Thirty-nine
Wallace made a move to intervene. Melanie grabbed
Wallace's arm. "Don't challenge them, you fool! They'll kill you!"
The Carn glared at him. Wallace calmed himself.
"Don't harm the female," he called out. "I'll go after water myself as
soon as the sun comes up."
Sasha translated. The Carn grumbled. "Your request
and offer are honorable," she said listlessly. "So will be your deaths."
Wallace turned his back on the monsters and sat on
the ground. Melanie joined him. "Wallace, I really don't think it's any
safer out there in the trees."
"I think the Carn were going to kill the Saur," he
said, reluctant to spell out his suspicions in detail.
Melanie lowered herself to her back on the charred
ground and interlaced her fingers behind her neck. "You made a deal
commencing at daylight. Catch some sleep while you have a chance."
Wallace listened to the night creak, slither, and
rustle. The tepid air was otherwise quiet. Daybreak brought a mist that
rendered the morning a study in multi-toned gray. The Carn were seated
back to back facing the four points of the compass with their chin's
resting on their chests. The Saur were curled up in a tight group in the
middle and likewise asleep.
Wallace sat up, hoping for a private moment to visit
the edge of the charred clearing and urinate, but he inadvertently brushed
Melanie as he rolled to his feet and woke her. She opened her eyes and
took a moment to orient herself, then climbed smoothly to her feet.
They went to opposite ends of the charred clearing to
take care of personal business. Wallace wet down an empty shell or husk,
one of several visible nearby, and as he did so he realized that he had
found a suitable water container. He selected one of the shells and met
Melanie near the middle of the clearing. "We can use these to carry
water, but I want Sasha to go with me."
"Why?"
"Because I'm afraid she's going to hurt herself."
"Sasha, or Qualin?"
"Qualin," Wallace said. "What difference does it
make?"
Melanie gazed at him with frustration. "Wallace,
it's over. You know that, don't you? It didn't look to me like the
strike force was having any trouble pressing their attack through the
portals. But whether any of the Saur managed to escape or not, Rathburn
wasn't relying upon them to destroy the portals. The strike force was
armed with quarter kiloton tactical nuclear warheads."
Wallace was speechless.
"I'm willing to bet the portal technology has ceased
to exist," Melanie said. "Maybe your friend Ghaedor put us here for
safekeeping, or maybe the equipment malfunctioned when the warheads
detonated. But even if we get a chance to go home, is Ghaedor going to
let Sasha, the Saur, or the Carn go with us? They're an extinct species,
Wallace."
"Sasha..."
"Sasha was an eighteen-year-old girl without much
experience in life," Melanie said. "Qualin has gotten the best of her. I
don't think there's much left of Sasha Abdul. She may never have survived the Willington Incident
to begin with, not really. A memory isn't the same thing as personal
experience, and you know our Sasha never experienced any of her memories."
Wallace squeezed his eyes shut in misery, wishing
there was some way to block it all out of his head.
"You and I should stick together, Wallace. I don't
think you can help Sasha now."
Wallace didn't say anything. She knew better than to
say the things she had said.
"Okay. Be my guest. Knock yourself out."
Sasha rose to her feet as she took note of Melanie's
anger. Wallace gestured with a nod for her to join him. Hesitantly, she
approached. "Go with me to get water," he said.
She gave a nod of agreement. Wallace pointed toward
an opening in the trees. "I think I see a stream just behind those
trees." He held up his shell. "There are lots of these lying around."
He gave her a crooked smile. "Don't use the one I pissed in."
Sasha ventured out into the underbrush to collect
several of the shells, then stayed close to Wallace as he started out into
the vegetation. Most of the dense plant life stirred as they brushed
past, but Wallace doubted if there was any dangerous level of intelligence
about, or any trap designed to deal specifically with a life-form that may
as well have arrived from some other planet entirely.
Sasha eyed the larger trees and their loathsome
tentacles writhing nearby, but otherwise shared his assessment. "This is
a strange place," she said, "but they have no eyes, or physical senses. I
think they interact chemically."
That would be Qualin talking. Wallace pointed out
several of the eyeless rodents impaled by the sword-like shafts of
predatory weeds, warning that there was still a risk of haphazard physical
injury.
Sasha picked up her pace, steering clear of larger
shrubs and plants and slipping between several trees to where a wide creek
rushed across worn stones. She scooped up two shells of yellowish water.
"We cannot risk a drink until we boil it," she said. She lifted a shell
to her nose and grimaced. "It doesn't smell potable."
They turned back together to the trees. And stopped
in their tracks. Black snakes rushed along the ground in the shadows.
When they encountered the thrashing tentacles, they spiraled along their
length to the trucks, then forced their pointed snouts into the hide of
the tree. One by one, they slipped inside and vanished from view.
Nearby, a rat like animal dived into the air from the limb of a tree and
spread a membrane between its limbs. It flew clumsily to the ground where
it burrowed in an instant into the earth. Sasha looked up at the low
overcast smeared with dark bands of greenish brown. She smelled the water
again, then dumped it onto the ground. Something beneath the earth
stirred as the water penetrated.
"You can't just give up," Wallace said.
"I want to go home, Wallace."
That was Sasha speaking. "Don't let Qualin hurt
you," he said, taking advantage of their moment of privacy.
"There is nothing left for her to live for. She is
tempted by the Carn. Let them enjoy their final victory before all Carn
are dead. The alternative, life in this place, is worse."
"You freed yourself of the Carn!" Wallace cried out.
"A few of the Saur may have escaped, just as you planned! Even if we
don't make it, you still have that to celebrate! You have your dignity!"
"There is no dignity," Sasha said. "The race is
dead. Perhaps you think the Saur breed among themselves, but the Carn are
the fertile males of the species and the Saur males are sterile workers.
The Saur wished to escape the violence, but without the Carn, the species
would have ended with their deaths regardless."
Wallace was horrified. Sasha dipped her head and
started back toward the clearing.
"Stay away from the Carn!" Wallace called after her.
"I don't care how hopeless things seem to be. I still think Ghaedor put
us here for a reason."
"Will he protect us from the Carn?" she said without
looking back.
"Don't take anything for granted! Give things a
chance to work out!"
They returned empty-handed to the blackened clearing
where the multicolored Saur and the massive, leather and chrome-clad Carn
awaited.
Melanie turned to the Carn as they approached. She
pointed into the forest at a concentration of swarming rodents. "Kill a
few of those things for us," she commanded.
Sasha translated. One of the Carn unslung his
rifle. Wallace forget to avert his eyes as a dazzling beam of light swept
into the gloom and sent debris exploding into the air in a cloud of
superheated steam. While Wallace recovered his eyesight, Melanie ventured
into the carnage and returned with two relatively undamaged rodents. She
dropped them on the ground and squatted, poking at the remains with a
blackened stick.
Wallace joined her. "We can't eat those," he warned
her. "Even if we could, we still have no water. The stuff we found was
more like oil.”
"I'm just curious." She reached into her pocket for
a folding penknife and slit the gut of one of the animals. White blood
and a mass of seeds the length of a finger gushed forth. She slit the
thigh of the back leg inspected the muscle. "It's not meat. This thing
is a seed pod with legs. It only looks like an animal." She held the jaw
up to view. "These aren't teeth. They're more like spines for gripping."
One of the Carn growled in its incomprehensible
language from nearby. Sasha translated without looking up from her spot
near the Saur. "Life feeds upon life in all worlds, the stronger upon the
weaker. Cattle graze. The Carn do not."
Wallace sat on the blackened earth facing a clear
patch of distant sky. The long afternoon passed in an uncomfortable
silence and the growing torment of hunger and thirst. At dusk, the Carn
relit their bonfire and turned again to face the Saur. As had happened
the previous night, the Saur grew increasingly agitated. The same Saur
female who had offered herself the previous night finally stood.
Melanie gripped Wallace's arm as he started to rise
to his feet. "They'll kill you if you interfere again. There's nothing
we can do."
Wallace's eyes were on Sasha as the two male Saurs
again wailed their terror. Now, the second female climbed to her feet.
Together, they delivered themselves into the arms of the Carn.
Wallace pulled himself lose from Melanie's hand and
rushed to Sasha's side. For the moment, she stood well back in the
shadows with her human allies, ignored by the monsters.
And for the moment, the worst of Wallace's fears
abated. The Carn began to have sex with the two female Saur. They went
limp and dangled in the arms of beasts who quietly and casually had their
way with them. The Saur quivered in their arms, making soft noises as
they were mated.
Afterwards, the Carn formed a semi-circle. They lay
the limp bodies of the Saur females on the ground between them, caressing
and prodding and muttering among themselves, as if discussing the merits
of one over the others with casual interest.
Wallace had relaxed and looked away when a shriek
sounded from within the circle. The soul-wrenching sound cut through the
darkness and was cut off by the crackling sound of breaking bones.
Wallace looked around in time to see thrashing limbs and a spurt of
arterial blood. Simultaneously, the two Saur males leaped to their feet
and raced silently away into the darkness.
Wallace's heart raced with panic. Melanie stood
shrieking with clenched fists. "You bastards! You deserve to die!"
Only one of the blood-soaked Carn bothered to rise to
his feet, his hideous face highlighted by the fire in ruddy light and
deep, sinister shadow.
His gaze fell upon Sasha. Sasha grew rigid and her
eyes unfocused. A tremor ran through her body. Wallace could smell it
then, an uncontrollably, instinctive reaction of overpowering lust.
Wallace spun her around. "No! Sasha, don't let
Qualin do it!"
Melanie was suddenly screaming at him. "Wallace,
run!"
The Carn split the night with a roar of animal rage
and attacked. Wallace whirled about and plunged into the darkness with
Sasha in tow. He knew by the heavy pounding closing on them from behind
that they'd never reach the sanctuary of darkness alive.
A portal flared in a flash of light directly in front
of him. Guided by the glowing blue rim, Wallace dived through without
hesitation. Once on the other side, still enveloped by total darkness, he
pulled Sasha off balance and threw her aside, then dived in the other
direction and tackled Melanie to the ground as well.
The Carn rushed past in a waft of a foul-smelling
breeze and vanished into the darkness without a sound. For a long time
afterwards, Wallace lay unmoving on soft earth, listening to the sounds in
the warm night of a new world.
