by Maia Starr
Swerving west, I had a jolt bump up in my stomach as I felt the smooth grip of the creature against my leg. My heart thumped against my chest, and I just managed to get away from his grasp, plucking my leg from his grip like I was watching myself from afar.
I heard Baxley fire off his weapon, probably aware that the thing was getting a little too close to me and I fired back, smoking the Vithohn in his thick arm and watching as his self-induced force field sparked up instinctively.
“Come here, asshole!” I yelled
I goaded him toward me, watching my feet as they danced on tiptoes to avoid our carefully dug holes.
Suddenly, I realized he wasn’t alone, but the two other sets of footsteps shrank back as we all watched the smooth, tight-faced creature rocket down beneath a shallow covering of leaves: a thin façade of ground covering, one of our carefully calculated traps.
My militia had dug holes around here; a drippy pink acid we concocted set in pools of thick plastic that would hopefully be good enough to roast off a limb or two. Anything to keep them on unstable footing would work fine for me, especially now.
I couldn’t help but bellow a small laugh as the creature went splashing down below into the bubbling acid, unable to activate his shield.
The creature emitted a piercing, rhythmic sound that sent the hairs on my neck shooting upward. I gritted my teeth, wondering if it might be a war cry and that I was totally screwed.
I looked down in the pit and watched as the taupe-skinned foreigner thrashed around and grabbed the side of the pit, attempting to pull himself up.
Cocking my gun, I laid a bullet into the alien’s face and watched as his flesh parted against the slug before collapsing into the pink depths and dissolving.
I crouched quickly, flattening my body against the frozen ground as I heard the other footsteps nearing.
“Where is he?” the Vithohn alien seethed. He had the same taupe skin and a large head, bald, that came back into a rounded point. His bone structure was harsh and chiseled; a wide-bridged nose and brown eyes that were always shrouded in blackness; his armor glowing with blue lines that scattered along black fabric.
“I can’t be sure,” the female said—whispered.
Her voice was familiar: human. I instantly recognized her as Tiffany Caites. Our communications officer. Looks like she was communicating just fine.
The Vithohn looked around the forest furtively. “You said there are traps.”
“Oh yeah,” she said, almost laughing. “We didn’t leave an inch.”
“That’s comforting,” the creature said with a quick lower of the brow: his tone almost comical in nature.
I swallowed hard, unfamiliar with the Vithohn being anything but mindlessly aggressive. I didn’t even know they could talk, I was so unaccustomed to their ability to converse. Now here he was being… sarcastic? Playful?
“Let’s get out of here,” he said, putting his arm around Tiffany protectively.
“What about Dreicant?” she asked, leaning into him.
I assumed they meant the alien I’d just smoked.
The man looked around, sniffed the air, and the dismissed her.
“He chose his own fate,” he said.
“We could help him,” Tiffany said in her childlike tone: feminine and soft-spoken. “Karen is here now; she led our science team.”
The man laughed, surprised. “There’s that many of you, is there?”
Tiffany shrugged into him, and I peered up through the grass just long enough to see the alien’s face turn sour: saddened somehow. His large eyes seemed to slope down as though he’d been disappointed, though by her, by the humans making it out alive, or by his friend’s death, I couldn’t be sure.
My former crewmate, the long-haired brunette, stepped up on her toes and grabbed both of the creature’s hands, bringing them in-between their bodies before offering him a sweet, soft kiss. He met her halfway, and I nearly recoiled.
I began to shiver then and decided I’d seen enough. I longed to be back at my trailer-park, back in the safety of the militia, of Baxley.
My boots hit the leaves in a sharp sloshing noise, and I knew instantly I’d moved too quickly; I froze in place, crouching back down as Tiffany and her alien partner began to look around with weapons drawn.
They began walking away from one another, slowly, to cover more land, and as the creature met my eyes, I felt my stomach drop.
My hand shook against my gun, and I looked up at him, big eyes bugging out.
“You see anything?” Tiffany called, pulling back the hammer on her weapon, just in case.
He looked down at me, just four or five feet away, and we exchanged a long stare. I knew he saw me because his eyes roved across my entire body before locking on my eyes.
Then his wide lips parted, and he said, “Nothing here.”
Chapter Two
Tessoul
I had been walking in the forests for what felt like hours now, and I hated these human forests.
The cities I was fond of—or what was left of them after our attack. We’d been here for decades now and yet still hadn’t thought of a way to rebuild.
My legs were tired and numb, and the cold was intensely bitter, even though the white fluffs hadn’t fallen or stayed. I felt a creek up my left arm and bellowed out a loud sigh, looking over at my associate Araxis with an eye roll.
My Vithohn friend had a wide-set red face and three yellow membranes that cascaded vertically on his forehead; purple eyes glowed and a deep bone protruded from his brow bone like tusks. He had grabbed a stick a while back and was swinging it from back to front, the two of us listening to its whipping noises as it hit the wind.
“Giving up?” he offered, sounding just as bored as I did of the search.
I watched the rabbits that flopped and pounced along the forest trails: chubby and fluffy and always in my way.
“Just about,” I said back.
I mentally decided that I would give it another ten steps before giving up on our missing friend. Unfortunately, or fortunately for me, within those few steps, we spotted a glowing pool blistering with heat in the distance.
“What’s that smell?” Araxis asked, plugging his nose with his fingers.
“Oh, isn’t that just pleasant,” I said, fighting off the urge to gag.
Dreicant, or bits of what was left of him, floated in the unsavory pink pool; rats and other woodland creatures were swimming in the water, victims of its strange acidic properties.
I stepped back and covered my nose with my forearm, recoiling at the sight and smell of it. It was like a sewage tunnel: a thick swamp of one of our best warriors.
“You think it was the humans?” Araxis asked, following suit and backing away from the pit.
“Well, it wasn’t a bunny,” I snapped.
A fury welled up in me, bumping through my veins like I couldn’t believe. My hands began to shake, and I started to wonder how many more pits were out there like this, waiting to consume our flesh. How many humans were still out there?
I knew there was a reason why I hated forests.
Rage boiled against me, and I scraped my sharp teeth against my fat bottom lip, seething against the idea that a human not only invaded our camp, but outsmarted one of us. Why didn’t Dreicant use his force field? It didn’t make sense.
“I don’t understand how they got to him,” Araxis breathed, rubbing his temples with two fingers.
“We need to find them, those humans that are left and swarming around our cities like locusts. We need revenge for this!” I demanded.
My anger bubbled into my throat, and my body needed a release that I couldn’t give it, the fury coming through in heavy breaths. As our armored boots met the pavement of the city street, finally out of that forsaken forest, I bent over and set my hands on my thighs, heaving my breaths.
When I managed to calm myself down, I cocked my head toward Araxis, still hunched over, and I spat, “How are you not outraged?”
&n
bsp; Araxis seemed lost; his eyes were elsewhere as he continued to walk. I chased after him and insisted, “How does your body not cry out for the blood of your brother?”
The red Vithohn sighed and continued to walk. Looking at me with some sadness in his expression, he said, “He was my brother, yes. Of course, I want to avenge him.” He repeated, “Of course I do.”
My eyes went wide as I watched my once-closest ally move toward a half-shredded skyscraper that looked over our whole city; it was half lit with what remained of Earth’s energy.
I could feel the skin of my eyes hit my brow bone as they shot up, watching him ascend a small staircase up from the shattered building’s courtyard.
A woman, human, stepped into view, and he set his hands on her thick waist. She had light hair that was short, cut to her chin, and thick bangs that hid her brows. Axaris told us he’d stolen her from a human pack: that she was something important to them. It was beyond me why he didn’t kill her then and there.
Instead, she was still in our base and causing trouble. This was the second troupe of humans who had come to find her. Except this time they murdered one of our own in the process.
“Tessoul,” she said coldly to regard me.
I blinked, but said nothing, simply cocking my head to the side and feeling my turbulent rage building up again.
Karen was her name, and she nestled into the crook of Araxis’ arm as we walked back to base, still miles away.
“Are you alright?” she asked in a softer tone then, reaching her pink hand up to Araxis’ long face.
“Dreicant was taken by the humans,” my leader said.
Her brows perked, though I couldn’t tell if it was out of sympathy or a delighted interest as she asked, “Dead?”
He nodded, and my thoughts were confirmed as an amused, hidden smile crept up the side of her mouth.
I inhaled sharply and gritted my teeth at the sight of it. Araxis noticed my attention and leaned into Karen, mistaking the close proximity for privacy.
“How many are there?” he asked in a whisper.
“I told you,” she chided. “Just a couple; a handful at most.”
Araxis looked down at his hand and then up at her quizzically, and she laughed, and then he smiled, and I felt a familiar anger at their flirtation.
One of our men just died, and our glorious general, our Voth, was playing coochie-coo with some human monster as she laughed about it.
“Five?” Karen relented with a smirk. “Six?”
“Are they coming here?” he asked, and she shook her head, nuzzling into his chest and tilting her head down, walking in unison with him.
“No, my love,” she said.
The two spent the walk talking, and I purposely slowed my steps so I didn’t have to walk with them anymore.
Araxis mated with her. I knew this not only because he’d shared it with me, but because I’d heard them on a number of occasions. Her strange noises offered through the walls as a slap in the face: a mockery of our dead. Now we were letting one of them
We fought for this land, and Araxis was disregarding it all. He’d lost his will to fight; he was a slave to the girl.
The red Vithohn was my friend and the leader of our team, so I had kept quiet about it, but I had a feeling I wouldn’t be able to stay quiet for much longer.
“What do we do now?” I heard him whisper to the girl, rubbing up her arm as she shivered against the cold.
“I want to leave,” she pleaded.
Leave us, she meant. What sickened me most was that it seemed Araxis was actually considering it.
“I can’t be without you,” he said desperately, touching her face.
My stomach turned.
“They don’t like me,” Karen said softly, turning her head to make direct eye-contact with me. I raised a brow to let her know her assumptions were accurate: a warning. “They want to kill me,” she continued.
Araxis let out a small ‘humph’ and then said, “Then they go through me.”
We got back to our base within a few hours: a large military space station with six different wings sprouting out from the center building like spider legs. While some of the Vithohn had taken up in skyscrapers, the majority of us preferred to stay in the space station. It gave us a direct line to all things tech, military, bedrooms, and most of all, food.
As the three of us entered a spacious metal warehouse, Karen and Araxis quickly paired off from me and began talking at one of the warehouse’s various stations. Large pilotable machines were arrayed at raised platforms, eight in all, and the couple quickly walked to one of the lifts.
They pretended as though they were going to board the robot fighter, but I knew they simply wanted their privacy from me.
The ceilings of the building were atrociously tall and made me feel cold and small. I followed the bright yellow lines on the floor and watched as the various stations heated up with an exhale of smoke.
Nazaarad approached me with a smile and set a thick hand on my shoulder.
“How did it go?” he asked, and I shot him an unimpressed look. “That bad?”
“He’s dead,” I dismissed, my eyes now fixated on Araxis and Karen in the distance.
Nazaarad’s face fell then: the same fury that had overtaken me apparent, flowing up from his feet and into his gut. I could see it hit his middle as his fists clenched uncontrollably.
“Is that so?” he enunciated and then suddenly a calm washed over him; concern replacing his tense brows. “And Araxis? How’s he doing?”
I pointed to the couple coupling on the platform and snipped, “Just fine.”
Nazaarad had a smooth skull that sloped back into a rounded point with a large spire that fell limply from the base of his neck. We looked like brothers, so always acted as such: both born with a pale tan skin and green hues that created a gradient along our foreheads. Tall and broad, my younger ‘brother’ was just shorter than me now.
“Something’s wrong,” I said quickly, staring off at the couple.
“You don’t like keeping the hostages?” Nazaarad said, sounding bemused suddenly.
“Are they still considered hostages when you’re mating with them?”
Nazaarad craned his neck to me; slow, comically, letting his spire whip into the background. “You think they are?” he asked with disgust.
“I think you’d have to be blind not to see it,” I mocked.
“Hey!”
I rolled my eyes and exhaled, making my way out of the hangar. “What do we do about the girl?”
Suddenly my body seized, and more heat rose up in me as I thought of the humans: of Karen and what her people had done. The very mention of them made an uncontrollable beast rise up in me.
“We didn’t need the humans before. In fact, I believe we chose to kill them,” I argued, pre-annoyed. “Why change the rules now? What’s Araxis hoping to accomplish?”
“You’re the close ones,” Nazaarad shrugged. “Figure it out.”
“Something’s changed,” I said. “We captured her, brought her here on a platter to question and destroy, and he… what?”
“Cares about her?” Nazaarad questioned.
I grimaced at that, and my friend continued, “You’re not used to it, are you? Not knowing the next move.”
“It’s unsettling,” I said.
As we reached the doors leading out of the main entrance I heard a loud smack, like bone on bone. I spun around, and Nazaarad followed suit. We watched as two of our kind launched toward one another, a new human, Tiffany, at the center of their fight.
It seemed that she’d taken up with yet another one of us—Kez—and a rival of his tried to have a taste. The two of them began whipping at one another wildly, with Kez grabbing the attacker with the tentacle spire coming out the back of his neck and slamming him against the steely ground below.
The echo carried through the building, and I winced at the sharp sound.
“Over her?” I asked with disgust as I spun o
n my heel, hoping she’d be taken down during the scuffle. “She should be bleeding at our feet, not being… fawned over.”
Nazaarad looked at me and shrugged. “Let’s take her on then.”
Chapter Three
Sidney
“She’s back!” a male shout echoed across our sad fortress. I could hear the rush of people coming toward the gate: coming to turn off our guns so that I wouldn’t become worm’s meat.
The abandoned park, depressingly named ‘Sunnydale Ridge,’ was a poor, densely populated city district that was clearly affected by economic hardships before the war and was only worse now.
I entered the gates; our makeshift protection with jury-rigged laser turrets and traps set up against our potential enemies. Luckily for us, however, no Vithohn had ever ventured out this far—to our little corner of nothing.
String lights hung, unlit, along the tops of the trailers. Leftover decorations from days gone by. We couldn’t risk turning them on now, not even for morale’s sake. We couldn’t risk anyone spotting us.
“You nearly gave me a heart attack,” Baxley snapped at me, pulling me deep into our trailer-park.
“Anytime, Commodore,” I said, shaken.
Baxley used to run a ship: Special Forces. Out of respect, we choose to call him commodore over captain. Made him feel more at home.
I shut the gates, and Baxley grabbed my hand, bringing me into the deep center of the trailers. A series of twenty or so abandoned double-wide’s that we’d taken up in. Two brave, or unlucky, soldiers would go out each week and scavenge for foods. We’d picked the local shops clean over the last five years.
The farther we had to travel into the city, the more danger we came under.
Every one of our trailers was inhabited and then some. We had a total of thirty-two survivors. One baby.
If we were about to restart the human race, we were doing a piss-poor job.
I still had no idea if there were other survivors outside of our country. Didn’t know how many of them there were, either.
