Second Heart: Bones of Eden Page 11

  Whiskey’s dogs broke cover, racing down the bank, across the rocks and lunging at the lizard. The megalania spun, not toward them, but away, and its immense tail hit the first of the dogs mid-chest. They went flying like leaves, dashed against the bigger rocks, some finding their feet again and some not moving at all. The lead bitch was wounded and dragged himself into the trees. Without him, the rest of the dogs milled, suddenly without direction.

  Whiskey broke from the trees too, charging toward the lizard with a roar of anger. The tail flashed again, but Whiskey leaped over it, jamming her spear into the softer flesh between the lizard’s thigh and belly. It did not stick. He heard it snap when the megalania whipped around, stepping on the shaft.

  Charlie rose to his feet and charged in with a yell, and the rest of the Varekai followed. They beat their spears together, shouting and waving their arms. The lizard inflated, nearly doubling in size, letting out a hiss that almost drowned out the war cries of the Varekai.

  Spears bounced uselessly off its hide, scoring little bloody wounds in the thick skin but doing no real damage. But the lizard was facing them, mouth open, putrid black drool dribbling from its teeth. That was all Fox’s team had been waiting for. The Elikai war party charged down the bank silently, spears up, never intending to be seen or heard.

  The megalania lunged at the Varekai and Xícara. Someone stumbled into him, and he tripped, crashing down on the bloody rocks and sand as the lizard barreled over top of him. Knife-sized claws lacerated his calf, and his leg twisted at the knee. He cried out, but he was not the only one. The thrashing tail caught Zebra and Nab, slicing open their chests like a blade. One of the Varekai was screaming, arm lacerated and coated with black venom.

  Still the spears did nothing. Still the beast was rampaging, knocking them over like toys.

  Tango charged in, leaping another swing of the monster’s tail and burying his spear into its shoulder with all the force he could muster. It recoiled in pain, then lashed out with one huge foot, knocking Tango down and ripping through his leather armor like it wasn’t there.

  “Tango!” Xícara struggled to his feet, his leg screaming in pain. He was too far away to help.

  The little tan blur streaked past him, almost knocking him down again, and collided with the lizard an instant before it would have bitten down onto Tango’s midsection.

  The mutant pup was hanging off the lizard’s nose, sharp little teeth embedded in both nostrils. The megalania tossed its head, slithering backward, trying to free itself, and Xícara scrambled forward on his hands to Tango’s side.

  The Varekai fumbled in the dirt, grabbing the broken end of a spear, but before he could throw it, the megalania caught a hold of the pup with one clawed foot and bit down. There was a horrible yelp and the crack and wet pull of the little body being torn open.

  “No!” Tango lunged, but Xícara caught him around the middle and dragged him back. Tango fought him, struggling and calling out, “Pup! Pup!”

  Whiskey stepped up beside them. He reached down, snagging Xícara’s knife from his hip, and ran up the tallest of the nearby rocks.

  A shadow passed over Xícara as Whiskey leaped, airborne and roaring in fury. He landed astride the megalania’s neck and buried both blades into the creature’s eye sockets. The beast began to thrash, but Whiskey’s legs locked around its throat, and he used the hilts of the blades to steady himself, driving them deeper with every thrash and lunge.

  A rope sailed through the air, landing on the ground an instant before the megalania’s foot fell, and the noose tightened around its ankle. Another came from the rear, and the creature was caught on the diagonal. Working together, the Varekai and Elikai pulled the ropes tight, knotting them to tree trunks.

  “Whiskey!” Sugar tossed his own bone blade, and it flickered through the air, sailing toward the Varekai. He caught it easily, reaching around and slicing the megalania’s throat, eye to eye.

  The lizard’s blood was thin and pale, but it did run. The queen sagged, and the tribes bound it with more rope, twisting it up like a bird in an orb weaver’s web. It still struggled, but quickly weakened.

  Xícara realized that in his arms, Tango’s face was streaked with tears.

  “It’s okay,” he breathed.

  “That dog was all I had left of Juliet,” Tango whispered. “I let her die.”

  “He saved you. Maybe he saved all of us.”

  Whiskey clambered to his feet on the megalania’s back, still holding Sugar’s knife. All of the blood on him belonged to dogs or lizards. He was unharmed and looked smugly vicious. Fox was looking up at him with a sort of awe.

  All around them, those that could were helping the injured. Everyone was alive, but there were head wounds and lacerations. The Varekai with the bite was wailing, the keen of pain putting Xícara’s nerves on edge. But it was Whiskey, in the middle of it all, that Xícara couldn’t look away from. What sort of thing was he, that he could kill a monster with his own hands?

  “Whiskey is not right,” he murmured

  “What?” Tango wiped his eyes with the back of his hand.

  “How could he do that? How is he so fearless? Something is wrong about him.”

  “Whiskey is in touch with that wild core that keeps us all alive,” Tango said. “That part of us that wakes up to dodge a blow we didn’t even know was coming. She’s the manifestation of what sleeps inside us.”

  “You think all Varekai are capable of that?”

  “I think all of us are. Varekai and Elikai. I think there is a deeply destructive core in us. Maybe we are all bred for violence.”

  “Don’t say that,” Xícara said.

  Tango rolled to his feet and carefully helped Xícara to his. His knee was swelling, and Tango scooped up a fallen spear for him to use as a walking stick.

  “There, can you walk?”

  Xícara nodded.

  “You can’t rest yet, sisters,” Charlie called. He had to raise his voice, because the wind was starting to shake the trees. “We still have a lot to do.”

  * * *

  Getting the body to stay afloat was the hardest part. Three canoes lashed together had finally been enough to support the weight of it, and it had taken all of them to move it into place. Whiskey had cut out the scent glands from the cloaca and smeared the stinking goo inside all along the dead creature’s belly and on the inside of the canoes. The smell was wretched, but Sugar was certain it would carry for miles.

  The sound of thunder was cracking the air, causing the ground to tremble intermittently and as they worked. The sun had started to fade, blacked out by the inky sky. The flashes of lightning were enough to illuminate everything in unnatural starkness, even though it was still only early afternoon.

  They floated the corpse and canoes through the islands toward the channel. They weaved as close to the larger islands as they dared, and through the foliage, the male megalania began to appear, dropping into the water to paddle after the canoes.

  The final step was pushing it out between two of the islands into the channel. At first it seemed it would not float far enough and would remain in the calmer eddies, slowly spinning out of reach of the open ocean. But then the current found the craft, and it was yanked away, wobbling dangerously but still staying afloat.

  The male megalania began to gather on the northernmost islands in their dozens, several plopping into the water, but there was no time for the tribes to hesitate and be certain they all followed. The wind was rising and the thunder getting louder.

  “We have to get everyone in the village and get to higher ground,” Charlie said from behind Sugar in the canoe.

  “I hope your sisters are all ready to go,” he replied. “Or we’re going to be caught out in the open when the front hits.”

  Neither of them mentioned the obvious. The Varekai would be mar
ching to safety with several months’ worth of supplies, and the Elikai would have nothing.

  They could only slay one monster at a time.

  * * *

  Waiting had been the hardest part. William had been deemed too bruised and stiff after his fight with Maria to go with the hunting party, and he’d been left at the Varekai camp.

  Like William, India had waited on the shore, fretting for Tare, and over the long hours, they had struck up a tentative conversation. It was nice, William realized, to have someone to share your fears with. It was nice to have someone else who knew what love was like—the good and the bad.

  When the canoes came into view, they both ran down to the edge of the water, ignoring the hail of leaves ripped off the trees by the wind.

  “Is everything ready?” Charlie called before they even reached the sand. “It’s time to go.”

  The canoes landed, and William ignored the chaos, running for Romeo and embracing him. Romeo held him tightly, face buried into his shoulder, and William grinned despite the pain the hug was causing him.

  “Are you okay?” Romeo asked.

  William laughed. “Now who’s inappropriately worried? You were the one killing dragons.”

  “Ah, well, the queen is dead.”

  “Come on, we have to go.” The Elikai, with nothing to pack or carry, were already putting the canoes back into the water to head to Pinnacle Island and the caves that would shelter them.

  Romeo’s expression turned cold. “Yes, off to be bludgeoned to death by flying trees trying to hunt in a cyclone. Or we could just starve to death.”

  William glanced around, taking stock of the two tribes. Tare was helping India load a basket of dried fish into a canoe. Sugar was talking to Charlie, pointing toward Pinnacle Island, making animated gestures as if organizing something. Fox was paddling away already, but kept looking back, his gaze finding Whiskey, who was returning his look with the same wounded longing.

  William smiled, just a little.

  “I don’t know, I think there may still be a way through this. For all of us.”

  * * * * *

  PART FOUR:

  The Monsoon

  Contents

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter One

  Eden—Before the World was Born

  November had been dead for two weeks. Not taken away and replaced by an identical baby as her sisters had been in the past, but completely gone. Romeo had found her body, the thighs cut deep to reach the big arteries. There had been shallow wounds on her neck too, where she had tried to kill herself the same way the Varekai slaughtered animals. It would be harder, garroting yourself. The angle would be wrong. November’s thighs had been her second choice, and she had bled a huge red pool—no different inside than an animal.

  November had reduced herself to meat.

  Two weeks later, Romeo was still sick with rage. November had been distraught for months before she had died, made ill by one of the teachers, a stranger with stubbly hair on her face, no breasts and a deep voice. The Varekai had been enamored of Teacher Steve at first. She had been new, exotic and so different from the teachers they were familiar with.

  Then, a few months ago, Teacher Steve had asked November to go with her to the lab, as teachers often did. Only this time, when November came back, she was crying and bleeding from between her legs. She had told Romeo Teacher Steve made her bend over and then forced inside, over and over. The bleeding only lasted a few days, but November kept getting sicker. Even without any physical injury, she stopped eating and sleeping. She refused to work or play and had hid, becoming hysterical, when she saw any of the teachers.

  The teachers had always said the law was firm: those who hurt another would be made to face them, and the wounded Varekai, along with her sisters, would choose a fitting punishment. When the Varekai demanded that Teacher Steve face November, the teachers had refused.

  Now November was dead, and Romeo was not the only angry Varekai. Now they watched the teachers with suspicion and open hostility. They’d made a pact to only leave Eden to visit the labs in groups of two or three and put up aggressive resistance when the teachers tried to insist otherwise.

  So far, they had held their ground, but both sides knew it couldn’t last. The teachers would soon punish all of them and keep punishing them until they complied. The trust between the Varekai and the teachers was disintegrating.

  “Do you have it?” Romeo asked.

  Whiskey held up a thin plastic rectangle. A key the teachers used to go between Eden and the labs.

  Since November had died, Whiskey and Romeo had been living together. Romeo had resisted at first, but Whiskey had refused to let her mourn in solitude. Romeo didn’t know how she would have survived if she had been alone all those nights she woke from nightmares with tears on her cheeks.

  “Are you sure she will even be in there? We have not seen Teacher Steve since November came back that day.”

  “Where else would she be?” Romeo asked.

  “That other dome. The one beside ours, with the Elikai in it.”

  Whiskey was the only Varekai to have seen the other dome and the alien Elikai within. Teacher Eve had confirmed it was real and there, but it was hard to think of it as a tangible thing. For as long as Romeo had known, Eden and labs had been the whole world. It was hard to think of something outside that.

  Together they followed the path toward the door, over springy green grass, past fruit trees, the compost heap, scavenging chickens and newly dug garden beds. The sheer curved walls of the dome rose up before them, opaque, smooth and seamless but for the doors. Overhead, the sun lights bloomed hot and white, but in the afternoon they would be dimmed for fifteen minutes while the rain was turned on. Then, at night, they would be switched off, and black lights would come on, turning anything white a neon blue so the Varekai’s teeth stood out like little lanterns.

  Whiskey stood watch while Romeo passed the key over the lock. There was a beep. Romeo pushed the handle and held the door open long enough for Whiskey to slip inside behind her.

  The corridor was cool and empty, smelling of bleach instead of animals, dirt and compost. Neither of the Varekai had been in the lab without a teacher before. They knew the way to the holding rooms and examination bays, but they also both knew there were corridors they had never been down. Teacher Steve could be anywhere.

  “This way,” Romeo mouthed. The two Varekai ghosted up the corridor, their bare feet making no sound on the linoleum floors. They passed empty holding rooms and ducked into an examination bay, crouching behind a stainless-steel gurney while two of the teachers passed.

  They were both strangers and both were like Teacher Steve, with flat chests and square jaws. Romeo clenched her teeth, feeling a rush of hostility in her gut. She wiped sweaty hands on her skirt.

  When they were gone, Whiskey tapped her ear, then motioned for Romeo to follow, leading them unerringly down a series of corners until she stopped abruptly in an empty corridor outside an open door.

  Inside, Romeo could see red couches and a chrome, black and glass machine with Coffee in silver lettering on the side. There was a large TV, like the ones the teachers wheeled into Eden, only it was showing footage they had never seen before: teachers of all kinds, wearing strange clothes, many bloody and wounded. Riots in the wide, paved roads the teachers said had existed “before” and footage of strange labs, showing a Varekai in a bed, bleeding out her eyes and ears, hooked up to half a dozen machines.

  The words End Times, Containment Breach
ed and Population Devastation scrolled along the bottom of the screen.

  This was only of passing interest to Romeo, because standing by a plate of sandwiches were Teacher Steve and Teacher Elaine. The hostility between them was almost a physical thing, taut and coiling.

  “If it were up to me, you’d be out the damn airlock on the streets. I don’t know what Peterson is thinking, putting you back on duty in the Male dome.” Teacher Elaine’s voice was low and cold.

  “Well, for starters, I’m not a fucking queer.”

  “Just a pedophile.”

  “Fuck you. Have you seen what’s going on out there? Have you watched the news? It’s all over. We don’t all have green clearance, Elaine. My family were in Auckland when the containment was breached. Where’s your husband? Still safe in the ark? And your parents too, right? But my two sons are dead. Two old goddamn retirees could have given up their places to children, and they didn’t. All so you can have a nice family dinner at Christmas?”

  “And that makes it okay to rape a child?”

  “There’s nobody left! Whose laws am I breaking here? There’s no goddamn government. There are Eden compounds and the arks, and that’s fucking it! Game over. Reset the world to try again.”

  “You shit.” The contempt and disgust in Teacher Elaine’s voice made Romeo queasy. “We built these Edens to raise these kids so they could survive this. You always knew this was coming. What the fuck did you think we were doing here? That girl killed herself. Twenty-six males and twenty-six females to rebuild society, and thanks to you, a whole genetic code is wiped.”

  “So turn on the goddamn meatvat and grow another one. They’re all fucking replaceable. Not like my kids.”

  Romeo looked at Whiskey with a savage grin.

  “We found her,” she mouthed.

  * * *

  Charlie huddled against Bravo and Tango, wrapped in hide that felt stuffy and damp. The Varekai had no open fires, because the wind tearing through the cave would have scattered burning embers everywhere. Instead, they kept their coals alive in clay jars. They were large and flat, with elongated hook handles so they could be picked up with poles if they got too hot and small air holes around the rim. In quiet moments, the tribe would carefully lift the lids and feed chips of hardwood into the burners.