We stagger into the thick bush, pushing aside branches and debris. I can’t see clearly; the sun is too bright, and it’s right in my eyes. It blinds me. But dusk is only two hours from now, and we can’t afford any delay. Jack is a few meters ahead – she prefers scouting the territory, to make sure we don’t fall straight into a trap. Unintentional as it might be, given the nature of the danger. But deadly nonetheless.
I detect movement into the woods, but she’s too busy avoiding the twigs to pay attention. I slow down, waiting for the hidden shape to emerge. I’m not disappointed. A whoosh – a low, snapping sound, followed by a squelching noise of trashed leaves. She turns her head, alarmed, whilst my arrow hisses and darts just a few inches away from her left ear.
“Norman, what the-”
A body falls to the ground at her feet, and she jumps back in a hysteric jolt. “Christ!”
“You’d better be careful, my friend.” I come forward, collecting the tiny bolt from the corpse’s head, dipping it in an iodine-arsenic solution and putting it back into the quiver. “Birmingham is known to be one of the most infested areas in the whole country. I wonder why this one was all by himself. Poor chap. He just wanted a taste of your sweet blood.”
“Well, he can taste this.”
She shoots him twice in the mush of its exposed meninges that scatter further on the ground. As if we needed additional infectious stuff. But Jack always goes for the overkill. It eases her tension. And she prefers bullets, whilst I’m more confident with my silver, recurve crossbow and my wooden darts, which I personally make. They’re cheap, fast and mortal, and good wood is the only thing I need. I also carry mini-frag hand grenades though, for fast-paced action. My victim lies there, lifeless as the dead forest that surrounds us. We call them Raptors, and that’s somehow a misnomer. But they don’t get offended, I guess.
Jack looks back at me. She’ll never admit it, but she has been scared shitless by the ambush. “Americans were just right. Let’s leave this shithole.” She says eventually, putting her gun back in the holster.
“Where for? Space, maybe?”
“You’re so funny.”
“And you’re so smart. Me, I’m European. I’m not leaving my country to hordes of famished Raptors. They’ll have to kill us before.”
“They will.”
“They won’t. We’re not as soft as you whiny North-Americans – yes, Canadians included.” I say with a smile on my face. I like provoking her – hurt national pride always reacts on cue. As if this bullshit made sense any longer. Who cares about who you are, provided you’re not one of Them? And fuck nationality too. But Jack never disappoints me. “You French faggot!”
Should I remind her the whole story? At the beginning, we gave this weird plague a fancy name –the Andromeda virus. Because it happened as in an old novel of the late XX century. One day a satellite came back carrying a nasty bug from outer space, escaping all decontamination procedures. After a while, we didn’t call it anything any longer. We were too busy dealing with the disaster. The world witnessed humans turning into monsters impossible to define, even less to contain. Their ghastly look and their predatory behaviour did resemble zombies of the best movie tradition. But they weren’t zombies. They didn’t eat flesh; they feasted on blood, without being vampires either. Not that luck – they didn’t turn victims into something like them, just into tiny lifeless shreds. And they were blind, with oddly bluish corneas. The plague that created them shattered the planet like a thousand cataclysms. The ones that escaped being infected started running and hiding, before deciding to fight back. For us, the Children of the Apocalypse, running has never been an option. We’re the second generation after Andromeda. Not only do we not remember a world without the Raptors; we’re not even able to imagine one. For us it’s as far away in time as the fucking Roman Empire. Our amazing progress of the last fifty years has given us clean fusion energy and blossoming space colony projects, but not a goddamn way to deal with this virus. Not yet – not anytime soon. Our only option is to chase and kill them, as many as we possibly can. “I’m Scottish French. And wait at least to try me before calling me names. Tonight?”
“In a parallel universe.” She sneers in defiance. “You can have all your blood sucked first.”
I probably will.
“You’re too noisy, both of you.” Ethan comes forward, put his gloves on and quietly starts examining the corpse. He turns it on its back, concentrating on its vitreous eyes. Good for him: they’re still there.
And he’s right of course. You don’t go hunting this way, even less on a high-risk mission. Ethan has been with our group since year one or so, but we don’t know jackshit about him. He’s older than us, this much I can tell; he looks in his mid-twenties – long dark hair, tattoos and a handful of earrings and bracelets. But he’s built like a special forces operative, and the precision of his sniper rifle is likewise.
From the accent it’s impossible to tell where he come from, no matter if his English is flawless. His complexion is darker than ours, and yet his eyes are the clearest I’ve ever seen. Almond-shaped ice blue. The girls like him – all of them, Jack included – but grudgingly: he doesn’t pay attention to them. Or to anybody. He shows affection just to the little ones – and once he admitted he had two baby brothers. And hell no, I didn’t dare to ask what happened to them. Ignorance is bliss, in our age.
Jack observes him with an impatient regard. “What are you checking the bastard for, exactly? A passport?”
Her sarcasm is obviously misplaced. Ethan ignores her.
“Happy with your findings? Maybe you haven’t realised it yet, Einstein, but they’re all the same, ugly and nasty and famished.”
“Quiet.” I interrupt her with a gesture. Another muffled noise. A far away screech, carried by the wind, and a not so far away sound of broken twigs.
Ethan stands up. “Let’s clear the area. We’re not in for a fight today.”
He’s right again. An annoying trait of his, this one – no wonder Jack always gets so pesky. But today we do hunt for something else, and as he has succinctly stated, it’s time to fucking leave.
*****
It’s almost night when we finally reach Solihull. Birmingham looms in the distance. I look at the city – at what remains of it. My mom worked here as a History lecturer in the University. But she, as many others, had been obliged to abandon it and go North during the second Escape. In retrospect, that came as a surprise. Yes, because after ten years or so of complete disarray since Andromeda, the world had reorganised. Asians – Indians and Chinese – had cleared up their premises and shown the rest of the world how to deal with a threat you can’t get away from. First, selecting an area conveniently remote and then luring over as many Raptors as possible. Then, blasting them with high-yield neutron nukes. Success. Replicated ever since whenever possible. The US government chose instead to quarantine entire states, leaving them to the ghouls. Hoping them to die sooner or later for lack of nourishment. Some of them did, according to estimates. And what about Europe? In Europe, now as before, we were structurally incapable to come out with a coherent strategy. While politicians discussed in their underground bunkers, people on the surface had taken interesting initiatives. Like survival, for example, and restless hunting expeditions. For twenty years furious fights ravaged the whole continent. And just when things seemed going into the right direction, a new wave of Raptors came out of nowhere. Giving origin to what has been called the Second Escape, six years ago. In the UK, all cities have been abandoned, apart from London and Glasgow. Small communities represent, now and since the beginning, the best bet for survival. But whenever packs of Raptors are famished enough to attack en masse, things can still go horribly wrong. This is what happened in Tweedmouth, near Berwick, two years ago. Myself, Jacklyn, Kiera, Aidan and Marie are the only ones left from a community of more than 10,000. We took away all the children we could carry and we settled down in the outskirts of Newark. And Raptors apart, life isn’t smooth. Diseases exist nonetheless, and the long-forgotten smallpox now threatens our small community. Kiera is the only one with medical training. She has put all sick children in isolation, but that’s not enough. With no doctors and no facilities, we need medical supplies. We have to go to a big city, into one of the old hospitals, and pillage their storage.
It was a simple decision to head South hunting, this time for medicines – as dangerous as it might sound. Less simple was to decide who had the best chances to get the job done and make it back to camp alive. We’re roughly the same age, with the sole exception of Kiera, Jacklyn’s sister. But she’s barely nineteen nonetheless. The two are the foreigners in our group: their parents moved to Scotland ten years ago. Both dead in the siege of Tweedmouth – together with the other adults. We drew straws. Chance kept us alive, chance had to select the hunters. Kiera was excluded from the ballot and Jack and I won the lucky draw. Ethan joined us.
“Do we know if anybody still lives here?” Jack sounds uneasy as we walk through the deserted streets.
“Apart from the Raptors, you mean.”
She doesn’t reply. She looks worried, but I’m not. It has been a while since the last time I’ve fought, and I’m right in the mood now. Truth is, I’m after a good hunt today – and they are my prey. I’ll worry about medical supplies later.
I don’t have to wait a lot. A compact screeching group emerges from a gutted building, waving rather enthusiastically at us.
Jack swears and starts firing. Ethan and I take position at her side. The Raptors fall with impressive regularity, one shot, one down, and while the two of us advance to make it quicker, Jack remains behind. Too bad, because another group comes out from a lateral street, few meters from her. She screams and stumbles, falling down. What comes after is just too fast: Ethan drops rolling on the ground and hauls Jack away, while he keeps shooting at the nearest ones. I reach for my pouch and throw a hand grenade to finish up what Ethan has started.
Screeches stop. There’s a moment of eerie silence. We’re look around – nobody else is coming. We’re safe for now. Ethan collects Jack’s weapons, while I get her into my arms, still trembling.
* * *
We decide to stop for the night – an abandoned house in the suburbs. It’s not safe for us to be there – no need to make things any worse by wandering after sunset. The Raptors are more aggressive at night, and diminished light makes us vulnerable. Ethan checks the place and decides it’s reasonably ok for us to stay. And stay we do.
Jack is shaken, and she’s right. What if Ethan had not been there? And talking about him… he looks concerned too. Somehow I feel it’s not the Raptors he’s worried about.
“Can’t you sleep, mate?”
He shrugs. “You know why so many people died in the beginning? Because they could not believe what they were seeing.”
“Well, how to blame them? At the beginning, people even believed the Raptors were rising from their graves. Like zombies, you know, or ghosts. Not exactly common sense, you’d give it to me.”
“Is it so? In your religion, that’s a given. The God you worship came back from the dead on the third day in an aura of immortality. He promised the resurrection of the flesh, and that’s why you stopped cremating the bodies.”
“Yes, but …He said nothing about a penchant for blood. Without mentioning an alien virus.”
“Alien? I rather think Andromeda was caused by an Earth-born bacterium, whose RNA was altered by cosmic rays. It won’t be impossible, you see. Not even unlikely.”
I nod. “I’m sure I’ve read something of the kind. But it was sci-fi.”
“Reality is stranger than fiction, and on top of that it has not to make sense. I’m sure you’ve read this too.”
Ethan remains in silence for a while. “We’re going to die, all of us.” He says eventually. “Our species, Norman.”
“You mean the Europeans? Our generation – the Children of the Apocalypse?”
He shakes his head. “The Homo Sapiens Sapiens has dominated this planet for how long -60.000, 70.000 years? Maybe we’re at the end of the road.”
Ah. It’s not just us he’s talking about. “C’mon, mate. They’re humans too, the Raptors – even if they don’t remember it. Name apart, they’re not fucking dinosaurs. Or aliens.” I wave at the stars. “OK, they’re as dangerous. We’re not sure even now how Andromeda spreads. But the Raptors still belong to our species. And we’ll find a way to fight them down.” I’m suddenly annoyed. I believe what I’m saying. “They’re not dinosaurs, and they’re not smart either. You mentioned the Homo Sapiens. Right, we’ve inherited this planet with our brain, the same this sort of monsters seems devoid of. And it will be the key to our survival, as it has always been.”
Ethan’s stare makes me shudder. There’s something in his cold eyes that scares me silly. “What if this is not the whole story, Norman?” He never blinks. Maybe that’s the reason why he makes people nervous, me included. “What if they are the new species and we’re like the old Neanderthal – stronger, maybe smarter and yet condemned to extinction?”
“No – species reproduce and have a sort of primitive organisation.” I say. “Not just mammals, even insects. Guess what? They’ve none.”
He doesn’t reply. He’s asleep in minutes, leaving me wondering about that strange discussion.
*****
The sun is high in the sky, but weather is so bad that we can’t see shit ten meters ahead. There’s fog, too, as if we needed any more excitement. We cross the city centre, quietly walking into that ramshackle area near the canal once known as Brindley Place – with its fancy bars and its glimmering lights. Nothing has survived. Gee – I expected desolate, but this is a notch up.
We advance in formation, covering all sides. We want to avoid yesterday’s incident.
I hear a click, like the safety of a rifle going off. I turn at once – I can’t see anything. But I know I’m right – somebody’s there. Ethan looks at me and put his hand on the gun. Before he’s able to take it out, an acute voice makes us stop.
“Freeze.”
Three people, armed like ninjas, appear. I attempt a step forward, but one of them aims straight at my head – her gun loaded and ready.
“Who are you?”
“Norman. Scottish. Hunter.”
“Hunter of what?”
“Generally Raptors, but not today. I’m more into medical supplies at the moment.”
“And you search for them in Birmingham?” Her sneer conveys her surprise.
“Why, London or Manchester are any better?” Being sassy is perhaps not the smartest thing I can do right now, but hey, it’s not as if I’m not in danger already. I’m in danger since I was in my mother’s womb. “And you are…?”
“We own this place. Nobody goes in and out without checking out with me first. Not even those fucking Raptors.” The girl’s eyes squint a little. She observes me for a couple of seconds, and then she lowers her gun. “Shelby, lead them to the old hospital in Edgbaston. Let our guests get all they can pack and escort them out.” She says with a wicked grin. “I’ll tell the others to hold fire until they clear off.” She’s dazzlingly pretty, now that I look better. Leggy and willowy, with gleaming amber eyes. She catches my stare, and smiles. “Want to come over to our place? You can rejoin your party on the way back.”
I consider the tempting offer. I’m used to the Raptors, not to street hoodlums with stunning bodies. Jack says nothing, but something wary in Ethan’s eyes makes me think again. “No, thanks. We prefer staying all together.”
“You don’t know what you’re missing.”
I sure get a fair picture. I’d better leave before I change my mind.
The girl and the other boy walk away, while the one named Shelby remains with us. He’s our age or younger, and, from Jack’s admired stare, I can see she finds him sort of cute. I wonder the hell why. That waxen-faced dickhead with pale green eyes doesn’t look appealing to me. But girl I’m not. Thinking better, maybe that’s why she has not objected when the hot babe wanted to snatch me away. Great. I decide to pay them no attention.
We walk for a fair while, and finally reach the hospital, deserted and derelict as the rest of the town. We’re damn lucky it’s in working conditions. Facilities of the old days. Civilisation here may well be a memory of the past, but electricity still works.
We check the area and prepare for the night. Shelby boy is quiet, speaking exclusively to Jack, who seems appreciating his conversation. A tad too much for my own taste. But I’m tired, and when they go outside to smoke after dinner, I don’t object.
When I get up in the morning everybody seems busy with a purpose. Ethan is listing supplies, while the boy and Jack are fixing breakfast. I sit nearby, taking a cup of coffee. “Hello guys – you had good night?”
Shelby nods and drinks his tea, while Jack smiles. “Hi, Norman. Everything’s fine here.”
Her eyes however suggest otherwise. And the way he touches her arm makes me think something happened last night. But it’s only a fleeting moment. Maybe I’m just jealous.
Shelby stands up. “I’m done here.”
“Yes?” Ethan says, looking at him with an unreadable expression.
“Yes. Tomorrow I’ll come and walk you out.” His backpack on his shoulders and his rifle in his hand he leaves quickly, while Jack follows him with a disturbingly wistful stare.
*****
We spend the day packing what we can. I observe Jack. She’s weird, but maybe it’s just my impression. However, when at night she comes on to me, I decide it’s not just an impression. She undresses and remains stark naked – her pale skin shining in the moonlight. “What are you doing, Jack?”
She takes my hand and put it on her breast. “I’m ready, Norman – let’s do it.”
Uh-oh. “What’s up? Raptors haven’t drunk me dry yet.”
“I’m serious.” She hugs me and takes out my shirt. I should be excited, but I’m not. There’s something that makes my hackles spike up like a frightened cat.
A sudden noise disrupts this intimate moment, making her jump.
“Norman, you need to come with me.”
We turn toward the entrance. Ethan is there, rifle ready to shoot. We both look at him amazed. Jack reacts first, covering her body best as she can. “You wanker -go away.”
“Now, Norman.”
There’s urgency in his eyes and a concern I have never seen before. I step back.
“Where are you going?” Jack looks alarmed, her eyes wide-open. “I was right, you’re a damn faggot.”
I don’t reply. I follow Ethan outside.
“We’re going to sleep here in the lobby.” He says, handing me a sleeping bag. “Nobody can access the storage room from here without hitting us first.” He says slowly, reading my thoughts. Jack is going to be safe there, alone or not. I could ask for explanations, but I’m not sure I want to know. And something tells me the night won’t be boring.
I hate to be right. Only a couple of hours have passed, when we hear noises. Actually, footsteps. Ethan loads his rifle. After a few moments, we see Shelby heading toward us, while I hear Jack coming out from the storage room and slowly walking into our direction.
He looks at us, and then looks at her, smiling. “Games are over.”
“What the hell are you talking about?” I don’t like his grin, that strange light in his eyes.
“She didn’t she tell you.”
“Tell me what?”
“About us.”
“About…the two of you?”
“No. About all of us. Including you.” He says, and I notice his eyes are dangerously bluish in the low light of the lobby. “Have you ever wondered how the Raptors could possibly be in control of such extensive territories after all these years? How they could keep going on and on and on after generations? They’ve been almost hunted down in Europe after the first wave, and exterminated; yet, they have managed to provoke the Second Escape. What do you think they are, fucking immortals? I’ll tell you how.” He takes a step in my direction. “They’ve learnt, asshole. They might have forgotten how to speak, but they still communicate, and exchange information. And in this evolutionary process, they learnt how to reproduce. How? They use us for it. Infected people but still humans, able to breed and transmit the virus. Spreading Andromeda to as many other humans as they can. Until, one day, we fully convert too. The Raptors are creating a new species, stronger than any human, or animal, can ever be. Like viruses can’t survive without their hosts and learn how to keep them alive, they hunt and capture us to spread their DNA, produce new specimen and keep going. The new Master Race, the one that will eventually inherit this world. Here, in Europe.
“The centre of world renaissance.” Ethan says coldly. “Once again.”
“Yes – an entire new world.” Shelby laughs. “Humans don’t stand a chance, and you should be grateful for the membership ticket. You’re part of the elite now.”
Jack starts crying, but Ethan has his own way to thank him for the offer. He shoots him right in his head. We look at the body on the ground. Yes, he had blue shades in his eyes. But human he was. He spoke, too. “He doesn’t seem one of them. Maybe he was just high.”
“Maybe.” Ethan starts checking him out.
“Norman I’m so sorry, so sorry….” Jack is on her knees, crying. “You may think this is why I’ve approached you last night. But I had no idea.”
“I believe you.” I do, really. “And I don’t believe his story. Andromeda turns people into monsters in a matter of hours. And was never sexually transmitted anyway. This boy was not infected.”
“Wrong.” Ethan loses no time in volunteering details. He starts rummaging into his backpack. Out there, in the countryside, the only way to tell if you’re infected is by using leeches. They react with disgust to the virus, and this is why everybody grows them as pets. But here we’re in a hospital and more sophisticated methods are available.
He tosses Jack a testing kit. “Do it yourself.”
“And then what? You will kill me if I test positive?”
“Do it.”
“Answer me, you Chinese half-blood. You think I don’t know where you come from? You bastards have killed your own people in thousands.”
He smiles to her. A suave smile. Then he raises his gun and points it at her face. “Good. I haven’t to explain you how I deal with Andromeda. Now give me a reason to keep you alive.”
She turns to me, her eyes brimming with tears. “How can you let him threatening me like that?”
“He’s right, Jack. If you’re infected we can’t bring you back to the children. Test yourself.”
Resigned, she does it. She inserts the testing unit on her forearm while she winces in pain, and she closes her eyes. There are a few seconds of silence. She looks at it – an allergic reaction’s already there – and starts crying again. Then she turns toward Ethan in anger. I see his eyes squinting and I know he’s going to fire. No. If somebody has to kill Jack, it has to be me. I raise my crossbow and I shoot straight into her heart.
Silence. Doom. Fucking white moon shining outside, nowhere as white as my girl’s sleek skin.
I’m still observing her in a sort of reverie when we hear a familiar noise. They’re coming. Hunting time.
*****
The sun is rising. We walk into the desert road that takes us away from Birmingham. We have not spoken since the carnage at the hospital. Because carnage is what it has been.
They were there, blocking our way out of the building. Most of them not older than twenty, and humans. Only their corneas were too bluish and their movements too feverish. But they didn’t screech – they swore like Jack and I in our most inspired days. I keep telling myself they were Raptors like the others, in another form but even more dangerous, if possible. I can close my eyes and see again, as in a nightmare too vivid, my parents ripped apart by those who have announced themselves as the new master species: and I hate them. But the truth is, what I’ve just killed were not famished monsters. They were boys like me, children of the same Apocalypse, but not as lucky: no Ethan around to save their ass. And I’ve butchered them.
My throat feels dry – those images are dancing in front of my eyes like transparent butterflies.
The blood flowing away from their wounds, their screams and my rage. Ethan shoots them down with the precision of a sniper. His eyes are cold, and his hand never waves. I shiver, and need to adjust my target more than once – and yet, my crossbow is as deadly. I slaughter the hot babe, when she attacks me; I jab a wooden arrow in one of her pretty eyes, that will never be pretty again. And even when I start having enough of all that blood, and tears run down my cheeks, I keep going, slashing their necks, looking at their bluish corneas and repeating myself – hunting is my life, this is what I have to do. Killing, killing, killing.
The howl of a dog gets me back to the present moment.
Ethan is looking at his compass, he doesn’t trust anything else, and certainly not GPS. Things look not that good. We’re covered in blood. We can only hope we don’t have scratches. We make a stop into the first canal we encounter on the way out. We strip down naked and we wash ourselves in the water with bleach and iodine. Then we test ourselves, just to make sure not to carry any infection back to camp. I give Ethan a sidelong glance. He’s even quieter since we have left, looking tired and worn out. I suddenly remember our conversation the first night we arrived in Birmingham. “Ethan, did you know it? I mean … Shelby’s story.”
“Yes. I heard rumours. But I wasn’t sure. Not until tonight.” He stares at me with his almond-shaped eyes. “Hong Kong, three years ago. We had an outbreak – one of the many. One of my baby brothers got left behind, and survived. We believed he had got away. But he had not. He kept a human shape for one year, without showing any symptom. I guess this is how they started mutating, the Raptors. It hasn’t happened in a day, and what we see yesterday are the results of that evolution.” He lowers his voice. “My brother…he infected our mother, his twin and my little sister too. I had to take them out.” He finishes suiting up. “We could not understand. It was nothing we had ever seen before. I was a biochemistry student at the time, volunteering in a crisis unit. After that, I decided to travel to Europe and search for evidence that ours was not an isolated case and we were indeed facing something new.”
“I don’t understand. The Raptors – they’re not even able to talk.“
“Do bees or termites talk? This doesn’t prevent them to build huge structures and develop complex societies. I guess we are witnessing an admirable example of swarm intelligence applied to a new human species. They adapt and evolve, learning what once made us a winning species.” He smiles, a dark hue in his eyes. “Maybe this is mother nature protecting herself. This new version is certainly less harmful for the rest of the species of this planet, considering that it only consumes the previous one. It doesn’t need to slaughter anything else on its path to supremacy.”
“What are you going to do?”
“Alert homebase. Send my report over. Prepare for counterattack. Go hunting them, before it is too late.” He loads his rifle, smiling at me. “And taking these supplies back to camp.”
END.
By Russell Hemmell