The Second Wave Page 14

  He stayed with the man whose name he would never know for almost four years; he slept in the kennel for two of them. The dogs got accustomed to him; they never harmed him again the way they did on his first night with them. Life with the man and his hounds wasn’t as bad as life had been in the orphanage; John did indeed learn everything he wanted to know and much more, while the two of them roamed Russia and Kazakhstan, tricking, stealing, conning, and boondoggling everyone and everything, until one day John felt the man was becoming something of a father to him. So he stuck to the first advice he’d been given and walked away without ever looking back.

  But in his fiercest nightmares, John always went back to his first night in the kennel. He saw the huge hounds with their sharp teeth and fervent eyes approaching him, every fibre in their bodies tense, the four of them appearing as one solid wall of teeth and claws, coming closer to rip apart the intruder. The stench of foul breath and wet fur hung in the air, and something else, something he recognized in his dreams as the scent of his own fright. In his dreams the dogs always won.

  * * * *

  Chapter 27: Semantics and Sacrileges

  The former subway station in the forest didn’t stay hidden. Once Mandy Rett reported its location back to Emily Eleven, the captain sent out a team immediately to check on things. A few days later the place was crawling with scientists and villagers, who all wanted to be the first one to come up with a theory.

  “It wasn’t there when we checked the area for the first wavers,” Eleven insisted. She and the mayor stood in the middle of the ruins, watching the others take notes, draw sketches, and discuss theories.

  “Well, it’s here now, and I doubt it grew out of the forest overnight,” Rochester replied. He wasn’t implying that Eleven and the other protectors had missed this on purpose. But something had happened in the meantime. Something that none of them felt able to grasp, let alone explain.

  “Sometimes I think we’re not even on the same planet anymore,” Eleven muttered, but Rochester couldn’t reply to that last remark, as Selena Moralez approached them, holding up a sketch pad.

  “This is interesting, mayor!” she announced when she had walked up to the two of them. She showed him the sketch pad on which someone had transcribed some of the graffiti from the walls. “Do you recognize this?”

  Rochester frowned, not understanding the point. “Sure I do. This one says ‘Timbob was here’, and what’s that—‘Ana loves Trell’?”

  Eleven shrugged it off. “Graffiti has been around ever since caveman times. It was never high literature. What’s the point, Mrs. Moralez?”

  The librarian looked at them, annoyed by their obvious thickness. “Isn’t it funny to find an exact copy of our alphabet on an alien planet with a completely different history than Earth?”

  “That doesn’t look like one of our letters.” Eleven pointed out, tapping her finger against something that looked like a lower case i with a horizontal dash through the middle.

  “From what I’ve gathered, there are slight modifications on the alphabet that’s used here. It’s almost like,” Selena searched for the right words, “they took our alphabet and used it as a grid to develop their own, slightly enhanced, version.”

  As far as Selena had found out so far there were two versions of i, one representing it as heard in light, the other one, the one with the dash through its middle, representing the one as heard in intricate.

  “Enhanced?” asked Rochester. “But Doctors Jones and Wagner told me those ruins were a couple of thousand years old! Are you telling me that a few millennia ago, this planet was populated by people who used the exact same letters we’re using today?”

  Selena didn’t have an answer to this; neither did Eleven. Mayor Rochester grumbled in irritation. From across the compound Timothy Niman gave a sharp whistle to catch Eleven’s attention. He and Carl Gibson were standing next to a doorway of sorts which seemed to lead downwards. He waved once, indicating that he and Carl were going in. Eleven nodded her okay.

  “In any case,” the librarian continued, looking at Rochester, “I’d like your permission to study these writings more deeply. It might tell us something about what happened here.”

  Rochester thanked her. He wanted to find out anything they could about anything that was going on in this world, and it more and more looked like this was a lot.

  Fifteen minutes later they heard muffled shouts from underneath, and then Timothy and Carl emerged from the half-hidden doorway they’d disappeared into earlier, running at top speed, hollering for everyone to get the Hades out of there right now.

  * * * *

  The trip started out harmless enough: Timothy and Carl followed a metal staircase down into complete blackness. In the light of their two torches they recognized the stairs were of the same strange metal as the inner walls above the ground.

  “Do you think those were moving stairs once?” Timothy wanted to know. He kicked at the banister with his boot; the walls echoed the harsh clinking sound.

  “Stop that. And to answer your question: yes, I assume they were. It’s supposed to be a subway station, right? Subway stations had escalators.”

  “What do you think is down there, Carl?” Yet again, Timothy clonked his foot against the railing. This time the echo was different.

  Carl gave an exasperated groan. “What do you think, Tim?! Another platform of course! And stop doing that, you’re making me nervous.”

  “If I’m making you nervous then there’s no way I’m stopping this.”

  They made their way downwards bickering, Timothy trying to make as many sounds as possible. After a few minutes they reached the foot of the futuristic escalator. They found themselves indeed on another level. This one was intact, not corroded and decayed like the structure on the surface. In the light of the torches they made out two sets of rails to the right and left. In the middle, where they were standing, was a platform. Everything looked a bit dusty, but sleek and modern underneath. Three pillars in the middle of the platform supported the high ceiling. A large billboard in the middle had probably once been used to electronically inform about train arrivals and departures. It was black now; long shut down and forgotten.

  “This is marvellous,” Carl whispered.

  Timothy went to the end of the platform and shone his torch into the tunnel where the tracks disappeared. “I wonder where they lead to,” he asked himself more than Carl. Then he yelled, “Hello?!”

  His voice resonated through the tunnel system before it faded away, not more than a distorted sound in the distance. He chuckled.

  Something yowled in the tunnel. It sounded like a furious wolf-howl.

  “What was that?” Carl tried to sound casual, yet failed miserably at it.

  “Let’s find out.” Timothy gave another shout, this time in the direction they thought they had heard the first yowl come from. It was followed by a second one. One that sounded just a bit closer to them than the first one. And then deep, guttural growling. Carl hissed. He almost dropped his torch in a panic. “Let’s get out of here now!”

  This time, Timothy sounded nervous. “Do you remember when the captain said there were these, um, dogs living in the forest?” Without waiting for Carl to reply to that, he answered his question himself by adding, “I don’t think they live in the forest.”

  The growl morphed into many growls and finally a howl. The noises were definitely coming closer. If there were dogs living in the tunnel system, they sounded understandably irritated for being disturbed in their own domain.

  “Great insight, Tim. Let’s run!”

  They fled up the stairs. Not a moment too soon: they heard the beasts galloping towards them. Many of them.

  Timothy drew his gun.

  * * * *

  At the same time Carl and Timothy faced a group of determined dogs, Simon Jones faced a group of determined employees in the workmen’s barracks. The men had gathered around foremen Ueno, who acted as a spokesperson for the occasion.

>   The angry mob had awaited Simon Jones when he came to his office in the morning, all crossed arms and furrowed brows.

  “A temple?” he asked, already fed up with the conversation they were having. They could have cleared up another square mile of the woods by this hour, but, no, the men were on strike for the time being. There were few words to sum up Simon’s frustration.

  “This place needs to be cleansed from evil spirits,” Ueno told him. He looked like a very determined man.

  “Right,” one of the men piped up. “The forest is cursed!”

  Simon looked at him with utter contempt in his eyes. Superstitious workers. He felt a headache coming on. “Cursed?” He managed to make every single letter of the word drip with disdain.

  Ueno, arms crossed, nodded earnestly. “First the beasts, then Dr. Chang. Now the unholy ground. It must be a curse.”

  “The Gods are punishing us for not building a temple for them earlier!” Erik agreed.

  Simon gave a sigh, “The beasts are just big poodles. And Dr. Chang’s death was an accident.”

  Dr. Chang was bitten by a poisonous spider whilst stripping the flesh from the mutated dog’s carcass to clean the bones. The spider lived in an eye socket and jumped at the vet, furious at the sudden intrusion. Dr. Chang was highly allergic to spider venom, his death was instant.

  “And what unholy ground?” Simon wanted to know. “What idiocy is that?”

  “The lair in the hill,” explained Ueno, who wasn’t usually this talkative. “We found it yesterday.”

  The men piped up. “It’s huge, and there are strange markings on the walls.”

  “Yeah. Really strange markings. And an altar of sorts.”

  “Yeah. A really strange altar!”

  “Look,” Simon tried with exhausted patience. “I told you, we’re demolishing that hill anyway to make way for the road. So this lair, or whatever it may be, won’t be bothering you after tomorrow.”

  He couldn’t have anticipated the uproar his words caused, or he would have spoken more carefully. The men all talked at once. Eternal consequences, Simon heard, entrance to the Underworld. Only Jupiter could save them, Ueno declared, they’d need to start building a temple right away; everything else could wait; and no demolishing of unholy grounds that might still be haunted by livid spirits, because, obviously, that was a sacrilege.

  No religious workforce next time, Simon decided. But it was no use arguing, and he couldn’t just send the men back to Earth—the wormhole wasn’t due to open for another week. A temple it was, then.

  He already regretted his decision to work on the whole colonization project—he could be in his house in Haiti right now, making love to his deliciously young girlfriend, who was probably already looking for an ersatz provider.

  * * * *

  Chapter 28: The Stuff of Waterfalls

  It was a general mood of fear, panic and confusion to which John, Eugenia and Sally returned from their outing to the waterfall. The dogs from the tunnels had chased the group of scientists and Mayor Rochester around the woods for a while; the protectors took three of them out, before the rest of the pack finally withdrew. No one got hurt, not even the beasts, for they had only stunned them, but the shock sat deep with the settlers. A pack of ferocious dogs in the forest wasn’t a comforting thought. Neither was the news that the three stunned animals were gone by the time a team around Dr. Paige and Captain Eleven wanted to collect them for studying, despite the fact that the stunners could have taken out an ox for two days.

  Simon reluctantly agreed to suggest the temple idea at the agora the next night, and the workmen agreed to maybe only be on strike until then.

  The news that the waterfall had ceased to exist only added to the settlers’ distressed disposition. It made the rounds quickly. Eleven sent Gavin and Sally into the mountains to investigate, but they radioed back in the evening with the message that the fount had dried up. This meant the river was going to dry out as well and quickly, leaving the colony with no energy; there was no contingency power station.

  Mayor Rochester paced up and down his living room, only just recovering from the dog chase, brainstorming with a group of the villagers about how to avoid a catastrophe. Eliseo and a handful of others headed out to search for another river, but returned later that night with no news. Creeks and small streams existed in abundance, but none of them big enough to power a hydro station.

  Simon Jones stayed up all night to hastily sketch out a solar array they might be able to patch together quickly to ensure at least a minimum amount of energy. He didn’t know who was going to build it, though, as his employees were very clear about their demands: the temple was paramount.

  * * * *

  Eugenia couldn’t sleep that night. She lay in her bed with wide open eyes and stared into darkness. She couldn’t help but listen to her people’s thoughts. It was her fault. If she hadn’t almost drowned, the water would have felt no need to withdraw, it was only protecting her after all. But until everyone was asleep she didn’t feel strong enough to think clearly about it, she only felt guilty. She was, after all, their Goddess, even though they didn’t view her as such. It was her duty to protect, not to harm. Alas, all her thinking didn’t amount to anything; she didn’t know the right course of action. She only watched. As long as she could think back that was all she had ever done. Maybe it had been her mistake in the first place. Maybe that was why everyone had left: because she hadn’t done enough for them.

  When her thoughts began chasing each other’s tails, she decided it was no use to ponder this issue by herself. She got up and quietly sneaked outside.

  The night was cold and the village was a chaotic cacophony of dreams, wishes, desires, and nightmares. As her people were asleep, their souls opened up and their feelings lay bared, drifting through the universe at an unimaginable speed, before they would return with their first blink, heavy with memories that would fade quickly in the light of day.

  Eugenia walked through the anarchy of the villagers’ dreamscapes as if through a fog. Sometimes she barely saw the ground beneath her feet, so dominant was a desire she accidentally encountered, which made her stop and catch her breath. They felt so much, all of them, and all at once, it was almost impossible to navigate through the accumulated images of their dreams. Some of the dreams happy, untroubled, some of them laden with memories of past mistakes. It took her nearly half an hour to reach the house with the number twenty-three painted on it.

  The door was unlocked, but once inside it took her a long time to find John through the nightmare she stumbled into. Fearsome beasts lurked in it. Malicious creatures that devoured everything. The horror she felt was real, even though the danger wasn’t; the creatures weren’t there anymore, but their shadows never left.

  John was on the sofa, entangled in slumber, rolled up in a woollen blanket. Lying in the only ray of moonlight that shone through the window. He snored.

  She knelt down beside him to shake his shoulder. “Listen,” she whispered urgently. “It’s my fault.”

  No reaction. John simply slept on.

  “I need to do something. John. Listen.”

  At last one eyelid snapped open. He made a growling sound, then gave a sigh. “Crazy girl.” He said it as if it was the answer to every imaginable suffering in the universe. The eye closed again.

  “Listen. John.”

  “Go away.”

  “It’s my fault!”

  “There’s no fault,” he replied drowsily, already slipping back into sleep, “only fate.”

  But Eugenia insisted. Not only because she felt she had to stop him from resuming his nightmare, but also because she needed an answer. “Do you really need the water in the river?”

  This time he opened both eyes, more slowly than she thought was even possible. “You came here in the middle of the night to ask me that?” he mumbled with a bleak voice. She nodded. He blinked.

  “Yes. We need the river. Now sleep.” With that he closed his eyes. He stret
ched out an arm, raising one corner of the blanket like an invitation. When she didn’t react, he grumbled impatiently, prompting her to scurry under the cover with him. She felt his arm wrap around her waist and his body rearrange itself around hers. The warmth of the blanket and his body made her realize how cold it was outside. Her body gave an involuntary shiver. His arms tightened around her.

  “Your voice sounds funny when you’ve just woken up.”

  “Go to sleep.”

  “You have no bed?”

  “Shush.”

  “I think it’s my fault the water disappeared.”

  “If you don’t shut your mouth right now, I will seal it for you.”

  She chuckled. “A mouth cannot be seal—” but he stopped her mid-sentence by placing a finger over her lips.

  His breath was scorching her skin. He rasped into her ear, “One more word out of you, woman, and I cannot be held responsible for my actions anymore.”

  She froze momentarily. Then she turned her body around in his arms so she was facing him. His eyes were open, all traces of sleepiness gone. He looked dangerous like this. For a fleeting moment she wished she could feel his heartbeat again. But it was impossible to make out anything other than her own heart that pumped blood through her body in a deafening frenzy, drowning out every other sound. Yet there was something she needed him to understand right now. Because if she didn’t tell him, she feared she might burst and this planet with her.

  With solemn gravity she whispered, “You are sleeping with your clothes on.”

  He groaned. Suddenly his lips were on hers and every river on the planet seeped away into meaninglessness.

  * * * *

  Chapter 29: 183

  When she was breathless from the kiss, John sat them upright. In the dimly lit living room, sharing one blanket, they huddled close together for comfort. Sleeping was not an option anymore, so he made Eugenia tell him everything she knew about her life.