Dark Energy

by Robison Wells

  The other man had taken a mano and metate from his bag—a sort of mortar and pestle for grinding corn—only he was smashing juniper berries and dried insects and the buds of dried flowers I didn’t recognize.

  “We learned how to kill the monsters,” Benny said. “And they left. It was too late for our people, but they left us enough to pick up the pieces.”

  His small sandpainting was done. It was stylized, but the shape was obvious. He had drawn one of the alien spacecraft. I gasped when I recognized it. The old man pulled out a heavy burlap bag from behind him at the wall. He set the bag down on the sandpainting and slowly began unpeeling layers of dusty cloth. It looked like this object hadn’t been unwrapped in ages—perhaps even in lifetimes. Maybe it had even been buried.

  With each piece of cloth that came off, I was closer to understanding what lay beneath the wrappings.

  Dread filled my stomach, and Suski and Coya leaned forward to see.

  The last strip of cloth was unwound, revealing a browned, tarnished bone. Coya recoiled, hands to her face, as the cloth fell away from the package. It was the skull of a Master. It was covered with horns—some broken and some still razor sharp. It looked like the head of a monster. It was the head of a monster.

  The singer stood up and blessed all who were there, casting corn pollen at us and drizzling it on the ancient skull.

  I watched Suski’s face—it was one of bitter anger and fierce resilience. He took his sister’s arm and pulled her back. And then he surprised all of us by spitting at the skull. He covered the microphone with his hand and said something to Coya that the translator couldn’t hear to process, and after a moment of coaxing she, too, spat on the skull.

  “We have vowed to watch for the return of our people,” Benny said. “And now you have come.”

  Another man, who introduced himself as Orlando, said, “We will shield you from the dangers of the monsters just as Monster Slayer saved his people from his people’s enemies—Monster Who Kills with His Eyes, Monster Who Kicks People Down the Cliff, Monster Eagle.”

  “But how?” Suski asked, letting go of his translator. “They are very strong.”

  “The People are stronger,” Orlando said, and he pointed to the man mixing ingredients in his mano and metate. “An arrow.”

  Another ancient man reached forward with an arrow—its shaft as straight and strong as any I’d seen in my former private school’s archery class, but this was made from wood and fletched with real feathers. The arrowhead was obsidian.

  The old man scraped the arrow into the metate and then back again, gathering a coating of the mixture on both sides of the tip.

  “We learned their weakness,” the man said to Suski. “We know a poison that will kill them with a touch. It has been a secret passed down from generation to generation.”

  And then he looked at me. “You are fortunate to have such a wise grandmother. She was aware of these traditions, of the old ways.”

  The man in the back reached forward with two full quivers of arrows.

  “We will prepare ourselves,” the old man said, and then to me, “You know how to call them here? Our Elders have seen it.”

  I was flustered by everything I had just heard, by the horrific skull lying on the floor, but I nodded my head. “I know how to call them.”

  The gathering of the Elders was gone—packed up and left in much less time than I could have thought possible. Instead, when I went outside to Brynne, Rachel, and Kurt, I saw a stunning sight. Twelve men—adult men, in their twenties—dressed in full traditional garb and waiting on horseback. They barely acknowledged us as we left the hogan and went around the back of Grandma’s house to where Bluebell waited. We had maybe two more hours of sunlight—the ceremonies had lasted all day. The four of us pulled the tarp off her, and I didn’t even bother to check for scratches, so consumed was I with what was ahead of us.

  Brynne, Rachel, and Kurt dug through their bags for their phones, replacing SIM cards and batteries. I plugged the GPS fuse back in and then sat down in the driver’s seat. I let out a slow breath and started her up. She purred to life in that quiet, beautiful way that well-cared-for BMWs do, and I waited for the GPS screen to activate.

  “I’ve got one bar,” Brynne announced. “Probably roaming charges out the wazoo.”

  “Text someone,” I said.

  “Already on it.”

  “I’ve got two bars,” Kurt said. “Looking up the news now.”

  The GPS slowly connected with the satellite and found us—it didn’t recognize us as being on a road and thought I was off in the bushes. That was okay. It had found us. That was all it had to do.

  Kurt spoke. “The ship tried to attack the tent city,” he said. “It shot down two aircraft and disappeared. Witnesses say that it was hit again. A missile or something.”

  “So they’re injured,” I said. “They’ll be looking for an easy target.”

  “I just hope we’re not too easy,” Kurt said.

  I reached out and took his hand, and he squeezed mine back.

  “Emily says, ‘OMG, I thought you were dead,’” Brynne said. “So if that’s the trigger, we’ve got it covered.”

  “Let’s get to a place they know,” I said, pointing to the rocky mesa behind. I called out to the men on horseback. “We’re going to Chaco Canyon.”

  I drove slowly, keeping the riders in sight off to my right.

  “Phones?” I called out to everyone in the car.

  “Yep,” Brynne and Kurt said. As we entered the Chaco Canyon National Monument—it was only a few miles from Shimasani’s hogan—Rachel finally got a signal on her phone. She texted her parents to let them know she was okay, and then once again opened the phone and pulled out the battery.

  “So we just wait?” Kurt asked. “I texted my girlfriend.”

  My phone buzzed.

  “Whaaat?” Brynne said, all grins.

  “Very slick, Kurt,” I said. “And, yes, we just wait,” I said, feeling my breathing constrict a little under the weight of what lay before us. I stopped the car at Pueblo Bonito, the biggest and most preserved of the ruins in the canyon.

  I turned in my seat and looked at Suski beside me and Coya in the back. “So, do you want to see where you’re from?” Behind us, to my right, I could see the dust plume of the men following on horseback.

  “This pueblo is shaped like a D,” I said, making a D with my hand. “The straight edge goes perfectly straight to the east over hills and arroyos until it hits another Chaco ruin—Pueblo Pintado. But that’s nothing—they don’t line up with the sun—they line up with the moon at the end of its fourteen-year cycle.”

  “I didn’t know the moon had a fourteen-year cycle,” Brynne said.

  “Neither did I,” Rachel said, her brow furrowing.

  “I’m getting the Bruner Award in knowing about the moon’s cycle. And that’s just the beginning. They have some amazing astronomical charts on Fajada Butte. Stuff that makes Stonehenge look like child’s play.” I pointed to the round mesa to our southeast. “Seriously, I think that your people had a very good reason to pay attention to outer space.”

  “Guys,” Kurt said, “we’re in trouble. It wasn’t just that one Master ship. There are now reports of eight of them over the Guide ship. It looked like they were taking it over—opening doors on the top and going inside. But they all just left, heading west. Toward us.”

  The horsemen were weaving in and out of the ruins, watching the sky but checking the corners. They each held a bow in one hand, and had a holstered rifle hanging down from the saddle.

  We left Bluebell on the road—running, just in case.

  I didn’t know what was on those arrows, but I hoped that the recipe for the poison hadn’t deteriorated over the course of a thousand years or so. It was all oral tradition—they had the skull, but it didn’t seem like they’d written down the ingredients. Could arrows even penetrate that heavy reptilian skin?

  I guess that wasn’t our problem.
We were just supposed to be bait. We didn’t have weapons. We ran around the back side of Pueblo Bonito to where a rockfall had smashed through the four-story walls. The massive stones had been made into an ideal photography spot for tourists, but it gave us a great vantage point to watch for the Masters, three stories up, overlooking the pueblo.

  Suski and Coya were taken into the ruin, into a center room with high walls, guarded by the Navajo riders.

  Unless they came down the cliff wall behind us.

  And then Rachel screamed.

  EIGHTEEN

  I spun around, facing the last remnants of daylight, and saw Rachel being lifted off the ground by one of the Masters. The entire ship was right there in the flat open expanse of Pueblo Bonito’s plaza—we hadn’t noticed it coming or landing—it hadn’t even made the slightest breeze. It was just right there—and one of the creatures had Rachel.

  Four Masters had emerged from the ship, two of them standing right in front of us.

  “We aren’t armed,” I said.

  “Then you’re as stupid as you are weak,” the translator said.

  Rachel was bleeding profusely from the shoulder. She was tall, but looked small in comparison to this mammoth beast.

  The other nearby Master had a gun—a wicked-looking thing with three barrels and a stock that wrapped around his hand and wrist, all the way up to his twisted, bony elbow. The gun was pointed at me. In another hand he held a foot-long knife, and he was twirling the blade eagerly.

  “We’re not who you’re looking for,” I said. I didn’t say it to pass the buck. I just knew that the riders had the magic poison, and we had nothing. They had to get a good shot, and quickly.

  “You’re trying to hide my animals,” he bellowed.

  Immediately, Kurt stepped in front of me, and the Master swung out one of his four arms and knocked him away. I saw a flash of blood, and then Kurt hit a two-story wall and flipped over the top of it. He landed on the other side with a cry of pain.

  I tried to keep my eyes locked on the Master, but they were filling with tears. Kurt had to be okay. He had to be.

  “Let her go,” I said, gesturing nervously at Rachel.

  He dropped her, but then grabbed her with another arm as she fell, his claws digging into her abdomen. She shrieked.

  “Why are you doing this?” I screamed. I needed to make noise. I needed the horsemen to hear me. “Why can’t you leave us alone?”

  I saw one of the riders lining up a shot, but a blast of blue light hit his horse and the rider went down.

  “Do you know what your friends have cost my people?” the Master replied. He tossed Rachel onto the ground, into the dust and sage. She writhed in pain. Brynne ran to her. I stood transfixed.

  “Do I know what they cost your people?” I said. “What about what you cost my people?”

  Another man was off his horse and standing on a wall, pulling back his bowstring.

  “What do you mean ‘your people’? These slaves were taken from this weak little planet more than eight hundred of your Earth years ago. We took only what we needed—we bred the rest. Your population is exploding. You seem to have more than enough to spare a few.”

  “We care for all our people,” I said.

  An arrow hit him in the back, and he reached around and pulled it out.

  “You’re fighting us off with sticks and stone?” My stomach fell right down through my shoes. The poison didn’t work.

  But then the Master took a deep, raspy breath. “You care for all people,” he said with a cough. “If that were true, then why do you have wars? Poverty? Preventable illness? No, I don’t think you care for all your people very much at all.”

  “And I’m sure you’re perfectly peaceful,” I said, Pissed-Off Alice taking over for Scared Alice.

  “We do not have wars with our own people,” he said. “We share our wealth.”

  A second arrow struck, this time in the arm. “You care for the poor and weak?”

  “Wrong!” he rasped. “We do not have poor and weak. We only have strong. So we must find weak to implant and use.”

  “And you don’t see anything wrong with that?”

  “It is only nature.” His green reptilian coloring was turning decisively gray.

  “I’ve seen a different kind of nature. A nature that cares for the sick. That fights for its friends.”

  “And you can see how well it’s gone,” he said. He took a step toward me.

  There was nowhere I could go to back up. There was a twenty-five-foot drop behind me.

  “Sometimes death is inevitable,” I said, echoing Suski’s words. “But I’ve protected my friends the best that I know how.”

  “And it isn’t good enough,” he said.

  Suddenly, the second Master—the one with the gun and knife—bellowed and reeled back. He pointed his gun and fired toward the path. Rocks exploded in a flash of light and flame. He fired again and again, some of his shots hitting the mesa top and some flying off into the night.

  He was still bellowing, shouting something in his garbled language. And then he fell to one knee.

  I could see the arrow, buried halfway up its shaft into his chest.

  The other two Masters were moving out toward the cover of kivas and walls.

  “What is this?” the one in front of me snapped, and he slashed his claws at me, but there was no strength left in him.

  Another Master swung two arms’ worth of claws at me. Something darted in front of me, and it changed his swing just enough that instead of plunging deep into my shoulder, his claws dragged across my chest and collarbone.

  I screamed at the white-hot pain, but he was screaming, too, bellowing in a raspy alien cry.

  And then he grabbed at me, his claws scraping around the traditional velvet shirt my shimasani had dressed me in. He yanked me forward, dragging me toward him through the brush.

  Someone shouted something in Navajo, and then I was in his arms, held up like a human shield.

  More guns were fired, but all I could see were the explosions as rock flew into the sky.

  Dark shapes were appearing all around the plaza, arrows pointed at the Master. Another Master fired his gun and a great gout of flame erupted from the wall. Arrows flew back. There was a scream, but I couldn’t tell if it was anger or pain.

  “What is this?” the Master carrying me repeated, as one of his many arms yanked an arrow free from his body.

  I could hardly breathe, he was holding me so tight against his chest. His long claws pierced my skin and I felt blood dribbling from my body.

  He dropped the arrow, and I tried to snatch it out of the air, to have some kind of weapon. But it slid through my fingers and only barely touched my shoe.

  “Let me go,” I said.

  He laughed, but his laugh was screechy and enraged.

  “Let me go,” I said again. “You’re already dying.”

  “I cannot be killed by a simple stab,” he said. “But you can.”

  He clenched his fingers tighter against my body and I shrieked as the claws pierced deeper.

  I reached a hand, slowly so he wouldn’t notice, into the waistband of my skirt. My fingers felt for the pistol grip of the Taser. I’d pulled it out of the car, although I hadn’t thought I would need to use it. Now it was my only hope.

  Gingerly, I pulled it free. Fighting against the pain in my chest, I held it the way the FBI agent had shown me. I pointed it under my arm—almost at point-blank range. I wondered if that would even work. Would I shock myself? Either way, it would make him drop me.

  I pulled the trigger, and the Taser fired its darts.

  The Master shivered and then shouted, “Some crude weapon? It will not work.”

  He swiped his hand down, knocking the Taser from my fingers—it felt like he’d broken my hand, and I cried out.

  I’d failed.

  The bowmen were climbing onto the walls, circling us. I could only assume that the other Masters had already been shot down, or th
ey’d be shooting back.

  “Leave us, or the girl dies!” the Master bellowed.

  I saw Suski crest the hill, his white skin glowing in the darkness.

  The Master saw him, too. “Bring the slave boy to me. I’ll trade you the girl for the boy.”

  “No,” I said, and tried to free myself, but the pain of his claws seared into me.

  Suski walked toward us.

  “No, Suski,” I said, desperate. “Don’t do it. He’ll kill you.”

  Suski kept walking. He was wearing his headset, the speaker dangling from his shoulder, but he wasn’t carrying any bow or arrow.

  “He’ll kill you,” I said. “He knows he’s dying. He only wants revenge.”

  Suski was right in front of us now, standing, waiting.

  “Suski,” I said. But there was nothing else to say.

  The Master dropped me, and I turned and grabbed at him, trying to bend his arm into a jujitsu pain lock. But I was far too injured to do anything. He caught me by the neck and flung me to the ground, and then he stretched out an arm and seized Suski.

  “You will pay for what you slaves did to my people,” the Master said.

  But then he growled in a low, guttural grunt. Suski murmured something, too quiet to hear or for the translator to pick up.

  I saw Suski withdraw a knife from the Master’s stomach—a black obsidian blade with a wood-carved handle. It was dripping in blood. Suski stepped back and then a half dozen arrows cut through the air and plunged into the Master.

  I watched him fall to his knees as the life drained out of him. He clutched at his scaly chest, weakly tugging at the arrows that were buried in his skin.

  Suski’s white face glowed in the darkness as he knelt over me.

  “Make sure they’re all dead,” I gasped. “Check the ship. And where are the other ships?”

  “But you’re hurt.”

  “I’ll be fine,” I said, hoping it was true. I could feel blood soaking all down my chest.

  Coya was the next one to reach me, and I yelled at her to go help Rachel. She took my hand for half a moment and then ran. Someone else tried to help me and I told him to go help Kurt, but this one didn’t listen—he scooped me up in his arms and began lifting me through a window in the wall to where another warrior stood. I was in terrible, searing pain. I looked for Kurt and Rachel as I was carried back to the road, but didn’t see them, and I shouted at the Navajo man carrying me that we needed to go back and find them. He ignored me.