“… friends, it is time for us to leave. Rowhan here will lead the way,” says the commander. A tall, muscular man from the forest stands up and moves next to her. He bows slightly and then grins at us all.
“To a new beginning!” Mary cries, and the crowd breaks into quiet cheers.
The group sets off from the camp at a rapid pace with the forest people at the front. They are practically running and we hurry to keep up with them. “There are a lot more forest people in our group than those from the station,” I comment to Rich.
“Yes, I think most people from the station would struggle to undertake such a long hike. They haven’t built up any stamina on Earth,” he replies.
“There look to be about ten of them, including the commander and her husband.”
“It’s a pretty small turn-out, but we’ll be much faster without them.” He’s right, of course. The forest people will be our greatest asset on this mission.
We position ourselves towards the back of the pack. Commander Rothman and Ben walk ahead of us, talking strategy with my mother.
“Ellie, we are going to pick up more people en route. Word has spread amongst the forest people that we have arrived. There’s a huge upsurge of support,” says the commander.
“That’s good,” replies my mother. “We need all the people we can get. Washington will not let the fuel stocks go without a fight.”
“Then a fight we shall have. We only have one chance to get this right,” replies the commander.
She turns her head and her red hair reflects the intense hues of the sunrise over the horizon. Her next words are indecipherable and I move closer to them so I can hear their conversation more clearly. Ben happens to look over his shoulder and see me. He holds my gaze for a second longer than necessary. I nod carefully, so no one else notices the exchange.
“Ben has been entrusted with the data file containing the entire Collection. We left one copy at the camp and a further copy has been taken by one of the forest people to be safeguarded by them,” continues the commander.
“The dissemination of information and rebuilding our society is the number one priority once we manage to take control of the fuel,” says my mother. She hasn’t seen me behind her. “There have been many sacrifices along the way. We will make these count for something.”
I slow my pace and put some distance between my mother and me. The stakes haven’t changed. Everyone on this mission has his or her own agenda.
We proceed through the forest as a group. The forest people remain ahead of us but we slowly overtake those from the station as the sun rises higher in the sky.
We are traveling south, back towards New York City. The area we are in is rugged and scrubby. The land is parched here. Soon the hot sun is baking us.
“Do you have any water left?” asks Abigail.
I’ve already emptied my water bladder and I turn it upside down to show her it’s dry.
We finally stop at a wide, shallow river to drink and rest. We eat some flat bread and berries that were harvested in the forest by the camp. It’s nice to sit for a moment and rest our tired feet. The forest people are a stark contrast to the rest of us: they laugh and potter around the clearing, playing and joking with one another. Commander Rothman and her people look half dead. We islanders are faring a little better.
I’m just about to offer Birch the last of my bread when the forest people freeze. A change washes over them almost instantly. They draw their weapons and assume defensive positions around the clearing.
We follow suit immediately, drawing our weapons and preparing for whatever threat they have heard approaching. “What’s going on,” whispers Rich, his body tense.
“No idea,” I reply, moving my gun slowly over the terrain surrounding us. My senses are on high alert and I can hear the rapid beat of my heart.
“Commander,” yells an older man. “Take your people, start running west along the bank of the river. We will fight them off and find you. Go!”
The commander doesn’t hesitate. She gathers her people quickly. They look exhausted and terrified, but Commander Rothman’s face is set with grim determination. “Come,” the commander yells to us.
“Go ahead!” replies my mother. She has her gun out, ready to fight.
“Come with us, please,” implores the commander. “We are stronger together.”
“We have to go, Mary,” yells Ben.
“Go with them,” says the man from the forest. “They need your protection.”
We don’t analyze the plan but instead move on instinct, trusting the man’s direction. We run quickly after the station people along the riverbank.
Two men are carrying something carefully between them. It’s a locked box. “What is that?” I ask my mother as we run along the sandy bank. We continue to scan the dense bushland around us as we run.
“It’s weapons, Chris,” she says, breathing hard.
I don’t have time to reply. Behind us there is the sound of guns discharging. Then the screeching cry of a flock of birds overhead, startled by the outburst.
“Run!” yells the commander. “Prepare to defend yourselves.”
There are screams of pain and more shots from where we were just resting. The fighting behind us is fierce. Birch looks at me with fear in her eyes. I take her hand and we run.
Chapter Eleven
We sprint hard along the riverbank. Behind us the gunfight intensifies, and it’s impossible to tell if the people from the forest are gaining the upper hand against our unknown attackers. “I wish we stayed to help them,” I yell to Rich. “Should we go back?”
Rich turns to me as we run, “I think we need to stay with the people from the station.”
As he speaks, one man carrying the locked box stumbles. He tries desperately to prevent the box from crashing to the ground and in the process falls hard, twisting his ankle. Rich and I run to him.
“We need to get out of here,” he says to me, his eyes wide with fear. There’s a burst of gunfire and it sounds closer. My chest constricts as I look behind us.
“Come on,” I say to him, offering him my hand. The man pushes himself to his feet and cries out in pain when he tries to put weight on his left leg.
“Let me see your ankle. Can you walk?” I tear open his trousers and see his ankle is already red and swollen. Philip and Birch have stopped next to us and are scanning the bush land around us nervously.
“Here, lean on me,” says Philip to the man. “We don’t have time. We need to go.” He takes the man’s weight over his shoulder and they continue along the riverbank.
“Let me take the other side of the box,” says Rich. The other man looks at him gratefully and they start jogging after the others.
Birch and I are at the very back of the group and we continue to scan the surroundings, searching for any sign of our attackers. “We are lucky that the river is on one side. It makes it easier to keep a lookout. But if we are attacked, escaping could be more difficult,” I say. Birch nods, breathing hard as we continue to run. All the while, the chilling noises from behind us carry on unabated.
“Who do you think is after us?” asks Birch. Her mouth is set in a thin, determined line and she clutches her gun tightly.
“It could be Washington, or Yanx, or both of them. Let’s just hope that the forest people can fight them off.”
We run on for a few more beats. My boots sink heavily into the wet sand and the river seems to be getting wider.
“The commander looks like she is in trouble,” says Birch. Up ahead, there is a red-haired woman bent over double. We get closer and it’s clear Commander Rothman can’t go on. She can barely stand up and she’s gasping for breath.
We stop next to her, urging her on. “Please, commander, keep going.”
“Run,” Philip yells from up ahead. “You can’t stop.”
“I can’t, I just need a moment to catch my breath,” the commander gasps.
Rich looks back and shoots me an urgent look. We
need to keep moving along the riverbank away from our attackers. We need to get the commander moving before it’s too late and all three of us are dead.
The others have run on ahead now. It’s just me, Birch and Commander Rothman. We each take one of her arms and half drag her along the riverbank. It’s no good, we are traveling too slowly.
“Wait for us,” I yell.
The others stop up ahead. They’re agitated, looking around for any signs of danger, desperate to keep moving. We finally catch them and our small group pauses for a moment.
Millie and Patrick stand defensively, their guns trained back towards the gunfire.
“Should we keep going?” asks my mother. “Maybe we should hide.”
“The forest people said they would catch up to us. I don’t want to lose them,” I reply.
The others quickly nod their ascent.
“So we just keep running along the river?” asks Philip.
“Yes, we don’t have any other choice.”
We begin along the river again, slower this time but we are making progress. Philip holds up the injured man and Birch and I continue to support the commander.
The trees are denser here which reduces the visibility all around. Up ahead, the river curves and disappears behind a thicket of bamboo. The noise of the battle behind us is fading and we run with renewed hope towards the bend.
Millie is the first to round the corner and her scream causes my heart to freeze. Commander Rothman seems to lock her knees involuntarily but Birch and I propel her forward. “We have to get to her,” I say with gritted teeth.
The ambush takes us all by surprise. We run right into the line of divinity, each one with a shaved undercut and the ominous bird tattoo on the side of her head. They are dressed in black and stand as a living, brutal barrier. They stretch from one bank to the other, knee deep in the shallow river.
We stop mid-step and draw our weapons. There are about twenty of us clustered in a small group on one side of the riverbank, facing off against the divinity. I appraise them carefully, my gun held tightly in my hand. There are about fifteen of them and they each stand with their feet apart, the water splashing past their knees. They point their menacing black guns at us. What they lack in numbers they make up for in weaponry.
One of the divinity steps forward, a smile on her face. “Look what we have here, ladies. We’ve been looking for you Chris, and your friends, too.”
On instinct, we form a barrier that mirrors the divinity, placing ourselves between them and the people from the station. Rich and I stand shoulder to shoulder in the water. Birch is on my other side. Some instinct drives us to form a human barricade around our most vulnerable.
“You killed a lot of our people,” says the divinity. “Yanx and the Washingtonians have been looking for you, and for these people from the station.”
The divinity walks closer to us and I shift my weapon to her chest. She grins at me and turns to Commander Rothman. “Where are the rest of you?”
The commander stands resolutely, her back straight and shoulders back. “You know I will never tell,” she replies.
I glance back and catch Ben’s eye. We have the cache of weapons with us. I flick my eyes to the box and Ben nods. He sidesteps to the box and unfastens one side.
“You there! Don’t move!” The divinity barks at Ben.
Millie and Philip shift closer to further obscure her view of him.
“Where’s Yanx?” I shout, trying to distract her and the other divinity. “Did she get buried with the rest of your army of freaks?”
I sense movement behind me and I hope that Ben managed to open the weapons chest.
“No, I’m alive and well thank you.” Yanx’s voice is unmistakable. Her statuesque form materializes between the trees and she strides towards us. I notice Apollo on horseback riding slowly behind her. She comes straight for me and stands in front of me.
Cool water rushes between our legs as we stand knee-deep in the river. She wraps her hand around my head, her fingernails digging sharply into me like claws. She leans in closer and pushes my arm, which holds my weapon, down beside me. I’m aware of my rapid breathing, my heart slamming in my chest.
Yanx is still breathtakingly, dangerously beautiful. Her eyes are wide and half a cubit from my own. My hand tightens over the gun as she leans in to kiss me deeply on the mouth.
The slap of her hand on my check that follows is both shocking and entirely predictable. The divinity cackle loudly and I can feel my cheeks redden. Yanx steps back from me with a smirk on her face. She spins slowly in a circle in the center of the river, her hands raised high above her head.
“So here we are,” she says grandly, as if she were a queen welcoming her guests to the palace. “The people from the station have arrived on Earth. But the question on everybody’s lips, is where you are going now?”
Yanx walks towards me again and I glance back at Ben to see if he’s managed to extract a weapon, when total chaos breaks out.
A loud, panicked scream comes from one Divinity. Her screams quickly turn from panic to that of someone in intense, life-threating pain, and the other divinity join her in a sickening crescendo.
We all turn to the source of the noise and there is a woman in the jaws of a gigantic reptile, with teeth out of my most terrible nightmares. We are all yelling now. People are running frantically away from the beast. The attacked woman continues to scream horribly and blood is pouring from the huge reptile’s mouth and into the river.
Through the chaos someone is yelling my name. I tear my eyes away from the macabre scene in front of me and turn around to see Birch on the riverbank. “Chris! Hurry up,” she screams. “Come on.”
But I don’t run. I plant my feet and aim for the beast’s body. I fire two rounds that sink into the beast’s flesh but the creature barely registers the impact.
I’m staring in shock at the creature, the red blood pouring into the river, and the woman—who has stopped screaming and grows pale and lifeless before my very eyes—when a second divinity is grabbed from the other side of the river. It’s another beast!
Birch yelling my name again snaps me back to reality “Chris!” she yells plaintively. She is now standing with the others further along the river. I look from them to the first woman who was taken. She’s still in the jaws of the beast. Our eyes meet for a long moment and I can see she’s all but given up.
“Wait for me,” I yell to the others.
I run towards the beast, my gun drawn. The animal and I are face-to-face, its ancient primeval eyes boring into me. I’m shaking as I point the gun. I am for its eye socket, hoping my trembling hands won’t fail me. The gun discharges with a loud burst and the beast wobbles for a moment, the top of its head destroyed by the bullet, before slowly collapsing into the water.
I’m over there in the next moment prying the beast’s jaws open. The woman has deep lacerations on her abdomen and her body is limp, her face white. I pull her out of the animal’s mouth.
I carry her to the riverbank and cradle her in my arms in the shallows, the water running over us and washing her bloody wounds clean. She gasps and takes her final breath. I close her eyes and lay her gently on the sandy bank.
I spin around and search for the other monster and the other woman snatched in its fearsome jaws, but they are already gone.
I’m momentarily disoriented and in shock, but when I scan the surrounds, I see my friends with the people from the station. They are watching me from a chain away in the thick foliage of the forest. The divinity and Yanx have disappeared.
I stride towards the others. “I couldn’t save her,” I say. “The beast took another woman too.” The others look at me helplessly.
“There’s nothing we can do,” says Rich. “We have to move from here before Yanx or that animal comes back.” We all agree and begin to run through the forest blindly.
“What was that?” I ask Millie as we fall into step.
“It was an alligator,” she said
. “Two of them.” We run in silence for a few moments, the only sound the pounding of our feet and the cracking of sticks and low scrubby bushes underfoot.
“Chris,” says Millie. “That was a good thing you did, back there at the river.”
I’m not sure what to say. Finally, I mutter: “Thank you,” and slow my pace, dropping behind Millie to where Philip is running with my mother and Delphine.
“We should stop soon,” I say to them. “We need to get our bearings. We also need to find the forest people if we want any chance of surviving this forest, particularly if Yanx and the Washingtonians know we are here. How did they find us?”
“I doubt they tracked us,” says Philip. “The forest people are too good to be followed and ambushed by Yanx.”
“They did track us,” says Ben. “But not in the way you think. Let’s stop here.”
We gather near a bamboo thicket and pass around our remaining water. Philip and Rich position themselves close by, watching for anyone who might have followed us from the river.
“What do you mean, they did track us?” I ask.
“I made the mistake of switching on one of the communicators when we left the camp. I wanted to be sure we were going the right way, and I accessed the mapping function. The Washingtonians must have picked up my signal. I’m sorry.”
“This is bad Ben,” says the commander. “We need the forest people if we are going to make it to the fuel stockpile and take it from Washington. There’s just not enough of us.”
“The forest people will find us,” says Birch.
“How will they find us?” asks my mother.
“They will track us easily,” I say, remembering not so long ago when a woman from the forest called Kahri found my friends from whom I was separated. The forest people moved quietly and easily through the forest, tracking my friends with ease.
Birch is nodding. “They will track us, and we can periodically use their call to alert any of them in the vicinity that we are allies.”
Hothouse Page 10