They came for our dead

by Robert E Dudley II

  We walked away from the alien, moving as fast as we could through the fields, the endless tracts of vegetation. I was shocked that Brian could move so fast, practically speed walking in front of me, because on Earth, the old man could only master a few feet at a time before he had to sit down.

  Within minutes, the alien was far behind us, out of sight. An hour later, we had created a gap of miles between it and us. Along the way, I managed to push down the music in my head, to shrink it so it did not bother me as much, and that was a sweet relief.

  Our trek was a long one, and I knew we would soon require rest, water, and shade. Wherever we were, there was a sun above us, beating down on us with its rays that were just as strong as those of the desert sun on Earth. Even with our newfound vitality, our escape would be all for naught if we did not soon find an oasis. I was sure we were still capable of dying out there in the middle of nowhere, and that thought urged us to walk on.

  “Hmm,” Brian said in my head, ever the situation analyst. “The gravity feels similar, but based on the stretch of our shadows, I think the days are longer.”

  “The stretch of shadows?” I questioned.

  “Yes. See, we’ve been heading the same direction for a long while, and our shadows haven’t moved much. Not only that, but our bodies are a lot more resilient. I don’t know about you, but I haven’t had this much stamina in a long damn time. Hey, maybe that alien gave us some of them little blue pills,” he thought with a wink.

  “Alien Viagra? Really, Brian,” I said with a roll of my eyes. “Have you…” I began, but that question trailed off into mental silence.

  We kept walking, and hours and miles passed. Finally, we stopped, and Brian bent over, placing his hands on his knees, his forehead glistening with a sheen of perspiration.

  “Look!” I messaged, pointing to something in the distance, a low-built, one-story structure of some sort. It was difficult to see because it was camouflaged, the same color as the grass, perfectly blending in. “Over there. Think we should head that way, see who…or what lives there?”

  “We have no choice. I’m getting hungry and tired. We’ve walked more today than I’ve walked in a year’s time. Even though my body is healed, I’m runnin’ outta steam,” Brian admitted.

  The house was about a mile away, and I had no idea what to expect after the day’s surprising turn of events. Hours earlier, I’d had my pistol an inch from Brian’s forehead, ready to end his life and join a new group of survivors in Westbury, but an alien burst into the house and changed all that. Now, we were somewhere else, both blessed with inhuman abilities, and we were walking toward a strange structure. With our past destroyed and our future very uncertain, I knew we had no choice but to move forward.

  As we drew closer, I studied the architecture. The building was simple but elegant. It would have been a wonder to any bricklayer back home, because it seemed to be constructed seamlessly, with only one material. The lines were perfectly blended and smooth, with no indication of welds, nails, or mortar of any type. It seemed to be part of the area it inhabited, perfectly retrofitted to the geography itself. Around the house, there was a border of worn gravel and earth, and a few feet from the walls, trails broke into the tall grass and led into the fields. There were three openings but no doors, and we peeked in one before we dared to step inside.

  When we saw no one, we ventured in. There were four rooms, and it was easy enough to determine what they were used for: two sleeping quarters, a main room with a large arch, and some sort of bathroom. The décor was sparse, just a few carvings, piles of stones that created a low table and a few chairs and a makeshift sofa. There was nothing alive in the house, and we found no food or water. I laid my hand on the wall and discovered that the material was strong and unbreakable.

  “The seven dwarves?” Brian joked as we realized the home was built for someone or something with a much smaller build than the average human. “I sure as hell ain’t Snow White.”

  “I‘ve got no idea,” I said aloud, running my hand over the table and admiring the handiwork; it, too, was part of the building, low and long and not very wide. “Now what? This place will protect us from the elements for a bit, but we’ll eventually have to move on.”

  The wind outside picked up, and it whispered over the grass, then blew across us.

  “Doesn’t make any sense to me, none at all. There are no electronics, no wiring, no pipes, but someone must have lived here. It’s open, with no doors, but the walls and floors don’t have a speck of dust on them. How did they stay warm in here? What did they eat? Like you said, this place makes no sense at all.” I got up and looked around at the simple elegance, the immaculate nothingness. “Maybe we should take one of those paths we found outside, maybe the one that looks the most used. It might lead to another building or town. What do you think?” I asked.

  “Sounds good,” he answered, still unwilling to use his tongue. “Let’s go. I don’t like it here. Gives me the willies, like the thing that lives here is gonna come back any minute. God only knows what the punishment is for trespassing ‘round here.”

  Brian got up from his stone seat. As he passed, I noticed that even the pink scars had faded. I looked down at my own body and noticed the same: All my old wounds and scars, the abrasions and bruises and contusions and lesions, were nearly gone.

  As if reading my mind, Brian looked at his arm, at a place that once boasted a deep laceration. He looked up into my eyes and smiled. “Yep! I figure they’ll be all gone in a day or so. Something is happening to us, to our bodies,” he thought.

  I shivered, and it had nothing to do with the cool breeze.

  We chose the most worn path, which was almost five feet wide. It wound through the fields, and we were soon a quarter-mile or so from the house. We were both thirsty, and we hoped the walkway would carry us to a pool or river, but we saw no sign of either. As we walked, the music in my head returned to its loud volume, almost deafening. I had trouble concentrating, and I felt dizzy and off balance, so much so that Brian noticed and placed a perfectly healthy hand on my shoulder to steady me.

  Finally, we came to the end of the path, a large, circular swath where nothing grew. It stretched in front of us no more than thirty feet, and at the edge of the grass, new life pushed up through the dirt.

  “How can you not hear this?” I screamed into the air, sinking down onto my knees. The ground beneath me was cool and moist. I put my hands over my ears and arched my back, pointing my eyes skyward. The noise was torturous, and I had never been so hungry and tired and thirsty in my life, nor had I been so baffled, in spite of all I’d seen. I couldn’t think straight about anything, could hardly remember my own name because I was so distracted by the merciless concerto. If only the noise would go away….

  I looked around and remembered similar fields from my boyhood, those places where I picked strawberries with my mother on hot, late-summer days. Back then, we drove down the asphalt roads till the tar gave way to gravel and pebbles, then continued on those backroads, deep into the heartland, till we reached the pick-it-yourself farm. God, they were so fresh and sweet and juicy. I fondly recalled our laughter as we placed half the berries in the bushel basket and sneaked to pop the others into our mouths. It was a lovely memory, one of few from my childhood, but it also enhanced my hunger. I put my head on the ground and pushed back against the music, trying to drive it out of my head, trying to drown it out by thinking of the acres and acres of strawberries. What I wouldn’t give for some strawberries now, even just one…or a piece of Mom’s strawberry pie.

  “Peter?” Brian said as he put a hand on my shoulder, his words cutting through the air this time. “Peter, get up. Look.”

  The racket in my head, the discordant sounds, began to fade. I raised my head and looked in the bright, warm sunlight, breathing hard and feeling the sting of sweat in my eyes. My mouth was parched, but it began to water as I took in the sight of strawberry fields all around me, hundreds of plants, fertile and plump, a
t least two feet high and all yielding fruit.

  Brian moved quickly toward them and plucked off fistfuls of ripe, sweet berries. He crammed them in his mouth, the bountiful juice running down his chin, and splashing onto his shirt.

  Without a second thought, I followed suit. I rose and clawed at the plants and stuffed handfuls of fresh fruit in my mouth. Minutes passed as we ate our fill, till our thirst and hunger abated. Then, as if to harvest them for later, I pulled the hem of my shirt up to create a basket and began piling more berries into it, till it looked like I had a lumpy pot belly.

  It was then that I noticed that the music stopped only when the strawberries appeared. Apparently, the noise was given off by the vegetation of that strange world; I somehow knew that, felt it. The aliens evolved us, healed and improved us, then fed us through the rift, a portal to where we were now, equipped with a plethora of new abilities. For me, it was a great epiphany: With our minds, we can conjure up whatever we need. The crashing melodies were only the plant life trying to speak to me, and it took time for my mind to catch up to what they were saying. Now that I understood, now that I could hear what they were saying, I could change the grass into anything I wanted or needed. “I wonder if there are pizza plants,” I mused silently to Brian.

  “Make it deep dish, and I’m all in!”

  Brian and I thought rapidly between us as we walked back to the house. Heat, light, food, and water were all available to us there, even though they were not visible. That was why the house was devoid of those things, because they could be thought up as necessary, by the minds of the more advanced humans. Those beings communicated with others telepathically and were empowered to shape the world around them. They existed more there than in the physical world. If we wanted heat or light, we only had to move the air around us, to mentally cool or warm it. If we wanted water, we only had to order the ground to provide it. If we needed food, we could command the plants to feed us. There was no need for machinery, electronics, appliances, plumbing, or pantries when the mind could provide it all. We didn’t even have to use our moths to talk, but we certainly used them to smile and cheer when the revelation hit us, when we realized just how powerful we were in that space and time.

  When we returned to the house, we set the strawberries down and sat at the table. For hours, Brian and I communicated with each other, discussing our past and formulating plans for our future. The mental discussions became easier and faster as we went, much like the messages from the plants. Brian was not in tune with the botany, as his was a more scientific, engineering mind, but he could focus on other things, and we complemented each other that way. Quickly after arriving back at the house, he sped up the air, producing light and heat. We both pulled water up from the ground, so we could wash and drink our fill. It was wonderful for us both, but I could tell that his mind was superior, that his thoughts were stronger, more pointed, and quicker.

  “It’s easy,” he thought, smiling at me with excitement. “I can warm the water that comes up from the aquifers, much like a microwave would. I’m sure you can do it as well. I mean, I also hear the plants singing, though I think they’re louder in your head.”

  It was not surprising. All my life, I’d worked with my hands, built things up from the ground, and I even did a bit of gardening. Brian, on the other hand, worked with his mind till it was warped with old age and sickness. We both shared new abilities now, but we still had strengths and weaknesses individual to us. I looked at my friend and, in that moment, was thankful I did not pull that trigger.

  In front of me, I raised some of the strawberries off the table, floating them just in front of my face. “How powerful do you think we can become, and if the aliens could do this, why didn’t they grant us these powers on Earth, in our time?” I thought, since it was much faster than talking.

  “I’m not sure they know our potential. I really can’t figure out why they brought us here though. I’m sure our ancestors or future generations were or are here. This place seems like something they would build and live in. Maybe we have to be here to absorb it all, to grow into them, but I really don’t have a clue. I’m sure they coulda done all this on Earth if…” He suddenly stopped short, as if something dawned on him. “Ya know, now that I think about it, the people who lived here, in this building and in this world, musta all been pulled back by the aliens. They’re probably nothin’ more than data on some alien cloud now, maybe just bytes of intel stuck on one of those crazy rods, like files on a computer disk.”

  With our world as we knew it destroyed, the living and the dead gone, it seemed to me that our past was fading. Even our thoughts of our former lives seemed to be vanishing; we were too focused on our new abilities and powers and our new environment. I even felt it difficult to catch a visual image of my sweet Sue’s face. As we laughed, moving strawberries through the air, I felt part of me die. My family, my old life was leaving me. I was more interested in moving water and morphing plants into something else.

  We both felt it at the same time, and we looked at one another with expressions of dread and foreboding on our faces. The alien had come with us, and we simultaneously felt its presence, like some dark blot far away, the proverbial fly in our ointment. It was coming for us, moving incredibly fast, because it wanted its lab rats back. We were the experiments, and it wanted to see the results of its research, wanted to study us, dissect us, probe us and pull us apart so their race could evolve as we did or at least find out how to live on after they died.

  The house was built around a gaggle of rocks, and the building was a typical square, with an open center for a small flower garden. Brian and I climbed the rocks, which allowed purchase to the roof, for we were eager to see into the distance. We scuttled across the ochre-colored stones, each higher than the next, their rough surfaces providing footholds as we went.

  It was still a bright day, and I was sure the roof would be warmed by the constant sunshine, but it was cool. Even more uncanny, the rooftop seemed to be a living entity all its own, covered by about six inches of earth, with some type of plant growing in that dark loam. I knew just by looking at it that it was a type of insulation, keeping the structure cool in the daytime and warm overnight. I marveled at the simple idea. The place met all basic needs of shelter, food, and comfort, even if it was out in the middle of nowhere. There, we could connect with nature, and it was beautiful. It made my heart ache for the teeming masses of humanity that were spread over the planet, before the aliens sucked them back to Earth.

  “There,” Brian thought to me, pointing to the horizon, at a small cloud of dust blowing up around some fast-moving thing.

  “What the hell do you think it wants with us? Why doesn’t it leave us alone? I’m sure they have all the data they need,” I thought back.

  “We’re a science problem, Peter, the control group in their little experiment. They’re using us and probably the others left on Earth for study. They wanna evolve us, to get a grip on our potential, to know what abilities or powers we are capable of gaining. If they can figure out those changes in us, they can emulate it for themselves, better their race. Now that they’ve gathered as much data as possible from the pull-backs, they intend to keep evolving and changing us, to see what forms we will take, what powers they might also glean.”

  “Us? Who else? I’ve seen no one else here.”

  “There were more, like those two we saw on the road. If they can evolve us and follow us to the planets or planes we go to through the rifts, they’ll have destinations for their ships. I’m sure they’ve conquered spatial travel, as well as dimensional. All they gotta do is tag along, then examine the data and put it into practical application for themselves. It’s all research and development with these guys.”

  A quiver ran down my spine when Brian mentioned the two men on the road, as he was unconscious during that encounter. How does he even know about them? I wondered. And, my God, did he hear them tell me to lose him?

  The alien drew nearer and nearer, movin
g impossibly rapidly over the ground, its power so strong it ripped into the earth, throwing huge swaths of dust and debris fifty feet in the air on either side of it by the strength and speed of its legs. While such a thing would have terrified me not so long ago, I was surprisingly calm, even as the strange thing advanced.

  “Amazing,” Brian thought to me.

  “What is?”

  “Well, it’s like I can see inside its armor, read it the creature’s feelings. It’s scared, as well as deeply curious about how we’ve changed.”

  I could sense all that as well, could almost see the glow of its armor, even from that far distance. I knew the force field flared out around it. I also suddenly surmised that the metal was made on some distant star, and the power of the suit was almost enough to provide energy to our entire old world. It recirculated atmosphere in its suit, and that was what gave it the glow and the almost godlike power of destruction. Nevertheless, in spite of all its knowledge and all the strength at its clawed fingertips, it was hesitant to come find us immediately after it awoke. As Brian said, it was frightened, and I sensed that deep fear and took delight in it.

  More than that, I hated it. I still wanted to kill it, to kill them all. The superpowers their games gave me did nothing to take that away.

  The alien soon stopped before us, in a hailstorm of blowing dust, debris, and dirt. It looked up at us, and we stared down at it, standing on the roof and refusing to cower. I spat at it and watched my discharge run off its shield. I glowered at the thing and knew it could feel the hate and anger boiling inside me. It knew we had changed, but it did not know how much.

  From its armor, it withdrew a small device, some metallic thing with a flange at one end and a sharp point on the other, no more than a foot long. The thing flung the presumed weapon over its shoulder, then whirled around and plunged it into the soft earth around the house. A second later, it pulsed with a burst of energy that was sent aloft, out into space, and more power pulsed from its armor.