Return to Eden

by Kaitlyn O'Connor

  He frowned, clearly confused. She went back to the pantomime, fluttering her fingers to try to give the impression of rain. “Rain water runoff.”

  He began digging around in his pockets after a few moments and finally pulled something out that looked like a narrow tube—or a very big drinking straw. He removed the packaging, examined it and then leaned down to put one end in the water.

  Anya was torn as she watched him. She hadn’t had more than a few sips of water in hours and hours—she didn’t even know anymore. But as thirsty as she was, she was still very reluctant to drink from the mud puddle.

  Especially since she’d pissed down the tunnel a little ways.

  She was desperate enough, she began trying to convince herself that she really didn’t have to worry about the urine. It wasn’t as if either of them had produced enough to flow this far! It had probably just seeped into the concrete.

  She certainly didn’t recall walking through it.

  Aidan handed her the tube. She examined it as he had, discovering that it was some kind of filtration device—not merely a tube.

  Closing her mind to the possible origins of the water and/or anything it might have run over or through on its way to this spot, she drank as much as she could hold and then passed the straw back to Aidan. He leaned down to drink more and then offered her the device. She considered it and decided to top her tank off since there was no telling when they might find water again. While she was working on trying to make like a camel and fill her storage tank, Aidan got up and explored the ledge that ran around the pool.

  “Here! Dis ting!”

  Anya peered through the gloom and saw he’d discovered an access ladder. She looked up as he flicked his light toward the ceiling. He had highlighted a hole the ladder disappeared into, she saw, but it was too dark beyond to see anything.

  She was willing to bet the ladder didn’t go much higher than what she could see, though. She got up reluctantly. “You know those damned things y’all sent here probably ate the ladder,” she said crossly. “Just how do you think we’re going to get out when we run out of ladder?”

  He summoned her imperiously with a gesture. She contemplated shooting him a bird and refusing, but he didn’t seem to have lost his determination to hang on to her and she wasn’t up to trying to outrun him.

  In fact, she was feeling less up to it as time went on. She refused to consider the dependency she’d rapidly developed—for an alien who also happened to be an enemy! Physically, she was just done in. She’d always considered that she was in pretty damned good shape, but she’d hardly had any sleep, anything to eat or drink, and she’d been moving almost constantly—in spurts of running for her life! The uneasy sense that she wasn’t actually very well equipped for survival swamped her abruptly. She tried to shake it, but it was as hard to ignore as her aches and pains.

  Aidan waited until she’d reached him and began climbing. As she’d predicted they ran out of ladder shortly after they passed into the shaft. “I hate to say I told you so,” she muttered.

  Instead of heading back down as she’d expected, however, the alien surveyed the dirt shaft leading up moved to the very last rung and then carefully positioned himself so that he was braced against the sides with his arms and legs. Anya studied him doubtfully, fully expecting him to come down on top of her. Instead, he began to inch his way upward.

  “I can’t do that,” she said flatly.

  “Yes.”

  “No!” she said more forcefully.

  He glared down at her, braced himself carefully and then reached down. “Yes!”

  “My arms and legs aren’t long enough, damn it!”

  She could see he was determined, though.

  After debating, briefly, whether she should just take her chances with the sewer and hope that somewhere there was an access to the surface that she had a better chance of navigating, she yielded to his determination and struggled up. He pulled her between his spread legs, settled her briefly on his lap, and then lifted.

  “Oh shit!”

  With a lot of grunting, straining, and cussing, she managed to inch her way up a few feet. The opening at the top still seemed impossibly far away, but every time she stopped to rest, Aidan planted his hands on her bare ass and gave her another push upwards. It worked better the first few times. The feel of his hands on her bare ass was enough inspiration to get her struggling higher, but it didn’t take long for her to move beyond caring where he put his hands.

  The problem with giving up was that by the time she reached the point where she didn’t feel like she could climb anymore if there’d been a fire under her, they were a long way from the hard concrete floor below. Feeling more than a little nauseated from the strain and the gallon of water she’d drank, she fought trembling, burning muscles, nausea and fear and kept trying until the lip of the shaft was almost within reach. Her anxiety then switched from fear of falling to what might be outside.

  Right up until the moment of truth, she’d actually felt somewhat more secure to have Aidan below her to break her fall.

  Or to land on if they both fell.

  She began scanning everything that she could see above her. Relief didn’t really sink in, though, until she was high enough to get a 360 degree view of at least twenty feet surrounding the manhole. It took the last of her energy and Aidan shoving from behind to climb out and collapse on the dirt. She lay panting, shaking, and struggling with the urge to puke while she listened to Aidan climb out. He collapsed beside her, huffing for breath.

  That was somewhat mollifying. He looked to be in great shape. If he was exhausted from the climb, maybe she wasn’t doing too badly?

  He was on his feet in a few moments, however. Leaning down, he hauled her to her feet, checked the thing on his wrist and began hurrying roughly southward. They’d emerged in a utility cut. The trees had been cut down in a wide swath to accommodate the high power lines, but there was vegetation that was nearly breast high on her. With that as a yardstick, she deduced that the cat alien must be between six and seven feet tall. Certainly a good bit more than six!

  So he didn’t just seem big and scary! He was!

  It was an advantage for him. He trampled through the high brush relatively unfazed. Following in his wake, Anya didn’t fare quite as well, for although he blazed a path with his boots, there were still plenty of bushes to slap at her as she followed.

  When he stopped abruptly, she smacked into his back and then fell back a step. He sent her a look over his shoulder. “What?” Anya demanded irritably. “Like I can see a damned thing!”

  “Looks like whatever this is it’s running in roughly the right direction. We might make better time to stick with it.”

  “Yes, well, gobble-dy gook to you, too!”

  He shook his head. “Dis vay.”

  Anya followed his pointing finger and went up on her tiptoes to get a better look. Then she looked up at the sky uneasily. “What about those things?”

  Aidan studied the sky, as well. Without a word, he led her to the edge of the forest. Except for the damned briars, it was a good bit easier to follow the line of trees. Pines just naturally worked as weed killers and not a lot grew beneath them—except the briars—which Anya discovered still had some blackberries attached! “Oh thank god! A food-type substance I’m familiar with!”

  Ignoring his tug to keep moving, she stopped and plucked a handful, looked them over perfunctorily, and then popped a couple into her mouth. Without sugar, they were a lot more sour than she’d anticipated. She scrunched her face up at the tartness, shuddering.

  Aidan chuckled.

  The sound caught her completely off guard. Her eyes popped open and she stared at him with a mixture of doubt and amazement. But she could see pure amusement in his expression and that dispatched the last of her doubts that she’d actually heard him laugh.

  An alien!

  Except that wasn’t what went through her mind. It was a nice sound, created pleasure. Before she even con
sciously acknowledged that she liked the sound, she felt the effects on her spirits, felt a buoyancy arise from the pleasure that seemed to ‘lift’ her. She found herself looking back at him with amusement even as his smile faded. “They’re good. Really! Want some?” she asked, lifting her hand to offer the last few she still had.

  He grinned, wryly, and shook his head.

  Anya used her finger to mark a cross on her chest. “Cross my heart. They won’t hurt you.”

  He studied the gesture and then her face, looking vaguely puzzled but intrigued. Shrugging, Anya popped the last couple into her mouth and searched for more, filling the pockets of his jacket. Sour as they were--and she couldn’t handle a lot of that at once—they were food and she had no intention of missing out on it when all she had to do was pick it.

  They’d been walking about an hour when Anya realized the viewing area ahead of them was widening. About fifteen minutes later she caught a glimpse of asphalt and then commercial-type metal buildings. Her heart skipped several beats with a mixture of hopefulness and anxiety.

  Well, bits and pieces.

  Chapter Six

  Anya decided that they’d reached an industrial park after surveying the area thoroughly.

  It was almost more bizarre than anything she’d seen since the alien landing/invasion!

  There were patches of asphalt. Some even still bore the paint stripe that indicated it had been a parking lot. Ditto the buildings and everything else that had once made up the industrial area. Nothing looked corroded, as if time was the culprit for the missing pieces, and yet it still looked rather like a ghost town, something that had stood long, long ago and had been worn away by time and the weather until there were only pieces left here and there.

  There were parking lots around each of what she could see had once been massive metal buildings, but no sign of cars or of people, no sign of bodies either—thankfully!

  Was everyone in hiding, she wondered? Or had the alien things …?

  She shook that thought. There were bound to be casualties, but there had also been plenty of time to take cover. Even the people on the interstate like she had been and away from home had fled to safety. They were just smart enough to hide.

  It took them over an hour to traverse the industrial complex. By the time they had the sun was hovering near the horizon and Anya was thinking uneasily about shelter for the night before it got too dark to look for a place.

  “We need to find a place to spend the night,” she said, pointing to the sun’s position.

  Aidan studied her when she spoke and dutifully looked when she pointed out that they were looking at sunset very soon and then shook his head.

  “We’re close now. We should be able to find the ship before dark.”

  Anya glared at him. She was exhausted—weak with fatigue, lack of food and water. She wasn’t in any shape to run for her life and she wasn’t in the mood to try sign language! “Look, fucktard! It’s almost dark! There’s no telling what will come out to eat once the sun sets!”

  Aidan glanced at his wrist thingy and then glared at her. “Ah-na fckd ard! No Aidan! Ned ship! Go!”

  Uneasiness slithered through Anya despite her anger—for several reasons. First off, it seemed pretty clear that Aidan had figured out enough of her language to know when she was being insulting. And she didn’t think it was really safe to insult him if he was aware of being insulted, seeing as how he was a really big and potentially very dangerous alien! Secondly, it seemed to her that he was suggesting that he intended to carry her away on his ship. And while she wasn’t especially happy about the way things were going on Earth at the moment, she damned well wasn’t going off to alien land with chewbacka!

  Ok, so he wasn’t hairy enough to fit that particular name, but she still wasn’t going off with him!

  She set her jaw stubbornly. “I’m not getting on any damned ship!” she snarled at him through gritted teeth.

  Aidan stopped, glaring back at her. “On ship, yes!”

  “On ship, no!” Anya snapped back at him.

  He studied her speculatively for several moments and then, quick as lightning, his hands shot out to grab her. Before she’d even had time to suck in a startled breath, he’d tossed her across one shoulder and manacled her legs to his chest with one arm.

  “What the hell? Put me down you son-of-a-bitch!” Anya snarled.

  Instead of complying, he popped her ass—her bare ass! “Quiet! Call narltacter! Eat Ah-na and Aidan!”

  She had a bad feeling he was talking about that thing that had chased them into the sewer system. That thought killed the urge to vent at the top of her lungs. It didn’t take the fight out of her. It was the very fact that she was concerned about being bait for something like that, or worse, that had inspired her to object strenuously before.

  It was still useless—a case of determination not paying off. She had no nails. She’d chewed them off to the quick. She couldn’t get close enough to bite him. And every time she boxed him with her fist, he popped her bare ass—a little harder.

  When she finally subsided, he deposited her on her feet again. Pushing his face close to hers, he glared and shook his finger in her face warningly. Anya resisted, barely, the temptation to chomp down on it. Instead, she glared back at him malevolently.

  His expression hardened.

  Anya decided he could do ‘evil threat’ way better than she could. After a few moments, she looked away, discovering that they’d entered what had clearly once been a fairly sizeable town. She frowned. “Is it just me, or does it seem strange to you that those insect-thingies are leaving more and more stuff? I mean, they cleaned up everything in sight when they came out of that missile thingy.”

  She saw when she glanced at Aidan that he was looking puzzled, as well, but naturally enough there was no way to tell if it was for the same reason she was confused.

  She supposed, if those insect-like things actually were something out of nature, that they might have gotten their fill and just hadn’t gotten around to polishing off everything in sight. She’d had the impression, though, that they weren’t actually insects of any kind, nothing natural, at any rate.

  So had they just worn themselves out consuming everything up to this point? Or were they malfunctioning? And if they were malfunctioning was that a good thing? Or might they do something worse?

  Aidan had also noticed that something wasn’t quite right. He wasn’t a little uneasy, however. He was extremely unnerved. There were clear signs that at least one of the terra-formers was malfunctioning—the one nearest their location—and he couldn’t think of anything good that had ever come of anything malfunctioning.

  He’d been preoccupied enough with his goal that it hadn’t registered completely or immediately that there were more and more signs of the civilization that should have been disappearing. Once the ‘wrongness’ finally resolved itself in his mind, however, it added to the sense of urgency he felt to find the ship and leave the planet as soon as possible. The terra-forming at least followed a logical progression of events and was, therefore, predictable even if the events themselves could be life-threatening. If the things had gone off programming there was no telling what the damned nanites were liable to do!

  Just as worrisome, he thought Ah-na was right about the danger increasing the closer to dark they got and the sun had dropped from sight long before his wrist computer indicated they were nearing the ship. He still thought they’d be better off to seek shelter in the ship if they could find it and assuming it was whole enough to offer shelter. As far as he knew it was comprised of materials the nanites weren’t programmed to break down and that made it the best insurance they had that it would still be sheltering them if they let down their guard and slept.

  They both needed sleep. Neither of them had managed more than snatches of sleep here and there since they’d found one another.

  He also needed something a little more substantial than the rations in his suit and he didn’t think he was as
suming too much to think Ah-na did, too.

  He stopped and looked around when his wrist computer indicated that they were within fifty meters of the ship. Seeing no sign of it, wondering if it, too, was malfunctioning, he glared down at the wrist computer and finally tested it. The test indicated that it was functioning properly and he lifted his head and scanned the area again.

  “What’s wrong?” Anya asked uneasily.

  Aidan glanced at her a little absently and then at the display of his wrist computer. A little surprised to discover the computer had translated—or seemed to have—he responded. The computer displayed a translation for him. “Not see sheep.”

  Anya gaped at him and then frowned. “We don’t raise sheep around here! What are you looking for sheep for?”

  Aidan studied his wrist computer and felt his face heating with discomfort. “Sheep. Sh-ee-ip.” He made a motion with his hand of something flying through the air.

  Anya uttered a snorting laugh. “Oh! Ship!” She frowned after she’d looked around. “Is it supposed to be?”

  Aidan nodded, pointing toward the remains of what must have been a very large building if the jagged remnants that formed a perimeter were any indication.

  Anya studied the ruin. It didn’t look to her as if there was anything but a pile of rubble but maybe his ship had somehow ended up under the rubble?

  It made sense if the ship had come down after the bug-thingies had started taking everything apart. And she thought he had.

  “Maybe it’s under that stuff? How big is it?”

  Aidan frowned, studying the rubble doubtfully and his computer’s translation of Ah-na’s comments. Finally, he shrugged. The computer said it was there. The rubble pile certainly looked big enough to possibly be concealing it. If it was under the pile they might not be able to dig it out, but it was certainly worth checking.

  Of course, it might be too damaged at this point to do them any good as far as shelter, but there would be some helpful survival gear and supplies inside at the very least.

  Moving forward, he began circling the mound in search of a spot that looked like the easiest place to tackle excavating the ship.