by J. N. Chaney
I saw in slow motion as the infected let loose of Doctor Allbright and settled for the barber instead. It grabbed on to him and fell backward, taking Tom with it. There was a sickening buckle in the crawler as we ran over them both.
“Tom, no!” David screamed. “We have to go back!”
I wanted to agree with him. I was about to yell the same thing, even though it meant dooming us all when I saw Tom’s body lying in the jungle behind us. One of the infected stopped to lift a boulder-sized rock over Tom’s head, then he let it drop.
“He’s gone,” Stacy yelled as she flung another infected from the rear of the crawler. “Keep going!”
“We’re not going to outrun them!” I shouted to Boss Creed. “We’ve got to go back to where Ira died and get some help.”
“What!?” The tone in Boss Creed’s voice told me he had no idea where I was going with this.
“We’ve got to lead them in that direction to get some reinforcements,” I yelled toward the cab. “Bring in the big guns in the jungle.”
“Oh, right!” Boss Creed said, finally catching my meaning. “Hannah, take a hard left here!”
Hannah swung the steering wheel to the left, following Boss Creed’s directions. The bellow coming from deep in the jungle began to grow in intensity. The infected chasing us didn’t seem to notice.
“Shouldn’t we be going the other way?” Lou asked. “I mean, opposite the terrifying roar in the jungle depths?”
“We’re going the right way,” I said, stabbing at an infected who managed to gain a grip on the tailgate of the crawler. “Trust me.”
The crawler rocked and bounced again. The case of armor in the rear of the crawler slid back and forth, even threatening to fall out at one point. Against all odds, Hannah kept us moving forward.
I could hear Boss Creed telling her the plan somewhere past the shrieking and growing roar we were headed to.
Finally, we burst through a thick throng of trees in the jungle interior and came face to face with what was making the roaring sounds in the jungle depth. It was massive, even larger than the crawler itself.
The closest thing I could relate it to was a gigantic rhinoceros with black and red skin. Three horns came from its head. One in the center of its forehead and one on each side of its cheeks, curving in.
It bellowed at us through hate-filled eyes.
Self-preservation told Hannah to let her foot off the acceleration. I didn’t blame her, except that her lack of will to go forward meant more infected were catching up.
“Hannah, go!” I screamed.
Snapping out of her wonder-stricken state, Hannah stomped on the gas again. We were headed in a beeline for the mountain of a creature.
It pawed the ground with one of its giant front hooves. A roar escaped its black lips as it charged us, head down and horns aimed straight at us.
Caught between a horde of infected and the King Kong of this jungle planet. I shook my head. I should have stayed on Earth.
“Hannah!” Boss Creed yelled as we rocketed toward the creature.
“I got it,” Hannah said.
“Hannah!” Stacy screamed.
“Not yet!” Hannah yelled back.
Despite our situation, I found myself liking Hannah. She was crazy. I could understand crazy.
We were so close now, I could see the creature’s eyes, dark orange orbs filled with anger and hate. At the last possible moment, and I really mean the last possible moment, Hannah swerved right.
The left side of the beast clipped the left side of the crawler ever so briefly as we shot past one another.
I could have reached out and touched the thick hide of the alien animal if I wanted.
“Oh, thank Esu we made it through that one.” Lou made some kind of symbol across his body I didn’t recognize but figured it was religious.
I turned to look back at the creature, who tried skidding to a halt. It failed, acting like a bowling ball crushing the infected, who followed in a trail behind us.
It was like watching a train wreck in slow motion. I knew what I saw on some scale was horrific, I just couldn’t bring myself to look away.
The alien beast ran on four legs, crushing the infected under its massive bulk. Each of its legs was roughly the height of one of the infected colonists and twice as thick.
The infected seemed as surprised to see it as the alien animal did them. One minute they were crashing into one another and the next tearing into the other. The alien animal wasted no time trampling and skewering them with its giant horns.
Hannah drove a safe distance then left the crawler idling as we watched the battle unfold. Some voice reminded me that we should probably get going, although I wasn’t going to be the one to give this idea a voice. I wanted to watch like everyone else.
At first, it looked impossible for the infected to win. Every time the creature turned, it trampled another infected under its hoof. Dozens of them fell. What the infected lacked in size, they made up in number. I had vastly under-guessed how many infected there were. We had to have killed a hundred, maybe more at the beach. I thought that was all of them. I was wrong.
More and more of them came from the jungle interior, jumping and clawing at the alien animal with their hands. They used rocks and sticks to take it down. Over and over, they tried, sacrificing many of their own number for the sake of victory.
Finally, they took down the beast like a swarm of ants attacking a scorpion. I watched on, dumbfounded as a pair of infected holding something that looked like moldy cauliflower ran up and threw it on the alien beast.
They wrestled the animal down to its left side. It still kicked out and bit anything it could get its mouth around.
A billow of black spores erupted on impact. The black cloud descended on the animal like it was given a tranquilizer. The beast stopped squirming. The infected holding it down released their hold on the animal, allowing it to rise.
Like a drunk after a long night out, it stumbled its way to its feet once more. Instead of bright orange eyes, black orbs looked around. Ebony veins began spreading from its mouth and ears.
“Uh, Hannah?” I said, still not daring to move my eyes from what I saw in front of me. “Now would probably be a good time to go.”
25
The ride back to the colony was finally quiet. Once we were out of the jungle and back on the plains to where the main part of the Orion rested, I allowed myself to relax.
Relax might not even be the right word. More like I collapsed from exhaustion. No one had slept the night before. As the suns rose, I was just grateful not to run into anything crazy on our way back. The ride would have been nearly peaceful if the memories of what we had all just been through weren’t so fresh.
“So much chaos and so beautiful all at the same time,” Lou said under his breath as those in the back of the crawler looked at the landscape around us.
I couldn’t disagree with him. The twin suns of orange and yellow, the vibrant greens of the grass and foliage—hell, even the alien chirping of the birds—it was all strangely beautiful.
“They—whatever the infected are now—they turned that beast into one of them,” Doctor Allbright said out loud as she worked the problem over in her mind. “What if they turn other animals? Other colonists? How many of them were there?”
“All great questions we don’t have answers to,” Stacy added.
“However, they’re able to turn animals, they didn’t seem interested in Mutt for some reason,” David pointed out. “Maybe there’s something in that we can use to our advantage.”
“A bigger question is, are they going to remain content to stay in the jungle or will they come looking for us?” I asked, musing over those thoughts as I looked down at my hands and armor. The knife on the back of my palm was covered in black blood and gore. My chest plate was spattered with the same, as were my arms and legs. I ached in a dozen different places, and the back of my neck and head felt like they were on fire.
“L
ook on the bright side,” David said, lying down flat on the crawler as if he were going to take a nap. “We’ve got a working crawler and armor now. All we need is a few weapons, and we can give those things a fight to remember.”
After that comment, we all remained quiet. Each of us lost to his or her own thoughts of the future.
I looked up to catch Stacy’s eyes on me. She didn’t look away, as if she were embarrassed I caught her. She just stared into my eyes with a silly grin on her lips.
I couldn’t help but grin back. Despite what we had just been through, I found her smile intoxicating.
I was about to ask her what she was smiling about when she answered the question for me.
“That haircut looks good on you, Slade,” Stacy said. “There’s an actual human being under there. I wasn’t sure what we’d find once we trimmed it all off. An animal, maybe.”
“The animal’s still there,” I told her. “Maybe I’ll let him out later.”
“Well, tell him he’s welcome any time,” Stacy said. “We’ll need more of him before this is all over, I’m betting.”
I thought about the kiss she had given me on my cheek. Of how right it felt, of how long it had been since I had kissed someone. Heck, how long it had been since I’d let anyone get close to me.
“Come—hear me—”
Everyone in the crawler snapped to attention besides Lou, who had drifted to sleep. The words crackled from the crawler cabin, where a radio sat next to the passenger side seat.
Even though it was only three cracked words that came in, I thought I recognized Iris’ voice. Were we really that close to the Orion already? We’d only been traveling that morning. It wasn’t even noon yet.
“This is Expeditionary Force One,” Elon said, grabbing the radio and clicking the button on the side of the communication unit. “Do you read us?”
“Just coming—into range,” Iris said. “Good—hear from you.”
“Good to hear from you too, Iris,” Elon said in a weary voice. “We’re returning to the Orion today. We should be there soon.”
“Understood—hurry,” Iris answered.
For the first time, I picked up a hint of worry in her voice, if Cognitives could be worried at all. I felt the icy hand of fear snake down my spine. Instinct told me to look behind us.
I did, half expecting to see something macabre following us: the infected, that creature they turned, or something else. There was nothing coming for us at the moment, just the bright green grassy fields.
“Is everything okay?” Elon asked.
“Yes, just a new development to go over with you,” Iris said. “Hurry.”
I knew something was very wrong. It was like when Mom and Dad were worried about something but didn’t want to talk about it in front of the kids.
Part of me didn’t even want to know what was going on. I just wanted to eat my weight in bacon and pass out for the next week. A hot shower might be nice too, one of those ones where you stay in there way longer than you need to be clean.
The rest of the trip went quickly, and for the most part, in silence. I tried to catch a few minutes of rest, but every time I closed my eyes, I saw images of the infected.
The crawler made great time back to the Orion. Just after midday, we saw the metal husk of what we now called home.
We were met with smiles and waves of the Civil Authority officers standing watch at the perimeter. The wall was nearly half completed in the time we were gone.
We pulled into the area inside the wall. Colonists surrounded us, eager to find out what we had seen and if there were more survivors on the strange planet. I saw it all in their faces even before they asked. So many of them had loved ones and friends they had not seen since the Orion broke apart upon descent and crash-landed on the planet.
“Did you find anyone out there?” an eager-eyed woman asked as I jumped off the crawler.
“What happened?” another man asked.
“Are there any survivors? Please, I’m trying to find my wife,” a middle-aged man asked.
The idea I had killed people these colonists were asking for crossed my mind. Who knew if some of the infected were the very people those looking at me now were so desperately searching for.
Lucky for me, Elon took charge.
“Please, the members of the expeditionary force are exhausted,” Elon said, moving from his area in the cab to the back of the truck. “We will have a full meeting tonight and tell you everything. For now, take heart that we have not only found a crawler and a case of armor but yes, there are survivors out there, and we will keep looking for more.”
Elon motioned toward David when he said there were survivors still out there on the planet. This was enough for a few of the colonists. Others bombarded David with questions.
I saw Elon whisper something to David, who nodded.
I could guess that the Eternal was asking the man to keep the whole infected thing under wraps for the time being.
“Would you mind overseeing the storage of the crawler and armor?” Elon asked Boss Creed.
“I’m on it,” Boss Creed answered.
Elon motioned to Stacy and me to follow him through the crowd.
I didn’t really want to. Something told me we were about to step in it right now. Iris’ cryptic message over the radio was enough for me to guess that things were about to go from bad to worse.
Arun popped out of a wide tent set against the base of the Orion as we made our way to the ship. She motioned us inside.
The look on her face said it all, stern and serious, and with a hint of happiness at seeing us returned alive.
Arun embraced her brother as we entered the tent.
“I want to hear about it all,” Arun said to Elon and then turned to Stacy and me to take us in. “I’m glad you’re safe, and for the time being, that has to be enough. We have a very serious situation on our hands.”
“More serious than a zombie tribe of aliens?” I said under my breath.
Stacy elbowed me in the ribs. My body was so battered, even in the armor, it still hurt.
The tent Arun erected at the base of the Orion was longer than it was wide. A kind of office had been set up with hard light emitters stationed in the corners of the chamber to give Iris physical form.
“This is Mr. Slade’s heads-up warning before I appear in the room,” Iris said.
“Thanks, Iris,” I said. “You’re always so thoughtful.”
Iris appeared as if by magic. She stood in front of us with her ethereal blue glow emanating from her body. Her fair skin and white hair gave her the appearance of an Eternal, but the blue glow around her and her bright blue eyes gave her away as something else entirely.
The room was Spartan with a desk and chairs on one side, a holo table in the middle, and the far end of the room stacked with crates.
“We should really go over what we found in the jungle,” Elon told Arun and Iris. “I’m not sure if we should be preparing for an attack soon or perhaps even a war.”
“I want to hear it all and we will plan, but first, we have a more pressing matter.” Arun ushered her brother inside. The way she waved off the warning of an attack or even a war threw so many warning signs up in my mind, I knew whatever Iris and Arun were going to tell us would rock the very foundation of our survival.
“Arun,” Stacy interrupted the brother and sister. “I’m not sure you heard Elon right. We came across a group of crazed colonists that are infected with some kind of mutant spore. We should be preparing the colony now on how to deal with the threat.”
“I heard you,” Arun said, motioning to Iris. “And that all sounds horrific, and trust me, on the inside, I’m as worried about it as you, but not in light of the news. Iris, tell them.”
“This morning, we received a message that I have been unable to translate,” Iris said, waving a hand over the hologram display. A holographic green image appeared showing the same mountain face where the alien door was discovered.
&nb
sp; Everything on the display looked exactly like I remembered. The rock face of the low mountain, the door set inside. One distinct difference took my breath away.
The doors were open.
“When—” Elon started but didn’t finish.
“Just as the suns rose,” Iris explained. “I am proficient in every language of the human tongue. I can communicate with machines, and the message I received from within the doors are none I have ever come across before. I can only make a guess at the short message I intercepted.”
“How can you make a guess if you don’t know what letters or symbols or whatever is being used?” I asked Iris.
“Based on the composition of the message and a series of algorithms I created to decipher the message, and considering the open doors, I believe an educated hypothesis is due.”
“And the that is?” Stacy asked.
“Welcome,” Iris answered.
Epilogue
“Well, at least if we die in here, it’s just us, and we can give the others some time to prepare,” I said as we stood in front of the open doors leading deeper into the mountain.
“Don’t be too eager to die,” Stacy warned me as she checked her rifle. “Things were just starting to look up—you know, what with the discovery of all those infected maniacs and all.”
“If the infected don’t kill us, maybe the aliens will.” I smiled at her with a shrug. “I got no plans for tomorrow.”
“Although I understand the human need for humor when matters seem dire, I would recommend staying focused,” Iris said through the earpiece. “Studies have shown that keeping a positive outlook can go a long way in survival situations. Your lives may very well depend on your ability to hope. In fact—”
“Boring,” I said as I checked my rifle. I patted the knife at the side of my right hip. It was the same knife Stacy gave me to fend off the infected earlier that morning.
A few hours of food and rest were all we got before we’d suited up in armor we’d found in the jungle. The same jungle that seemed to want to kill us at every turn.