by Beck, Greig
Human, but Then Again Not
I think it’s a dead whale.’ Becky sipped at the remaining warm water in the greasy looking plastic bottle.
Edward grunted. ‘Maybe.’ He walked along the line of chalk-white ribs. ‘Maybe once it was. Maybe it started out as a whale… but it’s not a sea creature anymore. Hey, did you know whales actually started out as land creatures?’
Becky turned her mouth down and shrugged.
Edward nodded and reached out to run his hand along a thick bone. ‘Sure. It was called an Ambulocetus, looked a little like a furred alligator, and was only about ten feet long. It developed a taste for shellfish, and the rest is history.’
Becky sipped again and motioned with her head towards the long line of bones. ‘Well this baby is more than ten feet long – more like a hundred.’
Edward nodded. ‘Hmm, maybe it thought it safer to try its luck back on land. Done a complete evolutionary about-face – re-evolved the ability to walk on its limbs.’ He looked around. ‘I wonder if this was an ancient seabed?’
Becky scoffed. ‘Safer on land? What the hell would scare this giant enough into wanting to drag itself out of the water.’
Edward grinned at her, an image of a giant whale-like creature running up out of the sea, chased by something even bigger lurking in the depths. ‘No, I meant it would have taken a lot of generations, and perhaps some forced mutations along the way. I reckon a million years ought to have done it. Besides, it might have been pollution, sea warming or a hundred other things, rather than predation, and…’
‘I don’t care. Let’s keep going, I’m boiling to death.’ Becky started walking away.
Edward had wrapped his shirt around his head; his shoulders were now pink from the sun. He caught up, walking beside her for a few moments and examining her face. ‘You okay?’
She looked at him, her cheeks glistening with perspiration. ‘You’re gonna have sunburn tomorrow.’
‘Thanks Mom. But seriously, are you…’
‘Yes, yes; just freaking hot and uncomfortable. We’ve been walking for hours, and I’m super tired.’ She didn’t look at him but he noticed her bottom lip was trembling.
‘Don’t worry Becky; we’ll come to the forest soon, and hopefully find some shelter. We just need to keep following the tracks. The soldiers did it, and Arn managed to cross this desert with nothing but his determination.’
She looked at him and smiled, her eyes seeming to shine in her red face. ‘I hope so. I didn’t think we’d be walking this far, and I’m just about out.’ She held her water bottle up and jiggled it. It had about a single sip left.
Edward’s mouth dropped open. ‘You’re kidding me? Weren’t you rationing?’
She pulled a face, giving him a look suggesting he was a dimwit. ‘No-oo. No one told me to.’ She finished it and threw the bottle onto the sand.
He raced after it and picked it up. ‘We might need this. What do you expect to find in the forest, a 7-Eleven? Even if we find water, you’re going to need take some with you.’ She didn’t acknowledge him. ‘Where will you keep it? In your mouth?’
Becky increased her pace, leaving him behind. He shook his head. Ooh boy, Princess Rebecca and her faithful hand-servant, Edward . He sighed and pulled his shirt turban down over his eyes and plodded on.
*
Albert Harper tried to make himself as inconspicuous as possible as Colonel Marion Briggs walked up and down the double line of Special Forces soldiers. Each stood a head taller than her. The man standing at the front was another six inches on top of the tallest person, and seemed to be her second in charge. He had a stare that was pure psychopath.
Briggs half turned from them, and put a finger to the small stud in her ear before she spoke. Her words were loud so she could be heard over the screaming wind.
‘Images?’ She nodded. ‘Sound… life lines?’ She grunted. ‘Good work.’ She then turned to Albert Harper who stood white faced at the opposite side of the tunnel.
Harper’s coat flapped and he held it down. The air was rushing inside the tunnel now, being pulled from both directions of the huge particle collision ring, and drawn to the oily spot hanging in the air. The tear in time and space was now large as a truck tire and looking like a toothless mouth – a hungry devouring mouth, waiting for its next meal.
‘Count yourself lucky, Harper. I need you here in the event we need to technologically enforce an emergency exit strategy.’ Her mouth turned down. ‘Whatever the hell that might be.’
She half turned away from him and roared over her shoulder. ‘Final weapons check.’
There came the rapid sound of metal and ceramic clips, slots and barrels being opened and slid back, of ammunition rounds, gas canisters and grenades being counted off, and bodies snapping back to attention. It all lasted only a few seconds.
Briggs turned, and walked up and down the line of soldiers, stopping now and then to stare into a face of one or another and speak a few words.
‘Samson, no quarter.’ The brutal man nodded.
‘Teacher, you’re on my three at all time.’ This man looked both formidable and intelligent – probably an even more lethal combination.
Briggs walked on, hands clasped behind her back, her voice raised and her jaw set.
‘This country is ours. We own it. We paid for it with our blood and our fore-father’s blood, and by god, we’ll rip a hole in anyone or anything that tries to take it away from us.’ She paused.
‘HUA!’ the Delta’s yelled as one. The word sounded like hooah, and was all a soldier needed to respond with, and all a leader ever wanted to hear. It was the combat professional’s shorthand for Heard, Understood and Acknowledged.
She continued pacing along the line and then stopped to turn and face Harper. ‘We own this goddamn beautiful country… now, tomorrow, and in the future forever and ever, Amen.’ She grinned cruelly at scientist. ‘Let’s just make sure that those assholes in the future are clear on that.’
‘HUA!’
Briggs turned to the gaping maw hanging in space, sucking in air and anything else not tied down. She balled her fists, and uttered a single ‘forwa-aard’, and sprinted at the dark void, leaping and disappearing in an instant.
Samson roared the same command over the banshee sound of the wind. ‘On the double – forward.’ He lowered a shoulder and ran, almost as if he expected to strike something that needed to be battered down.
Harper guessed the giant soldier approached every problem the same way. He silently watched, as two by two the several dozen black clad warriors leapt into the void. He shook his head and sighed.
‘Look out Arn, your saviors are coming… whether you like it or not.’
*
Edward stood swaying slightly, feeling like he was on the deck of a ship, pitching and rolling in a swell, instead of the dry sands of a desert that was once Illinois. He knew it was just his balance going due to dehydration – his vision was blurring as well. His water supply was gone, the last few mouthfuls given over to Becky, who was probably in an even worse state.
He inhaled the dry air – he could smell earth, and in the distance there was a dark line that could have been mountains, or trees, or nothing but a shimmering trick of the light played out on the endless grains of quartz and silica.
He tried to swallow the dry lump in his throat. His heart hammered under his ribs, keeping beat with a pounding in his head. They staggered on, sometimes falling down, and then using up precious energy dragging themselves back to their feet.
The dark line was closer – not a mirage then.
‘What is it?’ Becky was gripping his forearm, not letting go, using him as a crutch.
He squinted into the distance. ‘I, I don’t know. But I think it’s supposed to be a barrier. Maybe to stop us.’ He swallowed a
gain, and blinked. ‘Oh no.’ He felt the lump in his throat descend an inch or two, but threaten to immediately come back up, dragging with it a ball of sick.
What they had originally taken to be a stand of trees, or even some sort of wall, had turned out to be row after row of upright crosses, each with a body of some tortured being lashed to it.
‘There must be hundreds of them.’ He looked along the fence line of brutalized bodies.
Becky’s fingers dug into his arm like claws. ‘They’re like scarecrows.’
He nodded. That was exactly what they looked like. ‘And we’re the crows.’ He took a few more steps, and squinted up at the things. Their bodies looked strange – human, but then again, not.
Edward started to approach, but Becky held on, digging her heels into the sand. He tugged at her. ‘Let’s get closer – I want to take a better look.’
He had to drag her with him. She complained, but in the end knew they had to go forward, and fast – one way or the other, they needed to make it to the forest – they could never hope to trek back across the sands to the tunnel now without any water.
He plodded forward another twenty feet and stopped. ‘What the hell is that? A man with a wolf’s head?’ He rubbed his eyes, not believing what he was seeing.
‘Maybe it’s wearing a mask, or they stuck it on.’ Becky’s voice was little more than a squeak at his shoulder.
Edward’s scientific interest was piqued, and his intellect urged him on. He just needed to convince his legs and feet to agree and stop trembling beneath him. Taking another few steps, he stood close to the first cross, looking up.
The figure was shaped like a man, but bigger. Edward estimated about six and a half feet. Its body seemed normal – chest pectorals, stomach muscles, and arms and legs that were long-limbed and strong, but the whole thing was covered in a light sheen of fur. He grimaced; in this, as in most of the bodies, deep cuts and blue bruising ravaged the skin and fur. The figures were obviously dead, and flies feverishly jostled with each other over the wounds, eyes and mouth.
‘Yuck, I can smell them.’
Edward ignored her, and walked to the next figure, this one suffering a deep slash from the side of the face all the way down its torso. Sticky blood still coated its legs and dripped to the sand a few feet below its trussed feet.
‘Looks like they were tortured, and I don’t think they were all dead when they were strung up. Why were they staked out here? Were they meant to be a warning, or were they meant to die facing something in the desert?’ He went to reach up, and Becky grabbed his arm.
‘Don’t. Please don’t touch it, Edward. Maybe they had been cast out because they had a disease, or they were criminals… or maybe they deserved it somehow.’
Edward pulled his arm away, and looked at her with disbelief, before turning back to the creature on the cross. ‘A disease that was probably on the end of a sword or axe I’d say. Look at the wounds on him – at the wounds on all of them. These guys look like a vanquished army. Genghis Khan did the same thing to his enemies.’ He looked at her again. ‘And no one deserves something like this.’
Edward reached out again, this time placing his hand on the creature’s foot. The thing immediately jerked as if shocked, and lifted its head, screaming out words at the sky in a language Edward had no hope of understanding. He fell backwards, colliding with Becky and dragging them both to the ground.
They scrabbled backwards on the sand, both breathing heavily and their eyes fixed on the wolf-being.
The creature opened its weary bloodshot eyes and looked down at them. The light-colored orbs told of pain and suffering on an unimaginable level, but the mouth and lips still worked to form words. Only two made any sense.
‘Arnoddr Siggar.’
Edward stood again and hurried forward, clasping the creature’s foot and looking up into its pained face. The thing repeated the words.
‘Arnoddr Siggar.’
‘I think he’s saying… ‘ Edward breathed the words back to the creature. ‘Arnold Singer?’
The wolf-man stared for several seconds, and then its body started to shake. It slowly lifted its face to the sun, sucked in one last deep breath, and roared out a single word.
‘Valhalla-aaa!’ The word stretched and as it ended, the creature’s eyes closed, and the head slumped back to its chest.
‘It’s Arn. They know him.’ Edward turned to Becky. ‘Come on.’
*
Briggs was thirsty, and the black coveralls attracted significant heat regardless of the cutting-edge technology designed to draw away moisture and ventilate the body – there was only so much military science could do to keep you cool in temperatures over a hundred and ten degrees and humidity of around zero
The double line of men and woman marched at a pace close to five miles per hour – nearly jogging speed. They’d been keeping it up in silence for over four hours, and would continue to do so for many more. The recon told them there was fifty miles to cover and still twenty or so to go – they needed to cross at speed, without shelter, and without rest. And by the time they reached the tree line they still needed to be able to run, and fight.
Briggs smiled; every single one of her team would do it with ease. She heard the dry crunching sound of their boots on the sand closing on her from behind and she gritted her teeth; she needed to stay out in front. She was the squad leader; she was the one who led by example.
Damned heat, she thought, and put her head down to push herself a little harder.
*
Out on the sand plains, the two figures shimmered in the oppressive heat as they approached the tree line.
The huge bodied creatures watched, jostling and moving with excitement behind the trunks of trees.
One of the Panterran reached up high to dig black claws into one of the Lygon forearms, and hiss up at the figure towering above it.
‘Mogahrr wants them alive – she has lost too many Man-Kind and will not take kindly to losing more.’
The orange and black creature bared its teeth, but nodded its enormous head and made motions to it companions to press themselves back behind the trees.
The two small figures ran the last few hundred feet, laughing at their good fortune and escape from the heat of the desert.
Chapter 15
They’re Different
I’m itchy.’ Grimson hunched his shoulders and pulled a sour face.
Arn looked down at him, pulled him closer and turned his shoulders to look at his back. The scarring from the bat creature’s attack had healed over. The scar was still pink and uneven, but it was closed and there was no infection.
‘Don’t worry about it. It’s probably just the new skin getting used to all your movement.
Grim shook his head. ‘No, all over me – I’m itchy all over. It’s too hot.’
‘Oh that. Yeah, me too.’ The oppressive heat was stifling – even though it must have only been in the high eighties, the humidity compounded the discomfort.
They had been following the river, staying a hundred feet or so in from its bank for safety. In some places it was as silent as a whisper, and others there was a thundering as if it was rushing over rocks and boulders. Now, as they crept through the thick bushes and ferns, there came a faint roar from just up ahead.
He listened for another moment, and then half turned. ‘Let’s have a quick look at the river, and see if it’s any safer. Besides, that small lump we originally saw from the cliff tops is suddenly looking like a mountain. If the river started on top of it, then what we can hear is a fall of water, and that my young friend, means a bath.’
‘No bath.’ Grim turned away.
Arn shook his head. ‘We’ll see. C’mon, let’s go.’ He burrowed through the enormous leaves and vines, Grimson trailing behind him, thwacking at the
hanging plants with a stick. The going was getting tougher nearer the river, and after a short while, sweat ran from every pore, joining with the sticky sap, plant debris, and slow moving gnats to coat his body.
After twenty minutes of working his way close to the sound of the water, he saw the jungle brightening, and soon they had broken out of the dense undergrowth, and stood just behind the final veil of jungle vines. The hanging trees acted like a curtain, giving them a final bit of concealment so they could investigate their surroundings.
As Arn had hoped, the river they had been following pooled on broken rock at the base of a cliff. The fifty feet of sheer rock was scoured clean of plants, and looking up he could see the thick river pouring over the lip high above. Mist lifted off the falling water to sparkle momentarily in the sunshine before settling onto the giant green fronds of palms and tree ferns at the water’s edge.
At the centre of the pool was a boiling cauldron of white water that spewed away from the downfall. Jagged rocks poked up from the froth like dark teeth, and the torrent would have been far too heavy for them to get any closer. At its edges, there were shallow overflow pools that were not connected to the river. He hoped that a quick dip might have been safe. As safe as anything could be in this crazy world, he thought. He might even be lucky enough to catch some fish, as he was getting tired of trapping the small elephant like rats from the jungle floor. He’d keep that to himself for now; fish and Wolfen did not mix.
‘Wait here.’ He cautiously stepped from behind the vines, Grimson immediately following him.
Arn turned. ‘Hey!’
Grimson just shook his head, in a no way I’m staying-type gesture. Arn had to keep reminding himself that only a short while ago the young Wolfen was a prince, and rarely got orders from anyone other than the King and Queen.