Alien Terrain

by Iris Astres

  Jane blinked. She made her jaw go slack, her posture slump. No brains. No threat. “It’s in the bank,” she said.

  “No, it ain’t,” Dancer said. He was doing eighty on the bumpy road, looking at her in the mirror for what felt like minutes at a time.

  “I switched accounts.” She looked at Rick. “But it’s still there.”

  “What do you mean you switched accounts? How the hell they let you switch accounts without your husband’s say-so?” Bill kept barking at her like Rick wasn’t even there.

  “I signed his name.” She used her smallest voice for what was actually a false confession. The people at the bank all liked her. When she’d asked to open a new savings account, they’d all been pleased as hell, and no one had asked a thing about it when Rick’s name had been left off the new account. Was that discretion? Help? Incompetence? She didn’t really know, but there was no point setting Dancer off against them if she didn’t have to.

  “Forgery’s against the law,” he said.

  “Is it?” She shot a frightened look at Rick, then peered down at her knees in the dark car. What was and wasn’t law was up for grabs these days. The southwest had opted out of central government in favor of local control. Local control was supposed to be community. Consensus. People helping people. All of that. What it had ended up being was bullies and survivors pissing on whatever didn’t suit them. Now that Jane had woken from her five-year nap, she was starting to get a little annoyed at the state of the world these days.

  Thanks to Dancer driving like the psychopath he was, they were at the garage in less than fifteen minutes. The car kept speeding forward, and Jane felt real nerves for the first time since she’d seen the car. If they were going to Saint Mary’s, it was over. Father Steven wouldn’t know enough to play along. She cast her mind around for some secondary lie and couldn’t find one.

  “Where the fuck are we going?” said Rick.

  “The bank.”

  Jane concentrated on the slump. The blankness. Then she had a thought.

  “You need the money right away? Did you guys find some nice old cars to buy or something?”

  Silence. So the money wasn’t for the business. This was all about what Dancer wanted, which meant it wasn’t good. He took a hard right into the empty lot outside the bank.

  “It’s closed,” Rick said.

  “What the hell?” Dancer turned to Jane.

  “Is it after one?” she asked. In truth she had no idea what time or day it was.

  Dancer was already stepping down from the cab of the truck. Jane hoped to God the tellers had all gone. No one needed to meet Dancer in this mood. As to whether or not the so-called authorities would stand up to him, she’d rather not have to guess. She closed her eyes and waited until the door opened again.

  “We’ll get it tomorrow,” Rick said, sounding reasonable.

  Again Dancer glared at Jane in the mirror. Suddenly she understood why he’d been in a hurry. Once he had the money, he could deal with her. Until then, he would have to wait. Patience wasn’t Dancer’s strong suit. The car skidded back onto the road, and Jane knew she had one day to get out of there.

  At the sound of tires spitting gravel, all the boys at Rick’s Body Shop came strolling out. Jane dared a look into their faces and didn’t see much. No real hatred or relief. Just a vaguely pissed I told you so, like the parents of a known fuckup.

  She went straight to the kitchen. A good meal, a few beers, and it would all just be a story. Fucking Janey. Not bright enough to see the difference between an alien freak and an actual human being. All that fucking trouble ruined by some broad whose head was softer than her heart. Ha-ha.

  She set the bag of vegetables down on the counter. Then she swept them up again and put them in the pantry where she couldn’t see them. That way she wouldn’t have to think about Raj.

  He’d know by now that she was gone. And he’d be worried. She just prayed that he’d stay safe and not go looking for her. It was too damn dangerous for him to walk out on the streets. Anyone, including that kid who’d sold her the food, would know what he was in an instant. In polished company, he was impressive. Around these parts he really was a freak. A talking bear would cause less of a stir.

  Wonder. Worry. But be smart. Despite all his denials, she thought Raj could hear the things she thought. Never more than now had she wished it were true.

  Rick was still outside with Dancer. She could never hear what people said outside. Something about the open space, the wind. Voices didn’t carry to her window. Usually that was a blessing, but today she’d have loved to have known what they were hashing out. Dancer spit again. She wondered at his phlegm production. He left Rick standing there and walked to the garage.

  More hangdog than usual, Rick came back into the house.

  “Should I start cooking dinner?” She washed her hands in the sink, wiped them on a dish towel. Rick came up close behind her. At first she pulled her arms in, thinking she was in the way. His hand slid to her ass. He sighed into her neck. Jane understood.

  Chapter Thirteen

  The car was easier to manage than expected. Finding north on that thin stretch of highway, easier still. Raj let himself relax—as much as a man bent on murder could afford to—and scanned the road for Jane’s previous home. He was confident he’d recognize the place. A man like her ex-husband would make sure his customers could find him. Raj would find him too.

  As he drove he stared at the long stretch of black between the fields of dust on either side and let himself imagine all the ways that he might fail. Those men had weapons. He had none. Nor any true idea how many men there’d be. The first time he’d seen roughly half a dozen. Now, there might be more. He didn’t know.

  He didn’t care. He’d fight. He’d fight until he had her back. In this life or the next. He’d do whatever was required to be with his mate.

  His mate.

  Even now the word made Raj supremely happy. And surprised. He’d thought he knew exactly how and where he’d end his life, but fate had chosen to astonish him with love. He was grateful, and he was possessive of his prize.

  A spot on the horizon made him redirect his focus toward impending battle. Raj knew that clarity of purpose would be his greatest strength. It was a force not shared by his opponents. Earth men hesitated. All Backusians marveled at the fact. There was always the pause before the shot, that tiny hesitation between the closing of the fist and the delivery. What was that? Conscience? Fear? Whatever the source, it wasn’t part of his Backusian DNA. And Raj had no compunction about taking full advantage of the difference.

  He was drawing closer now. They’d recognize the car, of course. That was his biggest problem. For a moment, Raj considered stopping out of sight and coming in on foot. Attractive in some ways, except that it would take more time than he was willing to invest.

  And so he sped along the road and found that he’d been right about the sign. It was painted four feet high across the barn. He registered a house to the left before his focus narrowed on his target. Raj closed the distance and then gunned the engine, knocking down the split-rail fence and spewing gravel as he took on speed, the blue sedan now weaponized by his dark fury.

  He headed nose first through the wide door of the garage; then Raj slammed the brakes and fishtailed into a half-gutted car. The impact slid him over the bench seat into the passenger door. A workbench clattered to the floor. He thought he saw two men in dark blue overalls go down. Around them nothing moved but him. Raj opened the car door, then bent and grabbed the first thing that he saw—a heavy pair of pliers, as it happened. That would do.

  * * * *

  Jane lay beside Rick in their bed and tried to overcome a clamminess between her legs that seemed to seep into her soul. Why he’d wanted to have sex she didn’t know. A mix of ego spurred by a base itch or just the hurt of her abandonment. Whatever led to his advances, Jane knew that she’d accepted to survive.

  Could her husband stop Dancer from killing her?
Would he have the nerve to try? Maybe. Not a given. She wouldn’t leave it up to him.

  Now that Rick had satisfied himself, she wondered if he’d want to talk. Jane prepared herself to make another show of her repentance, but he just stretched and giggled, glancing at her, like he always did. And so she waited. When he got up, she’d get up too. She’d wash. She’d go downstairs and cook something with salt and spice to spur their taste for beer. Then after dark she’d find some keys and put on shoes and run.

  * * * *

  The men in overalls were dead but one. The lone survivor’s arm was held behind him in a grip designed to make each movement sing with pain. Raj marched him out into the gravel as an object he could trade for Jane. But now there was another man. A cooler man, holding a gun.

  “Where’s Jane?”

  The question caught the man off guard. The pistol lowered almost imperceptibly. “Christ,” he said. “It’s true you bastards all live for your dick, ain’t it? I thought that was just some hateful shit people said. But no, you really are pathetic gigolos, aren’t you. Lotharios who go to school to learn how to eat pussy. If that ain’t some shameful shit.”

  “Kill him, Bill.” The man in overalls rasped the words and spat. “Everyone inside the barn is dead. The bastard killed them all.” Raj pushed a little harder on his elbow until he gritted out a wailing curse and bent nearly in two.

  “Easy there,” said the man named Bill. “Jane’s upstairs with her husband working on their wedded bliss. The two of them were snug up in their bedroom with the door closed last time I checked.”

  Raj was surprised at how much information he’d been given. Far more than expected. Doubtless the man meant to aggravate him with the thought of Jane in bed. It didn’t aggravate him. It meant she was alive—that he would have her back again. The man let the gun waver for the sake of gesture, pointing toward a second-story window. He grinned and winked, enjoying his own show, the theater of being a real bastard.

  The last mechanic tried to free himself again. Raj snapped his arm. It splintered noisily at wrist and elbow. A shard of bone protruded from the flesh. That was impressive, but the howl of pain and spurt of blood was what gave Raj his opening. The man in front of him seemed to forget that he was armed. He stared in fascination at the savagery of what Raj had just done. That was enough time to exchange his grip on one man for another. He pushed his victim forward. The armed man stepped away like death was catching. And it was. Raj leaped on him and flattened him completely. He got both his hands to his throat and pushed his thumb through cartilage, through bone. The gun was inches from his victim’s fingertips and yet the shock of a crushed larynx prevented him from making any real attempt to get his hand around it.

  Surprise again. Surprise at savagery and ruthless speed. Earth men just didn’t see it coming. Clarity of purpose did a lot of damage in their world.

  Raj took the gun and shot the whimpering mechanic, then the leader who was not a leader anymore.

  He looked up at the house. Would anyone have heard the shots? Four windows. All of them ideal for firing at him several times. But he saw nothing. No movement. Not a shadow.

  He started for the door with all his consciousness focused on Jane. His warrior. His lioness. His love.

  Inside, he had his pistol ready, body ready for attack. But there was nothing. An empty kitchen filled with something of Jane’s spirit. He paused to take it in and heard the creaking of floorboards on the second story. A man was coming down the stairs, pulling a T-shirt over his head.

  “Stop,” Raj said. The man stumbled on the last step, taken by surprise. Both hands pulled in to his body as he recoiled from the stranger in his kitchen.

  “Where’s Jane?”

  “Who the hell are you?” The man was thin, boyishly attempting to mask fear with looks of irritation and confusion.

  “Where’s Jane?”

  The man brought his hands to his hips, then folded them over his chest. “Is that your business? What happened out there? Did I just hear a shot?”

  “Two shots,” Raj said. “The others are all dead. I’ll kill you too, unless you give me Jane.”

  The man went very still. His attention shifted toward the door, then down the hall behind the staircase where Raj had to presume he kept his guns. “She’s upstairs.” He seemed to think he’d have a chance to reach those guns of his. But he was wrong.

  “Turn around and show me where.” Raj raised the pistol.

  The man grew paler. Blotches stood out on his face and neck. The floorboards creaked again. He turned his head toward the staircase and Raj saw bare feet. A faded pair of jeans and Jane appeared, misbuttoning a shirt over her bare breasts.

  She was silent. Hollow. Absent. In her eyes he thought he saw remorse, defeat. That made him angrier than he’d yet been that day. There was much that he needed to tell her, that he should have said before. He should have promised his allegiance above anyone and anything. Soon. Alone together he would listen, he would heal her. They would slip back into timelessness together.

  With his expression, with his tone, he told her what he could. “Go back upstairs and finish getting dressed,” he said. “I’ll get the car and we’ll go home.

  “There’s a black car outside,” Raj said to the thin man. “Where are the keys?”

  “Ah shit,” he said. “Don’t take my fucking Off-Roadster.” It was the first time there’d been any real fight in him.

  “We won’t keep it.” That was true; this man, however, wouldn’t live to care.

  Chapter Fourteen

  There were two dead bodies about twenty yards from her front door, strewn in the dirt like broken toys. Jane made herself keep moving until she was beside them, staring down.

  Dancer lay flat on his back, his vacant blue eyes gazing at the sky. He had it easy, but not Joe. Pain still clung to poor Joe’s broken body. It hovered over him like a bad smell. His arm was flung overhead at the wrong angle, everything about him wrong. She pressed her sleeve against the wetness on her face and stared toward the barn.

  “All of them?”

  No answer. She’d heard his footsteps in the gravel. She knew that he was close enough to hear.

  “Did you torture them, like Joe?” she asked, sounding pathetic.

  Still no answer.

  Jane took a step toward the barn and felt his hand close like a trap around her elbow.

  “It was violent,” he said tersely. “It was quick. And now it’s done. Let’s go.”

  She turned to him full-on and let the sickness in her heart show on her face. “Go where?”

  “Back.”

  She thought that he’d say home, but he’d been smart. She hadn’t noticed that before. How much he thought before he spoke. She’d been too caught up marveling at that face, that body, how much he looked like someone’s made-up prince. And how she’d wanted to believe.

  All that time, he’d just been watching like the keen observer he admitted being. He’d told her everything. She’d give him that. He’d told her of his schooling in the art of war and blood. That he was a trained warrior who didn’t lose. She’d heard him, but she hadn’t known it meant he was a monster and a murderer. An animal. A freak.

  She hadn’t known. Although she’d been told by just about everyone. Her husband and their friends. A thousand teleposters, infoscreens. Just common sense should have told her aliens weren’t normal. It was obvious.

  But she’d wanted a nicer story. Just like her parents had. It was a family tradition to be a great fool. Subject to blindness that believes its blinding intuition. He’s special. It’s special. We’re special. I know it. That kind of self-delusion was disgusting.

  Jane let Raj lead her by the arm, not knowing where he meant to take her, only that movement was easier than standing still. A sharp tug made her stop cold in her tracks. For the first time since she’d met him, Raj felt tense.

  “What is it?” Jane looked around and found the sickening answer. A pair of dusty jeans. A faded denim
jacket.

  Rick.

  His body lay crumpled a few feet from the driver’s side of his new car. He’d curled up on his side, the way he always slept. His cap still on, she saw an inch of blond hair at the back. Who was he? She’d married him, and she had no idea.

  “Don’t,” said Raj.

  Jane dug her nails into his skin until he let her go so she could kneel beside her husband. An instant later, she tried to get back on her feet so quickly that she fell. The ground was hard and cold beneath her jeans.

  “You cut his throat.” She stared at Raj. He offered no excuse. Rick’s own knife was lying in the dirt beside him. She scuttled backward on her hands and knees. Away from her rejected past, away from her imagined future. Murdered husband. Murdering lover. She wanted out of the entire nightmare. Out. Out and away.

  Every time she blinked she tried to burn another image over what she’d seen. The garden hose coiled at the corner of the house. The wild spill of rosemary from her spice garden by the kitchen. The white rocks she and Rick had used to section off the flower beds. Yellow patches in the grass. The distant hills beyond the interstate.

  Nothing Jane made herself look at stuck. She only saw Rick’s bloodless face and then her lover’s body framed against the colorless sky. Violent. Pitiless.

  Alien.

  Chapter Fifteen

  There was a telepost in Rick’s new car. As wary as he was of big brother technology, he hadn’t been able to bring himself to get rid of a standard feature in a classic model. Raj drove them south again in silence. Jane fumbled with the mechanism—clumsily but well enough. It wasn’t all that hard to figure out.

  On.

  Search.

  The Body House. She used her fingers rather than the voice command. An instant contact link appeared. She tapped the letters of her message. I have a rescued Bod named Raj with me. He is unharmed. Twenty-seven miles south of Nordhup. Lot 2065 on old Highway 68. She pressed the button that said Send. And it was done.