by Andrew Gates
After the initial awe had worn off, Sanja eventually refocused. She had to remind herself that she was here to look for humans, not to take in the view.
Naturally, her first instinct was to look down and study for human footprints on the ground. She knew that, unlike her, the surface survivors would be wearing boots, not bare feet. That meant their tracks should have been easy to spot. After all, how many animals would be wearing shoes?
But searching for prints proved harder than she initially expected. With most of this section of the forest covered in leaves and foliage, Sanja found herself rarely stepping directly into dirt alone (apart from her initial departure from the ship). Most of the time her foot would land on fallen leaves, sticks, bushes or toppled bark. None of her steps left any obviously human signs.
“I have allowed you the duration of 20 minutes and thus far you have not proven to be any closer to finding the evolved-ones,” the officer complained as they walked along.
Sanja kept her eyes low to the ground as she navigated the terrain. She would not give this impatient Kholvari the satisfaction of looking his way. After all, he had granted her a full hour.
“I know. Just give me more time. I’ll find them,” she assured him.
The officer huffed a frustrated huff. She could tell he regretted allowing her this hour, but she did not care. She knew she would find them, whether he believed it or not.
Sanja took a few more steps, then slowly stopped in place. It had been a considerable amount of time and she still did not have a lead. Perhaps he’s right. Perhaps I need to rethink my plan, she thought.
The investigator searched around and wondered how she would behave if she were simply walking through the forest casually, not searching for tracks. There must have been something the humans would have done differently.
And suddenly, she thought of it. I would stop and rest, she realized.
Sanja refocused her search now. Instead of looking for tracks in the dirt, she now looked for good places for humans to sit; rocks, logs, small hills. There were several contenders nearby. She saw a few large rocks, a small clearing of soft moss and a decent-sized log toppled before a tree trunk. Sanja took a few steps toward the log and studied the tree nearby. She smiled as she spotted a unique line of dirt across its base.
Scuff marks. Somebody rested on the log and pressed their feet against the tree, she realized. Her grin grew even larger across her face. She had found her first clue.
Now she looked down to the ground again. There were a few smashed leaves and pockets of downed foliage nearby. Where she would have first discounted these as animal tracks, she was now more confident that these belonged to a human. She followed the clues like a trail until it brought her to a small hill. Now the hill turned to dirt and the all-too-perfect shape of boot marks finally revealed themselves.
“Aha!” she said, pointing to the marks. “See?”
The officer took a few steps forward and leaned down to take a closer look.
“These belong to an evolved-one? But the imprint is so different from your own foot.”
“They’re boot marks, not foot marks.”
“I see. Well, Kal Sanja, it seems you have indeed proved your worth. I suppose I was right to allow you this time,” he replied.
You mean to say, you were wrong to doubt me.
“What did you say?”
Shit. Did I project that to him? Sanja was usually careful not to project her thoughts through the translator chip in her brain, but sometimes when she mumbled to herself, the words went through without her realizing it.
“Uh, nothing. It’s nothing,” she replied, hoping he did not hear her comment.
Sanja acted as if she had not said anything out of the ordinary. She followed the boot marks for a few seconds before suddenly stopping in place. A familiar vegetable grew on the hill nearby, though much of it had been plucked from the ground. Sanja slowly approached it and leaned down to inspect it.
Just as she thought: spinach, or something close to spinach.
“Food. The humans picked this to eat,” Sanja explained, pointing to it.
“Karagthan leaf? But it is poisonous!” the officer said.
“To your kind, maybe. My people call this spinach, or something similar to it. It’s actually quite healthy for us.” Sanja plucked a few pieces for herself and popped them into her mouth.
Oh, that’s good, she thought with a grin. She hadn’t eaten real food in months, though it felt like years.
“So they are near,” the officer said.
“They are definitely near. These spinach leaves were recently picked,” Sanja replied with her mouth full. She slowly stood up and pointed to the trail of boot marks. “Come on. Let’s follow.”
* * *
It took a little over 10 minutes until Sanja began to see the clearest signs of human presence. She smelled the delectable scent of cooked meat and saw smoke emanating from the top of a hill. The smell almost made her feel like she was back in the station, dining at a luxurious restaurant.
Sanja and the Kholvari continued toward the smoke until they suddenly passed through a thick section of forest with downed trees and flattened bushes. The investigator paused as she entered the area. She checked both left and right. The stretch of flattened foliage seemed to cut through the forest like a long straight line several meters wide.
“What is this?” she asked aloud.
“This, I know,” the officer replied. He slowly bobbed his head. “It is the path of our bipedal tank. Its feet have pressed down upon this section of the forest. If we follow this, it will lead us to the evolved-ones.”
Sanja turned to the left. That was where the smoke came from. She pointed that way.
“Up the hill, then. We’re close,” she said.
Following the path of destruction caused by the tank could not have been easier. They walked and walked and… suddenly the smoke dissipated. Sanja heard a scurrying noise and held still.
“Stay here and be quiet,” she commanded to the Kholvari in a soft whisper. She hoped the translator would project her words so all could hear. Sure enough, the others stopped and got silent.
Sanja slowly crept up the hill, leaving the Kholvari behind, until she came to a massive vehicle with two legs. It was not moving. This must be the bipedal tank, she thought, briefly examining it as she continued along as quietly as possible.
In front of the tank stood some sort of massive dome-like structure. Sanja had never seen anything like it. The dome seemed to have cracked long ago. Soil and vegetation now covered the remaining portion of the dome’s shell. A bit of smoke still emanated through the air inside the dome, though most of it had dissipated.
Sanja walked as quietly as she could, trying to be careful. Muddy boot prints covered the ground all over the place, making it obvious that this area had clearly been walked across tons of times over. Something felt wrong about this place and she could not help but feel that she was walking right into a trap. The quietness of it all was uncanny, especially since the obvious signs of human presence were literally in the air.
“Hello?” Sanja said, still looking for anyone at all.
Nothing. Silence.
“Hello?” she repeated. “I’m not a ru- I mean, a zombie. I’m a person, a human!”
Suddenly the sound of a cocking shotgun echoed from her left, creating the only noise in this otherwise silent world. Sanja quickly spun to the left and came face to face with the dirtiest man she had ever laid eyes on. He had a long thick beard and messy, unkept hair. His skin was red from the sun and covered in cuts and bruises. He stood with a limp but had clearly grown used to it by the way he composed himself. He held a shotgun in his hands and kept it pointed right at her.
“What is this?” the man asked, staring straight into her eyes. He dared not look anywhere else. “Is this some kind of trick?”
“Hello,” Sanja said again. She calmly placed both hands in the air.
“Stop saying ‘hello’,” t
he man replied. He took a step forward. “No games. Tell me who you are.”
“I know this may come as a surprise, but I’m human,” she said. “No zombie.”
“You may be human, but you aren’t a survivor. You look too clean to be one of us,” the man replied, “and you dress… you dress like them!”
“Like the UBEs, the mantises,” she elaborated.
“Yes. We call them mantises here,” the man said. He paused for a moment. “How did you know that?”
“Because I have heard reports of your survival on the surface, well we all have. In fact, everyone from the FCP heard your stories.”
The man slowly lowered his weapon, as if curious to hear more.
“I know who you are,” Sanja continued, stepping toward him. “You are Daniel Georgopolis, former science teacher at Harrison Middle School, now legendary surface survivor.”
“You are from the FCP?” the scruffy man asked.
“I was.”
The man raised his weapon again.
“You don’t look like you came from the FCP. You have rings around your neck, makeup around your eyes, clothes made of materials I have never seen on a human before. If I didn’t know any better, you look like you’ve been cozying up with the mantises.”
Sanja nodded her head.
“I have,” she confirmed.
“Well, you guessed who I am, so I’ll guess who you are,” the man said, still keeping his weapon raised. “You must be Sanja Parnel, the scumbag traitor who abandoned the remaining FCP survivors to die. Am I right?”
Sanja gulped.
“That is me, but you need to hear me out,” she began.
“Hear you out? You’re Sanja Parnel! Why would I trust anything you have to say?”
“Because I am not here to hurt you. In fact, I want the opposite.”
“Did the mantises tell you to say that? Are you working for them?” the man asked.
“Yes.”
“Yes to which question?”
“Yes to both,” Sanja replied.
The man stared her down with a glare of disgust.
“Wait, wait,” she continued, “please, hear me out. I didn’t come here to hurt you. I want you safe, all of you; you, your brother, his wife, the kids. I know you all split up, but we can find them. We can work together to get everyone back.”
“And why should I listen to you? Just because you’re the first new human I’ve seen in months, do you think I’m suddenly going to be all ears?” The man stepped forward, aggressively.
“Hey, hey, hold on! Don’t hurt me. Please, don’t try anything. The mantises know where you are. A squad of soldiers stands down the hill right now, not even 100 meters away. They’re standing by, waiting for my signal. Trust me when I say that you don’t want to play games with me right now.”
“What signal? A signal to kill us?”
“No! The opposite. We want to save you. Just listen to what I have to say,” Sanja pleaded. “The soldiers are only here for my protection. They’re here in case something goes wrong.”
“So you guys must be on pretty good terms then,” the man said. “Is that why you did it? Did you abandon humanity for them? To win them over?”
“It’s not us versus them, Daniel. That’s what I’m trying to say. We’re on the same side. We were never meant to fight. I am here to broker peace between humans and mantises. We need this friction between us to end,” Sanja begged.
“Don’t you call me by my name, traitor.”
“So you are Daniel, then? I was right. Look, Mr. Whatever-you-want-to-be-called, what I’m trying to say is that, despite what you may have heard, I am not your enemy. You said it yourself: the mantises and I are on good terms. They’ve housed me, clothed me, fed me, even given me a job. It is possible to live peacefully with them. That’s what I’m trying to do. That’s all I want!”
“Trust her!” a female voice called out in the distance.
Sanja suddenly turned her head. A woman stood down in the shaded portion of the dome, staring at the scene.
“Selena, get back to the lab with the others!” Daniel ordered.
Another man came out of the shadows and grabbed the woman from behind, ready to take her away. This man looked very similar to Daniel. Sanja assumed this must have been his brother, Greyson.
How did they end up together? Sanja wondered. Last she had heard, the two brothers had gone their separate ways. But clearly here they were, together again somehow.
“Listen to her!” Selena continued. She wiggled out of Greyson’s grip and quickly ran over to them both. “Sanja Parnel may have done a lot of bad things. Hell, she deserves to die for what she did. But when it comes down to it, that’s not what matters right now, at least not for us. Forget about what she did and just listen to her words, Dan. She’s made peace with the mantises. Don’t you see the potential in that? We should do the same. We can finally stop running. We can finally be safe!”
“I just don’t trust her,” Daniel replied.
“Think about the kids,” Selena pleaded. She slowed her pace and walked before the shotgun, putting herself between Sanja and the weapon.
Daniel sighed and slowly lowered his gun.
“I hate to say it, Dan, but I agree,” added the other man. He slowly approached now.
Daniel looked up and glared at Sanja.
“Give us a minute,” he said.
Sanja nodded.
“I understand. This is a lot to take in at once. I’ll be just down the hill. Call me when you’re ready.”
Sanja turned away from the group and calmly made her way back to the Kholvari soldiers hiding downhill. The officer pushed to the front of the pack when he saw her and eagerly scurried her way.
“What has happened? You come back alone!” he noted.
“Calm down. They’ll come around. They just need time,” Sanja explained.
“Did they accept your message?”
“They haven’t even heard it yet. One of them held a gun to my head and was deciding whether or not he’d even listen to what I had to say,” Sanja replied. “But don’t worry about him. He knows I’m right. He’s just having trouble accepting it.”
“I do not understand.”
“Humans are not as blunt as Kholvari. We often say things we don’t mean or behave differently than we intend to. It’s natural for us. You have to read between the lines with these things.”
“I still do not understand. Are you suggesting that evolved-ones are liars?”
“I’m not saying we’re liars. We just have trouble making sense of our thoughts sometimes. Daniel doesn’t know that he wants to listen to my proposal, even though he does.”
“Daniel?”
“The one with the gun.”
“What did he say?”
“He said he didn’t want to listen to me.”
“That does not bode well.”
“Right, if that’s what he meant.”
“But he does not mean it?”
“He thinks he does, but he doesn’t.”
“I am confused, Kal Sanja.”
“Don’t be. At the very least, there were two other humans there. One of them obviously wanted to listen to me. The other held her back at first, but after hearing what she said, he didn’t seem all that interested in holding her back anymore. He’s clearly on my side too.”
“How can you be sure this will work?”
“You just wait and see. Pretty soon they’ll be calling my name, asking to meet.”
As if right on cue, the word “Sanja” echoed through the air. She grinned.
“And there it is,” she said, spinning on her heels toward the direction of the shout.
Sanja walked back up the hill again to meet the survivors. Daniel, Selena and Greyson all stood waiting for her. Daniel kindly held the shotgun by his side this time, out of her face.
“We’ve agreed to hear your proposal,” Daniel said as she stopped a few steps from them. There was almost no enthusiasm in hi
s voice.
“I figured you would,” Sanja replied. “It’s only logical. You can’t keep hiding from the Kholvari forever. At some point, all this must come to an end.”
“The… huh?” Greyson asked.
“Sorry, the mantises, the UBEs,” Sanja clarified. She cleared her throat. “That’s what you call them, but they are known as Kholvari.”
Daniel shot his brother a disapproving glance. It was as if it were a crime to call them anything but mantises.
“If we ally with the… Kavari, are you sure that means we can stop running?” Selena asked, cutting right to the question on the top of her mind.
“I am certain it does,” Sanja explained. “No one will hurt you ever again.”
“How exactly would this work?” Greyson asked.
“The Kholvari will take you aboard a spaceship and bring you before the Supreme Chieftain. He’s like their king, but they don’t call him a king. They get a bit touchy when you refer to their rulers as monarchs. But don’t worry about the Supreme Chieftain. He is sympathetic to our kind and he wants us to live.”
“The mantis leader wants humans to live?” Daniel asked. He chuckled a humorless chuckle. “I don’t believe it. If that’s true, then why have they been killing us since the Atlantic Station?”
“Politics. Times changed. Information changed. Leaders changed,” Sanja explained. “Honestly, there’s been a ton of turnover in the political leadership recently.”
“And you know all of this how?” Greyson wondered.
“I serve on the council. I am an advisor to his Majesty,” Sanja replied.
“What?” Selena asked.
“You can’t be serious,” Daniel added.
“I am serious. Look, if you don’t believe me, I encourage you to go to Fruitful Spring, the spaceship from where the Kholvari leadership rules. You can see it all for yourself.”
The three were silent for a moment. They each looked at each other, then back to Sanja.
“What happens if we refuse?” Daniel asked, gripping his gun a bit tighter.
