by Erik Hyrkas
Hunter was an ass, but Brit couldn’t have been happier to see him at that moment.
Whatever confusion he had felt over falling through the portal seemed to evaporate immediately when he realized he was on top of Peter because he smashed his fist into Peter’s face with enough force that Brit thought he might kill him.
Hunter pulled the cylinder from Peter’s limp hand and stood up. “Dick,” he said, and he spat on Peter.
Peter moaned and held his face for a moment.
Hunter studied the weapon he had wrested from Peter, then flicked it at him as he had seen Peter do. Peter grunted and skidded a few feet away. The impact was audible, but the weapon emitted no light or visible energy. Maybe the fact that the force was silent and invisible was part of the efficiency and deadliness of its design, Brit thought. Even the unadorned, glossy surface spoke of simplicity and unencumbered efficiency in design.
“You fucker,” Peter moaned.
“Well, it looks like I know how to use this,” Hunter said. He looked around. “Tell us how to get back.”
There was another flash of white light behind Hunter and all three hundred pounds of Michael appeared above him. Hunter was massive and strong, but he didn’t expect that much nerd to land on him from behind, and they went down in a tumble.
The weapon he was holding went off, triggered by the sudden flailing of Hunter collapsing, and hit Brit.
The air was knocked out of her and she skidded toward the cliff edge from the force of the blow. In a surprising display of athleticism, Marcy dove and grabbed her before Brit slid off. The dark glass rectangle, the prototype that Peter had desperately wanted, slipped out of Brit’s fingers and tumbled into the dark crevasse.
“What have you done?” Peter’s expression changed instantly.
Brit looked at him for a long moment, and she decided that what she saw in Peter’s expression was fear.
Hunter freed himself from the jumble of large limbs belonging to Michael and pointed the cylinder at Peter. “Don’t move, ass wipe.”
Peter looked back to Hunter. “Without an ilo, I’m stuck here. It took centuries to escape, and you fucking numb-nuts undo all of my work in a night.”
Brit stood and glared down at Peter, who still hadn’t stood up. He had used a word she didn’t know, and she struggled to care what it meant.
“Where is Jax?” Brit demanded.
Michael struggled to his feet and limped a few steps to put Hunter between himself and Peter.
“It doesn’t matter now. You’ll never see him,” Peter said as he stood up, glaring at Hunter. “I know that you think you are tough while holding that armilon, but you don’t know how to use it and it’s going to get you killed. One wrong motion and you’re fragile human body will be incinerated.”
Brit wondered what Peter meant. He had said the word “human” as if it hadn’t applied to him.
Hunter flicked the armilon at Peter, sending a wave of force strong enough to blast Peter back five feet. Peter collapsed into a heap gasping for breath.
“Thanks for the warning,” Hunter said. “Before I accidentally kill myself, I’ll be sure to figure out how to use it.”
Peter clutched his side. “You don’t get it, do you? You don’t know what wrong motion might kill you.”
Hunter smiled and flicked it at Peter again, blasting him with force and making him tumble back another five feet.
“You don’t get it, do you?” Hunter asked. “I know how to keep kicking your ass with it until you tell me how it works. Like you said, we have a lot of time on our hands, now that we’re here.”
“Where are we?” Marcy asked.
“Aeternum,” Peter said between heavy breaths.
Hunter flicked his wrist again, and Peter flew back again, and with more force than before. “Talking nonsense isn’t going to make this easier.”
“Stop it,” Brit said. She felt sick. She couldn’t bear to watch Hunter hurting a defenseless person, even if that person had taken Jax. “I think he was answering Marcy.”
She walked closer to Peter but was careful to stay out of his reach. Hunter followed her with the cylinder still directed right at Peter.
“Now, I need you to answer me,” Brit said. “Where is Jax?”
Peter looked from Brit to Hunter, who was still brandishing the cylinder like he was hoping Peter wouldn’t give a satisfactory answer.
Peter let out a sigh and gestured to the landscape around them. “He’s not here.”
“Where?” Brit demanded.
“If I had the ilo that this Neanderthal blasted off a cliff,” he said with a gesture at Hunter, “then I’d be able to get to Earth in a few seconds and bring him back to you. But now I couldn’t get anybody from here to Earth.”
“I don’t like this place,” Marcy whispered. “We need to leave.”
Brit looked at the starless, sunless, moonless sky, and then at the dark forest on the other side of the crevasse. “If this isn’t Earth, then why are there trees?”
“How would I fucking know,” Peter said, but then he noticed Hunter winding up to give him a particularly brutal smashing with the armilon. “Whoa! Look, just because I don’t know how they got there doesn’t mean that this is Earth.”
“I think it’s time that you make those glowing stairs appear and we go back home,” Hunter said.
Peter’s expression steeled. “You can threaten me all you like, but I’m telling you that I can’t make the stairs come back without an ilo. You know, the little piece of glass that she stole and you knocked off the edge of a cliff?”
Hunter gave two flicks in rapid succession. “How about instead of threatening you, I just keep beating you? Either you tell us how we get back or I beat the crap out of you until my arm goes numb. Either way, I’m going to be really happy.”
Peter spat out blood and coughed. “Aren’t you afraid that you’ll accidentally incinerate yourself with a device you have no comprehension of?”
“If it could incinerate me, you’d have already tried to trick me into doing that,” Hunter said with a smirk. “You sure as hell wouldn’t have warned me that it was possible.”
“I see your point,” Peter said. “There are ways out of here. I can help you find one of those ways.”
“Didn’t you say it would take centuries?” Marcy asked.
“We can’t trust him,” Michael said.
“He’s the only one that knows where Jax is,” Brit said.
“Yeah, but he has absolutely no motivation to help you find him, either,” Michael said. “He’ll probably either ditch us or kill us the first chance he gets.”
“I didn’t want anybody to get hurt,” Peter said. “If she hadn’t taken my ilo, then none of this would have happened. Hell, if she would have handed it back to me, you’d all be back on Earth eating breakfast and talking about how bad the weather was.”
“You kidnapped Jax!” Brit said. “Why would I trust you to let us go after you got what you wanted?”
“We aren’t going to solve anything by talking,” Hunter said. “You say you can lead us out of here. Start leading. If I think you are so much as considering ditching us, I’ll give you a beating you’ll never forget.”
Peter rubbed his face. “We need to get there.” He pointed at the forest across the deep, broad ravine.
“Are you sure?” Michael said. “It doesn’t look like there is any way to get there from here.”
“If we stay out here in the open long enough,” Peter said, “eventually something will find us. We’ll survive longer if we have some cover.”
Everybody glanced around the barren dirt hills, suddenly on edge and looking for danger.
“What kind of animals are out here?” Marcy asked.
“Nothing that you’d recognize,” Peter said, and he smiled a little. He shrugged. “Besides, do you see that building? There might be tools we can use, and at the very least, we’ll have some shelter.”
As they all strained to see into the fo
rest. Peter lunged at Hunter, who casually sidestepped his attacker. Then, with a backhanded flick, sent Peter flying again with the armilon.
“You are not off to a very good start,” Hunter said. “Fortunately, I plan to make the most of it.”
Peter looked afraid as Hunter studied him, apparently trying to decide how to best inflict pain.
Brit felt sick, knowing the violence that Hunter was going to inflict on Peter would be terrible. She needed Peter to live because she needed him to return Jax to her, but she was afraid there were no words she could find that might dissuade Hunter from beating Peter. Marcy stepped back from Peter and looked away, and Brit knew that Marcy had sensed the same violence rising.
Michael pointed. “I see the building.”
Brit followed Michael’s indication and noticed a faint yellow roof tucked among the trees. “I see it, too.”
Chapter Six
“Thank you, Lord!” Marcy hugged herself despite it being warm.
Brit didn’t want to point out that it was Michael who found the building, not any deity, but her heart wasn’t into starting a fight with Marcy. Not only because Marcy had lost her husband hours before but because losing Jax was threatening to overwhelm her.
“Well, that was easy.” Hunter smiled at Peter. “You are really lucky that I want to get home in time to watch college ball.”
Brit studied the forest across the ravine. There were no birds chirping or other signs of life, no sounds beyond the rustle of wind in the trees on the other side of the ravine. “Are there any wild animals that we should know about? Like tigers or something?”
Marcy stepped closer to Hunter, the only person who had a weapon. “There are tigers here?” she asked.
Michael also stepped closer to Hunter. Brit rolled her eyes.
“No, there are no tigers,” Peter said, and now he was smiling. “There are things far worse, and you may not see them coming.”
“I’m glad that we have you to lead the way, so you can point them out to us,” Hunter said.
“You aren’t getting out of here without my help,” Peter said.
Hunter gave a casual flick of the cylinder in Peter’s direction, and Peter’s head whipped back. He groaned.
“Yeah, and you don’t have to give it willingly,” Hunter said. “Actually, I’d kind of prefer you didn’t.”
Hunter was scaring Brit. She had no idea that he was capable of such cruelty. If they made it out of here, he was never going to be welcome in her home again. Right now, though, they were stranded on some foreign planet, brought here by some seriously alien tech and chased by a kidnapper who resembled a pizza delivery man in a sports coat; and she needed everybody working toward the goal of getting Jax and getting home.
Peter stood up, brushed himself off, and wiped a trickle of blood from his nose. “Let’s get this done.”
He briskly walked past them and toward the ravine. He looked down and sighed. “Fuck.”
A creature, approximately the size and shape of a winged, black buffalo, shot out of the ravine and flew toward the forest.
“Was that a bird?” Marcy asked.
Peter shook his head. “That was a raivo. They are mostly scavengers, but they are perfectly fine with snatching an easy meal.”
“Like a vulture?” Michael asked.
“More like a demon,” Peter said.
“We’re in hell?” Marcy asked. “I knew that poker was bad. Aiden wouldn’t listen to me.”
“We’re not in hell,” Brit replied.
Peter shrugged. “Let’s move along. If we can get to the building, we’ll probably be able to find the raivo and get back the ilo. There’s no way across this ravine at this point, and so we’ll have to follow it until we find a place to cross.”
“Wait,” Michael said, “there is a demon in that building.”
“They’ll live wherever they want,” Peter said. “There aren’t any living humans here.”
“What do you mean living humans? Are there ghosts?” Marcy asked.
“There is no such thing as ghosts,” Brit said with exasperation in her tone. The words had barely left her lips when she thought back to the shoveler in Marcy’s backyard, but she now dismissed that as foolishness.
“But there are demons?” Hunter asked.
“There are many things here,” Peter said. “You can call them whatever you’d like.”
“Look, you can say there are fairies, demons, and ghosts, but that doesn’t make them real,” Brit said with even more exasperation.
“There are fairies?” Hunter asked.
“Are we dead?” Marcy asked.
“Not yet,” Peter said. “We really should get out of the open. If the scavenger detected the ilo, then he knows we’re here. If he’s hungry enough, he might decide to look for us.”
“What do those scavengers typically eat?” Brit asked.
Peter smirked. “Anything they want.”
“Does anybody have a cross?” Hunter asked.
“I do,” Marcy said and gestured to her necklace.
“Why?” Brit asked.
“I’ve seen The Exorcist a dozen times. I’m not sure if you have to be a priest to use a cross, but it couldn’t hurt, right?” Hunter said.
Peter chuckled, Brit sighed, Michael’s shoulders sagged, and Marcy clutched the tiny cross on her necklace. The gesture of holding the cross seemed less like she was preparing to use it as a weapon and more that she was taking comfort in its existence, thought Brit, or maybe she was afraid Hunter would take it from her.
Peter walked along the ravine edge shaking his head. Brit only dared one glance over the edge and couldn’t see the bottom. A strong wind carrying a sour odor was all that escaped that vast darkness as they all followed Peter along the cusp of the ravine.
She didn’t trust Peter to help them, but she trusted that he knew this place and that he wanted to preserve his own life. As such, she was sure that getting out of the open was a good idea, but she was also sure that Peter would try to get them all killed at the first opportunity. She was certain that wherever he led them, it would be a trap, and yet there really wasn’t a better place for them to go than to follow him.
Hunter followed a few feet behind Peter, the armilon directed lazily toward Peter. Marcy followed closely behind Hunter, holding her cross out, with Michael limping along at her side. Michael’s head was jerking around so much, presumably looking for danger, that it seemed he was having some sort of seizure. Brit walked behind everybody else.
Peter had called the creature a demon, but Brit knew better. She wasn’t sure how the ilo worked, but it had quite probably transported them to another planet, which had distinctly Earth-like trees, and fortunately, oxygen. Whatever those scavengers were, they were still natural creatures and probably wouldn’t be scared by or interested in crosses or bibles. Brit imagined the terrifying image of one of those huge black creatures flying at them.
They walked for hours, and the sky remained the same gradient of blues, oranges, and golds with no rising sun or moon or hint of a star. The forest on the other side of the ravine looked much the same as it had before, and the building they had spotted had faded into the hazy distance long ago. On their side of the ravine, the ground remained the same red, coarse gravelly hills.
Brit’s legs ached and she was thirsty and hungry. The others, trudging ahead of her, didn’t look like they were faring better. Michael seemed to be doing the worst. His injured ankle had given him a limp, which had progressively gotten worse as they walked. Perspiration soaked his short, brown hair and gave it the appearance of many small spikes. She wondered why he hadn’t asked for a break.
“We should stop for a bit and rest,” Brit called out.
Peter didn’t slow down and didn’t look back. “That’s not a good idea.”
Hunter looked at Brit, who gave a jerk of her head at Michael to indicate that he needed a rest.
“Stop,” Hunter said.
Everybody, even Peter, stopp
ed.
“You stop for him and not me?” Brit asked.
“You don’t have a weapon, and you don’t look like you’d hurt anything,” Peter said. “None of you would stop if you knew how dangerous it was out here.”
Michael collapsed to the ground and held his ankle. Brit walked over and examined it.
“It is really swollen,” Brit said.
Hunter sighed, lifted up his sweater, and tore a long strip from the dress shirt he wore under it. He knelt next to Brit and wrapped Michael’s ankle with his makeshift bandage. Brit guessed that, as a personal trainer, Hunter probably had to maintain his first aid training because dealing with minor injuries at the gym was part of the job.
“Normally, I’d tell you to put ice on this and stay off of it,” Hunter said. “There doesn’t seem to be much ice here, and I know that your fat ass wouldn’t be walking if it didn’t have to.”
“What the hell is wrong with you?” Brit asked.
Hunter scoffed. “Nothing is wrong with me because I don’t spend 16 hours a day on the couch eating potato chips full of GMO toxins.”
“Guys?” Marcy said.
“GMO toxins?” Brit asked. “Yeah, potato chips are not good for you, but toxic? Do you even know what that word means?”
“Guys!” Marcy said louder.
Hunter studied Michael. “What he needs is about four hours per day on a treadmill, an hour a day on free weights with a regimen focused on the core muscle groups, and definitely a broccoli detox.”
“You can’t detox somebody with broccoli!” Brit said in frustration.
“Guys!” Marcy yelled.
“What?” Brit and Hunter said at the same time as they turned to Marcy.
“Peter is gone,” she said.
Brit looked around. There was no sign of Peter, not even a footprint.
“Where did he go?” Brit asked.
“That prick,” Hunter shouted as he jogged up to the top of the next rise.
The ground was perfectly flat, almost as if it was the foundation of an ancient building that time had erased. Hunter stood there and slowly turned to face each direction.
