Third Wave: Bones of Eden

by Zaide Bishop

  She was cut off by Ross, who had tossed his banana leaf of food onto the ground and stomped on it, swearing fluently.

  “I can’t eat any more of this fucking snake meat. It’s been a week and we’re still eating this greasy, rancid crap,” he raged.

  “You killed it,” Sugar said. “And it’s allowed us to spend time on things other than hunting and fishing. We have to eat it before it goes off and gets wasted.”

  “No we fucking don’t,” Ross said flatly. “We can toss this stuff and just shoot something else. Something like a pig. I would kill for a pig on a spit right now. Or some lamb. Or a fucking beef steak.”

  “There’s no cows or sheep on the islands,” Charlie said. “And we can’t hunt the boars right now. There aren’t many left after the megalania swarm hit the islands. Just like the goats, they need time to recover their numbers, or they’ll die off completely.”

  “One pig is not going to make a difference,” Ross said, annoyed. “One goddamn pig to save my sanity.”

  Whiskey tilted her head, eyes narrow. “It’s not open to any more discussion. What we need is more important than what we want.”

  Sugar nodded. “None of us really wanted to eat bats all summer. They are not a tasty meat. Nor did we just want to eat crocodiles and fish since then. However, sacrifices need to be made.”

  “I am so sick of your save-the-earth hippie bullshit. How did you go from being raised in a lab to primitive tree huggers?”

  “Cool it, Ross,” Vivian said with a sigh. “Not all sustainability is tree-hugging bullshit.”

  “One pig. One pig is not going to cripple the whole population. If I have to eat one more bite of this greasy, salty shit, I’m going to throw up. I don’t even need help. I don’t know why I’m asking. I’m going to go hunt a pig. Okay?”

  He rose to his feet, taking a handful of bullets out of his pocket and starting to load the gun.

  “Sit down,” Whiskey snapped. She handed the baby to Fox.

  “Who made you fucking queen?” he sneered.

  “Charlie and Sugar make these decisions. For the good of everyone. Sit down.”

  “No.”

  For a long moment they glared at one another, Ross red-faced and inflated, Whiskey cold and detached. Then Ross snorted and turned away, stuffing the bullets into the gun as he walked away toward the beach.

  Whiskey’s lip curled, and she rose silently to follow him. He didn’t realize she was following until she put her hand on his shoulder.

  “Hey!” he snapped, spinning around and pointing the muzzle of the gun right between her eyes. “Keep your hands off me.”

  She arched an eyebrow. “Or you’ll shoot me?”

  “Yes, I’ll fucking shoot you. I will put you down like the fucking dog you are. You’re not even a real person, did you know that? They just grew you in a fucking tank. They’ve been growing and flushing you things down the toilet like dead goldfish for thirty years now.”

  “They did,” she corrected, tilting her head. “Before they died out.”

  “Are you threatening me? Because I am the one with the gun here.”

  He pressed the barrel against her forehead, but she didn’t break eye contact.

  “Your little spears and bows and arrows don’t mean shit. Okay? I pull this trigger and your brain is a splattery mess.”

  “Ross,” Vivian said. “Cool it, man. Just put the gun down.”

  “So this little cunt can tell me what to do? No. I am not going to be bossed around by a come-socket baby machine.”

  He turned on his heel and started up the path again. Whiskey took a step after him, and Charlie barked, “Whiskey.”

  She stopped, eyes narrow, her face still pale with that deadly kind of rage that was apt to cost lives. “You should have left them on the reef, Charlie.”

  Charlie glanced sideways at Vivian, who looked apologetic.

  “He’s an asshole. I’ll get Kay to talk to him. It’s been a really long time since we’ve had to be civilized. Some of the nuances of socialization are a little rusty.”

  Charlie met his gaze, shaking her head slightly. “How am I to abide by threats?”

  “I know. I’m sorry. I promise it won’t happen again. Just let him shoot a pig, and it’ll be done.”

  Whiskey’s lip curled. “And what if that pig is the last sow on the island?”

  Vivian didn’t have an answer for that.

  Chapter Six

  The smell of roasting pork filled the air.

  Ross looked smug, leaning against a tree picking at a lump of fatty, blistered crackling. Most of the Varekai and Elikai were avoiding looking at him. The scientists, however, did not seem upset, and Whiskey had made careful note of the fact that all of them had been more than happy to eat the pork.

  Unlike her sisters, she was not looking away. She was not cowed by their superior years, technology or experience. Every moment Ross sat there with that stupid look on his face fueled Whiskey’s fury, which simmered inside her, a silent and growing rage.

  If not for Fox and the baby, she would have done something about it already. These fragile people from the world before were brittle-boned and slack-muscled. She had slain boars, Elikai and the leviathan female megalania. She had dived into the wallow of the super croc, without fear and without hesitation. There was nothing on this earth she couldn’t overcome, and Ross’s shiny little gun with its shiny little bullets did not scare her as he thought it should.

  She still remembered killing Elikai. Still remembered what it was like to see life fade from the eyes of a sentient body. And now, just like then, she would be doing it to protect her sisters.

  “Whiskey.” Fox nudged her with an exasperated annoyance that suggested it was not the first time he had said her name.

  “I’m listening,” she said.

  “Liar.”

  She huffed and turned to him. Meeting his gaze softened her. It was always his eyes that made her heart beat that little bit faster. So keenly intelligent and alert, never showing the uncertainty or fear she sometimes saw in the others. Fox was like her, a survivor, a warrior. Her lover and her peer. She had memorized every fleck of silver, like the glowing lining of a storm cloud.

  “Okay, I’m listening now.”

  “We need to name her.” He indicated the infant sleeping in his arms. She always seemed to sleep for him. With Whiskey she was suckling or screaming. Whiskey resented her daughter’s clear favoritism. It had been Whiskey that carried her all those months. Whiskey who sacrificed everything to make her. Whiskey who birthed her, after all those hellish hours of screaming and sweating.

  “She will be brave and savage,” Whiskey said. “We should name her Shark.”

  Fox snorted. “Brave and savage I agree with, but cannibalistic and heartless? Let’s find a name that reflects a want and need for the group. For family.”

  “And cunning,” Whiskey said. “She needs to be cunning too.”

  “Raven,” Fox said. “Like in India’s story. They travel in a family, they are bold and clever.”

  “Raven.” She stroked the top of the baby’s squishy little head. “If it makes you happy, yes, we’ll call her Raven.”

  He sighed, looking exasperated. “Does it make you happy?”

  “You make me happy.”

  They lapsed into silence again, and Whiskey once again found her attention drawn to Ross and the way the fat smeared across his face glistened in the firelight.

  “I want to leave,” she said softly.

  Fox blinked in surprise. “What?”

  “I want to go, you, Raven and I. Ram’s Head or the Shipwreck Cove. Somewhere we can hide.”

  There was a long moment of silence, and when Fox spoke, his voice was low. “It’s not like you to want to run.”


  “I’ve seen how Kay looks at Raven. That hunger in her gaze. We’re not safe here.”

  “Then we’ll go,” Fox said. “Tonight, if you like. I’ll gather our things, and we’ll walk away together.”

  She shook her head. “No. If it was just you and I, we would be away already. But it isn’t. Raven is too vulnerable. Too small. Too...useless. We need the whole tribe to raise a baby. Besides, I think they might come after us. I think with their technology they might find us.”

  Fox frowned. “Isn’t that a bit paranoid? We’ve every right to choose how we live. They can’t take away our free will.”

  “Do they know that?”

  “Whiskey, how is it even possible? You can’t think they’d hurt us. Sugar and Charlie would never tolerate it. They’d be dead the moment they tried. You’re not the only one who remembers how to kill Kai.”

  “So you say, but...it’s not a chance I am willing to take. Not with your life. Not with Raven’s.”

  He leaned on her, and she leaned back. “If you say run, we run,” he assured her.

  “And if I say fight?”

  “There will be blood,” he promised.

  * * *

  Kay had asked Zebra to look for honey, but as he had no real desire to be stung by bees, he’d decided to check his lobster traps instead and now had a whole basket of them, rustling and clicking at the end of the canoe.

  Everyone liked lobster, and as they were his traps, normally he would have been free to distribute them among his brothers and sisters as he saw fit. Today, he wasn’t entirely sure it would go that way. The scientists had a way of demanding what didn’t belong to them.

  He smelled the lingering odor of cooked meat—gull or cormorant, if he had to guess—before he saw her on the bank. Fifteen, his secret enigma. She was crouched down, wary and a little too close to the water for Zebra’s taste. His gaze passed over her long, lithe limbs and then found its way to those extraordinary lashes and her full lips.

  “Hey.” Zebra drew his canoe closer. “It’s you again. You shouldn’t be so close to the water’s edge. Crocodiles.”

  “I’ve been watching your camp,” she confessed, shuffling back.

  “I thought you might be. That or you’d be across the channel by now.”

  “I’ve been making a boat.”

  He grinned a little. “To be honest, I thought you’d steal one.”

  She arched an eyebrow. “You think that’s the sort of person I am? That I would steal from my own kind?”

  He held out his hands to show he meant no harm. “Sorry. It just seemed like the easy way.”

  “We have honor where I’m from. We don’t take what isn’t ours.”

  He chuckled. “You’re not as much like the Varekai as I thought.”

  “Things are tense at your camp. Those newcomers are causing you problems.”

  He shrugged, uncomfortable. “There are...some conflicts. Charlie and Sugar will sort them out. Somehow.”

  “The scientists are better armed. They’re weak and sick, but they have guns.”

  He rolled his shoulders, annoyed. “You’re telling me what I already know.”

  “So how do you think your leaders are going to solve this?”

  He hoisted himself out of the canoe onto the bank beside her and tied the anchor line to a branch. “I have no idea. It’s not like there’s anything I can do about it. We just have to wait it out, I think. Everyone will come around eventually.”

  She shook her head. “You’re too quick to believe in the optimistic outcome. The world is not like that, off these islands. People will kill one another for petty things.”

  “And you can see some kind of alternative?”

  She shrugged. “Soon they will be making your decisions for you.”

  Zebra shook his head. “Charlie and Sugar are in charge. The tribes elected them.”

  “Do those scientists do what Charlie and Sugar say?”

  “Well, not really...”

  “You’re cute, but you’re really naive.”

  He brightened. “You think I’m cute?”

  She rolled her eyes. “I rest my case.”

  He ignored the jibe. He got much worse from his brothers. “So where’s this boat?”

  She rose to her feet, leading him down a path to the glade she had been working in. The air in the trees was stifling, but at least it was shady. He looked at the sagging bundles of reeds in dismay.

  “So,” he said. “Your people don’t build many canoes, I take it?”

  She sighed. “I’m not sure it’s going to make it across the channel.”

  “I am sure it’s going to sink like a stone the moment you put it in water.”

  He crouched down beside it, starting to pick loose the knots holding it together.

  “Hey!” she protested. “What are you doing?”

  “Making it properly. At least you have most of the raw materials.” He eyed her up and down. “It doesn’t have to be real big, because you’re pretty light.”

  She put her hands on her hips. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  “It means it’s only going to take me a day to fix it instead of a whole week. Can you find some more of these long, flexible poles? Also, chuck that basket of lobsters in the back of my canoe into the shallows. Make sure the lid is on tight.”

  She nodded, and it wasn’t long before they had settled into a comfortable pattern. She fetched materials, and he stayed in the clearing, slowly putting together the frames. Once they had everything together, he showed her how to weave the reeds properly, and they sat side by side as the canoe slowly took shape.

  They talked as they worked. She taught him songs from her people, and he told her about his brothers, how the world had begun and how India and Tare had discovered the Kai were one people. She was both amused and mystified by their nativity, but most of his stories made her laugh. He liked the way she laughed. He liked her singing too. She had a beautiful fierceness about her without being hostile.

  It seemed a shame that she would leave and none of the others would get to meet her, but he didn’t suggest she come back with him, and she didn’t ask. It wasn’t safe.

  He was surprised when he realized the sky was turning orange. It felt like he had been with her an hour at most, but somehow the whole day had passed. What was it Einstein had said about the theory of relativity? Something about hotplates and pretty girls?

  “I’ll come back and try and help you with it if I can. You have somewhere safe to sleep, right?”

  She nodded. “Yes, and I appreciate your help.”

  “No problem.”

  She was staring at him expectantly, and he frowned. “What?”

  “You aren’t going to ask me for something in return?”

  “It looks like you need everything you have.” He glanced over her meager supplies. “Good luck.”

  She chuckled. “Well, I might still need it. I still need to carve a paddle.”

  He stood, stretching cramped limbs, and dusted off his hands. “Carve two, in case you drop one.”

  He returned to his own canoe, paddling away, wondering if he would see her again. And if he should have said something more.

  Chapter Seven

  Most of the Kai had already left for the day. It was mid-morning, and the only people who remained were those who rarely left the camp—the makers, fixers, cooks and gardeners. Everyone else was gathering, fishing or helping Sugar on Pinnacle Island with the building.

  Ross, Vivian and Jacobs were with the building crew—though how useful they would actually be was open to debate. India was busy carefully sorting seeds from the flesh of fruit so the remainder could be used in cooking. Once they moved to Pinnacle Island they would have to start the garden a
ll over again—though many of the smaller plants would hopefully survive the move. The trees would have to be left, and without the Varekai there to guard them, they’d once again be fighting for every fruit with the bats and possums.

  Kay was making herself useful, showing the remaining Kai how to knit. A skill, India had to admit, that was going to revolutionize the way they made clothes. It was easy enough—if time consuming—to make strings with plant fibers and even spider and caterpillar silk. While they had plenty of uses for string, they’d never been able to turn it into cloth before.

  What they needed, of course, was sheep. Sheep would make wool, and wool would make better clothes than grasses and palms. No doubt someone—probably Sugar—would get it into his head they needed to go to the mainland and find sheep once the village was properly established. Then again, something about their last trip to the mainland seemed to have scarred those involved. Xícara would not even walk to the north side of the island anymore. Not if he could see the mainland from the shore.

  It was hard to imagine how pigs could be that traumatizing. Even if they were tattooed with biohazard symbols.

  “You know,” Kay said, “since the boys are going to set up the solar panels and fetch the refrigeration units off the boat, there’s really no reason not to domesticate some goats. It will be easy to set up pens for them once the building starts, and milk is important now we have the baby.”

  India made quiet note of her use of the word “we.” “What does the baby have to do with it?”

  “Well, sometimes there is a problem with a woman’s milk. Goat’s milk is the best substitute for human milk—since we don’t have any formula. It would mean if Whiskey had a problem, we have something to fall back on. And it would be nice to have cheese again.”

  “It doesn’t form properly,” India said. “We tried early on. It’s too humid.”

  “But not when we have the fridges set up,” Kay said. “I know a little bit about controlling goats. I did a summer in Greece in a vineyard. One of those pretentious ‘natural methods’ places. If you can get me a nursing nanny goat, I’ll show you how to tame her.”