by Foy W Minson
“Charlie,” Emmie said with a hesitancy in her voice. “What are we going to do with him? I mean if we can find him?”
Charlie glanced at her for a moment, then around at the others who were now looking at him with what looked like expectations of an answer. He shrugged and shook his head before clearing his throat.
“Well, my first idea didn’t work out so well, did it? I didn’t really have a chance to talk it over with Jason or anyone else before we left, so…I don’t know. I guess we’re gonna just have to reconsider some things we tossed out first time around. Maybe we aren’t going to be able to avoid executions like we were hoping. Maybe…oh, hell, I don’t know. I can’t make that kind of decision by myself; I don’t care if I am the judge now. That’s too heavy for one man to carry alone. I guess we’ll just take him back to the village and keep him locked up until we can decide — the whole village.”
Silence settled on them while the weight of their mission bore down on them like a heavy cloud, a thunderhead with frightening potential.
“Did you all hear about Sarah?” Woody asked after an interval.
“You mean little Sarah?” Billy Ray asked, happy to have his concern diverted to something less disturbing. “Sherri’s Sarah? What about her?”
“Well, it seems she’s the mysterious mover that helped us recover when the waterwheel started going sideways. She admitted it was her when her mom finally convinced her that she was mistaken when she urged her to never use her power. I guess she could no longer hide it when she threw a couple of raiders across the village and through a wall when they tried to kill her mom. I heard Erin talking about it to Jason.”
Emmie nodded and said, “Yeah, and I guess Sherri did a number on the bastard of a husband Morgan gave her to, a really bad character that liked to use a whip.”
“Yeah, I heard about that,” Billy Ray said with a grin. “Lila was able to put her and Erin back together okay without hardly any parts left over. Kinda makes you wonder what the little one — Daryl — might be able to do in a few years.”
Charlie grinned and gave them another five minutes before he rose to his feet and said, “Unless you want to start looking for a spot to spend the night out here, we need to get moving.” He glanced over his shoulder at the sun between the zenith and the hills on the west side of the canyon. “We’ll have to make it an overnighter if we can’t find that little weasel. Come on, let’s get lucky.”
“Lucky?” Billy Ray asked with a snicker while climbing to his feet. “Is that the way you Marines operate? On luck?”
“No, you big ugly, but we have to hope for it when we’ve got a bunch of soft civilians bogging us down.”
When Billy Ray burst out in wheezing laughter, it seemed to ease the grayness of the day. The others grinned as they climbed back to their feet. To hear good natured bantering between those two was almost like back in the better days before Morgan had reappeared to wreak his havoc.
Before they took a step toward the intersection just past the west bank, they all froze and fell silent. Emerging from the whispering breeze rustling the remnants of the forest filling the canyon, came the patter of footsteps, running footsteps coming from beyond the curve.
“Damn! That little twerp really is gonna come back to us.”
“It might be him, Billy Ray,” Charlie said, “but I doubt if he’s coming a runnin’ just to save you some steps.” Then, turning to the others, he commanded, “Into cover, quick! Over there!” as he led them to thick brush across the road from the willow they had rested under.
The pounding footfalls grew louder even as they grew uneven, as if the runner was fast reaching the limit of his endurance and was fighting to remain upright.
Charlie edged backward into the leafy shelter of a large rhododendron growing on the far side of the road spur. Only Emmie had joined him there. The others had spread out to similar covers, but they all glanced toward him as though expecting him to issue further orders or suggestions or encouragement or —
Audible sobs and gasps for breath punctuated the wheezes between footfalls from just beyond the bend. Then, as he rounded the curve, Olen’s sobs became a cry of despair. When his legs could no longer keep up with the momentum his upper body was demanding, his whimpers stretched out to one long whine. Just past the fork of the road merge, he pitched forward with his arms outstretched, not so much to catch himself as to hold off the reality that his flight was making a forced landing. After sliding to a stop on his belly, he worked around sideways and curled into a fetal position with his skinned palms held to his breast inside the curl of his fingers.
Charlie resisted the temptation to rush out and grab him by his throat, reminding himself that the man had been running like the devil was on his heels. He slid back even farther into the bush while motioning for the others to do the same.
He watched Olen suddenly jerk as he uncurled and began to climb back to his feet, edging backward away from the direction he had come even before his feet were under him and causing him to flop back onto the sand covered pavement. But he immediately squirmed about and rose to his feet again. Instead of taking off at a run, though, he just backed up while gazing back at something beyond the curve not yet in view to Charlie.
Olen’s whimpers grew louder, and his head began to shake back and forth in a desperate denial of what he could see. He thrust his arms out with his hands spread as though to hold away whatever was approaching.
Charlie could imagine one or more hungry animals, dogs gone feral, coyotes, a bear, a mountain lion, or since it was Olen, even a couple of kittens with fangs bared.
A pencil-thin flash of green light blinked so briefly he might have thought he had imagined it if he hadn’t recognized it from deep memories. So, when Olen flopped to the ground and lay unmoving, he had a pretty good idea what was coming, and an angry, hungry bear would have been preferable. He muttered a soft, “Stay put.” along with a softer, “Shhh,” and hoped the others heard him.
The large kryl stepped into view first. It was carrying one of their broomstick-like laser weapons and wore a green sash. It stalked right up to Olen and gazed down at him. A few paces behind came a smaller one wearing a multicolored sash: a gllurik.
They were only about fifty or sixty feet away, and Charlie was afraid to even take a breath. How good was their hearing? Could they smell the cluster of sweaty humans hiding in the bushes nearby? Could they taste the fear radiating from him and his friends? Or could they detect them with some other sense that maybe even Raven wasn’t aware of?
When the kryl leaned over to pick Olen up, the gllurik made a slow turnabout, peering off into the surroundings. When it had turned to face across to Charlie’s rhododendron, it paused just briefly enough for Charlie to notice, but then continued to turn. After it had completed a full rotation, it followed the kryl that had walked back out of view to the north, carrying Olen slung under one arm. Just before it, too, was out of sight, it glanced back to its right for a second, toward the cluster of rhododendrons, and then it was gone.
Charlie flicked his hands out to motion the others to remain where they were. He forced himself to count slowly to a hundred, then another fifty before he rose up out of the bush. He paused to listen, again motioned for the others to remain where they were and stepped out onto the road. He eased out to a point from which he could see around the curve. After a glance about, he returned to the others still crouched behind cover.
“They’re gone, just about out of sight moving north. Come on, let’s get the hell out of here.”
Without pausing for talk, he led them south on the east road for a quarter mile before they stopped for a breather and to let their legs stop shaking.
“Well, I can’t say I’m sorry to say Olen is no longer our problem.”
“But, Charlie,” Emmie said, “what if they come to the village? We have to do something about them.”
“And if there’s a whole platoon waitin’ for them to return with their prisoner?”
; Woody said, “But what if they came for more than one? I can’t see ‘em coming all this way for just Olen.”
“Yeah,” Billy Ray chimed in. “He’d not be much of a catch.”
“It’s all right, they’re not going to come after us or hit the village.” Raven’s voice was calm compared to the tension in everyone else’s. “They’re leaving. Olen is the last one.”
Charlie turned to her with a face full of questions. “You mean they’ve already got others? What, from Cazadero? Olen’s friend?”
“Probably.”
“But how do you know? What’d you see?” Charlie wasn’t doubting her, just trying to understand.
“The gllurik told me.”
“What? You mean they know we’re here?” Billy Ray gasped.
“Why didn’t they —?”
“How long do you think —?”
“What if —?”
Raven smiled and held up her hands to fend off the storm of questions suddenly pelting her. “No, they’re not coming back for us, and no, they don’t know we’re here…not the kryls, anyway. You saw the gllurik turn around? Well, it was because it sensed us in the area, probably Woody, Emmie and me. Then, when it turned this way, it knew we were in the bushes. It didn’t inform the kryl because…well, I suppose even those forced to work with the kryls don’t really support them. I guess they are more like Raymond is and Ronald was than the ones here on Earth are aware. Or maybe it’s just some of them, in which case we got lucky. Anyway, it said for us to not come out or make our presence known to the kryl, that their mission is now complete, and that they are going to leave.”
“You’re right handy to have around, Raven,” Billy Ray said as a big grin spread across his face.
Emmie said, “So, Olen is going to be taken to another world where they’re going to hunt him down to kill for sport?”
When Raven’s answer was just a nod, Emmie winced at her own words and reached out her hand to her friend.
“Oh, Raven! I’m so sorry. I didn’t even think about Adam.”
Raven took her extended hand and squeezed it before releasing it. “That’s okay, hon. I imagine they found him a bit more of a challenge than they wanted. I wouldn’t be surprised if he was still making them regret that particular choice.”
“I’m afraid they’re going to be disappointed in the challenge Olen’s gonna be good for.” Charlie said.
“I can’t think of a better sentence for his crimes,” Woody said. “Too bad we can’t arrange for something like that for the next Morgan that comes along.”
Charlie turned serious again for a bit. “You mean you got all that in just the few seconds that thing looked this way?”
“Well, we didn’t really have to be facing each other to communicate. Beside, that form of communication tends to be bit quicker than all this old-fashioned speaking with actual words.”
“Okay, hon. I’ll just let you handle that part. I’ll be just as happy to talk by talking and keeping my thoughts to myself.”
Billy Ray chimed in with, “Yeah, me too. Is it even possible to cuss the way you do that? I’d hate to have to give up cussin’.”
Raven laughed, something she hadn’t done for what seemed like ages. “Oh, Billy Ray, I can cuss like you can’t even imagine. I can think things so fast, and so intense, and so down right gut-churnin’ and eyeball searin’ that plain old cussin’ is just laughable to me.”
“Well, damn, Sugar, you’re gonna have to teach me to do it, then. If they’s a better way to cuss, I sure want to learn it.”
Grinning, Charlie led them across the sandy creek bed toward the house on the other side where three potential, new citizens for Wolfehaven waited to join the community.
The End
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Books by Foy W. Minson
SCI-FI
Refuge Earth(Book 1 in the Refuge Omnibus series, previously published as Refuge)
Widower Jason Wolfe, a small-town cop in the coastal hills north of San Francisco, is considering giving up his badge for the sake of his young daughter. But his dilemma vanishes when an armada of huge star ships arrive at Earth in a blitzkrieg invasion of fire and death. Deadly conflict arises among survivors as one among them is progressively devoured by his own inner demons. Besides destroying most of humanity, did the invaders come for colonization – or something else? And what is with the strange, new abilities beginning to emerge among the survivors, abilities that once resulted in burning witches? If magic is real, is it still magic?
Raven (book 2 of Refuge Omnibus)
Matti Raven is a pretty and popular, sixteen-year-old, talented, suburban high-school athlete. She survives the fiery destruction of Earth’s civilizations by creatures from the stars. Her family does not, and she is alone until she discovers her boyfriend, Woody, alive and well among the ashes.
Matti and Woody both discover they have inexplicable, new powers. She survives the initial holocaust only by her telepathy leading her to shelter. Woody’s power of levitation saves her more than once, but when he lures an invader away from their hiding place and fails to return, she is alone again.
Matti witnesses a lay-preacher command the invaders to be gone, and, in seeming compliance, they leave Earth. The preacher, spewing his professed mandate from God to rid Earth of evil—as he defines it—accuses Matti of being an evil minion of Satan and in collusion with the demon invaders. Forced to flee the group she had joined in her struggle for survival, she is, again, alone.
Amid ruin, a gang of cutthroats gives Matti the option of joining them, mainly as their sex toy, or to be skinned alive just to see if she is black all the way through. When she opts to fight, she discovers she not only has formidable allies, but together, they can overcome much.
And Crawling Things Lurk
In a small, northern California town, an abomination that shouldn’t exist outside of nightmares has long flourished unnoticed by limiting its sustenance to what is provided from out of the area. But fate disrupts that provision, and it falls upon the local populace to sate horrific needs. The town drunk witnesses the beginning of these depredations. But how can he convince anyone that what he saw wasn’t just another phantom from a bottle? Could such evil come from so innocuous a figure as he describes? The only one to believe his story is a young girl who befriends him against warnings from her local cop and her parents. Ensuing events convince him that the thing will keep coming back for more. But can he overcome alcohol and war-wound-caused mental limitations to construct a weapon in time to kill the monster?
What If – Short stories
First, Space/Time as a Mobius Strip, is an essay, just a glance at some of the fun thinking a Mobius strip can inspire.
Then, in Greatest Impact, what essential, commonly accepted theorem does a time-traveler forget to account for (does not involve stepping on butterflies or otherwise killing one’s own grandfather)?
Next, Donor Cards explores how perilous traffic enforcement might be in a society that combines organ donations with three-strikes.
And, finally, Vivarium considers something that could be worse than being a resident of a zoo on an alien world.
THRILLER
Mama Bear
Not smart to take baby bear and leave mama bear alive to come after you.
Deep in a redwood forest in the Northern California, coastal mountains, would-be rescuers dig out Angela’s fourteen-year-old daughter but leave Angela still buried in the wreckage of her uncle’s earthquake-collapsed house with her husband and uncle, both badly injured. As the abductors depart, their allusions to the hellish life they plan for the girl as their new baby-maker galvanize Angela to free herself and go after them. But, she has always been adamantly opposed to violence. So, what, now, will she do — what won’t she do — to rescue her daughter?
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