by C. S. Nelson
Dustan frowned. “Why? We haven’t even gotten a chance to catch up.” Annie turned, and he grabbed at her arm.
Annie took one more long look at Dustan. She would miss him, she thought, as a wave of upset washed over her and she held back the tears. When she was getting her arm patched up in the hospital, all she was thinking about was how much she wished for Dustan to be by her side. But that wasn’t the way it could be anymore. “I hope you do great things.” She whispered, pulling her arm away. This was enough for her; she didn’t need this day off. She pushed through the crowd and headed back to base camp.
Annie entered the sleeping quarters and threw herself onto her bed. She began sobbing loudly into her pillow. If she had been slightly more successful in one of the tests, would she not have become a ranger? And if Dustan had failed in just one more test, would he not have become a breeder? It didn’t seem fair to her.
“Annie?” She stopped, sitting up and turning to see Kevin standing in the doorway. “What are you doing here?”
She wiped the tears from her face, embarrassed. She had held it together so many times in the past couple of weeks when she had wanted to cry, and she was disappointed in herself that Kevin was seeing her break down over this. “Rough day.”
Kevin walked over and sat down next to her. “I stopped going to those vacation days a long time ago.” He put his hand on hers, ignoring the wet from her tears. “You’re either disappointed when you get there or you’re disappointed when you have to leave.”
“Definitely disappointment getting there. My boyfriend became a breeder.”
Kevin laughed. “I had friends that became breeders. They become pretentious assholes so fast and so easily that you barely remember who they were.” Annie smiled at him. “But we would too if we realized we didn’t have to work a single day for the rest of our lives. I think there’s a lot that goes on behind the scenes with the breeders that we won’t ever know. In fact, want me to show you a secret?”
Annie nodded, and before she knew it she was being pulled from the bunk bed towards the equipment rooms. Kevin handed her a gun that she slung over her shoulder and took one himself, grabbing them both flashlights and taking a package out of a cabinet that required a lock to enter.
“Now, normally, I would advise against this.” He walked quickly towards the edge of the Shield; Annie had to jog to keep up. “The commander would beat us to hell. But everyone is in the town center and you’re in a shitty mood.” Annie liked to hear him swear. For someone that acted so formal whenever the commander was around, or whenever one of the rangers was goofing off, hearing him not feel the need to censor himself was oddly comforting to her. They arrived at the edge of the Shield, but instead of crossing through it, Kevin started following along the curve. “It should be here, somewhere,” he mumbled to himself. “Ah. Here it is.”
Kevin pulled back a layer of oddly coloured grass revealing a trap door. “What is this?” Annie asked as he pulled it open. Whatever was down there was clouded with darkness.
“There’s so much that previous generations did for this community that we will never know about. Annie, our species used to be on top. We used to have our shit together. Now we live in this tiny bubble and we can’t even keep track of the secret tunnels that we’ve built.” He paused, smiling at her. “You first.”
Annie shook her head. “I’m afraid of the dark.”
“The Shield penetrates the earth. There’s no suckers waiting for you down there,” he promised.
“That’s not what I’m afraid of.”
Kevin sighed, while still maintaining a massive grin on his face. “After me, I suppose. Just make sure you pull the grass back over it as best you can.” And with that, he jumped down into the tunnel, disappearing from sight and leaving Annie by herself.
She clicked the flashlight on. He was only a few feet down, staring back up at her. There was a ladder to his left. “You’re ridiculous,” she said as she stepped down onto the first couple rungs, pulling the trap door mostly closed and fixing the grass above it as best she could with her injured arm. She wanted to wince, but she didn’t let Kevin see the pain in her face.
“Hey, I’m second-in-command, you don’t get to speak to me like that.” He playfully patted the gun that was tucked safely in his holster.
Annie hadn’t seen this side of Kevin around the other rangers, but she liked it. Without the friendship she had developed with the second-in-command, she felt as though she would have gone crazy. “Where does this lead?” she asked as he turned on his flashlight and they started down the tunnel, which quickly turned from dirt to concrete. He turned and smiled at her in response. “Where is the Shield?” Annie asked after they had walked for a few minutes. They were definitely on the outside now, but she hadn’t felt them go through it.
“My guess is that the Shield can’t penetrate concrete. If you dig deep enough anywhere inside the Shield, I’m talking meters deep, you hit this concrete bottom that Henderson must have put there. But that’s just speculation. Yet another thing those fucking record keepers dropped the ball on. But the soul suckers, they lived under ground for who knows how long before they made their presence known. If the Shield and concrete doesn’t surround us completely, they could just dig through and get to us that way.”
The air, even though they were under feet of dirt, surrounded by concrete, still felt fresher to Annie once they left the Shield. Maybe it was in her head, but she was thankful that, if for no other reason, she could leave the Shield as a ranger. “So they live underground. Why is walking through a tunnel a good idea for us?”
“No, Annie. They lived underground. They hid from us while we evolved. And who knows, maybe they had been taking out humans for all time. Maybe just in secret. But one day they attacked, and unfortunately for us, they were stronger than we were. After they overpowered us they all left their underground homes. They didn’t want to be stuck underground any more than we want to be stuck in our bubble.”
“How do you know all this?”
“The acting commander needs to share the secrets of the Shield with second-in-command. Our job is so dangerous that anyone could be killed at any moment. If something were to happen to him, I would need to be prepared to take over immediately. No time wasted.”
“So you have to keep a lot of secrets.”
“I’m still getting used to some of it.”
“What happened to the previous second-in-command?”
“That’s a story we’ll save for our destination.” Kevin shone the flashlight far ahead. “Which we will be arriving at shortly.”
They walked in silence for a few minutes. Annie wondered what could have possibly been out here that had been so important that their ancestors had felt it necessary to build such a long tunnel. “What’s going to be the first thing you do when we get to the new planet?” Annie asked.
The ships would arrive, then they would make a few stops around planet Earth in case there were other civilizations still surviving like they were here. Then they would all be put into a deep sleep for the hundred years that it would take for the ship to travel back to Mpho. They would wake up and they would be safe, and with other humans. “I’m going to sleep outside,” Kevin said. “Like in the breeze surrounded by nature. Maybe some big animal will come along and kill me but as long as my soul doesn’t get sucked, I’ll die happy.”
“I’m going to swim,” Annie said. Sure, they had lakes on Earth, but only outside of the Shield and only if you were willing to risk your life to swim in them. They had learned about oceans and lakes and rivers when Annie was younger, and she had found it fascinating. It was disappointing to know that there was an entire other world below the surface that Annie had never gotten a chance to see.
“That’s a good one too,” Kevin said. “I hope they have fast food on Mpho. Apparently there used to be restaurants that could make you your food in ninety seconds. There’s one a couple of towns over. There are still cars by the window; I guess where
you pulled up to get your food. Some poor bastard must have gotten their soul sucked waiting his dinner.”
They came to an intersection in the tunnel. A ladder leading up like the one that Annie had climbed down, and a continuation of the tunnel. Kevin stopped, and shook the ladder a little bit to make sure it was sturdy still. “After you?” Annie asked. She was all for exploring, after someone else had explored first, of course.
Kevin shrugged, grabbing onto the ladder and jumping up it two rungs at a time. “Nothing spooky is waiting for you up here, Annie,” he said. “My idea of cheering you up is not leading you into a group of suckers.”
He pushed a wooden latch open that was covering the ladder and revealed a slightly lighter, slightly wider tunnel that continued up. Annie climbed the ladder and was confused when she arrived at the surface. “What is this?” she asked, turning her flashlight on and shining it up. There was a steep circular staircase that followed around the edge of this tunnel, leaving barely enough room in the center for anything else. Light was coming in from the top, about twenty feet up.
Kevin climbed the staircase and Annie followed. They arrived at the top where there was a crawl space out where the sun was shining. When Annie emerged, she found herself at the top a tree, on a poorly put together deck of a tree house. There were lawn chairs to her left, and a railing to her right. “Isn’t this dangerous?” she asked.
“Soul suckers can’t climb,” Kevin laughed. “They may be stronger and smarter than us. But they can’t swim and they can’t climb. You’d think by now they’d learn how to use some sort of weapon other than their bodies. I guess they’re traditionalists.” He stepped over to the railing and looked down at the forest floor. “When I was being trained we had a whole lesson on how to climb trees efficiently to avoid soul suckers. Then there was an incident a couple of years ago where instead of turning and fighting a couple of them, whom we could have easily over powered, the new recruits climbed away, leaving a couple veterans on the ground. The two that weren't up the trees fast enough didn't make it. Now we don’t teach to climb, just to fight or run.”
Annie nodded thoughtfully. She imagined the temptation of climbing to safety instead of fighting for her life. She understood why it was best for them not to teach that method of escape anymore. “Why is this here in the first place? The treehouse?”
Kevin sighed. “There’s so much about our history that has been forgotten over the years. Before Henderson figured out the components of the Shield, there were dozens of wild theories thought up to try to save the human race. People began building treehouses by the dozens, bringing their families to live up where the suckers couldn’t reach them. But not only did people begin starving to death as the suckers surrounded the trees and waited for them to run out of food, but the aliens also began to learn how to cut the trees down. The treehouses were destroyed in a couple of months, and this is the only one that I know of that’s survived all these years.”
Annie joined him at the railing, looking around. She had never been up this high before. She felt sadness for a moment, thinking about all of the people stuck in the trees, having to make the choice between starving to death and facing the aliens that lurked beneath them. “It’s nice being out here without having to fear for our lives,” Annie said.
Kevin took a deep breath in of the fresh air. “I love it up here. It’s where I come to think. The commander showed it to me when I first got my promotion.”
Annie nudged him a little bit. “That’s your cue to tell me what happened to the other second-in-command.”
Kevin took a seat, letting his legs dangle off the edge of the platform in the spaces of the wooden railing. Annie followed, keeping her legs crossed, paranoid that something could reach up and grab them. “It was a food gathering mission, just like the one we went on. We were swarmed, and then he was pinned by one. Mitch missed the shot, but it startled the sucker enough to annoy it. The thing realized it wouldn’t have time to finish the second-in-command off, and I’m guessing out of frustration, it stabbed him in the chest with its talons. Then it turned onto Mitch, who panicked, and happened to hit me the next time he shot.
“We brought him back to basecamp. He was bleeding pretty badly from his chest. We did everything we could for him, but he didn’t make it. No one was surprised. The wound was massive and the hospital was nearly out of antibiotics. A couple of days after, once my bullet wound was all patched up, I got my promotion.”
“Did you feel like you were ready for it?” she asked.
“I don’t think I’ll ever be ready for it. I don’t really think I’ll ever know everything that’s going on.”
Annie shrugged. “At this point, is there any human on Earth that truly knows what’s going on?”
Kevin shook his head, laughing. “It’s weird to think that we were once at the top of the food chain. Walking around like we owned the planet. Then the suckers come out of nowhere and BAM, just like that we become the prey.”
“Do you think that…” Annie began, before being interrupted by Kevin holding his hand up.
“Hear that?” he asked.
There was a crackling through the woods, like someone walking cautiously. Kevin pulled his gun from behind his back and held a tight grip on it. “Hello?” They heard a soft, scared voice that made Annie’s heart melt. A little girl emerged from behind them, stepping out into Annie’s sight. “Will you help me, please?” She reached up toward them. The dress she wore was dirty and tattered, her face was muddy and her hair matted down.
“Of course we will.” Annie stood up, ready to climb down the side of the tree.
Kevin grabbed her arm and held her in place. “What’s your name, little darling?” he asked.
The girl’s face twitched. “Tabitha.”
“Okay, Tabitha. I’m going to need you to be a big girl and do something for me. Then we can help you.” Kevin reached into his back pocket and pulled out a pocketknife. He opened it, and tossed it down very gently a few feet in front of the girl. She reached down and picked it up carefully.
“What do I do with this?” she asked, innocently. She looked nervous just holding it.
“I need you to give yourself a little cut on the arm,” Kevin said. The girl looked horrified. “Just a little one, Tabitha. Show me you aren’t a spooky monster.”
“I’m too scared,” the girl cried, tears welling up in her eyes. “Please, please don’t make me. I’m lost, I need help.”
Annie watched the little girl cry for a few seconds, her heart breaking. “Kevin,” she whispered. “Come on. Let her up.”
Kevin shook his head, standing up next to Annie. “Watch.” He aimed his gun at the girl and shot before Annie could even raise her arm in protest.
The girl howled, grabbing at her arm as metallic blue blood spilled from the wound. She locked eyes with Annie, breathing heavily. Angrily. “You believe you deserve to live, human?” the little girl asked, foaming at the mouth. “You were brought to this planet to feed us. Your very being provides us with nothing more than nourishment. Your shield will not save you forever. Your soul shall...” Before she could get another word out, Kevin fired another shot, hitting the girl directly between the eyes.
They watched the little girl crumple into a pile on the forest floor. “How did you know she was a soul sucker?” Annie asked. Blue blood pooled around the still body.
“There’s a wall in the commander’s office covered in every picture of every person who has been taken after the Shield was invented. She was a rather unfortunate case a few years back, where a sucker who happened to be disguised as a ranger than she had played games with on one of the vacation days, lured her out of the Shield and attacked her in full sight of the town.” Annie couldn’t take her eyes off the little girl. Even though she knew that it wasn’t truly her, seeing the poor thing get shot between the eyes made her feel nauseated. “You have to disassociate them, Annie. That was not her, that was some horrible creature using her as a way to get to you.�
�� He rubbed his shaved head.
“I know.” There was emptiness to her voice that Kevin could sense.
Kevin laughed to himself. “I brought you out here to help you relax and this is what happens.” Annie began laughing too. It wasn’t funny. Both of them knew that. Nothing about their situation was funny. But it wasn’t often that anyone in the Shield had a good laugh and neither of them were going to let the moment go. “Should we head back?” he asked.
“I guess so.” The sun had begun to set behind the house in the distance. “But we should do this again some time.” Without Kevin to laugh and joke with when she needed a break, Annie was sure that she would have gone crazy by now.
“Every chance we get.” Kevin smiled at her. Annie blushed as he turned away, crawling through the space to get to the inside of the tree.
She followed, and the rest of the way back they chatted about the things they would do and see when they got back to Mpho, even though both of them knew in their hearts that chances were one of them wouldn’t last that long.
Chapter 7: The President
“Annie, I can’t.” Anthony was in tears as other rangers handed him equipment. It was his turn to go out on a mission. This one had come about suddenly, one of the girls in record keeping had a severe allergic reaction, and she was running out of time. Annie wasn’t going to be out there with him, and he was panicking.
“Strap on your vest, and stop being a fucking child,” Mitch barked at him, handing him a gun. Annie shot Mitch a look, and he raised his hands in defeat. “He has to be ready in five minutes, Annie.” She knew that he was holding up the group, which in turn meant he was decreasing the likelihood that they would get back to the girl in time. But every other new ranger had already gone out on a mission. It was his turn. He had to go.
She wasn’t sure what to do for Anthony. She had never seen him like this. Then again he hadn't been given the time to mentally prepare himself to leave the safety of the Shield. Annie took the bandage off her wounded arm, which after nearly a month was healing up nicely. “Look, it’s nothing but a scratch,” she said. But that didn’t stop her friend from crying. “You might get knocked down, you might get a couple scratches, but that isn’t going to stop you from continuing. You’re going to get that girl her medicine, come back, and realize it wasn’t so bad after all. You’ve got something the soul suckers don’t.” Anthony pointed to his gun, and Annie shook her head and smiled. “You’ve got us on your side.”
