EX SHOUTED “NO!” and backed off. The others followed suit, afraid of something that eluded Alice.
“What is it?” he asked. Djard put her hand up to her mouth, shaping her fingers to represent teeth and growling like a vicious dog.
“An animal? You’re saying an animal did this? And then buried her?” said Alice, making digging motions with his hands. When he looked more closely at the remains, he could see what the others had known instinctively: the body showed bite marks. The victim had been partially eaten.
Djard nodded.
The others had taken guard again, scouring the thick jungle for signs of predators. They were on edge. After the oversized spider, they could be up against anything.
Chez, sniffing the air, grunted. That set the others off, all of them sniffing like dogs. Alice tried too, but couldn’t smell anything. Djard, looking a little panicked, pointed at the bushes. “It comes! It comes!” Alice couldn’t see anything, but he heard the faint sound of twigs breaking underfoot.
Karn pointed to where the sound was coming from. Ex nodded sharply at him, and signalled the rest of the group to follow him into the bush, on a trail he’d detected leading away from whatever it was that was closing in. In some places the foliage was so thick and matted with curling vines that they had no hope of penetrating it, and were forced to find a way round. It was during one of these detours that Karn abruptly stopped and put a finger to his lips: he’d heard something following them.
Ex motioned for them to hide. They darted off every which way, and concealed themselves as best they could. Then they held their collective breaths.
Alice had knelt down behind a large zamia palm. He was just wondering what the hell it was doing growing in Sydney, nearly four thousand kilometres from where it should be, when something sharp jabbed him from behind. He looked over his shoulder and, to his surprise, found a topless female warrior, her mostly-naked body decorated in tribal war paint and tattoos. She was standing over him with a very sharp spear pointed at his throat. Alice slowly rose to his feet, hands raised in surrender.
“Whoa! I’m unarmed—” he cut himself off. “No use talking to her Alice,” he chastised himself. “She probably won’t understand.”
The muscular young woman had striking features: high, firm breasts, brown hair woven into a long plait all the way down to the middle of her back, a six pack to die for and trim, muscular legs with striking tattoos on each thigh. Both arms were cut like a gymnast’s. She was wearing only a dark brown, animal hide loincloth, sandals with leg strapping and a leather garter, decorated with feathers and coloured beads, around her bicep and the wrist of the other arm. A string of wooden beads adorned her gracious neck, and a flash of ochre across her eyes gave her a fearsome appearance. Her skin was pale from lack of sunlight, but that didn’t stop her from looking incredibly fit, healthy and above all, awesome.
“Keep your hands raised and turn around,” she ordered, in a slightly British accent.
Alice was relieved she could speak. “Hey! My name’s Alice, Black Alice, and I—”
“Shut up!” she snapped, cutting him off.
As he obediently turned, she jabbed him in the rump with the spear.
“Ouch! Take it easy!” he complained. “That thing’s sharp!”
Slowly, other women emerged from their hiding places in the bush, each with a spear at her back. Djard hissed at her captor like a feral cat.
With no other option, they were led along a trail. The women were in no hurry. It seemed the predator Alice’s group had feared was stalking them didn’t bother these Amazon-like warriors.
Every time Alice tried to talk it resulted in a sharp jab in the rear end. He was busting for an explanation of who they were, where they were, what had happened to Sydney, but preferred to avoid the prods. After an hour and a half of silent trekking, they arrived at the Anzac Memorial. Alice looked up at it. From here he could see the ravages of some mighty catastrophe the building’s façade was blackened, as though it had been licked by a dragon’s tongue. A web of cracks, some as thick as a finger, ran through the pink granite blocks, suggesting that the entire building had been violently shaken. He remembered there was supposed to be a pool of reflection at the front of the memorial, but it had been gobbled up by overgrowing vegetation.
As they climbed the marble staircase to enter the building, Alice looked up at the fascia of the eastern wall. The bas-relief bronze panels that had illustrated the campaigns of the Great War were missing. He figured they’d been stripped and melted down to produce weapons or something similar.
They entered the building. Here too, the bronze memorial statues had been stripped away and replaced with primitive weaponry and a huge collection of car and bike parts, some of them quite large. There was the front end of a taxi, a section of fire engine and a large chunk of tram. But it wasn’t just strewn about randomly. It was on show, held in some reverence, like a museum display.
Ex and his friends had been stripped of their weapons, and they were all made to sit on the floor with their hands behind their backs. Alice felt he was being punished, like a naughty schoolboy, and was desperate to talk with someone.
The six Amazons who had brought them here were dressed similarly, although they had different body proportions, tattoos, hair and ornamentation. But all were young, topless, attractive and obviously extremely fit. Chez was grinning like a Cheshire cat at the biggest girl, who was well endowed in the breast department. She seemed to be enjoying his admiration.
Alice figured by her actions that the Amazon who had captured him was the leader. She left the others, passed through a curtain draped across an alcove at the far end of the room, and disappeared deeper inside the building. Although it had originally been built as a memorial, it seemed to Alice that it had been repurposed as a temple. While they waited for the lead Amazon to return, Alice tried to communicate with the rest, as they stoically kept their spears trained on their captives.
“Is she your leader?” he asked the big girl standing over Chez.
“No, she is Kinks,” she said, flicking her head in the direction Alice’s captor had gone.
“Kinks? Well … she really got me. Ha!” Alice chuckled at a joke only he got.
A short girl with her spear on Ex snarled: “Shhh!”
Alice chose not to provoke them, and kept quiet. After a few minutes the curtain opened and Kinks led out a woman dressed like a Queen.
The guards prodded the captives with their spears to encourage them to rise in the presence of their monarch.
Kinks walked up a small staircase and drew open another curtain, this time on the left at the far end of the room. She left the curtain open to reveal a small mezzanine containing a throne fashioned from a big, old, leather lounge chair.
The shapely barefooted Queen, whom Alice guessed was in her late twenties, gracefully floated up the marble staircase to the throne room. When she reached the landing at the top, she turned and faced them. Her elegance was embellished by a ray of light from the skylight above the throne, giving her a regal radiance. Her long, flimsy, white chiffon vestment was transparent in the beam, showing off a shapely, naked body beneath.
The boys exchanged looks of keen interest. Djard simply rolled her eyes.
The Queen stepped up to the throne, turned and elegantly sat upon it. Kinks moved to her right hand and stood firm, her arms folded: the Queen’s legate.
Kinks nodded to the short girl guarding Ex, who immediately raced outside. After a moment a bell chimed and she returned, followed by a dozen more near-naked female warriors. They all stopped just inside the entrance and waited.
Kinks took a step forward and proclaimed to those assembled: “Praise Zule, Queen of the Vixen!”
Her subjects clapped once and, as the sound echoed off the marble walls, chanted: “Praise the Queen!”
The Queen pointed at Ex and asked, sternly: “Who are you?”
Alice answered for him. “His name is Ex. Unfortunately, he’s still learning to speak. I will have to speak for my friends here.”
“And you are?”
“I’m Black Alice,” he answered, cordially. “Most people call me Alice, or just Al.”
“And from where do you come, Black Alice?” the Queen asked.
“Well, they come from up there,” he pointed. “The surface. I come from somewhere else.”
“I can see they come from the Deadlands. We have heard of such savages there. But you are different.”
“There is a lot to explain Queen Zule, and a lot I would like to know too.”
She stood. All her subjects immediately bowed their heads. She mumbled something privately to Kinks, then glided down the stairs to vanish behind the curtain.
“Vixen scat!” Kinks decreed, and the temple emptied, with the exception of the prisoners and their guards.
What Alice learned? They called themselves the Vixen, and Kinks was Zule’s second-in-command. It seemed they only numbered twenty, and that none were over the age of thirty. There weren’t any children to be seen, and certainly no males. It seemed Vixen society was a matriarchy.
Kinks approached Alice “Follow me,” she said.
Alice followed her through the curtain and into a long, narrow passageway. She stopped at a venetian blind at the end, and pulled a cord to raise it. They entered a small chamber decked out like a study. Zule was seated on a large sofa with a threadbare cover that had definitely seen better days. She had changed into black ripped jeans and a tattered Pink Floyd T-shirt, which looked cool with her long, blonde, plaited hair. Her bare feet were up on the lounge. She motioned for Alice to sit in the armchair opposite, and he obeyed. Kinks left them alone.
Zule was more elegant than the others. No tattoos, fine features and extremely sexy, with an ultra-intelligent look in her cobalt-blue eyes.
Alice glanced around the room. It was adorned with scavenged items from a bygone era: hubcaps, a steering wheel, the front end of a Harley. Two of the walls had floor-to-ceiling bookshelves, filled to capacity with old paperbacks. Another wall with a similar-sized floor-to-ceiling rack was loaded with CDs and vinyl albums. In the centre of the room, an old round table was surrounded by eight chairs, and on the table was an audio turntable with leads running to a stereo amplifier. From there, cables led to a set of large speaker boxes. There was an exercise bike in excellent condition in a corner, and beside it half a dozen dumbbells of weights up to twenty kilos. Alice was impressed.
“Good to see exercise equipment,” he said warmly.
“Are you not hot in that coat?” Zule enquired.
“I am actually, you mind?”
She shook her head, so he stood and peeled it off. She admired his build.
“Looks like you get your share of exercise as well,” she said.
“When I get the chance.”
“So tell me Black Alice—”
“Just Alice, or Al, please.”
“Alice, then. Explain how you found us?”
“I’ll do that. But first can you tell me what year this is, how you got here, how Sydney got like this and where you get the power to run that?” he said, pointing at the turntable.
She thought about it for a moment, then seemed to decide she would answer his questions first.
“I have no idea what year this is,” she said. “I grew up here, as we all did. Our founding fathers and mothers are dead. As far as we know there were sixteen of them. They produced children — nine girls and seven boys — and they in turn produced us. Originally there were twenty-five girls and five boys. For us, Sydney has always been like this. As for your last question, we don’t have any power. The exercise bike drives a small generator and storage cells that in turn power a few simple items, like the turntable. It’s how we learned to speak — from records. Reading was a little more difficult.”
“Where did all this come from?” Alice asked.
“Over the years, warriors have returned from hunting parties with things they have found, and here they all are.” She waved a hand around.
“How many of you did you say there are?”
“Originally? Twenty-five girls and five boys. We are all nearly the same age.”
“No old people, no children…”
“No men,” she finished for him.
“So where are the five boys?”
“Dead.”
“This is incredible. How do you survive?”
“There is food and water in the forest, though we have to compete for it,” she said, cautiously.
A flash of light.
Alice was grasping his chin staring at the glowing orb. “On the question of you coming into the equation…”
En-Ki’s voice resounded in the close confines, “I intervened to allow you to materialize after Ex hit your holographic image with his sword. It was the only way to free you.”
“Free me? How did that work?”
“Similar to the way I brought you here. But the most important issue is your preparedness, recounting what has happened.”
Alice started to pace the floor, still pondering, trying to make sense of his predicament.
“So, you’re educating me for some specific purpose?”
There was a pause. It stopped Alice from pacing. He lowered his hand from his chin turned and studied the orb instinctively knowing that En-Ki was carefully considering how to answer his question.
“Yes Alice, to save my children: humanity. We shall continue.”
Once again, a lightning bolt flashed in Alice’s mind.
Alice was staring at Zule waiting for the dazzle from the strange flash in his mind’s eye to subside. As he got his head together it came to him he was having trouble making sense of the Vixen’s existence. He figured Sydney must have suffered some sort of major catastrophe, an earthquake perhaps, that had resulted in the devastation he’d encountered. But that didn’t explain where the Vixens had come from. The founding fathers and mothers must have been survivors of the cataclysm, which would appear to have been a long time ago. Two generations, in fact — which made it even more difficult to reconcile the time that had passed since Secta had injected him. It wasn’t as though all this ruination happened only yesterday, when, as far as he knew, he’d been injected.
“Now tell me your story,” Zule said. Her voice was just a little raspy, and sexy as hell.
It took Alice the best part of an hour to try to explain. Being turned into a hologram. Being freed by a bunch of barbarians. Discovering this world, which didn’t match his own. When he’d finished, Zule wasn’t looking nearly as surprised as he had expected.
“What you say does not surprise me,” she said, calmly. “We have come to accept the impossible here. It is, however, amazing that by some great luck or fortune Djard accidentally flicked the switch that set off your hologram. And that the sword of Ex somehow caused you to become real again.”
“I know,” said Alice. “I can’t explain it myself. But I do wonder where the power for the hologram projector came from.”
“There are so many questions that need answers, Alice,” said Zule, softly. “But let me say this: it is good to have a man to speak with. I only vaguely remember last speaking to our father when I was twelve.”
“What happened to him?” asked Alice. “And to the boys … the men?”
“After the founding couples had reproduced, beasts began to come out the forest, foraging for food,” answered Zule, her voice quiet and sad. “Some of them were Roogas. The men, all of them, fought the Roogas, right down to our fathers and our young brothers. The Roogas killed them all. Since then, we have killed many of them in return. So many that there is now only one left.”
“Tell me more about this thing, this Rooga,” said Alice.
“It is a carnivorous creature. It lives in the forest. Like I said, it has eaten five of our Vixen, as its race before it ate our brothers and most of our parents and grandparents.”
Alice didn’t like the sound of that at all. “Jesus!” he exclaimed. “We found a body in the woods, before you captured us. A freshly-eaten body.”
“That was Jessie,” said Zule, matter-of-factly. The Rooga took her six darks ago.”
“Darks?”
“When there is no daylight.”
“Night time?”
“Yes, but dark is a better description.”
“Is there no other food in the forest this Rooga could hunt?”
“Plenty. We don’t know the names, but there is enough to go round. It is only when the Rooga catches one of us off guard that he feasts on our kind.”
“I see,” said Alice, thoughtfully.
They talked on, Alice still desperately trying to pick up anything from the conversation that might tell him why Sydney was like it was. He came up dry.
Eventually, Zule showed him out. “I will see you at the feast before dark,” she said. “Kinks will take you to a place where you can wash and prepare.”
Kinks, waiting in the hallway, led Alice back outside.
The streams of light from the canopy had gone. Alice figured they only occurred when the sun was directly overhead. It was dim now, like twilight, and he understood what Zule meant by calling night ‘the dark’. With no artificial light, it would be pitch black once the sun had set.
“Where did you get the name Kinks?” he asked, casually.
“From the band,” she said. “We have a few of their albums — Well Respected Kinks, Lola versus Powerman and the Money-Go-Round, part one, and Face to Face.”
“Are any of the others named after bands?”
“Everyone except Zule.”
“What does Zule mean?”
“I think it came from a character in a computer game.”
“What about your tribe? Why are you called the Vixen?”
“They were a female heavy metal band from the 20th century”
“Cool,” said Alice. “I know of them. This Rooga,” he went on. “You ever seen one?”
“Yes, plenty of times.” She stopped and pointed to a nasty scar on her hip. “We fought once. He tried to rape me.”
Alice was finding it difficult to keep his eyes off her lovely pointed breasts. Unperturbed by his amorous glances, she carried on along the side of the Temple.
“So, your scar … was that from a weapon?” Alice asked.
“No, from its teeth. It first rapes its prey, then eats it alive.”
“Christ,” thought Alice, rocked almost as much by her unexpected swearing as her story.
“Lately, it’s been waiting in ambush for us,” Kinks went on. “It’s only a matter of time before it kills again.”
“So … is it human then?” Alice asked. “You said it tried to rape you. Does it fancy humans?”
“It is part human I think, but mostly animal. It’s huge, strong, grotesque. And it has an enormous cock.”
“Uh … good to know, I guess.”
Alice was having difficulty imagining what kind of creature the Rooga was. But after the gargantuan redback, he figured anything was possible. One thing he was sure of — sooner or later, he was going to find out.
Finally, Alice and Kinks came to a pond, where the others were immersed in water up to their necks. Judging by the mist floating above the water, Alice guessed the pool was warm, probably geothermal. He also figured the canopy over the park operated like a greenhouse, which would explain the tropical vegetation.
“Get in with them,” said Kinks. “It is very warm. It bubbles up from the earth below.”
Kinks feasted her eyes as he stripped off his clothes.
“Nice,” she said, admiringly.
Alice, grinning, slipped into the pond and sat with the others. “Nice,” said Derg, repeating Kinks. Chez sniggered. Alice laughed too. They were certainly picking up language quickly, even if it was only the naughty bits.
“Ah!” Alice sighed with pleasure, sinking into the bubbling hot water. “Feels happening.”
Ex parroted, “Happening.”
Kinks called out: “When you are finished, come to the temple for the feast. It will be ready in an hour.” She turned and walked back the way they’d come.
I was like taking a hot bath. Alice could smell sulphur, which confirmed that the source was volcanic. He was sitting between Djard and Ex. He looked slyly at Djard’s small, firm, naked breasts. She caught him pegging, and folded her arms modestly over them.
Ex was cleaning the medallion hanging around his neck.
“What is that?” Alice asked.
“The Shine is the key,” answered Djard.
“Key to what?”
“We not know what key for,” she said. “But chief has always The Shine.”
That suggested The Shine was handed down among chiefs, and confirmed that Ex must be one. Which meant perhaps he shouldn’t screw Djard — he certainly fancied her, but then he also fancied Zule and Kinks. He pondered, briefly, their sexual preferences, considering there were no men — they could very well be a tribe of lesbians. Djard, on other hand, definitely seemed to want him. But then, he didn’t want to antagonise Ex, who, as chief, obviously considered Djard his property. It was a poser, alright, he thought, grinning to himself. He’d have to think it over. A lot.