My body shifted forward when the alien holding me began to climb the wall, heading up into the large crater and bringing me closer to the bodies. The stench was overwhelming and bile rose in my throat. I tried to swallow it down when a spasm squeezed my stomach, but my body was just as uncooperative as it had been since this creature sank its claws into me, and I found myself vomiting up everything in my stomach. It wasn’t a lot, but it was enough to splash across the face of the alien that was currently carrying me up the wall. The thing screeched and its wings went wild, and even though I now had a foul taste in my mouth and my entire body hurt so much that it throbbed, I found myself smiling in satisfaction.
“Serves you right, you bastard,” I muttered.
The thing moved faster and its claws sank deeper into my flesh. I screamed and the sound bounced off the walls around me, echoing in the large space. The alien changed courses and my body dipped to the right as it began to make its way over the wall at a horizontal angle instead of going straight up. It crawled over bodies that were hollowed out just like the one that had made me lose my lunch, and others that were still intact. Some looked fresh, their skin still pink and their stomachs still a normal size, but others had bellies that were bloated and so swollen that the skin looked ready burst. It was hard to tell if the people were alive or dead, but then we passed one and I saw the subtle rise of the man’s chest as his lungs filled with air, and I found myself praying that they were at least unconscious and unaware.
A shock of red caught my attention and I strained my eyes so I could see it. It was Hendrix. Her red hair was wet but even wilder than it had been back in the settlement, and just like all the others, her mouth was stretched open by a red vine. My stomach convulsed and I looked away. Bryan would beat himself up over this, assuming I got the chance to see him again and tell him what I’d seen inside the hive.
The alien finally stopped but I couldn’t twist my head to see what was behind me. He lifted me and his claws twisted in my body until another scream ripped its way out of my mouth. I was shoved through a couple thick vines, which seemed to move aside for the alien before once again going taut. Once we were past the vines, the creature set me down and I found myself on greenery that was soft and spongy and moist with condensation.
The creature pulled its claws from my body and I had to sink my teeth into my lower lip to stop from screaming again. Stars burst across my vision, followed by the black fingers of unconsciousness. I tried not to embrace them, afraid that I’d wake up and find myself with a vine stretching my mouth open and my body turned into an incubator, but the pain was too intense, and before my head had even hit the green floor, I was out.
Someone called my name and a gentle hand ran over my head, but I wasn’t ready to wake up. The dream world I’d found myself in had been quiet and serene, and even in my half-conscious state I knew that reality wasn’t like that. I knew, because despite the soft surface I was lying on, every inch of me hurt. Not just hurt, it throbbed, pulsed with pain. I felt like with every pump of my heart another round of aches shot through me. It was the most intense feeling I’d ever experienced, rivaling even the agony of watching my family get blown up, and all I wanted to do was sink back into the blackness so I could ignore it.
But I couldn’t. Seconds passed and I became more and more aware of my surroundings. Of the thick air I breathed in, moist with water, of the dampness beneath me and the humidity that weighed me down. The smells were just as volatile, ranging from the sickeningly sweet poisonous flowers to the stench of rotten meat that I knew had to be the humans hanging on the walls. I felt like every sense I had was firing on all cylinders, like every scratch of the claw-like feet against the wall was magnified and every hum of their wings was twice as loud as it should have been.
Through it all I became aware of one more detail. The hand on my forehead that occasionally swept back, brushing my hair out of my face. It was gentle and soft and welcoming, and that was what finally made me open my eyes.
Daisy knelt at my side, perched on bent knees and staring down at me with a concerned gaze that was both welcoming and terrifying. Deep down I’d known that she’d been carried away just like the others, but seeing her here, knowing what lay ahead for her, sent a chill shooting through me.
My brain came into focus a little more and I winced, remembering the pain of being speared by the creature and the helpless feeling of not being able to move. I’d wanted to pull out a grenade and blow it to bits, but I couldn’t.
My grenades.
My hands went to my sides and the sudden movement sent a sharp pain through me, which only turned into an ache of disappointment when I came up empty handed. They were gone, and so were my gun and knives.
“They took my weapons,” I mumbled.
“They know what they’re doing.” Daisy looked me over like she wanted to make sure I was still in one piece. “How do you feel?”
“Horrible,” I muttered.
She helped me sit up, which made my sides throb, and my hand automatically went to the puncture wounds the alien had left behind. The holes in my shirt were huge, allowing me to inspect my sides without pulling the fabric up, but the injuries were already starting to heal. They were as big as my fist, which was much smaller than I’d expected considering the talons these things had and the pain that had pulsed through me, but they were already scabbed over and the bruises that spread out from the wounds were purple, but already starting to yellow in spots.
“I think whatever they inject us with has some kind of healing properties to it,” Daisy said as I examined the wounds closer. “Mine are almost gone.”
She lifted her shirt so I could see her side. The scar would be there for a long time, but the wound had healed nicely. There wasn’t even a scab anymore. Just a circle of pink skin where the spikes had gone into her body.
I shifted and winced. “Tell me the pain goes away that fast too.”
“It does…” Her voice drifted off and I looked up to find her gaze focused on something behind me.
When I twisted, I found a fresh body hanging from the wall, just past the vines that encircled us. We were in some kind of cage made of greenery. Thick leaves cushioned the floor, covering twisted vines, which rose up around us and caged us in. It wasn’t big, maybe only ten feet long and four feet deep, but at least it was high enough that I was able to stand. I needed to stretch, as much as I knew it would hurt, because I didn’t want my body to grow stiff. I wanted to be ready to fight if I needed to. I didn’t want to go down easy.
I got to my feet, trying to avoid looking out through the vines at the body hanging less than four feet away. It was impossible though, especially when I realized that I recognized him as one of the guys from Bryan’s platoon. His skin was pink and his chest rose and fell quickly as if he was gasping for breath, but I couldn’t see how since the vine in his mouth had to be completely blocking his airway. Maybe it was feeding him oxygen. Maybe it was feeding him everything he needed to stay alive.
“Is he conscious?” I asked Daisy, unable to take my eyes off the man as I stretched my sore body.
She came to stand at my side, her face mirroring the horror I felt inside. “I don’t think so.” She swallowed. “He was when they dragged him out a few hours ago.”
I cringed at the mental images going through my head, and a million questions ran through my mind. Only, I wasn’t sure if I wanted to know. Did I need more details to make this situation any less gruesome or hopeless? No. Definitely not.
That didn’t mean I wasn’t going to ask.
I turned my back on the man and focused on my friend. She was as scratched and banged up as I was, and filthy. A day had gone by since she’d disappeared on the street, and she’d been here the entire time. Did that mean her time was running out? Did that mean I only had a day to come up with a way to escape?
“Tell me what happened.”
“The grenade went off and things went nuts. I was on the ground when the alien landed on t
op of me. Its claws went into my sides—” She crisscrossed her arms over her chest, covering her sides with her hands. “—and was gone before I could even scream. I think I blacked out, because I don’t remember much of what happened until I woke up in here.” Daisy looked behind her at the rest of the cell, which currently held only the two of us. “There were a bunch of people here then. Ten of us all crowded together. The aliens took the others one by one, but they started with the bigger guys first.” She looked back at the man hanging outside the cell. “I think they need the extra room.”
“What then?” I asked, trying to figure out how this whole thing worked and when I might have a chance to get the upper hand.
“Two of them came to drag us out. Sometimes they took the bodies far away, but sometimes it was close enough that I could see what they were doing. Like with Joe.” Her gaze once again went to the man on the other side of our cage. “Their claws pierced his sides again, making it impossible for him to do anything, and they held him against the wall while the vines curled around him. Once he was in place the red vine seemed to come out of nowhere. He tried to keep his mouth shut, but with the claws inside him he couldn’t control his body and it didn’t take much for the vine to slither its way past his lips. He was awake when it went down his throat.” Daisy swallowed and hugged herself tighter. “I’ll never forget the look in his eyes.”
“What then?” I asked, trying to figure out what these vines were. “What happened after that?”
It didn’t make sense, these red vines that peeked out through the rest of the vegetation. We hadn’t seen them anywhere else. Even Bryan, who had traveled all over with his platoon, had said that. Were they just more alien plants, or were they something else? Were they an organism of some kind? Were they responsible for planting the embryo inside the bodies?
“That’s it.” Daisy shrugged. “They left him alone. He closed his eyes, but I could tell he was still conscious for another hour or so after that. He would squirm or clench his hands into fists. Eventually, though, that stopped and he hasn’t woken back up. I assume they put him in some kind of coma.”
I moved as close to the vines caging me in as I could get, peering out through the breaks. The red vine protruding from his mouth wasn’t as smooth as the green ones were, but instead looked almost scaly. Almost reptilian. Was it more than just a vine?
“You didn’t see them implant an egg or anything inside him?” I asked, still staring out at the man. Joe, Daisy had called him.
“No. I thought they might come back and do it, but now…” She swallowed. “I think the vine did it.”
“I don’t think it’s a vine,” I said even as I nodded. “I think it’s a tentacle.”
“A tentacle?”
I turned my back on the man and captured Daisy’s gaze with mine. “Yes.”
“But what’s it attached to?”
That was something I couldn’t answer. “I don’t know.”
I spent the next few hours just watching. I’d stick my head through the vines and peer down into the crater, trying to find the source of the red tentacles or anything that would prove they were part of an organism we hadn’t seen yet. It was dark though, thanks to the thick clouds overhead, and the rain here was heavier than it was in the city, which made it difficult to see much of anything let alone what lay at the bottom of this pit. I did see the aliens removing old bodies, as well as a small bug crawl inside the host it had probably only recently broken out of and curl up to take a nap.
It made my skin crawl, watching these things work, but I felt hungry in my need to learn about them. They’d been here for five years and we’d never seen the inside of a hive before. We had no clue what they did when no one was around or what their weaknesses might be. I’d hoped we would learn that the exoskeletons were actually just a shell they could take off, which might leave them vulnerable to our weapons, but witnessing a new bug erupt out of a woman’s body burst that bubble of hope. They were born with the thick shell, as well as talons that were already sharp and dangerous.
If only my grenades had made it. That was all I could think. I didn’t want to die, but if I had a choice I’d rather pull a pin on a grenade and get blown up, hopefully taking a few of these bastards out with me in the process, than end up as a cocoon for one of these things. I knew Daisy felt the same way, but we were shit out of luck.
“How long do you think we have?” she asked me as darkness closed in.
The clouds blotted out most of the sunlight here, but just enough got through that we could still tell when it was setting.
“I don’t know.”
I shivered and scooted closer to her, hoping to absorb some of her body heat. The rain hadn’t slowed since I’d gotten here and Daisy had confirmed my suspicion that it never really did. It only went from a drizzle to a continuous flow, which left us soaked through and typically sitting in puddles of water. My fingers and toes felt like ice and I was pretty sure my body was turning into one giant goose bump.
Daisy shifted until her hip was pressed against mine. “I do-don’t think-k it w-will be l-long.”
Her teeth chattered together and the dark circles under her eyes told me she was exhausted, but afraid to sleep. Afraid that if she dozed off the bugs would strike and she’d wake to find a tentacle being forced down her throat. Not that I could blame her.
I knew that if Daisy’s theory about these things needing a bigger host was true she would be the first to go. She was as thin as I was—it kind of came with the territory these days—but several inches taller, which would give her hosts a lot more room to grow. The thought of having to watch my best friend go through everything she’d described made me physically ill, but if that was how it was going to go down, I had a plan. It was just a theory, and probably totally unrealistic to think it would be successful in any way, but I wanted to use the aliens’ talons against them. I wanted to see if those spikes were sharp enough to penetrate their exoskeletons when nothing we had was. I had a feeling that they were, and I knew it was our only chance at this point.
Not that it was much of a chance.
“Why don’t you try to get some sleep?” I told Daisy after her head had bobbed twice and she’d jerked herself awake. “I can keep watch.”
“I don’t want to,” she said even as she slid down so she was lying on the floor of our cell. “But I don’t think I can stay awake any longer.”
“Sleep. I’ll be here when you wake up.”
She nodded, but her eyes were already closed and I knew that even though she was shivering, sleep wouldn’t be far off. She was too exhausted, and if by some miracle we made it out of here, I needed her rested and ready to run.
I just hoped we got the chance.
Daisy dozed at my side while the rain dripped down on us from above. The greenery over our heads provided a little cover, but not a lot, so I shifted until my body was over Daisy’s face. I watched her sleep and the sense of relief at seeing that she was okay after a day of not knowing was overshadowed by the worry about what would come next. Outside our cage the aliens buzzed by, their wings flying at amazing speeds as they cleaned out old bodies or snacked on the fruit that grew from the vines. I noticed that they ate a lot of the same things we did, and that none of the flowers that were so poisonous to us were growing inside the hive. Did the poison affect the bugs the same way it affected us? If so, that could be useful. We had gas masks that would protect us from the pollen. We could collect the flowers, get them into the hive somehow and see if it knocked them on their asses the way it did with us. Only we’d have to have a lot of the flowers, and a way to transport them, and a way to get them inside.
But before any of that, I had to figure out how Daisy and I were going to get out of this mess.
I thought it through as it grew darker and all around me the buzz of the aliens’ wings eased until there was nothing but the thud of raindrops. From where I sat I couldn’t see very far, and with Daisy curled up next to me I didn’t want to move
—she needed her rest—but I spied a few of the hollowed out bodies across the way and noticed when the smaller aliens curled up. The hive was turning in for the night, which meant we had at least a few more hours to plan something. We were going to need it.
Once the buzz of the wings had died down, I found it harder and harder to stay awake. My eyes grew heavy and my head bobbed to the side, but I forced myself to keep them open, clinging to consciousness like it was the difference between life and death. Because it was.
Daisy was still asleep when one of the bugs popped up right outside the cage. I jumped, which jostled her enough to wake her, and she shot up. We sat side by side, staring at the bug as the vines moved aside for it, just like they had when I’d been dragged into this hellhole. It didn’t make sense how these creatures were able to control the plants the way they did. It was like they were all connected. Like the vines were a part of them.
The thing had an unconscious man in its grasp, its claws half buried in his torso, but I didn’t recognize him either from the settlement or Bryan’s platoon. The hive was still silent when the creature pushed its way through the vines, and even though these things didn’t have pupils and it was impossible to tell exactly where they were looking, it felt like the three eyes were focused on me when it moved forward. The hair on my scalp prickled and I shifted, bumping Daisy in the process. The bug flapped its wings and the hum it emitted sent goose flesh up my body as my heart pounded faster. That sound was like nails on a chalkboard when they were this close. I felt like it had reached inside me and was poking at my eardrums.
The Blood Will Dry Page 16