Third Wave: Bones of Eden

by Zaide Bishop

  Charlie blinked, some memory niggling her. “It’s a grampus!”

  “What?” Xícara stared at her.

  “It’s a whale. Like a big dolphin.”

  Another gray form broke the surface a dozen yards away, this one a quarter of the size. But there were others; each one seemed larger than the one before. Through the deep blue water, Charlie could see their cruising shapes riding the fierce current, far faster than the little canoes bobbing away above them.

  “What do they eat?” Sugar demanded, bouncing from one side of the canoe to the other as he tried to keep the pod in sight.

  Charlie shrugged helplessly. “Sharks? Gropers? Other dolphins? I have no idea, they’re massive.”

  A tail twice the length of Charlie rose up under them, and the canoe rose on the swell, then was buffeted sideways. With a yelp, Xícara was in the water, and Charlie pitched herself sideways in the opposite direction to the tilt of the canoe. For a moment, it seemed to balance on its side—outrigger over her head, toward the sky—and she was certain it would capsize. Then it fell back, and she bit her lip as she slammed into the bottom of the canoe.

  Instantly she was on her knees, hands in the water, feeling for Xícara.

  “Xícara!” Tango was standing up, about to jump into the water, and Sugar was grappling with her, trying to drag her back down.

  Xícara popped up spluttering, blond hair matted to his forehead.

  “Here!” Charlie called, and he swam toward her.

  She leaned back, bracing her feet and doing her best to make herself a counterweight as he dragged himself back into the canoe.

  “You okay?”

  He coughed and wiped the water out of his eyes. “Yeah. Did we lose the paddles?”

  “They’re here.” Charlie offered him his and grabbed her own.

  “We’re going off course,” Sugar called. “We need to haul to shore before we end up floating right past the islands.”

  Xícara nodded, starting to paddle again.

  The channel was trapped between the archipelago and the mainland, but once the islands ran out, it angled into the open ocean. Anyone swept past the islands could end up hundreds of miles from the shore and would have no hope of returning. They were already halfway across, and as the pod passed, they had no more interruptions.

  They reached the mainland beach, and Charlie jumped out, hauling the canoe through the shallow water until it touched the sand. Xícara flopped out, shoulders heaving as Tango and Sugar pulled their canoe up beside them. Charlie hadn’t been as helpful as she intended, and Xícara’s panting when she was barely out of breath irritated her. Who knew being pregnant would make you so useless?

  “Everyone okay?” Sugar asked, padding over to grab Charlie and Xícara’s canoe and pulling it up the sand to the other one.

  Charlie nodded. “No injuries. Xícara may have swallowed some water.”

  “A bit,” he admitted, wading out of the surf to join them. “I don’t suppose we can wait a while before dragging these canoes all the way up to Eden?”

  Sugar glanced at the sun. “We have plenty of time.”

  They settled in the shade with bottles of water and a basket of smoked fish and green fruit. Charlie was the only one who didn’t have to catch her breath, and yet she was achy anyway.

  “So if we make it to Eden tonight, should we plan to stay in the dome? Or camp on the beach?” she asked.

  Sugar shrugged, refusing to look at her.

  “It will be dark in the dome,” Tango said.

  “But there could be all sorts of predators on the beach,” Xícara pointed out. “The hole we made to get out of Eden, it was small. We might not even be able to fit through it anymore.”

  “Why not? We fit going out,” Sugar said.

  “Yeah, but we were smaller then. Much smaller,” Xícara said. “We’re going to have to make it bigger before we can get inside, I think.”

  “I think we’ll be safer inside,” Charlie said. “What if another swarm of megalania comes down the beach? Or something else? We can defend a little opening. Otherwise we need to find a tree we can climb.”

  She waited for Sugar to join the discussion, to have an opinion, but he still wasn’t looking at her. Tango and Xícara, yes, but his eyes never went farther than her feet. Her heart sank. Why had he come, if he wasn’t even going to look at her?

  “Do you hear that?” Tango asked.

  Charlie cocked her head. Something was grunting somewhere nearby. It was quiet, contented grunting. Just one animal, by the sounds of it. She motioned for the others to be still and edged to the canoe, gathering her bow and arrows. Staying low, she padded down the beach, following a muddy tributary into the trees at the edge of the sand.

  It was a piglet rooting around in a pile of steaming mulch.

  Charlie blinked, surprised by the pale pink of its hide marred only by one black spot on its rump. It was almost hairless, which, while not unheard of, was unusual. Most of the wild pigs on the isles were almost black with stiff brown hair. Its ears were big, its snout short. It burrowed its nose in the muck, pausing occasionally to chew, muttering contentedly. Every so often its little curly tail would wiggle.

  Silently, Charlie strung her bow and nocked an arrow. The piglet was still oblivious, and she had plenty of time to line up her shot. She could sense the other three watching in quiet anticipation. She mouthed a silent prayer. It would be damn embarrassing if she missed, though it was the thought of Sugar seeing her miss, rather than the missing itself, that made her feel slightly ill.

  She exhaled as she released the arrow. It soared gracefully toward its target. For a moment it looked like it had gone wide, but at the last moment the piglet turned and the arrow pierced its rib cage just behind its heart.

  The piglet collapsed, squealing in pain, legs thrashing pointlessly. Quick as a crocodile, Sugar had closed the gap between them and drawn his knife. He sliced the hysterical creature’s throat in one smooth movement.

  It looked stunned, gasping soundlessly for a few more moments before going still. There was something strange, though. She ventured closer for a better look.

  “Its eyes are blue,” she said, surprised, meeting Sugar’s gaze. He shrugged, but she pressed. “Have you ever seen a pig with blue eyes before?”

  “No. I saw a goat with one blue, one brown once. It tasted fine.”

  “But...they’re so vibrant.” Charlie held open the dead piglet’s eye. It stared blindly back at her with irises the same color as the sky. Charlie shuddered. “It makes it look almost... Kai.”

  Tango and Xícara had padded up behind them, and Tango scoffed, “Don’t get all weird about it, Charlie. We’re going to have to eat something on the mainland, and pig sounds good to me. Besides, with pale skin like this? It’s a mercy we killed it. It probably gets a terrible sunburn on hot days.”

  “It didn’t really act like a normal pig, when I shot it,” Charlie said, still frowning. “They normally run or attack or... I mean, they don’t just lie there crying.”

  Xícara put a warm hand on her shoulder. “Tango’s right. There’s no reason to get worked up about it. It was a great shot. Sugar killed it nice and clean. It couldn’t have asked for a better death, and I bet it’s going to taste fine.”

  “We should get moving,” Sugar said. “We’ll dress it and cook it tonight, when we decide where we’re staying.”

  Charlie frowned, nodding absently, but something still felt...wrong. Unable to look at it anymore, she closed the piglet’s blue eyes. Anything to stop it from giving her that accusing glare.

  Chapter Five

  They took turns wading through the shallow water, dragging their canoes behind them with ropes. The heat of the day was not the ideal time to be walking in the sun. Dawn would have been preferable, but it woul
d be too dangerous to move at night, and they couldn’t afford to waste a whole day on the beach doing nothing. They made good time, and after only a few hours Eden’s dome—once a shimmering white beacon, now faded to gray with black streaks of mold—came into view.

  Beside it, the dead city rose up from a landscape being reclaimed by wilderness. Polite sidewalk trees had gone savage, and every crack in the concrete was host to weeds and grasses. Small trees pushed the cracks wider, opening splitting wounds in the order of the world before. Greenery had taken root in buildings and reached out of shattered windows, half starved, half dehydrated, but still straining for life. Creepers and vines claimed poles and traffic lights, cars were packed with trash and sticks—now dens to rats as big as dogs and cats with tawny orange coats and ten toes on every foot.

  Dogs scampered out of sight. Without Kai around to cull off the deformed, the packs ran with gross mutations. Tumors with teeth and eyes, tails that grew from unexpected places, three eyes, five feet and one with wide, fluttering flaps of skin that looked like wings. Lizards as long as Kai basked in the sun, flicking black tongues, fearless in the face of strangers. Goats peered out of fourth-story windows, bouncing from window ledge to balcony, climbing gargoyles and leaping off cornices as if the old buildings were mountains and their shattered windows caves.

  There was a lot of food here. Much more than on the islands at the moment. The storms had surely caused damage, but the mountains went on forever. There had been ample shelter from the king tides that had flooded the islands. Shelter from the wind too, and more than enough greenery for life to bounce back with much greater enthusiasm.

  Sugar motioned for them all to stop and drop. Tango and Xícara, still in the water, crawled back through the shallows to the dry sand and sat hunched with the waves rolling over their feet. There was a deer.

  Charlie had seen pictures of deer, even documentaries on the vids, but she had never seen one alive. It was bigger than a goat, even the billy goats, but with thin legs that looked almost rickety under its fine-furred shoulders. It nibbled at grass growing through the road, picking its way slowly across the tarmac. Occasionally it would glance up and look right at them, ears forward and sniffing the air.

  It seemed to be following something, a smell perhaps, or food on the ground. It was slowly making its way toward a semicircle of cars. At the mouth, there were several long poles strung together with rope and net.

  The deer hesitated, and the hairs on the back of Charlie’s neck rose. Something was wrong. The way the cars were positioned, the wood and rope lying to one side like a gate. Who was there to set a trap on the mainland?

  The deer stepped into the pen, nose down, eating something Charlie couldn’t see. There was a sudden squeal and a fat, pink shape rushed into view. The deer startled, bolting straight into the slick black shell of a car, falling back with a thump, then charging at the only escape. But now there was a pig blocking its way.

  Two more pigs had hoisted the gate and were running forward, penning in their companion and the deer. Yet another had scrambled up onto one of the cars and was giving short, sharp squeals, like it was barking orders.

  The pigs were pale pink, like the piglet they had killed. These animals were fully grown, probably weighing four times as much as an Elikai. Black-blue tattoos on the side of the pig barking orders had a biohazard symbol and the words:

  0011-PGSTX

  Organ donor

  Not for human consumption

  Its eyes, Charlie noted, were a vibrant sky blue. The other three pigs had the same warnings, but different identification. 0030-PGYNN, 0043-PGFSH and 0123-PGPRT.

  The pig in the trap lunged at the terrified deer, grabbing its leg. The sound of snapping bone carried clearly across the open space, and Charlie flinched. Braying in fear, the deer tried to limp away, skittering around the walls of the cage, bashing the car mirrors and stumbling helplessly.

  The pig lunged again, and the deer crumpled. With squeals that sounded eerily like delight, the two pigs manning the gate pulled it open, trotting in to help dismember the still-struggling deer.

  “What just happened?” Xícara murmured.

  “They set a trap,” Sugar whispered breathlessly.

  “Can pigs do that?” Tango asked.

  Charlie rose up a little, trying to see better. All four pigs were around their kill now, and she could hear their grunts and mutters. 0011-PGSTX dipped its face in the gore, then smeared its bloody snout along 0043-PGFSH’s side, leaving a stripe, then a spot and a curl. It did the same on the others—dip, paint, dip, paint.

  “War paint?” she murmured.

  “What?” Tango was starting to go pale.

  “They’re painting each other like we do, but with blood instead of clay.”

  “No,” Xícara said, though it didn’t really sound like he was disagreeing, just that he didn’t want to believe.

  “We have to go,” Sugar said, voice urgent. “We have to go now.”

  Charlie glanced back, and her eyes came to rest on the pale form sitting on top of their gear in the nearest canoe. She’d closed the little piglet’s eyes, but they had been the same shade of blue.

  A sudden squeal cut through the afternoon. Charlie startled and spun around. The pigs had spotted them. They were staring, trotting slowly out of their trap and away from the deer, their faces all smeared with syrupy blood.

  0011-PGSTX was at the fore, sides heaving, ears flopping back in what Charlie could have sworn was rage. It screamed again, and she saw huge yellow teeth amid the soupy residue of deer guts.

  Xícara grabbed the spears, tossing one to Tango and Sugar, then forcing Charlie back.

  “Hey!” she protested.

  “Get in the canoe,” he ordered.

  “I can fight just as well as—”

  “No, you waddle. Get in the canoe!”

  Charlie snarled in annoyance, scrambling through the shallows and hoisting herself into the canoe.

  0011-PGSTX charged down the beach in short bursts, starting and stopping with a violent uncertainty. The others followed, flanking their leader in a wedge formation, like flying geese. 0011-PGSTX squealed, short, sharp and then gave a series of grunts. Demanding, almost as if it was waiting for a reply.

  Charlie scrambled into the canoe, and it tipped and wallowed. Xícara held it steady as she settled in the bottom, then the other three began to push the canoes out—wading chest-deep into the water, dragging the canoes with them.

  The pigs reached the edge of the water, still screaming their pig insults, but they didn’t venture beyond the surf. She understood their hesitation. Having the others so deep in the water was making Charlie’s heart beat so fast it hurt. She rose up as far as she dared, frantically scanning the water around them for signs of movement. She remembered Whiskey’s stories of the super croc—dozens of times larger than the salties they were used to on the islands. A shark could come in too fast for them to react. And perhaps even one of those whales. The ocean was a deadly place. So deadly, the pigs were not foolish enough to risk venturing into it. “Get in the canoes!” she insisted.

  “We might hit the current,” Xícara said.

  “Keep watch, will you?” Sugar said.

  “I am! I’m sure it will be very helpful for you to know you’re going to be eaten seconds before it happens!”

  “Lesser of two evils, Charlie,” Tango murmured. “Those pigs are definitely big enough to eat us.”

  She gritted her teeth until her jaw ached. The fatter she got, the less they listened to her. Pregnancy was infuriating.

  She focused her attention on the water, not risking glancing away, not even to look at the pigs. As they marched up the beach through the water, she could hear their squeals starting to fade, snatched away by the wind.

  “They’re not following?”

&n
bsp; “No,” Xícara said. “They did a bit, then I think they gave up.”

  There was a long, forlorn sort of whine that wavered up and down like a song.

  “They’re going back toward the trees,” Sugar said.

  “Let’s go in a bit then,” Tango said. “Before we hit a rip.”

  They trudged back into the shallower water, and Charlie hoisted herself into the knee-deep surf. She was still irritated and she stalked along, refusing to sit even a second longer.

  “That was weird,” Tango said.

  “It was their piglet,” Charlie said. “I think Pigstix was the sow.”

  Xícara frowned. “What?”

  “Didn’t you see the tattoos? Pigstix, Pigfish, Pigpart and Piglynn. They had names.”

  “They also had biohazard symbols,” Sugar muttered.

  “And the words ‘not for human consumption,’” Charlie countered, fists clenched. “We should have left the piglet where we found it when we saw those creepy Kai eyes.”

  “I’m not throwing away good pig meat!” he snapped back. “We haven’t seen pork since the start of summer. A whole damn season, and the last of it was all sweaty ham. I’m not passing up pig or fowl or goat or any other animal capable of making a decent roast. I love fish, but it’s all I’ve eaten for two damn months! Besides, we’re not human. We’re Kai.”

  Charlie glared. She wanted to scream at him, maybe throw sand at him, but that had nothing to do with what he wanted to eat. She couldn’t blame him for being sick of fish. She was too. She hated him raising his voice at her. She hated that this was the first thing he had to say to her, beyond asking what whales ate. She had said she was sorry. She had begged him to forgive her. Damnit, she was carrying around his fat, wriggling, bladder-kicking offspring!

  She fell silent, shoulders hunched, teeth grinding.

  “We’re nearly there,” Tango said. “Look, there’s the zoo.”

  The yawning black gates were half buried in dead vine. The wide paths beyond were barren and dusty. Empty cages that reminded Charlie eerily of the labs in Eden, claustrophobic and featureless. A huge tank had filled to overflowing in the storms, and deep green slime was oozing down the outer walls, a cloud of insects hovering over the surface.