The Second Wave Read online

  “Then why the gigantic fangs?” Eleven pointed out.

  “Maybe they’re decoration,” Paige assumed. “We’ll need someone to study them further, if we want to learn any more about them.”

  In the meantime they just had to be careful not to wander about the woods at night. The one thing that seriously worried Captain Eleven about this new species of animal was that it hadn’t died of natural causes. Which meant there was a good chance of something bigger, and probably a lot more dangerous, roaming the surroundings.

  * * * *

  As everybody slowly adapted to life in the colony, or village as most of them called it by now, the daily challenges subsided. More and more people stopped missing the comforts they used to have. The well near the canteen became the gossip hot spot, as it was crowded every morning and sometimes in the evening as well, when people came there to get fresh water. The teenagers learned to accept that outhouses were as modern and advanced as toilets would get on this planet for a long time. Chucking wood for the fireplace became the number one past time among the kids who were old enough to swing an axe. And the first recipe book containing melapple pies and prinpick flower salads began circulation.

  All in all, life was peaceful. Even the parents whose children had aged a year didn’t leave Alternearth, but accepted what had happened and learned to live with it. The mayor held a meeting to warn everyone not to leave the village after dark, at least not until they learned more about the creatures in the forest. Emily Eleven scheduled herself and her team for nightly watch duties. And John woke up one morning to feel he had got dangerously used to the smell of fresh tea before daybreak. It was time he pushed forward his plan of leaving, or he feared he wouldn’t be able to anymore. Not with Peter constantly encircling him. Not with Tyson, the wunderkind chef, making it his habit to come by the house every other night for a game of chess and yet another story. And certainly not with the crazy girl who was rapidly becoming just Eugenia to him.

  He needed to get out of here.

  So the next morning John went to see Dr. Paige in her office before his visit to Eugenia. It wasn’t actually her own office, she shared it with the other staff of the hospital, but she was alone when John dropped by.

  “To be honest, I don’t see why not,” she answered when he asked, or rather demanded, that Eugenia be released into his care for today, so they could take a walk. “She’s been cooped up in here for too long, anyway.”

  He had to promise to take a protector with them, and only asked it wouldn’t be Sally Sheldon, who admittedly was perfectly right in assuming that he was a con man and would take the first opportunity he’d get to leave and escape prosecution. He tried to stay away from her.

  Eugenia was overjoyed to hear the news. She had her own set of clothes now, as the hospital had become her home rather than her sick room, but until this day she hadn’t been allowed to leave; she hadn’t tried to run away again, either.

  “I will love to see the outside! What color does it mainly have?” she asked, sitting on the edge of her bed. John knelt down before her to help her tie her boots.

  “Mostly green,” he admitted. When she didn’t react to this, he tugged at the bandana he was wearing around his neck to show her. “Like this, but in different shades.”

  Sometimes he forgot that although she knew almost every word in the dictionary, she often didn’t know what it meant or looked like.

  “I like green, then,” she decided. “Would you like to know what my favorite color is?”

  “Yes, I would like that.”

  “You are my favorite color.”

  He raised his head to look at her, now that the shoe laces were tied, but she never got to explain it to him, because a knock on the door announced the arrival of protector Rett. Their excursion could begin.

  * * * *

  Chapter 25: A Tale of Two Hearts

  John didn’t want Eugenia to draw glances from the other settlers, so he led her out the back door to the North gate of the village. His consideration astounded him, mildly disturbed him even. He didn’t usually care about other people. But then again, ever since he had got here, he started to notice the smallest changes in his behavior and thoughts.

  Eugenia, wearing a light dress suited for this day, looking very much like a girl, walked a few paces behind John. With careful steps she followed him through the gate and past the stables over the grass. She was busy taking everything in, looking here and there, sometimes stopping to bend down and touch the ground. They moved forward rather slowly; but John didn’t mind. As long as protector Rett stayed where she was, at a polite distance, he didn’t care how far they’d make it today. As long as they kept moving.

  They made for the woods. Not to where the workmen were busy erecting a new colony, but in the direction where the subway station lay, which Peter had shown him on their first night here. If he was lucky, the sight would trigger some memory in Eugenia, because as much as she talked about wanting to get home, she had no clue what she even meant by it, let alone where home was for her.

  “You’re thinking of leaving again.” She caught up with him at the tree line and took hold of his arm as if touching him came naturally to her.

  “I’m not leaving before I get you home, Eugenia.”

  She made a face, prompting him to dare her to read his mind to verify that he was speaking the truth.

  “That’s not it,” she declared. “I like the name better you use for me in your mind.”

  He laughed. “Crazy girl? Really? You like crazy girl better than Eugenia?”

  “Neither of them is my name, but since I have no choice but to have one, I prefer the one you prefer.”

  “It is but a description, and an inappropriate one at that.”

  She shrugged. “It is honest. Do you know what my favorite name is?”

  “Could it perhaps be John?”

  Her laughter was contagious. “It is indeed.”

  John felt a smile spreading on his face. A real one, not one he faked to blend in or make people feel at ease. That hadn’t happened in a while; he was sure he shouldn’t like it as much as he did that moment.

  Neither Peter nor John ever went back to the relics of the subway station after they had first encountered it. John was, to be perfectly honest with himself, amazed he even found the way again. But then they stepped over the little creek and there it was: ancient and majestic in the golden rays of the autumn sun. He heard Mandy Rett gasp for air when she caught up with them.

  They climbed through a hole in the outer wall. John helped Eugenia up onto a protrusion from where they could overlook the ruins of the station; it unfolded before and beneath them like a picture or a map.

  “So this is what it looks like,” Eugenia whispered. Her eyes were wide with curiosity.

  “Do you know what it is?” John asked. But she cocked her head.

  “I think it’s a subway station,” he told her.

  “They called it differently. Many people came here every day and sometimes at night. They talked loudly. Their thoughts were scattered. Sometimes terrible things happened here. Sometimes beautiful thoughts were made. Other creatures live here now. Over there.”

  She pointed to an opening where a staircase led further downwards. If John remembered correctly, it was the same opening where he had heard the growling sounds the last time he stood in that exact same spot.

  Eugenia, not content with merely standing and watching, not now that she was free to touch and smell, sat down on the edge of the jetty they were standing on and carefully lowered herself down onto the next landing. It took her longer than it would any other person; she wasn’t used to more complicated physical challenges than walking to and fro. But she refused John’s help. She scrambled further down and in the end landed soundly on her feet on a mattress of moss.

  “Green,” she mumbled, more to herself than to John, but he nodded anyway.

  “Yes. Green.” He let her sort out the marvel of the moss by herself and wandered
along the rails. They were overgrown and corroded; although they undoubtedly looked like rails, they were also slightly different. As if someone who had never seen either train or rails had tried to build them from hand-me-down hearsay. More graffiti was on the walls down here, most of it unreadable, with parts missing because vines were growing on the material.

  “Do you know who built this?” he called over to Eugenia, who was petting a patch of wildflowers. Without looking up from the plants, her answer came matter-of-factly, “My people did.”

  “Your people? Do you mean to tell me there are more of you?”

  “No.” She got up. “They all left me.”

  Between the colorful flowers and the subway station’s ruins, she looked like the last human in existence with her frilly dress and her uncombed curls. He couldn’t imagine why anyone would want to leave her. A warm smile appeared on her face, a far more beautiful one than the first time she had attempted to mimic this expression; she was getting better at it.

  “Thank you.” A soft shade of pink flowered on her cheeks. “To answer your question: They didn’t know they were leaving me behind. They just,” she tried to shrug it off, but John could see a deep hurt in her eyes, “forgot about me.”

  “Where did they go, crazy girl?”

  She padded over to him. “I don’t know. Away. They only thought of leaving and finding better places in the end. We didn’t make them happy enough.”

  “And yet you wish to go home,” he said, a faint trace of disbelief in the back of his mind. Faint, yet distracting enough to not make him recognize the sudden plural in her speech.

  “I don’t belong among you. I’m not like you.” She took his hand in hers and gazed into space. “My head never stops aching. Everything is so overwhelming and much too slow. In the end, John, you will leave me as well. You will all leave again. You always do.”

  Before he could think about it and perhaps discard the notion, he dragged her close and into a soft embrace. Her arms wrapped themselves around him instantly; she buried her face in his shirt.

  “Close your eyes for a bit,” he suggested. “It might help your headache.”

  She did and gave a deep sigh; her breath warm on his skin through the fabric of his shirt. They stood in the bright sunlight, in the middle of the abandoned subway rails. For the first time John realized he heard birds in the distance and gusts of wind in the tree tops. He felt her smile against his chest.

  “I can feel your heartbeat,” she announced, eyes still closed.

  “As I yours,” he confessed quietly.

  “It is beautiful.”

  John didn’t know what to reply to that, so he said nothing and just held her a little tighter.

  * * * *

  The next time they went out, he took her to the waterfall. One of these days he was going to have to talk about payment with her; perhaps a nice setting would work in his favor.

  Peter had told him all about the time pocket and John made sure to stay away from the cave. The water and the lake were harmless enough, though, he decided.

  “Who’s Peter?” Eugenia wanted to know, no doubt because John was thinking about him. She had taken off her shoes and socks, and was standing up to her knees in water, the skirt of her dress floating on the surface around her legs.

  “We were, uhm…” Eugenia wouldn’t know any of the words he was going to use, so he started anew, “He’s a…” and almost said friend before he stopped himself; he wasn’t ready to acknowledge that for now. So he decided on a more cryptic description. “I was with him for a while once.” He sincerely hoped protector Sheldon, who was accompanying them today, didn’t hear him over the noise of the waterfall. The words sounded pathetic, yet before he could amend and say something else about Peter, Eugenia jumped backwards and disappeared beneath the surface to go for a dive.

  Unfortunately, Eugenia had spent the vast majority of her life in a temple in the darkness. She knew about the concept of swimming, but she had never learned it. She sank to the ground like a stone, then floated helplessly up again, drifting towards the surface but never reaching it.

  When John saw a group of air bubbles appearing in one spot on the water, he jumped in without even taking his boots off. The water was usually clear, but Eugenia’s uncontrolled movements stirred the mud on the bottom, making it hard to see. Her body was nothing but a dark shadow in an opaque fog. With half a dozen strokes he reached her, grabbed her around the waist, and yanked her up again. They re-emerged just as Sheldon was about to go in after them.

  For a frightening second, Eugenia’s body hung lifelessly in his arms. Then a violent spasm ran through her; her mouth snapped open and she gasped for air.

  “You can’t swim?!” John yelled at her, more fiercely than he had intended. He swam back to the bank, hauling her with him. Once out of the water, he sat down and dragged her into his lap. She sagged against him, her skin cold, her heartbeat hectic.

  “You can’t swim!” he repeated, more out of breath than a short dive should make him. He hugged her close; the only thing that was clinging to her body more desperately than his arms was the sand they were now both covered in. Sally Sheldon was at their side immediately to check on both of them.

  “That was fun!” Eugenia beamed between gulps of air.

  John stared at her in disbelief. “No, it wasn’t!”

  But she seemed to have caught up with her heartbeat; she was radiantly happy. “I never swam before!”

  “You didn’t swim, crazy girl,” he explained with strained patience. “You sank. And if I hadn’t jumped in after you, you would have drowned.”

  “Let’s do that again!”

  “No.”

  But not even his firm refusal and his grim expression could thaw the delight on her face. She couldn’t stop grinning. And gladly, for the sake of his dignity, Sally nudged John with the tip of her boot before the corners of his mouth could treacherously twitch upwards. He opened his mouth to tell the protector off, but she wasn’t even looking at him. When he followed her gaze to the edge of the cliff, his mouth, conveniently open for the occasion, formed an astounded O: where a few moments ago a cascade of water had been whooshing down into the lake, there was now nothing but a sad, dying trickle.

  The waterfall was gone.

  * * * *

  Chapter 26: Pack

  You cannot run forever. Not even when you’re a desperate twelve-year-old boy who has nothing more to lose. But sometimes, when you step off one path, another one awaits.

  As it happened, there was a cabin in the forest. A ramshackle, old shed, not more than a pile of wood, more or less randomly nailed together. But a storm was blowing and John’s lungs were breathing ice, and if his feet weren’t frozen stiff, he would have left a bloody trail in the immaculate snow. He was hungry and desperate, so he heaved himself up the two steps to the front door, where he collapsed into a heap of blue skin and numb flesh.

  When he came to, he found himself half sitting on a chair in front of a fire.

  “Finally.” He heard a smooth voice from behind. It belonged, as he saw when its owner came into view, to an earnest man with a haggard face and intelligent eyes.

  “If it hadn’t been for the dogs howling like the Lord almighty was coming down on them with a birch, you’d have frozen to death on my doorstep, and I’d have broken my ankles in the morning, tripping over your stiff leftovers.”

  John was too hungry to say anything, and almost too scared to be hungry.

  “What? Dog’s got your tongue?”

  “Thank you, sir,” he finally managed. His lips were cracked, he tasted the coppery tang of blood in his mouth when he forced them to move.

  “Yes. Well. You had better make it up to me and soon, because you’re bleeding all over my blanket, little man.”

  As much as John was intimidated by the man’s looks and talks, he felt his face redden at this addressing. Little man. That was very much what he felt he was now. He’d left the kid he used to be in the cupboard,
and had taken with him only the part that was strong and manly.

  “Where were you heading anyway in that storm and with bare feet? Ran into a spot of bother?”

  John shook off the fear that clung to his body like the cold. He stared at the stranger with wild, daring eyes. The eyes of a man. “I ran away so I can learn how to fight and how to kill and do whatever I want.”

  The man smirked. A distinct sparkle appeared in his cunning eyes. “I like your spirit. Like a little wild fang.”

  “I am not little,” John bristled. He had warmed up, and though he was still hungry, he tried not to think of it. He was a man now. He needed to be tough and brave.

  The stranger sounded solemn when he replied, “You are now, but I know you will turn out a mighty strong man one day. You are already tall, and there’s a fire in your eyes that Hades himself must have kindled. I can teach you how to fight and how to kill. And something else—I can teach you how to get anything you want from anyone you meet. But you must always stick to my rules, and any money we make together belongs to me.”

  John nodded eagerly. He’d pay any price, he’d stick to any rule. The man eyed him up and down; the sad little mess he must look, John thought.

  Then he laid down the rules, “You sleep with the dogs in the kennel; the right to sleep in the house must be earned. You do what I tell you when I tell you. If you begin to feel attached to me, my free advice to you now is to walk away for good and never look back. If you want to do whatever you want to do, you had better not attach yourself to anyone, especially not me.”

  He stood there, glowering down on John after he had finished his speech.

  “Thank you, sir. What’s your name?“

  “I have no name, and neither have you as of this moment. One’s name is like a free pass to one’s soul, so don’t go around advertising it. If you must give a name, use a fake one.”

  To John’s ears the bitter words were pearls of wisdom; he clung to them as if for dear life.

  Four dogs lived in the kennel. They were half wild and they didn’t take kindly to strangers. They barked like mad, howled at him when he entered their abode. They were used to fight each other for the food the man threw at them. But at least, John thought when he lay down in a corner far away from them, cold and hungry and bleeding, at least he was out of the cupboard.