Return to Eden

by Kaitlyn O'Connor

  What was going on?

  Were they at war, she wondered?

  If they were, she realized in a few moments, it wasn’t with some other country.

  They were being invaded by aliens!

  As soon as the thought occurred to her she tried to dismiss it. The conference had gone to her head! She’d spent days watching people stroll around the hotels and Atlanta streets dressed as aliens and galactic warriors and ‘acclimated’ to the idea of intergalactic travel and alien civilizations.

  There was no such thing, though!

  There had to be another explanation!

  She couldn’t think of one. That thing, unless it was just some kind of advertising gimmick she hadn’t noticed before—like a billboard built to look like a space ship—couldn’t be something from earth. She knew she hadn’t just missed it, been too preoccupied with getting gas, finding a snack, and bathroom to notice it.

  But what kind of invasion could it be when the thing hadn’t blown up?

  But she thought she’d seen smoke coming from it.

  Maybe it was a dud?

  It wasn’t the lightening of the world outside that presaged morning that woke Anya some time later. It was the clods of dirt sifting down on her and the sense that she was sitting in an ant bed. Waking with a start, Anya brushed frantically at herself, trying to beat the stinging insects off and then abruptly pitched herself out of the culvert and into the ditch. It was as well she did because even as she rolled over to look for the ant bed she’d apparently fallen to sleep on top of, chunks of the culvert began to fall.

  Her eyes, burning as if she had dirt in them, Anya blinked several times and rubbed them, trying to comprehend what she was seeing, trying to convince herself that it was nothing but her imagination.

  The culvert collapsed. At about that same moment, Anya’s brain assimilated the fact that she still felt like something was crawling all over her. Looking down to find the culprits, she discovered to her absolute horror that her clothing seemed to be disintegrating. She could see … something crawling over her. If not for the movement, she didn’t think she would’ve been able to discern even that much, though. Whatever it was was smaller than a gnat and moving in mass and eating her clothing!

  Sucking in a sharp breath, Anya swatted at the dark patches several times and then abruptly leapt to her feet and began to strip frantically. It didn’t take much effort. Her clothes seemed to fall off of her even as she tugged at them. She saw dark patches attach themselves to her bra and panties. The momentary reluctance she felt about discarding those vanished as soon as she saw bare patches of skin.

  She pitched them, beating frantically at her hair, brushing at her arms and legs and dashed off a few feet to examine her skin. Somewhat relieved when she discovered she seemed to have rid herself of whatever it was, she looked back to the spot where she’d discarded her clothing just in time to see the last scraps vanish.

  “What the f?” she gasped and then glanced around uneasily to see if anyone was around to see her standing stark naked by the side of the road.

  She didn’t see anyone. She did see the dark clouds of whateverthehell those things were, and where ever they settled … dust. The parking lot of cars was half gone already. The asphalt was turning to powder. She stared at the phenomena disbelievingly for a few moments and then glanced up and down what remained of the highway. To the south, she could still see cars and trucks that seemed intact, at least in the sense that they were there. To the north, where that thing had landed, even the overpass she remembered from the night before was gone.

  “Oh my god!” She couldn’t entirely comprehend what seemed to be happening, but the world seemed to be vanishing.

  Sucking in a sharp breath, she whipped around and began jogging south. She had no destination in mind—not in the forefront of her mind anyway—but running away from what was happening seemed imperative.

  She quickly discovered that no amount of fear was sufficient to make her completely unaware of her nakedness. Everything on her body seemed to jiggle when she’d never noticed it before—when she was wearing clothes! Her breasts felt like f’ing yoyos! Clamping one arm over her breasts, more for the sake of minimizing discomfort than due to any sense of modesty, Anya struggled with the imbalance that created in her stride and kept going.

  That thing, she realized after a while, might not be a bomb like anything she’d ever seen or heard of, but it was a bomb. They’d been invaded by aliens!

  It wasn’t until Anya was so breathless from running that she thought she would pass out if she didn’t stop and catch her breath that she realized that she wasn’t outrunning whaterverthehell was eating everything in sight. At some point while she was frantically trying to save herself, the voracious hoard had swept past her.

  A whimper of sheer terror escaped her when she glanced around to see how much headway she was making and saw that the dark swarm was well on its way to devouring the cars and the highway beside and in front of her. Gasping hoarsely, trying to gather enough spit into her mouth to swallow, she veered sharply away from the highway, sprawled out in the ditch and then clawed her way up the other side. Thankfully the fence, designed to keep wildlife off the highway, was just wire, not barbed wire. She still scraped her hide going over it. Ignoring the sting, she plunged into the woods.

  She became instantly aware of the lack of protective clothing and shoes. Branches slapped at her, stinging her skin. Briars caught at her and left claw marks as she pushed through them, and the pine cones, rotting leaves and branches, rocks, and tree roots nearly crippled her as they dug into the soft soles of her feet.

  She began to feel a lot better once she’d gone far enough into the woods that she could no longer see the destruction behind her, however. The metal, clothing, and asphalt eating insects, or whatever they were, didn’t seem interested in her or the woods around her.

  That was odd, she realized. Why would they eat things like that and not flesh or vegetation—apparently?

  She frowned, uneasy with her assessment, but there was no getting around the fact that the things had been on her bare skin and hadn’t eaten holes in her or that the trees and plants didn’t seem effected.

  Did that mean she was safe or not?

  She didn’t feel safe. She just felt less in danger—for the moment—more able to notice her misery. She was so dehydrated she felt like she was going to dry up to a husk. Her stomach felt like it was going to gnaw a hole in her backbone and she hurt everywhere. Her skin was stinging all over the place from scratches. Her feet were killing her and she felt every bruise from the falls she’d taken, every sore muscle she hadn’t worked out in effing forever!

  It occurred to her that she was going to be a hell of a lot worse off if she got lost in the woods but the alternative of turning around and testing her theory that the alien bugs wouldn’t eat her didn’t appeal.

  She could see the glint of the rising sun through the trees and knew if she put that to her left shoulder she would be heading south—toward home—but would she be any safer there? If she was right, and she was afraid she was, those things had landed all over the place. Was there any place on earth that would be safe?

  Unfortunately, nothing came to mind, but she realized she needed to get water, at least, or she was going to die whether those things got to her or not.

  God! She was so sorry she’d dropped that damned twinky and coke! Why hadn’t she had the presence of mind to hang on to them?

  She’d been trudging south for a couple of hours, by her stomach’s reckoning, when she heard a thrashing noise that made her freeze. It leapt instantly to mind, although she’d spared no thought for it before, that the woods belonged to a lot of animals she didn’t want a close encounter with. After trying to determine the direction the noise was coming from, she peered uneasily through the foliage, trying to see what it was and decide whether to run the other way or try to climb a tree or scream her head off.

  She didn’t actually make a decision.
The moment her gaze finally focused on the brightly colored, insect-like thing that was the size of a medium sized dog, she screamed like a banshee and ran for all she was worth. Deafened by the noise she was making herself, she had no idea whether the thing was pursuing her or not, but she didn’t slow down to check until she ran out of steam. Huffing for breath, she glanced around for any sign of it and spied a something crawling along the ground that looked vaguely like a millipede—except it was about two and a half feet long.

  Fortunately, it didn’t seem to be moving very fast. Sucking in a sharp breath, holding her side with one hand and her bouncing breasts with the other, she jogged on at the best speed she could muster.

  It dawned on her that she needed a weapon since it also occurred to her that the two monster insect-like things she’d spied probably weren’t one of a kind. She thought yearningly of the pistol tucked into her glove box—probably long gone now—and dismissed it. Nothing she’d had before mattered. They weren’t available and she needed something now!

  Slowing, she began to search her surroundings for anything that might make a weapon she had some hope of defending herself with. She spied a fair sized branch on the ground, but discovered as soon as she picked it up that the thing was rotted and would probably fall apart as soon as she whacked something with it. A little further, she found a rock about the size of her hand. Hefting it, she decided it was too heavy for her to throw very far. She could either try bashing something with it, up close and personal, or throw it and hope that was enough to scare whatever it was away.

  Pines dominated the forest tree population and those didn’t produce branches that were particularly useful as spears or clubs. She finally merely tore a green branch from a small maple and stripped the leaves from it. It wasn’t heavy enough to knock anything unconscious or beat it to death, but, if memory served her, and she thought it did, the whip effect was unpleasant enough to be some deterrent. It had certainly discouraged her from getting on her grandmother’s bad side when she’d been a child!

  She was still searching for something lethal when the silence around her was shattered once more by the loud crashing sound of something big blundering through the brush. Her heart seemed to stand still in her chest for a moment. She stopped dead in her tracks. Her head came up like a startled deer. The crashing noises had been preceded by a loud yelp that sounded as if it came from a human throat—a male.

  It hadn’t sounded fearful. It seemed to have been a sound of surprise.

  The abrupt urge to burst into tears came out of nowhere.

  She hadn’t realized she’d begun to feel as if she was the only person left in the world until that moment.

  Abruptly, she dropped the rock and took off. She was too breathless to manage running and shouting at the same time otherwise she would’ve been screaming her head off as she charged through the woods in search of the man she’d heard.

  She was so desperate to find someone she tripped over a root and plowed face first down the hill several yards before she managed to stop her descent. Shoving herself up on her hands and knees, she spied the man lying at the bottom, staring up at the sky.

  She hoped he was staring up at the sky. The fear that he’d managed to break his neck and was dead assailed her as did the urge to burst into tears again—this time from fear rather than hopefulness. Her nose stung and her vision blurred. Scrambling on all fours, she reached the man and bent over him.

  Relief washed over her dizzyingly when she realized he was breathing. It crashed almost as quickly as her vision cleared and she got a really good look at the face. Her first thought was that he was in costume but almost as soon as that flashed through her mind, she dismissed it. No makeup artist in the world was that good! As human as he seemed in some respects, the eyes absolutely weren’t human-like at all aside from the fact that there were two of them on either side of the bridge of the not-quite-human nose and they were roughly the same size and shape as human eyes.

  Her mind leapt from that to the obelisk she’d seen and the nearly microscopic bugs that seemed to be eating everything in sight and she surged to her feet before she even realized she’d commanded herself to rise. She’d managed to take one leaping step in retreat when he clamped a hand around her opposite ankle just as she shifted her weight in preparation to lifting it. She plowed the dirt with an inelegant grunt. Fear and shock dominated, however, and she hardly felt the blow. Whirling to discover what had tripped her, she found his hand clamped around her ankle and tried to kick him in the face with her free leg. She missed both his face and his vulnerable throat and planted her foot against his chest. Instead of releasing her, though, his hand tightened and she rolled up and began beating him about the head and shoulders with the switch she still gripped. “Let go! Let go! Let go!” she screamed at him as she flailed with the switch.

  “Ow! Stop it! Stop it! Gods damn it! Quit!” Aidan yelled as he felt the cut of the thin branch she was beating him with, trying to catch it to stop her when she ignored his command to stop. He finally managed to catch it and tried to rip it from her hand. Instead, since she didn’t let go, he only succeeded it jerking her closer.

  She snarled at him when they came face to face.

  Uneasiness slithered through Aidan as it occurred to him that he had hold of a wild thing. He hadn’t noticed a great deal about her beyond the fact that she was naked and that she was clearly female since she looked very much like the females he was familiar with. Nearly nose to nose with her now, he took in her bared teeth and her lips curled back in a snarl and realized that she was dirty and her pale hair matted with leaves and other trash and so tangled it stuck out around her head.

  His mind went blank. For the life of him he couldn’t recall a single lesson in communicating with primitive cultures.

  In any case, he discovered that he was far too busy for several moments trying to prevent her from tearing his head off. They wrestled for dominance for several minutes, but Aidan finally managed to subdue her by virtue of his superior strength and weight. Rolling on top of her, he pinned her to the ground, caught her flailing arms at the wrists and, gritting his teeth, forced them to the ground on either side of her head.

  Instead of admitting defeat once he had her pinned, she commenced to bucking against him.

  He had no doubt her intention was to throw him off, but her humping against his pelvis had a predictable effect considering that he’d never managed to lose awareness of her nakedness.

  She stopped abruptly as he felt himself rise to the occasion, staring up at him wide eyed and huffing for breath.

  He stared down at her, trying to force his sluggish brain to work on something besides the fact that there was something about her face and her wide sky-colored eyes that appealed to his senses in a very sexual way.

  Or maybe it was the soft mammary glands pressed against his chest and the female genitals he knew were bare that were pressed against his raging erection?

  Pushing thoughts he shouldn’t be thinking from his mind with an effort, he forced himself to smile at her. “I don’t mean you any harm.”

  Cold terror went through Anya when he grinned down at her triumphantly. To her mind the grin and the erection added up to rape. She’d already discovered that overpowering him wasn’t likely, however, and searched her mind frantically for some way to save herself. With an effort, she forced a smile in return. “If you pull anything out,” she said, using a tone similar to the one he’d used, “I’m going to tear it off and choke you with it, you alien son-of-a-bitch.”

  Surprise and gratification flickered through Aidan at her response since he knew very well that she couldn’t possibly understand him any better than he could understand her. Deciding that his tone and the smile had undoubtedly had the desired effect of calming her, he cautiously eased his grip. “Not harm,” he said again, trying to emphasize his benign intentions by simplifying his sentence structure.

  Something flickered in her eyes. Abruptly, she dragged in a deep breath, c
losed her eyes and went limp.

  Consternation filled Aidan for a moment. Studying her face, though, he decided she hadn’t passed out and the suspicion arose that she was feigning to catch him off guard when he let go of her.

  Regardless of whether she was or not, though, he couldn’t very well continue to keep her pinned to the ground. He had to let go of her at some point. After some mental exercise to decide on the best way to go about it, he cautiously eased his grip a little more and drew his knees up, settling his buttocks on her thighs and sitting up.

  She confirmed his suspicion that she was faking a faint by opening her eyes a sliver, no doubt to gauge her timing for the next assault!

  “I’ll let you go if you’ll refrain from attacking me again.”

  She narrowed her eyes at him at his tone, but she smiled at the same time. There was something distinctly seductive about that look and, despite the uneasy feeling that she had something unpleasant in mind, Aidan felt his body react to it in a very distracting way. “No harm,” he repeated, that time trying to convey the idea that he didn’t want to be harmed any more by wrenching the switch from her grip.

  Her hand tightened momentarily, but then she let go of the stick, to his relief. He smiled at her again. “My name’s Aidan. Do you have a name?”

  She stared at him uncomprehendingly.

  He frowned, trying to decide the best way to communicate. Finally, he transferred his hold on her wrists to one hand and touched his chest. “Aidan.”

  She smiled at him. “Fuck yourself.”

  He frowned, mentally testing the unfamiliar syllables before he tried repeating them. “Fk r slf?”

  She uttered a snort and looked down, biting her lip.

  Tipping her face up, he studied her expression and discovered she was looking perfectly blank. Maybe she wasn’t very intelligent? Maybe he’d been right to begin with and it was just a fluke that she appeared so similar to his species and she was actually no more than a higher life-form with very little intelligence?

  She’d spoken, though. He was certain the sounds she’d made were actual speech. “Aidan,” he repeated, touching his chest again and then touched hers. “Fk r slf?”