Then something happened. A simple resolution came to her, an intangible spark of thought that comes to someone and overtakes them with no discernable reason or point of origin, creating a chemical reaction that flowed through her blood like a shot of adrenaline, yet it wasn’t just that. A resolve took over her body like in the souls of those who are possessed by an unseen force to climb deathly mountains where no man should live, and who did not see impossibility in their endeavor, but inevitability. She stood and slid the backpack on and picked the rifle off the ground and began walking along the ridge down stream. This is where Josh went, and she would find him if it would take the last of her breaths.
Every step for her was a chore as if she were walking on a sand-strewn moon with little oxygen. Yet her legs defied her desire to lie down and rest, to let that sweet sleep of death finally come over her for the last time. She had felt it there, that night as her life ebbed away into the cold twilight. Death had not been a horrifying thing then, it was a siren, lulling her to the rocks with its promise of release from pain and suffering. It is a sweet promise she had to battle all night and which still tried calling for her.
There were no thoughts, no emotion now. She was on autopilot as her feet forced her body onward like some bedraggled zombie. Time passed slowly and was untraceable as the sun crossed over her. It may have been twenty minutes or five hours that she had walked in that state.
Her lungs had now filled so much with fluid that oxygen traveled thinly to her brain and she again became light headed and delirious. Where so much resolve had been, the strict finite limitations of the human body replaced it. The soul and the will could only carry a body so far on sheer ethereal force alone. Her feet shuffled instead of stepped and she had to toss her pack aside just to keep from falling over. Then the rifle was tossed and she tried calling out for Josh one more time but nothing audible sounded. She collapsed.
When she opened her eyes, she saw a cabin or maybe a space ship or her old room situated near the stream, nestled against an embankment with a dirt road running across it and surrounded by trees that shimmered with fluorescent light and prismatic rays. Whatever it was disappeared under a blurring cloud of soot and spark as if it were blasting off or exploding, and then the blackness overwhelmed her. There along the ridge above the stream the wind paid no notice to Leah, blowing over the grass and through the trees and over her motionless body as if she had always been there.
There was pain. Pain in death? She felt it in her head and in her extremities. Her arm moved, or so she thought as her deadweight body seemed unresponsive to her commands. It was quiet, and warm. There was faint light shining across wood slat walls that originated from the back corner of the room. The air was stale, humid. As her vision returned she craned her head to see where she was. The few windows in the room were completely sealed black.
It appeared to be a cabin, a very small one. A cobwebbed fireplace was imbedded on the far side wall. The light she noticed was emanating from a surprisingly minute object in the corner of the room, and next to it was Josh’s pack and rifle. Leah tried to move and realized something was stuck in her arm and she put a hand to it. A plastic wrap the size of a fist hung out of bandage attached to her skin. It looked like it had liquid in it at some point but was empty now.
Leah peeled it back until it was removed and tossed it to the floor as a droplet of blood seeped from where a needle had been. Her head pounded but the sickness that had ravaged her body seemed to have waned considerably. She had energy and an appetite but remained incredibly weak. There was no way of knowing how long she had been there, but she had a vague feeling it had been days. Whatever had been administered to her must have fought off her sickness, for she felt far better than she remembered.
There was a single door behind her and to the right that was slightly ajar. She heard footsteps on the floorboards in the adjacent room and the door swung open.
Someone stepped through with their head down in thought, but she could not seem him well and the light created a dark shadow on half of his features. When he noticed Leah was awake he hastily pulled something down over his face before edging back into the darkened room. Leah was terrified and slunk back against the wall, "Who-who are you? Where am I?"
The figure came back into the room as he rubbed his hands nervously. He stopped with his back to the light and appeared as a living shadow. He was wearing some kind of tattered uniform that seemed to shift and move and play tricks with her eyes, or maybe she was still hallucinating. He pulled something out of a sash that was attached to his hip, shook it and then held it out as an offer. Leah didn’t say anything and didn’t move. He took a step forward and tried offering it again as if she'd suddenly change her mind. Finally he gave up and slid it over to her.
"Please, say something," she said. "Anything. Who are you?”
No answer. Then the man went over to Josh’s pack and opened it, taking out an energy bar and studied it by the light. Then he spun around and tried giving it to her, and this time Leah sat up a bit. She was hungry, and at the same time realized she was feeling surprisingly better overall. She nodded and he tossed the food over.
After a couple small bites she curiously looked down and picked up the small packet he had slid over. It was difficult to see and she bent it towards the light which revealed a small symbol and the cryptic writing she had seen on the can Josh had shown her earlier.
Leah tore the top open and sniffed it. It gave off an odd odor but it smelled good, a dense sweetness like a blooming flower in the middle of a humid summer. She squeezed it and took a tiny taste, then ate the rest of it and sat back, eyeing the man who was still watching her with interest.
He cleared his throat, “Knicte bosh. Vajo mak rhem.” His voice was clear, deep, and his pronunciations came out sharp as knives.
“I-I don’t, I don’t understand what you’re saying.”
“Knicte bosh.” He said, touching his chest.
“Knicte...bosh?”
He nodded, “Knicte bosh, mak rhem?” he asked, motioning towards her.
“Um, I’m Leah. Leah Mogens.”
“Lee-ah? Mohens.” He said, his accent warping the sound of her name.
She nodded. Then he said, “Tei mak oos, eh...jaynke. Nuhn, nuhn.” He stepped near the door to the other room and pointed to it as he pushed it open. Leah realized that he wanted her to see something, so she slowly swung her legs down and stood up. Her head pounded like the pressure inside was ready to burst out of her temples and the room swayed a bit, but she gathered herself as best she could. As she shuffled towards the door, Knicte backed away towards the tiny ball of light behind him to let her pass. She kept a wary eye on her new friend and then peeked around the corner.
She gasped and couldn’t believe what she was seeing.
“Josh!” She scurried into the dimly lit room and fell to her knees at his bedside. He was sleeping, or unconscious, but alive. There were bandages on his face, torso and over his eyes, and his leg was in some kind of splint. A small vial hung from his arm with tape across the point where the needle entered the skin.
She brushed his hair back and kissed his face, his nose, his lips. She clung to him and didn’t want to let go. Whatever would happen from now on didn’t matter; she just didn’t want to be without him. She wiped her tears and saw Knicte standing as a dark figure in the doorway.
Leah put Josh’s hand to her face and kissed it, “I’m sorry,” she whispered. “I’m so sorry. I messed everything up, it’s my fault, it’s my fault, not yours ... ” She held his limp hand and kissed it and ran her fingers over his hair and felt so pitiful and responsible for nearly killing him. The sickness she had no control over, but she could have tried harder, she could have sucked it up and pushed through whatever he asked of her. She’d walk a hundred miles now if it meant he didn’t have to be lying here like this. And the book. Had she had just done what he said ... no, Josh wasn’t a horrible person. She was, for being so selfish.
Then Kn
icte appeared in the doorway, waving and calling her over in a hushed tone, “Ku lo!”
Leah watched Josh’s sleeping face a moment longer. Knicte said something again and drew her attention, wanting her to come back in the other room. She kissed Josh’s forehead before following Knicte into the next room. She had to trust him now that he was responsible for saving both of their lives. He stood awkwardly on the other side of the room, trying to face away from the light like an admonished child.
“Why don’t you want me to see you?” She asked. He turned to look at her and as the light reached his face, she could see the mask he wore. Leah put a hand to her mouth with a mix of surprise and horror. The mask was the color of natural skin, but clearly not real, and the features were fair and very much that of human design. There was nothing alien about it save for the fact it was entirely artificial. Knicte’s real eyes were exposed in the sockets of the mask, which were simply holes fashioned for the wearer. The mouth on the mask was shaped plainly, no emotion, no smile or frown, just a slit to allow some airflow or to minimize muffled speech.
Despite the lack of real facial features, his eyes spoke multitudes to Leah as she watched them carefully. They were sad, pained, tired and worried all at once. Leah felt sorry for him and she motioned to take the mask off, and he cast his eyes away and ignored her. Then he sat down and produced a marker and began drawing on the floor as he grabbed the light in the room to help better illuminate what he wanted to show Leah.
Leah stepped closer as he drew furiously, and when he was done she looked down and saw what he had written. There was a circle which she surmised was the planet they were on, and it included sketched continents she didn’t recognize. In orbit was an outline of their shuttle, and a line running from it and curving down into the planet. The drawing was very close to their actual shuttle and she figured he must have seen it at some point, either upon landing or at the crash site itself.
Knicte pointed at it, then her, waiting for a response. She nodded.
Knicte sighed as if she reaffirmed something he already assumed was true. Leah reached her hand out for the marker and he slowly gave it to her with curiosity. Leah started a line from the back of the shuttle and dragged it clear across the room and finished by sketching earth. Knicte stood to watch her and shone the small light to illuminate what she had done.
He said in awe, “Rhckta as lo nierheto?”
Emboldened, Leah decided to draw a sketch of the machine, and she sketched it with a weapon firing, making sounds as she drew the projectiles flying out. She looked up at Knicte hoping he would respond, “Are there more? More?” She circled her hands around it before pointing towards the window, “Out there?”
Knicte held his hand out for the marker this time, his eyes hard with contempt and bent over next to his planet and dragged a different line towards the other side of the room before finishing with the sketch of a third planet.
Leah covered her mouth, “Oh my God...” Then Knicte went back to his planet and sketched ships, large and small, and struck marks all over the continents. He spun back around and waved his hand out, “Vishne! Ako vishne!” He pounded his chest and his voiced quivered with emotion, “Nymen elto aga vlet! Vlet di maninko de!”
Leah backed away by the sheer emotion in his voice, a trembling mess of anger and sorrow. Knicte hung his head in anguish, then turned and grabbed Leah’s rifle off the ground. “No, no, wait.” She said, “Don’t need to do that, ok? Put it down!”
Knicte expertly brought it up to his shoulder and aimed down at the machine drawn on the floorboards and pretended to fire. Still pointing the gun downward he faced Leah with a cold look in his eyes, “Pel anigme. Akos.”
Josh moaned from the other room and Leah went to him, “Josh?” He couldn’t see from the bandage covering his eyes and his hands groggily searched the air. “I’m right here,” she said, holding his hand. “I’m right here.”
He licked his leather dry lips, “Water”.
Leah brushed past Knicte and sorted through her pack, grabbing the last water and bringing it to him. Josh gulped half of the water down before experiencing a bout of coughing. Josh whispered as he felt for her hand, “What happened ...”
She held his hand tight, “Just rest, we’re fine now. Everything’s going to be okay.”
He heard the floorboards creak in the other room, “What was that?”
“There’s someone here ...”
Josh tried to sit up, “Who?”
“Stop, it’s okay, he saved us. He’s not going to hurt anyone.”
“He? Who is he?”
“I don’t know, he uh, he’s some kind of soldier I think.”
“He’s not a machine?”
“No. He’s wearing a mask and won’t let me see his face. Listen. I think he knows what happened here, with the planet. He can help us!”
“How can you be sure ...?”
“We don’t really have a choice, Josh. Maybe there are others that he can take us to, he can’t be alone right?”
“Do you trust him?”
“Yes,” she said and she lovingly ran her hand over his head. “We have to.”
“Ok,” he sighed. “I trust you,” he took her hand. “Leah?”
“Yes?”
“I thought I’d never see you again. When the water came,” he swallowed hard and spoke hoarsely, “all I could think was that I let you down. You don’t deserve to be here, Leah. You were meant for something better than this.”
She took his hand and pressed it against her wet cheek, “I don’t deserve anything Josh. God gives and God takes, and he’s given us a special place in the world. I wouldn’t want to be anywhere else but with you. We can do this together, as long as we have each other we can do anything. I promise. I promise...” She kissed his hand over and over until Knicte appeared in the doorway and called for her.
He motioned for her to come back in the other room, “Akos. Ki lo, Lee-ah.”
“I’ll be back,” she said, kissing his lips. He kissed back and they stayed there until Leah slowly pulled away. Josh’s pain immediately diffused with the butterflies that ran through his stomach and the sense of joy for having her by his side again. It was a narcotic greater than any medication their new friend had given him.
Leah walked past Knicte as if he wasn’t there, a quivering frown on her face as the thought of losing Josh again was too devastating to consider. He lay broken and vulnerable and with nothing left except for her now.
As she entered the room there was a small electronic station set up near the light Knicte had set up. He motioned for her to take a look and they both sat near the array of alien gadgets. There was a hand-size monitor that was displaying a holographic three dimensional, wire-frame view of something geographic. It appeared to be a map. A power source base was attached underneath, and next to that about twelve inches high was a black pyramid with a domed tip.
He used his hands to touch the hologram and manipulate the view in mid-air, spinning it, zooming out, spinning it some more. As the wire frame outlines converged into smaller vertices, she was capable of seeing a much more refined image. It was actively mapping their surrounding environment in real time. The stream outside was visible now along with the adjacent embankment and trees, and then what looked like a curved road. It was a device that created a lifelike representation of the world outside their cabin.
Knicte pulled the view back further, maybe a mile radius and it took a moment to compute the new objects. On the road, to the southwest, a humanoid object highlighted in red was moving in a northeasterly direction. Towards them.
“What is it?” She asked. Knicte looked at her with those dark, tired eyes and then tapped at the sketch of the machine.
“Wait, does it know we’re here?”
Knicte put his index finger to the plastic mouth of his mask. Then he stood and pulled back some material on the floor she never noticed before. He reached down and grabbed a scoped rifle that looked strange to her, even though sh
e wasn’t very familiar with weapons it obviously was not like the ones her and Josh used.
Knicte grabbed the handle to the door leading outside, then pointed to her rifle and said, “Oh-kay?”
“The rifle?”
He opened the door slightly and then impatiently waved her on, “Ki lo!”
“I uh, I should stay here,” she pointed to herself then at the ground, “and take care of Josh, him ...” she pointed towards the other room.
Knicte briskly walked to her rifle, grabbed it and then jammed it into her hands, “Ki lo, ki lo. Adint!” He pressed his hand a couple times at Josh as if to say he’ll be fine. The red outline was closer to their cabin now. Okay, she thought, you wouldn’t go through all this trouble to save us and then get us killed.
“Okay,” she said, standing up. “Lead the way.”
Once they stepped outside, Leah squinted as her eyes tried to adjust from the darkness. The afternoon sun was blazing over her and the interior of the cabin had been so light-proofed, it felt like perpetual twilight in there. Knicte led the way and she tried to keep up, her body still weak. It didn’t help that the colors of his clothing shifted dynamically with his surroundings.
A Cold Black Wave Page 14