A pall of nausea draped over Fernando. He pressed his fist to his mouth to keep from vomiting. The lobby wavered and he fell across the dead vagrant like a lover. His kind had developed an intolerance for human blood. It was a thick, sickening taste, but he needed the nourishment. His body was failing. He would die if he didn’t find Avô Vinícius soon.
The mask fluttered to his face. The world became brown and green, but his mouth was splashed with red.
O Cristo Redentor.
He emerged from the hotel to find that the rain had stopped, but that the wind persisted. Thick droplets were blown from palm fronds and window ledges, pattering off his shoulders with heavy sounds. Sacks of cloud dragged across the sky.
He sensed the sunset and looked west, toward Morro Dois Irmãos. Lights glinted in the surrounding hillsides, glimpsed through stained cloud. His sick heart dared to hope . . . to believe. He was, after all, so close.
No sign of the Psycho Cowboys. He looked in all directions. Fernando lowered his head and moved on, ignoring the car horns, the jostling cariocas, and the occasional bursts of samba music heard in crowded apartments. His mind echoed with prayers.
Genuflection: he dropped to one knee at the intersection of Rua Mário Ribeiro and felt all the energy in his body gather between his shoulder blades and then erupt, breaking through his skin, hovering in the air above him like wings. He was lifted. Nothing mattered. There was no pain. His invisible wings rippled.
Seen through a diamond-shaped rift in the clouds, Christ the Redeemer looked down on him. The magnificent statue shimmered. Nothing of the mountain could be seen—only the pale, cruciform image, hanging in the heavens. Fernando threw out his arms in imitation, supplication, and exaltation. His imaginary wings made a sound like music.
“Save me,” he whispered. His mask glittered.
The statue hovered in the sky.
The cariocas paid him no attention.
To feel the final beats of your heart . . . and then to have hope, that wonderful, sweeping arc of hope, lifting everything inside you. The world becomes infinitesimal. You move with the stars. An endless, shining entity.
But I am still a shadow. That is the irony. I am still nothing.
You can’t see me.
Yet.
Translation taken from the Journal of Vinícius Araújo Valentim.
(Date unknown.)
I don’t know how long I have been here. There is a great void in my mind that no thought can fill, although I remember the crash clearly. One moment the world was bright. The sky was an undying shade of blue with the beautiful greens of Amazonia stretched below us. I remember looking down on a flickering formation of sun parakeets, and how they seemed to map our shadow on the trees. And then I heard an ominous clunking sound from the engine and all at once the cockpit was filled with smoke. This was terrifying enough, yet I could not accept that we were going down. It seemed too surreal. The idea that I was going to die within the next few moments refused to compute. That was when my pilot started to scream. It was an awful sound.
My life did not flash before my eyes. I thought, absurdly, about my camera—such an expensive and delicate piece of equipment that would be destroyed in the crash. I thought about the pictures on the film that would never be seen: a sunset blistering through the branches of a kapok tree; a Mirity-tapuya child poised with a fishing spear; a multicoloured waterfall arcing into the Rio Negro. I thought about my studio in São Paulo, and what would happen to my work. My final moments felt terribly lonely.
We broke through the canopy and I heard the aircraft coming apart. Searing heat pushed me from behind and I felt a moment of euphoria (I think, now, that it was acceptance). There was nothing else. No thought or feeling. Not even blackness.
I awoke here, in this cave . . . days, months, perhaps even years later. My eyes opened to unnerving darkness. I could not move; my muscles were like wet straw. I could only lie in that void listening to the sounds of the deep earth. But I soon came to realize that there was something else in there with me . . . that I was not alone.
Scratching and shuffling. The sound was all around me.
I didn’t have the strength to scream.
I wish I could explain the fear, but there are no words. I am a professional photographer; I would have more success pointing my camera at a cancer cell or a dying child—some terrible thing that would turn your heart into a miserable weight and drag you to your knees. I became certain in those first dreadful hours that I had died in the crash and been thrown into hell. The scratching sounds grew louder. I could hear inhuman chattering and flapping. At one point something moist and fleshy dragged across my prone body. My throat contracted. I imagined my eyes bulging in the darkness.
I cannot explain the fear.
My pounding heart assured me that I was not dead. Feeling returned to my body, albeit gradually. A pain in my ribs. My spine sending blunt signals to my limbs. I could feel the rock beneath me. I was naked. I tried to shut out the scratching and flapping sounds and throw all my energy into moving my body. I had no concept of time. It was eternity, measured only in beats of pain. I am sure I passed out several times, but eventually the fingers on my right hand were twitching, and then flexing. I could feel a shift in the air pattern as something large moved beside me. Its breath was warm and bitter, but I closed my eyes and ignored it—swam through waves of consciousness and agony—and then I moved my legs. I could bend my knees and wriggle my toes. I arched my back and tried to roll onto my side, but it was too much, too soon. The pain was immense and I cried out—the first sound I had made. This disturbed the creatures with which I shared the darkness. There was a flurry of movement and agitated whooping sounds. I could hear something to my right. My eyes, slowly adjusting, sensed a pale shape clambering along the cave wall.
Gasping breaths. The air tasted of alkaline and salt. I cried and prayed. I tried to move my left arm but couldn’t. More darkness, more time passing. I touched my face, hoping to judge from the length of my beard how long I had been there.
My left arm was missing, severed at the shoulder.
I thought about my camera, burned and twisted out of shape, with the film (so many wonderful pictures) melted to the spool. I was my camera: a ruined thing in a lost place. I blinked dreams that would never be fulfilled.
Time drifted. My panic subdued, allowing clearer thought. The creatures had no intention of harming me, or they would have already. Were they waiting for me to die? Did they only feed on dead flesh? Were they keeping me alive?
I was about to find out. I lifted my body to a sitting position. My head rolled in loose circles. Blood thumped in my temples and I had to clutch the rock to keep from falling backward. The creatures clicked and whooped, scratching across the roof of the cave. My head attained some semblance of balance and I pushed myself to my feet. Again, it was too much; I crumpled to the floor. In the next seconds I became aware of movement beside me. My terrified eyes glimpsed something huge and monstrous. Stale air rippled across my naked body.
“What are you?” I asked. A helpless, desperate question. I felt a spiny hand slide between my shoulder blades and lift me, cradle me. Warm fluid splashed onto my mouth and my weak body responded; I drank greedily. The taste was hell: flesh and fat and acid. It was gritty and sour. I drank, and when it was all gone, I opened my mouth for more.
It cradled me. It mothered me.
Before long I was able to gauge time based on the creatures’ habits, and how often I was fed. In the course of one day they would sleep (incredible stillness; the only sound was the earth groaning), then they would wake, and as one would leave the cave, presumably to hunt the wilds of the Amazon. They powered their wings and left in a fury of sound and motion. It was like standing at the rim of a cyclone. They returned with equal enthusiasm, taking their perches, chattering and clicking. I was fed soon after, like a baby bird. I opened my mouth, eyes bulging.
I got stronger. I could stand; walk; climb. I touched the creatures that
swooped to feed me. My one hand determined moist skin and tight muscle; ridges of bone; spines and horns. I caressed claws and wings.
My eyes adjusted to the dark, not completely, but enough to see them—their hairless bodies, vaguely human, suspended from the roof of the cave with wings curled around their bodies like petals. Shivering, pink things.
I drank . . . and drank.
Stronger.
I explored the cave and found my clothes—torn and burned—and my pack. Vestiges of a previous life. My notes were inside: Expedition into Amazonia: Words and Pictures by Vinícius Araújo Valentim. I ripped out the pages, tore them to pieces.
It would seem I have a better story to tell.
I am writing this in a chink of daylight. The creatures are sleeping. I have no idea how long I have been here, but my beard is long and my body is growing stronger. I am almost ready to leave this dark place.
I can see the brilliant green of the jungle canopy and many jewels of blue sky.
The world is waiting.
339099377822.
There were isolated cases all over the world, but South America was decimated. The military controlled the borders, and they weren’t trained to ask questions. Industry failed. Tourism was non-existent. Chaos curled its hand around the continent and squeezed hard. Millions died. The cities—explosions of life, at one time—stumbled to their knees like tired fighters.
Love and prayer . . . all that remained.
Psychoglobunaria (PGB). The first recorded case was in the municipality of Pauini in 2013. A young farmer named João Moraes claimed to have been attacked by a man who “. . . veio das árvores” (came from the trees). Whilst recovering in the clinic from numerous bite marks, Moraes attacked two nurses, and from there the disease spread. Tests concluded that the PGB virus was a rogue segment of genetic code that caused hitherto unseen levels of adaptive parasitic existence. Transmitted through bodily fluids (most often from being bitten by a carrier), the virus cloned central nervous system signalling molecules, affording it similar intelligence to the host and an awareness of its environment.
Further tests showed that, once adapted, the intelligent PGB virus produced a protein that altered haemoglobin and induced a violent appetite in the host for blood. The infected were relentless. The disease advanced mercilessly. Those who were not killed became carriers, and so it continued: tens of thousands dead or infected within the first months. The governments of South America responded, first with the culling and execution of the infected, and then—after global outcry—with the introduction of quarantine cities. The infected were branded and kept from the outside world. In Brazil, a Polícia do Vírus were established to seek out rogue carriers.
The strain weakened over succeeding generations. Many symptoms diminished, but one remained strong: the virus altered signalling molecules in the brain, producing a heightened awareness of blood; not only were the infected able to perceive the blood type of others, they were also able to recognize the unique signature of that blood, allowing them to identify another individual at a cellular level. This ability—stronger in women and children—shared similarities with extrasensory perception.
“I know what you’re thinking.”
“Yes. Your instinct has always been strong.”
“Stay with me.”
His heart ached. He closed his eyes so that he didn’t have to look into her eyes. But he knew that she could look into his mind—using the coil of power that had remained so vibrant. She could look into his mind and see his purpose. And his fear.
Her name was Giovanna Almeida, and she was everything in his heart. You could rip it from his chest and cut it in half, and she would be there. She poured through his veins and brought every nerve ending to life. She was him.
He opened his eyes and looked at her. She was crying. Every tear was like a star—some burning, brilliant memory he could never grasp.
“Don’t do this.”
He wiped away her tears; he didn’t want to look at them.
The quarantine was known as a Cidade do Inferno (the City of Hell). Formerly the Brasilia satellite city of Taguatinga, it was evacuated at the height of the pandemic, barricaded, and the infected were moved in. They lived in apartments and houses, and were given basic liberties, including running water and electricity. They had jobs and money. They had a small hospital, a library, even a school. Freedom was not a liberty, however. Much like Brazil’s borders, the quarantine was policed by the military. The government ordered the infected to stay within the walls, and warned that anybody caught trying to escape would be executed on sight.
Scientists worked to find a cure, while many believed that the best way to eradicate the disease was to eliminate the problem. There were multiple attempts to destroy the quarantine by various terrorist factions. It had been bombed eleven times. Low-flying aircraft had emptied vats of sulfuric acid onto the city. It had been set ablaze. The water supply had been contaminated. Several hundred barrels of synthetic blood had been poisoned. Thousands had been killed over the years. The quarantine protected the outside world from the infected, but it couldn’t protect the infected from the outside world.
Fernando moved into her open body and she closed around him like a shell. They made love with terrific passion, their minds conjoined, flaring with each other’s desire. Fernando often said that her love was life within life; the point where connection became duplicate. She threw her arms around his mind and her legs around his soul. They were singular and beautiful. Their tattoo was one long number.
“Don’t leave me.”
Sunset stretched pink arms through the open windows. Children’s laughter lifted the failing light. Fernando rolled Giovanna into his embrace and they stood looking out at the blackened city. Corroded buildings. No grass or trees. The broken walls of what had once been their church, bombed long ago, with the pale beam of a crucifix jutting from the rubble. They prayed, now, in their homes, to statuettes of the saviour, his body tattooed with numbers. Diseased Jesus. It was all they had. Fernando kissed Giovanna’s temple and felt the quick flutter of life on his lips. The children played and laughed outside. New numbers. They—like Fernando and Giovanna—had been born into this. They wouldn’t live to be twenty years old.
“I have to go,” Fernando said. “I have to find Avô Vinícius.”
They had been strong once. At the beginning, when Fernando’s grandfather had been a young man, their numbers were vast. They were the Great Flood; the Plague of Locusts. But oppression and incarceration had diminished them, and now, only four generations old, they were on the threshold of extinction. No strength to fight. No substance to evolve. A Cidade do Inferno used to be a teeming, vibrant metropolis: several families to a single apartment; the streets swollen with people lining up to get their ration of synthetic blood; bars and clubs packed with dancers, strippers, and musicians; a carnival every year—just like the world beyond the quarantine—with colourful floats and celebrations. There had been life. But now Fernando could see the deserted streets and the ghostly apartment buildings. So many empty rooms. They were always considered third-class citizens—no more important than the bands of stray dogs nosing through the streets of every South American town. They were reviled, and had been left to die.
Avô Vinícius represented hope, and perhaps their last chance at survival. He was the first of their kind, the purest strain, and grandfather to them all. His blood was the elixir of life.
“He could be anywhere,” Giovanna said. “Anywhere in the world. He might even be dead.”
“He’s not dead,” Fernando said. “I can feel him. You can, too.”
Tears moved down her face. Her number—377822—glimmered on her skin in the pink light. The children laughed. In the distance, the barricade was a silhouette of angry angles. Concrete and steel and tangles of razor wire. A mechanical forest.
“The Psycho Cowboys are out there,” Giovanna said. “You can’t run from them.”
“It’s our only hope.”
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“They’ll find you, Fernando. They’ll kill you.” She pushed away from him, turning, clasping his firm upper arms. A tassel of black hair fell across her brow. “Stay with me. I know how to love you.”
He traced her tattoo with his fingertips, making, as always, slight adjustments to the letters, spelling different words: QUE LINDA, meaning “so beautiful.” She closed her eyes. Her eyelids shimmered.
“But we’re dying,” he said.
They made love again, deep into the darkness. She went inside him—became him. Life within life. She knew there was to be no dissuading him. All she could offer were love and prayer—all that remained.
“Be a shadow, Fernando,” she said as he poured into her.
“I’ll be less than a shadow.” Droplets of sweat fell onto her brow. Her soul felt as warm as the air. “They won’t see me.”
She kissed him. “Be nothing.”
Fernando masked his face and escaped a Cidade do Inferno in the early hours. Giovanna stood by the window, her hands clasped, waiting to hear the gunshots. But, true to his word, he was less than a shadow, and he slipped through the barricade unnoticed. He moved southeast, following a trail of instinct as thin as Giovanna’s tears, toward Rio de Janeiro and salvation.
Translation taken from the Journal of Vinícius Araújo Valentim.
(Date unknown.)
In my dreams I am with them—one of them. I hang from the roof of the cave, my feet hooked into some fissure. I have one wing. It is folded around my body, the cartilage stretched so that the wing covers me completely. I understand their animal language. I scratch and cry to be fed.
I escaped while they were sleeping: a thousand long shapes hanging in the darkness. I crept beneath them and made my way toward the cave entrance—that alluring chink of light. They did not stir. They did not follow.
Bright daylight greeted me: an infusion of breathtaking colour that felt like falling into deep water. I dropped to my knees, unable to move. Incredible pain splintered through my head and my eyes screamed in the intense light. The stump of my left arm twitched. I covered my face and buried myself in long grass.
Imaginarium: The Best Canadian Speculative Writing Page 20