Feral Read online

  “Grab my hand!“ I shouted to him, reaching as far as I could. He struggled toward me and clasped my forearm. I did the same and pulled him toward me.

  “It’s Donovan! Donovan!“ Pritchard choked as the small currents from the retreating barge splashed over his face.

  “Hold on!“ I yelled again, trying to pull him up, but this time I felt his arm pulling away from mine.

  He surfaced once more, fresh gouges covering his face and head, blood spilling from his mouth. “Go, Ryder! Go now!“

  Behind Pritchard I saw rows of teeth lining the long jaw and high-set yellow eyes, but as the water spilled away, the thick, dark hair smoothed over the dog-like, pointed ears and head. My brain wouldn't process the image—not until giant, curved claws grabbed Pritchard, funneling him headfirst as he screamed into the elongated jaws.

  I scrambled back up the rope ladder, but pain shot up my legs as something pulled me hard toward the water. I kicked repeatedly, holding onto the rungs despite feeling the fibers cut and burn into my skin. I finally pulled my legs free, not even sure if I was climbing until I threw myself over the railing. Shots rang out again in the air, and I watched the wake of the barge swallow what used to be Donovan…the beast that just ate Pritchard.

  The barge’s horn sounded, and the crewmen were strapping down the last of their empty pallets. I grabbed the briefcase and squeezed between the closest stacks. Blood pounded in my ears, but I could still hear everything—the incoherent voices on the other side of the barge, the engine working to push away from the dock against the current. All this and I could still hear the wind causing reverberations through the stacks of empty pallets.

  This is shock. It has to be shock. What’s happening? I thought, clutching the briefcase to my chest. “They shot Nyssa,“ I whispered in answer to my own question. “Donovan just turned into some kind of…I don’t even know,“ I added to myself, then quickly pressed my lips into a tight line like that would somehow prevent anyone from hearing what I already said. I closed my eyes to block out the moonlight that somehow still found me even in between the pallets. The voices all started to merge into a droning, undulating hum that was swallowed and muffled by the roll of the ocean underneath us. We’re moving back into deep water, I thought absently, suddenly unable to keep my eyes open as the rock of the current took me under.

  When I opened my eyes again, it was almost sunset. The voices were all gone now, but there were still people on the other side of the barge. I wondered how long I’d been out as a shard of light glinted off the metal number plate on the briefcase, catching my attention. The flood of everything that had happened crashed back into view… Everyone I cared about was gone.

  I pushed the thought back and turned the slots on the number plate at random. I pressed them over and over again, faster and faster, like if I could get to a certain speed, it would block out the sight of Nyssa being shot, or at least the look on Pritchard’s ruined face just before Donovan—no, the thing that used to be Donovan—swallowed him whole. I drove my thumb into the gold number wheel until the plate caved in, shocking me out of the nightmare loop running in my head.

  The briefcase popped open a crack, and for a second I just stared at it. This was the payment case, I remembered, so I was careful to lift the lid in the breeze whipping through the pallet stacks.

  But there were no credit slips inside when I opened it the rest of the way. The inside of the case was lined in a black cushion with a thin black box that had come loose from its strap. I shook my head, confused… This is what Zhang traded for the syringes? I thought, and my stomach sank again remembering them. I pushed the thoughts away. It was a dud. It was a dud…

  I lifted the box from the cushion and turned it on its side, looking for the opening, but I dropped it when smoke started streaming from the corners. The smoke spilled over the black cushion lining the case, pushing to the edges, and I realized it was eating through it—through the bottom of the briefcase and over my legs. The burning was immediate. I shoved the case away and saw my shredded pants disintegrating as I scrambled to my feet, but not before I also saw the gouges running up and down my lower legs. For a second, I was seized with fear that the marks were from the gel, but then I remembered Donovan’s hold on me as I was climbing up the ladder.

  A cracked tube was wedged sideways in what was left of the black box. It dripped clear liquid, which produced more smoke and dissolved whatever it touched. It pooled in the bottom of the case before eating through it, too, and then finally burned through the decking below. It spread, widening the hole until it swallowed the briefcase, which I heard hitting the bottom of the lower level of the barge—and if it were to eat through that…

  I stumbled out from between the pallets when the decking around me started to crack. In the open air of the deck, disembodied voices from the other side of the ship got louder, closer, until people were swarming everywhere. I didn’t understand the language they were speaking, but two of them rushed me, pinning my arms behind me, and everything slowed down again.

  “No…listen! Who speaks English? Remember me? From the docks a year ago! Mama Luz! Where’s Mama Luz?“ I shouted.

  They didn’t answer, and I didn’t think. I just jumped as hard as I could toward the railing of the barge, and all three of us pushed high into the air. I felt the falling sensation in my stomach on the way down to the water, until breaking the surface felt like crashing through a sheet of glass.

  The pain dissipated just long enough for me to feel how warm the ocean was, but in the next second it was like little fires were igniting everywhere on my body. I gasped at the sight of land in the distance—land with palm trees, jungles, and mountains against the slowly lightening sky.

  I started to swim toward the shore, but something choked me from behind, wrapping around my chest and shoving my head underwater. We struggled until everything slowed again in my head, and I bit down on what I thought was an arm, but the cold, bitter taste of it in my mouth made me abruptly let go.

  I turned again for the shore and was on the beach, pulling myself to the sand in what seemed like just a few strokes. I expected to feel exhausted, but I wasn’t even out of breath. Seawater pushed over my legs, which sent the ruined tatters of my pants in several directions, exposing the deep gouges down either side of my shins, which had started to burn.

  I glanced down expecting the gouges to be filled with rusty-colored nerve fluid, but they were red—-bloody. I looked more closely into the cuts in the fading light and saw the beginnings of muscle tissue that seemed to be dissolving the wires and titanium.

  “What’s happening to me?“ I asked out loud, gritting my teeth as the burning intensified.

  Something sharp poked me in the shoulder.

  “The question is what’s about to happen,“ a man who couldn’t have be more than twenty years old said. He was with two others, none of them wearing shirts, and their hair was fashioned into dreadlocks that spilled over their shoulders.

  I pushed to my feet and noticed the tooth necklace the one who spoke to me was wearing—human teeth strung like popcorn. The whites of his eyes seemed to glow against his tanned skin as he flashed a yellowed smile at me. He leveled a sharpened spear and pressed the point of it into my throat.

  “Who are you?“ I asked, thinly. “Where is this place?“

  “Scrapper Island Penal Colony,“ the man with the spear said in disbelief. “What, did they tell you you’d won a holiday cruise?“

  All three of the men laughed until the one in front of me with the spear let out a sharp whistle through his teeth. “Take him to Burgess.“

  The two on either side of him rushed me, grabbing my arms and hauling me forward. I struggled, and to my surprise, they both fell away like they’d been struck by lightning. They looked as shocked as I felt as they got back on their feet, and all three of the strangers exchanged confused glances.

  The one with the spear sobered first. “Well, look at that!“ He laughed. “Might be he lasts the night
after all.“

  One of the other men joined in the laughter, looking me up and down. “Unless the island takes him anyway.“

  He moved closer, and I stared at him. “What are you talking about?“

  “He’s about the right age.“ The other man spit just before wiping his bloody lip with the back of his wrist. “What are you, twenty-eight? Twenty-nine?“

  “Twenty-three! What do you mean, survive the island?“ I shouted, and all three men took an abrupt step back.

  “You see that?“ the smaller man closest to me asked the others. “You see his eyes do that?“ I watched the pulse in his throat jump as a drop of blood pooled in the corner of his pressed mouth, then slid down his dirty chin. I swore I could even hear the scraping sound it made over the patches of dark stubble on his face.

  My body moved without my permission—something…other compelled it. I watched my hands grip the back of his hair and pull his head to the side, until all I could see was the taunting, pulsing vein. The other made me bite down, silencing it and drinking like it was spring water pouring from his throat.

  I drank until there was nothing left, and in a rage, I watched my own arms throw his lifeless body into the waves far beyond the breakers. The other two men were already running back into the jungle, and it took everything in me to resist the blinding urge to chase them.

  I looked at my hands, but they weren’t claws.

  My arms weren’t covered in hair like Donovan’s were.

  I’m still me? I thought.

  But also…something else. Something Feral, I thought again, wrapping my arms around myself to stave off the sudden, uncontrollable shivering. The tinny taste of that man’s blood was still in my mouth, but I couldn’t bring myself to spit it out.

  I shook my head until I noticed pain and pressure in my teeth. My hands flew to my face, and I dropped to my knees when I felt the pointed, elongated tips retracting.

  Oh no…the syringe…the delay…

  Another surge of palpable violence ran through me with the shock of the tide hitting the back of my legs. The feeling faded when I moved away from the water toward the forest, but it was replaced by another wave of uncontrollable shivering as the details of what just happened started to feel like a story I once heard instead of something I just did.

  I sat on the sand at the edge of the trees and watched the rest of the barge sink into the sea. By the time it was gone, so were the gouges in my legs.

  They were just gone.

  It was silent after this, save for the rhythmic surf crashing against the shore. I matched my breaths to it, trying to drown out the deafening absence of my heartbeat—of what I already knew was the beginning of endless time—the whole nightmare swallowed in the red and gold sunset.

  “Feral“ is the first prequel to Tracy Korn’s new Sci-Fi / Fantasy series, First Bloods:

  Prequel 1: “Feral”

  Prequel 2: Nervous Water

  Book 1: Bad Seed

  Get Nervous Water, the next prequel in the First Bloods Series!

  About Tracy Korn

  Tracy Korn is a sci-fi / fantasy author and all around science geek who may or may not have a “Lip Smackers“ chapstick addiction.

  When she’s not inventing dystopian worlds (and subsequently saving them or wrecking them more), she reads about other people doing it, practices her newbie cinematographer skills, and dreams of someday meeting James Cameron.

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