Wait… smell…
“That’s gotta be it!” She exclaimed suddenly, gaining a very confused look from Kit, and a curious expression from Zen who glanced over his shoulder at her.
“Care to share with the class?” He teased softly.
“Smell! That’s got to be how they tracked us.” She said with a look that seemed almost triumphant like she had been staring at a crossword clue for months and finally had the answer dawn on her.
Disbelief moved over Leonora’s face as though she couldn’t see how that worked, but Katya jumped into explaining her thoughts. “They can see, sure but they can’t see around objects, if they had I wouldn’t have been able to hide with my roommate that first day I found out about the factories. They don’t have mouths or fully functioning ones in the Hiko case, so it can’t for taste as there is nothing in the mouth of the Hiko that connects to the brain.” She was quick in her words but as clear as she could be to those of non-science backgrounds. “Oliver discovered that they couldn’t hear anything, so that’s off the list. And, I’ve taken off their armour and there is no kind of super technology lining it sending out for signs of life. Plus, that armour is so airtight that they can’t possibly track by the sense of touch.”
“So, they hunt us by smelling us?” Leonora repeated in surprise, none of them had really seen that coming.
“Exactly! It makes sense. They wouldn’t be able to smell all those people in the bunkers underground which is why they can be used. They didn’t hear my friends’ family in their safe room because it was in a storehouse where everything stank of dead meat.” Katya seemed almost excitable at her conclusion, it was another little thing, another thing that would help them survive. With a soft chuckle, she leaned her head down and kissed the top of Mishka’s little head gaining a happy lick to her chin in response.
“So, their true enemy is a Lush store?” Oliver grumbled from Axel’s shoulders, his head lifting slightly to smirk back at Katya. His comment gained a unanimous laugh from the group though he seemed more interested in looking at their newest member “How long was I out for us to pick up another hunk?”
Kit flushed dark under his beard causing Oliver to laugh cheerfully then groan as his head ached from it.
“This is Kit, we bumped into him shortly after you were out for the count… so, you’ve probably been out for three hours now?” Zen explained, while they stopped for Oliver to be placed down and checked over by Leonora.
“Ah, well, it’s a pleasure to meet you, Kit. I’m the one and only Oliver, whom I’m hoping they mentioned”
“Yeah, we told him all about how you got knocked out by a Hiko and had your ass saved” Katya smirked glancing over to Seth “Speaking of, I still need to thank you Seth, and so does Olli. We’d be Hiko chow if it wasn’t for you”
“Wait… Seth saved us?”
“Yeah, shot a nail gun into the Hiko three times… perfect shots”
Seth looked highly uncomfortable with the situation as Katya smirked playfully at him while Oliver came to terms with this information.
“Well, thanks, man. Saved our asses while facing a fear… no wonder you were well respected in the army” Oliver chimed with a smile, this was perhaps the first time he had actually smiled in Seth’s direction. But, it was the first time Seth had given him any reason to.
Seth shrugged awkwardly as he looked to the side, pointed refusing to look at Axel’s chuckling face or Katya’s smirk. “Yeah well, don’t mention it” he growled lightly, though his hands had stopped trembling now and his right one rested confidently on the hilt of the blade he had been forced to take by Axel.
Chapter 11
As the days passed, everything seemed to settle into place. It was as though the fact that this was their life now had dawned on them all. Walking daily, fighting and killing any of the aliens they came across, freeing people from those factories and getting them to safe places.
Ever since the day at the road, Seth had softened a little. He wasn’t chatty, but he would pitch in with plans, hold his own, and heck, he even taught Kit some tricks at shooting at a moving target with the crossbow.
Kit had decided to stay with them after they had rescued his family. Despite the protests from his father and the tears from his mother, the twenty-seven-year-old had stated gently that they had saved his family, so he wanted to try and help Oliver and Katya find theirs. Oliver may have teased Kit a lot to get him to blush, but they also seemed to have found themselves being able to talk almost all the time.
The pups were much larger now, not a size you would want to carry any more. They were beginning to look more like a mixture of wolf and bear; though Turi was more ‘husky’ for sure. He had inherited shorter fur length and colours grey and brown, though he still had the floppy ears of the Newfoundland and soft brown eyes. Turi was always by Kit’s side, he was protective and sharp about the surrounding. Both dogs were; over the days they had seen and smelt so much, and they were praised when they sensed danger approaching.
They were becoming watchdogs. Not guard dogs, nor attack dogs. Every member of the group was intent on training the dogs to merely alert them to the aliens’ presence and then to get out of the way. It helped that Kit stayed back as well and used a long-distance weapon.
Mishka was the troublesome one; mainly because since that day of Katya carrying her, she seemed to become more attached to the red-head than Kit. For the most part, this was fine, it meant they could split into two groups and always have a watchdog. But it also meant that Mishka had had a couple of close calls while trying to stay close to Katya. She had followed her inside one of the factories once, slipping past Kit who took on the job of look-out outside and come face to face with a Hiko.
If Axel hadn’t spotted her in time, she probably wouldn’t have come back out of that factory.
So, they had added a harness to the next shop pit stop. Just to keep her there while she was growing and learning what not to do.
Katya adored her though. The growing pup was a really dark grey and fluffy, she had a soft face which in no way looked vicious and bright blue eyes which stood out from that dark fur. She was cuddly and affectionate, always bouncing around and looking for a stroke to her floppy ears. Mishka wasn’t as serious as her brother, but she was very adept in looking out for them.
The red-head did not help the learning process though, but she did help with the bonding. She had picked up tennis balls to throw for the dogs in areas they had checked out and knew was safe. Along with the dog food, their backpacks felt heavier and their side trips to shops were increased – generally, they fed the dogs any meat which was still decent in the now very much unfrozen section of the stores, or on tinned meats and dog food which they could find. The rest, as usual, they tipped out onto the ground for any other animals to scavenge.
“Mishka! Come here!” Katya called out to the dog who had been running out further into a field they walked across, sniffing around for anything that might be interesting or dangerous. As the growing creature bounded towards her, she bent down to catch her as the female jumped up placing her front paws on her stomach.
“You’ve really got a way with her, huh?” Axel chuckled as he moved up next to her to scratch the dog’s ear while Katya ruffled her head. She still had a lot of growth to do, but she was already so charming.
“Apparently. I grew up with loads of animals, so I suppose I have a knack from back then?”
“Sure, looks like it” Axel smiled, watching the dog bound off again into the field, this time aiming more towards a hay barn just off the edge of a farm. “How’s that leg of yours doing?”
“Ah, yeah. It’s all good now; small scar but no major issues” She said with a shrug as she poked at her thigh through her combat trousers to prove her point.
“And your head?”
“Huh? I’ve not hit my head?”
“I meant mentally, silly lass” Axel laughed lightly as though he was talking about the weather. “I’ve seen the difference
s between you usually and you on nights after we’ve been in the factories. I’ve noticed that you are snappy the mornings after because you don’t sleep. Got something you want to talk about?”
Katya paused, looking over at Axel with a raised eyebrow.
“Don’t deny it, Kat, the others have noticed bits but I’m the one who watched Seth’s mental struggle in that room and I’m not blind to yours” Axel explained softly, carefully as though mainly trying to keep this light.
Katya sighed out a laugh, her mind dancing over the rooms with liquid tanks. Since that first face she had seen in that purple tank, Katya had made sure no one else had seen those; convinced them that there was nothing in there as the layout of every factory remained the same. Nothing but empty canisters waiting to be filled was what she had said they kept in there. She had seen body parts of all ages in those; she had seen wrinkled hands of the elderly, torn up torsos of people who had fought too much, and even tiny toes of children who hadn’t lived through the factory stages. Katya glanced in every time just to give the all clear to the others but that was always enough to remind her of the sickening reality. Then on top of that, they had seen more people bound further with the machines and only just able to be saved, generally, all having to be carried to the underground vault towns. The group were then having to go out and raid hospital or doctor’s surgeries, so the people could hopefully be on the repair where they were safe.
She couldn’t tell him things like that, but she could perhaps talk about the other parts of those days which got to her. At least then he might accept it as the whole truth, and he was only asking because he was concerned.
“It’s just, the number of people we save say that so many people didn’t make it. I dread the sight of a child unable to find its parents when we get back to the vault towns or the sob of a mother whose baby didn’t find their way to safety. While they have been gotten out of the danger, that doesn’t mean they are any less broken” Katya paused for a moment, glancing back over to where Oliver was walking with Leonora and Kit, discussing something animatedly. “It also adds to the fear that I’ll find my family didn’t survive, that my sister isn’t there and that I failed to keep her safe like I always promised when we were younger”
Axel nodded slowly, seeming to accept that this was the only part of the darkness in her mind.
“I just want to see her alive, I want to see her smile and know she has a chance at getting through this” Katya’s voice was incredibly honest at that moment, vulnerable and almost scared. It was true that this was a big part of why she stayed up at night often, all she could see when she closed her eyes was her sister's little innocent face in the purple tank of corrosive liquid.
She blinked back to reality as Axel placed a hand on her shoulder with a small but encouraging smile on his face. “It’s ok. If your sister is anything like you she’ll still be alive. Heck, if she’s like you, she probably still never got caught in the first place. Your family, too. You’re too stubborn and intelligent for your own good in a situation like this” that comment brought a small chortle to Katya’s lips “So don’t give up Kat, we’ve got your back.”
“Thanks, man”
Axel ruffled the female’s hair which was growing down to her shoulders now with brown roots showing more and more obvious as the weeks had passed by. Like Oliver, she had hacked the fringe as carefully as possible to keep it out of her eyes. The dark hand made her hair tussle over her face causing her to laugh out and bat his hand away.
“We’re family now” He grinned, before walking towards Seth who was still lingering towards the back of the group. The song ‘we are family’ fell from Axel’s lips as he swung his arm around his grumpy friend. Since they had considered the idea that they couldn’t be heard, but could be smelled, Axel had taken to singing to keep the mood up. They had taken to dosing themselves in perfume to points that they had initially felt a little sick, but as far as they were aware, they had been able to get closer before they were spotted, and they were able to lose any followers a lot quicker.
Of course, this had only been tested for at most two weeks now, but they were rolling with it.
That song from Axel seemed to spark a sing-a-long type afternoon for the group; Oliver had joined in happily, Katya had been caught singing along with some of the cheesy rock Axel picked, and Leonora and Zen pulled a couple of duets out of nowhere as well. This allowed laughter to fill them, very few of them could actually sing, Axel, having a good voice while Leonora got close to a decent one.
By the time they sat down to get some rest in the farmhouse which had been around 10 acres from the hay house, Katya found the things she had spoken about that day with Axel far from her mind. Instead, a gloriously hopeful thought lulled her to sleep.
Oh, how her sister would love the people Katya had befriended on the journey to her. With that Katya slipped into dreams of her sister singing, dancing, and laughing with her mother at a Christmas from years ago.
Chapter 12
That night’s sleep was probably the last peaceful sleep that Katya would have.
The following day, it was the usual factory day; scouting out the town they were in first, making sure there were no straggling aliens that could cause them problems. The further south they moved, the more of them seemed to linger as though getting closer to some kind of central hub.
With the increasing knowledge and experience about what they faced, the group found a steady increase to be tolerable, especially when their own numbers increased as well.
Everything that day ran smoothly, the scout cleared the town and the way to the vault which they located first. The way into the factory and the clearing of all inside; it was only a small town so there was not one of those rooms with liquid filled canisters. Just people, people which they could inform and keep calm with some well-practised routines.
The major hiccup which they faced, however, was the extraction room; dubbed so by Oliver very quickly into their journey. It was bleakly accurate.
The plan these days was that Leonora, Oliver and Katya would take on the extraction room while Zen, Seth, and Axel organised the people. Once out and with Kit and the dogs, Seth and Axel would come back to help carry anyone from the extraction room that couldn’t move.
It was efficient, and it had always worked. It also gave Leonora more time to patch up the people on the machines and gave Katya and Oliver more time to be delicate on the removal process.
So, as usual, Katya took the lead into this factory; ‘checked’ the downstairs storage and held back the usual retch as she spotted a barely dead child at the bottom of the purple tank, sunk for now until it broke up into pieces.
Ignoring the threat of her imagination showing her sister in that position, Katya acted like it was empty and signalled for the group to move upstairs, following once they had.
Nerushi and Hiko were down fast.
They had done this enough now that it looked more like a choreographed special ops movie than real life.
If only this horror was fake. If only the smell of caged humans wasn’t real. Katya still heard Oliver comment on how he would really like this to be one damned awful nightmare whenever they entered these factories.
Katya had given up on that hope.
Moving into the extraction room, glad to find it empty of aliens, they moved over to the first person. Kids, women, then men. Every time it was done in this order, simply because that was the order they were in. Children closest to the doorway, one left, one right; then the women, then the men. Every factory was the same setup; as identical as the aliens who had to build them.
“Ok, hold him steady there and I’ll cut; this is going to be deep though Leo, get ready” Katya warned as Oliver pulled the tube from the little girl’s mouth and held her close to him, fully supported and restrained.
Her screams of pain filled the room as she awoke to the pain of Katya carving out the attached areas of the skin with an always sharpened flip knife. The red-head and her black-
haired best friend had long since steeled themselves to the sounds of screams because of this. Their faces always contorted a little initially but biting their tongues they pushed through, Oliver muttering as much support as he could to those that were carved into, while Katya focused to get it over and done with as quick as possible.
This was the same for all the ages.
They got the children off, then one female before they hit a road bump that Katya knew was bound to happen. Though she had hoped above all hope that it wouldn’t.
As Oliver pulled the next female forward he frowned a little as she wouldn’t move as far as the other had.
“What? Is she stuck?” He asked with his eyes solemn after the previous three.
Katya moved closer, trying to see between the machine and the woman in case a wire was hooked on something.
Nothing.
So, she ran her hand down the woman’s back in case there was something in her shadow that Katya couldn’t see.
Silence of the Apocalypse- Journey Home Page 10