“NO!” Adam yelled, his eyes going wide. “Help me!” he begged Gar, who pulled at him roughly. “Help me, God please help me,” Adam kept saying over and over. With a jerk of its head, Adam was pulled apart by the worm, his innards spilling onto the ground. Gar still had a hold of his top half, and Adam was somehow still alive. They fell back together, onto the ground as the worm raised high above them.
“Help,” Adam screamed. He was crying, his eyes wide, his body going into shock. “Help me,” he pleaded. He sounded pitiful.
The worm swallowed his bottom half in one gulp and then came down again, and Gar had little time to think. He thrust a shaking Adam, well, the other half of him, upwards, and the worm bit into the man’s back and shoulder and lifted him away. Gar didn’t stay to watch Adam be swallowed, instead, he turned and ran for the crack.
Sarah had been watching from within the cave, her eyes wide with terror. As they listened they could hear Adam screaming, somewhere within the worm, and then he went silent. Sarah found herself glad that he was quiet.
“I couldn’t do anything,” Gar said.
“I know,” Sarah said, wrapping her arms around him.
Boom!
The worm slammed against the crack, part of its flesh squeezing inside. Sarah screamed, but the worm was too big. It tried, again and again, to get at them, and then gave up and moved off.
Gar pulled his pack off. “Not much food or water,” he said. “We can’t stay here.”
“They didn’t come out at night,” Sarah said. “We can wait for dark.”
Gar nodded, and that was exactly what they did.
Chapter Eleven
They slept some during the day, and Gar woke first. He went to the cave entrance and peeked out. The sky was pink with streaks of orange, and he could see the sun setting in the distance. He saw no signs of the worms, and he ventured out to the side of the mountain to relieve himself.
He returned in the cave and woke Sarah up.
“Is it night?” she asked, but it clearly was, it was a dusky purple in the cave.
“We should go,” Gar said. “We must find water.”
Sarah nodded and helped pack up their meager supplies. Gar then handed her the rifle with the scope, while he took his own. She thought about slinging it over her shoulder but decided against it, instead holding it ready in her hands as they left the safety of their cave.
There was no sign of the worms, they had truly retired for the night. Still, Gar and the Earthling were on edge, their hearts pounding in their chests.
“So water first and then what?”
“We must get off the planet, and get to my superiors,” Gar answered. “We need you, we need your crystal. With that, we can end the Aeon threat forever.”
Sarah nodded. “How are we going to get off the planet?” she asked.
“I don’t know,” Gar said. “We have to find another city. Smaller. Somewhere we can take a ship from.”
“Let’s get going. We need water. Do we have food?”
“Some,” Gar said, and rummaged within his pack for a moment, pulling out two small dark brown bars. “Don’t taste great, but they have everything we need,” he said, handing one over.
Sarah took hers and sniffed it. It smelled like wood, and she grimaced. “Seriously?” she asked, and Gar laughed.
“Seriously,” he said, and took a bite of his bar. Sarah did the same, gagging as she swallowed the bitter bite.
“Come on,” she said then, tucking the rest of her bar into her pocket, and leading the way out of the cave. They were only ten or so feet from the desert floor and hurried down the side of the massive hill. They picked a direction at random, just being sure not to head back towards the capital city, and walked. Gar was gazing at the night sky, pitch black and filled with a million brilliant stars.
“I don’t recognize them,” he said. “If we get off the planet I’m not sure how to get home. Well, my home. Your home is even farther.”
“You’ve never been to Aeon?”
“No, the war has never reached them on their own planet. None of their wars. They are lucky. Horrible, and lucky. They bring pain and suffering to everyone else, it never touches them. It is quite unfair.”
Sarah nodded. “I hate them,” she said. “They make me feel…” she trailed off, but Gar understood.
“Did the one, was he there?”
“Yes. Henry.”
“Did he do anything to you?”
Sarah shook her head, offering Gar a smile in the double moonlight. “No,” she said. “He did not.”
He reached over then and found her hand. They walked like that for some time.
“Look,” Gar said, pulling up short. He pointed, and she could see a small creature, the size of a mouse, running along in front of them. It was dark and hard to see, but it looked as though it could be a bird, it appeared to have feathers.
“What is that?” she asked.
“I don’t know, but surely it drinks water. Some must be near.”
“Does everything drink water? Are we all that similar?”
“Yes,” Gar said, nodding his head as they followed the strange little creature. “We all must drink, and we all breathe oxygen. Some need more or less than others, but any hospitable planet, we could breathe on it. This is a little less than I would like.”
Sarah remembered her breather and held it to Gar. He took it and inhaled. “Better,” he said with a smile, handing it back over to her.
With little else to do they followed the feathered animal, and a few times they got close enough for Sarah to see it clearly. It stood around two feet and indeed was covered with feathers, though she could make out no wings. It simply looked like a ball with legs, its eyes on two short stalks near the front, its mouth a sharp beak that was bright red, in contrast to its dark gray feathers.
Gar was hoping the animal would lead them to water, and his hope was rewarded when the creature darted into a hole in the ground. Coming up to the hole Gar and Sarah could hear water rushing below them, and crouching down they could just make out moving water in the darkness. An underground river!
The hole was large enough for them to enter, and they could make their way to the water by a well-worn groove along the side of the dirt, a lot of animals came there to drink.
Underground, the river had carved a tunnel through the earth, with a small bank where Gar and his lover crouched, drinking by filling their cupped hands with water and then tilting it to their lips. They also filled the one canteen they had with them, the other had been in Adam’s pack.
They sat on the bank for some time to drink, making sure they had their fill, and also ate their bitter nutrition bars, finding it easier to swallow when washed down with cool refreshing water from the river.
“Okay, let’s get going,” Gar said finally, leaning over to kiss Sarah before standing. She groaned but followed him, and within minutes they were back atop the desert once more.
“It’s colder than I would have thought,” Sarah said, shivering as she wrapped one of their blankets around her shoulders. She still held the rifle ready though, unwilling to stow it on her back. If those worms existed on this planet, who knew what other creatures they could run across.
And soon they would run afoul of a dangerous foe, despite having no way of knowing that, though this foe was one they were both intimately familiar with: Aeon’s. Not Henry and his ground, but there were bands of nomadic Aeon’s, some criminals banished from the cities, some who just preferred an outlaw lifestyle, and shortly after leaving the river Gar and Sarah had unknowingly entered one criminal band's land.
Sarah felt as though they had been walking for hours, and saw nothing but desert around them. No city, and not even any of the mountainous holes, which was a good thing she supposed since it meant they were away from the worms. “Where are we going to go?” she asked.
“I don’t know,” Gar said, trying to keep worry from his voice. He was about to say something else when a shot rang
out, and Gar felt something sail directly past his head. “Down!” the alien shouted, falling to the ground and pulling Sarah along with him. There was a boulder nearby, and Gar crawled for it, still pulling Sarah along with him.
More shots rang out as they took their hiding spot. Gar and Sarah could hear metal slugs slapping into the rock they hid behind.
“Not laser guns,” Sarah said.
“Still Aeon,” Gar said. He didn’t know how he knew, but he was sure of it. He was thankful to have his headband on still, but Sarah was still without one, so he turned to her and spoke quickly. “Stay here. I can’t tell you anything about what I want to do or they’ll know.”
Sarah nodded. “If you see one, shoot them,” Gar told her, and then he lay on his belly and started out from behind the rock.
Boom! Gun fire from his left and the slug passed over his head to slam into the rock. They didn’t see him. That was good. He had seen the flash of a rifle shot, and he knew about where at least one of their attackers hid, behind a wiry growth of bush fifty yards from the rock Sarah was lying behind.
Gar made a wide circle, not wanting to use his gun unless he absolutely had to. It was dark and it didn’t seem as though their attackers could see any better than they could, so they were without night vision or something similar, and for that Gar was grateful.
He made a wide circle around the bush where he knew an attacker was hiding, and crawled towards the bush from the rear. As he got closer, he could see one Aeon crouched, rifle held to his shoulder as he continued to take pot shots at the rock. Gar was sure he was supposed to be keeping his targets behind the rock so others could move in behind him. He would have to work quickly.
Gar climbed to his feet and ran, crouched over, to the bush. He was almost completely silent, and with the mechanical halo about his head, he managed to take the Aeon by surprise. He wrapped one arm around the other beings neck, grabbing one arm with his free hand.
The Aeon tried to call out but couldn’t, Gar was crushing his windpipe. Gar flexed and soon the Aeon couldn’t breathe at all, and then almost mercifully for the Aeon Gar felt his neck shatter beneath the muscles in his arm. Gar let go and the Aeon fell to the ground, dead.
Gar took his place in the bush and peered out, shouldering his own rifle. He could see the rock well, a shaft of moonlight fell across it. He looked around, trying to find whoever the Aeon had been with.
Finally, he spotted them, or at least two of them, slinking around the rock on the far side. Gar lifted the rifle to his shoulder and waited for them to reappear from around the rock. When they did, he fired. His first slug hit one of the Aeon’s in the chest, sending him flying back. His second shot missed, but then there was a sharp crack from the rock and the remaining Aeon dropped to the ground, a plume of crimson spraying from his forehead. Sarah was a pretty damn good shot.
Gar waited to see if there were any other Aeon’s, but it didn't appear there were and he slung the rifle over his shoulder, took the dead Aeon’s as well, and hurried back to the rock.
“Is that all of them?” Sarah asked when she saw Gar in the moonlight.
“I think so,” he said. “It will be day soon, we should hurry.”
“Where did they come from?” Sarah asked.
“I don’t know,” Gar said. But they had come from somewhere close, and that meant a camp. There would be more water, and food there, and they could possibly stay there for the day. It seemed better to move at night.
Gar spent some moments back in the bush looking for tracks, and eventually, he found some, leading off in one direction. It was where the shooter in the bush had come from.
“This way,” Gar said, and they followed the trail.
The sky was going from black to purple when they walked over a low-rise and saw the camp below them. Fires burned and tents had been erected, five in all. There were two adult male Aeon’s in the center of camp, sitting around a fire, eating from shallow bowls. They also saw four women. No children, which made Sarah feel good since she knew they would have to kill the aliens. As much as she hated the Aeon’s, she did not wish to harm kids.
“Before the sun is up,” Gar whispered. The sky was growing lighter by the minute, and Sarah knew Gar was right. It would be a lot harder to take everyone out if they saw them coming.
They hurried closer to the camp in a bent over run. Gar lay on his stomach when he was forty or so yards from the two men and readied his rifle. Two shots and two Aeon’s fell dead.
The women were disturbed, the antennae on their head weaving this way and that as they looked for the shooter. They seemed to sense Sarah because they looked in her direction and then ran and hid.
“I don’t like killing women,” Gar said. He stood up and Sarah followed suit, both of them holding their guns at the ready.
They found the four women hiding in a tent, huddled together.
“Go,” Sarah told them, and then she could feel them all in her mind, taking a moment to learn her language.
“Don’t hurt us,” one of them said into her mind.
“Go and we won’t,” Sarah said.
“We have nowhere to go,” one complained.
“The desert is a big place. Tell no one we were here,” Sarah added, trying to sound as menacing as possible.
“Thank you for your mercy,” one of them said, and Gar let them leave the tent. He allowed them to gather a few supplies, and then Sarah and her lover stood at the edge of the camp and watched as the Aeon women hurried away.
“Are they going to come back? Bring someone?” Sarah asked.
“I don’t think so,” Gar said.
By then the sky was bright orange, and the sun was peeking over the horizon. “We can stay here?” Sarah asked.
“Yes. Let’s see what they left us.”
Gar and Sarah split up, working on opposite sides of the camp, grabbing what they each thought would be useful. There was an abundance of food and water, the food mostly dried meat that didn’t taste too bad, the water in circular canteens. There were more weapons, too. Gar laid them all out, teaching Sarah about the ones that seemed most foreign to her.
He could tell the Earth girl was uncomfortable with the idea of staying there, so they took one tent and packed it up, grabbing the supplies they would take. They marched a few hundred yards away, near a line of thorny bushes. The tent was beige, the same color as the sand, and they set it up next to the bushes. They could see the camp from where they had come, but they would be hard to spot, and looked like a small rise in the land instead of a tent.
Inside the tent the two lay together, dozing during the day, drinking water and eating, and of course, making love.
Sarah rode the alien, her hands on his chest as she bent to kiss him, bucking atop him, her tight womanhood gripping his massive shaft until he could no longer take it and released inside her. She had already climaxed twice, and they were covered in sweat by the time she rolled off him. They lay in each other’s arms and drifted off once more.
Sarah woke first this time, the sky purple as she slid from the tent. She made her way back to the camp with a rifle in her hands, but no one had returned. She picked through the camp carefully once more and came across what she took instantly to be binoculars, though they looked different than the ones she was used to seeing back on Earth, for they had three lenses instead of two on the side opposite the one you looked through. She thought the lens may help with magnification, for when she looked through the binoculars she could see further than she had ever seen before.
Gar was awake when she returned.
“Don’t run off,” he said, but his voice was light. She held the binoculars up.
“I was getting the stuff you missed,” she teased, and he laughed.
“Well, let’s see what we can see,” the alien said, taking the binoculars from her and heading outside.
They stood for a long moment, taking turns to look through the binoculars. At the edge of the horizon they could see what looked to be a set
tlement, at least Gar was convinced of it, Sarah seemed less so.
“It could be anything,” she argued.
“We may as well head that way,” Gar said. “What else are we going to do?”
She didn’t have a good answer to that, of course, so she nodded and shrugged her shoulders and they set off. She was surprised to see that Gar was heading back to the camp, which was out of their way.
“What are you doing?” she asked.
He laughed. “Ah, so you don’t see everything, do you?” he teased. She followed him and laughed when she saw what he was talking about. At the edge of the camp were two mechanical frames, and though she had seen them before she didn’t know what they were, now for some reason it dawned on her.
Hover bikes. Gar started one, and she watched how he did it. “Climb on,” he said, indicating the small space behind him.
“Yeah right,” Sarah said, and she climbed onto the second bike and started it, impressing her lover.
“You’re always full of surprises,” he said.
“That’s Earth girls for you,” Sarah said with a grin, and kicked off from the ground. She turned the handle of her bike, and it shot forward, leaving her alien lover to follow after her.
The bikes turned a trip that would have taken most of the night on foot into one of just two hours. Gar got her attention as the settlement grew nearer, and from this distance, they could tell that it indeed was a settlement, the buildings made of stone, their profiles low. They pulled over by a rocky outcrop and parked their bikes, killing the engines and climbing off.
“There may be a ship here,” Gar said.
“I hope so,” Sarah agreed.
They edged around the rocks and lay on their bellies, Gar using the binoculars to see what he could see, having found a button on the side which turned everything a fluorescent green; night vision.
“It looks quiet,” Gar said. “I don’t see anyone.”
“Let’s get closer,” Sarah suggested, and they crept to the edge of the village. There were about twelve buildings they could see, situated in a sort of ring with the largest building in the center.
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