Acheron- A Sci-Fi Thriller

[Viserion_|||]

flectere si nequeo superos, Acheronta movebo

Prologue
Somewhere in the American Midwest

Kyle woke from his sleep with a start to the thump-thump of footsteps just outside his bedroom window. The eleven-year old boy laid there, immobile, as a shadow crossed the moonlit spot on his bedroom's carpeted floor and scattered toys. He kept as quiet as possible as the huge black shadow slid along, and eventually vanished.

His breathing was inaudible even in the petrifying silence of his bedroom, and he wondered briefly if it was his mom and dad finally home from the wedding. He glanced at the digital clock on his nightstand, which read 12:39. They'd told him they'd be back in the morning, and it was technically morning.

Kyle rolled out of bed, deftly avoiding the plastic bricks scattered around the bedroom floor, and tip-toed to the closet to fumble for his pants and hoodie. After dressing himself he very slowly opened his bedroom door, which creaked ominously no matter how slowly he moved it. Kyle winced, even though nobody else was home.

It was no time at all before he was pulling on his boots, and then he heard the crash of splintering wood. The panicked squawking of the chickens filled the night. He grabbed a big flashlight and charged out into the night, flicking the light on and swinging it towards the barn.

The several inch thick, eight foot tall wooden sliding door was completely shattered, and chickens were flying out in blind panic. Some were coated in blood.

Kyle had many flaws, but a lack of courage was not one of them. He charged into the barn, the light playing along a fuzzy gray body far above the barn floor.

"Get away from my chickens!"

Whatever he was going to say next died on his lips. He had never seen what loomed above him before, except in his most feverish nightmares. His mouth flapped soundlessly, the light shaking in his hand like a leaf in a hurricane.

The eight-foot beak struck home, and light was everywhere.

______
Iteration 0

Light glared through the airplane window.

Gabriel Vasquez the Third pressed his forehead to the cold glass of the plane, staring down at the blue Pacific far below. Clouds streaked by, blending the cerulean sky into the white-capped waves below.

Twenty-seven or so other people were on the plane- their teacher Mr. Roberts, and the two pilots, and Gabriel's (never, ever Gabe) twenty-four classmates. Mr. Roberts was pushing fifty and the pilots were both thirty or forty, but the students of Excellence Private Academy were all sixteen or seventeen or so. He was one of the younger ones, all things considered, which annoyed him.

His dad had offered him a seat at the front of the plane when he'd been arranging things, but Gabriel had declined. He'd always sat in the first rows of a plane, and this one was all luxury seating all the way to the back, so he'd asked for a change of pace and a seat near the back emergency doors. His father had begrudgingly accepted.

He wouldn't have picked this spot if he'd known that Thomas Jak Hunter would be in the seat directly in front of him. The older boy (by a narrow margin) turned around and peered over the back of the seat at him. Gabriel could feel his black eyes boring into the side of his face like a physical touch. He hated it when people stared at him.

"I never thanked you for the plane trip." Hunter didn't talk to him much, but apparently he'd decided to be chatty now.

Gabriel glanced Hunter's way, focusing vaguely on his nose. "Thank my father. It's his plane."

"I will. It'll be fun to see the mining operation once we get there, I've never been so deep underground as this place. Have you ever been?" Hunter shot him a toothy grin.

Gabriel shrugged. "Once, when I was five. I got really sick though, so the trip was cut short."

Hunter hummed sympathetically. "That's a shame. Do you like copper?"

Gabriel huffed in faint amusement. "Not really, no." He put his face back against the glass.

Hunter didn't take the hint. "Is it true that the Vasquez Incorporated Mining Conglomerate provides the copper for basically all industrial applications?"

Gabriel couldn't help but roll his eyes at the use of the full title. Hunter sounded like he was rattling off an official press release. "It's all public record y'know, you can just google it."

"There's no Internet out here."

"Google it when we land." A darkness caught Gabriel's eye, and he turned his face to look at it.

Storm clouds.

He pulled his book Demons of Hell Creek from the backpack in the seat next to him, and flipped to his saved place. He was sure the pilots could figure it out.

T. rex was certainly the largest predator in its environment when fully grown, but the juveniles would have been forced to compete with the local Dakotaraptor steini population. This raptor is little-known, and some researchers believe it to be a chimaera of other species' bones, but if considered valid then it served as one of the few species who could compete with young tyrannosaur specimens for prey. If it was a pack hunter, a currently unsupported hypothesis, its lethality would certainly be comparable to the great T. rex who prowled Hell Creek- and unlike the formidable tyrannosaur, a Dakotaraptor steini at roughly 500 to 800 pounds would see a human being as a prey item well worth the effort expended in hunting it…

The storm rumbled, and Gabriel glanced out the window to see flickers of lightning.
______

 

[Viserion_|||]

Iteration 1.1

Gabriel Vasquez stared at the billowing smoke of the wrecked plane as if it could explain what happened. Crackling flames devoured the aircraft, turning it into a makeshift pyre for those who'd been killed in the crash. The brutalist concrete air control tower had easily withstood the plane colliding with it, but the flames were still raging strong. He vaguely wondered if the surrounding forests would also catch fire. He thought not, it had rained recently, and the airstrip was puddling in places.

Mr. Roberts was on that plane, and the pilots. Three students had been killed too- Sarah, Dave and Violet. Nobody had retrieved them from the wreckage. Nobody wanted to be the one to haul their broken bodies from the furnace to bury them.

Thomas Jak Hunter was distributing water bottles he'd salvaged as they'd abandoned the plane, occasionally shouting for someone to sit the hell down now, nobody goes anywhere until we have a plan.

Jackass, Gabriel thought. Still, he accepted a crinkly plastic bottle when Thomas offered it. He didn't drink from it. Just rolled it between his hands, feeling the hot sun blazing away on his skin. His t-shirt was already getting sweaty, despite the stiff oceanic winds that buffeted the highlands. Some of the others were already complaining about the heat.

At least he'd been lucky enough to have his bag with him. He'd set it in the seat next to him on the flight, and instinctively hauled it with him when he made his exit. A couple changes of clothes, snacks, random items like that. Nothing like a flare gun or radio. His phone had been smashed in the crash, but his watch was ticking merrily away on his wrist. The time was 5:54.

Something works, he thought sourly. Gabriel stood up from the log he'd been sitting on and took a look around, water bottle in hand.

Twenty teenagers were in a loose huddle on the airstrip, most sitting on the same log as himself or on a pile of lumber a little ways off. The airstrip was surrounded by low conifer trees of some species he wasn't familiar with, and lush grasses that stood at chest level. The airstrip itself was dilapidated, all mud and gravel, with short grasses and ferns that had been disrupted by the broad wound the plane had gouged into the ground as it crashed.

The island was surprisingly huge- they'd landed on the highlands, which ringed the island like a gigantic wall. It looked like a bowl dropped in God's kitchen, now fuzzy with green mold. Behind him was the edge of the island. Giant birds wheeled in the distance, and fog swirled over the landscape. To his left, he could see a higher part of the rim, like a mountain. He wondered if the island was an extinct volcano that had blown up in the distant past. The mountain-high rim could be the edge of the caldera.

Strange bird calls echoed through the forests. Gabriel shivered.

"Hey!" Gabriel jumped, head snapping round to look at Thomas's shark-like grin. "You haven't touched your water, huh?"

Gabriel shook his head. "I'm saving it for later."

Thomas Hunter nodded at that. "Good thinking. You see anything interesting out there?"

"Nope. Just a big valley."

Thomas glanced out over the misty island. "Big-ass place all right. Island this big, probably has somebody else. Science station or whatever, based on that tower we crashed into. Fishing village. Hell, maybe we'll find a resort, I'm sure you'd be able to get us in."

Gabriel imagined sipping cold grape juice under a beach umbrella like he'd originally planned, pointedly ignoring the jab. "That would be great."

Thomas slapped a hand on his shoulder. "All right, I'll check up on everyone else, then we'll have to make a plan."

The air was thick with heat. The complaints were already beginning by the time Thomas finished his head count.

"Why're you in charge?" Xavier demanded, voice cutting through the murmur as he rose to his full height- the linebacker was impressively tall and broad. "You're not a teacher."

Hunter was more than a head shorter than Xavier, and probably barely half the older boy's weight soaking wet, but he wore a toothy smile. "You're right, I ain't a teacher. But if we're gonna make it out of this alive, someone needs to be in command."

Xavier snorted. "And that's you, the bleached-blond prick with an attitude problem a mile wide?"

"You looking for a fight?" Thomas Hunter's voice was dangerously low. The older boy smirked, and drove a punch hurtling towards Hunter's face.

It never connected.

Thomas grabbed the older boy's wrist, and did something Gabriel could barely see, sending him sprawling in the mud. Xavier came up fighting mad, only to find a combat boot between his legs. He went down again, only for Thomas to grab his messy dark hair in one hand and bring a knee flying up and into Xavier's face. The crunch of cartilage was agonizingly loud. Blood drenched the knee of Thomas's shredded jeans, but he didn't seem to care.

Xavier was writhing in the muddy gravel again, and Thomas gave him a vicious kick to the ribs.

"Anyone else want to fuck with me?"

Nobody moved.

Thomas offered a hand to Xavier, and he reluctantly took it. Thomas hauled him to his feet, and gestured for him to take a seat on the lumber pile with the others.

"I'm not gonna force any of you to follow me. You can stay here, or wander off into the woods in any direction you want. But I'm not gonna hang around here any longer than I have to, and that's looking like daybreak tomorrow, because it's getting late. I'm gonna be looking for people on this island, either alone or with people following me. I don't care. But you all should know that I know what I'm doing, and I definitely know that you won't last ten hours without help. Take it or leave it. I gotta take a piss."

Thomas sauntered off, and a sullen silence settled over the group.

Damn, Gabriel thought, mentally replaying the fight. He knew Thomas was vicious, but he'd never gone so far before. Of course, he hadn't had a fight without adults nearby either.

Some of the other guys also had to take a leak, and excused themselves. Nobody went too far though, and most of them just stared at the fire. A few people were sobbing as the shock of the crash finally wore off.

Gabriel wasn't good at comforting anyone, but he walked over to Xavier, still clutching his bloody nose.

"You okay?"

He was met with a noncommittal grunt.

Gabriel really didn't know what the treatment for a broken nose was. All he had was action movies.

"Want me to push it back into place or something?"

"Fuck no," Thomas said as he made his return. "That's a terrible idea. You're not a doctor."

Xavier gurgled something that might have been a laugh. "Stole the words from my mouth."

Thomas soldiered on. "He'll be fine. Too bad we don't have an ice pack though."

A thought struck Gabriel. "What's the plan for sleeping?"

"Afraid of roughing it under the stars, rich boy?" Gabriel ignored Thomas's provocative remark, and the blond boy rolled his eyes. "We'll just have to use the lumber to get up off the ground, not much else to do. It'll be a little harder than your bed, but you'll live. Unless you want to sleep in the concrete tower there, which is currently an oven in the making."

Xavier grumbled. "I can't wait to be devoured by mosquitoes." Gabriel found himself agreeing with that sentiment.

"Get in the smoke if you want to keep them off," Thomas said.

Gabriel stood. "I'm going to check out the cliff."

Thomas waved him off. "It's a free country."

Gabriel turned about and walked to the cliff, picking his way between the short conifers to the edge of everything. The damp grasses came to an abrupt end, and he cautiously peered over the drop. The blue waters of the ocean crashed like a distant roar, waves breaking themselves on the stony reefs. It looked a thousand feet down, but he had no real reason to believe he was correct- it could easily have been only two hundred feet. It was a long drop, he knew that much. Seagulls circled in white clouds far below.

A black shape surfaced briefly, huge and long and crocodilian, a spout of steam rising from the front of it. The shape vanished underwater almost as soon as it had emerged.

Whale, Gabriel thought, but he wasn't sure. It gave him a peculiar crawling sensation down his spine, but that could have been the vertigo.

Gabriel beat a quick retreat to the airstrip. The flames were still raging, the stink of burning plastic and fuel and metal and whatever else made up a plane overshadowing the smell of cooked meat. Someone offered Gabriel a granola bar, and he gratefully accepted it. He finally cracked open his water bottle after he was through eating, and chugged it down to wash out the food stuck in his teeth. Octavia was trying to get a signal on her phone, a huddle of four girls around her offering advice. A few others were also trying, but it seemed no results had been achieved. He wasn't surprised.

"Tropical island in the middle of the ocean." Hunter slid up to Gabriel's side. "And all they can think about is their phones."

"You sound like my grandfather."

Hunter barked a laugh. "Do I? Sounds about right. See anything cool?"

A whale, he thought, but he stayed silent on that. "Just the ocean and the rocks."

"Too bad. I'll check it out tomorrow."

Later that evening, after everyone had taken apart the lumber pile and shaken out the spiders, but before the daylight has completely died, Gabriel found himself sandwiched between Lucian and Thomas Hunter. He only had his backpack for a pillow and a hoodie for a blanket, and the highlands got cold with the whipping ocean breeze. A warm body to either side helped alleviate the chill. And the lumber was dryer than the muddy gravel, at least.

Gabriel stared up at the starry sky, unpolluted by city lights and clear of clouds. He counted the stars until eventually he drifted into sleep.

His dreams were full of brawls and bleeding.