Prisoners of Death

by Keely Caldwell

  The Cantellan hissed at her.

  Ardammt kept half a mind on Tegan as he brandished an ax at the three Cantellans advancing on him. "Away!" he commanded the creatures. "You will not have us!"

  Tegan swung her scythe in a wide arc, slitting new openings into three Cantellans as she went.

  "Well played!" Jake swung his own blade up to catch a small Cantellan right in his middle. With a howl, the Cantellan hit the dirt in a cloud of dust. "Take that, you overgrown escargot!"

  Page was grinning. He felt someone staring at his back and swung the pitchfork around just in time to catch a big dog poop brown Cantellan right between the eyestalks. The creature stopped dead in its slime trail. Its eyestalks twisted crazily back and forth as if it couldn't believe what had just happened. Then both eyestalks dropped and the Cantellan was still, a windup toy suddenly come unwound.

  Impressed, Page nodded. "One down." He yanked the pitchfork out of the dead skull and swung around. "Who's next?"

  Tegan laughed. These crazy Earthmen were actually enjoying this. Turning to meet more advancing Cantellans, Tegan faltered on the loose gravel and would have stumbled if Page and Jake hadn't come up on either side of her. Tegan jerked around and stared down at Ardammt. She'd been so busy fighting off a particularly angry Cantellan that she hadn't realized she and Ardammt had moved apart. The sight that met her eyes as she turned was almost too much. "Ardammt!"

  How the two bulky Cantellans had gotten to Ardammt, Tegan never knew. But they had. One moment she and Ardammt were back to back holding off the Cantellans. Jake and Page were coming their way, having themselves disposed of a good many. Next thing they all knew Ardammt bellowed in fury as his feet were shoved from under him hard, stunning him as he hit the ground. Before Ardammt even had a chance to recover his wits, Cantellans seemed to come from everywhere to box him in.

  Tegan moved towards Ardammt, screaming for him. Page and Jake ran up. Page grabbed Tegan just as she would have dove into the throng of Cantellans advancing on Ardammt. "No!" she screamed.

  The Cantellan captain slithered up to a still sprawled and dazed Ardammt and yanked the Vaneallan to his feet with surprisingly strong front appendages. Two Cantellan guards instantly moved in to restrain Ardammt.

  The Captain of the Guards slithered towards Tegan.

  Tegan stared, her mouth squeezing into a hard line and her denim eyes flashing at the two Cantellans, their pincer like appendages pinioning a now thrashing, furious Ardammt between them. Their hideous eyestalks vibrated with excitement. Cantellans loved nothing better than captives that fought back. It recalled race memories of their ancestors hunting insects on their long dead home planet.

  The captain's sharp gray teeth bared at Tegan in a travesty of a grin and his eyestalks waggled in obvious joy. “We have you spacies mat, Vaneallan!”

  “Escape!” Ardammt bellowed, wrenching to and fro in an attempt to break the Cantellan guards’ grip on him. He should know better than to waste his energy. Once they got their prey Cantellans didn’t let loose easily.

  Tegan shook her head, dropping the pitchfork into the dust at her feet. “I am here,” she calmly told the Captain of the Guards.

  The Captain wiggled his eyestalks in delight and slithered forward.

  “No!” Ardammt twisted unexpectedly and one of the guards lost its grip. Ardammt took the chance to launch himself at the Captain. “You foul thing!”

  Surprised, the Captain swung around. His eyestalks rotated assessingly at the approaching male. “Stand down!” it ordered.

  “Die!” Ardammt bellowed. The next moment Ardammt let out a squeal of alarm. He skidded to a stop, throwing himself backwards into the rocks and crab-scrabbling away, sick terror plastered all over his white face. His guards glided up and grabbed Ardammt under the arms, dragging him back to his feet. He was trembling hard and staring at the ground like he was going be sick all over the gravel.

  The Captain glided up to Ardammt, the one eyestalk telescoping in on the visibly shaken and repulsed Vaneallan. “What say you, Va –neal- lan?”

  Ardammt made a fierce face as if he intended to say something, but all at once, the fight went out of him and he sagged in his captors arms like a dazed animal caught in headlights. “I am here,” he mumbled in a monotone.

  Cantellans have no neck so they can’t possibly nod. But if they could have, the Captain would have nodded in satisfaction as it pirouetted on its slime trail towards Tegan, who now had a green expression on her face that said she knew exactly why Ardammt had stopped mid run and scuttled away from the Cantellan Captain. "Move. Va-nel-lean," he ordered Tegan.

  As they were hustled up the slimy, sticky gangplank by one set of guards, Jake turned to Page. They both wore the same shocked expressions on their handsome faces. Jake shook his head in horrific amazement. “We were behind that captain, but… Were my eyes playing tricks on me or did that…thing….open up the front?”

  Page nodded dumbly. “Sure as hell looked that way.”

  Jake tried to see into the ship as they climbed the long gangplank, his brow creasing. “What do you think is in there?

  Page stared straight ahead at Tegan and Ardammt being herded towards the waiting ship by those ghastly creatures. Their eyes and attitudes swam in terror. “Hell.”

  Eight

  "Captured Again"

  The first thing Jake noticed as the guards led them into the Cantellan General’s war room was the smell. And what a smell it was! What seemed like an excruciatingly pungent combination of rotted meat, moldy bread, wet dog and old gym socks all wrapped up in a base of sweat climbed its way like a poison worm squirming its way up Jake’s nostrils. He had to get tough with his stomach not to let lose its contents.

  Glancing aside, Jake saw Page’s eyes bulging and his face turning chalk white and knew his buddy was also trying desperately to not toss his cookies on his brown leather loafers. Good-luck, old boy, Jake thought wryly, but hoped he wouldn’t be the first one to disgrace himself.

  He glanced at Tegan and Ardammt who stood together almost back to back on the other side of Page. His first impression surprised him, but probably shouldn’t have. Tegan and Ardammt were terrified. Oh, they both hid it well. Their faces impassive masks devoid of any expression, bodies back to back like a pair of space age warriors ready for battle, two pair of dark sapphire eyes scanning and estimating. But years of observing people in the dozens of war torn countries that scattered the globe had taught Jake to recognize the signs of fear and Jake saw these signs in both of these people he had come to regard as friends.

  Even though Tegan seemed more terrified that Ardammt, Tegan hid her fear better than Ardammt, Jake noticed. Perhaps it was part of her personality or childhood training that made it a little easier for her. But whatever was the reason behind it Tegan was still as white faced as Ardammt as they all stood before the Cantellan General’s massive black stone battle slab.

  Tegan stood, her lips pressed together and slim hands clenched in tight fists. Next to her, Ardammt looked green with fear, his lean frame as tense as an over wound spring. They both looked as if a pin drop would see them shoot into orbit like twin rocket ships.

  A moment later, Jake saw why. From a side door the Cantellan General Tegan had derisively referred to as “Ugh” slithered into the room on an oozing, gummy slime trail that glistened eerily and smelled like a slush pile of decaying flesh.

  Ugh himself fit the dark dank room to a tee. The gargantuan creature stood no taller than the average man but in girth the thing was massive. Rolls of murky black gelatinous flesh swayed and flopped with a sickening sucking squelch as the creature moved into the room. The tall flat head was slashed through with a maw of a mouth that smiled – or what seemed to pass for a smile – at them in a way that made that mouth bear a striking resemblance to the back end of a large animal with old stones stuck in here and there . Surmounting the thing's head were two eyestalks – each one bearing an unblinking round eye the exact shade of crusty old vomit. Each
of these eyestalks waved around independently of the other and had an unnerving habit of zeroing in on the men with a decidedly hungry look in their bloodshot depths.

  The fiend risen from the nightmares of purgatory settled its massive slime dripping bulk behind the table, still smiling at them with tiny jagged teeth embedded in ugly gray gums. When the demonic thing spoke the sound it uttered was that of a foghorn with laryngitis.

  “Ta---gun,” Ropes of thick slimy drool slid between those rock teeth and slapped onto the table top as “Ugh” virtually slobbered over Tegan. She stood silent and unmoving as ropes of spit slapped across the valley between her breasts and whipped her in the face like devil’s rain.

  “We are so plazed to hiv you and you spacies mat back weeth we.” One bloodshot eye stalk rotated towards Jake and Page again, stopped, swooped to and fro like a snake hypnotizing a small rabbit before quivering with what Jake could have sworn was unholy excitement and swooped back to Tegan. “You brung we Earth males! Good. Yes. Good. Good.”

  Tegan slid sideways in front of Jake and Page, insinuating her small but generously curved frame over the two men, both of which stood at least a foot and a half taller than her, and eyed “Ugh” with pure, unadulterated loathing. “These Earth males are mine.” Tegan punctuated the words by stepping back and taking a hand each from Jake and Page, pulling the hands around her body until a hand came around each side of Tegan’s waist, the palms flat and low against her slightly curved stomach.

  Surprised, Jake started to pull his hand away, but stopped when Tegan’s hands came over Jake and Page’s hands, digging nails in, a silent message in the action. In that moment, Jake realized this was some ritual that clearly indicated possession to this slimy creep. “Ugh” was already rotating an eyestalk down towards Tegan’s pelvis and the two male hands there to take in the deliberate gesture, clicking its grotesque little razor teeth as if reassessing the situation.

  “We hiv not had Earth male before.”

  Tegan tried really hard not to shudder with revulsion. Pressing into Page, she let the shudder pass backwards into him before looking “Ugh” straight in the eyestalk. “You’ll not have these Earth males. They are mine!”

  “Ugh” opened his jaws, widening in a travesty of a grin. “We hiv this one you name Ardammt.”

  Tegan threw off the hands and stepped up to the “Ugh”. “No. You have me. None other.”

  “We have males,” “Ugh” insisted. “We see males survive the Hall. Except one.”

  Tegan blanched. “Look, you jumped up worm. It’s me. You want none other. You know it. I know it. These Earth males couldn’t take it. There’d be no pleasure in it for you. They’d be gone before you could get to…the end.” Tegan sucked in a staggered breath. “You know it has to be me.”

  Behind her, Ardammt choked.

  An eyestalk rotated longingly at Jake and Page before returning to Tegan. “Yes,” Ugh assented with a touch of disappointment. “We see. We will get more pla – sure out of Ta—gun.” Swiftly, “Ugh” moved towards the door. “Come, Vaneallan.”

  Ardammt reached for Tegan, long hands grasping for a fistful of Tegan’s tunic as if Ardammt intended to pull Tegan back from the brink of the abyss. “You can’t."

  Two Cantellan guards, smaller, lighter colored but still disgusting versions of Ugh, had surrounded Tegan and were shoving her towards the door as she turned towards Ardammt. The bleak fear outlined in her eyes made Page’s heart thump hard in his rib cage. What was it Tegan was headed to? “You know I’m the only one who can,” Tegan reminded Ardammt sadly. The guards pushed Tegan out of the room and the door snapped to behind her.

  Ardammt sprinted to the door and pounded his fists on the heavy glass, screaming long streams of words in that lyric Vaneallan language.

  Jake and Page exchanged horrified looks. “What do we do now?” Page asked.

  Jake shrugged, his eyes still on the man trying to kick in the door while turning the stale air blue with curses. “Beats the hell out of me, man.”

  ****

  Ardammt shadowed the cell door the three men had been moved to, tracing long fingertips around the vacuum tight seams in a frenzied agitation that bordered on mania. All the while Ardammt muttered disjointed phrases in a morose voice in that odd melodic tongue of theirs that sounded like either curses against those outsized excuses for garden slugs they called Cantellans or prayers for Tegan. Privately, Jake thought that if any creature deserved to be cursed - and worse - it was these Cantellans. A scummier bunch he’d never seen. It made him wish for the tender mercies of that terrorist group in Africa.

  Page was watching Ardammt pacing the door. “What do you think he’s doing?”

  Jake cocked an eyebrow as he regarded the golden haired man. Ardammt had finally abandoned his fruitless examination of the cell door and was now on his knees, his slim head bent as he mumbled rapidly under his breath. “Praying?”

  Page squinted in the little light that filtered into the room from the length of an air duct grill. “Or invoking a curse? What do you think this torture is?”

  “Why ask me?”

  Page shrugged. “Why not? You’ve been all over the world on those assignments. I figured you’ve seen it – or had it done to you.”

  Jake didn’t answer for a moment. When he did, his voice was slow and jerky as if the memories Page asked for were being dredged from Jake’s very soul. “I’ve been tortured. Yeah. I’m not gonna tell you about it, buddy. It’d give a staid scientist like you the nightmares for the rest of your life!” He paused. “But I’ll tell you one thing. I don’t know if that girl is coming back.”

  Page’s head whipped up. “Why?”

  Jake nodded towards Ardammt who was back on his feet and had resumed fingering the door seams. “Look at him. He’s crazed with fear for her. He's on his knees praying for her. If tough guy’s level of terror is any indication, that girl is going through a new kinda hell right now.”

  Page watched Ardammt with growing trepidation. “And we’ll be next.”

  “Yeah,” Jake agreed slowly. “I know.”

  “They’ve been through this before,” Page observed.

  Jake nodded. “Probably. In fact, those creepy crawlers seem to be these people’s version of Hitler. It must be…” Jake broke off as a heavy sucking sound opened on the other side of the cell door.

  Jake and Page stood and Ardammt hastily scrambled to his feet just as the heavy metal door slide aside with a groaning protest and a rattling clang. Two Cantellans, shorter and lighter in weight and coloring than “Ugh”, but subtly different from the other two guards, slithered into the center of the room on smelly slime trails, dragging a battered, bleeding and semi-conscious Tegan between them in their small but powerful front appendages.

  Without a word or a glance of an eyestalk, the worker creatures released Tegan’s limp form, letting her drop to the metal floor like a useless sack of spare parts and, surprisingly fast for creatures so lumbersome, slithered backwards on their slime trails and out of the cell. The door whined and clanked shut behind them sweeping glops of slime into the door seam and making it look like the dark cell door had a runny nose.

  Jake and Page watched Ardammt scramble over to Tegan. He lifted her into his arms and carried her over to the cold metal bench molded right into the cold metal walls and gently laid her down. Slowly and carefully, Ardammt brushed tangled hair out of Tegan’s face and winced, expelling a vicious curse voiced in angry Vaneallan torn up from his very soul.

  At the sound, Page rushed over and knelt down next to Tegan, gasping as he took in her beaten appearance.

  Page glanced at Ardammt’s ashen face. “She’ll be okay,” Page assured Ardammt. He really liked the two Vaneallans, especially Tegan. He was even kind of attracted to her and didn’t want to see her die. He also realized that Tegan ran her and Ardammt’s relationship – whatever it was – and figured that if she died Ardammt might not know how to cope – or escape.

  And escape they
would. Page knew he’d rather die trying to escape than just sit back and wait his turn in the Cantellan’s torture halls.

  Ardammt looked at him, his eyes unfocused, haunted. “Of course,’ he agreed, but his voice held a quiver that betrayed a still ghostly fear. He looked down lovingly into the bruised and bloody face resting on his lap. “She’s just…”

  “In shock.” Page nodded his understanding.

  Ardammt nodded but said no more. Instead he turned his attention to Tegan’s tunic. What was left of the material was in long thin shreds and was attached to Tegan’s body only by the fasteners running down the front. Deftly Ardammt undid these and slipped the useless garment from her torso, exposing to Page’s surprised view a rich pair of breasts and a cleanly defined waistline runneled with blood from her neck.

  Blushing, Page turned away and sank into the seat next to Jake.

  Jake cocked an eyebrow at Page’s slowly receding crimson stain. “Not shrinking violets, are they?”

  Page shook his head, watching Ardammt reach into a zippered compartment in his trousers and draw out a small vial of some type of bluish gel that he began spreading with gentle hands over Tegan's face and torso. “I wonder if they all behave like that.”

  Jake glanced at the two. Tegan had stirred enough to mutter a couple disjointed phrases in Vaneallan and turn on the bench so she could wrap her scraped and red striped arms around Ardammt’s thighs, her long hair falling in veil over her scarred face. Jake wasn’t sure, but he could have sworn that strong-minded little Vaneallan gal was crying into Ardammt’s battered trousers. “Don’t know,” Jake answered at length.

  Page nodded and watched as Ardammt shrugged out of his light tunic, cast it aside, shed the light-colored under tunic and worked Tegan’s arms into this garment, caressing the airy fabrics down over Tegan’s breasts and stomach with long smooth strokes of his hands. Tegan was starting to stir and Ardammt bent down to where her head rested on his lap and spoke soothing words in low Vaneallan tones while pulling on his own tunic, leaving the front hanging open.