Exodus: Extinction Event Read online

  Handing Kaelen one of the containers of food that he had managed to find, he took his own and settled as far from the female as he could before he extended his trey-claw to open it.

  “This from one of our stashes?” Kaelen asked.

  “You think I would have been back in this lifetime if it was not?” Dar asked drily. “I will admit, now, that it was smart to plant stashes so far from our lair. I was uneasy about it when you suggested it, but if we had kept everything close to make sure it was safe, it would be buried in ash or possibly lava by now.”

  “Either our ‘guest’ does not like the look of the food or she cannot open it,” Kaelen said neutrally.

  Dar glanced at her, studied her a long moment and finally set his food down and moved toward her.

  She did not cringe—exactly—but she stiffened noticeably.

  Still, she did not attempt to fight him when he took one of her hands and examined it. “She does not have a trey-claw,” Dar said after a moment, unable to entirely keep the surprise from his voice.

  “Seriously?” Kaelen asked, moving quickly across the space to take her other hand and study it. When he had finished, he flicked a look at her face and swallowed with an effort. “She is not much like us, but she is ….” He paused, clearly at a loss for words. “She is a very pretty little thing.”

  He frowned when he had returned to collect his food. “How do you suppose she perceives us?”

  Dar had also moved back to the opposite side of the shelter and taken up his container of food. “She thinks we are terrifying,” Dar muttered without looking up from his food. “At least, she thinks I am.”

  Kaelen looked unhappy about his observation but finally shrugged. “We did kidnap her.”

  Dar sent him a sardonic look.

  Kaelen missed it.

  He had a knack for missing things he did not want to acknowledge.

  “We did,” Dar responded finally. “Let us see if we can think of a way to make it count. I do not believe that we have the time it would take to teach her to speak our tongue or vice versa. We do not have the technology to overcome the language barrier. We did not have that before the Great Dying. What do you propose? Shall we grunt at her and try to mime what we need?”

  Kaelen frowned. “I had thought the most likely thing to work would be a combination of drawing and playacting,” he said slowly. “But I am thinking that will make complex ideas impossible to get across.”

  Dar shook his head. “We do not need complex. I think it should be obvious that we are barely hanging by a thread and have damned few options. If she has not figured out, yet, that we desire to go with them when they leave this hell hole, then she is not nearly as bright as I have thought.”

  Kaelen nodded and took his sword from its holder.

  Unfortunately, she did not take the approach with the sword well. She screamed and leapt to her feet, trying to charge the only exit.

  Dar intercepted her with little effort despite the lingering pain from his injury. He held her tightly against his chest until she stopped fighting. When she had worn herself out, he captured her face with one hand and made her look at him. “We mean you no harm, Meeka.”

  Seeing nothing but the wildness of panic in her eyes still, Dar hesitated and finally dipped his head to press a kiss of peace against her lips. She looked confused when he lifted his head, but he thought that was a vast improvement over the panic. Turning her, he showed her that Kaelen was using the tip of his sword to draw in the hard packed dirt.

  She stiffened when he tried to lead her back but finally yielded to his gentle but determined tug. He pointed to the drawing when they had moved around to so that they could look down at it from the same direction as Kaelen.

  Kaelen pointed to the shape he had drawn and then lifted one hand toward the sky and swooped toward the object on the ground and made the sound of an explosion.

  She looked from him to the drawing and back again, still clearly puzzled.

  Kaelen knelt and drew a door in the side and stick figures to represent each of the people that had emerged.

  Comprehension dawned. Dar could see the moment the light went on. She nodded understanding.

  At least he assumed that was what she meant.

  She touched each of the figures. “Meeka, Dr. Hobbs, Dr. McNeal, Sam, Johnson, Nunn. The shuttle. The crash.” She looked at Kael, pointed at her eyes and then the representation of the ship and asked, “You saw?”

  Kaelen nodded and drew a small volcanic cone, then lines flying out and rocks. When he was done, he drew figures to represent Dar and him running from it.

  It took Monica a little longer to figure that one out, but then she recalled the pilot had mentioned spotting an eruption just before something penetrated the shielding and they had to make an emergency landing in the rubble field instead of the smoother area beyond it that looked as if it might have been forest or fields because it was primarily scorched, blackened ground and ash.

  Kael drew her attention again and she saw he had rubbed out the figures of before and redrawn them facing the ship.

  This time he had included Dar and himself.

  Monica frowned at the picture.

  Kael touched her shoulder and then pointed to Dar and touched his own chest.

  Discomfort wafted through Monica when it dawned on her that he was asking if they could go with them when they left. How could she explain that it wasn’t up to her? That she was in no position to make such a decision even if not for the circumstances?

  And it certainly didn’t weigh in their favor that they’d taken her to make their point.

  Not that she couldn’t understand why they had now that she had a better understanding—or thought she did.

  Regardless, it wasn’t up to her.

  Even the pilot couldn’t really make that call because, ultimately, that was Captain Clarkson’s decision since he was in charge of the entire colony mission. And she seriously doubted that their pilot could be persuaded to try to convince the captain to rescue two survivors of the apocalypse.

  It occurred to her, though, that it might be more than her life was worth to disappoint them. What use would they have for her if she couldn’t be used as a bargaining chip?

  She studied the drawing for a long, long time, trying to think up a reaction that wouldn’t get her immediately killed. “I could try,” she finally said doubtfully, hoping something could and would be done to rescue her if she could convince them to take her with them when they went to negotiate.

  They appeared to understand the doubt in her voice even though it seemed unlikely they knew what she’d said.

  Kael and Dar exchanged a long look, struggling with a mixture of anger, disappointment, and frustration.

  Their future was looking very grim if they had no hope of rescue.

  After staring at the empty food container for a few moments, Kael picked it up and shook it at Monica. “We have more of these. We can find food to feed ourselves until we get to the world that is your destination,” he said earnestly with no idea whether it was true or not. They could certainly find some and they could do without if they ran out of rations before they reached their goal—as long as that was not too long. They would be no worse off that he could see.

  The meteor strike had shifted their world, or at least damaged it in such a way that cultivation of food, in the near term, seemed impossible. It was cold. There was no snow or ice, but it was far cooler than normal because there was so much dust in the sky that only weak sunlight filtered to the ground. The plants that had survived the initial impact were dying.

  There might or might not be enough stores that had made it through the cataclysm to carry the survivors until the planet/food chain began to recover.

  This particular area seemed to have been pretty much cleaned out, though, and they were about to have to discover if there was anything beyond the ruins of the city if Meeka’s people refused to help them.

  Frustration filled him when she only loo
ked at him uncomfortably.

  If they could communicate, he could have made a better case for himself and Dar. Unfortunately, primitive and inadequate was all he could manage.

  * * * *

  Shock induced by the suddenness and unexpectedness of the assault shielded Monica from most of her emotional reaction just as it prevented her from a successful attempt to rationalize what had happened.

  It was all a blur—a blur that left gaps in her memory even much later when she was able to try to pick apart the memories and piece them together.

  It was the fact that both of the aliens behaved in a non-threatening manner that prevented total emotional hysterics and a meltdown from terror even when the shock began to wear off, though.

  They couldn’t understand one another, but that wouldn’t have prevented them from being threatening and abusive if they’d felt like it. She hadn’t even gotten the sense that they were controlling their anger with an effort—the sense that they were frustrated, yes, but nothing aimed at her, nothing that made her feel threatened.

  There was no one around to prevent any violence they felt like taking out on her.

  And she had a bad feeling that no one from the shuttle had even argued in favor of trying to rescue her.

  She was on her own.

  Badly outnumbered and underpowered.

  They hadn’t even shown a great deal of interest in rape—which she was glad of, but she was afraid that also meant not a lot of chance that she could use sexual wiles to try to rescue herself.

  Even if she could’ve pulled herself together enough to consider trying it.

  There was that one incident when the slender one, Kael, had pinned her to the wall, but she couldn’t honestly say that it had been sexual. She thought it had been, but she couldn’t be certain enough to consider that flirting was likely to help her case.

  And the kiss Dar had given her—well that had been so light and non-sexual it might have been from a sibling or parent.

  Of course, she was pretty sure she knew what they wanted.

  She was also very certain she knew what the answer was going to be and the question of what form their disappointment would take haunted her dreams even when emotional exhaustion allowed her to doze.

  The night had passed and weak sunlight had lifted the darkness when she roused from fitful sleep.

  The two aliens—Kael and Dar—had built a tiny fire and looked to be cooking or at least heating something in the middle of the enclosure.

  Unfortunately, the shelter wasn’t terribly well designed for ventilation and most of the smoke was lying near the ground. She struggled with the need to cough for several moments, trying to prevent them from realizing she’d woken, but it was too much. She sat up, coughing.

  The ‘big fucking alien’ pushed a small container into her hand. It held water, thankfully, and it was cool enough it soothed the rawness of her throat.

  They shared a portion of the food they’d cooked, or at least heated.

  She had no clue of what it was, but it smelled edible and food wasn’t something a sane person wasted when it was so hard to get.

  It flickered through her mind that it could be poisonous to her, but she comforted herself with the indisputable fact that the aliens were so physically similar to humans that it was at least unlikely that their food would hurt her.

  The warm food both lifted her spirits and energized her.

  That good feeling lasted until she discovered they intended to take her somewhere.

  Thankfully, the first stop was a private corner to relieve herself. Otherwise, she thought she might have embarrassed herself when she discovered their actual destination and the thrills and chills that awaited her there.

  Chapter Five

  Monica’s stomach knotted with nerves the moment she realized Kael and Dar were taking her to the shuttle. Anticipation and fear had her heart palpitating uncomfortably as they paused just at the perimeter of the clearing where the shuttle sat, making it difficult to compose her thoughts.

  She knew they’d brought her with the understanding that she would try to negotiate with her people for passage.

  Or at least, she thought she understood that.

  She also knew that there was nothing she could say that would open the door for them.

  What would they do to her if she couldn’t even convince the others to open up and talk to her? Would they kill her outright? Abandon her? Or take her somewhere and torture her to get even with her for their disappointment?

  She supposed the real question was if there was some way to escape them and rescue herself and avoid any possibility of something horrible?

  She wasn’t convinced the group on the shuttle would even try to help her.

  They were on a survival mission—a desperate act to save the human race—and individually, their importance hinged on their usefulness to the group.

  The alien men had kept her fairly close to where they’d captured her. If anyone had made any attempt to help her it wouldn’t have taken a lot of effort to track her or much time to reach her.

  They hadn’t tried and she had a bad feeling that was because she wasn’t considered valuable enough to risk anyone else.

  As they waited for someone to acknowledge their presence, she discovered she couldn’t sustain her fear. Slowly but surely the anxiety began to wane. As it did, more rational and organized thoughts began to run through her mind. Their desperation became less of a threat to her personal safety and more a point of empathy.

  They must have been desperate to risk their lives to snatch her.

  They hadn’t hurt her or even threatened to.

  They’d asked for help.

  Their methods would probably be condemned by most people—probably even her if she’d heard about it instead of experienced it—but the circumstances hadn’t really left them with an alternative, she realized now.

  If they’d merely approached and tried to talk, the chances were high that they would’ve been seen as a threat and shot.

  What would it cost her to at least try to get help for them?

  She thought it was pointless, but she would never know if she didn’t at least attempt to negotiate a rescue for them.

  What might it cost her in guilt if she didn’t even make the effort?

  Would she be able to put their plight from her mind and go back to being comfortable? Completely focused on her own concerns?

  “They would have seen her in this length of time if they did not have a way to detect us long before we got this close,” Dar said in a tight voice.

  Kael frowned thoughtfully but finally shrugged. “We do not know what was damaged.”

  “We will know fast enough if we step from cover.”

  “I will take her closer so that we can be sure that they have seen her.”

  Dar clearly wrestled with a response. “And what am I to do if they blow your head off? I will not last long alone in this world we have now. I did not worry that I had not found a bond brother before the Great Dying. Now, I know my days could be counted on one hand if I was left to try to survive with no partner. I may as well go with you and let them blow my head off, as well. At least that would be quick.”

  Surprise flickered across Kael’s face, but then he smiled grimly. “You will find another bond brother to watch your back.”

  “I might find a partner,” Dar conceded reluctantly, “but bond brothers are not as easy to find and very likely I would only find someone who would abandon me to save himself at the first threat we encountered. Or slit my throat in my sleep for whatever food we find.”

  Kael could not argue with that. He knew from personal experience that it was very true.

  And also that two eyes to watch and two hands to fight were not enough in the new world. One needed a partner they could trust with their life, someone who would fight as hard for their partner as they fought for themselves. Otherwise it would be as bad, or possibly worse, than having no one at all if they came across a pack.
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  “What do you suggest then?” he asked finally.

  Dar released a disgusted huff of breath. “We will have to trust that she will not simply take off to save herself. I am not comfortable with the thought of using her for cover for a closer approach and, in any case, they would see that as a threat, I am sure.”

  Kael looked as if he might throw up. “I would see it as cowardice.”

  The comment angered Dar, but he knew Kael was not suggesting that he was a coward. He was merely stating that he considered it nauseatingly distasteful … as Dar did. But there was no getting around the facts. And that was that they would simply be shot the moment they stepped out.

  In the end it seemed Kael’s impulsive act was not likely to help them at all, but they had taken her. They needed to return her to her people if nothing else.

  He caught her hand and drew her back behind the shielding he had chosen. Catching her face in one hand, he met her gaze, struggling to dismiss the strange fluttering he felt in his belly when he looked at her. “Go back to your people, Meeka, where you will be safe. We will not hold it against you if you choose not to speak for us. We will not try to harm you.”

  He struggled for a moment with the urge to share the kiss of peace with her, knowing if he did that he would not be able to maintain anything that impersonal.

  And Loka forbid that he get tangled in a mating thrall! He would not be in his right mind and they would all die!

  He knew she could not have understood anything that he had said, so, reluctantly, he released his hold on her, turned her toward the ship, and then gave her a gentle push to get her going.

  The moment he released her and urged her toward the ship, Monica felt the fear descend upon her again like a thunderclap.

  She felt as threatened by her own people in the ship as by the aliens behind her.

  Would she get cut down by a firefight between them?

  Not that the aliens had anything but primitive weapons, but those were clearly effective if they’d survived so long in a world of complete anarchy!

  Stiff with fright, she made her way across the narrow clearing, pausing when she realized the shielding was up and they’d shown no indication they meant to lower it for her. She paused then, struggling with the urge to run back to the safety she’d left.