“You don’t decide that, Jinn!” Her dad’s face darkened. “The council decides if she is innocent or not. By interfering with the other clans, you have also become a fugitive.”
“The other clans would have brought her in a body bag, Dad.” Tuko spoke up. His eyes smoldered, as if he didn’t face off against his dad very often. “You always told us to do what was right, not what was popular; so here we are.” Their father was silent, as if contemplating Tuko’s words. Instead of waiting for his reply, I spoke up.
“If it wasn’t for these two, I would be dead. If they were my children, I would be extremely proud of them.” Jinn beamed while Tuko’s face remained neutral. However, their father seemed less than convinced.
“I don’t know how your clan works, Pene, but in ours we follow orders! Luther’s death has had reverberations throughout our entire clan structure. By assisting and aiding you, they have directly implicated Armor clan as coconspirators. There are several clans who would stop at nothing to end my leadership to get to you.”
“And that’s what it’s really about, Dad. If we make you look bad, who cares what’s right or wrong,” Tuko countered.
“Enough! I don’t need to explain my actions to either one of you, but I will to your friend.” Their dad looked pained for a second, and I realized that my presence here in this world was making it difficult for everyone. “I am Strika, one of the leaders of Armor and father to these two. Like your clan, Pene, we have a power structure that keeps us organized and safe. Throughout our world, there are dozens of clans, some growing, some shrinking, while others cease and are reborn. The clans are all very different from each other, typically achieving their identity from a single skill or leader. If that skill or leader is strong, the clan prospers and grows. If the leadership is challenged, the clan may transition to become something very different.”
“I’m sure Pene doesn’t need the history lesson, Dad,” Tuko added. Rather than respond, his father’s glare made Tuko lean back into his chair.
“As leader of our clan, I respond to the group of elders. Luther was one of those elders. They oversee our existence and make sure that the relations between the clans are peaceful. And for the most part, if everyone stays to their territory, we coexist. Everyone knows their place.”
“Now?” I asked.
“There are two sides forming. One group of clans feels it should only be the strong that survive.. Certain clans feel they deserve more territory and will expand as they see fit. Those who fall before them will become extinct. Other clans, such as ours, believe that we can all coexist and benefit from the diversity of the groups. Just because you can’t beat someone in a fight doesn’t negate your contribution to our culture.”
“Why is my capture important?”
“Several leaders believe that Luther’s killer represents a few clans wanting to destroy the others. Luther preached peace and coexistence. Without his calming presence, more radical views on the council will rear their ugly heads.”
“Shouldn’t those clans want to save Pene and make her a hero?” questioned Jinn.
Her dad shook his head. “Luther’s killer is just a means to an end. No one needs to hear the assassin’s view. And the clan who set this up sees Pene as a perfect patsy to pin Luther’s death on.”
“And your view, Father?” Tuko looked at him with concern.
Strika took a second to collect himself and then looked at me. “I don’t believe that a young girl can outwit an entire security system and assassinate a prominent council member alone. Either you’re innocent or you’re extremely dangerous. Either way, I need you alive. We need to turn you in immediately. It is the only way to end this mess.”
And there it was. I had traded my freedom for another type of prison, despite the support of his children.
“Does our opinion mean nothing to you, Father? Do you think that we would just support someone who could be capable of committing this crime?” Jinn yelled.
“Your opinion is not up for debate. Your support for her has put a target on both you and Tuko’s back. By supporting her, you have implicated our clan and made yourselves part of the bounty. Do you know how your actions are ripping this clan apart?” I could tell the time it had taken to find us had not been easy. Tuko was not so forgiving.
“Father, do you remember what you taught me when we went fishing when I was child?” Tuko asked.
“I taught you many things during our fishing expeditions. What is your point?” His father’s patience was clearly coming to an end.
“When we caught a large salmon one day, the biggest I had ever seen, you remarked that it was a great catch. However, you said that the salmon was endangered and this might be one of the few we would ever catch. You told me I had to decide; keep the salmon and win the prize for the biggest catch, or throw it back and give this salmon a chance to spawn and replenish its population. Short term versus long term. So I threw the salmon back into the stream.”
“Are you comparing me to a fish?” I asked, not impressed with the analogy.
“No. At least a salmon would be good to eat.” Tuko smiled mischievously and turned back to his father. “You supported my decision because you understood the long game. Giving Pene to Council would win you a prize with the other clans. Make you feel important for a brief time.” Tuko turned to look at me. “Help her get to the Cradle. She can explain her innocence there. If you turn her in now, I wouldn’t be surprised if she suffers a mysterious accident. That would hurt all clans in the long run.”
I was impressed. This arrogant boy had actually thought about someone else beside himself. His father’s face softened, and I could tell his message had reached him.
“Okay. She stays with us, under guard, until we reach the Cradle.” He grabbed Tuko’s hand. “How did the two of you get so smart? You must take after your mother.”
“Where is Mom?” Jinn asked. Her dad pointed to the front of the car.
“She is at the head of the caravan. As hard as it is to believe, we have much bigger issues than your friend.”
“Such as?” I asked, realizing that I this wasn’t my place but curious to learn more about this world.
“Your clan may have noticed, but the animal attacks are getting more frequent. And worse in terms of casualties. The dinosaur you encountered in Trall is just the continuance of many incidents. What’s worse is that they are becoming more coordinated and smarter.”
“Or we’re getting stupider,” Jinn added. “A lot of the technology in the Orphan town is broken down, and no one seems able to fix it anymore.” Her father considered her comment, but I interrupted before he could respond.
“Do you know what this is?” I pulled the small drone bee from my pocket. He took it from me and examined it.
“Some type of mechanical animal. Never see it before. Was it from the town?”
I hesitated, because if I told him about my home as I had Jinn, I didn’t feel he would be as understanding. Jinn nodded to prompt me to explain.
“In my home, these things watched us. There was typically a camera here, and its flight could follow us. You could never get away from it.” The three of them looked at each other as if I was telling them a tall tale.
“Where are you from?” their dad asked suspiciously. I realized that it was time to double down and tell the whole truth. Whatever happened would happen.
“My home is much different from yours,” I began as the three of them leaned in for my tale. I never got to finish.
The back seat went sideways as an explosion rocked the front of the car. Glass exploded from the window, and I felt a streak of blood drip down my cheek. Their dad immediately barked orders to the front seat driver.
“Radio ahead. I want to find out from the start of the caravan who is attacking us. Make sure my wife is okay.” The driver looked like he was going to say something, but their father interrupted. “Now!” he commanded. The driver began radioing several cars, and I heard several voices respond. Some sou
nded worried while others were excited. None of it sounded good. I put my hand on the door to open it.
“Wait,” their father commanded. I felt like another one of his children being ordered around. “Don’t go outside until I know what is going on. If you are a target, you’ll be giving them just what they want by stepping outside.” He was probably right.
“Give my dad the benefit of the doubt,” Jinn added. “We don’t know what is going on.”
“We’re being attacked is what’s going on! And sitting in here when we can be fighting back is no help at all,” Tuko yelled. I guess I was more like him than I realized. Sitting and waiting were not things I could do easily.
That option disappeared as the front of the car buckled. The concussive force flipped the car, and we landed on the roof. The seat belts kept us from flying around and we hung down from the ceiling.
“Get. Out. Now!” their dad commanded. We didn’t need to hear that twice. I unbuckled and immediately landed on Jinn’s butt.
“Ouch!” she yelled. I pulled open the door and crawled out onto the ground. There was an unmoving body near the front of the car. I was sure it was the driver. I looked around. The roadway was narrow and barely passable. Huge ruts and rocks jutted out. The trees were close, with thick vegetation. An army could be hiding in there and we would never see them.
“You see anything?” Jinn asked. I shook my head. If another clan was attacking us, they weren’t waving any flags. Her father went to the driver and touched his neck. His body slumped a little, and I assumed that the driver was dead. In front of us, several cars were at a standstill with about a dozen people milling around or standing by open car doors.
“Did the attack stop?” Tuko asked. I looked to where the front of the car had been. Something large and rough had impacted the hood, almost like a large rock. I looked to the ground and saw a bunch of shiny spikes in the dirt. I reached down.
“Don’t touch those!” I jerked back, suddenly remembering the worms from the store and the temporary blindness. What were these things? I looked at Jinn, but she shook her head. Her father stared at them.
“It’s not another clan. It’s an ankylosaur herd.”
My mind raced. I didn’t spend much time in school remembering the dinosaurs and what they looked like. Since seeing the monster at Trall, I knew that they weren’t like the history books. These dinosaurs had something more wicked done to them. I tried to get a glimpse but could only see movement and shadows in the trees. I had never studied anything that had thrown these death balls at me.
“The three of you stay here! I’m going to find your mother.” Strika took several steps forward and motioned to a large man.
“Keep your eyes to the sky, Pene,” Tuko said. “If one of those balls of spikes hit you, you’re dead.”
“The spikes are like a porcupine. If they puncture your skin, they hook in,” added Jinn. “Any movement is transferred to the spikes and they move closer to your vital organs. I’ve seen people who panicked after being hit and died a pincushion in minutes.”
I gulped. This world’s beasts were extremely deadly.
“How do they throw the ball so hard?” I asked, still not able to picture the beast.
“The animal is armored; knives and bullets can barely puncture unless you have a tremendous amount of force and are at close range. The tail is scooped like a slingshot; they gather rocks or branches, but the killer is the spikes that they release as well. Think of the hardest, sharpest pieces of steel and these things are tougher.”
“How do you deal with these things?” I yelled.
“You don’t, you avoid them,” Tuko interjected.
“Incoming!” the large man in front of us roared. I watched the dirty ball spin through the air. It made a funny sound like a whistle as air was rushing through it. It impacted in the ground about thirty feet in front of us.
“It missed!” I screamed.
Both Jinn and Tuko looked scared. The man in front of us stood, but his body went slack. He slowly turned to us as if to speak. His chest was covered in spikes that had ricocheted off the ground. He was dead by the time his knees gave out and he fell face forward. Before I could scream, part of a car roof flew in the air.
Now I could see the dinosaur in the distance. They were smaller than I thought, but that didn’t make them any less deadly. The size of a large armored horse, it was covered with sharp plates until there was a gap running along its tail with a clump of spikes at the end. The gap must have given the beast the flexibility to fling its deadly payload. Its face looked simple, almost like a cow, except for its eyes. There was a feeling of menace as it looked at us.
“Run!” Jinn commanded, and we scrambled toward the woods. The creature gave a bleating sound like it was scared, but we had no intention of trying to settle it down. The forest swallowed us up making me wish I had a machete to hack through the overgrowth. There is nothing more frightening when death is walking behind you and you can only get away at a slow crawl. The three of us smashed through the vegetation and I could hear the animal lumbering behind us. A large tree creaked and splintered, its trunk collapsing into the woods. The dinosaur had picked us as its targets.
“Keep moving,” Tuko ordered. “They’re slow but relentless and this thick forest works to its advantage. We need to get some space between us.” I pushed forward, noticing a small rise ahead. It made sense to find some elevation so we can see what was going on. A large crash came from behind us and I heard a scream. I stopped dead in my tracks; was one my friends hurt?
“Jinn! Tuko!” I called. Silence. This was worse than hearing their pain. I backtracked, despite the rumbling approach of the beast. I saw a large tree with Jinn kneeling before it. Tuko was poised with a knife ready to slash her back.
“What are you doing?” I yelled. Jinn turned and look petrified. She put her finger to her lips. I could see a large spike protruding from the middle of her back. It looked black and sickly.
“Shut up!” Tuko hissed. “She can’t move, or the spike will work itself to her organs. I’ve only got a few minutes to pull it out. Get away from us. If the dinosaur comes this way, I can’t protect both of you!” And like a surgeon, he began to work slowly at the spike. A trickle of blood oozed down her back. Jinn looked as if something was between her teeth to prevent her from screaming. The woods rumbled behind us. They didn’t have a couple of minutes of safety if I didn’t do something. I ran away from them and screamed as loud as I could.
I hollered for as long as I could. It felt like minutes, but it was probably a lot shorter. My voice cracked and my throat felt raw. I stood on a rock, banging a large stick, making as much noise as I could. Trees shattered behind me. Good. The creature had me in its sights. If it was as focused on me, Tuko could help Jinn. I continued climbing upward, hoping that the slight incline would slow the beast down. The closeness of shredding trees made me think it wasn’t helping very much.
I remembered my grandmother telling me about a story of a girl chased by a bear. I had never seen one in real life, so the story didn’t really hold my interest. My grandmother was quite animated, as if she had been there herself. The girl had been walking behind her house to a lake when she thought she saw two dogs playing with each other. Something seemed odd about their shape, but the girl’s curiosity won out. By the time she realized that these were bear cubs and not dogs, she was too late. She turned and realized that she had come between a mother and her cubs. The mother bear stared at her and the fur on her back end stood up. The girl ran and the mother bear chased her.
The girl couldn’t get back to her house and she knew she couldn’t outrun the bear. She searched around for something to climb up. There was a large tree with pine cones strewn everywhere. She did her best not to trip on one and leaped onto the first branch, reaching for the second. The bear didn’t miss a beat and reached for the branch as well. She didn’t realize how good a climber the bear was and had to keep climbing in order to stay just out of the bear�
�s reach. She tossed everything down that she could find, pine cones, an old bird’s nest, but nothing deterred the bear. The girl thought she was either going to be raked by the bear’s claws or she was going to break her neck when she fell out of the tree.
There was a cry below when the bear cub yelled up at its mother. The mother bear stopped her advance and looked down. The cub mewed again, and the mother dropped back to the ground and chased the cub away. The bear looked back at the girl and issued her warning, a guttural roar letting her know that she had spared her life.
Was there a moral of the story? I asked my grandmother. Yes, she said, don’t climb a tree to escape a bear. But there are other tactics to get away, he told me. I hoped this beast was similar enough to a bear for them to work.
Another spiky ball came flying, interrupting my thoughts and slamming into the trees. This time I ducked behind a large trunk, not wanting any of the debris to come flying into my chest. I let the dust settle. When I looked around the tree, I saw dozens of spikes impaled in the ground, some not more than five feet away. I zigzagged around them and continued to my goal.
The clearing ahead was trampled down, and there was a small hill with several large boulders. I ran toward them, hoping I could at least see better from the higher vantage point. In my peripheral vision, something moved. I stopped. One of the boulders moved. No, several of the boulders moved.
Instead of escaping the dinosaur, I had just walked into its nest. The large dinosaur that I mistook for a boulder blinked. It was smaller than the beast I had seen on the roadway. There were several tiny ones about the size of a goat that were jumping playfully around the larger creature. I held my breath, not wanting to make a sound. Whatever plan I thought I had went completely out the window. I backed up slowly, hoping that they would not react to me. For a few moments they didn’t, but they reacted to the roar of the largest one as it broke through the clearing, shattering trees with its tail. Damn my loud scream, it had no problem following me.
Clan World Page 9