by Geneva Vand
Finally, the animal holding my leg yelped and let go. I lurched to my feet panting. The other lunged for me, but only managed to catch its teeth on my already torn sleeve. I spun and ran down yet another small dirty street.
I could hear them behind me. I lunged to the side and grabbed a long piece of round metal. It was heavy, but not so heavy that I wasn't able to turn and swing it at my pursuers. I caught the first on the side of the head and it staggered. I stumbled sideways on my bad leg, swinging the metal haphazardly. I hit the other animal in the leg. It yelped and went down.
I backed away slowly, holding my weapon ready. When the animals seemed disinclined to follow after a few steps, I turned my back and moved as quickly as I could down the street. It was hard to walk with only one shoe when I already had trouble with my balance. I paused and quickly ripped off the remaining shoe before continuing. Everything sharp on the ground bit into my skin as I walked. I hoped I wasn't leaving bloody footprints for someone to find and follow later.
I looked around as I limped. Somehow, the animals had not chased me into one of the main streets where the Humans would have found me. I even knew where I was. Those two things were luckier than I expected. But I had lost my bread.
My torn-up leg gave out and I tumbled into a wall. I stayed there, gasping and trying to catch my breath. There would be no trying to get more food tonight. And maybe not tomorrow either. I would be lucky to make it back to safety. If the Human didn't come, I would be very hungry.
I righted myself and stumbled along. I used the metal pole for support until it grew too heavy. I dropped it just before stumbling through the bushes into the small street behind the building I was hiding in. I made my way around the side and into my safe place. I only realized I hadn't looked for Humans once I had closed the door and was leaning against it, panting with the pain and exertion.
When no Humans immediately tried to chase after me, I limped further into the room. I looked towards the pair of chairs, hoping. There was no new food. Disappointed, hungry, and hurting, I went slowly back to my hiding space behind the boxes.
I made it to the tunnel-like space, but didn't have time to do anything else. I watched the brown lines blur as I crumpled to the floor.
*~*~*
Playing catch-up on his first day back at work kept Eric at his desk for an extra three hours. He had expected it, but it still sucked. He groaned and shoved his chair back from the keyboard. There was more to do, but it was almost eight, and he was wiped. He saved his draft and put the computer to sleep.
Eric stretched his arms over his head as he stood, arching his back and hearing things pop that probably shouldn't. He shrugged on his coat, grabbed his bag, and was out the door. He hit the sidewalk just in time to see his bus go by. He checked his watch. They were early, dammit. And at this time of night, there wouldn't be another one for more than half an hour. They only ran on the quarter hour during the regular commute times. He frowned. Maybe he should have just stayed at work.
No. He could go to grocery store and be slow about it, instead of rushing. He had told whoever he was feeding that he would be there today with food, and it was already later than he usually went. Eric headed down the still-busy sidewalk, not really thinking about anything in particular. Just sort of zoning out for two blocks.
He stepped into the store, blinking at the brightness. Maybe he should get something other than granola bars. He headed for the snack aisle instead of the breakfast aisle. A few minutes later, he was back outside with a few packs of snack crackers and another bottle of water. He needed to start buying in bulk if he was going to keep this up.
It was only eight twenty, so Eric settled into a spot at the empty bus stop bench next to the store and scrolled through Facebook while he waited. By nine, he was standing on the sidewalk outside the strip mall with imaginary spiders crawling up his spine.
Something had changed again.
Eric examined the filthy windows of the empty storefront for any hint of what was giving him the creeps. He couldn't see anything different. Finally, he reached for the door, shuddering uncontrollably as soon as he touched it. He cursed in aggravation and pulled it open. It didn't stick, swinging open smoothly to reveal the shadowy interior. He didn't know why that freaked him out, but it totally did.
He stepped inside and let the door fall shut behind him with a quiet thud.
It was dark enough that he had trouble seeing, but he hadn't ever noticed a light switch. He guessed they were tucked discretely behind that door he had never been able to open. And with the case of the heebie jeebies he had now, there was no way he was trying to open it again. All his childhood nightmares said a monster would jump out.
Eric tried to shake off his unease, telling himself that it was only because he'd never been here at night before. The place was a little creepy during the day. It was only reasonable that it would be worse at night. It was a nice little argument, but his invisible spiders weren't convinced.
Using his phone for a flashlight, Eric went over to the chairs. Everything was gone except for the apple juice. That was tucked out of the way under the chair, obviously undrunk. He laughed a little when he saw the one juice box with a straw in it. Apparently his mystery person didn't like apple juice. But they had tried it, so they hadn’t known they didn't like it. That was interesting.
He was bending down to grab the juice boxes when he heard a quiet scuffing sound from somewhere behind him.
Eric jumped and spun around, catching his foot on a chair leg and tumbling to the floor. He wound up on his side with his legs tangled in juice boxes and chair legs and the strap of his bag twisted around his arm and chest. He lay there panting, staring into the gloom. He felt like a kid in a haunted house, afraid to move lest the monsters get him.
Just as he managed to get his heart rate and breathing back to normal, there was a rough groan from the back of the room. His heart shot right back into his throat, and he stared into the shadows along the back wall.
At first he thought there was nothing there except that old pile of boxes. As he stared, though, he saw a twitch of movement. Eric stared some more, until he realized there was a leg sticking out from behind the boxes. The movement he had seen was the foot twitching. There was another groan and the leg was pulled out of sight.
He swallowed hard.
He’d dropped his phone when he tried to maim himself on the chair. He could see the notification light blinking out in the middle of the room, several yards away. That meant he was left to untangle himself in the dark.
It wasn't too bad. Mostly he just had to shove the chairs off his legs. Both of the chairs were broken now, jagged chunks of wood going every which way, and he'd managed to scratch up the back of his right hand. It stung, but he wasn't dripping blood or anything, so he ignored it. He stumbled to his feet, resettling the messenger bag so that it was no longer trying to hogtie him.
The notification light on his phone blinked again briefly, and Eric went over to pick it up. A few taps turned the flashlight app back on, and he shined the meager light toward the pile of boxes. Eric frowned. They looked different.
Before, those boxes had always looked like they were pushed right up against the wall. Now, though, it was obvious that there was space behind them. Had they been moved? Or was it just the lighting?
A quiet whimpering sound echoed out from the corner and Eric winced. He was going to have to see who was back there, check on them. It was probably whoever he was feeding and from the sounds of it, they probably weren't okay.
Eric walked slowly over to the boxes, his eyes locked on the foot-wide shadowy gap between them and the wall. He rested a hand on top of them, leaning over slowly to look into the space behind them.
He couldn't see much. Just feet attached to a shadowy lump. Eric aimed the light from his phone at the lump. The light reflected off some sort of shiny fabric, and the lump whimpered and hid its head in its arms, curling into a defensive ball.
Okay then.
He couldn't very well drag whoever it was out of the little box cave. The logical thing was to move the boxes, then. He set his phone down on the floor with the flashlight app still running and took hold of the box he'd been leaning on. It was large, so he had expected it to be heavy. When it turned out to be light enough he could have lifted it with one hand, he lost his balance and stumbled backwards several jerky steps. Cursing, Eric righted himself and shoved the box against the side wall.
Unfortunately, only the top few boxes were light. The rest were seemingly filled with rocks. He would have gladly left a few of them where they were, but the mystery person kept retreating farther into the corner. He abandoned the last box of bricks with the others and collapsed ungracefully onto the floor next to the shivering ball of misery.
Since his phone had long since timed out and turned itself off, Eric still couldn't see anything. He groaned, then stretched out his leg and caught his phone with his heel, dragging it to where he could reach it. He opened the flashlight app again and aimed the screen at the figure next to him.
They were small and fine boned, and were wearing some sort of silvery jumpsuit that had been ripped and shredded in multiple places. He assumed the dark stains near some of the tears were blood. Not good. Their legs seemed to have gotten the worst of it, but there were a couple bad looking spots on their arms and shoulder as well.
Suddenly the slender form twitched, arms and legs jerking, then went completely limp. For a second Eric panicked, until he realized the narrow chest was still rising and falling softly.
Eric blew out a breath. Yay. Not dead. Just dramatically unconscious.
After setting his phone face up on the floor by his hip, Eric gently reached out and moved the limp arms away from their face, intending to check for more injuries. That thought got completely derailed, though, when he got his first look at a face that was definitely not Human.
Their features were delicate but flattened. The lips were wide and thin. The nose didn't protrude out of their face like a Human's, but instead rose softly up from the cheeks in a gentle curve. Where a Human would have defined cheekbones, this creature had almost no curve. Eric couldn't quite see the shape of the eyes with them closed, but he guessed they would be slanted and large. The brow above them was also flattened, making the face as a whole look smooth and slightly eerie.
As different as the grouping of facial features was though, that wasn't really what caught his attention. Eric took all that in in a few shocked seconds and was then left with the oddest two features.
The creature had cat-shaped ears with little feathery tufts at the tips sticking out of the side of their head, like a freaking anime character. And they didn't have skin.
Or, rather, they didn't have much visible skin. Because they were wearing some kind of jumpsuit, and what wasn't covered by the jumpsuit was covered in not-feathers like the one he had found over by the chairs.
Not quite believing what he was seeing, Eric reached out and pulled gently at the not-feathers on their face. The not-feathers lifted up a little when he tugged but nothing else moved. He pulled at the collar, looking for edges. Nope. Not a mask. Definitely an alien. Or something. Maybe he was nuts and imagining the whole thing. A muscle in his back twinged and he winced. Nope. One did not pull back muscles moving imaginary boxes.
He looked down at the creature again. Really? Like, really? This type of weird shit didn't happen to him. Eric was boring. He was a really good librarian, but all in all, he was normal and relatively boring. Events out of science-fiction novels did not make their way into his real life.
Except they apparently did.
Eric took a deep breath and shook his head. Okay. He'd been feeding an alien. That was freaky but also sort of cool. Impossible. But cool.
What wasn't cool was that he still didn't have enough light to figure out what was going on with their injuries.
The creature shivered slightly before going limp again. Eric sighed and took off his jacket, draping it carefully over the still form. He settled in against the sidewall, next to the poor thing's head. What now?
They couldn't stay here. The… whatever it was… was still alive, but staying in an abandoned storefront was not conducive to keeping them that way when he didn't know how badly they were hurt. Were they dying? Just in shock? What? He wouldn't know until he got them cleaned up and took a better look. The most logical thing was to try to get them home where he could take care of them.
Eric sighed. Taking them to a hospital would be convenient but stupid and cruel. Yeah. No contributing the alien to science. Home was the best bet.
Shit.
There was no way he'd be able to move them by himself. The creature was small but still Human sized. He didn't have a car, and he couldn't carry an alien through the streets without them looking like either an alien or a corpse. And he'd have to get them past the upstairs neighbors somehow if they weren't asleep already.
Shit, shit, shit.
Okay. His friend Will still lived in town and was a contractor. Will had a truck. And a tarp or something. The two of them were crazy close. Eric would call Will, who would come and help him deal with the proverbial dead body situation. Of an alien. That wasn't actually dead. Okay.
Eric picked up his phone and cursed again at the low battery. Twenty-five percent would just have to be enough. He opened the keypad and held his finger down over the two until speed dial pulled up Will's contact info and auto-dialed. He got to his feet and wandered to the center of the space with the vague idea of not disturbing the still-unconscious alien. The pacing while he held the phone to his ear was automatic and jerky.
After several more rings than Eric had wanted to listen to, Will picked up, shouting and music in the background.
"Just a sec!" he shouted. Eric listened anxiously as the background noise faded to a bearable rumble. Finally, there was a thump and quiet. "What's up?" Will asked. "You don't usually call this late, early bird."
Eric stopped pacing next to the creature and stared down at it. "I need a hand."
"I say again, what's up?"
"You got your truck?"
Will snorted. "Sittin' in it. Why?"
"I, ah, need you to come get me. And someone else."
Will must have started the truck, because Eric heard an engine rumble to life in the background. "You got a drunk date or something?"
Eric groaned. "Or something."
There was silence on the line, then, "You all right? You sound upset. Where are you?"
"I'm at that strip mall by my house. The one with the convenience store you like."
Will grunted. "Yeah, okay." A pause. "I can be there in twenty. You gonna be all right?"
"Yeah." Eric started to say bye and hang up but remembered. "You have a blanket or something in the back?"
Will groaned. "Fuckin' hell, man. This better not be the help me bury the body phone call. See you in a few."
Eric looked at the screen just to confirm that Will really had hung up on him. Great. Well, at least they had similar trains of thought. There was a reason they were such good friends.
Okay. Twenty minutes. What could he do with twenty minutes? Eric looked down at the creature lying injured on the floor and then peered around the room. Nothing. Absolutely nothing. He thumped back down onto the floor next to the alien and waited for Will's headlights to pull into the parking lot.
*~*~*
Will stood next to Eric, staring down at the alien, which was once again curled into a fetal ball on the floor. They groaned and Will jumped and stepped back.
Will turned his head to glare at Eric. "Seriously, man?"
Eric shrugged. "Don't know what to tell you. It's not like I knew I was feeding an alien bird-cat-person."
"And it's not like we can let it bleed out on the floor." Will sighed. "Shit. Only you, man. I'm gonna go get the blanket out of the back. We can haul them out of here body-in-a-rug style. The convenience store at the other end is still open, so we'll have to be quick.
" He shook his finger at Eric. "If somebody calls the cops on us, you are going to owe me until the end of time."
Eric raised his hands up to his shoulders, palms facing Will. "Fair enough, man. Just help me get them home." He dropped his hands to his hips and looked back down at the creature when they whimpered again. "I think they're in shock."
Will sighed again. "Yeah. Probably. Be right back."
Will quickly returned with a clean but ratty blanket and snapped it out on the floor next to the alien. They edged around behind them, Eric at their head and Will next to their feet. The two of them crouched down and carefully got handholds. The silver fabric covering their narrow shoulders was slick and Eric struggled to get a solid grip. Will had an easier time of it, simply wrapping his big hands around their calves. Eric looked at Will and nodded.
"On three?" Will asked.
Eric nodded. Will counted. Somehow they moved the alien into the middle of the blanket without dropping them out of either surprise or clumsiness. They carefully wrapped the edges of the blanket over them.
Eric looked down and groaned softly. It really did look like they'd wrapped up a dead body so they could get rid of it. Crap.
Will chuckled next to him. "Here. Take the keys and unlock the passenger side. Open both the doors. I'll follow you out and put them in the back."
Eric nodded and took off for the truck parked out front. He paused at the door to the shop, waiting until a lone car finished pulling out onto the street before jogging to the truck. Just as he pulled open the door to the back, he heard Will push the store door open. He moved out of the way and watched while Will tucked the alien carefully into the back seat, laying them out as straight as possible.
Will shook his head. "Shit," he muttered softly. "Get in. Let's get out of here before someone really does phone us in."
Eric laughed a little hysterically but got in the truck. Will pulled away as quickly as he could without doing anything that would draw attention. Eric winced as the passed another car in the parking lot entrance. That was a little too close for comfort. Thirty seconds sooner and they would have been seen.
