"Provide me good data, mortals," Dolos said cheerily. “To your limited minds, this may seem cruel, but all of you would already be dead right now if I had not intervened. Now one of you gets a chance to live on, perhaps even prosper.” Without warning, he vanished into thin air with a loud pop.
Chapter 2
Cole slammed his heel into the jungle floor. "Goddammit!"
"Looks like one already did, kid," joked Sheriff Satin. His wife stared at the orange dome above them with unfocused eyes. The glowing half-sphere lit the entire island as if they were inside a hollow sun.
Gary-Wayne Lucas got himself up, patting the dirt of his khakis. While everyone else's expression was a mixture of confusion and horror, his was a simple awe. A smile stretched across his face, and he threw his hands in the air jubilantly. "This is not damnation! This is the final test! Only those pure of heart may face the judgement of our Lord himself! This is the Rapture, my brothers and sisters, or perhaps purgatory!"
Cole frowned. The pastor had seemed kind before, even gentle. What the hell was happening to everyone?
Nadia coughed not-too-subtly into her sleeve. She shook her head, rubbing her rabbit foot pendant idly. "I think no, good pastor. This is bad ju-ju. This is wrong. Death is natural, and we were denied it. Fate cannot be denied so easily."
Cole snarled. "And what, you all think we should just sit down and die?"
"No, young man," said Gary-Wayne, wiping the tears off his face with one hand. His other hand gripped his daughter's wrist. The girl looked more frightened of her own father's reaction than she had while witnessing a floating god pop in and out of existence. "We must obey the messenger and trek to the center. We will find Truth there!”
Cole glanced at Kiddy, who was oddly calm. He had the same distant look as when he was laser-focused on a game. How could he be so calm in this situation? A god had literally pulled them out of death only to tell them that only one of them could survive. Even Holly seemed oddly calm, her eyes darting from tree to tree.
The truth was, they had all changed even before Dolos had transported them, in the dreadful silence before the tsunami overtook the island. Well, except Cole. He just wanted everyone to live, despite whatever the self-proclaimed god had told them. There was always another way.
"Why did our backpacks disappear?" asked Holly. "Nobody asked Dolos about that."
Sheriff mused, "Probably to hobble us, make us more dependent on the drops."
"That's likely, since we all had snacks and other things in our packs. Now we'll have to kill each other," Kiddy said with no emotion, as if reciting the ingredients to a recipe.
Sheriff pulled his absentminded wife behind him, his hand going to the hilt of the knife on his belt. He spoke calmly, but Cole recognized the look of a man on edge. "Why do you say that?"
Cole waved a hand. Enough was enough. "No. I don't care what the hell that Dolos guy said, we can figure this out. What if keeping peace, not being violent is the real test? You guys have seen the movies. He could be lying."
Holly hummed thoughtfully, the same way she had while looking at something interesting under a microscope in their Advanced Biology course. "I don't think someone powerful enough to transport us like this would go through all this trouble just to lie."
"She's right, kid," agreed Sheriff, his hand still on his knife.
“But what if lying was the point? What if we shouldn’t fall for it?” Cole asked, the questions aimed as much at himself as the group around him.
Sheriff shook his head. "He didn't look at us like people. He looked at us like mice in a maze. That's all we are to him, I think. He even took the time to explain it. This isn't a delusion, or swamp gas. We were all there at the tsunami. We were all supposed to die, to be dead right now. As I reckon, we are all dead already, but now we have the opportunity for one of us to live again."
The group was silent for a moment, before Nadia asked, "How do we do that?"
Kiddy held up a couple fingers. "We have two options. First, we can all just go to the center of the island like he suggested. Apparently, we'll need the food and water supply since our hunger is about to go up."
Cole was suddenly aware of how tight his stomach felt despite the large breakfast he’d had earlier that day. "And the second option," Cole said, continuing Kiddy's line of thought, "is to choose who gets to live now."
"Second option ain't an option," judged Sheriff. "Cuz even if we all agree, whoever we choose, the other group might have chosen someone else. And besides, people don't vote for other people to live when their own lives are on the line."
Cole smelled the bullshit a mile away. "You'd lay down your life for your wife, wouldn't you?"
Sheriff's hand moved away from his knife, and his expression softened. "In a second. But to be honest, kid, Annie can't go on without me, with her Alzheimer’s and all. Without me to help, she wouldn’t have much of a life."
"Exactly," Cole said, smacking a fist in his palm. "I think the real test here is to figure out another way. We don't have to kill each other."
"D-daddy?" asked Pastor Lucas' daughter. Her eyes were huge, and her wrist was no longer held in her father's hand. Her arm was bruised now. Cole felt his anger stir and was about to say something that probably wouldn’t help matters when suddenly, the pastor's head snapped up, as if hearing something.
"Oh, yes," muttered Gary-Wayne Lucas. "Can any of you feel it?"
Nadia took a step back and everyone else followed suit. The man looked crazed.
"Of course, none of you can feel it. You're all unrepentant sinners," continued Gary-Wayne. His smile split so wide Cole was sure the man's face might have torn in two. "God has granted me the Holy Spirit! It shines in me like a sun, like a candle in the darkness! I am deserving, I knew it!"
"Daddy?" asked his daughter again, this time more frightened. She had taken several steps back now, and Cole wanted to rush to her and pull her away from her manic father, but something about Gary-Wayne made everyone pause. The man's skin was glowing.
"What the--" Sheriff said.
"Oh, pretty," commented his wife. She smiled vacantly.
"I am the Light of the World, chosen by the Lord!" Gary-Wayne shouted. Cole was sure the man was quoting the Bible. "Whoever follows me will not walk in darkness!"
Cole began to step forward as the man's skin grew brighter and brighter. Kiddy's hand pressed on his shoulder, and his friend whispered, "Wait."
Gary-Wayne Lucas, the calm, thoughtful man that Cole's group had met only a few hours earlier on the Costa Rica mainland, threw his head back, eyes to the sky, and began to speak incoherently.
"Bad ju-ju," said Nadia, taking another step back. Again, everyone else did too.
Gary-Wayne was turning into a living light bulb. His eyes shot out light as well, so bright that it would hurt to look directly at it. Despite that, Cole couldn't look away. He was too transfixed by what was happening. Everything that had happened felt like something out of a dream. As he watched, Cole was sure he could see the pastor's skin wrinkle like shrunken plastic wrap.
It was then Cole remembered what Dolos had said about power seeds. His instincts warned him, and while defying all of his senses screaming danger, he took another step forward and yelled, "No! Don't!"
Kiddy pulled him back. Gary-Wayne's expression was one of pure ecstasy right up until his face contorted in pain. At that point, the man was not much more than a silhouette of light. The pastor screamed, and it was the worst sound Cole had ever heard in his life. Then Gary-Wayne burst into a pillar of light like an exploding sun.
Cole closed his eyes, but the light still burned through his eyelids. After the glow finally faded, he opened his eyes but couldn’t see well. His vision was blurred.
When it came back into focus, Pastor Gary-Wayne Lucas lay on the ground dead, a pained, twisted expression of surprise on his ashen face. His skin had wrinkled like a dried raisin, sunk nearly down to the bone.
"By the spirits," Nadia whispered.
"The girl," Holly asked. "Where is the girl?"
Cole looked around. The dead pastor's daughter was gone.
***
Ten minutes later, the group began to walk to the center of the island. They were all beginning to feel the effects of the hunger Dolos had described.
“What happened to the pastor?” repeated Sheriff Satin for probably the hundredth time.
“We don’t know,” replied Holly, also not the first time she’d said so.
Since the others were just repeating themselves, Cole decided to try his argument again. "We can't choose who gets to live.”
"Of course we can," countered Sheriff, gently guiding his wife through the thick jungle floor behind him while cutting a new path with a gnarly-looking machete. The group had abandoned the main path since heading in a straight line toward where the supply drop was going to be was the fastest route. “We vote."
"How American of you," said Nadia, her Haitian accent steeped in sarcasm.
"Cole is right," Holly said, her hand pressed warmly into his. "Life is important. Besides, natural selection is the only selection that matters. We are clearly in this Dolos' experiment to see who comes out on top. To find a result through committee would defeat the purpose of--"
"You can't be serious, Holly," Cole interrupted. What was she saying? "The reason I said we can't choose who gets to live is because we’d give into that Dolos bastard's plans. It’s also wrong. We have to find another way, even if that means jumping him."
Kiddy snorted. "Jumping a god who can bend time and space?"
Cole was beginning to remember why he and Kiddy had begun to grow apart over the last five years. Kiddy could just become cold, especially at stressful times. It was his coping mechanism, but it was a damned annoying one. Cole ignored his former best friend and repeated, "We have to find another way. As long as we're all alive, we can get out of this together."
His blue jeans were starting to get dirty. He’d been expecting a light hike, so at least his clothing was sturdy. The hiking boots he was wearing was the pair he’d had for a couple years, well broken in. If he’d known he was going to die that day, he might have worn something other than a singing bass t-shirt and a hat with an Earth graphic.
"Well, Gary-Wayne Lucas and his daughter sure won't make the portal," added Nadia. The image of the man’s corpse, a dried-up husk, sent shivers down Cole's spine.
Holly said, "Gary-Wayne's body didn't seem to have any blood. Whatever that lightshow was, it consumed both energy and mass from his body."
Cole nodded slowly. This was a new reply from Holly about the corpse they’d all left behind, and it made sense.
"The power seeds," agreed Kiddy. "Instead of mana points like in games, it uses our bodies for fuel."
"Not everything is a game, Jin," Cole growled, his boots crushing an odd-looking plant as he spoke.
Kiddy didn't reply, but other than a quick, irritated look, he otherwise seemed unfazed. Cole only ever used Kiddy's real name to drive a point home. He blinked, suddenly realizing he hadn't called Kiddy by his real name since their falling-out fight five years earlier.
"Look," Holly said. She stopped and poked at one of the vines hanging down. Everyone else stopped too.
Sheriff's eyes scanned the area around him, his thick forearms tight with anticipation. "Trouble?"
"No, just something interesting," replied Holly. Her finger floated above a thick black mass on the vine. At first, it looked to be a part of the plant, until Holly had pointed it out. "These are ants."
Everyone looked at the spot on the vines. What Cole saw when he really focused chilled him to the bone. Holly was right, the blotch was a group of ants, but they weren't moving separately in a train like he had seen others do countless times before. Instead, they had formed together in a single...clump. It was as if they were fusing together into some larger monstrosity. Where one's head ended, another’s abdomen began.
"Jesus Christ," Sheriff cursed.
"I don't think this was His doing," said Holly lightly. Cole examined his blonde girlfriend's face. She seemed to be in her element now. Other than her dirty jean shorts and shirt, or the leaf in her hair, she could have been explaining something about the scientific classification of a plant.
Only fifteen minutes earlier, she had wrapped herself in his arms for comfort in their final moments. Now, she was cracking jokes and commenting on some messed-up ant fusion like she was dictating a school paper. Holly continued, "In fact, I bet Dolos might not have even foreseen this outcome, if this whole thing really is an experiment like he said. Maybe this is why he gave these so-called power seeds to all the living creatures here, besides the plants. He did say he wanted good data. I wonder how the other animals have reacted."
“How did he even do any of this, though? Could he have been lying?” asked Sheriff.
“Not likely,” answered Holly. “We saw what happened to the pastor, after all. Based on his behavior, I wonder if mania or some sort of psychosis can occur now that we’ve been...seeded. It’s likely that all of this is a product of nano tech unless it’s magic or something. I’m not ruling anything out at this point.”
"Holly," Cole said, tugging on her shirt. "We need to get going."
After she nodded, they began walking again, following behind Mr. Satin who cut their path with ruthless efficiency. His faded, military-style pants had obviously seen a lot of wear. Cole didn't want to think about ever needing to fight the older man. Sheriff had the build of a seasoned fighter who still kept in shape--he wasn't even breathing heavily.
Cole himself wasn't a pushover. Despite his hours of work testing games, he had years of MMA training. This wasn’t a dick-measuring contest, though. He wanted to make sure everyone got out of this situation alive, not fight. There was always a way to make things work out, but he was still drawing a blank and it was starting to make his back tense up, remembering how he’d felt when the tsunami had been about to crash down on him.
Kiddy broke the silence. "You're wrong, Efrem."
Cole frowned. Kiddy was calling him by his real name now. "Wrong how?"
"We'll have to fight each other," Kiddy said, his voice flat.
Cole growled, "We are not going to fight each other."
"I'm certainly not killing anyone," chimed in Nadia. "It would taint the spirit. Ain’t worth it."
"Got that right, girl," agreed Sheriff somberly, his eyes far away.
"Well, we here might not fight each other. The fact we haven't gone for each other's throats yet is good,” Kiddy said, adjusting his round glasses. "But that can't be said for the other group. Haven’t you seen Lord of the Flies?"
"Warren wouldn't hurt a fly," Holly said. “He’s in the other group.”
Cole snorted and agreed with her. "Anyone named Warren Maximillion Price III couldn't hurt a fly even if they wanted to."
Holly punched him in the arm lightly. "Stop it. He funded this whole vacation."
“Yeah, and that turned out amazing,” muttered Cole.
“What about the others in the other group?” asked Sheriff.
Cole’s mood darkened further. "Kenan won't be, a killer that is."
"How do you know?" Nadia asked.
Normally, Cole would have kept the secret to himself, but circumstances had changed. "Kenan has a late-stage cancer."
Surprisingly, there were no immediate words of condolence or sympathy. No one said anything and the silence stretched. Had facing certain death changed them all so much? It had only been a half hour since the tsunami, but Cole was having a harder time recognizing the people around him.
"Vimous might," Kiddy finally said.
Cole opened his mouth, then closed it. Ray Casey--or Vimous, his gamer handle that Kiddy and Cole called him by--was one of their neighborhood friends, along with Holly. But unlike Holly, Vimous had moved to another state for ten years before coming back to Buffalo, New York for college. While he’d been away, Cole and Kiddy had stayed connected with Vim
ous through online video games. It was only the past few years that he was more than just a voice again.
Nadia, an exchange student and new to the group of friends, asked worriedly, "Why might Vimous. Wait, his real name is Ray, yes?"
Cole nodded and said, "Because he was in a gang in New York City, initiated and everything. He even spent a year in prison because he wouldn't snitch. He moved back home after that."
"But do you know that'd he'd actually kill someone?" asked Holly, also concerned. “Just because he was in a gang doesn’t make him a murderer. Isn’t that kind of judgmental? I mean, he’s our friend!”
Sheriff huffed, "Your friends aren’t the only people in this jungle. Our tour guides didn't look too friendly, either.” He shook his head. “Everyone is capable of killing. Well, except my Annie, here."
His wife looked up at her name and gave him a pleasant smile. She said, "I'm hungry, sugar. Why don't we go down to the Ironstone downtown in an hour? We can order your favorite lobster bisque."
"Of course, love," Sheriff said pleasantly, but Cole caught the worry in the man's face, and a hint of deeply buried pain. “We’re just having fun on a walk, right, love?” After Annie had been calmed, Sheriff glanced around and reminded everyone, "The food won't come in until the dome closes. We gotta pick up the pace."
"How are you so sure of our location?" Cole asked.
"A lifetime of land nav in the Army helps get you familiar with unfamiliar terrain," Sheriff explained. “We all have those maps in our heads.”
Out of nowhere, Kiddy interrupted, "The reason I brought up the others potentially killing us to survive is because like it or not, we may have to fight. Most of us are unarmed. It may be in our best interest to test our power seeds and see what abilities we have."
"No," Cole insisted firmly. "You saw what Gary-Wayne looked like after using his. It'll kill you."
Kiddy shook his head. "That's because the guy used up his entire mana pool."
"What did I just say?" Cole replied angrily. "This. Isn't. A. Game."
“No,” Holly said. "Actually, Kiddy is right. This is real life, but we might have to defend ourselves with whatever abilities we may have sooner than we think. Haven't you guys noticed how quiet the jungle has gotten?"
Cole Blooded Page 2