Conception: A Post Apocalyptic Thriller (Perfectible Animals Book 1)

by Thomas Norwood

  For a while, I’d naively thought the country might be better run under rebel control, but these weren’t benevolent dictators: they were the most power-hungry, aggressive opportunists that had been relegated to the de-reg zone. Biker gangs and mafia groups who didn’t hesitate to kill people who got in their way and who weren’t at all interested in establishing any kind of democratic government. Not that the current government was very democratic, but at least they maintained vestiges of decency that these new leaders wouldn’t bother with.

  Half an hour later, Dylan banked left and we were above the water, and then it was blue all the way to the horizon.

  After a couple of hours flying time, we glided down to a small island which rose up on steep cliffs from the blue water. The plane bumped along a grassy landing strip surrounded by forest. At the end of the landing strip was a tin shed and armed guards came out to meet us.

  Dylan and Sophie got out of the plane first, and I saw Dylan hugging the two men.

  “Do you think they’re really going to want your monkeys?” Annie said, poking her finger through Toby’s cage and scratching him behind a sedated ear. He opened a sleepy eye and looked at her, dribble coming out the side of his mouth.

  “I hope so.”

  Dylan came back and opened up the plane door for us. “Let’s go and talk to the chief and ask him what to do.”

  “You didn’t ask him beforehand?” I stepped down out of the plane onto the dry grass.

  “It would have taken too long. Trust me. This way’s best.”

  Annie looked at Dylan skeptically.

  The guards told us we could use their jeep and we climbed aboard and drove down a bumpy road between thick forest. The leaves of the trees beside the road were covered with dust, and more dust billowed up behind us. The sun was shining and a warm breeze brought with it the smell of salt and the musty tropical forest.

  After about twenty minutes the forest thinned out and then cleared entirely. Here, people moved up and down between rows of vegetables, weeding and watering and harvesting. Rows of earthen houses stood between date and coconut palms. People waved; dogs and chickens scampered out of our way.

  In the centre of town were some larger buildings, and we pulled up outside one of these.

  “Welcome to Government House.” Dylan turned to us and smiled.

  The building in front of us had a small patch of green lawn out the front, palm trees shading it. A verandah surrounded the building and a man was lying in a hammock there, smoking. Dylan greeted him as we went past.

  Inside was a large open room with rustic furniture and a thatched ceiling.

  “Is Putuk free?” Dylan asked the man at the front desk, who was fanning himself lazily.

  “Just a minute,” the man replied. He had a brief conversation on an old-style telephone and we were ushered down the corridor.

  A large, Polynesian man was working behind a desk and when he saw Dylan a smile spread across his face. He stood up and the two men hugged and Sophie greeted him as well.

  “Putuk, these are my friends, Michael and Annie.”

  Putuk greeted us with enthusiastic handshakes.

  “Sit down, sit down,” Putuk said, motioning to some cane lounges. “Can I get you something to drink? Kava? Tea?”

  “Kava sounds good,” Dylan said.

  Putuk went out and a few minutes later came back with a tray of cups and a large pot of tea which he served for us.

  “You like Kava?” Putuk said to Annie.

  “I’ve never tried it,” Annie said.

  “Very relaxing,” Putuk assured her, nodding happily as if he’d already had quite a bit himself that day.

  We sipped the tea while Dylan explained the situation with the macaques. He proposed that they either let them free in the forest, or that they construct a small shelter for them, like a zoo.

  “Hmm,” Putuk said when Dylan had finished. “I think we’ll have to get a consensus.”

  “What does that mean?” I asked.

  “We’ll send a message out to everyone. Everyone gets to vote.”

  “Everyone on the island?”

  “Yes. They’ll have twenty four hours to decide,” Dylan said.

  “The island is everyone’s. If we’re going to let the monkeys stay here, then everyone must decide,” Putuk said.

  “How does that get done?”

  “Software,” Dylan said. “People don’t have to vote if they don’t want to. Or many have pre-opted for someone else to vote for them — their local representative, or someone else who they trust.”

  “You have v-space out here?”

  “No,” Putuk responded. “Just a very simple form of network using the simplest of computers. In case they ever break down.”

  “What if the people say no?”

  “We’ll cross that bridge when we come to it,” Dylan said.

  “You mean we might have brought them all the way out here for nothing?”

  “It’s okay.” Dylan waved his hand at me. “Don’t worry. Something will work out.”

  Dylan always had a carefree attitude and it was one of the things that annoyed me most about him. Still, he generally seemed to get what he wanted, so all I could do was hope that this occasion was no different. Why hadn’t he worked all this out before we left? I knew Annie, who loved order and discipline, would be getting upset, and one look at her told me I wasn’t wrong.

  “So, will we be seeing you at the gathering tonight?” Putuk said to us, just as my body was starting to feel the warm glow of the Kava and my concerns over the monkeys were starting to fade. Everything would work out. There was no need to worry.

  “Absolutely,” Dylan said, and I turned to him, hoping he wasn’t speaking for all of us. “Of course, you don’t have to participate in all the ceremonies.” He looked at Annie and I, smiling.

  Putuk laughed.

  We left Putuk and drove to a house that had been prepared for us.

  “What about the macaques?” Annie said.

  “I’ll ask someone to take them to the animal pens,” Dylan said. “I’m sure they’ll have a chicken coop at least where they can keep them for the night.”

  “I’d like to go with them.”

  “Okay. We’ll go and get them if you like.”

  We left our bags at the house, which was small but comfortable, with the same cane lounges I’d seen at Putuk’s and thick rugs on the earthen floor. Then we drove back out to the landing strip to pick up the monkeys. They were still dopey and greeted us with droopy eyes.

  Just as we were unloading them from the plane, a truck arrived. Two lithe black men jumped out and we all loaded them onto the back.

  We followed the men into town and then out to a farm where chickens and cows roamed the fields.

  A woman came out to greet us, and we told her what we needed.

  “We’ve got an old shed out the back we can put them in,” she said. She took us around to what looked like a food storage shed that was empty apart from a few bales of hay.

  “This will be perfect,” Dylan said.

  We unleashed the macaques, and immediately they started playing. Annie and I took one another’s hands.

  “Maybe they’ll be alright here,” Annie said.

  “I think so,” I said. “Much better off than they were at the lab, anyway.”

  The woman, Liza, gave us some fruit for them, and we left them feeding noisily and rubbing themselves against one another.

  That afternoon, I went for a walk by myself along the path which led down to the ocean. I thought about all that had happened over the past year, and then I started wondering if the bio-vectors that Annie had injected herself with were going to work. If they did, maybe we should move here. I looked out across the blue ocean to the waves rolling in steadily, curling gently into white foam from one end to the other, catching the low afternoon sunlight in their crests and along their smooth faces. I sat down on the sand for a while, and then I stood up and walked back to the house
.

  Inside the living area the others were relaxing on the couches. Dylan was just opening a bottle of sparkling wine that he must have brought with him and Sophie, who had slipped into a sarong, was rolling up a joint.

  “I haven’t smoked in years!” Annie said. She seemed happy.

  I sat down in an empty seat.

  “Did Michael ever tell you about our university years?” Dylan said to Annie, sitting across from her and lining up the champagne flutes, winking at me.

  “I don’t know. What are you referring to exactly?” Annie said.

  Sophie lit up the joint, took a few puffs, then passed it to me, letting her hand brush against mine slowly as she let it go.

  “I don’t know. If he hasn’t told you, maybe I shouldn’t say anything,” Dylan said, looking over at me.

  “Well, I haven’t told her everything, I suppose. It was before we started going out.”

  “I’ve told you things about my life before we started going out!” Annie said. “What is it that you haven’t told me?”

  “Thanks, Dylan!” I said. But because I was getting stoned for the first time in about twenty years, and Annie’s sweet pheromones were wafting off her like an apple tree in spring, I couldn’t summon up too much conviction.

  It must have been good weed, as my mind was suddenly going a million miles an hour. The situation had taken a strange turn, and I noticed a subtle tension in the room that I hadn’t felt before.

  “Well, are you going to tell me?” Annie said. Sophie moved over next to Annie on the couch, casually picked up one of her hands, told her how much she liked her wedding ring, then started gently massaging her.

  “You’re my summertime,” an old Rachel Grey song, came on the sound system. The light outside was softening as the afternoon came slowly to an end. Light dropped down through the windows and covered everything with a soft glow. Little specks of brightness glittered from shiny surfaces. Outside, the tops of bushes and trees were basted in orange.

  “Michael?” Dylan said.

  “Well, it’s a bit late now,” I said.

  “Are you going to tell her or should I?” Dylan said.

  “About what exactly?” Annie asked, looking from one to the other of us.

  “I don’t know… Julia?” Dylan said, looking my way.

  “Who’s Julia?” Annie said.

  “Yes, who’s Julia?” Sophie repeated.

  “She was this girl who Michael introduced me to at university. Michael was in love with her, but I didn’t know that at the time. Because Michael didn’t tell me, did he?” Dylan said.

  I felt my whole body start to produce hormones that made my head spin as if I were drunk. I hadn’t thought about Julia in years. Images of some of the long sex sessions Dylan, Julia, and another girl called Ingrid and I had had when we were younger flashed through my mind. I remembered one night especially when we’d all taken some ecstasy and LSD and gone out to a club together and then gone back to the apartment where Julia lived, subsidized by her parents, and spent the whole next day listening to music and dropping more ecstasy and snorting coke and drinking and fucking each other’s brains out. It had been one of the most intense days of my life, a day when I really thought that I was in love with Dylan, Julia and Ingrid all at the same time, and that maybe we’d end up living together, the four of us, for the rest of our lives.

  “Well, if I’d known that about a week after I introduced you to her that you were going to start sleeping with her, then I probably never would have,” I said, trying to keep my cool.

  “Typical Dylan,” Sophie said. “So you’ve always been like this, have you?” I noticed she was still working away at Annie’s hand, which along with the pot and alcohol were sending Annie into what looked like a pleasant torpor.

  “So, what happened?” Annie groaned as Sophie hit a nerve.

  “Well, being the nice guy I am, I asked him if he wanted to join us,” Dylan said.

  “Of course,” Sophie said, shaking her head at him.

  Annie sat up straight, pulling her hand away from Sophie. “What do you mean?”

  “Well, you know, asked him if he wanted to have a foursome with Julia and I and another girl I was seeing.”

  “And did you?” She looked at me.

  I looked sheepishly down.

  “He did,” Dylan said. “We became a regular little family for a while there.”

  “Why haven’t you ever told me about this?” Annie asked me.

  “It was a long time ago.”

  “Long time ago or not. Don’t you think that’s the sort of thing you might like to tell your wife?”

  “You always seemed so against that sort of thing that I didn’t want to bring it up.”

  “I’m not against that sort of thing at all. You’re making me out to be some kind of prude. I didn’t complain for example when you and Sophie here almost slept with one another at that gathering you went to, did I?” Annie pulled away from Sophie and sat with her back tight against the sofa like a cornered animal.

  I felt paralyzed. I wanted to go across to Annie and put my arm around her, but the weed was making everything weirder than it already was. It was like all of us had stopped breathing and there was some poisonous gas in the air that was going to kill us if we did breathe.

  “Come on, you’ve never done anything like that?” Dylan said to Annie, breaking the tension.

  “No, never!” Annie said. “It doesn’t mean I wouldn’t, though. Or that I’m against it in any way.”

  “You seem like a fairly liberal woman. I’m sure you got up to some pretty crazy things in your younger years,” Dylan said, and I admired the way he was bringing her out of herself, relaxing her.

  “Well, there were a few things, I suppose, that looking back on did seem a little crazy.” Annie laughed, and I breathed a sigh of relief.

  “Such as?” Sophie prodded.

  “Well, nothing like that, of course.” She was still looking at me in a way which frightened me. Like she didn’t know me any more. Maybe it was just the pot. “I did steal a car once.”

  “What!” I said, trying to act outraged.

  “Tell us more,” Dylan said.

  “Well, not exactly stole. It was my friend’s car.” Annie went on to tell us a story, about how they’d driven it across town when they were only fourteen and picked up two boys.

  “You little rebel,” Dylan said. “At least we were of age, weren’t we, Michael?”

  We all laughed, and I felt a warm glow of love stretch out for this, my only family.

  Just before dinner, I followed Annie into our room as she went looking for a sweater.

  “So, are you enjoying yourself?” I asked.

  “Yes, I am, actually.”

  “I’m sorry about all that back there. I should have told you years ago. It was just one of those things that I was kind of embarrassed about, and then as time went by it became harder and harder, and then I kind of forgot about it.”

  “Forgot about it, or put it out of your mind?”

  “The latter, I guess.”

  “Is it still something you’re interested in doing? Dylan and Sophie look like they’re up for it.” She giggled.

  “Not really. You?”

  “No, probably not,” she agreed, and then we both laughed and hugged each other with what felt like relief. “Maybe I am a bit of a prude.”

  “I like you being a prude,” I said, and we kissed.

  The night was warm and a breeze blew off the ocean. We sat amongst a couple of hundred people around a large circular space where people were dancing, drumming, clapping with sticks or their hands, playing tambourines, triangles, flutes and recorders, or just adding to the general cacophony with their voices. After a few more cups of Kava and another couple of joints, I felt myself getting swept up in the euphoria and started clapping along myself.

  Slowly, the party died down and people started huddling together in groups or going off together through the trees, and Annie
and I walked along the dusty road together in the moonlight, leaning against one another and just enjoying for once the beauty of the moment.

  The next afternoon we went back to visit Putuk, and he informed us that the people had agreed to let the monkeys free. There weren’t any natural predators on the island, and the monkeys would be able to live a happy life amongst the trees of the island, which provided plenty of wild fruit.

  Before we left the island, we went to visit them. They were feeding noisily in a wild mango tree. Toby came running across to us and climbed up onto my shoulder. I took him down and held him tightly in my arms.

  “You’re going to be okay here, Tobes,” I said to him. “You’re going to be happy. We’ll come back and visit you soon. I promise.”

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  OVER THE NEXT few days, we monitored Annie carefully, but nothing changed.

  And then I had to return to the base.

  Annie came out to the airport with me and we gave each other a painful goodbye.

  “Let me know the second anything changes,” I said. “I’ll come back immediately.”

  “I’ll be fine,” she replied, but her smile was forced and I let her go with a heavy heart.

  That evening I went to find Justin. He was still in his lab, working on testing the immune systems of our patients to the Rebola virus. Thanks to the latest in vitro assay technology, we were able to do the testing outside the human body with a ninety percent certainty.

  “How is Annie?” Justin burst out. I had sent him an encrypted message letting him know that we’d started testing the bio-vectors.

  “No change, yet.”

  “Penny’s in hospital. I really don’t think she has long left.”

  “I’ll let you know as soon as anything changes.”

  “Thanks,” he said.

  “How is everything going here?”

  “The results vary. Some of them seem to be working perfectly, while others are not working at all.” He went on to explain to me the reasons why. We had managed to increase the number and variety of antibodies, but in some cases the attack by the natural killer cells still wasn’t fast enough. And with Rebola, that was crucial.