by Josh Law
It was still unnerving trying to talk with him. Motherhood had made Marilyn a lioness. She knew that if she wanted Nicky to ever have some idea of peace, she was going to have to work closely with this harbinger of destruction. She took a long pace forward and came to his side.
“You don’t like it.”
“Senora?” Cipriano looked up from his deep thoughts and the rapids below them.
“Whatever it is you’re pondering. Something below us, or something you interpreted from what you’ve observed. It has you a bit perplexed. Which can only mean bad. So talk to me, what are we looking at?” Marilyn folded her arms and jutted out her chin. Cipriano looked down into her dancing charcoal eyes. This woman made him somewhat nervous.
“You wouldn’t believe me if I told you.” He shrugged, jaw clenching as he tried to convince himself that his eyes were deceiving him. No matter how he scrambled the facts his eyes still saw the same and this was rocking reality on its axis. There was no way that this could possible.
“Okay, so don’t show me. I’ll believe my eyes. Just point it out.” She stepped closer to him and tried to see into the distance.
“Dear God!” Chance pressed forward then. Marilyn barely heard his stifled groan of irritation. Her spine ached with sudden terror.
Below them lining the shore were at least 50 Federal agents. They were exchanging briefcases with military officers, some of which were dressed like Spec Ops SWAT officers. Marilyn recognized one of them from Mexico City.
“Crap! The Feds have let Snake off the chain!” Renee face palmed.
“Nicky!” Marilyn’s breath was gone. She wasn’t aware that she was sliding to the ground until she felt Cipriano grab her up from under her arms.
“What the hell?” Chance leaned closer to look.
The Federal officers and the Mercenaries were climbing into and out of an Ark. Similar to the descriptions of Noah’s Ark but shrunken in scale and overlaid with solid gold.
“This is like a page right out of Sunday school?” Renee shook her head in bafflement.
“The Jaguar.” Cipriano closed his eyes and swallowed.
“Sorry?” The Vierra siblings spoke in unison.
“I was convinced that it was just a legend. The Jaguar is a mystery watercraft that belonged to Ashe and her cohorts. No one knows its origin or purpose. Of course, no one ever took the time to discover it. You see, we believed it was a myth that the Convention invented to keep us on our toes.” Cipriano hung his head at the ignorance of his colleagues.
Marilyn twisted free of his arms and turned back to the Jungle. She’d crawl on hands and knees if that’s what she had to do to get back to camp.
If Snake was free, he was coming for Nicolas. There was no question of that.
Chapter 4:
“Brandon, I’m going to need you to drive, buddy!” Alex hauled Nick into the Jeep cradling his head like one does an infant. There was the loud firecracker popping song of machine guns echoing off the dense forest.
Alex held his breath and looked up into Sally’s constricted face. She swallowed, unsure herself what they should do. He wasn’t the belligerent, street smart kid that Nicky was. How did he organize tactics in Cipriano’s absence?
Nick had woken up by now. He wasn’t making a sound, but his eyes were wide with horror and his stiff –angled legs alerted them that the chemicals had temporarily paralyzed him. There was something else. Something that was harder for the others to see, but Alex had found it without any real struggle in searching. His brother was in mental decline. Even now the look in his eyes spoke panic of the interrupted.
His brother’s need was his answer. If he had to lose everything that made him an individual and become an extension of his spirit to keep him alive, then he could make that sacrifice. If he lived or died, his tormented brother was going to survive to see peace.
“Peyo! Take 12 and 3 o’clock positions, ay, ‘mano? I’ll watch 6 and 9.” Alex leaned over his brother and handed Peyo a Mac10 that Cipriano had acquired from some of his contacts. Peyo’s eyes grew wide and he looked down at Nick whose fingers were suddenly digging into Alex’s wrist.
He coughed and shook himself. Blood effused from his bottom teeth and streamed down his neck. Even with the antidote coursing through him, he’d still been damaged deep beneath his skin.
“Nicky…Trust me this time, okay?” Alex’s eyes flashed in the glare of a muzzle loader that blasted through the trees ahead of them and shattered the path before them.
Nick nodded but then leaned forward. He was climbing his brother’s shirt with shaking hands, eyes sporadically looking around the cab of the Jeep. Sally laid a hand on his face, tears dripping from her cheeks and mixing like paint in his blood. He thrashed and let out a wail, shaking himself and Alex.
“Give me…to them...Take the kids. Get them somewhere no one will ever…” Nick coughed. Blood flowed down his chin and streamed down Alex’s t-shirt.
Alex took Nick’s hair in two fierce fistfuls and pulled his face to being level with his own. He stared down in his eyes eerily.
“For the last time, Nick! Last time I’m going to say this for as long as we live, got it? I’m not leaving you to die like this! If they take you, they’ll have to pry me apart muscle and bone first!” He pressed Nick’s forehead heavily to his lips. Swallowing, he tried to ignore his siblings and Bacardi crying without restraint to witness this. He forced his eyes shut and let the tears come, feeling Nick’s tears streaming and falling onto his neck mingled with his blood. He lifted his face and caressed it watching his troubled eyes. Then he looked around at all of his brothers and sisters.
“You guys understand everything that’s happened and is happening now. You’re all practically grown-ups and it’s not exactly rocket science. I know that Papa Vierra was trying to protect you all by saying this was temporary. That the people who came for me and Nicky the first time have come back for us. I know they told you that it will all be over soon. That the government will get it under control. Guys, I love every last one of you and I’m not going to lie to you, no matter how much this hurts. This is never going to stop. The world is hunting us for our dad’s genes because medical science has become a corrupted lucrative market. This doesn’t end today or tomorrow or ten years from now. We as a family have come down to the rock-bottom a person can ever reach. No government in this World can help us. The U.S. government are the ones who betrayed us to begin with by allowing the experiment that resulted in our being born.
Listen to me, guys. We as a family have hit the bottom of the lows. So, we as a family are going to have to climb over each other’s bleeding backs and stand on each other’s shoulders until together we rise again. From here on out, we work together…”
Alex took Nick’s chin in his hand and studied his face, unable to voice all the things he wanted to say.
“No more scapegoats.” He laid him gingerly in Sally’s lap and swept a Mac 11 off the cab’s floor. He pried the back window open. Suddenly, he was face to face with Snake.
He held his breath and felt his hair standing on end, fire anxiety sweeping over his skin. Alex Prescott was becoming someone else. Baptized in his brother’s blood and the fires of guerilla war he was transforming from broken little kid to a warrior. Rising again.
“Brandon, turn us down the bank. Follow the river. We’re not going back to the camp. That will lead them too close to home.”
“What are you thinking, Alex?” Brandon swallowed, trying to keep a straight face.
“I’m thinking that a good offense is the best defense. I’m thinking the best way to beat Snake’s death game is to play it.”
Chapter 5:
They had failed their children. It came to them too late.
Marilyn stumbled into the little camp 20 miles outside of Yaviza. She could already taste the ashes and the tar came rolling down her body like the curtains were falling. It was over.
Marilyn hit her knees. Her hand went to her throat to stifle a scream that
would have been silent anyway as her spirit had died within her upon sight.
It had been makeshift, something that belonged to the locals. There was a small plantain plantation in the area that had lent them a shed converted into a small church and local hospital called “the Mission” to lay low in. A local medical researcher that was testing natural extracts on the natives had taken the kids under his wing. He’d trained them all in basic emergency medical techniques. Sally had a particular knack for it, which is why Cipriano had entrusted the chest full of antidotes and other black market chemicals he’d bought through the grapevine with her.
Marilyn’s eyes burned in the Mission’s smoke. The small church and the plantation were gone, blown clean off the Earth by what could have only been a rocket launcher. It was like Snake’s watermark. He had wormed his way even through the dense Amazon. None of the nations would ever be able to hold him back. He had come to devour and he had succeeded. Marilyn’s chest and stomach went numb and her hands began to shake.
After all that he’d survived…
“Wait! Don’t shoot! It’s me!” The voice of the medical researcher echoed like angel song over the blistered tree roots that stretched their fingers to heaven in anguish. He was drenched in clay, blonde hair made to look more red from the Earth, but alive.
“Harrison Clark!” Marilyn shouted, spirit broken, only trying to reach out to someone who had retained the gift of life in this place of constant death.
She ran to him and fell to her knees in front of him. Tears flowed freely from her. Marilyn felt hollow. Throughout her life as a detective for the Amber Alert system, she had watched myriads of mothers in her own place now. She’d seen National Geographic where war had split the souls of many wretchedly beautiful women and left them crying to the sad refrains of an orchestra and a narrator’s sympathetic voice. It had always felt so distant. That would always be television. Something she would tear up over and send pocket change to somewhat alleviate the basic essentials of picking up the pieces. It was never the realm of empathy. It was never supposed to be her on the ground, wringing her hands in the dust, dead to the core.
Clark hit his knees and took her arms, eyes suddenly terrified.
“What’s wrong? Have you found the kids? Are they alright?” He swallowed, stunned by her response. She collared him and gave him a shake.
“What are you talking about? Look around you. The village! We should never have left them alone!”
Clark grappled Marilyn making her go limp. He brushed her hair away from her eyes and compassionately thumbed away her tears.
“The kids left the village before the fighting broke out. Nicky was acting sort of out of it and then he turned up missing. Mostly we figured he’d had a panic attack. You know this last year has been literal hell for that kid. But his troubled mind might have been his salvation.”
“What are you saying, Clark?” Marilyn swallowed her tears, mind clear enough to listen to him now.
“Marilyn, the kids could still be alive. It’s not time to throw in the towel yet.”
“If anything, this is where our fight begins. If any of the grapevine legends about the Jaguar are true your children will be faced with an end far worse than death if we don’t get to them first.” Cipriano’s eyes trained far away to the edges of the camp. He saw shadows and ghosts moving there that no one else had the wits to observe.
“We gotta move. Or we’d be better off dead too!” He motioned with his head and charged in the direction that they’d come from. The Vierras saw him coming and turned on their heels.
“What are we doing?” Chance pinned his rifle to his chest and looked back over his shoulder as fire began to ignite the woods like Independence Day.
“Stopping the end of Western Civilization and picking up the kids from school!” Cipriano posed the Jericho. A shot rang out and there was the thud of a body hitting the forest floor. Marilyn had no idea what was rising against them. She closed her eyes. If she kept this a dream for as long as she could, then she could keep going. It wasn’t just Nick’s life anymore she realized. The lives of all of his siblings and his continued humanity depended on her choices. Strength would come because it must.
Chapter 6:
Nick woke up in the Jeep. Alex leaned over him. He balanced a rifle on Nick’s placid chest. The rest of their siblings were out of sight, but they could still hear some of them milling around the outside of the Jeep.
“Alex…What the hell is…” Nick began wracking with furious coughs. Speech was one of Hercules’ Labors at this moment.
“Nicky, I’m only going to ask you once. Lay still for God’s sakes, man. You’re shaking like a Chihuahua.” Alex ran his hand through Nick’s hair and continued to draw his fingers through it, rustling it up and then smoothing it flat again. Nick watched his eyes. They danced with fatal responsibility. Something had happened while he was asleep.
“This is a diversion. We’re hiding in the bush, drawing them to our silence. Then you’re going to fill them with lead.” Nick was impressed. Alex smiled, sweat beading on his forehead.
“The sitting ducks are now seated on the throne, my brother.” Alex looked down at Nick lips curled in a brave
smirk. It was a valiant attempt at appearing to be okay, but there was hardly a person alive that could fool Nicolas Avalon.
“You can’t carry this by yourself.” Nick was surprised by his own words. The extra physiochemical bond they’d developed through the symbiotic blood transfusion that had saved both their lives last year had made Nick capable of reading Alex’s thoughts and feelings from the faintest expression on his face. Even a tense muscle in his shoulder would alert his brother that he might be feeling anxious. Alex sighed and leaned closer.
“You can’t either…Which makes you a hypocrite now. You’ve been trying to…When you disappeared…” Alex didn’t have to say it. Nick had scared decades off his life.
“I didn’t do it on purpose, Alex. I wouldn’t do something like that…Not after everything that’s happened to us.” Nick laid a hand on the nape of his brother’s neck.
“Explain.” Alex clenched his jaw. Nick swallowed.
“I’m on fire, man. Something-someone-is doing this to me…I wandered away. I don’t remember why. I just panicked and I ran. Something…I could taste chemicals. I know it sounds crazy.” Nick closed his eyes. Alex sighed and knotted his fingers in Nick’s hair, moving his head like a puppet on the strings, looking at his face from every angle the light would give him. He was contemplating the life in his brother’s face. How many times was he going to lose him?
“So, you think…These guys are somehow using a drug like a siren to get you to walk into their traps? Is that even a thing?” Alex felt his eyes crossing.
“Apparently.” Nick chewed his lip. Alex shook his head and gasped.
“What?” Nick felt his skin go cold.
“Are we ever going to talk about this, Nicolas?!”
“Talk about what?” Nick was honestly afraid now. Alex’s eyes were bloodshot and his lips trembled sporadically. He shook his head. There was a time when he was totally unwilling to broach this subject. Now he couldn’t resist it.
“Dude, when we look back on what was supposed to be the golden years of our youth, all I’m going to have to remember is burying you.” Alex bowed his head.
Nick tried to sit up but Alex pinned his chest down with his palms and the underside of the rifle that was resting on Nick’s shoulder.
“Alex…”
“For real, Nicky! Most people can’t even wrap their head around the thought of burying their brother. I have watched you die or nearly die (a couple of those times die for me) like four or five times now! I’ve lost count! I can’t…I can’t deal…” He looked to the Jeep’s roof.
This might be the last silent moment in their lives. They were being bated, hunted, by skilled poachers of humanity whose faces and origins were still awry to them.
Nick swallowed trying to course through his
own emotions and come up with a solution for this. It was a nightmare from its inception. Ever since a car hit Nicky and he died.
“If it hadn’t been for my death…For all of this. We wouldn’t have known that we were brothers.” Nick smiled. Alex understood and shook his head.
“You were always my brother. We didn’t have to be biological.”
“Yes, but we are. It’s a gift, see?”
“Since when are you an optimist?”
“Since your life depended on it.” They were silent. Alex wouldn’t let Nick sit up. So Nick pulled Alex down to lying by his side. He clutched his shoulder in a shaking hand and nodded.
“You said it yourself. The ducks are on the throne, brother. We’ve been hiding under rocks and clawing for our lives for too long now. Remember what the initial plan was? I’m talking like back in Durango?” Nick smiled like a coyote. Alex felt a thrill pass through him.
“You’re thinking of rounding up the Zombie Army again, eh?” Alex clapped a hand on Nick’s back. He could feel his throat knotting up. Would Cipriano agree to this idea?
“Hey, it worked the first time. We all have a common enemy and it would double the size of our forces. If you’re worried about Cipriano, remember that this was his idea. He said that we would have to eck out our own little right to existence. Well, Alex, it’s time to declare an independent nation of the Dead. Officially this time. I’m done making cloak and dagger deals with mysterious psycho hoodoo mamas and bad cop types. If they’re going to deal and do under the table, then let’s hand some of that back to them, huh? Let’s can operation run and hide and talk divide and conquer with the Boss.” Nick was suddenly passionate, driving his fist into the floorboards. Alex nodded smiling hopefully.
“It’s a great plan, bro. But we’re still in the woods…”
As if summoned, they heard engine’s filing through the foliage.
“I know you’re in there…Think you’re smarter than me, kiddies? I’m the best of the highly trained and you’re just a group of high school dropouts.” Snake proceeded to whistle “Dixie Land”. There was a smell like kerosene away in the grass.