Third Wave: Bones of Eden

by Zaide Bishop

  “Go? Go where? Zebra!”

  Zebra scrambled to his feet, grabbing Dog and hauling him after him.

  “We have to go to the mainland!”

  Chapter Two

  Tango looked up from where she was sanding wood as Dog and Zebra raced into the camp. Most of the tribe were resting, avoiding the mid-afternoon sun, but Tango found it hard to sit down these days. It was too early to say for sure there was another life inside her, but she felt different. More alive. Unable to relax, but at the same time eager to be doing more.

  “Everyone out of the caves!” Zebra yelled, arms waving over his head. “Everyone out in the open.”

  “What is it?” Sugar rose to his feet, striding toward his brothers.

  “Zebra says there is going to be an earthquake,” Dog said, doubling over to catch his breath.

  “I saw lights! We saw lights!” Zebra insisted. “All across the sky. Don’t you remember that vid they made us watch? There’s going to be an earthquake. A huge one.”

  Charlie gave Sugar a questioning look, and he shrugged. “Are you really sure about this, Zebra?”

  “Yes!”

  “Okay, okay. We better move everyone down to the river. It’s flat there, and there aren’t any trees,” Sugar said.

  Maria groaned. “Are we really going to hike all the way down there because this fish-head saw some lights? It’s hot. And a really long way. And Zebra is an idiot.”

  Sugar folded his arms, studying Zebra. Tango had to admit, Zebra looked serious. Not just serious, but genuinely panicked. “Yeah, we are.”

  Tango glanced up as Xícara appeared beside her. “Are you okay?” he asked.

  She nodded. “Yes.”

  Since her moon blood had stopped, Xícara had been almost irritatingly protective. Fussing every time she chipped a nail or had to carry something. She saw his concern for what it was, though: love. So it was easy enough to forgive him, even if he could be somewhat exasperating.

  “I’ll get you something to sit on. Food. Go down with the others.”

  She took his hand as he tried to walk away. “No. Come with me. I don’t need anything. If there is going to be an earthquake, I don’t want you in the caves.”

  “I don’t really think there will be.”

  He slipped from her grasp and headed up the path. She sighed, then turned as India appeared at her side.

  “Where’s he going?”

  “To get some things. I told him not to.”

  Tare snorted. “Loving you hasn’t made him any smarter...”

  Tango gave him a shove, and he grinned. They fell into step with the other Kai as they began their descent. Zebra was at the front, trying to urge everyone to move faster. Tango frowned.

  “He sounds genuinely scared.”

  “Yeah, he used to be afraid of butterflies,” Tare said. “So take it with a grain of salt.”

  India chuckled. “Butterflies?”

  The first rumble sounded like thunder, and Tango looked back with a frown, expecting to see a sudden storm sweeping in. But the second rumble roared up through the ground, and the rocks under their feet bucked. Her yell of surprise was lost in many. She fell hard, and someone else slammed against her, but the slope was steep, and before Tango could catch herself, she was rolling downward, sliding over rocks and thrashing her way over coarse brush. She hit a sapling, caught herself and hung on as the whole world roared.

  It didn’t seem to end. She tried to find her feet several times only to be knocked back to her knees, which were bloody now and smeared with dirt.

  “Xícara!”

  The mountain shrieked. The river below was suddenly consumed by a new channel as the earth fell away and seawater rushed in with a savage hiss. The new pit spread, eating rocks and trees as if they were leaves and dirt on the beach at low tide.

  The grinding crumble as the mountain started to collapse drowned out Tango’s next cry. Plumes of choking dust blasted across her. The caves were collapsing. Everything was collapsing. The whole island was going to go under, and she was going to die on her knees.

  She screamed. Not a name this time, but rage and fear and raw animal frustration. Tumbling rocks began to hit her from above, rolling down the mountain—some as big as robin’s eggs, some as big as fists. A boulder larger than her bounced past and splintered a tree. She ducked her head down, covered it with her arms and prayed that death would be quick.

  It took her a long moment to realize everything was suddenly still.

  Her body throbbed from the stones and the tumble. There was dust in her eyes and mouth. She could still hear the earth groaning and spitting, the sea savagely claiming new space, but the earthquake was over.

  She rose unsteadily to her feet.

  Around her, the other Kai did the same. She heard whimpers of pain. Saw blood and confusion.

  “Xícara!” She forced her legs to move, scrambling up the rocks and debris. Her whole body screamed in pain. There was a flap of skin flopping against her knee. Her skin. But the dirt seemed to have caked the blood, because she couldn’t feel the wetness yet.

  She wasn’t alone. Kai ran along with her, back to the caves.

  “Xícara!” she screamed.

  It was hard to tell where the cave mouths had been. The ground was unstable. The mountain was an alien scene of devastation. As she tried to orientate herself amid the raw rock and dust, she realized she must be standing in the village. Only there was no village now. All their work was gone. Buried under layers of rock.

  “Over here!” Fox yanked on a tree.

  Tango ran; they all did. She saw the flash of red and thought it was blood, but it was his hair.

  “Xícara!” It was the only word she remembered how to say.

  He groaned, and she realized that no, some of it was blood. One whole side of his face was painted with it, but he was definitely alive.

  “Help me,” Fox directed the other Kai, showing them where to cut, brace and pull. Tango grabbed Xícara’s arms, and with a great heave he slithered loose.

  “Everyone alive?” Charlie scrambled up the mountain toward them.

  “We found Xícara,” Fox called. “He’s alive.”

  Tango crouched beside him as he coughed and patted himself down. Then his eyes settled on the vast sinkhole that had claimed the river.

  “Tango...” he breathed.

  “I know.”

  His eyes flickered across her. “You’re hurt!”

  She laughed, suddenly close to tears. “You too. Why did you go back, you big idiot?”

  “Come on.” Fox put his hand on Tango’s shoulder. “Later, okay?”

  “We have to get off the slope,” Sugar called. “If it shakes again, we’ll end up buried.”

  Xícara put his arm around Tango, and they clambered down together, rejoining the rest of the tribe. The forest had fared better than the mountain, and they made their way into the trees until they found a space the rocks hadn’t managed to invade. There they stopped.

  Tango saw many shocked and bloody faces. No one was unhurt, and Raven was squalling angrily, bleeding from a cut on her arm that Whiskey kept licking.

  “Well, everyone is alive and accounted for,” Sugar said after he’d counted. “If we’d been caught off guard and been in the caves, that wouldn’t be true. Thanks, Zebra.”

  Zebra twitched, then started to pace. He stepped on something sharp, picked it out of his foot, then continued pacing. “No. It’s not enough. Fifteen said... Look, there’ll be more. More earthquakes and maybe a tsunami. Something big enough to wipe the islands away completely.”

  He was agitated, picking at his bloody elbows. He didn’t look entirely sane. Tango pressed herself against Xícara.

  “Calm down,” Tare said, trying to c
atch his arm, but Zebra shook him off. Instead he met Charlie’s gaze.

  “We have to go to the mainland. We have to go right now.”

  “Zebra,” Sugar said insistently. “You have to calm down.”

  Zebra ignored him, pacing over to Charlie, picking up both of her hands and looking into her eyes. “Right now, Charlie. If you go, the Varekai will go. If the Varekai go, the Elikai will go. Please.”

  She looked to India, then Whiskey, then Tango. India looked away through the trees, toward the sinkhole, with a silent sort of horror. Whiskey had blood smeared on her chin. She nodded.

  Tango nodded too. “I believe him. Let’s follow the idiot to the mainland.”

  Charlie sighed. “India?”

  “I... I don’t know.”

  Zebra shook Charlie’s hands. “You have to listen.”

  “Okay...okay. Sugar, I think we should go. We should go.”

  “If the canoes haven’t been lost,” Sugar muttered. “I don’t like this. At all.”

  Zebra pulled Charlie to her feet. “I’m right. I know it. Fifteen is right.”

  Tare rolled his eyes. “I’d have a little more faith if you weren’t the only one to have ever met your mystery girlfriend.”

  * * *

  The canoes were crowded, and with the bulk of their supplies buried in the caves, there was no rope to tie them together. The Kai did the best they could with what they had, and soon the entire tribe was on the channel, with the outboard motors on the western side and the rest of the canoes jammed together in an awkward and precarious canoe raft.

  Despite this, they made good time. The sky was orange when they landed, the sun setting quickly. However, there was still enough light to see, even to gather wood for fires to protect them through the night.

  Sugar peered up and down the beach. “We should drag the canoes up as far as we can and then hike inland a ways.” Charlie could tell it was pigs he was worried about. There had been no time to grab weapons. They were defenseless if they couldn’t get up into one of the moldering buildings, out of the pigs’ reach. But what was the reach of a pig with a human brain?

  “Where’s the water going?” Nab asked softly.

  Charlie turned. The canoes, which had been floundering in the shallow water only moments earlier, were suddenly high on the sand. There were no drag marks behind them. It was as if the ocean was simply...receding.

  Sugar grabbed her hand, eyes wide. “Run,” he whispered, then his voice rose to a shout. “Run!”

  The tribe scattered, sprinting toward the tree line and the cracked streets, weaving between the crumbling buildings, looking for higher ground. It was not terrain well engineered for fast travel. The abandoned shells of cars were rusted and hazardous with sharp edges. The bitumen was riddled with deep potholes or else scattered with debris that made running painful and impossible.

  Charlie saw some of her kin venturing into buildings, boosting each other up through the windows of second stories. It was dangerous; the earthquake had made everything unstable. A wall of water could flatten the entire block, and those trapped inside would be crushed. Charlie didn’t want to die like that. Instinct told her to keep running, that distance and altitude would keep her alive. Not hiding.

  Instinct was wrong. The rushing roar of the water was like static, filling up the empty space until she felt deaf. Over it she heard screams and the cracking and shifting as trees bowed and cars slammed into buildings.

  Sugar almost dragged her. She was too fat, too pregnant, to keep up. She was slowing him down. They were going to die together because of her. She risked a glance back over her shoulder and saw the roaring, churning brown wall bearing down on them. It was taller than she was, and at its fore, swept up and tumbling in the immense bow of water, was a huge red truck.

  The water hit with the force of a mountain. There was no up or down, no sight, sound or smell, only salt and pain. Things—brothers, sisters, the road, trees, cars—heedless, they slammed against her. Or she slammed against them. She fought for air with no idea what direction “up” was. Her hand broke the surface, and she floundered. She felt air on her face, gasped, and was underwater again.

  She grappled with unseen things, trying to slow herself. To find purchase. To stop herself being pummeled against every unmoving thing in the world. She swallowed great mouthfuls of salt water, because swallowing was better than choking. She lost her air when her belly, her baby, slammed against something that might have been a tree.

  As the blackness started to move in at the edge of her vision, she quietly gave up. The water was too vast, and her lungs were too small. The pain across her abdomen eclipsed the ache of shattered bones and the bruises and the blows. The baby she had sacrificed everything for was dying.

  * * *

  She was holding something, and she was climbing. She broke the surface, and the air rushing into her lungs burned like raw skin on a red-hot pan. She screamed, went under and fought her way back up into the air with a savage need to survive she didn’t know she possessed. It was a tree, she was climbing a tree. It was not a tall tree, and the branches around her were flimsy. She pulled herself higher—draping herself over them, out of reach of the water and its hostile, sharp projectiles.

  She hung on, and around her the water swelled. Perhaps she lost consciousness or was just lost in the agony of labor. Blood came from between her legs, staining the gray water before being churned and swallowed by the flood. She couldn’t tell if it had been forever or a few minutes, but the branch broke, and the water claimed her again.

  * * *

  She swam. Sometimes she could stay on the surface, sometimes the water pulled her under. Exhaustion and blood loss were winning. She imagined every carcass and flotsam that brushed against her under the water was a monster. She saw a hillside, dry land amid the churning gray, and gave every last ounce of effort to reach it. The current tried to snatch her off course, but then she found the ground under her feet and hauled herself onto the dry, cutting bitumen.

  A rat slithered out of the water beside her, making it only a few feet before it, too, gave up. They both lay there in the twilight, breathing hard, eyes glassy. For a time, Charlie closed her eyes.

  * * *

  Pain woke her. Pain and stars. She looked up at the blistering beauty of the sky, and tears rolled slowly down her cheeks. She forced herself to sit and saw the rat was still beside her. It had died. Ants were already eating its eyes.

  The pain came again, swelling through her middle so intensely she cried out. Her own blood was muddy around her, and she was in too much agony to move. She could not even make it to the grassy verge or the abandoned houses that were just hulking shadows in the starlight. She screamed. And again.

  It was the baby. Alive or dead, it was coming out. On the cracked road, with cracked ribs, under the stars, she was to give birth alone. In a final rush of blood and violence, there she was.

  She. A Varekai. An unmoving, lifeless baby girl. Charlie scooped her up and held her. She was warm, warmer than Charlie, and much lighter than she’d expected. This tiny little thing that was almost alive.

  Charlie lay back on the road and closed her eyes.

  Chapter Three

  When the water struck, Sugar had been dragged under. For a short time everything had been chaos, blindness and drowning, but chance had taken him close to a palm tree, and he had pulled himself high up its trunk, out of reach of the churning water. It had taken exhausting effort to get to its summit, and perching there had been awkward and painful. For hours he had screamed Charlie’s name. He’d heard replies, calls from his brothers that were too distant to understand, but nothing from the woman he loved.

  He was too tense and miserable to cry and had simply huddled, trembling with anxiety as the sun went down and left him in darkness. Below him, the waters had continu
ed to roll and buck.

  It was still several hours before dawn when he decided he couldn’t stay there another minute. He slid down the trunk into the knee-deep water. The city had seemed damaged before, but now the streets were unrecognizable and so strewn with debris many places were now impassable.

  Navigation was slow and dangerous. He shuffled forward, his toes finding broken glass, sharp metal and wood, broken concrete where the ground had been ripped away leaving trenches in the streets.

  His only concern was for Charlie. He could have been walking over live crocodiles and still he would have continued on. She was the only thing that mattered, and the ache in his chest was far worse than any wound the streets could inflict.

  He headed inland, trying to guess where the water might have carried her. As dawn crept closer and he moved higher, the water got lower. And soon he was slogging through mud.

  He stopped at a carcass of a cow. The first cow he’d seen since the world began. Already it was bloating. It had three horns and bundles of tumors down its flanks as large as Sugar’s head.

  He heard the mud shifting and sucking. Subtle, almost too quiet. He went still, turning slowly, listening. Somewhere between the shrubs, the broken buildings, the hulking remains of cars, something moved. Something large. Large but capable of silence, even in the destruction left by the tsunami.

  He waited, barely daring to breathe. He was unarmed. All that had mattered was Charlie, finding her, protecting her. He hadn’t considered his own well-being. His gaze flicked down, left, right, looking for anything he could defend himself with. But the sticks and palm leaves within reach were frail and soggy.

  From the corner of his eye, he saw the shadowy frame of a small car pick itself up and slither behind some bushes. His pulse thundered. He heard nothing, but it was far bigger than he expected.

  The undisguised tread of an animal caused him to spin around. The creature was a little over five feet at the shoulder, with a head as large as his own torso. Even in the dull light before dawn, he knew its pale hide would be pink in the sun, and that its eyes would be blue. There would be blue tattoos on its sides. Biohazard symbols. The words “not for human consumption.” The identification 0011-PGSTX.