“Both.”
She glances around. “I was really hoping that he would’ve been here. That’s the only reason I didn’t fight them when they came for me. “
“You went willingly?” I ask in disbelief.
“Yeah. I wanted to see him.” Then she narrows her eyes. “I wanted to kick his ass.”
“I don’t know. I would have let him be and ran like hell.”
“No. I couldn’t let it go that easily. I keep hoping that they actually did catch him and he tried to fight them, so they had no choice but to crush him into itty-bitty pieces.”
“Ouch.”
“I pray that God answers my prayers. He has to right the injustice.” Jasmine tosses the last pellet into her mouth and takes another drink from her container.
I inspect what she gave me at length now. They look like rabbit turds, except they’re hard instead of swishy. I bring them up to my nose and take a whiff. It doesn’t have a smell. “What are these?”
“That, my dear, is your lunch.” Amused by the look that must be on my face, she chuckles. “Eat up!”
“Food?”
She points to a bucket in the center of our containment. All the food you could ever want is in there. You eat one at a time and drink water in between.” She jiggles her bag for emphasis. “This is some kind of canteen. I don’t know how the pellets works but they make you full.”
I roll one of the pellets between my thumb and finger. “It’ll make me full?”
“You might need more than one, but yes, it seems to do the trick.”
After eyeing and playing with it for a couple minutes more I pop one into my mouth and swallow. It doesn’t make me feel any different. I’m still hungrier than ever. Jasmine hands me the water and I drink it. Almost immediately my belly feels full. I pop in the other two and gulp down water.
“Slow down.” Jasmine pulls the canteen away from my mouth. “You’ll get too full and your stomach will hurt.”
I wipe the trickle of water that’s spilling from my lips. “I’m hungry.” My stomach grumbles and a burp erupts from my mouth. “Excuse me,” I say, embarrassed. It’s not even a girly burp, but one that should come from a teenage boy.
“Just give it a second.”
I nod, thinking after a couple of minutes I’ll go and empty that container full of pellets.
* * * * *
April 23rd, 2012: Day 32
The next morning I’m sitting in a circle with the others, with a pocket full of pellets. The lizards, as everyone else has begun to call them, don’t seem to mind that we’re congregating with each other, plotting our escape. I’m pretty sure they see us as insignificant little beings. Two of them have gone off, walking right through the electrical barrier like it was nothing, leaving us with only one guard.
“Can’t we just take out those boxes?” Mark, Lizzie’s husband, asks. “I think if we can take them out, even one, we’d be able to weaken the barrier and escape.”
“And how do you suppose we do that?” Jim responds.
“A rock?” the woman with the children suggests. She looks around wildly, searching the ground. The two little girls cling to her sides. “Couldn’t we find a big rock and crush it? Maybe we can damage it enough that it will break.”
“Sure. Find us a rock, Joy,” Jim says.
Joy leans back some in response to his tone.
I just met Jim but can already see he has more attitude than Jasmine. I don’t know what I expected, but I know sarcasm laced with annoyance when I hear it. The whole idea of this is to brainstorm. “I see why no one has tried to escape,” I say. “He shoots down every idea.”
“She’s right. You don’t have to be a dick about it,” Mark says. “It’s an idea. We’re all entitled to one.”
“I told her that idea wouldn’t work yesterday. It didn’t work then and it ain’t going to work today.”
Mark crosses his arms over his chest and tilts his head, assessing Jim. “Why not?”
Jim threw up his hands. “There are no freaking rocks anywhere around here.”
Everyone looks around, scanning the ground, even me. I see grass and dirt, but not a rock in sight.
Mark loosens his arms. “Oh.”
“Well that’s out,” Lizzie says.
“How much time do we have until they move us?” I ask.
Joy inhales sharply and the kids cry and whimper softly.
Mark shrugs. “We don’t know. That’s why we have to think of something quick. I feel like we’re on borrowed time.”
It would be easy to become dejected and to even lose hope. No one here can think of an escape plan and we don’t know how much time we have before they move us. And it’s apparent that they plan to move us. There’s no reason to keep us where we are. We’re in some type of holding pen, that’s all this is I think, as I let my gaze wander around.
“We’re going to stay here until they can get more humans,” I whisper.
“What did you say?” Jasmine asks.
She’s sitting next to me. I turn to her and repeat the words I thought I had only said in my head.
“They’re going to keep us here until they have more humans. When they have more of us then they’ll move us.” Everyone is staring at me. I don’t know why they haven’t thought of this before. “There are only eight of us. Why move eight people when there’s trillions on Earth? Maybe they have some kind of quota or something?”
“Shit,” Mark curses. “I think you may be right. When we came, it was just Joy and the kids, then everyone else came trickling in.”
“When they have their quota they’ll make the call and we’ll be picked up,” Jim says, his face set in disbelief. “And we don’t even know what the magic number is.”
Magic number.
There will be nothing magical when they reach their quota.
Joseph stares past me and mutters a curse.
“No, no, no,” Joy cries. “Not another one. We need more time.”
I turn and, as if in slow motion, I see what they are all staring at.
“Not you!” I scream. “How did they get you?”
I leap to my feet as a lizard leads MJ into the containment field.
Chapter Seventeen
As soon as the lizard leads MJ in, it walks in the other direction, toward the other lizard. I run to MJ, crying as I do. I wanted to see my friends again, but not here, not like this. Never like this.
I don’t even try to slow down as I reach him. I slam into his body, almost knocking him down. He grabs and holds me just as tightly as I’m holding him.
“How did they get you,” I whisper. My face is pressed into his neck. The tears are running from my eyes onto his skin.
Although he’s hugging me, he’s distant, cold and hard. “I let them,” he says in a hoarse voice.
“What? Why would you do something like that?”
He pulls away from me and, reluctantly, I let him. “I had to, Sin.”
I stare at him, noticing for the first time the redness in his eyes.
“They killed Shayla.”
“Oh, God.” I didn’t want to think about it. I wanted to imagine she had gotten up and she was fine. I didn’t allow myself to remember how oddly her body lay against the wall, or how the blood dripped from her mouth down to her chin. I didn’t want to remember how still she had been.
My legs buckle underneath me, bringing me closer to the ground. I reach out, trying to catch myself. From behind me, arms hook under my armpits, stopping my fall.
“Whoa,” Jasmine says. “You know this guy?
“MJ, my friend.”
I’m still in a daze. My mind reels with the images of Shayla. She’s dead. I should have…I should have what? What could I have done to save her?
“I’m Jasmine,” I hear her say. “So are you some kind of stupid or something? Or is there a reason you let them catch you?”
“Jasmine! Shut up! Not everyone wants to hear you talk.”
I shake her hands off
of me. Standing, I hold onto the flaps of his jacket for support. “I’m so sorry. I know how close you were to her.”
“I should’ve have been there. I should have protected her,” his voice cracks. “I was supposed to take care of her.”
“You did. She knew you were her protector.”
The tears I think he was trying to hold back begin to slowly trickle down his cheeks. I pull him to me and hug him.
“I should have done more for her. I should have told her…I should have told her how I felt about her.”
I rock him in my arms. I feel his hands fist in the back of my shirt. He lets out a howl of pain.
“I loved her. I wanted to tell her so many times, but I was too stupid to do anything about it. That’s why I went back for her. I felt it then, that I loved her more than a friend. I thought I would find the right time to tell her. I thought…I had more time.”
My heart is aching so hard for him. I think I’m crying just as hard as he is. I know how much Shayla cared for MJ and how much she wanted to be with him, and I want to scream because of the injustice of it.
“She loved you,” I whisper to him. “She loved you so much.”
With a guttural cry, he tries to pull away from me, but I can’t let him go. He needs me more than ever now. “I’m going to kill every last one of you motherfuckers!” he screams.
I hold him until he no longer cries out, until he can finally catch his breath, and until his body stops shaking uncontrollably.
“Why are you here? You could have gotten away and saved yourself. Getting caught won’t do anything to bring her back.”
When he pulls away from me this time, I let him. He uses his sleeve to wipe his face clean. “Payback is a mother.” He glances from side to side and assured that none of the aliens are watching us. He opens his jacket and, taped to the inside, are grenades.
“Holy shit,” Jasmine exclaims. “Any friend of Sinta’s is a friend of mine.”
I shake my head. I want the lizards dead just as everyone else. But I can’t believe Ken let him come here. “They sent you on a suicide mission?” I ask surprised. There are only two aliens here right now. What purpose would it serve? “They’re not worth losing your life for.”
“We have a plan,” he says.
Jim and Mark are now in our circle. Jim puts a hand on MJ’s shoulder. “Good. We’re in need of a plan, my friend.”
“Tonight,” MJ says. “It gets cooler at night.”
Mark nods. “They get a little slower at night. I’ve noticed it. They just lie down and don’t really move. They watch us but they seem to be going through the motions, putting up a front that they can still kill us. I imagine they still could, but I think it’ll take them a couple of minutes to get their blood pumping to do it.”
“That’s what Ken was thinking,” MJ adds.
MJ ushers us to come closer to him. When we do he hands out some of his grenades. One to everyone except for me. “When we hear the cue, you all will have to set them next to the boxes that create the force field and detonate them.”
“What about me?” I ask. “I want to get them back for what they did to Shayla.”
He presses a cold grenade into my hand and holds out his own. “We’ll both be able to get payback. We get to toss these at those motherfuckers.”
I wrap both hands around it and bring it to my lips to kiss it. “This is for Shayla.”
I can’t contain the hate I feel. I want blood. I want to see it spilling into the soil. Even after the third alien returns an hour later, I still haven’t calmed down. Adrenalin is coursing through my veins. The grenade in my pocket seems to get heavier and heavier. The urge to pull it out and throw it at them is so great I have to link my fingers together just to stop myself.
Everyone goes about their business as if we don’t have the means to kill the lizards. We watch the sun begin to set and I feel the crackle of what’s to come in the air. Joy is singing softly to her kids. Jim is lying on his back, staring up at the sky. Mark and Lizzie are hugging, sitting away from everyone else and being typical newlyweds. Jasmine is with MJ and me.
He’s not really talking to either of us. After explaining the plan and what we’re supposed to do after the grenades go off he hasn’t really said much at all. I understand and respect what he is going through. I didn’t know Shayla as well as he did. But in the short time we had gotten to know each other, I called her my friend.
By the time the moon is rising, the lizards lie down. They lie on their stomachs with their arms pressed to their sides, palms up, the claws facing the sky. They’re watching us with their eyes pinned in our direction. The air in the containment begins to thicken. We all pretend not to notice them, but I know each one of us is focused solely on them.
I know that it might be hours still, but I keep my ears tuned for the sign that will begin my killing spree.
A bird call.
Wade will call out and then, after a few explosions, we’ll all be free. That’s the perfect plan. What could go wrong?
Everything.
The time ticks by painfully slow. Every few minutes I find myself looking down at my watch. No matter how long I try to wait between checking, it’s still not long enough. One minute has passed, five minutes, seven minutes, two minutes, eight minutes… This goes on for hours.
Then we hear it.
I start to get to my feet, but MJ stops me. “Wait. That’s the first call.”
Right. The first call means that Jasmine, Joseph, Lizzie and Mark should move closer to the containment field, particularly the boxes that act as some kind of transmitters. And they do, inching closer to the boxes. I look at the lizards. Their eyes are half-open and watching them. I pull my grenade out of my pocket. My finger slips through the circle of the pin. My hands are shaking. I say a silent prayer. I don’t want to accidently shake the pin loose. If I do, then boom! We’ll all go.
Jasmine, Joseph, Lizzie and Mark are as close to the boxes as we arranged they should go. We already discussed that they wouldn’t get really close to the boxes. We don’t want to lizards to feel threatened and get up.
Then we hear another bird call.
It’s time.
MJ and I jump up, and in one swift movement we pull out the pins and roll the grenades across the grass to where the lizards are. In slow motion I watch the grenades travel across the grass. When they stop just inches from them so does my heart.
Die bitches.
Boom!
Boom!
The force of the blast slams into me. The noise deafens my ears. Lizard parts erupt through the air.
Boom!
Boom!
Boom!
Boom!
MJ pulls on my arm. He’s mouthing at me. I can’t hear him. I beat my ears with the palm of my hand, trying to make my hearing return and the ringing go away.
He shakes his head and pulls me. I stumble behind him. Everyone is running in separate directions. We aren’t leaving together. We all have different destinations. Mark and Lizzie are going with Joy and her girls, Joseph runs off by himself and Jasmine and Jim come with us.
We run right through what used to be the barrier. For a fleeting second I’m worried that we’ll be zapped and fricasseed to death. But we make it. We don’t stop running until we make it into the woods where I run straight into Jason’s waiting arms.
Chapter Eighteen
I run into Jason’s waiting arms, but it isn’t at all like a romantic movie where the guy and girl reunite at the end. When they hug each other and he turns her in circles while they stare longingly into each other’s eyes. No. This is a little more painful and scarier than that.
I see him, Wade and Ian waiting for MJ, Jasmine, Jim and I to clear the area where the aliens had us. Everyone calls out to us, screaming for us to run faster. Sheer panic and fear makes me pump my legs harder. I don’t know what is going on behind me; if we hadn’t gotten all the lizards or if a ship was barreling down on our backs. I’m not going to turn a
round and look. I just focus ahead and run as fast as I can.
Jason holds his arms open, urging me on, and I concentrate solely on him as I go. I’m running so fast that by the time I reach him I can’t slow down my approach. I run into him, knocking him over, and topple on top of him. Before either of us can get up, Wade grabs me by the arm and, as if I weigh nothing, hoists me over his shoulder and takes off.
“We have to get out of here. Those blasts are sure to attract some unwanted attention,” I hear Wade say as he runs.
From my spot, bouncing against Wade’s shoulder, I watch as Jason pulls himself to his feet and follows us. I clench my stomach muscles to help against the pain in my side. It’s a pain that I will live with. I want to get away from this place and those things.
We don’t run for long before we meet up with everyone else. When we reach them, I slide from Wade’s shoulder. I’m not on my feet all the way before Mia has me.
“I was so worried that we wouldn’t be able to save you,” she cries.
I hold onto her. My legs are threatening to buckle underneath me. “I’m here.”
Mia hands me my bag and sword. I never thought I would be so happy to see a weapon before in my life.
“I’m happy to have you back, Sinta, but we have no time to play catch-up,” Ken says. He tosses my backpack to me. Jason helps to put it on my back. “We need to get as far away from here as we can.”
“I agree,” Jim says. He thrusts out his hand to Ken. “Jim Handler.”
Jasmine waves. “Jasmine Parker.”
Ken nods at Jasmine and shakes Jim’s hand. “Ken Chamberlain.” He goes quickly from person to person and introduces everyone. “Now that the pleasantries are out of the way, are we ready to leave?”
Jason adjusts his own pack on his back. “Let’s get out of here.”
We move north and we don’t stop for hours, making our way out of Knoxville and through Corryton. Adrenalin is what I believe is keeping all of us going. We don’t want to run into any more aliens. We follow the same plan as before, staying off the main roads and traveling where there’s adequate coverage from the sky, which seems more important now than ever before. We hear their space ships patrolling the area, and I can only assume they’re looking for the humans that got away.
Against The Darkness (Cimmerian Moon) Page 18
