Challa

by Linda Mooney

  They were hesitating. They were thinking. They were unsure. They were stymied.

  They are the enemy, and they are mi—

  The Arra began to close in.

  Chapter 43

  First Blood

  The Arra slowly drifted toward them, eight semitransparent globs of iridescent gelatin. They had no legs or feet. It was almost like watching white slugs advancing as one united front.

  Compton automatically reached behind him, searching for Challa. Her hand went to his back to let him know she was there. The sense of her love warmed him to the core, and at the same time strengthened his determination.

  All eyes were on the creatures that continued to move closer and closer. Compton caught Sheriff Klotsky trying to get his attention.

  “Let’s see if they mind us going around them,” Klotsky suggested.

  “Go for it. I’ll watch your back.”

  The sheriff nodded and motioned to one of his deputies. Compton watched as the man easily walked down the road, back toward town, not stopping to look back at them until he was in the clear. The Arra continued to inch toward the crews from opposite sides.

  Without any urging, the sheriff tried to follow the man when the Arra nearest him raised an armlike extension and aimed a round, silvery disk at him. Klotsky froze.

  Challa grabbed the back of his shirt. “It’s a paralyzer!”

  At the same time, DeGrassi yelled, “Hold off, George! Don’t move! It’s the UV ray! They think it’s a weapon! Don’t lift it! Don’t do a thing!”

  “Anything in your hands they’re going to consider to be a weapon!” Compton said. “Try putting it down and seeing if they’ll let you pass!”

  The Arra paused to watch as the sheriff carefully laid the UV gun on the tarmac. As he straightened, he held out his hands to show they were empty then continued down the road toward where the deputy was waiting. As expected, the creatures allowed the man to pass without further incident.

  There was a moment when the machines began to power down, but several logging foremen waved for the crew to continue cutting and clearing. Yet the strain of trying to maintain a casual demeanor in front of the aliens was beginning to tell on everyone. Fear and expectation for the worst hung thick in the air. The men were reaching their breaking point. Soon, very soon, something was bound to erupt, and Compton hoped it wouldn’t be the humans.

  “No!”

  Compton jerked around to see Jebaral slowly walking toward the Arra, taking the same route as the sheriff and deputy. Behind him, Hannah was reaching out to him.

  “Jeb! Please, no!”

  The Ruinos glanced over at Compton. “We’ll never know if your theory is correct unless someone challenges it. If this doesn’t work…”

  Compton nodded, understanding.

  All eyes watched as Jebaral casually strolled down the road, straddling the center stripes. He ignored the UV gun as if it didn’t exist as he breached the imaginary outer ring.

  Compton kept looking from Jebaral to Hannah, watching both closely and knowing how tightly strung the woman was over watching her mate make such a life-threatening move. But she stood her ground and bit her lips to keep from crying out any further. Compton’s respect and admiration for the woman rose considerably.

  Keeping his hands out where the Arra could see they were empty, Jebaral acted as if having the creatures around was a common occurrence. Incredibly, the Ruinos was able to join the other two men without any problems.

  One minute passed, followed by another. Without warning, the Arra resumed closing in. Compton took an involuntary step backwards and glanced over at where he knew DeGrassi was standing, when Challa’s fear solidified inside him.

  An Arra on the other side of the road was holding out an instrument Compton didn’t remember having described to him. “Challa, what is that thing?”

  “I don’t know!” she whispered back, and her fear grew colder inside him, until it was a block of ice completely filling the center of his being.

  He looked over at where Tiron was watching the aliens with a mixture of fear and anger evident in every line of her body. Her eyes never wavered from the Arra, and a few feet away her mate DeGrassi never shifted his gaze away from her. It was almost as if he was more fearful of what his wife might do, than what the Arra would.

  Compton had no idea where Simolif was. One thing, however, was rapidly becoming clear. The next move on this chessboard belonged to the Arra. Unfortunately, they were bringing in an unqualified player. That or they were changing the rules in mid-game. Neither option bode well.

  “Tiron?”

  The woman didn’t avert her eyes, but she responded, “What?”

  “You’ve never seen that thing they’re holding, have you?”

  “No.”

  “But in all the time you and the others were prisoners aboard their ship, don’t you think you would have seen every kind of torturing device or weapon they had?”

  Behind him, Compton sensed Challa thinking. Mentally diving back into the past, into memories she dared to dredge up only because he needed her to. From where he stood, Tiron appeared to be doing the same.

  “It could be a new weapon,” Challa suggested softly.

  Compton immediately slammed that idea. “I don’t get the impression that these giant glowing zits are the research and development type. No, I think this is something they’ve had all along, but just didn’t bring it out because it wasn’t needed until now. Which leads me to believe it’s not a weapon, or else they would have used it on you in the past.” He added a shrug. “Of course, I could be wrong.”

  “If you don’t think it’s a weapon, what could it be?” DeGrassi asked, loud enough to be heard. “A communications device?”

  “Maybe a translator? Something that would tell them what we’re saying?” Hannah ventured. Her nervousness was still very apparent by the quiver in her voice.

  Compton winced. “If it is, we’re in deep shit.”

  He stared at the grayish-colored contraption, looking for buttons or a trigger, anything that might give him a clue. But for all intents and purposes, it resembled an oven mitt. If there was a button, it was inside. Or maybe the creatures used some sort of mental trigger to fire it.

  An oven mitt for a creature with no arms, no hands, no legs or head, or anything resembling a face, for crying out loud! The irony was almost laughable.

  A movement from the corner of his eye made Compton glance over at where the deputy from Big Oak stepped down from the trailer where he’d been helping load the cut logs. “Let’s see if they’re still allowing us to walk past them,” the man said and began to make his way toward where the others were standing just outside the invisible boundary.

  The deputy took two steps when the Arra swung around and pointed their new device directly at him. Several people screamed as an intensely bright bubble of light closed around the man, encasing him from head to toe inside a milky sphere.

  Compton barely had time to grasp the suddenness of the attack when he noticed the deputy trying to break through the membrane. The man didn’t appear to be in any pain as the pale, translucent walls dimmed, and the rest of them could see—

  A skeleton.

  No, not a skeleton. The deputy’s internal bone structure. And his organs. Even the shadows of his clothing and the gun resting in its holster at his hip.

  The man obviously called out, although there was no sound. Compton watched as the jaws opened and shut, the vague shadow of the tongue forming words that were muffled by the bubble. The deputy beat futilely against the inner walls.

  “What the fuck is that thing?” someone from behind asked aloud.

  “It looks like an x-ray machine of sorts,” someone else answered.

  An x-ray machine? An x-ray bubble? Compton frowned. Why would the Arra bring along an x-ray—

  “Oh, fuck!”

  He never had the chance to yell out a warning when the Arra aimed the gray glove at the Big Oak deputy and fired again. This
time the ray was a pale blue, and when it hit the bubble, the whole thing exploded outward in a spray of white, red, and pink fluid. Compton and the rest nearly collapsed to the ground in horror.

  “Dear God, no!” It was Sarah who managed to find her voice first.

  The Arra with the glove swiveled in her direction and raised it. What happened next was so quick Compton had a difficult time following it. Simolif saw the Arra aiming at his mate, and he immediately jumped in front of her to protect her. The white ray struck him, enveloping him in another opalescent bubble.

  But this time the skeleton that reflected back looked nothing remotely human. And the crested ridge of bone running from forehead to the back of the skull was only the beginning.

  “Simon!” Sarah reached the bubble and began beating on it. Compton could hear her fingers scrabbling for purchase, for any fold or opening that she could grab so she could tear the bubble apart. Her sobbing sounded unusually loud in the night air.

  An unseen force rammed a steel post up his spine. Gasping, Compton shook the terror that was cementing his feet to the ground and cocked his rifle. “Sarah, back away!” he yelled, and aimed at the lowest edge of the bubble, opposite from where she was standing. He fired, and gasped again as the shot was absorbed as if it had hit a wall of marshmallow creme.

  He never saw the yellowish ray coming from the Arran oven mitt until it poured over the bubble. Sarah screamed Simon’s name again, but instead of the bubble disintegrating, it started to fold in on itself. Closing in over Simolif, shrink-wrapping him. Turning him into a neat little package they could trundle back up into their slave ship the same way a spider spins a sac around its prey.

  Compton glanced back at the Arra. At the same time a bone-freezing roar filled the night sky. He barely had time to see Jebaral morph into his true self before the Ruinos launched himself at the bubble to begin clawing at the membrane closing in around his brother. A split-second later, both Tiron and Challa changed and leaped in.

  “The Arra!” someone yelled, and another gun went off.

  Unbelievably, the Arra were advancing toward the bubble and the group of Ruinos around it. Except this time there weren’t nine Arra coming at them—there were sixteen.

  “Son of a fucking bitch!” DeGrassi pumped his shotgun and fired again at the advancing Arra.

  The creature that had started to aim at the group of Ruinos turned and aimed the x-ray mitt at him. Before it could fire, the mitt was blasted into a hundred pieces. A shrill keening sound pierced the air, and the Arra that had been holding the mitt semi-melted into a quivering heap.

  DeGrassi glanced over at Compton to give him a mock salute, congratulating the ex-Army lieutenant on his marksmanship. Compton nodded then raised his shotgun again, as did DeGrassi.

  And that’s when all hell broke loose.

  Chapter 44

  Attack

  The loggers and other law enforcement personnel joined in, meeting the Arra head-on with saws, axes, and guns. The fierce onslaught by the humans must have stunned the aliens. The creatures halted in their advance, and their hesitation proved costly.

  Compton fired his rifle at the globs, delighting in the way they exploded upon impact. It was because of their coordinated effort that the humans were able to take down the Arra with little resistance. Meanwhile, the creatures did little to defend themselves.

  He saw Challa alongside Tiron as the two women launched themselves into the air and slashed at the blobs with their sharp talons. Hissing and shrieking, the pair were doing major damage just by themselves as more runny white pus oozed from the Arra, and chunks of the aliens splattered the ground.

  The Arra with the round paralyzing disks were the first to begin firing, but it was already too late. Compton saw Lawson Hall get hit. The carnival owner fell to the ground, the large piece of wood the man had been wielding rolling away from him.

  Compton was reloading when he caught sight of Sheriff Klotsky running for the UV lamp Compton had asked him to bring. Once the man had it in his hands, he turned it on and shone it on the Arra.

  It was like watching marshmallows burn.

  “You were right!” the man crowed. “Them sons of alien bitches can’t take the UV!”

  There was little time to congratulate himself on getting one theory proven correct. He’d guessed that the UV rays from the sun were what kept the Ruinos from being able to shift during the day, and why the Arra only hunted the Ruinos at night. By sheer coincidence, both species needed the nighttime to change or hunt. And since ultraviolet rays bounced off the moon at a drastically lower level…

  Other Arra turned toward the sheriff. They were thwarted by the ray and half a dozen men with chainsaws and axes.

  It was only a short matter of time before the Arra would be defeated. That left Compton to see how the others were faring with getting Simolif out of his cocoon. Running over to where the Runios were tiring, he pulled his specially designed hunting knife out of its sheath. But stabbing at the membrane was tantamount to stabbing a block of plastic resin. The knife would only go in partway and no more. Neither could he cut through it, and the blade was as finely a honed piece of steel as could be made.

  Sarah was sobbing. The Ruinos were exhausted and breathing heavily from trying to shred the material. Challa was on the ground, on her knees, trying to gather enough strength for another go at it.

  Tiron turned to him with tears rolling down her cheeks. “We’ve never seen this before,” she whispered, her voice hitching.

  DeGrassi joined them, and Tiron sought his embrace. “Isn’t there anything that’ll cut through that shit?” the deputy asked no one in particular.

  Jebaral stopped to think. Blood ran down both of his arms from his useless attempts to free his brother. He started to reply, then simply turned and ran over to where one of the loggers was standing and holding a chainsaw. The logger backed up, momentarily startled by the Ruinos approaching to speak to him. A few seconds later, the man nodded and followed Jebaral back to the cocoon.

  “Stand back, everyone,” the man ordered, raising the saw. The machine roared, and the logger slowly lowered it onto the milky mass.

  An ear-splitting screech rent the air. The chainsaw bounced off the surface, nearly upsetting the logger as it flew up and backwards. The chewing blade narrowly missed Challa as Compton grabbed her to jerk her away.

  “Fucking thing’s like rock!” the logger explained. He gave the group an apologetic look. “I’m sorry, but a chainsaw’s not going to cut through it.”

  “What will?” Challa asked. She turned to plead with Compton. “He’s dying, Compton!”

  Compton stared more closely at the still figure inside the shell, then back at Sarah. He was stumped, but not defeated. Not by a long shot. He opened his mouth to say so when he was interrupted.

  “We got ’em!” Sheriff Klotsky hurried over to let them know. “We got those damn aliens. Well, most of them.”

  Compton and the others turned to look at him. “What do you mean most of them?” DeGrassi spoke up.

  The sheriff pointed towards the woods. “One of them damn things, the one that held that glove gun? It got away from us before we could stop it.” He shook his head. “I’m sorry, Jeb, but we were so busy trying to melt them suckers, we lost count of how many there were.”

  “Oh, my God! You mean one got away?” Hannah gasped. She turned to her husband. “Jeb, it’s going to go tell the other Arra!”

  Compton silently cursed himself for not following through. With his training and experience, he knew from past encounters that the enemy always tried to send away a survivor to relay the news to others. Alien species or not, the Arra behaved just like humans in too many aspects. “Well, if it’s gone to warn the others, then we better get Simon out of that damn thing, the sooner the better,” he said.

  “But how?” Challa asked.

  Instead of answering, Compton looked around, trying to spot something that might be a viable weapon. He noticed a sharp spike lying
on the ground several yards away. Maybe the cocoon could be chipped away.

  Hurrying over to grab it, he reached down to pick it up when Challa called out to him. “No, no! Don’t touch it!”

  He froze. “Huh?”

  Tiron detached herself from her husband’s embrace and ran over to where Compton was standing. “It’s an adjac,” she said, and bent down to retrieve it. “If you’re not careful, you could do some serious damage to yourself.”

  A light bulb turned on. “Didn’t you say that thing was used to burn holes in people?” he asked her.

  Tiron stared at him. “Yes.”

  “Can it burn a hole in that thing?” he asked, pointing toward the cocoon. “Maybe we need Arran technology to fight Arran technology.”

  She started, then rushed back to the group and handed the weapon to Jebaral. The Ruinos curled his claws around the slender tube, and with a determined look on his face, jammed the weapon as hard as he could into the bubble.

  There was a spurt of steam. Sarah shrieked. “It punctured it! It punched through! Hurry! He’s dying in there!”

  Jebaral continued to ram the adjac into the cocoon, creating several deep holes. DeGrassi ordered him, “Stay in one spot. Try to get all the way through to him with that thing.”

  Compton looked back at where the other men were cleaning up. More than a dozen white puddles still pulsated on the ground, the last remains of the Arra. He spotted two more adjacs, and he nudged Tiron to point them out. She nodded and went to get them, but DeGrassi’s comment had gotten him thinking.

  “Where are you going?” Challa stopped him.

  Compton gave her a smile. “Wait here. Don’t worry. I’ll be right back.”

  She gave him a worried smile as she nodded and watched him hurry over to the sheriff.

  Compton waved down Klotsky. “Hey, Sheriff! You wouldn’t happen to have a Jaws of Life in the trunk of one of those cop cars, would you?”