Achilles

by Greg Boose

  “Brooklyn,” Jonah says. “You’re…you’re going to be okay.” He knows it’s stupid to say things like that, but he can’t bring himself to say he’s sorry. If he says that, it’s like saying it’s over.

  “Who needs to see anyway?” she says softly.

  He stares at her long face for another second before closing his own eyes, hoping to conserve the amount of sight he has left, as if his lids stop a clock when they’re closed.

  “I’m Krevlis, by the way,” the boy says somewhere above him. “But everyone just calls me Krev.”

  Jonah clenches his body in annoyance. This boy is partly responsible, just like the rest of them. Jonah sees flashes from the crash: the black rock slicing through Daniel like a shark, Jonah jumping through the spear-like branches into Garrett’s arms, all the bodies in the valley, the raging fire, and the snouts. And then he sees these four kids from Thetis laughing under a tree, eating fruit in the shade.

  “Vespa?” he asks.

  “Yeah, Firstie?”

  With anger burning his tongue, he says, “They tell you that Tunick is actually Zion? That there is no Zion? Tunick is the one who killed everyone.”

  “Yeah,” Brooklyn says. She finds his knee and rests her hand there. “They just told us that. We’re more than a little pissed off.”

  “I’m going to kill that piece of shit, believe me,” Vespa says. It sounds as if she tries to stand but gives up quickly. “The next time I see him, he’s a dead man.”

  Jonah squints his eyes open and sees Krev mixing the yellow powder in his hand with a red slime he’s scooped out of a cracked shell. The boy then walks over to Brooklyn and says, “Keep your eyes closed. I’m going to try something else.”

  Above them, Lark, Hess, and the other girl pass a canteen around, taking long gulps, wiping their mouths. Then, Lark pushes Hess away. “Where’s Everett?”

  “Um,” Hess mumbles. “I’ll tell you later. He took the long way home. He’ll be here later.”

  “What is this?” Brooklyn asks as the boy smears the mixture over her eyelids with his fingers. It smells sweet and sour. Jonah doesn’t say anything about the snouts, but he wonders if it’ll stimulate her eyes like it did his knee.

  “It’s something that we found works for headaches and fevers. Just let it dry.”

  Jonah clenches his fist and slowly aims the gun at each of them. He and Brooklyn have a blood disease, not migraines. Hess circles around to Krev’s pouch and digs inside, and behind her, the black girl rests her head on Lark’s stiff shoulder. They hold hands and whisper, and then Lark softly kisses her cheek. Their affection relaxes Jonah for a moment, and he squeezes Brooklyn’s hand again and then drops down next to Vespa. She lies flat on a patch of short grass and avoids his eyes. He doesn’t know why he thinks it’s okay to do so—maybe because of the hug they shared on the beach before separating, or because of their intimate conversation in the caves—but he begins to run his hand through her black hair, stopping to examine a bump here, a bruise there. She smiles and turns her body toward him, but when she finally looks up into his face, Vespa gasps and sits up.

  “Your eyes,” she says.

  “I know,” he whispers.

  “How long until…you’re like Brooklyn?”

  “How bad is it right now, Jonah? What are your symptoms?” Brooklyn asks.

  He turns to Brooklyn, who has one eye coated with the slime. “I’ve been nauseous off and on and passed out earlier, and then I had some pretty bad pain in my eyes about an hour ago. Felt like needles. Like a thousand needles.”

  “Yeah,” she says. “That was me yesterday.”

  Everyone grows silent.

  Vespa gets up and offers her hand to Jonah, pulling him violently to his feet. “We have to get you two to Thetis for treatment. Like, immediately. Now how are we going to do it?”

  Lark breaks away from the other girl and says, “You don’t want to go to Thetis. That’s the thing. You want to stay here. That’s what we were about to tell you.”

  “Don’t tell me what I want to do. If we stay here, my friends die,” Vespa says, pointing to Jonah and Brooklyn. Her color is coming back, Jonah notices. Instead of stretching her jaw, she’s clenching it.

  “You go to Thetis and you’re all dead,” the other girl mumbles.

  “What do you even care?” Jonah points the gun at the girl and closes his eyes to conserve his sight. “You don’t care if we die. You’ve already proven that. You could have come to us the first night we were here! You could have warned us about Tunick and his brother and told us everything we needed to know to survive here, but instead you voted to hide in the bushes like a bunch of asshole cowards and then you watched us die. So fuck you, whatever your name is.”

  Something cold and sharp immediately touches Jonah’s chin, and then it scrapes harshly down his throat. He peeks open his eyes to see it’s Lark’s shard-covered spear. She rips the gun out of his hand and tosses it to Krev, who drops it into his bag.

  “Her name is Camilla,” Lark growls. “And if you ever talk to her like that again, I’ll gut you like a potbellied gloomer.”

  “Lark,” Camilla warns. “Please. I can speak for myself.”

  Lark keeps driving the gems into Jonah’s throat, and he’s just about to slide to the side and try to get his hand on the spear when Vespa punches it away from him. Lark loses her balance and stumbles forward, and Vespa stomps her shoe down on the middle of the shaft, breaking it into two. The girls lock arms, Hess shouts, but Jonah is able to get between them. If anyone from his group is going to fight, it’s him. He’s been through enough in the past two days, been lied to enough and seen enough blood, to make him want to fight all four of them. Jonah shoves Lark back into the other three and squares off with the whole group, hoping his eyes hold out long enough for him to do some damage. Then they’ll find Tunick.

  “Jesus. Everyone relax.” Krev laughs. “Just take a breath and relax.” He crouches in front of Brooklyn’s face, admiring his sloppy work that covers her eyes. “What we need to do now is talk about the ion fuel cell container that was on board your ship, the energizer you guys were transporting to the colony. We need to find it before Tunick does. Where is it?”

  “Just tell us,” Lark says.

  “Vespa,” Brooklyn says as she leans blindly into Krev’s face. “Aim for that purple stuff on her nose you were telling me about. Sounds dumb.”

  “It is dumb,” Vespa says.

  “We’re trying to help you,” Lark snaps. “Can’t you see that? We’re giving you our medicine. We’re keeping you alive. But if you want to fight, I’ll fight. I don’t have a problem with that. But I can understand why you’re angry. I get it, okay? You have to believe us, we didn’t know Tunick was hunting people down. We were just trying to stay out of it. I even tried to step in the first night. When Tunick set part of the ship on fire.”

  It hits Jonah. The woman’s voice he heard after they saw the cook and the professor down in the jungle, the one he and Vespa chased to the burning Support Module—that was her. “I heard you. You were yelling that night. Vespa, that was her.”

  “You’re right,” Vespa says.

  “I tried to help, but Tunick got the drop on me and pulled me away. There was nothing I could do anyway. I stepped in to help you, though.”

  “Bullshit. You could have done more. You could have come back. You stepped in because you thought Tunick was about to lead you to your ship,” Jonah says. Lark’s eyebrows furrow and connect, and he watches as she struggles to choose her next words. It feels good to silence her, if only for a second. She finally looks at Hess, who averts her eyes.

  Camilla places a gentle hand on Lark’s wrist and looks at Jonah. “You’re right. We want to find our ship. We want to find it so we can get to another continent here on Achilles. And once we’re there, we’re going to destroy it.”

  “What?” Vespa roars. “If there’s a ship, then we need to get these guys to Thetis. That’s what’s going to happen
when we find the ship.”

  “Definitely. That’s our ship now,” Jonah says.

  Camilla clears her throat. “I’m sorry, but I need you to listen to us carefully. If Thetis finds us—and they will eventually know that your ship has crashed here—they’ll finish what they started. They’ll kill us all.”

  “But I have to get to Thetis,” Brooklyn says from the ground. Her words come out soft and breathless, and they float around the heads of the splitters like clouds. The four look down at the small girl whose eye sockets are crusted over with yellow discs; Krev flexes his jaw casually, and Hess fumbles her fingers over the handle of her weapon, but that’s it. Jonah feels a new surge of adrenaline pumping through his body, spreading over his scalp.

  “We’ll get you there,” Vespa says.

  “Absolutely, Brooklyn. We’re going,” Jonah adds. “Don’t listen to these guys.”

  Vespa moves to stand over the demic. “And we’re going to find Tunick along the way and beat his face in. I promise.”

  “We sure are,” Jonah says. “And these assholes are going to take us to him right now.”

  Suddenly a series of blue flashes appear above the western trees.

  “Go!” Lark shouts. “Now!”

  The splitters don’t hesitate; they pick up their things and run after the lasers. Jonah and Vespa look at each other. He steps in the opposite direction at first, but Vespa grabs Brooklyn’s arm and follows the four leaping into the jungle.

  “What’s happening?” Brooklyn asks.

  “Someone’s shooting LZRs in the air, toward the beach,” Vespa says, pulling her along. “Jonah! Come on! Before we lose them.”

  “Who cares about that right now?” Jonah asks, picking up the white rock. “We have to get to Tunick! We’ve escaped, let’s go.”

  “I bet that is Tunick. And we can’t let those guys destroy the ship. They’re as much of a threat as Tunick is now. Come on!”

  “Right. I say we follow them,” Brooklyn says.

  Jonah growls and takes a few more steps in the other direction before spinning around. The lights continue to zip above the trees. He grabs Brooklyn’s hand and runs.

  Vespa spots a worn path, and they catch up with the splitters after a few minutes. There’s an explosion far up ahead, and three streaks of blue LZR-rifle fire show through the slits in the canopy. Jonah lowers his head and readjusts his hold on Brooklyn; they can’t be more than a few minutes away. Hess slashes the jungle apart with her machete, Krev pumps his fists holding two short amber blades, and Camilla wields a stick with a thick axe-head tied to it. Vespa looks back at Jonah, her green eyes flashing in the setting sun.

  “We almost there?” Brooklyn asks.

  “Almost.” He slashes his rock across a passing tree trunk, and it explodes into a thousand shards. “Shit.”

  Suddenly there’s a deafening thumping up ahead; something large pounds against the ground like thunder. It’s a familiar noise, he thinks, but can’t place it. Then Hess skids to a stop and flattens her back against a tree.

  “Pitchers!” she screams, closing her eyes.

  Lark grabs Camilla and presses her into the back of a tree. “Against the trees! Now!”

  Up ahead, Jonah can see the tops of bushes whipping wildly back and forth and small trees snapping and toppling. Then the ground begins to quake. A rushing sound fills the air. Krev hides behind a huge tree, but Vespa, to his horror, keeps running ahead.

  “Vespa!” he yells.

  The noise comes rumbling closer, trees and bushes just thirty feet ahead crunch and fall, and then between the leaves he sees the shining wet skin of a giant black creature. It’s the hoppers, and he remembers how they threw themselves out of the water, arching high in the air before flopping onto the beach. Thousands of them gathered on the tide line before scurrying up the sand, disappearing in the jungle. That’s what’s happening now. He’s on the other side of it.

  Jonah throws Brooklyn at the base of a wide red trunk and then jumps on top of her. He thinks of Vespa as the creatures herd past him, forcing their enormous bodies into the jungle. Water sprays off their skin, covering Jonah’s head, arms, and back. And then, just as soon as it started, the last ones pass, and the thunder moves further into the island. Jonah stands with Brooklyn and quickly finds Vespa huddling under a boulder. She’s okay.

  A shout comes from the beach, which they can see slivers of now. Jonah turns to Krev. “I need a gun. A weapon. Anything. Something. Now.”

  The splitters look at each other and no one moves.

  “On your back,” Vespa says to Lark. “You have a knife back there. Give it to him. Now.”

  “Fine,” Lark says. She pulls out a broad amber knife from under the back of her shirt, a blade curved at both ends. It’s warm in his hand. He nods at her, and then plows toward the ocean.

  “Wait for me!” Vespa shouts.

  He bursts through the last wall of trees and kicks off the lip of the jungle. With the double-bladed knife tight in his grip, Jonah leaps more than thirty feet over the sand, clearing a pack of hoppers lazily sleeping in the sun. Far to his right lies Ruth, her arms and legs awkward around her, her rifle broken to bits. Paul sits nearby, dazed and rocking back and forth, his hand pressed to a long gash on the top of his shaved head. And several feet from him, spread out in a rainbow of pieces, are the remains of Armitage Blythe.

  “Paul! Paul!” Vespa shouts.

  Paul squints at the trees, and when he sees Vespa padding across the beach, he wobbles to his feet, rifle in hand. The Fourth Year stumbles forward and then aims his weapon at the approaching Vespa.

  “Don’t shoot!” Jonah shouts as he speeds in their direction, the knife cutting the air at his side. “No!”

  Paul swings the rifle toward him, and Jonah doesn’t hesitate. He flings the knife with all his strength. The Fourth Year trips and falls forward, burying the barrel into the sand. The knife misses him by inches. Vespa reaches the cadet first and cradles his bleeding head in her sunburnt arms. She flips him over on his back.

  The cadet’s eyes are glazed over, pointing in different directions.

  “Where’s Tunick?” Jonah shouts.

  “Paul? Can you hear me? What happened?” Vespa asks.

  Paul tries to lick his cracked lips and then says, “They tricked us. They got the ion container…the energizer. We had it. Armitage had it.”

  Lark jumps and skids on her knees into the circle, covering Vespa and Paul with a slow wave of sand. She looks at Jonah as the others catch up. “What’s happening? Where’s Tunick?”

  Jonah looks from Armitage to Paul, and then back at Armitage. He grabs Brooklyn’s hand and pulls her slightly away from the crowd.

  “Jonah? What’s happening?” Brooklyn asks. “I need to know what’s happening.”

  “Where’s Tunick?” Lark shouts in Paul’s face. “Where did he go?”

  “Back up!” Vespa warns.

  Paul’s eyes flicker and then close. Krev places a canteen to the cadet’s lips, and instead of water, a milky white liquid flows over his chin. The splitters then pull back and watch as Paul’s eyes flicker open with the drink. Vespa begins to wipe away the blood seeping out of his head. It smears over his stubble, his cheek, his ear. Jonah looks away, and that’s when he sees them on the horizon, over hundred yards away on the sea.

  Jonah wheels around and grabs the scope of Ruth’s broken rifle. Aiming it over the water, he sees a crowd of people bobbing up and down on a raft. He can make out Tunick and Hopper. He sees Michael, Aussie, and Malix, but the others on board are just shadows in the setting sun. And tethered to the raft of people, alone on its own raft, is a long orange cylinder. The energizer.

  “Brooklyn,” Jonah whispers.

  Lark suddenly lunges forward and slaps Paul hard across the face. “Which way did Tunick go? Hey! Which way did he go?”

  She goes to slap Paul again, but Vespa snatches her wrist and bends it over, driving Lark onto her side.

  Camilla pl
aces her axe to the back of Vespa’s neck. “Watch it, bitch! Let her go right now!”

  Brooklyn tugs on Jonah’s arm. “What’s happening?”

  The cadet releases Lark’s wrist, and as Vespa and the others argue, Jonah looks through the scope again. The kids are rowing frantically away from the shore as Tunick keeps jumping up and down. Where are they going? His mind clicks and flashes to Tunick’s hideout, the spoiled meat hanging on its line, the symbols and scrawled writing on the back wall. Jonah then thinks of the childish drawing of a bat-like creature standing at the bottom of a deep pit, its head and wings sharp and robotic. There’s something about that drawing…

  It hits him so hard it’s like he’s falling from the sky onto Achilles all over again. That drawing. The robotic-looking bat isn’t a bat; it’s the ship. And that pit… Jonah grabs Brooklyn’s arm, pulling her toward the water.

  “I think I know where the ship is.”

  “Where?”

  “The island. At the bottom of the canyon.”

  Brooklyn’s blue eyeballs vibrate with anxiety. “How do you know that?”

  “Jesus, we were so close to it. It’s at the bottom of the canyon we slid down to hide from the storm. It has to be there. I saw a drawing of it on the wall of Tunick’s cave.” His mind stops and then starts up again. Brooklyn squeezes his hand so hard his knuckles pop. “The top of the canyon was black and charred at one spot, I don’t know if you saw that, but it must be from the ship’s boosters… And when we were all sliding down, I remember seeing something shine near the bottom. I can see Tunick and the others right now. They’re on a raft heading that way. With the energizer.”

  “Holy shit, Jonah,” Brooklyn whispers. “So, what do we do?”

  Before he can speak, Krev pushes past him and points across the water. “There! There he is! And he has the energizer! Lark, look.”

  “Move! Now!” Lark shouts.

  The splitters immediately spin and take off for the jungle, none of them saying a word to Jonah and the girls. In seconds, they disappear in the trees.