Babylon Twins , livre ebook

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, organizations, places, events, and incidents are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.
Copyright © 2021 M. F. Gibson All rights reserved.
No part of this book may be reproduced, or stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without express written permission of the publisher.

Published by Girl Friday Books™, Seattle
Produced by Girl Friday Productions www.girlfridayproductions.com
Cover Design: Dan Stiles Editorial: Clete Smith, Kyra Freestar, Monique Vescia, and Emilie Sandoz-Voyer Map & Chapter Art: Brian Cooper
ISBN (paperback): 978-1-954854-11-6 ISBN (e-book): 978-1-954854-12-3 ISBN (audiobook): 978-1-954854-13-0
Library of Congress Control Number: 2021906019

To all the wild girls.

Contents
Chapter 1: The Visitor
Chapter 2: Planet Junkie
Chapter 3: The Last Dance of Dasher Banks
Chapter 4: The Tik-Tok Man
Chapter 5: Bambi Burster
Chapter 6: Buck Lock
Chapter 7: Mini-Mart Army
Chapter 8: Ghosts of Ikea
Chapter 9: Tent City
Chapter 10: Paddington Station
Chapter 11: The Last Man
Chapter 12: In the Goat Room
Chapter 13: Treatment of Choice
Chapter 14: The Fatted Calf
Chapter 15: The Prince
Chapter 16: Death by Empathy
Chapter 17: The Local Zero
Chapter 18: Sleeping Beauty
Chapter 19: Heaven and Earth
Chapter 20: The Sum of Its Parts
Chapter 21: Long Live the Queen
Chapter 22: The Grown-Up World


Chapter 1
The Visitor
“Ichi! Ni! San! Shi!” Clo was practicing on the makeshift wooden dummy next to the cabin, pounding a quick succession of loud thumps into the forest, like she did most mornings. El danced around her, half sparring, while Clo took strikes at the stump making up the base of the dummy. The exercise was meant to simulate multiple attackers, and we would switch off in about five minutes.
We were eighteen years old. Our little brother, Dyre, out hunting near the perimeter, was fourteen. And Mama was inside our cramped, handmade cabin hammering acorns into edible mush. After ten years of living out here in the deep forest, our little family of four had long since fallen into routines we had no reason to believe wouldn’t continue in one form or another for the rest of our lives.
Clo kept our red hair long, with an occasional braid that would dangle next to the scar on her cheek. She liked to flip her hair back while tossing Toothy, our knife. She thought it was cute, but she worked that knife so much, even when we weren’t hunting, it could have been OCD. El’s hair was always short, cropped tight, sometimes even to bald, and she prided herself on her stillness while aiming Daisy Duke, our rifle, counting each moment of total personal crystallization a victory, almost as much as an actual kill.
But that morning we weren’t obsessing over our weapons of choice. We were practicing katas, and Mama was in the cabin trying to get creative with the mush (it can taste better than it sounds), when Dyre, buck antlers strapped to his head as always, loped up after his extended foray inside the perimeter (he usually hunted a couple extra hours beyond us first thing in the morning). He had his usual rabbit-fur tunic on, but recently he’d started decorating it with small strips of deer leather. An effort to look cool, we supposed. Personally, we thought his look was getting a bit garish; the horns he wore all the time were enough. But the boy was growing up, trying new things, so we kept our opinions to ourselves. Besides, he was a great hunter, and that was all that mattered these days.
We took a break from sweaty sparring, and El went to sit and chip some arrowheads. She barely looked at Dyre. “No luck?” she asked. It was really more of a sibling taunt than a question.
Dyre just grunted in response.
“Think fast!” Clo shouted, and she turned mid- san to throw her knife directly at Dyre. Now, this wasn’t Toothy—Mama was inside using him—this was a nicked-up wooden tanto we named Tim and used just for practice. Still, Tim would sting if he caught you in the face.
“Cut it out!” Dyre mumbled grumpily, easily knocking the projectile out of the air with the limb of his bow.
“C’mon, let’s spar!” Clo said, jumping sweatily toward our brother and landing in a combat stance. Clo was always up for fighting, or wrestling, or just cuddling.
“Go away,” Dyre said stiffly. He could be such a moody teenager sometimes.
Clo sighed in disappointment and stood up straight again. Then she shot her arms out. “Well, give me a hug at least,” she insisted. “I haven’t had a hug all day.”
“I’m not your boyfriend,” Dyre grumbled, trying to walk past her to the cabin.
“You’re the only boy in the forest, so you’ll have to do,” Clo insisted, and she jumped in front of him, wrapping both arms around his waist and burrowing her head into his shoulder.
“Okay, that’s just creepy,” Dyre scolded, and he tried to wriggle free. It wasn’t easy: all three of us were strong after ten years of living in the forest.
“Just one hug back?” Clo cooed, sweetly as possible, as she gripped him tight.
Looking only slightly revolted, Dyre sighed and reluctantly patted his sister on the back with one hand. “Fine,” he relented, going through the motions. “Hug, hug. At least you’re not trying to beat me up today.”
“Aw, you know you deserve every one of those—Hey!” Clo snapped back, then pressed her freckled face in close to her brother’s, almost nose to nose. Her hazel eyes and his black eyes were almost level, but hers were darting madly up and down.
“What are you doing ?” Dyre demanded, trying to back away from Clo’s terrible breath.
“It’s finally happened.” Clo nodded, amazed.
“Ugh, what?” Dyre waved her halitosis away. “You finally marry old Sneezer or just eat his butt?” he snarked, referring to the ancient, semitoothless, gray-muzzled beaver that lived in a scraggly lodge a couple of miles east of our cabin.
“You’re finally taller,” El called coolly from across the clearing. She didn’t even look up from her arrowhead, which was almost perfect now.
Dyre backed up a couple of inches and eyed Clo’s uncomfortably close face and the top of her head suspiciously. “Oh. Yeah.”
Clo beamed and started rubbing her brother’s exposed arms and legs. “Too bad you can’t grow up and be a real woman like the rest of us, but that’s okay. You’re gonna be so big . You’re going to turn into a big furry man . Ha! You’re going to have to stop wearing rabbit fur and start wearing deerskins, like an adult!”
Dyre, who had worked as hard as any of us to survive for the past decade, didn’t appreciate the notion that he perhaps was not already a grown-up. Truth was, he had been trouncing us twins in most strength contests for the past year (although we were still faster in an open run).
“Whatever,” he grumbled, and finally broke away from his sister’s clutches.
“You’re gonna be so great,” Clo continued. “You’re going to be just like Papa.”
“Is that really something to—” Suddenly he froze, listening.
El looked up casually from her arrowhead. It wasn’t unusual for animals to pass within earshot of the cabin in the summer. Animals that were big enough, we’d take one or two, but leave enough to keep the trails active.
Clo started to ask, “You hear someth—”
“Shh!” Dyre held up one hand.
We froze and listened for a few more seconds. We could barely make out . . . something, above the light midmorning wind.
“What is it?” El whispered as quietly as possible. “Pigs or deer?”
Dyre slowly turned to her, still listening as closely as possible. Suddenly his eyes grew as big as full moons, and all our thoughts of manliness and his developing peach fuzz evaporated: he looked like a scared little boy again. He shook his head.
El, quickly and quietly, gathered her arrows and mouthed, in complete silence, “What?”
Dyre made a quick flicking movement, one hand across the other. He used two fingers. Four fingers meant a deer, five meant a smaller creature. Two could mean only one thing.
Clo gasped, then dashed ghost-quiet over to the front of the cabin, where we could still hear Mama mashing inside.
“Mama!” Clo whispered. “Dyre hears a person, walking in the woods!”
It was the first human sign we’d had in ten years.
Mama’s freckles were bigger now, as were her wisdom wrinkles, thanks to life in the forest. Our years out here were taking their toll on her more than any of us, but she was outside in an instant that day, tearing off her apron but also taking pains to move stalking-silent.
“Get ready,” she breathed gravely, tossing Toothy to Clo, then quickly tying her graying blond hair back.
Clo caught the hunting knife by the handle in midair while Mama turned to snatch up Daisy Duke, which always sat propped against the cabin for anyone to use should the opportunity arise. We actually didn’t use the rifle much these days, relying mostly on our homemade bows and atlatls, but we kept her ready for special occasions, and this was definitely one of those. After all, this was the first sign of another human being we had seen or heard since fleeing to the forest so many years ago.
“How many?” Mama whispered intently.
Dyre held a single quivering finger in the air.
She nodded solemnly. “You all know what to do. This is it.”
Dyre nodded back and pulled the hatchet from the chopping stump in front of the cabin.
Mama pointed at him and then made a semicircle with her finger and pointed north. That meant he should circle around, letting us women confront the visitor head-on. Dyre nodded and disappeared westward between two trees. He didn’t crack a single fallen leaf as he went.
Clo fl