Deus Ex Machina by Andrew Foster Altschul

Author:Andrew Foster Altschul [Altschul, Andrew Foster]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781582438719
Publisher: Counterpoint
Published: 2011-02-10T05:00:00+00:00

WEEK FIVE

. . . previously

Once, there were ten. They were tough. They were cunning, courageous, determined to brave the island’s dangers and be the first to get to Paradise. But the island had other plans. Jackals. Electrical storms. Termites. Volcanoes. And the terrifying vengeance of the Sky Mother. Now it comes down to six—hungry, filthy, but unbowed, each one bent on victory at any cost. Alejandra has emerged as a leader to rival Bernatelli, who lost his Candy first to Shaneequio, then to the island’s wrath. Back home his younger brother, who has long struggled with bipolar disorder, has started electroconvulsive therapy, desperate for any relief. Hiroko, once so canny in her flirtations, is growing weak from malnutrition, while her husband of three years spends every night in Milwaukee’s Asian transvestite clubs. The others have grown cautious around Gloria, the sleeper, who shrewdly sent Candy plunging to her demise. By the time the producer was hired as the host of The Wrecking Ball, the panic attacks were safely in the past. It was in the second season that they rebuilt a house in the San Jacinto mountains east of L.A., a tottering old A-frame owned by a young painter. Though she was duly grateful, she regarded the whole proceeding—and the producer—with wry bemusement, her laughter dry but gusting suddenly and unexpectedly lovely, like that of a startled bird. Over the weeks the producer found himself playing to that laughter, provoking it, showing her the brushed steel fixtures, the French window casings, the remodeled studio with its majestic view, pointing all these out with the exaggerated flourish of a carnival barker, wanting only to sweep her up in the enthusiasm the whole crew worked to project. A month after the finale, she sent him a canvas, an impressionist painting of the new house, the autumnal blaze of the surrounding woods, two blurred and unidentifiable faces in an upstairs window. They corresponded for almost a year and were married toward the end of his last season on The Wrecking Ball. Armand was the best man. Unexpectedly happy, the producer sometimes sat with her by the pool of their new home, watching the sunset, and the faint echo of that strange, secret word would occur to him, the slightly embarrassing but distant thought of the days when he’d spilled those dark, inscrutable sounds. He had never discovered it, never found the mysterious combination of syllables, and yet if he closed his eyes he knew it was inside him, safely embedded in the warm, wet tissue around his heart. But there’s no rest for the wicked—and already the ill winds of the Mangrove Swamp are drifting across the island in search of the unsuspecting Deserted. There are storms brewing in the mountains, even bigger storms brewing between the players, and no one on either side of the camera is expecting the magnitude 8.1 earthquake about to strike two hundred miles southeast of the island, nor the towering wave of destruction it’s bound to create.

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