by Luke Norris
“Are you listening?” Oliver demanded. “You have to help me! Wake me up! Where am I?”
The doctor pointed again to Oliver's arm, the Oliver sleeping in front of himself.
“Yes, that's me. You have to wake him up! Can't you understand me?”
The doctor pointed with more urgency, and Oliver noticed it was the tattoo he was pointing to. A tattoo he got as a young man in varsity.
“Yes, it's a cat, it’s a cougar!” Oliver said. The word cougar was written in the blue-green ink under the outstretched form of the large cat.
“Cougar,” the man repeated.
Suddenly deja vus flooded over Oliver. “Lego? Is that you my friend? You...you're a person.”
“You have to finish the job, Oliver! You are our hope.” The man’s eyes were smiling at him. “You are the only one that survived being woken. The only one that didn't lose his mind. We bridged the language barrier with you,” he pointed to the tattoo, “that is why you stayed sane. Some did survive, but they died from complications.”
Other doctors had arrived and were working over Oliver's inert form lying on the gurney.
“What are they doing? What are they putting in my body?” Oliver asked.
“We made you like them so you could defeat them,” Lego said.
“How do I use it? What have you done?”
Oliver cried out in pain as he felt something being inserted into his leg. Abruptly the image turned to mist and swirled away, and he woke with a start realizing his infected leg had rolled onto a sharp stone on the wet ground.
He shivered in the morning cold. It’s as cold on this damn planet as it was in that morgue in my dream. That was the mothership, and those people are sleeping, not dead, some kind of cryogenic sleep, he thought and looked instinctively into the sky. Lego and Toro. He recited the names if his liberators. You are still up there my friends, waiting in orbit, circling this wretched planet.
He knew Lego was no longer a person like the man in his dream, he had been removed from his human body long ago and encased in a metal shell to serve as a slave for his captors. They've taken everything from us, Lego. I’ve already driven a stake through the heart of one of the pirates. He looked around at the other drivers rousing themselves off the dewy ground. I will uncover you other bastards, and do the same to you if it kills me, he resolved.
18. Encountering the locals
“That thing is following us again Cougar.” Ponsy took several steps towards it waving his arms and bellowing in his deep throaty voice. The slater stopped and instinctively closed up into its defensive shell. “It's a damn parasite.”
“Hmm,” Oliver replied. Ponsy insisted on talking to him. He had been watching Ponsy closely, especially around the women. But it was strange, although Ponsy tried to engage them occasionally, the two ladies wouldn’t entertain any conversation with him. Was that a ruse? It was so hard to be sure.
“You’re a quiet one aren't you?” Ponsy chuckled, “but you talk more than this one.” He indicated to Drake, the massive dark-skinned driver who acknowledged them by merely compressing his jaw, so the muscles in his face bulged.
Drake’s black skin was gleaming like the hide of a panther. His mouth was set, focused and intent, but Oliver could see how the skin under his bloodshot eyes hung loose, pink and raw from complete exhaustion and lack of any nutrition for three days. It was true Drake had hardly spoken a word, almost as if he were still in active driver mode.
“This land has been farmed at some stage,” Ponsy continued. He scooped up mud from the first terrace they came across and let it drip from his hand in front of Oliver, “but whatever crop was here has been harvested. We've been walking for at least two hours, if we don't come across somebody soon we are finished!” He raised his voice. “Wouldn't you agree, Cougar?” He chuckled again.
Oliver’s vision had spots of color and the blackness in his peripheral vision threatened to envelop everything. The infection had developed into the beginnings of a fever, and he had been staggering along for the last hour. His face was leached of color apart from the dark gristle of his beard.
He could see the chestnut brown face of Ponsy contorting his small features as he laughed, but the sound seemed to distort and slow in his ears. Blackness seemed to swallow his field of vision. He swayed on his feet and then collapsed.
“Drink! Yes, that's it, drink!”
It sounded like Verity’s voice. The cool water being poured into his mouth wetted his parched raw throat. He opened his eyes to see her determined brown eyes guiding the water container at his lips.
He raised his head and looked down to where she had un-clipped his filthy jumpsuit. Oh god, his leg wound was festering, custard yellow skin and pronounced dark veins running out from it. There was a large red circle encompassing the first. The ghastly sight brought the taste of bile to his throat and caused him to shiver violently.
He wanted to push Verity off him, but he was hardly conscious, and his strength was sapped. Why did she even bother with the sharade now?
Verity's attention was suddenly diverted from nursing Oliver. A squeal from a nearby bush caused her to look up. Oliver could see the line of Verity’s throat and delicate jawline through his fevered daze as she peered into the foliage. A pair of hazel, yellow eyes peered back at her.
“That's a child!” she exclaimed, “a child. There are people here! Hey! I've found someone!” In her excitement, she was shouting to the group.
A small girl, about seven years old, cautiously stepped into view. Jet black hair accented her fair complexion and hung loosely around her shoulders. She wore a leather tunic with free arms and leather patched pants that were neatly cut at the shins. She stared. Her startling yellow eyes wide with surprise as she absorbed the sight of the disheveled travelers, the little bouquet of flowers in her hands completely forgotten.
Oliver saw a small boy, about four years old, emerge behind her. He had the same hazel eyes. The boy’s black hair, which had probably not been cut in his life, was braided down his back with a brown feather woven in. His head was still slightly too large for his stark naked body. He held a stick in his hand and stepped forward bravely in front of his sister. He pointed the stick at Jerome, the biggest driver, and with his brow furrowed, gave some unintelligible orders.
“Praise the heavens we've found people,” Jerome said, in English, “that means they’ll have food.”
All nine drivers simply sat down where they were. Entirely overrun by hunger and exhaustion, they waited.
At the sound of the big drivers voice the girl gave another squeal, and ran back into the bushes. Her little brother was not so easily deterred. He stuck his belly out proudly and approached the travelers with the stick he held. He walked among them prodding them and talking to them in a strange language. The troop lay sprawled on the ground as the child walked between them, he was explaining gaily the purpose and advantages of his stick, completely oblivious to the desperate state of his audience.
It wasn't long before Oliver heard voices coming down the trail where the girl had disappeared. He saw two men appear carrying long farming implements, holding them menacingly. Clearly the only equivalent of weapons they had against people coming from the direction of the mountains. Then he passed out.
*
Verity carefully lifted Cougar’s head from her lap and lay it on the ground. She would still help these men if it was in her power, and this one was in a bad way, probably wouldn’t make it. Costa and Yarn be damned if she was going to do nothing! She had not missed their disapproving glances, but she ignored them.
It was funny, she’d always been the rebellious child, her brother a constant reminder how a Terrasian should conduct himself, and now her antics seemed so inane, laughable, in the company of these hardened men.
What the drivers did was understandable, they had no choice in the matter. But her crew were something else. Were they born with some psychopathic gene? What she had seen them perpetrate on Earth still gave h
er nightmares. Was it some traumatic experience in their past that allowed them to separate themselves from their actions? Verity always thought her empathy was kind of like her sixth sense, the ability to relate to people on some level, drawing from her own experience. But among this company, she was lost. As she watched one of the bare-chested natives approaching she felt she would have a closer affinity to this alien man, than the captain, engineer, and sergeant.
The first man wore similar leather pants to the girl, finished just over his knees to expose bare white legs and feet. His black beard was braided on both sides under his chin and fell in an inverted V across his flat pale chest. He ran urgently to the boy, strutting proudly in the midst of the strangers, scolding him. He sent him away crying with his sister.
He fears us. Verity realized. He is terrified. The man’s eyes were wide, and posture hostile as he held his scythe in front of himself.
Verity saw him slowly relax as it became apparent to the farmers that these peculiar travelers, in their outlandish white clothes were not a threat. Nobody even bothered to raise themselves from the ground, although they were clearly elated to see the two men.
The locals took several minutes to process what they were looking at. Nine people who appeared to have come from the direction of the mountains. Verity could tell they were confused. Nobody lived between them and the mountains. The attire of the travelers was not made from any animal skin they recognized and looked unlike anything they had seen, outlandish white one-piece jumpsuits. The composition of the group was utterly baffling, and there were men of several races. The two primitive farmers had expressions of utter bafflement and disbelief.
They’re looking at us as though we fell from the sky. Verity laughed to herself.
The locals just stood there gawking at the peculiar ensemble, until Verity approached the bare-chested man and gestured for him to follow. He followed cautiously with darting eyes at the intimidating physique of Jerome sprawled like an exhausted starving lion watching him pass. The farmer began to realize from the elation on the filthy half bearded faces that he was their salvation.
She led him to where Oliver lay in his semi-conscious stupor. Verity bent down and gently folded the side leg flap of his suit up to expose the cut on his thigh. The grizzly leg wound and pale, sickly face made the driver’s dire condition plain to see. The farmer nodded at Verity in understanding. He called to his companion who was still standing by the edge of the trail, gave some instructions and pointed to the long staff he held with the hooked metallic end.
The language was breathy and dispersed with thick guttural accents. The other farmer hurried over and removed his shirt also. Verity observed he had the same hard flat muscles from a lifetime of working the land with primitive tools. Their shirts were made from robust looking leather, they put the two poles into the garments to create a makeshift stretcher and awkwardly hoisted the body of Oliver on top.
The two farmers led the procession of fatigued drivers, carrying the stretcher at the front. Verity could see the hills around them were covered in the narrow terraces, some were full of a green reed crop, still waiting to be harvested. The hills were perfectly domed mounds. They look like giant green anthills, she thought.
It wasn't long before they saw another pair of farmers on a terrace near the trail, hunched over, shirtless, their bare feet submerged in two inches of water. The noise of the procession caused them to look up from their work and stare flabbergasted, squinting through black-bearded faces at the foreign looking troop of drivers.
One man called to the farmer leading them, a heated conversation between the farmers began as they explained how they had discovered the group. Wild gesturing in the direction they had come from and then to the sick driver they were carrying, guttural tones were being exchanged in rapid fire. Verity stood there listening to the confused, frightened farmers. She had studied several languages from new colonies. This sounded, unlike anything she had heard before. Most people she knew went their whole lives only speaking Terras. She’d always found the new colonies fascinating. The sound of the languages and social structures were sometimes so alien that it was hard to believe they were the same species. She listened carefully to the nuances and inflections.
“Come on, come on! We need food,” Riff said.
The farmers turned to see the lean figure of Riff gesturing to his mouth with his fingers then going through the motion of chewing his imaginary food. His cropped blond hair, and facial stubble was a color they had not seen and it captivated their attention. Eventually, they nodded and started moving again, continuing the discussions as they walked looking back constantly to point out individual drivers to one another.
“Look!” Yarn said. “We must be nearing a settlement, there are horses.” He pointed to where several of the animals grazed. Even Yarn’s full cheeks were drawn from hunger and the skin hung loosely around his jaw.
“Yep,” Riff agreed, “and we are attracting a right convoy now.”
They seemed to be collecting onlookers as they went along. There were now several men and two women that had joined the front of the procession, all with the same jet black hair, talking excitedly among themselves, and a group of children were running along beside the weary group. A blood-curdling scream from one of the girls near the back of the group brought everybody to a sudden halt.
“What is it? What's happened?” Verity asked.
“It's ok,” Ponsy said. “The girl has just discovered our slater friend following us. I've been watching it so don't wo…” His deep voice was cut off by the girl.
“Khatora ahaiwan! Khatora ahaiwan!” She yelled.
Frantic voices from the farmers answered, and two men ran to the back of the group where the girl was. The child who had issued the warning ran to her father, and he scooped her protectively off the ground and quickly inspected her, she brushed his hands away and pointed to the armored ball shape of the creature that Ponsy was prodding. He put his daughter back down and gave all the other children stern instructions. They promptly ran ahead as fast as their legs could carry them until they were out of sight.
The two farmers yelled to the front of the group, and another man came trotting back, bent down and pulled some tinder from a pocket and proceeded to bash two pieces of flint together. What’s going on? Verity wondered. Why are they so frantic?
The other two men collected some kindling from beside the trail, and they had a fire within minutes. There was an urgency about the whole business and it wasn't long before they approached Ponsy with a flaming torch, the fire was hardly visible in the afternoon sun. Ponsy was ushered aside by the three men as they surrounded the creature.
“We've already tried to kill it,” Ponsy explained, “but its skin is like rock.”
They didn't show any sign they had heard him as they focused on positioning themselves around the sealed up slater. There were quick flurries of orders, then they pulled the beast up so that it rested on its back. The man with the fire thrust the torch against its side where the heat could penetrate under the armored plates which made a perfect seal. In seconds the slater responded by uncurling. Its legs writhed upside down in the air, and the men prevented it turning back over. The fire kept the creature from closing up, as soon as it felt the scorching flames it pushed its body open as far as it could extend, opposite from its normal defensive mechanism.
With a man either end, one waved the flaming torch continuously over its underbelly. The third farmer took a long implement with a hooked steelhead and placed it carefully between two milky white scales on the creatures softer underbelly. He pulled back with straining forearms. The hooked blade, designed for making small holes in the soil for planting, slid between the two plates and sunk deep into the soft insides. The arthropod made a violent contortion, flinging the farmer to the ground. Hundreds of white needle legs had frozen in agony, pointing to the sky. It stayed locked in this position for several excruciating seconds, then relaxed, lifeless.
Verity watche
d the spectacle, surprised by the ruthless efficiency of the three farmers. Fire. Of course. The one thing we didn't have. Verity’s thoughts were interrupted as the farmer who had picked himself up from the ground suddenly had his fingers around Verity’s jaw and was looking her in the mouth and eyes like a horse for sale. He studied her eyes carefully turning her face from side to side. The yellow hue of his eyes struck Verity. He spent longer scrutinizing her but eventually released her and moved on.
Before she had the chance to be disturbed by this unusual behavior the farmer had moved on to Yarn to apparently to do the same but as soon as he saw the stubble of a short beard he moved to the next.
He virtually brushed straight past Riff and came to Shira. He took hold of her jaw and looked at her eyes. She made no effort to resist and seemed completely unaware of his presence. The whites of her eyes were bloodshot and were a sickly yellow like an anemic patient, and her pupils were dilated. The man said something in his language tugging at the front of her jumpsuit. Her zombie stare gave no indication she had heard him.
Verity already knew what the farmer wanted to see as he indicated for her to undo the front of Shira's jumpsuit. As soon as they pulled the vent on the suit open, a clear jelly substance could be seen plugging a small hole in her abdomen. He bent down and put his finger to the clear substance, although it looked wet it was firm and congealed.
“Hiya wahida-she is the one,” he called to his two companions gesturing urgently. They had begun to stack brush, sticks, and branches into a large pile beside the dead creature. One of them looked up from this task and came over bringing the forward curving blade he was using. They inspected the entry in Shira's abdomen again and came to an agreement.
“What the hell are they saying?” Yarn demanded. “Hey! Hey! Can you help her?”
The man nodded at the captain, in some sort of acknowledgment and, pushed him back gently to an arm’s length, then patted him on the shoulder indicating for him to stand there. He took a small step backward and raised the large blade he used for harvesting, high above his shoulder.