Covenant

by Jim Miesner

  Daniel pushed his way through the tent and poked his head out the seam as more sand slid back in around him. He came back in with a huge smile on his face.

  “You won’t believe this,” he said, and pushed his way outside.

  Emmanuel disappeared through the seam and outside they could hear laughter. Jenny was the next to run out of the tent.

  “What is it?” Marlena asked as she continued to hold John.

  Sam poked her head out as the three of them stood outside. The buggies were sunk in the sand almost to the top of their tires. It would take a little work to get them out and Sam wondered if the storm would affect the engines at all but then she saw what everyone was staring at. It was a good-sized lake at the foot of a snow-capped mountain covered in evergreens. It couldn’t have been far, maybe a mile.

  “Is this it?” she asked. “Where your friend is?”

  “Yes,” Emmanuel said. “We’re here.”

  That was the moment she noticed a pressure building between her legs. She was surprised she recognized it. She had to go. Which meant the water reclaimer inside her had failed, too. It didn't matter though. They had made it. Soon Jenny would be with her family again.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

  It didn’t take them long to reach the edge of the lake. They righted John’s vehicle, and it started right up. Jenny drove it with Sam as Emmanuel took John in the wagon. When they reached the edge of the lake, he was well enough to sit up and even get out of the wagon on his own.

  “Where is your friend? The one with the copter?”

  “Scully lives in the forest,” Emmanuel said. “He’s difficult to find but-”

  “Cannonball,” Jenny yelled, as she dove in.

  “Meatball,” Daniel yelled, and dove in after her.

  They both disappeared below the surface for several seconds before they came up gasping for air. Then Jenny splashed Daniel before he returned her splash for splash, and she screamed.

  “I’m not worried about him finding us,” he said and smiled.

  “Daniel,” Marlena yelled at him as she waded waist deep into the water.

  Daniel stopped and turned to see her stern face before Marlena reeled back and splashed him with a mini tsunami. He froze there a moment before Marlena laughed. Jenny and Daniel laughed and then Marlena hit Jenny before she retaliated. An all-out splash war began.

  Emmanuel grinned, then peeled off his shirt, the skin underneath only half as black as the rest.

  Sam turned back to John. “You coming?”

  John shook his head.

  “He doesn’t like water,” Marlena said. “He’s a big chicken.”

  John smiled. “You go ahead. I will look around for Scully.”

  Sam turned back to the lake and watched Emmanuel as he waded in up to his waist. A large black soot cloud surrounding him. He dove in head first, came up and rubbed his hands over his face as the soot dripped away. He looked at her as he smiled and Sam laughed. Most of the soot had rubbed off, except around his eyes. He looked like a raccoon.

  “What’s so funny?” he asked.

  "You missed a spot," Sam said as she walked up to him.

  She took the scarf that still hung around her neck and reached out with it in her hand. Emmanuel scrunched his eyes together in response and she wiped the soot from around them, then his cheeks and some around the corners of his mouth. He opened his sky-blue eyes again.

  “Better?” he asked.

  Sam nodded right before a massive splash hit her in the face. She turned to see Jenny standing there laughing and then Sam returned the splash with full force, followed by Emmanuel.

  “Okay, okay. Stop. Stop! I surrender,” Jenny said as she retreated.

  Sam glanced back to the empty shore in the momentary reprieve before tossing the scarf to the ground, taking a deep breath and diving under. Totally enveloped by the water all around her, the sun shone down overhead and she could see their legs dangle below the water. Their top halves blurred and rippled in the light. She watched Jenny splash Daniel and break the truce. He fought back hard but almost lost until Emmanuel snuck up behind Jenny and dunked her under. Jenny’s face was in complete shock as she dipped below the surface. Her cheeks puffed-out, her eyes wide before Emmanuel grabbed her and lifted her back up out of the water.

  Sam smiled and swam out along the shore. The water felt so good. She watched small fish pass underneath her, the sandy bottom turned to seaweed off to her right until it disappeared into the darkness. A large fish the size of Daniel startled her as it popped out of the darkness a moment, and then disappeared back into it. When she couldn’t hold her breath anymore, she burst back to the surface.

  The splashing had stopped, and now Daniel had his eyes closed while he reached out with his hands toward Jenny and yelled Marco Polo. Marlena scrubbed the rest of the black soot from Emmanuel's neck and ears, both their backs turned to Sam. She seized the moment and snuck up to the beach before she looked back one last time. She could have done it in the lake but the thought disgusted her. Making sure no one was paying any attention, she pushed her way through the bushes that lined the edge of the forest.

  The trees swayed and danced over her and pine needles clung to her feet as she walked about fifty yards through the forest toward a fallen pine. Somehow it still hung onto life, covering the forest floor in a lush green. Its trunk ended in a big ball of tangled roots and dirt. Sam wasted no time. As soon as she reached the other side, she looked around once and pulled off her pants. Leaning against the trunk she let go. The pressure lifted off a bladder she hadn’t used in years. A mild euphoric rush made her shiver and she let out an audible sigh over the trickle of urine into the pine needles. She couldn’t help but laugh at herself. It was such a simple thing.

  Then she heard something whiz by and her heart raced as she turned her head to see nothing there. Had she imagined it? She retrieved her pants and pulled them up as she looked around again, but all there was, was empty forest. Maybe it could have been a hummingbird, but out in a forest of evergreens? What did she know, she wasn’t exactly a nature expert was she?

  She moved around the root ball to make her way back to the shore and almost tripped over him. He was small, probably not more than a hundred-forty pounds. He had a thick white beard and wore tattered overalls over an even more tattered flannel shirt. In his hand was a gun and in his neck were eight yellow darts. His tongue hung out of his mouth and Sam pressed her fingers against his cold neck to find no pulse. She stepped away and her foot crunched down on a Covenant drone torn in two. Then she turned back toward the shore and ran, kicking up more pine needles in her wake.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

  It jumped in front of her and stopped her in her tracks. All it had to do was release one of its darts and drop her, but instead it shot out a beam of light. Sam jumped back in surprise as a red hologram of the council member Wexler appeared in full scale standing there.

  “Hello, Samantha,” she said. “It’s good to see you again.”

  “Why are you doing this?”

  “Doing this?”

  “Chasing us, burning fields, murdering people?”

  Wexler shook her head. “We didn’t mean for that to happen, but we needed to find you.”

  “Why? So, you can murder us like Dr. Tesla? Was that an accident too? Or was the accident that I woke up?”

  Wexler's eyes flickered to the side as if someone was telling her something then back to Sam. “Samantha, is that what you think? That we were trying to kill you? That cocktail we gave you was a sleeping medication. We were trying to find out what you knew.”

  “Bull.”

  The councilwoman looked at the ground and pushed her fingers through her dreadlocks. “You heard it didn’t you? Our conversation? You heard us discuss the situation we are facing?”

  Sam stared right through her.

  Wexler shook her head and sighed. “The Covenant is dying, Samantha. We’re at a crossroads. The source is running out. Some yea
rs ago, there was an unfortunate contamination, one that destroyed many of our reserves. We can't grow it fast enough to keep up with demand. Soon people will starve to death.”

  “What does this have to do with Jenny and I?”

  The council member pressed her lips together. “I think you already know.” She walked closer to Sam as the drone drew closer. Her eyes looking up and down Sam’s body as she walked around her. “You should be puking your guts out right now or dead but you don’t even show signs of a cough or fever.”

  “It comes in waves.”

  “Yes. It typically does.” She stopped and looked down.

  Sam followed her gaze to her forearms. The dark purple lines had disappeared. Only when she looked closely, could she spot the faint trails.

  “She has a gift, Samantha. One that could save us all. Men, women and children, we would all have a second chance. No harm will come to her and she won’t feel any pain. Please Samantha, you don’t know what you’re doing.”

  “What’s changed?”

  “I’m sorry?”

  “I remember what you said in the room, you said Jenny could destroy everything. What’s changed?”

  Wexler swallowed.

  “Are you going to give her a sleeping drug like you gave Dr. Tesla, like you tried to give me? She’s a risk, isn’t she? She’s a threat to your power? If all you needed was a sample from Jenny, you would have had it by now. Tell me the truth. You can’t let her live.”

  The warm smile fell from Wexler’s face and she wrinkled her nose as if she smelled something awful.

  “Who are you to judge us? You think it’s easy to make the decisions we have to make? You think we want to do this? You don’t know the first thing about what you’re talking about. You’re just a stupid girl. Wait until you have to make some real decisions, with peoples’ lives in your hands and then you can judge us.”

  A flock of drones buzzed by over the tree line.

  “You’re stalling me.”

  Wexler grinned now.

  “Don’t make this harder than it needs to be, Samantha.”

  The sunlight glinted off the drone's metallic surface as it inched closer to her. A compartment in front clicked open.

  “I’m giving you the opportunity to come home, the easy way. You can’t be happy out here, in this…” Wexler waved her hand and looked around the forest, as if searching for the right word. “environment. With these people.”

  Sam bent down and picked up a branch as the drone inched back. There was no reason for it to not shoot her, except for that perhaps it couldn’t. She tried to remember all the darts embedded in the man by the downed tree. Could she have used her whole cache up on Scully?

  “These people?” Sam growled. “These people have more generosity and compassion in their little finger than you have in your whole body. While you are burning fields, they are putting their lives at risk to help strangers. It was the family with the newborn wasn’t it? That’s how you found us? Did you hurt them?”

  Wexler swallowed. “Don’t let them fool you, Samantha. You’ve been living with them too long. You have everything twist- ”

  Sam reeled back, ready to smash the drone, but she never got the chance before there was a plastic crunching sound, and the hologram disappeared. The drone spun around and dove to the ground. One of its rotors was missing and there was a large chunk taken out of the side. By some miracle, three of its rotors still whirred as it tried to lift its mangled body out of the pine needles but it only managed to flop around like a dying animal. The red light shot out from it, projecting the council member sideways on the ground as it flickered.

  “Don’t be stup... Sa.... You can... fight this. One way or...”

  Sam’s foot crunched down on the drone and the image of the council member froze before the hologram faded to nothing. She took her foot off and looked down at it, ready for it to come back to life but it didn’t move.

  “Are you okay?” John asked.

  Sam turned to see him there, holding some kind of metal slingshot device on his arm.

  “What are you doing out here?” she asked.

  “I was hunting. Scully’s…”

  “Dead.”

  Something clinked off his weapon and a dart stuck in the ground near Sam’s foot before they heard the familiar buzz.

  It must have thought it hit John because it ignored him now and moved toward Sam. She only had a fraction of a second after she heard the hiss of the hydraulic release and swung the branch around as the dart stuck in the center of it with a thwack.

  She felt the wind from another dart whiz by her. This time it stuck in the ground a couple of feet in front of her and she ran, pine needles flew behind her with each step. She bobbed back and forth between the trees and a third and fourth dart whizzed by before she heard a plastic crunching sound again. Looking back, she saw it scattered across the earth. There wasn’t enough of it left to even attempt getting back up again. John’s footsteps came up behind her as she took off for the beach.

  “Wait,” he yelled out.

  She ran through the underbrush, getting closer to the beach now. Not taking her time as branches and prickers scraped across her chest, arms, legs, and face. Stopping just short of the beach she peered out from the bushes. They had barely made it to the beach before they found them. They were all sprawled out on the ground with about ten drones hovering over top, positioned in a circle around them, guarding them.

  CHAPTER THIRTY

  Sam stared at their bodies on the beach. Besides the drones, the swaying grasses and trees, nothing moved. Penny and Malcolm were nowhere to be seen. The leaves rustled as John pushed his body through the underbrush.

  “More drones?”

  “Ten more. They’ll guard over them until the Coven arrives. It’s their standard protocol. If we attack them or try to get them back, they’ll take us out, too.”

  John shook his head. “I could take out one or two with this.” He held up his sling. “But not ten. Could we lure them away?”

  Sam shook her head. “They won’t all leave. Just a few and there are more out there to take their place. All it would end up doing is getting one of us tranqued… Dammit. Damn them. Damn, every last one.”

  “Why are there so many of them?” John asked.

  “What?”

  “Those darts.” John pointed at Emmanuel and Marlena’s bodies. “They each have at least three.”

  “That’s because they’re meant for children. They probably shot them extra to be sure.”

  “Look.”

  Three dark obelisks floated just above the tree line. They didn’t move like the drones. Sam knew exactly what they were. She had seen the kids come off them enough times to know transport ships. They would be here in just a few minutes. If they weren’t outmatched now, there would be no chance when they came. Fighting was pointless, so was hiding.

  She breathed out a sigh. Their only options were to surrender or try to take a couple of drones out with them. At least with the first option, she would be awake through it, maybe able to stay close enough to Jenny until there was a better opportunity to make a move. She pushed her way out of the bushes.

  “Wait,” John said. “What are you doing?”

  “I can’t hide here. I have to be on that ship with Jenny. Tell Emmanuel and Marlena, thank you. I’m sorry for everything.”

  She stepped out onto the beach with her hands up. Four of the drones jerked around to line her up in their sights. As long as she didn’t run, she was fine. It was part of their basic programming to reserve their cache. If a human was controlling one of them though there was no telling what would happen. She could end up just like the little man she had found in the woods.

  “I just want to make sure Jenny is all right,” she said as she made slow even steps, with her hands held up above her shoulders.

  Two of the four that had lined her up flew down by her sides and hovered a few feet away as she continued to walk toward Jenny. They didn’t
shoot. They moved at the same speed and distance on each of her sides, too perfect to be human controlled.

  Sam took care to bend down, making no sudden movements. She turned Jenny over in her arms and wiped away the sand and wet strands of hair that clung to her face. She was still warm. Her chest moved up and down as she heard little puffs of air whistle through her nose. A little globule of drool slid out of the corner of Jenny’s mouth and Sam felt something hard against her side, it was the satchel.

  Every molecule in her body told her to pick Jenny up and run but she wouldn’t get one step before they took her out. She couldn’t bear the thought of waking up on the beach without her, while they did God only knows what to her. She squeezed Jenny’s fingers.

  “Jenny, can you hear me? Jenny?”

  She looked up at the dark obelisks as they approached and then down at the satchel. Quickly she slipped it off and buried it in the sand.

  The obelisks made no sound as they approached. They floated toward them like they were some special effect superimposed over reality. As they drew near the air seemed to warm up ten degrees. She could feel the droplets of sweat bead on her forehead in a matter of seconds and run down her cheeks. When they floated less than a hair’s breadth over the ground, they let out a low groan, and sunk into it as the sand under them blasted out in every direction. Sam almost didn't close her eyes in time before the sand rolled past her. Some of it went in her mouth. She coughed before she opened her eyes to see the drones wobble in the air as they steadied themselves.

  Looking back to the bushes for John, she didn't see any sign of movement. She couldn’t see him running but sometimes people did odd things in odd situations. Maybe he had realized there was no hope, too.

  The three obelisks in front of her had landed in a triangular formation. A small hatch on top of each ship clicked opened, and five more drones shot out of each hatch as they joined up to form a perimeter of defense. Then, a much larger hatch opened at the base of each ship. Men wearing mirrored helmets and armored suits jogged down the ramps with the glowing red wands in hand. They positioned themselves around the ships in another circle of defense. They were almost statues. The only sign of life was the slight turn of their helmets as they scanned the periphery for any danger.