As we got near the tree line, I stopped to touch one. The bark was smooth, slightly sticky. The branches were thin near the lower end of it, with slim leaves unlike any I’d ever seen.
“Dean, let’s go. We can look at the flora once we nab Terrance and Leslie,” Mae said.
I just shrugged and kept moving. The village was a couple of miles away; we’d expected to take fifteen minutes to get there at a good pace. Reality was different.
Three minutes in, the ground was too soft to walk on. Slate’s substantial bulk sank in as he stepped down, and we had to help him pull his right leg out of the mossy hole. A smelly mud stuck to his boot when he pulled free, and Mary wrinkled her nose at the stench.
“That’s not something you want to walk in. Let’s see if there’s a way across this way.” She pointed north, and we found much the same issue. Doubling back took valuable time, but the ground was eventually firmer, and soon we were making our way to the village in the right direction.
In a few minutes, we could see lights from the town: a soft glow in the darkness of an ominous world. It called to me like a beacon, and suddenly I remembered the time my car broke down on the highway in the winter when I was first off at college, right before the days when cell phones were in everyone’s hand constantly. It was the middle of a snowstorm, and after seeing no one else was crazy enough to be on the main roads, I spent an hour walking down a gravel road seeking a house. Just when I thought my toes were going to fall off, I saw a light in the distance. I ran, more stumbled, toward it, and the family let me call a tow truck and stay there until the driver picked me up.
When I saw the village light, the same feeling hit me, and I ran ahead. A few steps into my sprint, I felt the ground make way for water and I fell forward, going under.
It happened so fast, my brain couldn’t comprehend it. One second I was moving in the warm air, the next my head was under water, a thick sludgy liquid. I flailed my hands, trying to find something to push against, but they just sank into the muck on the bottom of the ground.
I finally swiveled my legs out under me and pushed up, my head breaching the muck.
Laughter shot at me from behind, and I turned to see Mary’s outline snickering at my epic fail.
“Laugh it up, chuckles,” I said, angry I was so stupid to get into this situation. That anger was heavily mixed with embarrassment. “Can you guys just help me out?”
It looked like I was in a small pond, only thirty feet across. All we would have had to do was walk a few steps to the left and avoid it. If I hadn’t rushed forward, I would be up there with the rest of them, dry and clean.
Slate stepped forward and reached a hand out, when something brushed against my leg.
SEVENTEEN
“What the hell was that?” I asked, shaking my leg.
As I stretched my hand out to grab his, I felt it again, this time harder.
“Guys, something’s in here with me.” Panic was creeping into my voice, the embarrassment all but forgotten. Slate grasped my wrist and that was when the creature underwater made its move. It wrapped around my ankle, pulling at me. I still couldn’t see it, but it was constricting tighter by the second. Another tentacle twisted around my waist and before I knew it, I was gasping in murky water, flailing for air.
I hadn’t even noticed, but Slate was still holding my arm, tugging at me, a tug-of-war where I was the rope. I could hear shouting as my head ducked in and out of the water, me just trying to get air when I was able to. There were multiple tentacles now, and I had no idea if it was one multi-limbed attacker or a group of snake-like animals.
This was it. I was going to die my first hour on a new world. Water gushed into my nose, and I tasted the stale muddy water as I was tugged under it once again. The strong hard grip of Slate’s hand was gone suddenly, and I was pulled down and away from my friends. Clenching my eyes shut, I tried to stave off the panic, and fought to pull one tentacle from its crushing force on my abdomen. Nothing worked.
The water muffled sound, and I thought I could make out Mary’s voice from the ground a distance away. The swamp area was far larger than I’d initially thought, and I kept being pulled farther in. My lungs burned for air, and I knew it wasn’t going to be long. Light flashed in my closed eyes, and my body went from tense and flailing to calm and serene. The light was there for me.
Something splashed nearby, and I felt a surge of hope. The pressure on my waist ceased, and before I knew it, I wasn’t being pulled any longer. Next the grip on my ankle was gone, and an arm was under my chest, lifting me to the surface. My feet found muddy purchase on the swamp floor, and my weak knees helped keep me in an upright position. It was dark, and I retched out water, bile mixing with the thick stinky liquid.
“Are you okay, Dean?” Mae’s voice asked in my ear. She was panting, and my eyes made out her form beside me in the dimly-lit night sky.
“Mae,” was all I could muster through my clenched teeth.
“Oh, thank God,” she said quietly.
She was holding a knife in her hand, and that’s when I saw the floating tentacles to the right of us. She’d dived in and killed the thing with a blade. The others were calling to us from forty yards away. Mae helped me to them, dragging the creature behind us like a prize kill.
Slate reached down, picking up a limb and pulling the thing onto the ground.
“Dean!” Mary called, her voice strained and tearful. “Are you okay?”
I was out of the water, pushing my body further away from the swamp just in case another of those monsters decided to swing an arm up and grab me.
“I think so,” I said, lying on my back. For a moment, I just stayed still, staring at the strange star clusters overhead. I let my body tell me what, if anything, was wrong with it, and other than a tender abdomen and a pulsing ankle, everything felt normal.
“Mae, that was amazing,” Mary said. “She didn’t wait a second. As soon as Slate lost grip, she dove in, knife in her hand. I’ve never seen anything like it.”
I turned my head and saw Mae’s outline watching the water, still holding the knife. She was soaked like me, her hair hanging long and dripping with mud.
“Looks almost familiar, doesn’t it?” Slate said, poking the dead creature with his heavy boot. It resembled a large octopus, but with six thick tentacles, each at least the length of a human. Beady black orbs sat on either side of its head, and even though the thing almost killed me a minute ago, I felt bad for it lying there dead. It was just doing what nature taught it to do, and we were the invaders.
“Amazing,” Mary said, looking at it now too.
I finally got up, testing my ankle and feeling it take the brunt of my weight. I lumbered over to Mae and put my arm around her waist. “Thank you, Mae,” I said. She was still looking over the swamp, and she leaned her head down against my shoulder. We stood like that side-by-side for a minute before Slate cleared his throat.
“We should keep moving. We’re almost there.” He took the lead, and I stayed back waiting for Mary.
“Dean, I’m so glad you’re all right.” Her fingers slipped between mine, and I squeezed her hand back.
“So am I. Mary, if anything ever does happen to me, just keep going on. We need to finish the mission.” I felt foolish for saying it, but a near-death experience was sure to bring up a couple of unwanted conversations.
She shook her head. “I don’t want to think about that. You’re fine now. A little wet and dirty, and to be honest, stinky… but fine.”
I sniffed, and the putrid swamp water that covered me did make me smell something terrible. A shower was probably out of the question. I laughed and pulled her close. “Now you can smell bad too.” She fought me off, and we were so distracted with each other, we nearly walked into the barn-sized man, Slate. He turned and shushed us like an annoyed parent. His finger went to his lips and he held his hand up, telling us to stay still.
The village was a few hundred yards away, and we were coming up to the f
irst building in the area. A few dim lights were on, a soft yellow glow making me wonder just how different the inhabitants were from humans. It looked like a scene from a hundred years ago. I took comfort in the similarities, but knew it was only right to be cautious at the same time.
Slate motioned for us to crouch down, and he took a pair of binoculars out. He found something. He passed them to me, pointing in the distance. I scanned the area his finger extended toward and saw it too. Terrance and Leslie’s ship was there. They walked through the field toward a large dwelling built of logs, and smoke poured from a rock chimney in the roof. It looked like quite the quaint scene until I spotted the aliens beside them. One was insectoid in nature, legs bending opposite of ours like a chicken, large black eyes on an oval-shaped head, antennae poking up a foot into the night sky. There was another with it, and I recognized the race instantly. Deltra.
Relief that there were still Deltra out there washed over me, but dread quickly replaced it. The last time I’d seen a Deltra, they were trying to kill us, after convincing us to murder the entire race of the Kraski. It hadn’t ended well for them, and there wasn’t a night I didn’t close my eyes and see the explosion that had snuffed out their lives at our hands.
Mae nudged me, and I handed the binoculars over to her. So the hybrids had stolen a ship, traversed a wormhole, and traveled to a backwater planet. To what end? What did they want there?
“Just what are those bastards doing?” Slate asked, mirroring my thoughts.
“Let’s get in closer,” Mae said.
A voice spoke behind us in an unfamiliar language. My translator shot the words into my ear. “You’re going to be much closer.” We spun around to see two large Deltra holding pulse rifles toward us.
My eyes roamed to Mae’s hand, which looked to be twitching near her holstered gun. She looked toward me and I shook my head, hoping she wouldn’t get us all killed. She grimaced and raised her hands in the air along with the rest of us.
“Come with us,” the translator said.
They marched us straight to the building the hybrids had gone to, and more insectoid aliens and Deltra sentries came out of the surrounding woods. They’d either been waiting for us or were a very cautious colony.
The building was large and looked more like a big house as we neared it.
“Weapons on the ground.” The bigger of the two bald Deltra pointed from us to the ground with his gun. We obliged, even if I saw a second of hesitation from Slate. Every inch of him looked ready to pounce.
The front doors on the side building were large, on rails like a sliding barn door. Inside the garage-like hangar, we saw a ship unlike any we’d seen yet. It was about a quarter the size of our ship and had an insectoid frame, almost like a hornet. I suspected I knew which aliens it belonged to. A Deltra was inside talking with Leslie and Terrance. They stopped and looked toward us, surprise etched on both the hybrids’ faces.
“Terrance, you left your wallet on Earth. I thought you might need it,” I said, hoping a joke would break the tension. It didn’t.
“What do we have here?” the Deltra said in perfect English. The guards walked us further into the room until we were only a few feet from the three inside. The Deltra was tall, very thin, and had markings tattooed on his neck and hands. He stood straight, confident. The energy this guy was pushing out was amazing, and I knew he must be a leader among the Deltra, or at least of the colony there.
“How the hell did you find us?” Terrance asked, shaking his head. He scanned the four of us, eyes stopping on Mae for a moment longer than the rest of us. He wouldn’t have known about the new ships or technology adaptations.
I figured telling them wouldn’t do any harm. “The smart people back home found a way to add a tracking system to our ships.”
Leslie nodded. “I told you they might be able to find us. We were too careless.”
“And you brought them here,” the Deltra said. “What are we going to do with you?” he asked, walking over to Slate. He was as tall as our huge soldier, but about a third as wide, even with the billowing cloak he had on. The contrast was almost comical.
“Why can’t you just let us be?” Leslie asked. “We just remembered hearing rumors of this place and wanted to ask Kareem if we could bring the hybrids who want to leave Earth here to start fresh. Somewhere we can be ourselves and forget about the Kraski and the human blood coursing through us. Live out our days as a free people.”
“And to do this you would kill? You would slice a friend’s throat, and hang another after gutting them? Then attack one of your own, leaving her pummeled on the ground as you stole a ship and killed more guards?” Mary was standing up straight, her voice loud and strained as she attacked them.
“We killed no one!” Terrance yelled. “And we didn’t attack anyone. What do you mean?”
“Mae. You attacked Mae on your way out!” Mary yelled back. The guards got between Terrance and Mary, separating them.
“We didn’t even see Mae. The guard listened to us, and he let us go. We left unseen, and quietly,” Leslie said calmly.
My hands started to shake hearing this. If they didn’t kill those guards on Long Island or fight Mae, then who had killed them? And who had attacked Mae? I turned slowly, looking for Mae so she could fill us in. We needed to hear her side of the story, to bring the truth out, and show these hybrids for the liars they were. But Mae wasn’t there.
“Where’s Mae?” I asked quietly. No one seemed to hear me. “Where is Mae?” I asked louder, and the others stopped talking. We looked around the dim hangar, and she was nowhere to be seen.
“Mae!” Mary called. Silence.
“Go find the missing woman,” Kareem said, his cloak flapping as he pointed to the entrance in haste. The guards raised their guns and started for the doorway.
“It was her the whole time. She must have killed those guards after we slipped out of the University. She killed the guard at the base after we left, beating herself to make it look like there was a fight,” Terrance said, and it all made sense. I couldn’t believe it. I wouldn’t. But the facts lined up. Don’t trust her. The text I’d gotten from that unknown source at the gas station last month flashed through my mind.
We ran to the doors as we heard pulse rifles go off in the distance. Red beams shot toward the forest and moments later, a green light emanated from the area before a ship lifted from the clearing where we’d seen the hybrids’ ship as we’d scoped out the village.
“She’s getting away. And in our ship!” Terrance cried.
What just happened was taking a long time to process. One minute we were all there, and Mae used the moment the guards separated Mary and Terrance to sneak away. She got onto the hybrid ship and stole it.
“I can’t believe it,” Mary whispered. “All this time. All of this time. She gave you blood, Dean. She saved us after the Event. She stayed in our house.” Mary ran her hands through her hair, tears falling down her face. I wiped the tears away with my thumbs and brought her in for a hug. “She was… our friend.”
“What the hell is going on there?” Clare’s voice came through our earpieces. “Are you all okay? Do you need a pickup?” The questions came in frantic succession.
“It was Mae. She ran off, taking their ship,” I said in reply. The words didn’t even make sense to me as they left my mouth.
“Mae. I knew those damned hybrids were going to be the death of us,” Clare said, making my blood boil. Maybe she was right. Janine, Vanessa, Mae… they’d all used us.
“Why are you really here?” I grabbed Terrance by the collar, getting close enough to his face to touch noses. Anger flushed through my body so intensely I thought I might punch someone. As I stood there, waiting for an answer, I wished I was back home. Before any of this. Before the Event, and before Janine. I wanted to just go back in time.
“I told you! We just want to leave Earth. We need somewhere to go. Somewhere off the grid. This is it, a safe haven,” he said, spittle hitting m
y face.
Maybe they were telling the truth. Probably not, since history had told me all hybrids were full of shit.
“Leave him,” Kareem said calmly, and I looked back to see the two guards holding guns pointed at me. I wasn’t going to give them the honor. I let Terrance go, and he straightened his shirt. The anger was still there, but muted. I shoved it down, along with all the fear and suspicion. Bottle it up. That’s what a man was supposed to do, yet I felt worse for it, like I needed that anger to keep going.
“Come. We have much to discuss,” Kareem said, motioning for the guards to lower their weapons. They did so, and I felt slightly better off.
“We don’t have time for chit-chat. We need to go after her,” Mary said.
“It won’t take long, and I think you’re going to want to hear what I have to say.” Kareem turned and walked toward the home’s front doors. We had no choice but to follow along, and soon were inside the large open foyer. He took his shoes off, implying that we do the same. Embarrassed, I remembered I was covered in mud and stank something fierce. Kareem didn’t seem to even notice as he called to someone to bring langols, which my translator said was some sort of beverage.
Beside what looked to be a kitchen of sorts was a large wooden table. Some things crossed species well. There were a dozen chairs around it, and we sat, the three of us on one side, Kareem and the two hybrids on the other.
“First things first, tell me what brings you here.” His voice was calm, soothing, and I found myself comfortable around him.
Terrance told him the story of the Kraski, and Kareem twinged at the name but pulled it together quickly. This guy had a hell of a poker face. Terrance told him of the plan to remove all humans from the world, sacrificing their own hybrids in the process. Terrance was passionate as he talked about being created for nothing but sacrifice and death, and how he wanted to lead the remaining survivors away to be safe and live their lives out in peace.
The Survivors: Books 1-6 Page 36