Achilles

by Greg Boose

  Vespa wheels around. “I don’t want any more chatter from any of you. Okay? All right? This is serious. We need to move as quiet as ghosts, cadets. And if you see anything you can use as a weapon, I suggest you pick it up.”

  Why do they need weapons? The group moves faster, and Jonah jogs to catch up. But should he catch up?

  North sweeps the ground in front of his feet, and they zip along the perimeter of the crash site. Jonah keeps his eyes open for anything of use: a weapon, a shoe, food, his sheaf. He scoops up an L-shaped piece of metal with a fist-sized bolt sticking through one end. Steph finds a heavy wooden chair and stomps off its legs, distributing them.

  They change directions and push through a thick patch of grass that’s chest high and stiff like bamboo. The blades clap and clatter around Jonah, and he has to force himself to breathe through the adrenaline pumping in his body. North leads them single file to a cliff and points his beam down into the jungle.

  “Down here,” he says as he takes a hesitant first step down the cliff. A chorus of howling squawks rains down from the tallest trees, and then there are the sounds of wings flapping and branches bending in the distance. And then there’s silence. Everything about this feels wrong to Jonah. He stares down into the darkness, his heart pounding in his ears.

  “Wait. North, you went all the way down there? By yourself?” Steph asks. “Why would you come down here?”

  “Yeah, seriously,” Griffin grumbles.

  “Because I heard them screaming,” North says. His voice is completely stripped of emotion, and Jonah can tell the boy has pushed beyond some kind of intense fear he has of this place. North runs on body mechanics now, telling his feet each time when to move. Jonah’s been there many times in his last few foster homes. Whatever happens, happens at this point, you think. It’s out of your hands.

  The closer they get to the jungle floor, the tighter Jonah’s hand grips the flat end of the metal. Is this a trap? How well does he know any of these cadets? Is he the only one not in on something? At the tree line, everything is cloaked in shadows; the pale moonlight from Peleus can’t penetrate more than a few feet inside the jungle. Jonah wants to stop, but he’s like North now, and he concentrates solely on keeping his feet moving.

  Vespa points to a low-hanging tree branch covered in wet, bubbling fungi, and after they all duck past, she produces a small blue handgun. Jonah eyes the gun and grips his weapon so hard this time that it cuts into his palm. It takes everything in him not to turn and run. Vespa grabs North’s flashlight to illuminate a row of giant purple flowers with six-foot-tall petals, and says, “We’re on our own now. You’ll understand what I mean in a second. But listen to me. I need you to remember your training and that we will get through this. I promise. North and I will stand sentry right here, so take a look around, look for clues, but don’t touch anything. And do not scream. Do not panic. Just come right back here, and we’ll regroup and strategize.”

  “Holy shit. Enough already,” Griffin says, snatching the flashlight out of her hand. The lion shaved into the cadet’s hair turns away from Jonah as the boy marches confidently toward the flowers. He swipes a jagged chair leg across a closed purple bud that’s as big as a football, knocking it to the jungle floor, where it smokes and disintegrates. Steph, Jonah, Sean, and Portis march after him.

  They enter a small circular clearing and Griffin whips the flashlight all around. Jonah slowly spins as he walks, hoping to see whatever there is to see, then get out of there. There’s a sickly smell in the air, and it hangs over Jonah’s head like a net. He doesn’t see anything, and just as he’s about to call out to Vespa to just tell them what they’re supposed to look for, Griffin sucks in a wheezing lungful of air.

  “Holy shit. Holy shit, holy shit, holy shit. What the—”

  Jonah follows Griffin’s flashlight. It’s pointing up into the trees, and when Jonah sees what it’s landed on, his breath sweeps out of his body. His chest heaves for air, but nothing comes, and little white explosions begin to float over his eyes. Still, he can’t look away.

  Steph sees it, too, and she shrieks and rams her bleached hair into Jonah’s chest, pushing him into a thicket of thorns. The sharp points drive into his skull and neck, but the pain isn’t enough for him to move closer to the clearing. Steph pushes and spins away, and Jonah just leans there, staring.

  Portis begins to gag, and then he chomps down on his wrist and runs, crashing back through the flowers, past Sean, who takes off his night-vision specs and squints up at the trees. Griffin grabs Steph’s wrist, standing perfectly still, his head stuck at a rigid forty-five-degree angle. When he touches his face, Jonah finds himself doing the same thing.

  Griffin’s flashlight stays in one trembling place, and every few seconds, a man’s bloody face twists and swings into its light. He’s dead, bloated and purple, hanging from a black vine around his neck, twirling like a toy. It takes Jonah a moment to realize the man has no legs. It’s the same man from the makeshift hospital, the one whose groans took the doctor away from him.

  “That’s—I think that’s Professor Eck,” Steph finally whimpers. “He’s a demic teacher. Benjamin Eck. I know him. Oh my god.”

  “Holy shit,” Griffin whispers again. When it seems they’ve all had enough time to process the legless dead man hanging from the tree, Griffin lowers the beam to the ground, and when he does, they all jump backward in horror at the discovery of a new body. Sitting directly below the professor is the woman with the half-shaved head who had asked about the snouts. The one who had fought with Paul. Her feet are straight out in front of her, her arms tied behind her back. A white piece of clothing sticks out of her mouth, falling below her chin. Her pale green eyes are lifeless, but they’re wide open and aimed right where Jonah stands in the thorns. He steps out of the bush, drawing in for a closer look.

  Steph falls to her hands and knees, crying, sucking wind.

  Griffin keeps his flashlight right at the woman’s face. “This is what’s-her-name, the cook.”

  “Mrs. Perlman,” Steph wheezes. She stands up and immediately begins to backpedal. “Let’s go. Let’s go, let’s go.”

  Vomit shoots up Jonah’s throat and hits the back of his teeth. He doubles over, but then he’s suddenly afraid to show any signs of weakness to whoever did this, and so he swallows the bile and makes himself stand straight up. He tucks the emotions into the dark corners of his mind to deal with later, when he’s alone and safe. He steels himself, hacks, spits, and concentrates on his breathing.

  With his eyes still on the ground, Sean asks, “What do they say? On their shirts. It says something.”

  “What?” Steph asks.

  Griffin lowers the beam to the cook’s abdomen, and clearly written in mud, it reads: RUN.

  “Run,” Griffin whispers. “Holy shit. It says, ‘run.’”

  Jonah’s skin prickles and rises off his body as if someone has caught him with a thousand fishing hooks. Run? He feels his joints locking, his muscles and tendons shrinking around them. He stares at the muddy word and his focus goes to the dark jungle around him. He listens. At the slightest movement, he’s leaving, he’s gone. He will run.

  Steph grabs Jonah’s arm. “Let’s just go.”

  The legless man above them then rotates, and when Griffin lights him up again, Jonah pays attention to his shirt. He now sees it’s smeared with muddy words, too. He squints and reads: KIDS ARE FREE NOW.

  “Screw this.” Steph lets go of Jonah and backpedals out of sight. “Screw this! Screw all of you!”

  “I can’t even look,” Sean whispers. “What does the other one say?”

  “It says, ‘Kids are free now,’” Jonah whispers. The words fall from his mouth like heavy rocks, dropping on his toes, pinning him in place. The little pinpricks of the thorns stuck in his clothes scrape over his skin, but they do nothing to distract him.

  Vespa’s voice sounds like a gunshot in Jonah’s ears. “Okay. You’ve all seen it. Now let’s go. Hurry. Now.” />
  The cadets crash through the jungle. Those shirts and their warnings, statements, or threats stick to the roof of Jonah’s mouth and replay over and over on his silent lips. Run. Kids are free now. Run. Kids are free now. Run. Kids are free now. He had just seen these two people. The man was about to die, shivering in a sleeping container. Now he’s dead, hanging from a tree branch. Kids are free now. And the woman, Mrs. Perlman, she had just been asking about the snouts and telling Paul to calm down. She was going to be fine. And now Jonah realizes none of them will ever be fine again. Run. He should run. Should he run? Where?

  At the bottom of the cliff, Vespa clears her throat. “Now listen to me. We’ll talk about all that crazy shit in a second, but there’s something else.” She pauses, and then in a cracking voice, she says, “They’re all gone. All the adults, they’re gone. They’re missing. They left, or they were taken away.”

  “What the hell are you even talking about?” Griffin asks. “What do you mean, they’re all gone?”

  Jonah steps forward in a daze. “No, they’re not all gone. I just saw Dr. Z about—”

  “She’s gone,” Vespa interrupts. “For the last hour, North, Paul, and I have been in every shelter, every module, the sickbay, under the truss, every-freaking-where, all over the wreckage. Every adult is missing except for that man hanging from his neck and that woman gagged on the ground.”

  “They’re just all gone,” North whispers. “We can’t find any of them.”

  Griffin swallows a lump in his throat and says, “Run. Kids are free now.”

  Chapter Five

  Darkness continues for another twelve hours. Jonah spends most of it sitting in the farthest corner of Module Five, his back flat against the shredded wall. His head bobs high over the sea of kids like a weathered buoy, and he starts to memorize faces. He pays attention to who huddles with whom before the accusations start. Then he pays attention to who turns on their friends, and how fast.

  As Vespa paces back and forth on the opposite side of the room, Jonah fingers the melted holes in his shirt. He tries to ignore the tiny burns on his chest and neck, but they throb and itch and remind him how useless he’s become.

  After leaving the professor and cook down in the jungle, Griffin demanded to see the Support Module to conduct his own murder investigation of the flight crew. Vespa agreed, and Jonah followed silently up the cliff in a terrified stupor, deciding it was better to stick together—at least for the moment—than to wander into the darkness and run. Run, he thought. Run. He said the word over and over in his head. Where was he supposed to run? Did the adults run? And did he even have the energy to run?

  Jonah’s mind was lost in images of Dr. Z, Garrett, and the dead bodies in the jungle when a flickering orange light appeared over the cliff’s edge. He smelled smoke and burning plastic. Soon, he heard the crackling of fire. The cadets shouted and doubled their efforts up the cliff.

  “What the hell?” Griffin yelled. “WHAT THE HELL!”

  Far in the distance, the Support Module was consumed in an orange and purple fireball. Thick white smoke billowed off it in blankets, and neon sparks shot out in every direction. The messages that had been repeating in Jonah’s head slammed against the back of his skull, ricocheted down his spine, and bit at his toes, and before he knew it, he started to run. He charged straight at the fire, covering several feet with each long stride. Run, he thought. Just run.

  He heard footsteps close behind him, and then Vespa’s voice: “Firstie! Damn it! Stop!”

  They were thirty feet away when Jonah dug his bare heels into the dirt and stopped. He had just run into a large cluster of the landmine weeds, and they were starting to spark and hiss like storm clouds. Jonah backpedaled and whipped his arm behind him to hold back Vespa, but she had too much momentum and pushed right past. She jumped high into the air.

  “No! Get out of there!” Jonah shouted.

  She landed on a narrow strip of dirt between the plants and the module. A weed off to the right exploded, blasting up a geyser of dirt and fire. Jonah covered his head and yelled again, but Vespa ignored him and stepped closer to the flames. The Support Module was collapsing. There was a creak and then a pop, and then Jonah thought he heard a voice, as if a woman was crying for something. It was faint, and he wasn’t sure if he actually heard it, but then Vespa shouted over her shoulder: “Someone’s inside! I think someone’s in there!”

  “You have to get out of there! The plants!” Jonah shouted. Two weeds blew up on his left, blasting debris and flames high overhead. “Vespa!”

  She stepped closer and closer to the module, trying to peek inside its windows. Jonah wanted to jump after her, to throw her over his shoulder and carry her to safety, but his feet were suddenly cemented to the ground. His knees shook. Acid rushed up his throat and coated his tongue and teeth. He was falling apart. Again. And this time Vespa would suffer for it.

  He heard the cry again, faint but clear. It was a woman. And she needed help. Who was it, and where was she? Was it Dr. Z? Was she trapped inside the module? Were all the adults trapped inside? Jonah stared at the inferno and couldn’t believe anyone could still be alive in there. Vespa raised her hands helplessly.

  That was when Jonah’s feet started to move again. A patch of weeds on the left ignited, sending fiery debris everywhere, but he just put his head down and kept going. He took two long strides toward the module and saw a clear spot in the middle of the burning weeds to launch from. He raced into it, planted his right foot, but just as he was about to leap, a weed a few feet in front of him exploded. White and green sparks blew against his chest like birdshot, bouncing up to his neck and chin. He screamed in agony as his flesh burned and his shirt melted to his skin. He stumbled backward, slapping at his chest, dousing the flames. Through tear-soaked eyes, he looked up and saw Vespa pacing in front of the module. He knew he should run away, but he couldn’t; if just a few more plants went off and there was a chain reaction, Vespa would be blown right into the fire.

  Jonah took ten steps back, clenched his teeth, and then sprinted forward. The cool air soothed his burns, and he jumped just as a weed exploded at his heels, its shrapnel punching Jonah in the back and legs. His feet hit the narrow stretch of dirt and he fell onto his hands, then he pushed himself up and tore toward Vespa.

  “Come on!” he screamed, reaching for her arm. But just as his fingers touched her shoulder, a dark shadow came in from his right and rammed him like a train. The impact left him breathless, unable to hear or think. His feet left the ground as he went horizontal. Jonah’s fingers still tried to grab Vespa, but she was no longer there. Everything was black and gone.

  His hearing returned just as the weeds started to detonate in large groups, booming in unison. Jonah found himself floating over the ground as fire, dirt, and scalding hot rocks showered his left side. He tried to turn over, but whatever rammed him held on tight and wouldn’t let go, pushing him farther and farther away from the fire and Vespa. He had to get back to her, he thought; maybe it wasn’t too late. He struggled against the shadow and howled in pain when he couldn’t move, and then a moment later, it all stopped. He was thrown to the ground, where he rolled onto his back in a daze. Next to him, coughing and swearing, was Vespa. And standing above them both, the shadow turned into Paul, his bald head gleaming in the firelight.

  “The hell were you two doing?” Paul asked. “Starting fires? With everything going on?”

  Jonah looked over at Vespa, who spat at Paul’s feet. “Asshole! It wasn’t us. And there was somebody in there!”

  “There was nobody in there, cadet. I assure you.”

  Vespa pounded a fist on the cold dirt and dropped her forehead to the ground in defeat. Jonah didn’t know what to say. There was a woman somewhere—he was sure of it—but if she was inside the module, she was dead by now.

  “I heard a voice, too,” he finally said. “There was a lady. She could have been inside, I don’t know. Maybe they all were.”

  Paul look
ed over his shoulder, and Jonah followed his gaze. The module was flattened, charred, and unrecognizable.

  “I was all the way at the other end of the wreckage when you idiots showed back up. Made it here as fast as I could, and I didn’t hear anyone but your little voice, Firstie. You know, you’re becoming a hell of a liability out here.” And then Paul said, “I’m starting to wish you’d died in the crash and I was left with someone a little more competent.” That cut so deep into Jonah that he lay there for a full minute, letting Vespa and Paul walk off into the darkness before he took North’s dirty hand.

  Now, from his vantage point in the back of Module Five, Jonah watches Vespa pace in the lantern light near the only exit. Steph and North flank her, all three holding spears ripped from one of the porcupine trees in the valley. In Vespa’s side pocket, he sees the bulge of her blue gun. He stares at her pocket enviously while picking at the melted holes in his shirt. Everyone’s a suspect; everyone in here, and everyone in the other module with Paul. Paul’s the biggest suspect of them all, Jonah’s decided, arrogant and aggressive, arguing with the cook at the makeshift hospital, disappearing to find Module Eight in the middle of the night. Hours later, two adults are dead and the rest are gone. Jonah hears Paul wishing him dead over and over in his mind, and when he closes his eyes, he sees images of the professor twirling above him from the vine. He wants a gun. His whole life he’s been the pacifist, the boy who throws the second punch—if he throws a punch at all—and now Jonah wants a gun. Kids are free now. Run. Run, run, run.

  “When the hell is daylight already?” Portis yells and then leans back and puts his palm between his teeth.

  A lean demic boy with long, straight brown hair jumps to his feet and blinks his eyes several times. He speaks rapidly: “Yeah. Hi, um. I’m Michael, and I was doing some calculating earlier and I believe that here on Achilles, at this exact point on its calendar, judging by the time it took for the sun to set this evening, night and darkness lasts just over twenty-four hours. Twenty-four hours and seventeen minutes, to be exact. And daylight is just nine hours and forty-three minutes. To be exact.”