And not surprisingly, neither Dar nor Kael seemed inclined to help the people who’d refused to help them.
In any case, she wasn’t in any state long to feel a great deal of resentment over Dar’s caveman behavior—or fear, for that matter—because her own misery pushed both that and her sense of guilt to the back of her mind fairly quickly.
She’d been thirsty when she’d fallen asleep the night before. She’d had only a little water after she’d eaten the food they’d given her and, although the temperature wasn’t hot but rather just the opposite, she was dehydrating fast.
Neither man appeared to be carrying water, unfortunately. And her ability to communicate with them was so limited that she couldn’t get up the energy to attempt to try, especially when she was fairly certain it would be in vain.
All day they walked, only pausing for short rests occasionally. At least part of that time either Dar or Kael carried her.
And there was no sign water.
No sign, actually, of much of anything living.
They left the rubble field around mid-afternoon the day after the shuttle disaster. In the time prior to that, they spotted a couple of groups of natives and took cover, waiting in tense silence until Dar was certain they hadn’t been spotted and the group had passed on.
Dar and Kael had both clearly been on high alert from the first. They’d constantly scanned every inch of their surroundings. Now and then they would pause and dig around in the rubble, but they never seemed to find what they were hoping to find and she wasn’t certain if their vigil had to do with danger or the hunt for supplies or both.
Monica’s belly gnawed on itself throughout the first half of the day, but it had settled to whimpering by the afternoon, its pain overshadowed by thirst and weariness.
Dar and Kael picked up the pace once they’d left the rubble field behind and begun a trek across a fire scared and ashy landscape that had either been a wooded area or perhaps farm land or plane.
Monica did her best to keep up, but she began to lag behind almost as soon as she was allowed to travel under her own steam. And when they picked up the pace, she got further and further behind, in spite of her efforts to catch up.
It crossed her mind that, maybe, they’d decided she was a liability. Maybe, like her own people, they thought she wasn’t useful enough to have any real value.
Finally, she gave up on catching up to them, convinced that they were trying to abandon her. After standing for a moment, watching as they diminished from view, she looked back the way they’d come, trying to decide if she would be better off if she tried to find her way back.
There at least seemed to be some food and water left in what had obviously once been a city.
There was a good bit of competition for food and water, though, as well.
The attack by natives just prior to the explosion flickered through her mind. She hadn’t really had much opportunity to take it in, but she knew she’d heard a scream just before—a sound that had snatched her attention for a split second—and she’d seen them pouring into the clearing waving primitive weapons threateningly.
Not that they were much threat to the people in the ship. They’d had the shield up.
Which, unfortunately, hadn’t withstood the cannon from the other ship.
Because they knew exactly what it would take to pierce the shield and hull.
Had they lied to them? Told them they were sending the other shuttle to pick them up?
Or maybe they’d planned to? Maybe the plan had been to send help to fix the downed shuttle and get it back to the mother ship?
She knew that, whatever they thought about the personnel aboard it, the shuttle was vital to the colony mission. That was why the captain had been so reluctant to allow them to do the extinction event study to begin with.
And it was the very latest, most advanced technology humans possessed.
They weren’t going to leave it for aliens to ‘steal’ so that they could travel easily through space and build colonies.
Livable real estate was precious. They didn’t want competition for the best pieces of land.
When she looked back toward the spot where she’d last seen Dar and Kael, she discovered they hadn’t disappeared at all. They were headed straight toward her and both of them looked royally pissed off.
She surged to her feet, staring at them wide eyed as they got closer and closer, trying to decide whether to run or not.
Their anger seemed threatening enough to pitch her into flight mode. She looked around a little wildly and took off in the direction that seemed to offer the clearest running path. Rapid, pounding footsteps told her they had given chase and her heart tried to beat her to death. Her ears pricked until she could almost ‘feel’ them. When that heightened sense peaked, she dropped to a crouch.
Her timing was perfect.
Kael sailed over her head and plowed the dirt.
She shot to her feet and whirled to run.
She hit Dar so hard they tangled arms and legs and plowed the dirt, as well. Dar rolled almost the instant he touched down and pinned her beneath him, pressing the air out of her lungs in the process so that she grunted inelegantly.
She caught his shoulders and tried to shove him away.
He caught her wrists and pinned them. “No run.”
Monica stared at him doubtfully, struggling to catch her breath.
He eased his weight from her, but he didn’t let go. He pulled her up and into a comforting embrace-like hold. “No hurt, Meeka.”
Her chin wobbled with emotions she had trouble holding in check.
He squeezed her gently and let her go. Getting up, he pulled her after him.
She sniffed and turned to look cautiously for Kael.
He was so thoroughly coated in ash he looked more like a black man than an alien and Monica uttered a choked laugh before she could stop herself.
He narrowed his eyes at her then looked down at himself and then surveyed the area he’d cleared with his body. When he looked at her again, he grinned.
Monica found herself smiling back, chuckling lightly.
She looked up at Dar, smiling, and encountered a look that was so heated with promise that her belly went weightless and her bone dry mouth got drier.
He dragged his gaze from hers. “I think she thought we were trying to leave her.”
Kael grunted. “Maybe. It is not safe for her to be alone, though, so it does not matter whether she comes willingly or not.”
Dar nodded. “We will have to watch her closer and not simply assume that she is willing to follow us … and able.” He rubbed his neck. “The scent of water is driving me insane. Where the hell is it?”
Kael knew it was a rhetorical question, but he answered anyway. “I am almost one hundred percent certain that we crossed the old creek bed a mile or so back. It must have been re-routed in the blast or maybe one of the earthquakes sealed the spring feeding it?” He frowned, thinking. “Maybe we should go back to the creek bed and try digging?”
Dar swallowed with an effort. “Last resort. Let us try to find a running stream. If we cannot then we can still go back and try to dig for water.”
The fates, they discovered, were smiling at them. They had not traveled more than an hour more before they discovered the tiny trickle of water that was all that was left of what had been a fairly sizeable stream.
The hope that they would find food dwindled, but the water was needed more than the food at the moment.
They checked the perimeter in both directions carefully, and then led Monica to the water. She reacted as if she had had no clue they were even close to water, releasing a delighted gasp after she stepped in and fell down.
Monica didn’t know what was more surprising—the discovery that they’d found water or the realization that Dar and Kael weren’t surprised at all. They’d expected to find it.
She considered that as she carefully scooped handfuls of water and used her fingers as a sieve to remove as
much debris as she could from it.
When she looked at Dar and Kael she saw they both had a piece of fabric of some kind that they were using to strain the ash and debris from their water.
Dar drew closer to her and held his cloth water ‘balloon’ up so that it would drip the filtered water into her mouth. At first she was too focused on getting the water she was desperate for to have any awareness of intimacy. As she quenched her thirst, though, she first became a little self-conscious about tipping her head back and holding her mouth open like a bird to catch the drips.
Then she met Dar’s gaze and saw the heat in them from before—except stronger—and she felt a responding surge of heat inside of her. She hesitated for a suspended moment in time and then she dragged her gaze from his and glanced at Kael.
She almost did a double take.
He wasn’t focused on assuaging his own thirst as she’d expected.
He’d clearly been watching the exchange between her and Dar.
And just as clearly, he was aroused.
Chapter Seven
Monica glanced back at Dar. She didn’t know whether to be glad or sorry that he had turned his attention to refilling his water filter.
Under the circumstances—slow drip feed and heightened sexual tension—it took a while to drink their fill. Dar finally left Monica in sole possession of the water filter and rose to his full height, looking around the area through narrowed eyes. “There is a place there that I think will do us for a little bit,” he said finally. “A possibility of finding food, as well.”
Kael immediately stood and followed the direction he’d pointed to.
Having no clue of what they might be talking about, Monica rose more slowly and carefully and peered in the direction Dar and Kael were looking, as well.
She didn’t see a thing to be alarmed about, but then there had been nothing in his tone to suggest danger. She just didn’t see what had interested him and watched with more curiosity than concern as the two men moved slowly and carefully toward what looked like it might be a hole made by the toppling of the charred tree next to it.
It didn’t seem like a particularly large hole until the men neared it. Then she could see that it was easily as wide as they were tall.
They stood at the rim staring down at something for a very long time and then, quick as lightning, they struck with their makeshift swords.
Monica shot to her feet in horror, wondering if she should run or wait to see if they were successful in killing whatever it was.
She didn’t actually have time to make up her mind before it was over with and the men were dragging a beast from the hole.
It looked like it must once have been a very large beast, but it was emaciated from hunger.
They set to work butchering and cleaning it.
Monica’s belly was torn between anticipation and revulsion, but she was hungry enough that anticipation quickly outweighed the empathy she might have felt toward the beast otherwise.
Particularly when it looked as if had been starving anyway.
She’d been trained in hunting, killing, and preparing meat. There was no way to carry enough ‘modernization’ with them that they could avoid having to process their own food and so that had been an important part of the training program.
She’d really hoped to get by with the occasional manufactured protein/meats in spite of that, though. They’d brought what they needed to build a meat/protein factory, but had been warned it couldn’t produce enough to feed the entire colony. It was there as a backup for anticipated ‘hard’ times.
The plan was that they would seek animals to domesticate for food and hunt wild beasts in the meantime to feed themselves. Stores were projected to be pretty much depleted despite all of their careful preparations and rationing by the time they reached the colony target.
This world.
She shook that thought. She had problems enough of her own without ‘borrowing’.
She would have had to get used to it eventually, she reminded herself and there could be no better time to do so than when it was absolutely necessary to survival.
And she was hungry enough to feel sorrier for herself than the beast.
She wondered if this was true of Dar and Kael, as well, if they’d learned to hunt and kill and prepare in order to survive.
Or was this their way of life before?
The question brought her to a ‘truth’ that she’d carefully avoided that had been churning in the back of her mind since the shuttle had been blown up.
She didn’t want to accept it now.
This was her life now. This wasn’t a temporary situation that she could expect to overcome and go back to ‘normal’.
It wasn’t the life she had chosen, or expected would be her life as a colonist, but she had to deal with it. From here on her life would be what she made of it.
That was almost enough to make her consider—for a blind moment of panic—finding the nearest cliff and jumping off of it.
But it was hysteria that spawned the self-destructive notion.
Why throw away what she had instead of trying to make something of it?
She’d thought—known—that being a colonist would be hard. The people organizing the exodus had done everything in their power to convince everyone that it would be and that the true mission was to save their species. And, to do that, they had to be willing to fight for it.
And yet, she’d been desperate to get the chance to live. She hadn’t wanted to stay behind and accept a nearly 99.9% chance of not surviving past the initial impact.
There were those who’d chosen that because they couldn’t face the unknown.
There were many more people who hadn’t that had been left because they weren’t deemed ‘high quality’ and ‘necessary’ enough to spend the time, money, and effort on.
She was facing the unknown, something she hadn’t anticipated, but she realized after a few panicked moments that she didn’t have ‘give up’ in her. She was a fighter, a survivor, because it was programmed in her to fight to live.
She would do whatever she had to do—including eat whatever it was they were butchering!
That tested them far more than she’d expected.
It was next to impossible to find anything to burn when the whole planet had been pretty much decimated by fire—this area anyway. They found what they could—mostly dried animal dung—but it wasn’t a big enough fire to thoroughly cook the beast.
And, at that, it was way better the first time around.
They spent the remainder of that day working around the area in ever widening circles, searching for more food and more materials for burning, cooking.
They cleaned out the hollow the animal had used for a burrow, widened and deepened it and then lined it with the skin and fur of their dinner.
They’d smelled bad before the night in the burrow.
Afterwards, it was all Monica could do to stand her own smell.
She recalled the uncharitable thoughts she’d had about the guys when she’d first met them and realized what an unimaginative, unsympathetic snob she’d been then. With water so hard to find and so necessary to life only an insane person would consider squandering it on hygiene!
That was taking the risk of becoming a ‘fresh’ smelling corpse.
It didn’t make it a lot easier to bear but by the time they finished off their kill and moved on Monica had grown pretty much nose blind.
She did wonder, though, if the other survivors could smell them coming.
* * * *
Monica supposed there was no actual destination in their travels, that they’d become nomads in search of survival and had no other goal.
Water, food, shelter—in that order.
Once they’d located a water source, they stayed close and that source brought food at least occasionally—because nothing that walked, crawled, or flew could do without water for more than a few days.
It was dangerous to approach it to drink an
d death not to.
She completely lost track of time and very quickly because there seemed no real point in keeping tabs on it. Within roughly a week’s time, though, the trio had developed communications that consisted of a smattering of each language and pantomime.
She was glad for it. The ability to communicate made her life a little easier and made her feel more connected to them.
They weren’t different species.
They were fellow survivors, a team with one goal—helping the team survive.
Shelter was a rare luxury and they had no supplies to give them comfort. At night when the temperatures dipped to dangerous lows they curled together to share warmth.
Monica faired best in that regard. She had more clothing for protection to start with and the guys sandwiched her between them—for protection, she supposed because they never made any sexual overtures in spite of the handful of smoldering looks she’d encountered.
She would’ve been lying if she’d said she wasn’t at least a little intrigued by the promise in those smoldering looks.
She would’ve been lying if she’d said she found them repellent, or simply felt no attraction at all.
But it did occur to her to view those feelings with suspicion, to wonder if she was intrigued by them because they’d shown interest but were damned good at controlling themselves, or because they were so similar to humans, or because they were so different from humans.
Or if it was just her instincts telling her she would be better off to bind them to her in some way, any way, to ensure that they would be willing to protect her.
She didn’t encourage them to cross that barrier they’d erected, though, because they seemed to be getting along well as things were and she had no idea whether intimacy would change things for the better or for the worse. Even as inexperienced as she was, she had a great deal of second hand experiences to draw from—advice from both her mother and grandmother—enough to know that intimacy would certainly change the dynamics of their little group in a significant way and that could be disastrous.
Unfortunately, she discovered fairly quickly that logic and reason had no place in regards to mating urges—or matters of the heart as her mother had referred to them.
Exodus: Extinction Event Page 6