Prophet of Bones by Ted Kosmatka Page B

about it,” Margaret said.
    “What if God had all these different varieties … all these different walks, these different options at the beginning, and we’re just the ones who killed the others off?”
    “Shut up,” she said.
    “What if there wasn’t just one Adam but a hundred Adams?”
    “Shut the fuck up, James,” Margaret said.
    There was a long quiet, the sound of the street filtering through the thin walls. “Us or other,” James said softly, not a question but something else, the listing of two equal alternatives. After another long quiet he said, “Paul, if you get your samples back to your lab, you’ll be able to tell, won’t you?”
    Paul thought of the evaluation team and wondered. He said nothing.
    “The winners write the history books,” James said. “Maybe the winners write the bibles, too. I wonder what religion died with them.”
    *   *   *
    The next day, Paul left to buy food. There was no choice. When he returned, Margaret was gone.
    “Where is she?”
    “She left. She said she’d be right back.”
    “Why didn’t you stop her?”
    “How was I supposed to do that, hold her down? She said she wouldn’t be gone long, and then she left.”
    They ate in silence. Noodles and fish.
    Day turned into evening. By darkness, they both knew she wasn’t coming back.
    “How are we going to get home from here?” James asked.
    “I don’t know.”
    “And your samples. How are you going to get them off the island? Even if we got to an airport, they’d never let you on the plane with them. You’ll be searched. They’ll find the samples and they’ll be confiscated.”
    “We’ll figure out a way once things have settled down.”
    “Things are never going to settle down.”
    “They will.”
    “You still don’t understand, even after everything that happened.”
    “Understand what?”
    “What these bones could mean,” James said. “When your entire culture is predicated on an idea, you can’t afford to be proven wrong.”
    *   *   *
    Out of dead sleep, Paul heard it. Something. At the edge of perception.
    He’d known this was coming, though he hadn’t been aware that he’d known until that moment. The creak of wood, the gentle breeze of an open door.
    Shock and awe would have been better—an inrush of soldiers, an arrest of some kind, expulsion, deportation, a legal system, however corrupt. A silent man in the dark meant many things. None of them good.
    Paul breathed. There was a cold in him—a part of him that was dead, a part of him that could never be afraid. A part of him his father had put there.
    Paul’s eyes searched the darkness and found it: the place where shadow moved, a dark breeze that eased across the room. If there was only one of them, then there was a chance.
    He thought of making a run for it, sprinting for the door, leaving the samples and this place behind, but James, still sleeping, stopped him. He made up his mind.
    Paul exploded from the bed, flinging the blanket ahead of him, wrapping that part of the room, and a shape moved, a theoretical darkness like a puma’s spots, black on black—there even though you can’t see it. And Paul knew he’d surprised him, that darkness, and he knew, instantly, that it wouldn’t be enough. A blow rocked Paul off his feet, forward momentum carrying him into the wall. The mirror shattered, glass crashing to the floor.
    “What the fuck?” James hit the light, and suddenly the world snapped into existence, a flashbulb stillness—and the intruder was Indonesian, crouched in a stance, preternatural silence coming off him like a heat shimmer. He carried endings with him, nothingness in a long blade. The insult of it hit home. The shocking fucking insult, standing there, knees bent, bright blade in one hand: blood on reflective steel. That’s when Paul felt the pain. It was only then he realized he’d already been opened.
    And the Indonesian moved fast. He moved so fast. He moved faster than Paul’s eyes