Alliance

by Andrew Stride

  David had no intention of being turned into a spit roast and to get his point across, he started to shout and holler, lashing out at the two Squalvolvans as best he could, but they just tightened their grip. It was useless, David needed a miracle.

  The blaze must have been visible for miles around and to have lit a fire in such a prominent spot, suggested this might be some sort of sacrificial event.

  The closer David got to the fire, the more desperate he was becoming and his determination finally paid off, as he somehow managed to free one of his legs.

  Now partly free, David kicked out like a madman in the hope of striking something vital, but so far he had only managed to lose his flip-flops.

  One of the Squalvolvans still had a good grip on him and paid no attention to his cries of pain.

  The fire was comparable to those erected during Guy Fawkes and he had a distinct impression that tonight he was playing the leading role. What had he done to warrant this kind of treatment? He shouted at the top of his voice. “Not like this, not like this.”

  A flash of light, followed by a ripping sound, stopped the Squalvolvan in its tracks. Then quite unexpectedly, the beast relaxed its grip and David was dropped on the hard rocky ground, only metres from the hungry flames.

  David rolled away from the heat and looked up. What he saw he couldn’t explain, as there appeared to be a tear in the night sky and it oozed a blinding white light.

  The Squalvolvan that had just dropped him seemed mesmerised by it and David took advantage of this and kicked out at it with all his strength. This knocked the Squalvolvan off balance and it staggered backwards into the fire and the flames quickly devoured it.

  Another Squalvolvan made a grab for him, but he evaded it without too much difficulty. In fact, he was more likely to be trampled, as these things ran around him in an effort to establish what the light in the sky was all about.

  He’d never been good at sports, but all this running and dodging reminded him of a rugby match, only instead of a misshapen ball, his life was in his hands.

  There was a roar behind him, which was cut short by a whoosh and a thud, but he didn’t dare look back.

  They were under attack from god knows what and the Squalvolvans shifted their focus to confront this unknown enemy. With the Squalvolvans preoccupied, it was up to him to make his escape and he was looking for the quickest way off the mound.

  His efforts hadn’t gone completely unnoticed, because from out of the darkness, Animal made a lunge for him. Somehow he evaded it, but having done so, he found himself off balance and the ground fell away quickly.

  David slid down a near vertical rock face and landed heavily on a small overhang and before his battered body had time to react, he toppled over the edge. As he fell he prayed for a soft landing and his prayers were answered, although the sand was still pretty hard. He rolled around in pain and his head buzzed from the impact, but he forced himself to stand up. He felt a wreck, his hands bound and bloody and another lump already forming on the side of his head.

  He swayed a little while trying to coax his body into cooperating and after a couple of tries; he managed to shuffle one leg in front of the other. He was doing it, but did he have enough left in the tank to escape the mayhem that was carrying on around him.

  David was convinced he was witnessing the clash of two armies and he had no intention of hanging around to find out which side triumphed.

  There were a number of intense flashes of light and debris started to rain down from above. He knew he had to keep moving, but in the end, his body forced him to stop and he collapsed in a heap on the sand.

  He had parted company with the bag that contained his other set of clothes, which he could have really done with right now, as it was freezing and he shivered uncontrollably. David felt terrible and he must have lost consciousness.

  David wasn’t sure how long he’d been out, but when he came to, it was still dark. He was desperate to find warmth, so desperate in fact, that he was tempted to return to the fire, which was still ablaze. He must have been mad to even consider it and while trying to make sense of his predicament through blurred vision, he concluded rather hastily that it was safe.

  David struggled to his feet, spurred on by the thought of how much better he was going to feel curled up in front of the fire. He had completely factored out the likelihood that any of those animals remained, so confident was he that they had been wiped out. What of the victors? Surely they could be just as aggressive towards him. To hell with them too, thought David and this change of attitude surprised him.

  He drew nearer to the mound and despite David’s apparent disregard for his own safety, he kept his eyes peeled for anything life-threatening. All was quiet, perhaps too quiet, but the lure of warmth drove him on.

  The climb up was difficult in places, made more challenging since his hands were still bound. He’d nearly reached the top and had expected to see at least a few dead bodies, but so far he hadn’t seen any and he wasn’t sure how he felt about that or what it meant. If any of his captors were still alive, they wouldn’t fail to see him up here, but it was a risk he was willing to take.

  Finally, at the top of the mound, David positioned himself close to the fire with his back against a large rock. Warm at last, he let himself relax and surveyed the area, but he could see nothing beyond the firelight, which only extended to the edges of the mound. He shivered at the thought of the extreme environment around him, which for the moment he did not have to endure. What in the world had happened here tonight and sitting there, he could only imagine.

  The rest of the night passed by uneventfully and he managed to catch a few hours’ sleep and stirred just before dawn.

  The fire had gone out and left the rocks of the mound discoloured from the heat, a reminder if he needed one, of how close he had come to being roasted alive. David found himself reliving the nightmare and closed his eyes tight in an attempt to clear the images from his mind.

  David's chest tightened and he forced himself to take some deep breaths because he wasn’t going to survive this unless he got a grip of himself. He could do this, he told himself, otherwise, he wouldn’t be here.

  David turned his attention to the expanse of sand that surrounded him. He may have survived the night, but his situation still looked pretty dire and as he sat there contemplating his next move, he noticed something out the corner of his eye.

  What he saw surprised and confused him, but there was no denying it, unless the dense forest growing in the middle of the desert was actually a mirage. David blinked a few times and stood up for a better look, his body reminding him of how beaten up it was and he thought he was going to pass out.

  He steadied himself against a rock and focused again on the forest and as desperate as he was to see something other than sand, he was sure he wasn’t imagining it.

  The forest may have been real, but it looked totally out of place as if it had just dropped out of the sky and while weighing up the pros and the cons of going over to investigate, his focus was pulled in another direction.

  He was now looking at the remains of his captors, scattered across the sand. They’d certainly met their match out here last night, but David wasn’t sure if he should be celebrating their demise just yet. Because whatever had killed them could still be around and he was in no fit state for another confrontation. Apart from the fact that he was in agony, his hands were still bound and surely that would be like presenting himself as a ready meal.

  If he was serious about going to investigate the forest, then he had to get these ropes off first and he began by rubbing them on the abrasive rock. He’d seen this done a few times in the movies and it always seemed to work and after a few minutes, he could see the rope beginning to fray. David kept at it and by the time he was through, he had worked up quite a sweat.

  Free of the ropes, David limped down off the mound and started across the sand towards the oasis. He was careful to avoid coming too close to any of the dead bodie
s, not that he thought they were likely to rise from the dead or anything, but seeing them again sent shivers.

  A sudden movement caught his eye, stopping him in his tracks. David remained still and watched a couple of unidentified animals run out of the forest and onto the sand, but they were too busy chasing each other to notice him and disappeared back into the thick undergrowth. David stood there biting his lip and wondered whether investigating the forest was such a good idea after all. What he needed was a weapon and then perhaps the skill to use it, so when he happened upon a branch, he was halfway there.

  David was close enough to the forest to hear the sound of insects, a kind of white noise of the natural world and although the meaning of this sound meant little to anything other than an insect, there was order here of the highest degree.

  David stopped, closed his eyes and leaned heavily on the branch, which was currently more of an aid than a weapon. While standing here in the shade of the trees, he listened to the sound of the wind moving through the forest.

  In his mind, he had transported himself to a familiar place, but a sound in the forest reminded him that he was in a strange land, full of danger.

  David looked nervously at the wall of green foliage, just metres from where he was standing and stopped leaning on the branch and braced himself for a possible encounter. His heart was beating in his chest like a tribal drum, but there was no fight in there, only fear. He waited for a good few minutes, trying to imagine what might have made that unearthly sound, but his fear quickly turned to relief, as nothing materialised.

  His ordeal last night had taken it out of him and he was still wondering why he’d been picked for this job. Surely they could have found somebody that liked sport and was reasonably fit. Didn’t they know he spent most of his life sitting behind a desk?

  Feeling the need to rest his broken body, he made his way over to a fallen tree. The tree was gnarled and twisted and turned out to be more comfortable than it looked.

  David didn’t know how long he’d sat there, maybe ten minutes, maybe an hour and the only thing missing was the lapping waters of the ocean and a cool drink. His visualisation put a smile on his face, but if he was going to survive this, then he should really be doing more to help himself.

  He was dehydrated, hungry and his feet were red and swollen, but his mind was having difficulty prioritising what he should do next. He would achieve nothing sitting here and David forced himself to stand up.

  A little unsteadily, he studied the edge of the forest. He was looking for a weakness in the wall of leaves and slowly limped over to where the fallen tree had flattened some of the undergrowth. Here he found what he had been looking for. A way in and that wasn’t all, because resting there was a huge leaf the size of a basin, brimming with water. Without giving much thought to its purity, he drank deeply and immediately felt better.

  David was experiencing humidity that was hard to quantify and a thick mist appeared to have erased much of the forest.

  He put his discomfort to the back of his mind and forced his way through the wet leaves while looking cautiously around this new environment. He felt vulnerable without his shoes and had only been standing there a few minutes and something was already irritating his feet. It was now that he wished he’d had a proper search for his shoes and trying not to think about the number of things that might want to nibble on his toes, he continued.

  David knew how easy it would be to get disoriented, so he was leaving himself plenty of clues for his return journey, breaking stems with the branch he’d found and hoping the noise he was making would keep the wildlife away. This was a whole new experience for him and he wasn’t convinced he was doing enough since his feeble taps with the branch could have easily sounded like a flightless bird to a predator.

  He decided to put a bit more weight behind his swing and was shocked to see that he was actually being observed by a pair of huge unblinking eyes. The eyes were enormous in comparison to the size of the animal and it held him firm, in a hypnotic stare. David had never seen anything like it, but why should that surprise him, he was on an alien planet after all. Its appearance looked a little comical, but appearances can be deceiving and he wasn’t going to take any chances. For all he knew, it was this thing that had made short work of his captors and he backed off slowly.

  Having survived the encounter, David was feeling slightly better about his chances. Surely it was a little early in the day to start feeling confident or had he forgotten what happened to those hairy ape-like things back at the mound. David quietened the voice of doubt and focused on his objective, since he had half convinced himself that this forest might be the hiding place of the Hidden Ones.

  Maybe it had been the blow to his head or the sun had cooked his brain, but David wanted to continue exploring the forest. He guessed that if he could get his fluid levels up and find his footwear, then there was nothing stopping him from venturing further. Despite the sound advice he was giving himself, he was reluctant to return to the desert and after only a short distance, he came upon a fruit-bearing bush.

  David’s stomach rumbled noisily at the thought of food and he was seriously tempted to try one. After all, he would have to take some risks if he was going to survive out here. He resisted and playing safe, he sipped water from another basin sized leaf.

  Visibility was still pretty poor and if he wasn’t careful he could get lost in here for sure. It seemed that every time he thought about heading back he would see something even more amazing. This time it was a massive tree, which rose out of the mist like a rocket on launch day. The tree was unlike anything he had ever seen before and he intended to make this his last stop, before returning to find his shoes.

  The ground had a thick covering of leaf matter, so his feet were reasonably happy, despite the odd creepy crawly.

  The tree was a lot further away than he realised, which also meant it was a whole lot bigger as well. There was a deafening chatter of insects or was that the sound of cutlery and on the menu this morning, one sweaty human. No, he was going to be fine; he couldn’t imagine anything less appetising.

  Aside from the insects, there was now a deeper reverberation and unless he was mistaken, it sounded like someone talking. David concentrated, trying to home in on the source. He had high hopes that this could be the rescue party. Then again, it could be more of those hairy beasts.

  David neared the tree; this wasn’t a tree, more like a skyscraper made of wood. It was gigantic.

  The mist directly ahead of his position swirled as if someone had just walked through it and then to David’s horror, from around the tree came a bulky form, which looked right at home in this challenging environment. Upon seeing him, it stopped in its tracks, a crescent moon shaped object clasped in one of its huge hands, while the other was pressed up against its ear. It appeared to be talking into a handset.

  They both seemed equally surprised to see each other and for a split second, David felt the urge to run, but then it spoke to him.

  “Human, what are you doing here?”

  It was talking to him, this thing, whatever it was. David was so shocked he couldn’t reply.

  “You bump your head, human?” the thing looked him up and down. “You are human aren’t you? Yes, I can smell you now.”

  It had seen a human before, which was encouraging, but David was detecting anger in its voice and he knew that the best way to deal with anger was to remain calm. Maybe he was reading too much into the situation, an easy mistake even back on Earth and here he was, on another planet. David smiled, which he hoped conveyed his intentions because he desperately wanted to keep the conversation going. This thing could be his ticket out of here.

  “Are you with the Hidden Ones?”

  “Hidden Ones! Who the hell are they?”

  David flinched in response to its reaction, which was like blood in the water to this thing and it screwed up its face as if it had smelt something bad. Without saying anything, it moved closer and now loomed over Da
vid, like a colossus.

  Intimidation, yes, David had encountered this before and he had to stand his ground or else he was going to get trampled.

  David composed himself. “I’m looking for the Hidden Ones and I thought you…”

  “Well, you thought wrong. Don’t you know who I am?”

  “No, should I?”

  The thing muttered something under its breath and looked at David as if it was about to kill him. “Where’d you come from?”

  “The desert. Those things out there were getting ready to make a meal out of me.”

  “Disgusting.”

  “They were pretty awful.”

  “No, idiot! The idea that they were going to eat you. Damn Squalvolvans.”

  “Squalvolvans you say? Is that what you call them?”

  The thing looked at him blankly and returned its attention back to the handset that buzzed with interference. It was clearly having trouble and in frustration, it thumped the tree, which made David jump. This local had some issues and it was clear that neither of them knew what to make of the other, but despite appearances, it looked like they could be on the same side.

  Even though this local was preoccupied, David noticed it kept glancing in his direction, but he had no idea why and it was making him nervous.

  In a temper, it cursed and focused back on David.

  “No luck?” asked David, a little tentatively.

  This thing was looking at him again like it wanted to rip his head off. It was making David uncomfortable and he inadvertently asked another question.

  “So, do you come here often?”

  “What!”

  “Sorry. That came out wrong. You must be from around here.”

  “Why would you think that?”

  “Just a guess I suppose.”

  “When was the last time you saw a Shamozolt in these parts?”

  David looked confused. “A Shamozolt?”

  “I’m a Shamozolt, you fool. Surely you can see that! It’s me, Boroc.”