Enslaved

by N. W. Harris

Shane had been there for her since right after her parents were killed. He’d led her and the rest of their friends through the worst muck. Returning his gaze, her fears were extinguished. She believed he could lasso the moon if he wanted to. She kissed him again. Electricity seemed to flow between them when her lips connected to his, setting her heart racing and leaving a tingly sensation all over her body.

  “Kelly?” her mom yelled, panic in her voice.

  She pulled away and stepped out from behind the little dock house.

  “Dad, no!” Kelly screamed and ran up the hill toward the pasture. Shane was at her side the entire way.

  Her father approached the fence, and the cows stampeded in a wide circle. They were going to trample her dad; that horrible day was happening all over again.

  “Go in the house and grab some guns,” Shane said with the usual calmness he maintained no matter how bad things got.

  “We can’t stop them,” Kelly replied. “It’s just a dream.”

  “We can try,” Shane said. “Get the guns.”

  When they came to the house, Kelly split off and ran inside. The gun cabinet was locked, but her dad had made her memorize the combination when she turned fifteen. She grabbed a shotgun and a rifle, loading them both and stuffing as many rounds as she could into her pockets and into an ammo bag for Shane.

  From the landing at the top of the flight of steps that led down to the yard, she saw her grandfather standing between the gazebo and the house. The two family dogs, Sara and Molly, crept closer to him with their lips pulled back and their teeth showing, and he shooed them away. Nat hid behind him, unaware that the dogs had no interest in her.

  Rage boiled through Kelly. She wasn’t going to watch her family get killed again. She leaned the shotgun against the railing and raised her rifle. Lining Molly in her sights, she suffered at the thought of shooting the beloved pet, but she pulled the trigger just as it lunged toward her grandpa. The bullet caught the dog in midair, pushing it off its trajectory into the other dog. Before Sara could recover, Kelly put a bullet in her head. Her grandfather looked up at the house, his eyes wide and confused. Nat shrieked and clung to his leg.

  Kelly turned her attention to the pasture. The cows charged down the hill toward her father. He stood in the field, waving his arms to turn them toward the paddock.

  “Shane,” she yelled. “Gun!”

  He ran toward the steps, and she dropped the shotgun and bag of shells down to him. He caught them and sprinted up to the fence, leaping over it to join her father in the field.

  Kelly raised her weapon to her shoulder and took aim at the bull, which led the charge with its head lowered. Her breathing slowed, the focus she developed over a lifetime of shooting kicking in. She squeezed the trigger, and the bullet pierced the animal’s brain, sending it into a somersault. Landing on its back, it tripped two cows and made the herd part. Kelly killed another one, and it looked like she might be able to save her father. Hope steadied her hand, and she emptied the rifle into the cattle.

  They split into two stampedes, going around and over the ones she killed. The cows turned, and terror rendered Kelly’s blood cold in her veins. The streams of animals charged toward each other, on a collision course for the exact spot where Shane and her dad stood.

  Shane pushed her father toward the fence, firing the shotgun at the enraged animals as they closed in. Biting her lip to keep focus, Kelly tasted blood. She pulled the trigger, and the lead cow on her father’s side dropped. Taking aim on the next beast, she pulled the trigger again and nothing happened.

  “Damn it, no!”

  She grabbed a bullet from her pocket and shoved it into her gun. The cows drew too close. There was no time to load more than one round. Desperation squeezing her heart, she fired her weapon once more, and the animals collided.

  Cows flipped over each other and piled up like two freight trains slamming together. Kelly’s eyes locked on Shane and her father at the moment of impact. Their bodies tore apart like wet paper dolls.

  Her mom was down by the fence, screaming for her father though now only tatters of his bloody clothing were recognizable. Some of the cattle didn’t move, the impact knocking them out or killing them. The rest recovered and turned toward the fence.

  “Mom,” Kelly yelled, running down the steps and reloading her rifle at the same time. Her hands trembled, and tears poured down her face.

  “Get away from the fence, Mom,” Kelly shouted.

  She choked on a sob as she ran. Her training and experience gave her the clarity to get the gun loaded in spite of her shaking hands. She raised it to her shoulder and fired past her mother, each round finding a cow’s skull. The remainder of the herd tore through the fence. Her mom ran toward her, shouting for Kelly to get to safety, and the cows got to her. Kelly screamed and dropped to her knee. She fired the gun into the stampede, wanting them all to die. They kept coming, charging straight at Kelly. The first one hit her with its head lowered. It slammed her back, and then a hoof caved in her chest.

  Shane gasped, his eyes wide open. The last thing he remembered was being smashed by the Douglas’ cattle. He tried to sit up and banged his nose and forehead against sheet metal. Dropping back onto his pillow, he cradled his face in his hands and groaned. The pain cleared his confusion. He was on the submarine, in the coffin-rack. He’d had the sweetest dream about Kelly, but it’d turned into a nightmare.

  “He’s awake,” Dr. Blain said.

  The blue curtain separating him from the narrow walkway between the racks drew back. The alien doctor studied him with a concerned expression.

  “What the hell?” Shane snapped.

  He rolled out of the rack and landed on his feet. When he’d gone to bed, the lights in the berthing had been dim and the privacy curtains closed off most of the racks. Now the lights were brighter and the curtains had been pulled back from the rack above and below his. The mattresses had been removed from those beds, and electronic equipment filled them.

  “What are you doing?” he demanded, glaring at the doctor.

  “We helped you to connect to Kelly,” she replied. She sounded proud of herself, as if she expected him to thank her.

  He looked at the equipment, fully comprehending what had happened. “That was Kelly in the dream,” he whispered, “not just a figment of my imagination?”

  “It was her,” Dr. Blain replied with a soft but excited voice. “We were able to read her vital signs through the connection to you. She’s okay, Shane.”

  “What gives you the right?” he said, touching the knot on his forehead.

  A wild mix of emotion assailed him. He was relieved that Kelly was safe, elated that he’d been able to make contact with her, and angry that the aliens used him as a com-link without his permission.

  “We couldn’t tell you or it might not have worked,” Dr. Blain replied, backing up with a worried look on her face.

  “So you just hopped into our minds and snooped around without asking?” He spoke in a quieter voice, but with no less anger in his tone.

  “If we’d asked you, it might not have worked.” She sounded apologetic. “You needed to think it was just a dream to establish a solid link.”

  “You have no right to make these kinds of decisions for us,” he snapped.

  “She didn’t make the decision to do it without telling you,” Steve said, looking sheepish. “We did.”

  “What?” Shane was stunned. “You?”

  “Yes,” Steve said, his voice wavering. “Me, Maurice, and Laura. Tracy had nothing to do with it, and she can’t know.”

  He’d always been so loyal to Shane. The idea that his big friend might’ve betrayed him was more than Shane could handle at the moment.

  “Why can’t Tracy know?” Shane barked.

  “Because we are going to try to connect her to Jules,” Dr. Blain explained. She’d moved closer to Steve, presumably for protection.

  Steve’s expression said he’
d turn and run if Shane came at him. Shane was pissed off, but he couldn’t even decide if his anger was justified. He felt raw inside. The dream had flipped from joyous to terrifying so fast, he still reeled from it.

  “This is how we are going to rescue them, Shane,” Dr. Blain said. “This is how we can set them free.”

  He glared at her, and then at Steve. “I need to think,” he said and stomped out of the back door of the berthing.

  Shane had seen only a small portion of the vessel, but he was determined to find a place to be alone for a minute. He walked down the narrow hall and into the room where he’d eaten earlier, which Tracy called the crew’s mess. Anfisa and Petrov sat with the rest of their team, playing a card game. He took four quick strides, passing through the room before they could talk to him. Making a left, he came to a hatch that had just been opened by a Jones-clone. Shane pushed around him, stepping into a long passageway with the curved hull of the sub on one side and a vertical wall running to the ceiling on the other.

  The clone closed the hatch behind him, and Shane headed down the passageway, glad to finally be alone. There was a constant mechanical hum coming from the other end of the passageway, and it was hotter than the rest of the boat.

  A sign on the wall warned this was a radiation area. He knew the sub was nuclear powered, having been given the basic specs of the boat by Tracy after they first boarded. Deciding that the nuclear reactor might be behind this wall, he worried about the invisible particles that might be bombarding his DNA. Shane rushed down the hall and continued along catwalks, squeezing past alien rebel technicians who tended the machinery that consumed ninety percent of the aft compartment.

  He continued until he ran out of catwalks. The hull tapered where he stopped, ending at a spinning shaft so big he couldn’t put his arms around it, which pierced through the back of the boat. He turned and looked forward. He was alone, the noise of the sub’s propulsion system roaring in his ears.

  He’d wanted to flip out when Dr. Blain and Steve told him what they’d done. Now that he’d made it to a place where he could throw a tantrum without anyone seeing or hearing him, he’d lost his motivation.

  Leaning on the railing, he stared down at the spinning shaft until his vision blurred. He relived the good moments of the dream, the parts where he was alone with Kelly. They’d made contact. That was huge, but Shane couldn’t help the anger burning in him. It came on without him having a chance to decide whether he should be upset. It was how his dad had behaved when he was drunk.

  But Shane didn’t drink. His rage was brought on by something else—something darker. He wasn’t mad at his friends or the rebels—he was angry with himself. His sins had exceeded those of his father by a long shot. Shane had killed so many people.

  So much blood was on his hands. The fact that each murder he’d committed was to defend his and his friends’ lives, and that he was trying to save the world, made no difference. He’d killed, and he’d acted like it was no big deal so that his friends could live more easily with their own guilt. But it was a big deal, and it ate him alive from the inside out.

  He’d felt sick after killing the escaped criminals in the gym at Leeville High, and he’d barely had time to process the lives he’d taken in Atlanta. The aliens had swooped in and kept them all so busy that he never had time to think too much about that first day after the adults died. What happened in Giza, the killing of the kids wearing skin masks and, to a lesser extent, his role in executing all the Anunnaki in the disabled ship, tore the scabs away from those wounds he’d earned in Leeville and Atlanta.

  It corroded his spirit—made him feel cold and hollow inside. Before this all started, he felt sick after squashing an insect. His mom used to say he had an old and nurturing soul, that he should be a nurse or a doctor. It was a big part of his identity further nurtured by his grandmother.

  This empathetic and caring side of Shane died a little more each time he pulled the trigger. It was like his mom and his granny died all over again, but this time, he was killing them. He feared his heart, that part of him that could love, was being extinguished. What would he become if he couldn’t love? He didn’t want to find out.

  Shane saw a rowing machine hanging off the edge of the catwalk. He tried to slide it out so he could use it and found the sub’s mechanics had clamped the exercise machine so that it was a permanent fixture in the boat. Although it was at an angle, there was just enough clearance between the rower and the boat’s metal guts for it to be usable. He settled on the seat and pulled the handle. He started rowing, building up as much speed as he could while trying to get used to the rower’s list.

  Within a few minutes, his blood was pumping and his mind began to clear. His let his attention drift to the machinery surrounding him. He’d been so consumed by everything that was going on that he hadn’t observed how awesome it was to be riding inside the submarine. After years of helping his dad repair just about everything with a motor from boats to lawn mowers, school buses and the occasional big rig, he knew a lot about engines. From the crew’s mess to the back of the boat, he was sure he’d walked over half a football field, and much of that length appeared to be filled with the engine of the boat. His dad would’ve geeked out for days in here if he had this chance.

  Once he’d breathed hard and had a good sweat on, he felt a lot better. He returned his thoughts to the anxiety attack he’d just recovered from and was able to assess his emotions more objectively. He feared he’d become a monster who was only capable of expressing anger. He reckoned a lot of soldiers came back from war like that. It was a price they paid to protect their families. Shane had to protect his friends—his new family. He tried to accept that he would be a casualty in this war whether he died of old age or from a bullet—everyone would be.

  Sweat dripped off Shane’s brow onto his cheek. He’d been rowing for a half hour in the warm engine room when Steve lumbered down the catwalk.

  Shane kept his eyes focused forward, ignoring his friend. He was just starting to process the betrayal. He’d already decided he would’ve done the same thing in Steve’s place, but he hadn’t cooled off enough to want to speak to the linebacker.

  Steve seemed content to be disregarded, having found a set of adjustable dumbbells. He put them at the heaviest setting and began curling them on the catwalk a few feet in front of Shane.

  To talk, they would have had to shout over the combination of the ship’s engine noise and the old rowing machine’s whirring, and it would be hard to not sound like he was yelling at Steve. Shane kept his eyes forward and rowed, and Steve lifted. It made Shane miss football team workouts, when they were all preoccupied with stupid stuff, nothing as dismal as the bowling ball of crap that banged around in his skull now.

  When the timer on the rower said sixty minutes, Shane stopped and got off the machine. Steve surrendered the dumbbells to him and mounted the rower. Although he’d gotten some sleep, Shane was still tired and had only started rowing to clear his mind. Now he continued because he needed this silent moment with Steve. He needed to forgive and forget—to move on so they could do the job at hand.

  Curling the dumbbells, Shane realized he’d never given his big friend enough credit. Steve had always been there, the doer that Shane could rely on. He’d forgotten that Steve had a mind of his own and felt like an ass for it.

  When Shane returned the weights to their cradle and headed forward in the boat, Steve followed him.

  “You understand about not telling Tracy?” Steve said, stopping Shane in the reactor passageway.

  “Yeah, I get it,” Shane said, looking Steve in the eyes for the first time since he found out what he’d done in the berthing. “Let’s get the hell out of this place before we get our jewels cooked.” He nodded toward the radiation sign.

  Steve’s eyes widened when he looked at it, like he hadn’t noticed it on his way aft. He was on Shane’s heels the rest of the way to the hatch. Shane stepped aside and let the big guy t
hrough, and Steve had his hands over his crotch until he was out of the passageway. Shane laughed and closed the hatch behind them.

  The little window leading into the galley opened just as they stepped into the dining room. Steve grabbed a plate. Shane did the same, and they sat down to eat.

  “So she’s okay?” Steve whispered, not only like he was trying to keep the conversation under wraps but also as if he still feared Shane might blow up at him.

  “From what I can tell, yeah,” Shane replied, glad for Steve’s concern. He didn’t have the stomach to recount how bad Kelly said it was up there.

  “There you slups are,” Tracy said, descending a ladder near the forward entrance into the dining area. “I had to help out while you guys snoozed. When you’re done with your chow, you’re needed in the control room.” She pointed up.

  Shane gathered that the control room was on the next level and was curious to see the ship’s controls.

  She grabbed a tray and sat next to Shane.

  “Wow. You guys smell like a jockstrap,” she mused.

  “You make it a habit to sniff them?” Steve teased halfheartedly.

  “Ha, ha, funny,” she replied. She had bags under her eyes, and it was clear she hadn’t slept yet. They must’ve made her stay in the control room so she wouldn’t see what they did with Shane.

  He felt guilty as hell for letting them dupe her like they did him. But if there was a chance that her connection to Jules could help save them, he had to keep his mouth shut. She might be pissed when she found out, but like him, she’d come to realize it was the right thing, he hoped.

  “What’s wrong with you?” Tracy asked. “We’re on our way to kicking some ass. You should be in a better mood.”

  “Have you seen the bunks on this ship?” he replied, trying to sound a little more upbeat. “Only a vampire could get a good night’s rest in them.”

  “Guess I’ll be seeing them soon enough,” she said, yawning between bites. “I could sleep on a bed of nails and be happy right now.”