by Wearmouth
“Did you hear that?” Ethan said.
“Hear what?” Ben said.
“Shouting. Listen.”
The engines continued to strain and lull below. Ben heard a voice drifting up on the breeze between the mechanical screams.
“I’m going to check it out. Give me a minute,” he said.
“Stay here. We’ll be safer,” Maria said.
“It might be the people that saved our ass. I’ll crawl to the edge and have a look.”
“They might not be people. How are you going to communicate?” Ethan said.
“He’s right, Ben. You’ve seen the trench behind the ship. Doesn’t take a genius to work out we’ve crashed.”
Ben peered back at the fresh brown trail chewed out of the ground. “We need to do something. I’m not waiting here for another psycho to show up.”
He slid onto his stomach. Maria grasped his ankle. “Don’t do anything stupid. We need you.”
Ben held up his thumb. He leopard-crawled across the platform, shooting glances at the body by the bike. A star shone brightly in the sky directly above him, warming his neck. The small dimples in the metal gave him a decent grip, and he quickly progressed.
He reached the edge, took a deep breath, and looked over.
A single figure stood below, looking directly at him, the bearded face of a man. Ben thrust himself back with his elbows.
“Hello. Hello,” a male voice called out. “Do you understand me?”
He spoke in English. Another member of the crew? It made sense. That’s why they shot the attacker on the platform.
Ben leaned over the edge. “What the hell’s happening? Where are we?”
“I’ll explain when you come down. You’ve only got a few minutes.”
“What happened to the ship? Did we detach?”
The man appeared to start laughing. His shoulders rocked as he looked down, shaking his head.
“I’m glad you find this funny,” Ben said.
He gazed back up with a stern expression. “Far from it. If you and your buddies want to live, you’ll do as I say.”
“What do you mean?”
“I’m not going to stand here debating. You’ll get us all killed. Come down in the next minute or I’ll leave you to join your friend,” the man said, pointing toward Jimmy.
“We can’t get off this platform, can’t see a way down,” Ben said.
“Look around the edge. There’s a ladder that runs up the side.”
Ben edged around the corner and looked along the side of the ship. It was a few feet away, rigid, and running from top to bottom. Easy enough to navigate. The view enabled him to get a handle on the size of their craft. Roughly two hundred feet long and seventy high. Colored a dull black but with something painted on the side he couldn’t quite see because of the angle.
“Get moving, boy,” the man shouted, all humor gone from his voice.
Ben weighed his options. They couldn’t get back into the ship and needed some form of protection. This man and whoever he was with provided it. They could have shot him, Maria, or Ethan on the platform. It seemed like the Ops team only had one choice.
He ran back to the internal space. “Did you hear all of that?”
“Not quite, but we did hear some English,” Maria said. “What did he say?”
“We need to leave, now.”
“Where are we going?” Maria said.
“Who is it?” Ethan said.
“Possibly a member of the crew. He says we need to leave or we’ll die. Do you want to try and prove him wrong?”
“No. Where are we?” Ethan said.
“He’s going to explain when we get down. We’ve got a minute. There’s a ladder on the side. Ready?”
“Okay, let’s do it,” Maria said. “I don’t like it but …”
Ethan returned a vacant look. Ben shook his shoulder. “Are you ready?”
“Yeah … Yes. I’m with you.”
Ben jogged back to the edge of the platform. “We’re coming down. There’s three of us.”
The man nodded and took a couple of steps back. He crouched on the dirt, surveying the area through the sights of his rifle.
“It’s just around this edge. I’ll go first,” Ben said.
He reached out and gripped the cold, square ladder rail. Composing himself, he took a deep breath and swung his left leg around onto a rung, grabbing the opposite rail with his left hand.
The sixty-foot drop had a dizzying effect. He hugged against the ladder, squeezing the rails hard.
“Don’t look down,” Ben said.
He descended the ladder, concentrating on his deliberate movements while glancing up at the other two. After Ben climbed down twenty feet, Ethan swayed out onto the ladder with a youthful fearlessness. Maria followed shortly after, and all three clanked toward the ground.
Ben flinched after the man shouted, “Denver, deal with that driver!”
He felt the man’s presence as he neared the dirt. With only four feet to go, Ben jumped off the ladder, twisting as he landed.
The man stood only four feet away. He wore a camouflage jacket and trousers with pieces of greenery attached, giving his clothing a strange organic appearance. The jacket hood had three ferns attached. They twitched as the breeze caught the edges.
A pink scar running down the center of his forehead wrinkled as he smiled through a thick, dark blond beard. His striking blue eyes were rimmed with weather-beaten wrinkles, giving him a hard look. He looked at least ten years older than Ben.
He held out his hand and with a low, rough voice, said, “Charlie Jackson. Your only hope for survival.”
Chapter Nine
Charlie waited for the uniformed man to take his hand, but he stood there, staring at Charlie with wide-eyed confusion. There was a degree of terror in there too. Charlie had seen that expression hundreds of times before. Usually when people realized their planet was no longer theirs, or in the final moments of their life.
“What’s your name?” Charlie asked as the other eventually took his hand. The man’s grip was weak, the shake clumsy. He’d obviously never shaken someone’s hand before. Wasn’t surprising.
The croatoans wouldn’t have bothered to go to that level of education for their ruse. They only needed people within the harvesters to believe they were on a generational ship and give them some bullshit procedures to follow in order to keep the harvesters on track for their yield of root.
“I’m Ben,” he said, releasing his grip. Two others joined him. Ben pointed to the younger male. “He’s Ethan,” and to the woman, “that’s Maria. What the fuck’s going on? Who are you? Where are we?”
“We crashed, didn’t we?” Ethan said.
The three of them turned to look at their ‘ship.’ Charlie noticed Ben angling his head to take in the giant tracks—the same tracks that were now jammed and splintered apart by Charlie’s land mines.
Ben looked back at Charlie, a sudden realization making his face muscles tighten and his eyes narrow with fear. “It was all a lie,” he said to the others. “None of it was real.”
“Damn right it wasn’t,” Charlie said, pointing to the two bodies of their former colleagues and brainwashed lab rats. “The croatoans use you as tools, nothing more. Well, that’s not strictly true. They use you … us … for lots of things.”
Maria shook her head. “I don’t get it, what’s a croatoan? Where are we?”
“Let me spell it out real quick. We’ve got about five minutes before these bastards return. We need to get you lot into cover ASAP. That,” he pointed to the great harvester, “is no goddamned ship. You’re not engineers or pilots or any other bullshit role they’ve brainwashed you into believing. That’s an alien harvester. You’re on Ear
th, your home. You’ve never left the planet.”
“So we’re not going to Kepler B?” Ethan said. “Is it still 2451?”
“No,” Charlie said. “2044. The shit hit the fan in 2014.”
Ben stepped down the gouge in the earth and knelt. He pulled up a bright orange root, its tip sheared off from the harvester. All down the gouge, more roots with the same sheared tips lined the dirt like a carpet, and in amongst them were the bodies of his two colleagues.
Ben placed his hands on the dead male’s back and bowed his head for a moment. After a few quiet seconds, he stood up and returned to the others, his eyes glossy with tears. “What do we do?”
“I don’t believe this,” Ethan said.
“Me neither,” Maria added, both of them on the verge of hysteria, the cold truth making it hard for them to comprehend.
Denver’s dog barked twice and ran up to Charlie, licking at his hand. The grey-haired gun dog was excited about its find. Denver followed close behind, dragging a small croatoan by the alien’s scrawny, leathery neck. Denver’s wiry, strong frame loped forward and deposited the four-foot-tall alien between Charlie and Ben’s group.
It collapsed into a huddle. Its weak, spindly arms, sufficient only to press buttons and type commands, huddled around its naked body. It shivered, and its widely spaced eyes narrowed. At one time, Charlie had pity for them. They were at the bottom of the croatoan hierarchy, but the slit for its mouth sneered, betraying its feelings for humans.
“Good job, Den,” Charlie said, patting his son on the shoulder. Denver stood nearly a foot taller than Charlie and bowed to the others. “Meet your captor,” he said.
Ben and the others leaned in but remained cautious.
“Holy fuck,” Ethan said as the croatoan let out a gurgled hissing noise and spat at the ground, choking up phlegm and blood, the earth’s oxygen already at work poisoning its lungs without the breathing apparatus needed to enrich the oxygen with root compound.
Denver kicked it forward into the dirt. “Shut up, scum.”
“Easy, son,” Charlie said. Denver nodded and stepped back, running a nervous hand through his red beard. He looked up into the sky, anticipating a croatoan scout group to arrive any second. Charlie had to fight the urge to dive into the forest this very second, but this group needed to see for themselves before they’d go willingly.
The last thing he needed was for a reluctant group of lambs to slow him down.
Ben looked from the alien to Charlie. “Where did you get him … it, that, whatever it is.”
“It’s your ship’s driver. Younger version of that fucker up there that killed your friends. It’s what’s taken over this planet. Well, I say take over; they were here long before we were, waiting deep inside the earth for when conditions were right.”
“My God,” Maria said, “It’s all true.”
“Evidence enough for you, Ethan?” Charlie said.
The younger man said nothing, his face pale.
“This is crazy,” Ben said. “I can’t get my head around it.”
“No,” Charlie added. “I suppose you won’t. But we really have no more time. They’ll know their harvester is damaged and send out a patrol. The one on the platform is one such member. The next patrol won’t be long. They have quotas and some such shit when it comes to harvesting the root. That orange stuff you see there. Here’s the thing, kids; that there is your enemy. Everything you knew was a lie. You’re nothing but meat and resources to them. You can stay and deal with them yourself, or you come right this second and earn a chance at living a true life.”
Charlie turned to his son. “Den, want the honors?”
Denver looked at Charlie with a grim expression before pulling his machete from the leather scabbard around his waist. He approached the mewling alien and cut him once across the throat, letting the creature bleed out into the dirt.
Its tan-colored leather skin hardened and crinkled to a grey, paper-like texture.
“Christ,” Ben said as the others gasped.
Turning his back to them and lifting his rifle to his chest, Charlie headed to the forest. Denver and his dog followed. “We’re leaving,” Charlie shouted over his shoulder. “Your decision on whether you follow or stay.”
***
Denver scouted twenty feet ahead of the group, hacking through the dense forest with the machete. His ever-faithful dog scurried along by his side, forever within a few feet of him. They were like siblings attached at the hip.
When Denver was just fifteen years old, he’d found the pup along with a dying mother in an old, crumbled apartment building. They couldn’t save the bitch, but the pup had survived after close attention by Denver.
Charlie thought it was a dangerous waste of time and energy. They needed to be able to move quickly from one safe shelter to another if they were to remain alive, and looking after a yapping dog didn’t aid general survivability.
But with Denver losing both of his parents when he was still a toddler back in the mini ice age times, Charlie saw a parallel there. He had taken Denver in, looked after him, made sure the croatoans didn’t find him.
Denver did the same thing for the dog.
“What’s he called?” Ben said, joining Charlie, helping to make their way through the thick foliage. Ethan and Maria had taken the flanks.
“Pip,” Charlie said. “The dog’s a she.”
“Nice name.”
“It has … sentimental value.” Charlie thought back to his Pip. Pippa. Even after all that time, it still hurt as fresh as the day she passed. He unconsciously reached up and fondled the blue bead wrapped in croatoan graphene thread that hung from a leather thong around his neck.
The day in the bar still shone in his memory. The look of Pippa’s beautiful face as she held up the bead in wonder and awe. How excited they both were at the discovery; how they didn’t realize it was an omen.
Charlie continued to trek in silence for the next fifteen minutes, occasionally stopping to check through a break in the tree cover, expecting to see those hover-bikes flying above, searching for them. With the GPS chips buried within Ben, Ethan, and Maria, every minute out in the open was another minute the scouts had to zero in on their location.
If they were found, he’d make their deaths quick to spare them the scouts’ torture. They seemed like good people.
Clueless and frightened, but good people.
Ben had adapted the quickest, focusing on tasks rather than worrying too much about the situation. Charlie recognized some of himself within Ben. Whether that was a good sign or not, he couldn’t say, but at least it’d keep the kid alive for a while.
As for Maria and Ethan—he gave them a couple of days, tops.
Denver took a knee and held his hand up. Pip sat by his side, her tail still.
“Wait,” Charlie said, pulling Ben to the ground. He looked to his side and indicated for Ethan and Maria to hit the deck. He pressed his finger against his lips to gesture to be quiet. He hoped they understood. It was difficult to tell what they had picked up or didn’t within the harvester.
They at least managed to read his body language and sat still. Charlie crawled forward to Denver, whispered, “What is it, Den?”
“Two surveyors, thirty feet up ahead.”
“Shit, that’s near the shelter’s entrance. Any others around?”
“None that I can see.”
Charlie crawled a further few feet and pressed himself against the trunk of a giant redwood that wasn’t there a decade ago. Since the mini ice age burned off, the growth of trees and plants had increased at an explosive rate, fuelled by the croatoans’ introduced farming, which seemed to cultivate the atmosphere.
Looking through a thick bush, parting the leaves a few inches, Charlie saw them. Den was right; there were j
ust two of them. They were small like the harvester’s pilots, but these wore the helmets and backpacks that recycled oxygen, enriching it with their chemicals. He heard their clicking, percussive language as they took a series of soil samples. They were identifying new routes for harvesting.
The only problem was that they were right above one of Charlie and Den’s shelters.
Within the trees and bushes, the remnants of a town showed through in places: old apartment buildings that had collapsed, sending concrete and steel to the ground, now reclaimed by nature.
His shelter was actually the basement of what used to be a three-story commercial building. From his position, he could just make out the southern wall. It collapsed years ago, leaving only a crumbled reminder of its previous use.
If one of the surveyors found his shelter, that traitor bastard Gregor would have the place carpet-bombed, especially now that Charlie had taken out another of his harvesters. His quotas would be way down, and he’d face increasing pressure from the administrators.
Charlie heard movement from behind. He spun round to find Ben crouching beside him. “What’s happening?” Ben said.
“Get down, you fool,” Charlie whispered between gritted teeth. He grabbed the idiot and pulled him away from the bush. Leaning close to his ear, Charlie added, “Give me the pistol you took. Do it quietly.”
Ben handed Charlie the croatoan pistol with a shaking hand. Charlie handed it to Denver, who took it with saying a word. “Now be quiet and don’t move,” Charlie said.
To Denver: “Take the one on the right after three. Headshot preferable.”
“Okay, Dad.” Denver buried his foot into the dirt, pressed his shoulder against a tree for support, and aimed the pistol through a gap in the bush.
The surveyor on the left hand side used a small control panel that resembled a TV remote made from glass to raise a five-foot-tall metal tube used to analyze the soil. The tube extended out of the ground, held up by a tripod of thin croatoan metal.