by Jim Laughter
But that would take time. In the meantime, he culled the old and sick out of his remaining captives to meet demand. As a further investment in what he now considered as his wild breeding program, he reduced the guards around the storage units holding the frozen meat from the other animals captured on the raid. The commander figured that if the runaways had enough food to survive, they might be more inclined to breed and thus solve his production problem. Then when the time was ripe, he’d send out patrols to capture the loose humans. Done correctly, he could still make this project work.
∞∞∞
The stench was unbearable. Packed together like the proverbial sardines, the humans were crammed into Red-tail transit ships. Orphaned by a Red-tail blaster, little Leatha clung to the adults she was thrown in with. But they were as dazed as she.
And everywhere were the monstrous red guards. Beyond the terror of torn and bloody bodies, beyond the horror of seeing her parents burned down while they tried to protect her at the last with their very bodies, worst of all were the Red-tails. Even with her eyes squeezed shut, she could still see them glaring at her. She had a child’s concept of evil, something far away in stories. But here it was looking back at her.
The small bands of survivors were rounded up and herded along the road back toward the waiting ships. The injured and people unable to walk were burned down and their bodies thrown into the rolling hopper-like vehicles following behind. The last glimpse the little girl had of her mother was as a corpse, the agony of her death frozen on her face. Her father’s remains were too burnt to recognize, except for his boots. Mute, she watched over the shoulder of the woman carrying her as their remains were forked into the hopper.
Looking the other way all she could see were Red-tail ships and Red-tail soldiers everywhere. And the look each one gave her sent a new wave of terror racing through her soul. Little Leatha wanted to disappear. But she couldn’t. The best she managed was to bury her face in the shoulder of the woman who held her.
Closer and closer they marched toward the waiting ships. Ahead of them and on either side they could see groups of surviving humans also being herded along. Each group was followed by one or more rolling hoppers. As they approached the ships, the procession slowed, causing them to come up behind the rolling hopper ahead of them.
A guard would occasionally sneak behind the hopper, scavenging for something or carrying bottles of some kind. It was only when her group got closer they saw the Red-tail guards were picking up pieces of flesh that fell off the overloaded hopper. The ones with bottles were sticking them under a stream of blood leaking out the bottom. Leatha wanted to be sick but found herself unable due to the fear that gripped her. She watched as one guard picked up what had been someone’s hand and nibbled on it like candy. Leatha buried her face again to avoid the sight. But she could still hear it, no matter how hard she tried to block the terrible noise.
Then she was in the hold of the ship. Shoved in until there was no room, they were locked in compartments as the ships prepared for space. Not only did the compartments lack any amenities, they didn’t even have padding to protect the occupants from injury. Leatha felt her innards wrench as the ship blasted into space. The effects of inertia leaked through the Red-tail drive system and crushed down on the human cargo.
The ship continued like this for what seemed like forever and then turned in its flight. The inertia shifted with it and crushed the humans against the naked steel walls. The lucky ones had the life crushed out of them as the combined mass of a thousand or more people smashed them into the walls of the compartment. Those in the middle had fewer deaths but suffered the majority of the injuries. Some of these died in short order. Others lingered without relief.
Then the bottom seemed to drop out from under them. Someone muttered something about free fall but little Leatha didn’t understand. All she knew was that she was floating free along with the others. The mess on the deck from people dying or being sick floated with them. And just when they thought it couldn’t get worse, their whole world would twist and compress into a terrifying torture chamber of broken humanity.
Leatha exploded into wakefulness, her body drenched in cold sweat. The blankets of her bed were twisted around her, binding her in place. With some effort, she struggled free as she also fought waves of emotion. Getting up, she stumbled to the sink in the corner of her room. She splashed water on her face, fighting to calm herself.
Drying her face, she crossed the room to the door and opened it barely ajar. She peered through the crack and saw the hall was dimly lit and empty at this late hour. Noiselessly, Leatha sneaked down to the nourishment room and rummaged among the few items inside the small refrigerator. She found some milk cartons that were kept there for the patients. Grabbing a couple, she headed unobserved back to her room.
After she closed the door, she sat down in the easy chair she liked and set her purloined milk on the table next to it. Turning on the reading lamp, Leatha opened the first carton. Sipping directly from it, she tried to collect her thoughts. She had experienced another of the nightmares Rose had warned her about. Taking the older woman’s advice, Leatha reached for the journal she kept handy for just such eventualities. Taking another sip of milk, Leatha took the pen and prepared to write.
She reached for the nightmare. It vanished. The harder she tried, the more elusive it became. Finally, Leatha was left with nothing but a sense of near suffocating pressure and the stench of burnt umber in her nose.
Chapter Ten
Gerad opened his eyes. Realizing it was morning, he sighed. Daytime was always better. He wasn’t troubled by the nightmares during the day. Just focusing on the necessities of food and shelter for his small band of survivors was enough to keep his mind active and his memories at bay.
Sitting up with a groan, he looked around. I feel so old, he thought.
Others were stirring and one young man had just brought in an armload of firewood he had gathered from around their new shelter. Dropping it by the fire, he left for more wood while another man stoked the fire. He glanced up and saw Gerad looking at him.
“Ah, you’re awake, Gerad,” he said as he continued to tend the fire. A small flicker of flame rewarded his effort.
“Unfortunately, yes. Is the hunting party back yet, Leston?”
“Obviously not,” Leston said, motioning with his hand toward the empty food spits. “But I expect them back anytime.”
“Good. I’m hungry,” Gerad said.
“That’s a change,” a woman huffed from where she was husking a pile of corn. She dropped each finished ear into a pot to be placed on the rocks by the fire. The combined heat from the already hot rocks and the fire itself would cook the corn.
“Oh hush, Murna,” Gerad shot back at the woman. She smiled and continued her work. Murna was considered the head woman of the ragged group just as Gerad was considered the leader. Although none of them were related, they operated like a large family, and a family needed a leader.
This new shelter was starting to work rather well for the refugees. It had taken some work at first to make it livable but the effort was worth it. By rearranging the debris above, they made it reasonably waterproof as well.
Water collection was still from a nearby stream using buckets, but Gerad hoped they could rig up a makeshift aqueduct system to pipe it to them. That would require damming the stream to create a collection pond. He sighed at the thought. Every project seemed to spawn two more.
Maybe it was time to do that now. The few humans that remained had wandered constantly for over a decade since the attack. This was done partially out of necessity while they foraged for food. Another reason was out of fear. When they left, the invaders had set up a small but well hidden outpost on the equatorial heat zone of Credence. They would periodically send out patrols to hunt for more humans. Those captured were almost never seen again. The very few survivor stories of escapes told of horrors beyond imagination.
Gerad shuddered at the thought. With a
n effort, he forced down the vivid memories of when his refugee band had been spotted by one of the patrols. Most of them escaped capture. Gerad shook himself to keep from following that train of thought.
So the small band of rag-tag nomads kept moving. Others tried to join it but Gerad encouraged them to form their own groups. Too many people made them vulnerable. The invaders were good at spotting large groups. It was best to keep their groupings small, scattered, and on the move. Their past encounter with the invaders had cost them dearly. He did not want it to happen again.
They would occasionally see over flights of invader ships. These were fearful things because the ships had weapons of horrific power when used against unarmed people. It had been ship weapons that caused much of the devastation to the towns and cities of Credence. Oddly, they had been careful not to damage the roads, and the survivors on the planet soon learned why. These creatures intended to use them in their constant patrols. Although their tracked vehicles could go anywhere, they ran best on hard paved surfaces.
This information proved beneficial to the humans. Realizing that the easy use of roads was conditioning their attackers into a restricting frame of mind, the refugees worked on how to use it to their advantage. The humans could not simply avoid the roads. That would encourage the patrols to go cross-country in search of them. What the survivors came up with was the use of a series of decoys.
Select members still in reasonably good physical condition would occasionally let themselves be seen by the patrols near the roads. Escape routes were well planned, so rarely did anyone come close to being caught. That and leaving evidence on the roads would keep the patrols looking there instead of searching out away from the old highway network. It was an old hunter from another band that came up with this solution. He took the spore from his band and spread it out on roads leading away from where they were hiding. The patrols would follow the trails almost exclusively. Gerad was amazed at how easy it was to condition them.
However, no plan was foolproof. Occasionally someone would be caught. The humans learned not to resist when captured. Fighting back only made the invaders unreasonably violent and they would injure or kill the human. Cooperation proved the key. The humans learned that the invaders preferred healthy humans. Apparently, they were planning some sort of farming program, using the stock they captured. By surviving initial capture, it improved ones chances of escape later. That was how they learned what had happened to the majority of the population after the initial attacks. En mass they had been shipped back to wherever these invaders had come from.
But that was the past. The over flights stopped roughly five years ago. One day there were the usual over flights, and the next day there were none.
Because of the sporadic nature of the flights, it was almost a week before it dawned on the humans that the flights had ended. However, this did not stop the patrols which not only continued but also became more frequent. The mood of the patrolling invaders had changed as well. They were darker, more prone to violence. Whatever had been restraining their discipline seemed to have slipped away.
Gerad noticed other things as well. The last few times he had seen the tracked vehicles the invaders used, they looked to be in poor shape. He could even see where makeshift repairs had been made. One band had told him they had witnessed one of the machines breaking down. The invaders had tried dragging it with another vehicle but failed. Eventually, they stripped it and then destroyed the hulk.
What happened to the invaders, Gerad did not know. He only knew they had not been seen for several years. But old habits die hard. The human bands kept moving, expecting the enemy to return. Slowly though, they eased back on their caution. There were still scattered reports of seeing the invaders but these mainly came from groups closest to the invader’s base camp. Everywhere else seemed clear.
Now it was time to stop wandering. Finally deciding last fall that they could settle down, Gerad’s band had been searching for at least a semi-permanent shelter. Then they found this place and had been here ever since. It had allowed all of them to survive the winter, which thank the Unseen One, had proven mild for once.
Abundant game had been found here and there in the area as well. Nothing big of course. The invaders had taken that as well. But smaller animals and descendants of former pets roamed freely. The refugee hunters used homemade bows and arrows to kill the game.
The corn Murna was preparing had come from a fertile field not far from here. As far as Gerad could tell, it had been some farmer’s crop that had gone to seed. The band harvested all they could and hauled it to the new shelter. Carefully stored, it lasted them through the winter up to now.
Yes, life was definitely improving again for the little band of survivors. Regular food and decent shelter had made a significant difference. Contrary to his earlier assessment, no one had been lost over the winter months. Now it was spring. With effort, they could now push the horrors of the past behind them and get on with life.
But that uplifting thought was bitter-sweet to Gerad. It had come too late for the one he had loved so much. She would have enjoyed this place. However, the last time he had seen his granddaughter, her lifeless body was hanging limp over the shoulder of a Red-tail invader. It happened almost ten years ago but the image was still clear today. It’s time to move on, he thought. But how could he when the burned and twisted bodies of his friends and family still haunted his nights? Thank the Unseen One for the day, thought Gerad.
Chapter Eleven
The door to Leatha’s room opened and she looked into the eyes of Rose Sharon. The older woman finished letting herself in, and after closing the door sat down in her accustomed chair. Finally, after a few minutes Leatha broke the fragile silence.
“Guess I did pretty bad in there, didn’t I?” she asked. Rose could see that Leatha’s face was lined with stress. She had also been crying.
“What do you want me to say, Leatha?” Rose said gently.
Leatha sprang out of her chair. “I want you to tell me that it’s going to be all right!” she exploded. “I want you to tell me that I’ll fly again! That I’ll have a life again!” She grabbed a water pitcher from off her side table and threw it hard against the wall, shattering it into a thousand pieces. And just as suddenly, Leatha collapsed back in her chair, spent.
Rose sat patiently, knowing there would be more in its time. She could almost see Leatha dodging this way and that as she searched her mind.
This to Rose was always one of the most difficult and yet fascinating parts of her work with service personnel. Watching and waiting while people searched their soul and met themselves coming back from wherever their tortured past had led them.
Even as a youth, Rose had always been thinking about thinking. She knew only the Unseen One could see into someone’s heart but that had not prevented her from wishing she could peek as well. All through her school years it had been a growing passion—to know and understand. In the year before graduation, Rose had taken the standard aptitude tests like everyone else. No one who knew her was surprised that her strongest marks were in the social sciences.
With that had come a choice—how best to pursue her interests. On the one hand, she considered going into the ministry of the Unseen One. Counseling was part and parcel with that field. But after conferring with her minister and searching her own heart, she realized this was not the way for her. Ministry, she learned, required more than an aptitude. It required a specific leading of the Unseen One. Rose did not feel such a leading in spite of her interests, so she looked for another avenue.
At the University, Rose found much to intrigue her. Her advisors marveled while they watched knowledge meld with interest to produce talents beyond what anyone had foreseen. Allowed to proceed at her own pace, Rose completed her studies ahead of schedule and with honors. But for all of this she was still not satisfied.
It was at this point that she shocked everyone who knew her. Instead of going into private practice in social work, Rose, after mu
ch deliberation, decided to enlist in the service. Her family was so alarmed they had their minister visit Rose, and if possible, intervene in what they considered a wrong move.
The two met at the chapel on the University campus. Rose remembered the fall day. The crispness in the air matched the concern so easily seen on the minister’s face. They had come to know each other through the years so it was difficult for each of them to hide their feelings from the other.
Rose remembered they sat for a long time without speaking, facing each other across a simple table. The minister spoke first. “So you’ve decided to enlist?” he asked quietly.
“That I have,” Rose replied. “But it wasn’t just my own decision.”
“How so?”
“You advised me years ago to seek the direction of the Unseen One for the path my life was to take,” Rose said. “And at that time I felt led to go to the University rather than pursue the ministry as some were suggesting.”
“True,” the minister replied noncommittally. He was still a little unsure of just what direction this conversation was going to take.
“And now I stand at another crossroad in my life,” Rose continued. “I have secured my degrees in my chosen field. Many at this point would naturally seek a position with a private counseling service.”
“But you came to a different conclusion.”
“Yes,” Rose said. “I sought for direction for my life and now feel strongly led to enlist in the service. I don’t fully understand why the Unseen One is leading me in this direction, but I know it’s the correct choice.”
