by Mike Kilroy
That usually was a bad sign.
Brock, those deep thoughts causing his eyes to narrow, finally spoke. “This is too good. This is unsettling.”
Those words knocked the happy off their faces.
Zill glared at him as she mashed the buttons on her controller, the sounds of simulated gunfire echoing on surround-sound. “God! Why do you have to be such a buzzkill?”
“Sure. We won and we are being rewarded, but we have never been rewarded so lavishly. This is beyond anything they have ever given us before. I mean, we’re getting our favorite foods, our favorite activities. We have plush surroundings and we want for nothing. It’s too good.”
The others rolled their eyes and let out long exhales of frustration aimed at Brock. Well, all but Mizuki, who just sat in her own little corner of the cosmos and stared at them blankly.
Cass set her controller down sullenly. “You know, he’s right. I have a bloody bad feeling about this.”
Harness growled. “Relax. Maybe they were so shocked Zack pulled it out for us, they wanted to do something awesome.”
The group seemed to accept that explanation. Zack knew better, however.
He couldn’t keep it in any longer. He didn’t have a name for what he was feeling—maybe it was guilt or shame or dishonor—but it was building inside him like steam in a kettle. It needed to whistle out.
Zack whistled. “We didn’t win, exactly.”
All the eyes in the room expectantly turned to him.
“What do you mean?” Brock asked.
“I didn’t kill the German girl. She didn’t kill me either. We just sort of laid there until we passed out. I mean, I guess she could have awakened and killed me, but I don’t think so. I think it was basically a draw.”
Harness cocked his head and his shoulders slumped. “What. The. Hell. You loser. You goddamned loser.”
“What does it matter?” Zill was fond of asking that question. “We’re here, obviously. They must have been okay with it.”
“They’re just going to screw us later. Screw us big time in our puckered butt holes because of this pansy-ass screw-up. He screwed us. We’re just all screwed.” Harness certainly had a way with words.
Brock was the voice of reason. “Not necessarily. This may be what it appears to be: an elaborate reward.” Brock then bowed his head and winced. “Then again, this could be like a last meal before an execution.”
Jenai looked lovingly into Zack’s eyes and smiled big and wide. Zack wanted to look away, but he couldn’t. He didn’t want to hurt her. “I don’t care that he didn’t avenge me.”
He didn’t want to hurt anyone, it seemed, even if that was the best and right thing to do. He knew it and most of the others knew it. As weak as his position was before, it was even weaker now. One by one, except for the doting Jenai, the others rose from their comfort and peered down at Zack, some with disdain and some with loathsome disregard, as they left to retire to their spacious rooms, knowing they would pay dearly in the next battle for their leisure.
Jenai just clutched his arm and rested her head on his shoulder. “Don’t pay any attention to them. You’re still my hero.”
Zack disliked Jenai’s reaction most of all.
Alone isn’t so bad.
Part I
Chapter Seven
Gorn Free
Zack stood in a flat field that stretched for as far as the eye could see in every direction.
The grasses swayed in a breeze and a milky sun hung above him. It was cold, but not exceedingly so, and he wore a wool coat, dark jeans and boots and black gloves that were skin tight on his hands.
He removed dark sunglasses from the bridge of his nose and squinted at Jenai. She was spinning to survey in all directions.
She also wore dark sunglasses, a wool coat that fit her perfectly and black jeans and boots.
Harness, Brock, Zill and Cass stood a football field away and once they spotted Zack and Jenai, walked briskly toward them.
Once again Mizuki was nowhere to be seen. “Where’s Mizuki?”
No one spoke; no one knew the answer anyway. They were all in the same dress, which wasn’t particularly shocking. They all had appeared in the arena with similar clothing before.
Zill broke the silence as Zill was known to do. “Well, this is awk. I mean more awk than usual.”
Harness held his hands up and peered at his gloves, then slipped them off angrily. “This is bullcrap.”
“I think we are in Kansas,” Brock quipped.
Zack couldn’t help but chuckle at the irony.
“Wherever we are, it sucks,” Harness groused and slammed his hands into the pockets of his coat. He flinched and grimaced and felt around in the right pocket. “What the balls is this?”
Harness pulled a syringe from the coat. His finger had a bead of blood on it.
Zill expressed her concern loudly. “Oh my God, did you, like, prick yourself? Jesus, you could have given yourself smallpox or something.”
Harness glowered. “I didn’t give myself stupid smallpox. I didn’t even push down on the plunger. I’m okay. Jesus.”
Brock carefully pulled a similar plunger out of his pocket and held it up to the ashen sky. He shook it slowly, and then shook it vigorously. “It could be some sort of toxic agent. Some sort of poison.”
They each reached carefully into the pockets of their coats and they each removed a syringe filled with the same clear liquid.
Cass looked with ire down at the syringe she held. “Bloody great. Now we get to poison people to death.”
Brock held his syringe up and shook it again. “I suggest we treat these with the highest caution.”
Zill scoffed. “Ya think?”
“The question is,” Jenai said in her high-pitched and meek Jenai voice, “who are we poisoning? I don’t see anyone else.”
Zack scanned the horizon again. There was no activity, not so much as a prairie dog or rodent or bird or even a fly.
This, too, did not surprise Zack. He had learned their captors had a complete grasp on broad concepts, but little understanding of the small details, the little things that truly made a thing real.
Perhaps that was another of their weaknesses.
Cass threw her arms in the air in frustration. “Well, geniuses. What do we do?”
Harness always had an answer. “Let’s go find the things we need to jam this stuff into.” He marched toward the west and had made it a good twenty yards before he turned back to see the rest of the group hadn’t budged. “C’mon! They aren’t just gonna come up to us and say hi.”
Reluctantly, they followed, Cass first—of course Cass would follow first—and then Zill and Brock. Jenai waited to see what Zack was going to do.
Zack shrugged and began to walk. Jenai followed next to him. “I wonder what is in the syringes?” she asked.
“Nothing good. I know that.”
Zack could sense Jenai wanted to ask him something else, something with more meaning than the makeup of the mystery liquid they carried carefully in their pocket.
Finally, after several aborted attempts, Jenai spit it out. “Hey, uh, I noticed you have been a little distant with me. Is everything okay?”
It was Zack’s turn to stammer. “Well, Jenai, I think you are great …”
Jenai looked wounded as she interrupted Zack. “I’ve heard this speech before. You need space. I get it. I just thought being here, like this, there was enough space between all of us. I’ll leave you alone.”
She began to walk briskly away. Zack reached out a gloved hand to stop her, to pull her back and apologize, but he quashed it. Instead he slid his hand back into his pocket to hold the syringe securely.
Last thing I need is to stab myself with it.
Jenai glanced back at Zack. A frown creased her face.
Then again, maybe that won’t be so bad.
They walked for at least an hour, maybe two—Zack had lost all sense of time—and the terrain had not changed. It was
as if they walked on a treadmill with the background moving like a belt around them in a never-ending circle. The grass, the sky, the horizon appeared the same. There was an unsettling calm to everything; no wind; no noise; just a void. It unnerved Zack.
Finally, Harness held his hand up for them to stop and pointed toward the horizon. There were six figures cast in a silhouette against the grey sky. They appeared to be marching toward them.
There was nowhere to hide and nowhere to take cover. There would be no ambushes, no attacking on multiple fronts. It was going to be a clear strategy of marching forward until you meet the enemy. All they had for weapons was their fists and a syringe full of a mystery toxin.
“Nothing to do but keep going, I guess,” Brock said matter-of-factly. “Let’s get this over with.”
As they tramped onward over the grass, they got a better view of who their opponents would be on this calm and sterile battlefield.
“It’s the Gorn!” Jenai exclaimed, almost gleeful.
Indeed, it was the lizard people. They were also wearing coats and dark clothing and gloves—mittens would be a more apt description—over their webbed fingers.
Both groups stopped about thirty yards apart and gazed at each other across the field.
Zack was afraid. He could tell the Gorn were, too.
Harness, as was his character, charged ahead first, caterwauling like the crazed lunatic he was. A Gorn charged, too, and both met in the middle of the field with flying fists and kicking legs.
Cass galloped off next, whooping as she ran, and then Brock. Zill was hesitant at first, but then wholly committed to the plan and churned her legs rapidly in a crazed attack. Zack just looked at a terrified Jenai and whispered. “We don’t have to do this.”
“Yes we do.” Jenai pointed at two Gorn rushing toward them.
Zack braced for a tackle, but the Gorn merely stopped in front of them and stared. They looked rather human, save for the green scales. Their jaws jutted out like a small snout, and their eyes were much larger than that of a human.
One Gorn, a female Zack thought by body build, tried to advance at Zack, her scaly lips curled in a snarl, but the male Gorn held her back.
Jenai reached out and grabbed Zack’s forearm and squeezed as she whispered. “I think that’s the one we saw through that barrier. He has the same eyes.”
Zack leaned forward to get a better look. He agreed. Those were the same eyes he saw peering at him through the hedge.
As they stood there, examining each other, a war raged in the field behind the Gorn. It was not going well for Zack and Jenai’s side. Harness was holding his own as he jabbed his syringe into the throat of the Gorn and pressed down on the plunger. The trauma of the stab itself was enough to drop the Gorn. Zill and Cass, though, were bludgeoned by flying mitted fists. Brock was felled, a Gorn standing over him, kicking. Brock struggled to pull the syringe out of his pocket as he absorbed the booted blows and was finally successful, but the Gorn kicked it out of his hand and finished him off with a brutal stomp to the throat.
The triumphant Gorn picked up the syringe and peered at it oddly.
The Gorn don’t have syringes.
Jenai squeezed his arm again. “What do we do?”
Zack shrugged.
The male Gorn spoke, unfamiliar sounds escaping his mouth. Then, he held his hands up in a sign of surrender. His female friend was not happy and shook her head vigorously.
Zack nodded and put his hands up as well.
“Truce,” Zack said, knowing full well the Gorn could not possibly understand.
The male Gorn smiled, his eyes becoming wet.
Jenai began to weep with joy, too. “Oh my God. I think they understand. I think they don’t want to fight.”
As the last word left Jenai’s mouth, Harness came up from behind the female Gorn, grabbed her head and twisted it. Zack could hear a snap as the female Gorn fell to the ground in a heap. The male Gorn grabbed Harness by the throat and squeezed. Harness struggled and peered through bulging eyes at Zack for help, but Zack was frozen in place.
With a few hard squeezes by the Gorn, Harness was dead and dropped with a flop onto the grass.
The male Gorn turned his familiar eyes to Zack, fell to his knees and lowered his head in surrender and despair.
Jenai said hysterically, “What do we do?”
Zack had no idea.
He pulled the syringe from his pocket and stared at it. He shook it, the liquid sloshing about inside.
Zack cocked his head and thought of his captors, of how they operated, of the trials and tests they had already presented to them and he had a theory—an epiphany really—that just leapt into his mind.
Zack knelt in front of the dead Gorn. Her eyes, which swirled with reds and yellows and were soft and kind, stared at him blankly. In one quick motion, Zack stabbed the needle of the syringe in her neck and pushed down hard on the plunger. The male Gorn flinched, feigning an attack, but remained on his knees, despondent as tears ran down his scaly face.
Jenai bellowed, “What are you doing?”
“I have a theory,” Zack answered as he watched the female Gorn closely.
A minute passed, and then another.
“Nothing’s happening!” Jenai yelled, her voice high and screeching again. “She’s already dead. Poisoning her is a little overkill isn’t it? What do we do? What do we do?”
“Hold on, Jenai.” Zack closed his eyes and said a silent prayer to his God or the female Gorn’s God—if she had one—or to all the Gods in all of the cosmos.
He wasn’t picky.
“This has to work,” Zack muttered, his eyes still closed, a silent prayer still chanting in his head.
A minute passed, and then another.
Still nothing.
Zack exhaled, disappointed. He was so sure it would work.
He stood and walked to the male Gorn, who starred up at him weeping. “I’m sorry,” Zack said. He got the sense that the male Gorn had forgiven him.
Zack heard a moan and his eyes snapped back to the female Gorn, whose red and yellow eyes—quite striking and beautiful—had life in them again. She blinked rapidly as she sat up and felt her neck in disbelief.
The male Gorn crawled quickly to her and embraced her tightly.
“I think they’re in love,” Jenai said, coyly.
Zack smiled, and then looked up to the sky defiantly. “I figured it out! I resurrected her! We didn’t kill each other!”
He screamed as loud as he could, so loud his vocal cords burned. “The game is over! Send us home! Send us all home!”
Part I
Chapter Eight
Play It Again, Sam
Zack awoke to the site of drool on his pillow.
It was his pillow, not some strange one in a strange cabin or a strange house with a plasma television, or a strange cell with a plasma barrier.
It was his pillow stuffed snuggly into his Star Trek pillow case.
There was drool on Spock.
He sat up and smiled. He was home. Sunshine spilled through his window. He peered out into his backyard and saw the grass needed to be mowed. He hated to mow the grass, but today, he would welcome it.
His posters of Freddie Goes to Hollywood, Coldplay, Evanescence and Radiohead hung on the cork board, which was secured to the powder blue walls of his room.
The smells were even as he remembered them. The aroma of eggs being cooked in a skillet downstairs filled his nostrils.
A part of Zack doubted if this was really home. His captors had shown an undeniable knack for recreating locales. That realization made his heart sink and his stomach turn.
He quickly got out of bed and straightened his white T-shirt with “Relax” written across it in big, black, bold letters.
If only I could follow that advice.
Zack slipped on his jeans—they were his favorite pair and looked every bit as such with holes worn in the pockets and threadbare on the thighs—and opened his window, feeling
a rush of fresh Maine air hit him in the face. Nothing felt as good as that early spring air, and he must surely be back in the early spring as the trees were just budding.
The scent of eggs made his stomach grumble as he turned and tore out of his room. His bare feet pounded the stairs as he descended them quickly, yelling “Mom! Mom!” as he did.
Zack burst into the kitchen. There were eggs sizzling on the stove, but his mother was nowhere to be seen. Neither was his father, who he supposed would still be hurrying for work, or already on the way there.
He searched the house, the living room first and then the study where his dad often escaped to be alone and read—and drink himself into a stupor. He rushed up the stairs again, flinging the door open to his parent’s bedroom. The bed was unmade.
No one was home.
By the time he made the ponderous decent back into the kitchen, smoke, white at first and then black, billowed up from the skillet.
His eggs were burnt.
Can’t even enjoy the eggs.
Dismay crashed over him. He was home, but it wasn’t really home. He was stuck in another snowglobe of his captors’ creation, perhaps the cruelest one to date.
Zack removed the skillet from the burner, turned off the stove and then walked slowly and despondently into his father’s den. He stepped over a random smattering of empty Jack Daniels bottles, beer cans and even a snifter, and sat slumped on the loveseat that was pressed against the wall across from a large oak desk.
He rubbed his eyes and felt like crying, but he would not give his jailors the satisfaction. Instead he stood, paced angrily for a few moments and then swiped a stack of papers off his father’s desk.
The papers tumbled to the floor. It gave Zack a small measure of satisfaction. At least he held dominion over that much.
As he looked down, he saw newspaper clippings pasted to thick white resume paper. One headline read: “Police still search for missing Farmington boy”
Another read: “Farmington teen presumed dead”
Zack knelt and pored through the papers. Some were newspaper and magazine articles describing his disappearance. Others were letters written to various politicians, urging them to keep the investigation and search alive.
