Third Wave: Bones of Eden

by Zaide Bishop

  Tango and Dog nodded.

  “Well, the last days were...ugly. Violent. Everything went to shit, and it went to shit in a whole lot of ways, in a whole lot of places. Mostly people were sick, you understand? Those who weren’t infected yet were doing whatever they had to to stay away from those who were, but it was in the animals and the air. All the infrastructure broke down. There was no police or fire or ambulance. No one shipping food or resources. Fires destroyed whole towns. Power went out in a lot of cities. There was no clean water, because the water reserves became contaminated with dead animals. There were just too many dead.

  “Different places had different problems. Insurgents, nuclear meltdowns, in the worst of it, some people decided war was a good idea. I was out at sea by that stage. On that boat, working desperately on a cure. We thought if we were fast enough, there would still be people to save. By the time we were confident the vaccine worked, there wasn’t. We sailed around, spending a few hours every day listening to the radio, sending out calls, looking for anyone who was left. Anyone who might still be hiding, waiting for someone like us to come along and save them.”

  “Glad I missed it,” Dog murmured. “But what about before the disease? What was it like?”

  “There wasn’t really any ‘before the disease,’ not in the way you’re thinking,” Vivian said. “I mean, it didn’t happen all at once. It had been going downhill for a long time. There was always a new disease. Pandemics the CDC rushed to control. People died. Germ warfare was always going to wipe us out. It was spreading further and further, getting more and more out of control. Once we cracked genetics, we were fucked. We could make anything, bring anything back...”

  “The megafauna,” Tango said. “The big crocodiles and megalania and paraceratherium?”

  “You saw paraceratherium?”

  Tango nodded.

  “How do you even know what they are?”

  “We studied extensively in Eden. Biology and taxonomy were major parts of our education. Everything and anything we might come across. Well...almost. Sometimes on the mainland we’ve seen things that are unknown to us.”

  “Such as?” Vivian asked.

  “Tare said he saw a blue eagle,” Dog said.

  “And pink, tattooed pigs...” Tango murmured, the memory leaving her feeling cold.

  Vivian paled too. “Pigs?”

  “Blue-eyed pigs. We killed a piglet on the mainland, and the rest of the sounder came after us. They were tattooed with biohazard symbols.”

  Vivian shuddered. “I thought they’d all be dead.”

  “What are they?” Dog asked.

  “Some animals, pigs and rats for example, have similarities to people. Similarities that have allowed us to use rats for scientific research into human disease, for example. Once the manipulation of genetics became easy, they started using pigs to grow human organs for transplant. We could grow them in laboratories as well, but the pigs were cheaper and the organs tended to handle the transplant a little better... The pigs had been altered, of course. Made more human. Too human maybe.”

  He sighed. “There were riots. Animal rights activists with their tree-hugging bullshit. Trying to prove the pigs were self-aware and that it was unethical to raise them in labs for slaughter. Pigs were always smart, but these ones were smarter. A bunch of hippies rescued a few of the piglets and raised them in a classroom environment. They taught them to talk with a special keyboard...” He trailed off, glancing at them. “Anyway, the point is, it caused a huge divide. There were riots. The Pig Riots. Lots of noise about them not being pigs at all, but deserving of rights.”

  “What happened?” Tango asked.

  Vivian shrugged. “The fucking world ended and people had more important things to worry about than a bunch of pigs.”

  “Ah. The pigs didn’t.”

  Vivian raised an eyebrow. “So the pigs you saw, they weren’t sick?”

  Tango shook her head.

  “They should have caught the disease like everyone else,” Vivian said. “Unless they were from the Eden Project too. Generation one.”

  Tango’s stomach roiled—that idea somehow seemed far worse than Vivian’s stories of mass death and violence.

  “They can’t swim across the channel,” Dog said, misunderstanding Tango’s expression and petting her arm. “They’ll never make it over here.”

  “Unless they make a raft,” Vivian murmured. “But don’t worry. They can’t shoot guns.”

  “It’s not that,” Tango said softly. “It’s just...”

  “What?” Dog asked.

  “Well...they tasted just like pork.”

  * * *

  Raven was the most perfect thing Fox had ever known. Tiny, pink and bald, but somehow entirely complete. Her blue eyes, her stubby fingers and toes. Fox had thought he loved Whiskey as much as it was possible to love any living thing. He would die for her without hesitation, give her anything she wanted, kill for her, if it came to it. However, that love was entirely eclipsed by his love for their baby. If he had known how he would feel, if he had known it was possible to feel this much, he would never have gone ahead with it. Or maybe he would have done it sooner—done more to encourage his brothers to do the same. Overnight, the world had shrunk until there was nothing but this child: his perfect, screaming, sort of smelly daughter.

  “Can I see her?” The stranger woman, Kay, crouched down beside him.

  He shifted slightly so she could see the bundle in his arms. The baby was sleeping for once, peaceful and blessedly silent.

  “Can I hold her?” Kay asked.

  “No,” Fox said.

  “I just want to check she’s healthy. I’m a doctor. I’ve looked after a lot of babies. I even had some of my own, many years ago. Two girls...”

  “You may not touch her,” Fox said calmly. “She’s mine.”

  “I’m not going to take her away. I just want to do a physical. You want her to be healthy, right?”

  “You can’t touch her,” he said again, without rancor. “She doesn’t need anything from you. She only needs Whiskey and I.”

  “Whiskey doesn’t seem interested in her.”

  Fox gave her a sharp look. “Be careful what you say to me. The others may have welcomed your people, but I see no value in you. Whiskey loves our baby. She’s just tired, and she has responsibilities.”

  She held up both hands. “Okay. Maybe. Of course. But sometimes women don’t bond properly. Sometimes they get depressed. I can help with that too, if you let me.”

  “No,” he said again. He got to his feet, moving away from her. “You stay away from what’s mine. Sugar and Charlie want to learn from you. If you want to play with a baby, you’ll have to wait until Charlie has hers.”

  Kay frowned at him—though it was more of a scowl. He could see her jaw working as if she had more to say. He wasn’t going to stay and listen, though. He went to find Whiskey instead. She was sleeping in her hut, sprawled on one side as if she had just collapsed there. She looked pale, her hair tangled and unusually unkempt. Her body paint had mostly flaked or sweated away, leaving her skin unusually clear. It had been a rough few days. An exhausting few days. Fox was certain that when she’d caught up on sleep, Whiskey would be as excited about the baby as he was. He knew she loved their child. It was just that Whiskey did not always show her affection in predictable ways.

  He settled down beside her.

  It would be fine, he was sure it would be fine.

  Chapter Four

  Zebra lay back in his canoe, watching a hawk ride the thermals hundreds of feet overhead. He should have been fishing, but he found it hard to stay focused at the best of times. He couldn’t help it, the world was fascinating. Too fascinating to dedicate all his time to farming it for flesh. How did birds stay in the air? The wings p
robably helped, but there had to be more to it than that.

  It was nice to be out on his own. It had been busy enough with the two tribes together—now the scientists had been there a few days and the baby was always screaming, it seemed to be a constant hotbed of chaos. Not that he wasn’t curious about the scientists’ technology or the baby. Both were great, but silence was nice too. The flow of the water, the hush of the breeze...

  The flicker along the bank was little more than a flash of movement, half caught from the corner of his eye. He sat up, scanning the trees. There was no sign anything had been there. The day had warmed up enough that most of the creatures were still. The sullen heat of midday seemed to make even the plants sleepy.

  He whistled, mimicking the call of one of the little birds that nested on Pinnacle Island. There was no reply, so he whistled again, turning it into a short melody. The air was still silent, but the hair on the back of his neck prickled, and he cocked his head. He was certain there was something watching him. Someone. He was willing to bet his life on it.

  A year ago he would have been terrified that it was Whiskey—the red terror who had haunted so many nightmares before the tribes had become allies. The Varekai had seemed like monsters then. It had taken some rather complicated twisting of his brain to realize they were more than bloodthirsty predators. A year ago he would have got the hell of out of there, spear up and head down.

  Now he saw things a little differently. Between the lush green of the foliage, sunlight rippled across something shimmering and curly, and he smiled. He drifted closer to the bank, scooping up a rock from within a snarl of tree roots, and then he pegged it into the bushes.

  There was a yelp and a flurry of movement. The Varekai stumbled back against a tree trunk, hand on her shoulder where a thin trickle of blood marred brown skin. Her teeth were bared in open hostility. As he’d thought, it was a stranger. Most likely the stranger who had left the footprints on the beach.

  “Oops,” Zebra said.

  “I warn you,” she snapped. “I am armed.”

  “Yes, but I’m all the way over here on a canoe.”

  She ducked down, and when she came back up she had a rock in her hand—bigger than the one he had tossed at her. She lobbed it at his head, and he ducked. He was still caught in the splash. He shook his head and laughed.

  “You’re not like those scientists.”

  “Who?” She slid behind a tree, peering around it at him like a possum. Her eyes were a deep shimmering brown with the most extraordinarily long lashes he’d seen. She was a little on the skinny side, but he suspected that was a recent development.

  “The people we found on the reef,” he explained.

  “I saw them.”

  “Yes, you came in from that side, didn’t you? Tare and India found your footprints on the beach.”

  She scowled, refusing to answer.

  He shrugged. “Whatever. I’m not hunting Varekai.”

  “What’s a Varekai?”

  “You. You’re a girl. A Varekai.”

  “I’m an Odd.”

  “A what now?”

  “Odds and Evens.”

  He shook his head, bemused. “I have no idea what that is.”

  “Our Eden was numbers. One, Three, Five.”

  “Oh.” He brightened. “And the males were Evens. Two, Four, Six.”

  She nodded, sliding out slowly from behind the tree.

  “So what’s your number?” he asked.

  “Fifteen.”

  “I’m Zebra.”

  “A horse,” she said flatly.

  He blinked. “What?”

  “A zebra is a stripy horse.”

  He shrugged, grinning. “I guess my stripes washed off. What are you doing here?”

  She sighed, leaning against the trunk. “I took the dinghy out. I knew a storm was coming, but I thought I’d get back to shore before it could reach me. I was swept halfway down the coast. I think I’m about two hundred miles west of where I started. I lost the dinghy a few days ago, I’ve been floating on junk since then.”

  “Fifteen must be a damn lucky number,” he said. He lifted his water bottle and shook it at her. “I have water.”

  She frowned, instantly becoming distrustful again. He eased the canoe closer to the bank anyway. He took a swig, capped it and offered it to her again, his arm stretched out as far as it would go. She inched forward to snag it, then darted back to the tree. She sniffed the water and carefully tasted it before swallowing.

  “So, your Eden. How many Elikai and Varekai are there?” he asked.

  “Odds and Evens,” she corrected.

  “That, then.”

  “About sixty.”

  “Babies?”

  “Yeah, we have some kids. Not me personally.”

  “We have one.”

  “I heard it crying.”

  “Do they all do that?”

  She rolled her eyes. “Yeah, lots.”

  She picked her way closer to him and offered him the water bottle back. She’d left him a few mouthfuls. He took it and put it in the bottom of the canoe, making no effort to get any closer.

  “We have a scientist too,” she admitted. “She was the last teacher who survived after we opened the gates of Eden.”

  “Good or bad?” Zebra asked.

  She cocked her head. “A little of both. She’s not one of us. For better or worse, their blood is different.”

  He nodded; he’d suspected as much. He dipped his oar into the water, using it to push away from the bank, angling his canoe away from her deeper into the channel.

  “Where are you going?” she asked.

  He flashed her a grin. “Fishing.”

  “Just like that?” she demanded.

  “I told you I wasn’t hunting Varekai. Stay safe.”

  He glanced back only once, just to see the outraged look on her face as he glided out of sight.

  * * *

  India knelt beside the garden bed, watching with interest as Jacobs shoveled a spoonful of soil into his device. Back at the camp, many of the hunters had already left for the morning, but the rest of the tribe was busy with the domestic necessities of caring for the scant animals who had survived the wet, repairing broken things and cleaning up after the morning meal.

  They were alone but for the two half-grown pups Whiskey had managed to keep. With the limitations of the pregnancy and then the baby, responsibility for the dogs had been handed to Mike. Mike’s animal husbandry skills were roughly equivalent to that of a shark, so the pups spent much of their time digging up the gardens to eat the chicken poop and rotting fish bones.

  “It analyzes the soil,” Jacobs said. “See here.” He showed her a panel of numbers with colored lights running in strips up the side.

  “The islands are sandy. But we learned about enriching the soil in Eden. The problem is, when the storm surges come, they flood the gardens with salt water. We have to start all over again.”

  “That’s why you’re planning to move to the Pinnacle Island, correct? To build a permanent village?”

  She nodded. “Sugar has plans for proper houses and buildings. We can build more permanent pens for the chickens to keep the snakes out. I like the idea of more farming than gathering, but so much of what I’m doing here is trial and error.”

  He flashed her a smile. “It doesn’t have to be. If I gave you this and taught you to use it, you would know exactly what you needed to do.”

  She met his gaze. “Would you do that?”

  He reached out and touched one of the woven threads of her hair, rubbing a purple shell between his thumb and finger with a smile. “I might. You know I’ve been at sea a long time. Nine fucking years with Cobweb Cunt Kay. It was okay when Brenda was alive, but after
she died... I didn’t think I would ever see beautiful women again. But you are beautiful.”

  “How did Brenda die?”

  “Childbirth.”

  India blanched. How likely was it, she wondered, that women would die in childbirth? Was that just for scientists and doctors, who seemed so different in their ways to animals? In the wild, death by childbirth was rare. Where were Varekai on the spectrum? More like animals, or more like these people from the world before? “Dr. Kay wasn’t able to help her?”

  He pulled away, sitting back on his heels. He looked angry. “It doesn’t matter, okay? I was complimenting you.”

  “Ah.” She paused. “Beauty is objective.”

  “Yeah, but they made you Eden girls with the best of everything.” He leaned forward again, waving the soil analyzer. “So do you want this?”

  “Yes, thank you.”

  She reached for it, and he snatched it away, shaking a finger at her. “No, no. I’ll give it to you and teach you how to use it, but I want to trade.”

  She frowned. “For what?”

  “Make love to me.”

  “What?” The idea itself was alien—sex as an object of barter. Offensive somehow, like farting just because you liked the smell or killing because you liked watching something die. Twisting around the natural function of an act to make it something it wasn’t supposed to be.

  “You want a baby. I might give you one. You could have the soil analyzer and a child. You want that, right?”

  “Tare is my Elikai.”

  “Tare doesn’t have a soil analyzer.”

  She shuffled back from him, eyes narrowed. “Neither, it seems, shall I.”

  He crept after her. “Please. You have no idea what it’s been like. Men, real men, need it. Being around you hurts.”

  She stood up, glaring down at him. “Then keep your distance.”

  She heard him call her a “cunt” as she made her way back down the path to the village. Tare grinned when he saw her, rising to his feet to move to her side. She was relieved to see him. Solid, safe Tare. Her mate. Her chosen. She didn’t know why they hadn’t been able to make a child yet, but if not with him, then she accepted it would be with no one.