Homebound

by Lydia Hope

  “I can feel them but they don’t hurt,” he said, surprising her.

  “The guard made it sound like they should,” Gemma mused. “Maybe you got lucky and the tracker doesn’t work.”

  “It works,” he said flatly. “But I can tolerate high doses of electricity. All Rix can if put to test. Dr. Delano applied himself to testing me. He wanted to see if there was a limit to how much voltage I could take, and that hurt. He would keep me plugged in and increased the voltage until I passed out.”

  Gemma halted with the chair in the middle of the deserted street, sick to her stomach, her mind frozen in shock at the images his confession conjured.

  Unaware or oblivious to her distress, Simon grinned, his smile terrifying with its display of blue gums and pointy dark teeth emerging from them.

  “Thanks to him, I’ve built up a tolerance. Now it takes a step-up transformer to make me twitch.”

  “I’m sorry,” Gemma whispered brokenly. “You didn’t deserve any of it.”

  He shrugged, and it was all the reaction he showed toward his ordeal and her compassion.

  All around them, the mist bunched and flowed. At the street delta, it wavered funnily, solidifying, and taking a humanoid shape. Then two. Three. Their legs were bent backwards, a distinct feature of Perali.

  Gemma went on high alert.

  Simon must have noticed the shapes at the same time. His posture never changed, but he cocked his head and his long fingers flexed in his lap.

  Gemma told herself not to overreact but her protective instincts were already raging. She executed a quick turn and started walking away from the Perali as fast as she could, which, with her pushing the heavy chair, amounted to no more than a brisk stroll.

  The Perali spoke to each other, their voices reaching her retreating back, a staccato chop of strange sounds thrown around.

  “Do you think we need to be concerned?” Gemma quietly asked Simon.

  “Yes.”

  Her heart lurched in fear. “Why? We did nothing to them.”

  He shrugged again as if indifferent. “We’re weak. Prey. They will attack.”

  She hoped he was mistaken. “What are we going to do?”

  “Get back to the prison.”

  “It’s almost a mile.”

  “You can run.”

  “Not with this chair.” She was already limping badly.

  “No, not with the chair.”

  She tensed. “Simon, did you think I’ll leave you here and run?”

  She pushed the chair harder, moved faster applying all she had to get them going. They covered fifty feet or so when another muscled shape emerged from the fog blocking their way and screwing up their plan for a straight shot to the safety of the prison entrance.

  With her stun gun left on the inside, for the first time Gemma wished the building had windows facing the street so that the guards could see out. Although in this fog it wouldn't have made a difference.

  “Go around the church,” Simon said quietly. “If we’re lucky, we’ll lose them in the fog.”

  Without slowing down, Gemma took a sharp right.

  “I’m not feeling particularly lucky, Simon.”

  They zig-zagged within the area of Simon’s confinement until Gemma ran out of breath. Her ankle was holding up better than expected but her heart was hammering and her head swam. She cursed the recent illness that left her in recovery mode today.

  They ended up near the crumbling wall where the church’s entrance used to be and Gemma parked the wheelchair to catch her breath. She turned around slowly, listening to eerie silence ripe with foreboding. She didn’t dare look at Simon knowing she’d failed him. The weight of responsibility was crushing.

  “I’m sorry,” she said hoarsely. She dropped her eyes to the ground and searched for something, anything that could be used as a weapon. Spotting a stick among the debris littering the road, she picked it up and realized it wasn’t a stick but a length of steel pipe, rusted and bent, but sturdy.

  Good. It could do some damage.

  She positioned herself in front of Simon. As a fighter, she was a joke but she was going to protect him till her dying breath. Which, in this case, might not be a figure of speech.

  Simon’s liquid eyes fastened onto the pipe she was gripping.

  “What are you going to do with this?”

  “I’m going to swing it and hopefully hit some Perali.”

  “You don’t know how to fight.”

  “Sadly, no. But do you have an alternative?”

  “You need to run. Get lost.”

  The Perali were yet to make their appearance out of the fog. But they would, no doubt about it.

  She shook her head. “They will kill you.”

  “If you stay, they will kill you, too.” His voice conveyed utter non-committal.

  “I’ve had a good run,” as she said the words, she realized she meant them. “My only regret is that I can’t get you to safety, Simon.” She smiled sadly. “All that yogurt I fed you will have gone to waste.”

  She traced his beloved alien face with her eyes drinking the image in, his features coming into sharp focus under the intensity of her regard. He was beautiful. He had a long smooth neck and divine hair. His tattoos, visible in the opening of his shirt, were dancing. She longed to place her palm on his skin, right on top of them.

  “How many of your hearts are beating?” she asked, to distract herself from the impulse.

  “Three.”

  She smiled wider, lost in the moment. “Are you angry?”

  “All that wasted yogurt? I’m livid.”

  His large hand enveloped her tight fist gripping her makeshift weapon. It was the first skin-on-skin contact Simon initiated and Gemma felt a thousand tiny shocks tingling where they touched.

  “You would go against a pack of Perali to protect me?” he asked in his quiet voice.

  “Do you have to ask?”

  “But you don’t even know me.”

  “I guess it doesn’t matter.”

  He braced his free hand against the chair and rose to his feet.

  “Give this to me.” He pulled the pipe out of her grip. She tried to resist, but this Rix invalid wrestled the steel pipe from her with astonishing ease.

  “Simon, what are you doing?” Her hackles stood up, and even though she couldn't see them, she knew the Perali were advancing.

  “I’ll take them on for you.”

  “Don’t be ridiculous. There’s four of them!”

  “You were going to do it,” he pointed out.

  “I’m healthy. I’m strong. Well, as much as a woman can be.”

  He gave her an assessing look. “It isn’t much. And we are out of time.”

  Whirling around, Gemma saw the Perali closing in from the floating foggy haze. One laughed at the terror he read in her wide eyes.

  Her head whipped back to her alien. “Simon!” was all she could utter.

  He brought his face within an inch on hers, closer than she’d ever been to him. His breath fanned strands of hair around her face. His overly large brilliant eyes were fathomless, dark, and so near that she could see deep into them like into a murky lake.

  He did have three pupils. All vertically slit, one was positioned in the middle of the eye, a larger one, and two smaller ones were on each side. They blended well with his black irises, but this close she could make out the different texture of the pupils, and the alien sight held her spellbound.

  His face hovered there, almost close enough to kiss, and then he took a step back tossing and catching the pipe in his hand. His tattoos vibrated smoothly.

  “Go stand by the chair,” he ordered.

  She wanted to argue but one of the Perali got perilously close reaching for Simon. He turned away from her sharply, braid flying, surprising the Perali with his sudden move. Surprising Gemma, too. She stumbled back several steps.

  The Perali’s outstretched arm that was trying to get a hold of Simon took the brunt of a downward chop
he applied with lightning speed. The dry crack of breaking bone was followed by a howl of the arm owner. The attacking Perali clutched his arm, stunned, and Simon used the opportunity to promptly punch him in the face with his left hand once, twice, before taking hold of his hair and skewering him with the pipe through the throat.

  One down.

  And it wasn’t neat.

  Terror washed over Gemma after a delayed realization that the fight was real. She kept backing away, unaware she was moving, until the backs of her legs hit the wheelchair.

  Simon yanked the pipe free. A half-wheeze, half-gurgle that issued from the felled Perali’s throat caused her entire body to convulse and break out in violent goosebumps. She sank into the seat, her mouth filling with a sour taste. She couldn’t help staring at the dead body, at the rich blood pouring out from the throat that was left open, pooling on the ground, steaming in the cold.

  “Don’t look, don’t look, don’t look,” she chanted.

  Impossible. Death was a riveting sight.

  Simon was now surrounded by the three remaining Perali who were circling him like wolves. He turned slowly with them trying to keep each alien in his sights, his movements lurching and slow. The Perali seemed to be regrouping, the shock of losing one of their own to this outwardly delicate creature wearing off. They began heckling him, cackling and making obscene gestures.

  Two launched themselves at him at once.

  Gemma’s heart almost launched out of her chest.

  Simon dodged by crouching and sliding from between them at the last possible moment as if he were a sliver of soap slipping from between two hands. He struck out with one foot sending one attacker teetering and off-balance. At the same time, he blocked the other assailant's flying fist and smashed the pipe into his face with enough force to make his nose concave. The Perali bent in half palming his bloody face and making hoarse moaning sounds that made Gemma’s skin feel too tight.

  But Simon wasn’t done. He caught his attacker’s wrist in a firm hold and gave the Perali’s arm a sudden powerful yank that separated the thing from the shoulder. The tearing tissues made a wet sound and blood splattered far enough to reach Gemma in a spray of warm droplets. She swallowed the rising bile. Here she was, someone who only a few short minutes ago had thought that simply hitting the aliens with the pipe would be tantamount of violence.

  The armless Perali with smashed nose was now down, dead. Simon moved away from him and was facing off the Perali he’d knocked off balance, a big snarling guy.

  The fourth of the attackers was hopping around trying to get a jump on Simon from behind.

  Simon wouldn’t let them get close. Every single one of his movements was tight and calculated as if rehearsed a thousand times to perfection. He hadn’t wasted a drop of energy, carefully preserving every ounce of what little juice he had. Yet he never wavered. It was like he anticipated the Perali’s every move and reacted with strikes that were the most cost-effective.

  The burly guy charged Simon. With no way to evade, Simon caught the assault with his side. It must’ve hurt. The impact took him down with the Perali coming hard on top and the ground shook from the slam of their bodies. Simon never made a sound. Even as he fell, the pipe remained firmly in his grip, waiting, ready, until he abruptly threw his hand up - just as the Perali on top of him reared up and brought his forehead down aiming for Simon’s nose.

  Skull, meet pipe.

  More blood.

  The guy slumped and Simon didn’t waste time pushing him off.

  The last Perali howled as he descended.

  The two of them rolled into the fog, and the wavering fluffy layers of it completely obscured the straining bodies. From that point on, it became difficult for Gemma to track who was winning, who got hurt, and whether it was Simon’s pipe that kept hitting the Perali or the Perali’s fists hitting Simon. All of it was awful, and hysterically Gemma wondered if she could pass out, after all, and not have to absorb the overwhelming sensory input of the fight.

  Holding the armrests in her frozen fingers like they were a lifeline, she pulled her feet up tucking them beneath her - the blood from the first dead Perali kept spreading, threatening to reach her toes.

  Some time lapsed, she didn’t know how much but it couldn’t have been long. The fog persisted. The sounds of the fighting subsided, slowed down, and finally, there was only silence. And it was the most terrifying sound of all.

  After a heartbeat of absolutely nothing, she heard steps, measured and shuffling. Gemma stared into the fog, willing for it to part and disclose the walker. Gradually, a shape became visible and grew closer, a tall, slim figure emerging from the opaque white mist.

  Gemma watched his steps as he approached. He had large feet befitting his tall frame, shod in the ugly rough-hewn canvas shoes that seemed to have been in vogue at prisons for centuries. He took measured steps and she was left fascinated by the length of his stride and a slightly pigeon-toed way he positioned his feet, inward. Not prominently so, but enough to endear her.

  He was here. He was alive.

  “Beautiful Gemma,” Simon said when he came closer. “Number 34 said to tell you hi.”

  He threw something, and the something rolled on the ground across the puddle of blood to come to a stop in front of the chair.

  Her throat expanded on a whistling wail. It was a head, crudely torn off, with chunks of the neck and a part of the shoulder skin attached to it in shreds. What she could see of the face was unrecognizable.

  “It’s… It’s… “

  “Yes, it’s him. Your admirer and my next-door cellmate. Late admirer and former cellmate.”

  “No! I can’t… Why?” The sight was beyond horrific.

  Simon gave a one-shoulder shrug. “I didn’t get all that they were saying, but I understood enough to know he led the pack to us. He knew about the outings.”

  Gemma raised her eyes to him and had to swallow. “But… the head. Was it necessary?”

  Simon’s eyes were flattening, losing their liquid brilliance. “It was effective. No species can function without the head. Arc was strong and I was getting tired.”

  He listed to one side and had to prop himself with one hand against the wall. His torso was grimy, smeared with blood and gore. An angry gash bisected his cheek.

  Gemma took note of his condition but couldn’t properly process the significance of it. Or the significance of him, alive, where four Perali were so obviously not. She could process nothing except the sight of the severed head right in front of her.

  Realizing it was majorly distracting her, Simon give the head a well-aimed kick that sent it rolling away, spinning and bouncing, into the fog.

  “I hate to ask, but may I have my chair back?”

  As if in a trance, Gemma slid off the chair, careful not to step into the blood. She was supposed to act, to say something, but at the moment she couldn't fathom what. She looked at Simon. He was badly winded, barely able to stand upright. His braid was coming undone.

  Breathing in and out, measuring the depth of each inhale, she worked to collect herself while he settled into the chair and rearranged his soiled shirt to conceal the damage done to his body. His face was dirty.

  Without fully realizing what she was doing, Gemma mechanically cleaned the worst of the grime off his face using the hem of her shirt. He stayed silent and still, letting her do what she did, reminding her of the Simon she’d been so familiar with. Her sick, frail, harmless Simon who needed fussing over. Not the Simon who tore off body parts like they were tree branches. That Simon was not her Simon. She had no idea who that animal was.

  “Are we late? We’re probably late. We have to get back to the prison,” she babbled semi-coherently.

  She turned the chair around, and, one foot after the other, started walking away from the carnage. She knew that no matter how far she walked, the sights would always stay with her.

  Simon was silent for a while and then he dropped both feet on the ground effectively app
lying them as brakes and stopping their progress. He threw his head back looking at her from upside down.

  “Run away with me now.”

  The tight roll of suppressed emotions within Gemma threatened to burst. She gripped the chair handles tighter.

  “I have nowhere to go.”

  He reached up and grasped her arms, circling them with his long flexible and clawed fingers. One yank, and her arms could pull apart from her shoulder sockets.

  But he wasn’t hurting her, he was merely holding her. “I can take you away from here.”

  Her skin burned through her clothes where he was touching, and the intense gaze of his huge alien eyes held her immobile.

  “Away? There’s no ‘away.’ This is it, with no way out.”

  “This rotten City is doomed like this whole miserable planet is doomed. Nothing is holding you here. No one. Let me get you out.”

  “How?” He was delusional, riding high on adrenaline. “You can’t run away! You have a tracker.”

  “There’re ways to disable it.”

  Scared of an overwhelming desire to go along with his wild scheme, she was shaking her head so hard her neck pinched.

  “No. No, it isn’t right. You can’t run away! I can’t go with you.”

  He gave her a good long glance and released her. “Okay. Not now. You aren’t ready.”

  It isn’t that she wasn’t ready. It was the reality of their respective situations.

  “You don’t mean it, Simon. It’s your adrenaline talking.”

  “Rix don’t produce what you call adrenaline. It’s not how we work. Come on, let’s get back.”

  Gemma remembered little of opening the door and entering the prison. She was frisked, surely, got her stun stick back, and they crossed the lobby somehow, and she summoned the elevator - nothing registered. But once they were enclosed inside the smelly rickety cabin going up, she unraveled.

  She didn’t cry, for strangely she had no tears. For some time the only sound in the dimly lit cabin was her labored, uneven breathing.

  “Why are you upset?” he asked with curiosity.

  He truly didn’t understand.

  “I was scared.”

  “Of the Perali?”

  “Blood. Fighting. I was scared of those things.”