by C. R. Jane
“She needs clothing.”
Until he said it, I didn’t realize I was naked. Honestly, I didn’t even know that I was female. I looked down at myself as if I’d never seen my body before.
Because I hadn’t. At least… not that I could remember.
I was slightly chubby and unfortunately pale, like I’d never gone outside in my life or done anything but push pencils or sit in a cubicle somewhere. I could already feel the sun heating up my skin. I’d have a terrible sunburn to rival the aliens’ delicate skin if I wasn’t careful.
But I had no memory of ever being outside. Had I never gone to a lake or a beach, where I’d needed sunscreen before? “Why can’t I remember anything?”
Kharon dug around in a pack and threw some clothes into my lap. “Shock. Trauma. Give yourself some time, Eve.”
Dragging on the pants, I grumbled beneath my breath. “I’m not Eve.” The pants were huge, but at least I could cinch up the drawstring to keep them from sliding off. The T-shirt smelled surprisingly good, though strange and vaguely furry, as if a cat had used it for a pillow. “Eve was the first woman. I’m surely not the last. Am I? Have you seen other humans?”
“Not a one,” Kharon replied. I glanced up at him, relieved to see he’d turned around to give me some privacy. So had his friend. Chivalry wasn’t dead, even if the rest of the human race was.
I looked down at the chasm again and shuddered.
I had been buried alive beneath people who’d contracted a horrible alien virus that had killed them. Even now, that virus had to be attacking my cells. There was no way that I couldn’t be contagious.
I was dying. I just didn’t know it yet.
I dragged my gaze away from the pile of dead and searched the horizon. Mountains rose in the distance. We were in dry, arid foothills, but nothing seemed familiar. It could be South Dakota or Arizona or New Mexico. Or maybe even Utah or Montana. I had no idea.
I shaded my eyes against the sun, looking for any sign of life. Lights from a city. A landmark. Anything that I might recognize.
But not even buzzards wheeled above this gigantic pile of dead.
I wanted to cry. I wanted to wail and pound my fists on the dirt and throw my head back and scream with rage at the unfairness. The cruelty. So many dead. So much suffering. I couldn’t even wrap my mind around it.
Even though I was alive, I felt like I’d swallowed a ticking bomb. Any minute, I’d start feeling the effects of the virus.
I’d die. It was inevitable. I’d seen enough to know.
Even if I didn’t know where.
Clenching my jaws, I turned away from the gorge. “Why did you risk exposure to pull me out of there?”
Kharon snorted. “Risk exposure? Really? Like being stranded on this fucking nightmare of a planet isn’t already exposure?”
“I sensed your life force,” Hades said. “In a place where nothing else is alive. Of course we had to investigate it. What would you prefer for us to call you?”
I waited for some indication of my real name to filter up into my mind. Sally? Rebecca? Heather?
Nothing.
Hades. Kharon. They’d chosen names that were associated with the underworld. They’d pulled me from death. So it was only fitting that I choose a similar name.
“Thanatos.”
Kharon smirked. “That’s more like it, though I like Eve too.”
I shrugged. “Eve Thanatos, then. I don’t really care. Where are we headed?”
The two aliens looked at each other a moment, some silent communication passing between them that spoke of a long friendship.
I got it. They didn’t know how much to tell me. Whether they could trust me.
I wouldn’t trust a person who was magically alive in a pile of dead bodies either.
Chapter 2
We walked until my feet were bleeding. I didn’t care. I didn’t feel it. I didn’t feel anything. Even the sunburn on my cheeks and lower arms didn’t hurt, though now I understood why Hades wore long sleeves and kept a hood up over his face.
Mile after mile, I kept trudging along, searching for anything familiar. Dust. Thin, scraggly grass and weeds. A low windblown shrub. A rusted-out car.
Wait, a car.
I scanned the front bumper, but there wasn’t a license plate. Racing around to the trunk, I found a bent scrap of metal attached by one rusted screw. I had to swipe off the thick layer of dust to read it.
“Missouri? That doesn’t make any sense.”
Kharon shoved the partially opened door wider and leaned in to rummage for anything salvageable. “Why not?”
“This isn’t Missouri.”
“That’s one of your states, right?” Hades asked. “Is this Missouri someplace you know?”
I turned slowly, scanning the countryside again. “When I think of Missouri, it’s not desert like this. Or rocky, steep mountains. Maybe it was a tourist’s car. There could be a hundred reasons a car from Missouri is here in the middle of nowhere.”
Kharon grunted, leaning over the backseat. “Nothing here, skyr.”
I didn’t know what skyr meant, but it sounded like a title, not a name. Hades replied in a musical string of words that made no sense to me.
They didn’t trust me.
Again, not that I could blame them. I didn’t trust me either.
Someone had tried to pry the trunk of the car open. The edge was dented, though the lock still held. There could be something inside. Maybe some water.
Yeah. My body liked that idea. My lips had cracked and my tongue felt like a wad of cotton.
I slipped my fingers into the crack and pulled. The metal gave with a vicious screech and I threw the trunk lid up. Something was here. I could smell it. I shoved the spare tire aside and found a backpack. There was food inside. I fucking knew it. Chocolate. Nuts. Caramel. Heaven on earth.
Some idiot had left a candy bar in this rusted old car.
I flopped down on the ground and dug around in the backpack until I hit the jackpot. I tore into that candy bar like a starving animal.
Oh. My. God.
Chocolate had never tasted so fucking good. My mouth filled with drool with the first bite.
I glanced up and both men were staring at me.
Oops. I broke off half and held it up to Hades. “Sorry,” I said around a mouthful of chocolate. “I’ll share.”
He shook his head slowly, pushing the hood back off his head. “You don’t even realize what you did.”
I glanced over at Kharon, who had given up on searching the car. He’d taken his glasses off, revealing golden eyes that flashed in the growing darkness. “I don’t know what the fuck you are, Thanatos, but you’re as human as I am.”
My hand fell down in my lap. “I really am sorry. I don’t mind sharing. You saved me. I should have let you have some first, but I didn’t realize how hungry I am.” Then his words sank in and I scowled at him. “I’m human. You’re the aliens.”
Kharon came closer and squatted down between me and Hades. “You ripped that trunk open.”
I shrugged, not sure why that was a big deal.
“Didn’t you hear the metal tearing? It was still locked, but you opened it like it was nothing. A human couldn’t do that.”
“It was rusted.” My voice rose in pitch. I hated sounding defensive and scared, but maybe he was right. I hated not knowing what had happened to me.
Maybe I wasn’t human. Maybe I was an android.
The more I thought about it, the more it made a weird kind of sense. Why else would I be relatively unscathed in a mass grave? I couldn’t feel anything. I recognized that my bare feet had been torn up by rocks and sticks all afternoon, but I didn’t actually feel pain.
Aliens had visited us. Why couldn’t we have androids that were so well-made that it might think it was human?
I registered Hades’s musical voice, and Kharon’s deep, growly reply, but I couldn’t understand the words. I didn’t think they were speaking in their langu
age again. I just couldn’t make myself focus on their words to understand.
Kharon growled out a sharp reply and then pushed up to stride away.
I fully expected Hades to follow him.
“Thanks,” I mumbled, unwilling to look up and see the doubt and suspicion that would be on his face. Numbly, I carefully wrapped the last half of the candy bar and stuck it back in the bag. “I mean it. You didn’t have to pull me out of that pile. I understand.”
He sat beside me, making me twitch with surprise. “What do you understand?”
Relief welled up inside me, making me sniffle. My throat ached. I rubbed my chest absently, trying to ease the band tightening around my ribs. They’re not leaving me alone. Yet. “You should leave. Get away from here. You don’t know me.”
“You don’t know you,” Hades replied mildly. “Where else would we go?”
I made myself breathe. In. Out. Even though it would be easier to lie back, look up at the darkening sky, and just stop.
Stop breathing. Stop walking. Stop trying to come up with explanations and reasons for why I was still alive when everyone else was dead.
“Home?” I said it hesitantly, surprised at a surge of emotion inside me. Not yearning or homesickness, but a black wave of what I could only call rage. “You could go home.”
He made a low sound that rang like a sweet, clear bell. It took me a moment to realize he’d laughed. It was a mesmerizing sound, even though I could hear darker notes like blots of ink.
“How can we, when we can’t locate our ships?”
“Wait, what? What happened to them?”
He drew his knees up and braced his chin on crossed forearms, staring off into the thickening shadows. “We split into groups once we arrived. Some remained with the ships, while others went as ambassadors to your people, so we could share information and learn more about your planet. I was one of the first ambassadors, and thus one of the first to experience your unfortunate virus. Once the epidemic broke out, we were quarantined.”
A flash of white filled my mind. A white room. Stainless steel tables. White curtains. Biohazard suits and masks.
Me. Looking out of plexiglass.
It’d been a fucking case of measles that started it all. One ignorant, self-righteous parent who’d refused to vaccinate their snot-nosed kid. They’d come to see the aliens as they passed on the street. With cameras clicking nonstop, one of the aliens had bent down to speak to the child. A friendly gesture. A show of good faith.
The kid and the alien had made a great photo op. The resulting rash and fever had not made the news rounds.
Not until people started dying. And worse, mutating.
“For our own safety, of course,” he continued. Though his voice was still soft and gentle, I could hear the bitterness. “I suppose that quarantine saved us, if nothing else, from the rioting humans who blamed the pandemic on us. Though your medical techniques were barbaric torture, we did survive, while so many others of my people died.”
“The vaccine.”
His head whipped around, silver hair fluttering about his shoulders like delicate wings. He didn’t physically touch me, but I felt… something. My skin prickled with goosebumps, even though I hadn’t sweated in the grueling sun today. “You remember.”
I fought not to drop my gaze. I couldn’t see his eyes, but he radiated intensity. The beautiful elf with the musical voice suddenly had me locked in a vise.
“A white room,” I whispered hoarsely. “I was there. I guess I was a scientist or doctor of some kind. I don’t know what we did… but I saw the room.”
Slowly, he reached up and removed his protective eyewear to reveal gleaming mercurial eyes that shifted with all the colors of the rainbow like oil splashed on pavement. “You—speaking generically of the team of human scientists—called us patients zero. You used us to develop a vaccine since we had survived. But it was too late for my people, and too late for most of yours. By the time Kharon and I found our way to freedom, we were unable to locate any of the ships that had brought us here. Evidently, they were confiscated or destroyed.”
I swallowed hard. “But some did survive?”
He grimaced, lifting his shoulders in an elegant shrug. “If you can call this survival.”
“And no,” Kharon’s voice echoed from the darkness. I could barely see his shadow prowling around the perimeter. “You’re not a fucking android. You’re a stinking human.”
“How did you know I was thinking that?” I retorted. “I didn’t say it aloud. Besides, how can you be certain? I mean, I didn’t know aliens existed. Why not an android?”
He let out a barking laugh as he came closer. “Because you stink. Literally. I could smell you for miles. No computerized machine could duplicate that stench. If you don’t want us to know your thoughts, then you shouldn’t broadcast them so loudly.”
I opened my mouth. Shut it. I didn’t think I was broadcasting my thoughts… but maybe the aliens were telepathic?
“Build a tower in your mind,” Hades said. “Shelter within the peace and quiet inside those walls. Then your thoughts will remain your own.”
Kharon dropped down behind Hades and stretched out flat on his back, arms crossed beneath his head. “All clear for now. I didn’t sense anything but us for miles and miles.”
I started stacking bricks in my head, but it took forever. I finally imagined thick steel walls that snapped shut around me, blocking out the world.
“Ahhh,” Hades whispered as he dropped back to rest his head on Kharon’s lap. “Thank you. That’s ever so much better.”
Staring at them, I was thankful I’d figured out the tower wall before he’d laid back on the other man like that. It was so casual. So…
Beautiful.
It wasn’t sexual, though I could see them together in that way too. Hades rolled over slightly, pillowing his cheek on the other man’s thigh as he looked at me.
Had they found solace in each other before the pandemic? Or only as a result of being stranded here and surviving hell on earth? I didn’t feel like I had the right to ask such a probing question of them.
“So there are things still alive out there in the night?”
Kharon grunted with disgust. “Alive is debatable.”
“Yes,” Hades added. “Contaminants still roam the countryside.”
I huddled in on myself. That word carried several layers of meaning. Contagious humans. People who’d contracted the virus—and their DNA was now compromised by the alien DNA the virus had picked up as it mutated.
As they mutated into something… not human. Before dying a horrible, painful death.
I couldn’t remember much of the details about the vaccinations and studies we must have done in that white laboratory, but I knew that once the virus had a foothold in its host…
Death was imminent.
I wouldn’t mind dying. I’d actually prefer a quick death rather than suffering the virus. Maybe I could find a gun somewhere before…
How long did I have? A few days? A week? I didn’t know. The virus had gone through several mutations, each time becoming more efficient.
I felt my forehead, trying to tell if I had a fever yet.
“You don’t have any symptoms.” Hades’s soft voice wrapped me up in a gentle lullaby. “Get some rest.”
Throat aching, I laid on my side facing them, but curled up tight in a ball.
Kharon’s eyes flashed golden in the darkness and I felt a sharp nudge in my mind.
:Yes.:
I blinked, searching his face. His mouth hadn’t moved.
:If it becomes necessary, I’ll kill you when it’s time. Clean. Quick. Easy.:
Relief welled inside me. I closed my eyes and let the soft notes of his friend’s voice lull me to sleep.
Chapter 3
A vivid dream illuminated the night with strange colors. Deep purple. Flares of liquid silver. Crashes like thunder. Explosions. The snarls and howls of beasts.
It took m
e a moment to realize it wasn’t a dream at all.
I lurched to my feet and staggered over to crouch behind the rusted-out car. My heart pounded, my ears ringing with the noise and clamor. Something wasn’t right. My vision swam. My hands trembled. Maybe fear.
Or maybe the first stages of the virus were setting in.
Which only made my hands tremble harder.
I didn’t have a weapon. Fuck, I didn’t even have shoes. I couldn’t run far.
Peeking out around the rear of the car, I tried to see what was happening. Hades and Kharon were both gone. The next flash illuminated a pack of snarling, tangled animals. It sounded like fighting wolves, but the shapes were much larger. Grizzly bears? In the desert? That didn’t make sense.
Another silver flash lit up the sky, drawing my attention to its source.
Hades. On the slight rise back the way we’d come from the gorge, he stood illuminated against the night sky. Head thrown back and arms outstretched.
Silver light rolled from him. I didn’t know what kind of weapon he had, but it was badass. The energy sliced into the howling beasts and one of them yelped. Another. One of the creatures pulled back. Monstrous teeth bared in a vicious grin, it looked at me with an unholy glee that made me shrink and duck down behind the car.
My mind reeled, unable to reconcile what I’d seen. The teeth and jaws had definitely been wolflike, but the eyes…
Were very human.
The fur was patchy across the face, revealing human-like cheeks and a sloped brow. Longer fur around the top of the head could have once been hair. It moved with a strange lurching gait completely unlike a natural wolf.
Like a cartoon werewolf. A person, in a wolf suit.
My stomach quivered. The chocolate bar I’d scarfed earlier rumbled around like I was going to spew, but my starved body refused to give up those precious calories.
The virus had done that to a person.
It was doing it to me. This very moment, my cells were transforming. Mutating. My DNA was combining with alien DNA.
