by Foxx Ballard
When he reached her, his heart sank. The water was full of blood and the coppery scent filled his nostrils. Karnij felt him more than saw him and grasped the waist of his jumpsuit. He spent the rest of his energy swimming sideways on an angle that went with the flow of the river towards the shore, the far shore from where they had arrived since it was closer. Zondra swam up to help, and they both pulled Karnij through the water until they were safely on land.
They all collapsed on the sand, exhausted and breathing heavily. His hearts were pounding, but he recovered quickly. Blood could easily be seen through Karnij’s fur across the majority of her torso.
“You be okay?” Rusty asked, knowing nothing about rippers aside from fur and claws.
“Think so,” she responded quietly.
They all fell asleep, Rusty unintentionally, as he had planned on staying awake to keep an eye out for night predators, but the day had been overwhelming.
In the morning, Rusty was thankful they were all still alive. Karnij was no longer actively bleeding, but to prevent her from re-opening her wounds, they decided to wait another day to let her rest.
Leaving Zondra with Karnij to keep an eye on her, Rusty took a walk to explore further downstream.
After an hour, he came across the remains of the giant fish Karnij had carved her way out of. There were other smaller fish picking at it and a couple of several foot long eels. He waded in, and having fished by hand before, snatched a few fish out of the water and threw them up on shore, including one of the eels. As soon as it landed on shore, the eel started exuding large amounts of slime, and not knowing whether it was safe to eat or not, Rusty found a stick and flipped it back into the water. He washed his hands off in the water, just to make sure, and then bit the heads off the three flopping fish and chewed happily while washing the dirt off of them. When he was done, he started heading back up the river towards the girls.
The sun was working its way across the beautiful blue sky. Large insects would fly by occasionally, mosquitoes of sorts probably, but Rusty just snatched them out of the air and popped them in his mouth. Insects were wonderful to eat and had a variety of flavors. Except for a few, he stayed away from the brightly colored ones. A simple pinch or slap usually was enough to take care of those.
After an hour of walking up the shoreline and not seeing the girls, he became a little concerned, especially when he found the blood on the ground where they had been laying the night before and the girls were nowhere to be seen.
If they had left the spot because of a predator, he didn’t want to call out in case he caught its attention, but on the other hand… He sniffed the air, and it quickly became apparent the direction they had headed in, despite the stronger scent of blood here, he just had to account for the wind direction.
While he was contemplating, Zondra called out from the trees nearby, giving away their position before he had to look for them.
“Here Rusty! We just wanted to get out of the sun.”
With a sigh of relief and a wide, toothy smile, Rusty walked over to them and presented his catch. Karnij was thankful and slipped a fish beneath her face fur where Rusty could hear her chewing, but he still couldn’t see her mouth. Zondra politely declined.
“We’re ovo-vegetarians primarily.” At Rusty’s confused look, she added. “We eat eggs and vegetables.”
He nodded, understanding, and then tossed a fish into his mouth and offered the last one to Karnij, who happily took it and ate it as well.
“I’ve found some roots and tubers that are likely good to eat if you want me to dig you up some, Rusty. Karnij had some, but I can get more if you like.” Zondra looked at him expectantly.
“Rusty prefer meat and insect.”
“Suit yourself. At least we won’t be fighting over food.” She made an image of him and her in his mind, tugging on a log that had fins growing out of it, back and forth.
Rusty laughed.
He stopped immediately when he smelled something he didn’t recognize. It was acrid, so likely an insect, but it smelled like it was burning and had to be large enough to create that strong of a scent. There was another sweet scent that went along with it, like a mix between vanilla and clover.
“Me smell something. Be back,” Rusty warned as he slipped quietly out amongst the trees. He made as little noise as possible, which slowed him down considerably, and he noticed Zondra following him just as quietly as he was. She smiled at him and he briefly smiled back and then worked his way toward what he was smelling.
The odor was getting stronger and stronger, but he still couldn’t see anything, until the scent was almost directly beneath him and he stopped. It was a mossy patch, but when he looked closely, he could see through the moss into a small pool of amber fluid. If he had kept walking, he would have walked right into the pit. He held out his arm to warn Zondra from falling in and pulled back some of the moss from the edge with his other hand.
There, dissolving and bubbling in the amber fluid, was a very large insect, an ant it looked like, the length of his arm. The amber fluid was obviously acidic, but it smelled sweet. An interesting way to attract prey. He nearly jumped when a thin tendril moved inside the plant, but it was thin and didn’t look very strong.
Rusty showed Zondra the plant, and she gave him the thumbs up, leaving after she looked at it for a moment. Rusty followed, and both of them paid more attention to where they stepped than they had before.
After a short jaunt, they got back to Karnij who had a few beheaded ants next to her.
“Nest close by, we can’t stay,” she said to them. “Now they found us, they keep coming.”
Rusty let Karnij ride on his back. The fur made her look larger that what she was, because she wasn’t very heavy.
They followed the river southward during the day, passed the giant dead fish where Rusty replenished his and Karnij’s meat supply. After another hour or so, he was breathing heavily, but still had plenty of energy, something Goblins were known for. Two hearts kept the body supplied with oxygen.
Rusty’s nose warned them of something again as it approached twilight. “Me smell cured leather, cured with oil. Humanoid sweat. Cooked meat. Campfire.”
He gently put down Karnij.
“It far away.” He sniffed the air a bit and checked the wind direction. “Oh, across river, it fine. Smell ocean, in direction we…” Rusty pointed downriver, unable to think of the word.
Zondra looked like the prospect excited her. “Can we keep walking until we reach it? I haven’t seen the ocean for I don’t know how long.”
Rusty glanced at Karnij, and she shrugged. “You do all work.”
Rusty smiled at Zondra and picked up Karnij again. It was answer enough.
A couple hours more brought them to a beach where the river widened out and met the sea.
They sat on a large driftwood log and Zondra ran off into the ocean to swim, tossing her jumpsuit aside in the process. Admiring Zondra’s rear embarrassed Rusty, as he had only lost his wife a day ago, even though she had likely died decades ago. And now he was thinking of his son, too. It was too new. He turned away, not liking the conflicting feelings and marveling how the same shapes of women still were attractive to him regardless of race.
Rusty took a dip in the ocean too, just for fun, keeping his distance from Zondra, and then returned to the shore to wash his jumpsuit upriver so it wouldn’t dry with salt in it. Besides, Zondra had decided to lie on top of her jumpsuit instead of putting it on again, and he didn’t want to ogle her too much.
He sat upriver amongst some trees, letting his jumpsuit air out. When it was dry enough to put back on, he started dressing and the wind shifted, blowing from the ocean up the river, instead of across the river as it had before. He recognized the girl’s scents immediately, and was comforted by them, until he detected cured leather. And it was coming from the same direction.
Rusty set off at a sprint along the riverside, hoping against hope that whoever had found them was friendl
y.
He was about to reach the treeline at the edge of the beach, where there would be no more cover if he continued beyond and he stopped, stepping behind the nearest trunk, ignoring the minor cuts the leaves caused him when he wasn’t paying attention to the low-hanging branches. The more cover, the better.
By the time he saw them, he already knew there were three other scents.
One was an enormous brute, male, with a bone faceplate and demonic wings. He had slits for eyes and tusks jutted from the bottom of the faceplate. Dark skin ended at bone spikes protruding from his joints, a couple of bony spines facing forward over the back of his fists. Sweat and testosterone or something very similar marked the man in Rusty’s mind. Rippling muscles and all that spiked bone said this was an adversary he did not want to fight. He had Zondra held up by her hair-tentacles in his ham-fist. Her feet were several inches off the ground. She strained to hold herself up with her hands by hanging onto his forearm. Her tentacles were not made for holding her weight.
“Go ahead! Try it!” He held her close so that she could see him eye to eye. “You mess with my head and I will crush your skull.”
Another vesuvian woman in a tight black leather suit comprising a jacket, pants and boots, all laced at the seams, carried a cutlass on her hip, though she hadn’t pulled it out yet. She was keeping an eye on Karnij, who had sat up, but wasn’t approaching anyone yet.
The last scent was a feral looking hunched humanoid with the face of a hyena. It was cautiously working its way towards Karnij.
Rusty slipped through the edge of the treeline to work his way behind his adversaries.
As soon as he left the trees, Zondra saw him and kicked the winged man hard in the groin as a distraction and then double-heel kicked him in the chest to release herself from his loosened grip.
Karnij stood and hissed, snapping her long curved forearm claws forward into position over her fists, which caused the hyena-man to stop his advance.
Rusty sprinted toward the back of the Vesuvian woman with the cutlass, even as he saw Karnij freeze as the Vesuvian infiltrated Karnij’s mind. He leapt as he reached the woman, grabbing her shoulders, and head-butted her from behind with a loud crack as their skulls collided, sending her sprawling forward drunkenly into the sand.
Her mind now freed, Karnij sprinted at a surprising speed at the hyena-man who backpedaled frantically, but too slowly to get away. He held up his arms futilely as the ripper plied her namesake, tearing him to shreds with clawed fury in seconds. He fell limply with cuts that were so deep they almost went through his entire torso. His head was severed at his shoulders and there were pieces of his limbs nearby. She could cut through bone. He hadn’t known that about Rippers. Definitely worth noting. Never anger Karnij.
Rusty could hear the huffing rage in Karnij’s breath and he could smell the adrenaline through her sweat. She was ready to kill again.
The winged brute flew up into the air, holding his groin. The Vesuvian woman ran, stumbling, for her life, circling wide around Karnij so she wouldn’t get too close and carried on down the beach to cross the river while holding the back of her head. He suspected her pride was more hurt than anything. Unless she had been close with her hyena-friend. Would serve them right. The flying brute put his hands up in surrender when Zondra stood up from the sand and glared at him. He flew off, following his friend.
There were only a couple of things of use that could be recovered from the body of the hyena-man. He had a belt and dagger of hardened but flexible resin with shards of obsidian cemented along the edges and a pouch with some gemstones in it.
Karnij cleaned her claws on his body and then took the pouch that Rusty offered her. The pouch disappeared under the ripper woman’s fur without a trace. Rusty was going to ask, but decided against it.
“Pulled cuts, open.” Karnij winced.
“We rest again?” Rusty suggested.
“I think we can,” Zondra answered. “They should leave us alone now. We’ll keep one of us awake at all times, and we’ll sleep well into the open on the beach so we can see from every direction.”
They all agreed, so spent the rest of the night sleeping and taking turns watching out, though Rusty took the time to discard the hyena-man’s body in the ocean where fish could eat it.
In the morning, he found some crabs that were twice the size of his fist, feasting on the bits of the corpse that had washed ashore. He grabbed two of them, tossing them onto the beach, where he could easily catch them again. He crushed their heads between stones and offered one to Karnij, knowing that Zondra would not want one. Zondra went to the forest’s edge to gather more herbs and tubers.
Rusty was able to fit the entire crab, shell and all, in his wide mouth. It was salty and crunchy and delicious, filling his nose with scents of the sea.
Karnij delicately used one claw to work out the crabmeat from the shell and ate that. Apparently, her mouth wasn’t built like his under all that fur.
He smiled at her, and he liked to think that she smiled back.
After Zondra joined them and they had all finished eating, they walked off down the beach toward what he would have called East, as the sun had risen from there. They wanted to put some distance between themselves and the people that had attacked them. They were probably well-established in the area, so could return with greater numbers, no point in making it easier for them.
CHAPTER FOUR
Rusty: Beach South of Prisoner Drop Zone, Incarcerata IV
As they walked, the beauty of the beach reminded Rusty of how much his wife and son would have loved this. They had never seen a beach before. Zondra noticed his tears.
“Why so sad, Rusty?”
“Miss family, they never see beach.”
“Aww.” Zondra leaned in and gave him a hug as they walked, reaching out to take his hand. “Why are you here? You just don’t seem like the criminal type to me.”
He looked up at her. She was so thoughtful and kind.
“Boss tell me mess with Inhibitor Chip, so me mess with Inhibitor Chip.”
She squeezed his hand. “That doesn’t seem like much of a crime to me. I don’t even know what an Inhibitor Chip, does. What happened?”
“Supe Hurly say it affect Vancouver Spaceport.”
“The Recruitment Center?” she asked hesitantly.
Rusty nodded.
Zondra’s hand went limp and slipped out of his.
He could smell her seething anger before she even portrayed it. From Karnij too. Karnij’s claws were twitching against her forearms. Zondra took a step back from him and her face screwed up in a vision of hatred.
“You?! You are the reason I’m here?! Everyone in the Recruitment Center was wrongfully arrested, Rusty, and sentenced to a life here!”
Rusty’s heart sank. Forty-seven criminals. They weren’t criminals that were arrested; they were normal people ripped from their families. He hadn’t really known the effects of what he had done. Now he was catching on.
“I protect family…” he started to say, but the sudden vision of his wife and son burning and screaming caused him to blurt out, “No!” Rusty dropped to his knees in the sand and sobbed.
The vision stopped almost as soon as it had started.
Zondra’s face softened, and the guilt was evident in her eyes.
“Sorry… I didn’t mean for—that—to happen. Why did it have to be you, Rusty?” She turned and walked towards the sea, taking several steps into the water until the waves were washing over her waist. She stood staring out over the ocean, saying nothing.
Karnij was quietly huffing in anger.
“She with me, Recruitment Center,” Karnij said, poking him with a single claw, and then left him, claws still twitching, to stand behind Zondra but not in the water, he assumed to still keep her wounds dry so they could heal.
The Boss was affecting him even here. It wasn’t fair. There was no way for him to fix any of this.
Rusty fell backwards onto the sand, despair a
nd hopelessness flowing through him. Every thought dead-ended at what he had done, so many lives ruined. The volume of tears streaming from his eyes was so great they blurred even his vision. Quiet sobs took him for a moment and then he just felt nothing. There was nothing he could do, nothing he could fix. He felt dead inside.
He stood up, not bothering to brush the sand from his jumpsuit. He could see the back of Zondra, her shoulders shaking as she cried, and Karnij just sitting motionless in the sand, facing out towards the sea. They’d be better off without him.
Rusty stepped up close to Karnij and dropped the dagger and belt into the sand behind her, and then walked down the beach, heading east along the shoreline. He didn’t know for how long, but eventually, the tears dried. A one-eyed seabird flew by him, close enough for him to grab, but he didn’t bother. Nothing really mattered.
The smell of smoke a distance ahead pulled him out of his slump. Immediately he was concerned for what it meant. Were they friendly? Would they hurt the girls?
He stopped, thinking maybe he should go back, whether they wanted him to or not. When he turned around, there they were, following him anyway. He’d been so preoccupied he hadn’t even smelled them. Zondra had put the belt and knife on. He was thankful for that.
When they caught up to him, none of them met eye to eye.
“Smoke ahead,” said Rusty, looking at the ground.
Zondra let her hand brush his shoulder as she passed with Karnij.
It was one of the best and worst feelings he had ever had.
When he looked up, in the distance he could see the smoke from a campfire rising from the forest, and further down the beach was a large canoe with pontoons for stability. An actual constructed craft for the water! Someone had settled in this area.
They all picked up the pace, a little more excited, though cautious as well. The last people hadn’t been very nice, but they needed information about this world or they weren’t going to survive in it for too long.