A House Divided: Book 3 of The Of Sudden Origin Saga Page 2

  In Ciudad Victoria, the royal entourage had settled into a ruined mansion that overlooked the valley below. Mary, the one he fucked most often, watched Paul step away from their meal and observe their young son gobble up a rat. The child was learning fast; the furry little creature had come against its will to the child’s calling. The fat rodent squeaked in terror, followed by anguish as the toddler used its new teeth to playfully bite off the legs first before taking a huge chunk of the belly. The family laughed together with the pleasure of mentally sharing the animal’s fate.

  Mary was more cunning than the other disciples, Peter, John and Simon, and enjoyed the advantage that being female had to offer Paul. Though all of The Five fornicated with each other — and anyone else they chose — at any given time, only Mary could give Paul a child of the Five. She had already given him one boy. Now, though she wasn’t yet showing, she knew she carried another, and she enjoyed sharing her thoughts with it. At that very moment she was conveying to her unborn child the pleasure that its sibling was taking from feasting on the screaming rat.

  Mary laughed with prideful delight as her child began to slowly bite the head off the little twitching beast. Their son’s six month-old teeth were exquisitely sharp and capable of surgical precision. Already mentally advanced, the boy allowed the satisfaction of being patient to be part of his meal, absorbing the terror and squealing of the creature as he slowly bit down and savored the blood on his tongue. It instantly brought the bloodlust up in Mary and her face flushed with lecherous desire for her mate. Paul also felt his heart pound with the thrill of the kill. He had reclined on a rotting chaise lounge with a fierce erection before him. Suddenly ravenous, he called out to one of the small birds that he mentally kept close. The creature flitted to his outstretched finger and gently landed, its head cocked, its large black eyes looking for further instruction. Paul opened his mouth and the bird flew right past the rows of bright white daggers that closed around it — a soft crunching sound signaled its end.

  Mary watched a smear of blood paint Paul’s lips, and she scrambled up on top of him, mounting his erection and licking the blood off his mouth.

  Only a few feet away, the meal, laying naked on the dining table to their right, was forced to watch. Her name was Allison. She was twenty-eight, originally from Nebraska. She had just graduated from high school and was headed to the University of Michigan when Omega happened. She’d been caught up in the flood of refugees who’d headed toward Mexico, and made it as far as Odessa Texas before falling in with a group of survivalists; the group making a successful stand in the foothills to the south. For years she’d lived in relative communal safety until they were discovered by a hunting group of Chosen. While living among the survivalists, she found a mate named Tom, a gentle man who’d been an auto-mechanic in a small Oklahoma town she couldn’t remember the name of. As a slave of the Chosen, Tom had died the year before. He had broken his femur when a tree he’d been felling twisted wildly away from its partially severed trunk. As was the way of the Chosen if a slave became incapacitated, even with an injury that would likely heal, that slave went on that night’s dinner menu. Now, laying naked on a table, her light skin turning bright red under the noonday sun, she found it odd that she thought of Tom that way — not as a boyfriend, nor husband, but a mate. She’d never really fallen in love with him. It was a relationship of convenience and survival. They had each other’s backs. They’d worked their land, kept a home, and kept each other company. She was very careful about pregnancies. They never had much sex anyway, the practical elements of the relationship taking charge. Their’s had been a small community, which had nevertheless grown by twenty-four children before their discovery and capture. During their years in isolation, her community had worked hard to keep the culture and values of America in the forefront of their lives. There had been no fallback to a more primitive behavior, no embrace of a darker survivalist method — no Lord of the Flies. There was a fight now and then, but never too harsh, certainly never a murder. Democracy, or a form of it, had prevailed. As the creature comforts of a modern world faded away, life was tricky, and at times, downright hard. Many (mostly the elderly and the young) died from the harsh elements and the lack of medicine. Life became very Nineteenth-Century-like, but it was good; it was honest; it had purpose, and Allison had been happy.

  When the Chosen came, all forty-seven survivors where caught without a shot being fired. They were marched into Mexico and beyond. She was forced to lay with human man after human man as a form of breeding stock. As the years passed, she’d had two children and several miscarriages — her children taken away as soon as they were weaned. Still, unlike many of her companions, Allison never fell into depression. At times she was terribly distraught; having her babies taken away was like having pieces of her heart ripped out, but she survived. She would escape. It was always on her mind — everyone’s minds. Through hubris the Chosen allowed her this notion, allowed all of their captives this notion. The Chosen knew that their power over their prey made escape impossible. That’d been proven wrong when the Americans in the Navy destroyer had shown up and disrupted the lock that the monsters had on them. For nearly a month, she and some fellow escapees had lived off the land, reveling in the freedom from constant mind-control and the horror that was death by being eaten alive. It ended when they were swept up in a massive hunt. That didn’t stop the captives from continuing to search for opportunities to runaway. Outside of their labors, it was their primary focus and pastime.

  Allison’s final plan for escape, for freedom, was dashed when she stumbled badly on the march to Ciudad Victoria. Her fall into a short culvert resulted in her spraining her ankle so badly that she was unable to put weight on it. Though the humans around her where more than capable of taping her up and helping her along, they were forbidden from doing so; not through the medicinal ignorance of the Chosen, but rather, that any such injury was relegated to chance and was therefore part of a ruthlessly efficient and egalitarian lottery system. The Chosen liked their human meals. They preferred that they were delivered by the hand of The Lamb.

  As Allison lay paralyzed on the table, the Chosen guard played mental games with her, alternately enhancing the pain of her badly sprained ankle or relieving it, whichever his mind deemed pleasant. Now, he shifted from the ankle to her freshly stripped fingers, replaying for her his own point of view as Paul had shredded the meat off with his teeth, leaving bone and tendon protruding in a ghastly claw. This was interrupted by the passion of the two rulers — who were violently screwing each other only a few feet away. Their rutting spilled into her mind, mixing the taste and grunts and sensations they were experiencing with her own, and leaving her feeling deep revulsion. To cap it off, her head was turned and her eyes forced open so that she couldn’t escape watching the masochistic display — the creatures scratching and slapping, as they ground onto each other.

  When Paul and Mary finished, they playfully pinched and scratched some more until the female’s stomach growled. Then as one, their attention turned back to Allison. She felt their hunger, and though she couldn’t cry, inside she wept with terror.

  Paul dismissed the guard as he and Mary, their sex organs still pulsing with heat, stepped to the table, sat, and said grace. Allison felt a sensation of tugging on her legs as the muscle was carefully removed. Her tears poured freely as the toddler climbed up next to her head and stared down into her eyes. It joined its parents in her mind as they cast about for her feelings, adding an element of raw animal to the mix. She tried hard to not give them the benefit of her fear or worse, her despair. With a will she didn’t realize she had, she thought instead about her youth, her family, her mother, father, brother, and the vacations they’d enjoyed together. She allowed her mind to drift off to better times, when the Earth as she knew it was whole, her life a safe and happy one.

  She was startled when Paul, once again spoke aloud to her. “Where is The Lamb in your memories? What of the Lamb?”

  Sh
e didn’t mean to switch channels in her mind, but the mere suggestion placed her in church. Her’s had been a regular Sunday church family. Allison sang with her mother in the choir. Her memories filled with the sound of hymns that she hadn’t sung for so very many years. As the songs soared through her mind, her heart and soul fixed themselves on the large simple wooden cross that adorned the space behind the pulpit. Cottonwoods grew outside the picture window beyond the cross. The sun shown on the bright green leaves and a gentle breeze often made them shiver, as if an invisible hand was present outside the glass.

  Paul spoke aloud again. “Yes, I feel The Lamb now.”

  Mary said, “This is a blessed meal.”

  Allison found her near dream-state broken as her eyes focused once more on her actual surroundings. Paul chewed slowly on a piece of her bright red flesh and offered her a gentle sharp toothed smile.

  He said, “You are delicious, Allison. Thank you. The Lamb’s blessings be upon you.”

  CHAPTER TWO

  1 Year Later

  Dean stepped out of the beach club and crunched his toes into the soft sugar sand. The pre-sunrise sky had a pink hue that was made more brilliant as it reflected off the gently moving turquoise sea. As he stretched, arching his back, interlacing his fingers and raising his arms until they were almost even with his tan shoulder blades, he thought, I’ll never get bored with this sight. Letting go of the stretch, he breathed in deeply and sighed with satisfaction. He would take one more plunge and enjoy the luxurious feeling of the soft warm water.

  Norman’s Cay sits at the northern end of the Exuma chain of the Bahamas. Its varied history includes attempted development for wealthy landowners, a small way station for cruisers, a dramatic role as a Sodom and Gomorrah-like haven and distribution center for a Colombian drug lord, and then a mostly deserted stretch of sand, scrub, and beauty. But for a landing strip and a small bar and inn, the island had been left to nature’s whims. During Omega all of that had changed. Like all islands around the world, anyone who could get to one tried. The false hope of an isolated island was summed up for Dean and his fellow travelers when they were greeted by thousands of bleached bones as they had set anchor. Rather than being a haven, the island had become a trap. It only took one case of Cain’s to spread the disease island-wide. Once killed or converted to monsters, the Fiends ultimately cannibalized each other to the last; the creature madly staring at the abyss and starving to death. The few puckish children left behind fared little better, ultimately starving as well, their odd bone structures mixed with the rest. The reef sharks and the rays, the barracuda and visiting herons, bore witness to the violent events and went on about their business.

  Dean and Eliza, along with Dean’s son, Billy, the Shoreman Gallagher, Dean’s shipmates Sanders, Cookie, and Maggie, along with Brandy the Arizona girl, the Nicaraguan boy Ricardo, and the Fiend children twins Hansel and Gretel, had bypassed the largest islands as they worked their way north from Nicaragua. The pucks were more than tuned to the Chosen now and could feel each colony they passed. Only the very smallest islands were free of their isolated settlements. When the weather had turned back toward the frozen mean, Dean decided they would have to stop and wait things out until the next short summer gave them a window to go home. They needed an island that was too small to support a Chosen population, but large enough to provide what a clever human, or ten, could make do with. Norman’s Cay fit the bill.

  Now, as the approaching summer sun made the dark water glow ever more brightly, Dean allowed himself to float in its languid embrace and stare at the still purple sky. There was a time when contrails during the day and satellites by night marked the heavens with constant human activity. No more. As the one-time Navy SEAL-then-whaleboat-captain pondered their absence, he considered the time when the first modern humans stared at it. Dean decided that he didn’t miss the ever-shifting graffiti that was humanity’s etching of the sky.

  He heard feet splash at the water’s edge and allowed his gaze to shift back toward the shore. Eliza walked slowly toward him, naked and tan. Her hair was long, her legs slender and steady with confidence.

  “Good morning,” she said as she let her body glide into the gentle surf. She swam a few strokes to slide up next to him, wrapped her arms around his waist and gave him a peck on the lips. Standing in the shallow water, she let her arms cradle him, easing his effort at floating.

  “Good morning.”

  “Billy went fishing. I heard him head out a half-hour ago.”

  “Heard him too.”

  He let his hand rise up and gently cradle her cheek. She kissed his palm. “I don’t want to go.”

  “Me neither.”

  “So let’s stay.”

  A slightly pained smile crossed his lips. They had been playing this game for a month, but the month was over. Today was the day that they had agreed to move on. The situation was quite clear. Hansel and Gretel had received the message along the way. The Chosen were going to finish the job. The people up north had no idea what was coming for them. Maggie and Cookie would stay. They had become a couple; they would look after the children, Ricardo and Brandy.

  “We’ll come back,” he said, his effort at conviction not terribly convincing.

  Not to be deterred, Eliza held his face to look into his eyes. “Do you promise?”

  He did. Every time.

  The castaways had taken up separate residences on the island, meeting twice a week for “family dinner”. Sanders had restored the presidential cottage at the island’s sole resort. The place had been almost new when the world went to shit, and though the weather had been hard on the building, the handy old sailor managed to set himself up pretty well. His suitcase, packed with the abandoned clothes of dead men, sat by the door. While sipping some tea made from rugged little berries, he stood in the lanai and looked at the spectacular view one last time. He never tired of the vista; he could sit in his lounge chair or swing in the hammock for hours and take in the sight. He sighed and set the cup on an Indonesian teak table. For the third time that morning, he felt his belt for his multi-tool nestled snuggly in its pouch, then turned for his bag.

  He met Gallagher, the other resident at the resort, and the two of them walked over to the dock where the Nicaraguan sloop, Viento, was tied up and provisioned for the trip.

  The Viento had survived a harsh winter. Despite their best efforts to anchor her against the worst of the storms, she had broken free twice. She was beached once with her hatches breached, the interior swamped, much of the fine wood and upholstery destroyed. The second time, she was found wedged within the skeletal remains of a downed DC-3 airplane that had crashed in the lagoon during the island’s stint as a 1980s cocaine empire. Each time, Dean and Sanders had restored her to working condition, scavenging from other wrecks or the homes and resort rooms that had yielded so many comforts to all of them during their eight month stay.

  Cookie, Maggie Tender, Brandy and Ricardo came down to the dock to say bon voyage. Dean had struggled mightily with whether to leave Billy behind. The safety that the island had afforded them seemed like the best option for his son. Billy had outright refused. He didn’t say it, but he’d be damned if he’d be separated from his father again.

  Ultimately, Dean felt the same.

  When the captain and Eliza arrived at the Viento, Billy had already finished cleaning and filleting his morning catch — squeezing limes onto the meat to make a ceviche. The resort had various citrus trees on the grounds, the bounty of which saved them all from the risk of scurvy.

  They had thrown a goodbye party the night before, so the departure was short; the hugs, reassurances, and promises to see each other felt repetitive and perhaps even a bit dishonest. They all knew in their hearts that chance would make a reunion unlikely.

  Gallagher and Sanders hoisted the mainsail while Eliza pushed the bow out. For a brief moment, her foot, as it pushed away from the dock, felt like it was hanging in undetermined space. The rest o
f the passengers felt the same; there was a break in the tether as the capsule left the airlock to drift in the vastness of space. The island that had been their life-support, was suddenly out of reach.

  Dean steered for open ocean. The now separated groups waved to each other. Those on the beach remained rooted to their spots until those on the boat became too distant to make out. Billy was the last to glance back. His heart felt squeezed tight in his chest. Over the last few months, he and Brandy had carried on a young love affair. She had been his first kiss; something that they had worked up to, until on that last night… like moths hovering around a flame, they finally dove in. The feeling of her lips still lingered on his, the shape of her waist and back pulsed on his empty fingertips, and despite cleaning fish that morning, her scent still hung on his clothes. He knew it would hurt to leave. Feeling anything about the girl left him open to pain, but he didn’t regret it. If he died now, at least he would know.

  Dean and Sanders had plotted their course so that once they were outside the Bahamian nation they would stay two hundred miles off the continental shore. Their plan was simple: sail the 1214 miles straight to Nantucket. Only on Nantucket could they be assured that they would be able to safely stay together. From there, they could alert their respective governments to what was coming. Gallagher had demurred at first. He very much wanted to go home, and the prospect of living on an island full of Halflies, any one of which could turn into a Fiend overnight if they didn’t take their medication, seemed rather frightening and depressing. Not to mention that contact with any of them could mean infection for him. He and Billy would have to be isolated. Weighed against this was the prospect of staying on the remote Bahamian island; living his own isolated life, parallel with the cook, his bride and their adopted children seemed worse. Gallagher was a people person. Dean refused to drop him at the Shore so he’d take his chances on Nantucket, and hope to get to the mainland US from there. He was, after all, uninfected. Surely, the US government would consider his candidacy to be taken off the island for his own safety.