the dirt of the monster, almost akin to a porcelain doll. Eyes as sheer as the ocean’s waves would have been luminous, but unsettling red lines etched across the white sclera. He contrasted greatly in looks to the tree-dwelling Chaot near the city but shared one common thread in her mind: the overwhelming feeling that she was now in the presence of the gods. They had been created not as some error of warfare, but through the divine.
Despite this conception, she would not be restrained against her will. She took a step away to free herself; but his grasp grew tighter, preventing any escape. His fingers pressed into her skin. His nails were like claws in their yellow lengthy appearance.
The Chaot did not move at first, other than to keep her at bay. He made no efforts to bring her to the others, or to hide her away as his own. It was almost as if he was accepting her as one of them, welcoming the long lost one home. The strange thing was, she wanted to see where he led her, embracing her allure to these strange creatures, no matter the darkness that shadowed them.
Leander called again from the distance. The believed moment of kinship between them ended. And this time, the soldier’s call caused a grumble of alert from the gathering below. Starting as a quiet alarm, it snowballed into a duet, a quartet, and finally a loud rise from all their mouths. It did not signal her interruption; the group alarm was directed to the soldiers, the outsiders.
The one besides her joined in with the chorus. His call was so powerful in its reiteration that as he vocalized a loose tooth bursted from his putrid gums. It fell with a thud, hitting the dirt of the forest floor. What would have surprised her if not for the circumstances was the disregard he had to his dismantled jaw. It was as if he had grown accustomed to pieces falling from him that the Chaot no longer took notice.
The rousing warning of this infected male petrified her; she did not know what would come next. What stopped the Chaot from satisfying his needs now, tearing away at her skin as a barbie on a pit, she wondered even though she could guess the answer. The id contained more than hungers for the feast, and the flesh could be used to serve other appetites. He could control his urge to kill and eat, at least for moments, in order to engage in other limbic desires.
His alarm stopped in cohesion with the others, replaced by grunting breaths. His tongue flickered in delicious excitement along his lips in anticipation of her. The organ, cancerous and shriveled, moved out from his mouth, along her cheek to taste her salty freshness. The wet trail lined her face. She could only hold still, hoping not to incite him further.
He grabbed her with both arms, dragging her away. Away from the other Chaots and from the threat of the intruders, away from any interruption. She damned herself for hesitating from fighting back, for ignoring Hector’s lessons of attacking before too late. Fear, his other lesson, had now hindered her. Though it was more than that. Curiosity. And curiosity now caused her to pause in action. The Chaot may bring her to the Pathfinder, or even reveal the mysteries of her soul, bringing a fate that had long evaded her. She could not fight back, for then all the
answers would slip away to obscurity. But she knew she had to fight back for the soldier’s sake.
The trees shadowed their figures, hiding the duo from display. The Chaot stopped about thirty feet away from the group and pushed her down and into a hole. She fell several feet, but her descent abruptly stopped upon impact with the ground. Dust and dirt dispersed around her, making it difficult to see. She touched the edge; deposits of the rock rubbed along her finger. It was limestone. Then her hand came to a wooden board, placed there to probably secure this cave. The walls integrated a fusion between the uniform structure set by the cave’s creators and a natural expanse of hollow earth. Parts seemed wet to the touch, a sign of its slow erosion—nature taking its claim on the manmade structure.
The fall did no damage, she thought, nothing substantial enough for concern. What would happen next was. She immediately tried to run after standing, but the Chaot jumped on her and grabbed her. He stood still, waiting with her in his grip. Her sight adjusted to the lair and she looked around, hoping she could gain some information of her surroundings to help in her escape. It was an underground cave system beneath the forest, one that still reeked from the usage of past times. She wondered if it had been built in a last hope effort to shelter survivors from the plague of Armageddon. The Chaots of this gathering may have been the ones who built this cavern before they had become infected. Or perhaps they were the ones who penetrated the grounds, bringing chaos to the shelter and eating what hid inside. Or a mix of both, and only through the disease it joined two enemies together, fighting no more as they became one.
Fear shimmered within her sweat in this sweltering complex. The Chaot turned her toward him, his gaze catching hers through the cave’s dark. Wrapping one arm around her trembling form as he grew close, the second hand came over her mouth to prevent any screams. He was face to face with her as he imprisoned her in his arms, awaiting the threat from above to vanish. Waiting to quench his desires.
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