Everyone stopped. Sheriff held his machete up in the air, his eyes scanning the forest. His head whipped around, and he pointed his blade at a dark patch between the trees, only a couple dozen yards away. His voice was calm, but full of authority. "Pick up a weapon or use whatever magic powers you've got up your sleeves because we've got trouble."
Slowly, like a scene from a horror movie, ten hunched, muscular figures walked out of the shadows. They walked on their feet and the knuckles of their hands. At first, they looked like gorillas, but their canines were so large they were more like tusks. Their fur stood stiff as porcupine fur. They were also misshapen, each in their own unique way--one with unnaturally long arms, another with a neck so thick it seemed to swallow its head.
"What the--" Cole muttered, pulling Holly reflexively behind him.
One of the twisted creatures beat its ugly fists against its chest and screamed a war cry. It pointed at Cole's group. The ape monsters attacked.
Chapter 3
Sheriff Satin was the first to move, holding his machete defensively and slowly backing up while he moved his wife firmly, but gently behind him. He barked over his shoulder, "Form a circle! Backs to the center!"
Cole and the rest did exactly what they were told, picking up a rock or a stick. Annie Satin was nestled in the middle of the circle, and quietly asked what was happening as the gorilla creatures moved forward at once. The creatures slowed their momentum as they approached closer, spreading out to surround them.
Nadia said, "Maybe they won't attack. Animals are more afraid of us than we are of them, yes?"
"Pretty sure whatever Dolos did to them took all the cute parts of their DNA," Cole remarked. “If they had any to begin with.”
"That's not how DNA works," Holly corrected, her voice tinged with fear.
The mutated gorillas began beating their chests. Maybe Nadia had been right. In Cole's peripheral vision, one of the gorillas rushed toward Sheriff. The man yelled, "Hold!" Right before the animal came within range of actual violence, it backed off, grunting.
Sheriff, unmoved from his position, let out a slow breath and warned, "They're testing us."
It was good that Sheriff had given the warning because Cole could tell his friends wanted to dart for the nearest trees. Cole himself didn't have the urge to flee. His contrary nature always chose the strangest places to assert itself. Sometimes it didn't matter if it was a college linebacker, a giant gorilla, or even a damned tsunami; something trying to make him move would often just make him set down stubborn roots.
The first gorilla-thing that had charged came in again, its shoulders low, and this time it committed to an attack. Somehow, Sheriff ducked the wide swing of the gorilla's misshapen forearm. The gruff, older man’s speed wasn't abnormal, but his movement was so smooth he made it look like he’d fought with mutated monsters before. The weight of the gorilla’s arm, combined with the arc of its swing, caused the creature to twist in a circle, throwing itself off balance. Sheriff's machete blurred. Cole heard the creature roar in pain and saw blood.
The gorilla rolled away, clearly hurt, and ran off without looking back. Nadia threw one of the giant rocks she’d picked up at the retreating beast but missed. The other monsters began beating their chests in a steady rhythm, their white teeth reflecting the orange glow of the burning dome overhead.
Holly was to Cole's left and Kiddy to his right. Kiddy pushed up his glasses. The young, normally reclusive, thin Japanese man seemed to be studying the situation in a detached sort of way, like he wasn't really a part of it. He said evenly, "Cole. We gotta two-on-one. I can aggro one with a rock. You and Holly can attack it with your sticks."
Cole wanted to scream at his friend that this wasn't a damned game, but Kiddy had a point. They were sitting ducks. Still, what the hell were two wimpy sticks going to do to a bunch of mutated gorillas?
Sheriff's voice thundered behind Cole, "Incoming!"
Five of the ten gorillas attacked, two at Sheriff and three at the rest of the group. Kiddy pulled back his arm to throw the rock in his hand, but froze before throwing. Suddenly, the rock bulleted toward one of the gorillas, lodging itself in the beast’s eye. It screamed, stumbled to one side, and barreled into two of the other gorillas.
"Holy shit. I've got telekinesis," Kiddy whispered. The look on his face was pure joy.
“Just like that?” asked Cole. The situation was so bizarre, it felt like he hadn’t even had time to be properly terrified.
“Yeah. Something just clicked in my head and I went with it.”
Sheriff danced effortlessly between the two remaining gorillas, dodging their attacks and grabbing hands by inches. He hardly seemed to blink as his machete rose and fell, carving horrible injuries on the arms and legs of his enemies.
Cole desperately wanted to help, wanted to survive. He searched inside himself for some kind of glimmer of something, a sign of power. He felt his stomach tighten, but that was it. Nothing happened. Nadia stepped forward, her hands out. She yelled, "I can feel them!" then dropped to her knees, a hand on the ground.
One of the gorillas pivoted to face Sheriff, who had somehow slipped behind it. The monster's elbow would have connected with Sheriff's temple except something pulled it back. Several vines that had been on a nearby tree had wrapped themselves around the gorillas. After the initial surprise, the creatures snapped them with little effort, but their momentum had slowed and Sheriff had an opening. His blade made contact with his opponent’s neck.
Two hacks, and the gorilla was down. The other creatures hollered and hooted, but after a moment of hesitation, they turned and ran, most of them leaving trails of blood.
Sheriff's knee hit the ground, the knees of his khakis becoming covered in dirt. He groaned, breathing heavily while he held his side. Annie walked up to him, concerned. "Baby, you're hurt. Did you get into a fight at one of the bars again?"
Her husband gave her a pained smile. "I'm fine, love. Just a small bruise."
The rest of the group surrounded him. Cole's eyes scanned the trees for any sign of trouble. "What happened? Are you hurt?"
Sheriff lifted his shirt and revealed a long scratch surrounded by a nasty bruise. "One of them got me, glancing blow. Nail went right through the shirt. I can’t believe we survived.” He shook his head.
“I can’t believe there are gorillas here. We were on the other side of the world from their natural habitat,” muttered Holly. Her hands were shaking.
Kiddy snorted, betraying his nerves by moving constantly as he talked. “Well, we were transported away from instant death to a death game under an orange dome, and we have super powers now. Some gorillas are not the weirdest thing we’ve encountered today.”
“We got really lucky. They were moving slow,” said Sheriff.
“Slow?” Nadia was breathing hard and her voice went up as she spoke. “That was slow?”
Sheriff nodded seriously. “Yes. Didn’t you ever watch TV? Gorillas are very fast and strong. They should have been able to tear us apart, but these ones were slow and kind of clumsy.” His voice grew quiet. “We still got lucky though. I should have died, but something happened. Like, I wasn't even thinking about it until it happened. It felt like I saw what they were going to do, and I kind of reacted, but they hadn’t done it yet. In some cases I’d started moving before they did.”
"Precognition," said Kiddy absently. "Apparently Nadia can talk to plants. And I have telekinesis."
“Plants?” asked Cole.
Kiddy mutely pointed to the vines that had snared the gorillas during the fight. Nadia nodded.
Holly knelt next to Sheriff and said, "May I?"
Sheriff chuckled darkly. "You've got experience in triage?"
Holly shook her head. "Just following a feeling."
“Go ahead. Nothing to lose,” said Sheriff. He shrugged and winced.
Holly knelt and placed her hands on the older man’s wound. In a few seconds, it began to shrink until even the bruise was completely go
ne. Sheriff's breathing steadied, and he shot her a wide-eyed glance. "Mother of god. Did you just do what I think you did? And do any of you feel like you could eat a whole cow right now?"
She smiled. "Well, that was cool. And yes. I'm starving, which is funny because we all had a big breakfast."
"That's our healer," Kiddy said as if checking an item off a list. He looked to Cole curiously. "Do you know your ability yet?"
Cole shook his head. He'd never felt so useless in his life. "No. But I felt...something."
Sheriff stood up and rotated his arm, then thoroughly checked the skin where his bruise had been. “Well, I'll be damned."
Nadia warned, "Don't say things like that. Or else--" The dark-skinned young woman's eyes rolled to the back of her head, and she collapsed.
Cole rushed forward, catching her before she fell. Holly placed her hand on Nadia's forehead, opened her mouth, and said, "She's too warm. Her tongue is white like she hasn't had a drink of water in days."
Cole realized he was starving and thirsty too. Then he remembered what Dolos had said about the power seeds, how they drew on their life force. He cursed. "She overused her powers, used them like Gary-Wayne but didn’t have any reserves."
"She's out of mana," Kiddy remarked idly.
Cole snarled and shoved his finger at Kiddy. "Shut up, Jin! If you make another damn game reference, I'm gonna--"
"You're going to do what, exactly? I have telekinesis. I turned a rock into a bullet, and all it cost me was a little hunger. What power do you have, Efrem?" Kiddy asked. He adjusted his glasses, the orange light of the dome reflecting off of them so that his eyes were hidden. Jin looked very alien in that moment.
Who was this new person? Cole didn't recognize this man anymore; he wasn’t the boyish recluse that had been his oldest friend. Sure, they had grown apart in the past five years, but people didn't change that much so fast, did they? The trip to Costa Rica had been strained, but this coldness? No. That wasn't his friend.
"Jin," Cole said, controlling his anger. "Monsters just attacked us out of nowhere. Nadia just passed out, and we don't know if she's going to wake up. The dome is going to close soon, and we're all getting hungry. If we don't deal with reality, then we'll all die."
Kiddy soaked in silence for a few seconds. He adjusted his glasses and said, "But we already did."
Cole felt his eyebrows knit together. "What? No we didn't. Dolos plucked us from Earth before we died from the tsunami."
Kiddy shrugged. "Either way, only one of us gets to leave here alive. Everyone except one person is as good as dead. We were given powers with costs, locations of supply drops, and a closing ring that kills you when you're outside of it. How is this not a game?"
Cole's anger stirred again, made worse because he couldn’t deny the logic in Kiddy’s words. He gritted his teeth. "Because we're going to get out of this together. I don't care what that bastard Dolos said. There's always another way."
Holly placed a gentle hand on Cole's shoulder. "Hon, the fact you think that is why I love you."
Cole frowned. Despite his girlfriend's words, she spoke in a tone that had a “but” coming. Then just as he’d predicted she continued, "But, Kiddy is kinda right. We were all supposed to die. Whether you like it or not, things have changed. We have to adapt or die. That's the most fundamental rule of biology."
Sheriff fixed his clothing and pointed his machete toward where their first supply drop was supposed to be. "That fight took time. We've got twenty minutes until the dome starts to close, and we don't know how fast it's gonna be. Now we're a half an hour away. Whatever I--we--did to fight off those creatures took a lot out of us. So, as I reckon, we gotta double time that way right now. If you wanna keep up your little drama club on the way, fine, but I'm leaving anyone too slow behind. Got it?" The older man turned to check on his absent-minded wife, clearly preparing to leave.
Cole sighed. He appreciated the gruff older man's straightforward personality. Most people weren't like that. It wasn’t always pleasant, but at least it was honest. Cole said, "Alright. Holly, you can heal, right? Can you do anything about Nadia without passing out yourself?"
Holly's mouth moved as if biting the inside of her lip, revealing the dimples Cole loved so much. "I don't know if my power works that way. Our bodies can't just absorb energy. With Mr. Satin, I had to encourage his body to heal itself faster. He was the one who provided that energy, not me."
As if on cue, Nadia stirred awake, a little confused. Holly helped her up.
Cole held his hand out to Sheriff and said, "Sir, thank you for what you did, but you look like you'll need all your energy just to walk on both feet. Give me the machete and I'll cut us a path."
Sheriff frowned at Cole's hand, then gave him a cold, hard stare. His eyes searched Cole’s. "Sure, kid. But you hand it back when I say so, or else I pry it from your corpse. Got it?"
Cole smiled at the threat, not taking offense. "Sure thing, sir."
In a few seconds, they all began moving again. Cole led the way toward the first supply drop. The funny thing was, he got the feeling that he wasn’t using the machete much at all. There just seemed to be an available path that opened up before them. Was it Nadia?
He looked over his shoulder at the Haitian girl, concerned. She seemed a little too unfocused to tell the plants to do anything. Kiddy looked lost in thought as well.
Cole took this as a sign that the group might be thinking about what he’d said, that the situation might get better. He felt hope. He had to believe they were all going to get out of this alive, together.
Chapter 4
Jarret Freidhof watched in stunned fascination as black miasma was sucked back into the body of their tour guide, Ricardo. At the bottom of Ricardo's feet lay the corpse of Jarret's college friend, Ray Casey. Ray’s head had been twisted so far, his chest faced the ground while his lifeless, grey eyes stared at the burning orange dome above them.
Each of Ricardo's hands rested on a weapon, one on the long knife attached to the sheath on his hip, the other on his pistol. It only now occurred to Jarret to wonder why in the world a Costa Rican tour guide would really need a gun. Had it even been legal? Before the wave and the dome, the guide had said the weapon was only a precaution to scare off the occasional wild animals. Now its original intention wasn’t important anymore--Ricardo had used the gun as an unspoken threat, solidifying his authority as the de facto leader of their small group.
Everything had changed after the dome appeared and they’d met Dolos, who had explained the rules for this fucked-up experiment. Then after the huge, freaky god had left, Ricardo's personality had shifted from the friendly tour-guide to that of a hardened serial killer. It was as if the man had been wearing a mask and had only needed the smallest excuse to take it off.
Ricardo had very clearly informed all of them that he was the leader, and that they were going to hunt the other hiking group. After that, they'd figure out who got through the portal. Jarret had a pretty good idea who that person would be, at least who Ricardo intended it to be, but he hadn’t been the only one suspicious about Ricardo’s motives.
Ray Casey had had a problem with the “plan” too, and he’d had the spine to say something. Poor Ray. As soon as he opened his mouth, Ricardo had touched him and black fog had leaked out of the former guide, covering them both. In less than a breath, the fog had disappeared, revealing Ray dead on the ground.
Jarret wanted to scream. Hell, he wanted to run away and find the other group, to warn them of the killer trapped with them on this island. Instead, he was caught like a deer in the headlights. He noticed the others in the group had different reactions than he would have expected. Mohammad folded his arms, tensing his jaw. Javier, the other tour guide, kept scratching his forearm like he’d been bitten by a mosquito. The guy seemed too preoccupied to even care about Ricardo killing someone.
Warren Price, the only person who Jarret could truly call a friend among the group, screamed in denial. The blond
-haired, blue-eyed rich boy ran to check on the obviously dead Ray, sobbing over his corpse. Behind him, Kenan, one of Cole's friends from childhood, clenched his jaw like this was just one more trial to deal with.
Ricardo looked up from Ray's body, an easy, feline smile on his face. He drawled, "Anyone else have a problem with killing the other group?"
Nobody answered. Warren kept crying, lying over Ray’s corpse. Javier exchanged words in Spanish with Ricardo, and Jarret had no idea what they were saying. After a staccato exchange of unfamiliar words, Ricardo sighed, then pulled a small plastic vial out of his cargo pants. He handed it over to Javier.
The second guide accepted the vial and sniffed what was inside. His eyes widened for a brief second before his face dropped in a brooding frown. He threw a few short, angry words to Ricardo, who shrugged. Ricardo ran his eyes over Jarret and his friends again before turning to the tall, muscular Arab man in the group. He raised an eyebrow. In response, Mohammad met the man’s eyes and squared his shoulders.
Jarret didn’t know much about Mohammad. The tall, dusky-skinned man knew Warren well but was only an acquaintance to everyone else in the group. Mohammad said, "No, I don't have a problem with taking out the other group. It's all about survival of the fittest, isn't it? What's that phrase you guys always say?"
"Pura vida," Javier said, acting jittery and staring at the white contents of his vial with a disappointed look.
"That's not what the phrase means," Ricardo said cheerily. "But, that works too. Just as long as you all see reason.”
Warren looked up from Ray's dead body and shot Mohammad a venomous glare. "What the fuck are you saying, Mohammad? That guy just killed Ray! Isn't killing against your beliefs?"
Mohammad shrugged. "We were all gonna die anyway. Plus, Dolos appeared to us. Everything has changed."
Cole Blooded Page 3