Chapter 53
The Loth was right where he’d left it, asleep on the hard deck not far from his truck. He suspected, the old Ford was an anchor of familiarity for the Loth, as it had been for him, marooned on Sang-Morang. He watched the big beast gulp a deep breath of air in, and then, with a gurgling rasp, nosily expel it. To most, it probably would be a disgusting experience to witness, but to Cameron, after so many weeks together, it was rather normal. Plopping down on the deck, he leaned back against the Minal Loth. He was exhausted, knew he wouldn’t get the opportunity to sleep again for an extended period of time. He closed his eyes and within moments was fast asleep.
He was startled awake four hours later as a flurry of displays popped up within the aft hold area. A virtual Alice stood before him, gesturing at a nearby display—an image of Earth, rotating on its axis. “We are approaching your home planet, Cameron.”
“I can see that.” He wiped his eyes, could tell by the steady deep breaths behind him that the Loth was still asleep. “I’m on my way.”
Reaching the bridge and descending the stairs, he asked aloud, “What’s happening down on the Earth’s surface … with Larksburg Stand and the mother Griar Loth?”
Cameron was surprised to see Ramen, or the cyborg facsimile of Ramen, stepping away from a workstation. This Ramen wouldn’t remember him. Didn’t have the HOD download session with the Ramen he knew to draw memories from.
“Primion sensors have located the Griar Minal Loth, as well as six birthing pods nearby. Their position is approximately four hundred feet beneath the surface of the town, within a large, solid rock cavern,” the Ramen cyborg said. He then said, “How is the creature?”
Cameron remembered what the Ramen he knew had said, that he was a keeper.
“The Loth’s sleeping. He had a lot to each before we took off.”
Alice appeared, hurrying from the entrance beneath the stairs. “Monitoring Earth’s communications, it appears your military will attempt to detonate a nuclear device … of indeterminate strength … in an attempt to destroy the Griar Loth.”
“Wait … they’re going to nuke the town? Are they fucking crazy?”
No one replied to his rhetorical question.
Cameron, taking a deep breath, tried to think. “So what else have you picked up while monitoring their communications? When exactly is this supposed to happen?”
“It is happening now, Cameron,” Alice said.
“So the people … everyone inhabiting Larksburg Stand and probably the surrounding towns … they’ve all been evacuated, right?” It occurred to him in the same moment that nuking the Griar Loth and her spawn really was the best solution. In reality, what had he hoped to accomplish there anyway? The Griar Loth and her pods had to go, be destroyed in any event.
“The area still has many inhabitants, Cameron. In addition to the possible destruction of the Griar Loth and her offspring, there could also be significant loss of human life.”
“No! They wouldn’t do that! They couldn’t do that,” he shouted, but with little conviction. He gasped, as if he’d been shocked by 110 volts of electricity. Heather! Where is she? Is she there, in the middle of it all? About to be annihilated, along with everyone else?
“Can you stop it? Whatever they’re doing … them dropping a bomb, or whatever?”
Alice turned toward an adjacent cluster of workstations, to the crewmembers seated there. A moment later, a female voice said, “An aircraft is in the air … making an approach … what is described as a B1 bomber. It is on its final approach over Larksburg Stand.”
“You have to stop it! Cameron yelled. Shoot it down if you have to! Do it … right now!”
The entire bridge crew perked up, staring back at him. He saw their distress.
Alice took a step closer and placed a hand on his arm. “Although the Primion does have sufficient weaponry to destroy the aircraft … I am sorry to tell you … it is too late.”
But Cameron was no longer listening to her, staring instead at all the virtual displays popping up around the bridge. From multiple angles, he watched as a billowing white mushroom cloud. Countless times he’d seen pictures and videos of previous nuclear explosions, tests and the like, that had taken place on Earth over the years—so he knew what he was looking at. He recognized the Adirondack Mountains, located within northeastern New York. More specifically, he recognized the peak on Gant Mountain. Everything below it, though, was shrouded within the devastating effects of the blast.
Having trouble breathing—trouble standing—Cameron leaned over, trying not to throw up. The scene below was the single most horrible thing he’d ever imagined happening. How many people had just died?
Ramen was speaking, so he tried to concentrate. “Say that again.”
“The mother Griar Loth … she is on the move.”
“She’s alive? The fucking thing is still alive?”
Alice said, “She had been far beneath the surface. She does appears to be injured, although definitely still alive and advancing now toward the surface.”
“The pods?”
“Difficult to tell will so much heat generated from the blast. Sensors are picking up … possibly … three other life signs. The Griar Loth has them with her.”
“Won’t the heat and high radiation kill her along with the pods?”
“Unlikely, Alice said, standing at a console and studying some fast-scrolling symbols on the display.
“Can the Primion land there … within that blast zone?”
Alice nodded an assent. “But why would you want to?”
Cameron chewed the inside of his lip. His original plan still might work. Maybe. “I want to entice the mother Loth to willingly come aboard the Primion, to leave Earth.”
“Why would she do such a thing?” Ramen asked skeptically.
Alice answered before Cameron could respond back. “Because her first born is onboard, waiting for her—coaxing her to enter.” She looked at Cameron, “It might work. It could also turn out very bad for all of us.”
Chapter 54
Cameron spent the next two hours, sitting cross-legged on the deck within the aft hold, speaking in low tones to the distracted Minal Loth. He tried to explain the situation, but it seemed to make little sense to the creature. How could there be another Loth? There was no other Loth. Why would Cameron want another Loth to come inside their ship?
Cameron chided himself for not spending more time conversing with, properly teaching, the creature. Educating it, so having discussions like this wouldn’t be so impossibly difficult.
“You trust Cameron?” he asked, taking another route.
The creature honked something then looked away.
“Do you want to hunt with Cameron?”
The Loth honked loudly, “Yes, hunt!”
“First, we bring other Loth onto ship. Then we go home.”
It took another full hour for Cameron to roughly convey what he wanted to happen. He wasn’t remotely sure the Loth understood his intention or would even participate in what he planned to do.
* * *
He didn’t dare leave the Loth’s side. Highly agitated, the creature easily could start breaking things. Could potentially destroy the ship from the inside.
Cameron felt the vessel’s rapid descent through the atmosphere, then touching down onto solid ground. Alice was next to him in the hold. Watching the ever-present, visual pop-up displays, he could see that outside the ship it was pure Armageddon. A row of toppled, branchless trees, blackened and smoldering, only underscored the recent level of death and destruction there. For the hundredth time, Cameron pushed away all thoughts of Heather. There would be time to grieve later. For now, he had to try staving off further destruction to planet Earth.
He studied the smoky, barren landscape that was, not so long ago, his home.
“The creature approaches,” Alice said, pointing.
“I see her.” The mother Griar Loth, moving amongst the white smoke and soot, crept si
milarly to how his own Loth traversed. One tentacle was missing; the other three were wrapped around greenish-brown birthing pods.
A bellowing honk filled the hold compartment. Cameron needed to place his hands over his ears—shield himself from the incredibly loud noise. His Loth, staring at the display, began to react to it. Tentacles flailed and began to crash down onto the deck, leaving it dented and buckled.
“Stop! It’s okay. We talked about this. It’s okay …”
The Loth, after bellowing several loud honks, seemed to calm down.
“Alice, how far away is she? How close to the ship?”
“Far away?” Alice looked confused. “The Griar Loth is upon us, just outside the ship.”
All of a sudden, Cameron realized how stupid his idea was. What was I thinking? He could barely get his Loth to do what he wanted and the one outside was a true killer, had killed humans countless times already—had never shown any mercy.
He turned and stared intently into the eyes of the creature beside him. “It’s time. I’m counting on you. Just like we talked about. Okay?”
The Loth, although clearly beyond agitated, didn’t honk out the word no, which was at least something.
Alice took Cameron’s hand. “We need to leave.” With surprising strength, she pulled him away from the creature and toward the direction of the bow. The Loth honked repeatedly.
They hurried through the large inside hatchway, into the retention area. He heard the Primion’s aft hatchway then opening up.
“We must hurry!” Alice said, tugging him toward the far side of the retention area then out through the opposite hatchway. Once they were through, it cascaded closed with an audible thump.
“I need to see what’s going on.” Cameron said.
Alice waved her hand. Four pop-ups appeared, giving Cameron a perfect perspective from multiple angles of the events taking place outside near the ship’s stern. The mother Griar Loth was right there, clutching her birthing pods, moving closer and closer to the Primion’s aft open hatchway. Constant back and forth honking was being exchanged between the two Loths. They were communicating.
Cameron looked at Alice. “What if I’m wrong? What if the mother Loth has the stronger influence? Instead of my Loth convincing its mother to come inside, it goes the other way? Fuck! This could just as easily turn out all wrong. Both Loths—mother and son—rampaging together across the planet.”
Cameron watched as the forty-foot-tall Griar Loth, menacing—entirely covered in white soot—still held back, was not entering. Her eyes, irritated and red-rimmed, were locked on her long lost offspring.
“This was a bad idea,” Cameron said.
The mother Loth began to move away, bringing her tentacles close to her body—to the point that the three clutched pods were no longer visible.
Alice said, “Look, your Loth is going with her! You are right; this is not working out as planned.”
Cameron was sickened all over again. Things were only getting worse. He watched as the Loth slowly exited the Primion’s rear hatchway, the mother Loth waiting for it to follow her.
And then the Minal Loth attacked.
Both Cameron and Alice watched in shocked silence as the younger, larger Loth—his Loth—tore into its mother with a savagery that both thrilled and scared Cameron at the same time. It was no contest between the two Loths. The Griar Loth, trying to protect her birthing pods, was ill prepared to fend-off the larger Minal beast. One by one, her tentacles were torn off, and then her head—torn away from her already ravaged torso. Plucking the three birthing pods from off the ground, they were devoured by the victorious creature. Like grapes eaten in quick succession.
“That was the most disgusting, most horrifying thing I’ve ever witnessed,” Cameron said.
Alice, seeming surprisingly human-like, nodded, looking utterly speechless.
“Can I go back there now … to the hold?”
Alice nodded in assent.
“What about the radiation … all that heat from outside?”
It took a moment before she turned back to him. “No … the Primion has powerful protective outer shields. You can go back now, but do not pass through the hold’s aft hatchway to the outside world. It would kill you instantly.”
By the time Cameron entered the aft hold, the Minal Loth was already inside, had resumed lying in its resting place beside the truck. For the first time in a long while, Cameron actually feared venturing too close. After what he’d just witnessed, he wondered if he would ever be safe around the creature again.
The Loth honked and waved its five remaining tentacles. One was missing. The creature’s eyes were wide open, happy to see him.
“Are you okay?”
“Now go hunt. Go home.”
Cameron smiled. “You sure? You okay?’
The Loth ignored him, licking instead at its messy bloody stump.
“I guess so,” Cameron muttered to himself. Then he heard a sound he hadn’t heard in a long time. The ringing of a smartphone—his smartphone! He patted his pockets then remembered where he’d left the thing. Taking several hurried strides to his truck, he pulled open the door and saw it lying there, still charging on the center console. He plucked it up and answered it: “Hello?”
“On God … Cam?”
“Heather?”
Chapter 55
Thank God she is safe. Apparently, when the bomb dropped, Heather and her mother had been sixty-five miles away, at a Courtyard Inn hotel in Lake Placid. They’d watched the erupting mushroom cloud from their second-story window.
As they caught up, Cameron wondered whether sixty-five miles was far enough to be safe from a nuclear blast. The varying effects of a nuclear blast were well covered in his encyclopedia reading. The buildings would probably be destroyed or damaged within about a three-mile radius, and the thermal effects would burn people within about two miles. The radiation itself would have an even smaller range. Contrary to what many thought, the physical damage and fire spread further than the radiation from a bomb like that one. Of course, the lower levels of radiation would be a cancer risk for the area for years, but that was different. Heather and her mom were probably safe, but he still didn’t like the idea of how close that had been.
Cameron had spent all of two minutes talking to her before her father grabbed the phone away from her.
Sheriff Christy hit him with a barrage of rapid-fire questions. Cameron answered them as best he could. Yes, the Griar Loth, what the Sheriff referred to as the Octobeast, was definitely dead. Yes, the other, smaller, life forms, the birthing pods, were indeed destroyed. Yes, there was another Octobeast and it was secured within the spacecraft. No, it was not dangerous and there was zero chance of it getting loose to ravage the planet as the other had done.
Cameron had his own questions for the sheriff as well: No, there were no direct deaths resulting from the bomb. Even though the bomb yielded the lowest levels of radiation of any nuclear bomb the military had within their arsenal, they would still need to monitor levels within Larksburg Stand and the three adjoining towns for years to come. Yes, even with all the smoke and soot, the military had been able to watch, via classified Hi-Res satellite imagery, the events unfold from the time the Primion had landed within the blast zone to when the two creatures battled one another.
The sheriff said there was much more to discuss. He would text him specific instructions on where to set down the space vessel at Griffiss Air Force base located in Rome, New York. There, he’ll immediately be taken into a quarantine type situation. The military was chafing at the bit for a thorough debrief of the events that transpired over the preceding six weeks. Cameron wasn’t exactly sure what a military debrief entailed, but he knew he wanted no part of it. They explained how government organizations were wrangling to speak to him; it seemed everyone wanted to take possession of the alien spacecraft—NASA, of course, but also the NSA, CIA, FBI, the U.S. Army, the U.S. Air Force, the Navy, and a slew of other national, as well as int
ernational, government bodies. All Cameron knew was that he wanted to talk to Heather again—right now. Reluctantly, the sheriff put her back on the phone.
“I’m back,” she said. “Sorry … he barged in and ripped the phone right out of my hand.”
“Don’t worry about it. I’m just glad you’re okay. That you’re all okay—”
Heather cut him off, “Cameron … it’s not like you missed dinner, or were tardy for class! Where the hell have you been all these weeks? I thought you were dead! And where are you now?”
He heard the near desperation in her voice and took that as a good sign. “I would have contacted you if I could have. I’ve been living on another planet. God, that sounds so ridiculous, hearing myself saying that … but it’s true. I lived it.”
“Where are you … like right now … this second?” she asked, still sounding unhinged.
“I’m still in the spacecraft … called the Primion. I’m here in Larksburg Stand right where they dropped the bomb. By the way, there’s nothing left of the Dairy Queen … or the Jiffy Lube.”
He heard Heather arguing with her father; he wanted the phone. “You have your own phone; you can call him as soon as I’m done … Just back off, Dad!”
Cameron had to smile at that. Suddenly there were other, highly excited, voices. Their hotel room must be turning into Grand Central Station with all the racket he was hearing.
“Sorry, they need me to hand the phone over again, Cam.”
He heard another cell phone ringing in the background, and then the sheriff was barking off orders to someone. A reprieve.
“Look, Heather … I’m leaving. I can’t stay here. Need to get the Loth … my Loth creature … back to Sang-Morang. I know none of that makes any sense to you, but I want you to know I’ll come back someday. If you want me to. If you want …um …” He didn’t know how to finish the sentence.
She said, “No … Cam.”
His heart missed a beat. But what had he expected her to say? Of course she had moved on. Undoubtedly with Deputy fucking Kirk. She’d have what she said she wanted: a simple life here with her family—here where she grew up in Larksburg Stand. She’d have lots of babies …
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