Triumph Over Tragedy: an anthology for the victims of Hurricane Sandy

by R. T. Kaelin

  They both made a second attempt for the rifle, but the beluz was closer, forcing Dex to kick the beluz’s hand as hard as he could. The guard bellowed and grabbed at Dex’s leg, taking hold of his calf, right below his knee. Dex clenched his teeth when it yanked him so hard he heard—and felt—his knee pop.

  Despite the sudden pain shooting up his leg, the beluz had actually done him a favor, pulling him closer to the rifle. Dex grabbed the gun, but it was big, and heavy, and he fumbled with it in his only hand. He didn’t want to shoot this guy. The beluz was simply a gun for hire, a job Dex had held his entire life. The galaxy liked humans in that role. They were efficient killers and didn’t fret much over their victims. They were the soldiers of the Milky Way, and up until Dex had suddenly developed a conscience, he’d been okay with the way things were. Now he just wanted to stay as far away from Triss space as possible.

  But the beluz tugged him again and his knee popped again and Dex pulled the trigger.

  The air was thin, but the gun still made a loud noise. The smartsuit kept most of the beluz’s blood from spilling out, but Dex guessed he had hit a vital organ as the guard was dead before hitting the ground.

  “Sorry about that, boss,” Dex whispered. Then he glanced at the dead native and felt a little less sorry. Grunting, coughing, he scrambled to his feet. His knee hurt, but held his weight. Shots fired would surely bring the other guard—or guards—running. He needed to move. He retrieved the assault rifle from the ground. It was cumbersome, especially with only one hand, but it was a gun. He could have used the beluz’s smartsuit, but he’d only end up swimming in it. His feet—cold and alternating at random between agonizing pain and a dull numbness—demanded he take the boots, but he didn’t. They, like the suit, were much too large and would be more hindrance than help.

  He thought about the best place to hide and decided on the burning alien village. The streets were narrow—maybe even too narrow for the bulky beluz—and who would expect anyone to run into a fire?

  He made his way painfully across the field of jagged rock shards, keenly aware that he left a trail of blood behind him from his shredded feet. The closer he got to the village, the more purple aliens he found. Some were dead, others twitching, barely conscious. Those who could scuttled away from him, their squeaks combining to form a constant, shrill chorus. Dex had the impression they were talking about him.

  After reaching the relative safety of the first row of stone houses, Dex looked back, worried the guards were on his trail. Instead of beluz, however, he found a small crowd of aliens had gathered behind him. He scanned their beseeching eyes and shrugged apologetically at their urgent squeals and squeaks while ensuring he didn’t point the assault rifle in their direction.

  A few started pointing their tentacles in the same direction, into the village’s center. One after another followed suit, until dozens of little, outstretched tentacles indicated a towering column of black smoke. The fire seemed to be spreading unabated through the village. The stone structures acted as ovens, and even from a distance the heat was almost unbearable.

  “High oxygen content,” Dex said to himself, looking around at the gray sky made darker by all that smoke.

  He had felt a little giddy since waking up, despite his dire circumstances. The air was thin but apparently contained enough oxygen to keep Dex alive at what felt like three thousand meters above sea level. And all that oxygen fed the fires. The little purple things built their village out of stone probably for that reason. Fire was a problem here, and thanks to whoever shot down the Triss prison transport, their village was ablaze. He couldn’t understand their language, but he could feel their distress, their panic. They needed help, and for some reason, they were looking to him for it.

  Dex went in the direction the purple aliens were pointing, not entirely knowing why. The streets were narrow, but still wide enough for the beluz to navigate should they pursue him. He rounded a corner and skidded to a stop. Dead aliens and rubble littered the street. Smoke poured from round, glassless windows. Dex was tall enough to look into the third floor of some of the buildings. From a distance they’d looked like maybe two-story block houses, but up close, they were like the local equivalent of skyscrapers, most of them close to four meters tall, with five rows of windows. Some of them seemed to have taller ceilings than others and Dex thought he might actually be able to stand upright in some of them. He saw ramps, but no stairs.

  The fires were coming from fabrics and other materials inside the houses, including some dead, tentacles bodies, and the odor of some kind of fuel or accelerant was mingled in with the smoke—something spilled from the ship, maybe.

  Dex swallowed, shifted the weight of the big rifle, and stepped carefully down the street. He made his way maybe ten meters along the street then looked back over his shoulder. A few of the locals were there, their eyes filled with a desperate hope that went beyond language. They pointed forward as one, their tentacles curled left to indicate a side street.

  Dex nodded, and out of habit tried to bring the rifle up to his shoulder. That was impossible to manage with one arm, forcing him to settle for resting the butt in the crook of his elbow, his hand on the grip. Upon reaching the side street, he jerked the barrel around the corner. A quick glance revealed the it to be clear. He moved down the way, deciding it was more an alley than a street.

  About two meters in, burning rubble blocked his way. Dex looked back at the aliens who had continued to follow him. They all poked their tentacles at the rubble pile.

  “You want me to go though there?” The aliens’ answer was a collection of hoots and whistles.

  Dex shook his head and stepped closer to the rubble. It was hot, too hot to climb over even if he had boots. He turned back to the locals and pointed at his dirty, bloody, and—most importantly—bare feet.

  One of the locals skittered forward and held up two of its tentacles. Dex nodded his understanding. They were in the same boat and they were barely a third his height. The alien locked eyes with Dex and looked up. Dex followed its four-eyed gaze to the edge of the rooflines on either side of the alley. Then he looked back at the lead alien and realized they couldn’t climb at all.

  “You can’t really even reach your…hand…things above your head, can you?” he asked, not expecting an answer.

  But he got one: that same sad, desperate look.

  Dex looked up at the roofline again and sighed “You better not be sending me back for the cat.”

  He lifted the assault rifle over his head and rested the tip of the barrel on one roof, about two and a half meters off the ground. Then he had to toss the rifle up so that the hard, carbon-nanotube stock dropped onto on the roof of the building on the other side of the alley. The buildings weren’t exactly the same height, but close enough.

  Dex was tired and his knee, feet, and shoulder-stump all hurt, but he jumped, wincing and grunting, and pulled himself up with one arm.

  When his eyes came up over the gun, he saw that the rubble pile continued down the street a few meters. He couldn’t just swing over it.

  The aliens squealed at him again and he was about to look back when he realized the calls came from the other direction. And they were smaller, weaker, almost like the mewing of a kitten.

  “Damn it,” Dex whispered, hanging by one arm over burning rubble that was already roasting the soles of his feet, “they are sending me back for the cat.”

  Gritting his teeth, he mustered his strength and bounced up, scooting himself and the rifle forward a couple centimeters. His arm shook, but still he repeated the maneuver and moved another couple of centimeters. Then again.

  The fourth time, his hand started to slip. The aliens behind him whistled in alarm, but Dex managed to hold on.

  Smoke rolled through the narrow alley and stung his eyes, forcing them closed. He jumped forward again and his arm started to shake. He sucked air, but it was so damn thin that he felt like he was breathing through a straw. He wasn’t going to make it, wasn’
t even sure how much farther he had to go.

  He tried to hoist himself up, thinking he could get up on one of the roofs, but he didn’t have the strength. Knowing he was about to fall, Dex swung himself forward and launched himself into the air, leaving the assault rifle behind and praying he wouldn’t burn his feet when he hit the ground.

  He landed hard, favoring his injured knee. The warm ground scraped off what little skin he still had on the bottoms of his feet. Staggering forward, he tried to wave the smoke away with his hands. The high-pitched squeaks and hoots grew louder and he followed them into one of the buildings. Coughing and sputtering, he crawled in—thankful at least for the rest it gave his feet.

  He wiped sweat and grit from his eyes and squinted through the smoke. More than a hundred sets of four tiny eyes stared up at him from the gloomy interior. These aliens were no taller than ten or fifteen centimeters and their skin was more pink than purple.

  They hadn’t sent him back for the cat, they’d sent him back for the kids.

  Dex held his hand out, showing his palm to the room full of little aliens, worried that they would be afraid of him. But they weren’t. They each held up one of their little tentacles, mimicking him, and just sort of blinked at him.

  Dex slid into a seated position, careful not to step on any of the aliens. The ceiling was just tall enough for that. He examined the room. There seemed to be only one way out, the same way in which he’d come. They were trapped.

  “Think,” he whispered to himself. He scanned the ceiling, but it appeared to be solid. He looked at the walls next, hoping for a window or some kind of pass-through. Childlike drawings of little purple-tentacled families and square stone houses adorned the walls, one of which caught his eye. Like the others, there was a little purple ball with tentacles, lovingly rendered, standing next to a stick man. The head was a circle, as were the two eyes. A half-moon smile. Two arms. Two legs. Dex wasn’t the first human they’d seen.

  He turned and crawled out the way he’d come, ignoring the aliens’ squeals. He spotted what he thought was a stick, but when he picked it up, it felt like rawhide. Too flimsy to support him as the beluz assault rifle had, the not-stick prompted a different idea. He approached the burning rubble pile cautiously, wishing he had his other arm and hand so he could cover his mouth and hold back the smoke.

  Squinting through burning eyes, Dex spotted the rifle and used the stick to drag the gun toward him. The barrel end slipped free first and the weapon fell into the burning rubble. He grabbed it and pulled it back before it got too hot to touch.

  Pushing the gun along in front of him, he crawled back into the room and waved the assembled aliens back, encouraging them to move away from the rear wall. It took longer than he would have liked, but they eventually understood what he wanted and scuttled away. Once they were clear, he sat with his shoulder-stump braced uncomfortably against the side wall, leveled the rifle at the rear wall, and squeezed the trigger. It kicked hard and went off target, but the short burst drove fist-sized holes into the stone wall, which apparently wasn’t as solid as he’d feared.

  He went ahead and emptied the clip, tracing out a rough circle. The little aliens scrambled away from him and bunched up in one corner. When the rounds were spent, Dex let the gun fall to the floor. He kicked the wall and immediately regretted it. His foot had gone numb, but now it started to hurt again, and badly.

  He reached back to the assault rifle, ignoring the aliens cooing and squeaking in a pile in the corner. Hitting the wall with the gun wasn’t easy from a sitting position, and with only one hand, but after a little trial and error, he worked out a kind of battering ram. The beluz made solid weapons. After more panting, coughing exertion, he bashed an opening big enough to crawl through. As Dex set the gun down, his gaze fell on one of the drawings now on the floor. This one had a number of humanoid stick figures. He grabbed it, climbed through the hole, and came out into another narrow alley that wasn’t nearly as smoky, and seemed to wind back in the direction of the group of frantic adults.

  “Okay, kids,” he called back into the room, “come on!”

  They simply stared at him, then at the hole, then back at him. After a frustrating few minutes of charades, Dex realized they couldn’t climb up the few centimeters of wall to get out on their own.

  Dex was getting dizzy. Trauma, exhaustion, and based on his aching thirst, dehydration were taking their combined toll on him. Still, he knelt at the side of the hole and with his only hand passed each of the kids—he counted a hundred and eight—through the opening to safety.

  “Come on, guys,” he said, somewhat slurring his words. He stood, blinking to try to keep from passing out, and set out down the alley. He made a couple of wrong turns but eventually made his way back to the larger aliens. He sat down and watched as the adult aliens and kids split into groups—three adults to a handful of children seemed to be the norm. The grown-ups ran their tentacles across their young’s pink skins, as though examining them for injuries. The messages in the sounds they made were unmistakable: relief, sadness, regret, thankfulness… If not for the agonizing pain, burning thirst, and shortness of breath, Dex would have been sincerely touched. Then he remembered the drawing still clutched in his hand.

  “Hey,” he gasped. He dragged himself to his feet and staggered to the alien with the dark splotches. The alien looked up at him and squeaked.

  “Yeah,” Dex huffed, “you’re welcome.” He held up the drawing and tapped a finger on the little human-shaped stick figure. “These guys. Humans? Like me?” He pointed at his chest. “Where?” he asked, waving his hand around in the air and looking this way and that.

  After a few repeat performances, the alien pointed a tentacle in the direction of the plateau. Dex looked up at the flat-topped mountain of jagged rock and sighed.

  No way could he make that climb. He cast his gaze about, trying not to lose hope. He hadn’t seen anything in the village that looked like a vehicle. These little octopus guys couldn’t climb either, and the fires were spreading. Their village was a death trap.

  He swore, his gaze resting on prison ship wreckage. One of the bulkhead support struts that was rooted in the ground, rose high over the burning village.

  “They couldn’t have crashed on top of the mountain… He took as deep a breath as he could and wondered if the Triss ship could still be of use. It was a big ship, at least a couple thousand tons. It probably had a shuttle or two…

  He turned back to the crowd of reunited alien villagers and announced, “Come on everybody. We’re flying out of here.”

  With a renewed sense of purpose, Dex turned back to the crashed ship just as it exploded in a massive orange fireball. He had time to blink once before the boom and shockwave hit him, knocking him onto his behind amidst the gaggle of aliens.

  “Change of plans,” Dex said, coughing out a mouthful of smoke. “We’re running.”

  He got to his feet and tried to run but had to settle for a slightly-faster-than-walking staggering hobble. He hoped there was a pass up the side of the plateau, someplace where they could walk up. A dozen steps later, a second explosion wracked the ship.

  He ducked behind a shard of rock, and the crowd of aliens behind him squealed. When Dex tried to stand, his knee gave out and pain flared so badly in both feet that all he could do was writhe around on the cold hard ground, moaning.

  As he lay there, something bumped into him. Then another something bumped him from the other side, and he was lifted a few centimeters off the ground. The locals pushed and prodded him, rolling him onto a stretcher. Dex could feel the rough, canvas-like fabric through the thin Triss unitard. It felt good to just lie there as they spent several minutes jostling him around. He blinked, wiped his eyes, took a few shallow, calming breaths, and tried to sit up. A gentle but firm tentacle on his chest prevented that, and he didn’t struggle. One of them babbled something unintelligible into his left ear then they were moving.

  One of the aliens—Dex thought of her as a
female, though he really had no way of knowing for sure—rode along with him on the litter. Something poked one of his feet and he jerked it away, but a tentacle wrapped around his ankle and pulled his leg back straight. He looked up, his chin pressed against his chest, and watched two of the aliens tend to his wounds. Little nubs like fingers came from the undersides of their tentacles and they gently pulled pieces of rock and other debris out from the soles of his feet. They wiped away blood and dirt with soft, clean rags. It hurt, but Dex gritted his teeth and let them work.

  The litter tipped up at his head—they were heading uphill.

  “Are you taking me…?” he started, but reminded himself that they couldn’t understand him. They had pointed up the plateau when he’d asked about the humanoid stick figures. He assumed they were taking him up there now.

  He could only guess at how long they dragged him up a series of tight switchbacks, ever upward to the top of the craggy plateau. Somewhere along the way they put some kind of paste on his feet that took the pain away, but also made him groggy. He might have slept some, but couldn’t tell.

  Eventually, the litter came to a shuddering stop, and there was the sound of footsteps on loose gravel. “Well,” a voice said from somewhere off to his side, “what have we here?”

  He lifted his head and found a woman staring down at him. She smiled, wide and brilliant white behind the faceplate of her smartsuit. She looked about a tenth as surprised to see him as he was to see her.

  “You look like you’ve seen better days,” she said.

  One of the locals spoke a string of gibberish, which the voice—a woman’s—answered in the same burbling tongue, then looked back to him. “You did all that?”

  “All what?” he mumbled as he struggled to sit up.