Cole Blooded

by Blaise Corvin

  Before his brain could kick in and tell him not to say anything, Jarret found himself adding, "Mohammad drinks, doesn't pray five times a day, and eats pork. He’s not exactly an imam, and he doesn’t give a fuck about us. You didn't see his expression when Ricardo killed Ray. I did. This guy doesn't care, Warren."

  Everyone's head snapped to Jarret. Javier mouthed, "Como?"

  Warren's eyes widened. "Jarret, where the hell are you?"

  Jarret looked down at his hands, only to realize he couldn't see them. He was invisible. Then the realization hit him that he could run away to find the other group, tell them about Ricardo killing Ray. Cole would know what to do; he always did.

  After what Mohammad had just said, there was no way Jarret wanted to stick around to watch Ricardo kill more people. But then there were Kenan and Warren to think about. Jarret didn't know Kenan that well, but he was a childhood friend of Cole's and Kiddy's. And Warren was a completely different story. Jarret had been roommates with Warren for two years. They'd grown as close as brothers.

  His hands appeared again, and Warren yelped, backing up and scuffing his expensive boots in the mud. His tears had left tracks in the dust on his face. Kenan raised a curious eyebrow.

  Ricardo's smile deepened. He spoke, his voice tinged in his Costa Rican accent. "It looks like our friend Jarret here can turn invisible. So, what will it be? Will you stick with our group and do what needs to be done?"

  Warren interrupted, "Why are you doing this? Why do we have to kill our friends? Why did you kill Ray? He only asked a question!" Angry tears streamed down his cheeks.

  Before Ricardo could answer, Mohammad snorted. "Didn't you hear Dolos? A real god! He told us only one can survive. My survival chances are higher if I don't have to worry about the others. You saw the build on that older guy, Satin. And Cole is a goddamn nightmare in the octagon. We've all been to his matches. They're thinking the same thing, probably!"

  Warren shook his head. He meekly said, "Cole would never--"

  Ricardo offered Warren his hand and gave the rich young man a friendly smile that ran shivers up Jarret's spine. "He was probably a very good guy, maybe before the tsunami, Warren. But not now, yes? Things have changed."

  To Jarret's relief, Warren didn't take the guide's hand, but did stand up, his eyes tracking back to Ray's body. He shook his head wordlessly.

  Ricardo said, "I'll take that as a yes to being a part of the team. That still leaves our dear friend Jarret. What say you, my friend? Do we have a problem?"

  Jarret's mind raced. He wasn't a fighter; he was a goddamned English major. He was supposed to get closer with Nadia and tell her how he really felt about her on this trip. They weren't supposed to be in different groups, he wasn’t supposed to die in a tsunami, and they all sure as hell weren't supposed to be part of this fucked-up experiment, or whatever it was. He felt his stomach squeeze, as if he hadn't eaten in a week. Then he remembered the location of the supply drop Dolos had shown them in their minds.

  A few minutes earlier, he’d thought this had all been a dream. But now Ray's body lay twisted on the ground.

  This was real.

  The smile on Ricardo's face was too relaxed, too practiced to be anything other than a born killer's. Jarret wouldn't kill his friends, but this didn't mean he had to die like Ray did.

  His stomach turned as he made his choice. "I'm with you.”

  Chapter 5

  Cole walked, and tripped side by side through the jungle with Holly. Other than Jin, the pretty blonde girl had been his oldest friend. Back when they were children, the three had been inseparable. They’d done everything together: basketball camps, Sunday school, soccer clubs, and of course, video games. Holly had been into casual games like farming simulators or party games like racing kart games. Cole and Jin had enjoyed those, too.

  But when Jin's parents had finally bought him his own personal computer, things had changed. Jin and Efrem had discovered online games. From that point on, whether they were taking part in battle arenas, first-person shooters, or massively multiplayer role-playing games, Efrem had been over at Jin's house to play.

  Jin was the person who gave Efrem his gaming name, Coleslaw, since he’d liked the food so much. The origin for the nickname was silly, but Cole had entirely embraced it. After that, instead of Efrem White, he’d told everyone to call him by his gaming handle. To this day he thought himself more as Cole than Efrem.

  As Cole and Kiddy had sunk more time into games, Holly had become more focused on school and sports. Cole had joined her occasionally whenever his foster parents allowed it, but Jin had stopped playing sports completely by then. Then during middle school, all Jin had talked about was video games. He’d created a dedicated streaming channel with thousands of followers under the gaming handle Kiddy Whale. Eventually, Jin had gotten so skilled at games that he’d dropped out of college to pursue a career in streaming.

  Cole had hoped that having thousands of followers would help Jin with his social skills, but it’d actually made things worse. His friend had become more of a recluse, even to the point he rarely answered texts as time went by. Then, soon after Cole and Holly had announced they were dating, Cole and Jin had had a falling out after a heated argument.

  To this day, Cole still didn't really know what had started the argument. Then he and Jin, Kiddy, had barely spoken for five years. It had been Holly's idea to invite Kiddy along for their Costa Rica trip. She’d said they might be able to use the time to patch old wounds.

  The thing was, before the tsunami had come, the situation was actually looking really hopeful on that front. But now everything was different. Cole secretly wondered if this might be the day he would lose his life and his best friend for the second time.

  Despite his deep thoughts, Cole still paid attention to the jungle around them. After the mutant gorilla attack, the whole group had been jumpy. Strange animal sounds like growls and hooting would carry through the trees occasionally, making them all swivel their heads and stay quiet for a minute or two. Cole could tell he wasn’t the only person feeling exhausted. Part of him regretted volunteering to clear the trail, but he knew some members of the group were feeling worse than he was.

  He turned to look at Holly for a bit, wondering where she got her energy from. Using her newfound power had obviously taken something out of her, but she’d still been acting strangely ever since, almost manic. Whenever the group hadn’t been scared into stillness, she’d been muttering to herself. Cole had overheard her speculating that their new powers could be the next evolution in humanity. She’d also whispered something about the possibility that their bodies were constantly evolving on a micro-biological level.

  Cole hadn’t thought that last bit made a lot of sense, but neither did how she was behaving. She seemed to be retreating into herself, all while ignoring the fact that they had all almost died in a tsunami, then been thrown into a death game on another world; at least he thought this was another world. Holly had either grown immune to how terrible the situation was, or was compensating in a strange way. Cole wasn’t going to ask her about it, not least of which was because he didn’t feel like talking. The pall of Gary-Wayne Lucas blowing himself up, probably taking his daughter with him, and the recent fight with the gorillas had left him feeling cold.

  Thinking about the gorillas again made him start going over the fight in detail. Almost everyone else seemed to have a special power now. What was his?

  He remembered how Sheriff Satin had fought off multiple misshapen gorillas with nothing but a machete. Cole looked over his shoulder to the serious-looking older man and asked, "Sir, if you don't mind me asking. How the hell did you move like that? I did some amateur mixed martial arts back home, but I've never seen anything like that."

  Sheriff frowned and paused. “Okay, this is a good place to slow down and take a small break.” He waved the rest of the group to slow down and guided his addled wife over a high root that would have otherwise tripped her. To one side, Holly was
still mumbling to herself. Jin and Nadia were both quiet. Sheriff met Cole’s eyes. "I picked up some skills in my profession."

  His wife, Annie, brightened up at the new conversation. "Oh, hon, my husband used to work as an undercover agent for the CIA. But, shh! Don't tell anyone or we'll be in big trouble!"

  Sheriff slapped his free hand on his forehead, sighed, and gave Annie a patient smile. Nadia laughed tiredly at the unexpected reveal. He sighed. "I guess there's no point in keeping secrets anyway considering the circumstances. Hand-to-hand combat is a part of our training, and I did some other training too. Of course there are also things experience teaches you that classrooms never could, not that I wanted to learn those lessons."

  He sucked in a breath and frowned. "But to be honest, kid, I've never moved like that before in my life. I've got the scars to prove it. Those damned monsters, when they got serious, still moved fast, even with how awkward they seemed. But I could see and feel what was coming before they even did it. Still don't understand it myself."

  "It's simple, really," chimed in Kiddy, adjusting his glasses. "Like I said before, you have precognition, but probably only on a tactical scale."

  "Explain," Sheriff ordered.

  "Be nice to the kids, dear," chided Annie.

  Cole knew he probably needed to jump in here and rolled his eyes. It had been a while since he’d needed to translate Kiddy's game-speak to normal English. "What Kiddy is trying to say, sir, is that you can see into the future, but probably only for a very short amount of time. Probably only what's really close by, or even within sight."

  Holly suddenly asked, "Mr. Satin, what's your first name?"

  Sheriff spoke in the practiced way that people who have had to explain something a million times do. "Sheriff is my real name. My daddy took a liking to the gunslingers in movies of those days. All the good ones were almost always Sheriffs. So, that's what he called me. I used to hate it. The funny thing is, I grew to like my name. It's something I became grateful for."

  "It's a handsome name," Nadia replied.

  Annie patted her husband's stubble-ridden jaw. "It sure is."

  Cole tightened his grip around Holly, who gave him a small smile back. Then he turned back to Sheriff and mused aloud, “I wonder if I’ll get a power.”

  “I don’t see why not. Just hope you don’t blow up like the preacher did,” Nadia said.

  Holly shook her head. “I don’t think that was his power. He lost himself in some sort of religious euphoria and self-destructed.”

  “Christians,” scoffed Nadia.

  “Now hold on there, lady,” admonished Sheriff, eyes narrowed. “Throwing around disdain like that is a great way to hit people you don’t mean to.”

  “Oh, you mean you are--” Nadia let her words trail off.

  “Yes,” said Sheriff. He drew a chain out of his shirt, showing her a crucifix. “I don’t like being associated with crazies I ain’t got nothing to do with. Seems to me that you might relate a bit, reckon? One bad apple doesn’t make a bad orchard.” He put his chain away.

  Nadia pursed her lips and crossed her arms. “Fair. But how do you explain Dolos then? Or where we find ourselves?” She waved her hand at the dome.

  Sheriff shrugged. “Way I see it, I never claimed to know everything, and only a fool would. Seems to me that if someone believes in angels, and I do, and they believe in miracles, and I do, then keeping an open mind comes with the territory.”

  “So you believe Dolos is a god?” asked Nadia, tone skeptical.

  “Can’t rightly say,” admitted Sheriff. “Angel, demon, devil, god, it doesn’t change anything, and doesn’t change my faith. What is, is. Always. I may not know all the particulars of what’s going on, but I know where me and Annie are going if we die. That’s a comfort now.”

  Suddenly, some light returned to Annie’s eyes. “Are you talking about death again, sweetie?”

  “Yup.”

  “You stop that!” She turned to Nadia. “Sorry, hon, sometimes he gets all dark and mopey.” Then as quickly as it had returned, the spark of light left her eyes and she turned to stare at a tree.

  Nadia’s expression softened and her shoulders relaxed. “Personality defects aside, what actually happened to the preacher anyway?” she wondered aloud. “Could that happen to us?”

  Holly absently scratched at one arm and made a face. “Gary-Wayne seemed to have an ability related to light. He probably just drew on his power too hard, and kept doing so long enough to start some kind of chain reaction. There is that feeling of emptiness--like a ledge or something. You know what it’s like to use your power, we’ve both done it now. He went over that ledge, I think.”

  “Yes, you are right,” said Nadia, voice thoughtful. She shivered. “It felt like...part of me was dying, or being used up.”

  “For me, it felt like I just ran a few miles and went a day without sleep,” said Sheriff. “I have been thinking about food non-stop.”

  “Me too,” admitted Holly.

  "We're close to the supply drop," Kiddy said, changing the subject. "Once we start moving again, it won’t be long until we arrive. The other group might be there. There might be trouble."

  Cole's mood soured at the comment and he could feel his party's mood darken even further. He said, "We can talk things out with them, tell them that there has to be another way for us to live. It just doesn't make sense for Dolos to have saved all of us only to let everyone die but one person."

  Holly shook her head side to side slowly as if weighing both sides of the argument. "Cole might be right. Dolos looked like a god, or an angel,” she said, nodding her head at Sheriff, “but spoke like a scientist. He might only be interested more in data, not lives. If we can figure out how to evolve with our new powers--"

  "No," Kiddy said flatly, cutting her off. "Dolos clearly defined the rules. Nothing we've experienced so far contradicts that. There will only be one winner here. The one way to win is to be a part of the winning team. After that, it's just a free-for-all."

  Cole felt his patience slipping with Kiddy again, but the warmth of Holly's grip reminded him to stay cool.

  Nadia squared her shoulders. "I'm not a killer. Killing taints you, wounds the spirit."

  "It sure does," Sheriff confirmed. "Even though what the Oriental kid said--"

  "That's the wrong word, dear," Annie said, warning in her voice.

  "The kid with glasses," Sheriff said, correcting himself. "I didn't mean nothing by it. Anyway, he's right. We don't know what the other group is gonna be like at the supply drop. If there's anything I've learned in my life, you choose who you trust carefully, or or as carefully as possible, and stick together like glue. Everyone else is a liability, given enough time."

  Cole looked over his shoulder for Annie to say something sweet, to disagree with her husband, maybe even snap out of her dementia for a short time. Instead, her face was grim, which was enough for Cole to realize she agreed with her husband.

  "So, let’s talk tactics," Kiddy said and pushed his glasses up. "Sheriff can see slightly into the future. He's our lead-in aggro, maybe a tank. Nadia won't kill but is the druid. She's defense, or crowd control. I've got ranged damage with telekinesis and can sling things I touch. Holly can heal. So you still don’t know what you can do yet, Coleslaw?"

  "No, not yet." Cole shook his head, then realized he needed to translate again. Everyone other than Holly sported a blank stare. He handed the machete back to Sheriff. "Mr. Satin, if we end up fighting, you'll be doing your thing. Your ability doesn't seem to tire you out as much as the others. Nadia, I don't want you stretching out your powers or we might have another Gary-Wayne on our hands. Don't push yourself with the plants unless you feel confident about not passing out."

  Nadia nodded. "Got it. I think last time, part of the problem was how far away I was.”

  Cole continued, "Holly, you stick by me and Annie."

  Sheriff frowned at that. "I can protect my wife." To his side, Annie frowned. At the
moment, she was still at least somewhat coherent, and obviously didn’t like the tone of the conversation.

  "And what if you can't?" Cole asked in a matter-of-fact tone. "I know you don't trust anyone but your wife, but it's not like we have a lot of options, here. We gotta stick together, and if she’s with you at the front of a fight..." He let his voice trail off.

  Annie patted her husband's chiseled jaw. "It's okay, love. We'll go to the fair after this. I won't even have to force you on the carousel since you hate heights so much."

  Nadia laughed. "Sheriff Satin, deadly jungle master agent man but afraid of a little vertical."

  Sheriff shrugged. “We all have our quirks.” He took Annie’s hand gently, working his jaw while he thought, then sighed. "Fine. But only if my hands get full."

  As he watched the exchange, Cole realized that despite not knowing what power he had yet, if any, he could still feel the same hunger others had described, and it was getting worse. Was he using a power? He hated feeling useless.

  Even worse, he hated what the situation was doing to the people he’d known for so long. It seemed Kiddy really had reverted back to seeing everything as a game, people as pieces. Then there was Holly. She’d always been strong, but her fascination with the power seeds and how it was affecting their bodies seemed a little unhealthy. The way she was acting still seemed strange. Cole had to admit that after so much trauma, they were all probably doing pretty well, everything considered, but he still worried.

  All he wanted was to get everyone out alive. Cole was sure the other group could understand that. They could be reasoned with.

  After the group began moving again, they didn’t travel far before reaching a smaller clearing surrounded by lush jungle vegetation. As they passed a thick copse of trees, Cole wondered if he was imagining that some looked sick. At the center of the clearing were two large duffel bags. One of them had some sort of snack in a wrapper visible through the opening. Nadia's stomach groaned so loud even Cole could hear it. She began to run forward, but Cole held her back. He shook his head in warning.