The Givers (Pack)

by Jones, Rogue

  Taking a deep breath, he continued, “They use air bladders to supply themselves with air in their pod houses, no need for the tanks. We know that they are fearful of germs and rightfully so, they have no defenses to fight them off”

  Dr. Hopewell walked over to the table and opened up a box that contained vials of liquid. “Ladies and gentleman, we introduce to you, the common cold. Influenza, highly concentrated that is combined with snake venom. This is a one two punch. We are going to go far beyond just poison, we are going to take away their ability to live. What we need to see and what we need volunteers for is to see if when injected into the central air bladder, will it work to kill the houses and the Givers inside?”

  “I’ll go,” I strode forward. Mom gave me a sad look but she knew that I would volunteer. I always do. I feel useful when I have a goal, here I just feel useless.

  “I’m going also,” Thomas stood next to me and quickly two others volunteered. Tina, a tall blonde who was deadly with a blowgun and could run like a cheetah and Bob, a deadly shot with the rifle.

  Armed with a mixture of guns, blowguns and darts poisoned with coral snake venom and then carrying pouches of syringes with the flu bug mixed with poison, we mounted horses and rode off. It feels so 19th century to have to ride a horse off into battle, but here we are. We rode across the ruins of what used to be the crossing at San Ysidro, CA. Burned out cars greeted us silently and we found shelter for the horses and walked. The first of the housing areas that we were going to coming across was not that far away.

  The Givers liked to build their factories and then in a semi-circle fanning away from the factory, they would cluster their red pod houses, about ten of their egg looking pod houses in a group, each with a silvery air bladder above it, and those air bladders were all attached to a larger one, that sat in the middle of the cluster. They did not have protected air bladders because they never figured that we would attempt to do this. Sneaking over to keep tabs on them and to see what goes on in the factories was one thing, but to try to sabotage the pods, this was new territory and risker.

  We waited until night, there was enough ambient light being given off from the factory and the moon to allow us to do what we needed at night and not during the day, it was at night that the Givers went into a deep sleep. They even slept with their body suits on, and from what we could tell when trying to dissect their dead, the suits are actually part of them, joined to their joints and muscles by the same ropy striated flesh-like stuff that seemed to make up their suits, pods, and ships. Even when they were dead, tendrils of that red, striated tissue would pulse under their suits.

  Tina and I went towards the factory and the men went towards the first cluster of pod houses. We were going to try to free the penned humans and the slaves, if possible. The humans were huddled together in the pens.

  Tina put her finger to her lips and pointed to a camera, it was facing the other way but chances are, it was sound activated and if we made too much sound, it would swing our way. The people in the pens nodded and one, a thing woman in a threadbare dress, pointed to the locking mechanism. Tina inspected it and then produced a hairpin and went to work.

  With a click, the lock opened, we looked at the camera, no movement our way. Swinging the door open, Tina gestured for the people to head back the way we came. They followed her finger and went, all but one, the woman in the threadbare dress.

  “They will only catch more. More of us to feed those monstrous houses,” she said in a whisper.

  I patted the pack on my side, “it’s okay. We are going to sneak in and inject the houses with a poison and a virus. It should kill them but we will not know until we try it. We are waiting for the signal from the guys, they are going to do the same to the pods.”

  “If you are caught in the factory, you will not be able to fight your way out,” the woman in the threadbare dress whispered. Tina and I nodded. We knew that we would very likely be making our last stand in the factory if we could not get out after injecting the growing pods. When you are fighting with bows, arrows, and darts, you have to fight on ground you have the advantage on, which means outside, where we can run and hide. Confronting them head on would mean death for us and we would have no choice to do so if caught inside the factory.

  “I can help,” she insisted as she picked up one of the syringes.

  “You need to get away, you don’t want to get caught,” Tina told her.

  “I know the inside of the factory, I was a worker until I hurt arm. They put me in the pen this afternoon. Tomorrow I go to the conveyor belt. Its automatic you know…the belt. Once something steps foot on it, or sits on it, it goes, and takes you right inside and you come out mush.” Her eyes hardened, “I can help.”

  We did not get a chance to discuss it with her any further because the men gave the signal, an owl hoot. It was time to go. We crouched, ready to try to navigate past the cameras, when the woman once again spoke to us.

  “My name is Anna. I have cancer and I would rather die here than die out there,” she nodded towards Mexico. They gave us so much and now I want to give some back.” She uncapped the syringe and plunged it into her thigh. She staggered into the warehouse, the lights came on inside and we had a clear view of her going to the conveyor belt and collapsing on it.

  Tina touched my arm and pointed up at the camera, it had swiveled into the warehouse, and every camera in the warehouse was pointed at Anna, on the conveyor. With a jerk, the conveyor belt started up and carried Anna up to the top, as she got halfway up she started to jerk. Two Givers ran over and one tried to grab her but she was carried up and over. There was a grinding noise and then a sucking sound and the thick tubes filled with fluid, it was not a lot of fluid but there was enough to make sure that every growing pod got some.

  Crouched behind a chunk of concrete, Tina and I waited. The pods began to pulse, black veins began to appear, and then with a wet splat, they burst, sending wet red pulp in every direction. One by one the pods burst, to the amazement of the Givers standing there. The whirled around and headed our way, I notched a poison arrow and Tina was ready with the blow gun and as the pair of them strode out into view we each let lose.

  The one closest to Tina put a hand to his cheek and then began to convulse. It appears that coral snake venom does not agree with them. It was harder to see how it affected the one that I shot, since the arrow went into his ear hole and out the other side. He had fallen down the instant it pierced whatever brain was present between those freaky earholes.

  Running in a low crouch, we headed for the shelter of a burned out building. The guys must have started with the pods furthest from this area and they must be working their way down because the cluster in front of us was still intact. Tina and I grabbed a syringe each and crept to the nearest pod. We each jabbed a needle into one of the thick veins of the pod. I expected the needle to break, but it did go in with some resistance, we hit the plungers and then crouched/ran back to the building. The pods must be linked through the air bladders because as the pod that we injected began to pulse, so did the others near it until they all did, and then they blew. As they exploded, we could see Givers inside, looking like they were clawing at their noses, nose plugs were not in place.

  Triumphant, we raced to the meeting place where the guys were waiting. The Givers, all except the two that were in the factory, died in their pods, we did not have to try to battle our way out. We had won a victory. No pods stood. The factory was silent.

  This day is one that I will remember just as well as when they first made contact. Today was the day that we learned that we could give back.

  The Givers Part II

  Forcible Returns

  We rode back to Hell on horseback, our jubilation at our victory against the givers giving us a bigger boost that any amp ever could. We had won. Our small band had managed to take down a factory and destroy a colony of Giver pod houses. Colony was a good word for it. The Givers may emulate humans but there is nothing human about them. The
ir organic houses, ships, and suits were utterly alien and their pod houses, connected and being fed by feeding tubes leading from the factory cemented the surreal nature of their existence.

  I imagined their pod houses, growing in the factory, connected by some pulsing red tube to the pods and I shuddered. I thought again of the Givers dying in the fully-grown pods, as their pods grew diseased and burst with them inside, vulnerable without their nose filters and I smiled. The common cold, once an inconvenience to mankind, and now it is a weapon that we can use against those that came, promised us the moon and the stars, and then sent us straight into hell; the givers.

  They gave us their “gifts” and now, we were going to give them back, one way or another. Mankind is resilient and we were methodical, organized, and determined. All around the globe, we were organizing to fight back in a different ways. It was slow going, hindered by geography and a lack of technology. Nothing modern could be used, but old parts and discarded electronics were treasures to the geeks and the computer techs who could get us on the power grids, allow us to use landline phones to communicate, and to help us cobble together working technology, safe technology, for us to use.

  We had seen no aircraft on our way back to Hell; the Givers used the drone planes that they helped us improve to hunt us down and corral us. The Givers tended to underestimate us and that kept us safe. The felt that when our technology turned upon us, that we would be easy prey. That we would stick to the ruined cities where we were easy prey but they were wrong. Some stayed; some always stay behind life finds a way. We found a way and that was to flee the cities, to flee the known and the comfortable and to begin anew in desolate areas.

  That is where our group is from, Hell. The original Mexican name is lost to us, but it is a small town in Mexico, relatively near the California boarder. By relatively near, I mean we can travel there in two days by horseback by riding easy, one day if we ride hard. We had a few old cars that worked, but for the most part, and for missions as ours had been, we relied on horses. Funny, most of us who had never seen a horse in person before are now expert riders.

  I reigned in my horse as we crossed the hand-lettered sign that read “HELL” in bold splashes of red paint. I always took a minute to study the sign; the rest of the group knew this and with nods, headed to the encampment in the heart of town. Thomas, my friend, rode off a ways and the stopped, turning his horse against the harsh, dry wind to wait for me. He always did and I loved him for it. Truth be told, I do not know why I pause at the sign and the motive for doing so is probably as changeable as the clouds in the sky. There is never a shortage of things to think about when I look at the sign; usually flashbacks of happier times taken from us, people robbed from us; love gone missing and bodies gone cold.

  That sign can both calm me and get me riled up. We have taken losses, but we will not give up. We have had victories and there will be more. Loss and vengeance in a terrible balance, but I was the only one who saw that when I saw the sign. Others just saw a sign. Mom tells me that I have always been able to see more than others, that I can see between the shadows too see more.

  “You think too much Shara,” Thomas called to me.

  “Perhaps,” I said back, my voice soft on the wind, “But it has served me well. I do not know how to stop seeing what I do, or stop thinking what I think.”

  He cocked his head towards me, “What do you see?”

  He had never asked that before. Others asked, but they tended to mock. Thomas has never mocked me, nor has he questioned me, ever. The two of us were close friends, survivors of this terrible war and as I searched his face, I realized that he was not questioning me, nor mocking me. He really wanted to know what I saw.

  “Echoes of things done and undone. I see the possibilities of actions not yet taken, the hope of the future and the despair of the past, all in the same thing. I see ghosts of the past intermingled with the spirits of the future.” I pointed to the sign, “That says Hell, and some days it says that because we live in Hell. But, sometimes, like today it says that because we are going to give them Hell. “

  He nodded, “I understand. I wondered why you attached so much meaning to things sometimes. I did not want to upset you by asking. I think…I think that it is good to see what you see.”

  My lips twitched into a smile, “Others just think I’m weird.”

  Thomas laughed, “Yea but they respect the hell out of you. Let’s go, your mom will be waiting.” That was true, we had no way to notify our people if we had been successful or not so they had to stay, and wait, and hope. Hope, it was a tangible thing this destroyed world. We kicked our horses into a trot and headed to town, where people were gathering. The others, riding ahead, had told them of our success.

  We swung off of our horses, handing the reigns over to two girls who would take them to the stable, rub them down, and see that they were treated well and taken care of. It was good to get off the horse but the ride home felt shorter than the ride there. We had a win, a victory and it was sweet.

  Proving that you are never too old to get hugged by your mom, my mom swept me up in a big hug, “Thank God you are back sweetie.” Sweetie, that means she was scared and worried for me.

  “I had to go,” I started to tell her quietly but she hushed me by putting her finger to my chapped lips, “I know Shara. Nobody sees like you see, you can see and you can help defeat them better than anybody does. You are more than a dreamer, your father, he saw too, like you see. Only he saw only the good.”

  I remembered the excitement on dad’s face, watching the first glimpse of the Givers, how he had such bright hopes. When they turned, he thought that perhaps mankind had wronged them, he even tried to approach one after it all went to hell. I saw the moment in my nightmares; dad walked forward, arms up, pleading to the Giver stalking towards him, “Whatever we did wrong, I am sure it was a mistake…” I knew then that the only mistake was my dad’s action and I ran towards him, but it was too late. The Giver looked at dad, looked at me and then winked and shot my dad in the stomach and then turned and walked away.

  That wink was motivation to observe, learn, and to survive. I hugged my mom tightly, sometimes, there is nothing to say to each other, but a hug conveys more than any words, in my humble opinion. It was good to be back. It was good to have good news.

  Tina, Thomas and I described what we had seen, what we had done. My voice choked up talking about Anna. She was an integral part of our success. A prisoner, next in line to be chopped and turned into mush had willingly injected herself with the flu and walked onto the conveyor belt. We took a moment of silence to remember her, this stranger who helped us win a victory. She will not be forgotten. We will see to that.

  Tina, Thomas, and I headed to the medical tent to talk to Dr. Hopewell and to Brent Standling. They would be getting a more detailed report on the effectiveness of the coral snake venom and of the use of the flu bug in our war with the Givers. This information will be passed along by messengers and landlines, spreading the word to many. I felt empowered and I think we all did. Victories, no matter how small were things to be treasured.

  Although there are some buildings in Hell, the important buildings are in tents, camouflaged and set apart from the buildings of the town. A drone with body heat sensors could identify body heat signatures, but a drone that is just taking a look-see would see some decrepit buildings and lots of sand and rock. If a strike against the town where to happen, the tents would hopefully be a safe distance away. Like I said, hope is a tangible commodity and we trade in it daily.

  “How quickly did the flu virus disable them?” Standling asked his eyes, always tired looking, and had a glimmer of hope.

  “Less than a minute. The Givers, when inside their pods, do not have their nose plugs in. When the pods sickened and burst, the Givers were left exposed and vulnerable. They clawed at their faces but died before taking more than a step.” Tina and Thomas nodded their agreement as I told the story.

  I continued, “Inj
ecting one pod destroyed that pod, and then it spread to the pods nearest it, until all pods in that cluster, and the Givers inside, were dead.”

  Standling smiled, “They do share an air supply then.”

  Tina spoke up, “We injected the pod, not the air supply, and it was just a chain reaction.”

  Dr. Hopewell spoke, “When you poisoned that pad, it must have poisoned that air; it quickly contaminated the nearest pods, spreading like a…well, like a disease.” Her red hair fell over her face and she pushed it back, “And the pods, they are grown?”

  “Yes,” my stomach clenched at the flash of memory of the factory. With the pods growing, attached by thick tubes that pulsed and glistened as they fed the pods; fed them with people. We found a pen, of people, food. Those pods are grown. That means that their suits, their ships, everything is grown and people are not used as slaves. We were wrong. People are used as mulch to feed these…things.” I heard my voice going shrill, but it was hard to contain the emotion that I felt.

  “It was horrible,” Tina said softly. “We got the people out and we were not sure how to disable the factory, we were going to try to get to the back, to inject the flu into the tubes that fed the pods, but Anna, she injected it into herself and went into the conveyor. It only took a little for each pod to make them turn black and burst.”

  The two doctors stared at each other. I knew what they were thinking; would we need to sacrifice one of our own each time just to take a factory down? That was a question that weighed upon all of us on the way back.

  “We will find a way. We know that it can be done and we will find a way.” Standling said. Even though he was a doctor as well, I never got used to calling him Dr. Standling. He had more of a police demeanor, like the cop shows I watched as a kid with my dad and he never minded that I called him Standling and in fact, it seemed to amuse him. His eyes cut to him, “It may not come to that.” I guess I am not the only one to pay attention to the whispers in the wind since he had just done the same to pick out the very thing bothering me.