Achilles

by Greg Boose

  “Ohhhhh, did I say that?”

  “Yes, yes,” Jonah slurs. The crackling of the fire begins to sound like music. “Where’s your sister? Your sister?”

  “I don’t have a sister.” Tunick laughs, crunching on his verve. He tosses four more seeds in his mouth. “I’ve been known to stretch the truth as big as the Silver Foot.”

  Jonah looks up at the planets and stars. They move, bouncing into each other, streaking out of sight. Peleus swoops in an arch, pulsing in a rhythm like the jungle toads. When Jonah blinks, he finds the stars and moon back where they were. And then they move again. Sitting up on the wall, Hopper yells, “Michael, you’re totally like my best friend now, did you know that? Dude, I’m so sorry I used to make fun of you! I’m really sorry, ya freak.”

  “It’s okay,” Michael says, standing below him. “Just don’t hurt yourself up there. I worry about you.”

  “So, you don’t really have a sister?” Aussie asks Tunick.

  As Tunick waves his hands over Christina’s blissful face, he says, “Who needs a sister? I have a brother, though. Good, good, good kid. Does what I ask.”

  “I used to have a brother,” Christina mumbles.

  “Awwwwww. What’s your brother’s name?” Aussie rolls off Jonah’s legs.

  Jonah jumps to his feet, full of energy. He pushes past Tunick, toward the fire. His mind is caught in a high-speed chase of colors, and he has to cover his eyes with his hands just so he can concentrate. What did Tunick just say? He has a brother? Jonah drops his hands and stares at the fire that is now pure purple. It’s the most beautiful thing he’s ever seen.

  “So, my birds,” Tunick says, turning Jonah around. “Where is the energizer now? That’s all we need. If we want to do this again, we need the energizer.”

  Aussie gets to her knees and vomits again. “Christina has a brother, too.”

  “I used to. I used to.”

  Tunick slaps Christina hard across the face. “The energizer, goddamnit! It’s big and orange! Where did you put it? Why are you so stupid?”

  The cadet’s face freezes at the insult, and then she begins to sob uncontrollably. Jonah wavers above her. Oddly, it’s as if he can feel her tears running down his own throat, and they cascade into a rising pool in his lungs. Christina’s sadness is so intense that he begins to cry, too, and he sits and cradles her head in his lap. It couldn’t feel more foreign to him, to comfort someone so intimately, but he doesn’t want to be anywhere else.

  “Jonah Monah? Where’s the energizer? Do you hear me, smart boy? I have my orders. They want me to move forward. They want me to move forward with you.”

  Tunick keeps talking, but all Jonah can focus on is the pale yellow light flowing out of Christina’s nose and mouth. It moves along the dirt floor, spreading in every direction. “I—I think I can see your soul,” he whispers into her ear. He wants to swim in it. He wants to swallow the yellow light like water.

  Christina opens her eyes. “My what?”

  Something hard slams into the top of Jonah’s head, knocking him over. When he looks up, Tunick stands over him with the blue gun in his hand. “You know where it is, so JUST TELL ME!”

  Jonah opens his mouth, but the words don’t come. The lights. He wants to get back to Christina’s soul flowing around him.

  “Over here! Hey, ya freaks, look over here!” Hopper dances awkwardly on top of the wall, but he loses his footing, tipping backward and out of sight. Malix backflips up onto the wall and then bows before looking down into the jungle.

  “He’s fine,” he calls down into the room. The branches hanging over the wall begin to shake violently. “Ha! The dumb idiot is trying to kick down this stupid tree and I’m…I’m going to help him. I’m going to help him knock it down. Watch out for our stupid tree because we’re going to knock it over!”

  Malix goes over the wall into the jungle, and Michael tries to jump up after him. Tunick growls and tosses the blue handgun into the fire, sending up a cloud of purple sparks. He marches toward the wall.

  “His name was Eddie. My brother. Eddie, Eddie, Eddie. Edward James,” Christina says wistfully.

  “I like that. Eddie,” Aussie says, looking up from her vomit. “Tunick? Tunick, what’s your brother’s name again?”

  Tunick ignores her and grabs the waist of Michael’s pants and the back of his shirt, and without warning, launches the small demic over the wall.

  “Here I come!” Michael calls.

  Over his shoulder, Tunick says, “Verve gives you muscles. Feel how strong you are. And you don’t feel pain. Try to hurt yourself if you want. It doesn’t hurt. Much.”

  “But what was your brother’s name, Tunick?” Aussie asks.

  “Him? Oh, oh, oh. You probably know him, girlie. I bet you know him really well. After all, you just spent a hell of a lot of time with him. Almost a year.”

  Hearing this last sentence brings a crashing moment of clarity to Jonah. A throbbing coolness beats down his neck, and the glowing white light framing everything in his sight fades and disappears. Christina’s yellow light vanishes, and the dirt floor is nothing but a dirt floor again. “Who’s your brother, Tunick?”

  The man doesn’t respond. He simply jumps up and over the wall. A moment later, the branches hanging over the stone circle swing wildly above Jonah. There’s a sound of the ground ripping, of wood moaning, and as the tree tips away from Jonah and the girls, Tunick yells, “Timber!”

  Chapter Thirteen

  Jonah rushes toward the fire. The gun is just out of reach inside the flames, and even though Tunick has just told them they wouldn’t feel much pain, he knows his skin will blister and melt, and he’ll feel it in time. He can hear the boys on the other side of the wall laughing and congratulating each other, and he knows he doesn’t have much time before they leap back into the room. The cadet is dizzy yet completely focused, and he drops to his knees and scrapes his fingernails into the dirt. As soon as he has a handful, he tosses it onto the gun, driving away the closest flames. Another handful. Another. Then he grabs a nearby rock and digs the gun out of the embers, only to cover it with another handful of dirt. Tunick said that Aussie just spent over a year with his brother. That can only mean Tunick’s brother was on the ship. And that can only mean he’s involved with all this mess.

  Kneeling over Aussie’s blank face, Jonah whispers, “Get up. Get up, get up, get up.”

  The constellations of freckles on her cheeks and nose move and swirl. Jonah blinks and shakes his head, then spits his verve into the fire. He digs his fingers into Aussie’s mouth and scoops out the white seed, tossing it against the wall.

  “Heeeey,” Aussie whines. “What’s your problem? I kind of like the—”

  Without thinking, Jonah slaps her. “Snap out of it. We’ve got to go. Now.”

  Aussie’s cheek grows red, but she smiles. “That didn’t even hurt. Your slap didn’t even hurt, Jonah. That’s so weird. Do it again. Hit me again.”

  Christina props herself up onto her elbow. “Ooh, somebody hit me. I want to try.”

  “No!” Jonah seethes. He looks back and forth between the two girls, and then he snatches up the dirt-covered gun. The metal isn’t too hot. At least, not that he can tell.

  “I’ll hit you,” Aussie says. She gets to her feet and balls up her fist. Christina stands and hops in place, impatient and giddy. “I’m sorry we’ve never really talked before, Christina. You’re so sweet.”

  “Thanks. I really like you, too. You’re so pretty.”

  Just as Aussie swings her arm at the cadet, Jonah grabs her elbow and yanks her toward the wall. “Listen! Both of you grab whatever you can and let’s go. How do we get out of here? How’d we get in here? Come on, come on, come on. We have to go right now.”

  “Somebody hit me already!” Christina barks with her eyes closed. Over the wall, Malix yells for Christina to get over there, that he’ll hit her right after they knock over this next tree. Aren’t they worried about Zion hearing all this no
ise? Tunick seemed so worried before, but not anymore.

  Jonah grabs Christina’s shoulders and puts his face inches from hers. “I’ll hit you after we escape, okay? This verve stuff is messing with your mind, Christina. Control it. Remember your training. Remember the academy. Remember Officer Dravo. We’re prisoners. We have to get out of here, we have to move. Now.”

  The cadet opens her eyes, frowns, and then goes limp, trying to drop out of his grip, but Jonah holds tight, keeping Christina hovering above the ground. His entire body flexes with agitation. Ten minutes ago, he couldn’t lift the water jug, and now he believes he could punch a hole in the wall.

  Portis rolls back and forth on the floor; he’s in his own world, gnawing on his fingers, blood covering his face. Should he try to take the cadet with him, too? No, he’d only slow them down with his leg wound.

  There’s a noise on the other side of the wall, and then Michael comes sailing high overhead, screaming like a banshee. At first Jonah thinks the demic is going to land right in the fire, but instead he crashes into the dirt several feet past it. The boy rolls into Jonah’s legs and begins to laugh. His front teeth are chipped, and he spits blood without concern.

  No one else seems to feel the same sense of panic that Jonah feels, nor do they imagine, like him, what Tunick might do once he realizes they can’t help him find the energizer. Or what it might mean that Tunick’s brother was on the Mayflower 2. Jonah drops Christina to the ground and wheels around to snatch Aussie’s wrist, but to his surprise, she grabs his neck with both hands and tries to choke him.

  “No!” she shouts.

  “We’re leaving,” he says, coughing. Her grip is so strong.

  Malix’s head appears at the top of the wall, and as soon as he and Jonah make eye contact and Malix sees the gun, the cadet whispers something down into the jungle. Jonah snakes his hand between Aussie’s rigid arms and slams his elbow down on her wrist. She’s forced to release her grip, and Jonah says, “Just stay alive. I’ll come back. I’m going to get us off this moon.”

  “Is there a party going on in there?” Hopper yells from the jungle. “Hey? Jonah?”

  “Jonah Monah!” Tunick sings.

  Jonah runs along the base of the circular wall in the opposite direction, leaping high over a giggling Portis, trying to find a way out. The floor around the fire begins to separate, rise, and spin, but Jonah knows it’s just the verve, and he blinks hard, refocuses, and the floor stops moving. Just when he thinks there’s no exit, he catches Michael in the corner of his eye pointing in the opposite direction. He turns and sees it; the wall isn’t a complete circle. Two walls overlap, and there’s a narrow path between them. Hopper comes into view next to Malix, and when he sees Jonah, he yells, “Tunick! I think your friend Jonah doesn’t like it here!”

  To his right, Christina and Aussie stand near the wall, arms crossed, eyes dilated. Above the left wall are Malix and Hopper, both of whom flex their jaws in anticipation of a fight. Jonah realizes his only choice is to go straight across. As he pushes away from the wall and sprints forward, Jonah pictures his mom and dad trying to escape their shaking bedroom, and how they somehow had enough time to shove him under the dresser. He’s ten feet from the raging fire when he knows he needs another one of those moments right now, as Tunick appears on all fours on top of the wall like an insect. Jonah closes his eyes and leaps through the top flames, bursting out the other side with the taste of ash on his lips.

  “No, no, no,” Tunick growls, dropping fast into the room.

  Jonah doesn’t turn around. Something hits the back of his head, but he keeps racing for the passage between the walls.

  “Waaaaaait. Where is everyone going?” Portis asks as Jonah blurs by.

  Tunick is just a few seconds behind Jonah as he slips through the dark opening and bounces hard from wall to wall with the gun in his hand. Finally, the walls widen and he falls into a cold, pitch-black space.

  “Who’s going to protect you from Zion? There’s nowhere to go, smart boy. Be smarter. BE SMARTER!”

  It takes Jonah a moment to see the half-circle of Peleus moonlight on the left side of the room; he’s back in Tunick’s freezing cave, smelling the foul meat. He flattens himself against the eastern wall just as Tunick barrels inside.

  Jonah’s fingers feel the carved symbols, and he silently digs his nails inside every crevice, twisting and pulling on every piece of rock. Nothing clicks. Nothing’s going to save him, but him.

  “Jonah?” Tunick whispers. “Jonah Monah, what’s wrong? You don’t like the verve? If you don’t like the verve, well, then you’re a splitter. And I kill splitters, Jonah.” After a pause, he barks, “I don’t have a choice! I have my orders!” Then, quieter, in a shaky demonic voice, he says, “I can see them, Jonah. If I have enough verve, they talk to me. They’ve chosen me, and now I have to choose others. And if you don’t tell me where the energizer is, I’m going to have to kill you. I’m going to have to kill you all. Those are my orders.”

  The First Year holds his breath tighter than the blue handgun digging into his palm. Who is Tunick talking about? Traces of the verve creep through his mind again, and Jonah sees a hundred white and green streaks fall from the ceiling. They bounce and circle his feet. A cloud of blue appears around his ankles and grows tall until a faceless figure stands before him. He stares into it, feeling a strange connection to its shape, but when he shakes his head, it all disappears.

  “I could go get one of your big guns, smart boy.” Tunick is so close that he can reach out and touch him. The man crunches a seed in his teeth. “But maybe… Oh, maybe we should just wrestle to the death in the dark here. That sounds like fun, doesn’t it? Me snapping your neck?” Tunick inhales deeply through his nose. “Hand-to-hand. Ooh wee, I can smell you, Jonah Monah. And you stink.”

  Jonah inches left while his knuckles scrape into the symbols. The floor scratches the bottom of his one bare foot. He raises the gun in Tunick’s direction and curls his finger over the trigger. This is it, he thinks. This is when he takes something.

  “I know right where you are,” Tunick whispers. “I’m just messing with your mind. I’m like your little disease. I am your cancer. I am your killer.”

  As Jonah begins to squeeze the trigger, he thinks of Vespa sliding down the canyon wall on the island, dragging the chain of terrified kids with her. She never looked up to see who was still following her, and when she hit the landing, she just ran. His finger feels the last bit of resistance, the point of no return where he can no longer look up, and then he shoots.

  Click. Nothing happens. He presses the trigger again. Another click. The gun is empty. His heart pumps in his throat.

  Tunick’s laughter fills the cave, and it grows louder and louder until Jonah feels like he’s drowning in it. Then he hears a pair of feet scraping across the dirt floor, and before he can brace himself, he’s tackled around the waist. His skull bounces hard off the wall, and white rings pop in front of his eyes. Then he’s on the ground, his lips kissing the cold floor. The broken bones that Dr. Z set in his nose have dislodged, and they poke into the flesh of his cheeks.

  “So boring, so easy.” Tunick sighs. “Put up a little fight, boy. The older ones fought more than this.”

  The man kneels down next to him, and Jonah rolls onto his back. The older ones? A fist wraps itself around his ear and twists. Jonah instinctively snatches Tunick’s wrist and digs his thumb into the back of his hand. Then, with the white rings still attacking his eyes, he swings his bare foot up and strikes the side of Tunick’s knee with an amazing amount of force. The fist releases his ear, and Jonah tucks his arms into his bruised body and rolls in the opposite direction.

  “Hey, hey, hey! Now we’re… Damn, that actually hurt, smart boy. Holy moly that hurt. What was that?”

  After a furious few seconds, Jonah crashes into a wall. He opens his eyes and finds himself next to the cave opening, right where he stood opposite Malix to get the drop on Tunick. On his hands and knees
, Jonah pushes out through the hole. A hand grabs his ankle, but Jonah grips the outside frame of the opening and muscles his way onto the valley floor.

  “You’re dead!” Tunick barks, crawling after him. “I’m going to string you up like a little snout pup and eat your face!”

  Jonah jumps to his feet but immediately trips over something. He twists onto his back to see Bidson slouched against the base of the cliff, his long legs sticking into the grass in a V, his stiff right arm still stuck above his head. The bandage on his other wrist is rusty brown with dried blood. Jonah watches the boy’s huge head drop to the side, and then to Jonah’s surprise, he opens his big walrus eyes. They look at each other for a second before Bidson rolls his head to the other side.

  “Too far, too far, too far. That’s too far,” Tunick says as he steps over one of Bidson’s thighs.

  Jonah tries to scramble backward, but his shoulders press up against a jagged tree stump. Tunick laughs and takes another step; his smile is so wide that Jonah can count five white seeds in the corner of his mouth. But in what looks to be the boy’s last breath, Bidson’s meaty right hand actually moves on its own, and it snatches Tunick’s wrist. The man looks down, and that’s all it takes for Jonah to get back on his feet.

  “Ha! I thought you were done for, big boy!” Tunick says before slamming a fist into Bidson’s chubby face. The impact echoes down the narrow valley and rings in Jonah’s ears.

  The demic, somehow, holds on.

  Tunick shakes his head and then hits him again, harder, cutting open his cheek. Bidson’s body convulses, his eyelids flitter, and a low groan escapes his lips, but he still doesn’t let go of Tunick’s wrist. The man begins to pound on the boy’s clenched fingers, and Jonah turns and runs, his shoulder scraping along the cliff wall. He jumps over the high grass to the other side of the valley, and far behind him, Tunick’s frustrated screams bring a quick, fleeting smile to Jonah’s face. And then he runs.

  • • •

  Jonah crashes through the curtain of thin trees and falls into the rocky embankment, banging his knee into a boulder. He’s out of breath. He has no food, no weapons, no companions. He knew it was only a matter of time before he was alone. He staggers along, wondering how all those kids took to the verve so quickly, and how he was able to disconnect himself with just a little bit of determination. Was it a side effect of his blood disease, or perhaps it was just another residual effect from the wormhole?