“Yeah, well…” Sima shook her head at the little panel above her arm. “We don’t have any machines to process it. Do you know a simple way to make cloth? Like tribals did?”
‹I do not have that information in my archives.›
“The colors are pretty.” Lissa stood close enough to the plant to pull a leaf into position like a skirt. “I like it.” Her fingers tore through it a few seconds later, and the stalk bobbed back into place, leaving her holding a few thread-like filaments. “Bleh.”
Sima scratched the back of her head. “Maybe I could make something out of the feathers.”
“I got an idea,” said Juan.
Everyone looked at him.
“Use wires from the lifeboat for a belt. Metal scraps for a skirt.”
Sima squirmed at the mere thought of wearing metal strips. “I don’t think that would work.”
“Pinchy,” said Austin, crossing his legs. “Ouch.”
Giving up on the pretty, too-brittle leaves, Sima resumed hurrying back to the lifeboat. The kids followed her inside without detour despite it still being day out. She knelt by the medical kit and looked at the bracelet’s display panel.
‹There’s a device inside that resembles a silver egg. Hold the narrow end by the injury and squeeze the button.›
Sima opened the box, which contained several devices and canisters in foam. She plucked a silver plastic egg from the packing and looked it over. It had one button at the fat end and a chromatic sheen over the narrow end. With a shrug, she held it near the wound and pushed the button.
Faint white energy appeared at the tip. The claw slashes in her shoulders flared up like a flaming hot shard of metal jammed into her skin. Unprepared for the pain, Sima yelled and dropped the egg. Austin caught it before it could roll too far away.
Sima gritted her teeth. “Oh, crap that hurt.”
“It hurt?” asked Lissa.
“Worse than being cut.” Sima shivered, then glanced at Austin. “You do it… Please. I’ll drop it again.”
He nodded and moved to kneel beside her. “Ready?”
“Yeah.” Sima closed her eyes and concentrated all her effort on not screaming. Pain ripping across her shoulder almost made her pass out.
“Whoa. The cuts are closing!” said Austin. “This is awesome.”
The next thing Sima knew, she lay flat on her back with Lissa’s face hovering over her.
“She’s not dead,” said Lissa.
“Ugh. What happened?” asked Sima.
“You passed out.” Austin snapped the fasteners closed on the medical kit.
Sima poked at her shoulder, finding intact skin covered in blood. “Ow. Still tender.”
“It’s not bleeding anymore.” Austin scooted over and hugged her. All the fear he must’ve had while treed by a quill cat came back at once. He fought hard not to cry, but didn’t fully succeed.
She hugged him close, letting him tremble and sniffle until he composed himself.
“That was the coolest thing anyone ever did for me,” he whispered. “You could’ve been killed.”
“Yeah, well I’m not ready to die yet.” Feeling guilty, she stared at the floor, thinking back to the ledge at the Crash where she stared down at the landfill. Honestly, she hadn’t been ready to jump, or she would have. She pushed that grimness out of her mind. “Let me have a look at you.”
He sat still and let her examine him. His worst injuries, scrapes on his back from where the creature walloped him into the ground, looked less severe than skinned knees. Still, she took him outside and poured water over the scuffs, rubbing with her hand until she got all the dirt out of the scratches.
Lissa wandered over and sat next to her, seeming listless.
Once Sima could find no more scratches in need of cleaning, she ruffled Austin’s hair and hugged him again. Grinning, he trotted off to join Juan in the field near the lifeboat, where they resumed play sword fighting. Though, they appeared to be trying to get more serious about it… as if preparing to have to fend off a quill cat.
The girl’s lack of fussing with flowers worried her. She simply sat there, leaning against Sima.
“Are you feeling okay?”
Lissa shrugged one shoulder. “I’m tired.”
“Me too.” Sima rubbed the girl’s back, then put an ear to it. Whispery-wheezy breathing worried her, but at least the scary sounds had quieted. She could only hear the rasping if she pressed her ear close, not out loud on every breath.
“Am I gonna have to have a baby with Juan when I’m big?” asked Lissa.
The awkward question caught Sima so off guard she laughed. “Umm. No. You won’t have to do anything like that. But if you want to, it’s okay. However, you are not to do anything like that until you’re at least eighteen.”
Mercifully, Lissa accepted that answer without further interrogation. Sima was not ready to explain where babies came from. Most definitely not to a six-year-old. It probably wouldn’t be too much longer before she had the awesome pleasure of having to explain randomly bleeding. Not as though her present circumstances would make it easy to hide that from them. With any luck, the kids would accept a ‘girls just do that’ and not pry. But if she had to, she’d do more for Lissa than her mother had done for her. Sima had to learn from a total stranger in an alley. The mere anticipation of that conversation made her squirm with embarrassment.
The afternoon continued to warm, and within two hours of their return to the lifeboat, Sima felt overdressed in only her skin. She relocated closer to the metal wall, sitting in the shade. It didn’t take long for the boys to abandon the field for the shade of the jungle.
They went through their stash of water fast, so Sima left the kids at the lifeboat for a quick run to the river to fill the jug. She returned to find them in good health, Austin standing guard with his axe. She smiled at him, picturing how he must’ve imagined himself growing up to be an EGSF officer before his dad’s injury altered his mind. Was it losing his father, or being an Outcast that made him hate the cops?
Sima held the jug for the kids to drink, then set it down in the shade by the hatch.
“Wow, it’s hot,” said Juan.
“Is it summer now?” Lissa looked up at her, and coughed a little.
‹The current season is roughly equivalent to August on Earth.›
Sima held up her screen so the others could read. “Yeah. It’s August.”
“How long do we have left ’til we die?” asked Juan. “That monster was really scary.”
Lissa clung tight, despite the heat. It surprised Sima not to wince at the squish of a sweaty child pressed at her side. She smiled down at the girl. Lissa grinned back, and a bubble of snot swelled from her nose. Without a second thought, Sima pinched it clear and wiped it on the grass. Both boys made faces at her touching ‘someone else’s snot.’
“I don’t wanna die.” Austin patted the axe.
“Umm.” Sima forced herself to look away from Lissa’s innocent face, unable to bear the truth: that it would be an outright miracle if they survived much longer than a few more weeks.
Between the Night Scratch, the giant cat thing with quills (or maybe that was the Night Scratch), lack of food, weather, possible disease or infection, the Pixie exposure shredding Lissa’s lungs, or any of a thousand different potential things they hadn’t seen yet… the odds of their continued existence felt minuscule. She’d given up scolding the kids for not wearing their pants. What did it matter? What did anything matter? Like why care if a terminally ill person continued drinking booze, they’re dead anyway. The best thing she could do is keep them as happy as possible until the inevitable came to pass.
“We just need to be careful.” Sima ruffled Juan’s hair. “This isn’t much different from Earth.”
“There’s monsters,” said Juan.
Sima nodded. “Yes… but there’s monsters on Earth, too. Only, back there, they had guns.”
Thinking about what the Scathers might’ve done to
her kids, she gathered them close in a protective embrace. The streets would’ve killed them all anyway, but not before destroying their souls.
Mirage at least had beautiful scenery.
26
The Problem with Plants
Distant screaming dragged Sima out of sleep.
She pushed herself upright. Both Juan and Lissa remained close, half-awake in the lifeboat. No sign of Austin. The screaming outside became muffled.
A second later when her brain kicked in and processed what her eyes and ears told her, Sima grabbed her axe and dashed outside. Rustling and muted shouting continued from the left, beyond the corner of the lifeboat. She ran toward the disturbance.
Thirty feet past the edge of the clearing, she skidded to a stop, staring at two feet sticking out of a giant strawberry-shaped plant that had apparently swallowed Austin whole up to his calves. Vine-tentacles sprouted from the base, whipping and thrashing across the ground. Small fist-sized bulges appeared as he punched the giant petals engulfing him.
“Austin!” shouted Sima.
She ran in, disregarding the whipping thorns slapping at her legs, and grabbed the rim of the flower. Rather than swinging the axe, she sliced at the plant. Spiky tendrils wrapped around her legs. She shrieked and chopped at them, severing the vines with ease. Austin struggled in a frenzy, growling while thumping and thudding at the soft walls trapping him.
The high-tech axe sliced the plant with little resistance. Sima hacked at the bottom of where the ‘jaw’ closed, tearing gaping rents in the tough, fibrous plant. Clear gel, likely some kind of digestive fluid, collected at the bottom of the cup and oozed out of the slashes. Another two good whacks convinced the flower to open and release the boy. The facing three-foot-tall petal lowered to the jungle floor. Austin rolled away from it, floppy and limp. Thin blue vines wrapped around him, coiling around his neck, chest, and thighs. Thousands of tiny bleeding dots covered his body. Before she could take the axe to the thinner vines, they released their grip and snapped back into a snarl of tangles at the center of the flytrap.
Sima grabbed his arm and dragged him away, out of reach of the longest vines sprouting from the base.
“Ow,” said Austin.
“Are you okay?”
“Umm. More scared than hurt.” He sat up and wiped blood off his legs and stomach.
Sima folded her arms. “What happened? What are you doing outside alone?”
“I had to pee. That flower grabbed me. The blue stuff in the middle like exploded into tentacles and pulled me in.”
She frowned. “You peed right on it, didn’t you?”
He offered a sheepish grin. “Maybe…”
Sima sighed at the clouds. “What is it with boys?”
“It does kinda look like a wall toilet when it’s open.”
She squatted and wiped her hand at his arm. “You look like you got attacked by a swarm of thumbtacks.”
He brushed blood off her shin. “You too. I’m sorry.”
“Please don’t run off alone again? At least tell me you’re going out to water the grass.”
“Okay.”
Sima asked the bracelet to take a picture of the giant flower, and couldn’t stop shaking on the short walk back to the lifeboat. Great. Even the plants are trying to eat us. Once they returned, she showed the photo to Juan and Lissa.
“I don’t want you two going anywhere near a flower that looks like this. Do you understand?”
“Okay,” said Lissa.
Juan nodded
“It’s lucky I’m bigger. If I was your size, it would’ve swallowed me whole and Sima wouldn’t have heard me yelling.” Austin shivered.
Both smaller kids gasped.
Sima handed out fruits. Juan didn’t seem at all interested. Lissa halfheartedly ate one. Sima kept pestering her until she finished a second.
“Come on, man.” Austin threw a fruit at Juan. “I’m sick of them too, but we don’t have anything else.”
Grumbling, Juan begrudgingly stuffed his face.
After eating, Sima pulled her EGSF-issue underwear on and led an expedition into the jungle on the far side of the clearing behind the lifeboat, a section they hadn’t yet explored. They eventually happened upon a new plant with sky-blue leaves about twice the size of Sima’s hand, and vines thin enough that they might work as belts to hold up a skirt. Her hope died a swift death upon examining the leaves and finding them stony hard with razor edges.
Austin sliced one leaf off with his axe and threw it like a Frisbee at a nearby tree—where it stuck. “Cool!”
“Don’t play with those,” said Sima a little louder than normal, but not quite yelling. “They’re sharp.”
He pointed at it. “We could use them as weapons if another quill monster tries to eat us.”
“Ninjas!” yelled Juan, running to pull the thrown leaf out of the tree. He jumped back with a yelp, jamming his hand in his mouth.
“See!” Sima rushed over and grabbed his arm. Fortunately, he had only a little cut on the side of his thumb. “These are not toys.”
“All the plants here suck,” said Austin. “They either want to eat us or hurt us or they’re useless.”
Juan wiped at his mouth. “The fruits are okay.”
“Come on. Don’t touch these.” Sima tugged Juan back to the group.
They walked deeper into the jungle. Lissa gravitated to bright mushrooms or small flying creatures. Juan kept his attention in the high canopy, and Austin clutched his axe close, ready in case of danger. Sima continued looking for never-before-seen plant types. Eventually, she found a seven-foot-tall bush with waxy leaves. Each leaf ran about twelve inches long, two inches wide with blue edges and white down the middle. This plant felt the closest to anything from Earth she’d discovered so far, neither breaking on contact nor having an edge sharp enough to cut skin.
Figures. Finally, I find a plant I can use for something to wear and none of us care anymore. She glanced at the others roaming around the trees, picking up rocks and such. Okay. I’m the only one that ever did care that much. Still… when they get older, it’s going to be really weird. Maybe they’ll get self-conscious. A sigh slipped out of her nose. We’ve all gone crazy. How long before we start worshiping the sun and making offerings to giant rocks?
She collected some of the usable leaves for practice. It couldn’t hurt to teach herself how to make a skirt. A little past noon, she gathered the kids and headed back home.
“Wait,” said Austin. “I wanna try something.”
Sima glanced at him. “What?”
He pointed up at the trees. The pods with the lime green spheres hung way overhead. “I’m gonna cut one down. So sick of the red ones.”
“That’s like thirty feet in the air. What if you fall?”
Austin held the axe up to his mouth. “I won’t.” He clamped the rubberized handle in his teeth and shimmied up the trunk. Sima stood right beneath him, shaking with worry as he got higher and higher. The tree he’d chosen held at least nine of the multi-fruit pods, like some kind of mutant apples—except each ‘apple’ held twenty or so smaller fruits. As soon as he got within reach of one, he clung to the swaying trunk and used the axe to chop at the stem holding the pod in place.
It soon fell, snapping down through the foliage, and landed with a heavy thump barely two feet away from Sima. Three of the lime-colored fruits at the bottom exploded on impact, showering her, Juan, and Lissa with pulp and juice. Both kids licked their arms. Sima couldn’t look away from Austin.
He held the axe out. “Gonna drop this so I can climb better.”
Sima took a few steps back, pulling the kids with her. Austin let go and the axe stuck into the ground, standing up like an arrow. He scooted down the tree like a human version of a squirrel, jumping off when he got within a few feet of the ground.
“Easy.” He grinned. “I know it’s still fruit, but it’s different fruit.”
They decided to rest right there and eat the broken ones so as
not to waste them. The peachy-lemon mixture punched Sima square in the taste buds, but she couldn’t argue that the change of flavor offered a much-needed break.
Once they finished eating, Sima asked Juan to carry the leaves, and dragged the heavy fruit pod along on the way back to the lifeboat. Upon returning home, she salvaged a length of electrical wire from the useless cooling system to use for a waistband. The design she evolved in her head sounded pretty simple: spear the wire through the leaves, making a ‘curtain,’ then put it around her waist and tie the wire together.
She sat in the grass not far from the lifeboat hatch and got to work. Lissa flopped on her back, chattering away as if talking to the creatures flying overhead. She named any sky manta she believed to be new, and also called out whenever she spotted a cloud animal. Sima played along, finding other cloud animals and even offering a few names for the flying rays while the boys continued ‘practicing’ how to fight with an axe using the semi-flexible branches.
After a while, she stood with her completed skirt (forty or so leaves strung along on the wire) and wrapped it around her waist. It felt weird, like wearing a garment of plastic strips, though as long as she stood perfectly still, it was more modest than the EGSF undies. If she moved at all, the leaves swayed apart like vertical window blinds.
“Ugh. This is more decoration than clothing.”
“It’s pretty,” said Lissa.
Sima tried sitting. The flexible leaves withstood her weight, but it wouldn’t take a whole lot of force to rip them off the wire.
Juan let off an anguished, wailing scream.
“I’m sorry!” shouted Austin. “Accident!”
Sima looked up, seeing only one boy off in the tall grass. “What happened?”
Austin turned to face her and gave a sheepish smile. He held up his branch ‘sword.’ “I hit him in the nuts on accident.”
A stick appeared between Austin’s legs.
“Look—” shouted Sima.
The stick flew upward, delivering Juan’s revenge. Austin crumpled into the grass, moaning.
Out of Sight (Progenitor Book 1) Page 29