Planet Urth: The Savage Lands (Book 2)

by Martucci, Jennifer

  My pulse darts against my throat as I wait, anticipation goading it along.

  “That’s right,” he says and tears a stick from the folder. “Here goes nothing.” He flips the book and slides the bulbous tip of the stick along the grainy strip on back.

  To my delight and his, a spark flashes before the entire head is aglow.

  “Wow!” Riley exclaims.

  “Cool!” Oliver agrees.

  “Amazing,” June adds.

  “I know, right.” Will agrees, his eyes riveted to the flame.

  “I can’t believe it,” is all I can say.

  I watch as Will brings the flame to the wick of the candle and a soft glow haloes it, bathing the room in warm light.

  “Oh my gosh,” I can’t help but gasp once I am able to see the space around me more clearly.

  All around me I see items I believed were fabled, the stuff of legends and bedtime stories parents told their children. In the room to my left, a couch, similar to the one we had in our hut at the compound when I was a little girl, faces a cushioned chair between which a table sits. The floor is covered in what I assume is carpeting. I would like nothing more than to remove my boots and socks and walk atop it barefoot, but I do not know what chemicals remain embedded in the fibers. Everything seems to be covered in a chalky, white film. I do not know what the film is composed of and do not intend to find out.

  “This is crazy,” Will says as he looks around the room with the couch and chair, all the while holding tight to the candle. “Can you believe this? It’s real. The stories our parents told us are real.” I hear hope in his voice. His hope makes me smile and feel my own surge of optimism. “And it’s not even that dirty,” he adds and points to the fine coating covering everything we see.

  “I know,” I reply, smiling.

  “People, human beings, used to actually live here, maybe even kids our age,” he says and sounds as if he is struggling to contain his enthusiasm.

  To my right is another room.

  “Will, come this way,” I wave him toward me. “Come on. Let’s look in here.”

  He obliges and lights the way inside. Cabinets that appear to be made of wood hang from the walls, and another table and chair are set up close to the exterior wall. A window is in front of it. I imagine a family sitting there, eating their fresh food and talking while enjoying the outside through the comfort and protection of a pane of glass. I stare at the dark world beyond the glass.

  My eyes continue to scan the room. Oddly, I see a bowl with fruit sitting atop the counter just below the cabinets. Fruit does not last long in the forest after it is picked. It certainly wouldn’t endure centuries of chemical fallout and war. They would have rotted, turned to dust and blown away long ago. My eyes follow the line of the countertop and freeze on a bowl with a mushed substance inside. I move toward it and reach out a hand. I touch the bowl. It is warm. Seeing the fruit then touching the bowl and finding it warm sends a trill of awareness down my spine that raises the fine hairs on my body. The situation narrows into razor-sharp focus.

  “Someone is here,” I say as chills speed over my skin in waves. “We need to go, now!” I whisper urgently to June, Will, Oliver and Riley.

  We turn and begin scrambling toward the door. But immediately the sound of footsteps echoes and freezes the blood in my veins.

  “Oh my gosh,” June says in a hushed, frantic tone.

  “Go! Go! Go!” I urge everyone. But before we make it to the hallway at the end of which the only known exit lies, we hear a voice.

  “Wow! Humans are in my house!” the voice says and then makes a soft chuffing sound through the two asymmetrical holes below his eyes.

  A miniature creature with a misshapen head, disproportionately larger than his stubby body, ambles toward us. His lidless, black eyes are wider and clearer than I have ever seen on any other Urthmen, and his nearly transparent skin seems thinner. It displays the vivid entanglement of veins spanning his entire head like a web more readily. Perhaps it is because he looks to be a very young one.

  “Shh!” I shush him.

  “I can’t believe it!” he says and claps his stumpy hands together excitedly. As he does so, the black line of his mouth contorts into an expression that displays small, pointed teeth, making him appear even more monstrous.

  I make a mad dash to him, figuring that where there is one there is more. I clamp one hand over his mouth and hold the other against the back of his head. He tries to scream.

  “Be quiet!” I tell him, but the clatter of footsteps racing down the hall means it is too late.

  I let go of him and draw my sword. Will grips his club. The children scurry behind us as we prepare to fight.

  “Mom! Dad!” The young Urthman shouts.

  Two Urthmen storm into the room, one is male and the other is female. In the instant I glimpse them, an idea flashes through my mind, streaking like lightning in the sky. I collar the young one, bring him within arm’s reach of me again and place my blade against his throat.

  “Stop where you are,” I order the pair.

  Both stop instantly. Their cloudy eyes dart from him to my blade then to me. They widen considerably, a feat I have never witnessed an Urthman perform.

  “Please, don’t hurt him, human. He’s just a child,” the male says.

  A child implies human origins. The thing my blade is pressed against is nothing more than a young slaughterer of my species.

  “I have seen plenty of children slaughtered by your kind,” I say in a low voice that sounds foreign to my ears. “It never seemed to bother you, taking their lives,”

  “We didn’t do anything to you,” the female cries out, her voice shrill and pitched high, similar to a distressed woman’s voice. “Please just let our son go,” she begs.

  “Son,” I mumble the word with disgust. My mother may have had a son growing inside her womb when she begged and pleaded for her life and the life of her unborn baby. But mercy was not shown to her. It is a word that is absent from their vocabulary. I have seen many sons struck down in my lifetime. The creature before me is not a son; he is not a human being. He does not deserve such a title. He is nothing more than the offspring of a murderous pairing in a murderous species.

  Sweat collects between my shoulder blades and trickles down to the small of my back. My forehead is slick and so are my palms. My pulse is thundering in my ears. I lick my lips and look at Will. The children are out of harm’s way, close to the front door. His eyes lock on mine, but his expression is indecipherable.

  “Both of you come over here slowly,” I order them. I watch them closely as they cautiously slide their feet forward until they stand by their offspring.

  “Please,” the male begs. “Just leave. We won’t tell anyone you were ever here.”

  He is trying to convince me he is civil. What a joke. I know better than to believe such nonsense.

  “You expect us to trust you?” I ask him in amazement. “You would bludgeon us to death the second we look away,” I say and a crazed laugh passes between my lips.

  “No, we would never do such a thing!” the male pretends to be indignant about what I have said. “We are not soldiers. We are not like the others who overtake villages. We’re ordinary beings, parents.”

  “We live here in peace,” the female adds and attempts to augment her cadence with a soothing lilt.

  “You’re lying,” I shake my head and say. They are trying to mess with my mind, trying to sway me to believe they are tame, obliging citizens, that I misunderstand their role. Well they are not fooling me. I know better. “You are murdering liars, all of you!”

  “Avery, let’s just go,” Will’s voice floats through the ether and wraps itself around my heart.

  “What?” I ask him, dumbfounded.

  “Come on, these people aren’t looking for trouble. We can just leave.” A pained expression dominates his handsome face.

  “Are you crazy? You’re calling these creatures people?” I am beyond shocked
. They have managed to get to him, to penetrate his defenses, despite watching both his parents die at the hands of their kind just days ago. “You actually expect me to trust them after what you saw them do, after what you lived through?”

  Anguish gathers his features. His shoulders slump forward and his pain is evident. “These beings did not kill my parents,” he says in a trembling voice. “They didn’t do it,” he says and points to the three Urthmen. “I don’t want to be like the monsters that killed my mom and dad, and if we kill them, we are no better than they were.”

  I can’t believe what I am hearing. For the briefest of moments I am speechless. Bile burns up the back of my throat as his position gels in my mind. Will is not on my side. He does not see things as I see them. I swallow hard and speak with calm I do not feel. “Will, we have to kill them,” I tell him levelly. “You’re thinking of them like humans, like they are the same as we are, but they’re not.” Memories of my mother’s death, and the deaths of his parents, come flooding back in a cold rush. “Think about it. Remember what they are and think about Riley and Oliver. Think about June and I.”

  The female and the young one start to make a sound similar to crying. “Avery, I can’t. That’s not me. It’s not us,” Will says.

  The word ‘us’ succeeds at momentarily jumbling my thoughts. I begin to focus on what he meant by that. But my thinking rights itself quickly. What he meant by his choice of words is irrelevant. Our lives are at stake. We cannot let the Urthmen live.

  “If we don’t do it, they will get help and hunt us down,” I tell Will.

  “We won’t, I promise!” the male says, his voice bordering on whiny and pathetic.

  “Shut your mouth!” I warn him.

  “Avery, don’t do this,” Will continues to try to sway me away from what I know is the right thing to do. Something between regret and apology flashes in his eyes.

  I know they have to die. Just because they have behaved in a mildly human fashion does not make them human. They are hardwired, genetically altered and programmed, to hate and hunt humans. My sister’s life rests on me ending theirs. I clutch the handle of my sword in my hands and grip it tightly. I swing it in a wide arc and am about to slice it laterally and be done with it when Will’s club rattles to the floor with a bang. I halt my blade mid-swing and freeze. He steps in front of me and places his hands in front of his chest in surrender.

  “Avery, this is a family. They are not soldiers,” he says meekly, fixing a penetrating gaze on me. “Having compassion is what makes us human, it makes us better. You can’t do it. Remember what you are.”

  I gaze into the bottomless depths of his aquamarine eyes. I see innocence. I see warmth and empathy. But sadly, none of those qualities serve us now.

  “No,” I tell him. “If I draw upon compassion, as you’re telling me to, it does not show my humanity. It makes me a fool.”

  “Please,” he begs.

  “We won’t tell. You have our word. On our child’s life, we swear we will not tell the others that we saw you,” the female promises. My eyes linger on her, searching for a shred of truth to her words. I see nothing, just the face of a vicious predator.

  “Avery, look at me,” Will says and diverts my attention away from the female Urthman. “I’m begging you, don’t do this. If you do you are no better than they are, and I don’t want to be a part of it,”

  His last sentence lands like a slap across my face.

  “Of what? Of me?” I ask and narrow my eyes at him, stunned that he would even utter such a thing.

  “Of this, of what is going on right now,” he answers. “I can’t travel with an executioner,” he says finally.

  He is talking about me. He will see me as an executioner if I kill the Urthmen, our enemies for centuries. I feel as if I have been slapped and punched in the gut.

  With an unsteady hand, I lower my weapon. My mouth is dry, my temples pound. Will issued an ultimatum and I caved. I compromised principals that have kept me and my sister alive since we were born. Kill or be killed was my father’s motto where Urthmen were concerned. There was no maybe. Every cell in my body shrieks at once that what I am doing is wrong. I feel it in my bones, in the lifeblood that pumps through me.

  Reluctantly, I back away from the three and out the front door. “You better make good on your promise and keep your mouths shut,” I mutter as I leave.

  “We will,” the male Urthman says.

  “Thank you so much,” the female says.

  I sheathe my sword and all of us run out into the street. As soon as our feet touch pavement, I hear the piercing peal of bells echoing though the silence. The high-pitched sound persists. I twist and look over my shoulder at the front of the house. I see the male’s form filling the doorway. In his hand he grips a club. The female squeezes beside him. She, too, is brandishing her weapon.

  “Humans!” the male screams louder than I ever imagined a creature could call. His voice rips through the night. “Humans are here!” he persists.

  Doors of neighboring houses begin to open and torch wielding Urthmen spill from them. Shock registers on Will’s face, shock and understanding. He knows as well as I do that letting the three Urthmen, the male and female and their offspring, live was a mistake that could prove fatal. But time does not exist to assign blame. We take off running. We are being pursued in the open by dozens of Urthmen who will kill us if we are caught.

  I realize in that instant that my life, as well as the lives of those I love, will likely end tonight.

  Chapter 8

  “Run faster!” I scream to Will, Riley, Oliver and June. I grab June’s hand and jerk her forward, in front of me. “Come on, come on!” I urge Riley and Oliver too. They must remain where I can see them, and we all need to get as far away as fast as possible. We flee from where Urthmen are approaching.

  “You think we’re stupid, don’t you, humans?” I hear the male Urthman whose home we were just in call out after us.

  His inhuman voice no longer sounds civil, and it certainly does not sound pleading. It has returned to what Urthmen always sound like, a voice that is tinny and grating and slices at my eardrums like innumerable blades. And it taunts us.

  “Don’t look back!” I tell the children when I see Oliver screw up his features and glance over his shoulder. “Just keep running!”

  Cruel laughter erupts between the male and female. “You thought we would just let filthy humans run free in our town! Ha! You will be dead long before the sun rises!” the female cries.

  Rage wells from a cavernous reserve, inundating every cell in my body as it overflows.

  A dark recess deep within me, hidden and coiled tightly like a venomous snake, beckons me to run back and do what should have been done in the first place. But I must deny it. I must deny an inherent part of me that demands their blood be spilled. Instead, I press on. I sprint away from the male and female.

  We run along the blackened street. The glow of the moon has faded, its light hidden behind a bank of clouds. We cover a lot of ground and pass numerous cross streets. I feel my blood throbbing against my skin in time with my speeding heartbeat. My flesh struggles to contain it. I pump my arms and pant as I race. But before long, I notice the children slowing.

  “I can’t,” I hear June gasp as her grip on my hand goes slack. “It hurts too much.”

  One hand flies to her side and clutches what is undoubtedly an aching stitch that has developed. Even in the thick, sinister darkness, I can see that she grimaces. I hate that this is her reality now, running, always running for her life.

  “No, June. Keep going,” I encourage her despite the fact that my entire body is hurting and trembling also.

  My breathing is labored. My arms and legs sting unbearably. Each sears with fatigue.

  I peek over my shoulder, slowing only slightly as I do, and see torches are still advancing. Anger crops up inside of me, and it is not earmarked for the male and female Urthmen exclusively. I am angry with Will as well. I liste
ned to him, even though I should not have. I allowed my feelings for him, as confusing as they are, to cloud my judgment; to cause me to deviate from what I know is right. And now we are paying the price for my clouded judgment. As I run, I vow to never let it happen again. My feelings must never interfere with the safety of my sister and I.

  “Turn here,” I tell our group between choppy breaths as we come upon a turnoff street. Everyone does as I have told them to, including Will.

  When I round the corner and make my way down the side street, I steal a look over my shoulder and see that some of the torches that glow eerily in the void have stopped moving. Only a few are following us as far as I can tell. I am tempted to breathe a sigh of relief. But a sinking feeling in my gut prevents me from doing so. I know that Urthmen do not easily give up. They do not retreat. They kill.

  I try to force their deadly nature to the back of my mind when the pitch-back darkness becomes disorienting.

  “Will, I can’t keep going,” Riley says. Her voice is thin as she barely manages to speak between breaths. She has slowed considerably and is jogging now.

  Will rushes to her side and places an arm around her waist for support. “I gotcha,” he says. “I’ll help.”

  “No, I’ll slow you down,” Riley pants dejectedly.

  “No you won’t. I’ll carry you if I have to,” Will tells his sister.

  As mad as I am at him, I admire his dedication to his sister. Unfortunately, carrying Riley would slow Will almost as much as her lethargic trot is slowing him now. I need to come up with something else, something that will buy the children time to catch their breath.

  Another cross-street catches my attention. I almost missed it smothered in the oily shadows that coat the area. An idea forms in my mind.

  I do not have time to think it through and time is running out. I do not know how much longer the children have before complete exhaustion claims them and they collapse. I must act now. I must go off on my own.

  “Take the kids and keep going straight,” I tell Will. “I’m going this way,” I say and point back in the direction we came from.