by Naomi Lucas
“Get down.” She was pressed down onto the packs when an arm went over her back and a series of bullets fired off over her head. Norah looked up to see Stryker shooting at the beasts that were following them, all while still driving the craft. “What are they?” he shouted between the gunfire.
“Coilers, we call them coilers. Think giant eels with legs,” she gulped. “And spikes.”
Her hands clenched the heavy material below her as another wave of water flooded them. Norah closed her eyes and took a deep breath, waiting for it to pass.
When the ship emerged from the water, she crawled back into the front and over Stryker’s lap. Norah grasped the wheel, her fingers slipping over the wet plastic.
“I’ll drive, you shoot,” she yelled.
His heavy, metalloid Cyborg body shifted under her in a way that didn’t seem humanly possible. She jerked the vehicle back into position and dodged a low-hanging branch. Norah thought she felt something jut up against her back side, something long and thick. She couldn’t be sure what it was, but she thought all of the unaccounted for guns were in the duffel bag.
It felt wrong and incredibly inappropriate.
It had to be a gun. It had to.
Stryker grunted and reloaded a new chamber; the old one fell into the water at her feet. The craft dipped again, submerging her view for a moment before lifting back up into the rain.
And right into another coiler.
She crashed into it before she could change course and ground the creature under the craft’s heavy metal frame. The spray of blood that coated one side window, the frame of the other and part of the ceiling announced its death. Gunfire rang out like music as the vehicle shuddered and groaned.
“No, no, no,” Norah begged as the front dipped again into the water. The smell of exhaust filled the small compartment. She was able to drive it several more yards before it came to a complete stop.
Norah hit the controls, urging it to restart, but it didn’t move. She stared in shock as her view of the rain vanished and the front half of the craft began to sink into the bog.
The two coilers that were chasing them attacked the open back of the craft.
Her nails dug into the wheel as error reports flooded the console, and an A.I. blared evacuation measures in her ears. Water flooded the interior as they sank. She tried again to restart it, screaming and cursing it all the while.
The coilers swam like eels across the cracked glass on either side. A hand gripped her arm.
“Time to go,” Stryker urged, pulling her out of the seat.
He covered her as a spiked tail whipped out, further destroying the enclosure. It struck him and they crashed together. The water poured in. It was up to her stomach and was rising with each passing second.
What was left of the terra vehicle shook with each strike. One of the eels snapped its jaw at her, hitting the front window shield.
She latched onto Stryker’s arm. “Are you okay!?” His eyes were at half-mast, staring straight ahead. “Stryker?” she screeched, shaking him. “Stryker? Look at me. Look at me!”
He looked at her as water rushed around his head. “Time to go,” he repeated in a strained voice. The Cyborg pulled her toward him. “Time to go.” His eyes narrowed and flashed. “Time to go.”
He said it again and again.
“Stryker, wake up, please,” she yelled and fought his hold. But it didn’t work.
The air bubbled up, the monsters had them trapped, Stryker had her trapped. The water lapped at her chin.
“Time to go.”
“Go where!?” Norah looked into his eyes and asked, begged. Although the light cast shadows across his face they still shone like beacons against the encroaching darkness. She glanced around, anxious, alert, and more awake than she had been in days, and tried to find anything that would help them.
She twisted and reached back toward the console, begging it to turn on, even for just a moment. When that didn’t work, she kicked the machine and cursed the company that made such a shitty terra vehicle.
Norah turned back around to face Stryker and grabbed for one of the packs floating behind him. She strained her head up as the water covered her mouth, gasping up the remaining air.
She tugged but the bag didn’t move, caught on something out of her reach. Norah screamed in frustration.
Stryker twitched like a short-circuited machine, having gone quiet now that his mouth was under the water, he held onto her with a punishing grip. Norah tried to shake him; he didn’t move. She tried to retrieve her arm from his grip; he didn’t let go.
This is it.
Norah clutched his head and stared into his eyes. She couldn’t stop the tears forming as the glass shattered behind her.
Water reached her bottom eyelashes. Something snaked across her back. I’m so sorry. I’m so sorry you died because of me. Norah leaned her brow against his and waited to drown.
There was a bellowing rush just before the entire flyer was swallowed by the water. She closed her eyes. Stryker’s grip on her loosened and her body was thrown into the front windshield, her eyes shot open only to burn from the alien miasma.
The next thing she knew, she was being hauled through the back of the flyer and right into the side of one of the giant trees. Bubbles trailed out of her nostrils as her mouth filled up with water until the grip on her arm lifted her above the flood.
“Grab the bark!”
Norah heard him but she couldn’t stop hacking up the liquid in her throat. Her breath was lost somewhere amongst the sputter, but her hand found the rough edges of jagged bark and held on.
“Don’t let go. For anything,” Stryker shouted over the rain just before he let her go.
The sound of gunshots filled her ears as she coughed and vomited up water. She blinked the last drops from her eyes. Norah looked down to find broken metal and plumes of blood, all rising up from below in billowing red clouds.
She shrieked as it surrounded her body. The heel of her boot dug into the wet base of the tree and she lifted herself up but her eyes remained glued to the currents and the pit of monstrous snakes thrashing just below the swirling water. One of the tails glinted like quicksilver.
She held her breath.
And then the violence ended.
“Stryker?” she cried again but he didn’t reappear.
Norah squinted as the dead coilers rose up only to drift away on the currents created by the flood. Their corpses tangled against a large bush only to be sucked back below by other predators.
Bubbles continued to churn up from the water as the last remaining air escaped the terra cruiser. Then she heard the one thing she had hoped to never hear again.
The distant shrieks of approaching ghouls.
“Oh, what the fuck,” Norah muttered. What the fuck. She continued to swipe the rain out of her eyes and sputter. Maybe I wasn’t meant to survive.
Fuck that.
She eyed a nearby tree, one with branches hanging low enough to grab onto and, without a second thought, propelled herself away from the trunk she held. She waded forward and tried to ignore the creatures that nipped and swam around her feet.
She treaded perpendicular to the current and kept her head above water as much as she could. She caught the next tree with the tips of her fingers.
It was enough, her nails ripped across the soggy wood until she found enough purchase to bring her legs up and out of the water. She hugged the wood. Her clothes tore as she hooked one leg around the branch and hauled half her body out of the flood.
The sharp peel of the branch dug into her skin. Norah lifted the rest of the way out of the water and took in her surroundings.
She couldn’t see the shriekers; she couldn’t see much at all past the dense foliage and rain. She counted their wails like the pauses between oncoming thunder in her head.
We drove south, no more than thirty minutes.
That put them, possibly, halfway to the landing site and to a ship that may or may not be ther
e.
Her eyes dropped back down to the water below her, clouded by constant movement and the soil of the jungle. Things moved within, bugs, amphibious creatures, and plant-life destroyed beyond repair.
Lightning cracked, flooding her shaded spot with a burst of light. Thousands of critters appeared in the flash, either basking in the monsoon or trying to find ways out of the water.
There were more than coiler corpses–there were the drowned bodies of animals all around her.
Stryker wasn’t among them.
Norah counted four more shrieks, eight more lightning strikes, and the numerous cracks of wood snapping and animals feasting and dying around her. She counted the ways she could die: drowning, animal attack, starvation (now that she no longer had her pack), sickness, bug bites, lightning strike...
She stopped when she realized that there were no easy solutions to any of her problems. Minutes passed as she caught her breath and eyed the tree above her, determining the safest ascent into the pods at the top.
Or the safest way to continue south.
She closed her eyes, took a deep breath, and squeezed her empty pistol clip. She steeled her nerve. I have to keep moving.
Norah clenched her fists and lifted herself up only to stop and let loose the remaining air in her body. A head appeared from the currents, breaking the path of floating leaves and twigs. It rose up slowly, short hair pasted against it until dark eyes that gleamed with a twinkle of blue appeared, narrowed and observant.
She could’ve cried when Stryker rose up.
Two packs bubbled up next and Norah, without a thought, reached out and grabbed them from the debris bobbing around the grave of the sunken ship.
Her heart expanded as her body found its breath once again; relief, dread, and excitement shot through her. She felt it all until they morphed into a singular emotion: shock.
The heavy band came up next as she hauled both bags onto the branch that was beginning to dip with the weight before placing hers, waterlogged, onto her back.
“I thought you were dead,” she whispered as she made room for the Cyborg to climb up. His eyelids twisted and she thought she saw the head of a snake appear before it vanished in the haze.
His dark, poison blue eyes drifted from hers to examine everything around them.
Norah had lost count of the shrieks.
“I’m not easy to kill,” Stryker growled as he raised his rifle and eyed the area through its scope. The branch cracked and snapped. “Start heading up. I’ll cover you from here.”
She watched, still in shock, as his gun stopped to aim at something in the water and issued an ear-splitting shot; the body of another coiler rose, dead.
Mud and blood oozed everywhere. The eel’s elongated fangs showed through a mouth gaping in a dying scream, eyes glazed and pale, surprised at its own death.
She didn’t want to leave Stryker. Every time he left, she was always sure he had died. Everybody else would’ve. Norah didn’t want to lose him again. Her heart couldn’t take much more.
“No,” she said, coughing. “We stick together.” Please. “I’ve seen more than one horror movie, Cyborg.”
He looked away from his gun, its scope, back to her. She could see him weighing her words.
“Yeah, so have I.”
What?
He continued, “Fine. I’ll be right behind you.”
Norah chewed on her lip, nodded, and with shaking muscles began to climb the tree. Each branch burned under her palms, her hands torn up from so many death-grips, her thighs strained from constant use, and feet wrinkled, having been encased in wet socks for longer than was healthy.
She stopped and looked down.
Stryker was a foot behind her. “Keep going, I’m here,” he said, reading her mind.
Norah frowned but turned away and kept climbing, continuing as the sounds of the flood fell away and the wind picked up around her. The constant barrage of rain slapped against her face until she thought it was hail that poured down from the sky, not water.
A hand caught her ankle, stopping her, and Stryker joined her on her branch. She hugged the trunk. Her hair whipped around her head and shoulders.
“We need to find a safe place to retreat,” his voice boomed over the airy howls.
“Is there such a thing as a safe place here?” Norah quipped then added, “We can cross over to one of the giant trees next to us. They have pods and enough space to camp.” Stryker looked around and eyed their canopy-like surroundings. “Think we can do it?” she yelled. Thunder joined her question.
The Cyborg ran a hand through his short hair and pulled his pack off to rest between them. He pulled a long rope out.
“We can if you trust me.”
The wind lashed her face and her sensibilities bloomed with misgivings as the strange man tied the rope around his arms and waist.
Her eyes fell to the abyss below them. I have nothing left to lose.
Nothing.
Norah nodded at the Cyborg. “Okay.”
Their eyes met, and a shivering, vulnerable, unusual moment passed between them. Something heavy and unkindled. A fire that had burned down to embers, only waiting to burst back into flames. She rubbed the goosebumps from her arms. His eyes flickered into dark rings of color as she gulped down the burning ash.
Golden-white bolts of electricity flashed.
Stryker nodded and handed her the rope. Norah took it and placed it around her waist, her armpits, and followed the method the Cyborg had used until he turned his back on her and she handed the last bit of rope back to him. She pressed up against his back as he lashed her to his body.
The rope sat tight against her skin until she gave in with a sigh and released her grip from the tree and clutched him instead, her arms threading around his neck while he straddled the branch until her legs hooked around his waist.
It was quiet as she snuggled up against him, his heat penetrating her clothes, her skin, and her bones. A sizzling sensation ran through her.
Norah closed her eyes and buried her face at his neck.
“Don’t let go. This will be very…” he paused, “uncomfortable.” Stryker jumped before he finished speaking and before she could respond. Norah clung to him as the sensation of falling flooded her senses, only to jerk abruptly into the heavy clamor of landing.
Her legs tightened around his waist. With each jolt of movement her body jerked against his. It would have been pleasurable if she wasn’t terrible of falling.
The ropes kept her bound. It dug into her skin, leaving her even more chafed and raw under her clothes.
A grunt had her opening her eyes.
Norah felt the hard muscles under her body turn to steel until it felt like she was clinging to a rock. Something shifted under her groin, plates moved between her legs, pressing into the cleft between her legs, only to shift again into something smooth. The hip bones that caught her knees were no longer there, leaving only a rounded pillar of hard metal.
She couldn’t move enough to see below her. Stryker’s frame left her thoughts as he began the climb the trunk of a tree with only his hands.
Each twitch was the pull of his arms lifting them up an unclimbable surface with the tips of his fingers. It was impossible.
Impossible.
Norah prayed. She’d never been so spiritual in her life since the past few days. She didn’t believe in God. Not because she didn’t think he existed, but because the human race didn’t deserve to be noticed.
They continued to ascend the trunk with each rattling chunk of metal piercing the bark. Norah turned away from the rain and breathed in the male under her. She took in his warmth. Took in his heated scent, unusual with the alien life forms all around them.
Her body swung and the rope slithered from her body. Her butt hit the hard surface of the Giant. Her hands dropped down to steady herself as the Cyborg turned to her.
“The pods?” he asked, his head tilted.
The Giants, much like many trees on Earth
, only had branches high up off the ground, thick and impenetrable, a coverage for the swamp-life and jungle landscape below. She could barely see the sky, a wave of leaves obscuring her view, along with the rain that scuttled over the canopy into makeshift waterfalls.
No ground. No sky. Norah stood up on the branch, nearly eight-feet wide, and saw the curved shape of the pod where the branches grew too thick and snapped across the middle into two, creating a dip. Eventually, the tree-pods would fall to the ground and make dens for the creatures below, and the seeds within would sprout saplings.
“Yes.” She smacked her lips. “Never been this far up but Robert,” she looked around her again, “Robert had pictures. These were one of the reasons the corporation I work for chose this location.” Norah hefted her pack. “Are we staying here?”
“Depends.” His eyes pinned her. “Should we expect company?”
Stryker’s eyes didn’t move, he didn’t breathe, he didn’t twitch. She almost forgot to respond when he stopped being human. Norah swallowed.
“Maybe. The things below, the eels, they can climb up to these heights.” She rummaged through her mind, trying to remember everything Dr. Euron had mentioned during their daily meetings. Her heart hurt knowing those meetings would never happen again. “There are bugs at this height, some are poisonous, I don’t recall their names but as long as we avoid being bitten we should be fine. They’re more afraid of us.”
Wind ripped the breath out of her. No. Stryker’s lack of movement did that. He was taller than her, faster than her, stronger than her. He was a predator and she felt frightened in his presence. More so as he continued to remain motionless.
She continued, “There are felines, those that resemble Earth’s larger cats. Many are predators, but they’re land dwellers.” Norah shook her head. “Few would have the ability to get into the pods. Flying carnivores, beaks, fangs, and all could be waiting out the storm. And then there are the snakes.”