by David Beers
What would Briten do? He had always been the calm one, the one who put thought into all of his decisions—and yet when she needed him most, he moved with a speed and purpose that kept her safe.
When the world was at its darkest, he was at his best.
Briten would find a way to win. Not her mother, her mother would have never been in this situation. Briten, though—he would find a way to kill the humans or make them bend their knee.
Her children would die soon. That's what scared her. The strands could regrow if she found a way to stop the cold from marching forward, but the children? They were alive. When they died, they wouldn’t be born again. Each life lost was life that wouldn't return, sent to whatever came after this universe, where the rest of Bynimian now lived in memory.
That's what she was sentencing them all to, just as Chilras sentenced her and the rest of her kind. Because of her inability to stop this affront.
She turned slightly behind and looked at the Bynum, the first born.
Named after her husband.
Briten looked back at her with blue eyes, so bright, almost incandescent. He couldn’t speak yet, as his aura still tried to learn the world around him.
It really was all so miraculous, the way life grew. First the aura assessed the physical environment, preparing him for possible threats. Then the assimilation of culture would start, but much more rapidly than the species on this planet learned. Truly, Bynums were more akin to the animals here, the way they learned almost everything within months of exiting the womb—some within hours.
Briten didn't move, only stared back, and Morena realized that it must have been shocking, beyond shocking, to be born into a universe with so much. Only through ignoring it all could anyone continue for just one more step.
Morena turned back around and looked down into the core.
Her mother would have never arrived. Her husband would have won. What would she do?
* * *
"Let's hear it," Kenneth Marks said.
He stood in front of the same tables that Knox had been bent over all day, studying digital maps, plotting and planning his assault. Kenneth Marks didn't need Knox to tell him how things were going, he only needed to look down for a few seconds and assess what sat before him.
"It's working," Knox said, not looking up.
"It would appear so." He liked the answer. He wanted the alien to see this, that what she created would die if she ignored him. However, it couldn't work too well. Kenneth Marks needed to walk that line, not falling on either side. "How far are our inroads?"
"We've shrunk the perimeter by about a mile in all directions. There's hundreds more to go though."
"Hundreds? How long are you planning on this taking?"
Knox looked up at him. "As long as it takes to kill it all."
Kenneth Marks smiled. "Are you forgetting our earlier conversation?"
"I don't know how you want me to answer. At our current rate, a hundred and fifty miles will probably take a week, unless we get more troops in here. If something comes up, then it's going to take longer."
Knox perhaps hadn't forgotten their earlier conversation; perhaps he simply decided to ignore it. Perhaps he just threw it out of his mind right after the conversation took place. Kenneth Marks wanted to sigh, but he wouldn’t drop his smile right now. Finding good help was damned hard. Rigley and now Knox, both of them sealing their fates the same as they would lick envelopes before closing them.
Death comes to all, though, he supposed. It was only a matter of when and how. He would do the duty for these two.
"Thank you," he said. "Bring in all the troops you need. I want this over with in three days. Is that possible?"
Knox looked back to the screens on the table. He nodded as he looked across. "Yes, I think it should be. The more ice we have on them, the quicker they're going to go down."
"What do we do when we meet her?"
"Use the same plan."
Kenneth Marks hoped he would hear that. This white cake growing like a weed might not be able to combat the cold, but Kenneth Marks thought if for some reason they did run into the alien, ice water wouldn't put her down. The plan was for them not to run into her, though.
He said he wanted it done in three days, but in thirty-six hours, when the turning tide was too obvious to ignore, he would go to her again and she would relent. Then, together, they could watch the world change—with him and her side by side, ready to fulfill his fate. Ready to evolve humanity.
But, before that happened, the two people he hired would meet an end a bit more grisly than whatever the alien had planned.
"Where is Rigley?" Kenneth Marks asked. He hadn't seen her in a few hours, and his brain pushed the information to the forefront.
"I haven't seen her," Knox said. He zoomed in on a piece of the map.
"When was the last time you saw her?"
"Last night. When she dropped the bomb."
"You haven't seen her since we were in the main tent?" Kenneth Marks said.
Knox didn't look up, but only shook his head as he studied the map.
Kenneth Marks smile dropped away. Something was wrong here. She hadn't been out of his sight, unless in a hotel room, since he arrived—and now all of a sudden he couldn’t account for her? He had been so concerned with the alien, and then with sleep, that he hadn't thought about her since the main tent, either.
And now, she was missing.
No, his mind said, refusing to believe it.
He left the tent without saying anything and walked across the parking lot to Rigley’s tent—already plotting out what he would do if she wasn't there, what actions he would take, how he would find her.
Because he would find her.
And if she fucking left, the flaying would only be an appetizer. He'd create a fucking six course meal if she tried to run.
He pushed back the tent's flaps, walking into the barracks. He didn't need to move down the aisle to see her bed, though. He knew where she was sleeping from the first moment she went into the tent, because he didn’t plan on losing his prized possession.
And yet, she wasn't there.
24
Rigley's Mind
The wallpaper melted.
Black smoke rose and grew thick near the ceiling. Had anyone been on the first floor, they wouldn’t have been able to stand up, but made to crawl on the floor in order to avoid the smoke that would surely fill their lungs. And even on the floor, they wouldn't last long, as the dark cloud pushed down, starting to flirt with the carpet, not content with its conquest above; indeed, the downstairs of Rigley’s mind looked more like the flames that roared across Bolivia than anything resembling the quiet home she built for herself.
The fire spread across the carpeted floor, making its way to the hardwood, and grabbing onto any furniture it could find. The flames danced like practiced lovers, putting on a show not for the viewers, but for each other. All of the sprinkler systems installed in the ceilings were off, or never functioned to begin with. It didn't matter at this point; it was all the same.
Rigley's feet were warm, but that felt good, not uncomfortable. The warmth was much better than the cold she felt in the other rooms or the way the floor first felt when she walked into this place.
The smoke and flames below, besides the warmth at her feet, hadn’t made its way to this high floor. Perhaps the house’s construction kept them at bay, or perhaps it was only Rigley’s mind, fighting to keep the insanity downstairs from rising to the last refuge Rigley knew.
She had begun decorating, and she found it exhilarating. She wondered, when she finished in this room, if she could go back to the others and remove the furnishings already there—the picture of her child, the man holding his hand out, etc. She would replace them with whatever ideas came to her, because in this place, she made the rules—no one else.
Right now, a parrot sat atop Kenneth Marks’ head, squawking. Rigley hadn't found out exactly how to make it stop, but she didn't mind.
She found it actually quite humorous.
"More!" it screamed out into the room.
"What should I call you?" she said, turning away from the wall on which she was trying to decide what type of painting to hang.
"Sam!" the parrot's throaty voice threw out.
"Sam. Not a bad name by any stretch of the imagination. What should go on this wall, Sam?"
The parrot pranced around on top of Marks' head, the man's hair sticking up in odd spots whenever Sam moved his talons from one place to the next. The parrot turned around in a circle, squawking in a tune that sounded oddly like a laugh.
"His blood! His blood!"
"Whose blood?"
The parrot pecked down hard, his beak ramming through the skin and scraping the skull underneath. Blood shot up, coating the bird's head and dripping down his body. It rolled to the front of Marks' head and slicked down his face, running in between his eyes and nose.
Rigley turned her head sideways, looking at the blood on his face.
She smiled.
"I don't think that's a half bad idea, Sam."
Sam squawked in response.
Rigley stepped closer to Marks, and brought her hand to his face. She paused momentarily, something flickering in her head. Perhaps it was the last remnant of the rooms downstairs, the calm before the other levels had been built. Perhaps the memory of those rooms said there wasn’t a way back from what she was about to do. Perhaps only a momentary lapse occurred, though, like a circuit briefly misfiring. Perhaps nothing happened at all.
Either way, Rigley pushed forward, ignoring the pause, and rubbed her finger across the blood on Marks face. It still rolled down, fresh and warm, his heart doing its job and pumping the liquid life through him. Rigley looked down at her thumb and saw the dark red sitting there, waiting on her to make art.
She turned from the bird, which still squawked—loud annoying brays that would have driven most people mad. Rigley didn't notice it though, and if she had, she would probably have enjoyed it.
She stepped to the white wall and rubbed her thumb across diagonally. A long red stripe moved just behind her finger, starting off thick and heavy, and tapering at the end. Rigley put her hand to her side and only looked at the stripe.
She liked it.
"Sam, I think you're onto something here."
Sam kept on squawking.
25
Present Day
Rigley looked out at the land.
She had never seen anything like it before. The area before her looked like another world, like something that shouldn't even be considered land. White ropes covered it. Green dominated Earth for the past however many millions of years, even with the color of concrete, brick, metal, and asphalt making a strong attempt over the past two hundred years or so. Here, though, in this place, these white strands had done in days what men weren’t able to do in centuries. She saw no more green, no more man made colors either. Only white, and from a distance one might think it was snow. But once Rigley got close to it she saw it was nothing like the powdery substance that fell from the sky.
Tiny white… creatures… lived in front of her. She couldn't consider them anything else. This wasn't the Sherman she saw in Bolivia. These things wiggled and moved like worms, straining to grow forward. She was maybe ten feet from them, but from where she stood, they would meet her feet very soon. The Sherman had spread, but not like this, not with such individuality in each of the little strands she saw.
The only thing disturbing the white color, maybe a few football fields into the landscape, were the same colorful bubbles that Marks had seen in the bag. She couldn't see inside any of them, their distance too far, only their different—beautiful—colors.
Rigley found a gap between the soldiers outlining the perimeter of the growth. It looked to be about a half mile, and she knew that they could see her, one soldier on either side. It would take them time to get her though; each of them carried huge backpacks, similar to flamethrowers, except fire didn't shoot out the end of their weapons. Rigley couldn't see exactly what they blasted the growth with, only that it appeared to be working, because each of the soldiers were further into the white fields than Rigley. The growth thrived here, but it died where the soldiers stood.
If they tried to catch her at this spot, they would be far too late. She wore a large hazmat suit, just as they did, but she planned on walking straight into the ‘white cake’, while they would need to skirt it.
And here was the moment of truth, because she had to trust that the creature on the other side of that cage—the one holding onto Will's body—had listened to her. She had to hope that the creature heard and would allow her safe passage. If not, this growth would eat her the same as it had the men who showed up with flames. A lot of hope, but that was more than she'd had in the past ten years.
Rigley looked down at her hands.
They were still, so different than in the bathroom where she found herself shaking when this whole thing started.
She looked up for a second, to the left and right. The men had stopped shooting their mystery substance and stared at her. Probably communicating over an intercom, discussing what to do.
"Come get me," she said and smiled.
Rigley started walking into the white growth, and somewhere a parrot laughed.
* * *
The growth—though it didn't think of itself in that way, it just was, without name or need for name—felt the human walking on top of it.
The cold killing its brethren, killing it, made the growth frantic. It saw no way out of this, saw no way to combat the death all around it. Except for heat. For more heat. It yearned for warmth the way a newborn child yearned to be comforted.
It grabbed onto the human's feet, moving across the plastic hazmat material, sinking deep through it and into the shoes beneath so that it could get to her feet. At the same time it sprang up her legs, digging through the jeans while other strands propelled themselves even further up her body. It felt the warmth, felt the necessary fuel needed to grow faster, perhaps to outrun the cold attacking it nearly everywhere.
The growth would dig in here, dig into this person, and find peace for a moment.
The first tendrils plunged into the human's skin, tiny drops of blood seeping out around the small holes they made.
Warmth. Warmth. Warmth.
They felt cells trying to speak with them, trying to communicate, describing…
And the growth stopped.
It didn't pull out of the human, but it didn't move any further in either. It listened as the cells relayed who this human was. The pause ran on long, creating a desperation similar to a dog staring at a steak that it can't have but desperately wants. Because the strands wanted her. Wanted to feed their growth with her heat, but their mother—she told them about this human. Their mother told them that if she arrived, they weren't to touch her. They were to grant her passage. They were to protect her if need be.
Mother wanted this creature and nothing else mattered. They didn't have to listen to their mother, but they trusted her, believed she would lead them away from this pain and to the warmth they craved.
The strands couldn't speak, but if they had the ability and knew the English language, they probably would have slung curse words as they recognized what they must do. They slowly backed out of the human, who stood as still as a venus fly trap waiting on dinner. The white strands backed all the way down her body, retreating to the ground where they had rested before. The holes in her skin were still there, but the strands left salve as they departed, helping to stop the blood flow.
The strands left Rigley alone, with nothing to stop her from moving forward.
* * *
Morena's eyes still focused on the glowing orange beneath her, but she stopped seeing it.
She heard the strands speaking to her, their language nothing that anyone besides Morena could ever understand, but one that she felt intuitively. She would miss them when they were gone, when the world was
as it should be. She would want them back.
She had no reason to mourn their pending loss, though. Things were meant to be a certain way, and nothing Morena wanted could change them.
Because the woman, Rigley, had arrived. She was crossing the white desert Morena created. And maybe she could use this woman. Morena had no doubt that if the woman lied to her, Morena could kill her easily. But there might be a chance Rigley was telling the truth. If this woman thought that peace could exist between the two species, then Morena could use whatever information she possessed to protect Bynums—no matter what it took.
Get her. Protect her. Use her.
The words weren't her mother's or Briten's. They were hers, the ruler that she was becoming, the ruler Bynimian needed. A saying she picked up from Bryan swirled around her mind, trying to land. It seemed apt, seemed to possess the truth of the situation.
If this woman told the truth, if she had grown tired of war, then Morena would use that—twist it until she wrought every bit of usefulness from it. Bryan's saying… Morena understood it with a sincere clarity.
Humans had made their bed. It was time to sleep in it.
26
Present Day
Wren stood at the open motel door; his son only a few feet away.
He wanted to step out, but at the same time, didn't want to move a single muscle. He always viewed his son as small, as something that he could control. Even when the fights started a few years ago, Wren saw his son as a beta, and he the alpha. The past few days—maybe the sobriety brought it on or maybe Wren finally gave a shit about something besides vodka—he had come to see his son as an equal. Now, though, looking out at Michael standing on the breezeway, he was shocked to find himself a bit scared of his presence.
He seemed bigger somehow, though that was impossible.
Still, Michael's back looked to surge with muscles, bulging out of his shirt.