Another group was coming from the other direction. Isaic could tell it was one of them by the light reflecting from their leader. It was Zon. He had everyone chained together by hand. Boy, girl, boy, girl, ending in boy, the least likely needed to finish their goal of reproduction. Mass reproduction was possibly their only hope for survival on this planet when the world was to come to an end again and these Pasties could emerge victorious. What the humans were faced with here was bigger than life, almost surreal. Yes, they just won their third straight football title in a row, and war on the ball field proved to be easy for them, but this wasn’t high school football. This was the real deal. Their focus was on strength in numbers. They sat, patiently awaiting the rest of the students from their school to arrive.
The sound of Pasties marching ceased, and all was quiet within the cave. At this point, there was a distant screaming, extremely audible and high-pitched. The sounds of water sloshing and the vacant echoes of minerals against hard rock remained noiseless. A beckoning of some sort made the teens wonder if the Pasties were between them and the source of those who sounded like they needed help.
Zon, Isaic, Mariot, Rivers, Cruze, and Astor all sorted through their crews, deciding who was going to lead and who was going to pull up from the tail as an anchor. They singled out the ladies, except for the tomboy, tough ones, and kept them in the mix. This would make it harder for the Pasties to reach the heart of the groups’ survival as human beings. They all scuttled soundlessly, backs against the walls as they passed the teeming society of upset Pasties and into the tunnels that led to the noise of those in dismay. Like lighting the fuse to a stick of dynamite, they summoned those now behind by acting like they were thinking suicidal thoughts. Once through the mercury barrier, each found a weapon and armed themselves for battle. Tynan and his group were already silently waiting with weapons in hand. This booby trap was all set up for the Pasties. The souls of those from before were re-uniting with their selected bodies as the mounds of Pasties in the back were coming to life. Approaching from behind, the group of humans was surrounded. They banded together in the middle, creating a huddle with the meeker sex protected in the middle again as the tough outer shell all prepared for battle.
The first Pastie through the door was a little wobbly, as he was summoned by thoughts of suicide. His gems lit up the surrounding walls as Tynan thrust a spear-like section of wing into the gem holder. The stone fell out and landed on the ground as the other went out and the body tumbled over. That was too easy. It didn’t even fight back. Tynan felt a little guilty but remembered that there was no final review while in the center of Trendago in this underground devil’s playground of soul-seeking Pasties. Remorse was overcome by redemption. He waited patiently stalking his next victim. Finally, his hunting tactics had come of use in a different, needful sense.
Isaic pieced together a slingshot of some sort using the elastic webbing of luggage trapping net. He placed large pieces of oblong-shaped metal in the middle basket and pulled it back for when the next Pastie came through the holographic hollow. He looked over at Cruze who was busy erecting blow dart tubes large enough to accommodate nuts and bolts. He was going to try to shoot their eye-stones out with the apparatus.
The girls were advised to huddle to the back where a wall of boys could protect them. Like playing Capture the Flag, they were requested to think suicidal thoughts as hard and as deep as possible to attract their opponent. They were told to concentrate like they had never concentrated before. The Pasties would have to come all the way to the back corner if they hoped to conquer these humans.
Zon raced to the back of this 360-feet-long cave using his firebug lights to create visibility. There were more firebugs starlit on the far side of the cavern, their lights emitting a little visibility. He searched all over for anything that would serve as a mass destruction device to take out the remnants of the Pasties. He found something that they needed, something only he would be strong enough to handle.
The device was an Alset generator that could run off mineral water. It came from the heli-bus and was used to convert jet fuel into electricity along with the thrusts of the propellers generating dry cell activity. He dragged the Alset to the front of the cave, near the entryway. The first body of a fallen Pastie was dropped in a puddle at the base of the far wall by Mariot, who was the only one brave enough to approach the incoming Pasties. As he watched the generator dissolve the body, he thought to himself that he’d better not get too close because his body consisted of mineral water, too.
The first decoy Pastie was out of the way as the Alset de-energized the body by electrocuting it then incinerated the corpse. A soul floated out of the eye sockets and hovered overhead. It was trapped in this room also. It was the soul of the skater, Shane. He was trapped in this inner darkness where they were located, with no judgment to be found. The only bad part about it was that he was waiting for the next Pastie to get killed, and hopefully not incinerated, so he could rejoin with another body. Unfortunately, the risen bodies of the thirty Pasties—who brought all of this stuff in here in the first place and trapped themselves—were still hiding in the other dark corner. Shane’s soul swooped down and took form again with one of the bigger bodies. He was back in battle like a pawn reaching the opponent’s end of a chessboard. Isaic was well aware of this process, so he warned everyone to make sure the bodies got disposed of via the Alset.
As long as the Pasties were in soul form, they couldn’t do any damage to the living. It was only a mite uncomfortable for those who didn’t want to comprehend what was taking place. Nevertheless, the room quickly filled with lost souls floating at the top of the ceiling. Some would go into hibernation after having to wait in line for those who wanted a body more than the others. The humans doubled up and toted the mound of bodies as fast as they could. The majority made it to the generator quick enough not to be re-entered.
Lexie and the nerd were the only two out of harm’s way. They went around, escorting the de-eyed Pasties to different places upon their demise. Cruze had grabbed the bent metal of a seat brace and flung it like a boomerang hitting a mid-sized Pastie upside the head as it was approaching Lexie from behind. The Pastie’s gemstones rolled out onto the ground as Lexie and the nerd, Aftab Kahn, toted the body to the mass body destroyer. The body was slid under a laser where it was cut into thin slices until all of them dissolved back into the depressions of this section of cave system. Instantaneously, another soul floated up from the butchered body, deflating like a balloon toward the ceiling.
It didn’t take long for the cave to fill up with mounds of carved Pasties. The existing Pasties’ form of weaponry was useless once everyone quit having suicidal thoughts. It’s like the humans became invisible to them again.
Zon had set up somewhat of a maze of side panels from the heli-bus to block off the sight of the pregnant girls in the huddle. He didn’t feel they needed to be seeing this anyway. It was just a matter of dissections before one would feel sorry for the mineral people, and all would be at a loss even though these same beings were trying to steal the tainted souls of the living. The hardest part about fighting off this clan was the timberpines. They weren’t so easy to extinguish, and their senses gave them the upper hand when it came to finding prey in the dark. There were just so many of them.
Tynan and Harvey grabbed the least liked of the humans and threw him to the timberpines. As he flailed through the air, crying like a little schoolgirl, they devised a scheme to overcome the feasting sharp-toothed spine-backs.
Harvey lifted one side while waiting for Tynan, Drake, and Chisholm to lift all the way down to the other. Together, they hoisted the wing of the heli-bus, which was still entirely intact. They tossed it up in the air until it came crashing down on the pack of the timberpines. The Pastie’s eye stones rolled out from under the heavy wing where the gems sat idle, lacking sheen. Lexie advised one of the other weakling males, who was too afraid to fight, to gather all the ston
es so they could store them for later. Timothy Bender went around, scooping up a shirt-full of gems at a time, until he had the pile stacked as tall as he was: six feet, two inches. Aftab grabbed a clear plastic bag and scooped up as many firebugs as he could fit from the other side of the room. With the firebug lantern in hand, he lit the surroundings up to help the others in battle. Somewhere from the dark, Boots emerged to cheap shot Timothy in the side of the head, and then retreated, hoping no one else would notice. Why he did this to someone who was on the same team was a mystery to Timothy. He rubbed his jaw and continued on after shaking his head in disbelief.
The Pasties kept coming, sometimes two at a time.
The stack of weapons was dwindling as Isaic sent a couple of innocent, non-suicidal thinking freshmen to gather as many arms as they could carry back to rearm the group. Everyone was getting pushed to the opposite side of the hollow. They waded through humans and Pastie deposits, some of which were making mounds that were easy to hide behind. Since the bodies of those who got subdued by the Pasties were no longer needed, they got sent through the incinerator as well. It was hard to let go of, and the army of humans had no time to give a proper burial; no one wanted to be the one to do the burying anyway. They all agreed that this would be best. Those who departed left part of themselves inside the wombs of the girls as their replacements anyway.
A hole in the wall was discovered in the back of the room, merely big enough for the largest kid, Zon, to fit through. He yelled for his crew to enter the wormhole as he fought off the outnumbering Pasties. With a side panel of the heli-bus as a shield, he pushed them back until all were through the portal. He slowly slid back-first into the hole and blocked it with the panel. Three Pasties flung the metal across the hollow as they all tried to enter at the same time. They got stuck as Zon snatched out their eye gems with his bare hands as the souls went out the birth slit on the back end of the bodies to join the others. The dead bodies became the plug that kept the others from entering this room. Now, the rest were trapped and would continue trapping themselves until too many would fill the room for more to enter.
This dugout portion of the cave was another hundred feet long, but different than any they had seen before. In this one, the walls lit up from people rubbing the sides as they were feeling around in the pitch of black. Some were spelling out their names; others were trying to reach as high as they could and as long as they could to light up the room for a short time frame. The neon, ruby red light would die down after a minute or two of excitement. This was the fossil room where millions of microscopic plankton-like extremophile (bacteria that are capable of living in extreme environments) parasites would light up when they got excited. Sometimes, all it took was one’s breath to get them to light, but they only stayed lit temporarily.
Weary from fighting for nearly three hours, the crew licked their wounds and rested against each other while regaining their strength. This room had a waterfall trickling down a minute spout in the back that remained lit as these plankton continued to be excited. Different colors cascaded down, flowing together to make a prismatic array. It was somewhat relaxing for the students to gaze into and took them away for the moment, a brief reprieve from the reality of where they were and why they were there. One daring young lad boldly walked up to the spout and took his clothes off to bathe. The water got even more vivid red upon his entrance and as his girl joined him. They ran their hands up and down the fall as some plankton eating cave krill attached to them, lighting them up momentarily like the firebugs. This place was majestic. The ceiling had winged insects that fluttered light dust down from the flapping of their wings. The holographic wings created a rove of miniature blue and green flame-shooting clouds that pushed outward overhead. The rest of the room was aglow, and all could see each other. It was a mystifying display of lights, like fireworks, only smaller.
The sparkly dust came down, lighting the air until landing on the heads of the humans. They sat gazing at how beautiful each other looked. Some had blood dripping down their faces. The dust landed on the wounds and healed them on the spot. So, naturally, this room became referred to as the restoring fossil vault.
One of the two under the waterfall decided she was thirsty and tried some of the water. The girl’s stomach lit up and so did her partner’s. She stood up and could feel herself fulfilled of hunger. She didn’t have pains anymore. The baby started growing rapidly, until it was born right there at that moment. It popped out and started suckling on her breast. The boy, with his wet hair of dark blond, looked on in amazement. He ingested a mouth-full of water and he, too, felt his ailments go away. No more pain.
One by one, the girls partook of the water and each gave birth to their babies. That wasn’t the oddest part, though. The babies grew to their parent’s size almost upon delivery. This room was unreal. The humans’ numbers had just multiplied, almost by half. The water spread outward to fill channels the more people that entered. The channels lit up along the sides of the cave until circling and coming back down two more carved out channels in the middle. The rest of the non-pregnant people, who weren’t football players, sat down in the water to heal themselves by quenching their thirst with two cupped hands full of red water. The football players were used to healing on their own and didn’t find it necessary; just tape them up, rub some dirt on it, and send them back out onto the ball field.
The grown babies of the parents found their fathers and connected with them. They hugged on each other, not knowing what else to do.
Zon led a crash course in combat while the grown children sat and watched. He used the wall as sort of a chalkboard—his finger as chalk—to let the others know what they could be up against in the other room. Like Schuler would have done, he spoke in the most serious of tones while drawing out possible killing plays and their angle of pursuits, or better yet, interventions. The wall looked like a scene sketched out on the battlefields of some old Indian war, or maybe even a buffalo-run scheme over a cliff. He wanted the Pasties herded into an endless trap, kind of like where they are right now. In case they got through the wormhole, these newbies would need to know how to help defend themselves. The males, that is. The females would need to stay with their mothers to learn their female duties, like making more babies. It didn’t matter because, at that moment, each child died.
They were sitting up one second full of frolic and joy, then hunched over in fetal positions hurting from growing pains the next. The mad, microscopic shrimp, or plankton, in the water sped up their life process, aging them to death. There was nothing the others could do. The mineral rich water had made them grow too fast. It was sad and their plan was foiled. Everyone had died except for those who didn’t partake of the water, those few being the forty-two football players plus Aftab and Lexie. The Pasties were now the least of the remaining people’s worries.
Zon shed another tear after Jessica’s body was exhausted to the crystal-like gypsum created limestone floor of this cave. Not wanting to think too long about it right now, he instantly let go and started devising a scheme to escape.
“Do not drink the water!” Tynan shouted after watching the last aged baby die. “Each and every one who died had drunk the water from the waterfall. The two parents of the first tike withered to the bottom of the cave. The bodies, piling up, were heaved onto the other side of the water channel. “And if any of you have cuts on your legs or feet, I wouldn’t bathe in the water either.” The football players began checking each other to make sure that the water-borne dinoflagellates didn’t get into their system. Since several pieces of vinyl were confiscated from the other room, Zon went around, sealing them to the parts of the bodies of those who had any cuts on them. Lexie was the only one who didn’t have a scratch.
Lexie was the midwife to all of the girls who gave birth. She almost gave in to letting herself get pregnant, though she felt like she needed to hold out for Brody. After seeing this, she was glad that she chose not to.
She couldn’t stand to bear the thought of losing another loved one in her life, especially not someone created from her body, let alone to lose her own life.
Brody was Lexie’s first, and only, love, and she swore that if he would be her first, he would be her last. She had a close call with a boy one time, as far as love goes, but after losing both her parents a year apart, she just couldn’t find love within herself. That was the only reason she was sent to Trendago. She turned away from God when she thought he had turned away from her by taking her only true love in this world. This was a truth only Brody knew, and she swore him to solemn secrecy or promised him that he would lose her forever. His love had saved her life.
The six gems that fell to the ground, after Zon had ripped them out, started flickering projections, but didn’t stay lit. Tynan walked over and scooped them up to tote them over to Zon. Along the way, he was not watching where he was going as he sunk into the waterway and the gems lit up bright. The water turned the neon blue to red. He checked his feet and ankles to make sure they were cut-free. He stepped out and the jewels went off; the water returned to bright blue. He stepped back in, and they lit up: red water. He couldn’t figure out why they were still trying to work. He sorted them out by color, using the now neon blue light from the chasm to distinguish the difference. After pairing them up, he held them at chest level. The image reflected off his shirt, but didn’t last long. He stepped into the neon red water and they started to show a motion picture. He lay back against the middle island stone slab that had been created and watched the review. Isaic, still equipped with his barely working party cam goggles, lay down and taped the silent movie.
A sound echoed inside the hollows; the Pasties, on the other side, were getting restless. They kept hitting up against the three hole-pluggers, unsuccessful at dislodging them. The sound of the generator shutting down echoed through this part of Freeland. Next was an uncomfortable silence.
Good and Evil : Freeland - Part Two (9781628547375) Page 10