Had he counted wrong? No, there were five. With the one that fell off the cliff, the one Eliza had killed out on the rear path, and the one he’d killed in the forest, that made eight.
Unless that was one of the ones that had gotten away. There had been three they hadn’t killed, that they had escaped down a “waterslide” from, when Eliza and Jonathan had first found him and Mirabelle.
Those ones could still be out there.
They patrolled in silence the rest of their shift, tense, expecting to be attacked.
But the hours passed uneventfully. Whatever the screech had been, it didn’t recur.
9
“Time travel?” Mirabelle asked skeptically the next day as they sat in the shade of the tree eating breakfast.
Cal nodded, looking at Imogen. “If she’s from ninety-three, that would seem to imply we went back in time.”
Eliza studied his face. “You don’t sound like you believe that.”
“I don’t know. It doesn’t feel right.”
“If it’s time travel,” Mirabelle said, “then that means our family and friends aren’t dead. We can go back to see them.” She glanced at Imogen. “Save them.”
“Even if it is time travel,” Imogen replied, not looking at anyone, “we don’t have the device they used. And I didn’t see any controls on that door.”
They talked about what it might be for a while longer, but ultimately came to the conclusion that there was nothing they could do, either way.
“We could explore the area to look for it,” Cal said, “but I worry about getting caught out when a wave comes.”
“Especially if there’s going to be sixteen next time,” Eliza agreed.
“If we can’t do anything about time travel, what about those?” Mirabelle asked, motioning at the alien corpses. “Why are we keeping them again?”
“I want to make a spear out of one of those limbs. All of them, come to think of it.”
Eliza frowned. “They look tough, but I’m not sure they would be any better than the wooden ones we already have.”
Cal shook his head. “Don’t care. I’m making one out of it.” One of those bastards had nearly given him a heart attack when it’d tried to climb up his spear, and he was taking a trophy.
“You going to do it today?” Mirabelle asked. “I woke up last night and the first thing I saw was one of those monsters staring at me. I nearly died of fright.”
“I need to go back out and get the cordage from the nettle roots,” Cal said. “But if anyone else wants to work on it…”
“Sure,” Eliza said. “Not much else I can do.” She motioned to her body, covered in leaves, and Cal tried very hard not to look at the bits that were left uncovered.
He failed, but at least he had tried.
He glanced over and found Mirabelle glaring hard at him, cleared his throat. “Right. Good. I’ll be heading out then.”
“Actually,” Eliza said, studying the alien corpses, “I might be able to make armor from them.”
Mirabelle snapped to attention at this. “Really? That’s a great idea. I can help.”
“You shouldn’t go alone this time,” Imogen said to Cal. “Especially after last night.”
“What happened last night?” Mirabelle asked worriedly.
“Nothing. We heard something.”
“We?” Mirabelle asked.
“I woke up before his shift was over,” Imogen explained. “We stayed up together.”
Mirabelle squinted suspiciously at her.
“What did you hear?” Eliza asked.
“I don’t know. A screech.”
“One of them?”
Cal shrugged.
“I’ll come with you then,” Mirabelle offered.
He smiled. “No, it’s better if you three stay here. I can handle myself.”
“Oh,” Mirabelle teased, “big strong man.”
“Damn right.”
Eliza tilted her head. “Especially after his upgrade. I’ve seen the way he lifts you so easily now.”
Mirabelle’s cheeks flushed. “You have?”
“You two aren’t as discreet as you think.”
“Who said we were trying to be discreet?” Cal asked with a grin.
“Imogen’s right” Mirabelle said, embarrassed and trying to change the subject, “you shouldn’t go alone.”
“If anything happens, I’ll come running back,” he promised.
“Just like last time.”
“Exactly.”
“That was supposed to be an insult.”
“Well then you suck at insults.”
10
“Keep alert,” he said to the three women under the tree as he stood at the rear gate holding the basket they used to gather food in in one hand, wooden spear in the other.
“We will,” Eliza promised.
He set his items down, pulled the gate shut behind him, then headed down the steep rear path, stopping at the dead alien.
He thought about kicking it off, but decided they might be able to use it. He went back and called over the gate. “There’s the alien you killed out here. Spear stuck in it. We can use it. One of you should drag it in.”
“Anything else, your highness?” Eliza asked. “Shall we craft you a throne while you’re out on your picnic?”
Cal shrugged. “Sure. If you want.”
Eliza snorted. “Get out of here then.”
He left and made his way to where the nettle-like plant grew, and where he had left the roots out to dry which he had been about to gather yesterday before the surprise wave had interrupted him.
He made a mental note to himself to make another basket, wondered why they hadn’t yet.
Probably because they were focused on more important things like getting the gates and palisade up. And that little thing of getting tricked into thinking they were going back to Earth only to have to face zombies.
He shook his head as he walked. He couldn’t believe they’d dump zombies on the Earth. Wondered how they had done it.
Though the aliens who’d abducted them were clearly very advanced, and so doing something as simple as making zombies probably wasn’t that difficult.
Though creating ones that could survive so much damage…
And then what about those other things? Were they alien creations, the aliens themselves, or something else altogether?
He was growing more frustrated that he couldn’t pinpoint what it was that seemed wrong to him about the idea that they’d time-traveled.
They’d been sent back in time through a portal to a point in the past which had been modified to have zombies.
It seemed… off.
He was so distracted by his thoughts that he didn’t notice the noise until it had grown too loud to ignore.
He froze, finally noticing the sound of movement, of plants being trampled underfoot by something moving quickly through the forest.
He quickly checked his interface, but saw no notifications.
But this told him nothing. The last wave had come without a countdown, maybe the next would have no warning at all.
But it didn’t sound like a wave. The sound was coming from one distinct spot, not multiple ones.
The giant snake thing then?
But the movement was too quick, the cadence all wrong, that of something with feet, not something slithering.
He was pretty sure, anyway.
Perhaps this was what they had heard last night.
He set the basket down and crouched, spear at the ready, hoping whatever it was, there was only one of them.
It sounded like only one. With his extra strength he might be able to take it on.
It was his only option, really. Even though it seemed like it should have, his strength upgrade hadn’t made him any faster, so all he could do was stand and fight. Because he sure as hell couldn’t outrun whatever it was. Not now that he’d let it get so close.
He’d barely made it back yesterday, and he’d had a larg
e head start that time. And even still, one of them had sprinted ahead of him, cut him off.
So he stood his ground.
Then a flash of blue came from a direction he wasn’t expecting, from slightly off to the side of where he expected, and he turned his head just as the thing jumped from the foliage and right at him.
He had no time to move his spear to jab the thing and so instead it slammed into him, knocking him to the ground.
He tried to push the monster off, but it was too heavy, and its huge mouth opened as it went for his face.
11
“Get off me you dumb not-dog,” Cal grunted, trying to stop the alien dog from licking him.
It was futile. The beast was too strong and heavy, even for Cal’s new upgraded strength. He just kept licking Cal’s face.
“This is so gross,” Cal groaned, hands up, trying to push the beast off. “Stop it!”
The dog didn’t stop, its two tails wagging furiously.
Cal turned his head to the side, saw the spear next to him. He dropped one arm to reach for it, now only fending off the licks with a single forearm.
He clutched for the spear through the dog’s onslaught, got hold of it, then flicked it away.
The move drew the dog’s attention and Rufus took off for it, a weight literally off of Cal’s chest.
It hadn’t flown far—Cal hadn’t exactly had good leverage—so he quickly got to his knees before Rufus could pin him again.
The alien dog grabbed the spear and brought it back to Cal.
“Good boy,” Cal said, reaching for the spear, but when he tried to take it, Rufus wouldn’t let go.
“Drop it,” he ordered.
Instead of dropping it, Rufus pulled on it, letting out that rumbling growl that he had used when the snakelike creature had ambushed them, the one that sounded like a huge diesel engine.
“Rufus,” Cal scolded, “drop it.”
The dog didn’t listen.
“Come on Rufus, you’re going to—”
The spear snapped under the pressure of Rufus’s strong, massive jaws.
“Goddammit,” Cal said, looking down at the half of the spear in his hand, then at the other half still in Rufus’s mouth.
Rufus opened his mouth, letting the spear drop to the forest floor. He looked down at it, then back up at Cal.
Cal shook his head. “Great. Now I’ve got two.”
Rufus wagged his tails, as though this were a good thing.
Cal grunted, reached down and scratched the dog’s head between its two tall, pointed ears.
Its eyes closed and its tongue lolled from its mouth in contentment.
He wondered if the dog had been what had caused that screech. “You find one of those aliens and take it out?”
Rufus of course didn’t answer.
He did however huff indignantly when Cal stopped scritching him.
“Don’t have time to pet you all day. Dumb mutt.” He wiped the alien slobber from his face with the crook of his arm, glad that the dog at least didn’t have two tongues. “Got work to do.”
He grabbed the basket and the pointed half of the spear and headed off in the direction he’d been going before being jumped, toward where he’d left the nettle roots to dry.
Rufus bounded after him, running around, trying to get Cal to play.
“I’ve got work to do, I said. You can help if you want, just don’t get in my way.”
Being the well-behaved alien dog he was, Rufus ran around, darting back and forth in front of Cal, nearly tripping him several times.
“Quiet,” he hushed as the dog darted about like an idiot, making noise that Cal hoped didn’t draw attention.
But there seemed to be scant few other animals on this planet, or at least in the area they were in. Besides, the dog had excellent senses and so at least he would serve as an early warning system. The dinner bell and the alarm.
If Cal was honest with himself, he appreciated having Rufus with him. He was certainly stronger than Cal was, and that snake had apparently not gotten the best of him.
Cal smiled as he thought of what Eliza’s reaction would be when he brought Rufus back. She’d be so happy. She really liked the alien mutt.
Cal was glad he was still okay too.
But only because Eliza would be.
He didn’t actually like Rufus. No, of course not.
Rufus’s feet skidded out from under him as he tried to take a corner too quickly and he fell onto his side, sliding, legs kicking wildly to try to regain his paws.
“Idiot,” Cal said, fighting a smile.
12
A few minutes later Cal spotted the roots he had left to dry out in the sun.
He picked up his pace as Rufus darted around him, rolling in the dirt and biting off random plants that Cal hoped weren’t poisonous.
But at least he was distracted. Cal needed to make it to the roots before Rufus did. Cal had no doubt the alien mutt would get one look at those roots spread out and think nothing but TOY! TOY! TOY!
The roots were strong, but Cal didn’t feel like testing their resistance to an alien dog’s teeth. Not when they took so much effort to gather.
He picked up his pace, walking quickly but not running. He didn’t want to draw Rufus’s attention by triggering some predator’s instinct in the dog, even if it was only to play.
He reached the area he’d laid the roots out in and began swiftly gathering them up, coiling them as he went.
He was about to reach the end when Rufus finally took notice of what he was doing and ran over.
Cal pulled the roots away at the last second as Rufus dove for them, missing and landing in the dirt, skidding face-first several feet.
This time Cal couldn’t help but burst out laughing. “You idiot.”
Rufus bounced up, shaking his head and huffing out dirt, then went down on his front paws, staring up at the bundle of roots Cal held.
“Don’t even think about it.”
But Rufus clearly was.
“No,” Cal emphasized.
Rufus sneezed, spraying dirt, then made a sound, a huffing, rumbling sound of annoyance.
Cal gestured with the hand holding the coil of roots, Rufus’s large eyes following the motion fixedly. “There’s plenty of other plants. Go play with those.”
Rufus made that huffing sound again, then started rumbling.
“You don’t scare me, mutt,” Cal said as he stashed the coil of roots in the basket.
This wasn’t entirely true.
Cal nodded to himself, looking down into the basket. Dried up, there was about a hundred feet of cordage. They would still need to be twisted at least once to make rope strong enough for their purposes, but that still gave fifty feet of rope from a single plant, even if it took a lot of digging to gather.
Cal glanced at Rufus, who was now lying down, head on his front paws, pointedly not looking at Cal. “Hey, you like digging?”
The dog huffed, still not looking at him.
“Yeah, I bet you do.”
That would speed up the gathering process.
And if they wanted to speed up their palisade construction process, they’d need a lot more cordage.
The front path was about a hundred and fifty feet long, so they needed about two hundred feet of rope to be able to tie off logs and then use the tree to pull them up. Adding this to what they already had should give them just enough.
Cal wanted to create a kind of pulley system, but he was no engineer. He knew he needed something moving to create that, that the way a pulley system worked to lighten the load was by increasing the distance you pulled. So he was pretty sure to do that required something that could move. But he couldn’t think of any way to construct a system like that with the things they had at hand.
But still, at least the rope would mean they wouldn’t have to carry the logs up the path, which was precarious, especially as it got narrow at the top.
Then Cal, still staring at the dog who was now roll
ing around in the dirt, having forgotten about the coil of roots, realized there might be an even easier way.
They could put the big log on littler ones and pull it up, using them like rollers which would reduce the drag.
Or maybe they could make actual wheels.
Jesus, how could he have only just thought of that now?
No wonder it’d taken cavemen so long to make the wheel.
Wheels might take a while to make, and they’d need to build a platform to attach them to. But rollers, that was something they could make and use almost right away. They would only need to gather a bunch of branches that were all about the same diameter.
He wished he had something to write this down on so he wouldn’t forget.
Wasn’t there something else he needed?
He watched Rufus play, trying to remember.
After several seconds, he shook his head and gave up. Then remembered as he looked back down into the basket. Yes, that was it. Needed to make another basket.
He headed back to the hilltop, eager to tell his idea to the others.
They needed more rope, but to gather the cordage to make that he still needed to find another nettle plant old enough to have such a large root system. There were many of the plants, but most were young and had meager, thin roots.
He could go now and look for more, but wanted to drop off what he’d gathered first so they could get started on making it into rope. And he also couldn’t wait to see the look on Eliza’s face when she saw Rufus.
“Stay quiet,” he told the dog as they approached the hilltop base.
Rufus looked up at him, tilting his huge head.
“Good boy,” Cal said, patting the alien dog between his ears.
Then they made their way up the rear path, Rufus slipping and sliding on it.
Cal almost said we’re back, but caught himself. “I’m back,” he called over the gate, which he could just barely see over on this side due to the slope of the path.
He saw Eliza dozing under the tree, Mirabelle working on making more arrows, Imogen helping her out.
Survivor: World of Monsters 2 Page 4
