Dark Dreams, Pale Horses Page 2

  Time drifted. My panic subdued, allowing clearer thought. The creatures had no intention of harming me, or they would have already. Were they waiting for me to die? Did they only feed on dead flesh? Were they keeping me alive?

  I was about to find out. I lifted my body to a sitting position. My head rolled in loose circles. Blood thumped in my temples and I had to clutch the rock to keep from falling backward. The creatures clicked and whooped, scratching across the roof of the cave. My head attained some semblance of balance and I pushed myself to my feet. Again, it was too much; I crumpled to the floor. In the next seconds I became aware of movement beside me. My terrified eyes glimpsed something huge and monstrous. Stale air rippled across my naked body.

  “What are you?” I asked. A helpless, desperate question. I felt a spiny hand slide between my shoulder blades and lift me, cradle me. Warm fluid splashed onto my mouth and my weak body responded; I drank greedily. The taste was hell: flesh and fat and acid. It was gritty and sour. I drank, and when it was all gone, I opened my mouth for more.

  It cradled me. It mothered me.

  Before long I was able to gauge time based on the creatures’ habits, and how often I was fed. In the course of one day they would sleep (incredible stillness; the only sound was the earth groaning), then they would wake, and as one would leave the cave, presumably to hunt the wilds of the Amazon. They powered their wings and left in a fury of sound and motion. It was like standing at the rim of a cyclone. They returned with equal enthusiasm, taking their perches, chattering and clicking. I was fed soon after, like a baby bird. I opened my mouth, eyes bulging.

  I got stronger. I could stand; walk; climb. I touched the creatures that swooped to feed me. My one hand determined moist skin and tight muscle; ridges of bone; spines and horns. I caressed claws and wings.

  My eyes adjusted to the dark, not completely, but enough to see them—their hairless bodies, vaguely human, suspended from the roof of the cave with wings curled around their bodies like petals. Shivering, pink things.

  I drank…and drank.

  Stronger.

  I explored the cave and found my clothes—torn and burned—and my pack. Vestiges of a previous life. My notes were inside: Expedition into Amazonia: Words and Pictures by Vinícius Araújo Valentim. I ripped out the pages, tore them to pieces.

  It would seem I have a better story to tell.

  I am writing this in a chink of daylight. The creatures are sleeping. I have no idea how long I have been here, but my beard is long and my body is growing stronger. I am almost ready to leave this dark place.

  I can see the brilliant green of the jungle canopy and many jewels of blue sky.

  The world is waiting.

  339099377822

  There were isolated cases all over the world, but South America was decimated. The military controlled the borders, and they weren’t trained to ask questions. Industry failed. Tourism was non-existent. Chaos curled its hand around the continent and squeezed hard. Millions died. The cities—explosions of life, at one time—stumbled to their knees like tired fighters.

  Love and prayer…all that remained.

  Psychoglobunaria (PGB). The first recorded case was in the municipality of Pauini in 2013. A young farmer named João Moraes claimed to have been attacked by a man who “… veio das árvores.” (came from the trees). Whilst recovering in the clinic from numerous bite marks, Moraes attacked two nurses, and from there the disease spread. Tests concluded that the PGB virus was a rogue segment of genetic code that caused hitherto unseen levels of adaptive parasitic existence. Transmitted through bodily fluids (most often from being bitten by a carrier), the virus cloned central nervous system signaling molecules, affording it similar intelligence to the host and an awareness of its environment.

  Further tests showed that, once adapted, the intelligent PGB virus produced a protein that altered haemoglobin and induced a violent appetite in the host for blood. The infected were relentless. The disease advanced mercilessly. Those who were not killed became carriers, and so it continued: tens of thousands dead or infected within the first months. The governments of South America responded, first with the culling and execution of the infected, and then—after global outcry—with the introduction of quarantine cities. The infected were branded and kept from the outside world. In Brazil, a Polícia do Vírus were established to seek out rogue carriers.

  The strain weakened over succeeding generations. Many symptoms diminished, but one remained strong: the virus altered signaling molecules in the brain, producing a heightened awareness of blood; not only were the infected able to perceive the blood type of others, they were also able to recognize the unique signature of that blood, allowing them to identify another individual at a cellular level. This ability—stronger in women and children—shared similarities with extrasensory perception.

  “I know what you’re thinking.”

  “Yes. Your instinct has always been strong.”

  “Stay with me.”

  His heart ached. He closed his eyes so that he didn’t have to look into her eyes. But he knew that she could look into his mind—using the coil of power that had remained so vibrant. She could look into his mind and see his purpose. And his fear.

  Her name was Giovanna Almeida, and she was everything in his heart. You could rip it from his chest and cut it in half, and she would be there. She poured through his veins and brought every nerve ending to life. She was him.

  He opened his eyes and looked at her. She was crying. Every tear was like a star—some burning, brilliant memory he could never grasp.

  “Don’t do this.”

  He wiped away her tears; he didn’t want to look at them.

  The quarantine was known as a Cidade do Inferno (the City of Hell). Formerly the Brasilia satellite city of Taguatinga, it was evacuated at the height of the pandemic, barricaded, and the infected were moved in. They lived in apartments and houses, and were given basic liberties, including running water and electricity. They had jobs and money. They had a small hospital, a library, even a school. Freedom was not a liberty, however. Much like Brazil’s borders, the quarantine was policed by the military. The government ordered the infected to stay within the walls, and warned that anybody caught trying to escape would be executed on sight.

  Scientists worked to find a cure, while many believed that the best way to eradicate the disease was to eliminate the problem. There were multiple attempts to destroy the quarantine by various terrorist factions. It had been bombed eleven times. Low-flying aircraft had emptied vats of sulfuric acid onto the city. It had been set ablaze. The water supply had been contaminated. Several hundred barrels of synthetic blood had been poisoned. Thousands had been killed over the years. The quarantine protected the outside world from the infected, but it couldn’t protect the infected from the outside world.

  Fernando moved into her open body and she closed around him like a shell. They made love with terrific passion, their minds conjoined, flaring with each other’s desire. Fernando often said that her love was life within life; the point where connection became duplicate. She threw her arms around his mind and her legs around his soul. They were singular and beautiful. Their tattoo was one long number.

  “Don’t leave me.”

  Sunset stretched pink arms through the open windows. Children’s laughter lifted the failing light. Fernando rolled Giovanna into his embrace and they stood looking out at the blackened city. Corroded buildings. No grass or trees. The broken walls of what had once been their church, bombed long ago, with the pale beam of a crucifix jutting from the rubble. They prayed, now, in their homes, to statuettes of the savior, his body tattooed with numbers. Diseased Jesus. It was all they had. Fernando kissed Giovanna’s temple and felt the quick flutter of life on his lips. The children played and laughed outside. New numbers. They—like Fernando and Giovanna—had been born into this. They wouldn’t live to be twenty years old.

  “I have to go,” Fernando said. “I have to find Avô Vinícius.
”

  They had been strong once. At the beginning, when Fernando’s grandfather had been a young man, their numbers were vast. They were the Great Flood; the Plague of Locusts. But oppression and incarceration had diminished them, and now, only four generations old, they were on the threshold of extinction. No strength to fight. No substance to evolve. A Cidade do Inferno used to be a teeming, vibrant metropolis: several families to a single apartment; the streets swollen with people lining up to get their ration of synthetic blood; bars and clubs packed with dancers, strippers, and musicians; a carnival every year—just like the world beyond the quarantine—with colorful floats and celebrations. There had been life. But now Fernando could see the deserted streets and the ghostly apartment buildings. So many empty rooms. They were always considered third-class citizens—no more important than the bands of stray dogs nosing through the streets of every South American town. They were reviled, and had been left to die.

  Avô Vinícius represented hope, and perhaps their last chance at survival. He was the first of their kind, the purest strain, and grandfather to them all. His blood was the elixir of life.

  “He could be anywhere,” Giovanna said. “Anywhere in the world. He might even be dead.”

  “He’s not dead,” Fernando said. “I can feel him. You can, too.”

  Tears moved down her face. Her number—377822—glimmered on her skin in the pink light. The children laughed. In the distance, the barricade was a silhouette of angry angles. Concrete and steel and tangles of razor wire. A mechanical forest.

  “The Psycho Cowboys are out there,” Giovanna said. “You can’t run from them.”

  “It’s our only hope.”

  “They’ll find you, Fernando. They’ll kill you.” She pushed away from him, turning, clasping his firm upper arms. A tassel of black hair fell across her brow. “Stay with me. I know how to love you.”

  He traced her tattoo with his fingertips, making, as always, slight adjustments to the letters, spelling different words: QUE LINDA, meaning “so beautiful.” She closed her eyes. Her eyelids shimmered.

  “But we’re dying,” he said.

  They made love again, deep into the darkness. She went inside him—became him. Life within life. She knew there was to be no dissuading him. All she could offer were love and prayer—all that remained.

  “Be a shadow, Fernando,” she said as he poured into her.

  “I’ll be less than a shadow.” Droplets of sweat fell onto her brow. Her soul felt as warm as the air. “They won’t see me.”

  She kissed him. “Be nothing.”

  Fernando masked his face and escaped a Cidade do Inferno in the early hours. Giovanna stood by the window, her hands clasped, waiting to hear the gunshots. But, true to his word, he was less than a shadow, and he slipped through the barricade unnoticed. He moved southeast, following a trail of instinct as thin as Giovanna’s tears, toward Rio de Janeiro and salvation.

  TRANSLATION TAKEN FROM THE JOURNAL OF VINÍCIUS ARAúJO VALENTIM

  (Date unknown.)

  In my dreams I am with them—one of them. I hang from the roof of the cave, my feet hooked into some fissure. I have one wing. It is folded around my body, the cartilage stretched so that the wing covers me completely. I understand their animal language. I scratch and cry to be fed.

  I escaped while they were sleeping: a thousand long shapes hanging in the darkness. I crept beneath them and made my way toward the cave entrance—that alluring chink of light. They did not stir. They did not follow.

  Bright daylight greeted me: an infusion of breathtaking color that felt like falling into deep water. I dropped to my knees, unable to move. Incredible pain splintered through my head and my eyes screamed in the intense light. The stump of my left arm twitched. I covered my face and buried myself in long grass.

  I got to my feet, slowly, allowing sips of daylight though the cracks of my fingers, until I was able to remove my hand completely. The vastness of the rainforest stretched around me and I suffered a long moment of disorientation. Everything was green. I staggered in circles, struggling for focus. Eventually I was able to move in a straight line and with huge relief I started away from the caves, away from the creatures. Every step eased my soul. I was sobbing. I felt reborn.

  The sun leaked through the thick canopy. I could see its flare, at first directly above me, and then sinking to my right, to the west. I decided to head east, trusting to the logic that we had taken off from Manaus and were headed west, for Carauari. We were not long into our journey when our plane went down. I surmised—incorrectly, as it turned out—that I was submerged in the Amazon to the west of Manaus. I was simply going back the way I had come, one step at a time, using distinctive landmarks (fallen trees, colorful bromeliads, odd-shaped leaves) as waypoints. I waded through rivers and crashed through snarls of foliage, determined to maintain an even line. When the sun touched the horizon and the jungle was fat with purple light, I thought of resting for the night. But that was when I heard their crying, tormented whoops. The sound didn’t carry across the miles; it was in my head. I was a part of them. I shared their blood, and understood them.

  They were coming for me.

  I peeled through the darkness, snapping through ferns and vines with no regard for direction. Their advance was like a pendulum in my mind, swinging from one side of my skull to the other, until I could hear them on the outside—their wings slapping the air, their frustrated shrieks. I never looked back. I never stopped. Everything was hurting and my heart brimmed with dread. I crossed a wide river, kicking my legs and working my one arm, finally reaching the other side, where a female caiman snapped her huge jaws and whipped away from me. I broke into the jungle, startling sprays of sleeping macaws. The creatures were behind me, closer now. Their powerful cries filled the sky like stars.

  Trying to outrun them was futile; I was weak, and they were too quick. My only hope was to hide, and I found a place in the dense understory, low to the ground, where I knew they would have difficulty moving their wings. I wriggled amongst the vines clinging to the trunk of a strangler fig, shivering as they came closer. At one point I heard their cries directly overhead and dared a glance. I could see fragments of the night sky through the skeletal fingers of the canopy and shuddered, watching their shapes pass over the stars…long, hooked wings and thin, almost-human bodies. They circled above my hiding place, occasionally swooping lower so that their talons scraped the treetops, but they never broke through the canopy. I waited, my heart blistering in my chest, and eventually they swept away from me. Wounded shrieks ripped from their bodies, fading into the night.

  I could still hear them, though—in my mind. Their cries trailed into my sleep and underlined my dreams. I awoke at dawn. Bursts of green seeped through my wounded eyes and a line of orange light bled through the understory in the east. The air was clean, fat with oxygen, and I sucked in long, grateful breaths as my nightmares dispersed. I started to snake my body through the vines but stopped when I saw the jaguar poised on a fallen tree trunk, less than seven feet away. It glared at me, yellow eyes glimmering, and I watched the muscles in its flank ripple as it readied itself to pounce. Instinct swept away all fear—hateful, animal instinct—and I roared at the beast, baring my teeth, stamping my one fist into the ground. The jaguar hissed, backed along the trunk, then turned and fled. It rustled amongst the understory and disappeared.

  Sweat glistened on my brow. I wiped it away with a trembling hand, got to my feet, and walked toward the light.

  My body cried at me, buckled with thirst. I knew what it wanted—what it thirsted for—but tried to deny it. I splashed chilled water down my throat, gagging, hating it, and couldn’t keep it down.

  What have I become?

  By chance I stumbled upon an injured Tapir. Its front leg was lame and it struggled to walk, snuffling at the grass, trembling when it saw me. I caught it easily, wrapped my arm around its neck, and twisted. There was no fight in the creature; its body flexed once against my side, a
nd then it was still. I opened its throat with a sharp stone. Hot blood poured out and my stomach made convulsive clenches. I didn’t deny it a moment longer. I lowered my mouth to the steaming wound and drank. The taste was immediately satisfying and I felt my strength returning. I drank until there was no blood left—just a slaughtered husk lying in the grass. I licked my lips, half-weeping with some unknown emotion, and stumbled on.

  I wondered if I was more animal than human—more like the creatures that inhabited the cave than the professional photographer who owned an expensive studio apartment in São Paulo. I still don’t know the answer. My thoughts are certainly human, yet I know there is something different inside me. Something huge and living. And terrifying.

  My appetite for blood is unquenchable.

  What have I become?

  I staggered through the jungle for days—weeks, even, killing whatever I was quick enough to catch. I feared nothing. I encountered the worst the Amazon had to offer, and bested it all. I always had blood on my hands.

  And at last…civilization: lights flickering in the distance.

  I washed the blood from my body and staggered, naked as the day I was born, into the municipality of Pauini.

  Close to you.

  City lights blaze around me, but I hold to the shadows and move like vapor. I reach out—mental arms yearning to touch you—and feel the vague flicker of your presence. It touches me like sunlight.

  Here I come.

  FAVELA ROCINHA

  The buildings were like the random thoughts that occur on the cusp of sleep, haphazardly piled on top of one another. Concrete and clapboard. Brick and tin. No order. Barely a semblance of structure. They challenged physics, leaning at angles, creaking and shifting in the wind. Electric lights hummed behind shuttered windows.

  It was easy for Fernando to move unnoticed. He was just another stray; trash blown by the wind. He whispered through the shanty, past the stalls selling bottled water and old fruit and clay statuettes of Christ the Redeemer. Fires flickered on street corners, fueled by children with dirty faces and scuffed knees. He could smell churrasco and sewerage. The streets were wet with rain. He could hear it dripping from one tin roof to another.