Third Wave: Bones of Eden

by Zaide Bishop

  “The moon is waxing. You have until the new moon to convince me of your value. We will house you until then,” India said.

  “What happens if we aren’t useful?” Jacobs asked. “If we don’t meet your standards?”

  “Perhaps the Elikai will have use for you,” India said.

  “But you live together, don’t you?” Jacobs asked.

  “We do, but men and women are too different to be governed by the same rules.”

  For some reason, Ross and Vivian laughed.

  Chapter Two

  “Fuck these flies!” Ross swore, doing an agitated dance, slapping his skin and swatting the air.

  “I wouldn’t recommend it,” Mike said.

  Sugar glanced up to see Mike waiting patiently with a fiberglass and snakeskin shin guard.

  Ross stared at Mike, confused for a moment, then he started to grin. “That—Ouch!”

  She yanked the leather in place, pulling it so tight it was cutting into his skin.

  “Mike,” Sugar warned as Ross shied away from her.

  “I didn’t hurt him on purpose!” she protested.

  Sugar sighed. He’d always thought Whiskey was the most difficult Varekai because she was so dangerous. He was starting to realize that was only because he’d never spent any time around Mike before. At least Whiskey was cunning. Mike just seemed to blunder into every situation, create a disaster and blunder back out again. His initial assumption she was like a big stupid dog was being replaced with an idea that she was more like a localized storm, unpredictable and usually messy.

  If you pointed her toward something alive, though, she could usually find a way to kill it.

  “Do you always get up this early?” Jacobs asked. He was hunched over on a log, eyes bleary and red. It was dawn, and around them the camp was making its first preparations of the day. Breakfast was raked out of cold coals where it had been buried the night before. The hunters dressed for combat. Everyone was curious about the strangers, watching them, talking about them, but keeping their distance for now. The strangers themselves seemed to have had a restless night.

  Sugar nodded. “For hunting, yes. The warm-blooded animals are most active at the dawn. The crocodiles and snakes are slower before the sun comes up and it’s light enough for us to spot them. You need to be prepared for an ambush.”

  Ross scoffed, loosening the straps. “Who needs to be prepared if you have a gun?”

  Mike grinned. “You, if you don’t want to be dead before you can fire it.”

  “What do you have here that’s faster than a bullet?” Ross demanded.

  Mike pointed to Sugar’s shoulder. He absently touched the puncture scars there. They took up his shoulder and half his chest—the horseshoe rings of dual rows of teeth. He’d never even seen what it was, just the blind panic as it had dragged him away from his brothers into the night.

  Jacobs paled and exchanged an uneasy look with Ross.

  India appeared around one of the huts. In the faint dawn light, the white swirls of clay stood out more than her skin against the dark forest. In her hands she had two pots, one of clay and one of ink.

  “You’re painting them?” Sugar asked.

  The Varekai were painted in black and white—swirls, spots and stripes, like tigers and snakes. The marks of predators. Tare had taken to it too, once he had left the Elikai. Sugar still preferred the Elikai method of rubbing his skin with coconut oil.

  “The Varekai agreed to keep them, so for now they are with us,” India said.

  “Wait,” Jacobs said. “We don’t want girl makeup.”

  “Jesus Christ, Jacobs.” Kay slipped out of a hut and stretched. Her bones cracked. “Stop being a misogynist for ten whole seconds.”

  “Look around, Kay. The girls have the pretty mud swirls, the guys don’t.”

  “That is because we are better stealth hunters,” India said calmly. She crouched down in front of Ross first, slopping ink on him before he could protest. “And this will identify you to the spirits.”

  “Is that a good thing?” Ross asked, wincing as the clay was applied.

  “You don’t want to be seen as a stranger here,” India insisted. “The spirits will accept that you are with us. They will leave you alone.”

  “Primitive cultures,” Kay said with a yawn. “Doesn’t matter where you go, they mimic the same beliefs. This rock has a soul, that crocodile is a god.”

  Jacobs chuckled. “Maybe they know something we don’t.”

  She snorted. “Ask an evolutionary psychologist.”

  India narrowed her eyes, and Sugar was surprised when she held her tongue. Mike grinned and slapped Jacobson the shoulder. “Come on. Time to meet the crocodile gods.”

  “Are you going to be okay with Kay and Vivian staying here?” Sugar asked India, suddenly more worried than he had been a moment ago.

  “They will be fine,” India said calmly. “Charlie will be here.”

  Sugar’s heart did an involuntary skip. Just hearing her name was all it took. The fact that she was going to be here made him want to stay. Let someone else take the scientists hunting, he would find work for himself in the village. Somewhere he could watch her, even if it still hurt too much to talk to her.

  “Okay. Come on then, Mike,” he said, despite himself.

  “I’m ready.”

  Sugar stood and saw his other hunters gathering their tools. There would be two groups today. Maria was leading the others. Sugar was taking Dog, Mike, Zebra and Nab. Not exactly the cream of the crop. Zebra had the attention span of a finch, and Nab usually seemed to be living in a completely different world from everyone else. Dog was competent—Sugar had left him in charge of the Elikai for a short period once, and hardly anything had been set on fire. Mike was... Well, if anything needed to be stabbed between the eyes with a spear, they were covered.

  The second, legitimate band of hunters headed out. Romeo paused, William pressed tight to his side like a human accessory.

  “Good luck, Sugar.” He smirked.

  Sugar sighed for the hundredth time. He watched the others leave, pushing their canoes out into the channel and heading south.

  “Where to, oh fearless leader?” Dog asked.

  “Northwest,” Sugar said. “We haven’t been out that way since the wet ended. Something might have come out of hiding by now.”

  “Yeah, Goodyear,” Zebra muttered.

  “What?” Jacobs asked. “Did you say Goodyear? Like the tire?”

  “It’s a crocodile,” Sugar explained, holding the canoe steady while Ross clambered in. “The bull crocodiles are territorial. There are three in the archipelago. Well, there were. Toyota was killed by a bigger croc. A type we’ve never seen before. It came from the mainland, but it’s dead now. And Samsung controls the reef on the east side, where you crashed your boat.”

  “So, you just name animals after the junk you see on the beach?” Jacobs asked as they pushed out into the channel.

  “Just the big ones,” Dog said.

  “How big are we talking?” Ross asked. “I mean, they won’t attack anything bigger than themselves, right?”

  “Oh, no, nothing bigger than they are,” Mike assured him.

  Jacobs nodded. “So we’re safe in the canoes.”

  “Maybe if we got a whole bunch of canoes and roped them together,” Mike mused.

  “We’ve got a gun, remember?” Ross said. “Nothing a bullet between the eyes won’t take care of.”

  “Perhaps,” Dog said. “But in some cases you’d have to choose which set.”

  They rowed the canoes in loose file, heading west toward the old Elikai village. The wind was up, making the surface of the water choppy. Normally by this time of day, the air would be sullen and still. Protected by the islands from
the sea swell, the water should have been as still as glass. As it was, they couldn’t see the reefs—it was only the larger, moving creatures that were visible. Turtles and large sea fish. They passed many long dark shapes that could have been crocodiles or logs or rocks.

  “Was that a tiger shark?” Ross asked as something large ghosted away from them.

  “Perhaps,” Sugar said. “A small one, if it was. The sharks are not too much of a problem here, and we don’t swim off the beaches.”

  “I’m surprised you swim at all,” Jacobs said.

  “It’s safe if there is a group,” Dog said. “If the water is clear and someone is keeping watch. We have to dive and hunt, it’s just part of staying alive.”

  “I’d have thought a big part of staying alive was avoiding things that can kill you,” Jacobs replied.

  “For that,” Zebra said, “we’d have to live on the clouds.”

  Mike snorted. “Or on a boat, floating around at sea for nine years apparently.”

  Sugar glanced over and saw Ross’s eyes narrow at the jibe.

  “Is that... Jesus fucking Christ,” Jacobs swore, his sudden tension causing the canoe to rock. Dog put one hand on the rim to stabilize them. Sugar followed Jacobs’s gaze.

  Basking in the sun, looped over large flat rocks, around tree trunks and through bushes was an immense mass of coils. Golden, brown and black, the snake was as thick in the middle as Sugar was. Its head, too, was as large as a man’s, but in a fat triangle with tiny unblinking eyes, so pale they were silver in the sun.

  “Altec,” Mike said, unable to hide her amusement at the scientists’ horror. “I thought she was dead. Whiskey said a big snake got eaten by the super croc while she and Fox were trapped in its den.”

  “Apparently not,” Dog murmured.

  They were a little wary of the leviathan creature. Not so much when it was basking in the sun in clear view. Pythons hunted during the night. They lived in fear of the serpent slipping into their shelters while they slept, biting their head, coiling around them with such speed and force they wouldn’t even have time to cry out. They could die and be swallowed, only yards from their brothers, without anyone ever waking up.

  Ross raised the gun.

  “What are you doing?” Zebra demanded.

  “Making snake for dinner.”

  Dog held up a hand, as if to reach for the gun. “No, don’t—”

  The sharp report of the gun going off made them dive for cover, and for a moment Sugar could hear nothing but a rushing noise, like a waterfall. On the bank, Altec writhed, coils looping in six-foot-high curls. Ross fired again, and the rushing noise in Sugar’s ears became a high-pitched whine. The second bullet bit an angry, bloody hole beside the serpent’s eye, and it opened its mouth as if in a silent scream of agony.

  Two more shots, and on the shore two small trees cracked as the snake’s coils shattered the trunks with the pressure of its dying contractions. An arc of blood hit the crystalline water, followed by an avalanche of dirt and debris.

  Ross kept firing, again and again. Sugar lost count of how many shots, but he stopped to reload.

  “Enough!” Jacobs was yelling, hands over his ears. “It’s dead, Ross.”

  “It’s still moving,” Ross called back, equally deafened, even though they were only feet away from each other.

  “It’ll thrash around like that for ages,” Mike said. She was the only one who didn’t look horrified. Dog and Zebra were both wide-eyed and slack-jawed. Nab was holding his knees and rocking slightly, looking away from the dying creature toward the horizon.

  “Do you have any idea what you’ve done?” Sugar snapped. He wanted to stand up and loom over Ross, but he was certain the canoe would overturn. “Do you know how long it takes for snakes to reach that size? What it’s survived to be here?”

  “It’s a fucking snake, mate. A man-eater. We’re all safer now.”

  “Safer? Safer!” Sugar balled his fists. “Altec was the biggest snake in the isles. How do you think the other snakes are going to react to this? The entire archipelago is swarming with sea snakes. They’re venomous enough to kill with a single bite, and none of them were culled off by the megalania. They’ve always been peaceful, but now...”

  “Look, kid.” Ross squinted at him. “All your spirit mumbo jumbo, it’s not real. It’s just shit you made up because you didn’t have someone around to explain things to you. Snakes can’t think, okay? They’re just dumb animals. They aren’t going to get mad. They aren’t even going to know this one is dead. They’re certainly not going to come after us for revenge.”

  “No?” Dog said softly. “Well, they will be on the move. This changes the territory boundaries. For weeks, we’re not going to know where another huge python could pop up.”

  Ross grinned. “That’s why we have guns, right? Calm down, okay? I’ll protect you from the big, bad snakes.”

  Sugar shook his head, trying to swallow the knot of fury in his throat. “Just get up there and dismantle the damn thing so we can get it in the boat.”

  Jacobs snorted. “All that protesting, but you’re still happy to eat it.”

  “The only thing worse than killing it would be wasting it,” Sugar snapped back. “Let’s not make things worse.”

  Chapter Three

  As the sun set, Tango sat at the edge of the Varekai village, dismantling the remains of her spear. The primary hunting party had been largely unsuccessful, killing only two juvenile saltwater crocodiles. The strangers had returned with a bounty of flesh—the largest snake either of the tribes had ever killed, which was being industriously prepared by the Kai cooks. Every useful part was saved, from the hide to the teeth, which left them with a mountain of good meat. So much it would need to be smoked and dried, or it would never keep long enough for them to eat it all.

  Most of the tribe was happy, and Tango could hear their exclamations as they discovered the slag remains of the bullets in the meat. The sentiment was not shared by everyone, and Tango noticed Sugar talking to India in hushed, angry tones, indicating the immense carcass. India appeared concerned and had vanished into her hut, emerging with the tools of her trade—dried herbs, bone knives and a collection of pretty stones she’d recovered from the guts of crocodiles.

  “What happened?” she asked Dog as he passed by.

  He hesitated, then flopped down beside her, toying with the leather strips she was using to make her new spear. “They shot Altec. Sugar is worried the snakes will retaliate.”

  “He wants India to speak to the spirits?”

  “We only have two chickens left. What are we going to do if the snakes take them? We don’t even have a dog pack to keep watch.”

  “They can be caged at night and kept in someone’s tent.”

  “Not mine,” Dog scoffed. “Where’s Xícara? I thought you two were joined at the hip now?”

  Tango smiled despite herself. “Are we that bad? He’s washing after skinning the crocodiles.”

  “You’re pretty cozy together,” Dog grumbled. “I preferred it before. When everyone was having sex with everyone else. This pair bonding is seriously limiting my fun.”

  She gave him a sideways look. “Leave Xícara out of your fun...”

  “Trust me, he said the same thing.”

  Vivian hobbled past them toward the trees, moving awkwardly in his cast. He’d wrapped the bottom of it to try to keep it clean, but it didn’t seem to be working very well. The forest was not exactly a clean place.

  Dog watched him. “Where do you think he’s going?”

  “Latrine pit,” Tango guessed. “I hope there is nothing waiting for him. He’s so lame, sometimes I want to shoot him.”

  Dog snorted. “Easy prey is easy prey?”

  “Something like that. So now hunting is off the cards for a
few days, has Sugar told you what his plans are?”

  “Building. Planning. Preparing construction materials for the new village. The scientists have a lot of ideas and tools that might help. I think Sugar wants to go back to their boat and see what can be salvaged. They’re talking about setting up solar panels and moving a refrigerator into one of the caves.”

  Tango thought about that. “A good idea in theory. We’d need a pretty big raft and some way to tow it if we’re going to be moving things of that size.”

  “You know Sugar. He’s probably had ‘raft plans’ drawn up since the day we left Eden.”

  Vivian hobbled back out between the trees, still struggling with his fly. Tango could see the sunken look of his eyes, his paleness under the war paint, and she could hear the wheeze in his breath. He wasn’t doing well. The heat, the pain, being mobile after years of such limited space, were taking a toll.

  He staggered over to them and sat down to catch his breath.

  “So,” he huffed. “What are your names again?”

  “I’m Dog, this is Tango,” Dog explained.

  “D-male and T-female,” Vivian said with a grin.

  Tango frowned. “They used to call us that in Eden.”

  Vivian held up a placating hand. “Sorry. I didn’t mean anything by it. They’re just funny names.”

  “What was it like before the world began?” Dog asked.

  Vivian blinked. “I... What? What do you mean, the world began? Are you talking about the Big Bang?”

  Tango tried to hide her amusement. “It’s our origin story. The beginning of the world. We were raised in Eden, we had no idea there was a world outside. We thought it ended at the edge of the dome. The teachers who raised us were killed—”

  “By the Varekai,” Dog interjected. Vivian blanched a little.

  “But not entirely intentionally,” Tango corrected. “But then we were trapped. The lights went out, the water went bad, we started to starve.”

  “Then Tare managed to dig through the wall. The world was born.”

  Vivian was silent for a moment, looking thoughtful. “Right. Okay, that makes sense in its own weird way. So you want to know what happened before you broke out of your Eden dome?”