Lisica Chapters

Thanks for joining us for the third volume of our Scientist Soap Opera escapist journey to the mysterious island of Lisica! You can find previous episodes in the link above or column on the right. Please don’t forget to subscribe and leave a comment if you enjoy what you find!

Audio for this episode:

32 – Let’s Go For A Run

In Miriam’s dream, her little brother Denny is dying again. He is slowly drowning himself in his tub with pharmaceuticals, just as he did in real life, and she’s on the phone with someone who is there at the house, watching him but unable to stop him. It’s her Nan, or someone’s auld wan, her creaky voice dispassionately narrating how Denny’s face turns bloated and blue and his eyes lose their light. But Miriam is stuck in traffic, helpless, raging against the oppressive modern world, her face a teary mess.

Then a hand grasps her shoulder and shakes her urgently. She reaches for it in gratitude. Oh, praise be. Someone came to rescue him. She grabs the slender forearm and forces herself awake, the grief sliding off her like a shroud.

“It’s Pradeep!” Mandy squeaks, shaking both her and Alonso. Wait. Where is she? Right. This mad island. And Pradeep is…?

“What is it, Mandy?” Miriam glances at Alonso in the halo of white light that Mandy brought. His curls are wild and his beard is coming back in again. He looks ghoulish, and whatever dream he claws himself up from looks even more harrowing than her own.

Their minds veer toward calamity. Mandy would only ever waken them if he had died. But her face splits into a relieved but tired grin. “He’s awake. He’s back. It’s passed.”

Mere moments later, shivering in their base layers, everyone save Jay are crowded in the lantern-lit clean room, surrounding the cot. Pradeep still lies there with Maahjabeen, and they are arguing and giggling at the same time.

“No, I am telling you that I need to get up.”

“And I am telling you that you just spent nearly three days in a coma and need to take these things slow.”

“I am also not very comfortable with everyone looking at me while your arms are around—”

“No, you cannot turn this into one of your panic attacks, Mahbub. Everyone knows we are in love and nobody cares.”

“What do you mean, nobody cares?” Katrina scowls. “We think it’s a fabulous idea.”

“I’m just jealous,” Flavia adds. “But to say I don’t care would be false. You two are my new favorite soap opera.”

Pradeep giggles some more, the anxiety releasing its grip. He has long thought that the anxiety itself is neuronal circuits primarily in his brain but all along his limbs and deep inside his enteric nervous system in his gut as well. Neurons are always seeking out new connections and at some formative point in his development as a boy he learned to build these extremely strong anxiety pathways. They have nearly no off-branches and they only travel one way. If he thought neurological networks could spiral he would say that’s what his did. But he knows it’s more a feedback loop of endless repetition, the same images and feelings and scripts of fragmented condemnation that flit through his head in interminable cycles. But they are fading. His anxiety cannot hold him right now. The love they all share is too clearly demonstrated here to be questioned. And they are all such lovely people too. “No. Seriously. I’m ready, Maahjabeen. Please let me sit up.”

She scowls, just enough for him to see the ferocious creature she can be when she wants. Then she relents. “Yes, fine. But I am watching you.”

Her grip goes slack and he pushes himself up with gasps and groans until he is sitting cross-legged. Maahjabeen kneels beside him, her hand on his arm. Pradeep drinks water from a flask, then nods at everyone watching him silently. “Hello, everyone. Uh. What time is it?”

“3:32 am, the morning of the twenty-first of April.” Esquibel records the time in her notes then turns on her phone’s light. “We are very happy to have you back. How do you feel?”

“Hungry. Very sore. Kind of… restless.” Pradeep giggles again. “You can all go back to bed now. Please.”

“Yes you are sore from all the CPR. Lean forward?” Pradeep does so and Esquibel lifts the back of his shirt. She takes a photo and displays the screen to the others. “No marks. None at all.”

Pradeep frowns. “There were marks back there?”

“In the shape of a little fox.” Mandy draws the figure in space with pinched fingers. “No, really.”

“It was very much,” Alonso pronounces, “the craziest thing.”

“I’ve got a working hypothesis,” Esquibel tells them. “Obviously no natural process would create such a distinct pattern. It was proof of human intent. Someone poisoned you, Pradeep. Attacked you somehow. I think of it like, well, imagine an old hairbrush, but instead of bristles you have fifteen or twenty poisoned needles in the outline of a fox’s head. You bring it to camp and when your target presents the opportunity… whack!”

“Did anything like that happen to you the night of the big feast, sweetie?” Triquet smooths Pradeep’s hair out of his eyes and cups his chin. “Anything you can remember?”

Pradeep is flattered, nearly dazzled by all this attention. “Uh, no. No, I left the party early. The news that there might be others on the island who weren’t villagers… It shocked me. I was sure we were doomed.” His giggle becomes more neurotic. “Any news on that, by the way? Any, I don’t know, Russian paratroopers discovered on the far side of Lisica while I’ve been down? Any…?”

But they all talk him down, with a chorus of soothing words.

“Wait wait wait.” Miriam holds up a hand. “I want to hear more from Esquibel. What kind of poison would that be? Is it one of these plants here? Should we be worried?”

“I do not know.” Esquibel shrugs. “Perhaps we could have a patient interview discussing its effects from an internal point of view, but I do not have any knowledge of a poison or venom that has primary CNS neurotoxicity with the… phlegm or whatever it was that the woman was able to expel. Maybe it is one of the tree-frog or marine invertebrate toxins but that is pretty far outside the literature. I’ve been looking.”

“The… phlegm…?” Pradeep’s smile turns a bit sickly. “That doesn’t sound good. Oh, dear. Have I been gross?”

“No, no…” Maahjabeen presses her head against his shoulder. “You’ve been so strong.”

“Don’t worry, Prad,” Amy tells him. “You’ve been super sick but you’re better now. And we’ll just keep making sure you get better every day.”

“Good advice.” Esquibel takes out a stethoscope. “Now clear out everybody. I need to take another set of readings and our patient needs his rest.”

“Yes. Well. Happy dreams, everyone,” Alonso says. “We can all sleep easy now that we have our dear Pradeep back.”

“Wait.” Pradeep frowns. “Where’s Jay?”

Ξ

In the morning, Esquibel wakes up in Katrina’s arms. The blonde girl blinks sleepily at her when she feels her stir. Esquibel doesn’t remember anyone joining her and Mandy in bed. But somehow she doesn’t mind. It is very comforting. “Oh. Hello.”

Katrina grunts softly. Her voice is a sleepy drawl. “Mandy said I should hold you…” She drifts off and rouses herself again. “Like Maahjabeen holds Pradeep. You need it.”

A sweet tenderness for Mandy fills Esquibel, and Katrina by association. Nothing sexual, just a softness in her heart. Katrina is a lovely girl, no doubt, and Esquibel could imagine all kinds of erotic delights for her to indulge in with her and Mandy, but she is feeling rather monogamous these days. Mandy just satisfies Esquibel so completely she can’t imagine needing anything physically from anyone else, even someone as luscious as this.

So they hold each other for another long sleepy moment. Then finally Esquibel rouses again and checks the time. Nearly 10am. Ai me. How did it get so late? She should go check on her patient. “Thank you so much, Katrina.” She kisses the tip of her sharp nose and pulls her limbs free. “You’re a doll.”

Katrina rolls onto her belly and gives Esquibel a devilish smile. “Don’t you objectify me.”

Esquibel puts on a light layer of tops and bottoms. The air is so mild. She can take her chances with sandals. She exits the cell and the bunker into camp, where Amy is picking shellfish out of a net and Flavia is working on her laptop. After visiting the trenches, Esquibel finds some breakfast—a mug of hot water and a packet of crisps. She should get something more substantial in her later today but she has a lifelong habit of surviving too long on mere handfuls of crap. The wonders of cuisine have never meant much to her.

Finally she makes her way to the clean room to find it shockingly empty. No Pradeep, no Mandy, no Maahjabeen. She curses under her breath. Those damn kids. Where are they? He needs a week of observation before he should even think about leaving his cot.

She exits the clean room to find Triquet climbing out of the sub. “Hello, Doctor Triquet. Anyone see my patient?”

“No, Doc.” Triquet lifts a thick file. “Been sleuthing the morning away. Did you know the lagoon used to be full of sharks when they first got here? Nurse sharks, by the description, although maybe the biologists can tell better. And the Air Force just fished them all out. Didn’t even eat them. In this one report they say how they were more comfortable swimming in the lagoon after that.”

Amy has entered and caught the last half of that statement. “Whaaa-aat? Well, that’s appalling. Here we are wringing our hands over whether or not we can harvest a few handfuls of seaweed and our grandparents were committing wholesale shark slaughter. Great. Let me see that description.”

Triquet hands Amy the report as Esquibel continues her search for Pradeep. She exits the bunker, crosses the camp, and scrambles atop the fallen trunk to scan the beach. There they are, all three of them at the edge of the water, sitting in the sand.

Esquibel climbs down the trunk on the ocean side and crosses the sloping beach to join them. They are watching a whirling cyclone of white birds out on the open ocean. “There you are. What do you think you’re doing out here?”

“Fresh air.” Pradeep looks dramatically better. His color has returned and his eyes are no longer stained black. His cheeks are still hollow from lack of nourishment over the last few days, but he looks otherwise hale and whole. “Look. It’s feeding time. There must be a giant shoal or school of sardines down there.”

“Fins!” Maahjabeen points at a line of small hooked black fins breaking the surface of the water on the far side of the breakers. “Too small for orcas. Pacific porpoises. So many!” And following them in the air is a line of brown pelicans, thirty or forty strong.

But Esquibel sees enough of the ocean’s wonders aboard ship. She lifts Pradeep’s wrist and finds his pulse. “You have been very sick and we don’t know if there might be a relapse. You had…” But his pulse is quite strong and balanced, even better than her own. She shakes her head. “I am someone who often prescribes some time outdoors to my patients but this is just too soon.”

“I couldn’t be in that bloody plastic box any longer.” Pradeep realizes how this must sound to Esquibel and quickly amends it. “I mean, I am sure it is a snug and proper working environment for you, quite lovely, but I have just spent too long…”

Esquibel pats his hand. “It is fine. I get cabin fever too. But you cannot make these decisions without consulting your doctor first.” She wheels on the girl beside her. “Mandy.”

Mandy shrugs. “Yeah, I made the call. I couldn’t wake you up. You two looked so cute sleeping there.”

Esquibel frowns at Mandy, wondering what her game is. But she only gets a playful glance in return. Well. More to figure out there later. “I think you should come back anyway. You are painfully thin, my good fellow. Have you no appetite?”

“It’s true. I’m starving. I just needed to see the sea.”

“And, as I was just telling them before we were so rudely interrupted…” Mandy stands, pulling Maahjabeen to her feet. “There’s another storm coming. I can just feel it.”

“Feel it?” Esquibel takes Mandy’s hand and rises, dusting sand off. “Now you are becoming one of the mystics?”

“No! I’m just able to see what’s there. Finally. I can just tell now, even without my instruments… I can smell it on the wind. I’ve been forced to use other tools, like older tools, and—”

“You’re a pattern-seeking primate,” Pradeep interjects.

“Exactly. And I’ve been here long enough to see the patterns.”

Esquibel scans the horizon. It looks like it always does, gray and endless. “I don’t see any storm coming.”

Mandy points at the bulk of the island behind them. “That’s why I think it’s coming from the north. Come on. Let’s get back before it surprises us.”

And just as Mandy predicted, as the four of them enter camp a few minutes later, a swirling wind from above the clifftops carries dark clouds with fat raindrops that hit their tarps with flat slaps.

Everyone withdraws into the bunker. Mandy finds Amy. “Hey! I’ve been thinking more about your idea. And look! It’s raining! Now we can fill the elevator shaft up even faster!”

Amy nods. “Right. How wet do you think this storm might be?”

Mandy shrugs. “No clue. But it started well. Lots of moisture in this front with these big drops. And now it’s really pouring! If we can get, like that reservoir, you know wherever that pipe is draining from? If it fills all the way up then like a ton of water can flood the shaft, and maybe we can fill it up in just an hour or two.”

“Should we go down now? Build the raft? Stop up the tunnel?”

“Now? Ehh…” As eager as Mandy is she needs to think this all the way through. Her mouth opens then closes again.

“I know. It’s a one-way ticket. And if we have second thoughts there’s nothing we can do but wait till we get to the top.”

“Maybe we wait, until right at the end of the storm? It’s not like the shaft will fill up with rain falling from the sky. It’s all the other water that’s been building up in the other chambers.”

“Yeah. It’s the drainage. So the more it rains the better and then over the next couple days after that is when the water will flow the heaviest. So we keep waiting?”

“I know you want to find Jay.” Mandy squeezes Amy’s hand. “I want to find him too. We just have to choose the right time. I’ll figure out all I can about this storm and then we’ll get started.”

“Wait! Here is the guy I’ve been waiting to have up and ready for this idea. He can really help. Pradeep.” Amy pulls him out of an intimate conversation with Maahjabeen. “Listen. I need your brain for this. Mandy and I have an idea to flood the elevator shaft in the tunnels so we can ride on a raft up to the top. Back when she lit it on fire you came up with some equations…”

Pradeep shakes his head, as if he hadn’t heard Amy clearly. “Wait, you want to what?”

Esquibel exclaims in wordless exasperation and slaps herself in the forehead with an open palm. “Are you people trying to kill yourselves? I mean, honestly.”

Ξ

“So my mom was a hippie and my dad was a Marine.” Jay walks through the understory of a beautiful glade, the first time he’s been above-ground in two and a half days. Jidadaa walks beside him, her long athletic strides signaling a confidence in this place, an expectation of security and safety. So he tries to relax and answer her many questions. Her English is surprisingly good. She just doesn’t know what anything actually means.

“Wait, Jay. What is…?”

“A hippie?”

“…a Marine? She marries the water? The sea?” Her accent is so cute, hard on the r’s, with almost a liquid sound in her mouth. But when she speaks any of the Lisican words the guttural consonants in the back of her throat sound like a car crash.

Jay laughs, his hands trailing over the soft branches of a young madrone. “No! Ha. A Marine is, uh, a kind of soldier. They live on ships. Well they used to, historically. Anyway, I never met the dude. He took off when I was still being born in the hospital. It was just me and ma. Kind of like… I mean… Kula’s your mom, yeah?”

Jidadaa nods at him. “Yass. She is outcast.”

Jay nods back, slipping down a game trail to the steep bank of a stream. He lifts rocks, hunting crawdads. She joins him, crouched easily at the edge of the water, her brown hair falling in a wave to the water. “So… Your dad taught you English?”

She shakes her head no. “No. Not dad. Chief Master Sergeant Chilton Kincaid of the USAF of America.”

“Oh. He wasn’t your dad, though?”

“Kula has many men.”

“Ohh.” More of their story comes into focus. An awkward silence ensues. Now Jay feels sorry for her. There was evidently just one prostitute on Lisica and she had many customers. And now the islanders want nothing to do with her. Or her daughter. He tries to think of something neutral to say. “So he never taught you about the Marines? Yeah, sounds about right. The Air Force are all a bunch of stuck-up pricks, for sure.”

“You do not talk like him.” Jidadaa’s hand twitches, fast as lightning, and she snatches up a red and brown crawdad, its plated tail curling around her thumb. With a giggle she pops its head off with a practiced flick and slurps on the body while it is still kicking.

“Whoa. Hardcore. Alright.” Jay’s belly growls. He finds a silvery fingerling, probably some trout, in the mud nearby and grabs at it, but it slips out from between his fingers.

Jidadaa laughs at him, then cocks her head and looks up at the canopy. “Egg season. Good to climb.”

“Yeah. April. Definitely the late days of egg time. What we got here? Like, uh, pheasant? Grouse? Quail?”

“Dáax’. Big bird. Fat.”

“Fat is good.” They stand and scramble back up the slope to scan the treetops, seeking movement. Gray mice run rampant across the boughs. Songbirds flit through the eaves. What a pretty day. A pretty place. Jay knows from his view out the gun emplacement’s port that they are on the east side of the island somewhere. Fine living here. If it’s anything like the Hawaiian Islands the east side is wet with tons of storms and rough surf while the west side is dry with big reefs and killer waves. But there’s no reason to think that necessarily applies here. Different ocean and air currents up here. Still. He visualizes building a cool little treehouse and hanging solar panels in the trees. He could live here no problem. Him and these ladies. He chuckles. At least until those hunters track him down.

Jidadaa selects a madrone and scales its lower branches with ease. She is barefoot and her feet seem too big and wide for her size. Probably just from so much use. Her hands are big too, strong and stained dark.

She levers herself up into a high fork in the branches and an outraged squawk greets her. Jidadaa cries out, flapping her free hand, trying to scare the mother hen off the nest. It is a big grouse, dun and off-white, stubbornly defending what is hers. The girl is able to slip a hand in and snare a single egg before retreating, her own blood running down her forearm.

Jidadaa giggles as she drops back to earth, proudly handing Jay the egg. He grabs her arm to inspect her wound.

“Oh, you got sliced pretty—” Then he falls silent. She has gone utterly still the instant he grabbed her. He gently releases her arm and takes a step back. “Sorry, dude. I shouldn’t have just grabbed you like that. That wasn’t…” But the feline stare she gives him robs him of words. Best if he just doesn’t say another thing.

They head back to the hidden manhole that leads to Kula’s underground garden. Jay inspects the egg. Nice size, a bit bigger than a chicken egg, pale blue. Now just add a bagel and some avocado and maybe a bit of salsa then ya boi is livin’ large.

Kula waits for them. She has harvested a salad of her baby greens. She also has old onions and garlic in storage. Is that how her transactions occurred? She led the men to her mattress and they’d leave her some fruit or vegetable seeds? Hoodies and Reeboks? Better than money, for sure, but still. It’s like some appalling fairy tale.

Kula coos over the size of the egg and protests when he tries to talk about sharing it. She pushes it onto the carved plank that serves as Jay’s plate. “No no no. Jay and Jay.” But it’s clear she and Jidadaa expect him to slurp it down raw. And he will, if he has to, but he just really misses hot food.

“Any chance… we can build a fire?”

Kula makes a face, then silently leads him to a pile of garbage beside the edge of the emplacement’s curving gunport. Beneath leaf litter and trash he can make out the remains of a propane stove. It is a dilapidated mess. The canisters are empty. The pan still has a black crust of carbon from whatever meal they cooked on it last. It has quite obviously been years.

“Aw, man. You guys been eating cold this whole time?”

“Not cold, no no,” Kula says, leading him to another spot along the curving view, where a blackened campfire still glows with ruby embers. He recalls that she was smoking a fat joint when he first arrived. She must have gotten the fire from somewhere. Here.

“Right! Excellent. Check it out. Uh… Here.” Jay still holds the neglected pan. With a twig he scrapes it clean and then uses his sleeve to finish the job. Then he places it as levelly as he can on the coals. He cracks the egg onto the pan and they stare at the golden yolk, waiting for the pan to heat up enough to cook it. Soon the whites of the egg are turning milky and the edges are crackling. Jay’s mouth waters in anticipation. “Aw, yiss. This is gonna be so fucking good.”

When they sit again he prevails upon both of them to try the cooked egg. Kula chortles with pleasure, slurping on it, but Jidadaa is uncertain. The consistency is too unfamiliar to her. But her mother pokes fun at her in a guttural dialect that Jay can’t follow at all. Blushing, Jidadaa swallows a mouthful and bestows a weak smile on Jay.

“Yeah, you’re right. Needs butter. But you don’t got to act like I poisoned you. Okay, let’s talk. So, like, I’ve got a whole crew back on the beach. Really solid folks. You’ll love them. And we’ve all got a metric fuck-ton of questions. Maybe you can answer? I mean, we’re just a bunch of scientists and researchers and we’ve been here like a month and we can’t figure anything out, know what I’m saying? There’s all these mysteries here. Like: you know the outside world doesn’t even know Lisica exists, right?” As soon as he says it, he regrets it. They look stunned. Aw, man. It isn’t his job to lay such a heavy trip on them. They need like an anthropologist for this shit. They need a therapist is what they need.

Jay has to start slower. “So. Wait. How long have there been people on the island?”

Kula and Jidadaa confer. “Kula is fourteenth mother.”

“Ah. Aha.” Jay doesn’t know what that means. But then it clicks. “Oh, you mean generations? Like, uh, you’re fifteen? And her mom was thirteen? And her mom’s mom was twelve?”

“I am not fifteenth mother until I have baby.”

“Got it. So, like twenty years per generation… Y’all have been here like three hundred years?”

They just frown at him. In the awkward silence he eats one platter of salad, then another. His appetite is ravenous. The egg is long gone. Finally he stops, afraid that he’s eating into their stores. Kula sure as shit didn’t expect some giant American to suddenly show up and eat her out of house and home. They might even be expecting him to provide some new seedlings or something. Shit. Jay pushes his plate away, still hungry. He’s got to be careful here.

“Wait. I know. Dessert.” Jay takes out his kit and grinds a blend of his Kush with a touch of the Jack. He rolls a fat joint and hands it to Kula, who chatters at it, marveling in her own language at how thin the papers are and how neat the package. “You got to hit this slow, mama. Okay? Tell me you understand. This shit is fire. It will knock you on your ass.”

Jidadaa says something cautionary to Kula, who looks at Jay with lidded eyes, suddenly wary.

“No, it ain’t dangerous. Just take one puff. A little one.” He pulls it from her hands and lights it with his disposable orange Bic. She and Jidadaa both exclaim over the lighter even more than the joint. He instantly realizes how much it could revolutionize their lives, at least until it runs out of fuel. “Yeah. Sure. I got a spare with me and more of them back at camp. Here.” He holds out the lighter and bows his head, smiling as he offers it as a gift.

Kula marvels at it. Jidadaa frowns, a little spooked, and keeps her distance.

After Jay teaches Kula how to use the lighter he passes her the lit joint. She puffs it like a cigar. “No no no!” He pulls at her arm, laughing. “New weed. Big weed! Kula’s head goes boom!” And he mimes her mind getting blown.

But Kula just giggles, until she rolls backward onto the floor and loses her balance. She laughs louder, kicking her feet up.

Jidadaa frowns at her mother, then at Jay. He doesn’t offer the joint to the daughter. Her vibe is all wrong for it. But she doesn’t look upset with him, just disappointed in her mom. Jay takes a drag and asks, “So what’s the deal here? Lisica used to be some kind of… like secret military base then what?”

Jidadaa shrugs. “The men leave ten years.” She holds up all her fingers. Still eating, she has the appetite of a bird, pecking through her salad with nimble fingertips for choice morsels.

“Ten years? Wow. That’s a long time to be alone. And you haven’t seen anyone that whole time?”

“We see men.”

Jay’s eye twitches. “Okay. What does that mean? So the men are gone but you still see men?”

Jidadaa talks to Kula in their pidgin, low and fast. They have a long conversation, perhaps a bit of an argument, and then finally reach an agreement, echoing each other’s phrases.

Kula turns to him. “Yes and yes.”

“Cool. The men are gone. You still see men. I like it. Kinda surreal for sure. And what’s the deal with all the villages? Kula, you don’t like them?”

“Village? Which village?” Jidadaa asks. “Village village village.” She counts off three with her fingers. Then, touching the tip of her thumb like the other Lisicans do, she points at various corners of the island and counts off, “íx̱t’, íx̱t’, yéik deiyí.”

“Huh.” Jay nods emphatically, as if he understands. “So, you’re saying there’s three villages and… then… a whole bunch of other stuff. Got it. Well we’ve only found two villages yet, unless those kids covered in pollen were from the third. You know about that? I saw four kids in the field beside the river with their faces just totally covered in pollen? Thought I was losing my mind.”

Kula asks Jidadaa what he means. She does her best to translate and he waits. Kula’s face falls. She covers her mouth with a hand. She whispers something.

“When? Where did you see the gold childs?” Jidadaa is worried.

“Uhh… Just on the, well, let’s see, that’s the east side of the river in that valley down in the south. You know the one, where the two villages won’t cross it or look at each other? So just after I got across it, they were in the meadow. Super trippy. Fully covered their faces with masks. And then the hunters came and…”

But Kula and Jidadaa have stopped listening to him. They are engaged in an anxious conference, counting days.

“Aw, shit. What is it? What did I do wrong?”

“The golden childs…” Jidadaa frowns. “We do not see them. My whole life we do not see. Now they are here.”

“Wow. First time in twenty years? You’re like, what, twenty? I’m just guessing. Which I’ve been told back home I should really stop doing with the ladies. I don’t know if you have any of the same… I mean… conventions.” Jay flounders. “But like it’s been a while. Got it. So… Why? Why has it been so long? Just not any good pollen season for the last couple decades or…?”

“The golden childs. Bring death. Destruct.” Jidadaa has trouble finding the words. “Old time over. New time begin.”

“End of an era. Got it. That’s wacky. And I saw it happen. Wow. Part of history here. That’s awesome. Yeah, lots of things are about to change. You know they’re about to open this whole island up to…? Yeah. There’s no way you know that. Well, guess what? The men are coming back. A whole bunch of men. Probably heaps and heaps of men. But hopefully they’ll, uh, be nicer this time.” Jay’s words fade out. He has no reason to be optimistic about that. “Oh, wait. End of an era? Because of us? Is it because we’re here?”

“Jay cross river.”

“Yeah. Had to see what was on the rest of the island.”

But Jidadaa only stares at him.

“Oh, fuck! You’re saying I brought about the end of the era? That it was me crossing the river that did it? But—but no…!” He falls back, shocked to have such an effect on the island. They got to understand. “I was just… I mean, my entire fucking job here is to crawl all over the island just like picking up bugs and mushrooms. Right? I had to get across the river if I was going to see the rest of the island.” But they still only regard him in silence. “So, uh, what kind of era are we talking about?”

Jidadaa grins fiercely, her eyes flaring with sudden vengeance. It transforms her from a waif into a fanatic. “The end of Lisica.”

Ξ

“Jay is really who you want for fishing and hunting. I’m really more of a molecular gastronomy guy.” Pradeep looks up from his laptop at the spear and net Amy and Flavia have fashioned. The rain has stopped for a bit and many of them have taken the opportunity to escape the bunker. Some to work on their datasets, like Pradeep. Others, to fashion fishing gear.

“Well he is not here.” Flavia thrusts the spear at him. It is a softwood branch from a bay tree as long as his arm and whittled to a point. “And now that I’ve tasted the fish here, I need more. The big purple one was best. It tastes like steak. I could not believe.”

“Yeah, I can come out on the water with you, Prad.” Amy hoists her net, made from twine and twigs. “I just thought the activity might do you good. Or maybe you’d prefer to get out with your girlfriend instead.”

“Ai, don’t call her that!” He drops the spear and claps his hands over his ears. “It is… excruciating… knowing that everyone follows my personal life this much.”

“Yeah, sorry, champ. But this is what love feels like.” Amy claps him on the shoulder. “Familial love. It’s all support. I mean, you’re welcome to be as private as you want, but we all live together and we all love each other so… better get used to it.”

Pradeep snaps his fingers. “I know! Katrina brought a wetsuit.” He escapes his discomfort by grabbing the spear and wheeling away, crossing to the bunker. “Spear fishing would be perfect for her. It’s probably like a bloody class in Australian high school. Oh, Katrina?” Pradeep opens the door and escapes inside.

Amy shares a smile with Flavia. “Well. At least I can get you some clams with this contraption. Will that be good enough?”

“Ramen con Vongole,” Flavia shrugs. “It is a new dish, but sounds promising. We just need white wine.”

“That’d be super yummy. I didn’t know you were so interested,” Amy ventures, “in helping with the food.”

“Well, I am done for the time being, you know, with my work on Plexity. Or I am just waiting for someone to break the next thing. And I can’t get any more data for Mandy until she puts her new weather station up on the cliffs. So, when I got hungry, I thought about how I might eat better.”

“Don’t tell Alonso or he’ll have you grab a reader.”

“I told him I would take a turn and he told me to ask Miriam. She said later. So now I am on break. And I make fish spears.”

Amy high-fives Flavia. “Nice spears too. Oh. Here comes the rain again.” They listen to it drumming on the canopy as they hurry into the bunker. “Falling on my head like a memory…”

In the bunker, they find Mandy and Miriam returning from a session with the readers in the creekside understory. They are filthy and cold, striped with white and yellow streaks of fungus. Pradeep is cooing at his phone, reading their results in real time. “Oh my god, do you know how long I’ve been looking for a plasmodial slime mold like this? Fuligo septica but different, I’d bet my life on it. Mandy, you might just get a slime named after you!”

“Oh. Wow. Great!” She tries to marshal enthusiasm and fails. Everyone who hears her valiant attempt laughs.

Triquet catches up her hands. “Aw. Now, whenever I see you, Mandy, I’ll think of a slime mold!”

“Super!” she responds with even less enthusiasm.

The door bangs open and Maahjabeen enters. She is doused and shivering. “Here. Here is your stupid reader, Alonso. It is good they can float. I almost lost it. Then I almost lost my oar trying to get it back. And then I got soaked…” Pradeep fetches a towel and starts scrubbing her before she can even get her clothes off. “Ehhh. Thank you, Mahbub. That feels very nice.”

“Let’s get you into dry clothes.” Pradeep leads her to her cell.

Flavia brings her spear to Katrina at the workstations. “Did Pradeep tell you we need more of those big purple fish for dinner?”

Katrina, reading up on language families, pulls her eyes from her screen and gives Flavia a polite smile. “Um? What’s that, love?”

“He says you have a wetsuit.”

“Yeh? Is that a spear? Spearfishing…? Oh my god, I’m supposed to just swim down and run this thing right through their little fishy bodies, am I? Bloody work, that. Wow. Give me a moment to wrap my head around the idea, will you? I mean, um… Maybe later? I’m not sure anyone will let me outside in the storm anyway.”

“No.” Esquibel crosses her arms. “I won’t.”

Katrina nods her head slowly. “After the storm passes then. Yeh, those reef fish are delish. I guess I can give it a shot when things calm down. I did see Aquaman in the theaters five times, I’ll have you know. Jason Momoa could eat me like a snack.”

Flavia waits for more clarification. When it doesn’t come she looks at Amy. “I think that is a yes. Until then, oh well. I guess we are surviving on more packets of tuna and powdered eggs.”

A crack of thunder in the distance makes them all catch their breaths. The storm is intensifying.

Amy sighs. “Fucking hell. Jay is out there somewhere in that. Hope he’s staying dry.”

“I’m sure he’s safe.” Miriam kisses Amy’s hairline and squeezes her for assurance. “Warm and dry and… living his best life.”

Ξ

Jay sprints screaming down the curving concrete tunnel. His blood is hot and slick, running down his side. He keeps slipping on it, barefoot on concrete. His left hand is pressed against his ribs, where the blade slid, tearing his favorite base layer and opening his skin. He won’t remove his hand, not for love or money. Who knows how much blood he’d see then.

They’re still behind him, far back. He can tell. They’re doing the hunter thing, letting him run himself down while keeping a steady pace, to eventually corner their quarry and kill him. He wonders if they will ask for forgiveness or sing a prayer of thanks like Kalahari tribesmen. Or will they just slaughter him like a goat?

He runs harder. What they don’t fucking know about Jay is that he’s a goddamn monster. He can run all day and into the night. Even with blood loss and like zero adrenaline left. His baseline for fitness has always been the ability to hike ten miles uphill, in the rain, at night, while sick. Apart from his recent troubles with his hand and his ankle he’s got that amount of stamina right now no problem. They want to chase me? Eat my fucking dust.

They had come upon him in his sleep. Three hunters. Jidadaa must have heard them and gasped. The sound woke Jay up and all he saw was a shadow darting toward him. He instinctively rolled away and the spear blade opened up his side. Then he just started kicking, whipping his pack around, tangling them in his bivy. If it had been zipped shut he’d be a dead man but it had been a warm night and he’d worn it like a blanket. One hunter got his spear and legs snared in it, clueless how tough the nylon was. The littlest one beside him danced away.

Jay kicked the shaft of the third one’s spear and its point went wide. That dark figure leapt back. In a sudden hot flash of self-preservation and rage Jay picked up his cot and hurled it at them. The littlest one went down.

Jay knew he couldn’t let them corner him. And he knew that he must be endangering Kula and Jidadaa by staying here a moment longer. He charged in behind the cot and missed by sheer chance a spear thrust from the third. He ran past, out of range, but heard his attacker leap after in close pursuit.

Out the passage and into the garden. But Jay hitched his step and swung around. When the hunter appeared in the passage entrance, Jay juked left like a linebacker, lining him up, then slammed the slight youth against the wall with a piledriver of a tackle.

The kid rolled away, gasping and retching. He wouldn’t be going anywhere for a while. Jay grabbed his fallen spear and threw it out the emplacement’s port. Then he paused. Jidadaa and Kula were still struggling with the others in there. Should he go back? But an unfamiliar voice shouted in fury and Kula cried aloud in despair.

“Run, Jay!” Jidadaa’s voice pierced right through him. He considered shoving this fallen hunter through the gap but didn’t know if he’d fall off the cliff to his death. Jay didn’t know if he was ready for murder, even though they quite obviously were. He was barely awake. This wasn’t even his idea. He’d just run instead.

Now, a timeless stretch later, he’s on the curve, spooling back the klicks he’d climbed through the spiral. It’s got to be a spiral, right? That’s the only way it could go on so long. He’s fine with the dark. There was never any obstruction underfoot, he recollects, except when he got to the junctions. And maybe if he’s lucky he can find another door at one of them he could pop up a hatch and get back above-ground.

Yeah, but then what? He knows where these hunters came from. They tracked him from the bad village. And if he goes back up he might still be in their lands and facing far more than just three young ones. They could get like the whole town after him. And he’s leaving a blood trail. No bueno.

Let’s see. He’s running clockwise down the east side of the island, at this point like probably toward the southeast of the coast near four o’clock. If he could, he’d climb to the top now. He must be close to his friends; they’re just on the other side of a mountain of rock. He can’t make any mistakes here. All he can really do is make this a strict out-and-back. Don’t deviate from his former path. Just hope the hunters didn’t like leave anyone back at the first hatch to the south. Well, only one way to find out.

Jay runs. He loves to run. He’s built for it, all legs and lungs and implacable willpower. A lot of people think he’s flighty, just some silly hophead skating by in life. But you don’t survive Mavericks without being a peak athlete. You don’t survive getting lost in the Sur for eight days when you’re fourteen unless you got something fierce in you. At least that’s what the EMT who found him told him. And he’d always taken it to heart. When shit went down, as it so totally has here in the dark underground, Jay likes his chances against nearly anyone he’s ever met.

So come on, you little fuckers. Let’s go for a run.