"Seems like the little ones aren't as immune," Marco said, pointing at the charred corpses of the baby marauders.
"Poor babies!" Kemi said.
"Poor babies who tried to eat me!" Marco said.
His communicator crackled to life. This time it was Lailani, speaking from the bridge above.
"Um, guys?" she said. "I swear I did not pull the plasma strand. But a few seconds ago, this ship belched out enough fire to burn a small solar system."
Marco raised his flashlight, pointing at the massive organ which had once contained the fire. It was cold, dark, and pierced with a bullet hole.
"Amazing!" Kemi said. "Another defense mechanism! When the plasma supply threatens to burn the ravager from within, she spews it all out into space. Like a human vomiting a meal when the body detects poison. These are truly amazing animals."
Marco winced. "Except now, twenty of these amazing animals are chasing us through space, only a day or so away. And we have no more plasma."
Both turned toward Ben-Ari. She stood beside them, very still, very silent, staring at the pierced organ. Finally she spoke, voice strained.
"Bring a medical kit."
It was almost comical, Marco thought. They stitched up the bullet hole. They placed a bandage on the wound. They hoped the plasma would return into the organ, refill it with fury. But the sack, once containing the ravager's wrath, shrank and shriveled. Finally it dangled like a wrinkled skin tag. The heart still pumped. The lungs still breathed. But the fire was gone.
They all rejoined Lailani on the bridge. They stared together at the viewport. Twenty healthy ravagers still flew in pursuit. Faster, closer than ever.
"We have a day," Lailani said. "Two at most. Then they'll reach us. And we have no more plasma to fight with."
Marco felt them all staring at him. Suddenly, he missed being just the guy who had forgotten the food.
"What do we do now?" Kemi finally whispered. "If we can't reach the Ghost Fleet . . ." She covered her face with her palms, shivering.
I didn't just doom us, Marco thought. I doomed Addy. I doomed humanity. He returned to the deck, and he sat in despair. The clock ticked down.
CHAPTER SEVEN
After the longest, most miserable days in Addy's life, the massive transport ship thumped down. Its engines died, and Addy knew: We're on Earth.
Days? Yes, perhaps only days—torturous, suffocating days in the heat, the stench. Days of the feeding tube stuffed down her throat, pumping her full of gruel. Days of her fellow rebels hanging around her, their hands severed, another one dying every few hours. Days of human waste dripping down her widening thighs, of a ship full of wretches, crying out, naked, shaved, filthy. Days of agony before the inevitable slaughter. Days? Yes, perhaps only days. Perhaps weeks. Perhaps eras of empires rising and falling. Time had no meaning here. But however long this time had stretched, it had come to an end.
They were home. And that terrified Addy more than a thousand feeding tubes.
When the cattle car stops moving, the cows are slaughtered.
As the engines fell silent, the human agony seemed so much louder. From all across the ship, the thousands cried out. Some prayed. Most screamed. A baby cried, perhaps the one born on the ship.
Marauders crept across the ceiling and walls, ripping the webs that had bound the prisoners during their journey. Half fell as corpses. Grant, still alive, thumped onto the ground. His stumps leaked fresh blood. The veteran groaned, opened his one eye, stared at Addy, then lost consciousness. Marauders laughed, lifted him, and carried him out.
Addy tried to call after him, but the feeding tube still stretched down her throat. For days now, it had been pumping her full of gruel. For days, her body had been growing, stretching the webs that held her. Finally, a marauder grabbed the tube and yanked it out. It came free like a tapeworm, flailing in protest, spurting out its gruel. Addy gagged, vomited, coughed, and nearly passed out. Every breath was a struggle.
Claws ripped her webs, and she fell to the floor. She took deep, ragged breaths, and stars floated before her eyes. Her body shivered, covered in bruises and welts where the webs had pressed against her. Her muscles and joints screamed in agony. The journey couldn't have been too long; she was not obese yet, not a quivering ball of flesh. But her limbs were wider, her belly softer, plumped for a feast.
So much for my hockey career, she thought, then burst out laughing, then wept.
"Nice and plump for the feeding," hissed Orcus. The marauder crept toward her, licking his chops. "Delectable. Soon Lord Malphas will dine. And I will feast upon the scraps." He licked Addy. "I will enjoy you."
On his side, his parasitic twin cackled, jaw snapping. "Feast, feast!"
Orcus lifted her. Addy was too weak to resist. The marauder moved on four legs, carrying her with the other two, and they left the cell. As they climbed up a shaft, the parasitic twin—Addy had nicknamed it Bitey—kept scratching her, drawing blood, and licking her leg.
Orcus carried her onto a higher deck. Thousands of humans were still here, naked, feverish, covered in their own waste. The marauders had opened the hatch, exposing the outside world, and lowered a ramp. The deck, however, was so crowded that people could barely squeeze out.
"Move!" shouted a marauder on the ceiling.
"Out, out!"
Orcus tossed Addy into the crowd. "Out and line up, maggots!"
She banged into other prisoners. With gravity restored, the deck was even more crowded. The dead lay on the floor, dozens, maybe hundreds of corpses. Elders. A baby. Some humans were pinned to the walls, still alive but crushed, crying out, suffocating. They were jammed into the ship like too many pickles in a jar. One by one, prisoners managed to trickle outside into the sunlight, but it was slow business. Limbs were tangled together. The living fell over the dead.
"Move!" the marauders screeched, grabbing prisoners and yanking them out.
Some humans had spent the entire journey pinned to the walls. Their skin had stuck to the metal with sweat, blood, and dry shit; the marauders had to rip them off with claws.
Addy took a step. Another step. Everything ached, and her thighs rubbed together; they had never rubbed together before. Covered with filth, blinking, weak, maybe dying, she shuffled through the crowd toward the sunlight.
As she walked, she placed her hand against the strands of marauder webs still wrapped around her torso. She felt it there. And even through the pain, Addy smiled.
Hidden inside the webs, pressed against her bloated body, it waited. A marauder tooth. Orcus's tooth. A blade harder than steel. It was the length of her thigh. It was a weapon. And she would use it before the end.
She trudged over corpses and out into the light. For a moment she stood, raised her head, and just breathed.
Earth. I'm home. I'm home.
Blue skies spread above her. The air stank of the aliens and prisoners, but she recognized it at once as Earth air, not the acidic, thick air of New Earth. Soil crumbled beneath her feet, and weeds rustled in the wind. This was an ugly place, a place where death dwelled, where blood and human waste soaked the ground, where humans were slaves, awaiting butchery. But it was still her home, and that gave her hope.
Standing with the thousands, she looked around. The ship loomed behind her, a massive black box, still spilling out its human cargo. The sun beat down overhead. It was noon. Farther away, Addy saw the ruins of a city. Skyscrapers rose, some smoking, some in ruins, ending with jagged crowns. Addy frowned. Could it be . . . ?
She gasped. Yes. Even in its ravaged state, there was no mistaking this skyline.
She stood outside Toronto, her hometown.
Her mind reeled. How could it be? Out of all the cities in the world, they took her home? Even after the war against the scum, there were still thousands of cities on Earth. What were the odds of the marauders bringing Addy back to her city?
Then she understood.
I'm food for Lord Malphas himself, she thought. The marauders told
me so. The ruler of the marauders. From here in Toronto, we rose. Me. Kemi. Marco. The heroes of the war against the scum, those who toppled that empire of centipedes. Of course Malphas would set his headquarters here. Where humanity had risen to defeat the scum, the marauders would see us fall.
Once more, the marauders marched them in lines. More alien starships were thumping down in the distance, and more humans were emerging, also naked and bald. Other lines of prisoners, tens of thousands long, stretched out from Toronto's ruins, snaking for kilometers across the fields.
So Earth no longer fights, Addy thought. We lost the war. She kept her hand pressed against her hidden weapon. But I will still fight.
The marauders led their captives through the fields. Barbed wire fences stretched along each line, forming tunnels of blades, preventing escape. Some humans still tried to flee, willing to lacerate their flesh for a chance at freedom, only for the marauder webs to catch them, to drag them back into line, their skin in tatters. Addy kept walking with the others. The time to fight would come, but not here, not yet. Not with hundreds of marauders still around them.
She lost sight of Grant. She marched between the barbed wire fences, traveling with thousands. All these roads of metal and misery led through the mud toward a great complex in the wilderness. Metal fences rose high, topped with more barbed wire, and a gateway loomed ahead, bedecked with skulls.
"Go on, move it!" A marauder lashed a strand of web woven with metal spikes, ripping into prisoners' backs. "Through the gates! Into your new home."
As Addy stepped closer to the gate, she raised her eyes and gazed at the skulls. Human skulls. The tops sawed open, the brains consumed. The eye sockets gazed down at her, jaws open in silent screams. A three-headed marauder perched above this lurid gate, drool dripping, legs twisting, a guardian of this hell.
Around the gateway, the fence crackled, and the hairs rose on Addy's nape. This was an electric fence. Several human corpses clung to it, their skin seared onto the metal, their flesh blackened. Perhaps they had tried to climb, to escape what awaited Addy inside. Perhaps they had committed suicide. It reminded her of a concentration camp, the kind she had seen in history books, back from the days before space travel when humanity had faced no natural predators, instead preying upon itself.
"Go!" The marauder with the whip lashed her back. Addy kept walking, hand on her hidden weapon, and passed through the gate.
She paused, looked around, and knew at once: This was no concentration camp. It was a slaughterhouse.
They marched her down a road through the complex. Barbed wire still lined the fence, but it couldn't hide the view. The full terror of this place unfurled around her. Nausea filled Addy, and her fellow captives whimpered, wept, begged. Along the path, humans dangled upside down from hooks, moving on chains. They were still alive, squirming, pleading. As the moving chain passed over pits, marauders reached out and slit each human's throat. The blood gushed into the trench.
Addy gagged. As she walked along the line, she avoided eye contact with those being butchered. She didn't want to see any friends dying here. The whip lashed her back again.
"Keep looking," rasped the marauder with the whip. "We want you to look. See your friends squirm as they die. Let the fear flood your brain." The alien licked his chops. "Fear makes the human brain so much more delicious."
Addy kept walking, unable to hide from the terrors alongside. Farther along her path, just beyond the barbed wire, human corpses were moving on assembly lines, drained of blood. Marauder workers hunched over the moving tracks. With their claws, they carved up the corpses, then packaged them in webs. Legs. Arms. Torsos. The severed heads were cracked open, the brains removed and packed separately, the skulls then cleaned and added to crates. Some of the humans were still alive, still twitching as the claws carved them.
"Meat, sweet meat!" the marauders chanted as they worked. "Crunchy bones and soft marrow, delicious skin and blood! Brains for the rich, flesh for the poor! Meals for conquerors! Meat, sweet meat!"
They were chanting in English. Chanting for the prisoners to understand. Chanting to flood the brains with terror.
Addy wanted to resist, wanted to keep her mind strong. But she couldn't help it. The terror flooded her, soaking her with cold sweat and shaking her limbs.
I never thought it would be possible, she thought. But I miss the scum.
The fresh arrivals kept walking along the path, passing through the slaughter, until the marauders corralled them onto a muddy field.
A huge network of cobwebs filled the field. Addy gasped.
Metal poles soared from the earth, taller than her apartment building back in Haven. Branches shot out from the poles, forming bridges and ladders, an entire town of jagged metal rods. And between the bars hung the cobwebs, countless strands, a forest of black, sticky webbing.
In this forest hung thousands of living humans, wrapped and bound, awaiting the slaughter.
Some of the humans were silent, maybe dying. Others wept, screamed, struggled, tried to free themselves but could not.
Many cobwebs were still empty, awaiting the prisoners of Haven.
"Move! In you go. Faster!"
Mud spread between the network of webs, and blood dripped from the prisoners above. The marauders corralled the new arrivals onto the field, cramming thousands together, then lifted them one by one. The aliens carried the captives up the cobwebs, adding them to the others.
Here, in these webs, we will await our turn on the assembly lines, Addy knew. Here we'll be kept fresh before they butcher us.
More people kept walking down the road, entering the muddy square between the cobwebs. Most were prisoners from Haven. But some were arrivals from other colonies; Addy could see the cargo ships in the distance. And thousands were coming here from the ruins of Toronto.
Addy stood, hand pressed against her side. The webs were starting to loosen around her torso. She kept tugging them back up, hiding her marauder tooth. Her only weapon. Her only hope. Around her, the marauders were plucking prisoners and carrying them onto the webs. The aliens sang as they worked, this time singing in their language, guttural and hissing and cruel. Some prisoners tried to fight, only to lose fingers and hands to the marauder mouths, to scream as the aliens added them to the cobwebs. Addy clenched her jaw as a marauder lifted Grant—the man was barely conscious—and carried him up a web.
Are you here too somewhere, Marco? she thought. Will I find you in this horror, or are you out there, still fighting?
"Come on, get up, buddy." The voice rose behind her. "Come on, you're stronger than this!"
Addy frowned. She knew that voice. She spun around, seeking its source, but the crowd was too thick. The marauders were shoving more and more captives onto the field, barely keeping up with their comrades who were carrying humans onto the cobwebs.
The voice rose again. "I swear, if you just lie on your ass, I'm going to kick it up to your ears. Come on, buddy, we gotta fight this. Come on, Stooge!"
Addy's eyes widened.
Her heart burst into a gallop.
"Steve," she whispered.
It was him. It had to be him. It was his voice, and who else would be talking to a useless lump of a friend named Stooge?
"Steve!" she cried, seeking him in the crowd, but couldn't see him. "Steve, you bonehead!"
She had met Steve eight years ago, when they had both been only seventeen. They had played hockey on opposing teams, and he had body checked her into the boards. She had responded by delivering a dozen punches to his head. Later that day, she had joined him in his bed, replacing punching and body checking with hot, sweaty sex.
Marco had never liked the guy. The two could not be more different. While Marco was no taller than Addy, Steve was something of a giant, towering and strong. While Marco was studious and intelligent, Steve could hardly be called a scholar; the best thing she could say about his brain was that he was probably safe from marauders. At least he was easy on the eyes—his jaw
wide, his eyes sparkling blue, his hair shining gold, his body chiseled. And Addy knew his heart was good, and she had loved him, after a fashion.
She hadn't seen Steve in two years, not since leaving for Haven with Marco. On her first day on Haven, Addy had regretted fleeing Earth, leaving Steve behind. Since then, she had missed his stinky, cluttered apartment, even missed his roommate Stooge who lived on the couch. And she missed Steve's arms around her. Missed feeling small, vulnerable, and safe in his embrace. With Marco and the others, Addy had always been the tall, strong one, the fierce warrior. Steve had always made her feel delicate and small, feel like a woman. For that she loved him.
"Steve!" she cried again. "Dumbass, where are you?"
His head popped up from the crowd twenty meters away. He gaped. "Addy?"
Across the field, the marauders were still grabbing humans, carrying them onto the webs above, and binding them there. Addy elbowed her way between the people still on the ground, approaching Steve. Bigger than almost anyone else here, he struggled to worm his way toward her. Finally they met in the crowd.
"Addy Fucking Linden!" Steve was naked, his head shaved, his body covered with scrapes and bruises. "Did they catch you too?"
"No, Steve, I'm only here for the Chinese buffet."
He looked around him, brow furrowed. "There's a buffet?"
Addy rolled her eyes. "Whichever marauder finally cracks open your skull will be deeply disappointed with his portion." She grabbed him. "Yes, they fucking caught me!"
Steve pulled her into his arms, and she leaned her head against his wide chest. He was so tall that her head barely reached his chin. For a moment, after so many days of terror, she felt safe. God damn it. Even after all this time, she still cared for the big dumb galoot.
"Hey." Steve furrowed his brow. "Did you gain a few pounds?"
She stepped back and raised her fist. "Watch it, or I'll drive a few pounds of knuckles into your teeth." She leaned in closer. "Listen, Steve. We're going to fight. I have a plan." She pulled back the webs that draped her hips, revealing the marauder tooth, then covered the weapon again. "Just stay near me."
Earth Shadows (Earthrise Book 5) Page 7