Paradise: An Apocalyptic Novel (11 page)

“Who’s back?”

“Silver.”

The words hung in the air, punctuated by the guttural sound of the dog.

12

Orange Glow

“What can you
tell us,” Penelope said between pants, trying to catch her breath. “You have to know something from that damn radio.”

“Nope. Wires got cut. Sabotage.” Captain Cooper just shrugged. He’d been on the boat, away from all the ridiculousness. Penelope had filled him in on the sordid details; his demeanor hadn’t changed.

“So you’re telling me that you know
nothing
?”

“Nothing more than you.” He looked at the young woman with a bemused glint in his eye. Everyone stressed out, clamoring about. Did no good. He’d already missed his kid’s birthday. By the sound of it, his kid was dead.

Nothing he could do. It wasn’t cold, just the truth.

“Any ideas, then?”

Captain Cooper leaned back against the deck railing and lit a smoke. Might as well; it was the apocalypse. He offered one to Penelope, but she shook her head. He dragged on it for a couple minutes as she bounced back and forth, one foot to the other.

“Maverick say anything else?”

“That Amanda would know what to do.”

Captain Cooper nodded. That woman was a tough gal, and she would know what to do. He flicked the butt into the gentle tide and went back into the engine room.

“Where are you going?” Penelope tagged behind like a lost puppy.

He tossed her a gear pack and donned his own. Plenty of time in the Army had made sure of one thing: he was Zen cool, and he was always prepared.

“Supplies. It’s a jungle out there.”

The pair disembarked, and Captain Cooper took a moment to look behind him, the yacht bobbing in the mild surf. There was his only idea for getting off the island. He hoped Amanda had a better one.

Rustles and groans shrouded the path as the pair made their way towards the homestead. The well-kept trail was beginning to show little signs of being reclaimed by the elements; branches and patches of moss had infringed upon the pristine cobbles.

A crash behind the two caused Penelope to jump; Captain Cooper’s trusty Desert Eagle .50 was up and aimed before she could recover. Nothing—a fallen tree. Above, high in the canopy, a jungle creature scooted out of sight.

Cooper holstered his pistol and continued on. They were close now; the jungle began to open up, the foliage less thick—almost as if it was designed to prepare them for the clearing that lay ahead.

They could see daylight, the sun stretching across the horizon. The tilled fields, the mess of crops, the scent of food, hope. It was all before them now.

And so was a Kodiak bear, muscles bulging from its mutated neck, eyes bloodshot like a rabid dog. The bear roared, and it seemed to shake the leaves from the trees. Or perhaps that was its giant paws slamming against the jungle turf, because now it was running, sprinting at them, covering yards with single bounds.

Captain Cooper readied his pistol, as he had many times before, and fired.

The bear crashed to the ground, skidding to a halt right before their feet, warmth still emanating from its body. A small trickle of blood dripped down its nose, originating from a single massive bullet hole to the head.

Penelope fell over, but Captain Cooper caught her.

“Some animals they got in this island,” he said, and then he stepped around the dead beast, closing his eyes as he did—a moment of silence for the fallen.

Penelope realized that this, this was what Maverick and all the other men wanted from their life. To be stoic in the face of certain death, and then conquer it. This was like a religious realization, more powerful than the wafers and the wine that her local church had forced down her throat and she had rejected. Lost in thought, she tripped over a root, or a vegetable, or some plant, and she was again lifted from the damp dirt, as if by an angel.

Cooper placed Penelope
down on the bed; a rush of cold surged over her body, and she regretted that their journey had come to a conclusion—at least for now.

“Found a Kodiak,” he said, “she did good, though.”

Amanda looked at him between the wisps of blonde hair hanging askew over her eyes. They were kindred spirits, the two of them, even though they hadn’t met many times. Sometimes you just know a person.

On the other bed, Jackson tossed and turned. His fever had broken, but he was still weak. The faint hint of burnt flesh still hung in the air, even if it’d been hours since the ordeal. Captain Cooper had smelled it; he knew what that was like. His eye twitched at the recollection.

“I don’t know where Maverick got those things, but they’re some real bastards,” Amanda said. “Coffee?”

“Got something stronger?”

She placed a bottle of bourbon down on the kitchen table with a solid thud. No glasses were forthcoming. Cooper picked it up and drank, a familiar fire surging through his mouth. He wasn’t a drinker, but there seemed no better time than at the end of the world.

He wiped the excess from his mouth and looked in the corner.

“Planning to go to war?”

“I guess. Fill me in on the details.”

They exchanged what they knew. By the end, they were both shaking their heads.

“Cole,” Amanda said, bringing the bottle of whiskey to her lips, “figures he’d pull something like this.”

“There are others on the island,” Cooper said, his stony expression somewhat softened by the swigs of whiskey, “that’s amazing.”

“Ambrosia Team.”

“Ambrosia. Now there’s something.” Cooper wasn’t much for learning, but he liked books well enough. He knew the stories about immortality, how they all seemed to end.

If you tried to become a God, you’d either succeed—and become vengeful, bitter and cruel—or risk the wrath of those already in the position.

Captain was good enough for him.

“Got a plan?”

Amanda grinned at this. “Is that what Maverick sent you over for,” she said, talking to Penelope now, “for my wits?”

“Yeah.” Penelope had been listening, but she was off in another world.

“Not that dumb after all, I guess.”

“The windmills.” Jackson. His voice was rough, low, but the words were unmistakable.

“What about them?” Cooper asked.

“They’re our way off the island.” He explained how he could fix the boat with repurposed parts from the windmills.

“How long will that take?”

“Two days.”

Cooper turned towards Amanda, who had been silent for a few minutes. “How much ammo do we have?”

She gave him a wolfish smile. “We’ll find out.”

He didn’t return the grin. He laid down on the floor and stared at the ceiling. “Wake me up in a couple hours.”

She nodded, and that was that.

It was nightfall
by the time Cooper awoke. But he was ready to go when he did. He thanked himself for not binging on the whiskey; they’d all need their wits to pull this off. Jackson was tasked with staying put, guarding the homestead.

While Cooper was asleep, Amanda had rigged up a makeshift turret and firing hole for Jackson. Where she learned that was a mystery; she hadn’t been in the army, had no reason to know that type of thing.

Then again, this island was brutal.

They left Penelope in the foxhole with Jackson, and then set off.

“How far,” Cooper asked when they were on the edge of the clearing, about to plunge into the jungle.

“Six miles.”

He drew in a deep breath and checked his Desert Eagle. He ran his hand over the slide, and it ratcheted forward and back, sending an echo through the whispering trees.

They were both strapped. The jungle was a dangerous place at night, Amanda had warned, but she looked excited about it. And why not—they were still alive, although for how long was anyone’s guess.

The first couple miles were smooth going. Then they stopped. Noises.

She looked at Cooper, but he didn’t notice; his ears were listening to the stories the jungle was telling him.

Cooper sat down, and they stared at each other in the blackness. Not much moved in the jungle; things spoke to each other in unknown tongues, but everything seemed okay with staying put. Too many things that would eat you, swallow you whole in the murky night.

Rest time over, Cooper and Amanda rose to their feet, continuing forward. It was getting denser, the vines and the limbs, and their arms began to tire from hacking at them with machetes. Three or four hours in, they’d made it just about as many miles.

A thin sliver of moon shone down from an opening in the canopy, and each explorer got a look at the other. Sweat caked their brows, and hair clung to their faces, matted with debris.

And then, just like that, they were in almost total darkness once more, feeling their way by the tip of their dulling machetes, and Amanda’s instinctual knowledge of the area. She’d visited the windmills many times; she could hear them calling.

Never beyond the windmills—there was no reason to go past them. But the windmills, those were her responsibility. And she knew them well, or as well as anything can know another.

Subtle whooshes began to meet their ears, and the treetops rustled not with monkeys or toucans but the force of metal slicing through the air. Breath laboring, the pair surged forward, the rhythmic hack of their machetes punctuated by the growing sound of freedom.

Amanda, who was leading the way, burst through, and the sky opened up, and above them the wonders of mankind whipped through the air, like pinwheels in an evergreen field. The windmill farm was wide, a dozen acres, but around all of it was thick, impenetrable jungle.

Cooper shielded his eyes as he stepped into the field; accustomed to the jungle black, the moonlight seemed as powerful as a high-wattage spotlight. Vision adjusting to the brightness, he looked up, stopping.

“How are we going to get the parts?” The machines, blips on the horizon as your car or train zoomed by, looked monstrous.

“By being careful,” Amanda said, and even though he couldn’t see her, he knew she was grinning.

They walked forward and unhooked their packs.

Their preparation was interrupted by screams.

“Run, run, they’re coming for us,” a woman cried, followed by the crash of branches and other jungle fauna.

Three figures emerged from the nearby foliage looking wild and worn. All their clothing was in tatters, but the man, he looked
beaten
, near-dead. Bullets sang out in the air behind them.

Then Amanda noticed a fourth, a small kid who couldn’t be more than three or four. The group hadn’t seen her and Cooper yet. She crouched down beneath the wide base of the windmill and whispered to Cooper.

“What do you want to do?”

He didn’t say anything; his mind was already made up.

He’d seen the kid, heard the gunfire.

He stepped out into the open and looked at the trees. In the dim moonlight, he thought he made out a hint of flare from a sniper’s scope sitting high above the windmill ravine.

The .50 caliber bullets from Cooper’s handgun boomed across the expanse as he beckoned towards the group. There was no hope of hitting the sniper from this distance; it looked like it was three quarters of a mile, maybe more, to his position up in the trees.

His adversary returned fire, and Cooper ducked, even though he was naked, exposed out in the open. The group stumbled towards him, running slow because of the man’s broken body.

Cooper fell in behind them and fired off a few more cover shots.

No words were said. No words needed to be said. His eyes had said them all.

Another rifle shot roared out across the ravine, and this time, Cooper didn’t return fire. He staggered and dropped dead, knees hitting the damp ground with a soft thud.

Amanda wanted to call out, rush to his side, but there was nothing to be done. The others collapsed at her position and huddled behind the windmill.

Amanda recognized Melina and Pierre, although Pierre looked like he’d gone through a hell of a wringer. The other two—the woman and her child—were new.

“Amanda.”

“Clara. And this is Bobby,” the woman replied. They didn’t shake hands; both of Amanda’s were on the rifle, scouring the horizon for movement. There wasn’t any.

But the plan was toast; no way she could climb halfway up the base of this thing and crack it open. She’d be cut down in an instant. Even with cover fire, the operation would take way too long; no way they could hold him off.

Whoever was out there, they held all the advantages.

“Baxter,” Clara said, “he’ll find us.” It was her way of saying that they had to move, but she didn’t know how they’d do it. “The windmills, they’re the key to the village…we have to destroy them.”

Amanda unhooked her pack and rummaged through it, coming out with three small canisters. She handed one to each adult.

“Throw these,” she said, pointing to various points in the windmill farm, “one minute apart. Melina goes first.”

“When,” Melina asked.

Amanda grabbed something else that the others couldn’t see from the bag and stood up.

“Now.”

Amanda darted to where the first grenade had landed. A bullet sang out from the ridge, but it sped straight into the turf. Even in the still night, it was hard to hear the hiss of the grenade.

But everyone saw the smoke. Amanda rushed to the first windmill, setting the charge. Thirty seconds. The smoke was thick, but she knew the night would cut through soon. Up on the ridge, she thought she could hear Baxter cursing—but that could just as well have been a figment of her imagination.

Ten seconds. The charge was set for three minutes. On to the next one.

The makeshift plan went like clockwork; she set the charges on the next windmill and Baxter didn’t even get a shot off.

She was like a ghost.

But now it was time to dash back to the group. The smoke from the grenade streaming from the jungle floor, she made it, attached the explosives to the base, and then drew the final smoke grenade from her pocket.

“There. We’re running,” she said, “so Pierre, it’s time to nut up, buddy.” He grimaced and got to his feet.

She pulled the pin and threw the metal canister.

Mist rose up from the ground, ethereal and wondrous, and the group charged through it, aiming for the trees—and safety—ahead. There was an empty space, though, between their destination and the smoke, where they’d be without cover.