Chapter 4 The Sinkhole
The sinkhole.
“The first sample our labs analyzed was actually from the Kraken. He was the first to rise and the first to face a military strike. They managed to rip off one of his giant tentacles. Back then, we knew nothing. Most of us still nurtured the crazy idea that he’d come from space.
That we were being attacked by an extraterrestrial species.
But then the first results came in. His blood was saturated with hemocyanin, a protein that transports oxygen and contains copper instead of iron.
It was the strangest color blue. It might seem alien to you, but we actually have a few species on Earth that share the same particularity.
And one of them had a lot in common with the Kraken: the octopus.
The Kraken had come from the abyss of our planet, not from space.
His genes are the product of life on Earth, as insane as it might sound. ”
STELLAN
“Let’s switch. You need to sleep,” says Alastair.
It’s the middle of the night, and the mountains are dark and quiet.
There used to be so much life in these forests; I’ve seen the documentaries.
Now most of the trees have burned, and the animals are gone.
The wastelands are gaining more ground every year, devouring every corner of what used to be the United States of America.
We could blame the old gods, but this is more our own doing than theirs.
Humans are the origin of climate change.
“I’m fine. I can keep going,” I say.
We’ve been driving for more than a day.
“We’ll be no help to Perri if you crash us into a ravine.”
I frown. “I won’t crash us.”
“Stellan. Stop the truck.”
He’s using his kingly voice and I find myself putting my foot on the break.
The others stop behind us, too. Alastair is watching me with his creepy eyes.
They seem to glow in the dark, reflecting the little light there is.
Unwilling to keep his attention on me, I sigh and get out of the truck to switch seats.
As soon as my feet land in the dust, I aim my flashlight over the cracked road. Perri’s tracks are still visible. I would recognize those anywhere; I changed the tires myself last week. It appears that his journey through the mountains has been uneventful.
I won’t admit it out loud, but as soon as I relax in the passenger’s seat, I realize that Alastair was right. I’m exhausted. I’ve been driving for hours. We wait for his mercenaries to switch seats, too.
“Drink,” he tells me, throwing a bottle of water on my lap.
I glare. He might be my king, but he needs to stop giving me orders. I let the bottle fall to the floor. Alastair laughs quietly.
I settle over the seat and pull the blanket over my lap. I close my eyes, hoping that sleep will find me, even though I know that Perri’s absence makes it impossible. I just can’t relax knowing he might be in danger somewhere.
“How did you two meet?” Alastair asks suddenly.
My eyes shoot open. His attention is on the dark road ahead. There are a lot of potholes and rocks to avoid. It makes our journey extremely slow at night.
“He never told you?” I say.
The King shakes his head. “It never came up. We didn’t get enough time to talk.”
Let me guess, you were too busy fucking like rabbits? I almost say out loud. But I keep it contained. He’s helping me find Perri; I need to keep him on my side. On both our sides.
I’m not a jealous person. At least, not when it concerns Perri. What we share is special and I never felt threatened by anyone. I have all of him, even when sharing him with others. But I’ve always found his tastes in men to be dubious. It makes sharing a little difficult sometimes.
“It’s not really a secret, but Perri doesn’t talk about it often,” I say. “It’s still very traumatic for him.”
“Then you don’t have to tell me,” says the King.
But I decide that I should. If they’re lovers, Alastair needs to know.
If only to avoid hurting or triggering Perri by accident.
One of his lovers once tied him to our bed while I was working in the hangar and left him for an hour alone, thinking it would just make Perri desire him more.
I heard Perri’s screams eventually. By the time I untied him, he was shaking.
Even though he was in our home, some primal part of him expected to end up trapped there forever and die of thirst. I found the man sipping a beer outside and threw him over the rope bridge.
He broke both his legs on impact. He tried to appeal to the King the next week to get us thrown out of the Market.
Alastair took one look at the merchant in his crutches, then at me, and asked, “Why?”
“He deserved it,” I said.
He had just nodded, and that was it. The man left the Market the next day, never to be seen again.
Alastair needs to know what he’s getting into. For Perri’s sake.
“I found him in a sinkhole when he was twelve, and I was fourteen,” I say.
Alastair’s head whips towards me for a second. “A sinkhole?”
I sigh. “It was back in the day when my mothers and I were still nomads. We were crossing the wastelands south of California during a heavy rainstorm. The roads were flooded, and we were trying to find higher ground to save the engine.” It rarely rains in the wastelands.
But when it does, the ground is hard and permeable, making it dangerous when it pours.
“We almost fell into a sinkhole that had taken a good part of the road with it. My mother backed up in a hurry. But just as we were about to go around it, I heard a small voice calling to us.”
Remembering that day, I still get chills. What if I hadn’t heard him and we kept going? What if we had left him to die in that sinkhole?
“Perri,” Alastair says.
I nod slowly, lost in painful memories. “He was standing on the roof of his family’s camper van, half buried in the mud.
He was the only survivor out of five people.
They had all been sucked into the sinkhole and suffocated in the mud and rain.
He had managed to pull his little sister’s body and free the others’ faces from the mud, but they were long gone.
He dug with his bare hands, and his nails were broken and bloody.
It had been five days since they fell into the sinkhole.
Perri spent five days alone with the dead. ”
He had looked so ghostly, standing precariously in the rain and calling to us, his brown hair plastered to his face. And young. So young.
The King doesn’t comment, but his hand tightens on the wheel. There is a ripple of color and bumps on the dark skin of his forearm. The effects of his mutations are often the only indication of his emotions. His skin reacts like that of an octopus.
“We pulled him out with a rope tied to our truck,” I continue.
He was so weak that all he could do was tie the rope around his waist and let himself be pulled out.
“He begged us to get his family’s bodies out, too.
We couldn’t; it was too dangerous. From that day on, I never let him out of my sight for long. ”
Until today.
“We’ll reach him soon,” says Alastair.
“I know.” We have to. “I need to sleep,” I say, dropping my head on the headrest and closing my eyes.
“Thank you for sharing this story with me,” he says.
“Use it well.”
“Or you might push me over a bridge?”
I smile faintly, my eyes still closed. “You’re a mutant; it wouldn’t be enough to hurt you. I would need to push you from the top of one of the Baggers, at least.”
Alastair laughs quietly.
I realize that it might be the most words we have ever exchanged.
Somewhere along the way, I fall asleep.
I’m woken up by Alastair’s hand on my shoulder and his deep voice saying my name. “Stellan.”
I’m immediately wide awake. The truck has stopped.
There is a fallen tree in the middle of the road, blocking the way.
Usually, when there is something on the road in the middle of nowhere, it hasn’t arrived on its own.
I grab for the shotgun on the middle seat, the one I pulled out of my bag earlier.
“Stay in the truck,” the King says. “I can move the tree on my own.”
He relays the order on the radio to the mercenaries behind us.
It’s certainly a trap, but we need to be on our way. In the wastelands, if you want to get somewhere, you have to be ready to get your hands dirty and hold your own.
Alastair gets out of the truck, freeing the handgun on his belt. It’s a beautiful weapon, with a wooden grip and a real silver lining. He’s not wearing his coat. He walks to the fallen tree with not a care in the world.
Shots ring in the night and a bullet takes him right in the chest, followed by a second one. Alastair stays on his feet. I swear and get out of the car, shotgun raised. Another bullet hits the truck just behind me.
“Stellan!” he bellows in warning.
I duck back into the truck just as he pulls his handgun out and starts shooting in the dark.
From the screams that echo in the night, he’s reaching his targets. More gunshots light up the darkness in flashes, but Alastair is not slowed one bit. Soon, his magazine is empty, and he runs out of the truck’s headlights and out of sight.
“Fuck,” I whisper, running after him.
The other two stay in their vehicle. He’s our king. Aren’t we supposed to have his back, mutant or not?
I pull my flashlight out and follow the trail of blue blood. He’s not losing that much, considering the number of bullet wounds he received.
I find him standing over three male bodies.
“Highwaymen,” he tells me, kicking one corpse to roll him on his back. There is a red square sewn into his jacket. “Jude and his mutant might have cut the head, but the wastelands are still crawling with them.”
But without proper leadership, they’re reduced to common bandits.
“Are you okay?” I ask, aiming the flashlight at him. He has a few bullet holes in his white shirt, leaking blue blood.
I’ve lived at the Market long enough to know all the rumors about Alastair the First, but I’ve never seen him bleed with my own eyes before. It’s strange.
“I told you to stay in the truck,” he says, frowning. His skin ripples with color around his cheekbones. He’s annoyed.
“You needed help,” I retort.
“No. I didn’t.”
I glare at him. “Very well. Next time you can die alone for all care.” I walk back to the truck.
I shouldn’t be talking to my King like this. He’s not known to accept disrespect. But I hear him laugh behind my back.
The two mercenaries have found the Highwaymen’s cars a little farther down the road and are looting everything that could be of use. Then they will announce on the merchants’ radio channel that the vehicles are available to scavenge.
Alastair grabs the falling tree with one hand and pulls it out of the road like a giant twig. Fucking mutants have no business being so strong.
I get back in the truck, annoyed. Alastair pulls his shirt off, and I can’t tear my eyes away as he removes the bullets from the wounds on his muscular chest one by one, using his damn fingers and a small knife.
He’s not even cringing from the pain. He then wipes the blood with his shirt before dropping it in the dust. By the time he walks back to the truck to grab another shirt from the back, I swear his wounds have already healed.
I watch him rummage through a bag to find a new shirt. He’s a monster of a man, to say the least. Oliver is tall—most mutants are, from what I’ve heard—but not as muscular. I guess it makes sense. He shares his genes with one of the biggest old gods on Earth.
I feel his eyes on me and look up.
“What?” I ask sharply.
Alastair just smiles again. He’s known to be a ruthless leader and an unrelenting killer. I never knew he could smile. And yet, he’s been doing it a lot.
Not that we’ve ever spent much time together.
He puts a new shirt on and sits behind the wheel once again. But right as we’re about to drive away, Leonard runs to our truck.
“We’ve intercepted a radio signal from a merchant,” he says. “Perri sent a message with the coordinates of his position. Apparently there is a good amount of stuff to scavenge in Silicon Valley. He has blown up the entrance to a secret lab. He’s fine, and he’s found what he’d been looking for.”
Relief hits me like a brick. Perri’s fine. Another day of travel, and we’ll meet halfway. And the AI…
“He has found his AI,” Alastair says, echoing my own thoughts.
Not only an AI, but a robot, too. If what she said was true, she has an artificial body and can move.
Let’s hope she’s as gentle and safe to be around as she pretended to be.