by Zaide Bishop
Surely she would find the others soon.
She hurried into the mall, the rain roaring, the space echoing with the alarm trill of the birds. There were no other sounds. She hurried up the stairs, but when she reached the top she froze. The door to Hauser and Associates was open, and she had left it closed. She scrambled in, but the drawer was open too. The paper nest was soiled, but there was no sign of her baby. Frantically, Charlie searched the floor and under the desk, as if she could have just crawled out, but there was nothing. No signs of a predator. No trace of blood. Her baby was just gone.
Charlie gave a desperate wail and sank down to the musty carpet, and outside the door the birds panicked and took to wing.
* * *
Tango had no warning. There was no sign the tribe was being hunted until they were attacked. The highway was wide and barren, littered with car husks and the occasional pile of human bones, white-brown and hung with tatters of flesh.
Around them acres of dead industry had been claimed only by vines and lizards, nodding purple flowers silently agreeing with the sun that was just cresting the clouds. The tribe was spread out. They had drunk their fill in the storm, but now the afternoon was turning humid, and they were damp and hungry. Tango was still helping Zebra, and he didn’t even have the energy to talk incessantly, his breath raw and too hot on her ear. Sugar was trailing further and further behind the group, constantly looking back the way they had come, desperate for any sign of Charlie.
The squeal cut the air, sending up a spray of alarmed birds right as the sun ducked behind a cloud again. Humping pink shapes burst from the cover of a long, overgrown drainage ditch on both sides of the highway. Huge and long, streaked and spotted with symmetrical war paint like Varekai but partially tattooed in blue with identifiers and biohazard symbols.
“Pigs!” Tango roared. She still woke sweating, remembering her last moments on the beach outside Eden, certain she was going to be eaten alive. Now exhaustion left her surprisingly calm.
“Go, go, big red truck!” Fox thrust Raven into William’s arms and snagged a spear, running to defend his fleeing brothers. The red truck was covered in ladders and hoses, and as they scrambled up the sides, the fierce smell of fetid water assaulted them.
Tango pushed Zebra up, then dropped back to the road, running with Fox to defend Sugar. He was standing as if stunned, not trying to flee, just frozen. Fox reached him first, hauling him bodily toward the others, and Tango swung her makeshift spear to clear them a path as the pigs closed in around them.
They seemed bigger than she remembered—as big as the cars around them—masses of muscle, bone and teeth, all screaming.
“It’s the same ones, the same ones.” Sugar gaped.
“I know.” Tango’s pulse was thundering in her ears. Xícara was reaching for her even though she was much too far away, leaning precariously over the side of the truck. “Come on, Sugar.”
“They’re not going to give up until we’re dead,” he gasped, stumbling on the cracked road.
“Or until they are,” Fox snarled, lunging at one of the pigs with a practiced strike that had felled a hundred wild boars in the past, but this beast sidestepped, snapping the spear out of his hands and crunching it into pieces.
Fox’s eyes widened, but Tango grabbed Sugar, hauling him toward the red truck and the waiting forest of helping hands. Fox closed in beside her as the pigs swelled around them, and then they were hoisted upward, the last two of the tribe, to safety.
“Is everyone okay?” Fox demanded.
No one appeared to have new injuries.
“Vivian,” Tango said quietly. “He told us about these pigs. They made them to experiment on, but they’re too smart. Smart like us.”
“That’s terrible and all, but...” Romeo said, looking down at the war band of furious porcine. “How do we get them to leave?”
“They won’t,” Sugar said grimly. “They attacked me while I was searching for Charlie. They’ve tracked us all this way. They’re not going to stop until we’re dead. Now they have us trapped up here, they have the luxury of watching us in shifts until we’re too dehydrated to fight back.”
“They can’t get us up here,” Dog pointed out. “They can’t climb.”
Romeo peered into the tank of stagnant, wriggler-filled water and pulled a face. “Lucky us.”
“They’re just pigs.” Whiskey was looking down at them thoughtfully. “Bigger than I’ve ever seen, but pigs.”
“Not just pigs,” Tango warned. “Didn’t you listen? They’re part human. See that war paint? They painted that on themselves. That one is the leader. Pigstix.”
“Why are they so angry?” Zebra asked.
“We killed one of their babies,” Sugar explained softly. “We ate it. We didn’t know any better.”
What if the blood they had used to paint themselves belonged to Charlie? Perhaps if she, Xícara and Sugar stayed behind, the pigs would let the rest of the tribe go.
“Whiskey.” Tango turned to her. “Do you think you can get to that black van?”
Whiskey gauged the distance. “Maybe. Yes, probably, why?”
“I don’t think they’ll attack you.”
“I’ll go,” Romeo said. “Whiskey is the only one with milk.”
“Don’t, please,” William said, grasping at his arm, but Romeo ignored him, clambering down the windshield and freezing with his feet on the bumper bar.
The pigs screamed, shoving and jostling one another. Teeth like rocks snapped inches from Romeo’s toes, but Pigstix gave a deep grunt of warning, and the attack didn’t come.
Slowly, Romeo stepped onto the ground. William was so tense he was vibrating, but even though the huge, looming shapes shifted and snarled around Romeo, there was no violence. Picking his way through them, trying not to touch their coarse, tattooed hides, Romeo broke free of the sounder. He walked a dozen paces on the bitumen and scrambled up the bumper and onto the roof of the black van.
“Ah, s’hot,” he cursed.
“What does it mean?” Xícara demanded, looking at Tango with confusion.
Tango’s heart fell. “It means you, Sugar and I stay. And the others leave us behind.”
* * *
Charlie trudged through the rain, the gnawing tension in her belly nothing to do with hunger now. Her breasts ached, and she sucked on them periodically to relieve the tension. The creamy milk was more filling than the mint, but food was the last thing on her mind.
Where had the baby gone? Charlie had been gone a long time. Too long. With her injuries, progress had been slow. She’d had to stop and rest frequently. She suspected, at one point, she had passed out for a bit. She had done her best.
She was so desolate, she almost didn’t notice the child standing on a retaining wall beside a sagging porch. There was a blue cloth bound around his hips, and his thumb was tightly in his mouth. His skin was a mid-coffee tone, his hair a wiry blonde. He was about three feet tall and still had the large head and pudgy limbs of infancy.
She stopped when she noticed him, and for a few moments they just stood, gazes locked, him sucking earnestly.
“Who are you?” a woman asked. Charlie turned to find a blonde woman climbing a set of stairs under a bower of twisted, wild roses. In her arms she held a baby. Charlie gave a little cry, taking a step toward her, but she realized her mistake. It was not hers.
“I... I’ve lost my baby,” Charlie said.
The blonde woman looked her up and down with a frown. “Where are you from?”
“The archipelago. I was caught in...the wave. The tsunami.”
“I don’t think you will find your baby then,” the stranger said.
“No, I had her after the wave. I left her to...to find food...” Charlie started to cry, and the young woman cautiously stepped closer.
/> “I am Three.”
“Three,” Charlie repeated. She wiped her tears, but they kept coming. She swallowed and snuffled, fighting to regain her composure. “I’m Charlie. Do you know Fifteen?”
Three nodded. “You’re from an Eden too, then?”
“Yes. My people came over, and I... I can’t...” She lapsed into confused silence. “Are these your babies?”
“Rowan.” She gestured to the toddler up the wall. “And this is Seventy-Two.”
Charlie blinked. “Are there so many of you?”
“Sixty came out of our Eden. The numbers swelled. Not everyone is still alive, of course.” She looked east. “Would you like to come back with me? I should present you to Spider.”
“Who is Spider?” Charlie asked.
“A seer, of sorts. She’s from pre-pandemic.”
Charlie balked. Another scientist. So far, people from the world before had been bad news. The teachers in Eden, the scientists the Kai had rescued from the reef, they proved themselves to be monsters in the end. But Fifteen’s village was where her own tribe would go. Where Sugar would go. Another tribe would have food and perhaps medicine. It was the sensible choice.
“Yes. Please.”
As Fifteen had promised, the village was on the river. A mess of reclaimed buildings patched and expanded on with refuse. Tiny colored lights were strung everywhere, hanging from windows, from gutters, from trees and from the life-sized statues of bears and giraffes, brightly colored horses and angels that decorated the streets.
Even from a distance, Charlie could make out gaggles of children—all different ages—and a huge throne painted blue and white, as tall as a building, right in the middle of the town square.
“How many people live here?” Charlie asked Three.
“Eighty-two,” she said.
“And most are from an Eden?”
“Most. Not all.”
“Your seer.”
“A few others,” Three admitted. “Some older folk who have gone bad in the head. We look after them. But a lot of the pre-pandemic people are...violent.”
“But you listen to your seer?”
“Spider,” Three corrected. “Yes, she is different. She knows things. She controls the server farm. Without her, the town would die. The servers would stop working.”
Charlie shook her head. “I don’t know what a server farm is.”
“Maybe Spider will show you.”
There was a call, some sort of alarm, as a sentry spotted them approaching. The children vanished, scurrying down bolt-holes like rabbits. The Elikai that emerged were armed—no, not Elikai, Charlie corrected herself, Evens. Children from another Eden, grown and escaped. She wondered how their world had been born. If their beginning had been quite so bloody and fierce.
They were certainly prepared to fight. They said nothing as Three, Charlie and the children made their way down the road to the edge of the village. Waiting in hostile silence. Why could she only see the Evens? Where were the Odds?
But she was wrong. There was one female. The woman was tall, her skin was black, her hair was white. Her clothes were brightly patterned, and she had dozens of strands of rainbow beads around her neck. Her wrists were heavy with silver and gold bangles—her ankles too. She moved with a light, rolling gait. Unlike the scientists they had rescued from the reef, she was not weak or slow. There was a quickness about her. A wiry strength. The name “Spider” was a fitting one.
“A child of Eden,” she said as she got close, her amber eyes bright. “Which one, eh? Down the coast? Phonetic?”
“What?” Charlie asked.
“Alpha, Beta, Charlie.” She counted on her long fingers.
“Charlie,” she said, surprised. “Yes.”
Spider tilted her head. “Saw the inside of that place. Didn’t think any of you had come out alive. So many dead. And you’ve been there that whole time. On the islands. Fifteen said you had some trouble with old blood.”
Charlie shook her head, confused. Then she realized. “The scientists?”
“Yeah.” Spider grinned.
“They’re dead now.”
Spider spat to one side. “Good. Filthy shits. They scurry around like cockroaches. Raping and stealing. Begging. There’s about two hundred of them nearly three days east of here. You don’t want to go up that way. So what’s your story?”
“The earthquake.” Charlie paused. “My tribe fled the islands, but the tsunami caught us on the beach. I gave birth, on my own, but when I went to find food... I came back and she was gone.”
Spider frowned, the lines around her eyes crinkling. “Someone took your baby?”
Charlie nodded, suddenly mute with misery, a lump like a turtle egg in her throat.
“I’ll send people,” Spider said. “We’ll look for it. Boy or girl?”
“Girl,” Charlie whispered. “And the rest of my tribe. Some of them must still be alive. We were going to come here. Zebra said—”
Spider gave a dismissive wave. “Yes, your people can come here. Children of Eden only, though. Can’t taint the lines, you know? The Eden blood has to stay pure. But we can always handle more of it. If it was one of those old bloods who took the child, we’ll find ʼem.”
“Aren’t...” Charlie hesitated. “Aren’t you from before? Old blood?”
Spider nodded. “I am. Twenty-three when it went to shit. Already had a hysterectomy, though. Cancer. There’s no risk of me infecting the rest of you with my genetics.”
“How are you not sick?” Charlie asked. “Why haven’t you...”
“Died?” Spider suggested, lips quirked in a wry grin. Charlie nodded.
“Blood transfusions. Once a month.”
“I don’t understand.”
“The Children of Eden give me their blood, and I put it in my body.”
Charlie stepped back, alarmed. “You eat our blood?”
“Eat? Of course not. We use needles. Blood transfusions. You must remember needles from your Eden.”
Charlie frowned and nodded. Another scientist. More tests. All the people from the world before were the same. “And if my people come here, you will want our blood too.”
“I don’t take, Charlie, I accept what is given. In payment for access to the servers.”
The server farm. Three had mentioned that too. Charlie was wounded and tired and hungry. She needed to sleep, and she desperately wanted her baby back.
“If you find my baby, I will give you anything,” Charlie said.
Spider quirked an eyebrow. “Be careful what you offer up, little butterfly. I don’t need anything from you, but there are people in the world who will take and take and take. You can stay if you follow the rules here, and the warriors will look for your baby because it is the right thing to do. You need medical aid, and I bet you’re hungry and tired. Eh? Don’t look surprised, I can see it in every inch of you. You can have food, aid and shelter. We’ll look for your baby. As for the rest, well, we’ll have to reassess in the morning.”
Charlie nodded. This woman, with her bright colors, made Charlie uneasy. She moved too quickly for her withered skin. She oozed a brash confidence that surpassed even Whiskey. She looked at the world as if everything in it had a value, a worth, a weight, that only she could see.
“Come this way,” Three said and continued past Spider and the warrior Evens, down the street where the chipped concrete and asphalt had been mostly pulled away to leave more reliable, hard-packed dirt. Children peered out of windows, giggling or wide-eyed. Fat-bellied Odds rested, leaning on anything that offered support to their swollen frames. Charlie knew the feeling well. At the same time, she was aware that this was what they could have been, if they had stayed in Eden long enough to learn what they were. Families. A whole village. Maybe a hundred f
rom the fifty-one they had started with. All those years of killing one another. All those years of pointless misunderstanding.
“Are you crying?” Three put her hand on Charlie’s shoulder. “Don’t cry. You’re safe now. And when the moon comes up, the people will come together, and we’ll pray for your people and the baby.”
“Pray?” Charlie wiped her wet cheeks. “To who?”
“Spider, of course.”
Chapter Six
India was sitting on a wall. It was hundreds of feet high and fell away below her to a river and lush green trees, wholeheartedly gobbling the moldering structures of the world before. Behind her was water. An endless serene mirror of ash blue. A whole valley, dammed and filled, the skeletons of drowned trees still reaching for the sky at the water’s edge.
Beside her was an ugly black dog. One ear was oversized and abnormal. It thumped three tails on the concrete.
“This is another dream,” India said.
“What do you know of dreams?” The dog spoke in Juliet’s voice.
“They show us what we already know.”
“Do you know this place?”
India looked around with a frown. “This is a dream place.”
“Your dream or mine?”
“It can’t be yours, you’re dead.”
The dog smiled, showing off uneven teeth—too many on one side and not enough on the other. It thumped its tails again. “Charlie needs you.”
“Where is she?”
“In the web. Tangled already. India, there is something you must know. Whatever happens, don’t—”
* * *
India woke to the sound of arguing. They had made camp on the second story of a parking garage. It was mostly empty, and they had dragged several dozen shopping trolleys to the mouth of the ramp to form at least some barrier between them and roving pigs and dogs. It was raining again, and they had washed off some of the filth, but the dust in the car park had gathered on them quickly, and the damp had left them chill and huddling together for warmth.
“We have to go back for them,” Fox said.