by Amanda Milo
He had recovered enough to walk, so we made for the door. I took one last longing look at the pool of blood that Horton’s head was lying in.
Did I get the satisfaction of killing the bastard? Negative. The man who tortured countless souls including my girls died the most unsatisfying death in history—he thumped his head when the ship shook us up.
Taylor sent a glance in Horton’s direction too. “Damn shame,” he declared. He was echoing my words from earlier, and in that moment, I got a sense that a line had been drawn—and the side he was standing on was the same side as mine.
I experienced a grim flash of comradeship that I felt I could trust.
I opened the door, and the source of the somewhat comforting sound of booted feet marching was revealed as guards. A line of them. All doing double time as they sped past us. When I spotted one with the bearing of a ground pounder, I barked, “Halt!”
He pulled up so fast the man behind him crashed against his back, causing a domino effect for the next seven guys behind him.
He looked slightly embarrassed by his ingrained reaction, until he focused on my stars. His hand came up in an automatic salute just as his boots slammed together.
“At ease. What the hell’s going on?”
“Ship crashed, Major General, sir.”
My heart stopped.
“Our orders are to split into groups. One is checking our food supply, my group is going to recon for the other pods’ crash sites—”
My ears filled with a rushing sound. “Other pods...”
“Detached, sir.” His eyes flicked to the men filing past him, the stomping of feet loud, the din equivalent to the clamoring inside the privacy of my mind.
Outwardly, I nodded to him. “Thank you.”
He didn’t lean around me, but I perceived his curiosity a moment before he hesitantly asked, “Where is Warden Horton, sir?”
Deadpan, Taylor replied, “Died on impact.”
Before the grunt could formulate a response, I cut him loose.
He gratefully fell back into formation, as I silently planned a mutiny.
I RANSACKED THE SUPPLIES, and nobody questioned me. Taylor dogged me, not saying a word, and when he saw me filling a pack, I wasn’t surprised to watch him grab up his own, repeating my process in silence.
“I’m not going to hold their damn hand,” I finally said. I felt it fair to warn him I was jumping this ship.
“Expect not.”
I crammed another MRE in my pack. “They don’t need me. Only a few knew I was even here.”
Taylor stuffed a couple of meal rations into his own bag. “Affirmative. Rescue Charlie and Preta.”
I regarded him. “Why are you doing this? You can still walk away with a career. Hell, you can go be a hero if you step out right now.”
His eyes locked on mine. “I can still be a hero. I can do the right thing.”
“The whole ‘for good men to do nothing’ deal?”
“Damn straight.”
We crammed bags like wintering chipmunks, and nobody so much as breathed a word of protest. We nodded, stayed cool, and walked right off the ship and out into the night.
In my state of mental meltdown upon hearing that we crashed—upon learning that alpha pod, and therefore my girls were no longer a few swift steps from me—I failed to ask where we crashed.
Taylor’s breath escaped in a rush. “Toto?”
“Yeah, Dorothy?”
This ain’t Kansas.
We stared out into a jungle. An unfamiliar jungle.
“I’ve been all over the world,” Taylor remarked.
I cocked my head, watching what looked like a giant praying mantis stalk across the clearing in front of us. “But you’ve never seen a place that needed the Orkin Man more?”
“Was gonna say I’ve never seen this before. This is going to sound crazy but...”
Another praying mantis stalked out.
It spit fire.
This. Ain’t. Kansas.
This isn’t Earth. “No way.”
We struck out—avoiding the giant killer bugs—all the while looking like we had a plan, which put those who saw us at ease. The men in charge can do anything they want as long as they look like they have it all in hand.
And we did. We were taking everything in our hands right out of here.
It was that easy.
I wish I could have said the same for the rest of our mission.
FOUR
GERARD
It’d been weeks.
Weeks of searching, of finding other survivors, of finding signs of more—I had to believe they were alive. My girls knew how to rough it.
The white static background noise of the thick jungle always lulled me into my own thoughts. Mean bush was new to me. Even during my time on the ground, Earth had nothing to compare to the colorful, dangerous, and downright strange flora on this planet. My blade cut through one last sap-dripping shrub before I took a breather.
I dragged my knuckle over my chest, the familiar shape of metal behind my shirt comforting as it pressed to my skin. Charlie’s dog tags. She’d given them to me before she was arrested, knowing that they wouldn’t let her keep them, but more so for me. It was a promise, in a way.
She had to be safe. She was strong. And Preta, despite nothing formal or official, could handle this. Charlie would kick her ass if she didn’t.
The thought made me smile.
“Sol? Hear that?”
My eyes cut to Taylor, who had two fingers pointed at our three o’clock.
It sounded like a woman.
I mouthed, “Is she crying?”
“Sounds like,” he answered in kind.
A male’s voice chuckled, “Caught her,” before we heard the sound of a fighting—now unmistakable—woman’s scream.
Adrenaline dumped into my system like acid, my blood instantly boiling, and it was Taylor damn near tackling me that stopped me from charging through the thick trees toward what sounded like an attack.
On a woman.
I took a deep breath. I knew better than to just storm in. Her outraged vocalizations gave us the advantage of covering our noise so we moved swiftly, and we arrived close enough that we could peer through the vegetation and get a look at our situation.
It’s not them.
Instantly, I was ashamed for the wave of relief that coursed through me. My chin tapped my chest as I cringed. This girl was a Charlie, this girl was a Preta—this was a woman who did not deserve this.
When the man turned, I nearly shot him in the ass by accident.
Horton. It was Horton. Alive.
“I didn’t check,” I growled. “I saw all that blood, and assumed.”
Taylor’s whisper sounded as stunned as I felt. “You know what they say about assuming.”
“Yeah, the asses come back fucking alive, that’s what. Shit!”
Head wounds bleed. A lot. I should have checked his fat neck for a pulse.
If I’d realized he was still alive, I’d have happily kicked his head in. I wouldn’t have lost any sleep. In fact, my belief that he was no longer polluting air with every breath he took had made it a little easier to make it through my days.
Yet here he was, hurting another woman.
“Whiskey dick, sweetheart,” he told her as he stroked himself.
Taylor’s voice came out tight. “Perfect shot, right there.”
He was right; Horton had taken a step back. It was enough; I took the honors. I shot Horton in the pecker.
His scream was high pitched, and pitiful, and animals began their hunting cries in the distance.
The girl didn’t move.
My heart sank when I looked—really looked—and saw that she was cut up, scratched, bruised—with a rope dangling off her wrist. She had escaped.
‘Caught her,’ Horton had said.
Wait.
Not ‘caught you.’
Caught her.
Who was Horton—
T
he hairs on the back of my neck rose.
Horton’s shrieking had covered the sound of the second man’s ambush on us. I’d given away our position when I made the shot.
Taylor’s shoulder slammed into my side, knocking us both down to the spongy forest floor. I felt the impact in his body as he took the bullet.
Training kicking in, I craned my neck to find the shooter, and pulled my arm out from under Taylor to nail the newcomer with a headshot. I carefully slid out from under the kid, and aimed for Horton’s dominant hand—then to be safe, I got his right hand too.
Pulse thundering in my ears, I listened. My eyes took in the forest which was neither still nor silent, but the trees and vines were so thick, there could’ve been an army hiding and I wouldn’t have seen them until it was too late.
Taylor.
I spun and dropped to my knees, the heel of my hand slamming to the dirt beside his shoulder.
His hands were clamped... upper abdomen, right side, under the stomach...
That was his liver.
Dark blood emptied despite the pressure he had on it. His eyes too glassy, he made a choked noise before he managed words. “Hey, Toto?”
The lump in my throat felt bigger than fucking Kansas. “Yeah, Dorothy?”
“Don’t give up, old man.”
I felt a broken-hearted grin stretch my face.
Taylor shared it; his bloody teeth were stained, and more dark red escaped out of the side of his mouth.
“Go. Help her,” he ordered me.
“Taylor...”
Somehow, he managed to look a little cocky. “Told you,” he swallowed, momentarily cutting off the blood oozing from his lips, “I’d be a hero.”
“You are, kid.”
I didn’t know if it hurt, but I hugged him to me anyway. I eased him back to the ground, leaving him there, alone, in the dirt, to go check on our girl.
She was dead.
Horton wasn’t.
Not yet.
I pulled out my knife.
“What was it you said to her?” I grated as I sunk the blade into the flesh of his shoulder.
His scream tickled my spine as I leaned on the handle and hissed. “I caught you.”
MY EYES STUNG.
I raised my palms to scrub my face, the exhale gushing from my mouth roughly. I’d take a minute and sit here with Taylor and the nameless girl before I left. Didn’t have the tools to bury them, else I wou—
A gurgled scream rang out.
I whirled around.
A man’s body crumpled to the ground, a gaping hole clear through his chest.
My gaze lifted, a woman coming into view as I blinked, clearing my eyes of moisture.
Her head slowly canted to the right and she dropped the man's heart before shaking off the blood, examining her coated fingers like the glossy shine intrigued her.
It splattered against the grass.
Her expression was devoid of emotion...
She fully turned, facing me, and that’s when I realized she wasn’t a woman.
Not a human woman.
I’d been mistaken. Her shape, her skin—where she had skin—was a trick.
Her right eye—golden and matching the left—blinked. The left eye... having no skin around it, no eyelid, just stared at me. A reverse pirate patch—only metal was visible.
Every place she was missing skin—spots along her bare arms, claw marks raking her right leg, and a crack along her ribs—dark metal shone through. The small tank and pair of shorts she wore did little to hide her body.
“What are you?” My voice sounded hoarse to my ears.
She—the machine?—blinked again and crouched next to a pack that hadn’t been there before. Pulling a strip of fabric from it, she wiped her hand leisurely, as if she had all the time in the world.
It crossed my mind that maybe she was an experiment set loose on this world after the crash, but it seemed like a reach.
“Yolla.” Her voice was like a strong shot of liquor—it slid down my throat in a velvety fire, burned in my gut, and I wanted more.
I stood, and she paused, watching me rise, her golden, patchless eye drawing my attention. Yolla. She affirmed my previous thoughts. Which, to me, really only meant not human.
Her dark wavy hair fell over her shoulder, the rich cola color a weakness of mine. I was fully aware it was inappropriate to notice. Extremely aware. Fuck, she was a machine!
My sight dropped to the heartless dead guy.
A machine that could punch a hole through a human chest.
“Well, thanks for—” I jabbed a finger toward the carcass, “saving my ass.”
Keeping my movements controlled, I reached down, grabbed my pack, and shouldered it. I’d fully intended to stay a while longer with Taylor, show my respect, but I was alive and I wanted to stay that way a little longer.
That and the smell of blood would draw in the big-ass predators soon. I needed to get the hell out of Dodge before that happened.
Giving the dead captain one last nod, I took a breath and headed in the opposite direction.
“Where are you going, Sol?”
I came to a stop and slowly turned on my booted heel.
How the fuck did she know my last name?
FIVE
GERARD
“Are you seeking?” she asked, brushing her thumb across her... upper chest.
The move confused my brain, which saw a woman touching her chest, and immediately clamored ‘Breasts!’—while the other part of my brain, the one not controlled by my dick, rationalized that the move was deliberate, mimicking my frequent touch to Charlie’s dog tags.
Charlie’s tags.
I’d lost them when I’d flipped on Horton.
Everything was covered in blood. I clawed over the ground like a madman, but it was a lost cause.
I forced my attention back to the current... What? Was she a threat?
I didn’t know how to classify her. I had no clue what I was dealing with here. My body was strung tight at just the hint of anything related to Charlie, no matter how remotely.
Not that this... machine would know anything about her, or the two sheets of metal identifiers that used to rest over my heart.
“Seeking?”
She grabbed up her own pack, swinging it to her shoulder easily, in a way that bespoke much practice. I noted that she could do it silently.
My eyes narrowed.
“I have been seeking with you,” she offered in way of explanation.
I dug a thumbnail into my eyebrow, my gaze skipping over the bodies all around us as we conversed like we weren’t affected at all. She didn’t appear to be. “Yeah? What, uh, what are you seeking?”
She stepped toward me, and my muscles tensed.
She paused.
Ah, fuck me—she was observant. My wariness increased.
She tilted her head. “Are you scared of me?”
That phrase. She couldn’t know, but that phrase. Images of another time, another life, blasted me.
Samara, Charlie’s mom, as she’d sauntered up to me, grabbed my shoulders, and tugged me down for a kiss... “You scared, Sol?”
Preta’s mom, Zoie, throwing back her head, her thick, dark hair cascading down to tease just above her ass before she whirled around, “Scared of me?”
Had I been? Hell yes. And I’d only started to learn fear then as a widowed father of one. All too quickly, it had turned into widowed father of two.
All I had left...
I jerked my hand from where it’d been making its way to the tags.
To their empty spot.
Every woman is taken from me.
Where the fuck are my girls?
I felt my Adam’s apple go to work as my throat drained the hot liquid that wasn’t escaping from my eyes.
She—it, dammit, it!—continued to glide toward me, hips swaying, a tiny orange spark flaring from the exposed mech on her leg, the tear ragged and painful-looking. “The Kahav call it The
raracha. I seek that.”
I cleared my throat, and ignored the way I took in air with a gasp like a drowning man. “Should I wish you luck?”
She seemed to consider this. “Would you like to seek with me?”
I wanted to shut my eyes against the seductive sound of her voice. A siren on an alien planet.
My eyes fixed on her hair.
My type of siren.
I pressed the heel of my hand into my eye socket—just one, since she’d proven she bore watching.
She knew my name. She knew at least one of my intimate habits: my little tag-worrystone sessions.
She’d been watching me. If I declined her offer, would she take off? Or would she keep following me?
I hadn’t had a clue she was there. My eyes went to the man’s heart lying on the ground, sand clinging to the sticky surface. This alluring little creature was deadly—clearly—and the fact that she hadn’t attacked me was nice and all, but now that I knew she existed...
“Sure. I’ll follow you.”
Her lips moved into a facsimile of a smile, yet her expression retained an unnerving blankness. “We can seek together.”
“Great.” I tried to muster up a smile. “Lead the way.”
She did, easily sweeping past me, showing no fear at having me at her back. Yeah, I took full note of that. The logistics of the strength it would take to pierce through flesh, miss or break bones, rip out...
I went for my eye socket again, a headache trying to incapacitate me. She had nothing to fear, and we both knew it.
“Your kind are the Toto?”
I stumbled.
‘Toto?’
I heard the kid’s voice almost as if he were still dogging my heels.
‘Don’t give up, old man.’
A mortifying, choked squeak escaped from my larynx, causing her to turn and study me. “Humans,” I forced out. “My people are humans.”
I heard a little electronic whirr while she watched me a second longer, before she turned and continued taking us away from one of my last connections to Earth.
THE AFTERNOON CARRIED on and I was working my way through one of the last MRE packs while I followed the machine. The parts of her exposed back—the spot between her shoulder blades, and the perfect curve at the base of her spine—were fucked up, to put it kindly.