Free Paradise: An Apocalyptic Novel by Nicholas Erik Page B

hurry.
    The rifle slapped against his back as he ran, slivers of light cutting through the forest canopy. A clearing lay ahead; Silver dove into cover atop a ridge overlooking the entire expanse. A heavy whirring sounded above, loud enough that it was difficult to talk.
    He signaled to the bald man, but his companion wasn’t paying attention. Silver screamed in his ear.
    “Baxter. Ahead.”
    Baxter nodded in response and knelt down, staring through a pair of binoculars. He was the spotter, but he just as well could have been the gunman—his demeanor suggested that he was well-versed in both roles.
    His eyes scanned the horizon, amidst the whirring blades and metal trunks of the windmills. There was no sign of anything. Baxter shook his head, then jammed the binoculars back to his face. They would wait; this, both men were good at. Masters.
    This was a daily routine when guests were on the island. The windmills were the lifeblood of Shadow Village—though the group could survive without them, doing so would make their already difficult lives hellish. The windmills generated the power, the power that fueled their dreams. Without hope, a man is not a man.
    He is just an animal.
    The pair sat in focused wait for hours, until the sun began its descent on the other end of the horizon. This day, they were pleased to discover, had been like all the others. There was peace out here, standing guard. As they were about to leave, Baxter tapped Silver on the back, pointing at a movement on the edge of the clearing.
    A deer.
    The bullet zipped through the air, clean and true, and the men strapped dinner to their backs, smiling despite the miles that lay between them and camp.
    The scent was intoxicating; Melina didn’t know that seared flesh could smell so delicious. Not that she or Pierre got any, but the breeze carried in sounds and other tidings of the feast that was transpiring only feet away.
    “Do you smell that,” she whispered, “my God…”
    Pierre groaned, acknowledgment that he, too, was tortured by things that were not his.
    Melina’s thoughts turned to the mainland. Sam, delirious and dying, had murmured some serious things as he slipped in and out of consciousness. Over a million confirmed deaths—in Los Angeles alone. It seemed like half the world had vanished.
    There was no vaccine, but a few people were immune. Why, the experts didn’t know. There wasn’t a vaccine, and there was no correlation between these folks—old, young, male, female, poor, rich.
    Some people’s systems just rejected the virus, and no one had a real reason why. It’d been days since the outbreak—and Melina shuddered to think that she had only been in this prison for about that same time. It already seemed like this was the way things always were, always would be.
    Humanity was doomed.
    Then again, Melina considered, they always were. She knew that well enough—what depraved lengths people would travel to, all under the guise of civilization. Freedom wasn’t free, and civilization was anything but civil. Now, the makeup was just stripped off, and the truth, when hopes and opium dreams were a thing of the past, was brutal: everyone was doomed, just as they always had been.
    When she thought this, she sucked in her breath. The pain from the rifle butt stuck in her side, like a letter opener jammed between her ribs. She’d get out. Cassie needed her—and she was alive. Her daughter was alive.
    She just had to find her.
    And to do that, she needed to get out of this cage.
    Melina ran her hands along the wood, catching more than a few splinters in her cracked, dirty hands. The small pinches didn’t even cause her to wince. The cabin, though, was bare—and solid. No way to escape, and nothing to do it with.
    Help would have to come from the outside. Melina put her eye up to a crack in the logs, staring at the hint of a fire that lurked just out of her grasp.
    They’d all burn. All of them.
    Bobby was running a high fever. The vaccine