by Romi Hart
She gulped and straightened up. “Where am I?”
“You’re in the Atchafalaya National Wildlife Refuge.”
She blinked again. This time, she examined the collection of houses standing on stilts all around her. Their rough thatched walls and rooves blended into the vegetation. A brackish channel flowed by a few feet off.
She swallowed again. “That’s impossible. If it’s a wildlife refuge, you wouldn’t be allowed to build structures here.”
He shrugged and glanced around him, but he’d seen it all before. He didn’t need to know what the place looked like. “We do it anyway. You gave us a scare earlier, Strickland. We weren’t sure you would survive.”
Her head whipped around to stare at him. “What did you call me?”
“Strickland.” He pointed to her jacket. “That’s your name, isn’t it?”
She glanced at the patch. “Yeah. It is. You called me Pocahontas before.”
“He did call you that, though, didn’t he? You can’t blame me for thinking that was your name.”
Her eyes flashed. “It’s a stupid name. You should have known it wasn’t my real name.”
“Why did he call you that, then? Most people call each other by their names.”
“It’s a call sign, you…..” She bit back the last words. “I’m a pilot. That’s my code name. Only my teammates call me that. I would beat the shit out of anyone else who called me that.”
He cocked his head. He couldn’t understand her. “If it’s so offensive to you, why do you let them call you that? Why not something else?”
She lowered her eyes and suppressed a secret grin. “It was either that or Sacajawea.”
He furrowed his brow. “I don’t understand you.”
She cocked her head to fix him with her intense scrutiny. “Do you even know who Pocahontas is?”
“Nope. I never heard of it.”
She shook her head and snorted under her breath. “I don’t believe you.”
“It’s true. I grew up out here. I don’t have much contact with the humans.”
She frowned. “The what?”
“The humans. They live on the outside. We stick to our own.”
Now it was her turn to furrow her brow. “You’re weird, you know that?”
“I do know it, but you are also weird to me. Why do you have one name on your clothes and one name your friends call you?”
“Riley!” she blurted out. “My name is Riley, okay? Riley Strickland. Only my teammates call me Pocahontas. It’s a nickname, a military nickname. It doesn’t mean anything. They picked that because I’m Choctaw. I grew up outside Lafayette in a swamp not much different than this one.”
She searched the trees and marshes around her. Now that she mentioned it, he recognized how familiar the terrain seemed to her. It didn’t frighten her. She understood it. His heart went out to her. Maybe she wasn’t such an enemy after all.
She shook her head again and planted her hands on the ground. “Anyway, it was nice meeting you, but I better get back. I have to report to Major…..”
She stopped when another brutal spasm hit her. Her arms shot to her waist and she doubled over howling in agony. She collapsed on the ground and writhed.
Victor stayed where he was. She heaved onto her side and retched into the dirt. Her hair stuck to her sweaty forehead. He observed the waves of contacting muscle rushing down her back and she clenched her knees together.
When the paroxysm ended, she flung herself back growling through locked teeth. “Holy shit! What’s wrong with me?”
Victor propped one elbow against his knee. “You might as well settle down. You’ll be here all night the way you’re going.”
She stole a peek at him from under her hair. “What are you talking about? If you know what’s wrong with me, why don’t you help me?”
“I am helping you. I saved your life earlier.”
She picked up her head, but she didn’t rise. She was probably too weak to sit up. “What are you talking about?”
“You had a seizure when we tried to throw you off our land. You would have died if I didn’t bring you here. I gave you a tincture of gator blood infused with belladonna. That’s the only way to stop the seizures once they start.”
She blinked at him in shocked disbelief. What was the point in explaining these things to a human? She wasn’t human anymore, though, was she? “What the fucking shit are you talking about?”
“The fellas wanted to leave you to die, but I brought you back. I’ve been sitting here watching over you for more than fifteen hours. You might show a little gratitude.”
Her mouth fell open. All her surprise started to irritate him. It only impressed on him how alien she really was. “Fifteen hours! I couldn’t have. I only….” She waved her hand toward the channel, but she didn’t say it.
Victor waited. A jumble of emotions raced across her face all competing to get out first. “You fell in the water, didn’t you? You must have. It’s the only explanation.”
“Yeah, but I….” She faltered again.
He picked a straw out of the house thatch. He pulled it in half and started picking his teeth with it. “You fell in the water. Now you’re contaminated and you’re changing. It always starts with these seizures. If someone doesn’t treat you with the tincture right away, the contractions will eventually get so strong that they’ll break your spine. They twist your ribs around to puncture your heart and lungs. It’s certain death, but since I gave you the tincture, you should be fine. You’ll still suffer a few side effects, but once you change, those will stop, too.”
“Change?” she whispered. “What do you mean?”
“You’re changing. Everyone does when they get submerged in the water or ingest it. It always happens.”
She clapped her eyes closed. “Are you saying that water poisoned me?”
“Of course. Don’t you know how toxic it is? How do you think we got like this?”
He waited for his words to sink in. He never turned a human before. He expected it to go a lot quicker. He didn’t bank on her putting up such resistance to something so obvious. Any child knew about the water.
She opened her eyes and scanned the village again. Then she shut them and shook her head. She went through a series of these reactions before she gulped and looked up at him. “The spill—the toxic spill south of New Orleans—it contaminated the water there. It mutated the gators into dragons. Is that what you’re talking about?”
He scoffed under his breath. He shook his head and tossed away the straw. “It didn’t mutate the gators. It mutated the people. It got into the water and spread all over the bayou. How do you think we got like this?”
She opened her mouth and shut it again. “You….” She narrowed her eyes at him. “How did you hear Rover call me Pocahontas? You said you heard him.”
“I was right there. I heard him over your radio.”
She blinked. “You…. you were the…. You destroyed my plane?”
He pursed his lips. “Come on! Don’t you recognize me? You can’t be that dim.”
She gaped at him in horror. When she spoke again, a hoarse whisper came out of her throat. “You’re a dragon?”
He jerked his chin sideways. How long would this go on? “Do you doubt it?”
She lowered her eyes to survey his body and clothing. “You look like a normal guy to me.”
He didn’t mean to react that fast. It happened before he could stop it, but this tiresome conversation exasperated him. He had to convince her and this was the quickest way.
He rocketed off the ground in a flurry of motion. He launched at her letting his soul rip free. This frail cocoon fractured and the dragon erupted to life. It stretched to an impossible length and left the man to vaporize into ether.
His dragon self rose off the ground pounce in front of her. He flexed his wings and his neck extended. He cracked his jaws and shrieked to the Heavens.
She scrambled away from him with a broken scream.
She clawed backward until she bumped into a different house. She cowered there staring up at him with huge eyes.
He loomed over her just to let her get a good long look at him. He stayed there until she stopped screaming and just gaped. Then he arched his neck around and sprayed a flaming blast of fire across the sky just to punctuate his point.
She cringed, but she didn’t look away. He let her drink in a good eyeful. Then he withdrew his raging spirit. He collapsed back into his human form.
He sauntered back to the house and resuming his former position. He bent one knee and rested his elbow on it.
She went through the same turmoil trying to puzzle out what she just saw. She plastered herself as far away as possible like she expected him to jump at her again.
While she sat there in a stupor, his brother Bryce crossed the village going somewhere. He didn’t pay the girl or Victor any mind, but she kept him in sight until he disappeared.
Her gaze darted back to Victor. “Are all these people dragons, too?”
“Some are. Some are other creatures. Some are just mutants. We call ourselves New Breed. It’s sounds a little nicer than calling someone a goddamned mutant, don’t you think?”
She frowned. “What do you mean? If they aren’t…..dragons, what are they?”
“Some are bears. Some are wolves. Some are snakes or other kinds of shifters.”
“Shifters?” she interrupted. “What do you mean?”
“They can shift back and forth from one form to another. Some can take multiple forms. Others have different abilities. The poison affects everybody differently.”
She lowered her eyes. “Does that mean I’ll…. I’ll become one of them?”
“No one knows what you’ll become, but you’ll definitely become something. You’ll stop being human and become one of us. That’s why I brought you here.” He glanced to one side. “The fellas didn’t want me to, but that’s my problem.”
“Why didn’t they want you to? Why didn’t they want you to save me?”
“Because you’re human,” he replied, “at least, you were. When the seizures started, I realized you must have fallen in the water. That’s when you ceased to be human. That makes you one of us.”
She shook her head for the thousandth time and looked away. “This is impossible. I can’t be here.”
She tried to rise again and wound up buckling. Victor nodded. “Get used to it. This is your life from now on.”
“I can’t!” she blurted out. “I’m a pilot. I have to get back to Barksdale.”
He lowered his voice. He didn’t have to yell to make her understand. “You can never go back to Barksdale. You can never go anywhere but with us. You’re New Breed now.”
“I can’t be!” She leaped to her feet and this time she managed to stay upright. She tottered across the village.
Victor heaved a sigh. Maybe Finn was right and he made a mistake bringing her here. He probably should have let her die. She already slowed them down way more than necessary.
She made it all the way to the channel. She staggered cramming her arms into her stomach. She winced at every step, but she made it. She paused at the water’s edge and peered into the woods beyond.
Several paces away, Isaac Weaver and Lincoln Manning crouched over a deer carcass. Victor got so engrossed in her that he didn’t even hear them pull it down.
A black wolf and a large yellow puma squatted on either side of their kill. They ripped their jaws into the flesh and tore off chunks. They gulped down the meat. Blood stained their muzzles and they grunted in primal satisfaction.
That sight shouldn’t have given Victor the slightest pause. God knows he’d seen it enough times in his life. Everybody has to eat.
This time, though, he saw it from her point of view. The puma raised his blood-splattered head and glared at her wavering there across the channel. Isaac curled back his gory lips and snarled at her. He didn’t mean anything by it. He was just drunk on his kill.
She listed to the side ever so slightly. She rocked on her heels once and pitched forward. She would have tumbled headfirst into the water if Victor hadn’t raced to her side and caught her.
“Easy, girl,” he murmured in her ear. “Take it easy. You’re not strong enough to walk. Just sit tight. You’ll feel better in a little while.”
He steered her back to her place and put her down. She felt fragile and tiny in his arms, but he couldn’t let his guard down for a second.
He saw her getting ready to fight them all back at the cypress tree. She didn’t shy away from a confrontation. She took a stance like she knew what she was doing.
Besides, she could shift at any moment. When that happened, she’d go berserk.
He lowered her to the ground and walked back to his own position. She huddled there hugging herself. “What…what’s happening to me? Am I going crazy?”
Victor studied his fingernails. “You’re not crazy.”
Now she narrowed her eyes searching the whole village for some threat. “What is this place? Do you live here all the time?”
“We don’t live here. It’s just a hunting camp. It was the closest place to bring you.”
He let her sit there in silence for a while. She didn’t try to talk to him. She kept looking one way and then the other. She jumped every time anybody came in sight.
After a while, he got bored of just sitting. He got up and wandered into the house. He found his brother Bryce cooking gumbo over a bed of coals.
Bryce looked up sipping the broth off a wooden spoon. “How’s the human?”
“She’s fine. She’s going through a little existential crisis, but she’s fine.”
“Any sign of what she’ll turn into?” Bryce asked.
Victor shrugged. “Not yet.”
Bryce stirred the pot. “Pop’s gonna whoop your ass when you come back with a human.”
“She’s not human—at least, she won’t be by the time she gets back.”
“Says you.” Bryce handed him up a bowl. Fragrant steam billowed into Victor’s nose. “I never knew you to hanker after death like this.”
Victor pivoted on his heel and walked out. So Bryce turned against him, too. Maybe his whole party whispered behind his back that he made a deadly mistake taking this girl in.
He strolled back to Riley deep in thought. His stomach ached from hunger. The gumbo tempted him to down the whole bowl right now, but he couldn’t. He took responsibility for her. Now he had to follow through even if he lived to regret it.
He found her in the same spot. Against his better judgment, he squatted down next to her and held out the bowl. “Drink this. You’ll feel better.”
She didn’t unwind her arms. She shook all over and her teeth chattered. “I…..I can’t.... I can’t…. move, Victor……Please…. please help me…..”
The words eked through her locked jaws and she didn’t look up at him. He bent down. Her terrified eyes slid his way, but she didn’t lift her head.
He dropped the bowl in a flash and grabbed her. The instant he touched her, he knew the dreadful truth. She was having another seizure.
“Fuck!” he gasped. His mind raced trying to think what to do. He thought she was fine. He thought she was clear. If she died, he’d be walking around with her blood on his hands for the rest of his life.
He spun away and tripped over the spilt gumbo. He slipped and almost face-planted into the dirt. He caught his balance and tore back to the house.
Bryce whipped around. “What the hell is the matter with you?”
Victor dove into the corner. He yanked up a mattress lying on the floor. He dropped on one knee and ripped open a trapdoor set in the boards.
A small wooden compartment suspended from the planks. He thrust his hand inside and retrieved a gourd capped with a cork. He hopped to his feet and raced back to Riley.
He found her flat on her back insensible with seizures. Foam bubbled between her clenched teeth. Her glazed eyes stared up at the sky. Victor curse
d under his breath. He was already too late.
“Bryce!” he thundered. “Bryce, get over here quick!”
Bryce hustled out of the house fast. “What, man?”
“Get the ax!” Victor bellowed. “Hurry!”
Bryce took off running. A second later, he returned with a hatchet. He fell on his knees next to Riley and shoved the blade between her teeth.
Victor clamped her head in both hands, but not even that was enough to hold her still. He swiveled around her head and locked both knees against her ears. He strained every sinew steadying her. Bryce growled wedging the steel into her mouth. He succeeded in prying her teeth half an inch apart.
Victor willed his hands not to shake popping the cork. He tipped the gourd and dumped the tincture down her throat. He prayed over and over to himself. Don’t spit it out. Please, God, don’t let her spit it out.
She coughed and gagged. The next minute, her Adam’s apple bobbed and she swallowed.
Bryce dropped the ax and flopped onto the ground. Victor tossed the empty gourd away and let his chin sag on his chest. Riley gave a few more agonized convulsions before the seizure died and she lay still.
4
Riley tried to blink, but her eyelids stuck together. She had to force them apart. Even then, she didn’t see anything.
A soft, deep voice penetrated the dark. “Are you hungry? You haven’t eaten in three days.”
She stiffened. “Who’s there?”
“It’s me, Victor. I brought you some venison steak if you’re interested.”
A savory, juicy scent entered her nostrils, but she couldn’t relax. “Where am I?”
“You’re in our village. Don’t you remember?”
She tried to sit up, but overpowering gravity pinned her down.
“Take it easy on yourself,” he murmured. “You’re malnourished and dehydrated. If you want to get up, you need to eat something first.”
“I have to get out of here.” She rotated her head from side to side. She couldn’t understand why she couldn’t see. “Am I blind?”
He chuckled. The sound infuriated her. “You’re not blind. It’s nighttime. It’s dark.”