“Let the others yell and get attention,” I said quietly, one hand on a steering handle, one on his arm – one eye on the terrain in front of us and one on him.
He nodded and shut his mouth, then readied the stun gun, dialing it up as high as it would go.
“Don't miss,” I said. “That high could kill the children.”
He nodded again, but didn't say a word and didn't dial down the rifle. We peeled up to Bald Knob with no sign of the fog or the hunter in the fog. Soren jumped up on to the flat bed and turned on the spotlight from the tool trunk, flooding great sweeps of ground with light as he swung it back and forth. I was out of the truck and running up the knob, grabbing the rock face with my hands to help me climb faster, leaving the door of the truck wide open just in case we had to run for it.
I made it to the top and whistled down into the dark hillside of the knob.
And a little, achy voice called up thinly - “Mr Bell!” “Cadell!” I cried out, and the spotlight swung around, then bounced wildly as Soren scrambled up to the top of the knob. He shone the light down and there was Cadell, his arm up to protect his blinking eyes from the brightness, sitting in the grass beside the silent, unmoving body of his sister.
I made a cry that was some mix of fear and grief and dropped to my ass to slide down to them.
“She's breathing, thank God,” I said thickly to Soren as he slid down beside me.
“She fell,” Cadell said, his voice high and exhausted. “We couldn't wake her up. Trevor said the monster's coming. He went to get help.”
“She's got a lump on her head,” Soren said. “Some kind of bandage there, too.”
“Don't move it,” Cadell said, surprisingly fierce. “Trevor says only Doc's supposed to touch it. It's medicine.” That's when we heard the whuffing noise, something far bigger than Simon the little bastard, something closer than I'd like. Soren whipped around and shone his light up the hill, toward the truck, and the light hit a wall of fog.
He swore again. I did too, with more skill born of experience.
“Come on, Cadell, time to go,” I said, and lifted Catrin up and slung her over my shoulder.
“I hurt my leg,” he said, and his face crumpled nearly into those tears he was trying so hard to hold back. “Paden,” Soren said, alarmed. “We have to go.” “Drop the goddamned light. No – throw it. As far that way as you can. Then hold that rifle as if you were about to shoot a goddamned monster. We'll follow the truck lights.” I reached a hand down to Cadell and swung him up into my free arm, setting him against my side. He clung for dear life.
“I want to go home,” he whispered.
“We're going right now, kid,” I whispered back, then hushed him with my fingertips against his mouth, though I had to squish Catrin a bit to do it. Then we started moving toward the truck, right behind Soren, who was doing a damned fine job of looking competent with that rifle. We moved as fast as we dared and as fast as I could carrying two scrubby kids.
Behind us I heard a crack and we saw the spotlight go out.
Soren swung around to take up rear guard, the rifle up and aimed. Cadell was shaking so hard I thought I would drop him, but he held on tight and made absolutely no noise except his quick, terrified breaths. It was so quiet all around us that I heard the beast go to our left, then range ahead of us.
Soren moved quickly to stay between us and that thing, his rifle pointing toward where he heard the beast.
It was between us and the truck.
No sooner did I think that than I heard something crinkle and shatter, and one of the roof lights went out. Then another, then another, then another.
Soren, who had been preternaturally calm, finally swore again.
As we came around Bald Knob, the right headlight shattered and went out.
Three more steps forward and the left went out, and we were still at least ten meters from the truck. The truck was now invisible in the fog.
I heard a low, nasty growl.
We all froze, even Cadell, his breath sounds ceasing suddenly, his grip on my neck tightening painfully.
The creature came closer, the growl closer, and closer. The dash com blared out, shockingly loud. “We're coming, Paden, we're coming!” Huw yelled over the speakers. The low growl became a sudden snarl and the unseen beast turned away from us. We heard it hit the truck, heard claws scraping. “Hold on, we're coming!”
“I've got that son of a bitch,” Soren said grimly, and he was gone into the dark and the fog. I heard the rifle report, then heard it again.
“Come on!” Soren screamed. “It's open, come on, Paden!”
And I ran, flat out, no old man run, no weighed-down by two injured children run, but a full on running back Old American football run. We practically hit the truck. Soren was already inside the rifle down and the truck door wide open. He was pressing buttons to bring up the auxiliary lights, and I tossed Cadell in to him, then more gently, handed Catrin up into the truck. Just as I grabbed the sides of the door frame to haul myself in, I heard Soren swear again.
Cadell shrieked in terror.
All I remember after that was sudden, tearing, excruciating pain in my back and feeling my leg go out under me, and the smell, the heavy, bloody smell, then all was black.
I didn't come to until sometime early this evening, a full eighteen hours later.
I'm actually writing this to you from Doc Raines' clinic; young Catrin is here beside me in a cot of her own. Doc says she'll make a full recovery. I'm grateful for that. Cadell has a badly sprained ankle from tumbling down after his sister after she slipped and fell and knocked herself cold on the rocky top of Bald Knob, but he too will make a full recovery, and with less trouble than Catrin, I am sure. He's already showing off his fancy brace – the very same kind Soren so recently wore on his own leg.
The twins had indeed gone to bring Liberty's body up to Bald Knob, because that was whose remains we'd found. They had wanted to bring her home to her brother.
They surely hadn't meant to be gone very long, but they needed a good cry, and Trevor had sat with them, holding on to their fingers with his tiny hands. Trevor, too, was grieving. But then Trevor had gotten frantically upset, and he'd dragged the washcloths holding Liberty's body into the mouse-sized cave they made their home in – solid, hard rock to deter the hunter from digging after them.
He told the children to hurry home, the fog was coming.
They'd bolted, racing up over Bald Knob, and that's when Catrin had slipped and tumbled back down the hill, and Cadell had gone after her all in a jumble. Dark fell and Catrin was still not awake. That's when Trevor made the decision he was going for help. The children were out because they'd brought his sister home to him, and he was going to see them home, even if it meant risking the fog to try and get to town. He wasn't sure how he was going to get uninitiated adults to understand him; it had taken Catrin and Cadell, even with their young and pliable minds, some time to come to understand what Trevor and Liberty tried to communicate with them.
He hadn't gone far when he saw our truck pull up, and he saw the fog roll in after we'd gone up over the hill. So he climbed up into the cab of the truck and started looking for the alert button. He knew enough about the way the trucks worked to know there was one, Catrin had told him about it and how they were told to press that button in an emergency.
He found that button and pounded on it frantically, but then the hunter was there, breaking the lights, and he hid himself beneath the seat, nearly paralyzed by fear. Then he heard the hunter start coming toward us, and he knew he had to do something, so he flipped on the com speakers and cranked the volume all the way up, and just managed to get beneath the seat again when the hunter came crashing back to the truck at the sound of Huw's voice.
I knew I'd had that speaker off. So anyway, Catrin's recovering, and she's got a little doll bed on her nightstand, and there's Trevor, sitting on it, watching over her. He's not always about, but I've seen him a couple times this evening. His kind a
re terribly shy, I understand. And he's not sure he trusts us yet.
In fact, he's specifically asked our magistrate not to broadcast his existence as of yet, and as guests on his planet by his leave, of course Huw agreed, and so did the rest of us. Bets Almond shrewdly asked how long we should keep it a secret, and Huw and Trevor came to an agreement than when our year of planet-testing was up, we'd make a formal announcement. Bets is tickled by this because she'll get to spend a year studying a xenosapience without interference or competition.
As for me, my love, the news is good and bad. The hunter did a good deal of damage to me, even after Soren had shot it twice with the stun rifle. Somehow it managed to get itself up and leap at me just as I was trying to get into the truck.
Huw and Udo Jalloh arrived right about then, and the hunter, staggering, made no move to escape but instead turned on them, charging and snarling as if it would tear their truck apart if it could even in its debilitated state.
Concerned for my safety, they made no effort to protect the life of the hunter, and they hit it soundly with their truck.
Doc Raines is a good doc, love. He's got me pumped full of pain meds, and I'm stitched together as well as anyone could. I won't die from bleeding out, but I won't live long enough to scar. You see, the hunters' jaws release a toxin when they bite. This toxin doesn't have a neutralizer yet, and it will shut down my internal organs in about a week's time, Doc estimates. There's nothing he can do but make me comfortable.
I've asked that we keep that between us and Huw, and of course that's how it will be until its over. Doc Raines is an honorable sort and Huw... well, Huw respects my secrets, such as they are. By the time you arrive in your date-dash-date adorned urn, I will already be with you in whatever life comes after this one. We can be buried together here in a little town called Mardabell, on the cusp of a whole new perspective on what it means to be human as the people we leave behind come to define us alongside a brother species. I will have already found my way to those arms I miss so deeply, I will already be hearing you laugh again. Because I do believe that, I do believe you're there waiting for me, it's how I've kept going, that and these letters I've written hoping they find you on the other side, hoping they bring me closer to you the same way they hold you close to me.
I love you, Marda. I love you. I will see you soon.
Planetfall For Marda Page 15