“So it’s off the map,” said Mike. “But a satellite phone would work no matter where you were. Do you have one?”
Orthon stared at him blankly.
I placed my hands on my hips. So much for showing a little kindness to strangers. How stingy could anyone be? I’d pay him double or triple if he wanted. “You’ll be paid for your trouble and time too, I promise.”
“Sorry, but I do not carry a phone of any kind,” said Orthon.
I pulled Mike away from Orthon as I whispered, “Do you think it’s safe to go with him? I mean, there’s something odd about him. And besides, who doesn’t own a cell?”
“I don’t care who this guy is, as long as he can get us outta here. For all I care, he could be Jack the Ripper himself, and I’d still go. He’s gotta be a safer bet than hungry dinosaurs and brunette-loathing aliens.” Mike reached for my hands. “Listen, we need this guy. He knows this area, and we don’t. Just don’t promise him money, or he’ll think we’re rich and spoiled—maybe worth a ransom.”
“I don’t see how he’d think that…” I pointed to his feet and finished in a playful tone, “…when you can’t even afford a pair of shoes.”
“Ha ha,” he laughed. “Hiking over rocks barefoot really sucks. Wanna head back into the wildlife preserve and get my sandals outta that hole?” He held up a hand. “Kidding. Let’s go.”
I peeled away the strands of hair that were sticking to my forehead. Orthon wasn’t forcing us, but we really didn’t have any other choice than to go with him. He was strange, yes, but he didn’t look like a serial killer.
What would Jack do if he were here? I wondered. He’d want to get word to our parents that we’re still alive so they could launch a rescue mission. I decided it was best to follow Orthon, and I hoped the city would have a phone I could use. I turned toward Orthon, who had stopped to wait for us. “We’re coming.” My heart sank in my chest. For some reason, my decision didn’t strike me as the most profitable one, even though it seemed the most logical choice. I could only hope we weren’t running right into a trap.
* * *
Orthon hurried his pace, leaving a trail of deep footprints for us to follow. Pebbles and sticks crunched beneath his feet and smashed into dust. I wondered how much he must weigh. From behind, I regarded his muscular shoulders and narrow hips. Judging from his stature, he was barely more than middleweight, so either he was intentionally stomping like an elephant, or he was seriously big-boned. Unless… I thought for a minute that maybe he was a cyborg. I shook my head and let out a sigh at my overactive imagination running wild yet again. Still, I couldn’t help but stare at him, certain that at any minute, he’d turn around with glowing eyes and say, “Hasta la vista, baby.”
Mike walked ahead with Orthon. They seemed pretty busy yapping about who-knew-what.
“Hey, Mike,” I interrupted. “Can I see ya for a minute?”
He smiled and stepped back. “Miss me?”
“You know it, babe.” I nodded toward Orthon. “Exchanging recipes for protein shakes? Does he put in ten eggs to your two?”
“Ha ha.”
“Yeah, you’re right. I don’t think he does eggs. He might short circuit.” I pointed to the ground as he walked ahead. Stones crushed into smithereens under Orthon’s boots. “Artificial intelligence?” I was almost scared to bring it up to Mike, because I didn’t want him to think I’d gone completely nuts.
He glanced up, his eyes wide, with a glint that promised he was just as much in his own fantasy world as I was. “You mean a…a cyborg? Like in Terminator?”
I nodded. “Yeah, or Battlestar Galactica or Star Trek or you-name-it.”
Now he seemed impressed. “Hmm. That’s not such a bad theory. Yeah, maybe he’s some kind of humanoid robot. Or an alien.”
“If he turns into silver liquid and takes the shape and appearance of anything he touches, I’ll just scream.”
“Me too,” said Mike. “I’ll be running for the hills.”
I laughed as I followed Orthon through a large crack in the rock wall. “It’s so reassuring to know you have my back. Guess I’ll have to turn into kick-butt Sarah Connor or Sigourney Weaver and take care of him myself.”
Orthon turned and shot us an enquiring glance. “I can hear you, but do not know what to make of your words.”
Not only was he strange, but he also had no idea what we were talking about. He couldn’t be older than thirty, so unless he had lived in some kind of hole in the ground with no TV, no radio, no Internet, and no knowledge of protein powder, there was no way on Earth he didn’t know about Arnold Schwarzenegger.
Mike eyed Orthon up and down suspiciously. What kind of trouble is he going to start? I began to think that maybe I should’ve never stirred things up. Besides, there was no way Orthon was really a robot. That would be too far-fetched even for this place. I gave Mike a shut-your-mouth look.
He ignored me and blurted out, “You’ve got to admit, you’re one tall guy. What is it that you drink in Agartha?” He emphasized the last word like it was some sort of curse, ready to befall anyone who sipped on the formula to unleash its power.
Orthon never slowed his pace. “The same thing you drank from my canteen—water.”
Mike zigzagged and leapt over razor-sharp rocks on the dusty path as he struggled to keep up with Orthon. “Are you all so unnaturally tall?”
He nodded.
Mike shot me a triumphant grin, like he’d just discovered that the government had been cloning aliens for years. “I bet there’s some sort of secret to your height? Maybe human growth hormone? Or a specific plant that’s not grown on Earth? Or genetic mutation? How many chromosomes do you have?”
“Why don’t you just ask him whether he’s from Mars and when he last visited the bathroom?” There was no way poor Orthon was a robot. Besides, jumping to ridiculous conclusions was Mike’s thing, not mine.
Mike raised his hand, signaling me to keep quiet. “I’ll get to that in a minute. Now don’t get impatient, or you may scare our friend here away, even though he’s probably lived for hundreds of years.” He turned to Orthon with probing eyes. “What’s it like? You know, up there?” He pointed to the sky.
“I do not understand,” came Orthon’s reply.
I pulled Mike to the side, “Look, I was wrong about the robot theory, and he’s not an alien either. Heck, we’re on Earth. Yeah, he’s kind of a weirdo, but last time I checked, that wasn’t a crime. We need to stop treating him like a freak.”
Mike didn’t say another word and I hurried my pace to catch up with Orthon. I gazed up at his kind face, squinting under the blazing suns. “Everything about this day has been really weird.”
Mike heaved a sigh. “Weird? How about outright bizarre?”
Orthon leapt like a superhero onto a humongous black boulder, as tall as a semi-truck. His blue eyes twinkled. “You have no idea what you have stumbled into.”
My mouth dropped as I shook Mike’s shoulder. “Did you see that?” I’d never before seen somebody from Earth jump that high, except on television. But as far as I could tell, Orthon didn’t have any help from invisible ropes or camera tricks. Orthon motioned for us to follow.
I glared up at him, confused. He doesn’t really expect us to start floating up, does he? “I’ll be right there!” I called up. “Just let me get some superpowers first! Any ideas from where?”
“I meant you should follow me in this direction,” he retorted.
“How the heck did he do that?” whispered Mike. “That’s a good ten feet.”
“I dunno.” I shook my head. “This guy’s not normal. That much I can tell.”
I squeezed through a narrow gap between the huge boulder and the rock wall. Guess Mike and I would have to take the long way around.
“There’s something strange about this guy, and I want to know what it is,” said Mike.
I shrugged. “After everything we’ve seen, I don’t doubt you. I’m just not sure if this is the time and place
to start questioning his intentions. We need to get to that city if we want to save Jack.”
“We need more info. Watch this.” Mike glanced up and stood, his arms firmly planted on his hips in a powerful stance. He seemed to be channeling Clark Kent, ready to morph into his blue tights to impress an eager Lois Lane. Raising his voice he said, “Hey, Orthon, we’re tired of waiting for answers. We’re not taking another step until you tell us who the people in those ships are.”
Why does he keep saying “we”? It’s not like I told him to get in Orthon’s face like that!
“Fair enough,” said Orthon. “I will tell you.”
Mike nudged me. “See, babe? That’s how it’s done.”
I tried not to laugh. “Yeah, you showed him. You da man.”
Orthon ventured through the twisting rock when he stopped for a brief moment. “Are you sure you can handle it?”
He didn’t wait for Mike’s answer, but just took the lead again, his feet moving effortlessly over the stony terrain. I tried to keep up, huffing again. “Of course. If Mike gets scared, he can hold my hand.”
“You know nothing scares me,” he said. “I’m like—”
“It is going to change the way you see the world…” Orthon’s voice echoed off the rock. “…and nothing will ever be the same again.”
Obviously, Orthon was as much of a drama king as Mike. Whatever he had to say couldn’t be worse than facing a hungry T-rex and its dinner guests. “Thanks for the warning, but I’m a big girl. And Mike’s a big boy, or so I hope. Just lay it on us. I don’t care if it rocks my world.”
Orthon let out an exaggerated sigh. “Do not say I did not warn you.”
I came to a startled halt. Uh-oh. Now he’ll start reciting some scary ghost story, like we’re sitting around a campfire. “Please just tell us.”
He met my gaze as he tilted his head slightly, his eyes ablaze. “My city’s under attack by rebel Greys. The Greys are a humanoid race from another solar system.”
We could definitely scratch the Terminator scenario. This was more along the lines of Star Wars. Definitely sci-fi. “Seriously? You’re being attacked by aliens?” For a second, I thought he might be joking as a result of listening to our banter, just messing with us, but his expression was a cross of slight impatience and dead seriousness.
“What?” Mike rested against a huge rock slab, a frown crossing his lips. “What did you do to piss them off?”
“It is actually something surface scientists did back in 1961, with the launch of the first planetary probe,” said Orthon. “There was a mishap. Venera 1 disappeared into space, never to be seen again. Your people never thought anything of it, but it caused a ripple effect that no one ever expected. I cannot tell you anything more, except that revenge has been on their minds for a long time—long before you were even born.”
So this is about some cosmic revenge. How is any of this our fault? We had no control over what scientists did back in the 1960s! The space program lost a probe. So what? Doesn’t that kind of stuff happen? Biting my lip, I pondered more. So the aliens got all concerned about others dumping their garbage on their planet? It was just a satellite! Geesh! Talk about making a mountain out of a molehill. I was surprised the probe had even made it that far. Besides, what could it do that could cause a race of aliens to want to destroy every human on Earth more than fifty years later?
Mike shrugged. “I don’t know what your plans are, but I’m definitely outta here.”
“Mike, wait,” said Orthon.
“What? They don’t want Cali, so I’m on my way home to Huntington Beach.”
Orthon’s gaze narrowed. “We have to save Agartha.”
Mike didn’t seem eager to assist. “Dude, how do you do that?”
“You don’t.” I bit my lower lip to still the emotions rising up inside of me. “We should run the other way.”
“Besides, the big guy doesn’t need a couple of teenagers standing in his way,” said Mike. “Right, Orthon?”
He frowned. “It’s not just about this city. They want to make Earth their home, and they won’t give up until we’re all annihilated.”
I gasped. “Annihilated?” Did Orthon just say “we”? This can’t be real, not outside TV. I stared up at him, waiting for a smile to cross his features as he told them it was nothing but a joke and we were the main protagonists on a new reality show. When it didn’t happen, I wagged a finger between me and Mike, a sense of foreboding washing over me. “You mean us too? And our parents? And everyone else we know?”
He nodded. “By we, I mean everyone that inhabits the planet—no exceptions.”
“But how do you know?” I asked. “Surely if something like that was the case, then the government would’ve sent out a warning, asking people to stock up on baked beans and Reese’s Cups and whatever else might help them survive an alien invasion. It’s not like they sent you a greeting card, informing you of their plans. Or did they?”
“Our people have been hacking into their communication systems for ages.”
There were so many things I wanted to do before I died, like travel to Hershey, Pennsylvania and gorge only on chocolate bars for a week. And then there was Mike. We couldn’t die—not before I figured out where we stood and where we wanted to go from there. The whole situation was hard to wrap my mind around. Under normal circumstances, I’d think Orthon was delusional and in dire need of his meds. I rubbed my temples. How could I deny the proof slapping me in the face? I’d seen the flying thingies floating above our heads, shooting down red laser beams, trying to cut off a limb or two. Orthon had to be telling the truth. My heart started to pound.
Orthon’s lips pressed into a grim line. “They are very dangerous.”
It was definitely an understatement. I had barely escaped with my life when they were shooting at me—not to mention that they’d kidnapped Jack and were probably hatching their offspring in the back of his neck at that very moment. “We have to call the military. You might be in the middle of nowhere, but we have millions of soldiers from different countries that’ll know how to deal with a threat like this.” A ray of hope formed somewhere in my heart, lifting my spirits.
Orthon held my gaze. “My people are handling it. I doubt your military can do much apart from standing in our way.”
“Are you kidding?” retorted Mike. “I don’t care how high you can jump and climb, this little island can’t fight an alien race from another galaxy.”
I nodded in agreement. Again, Mike had a point there. Unless Orthon and Company could lunge from the ground on top of the spaceships, rip through metal to get inside, and put the entire crew to sleep with a wiggle of their noses, I doubted we stood a chance.
Orthon crossed his arms. “Yes we could. Our spacecraft is state of the art, but everything is inoperable right now.”
I swallowed hard. “Wait…what’re you saying? You have your own ships?” I knew something was wrong. Unless governments around the world had kept it secret, they had yet to come up with anything more advanced than a plane using stealth technology or the space shuttles. I wiped my sweaty forehead, and that was when I noticed that our strange new friend didn’t have one drop of sweat pouring off of him. It was hard to admit to myself, but I knew Orthon wasn’t from Earth. It was exactly what I feared, even though I’d just joked around about it with Mike.
I wanted to believe it wasn’t true, but how could I, with the all evidence adding up? My stomach fluttered as a shiver ran down my spine. Were all those UFO sightings real? Do aliens dwell on Earth? We could have easily taken over one of the many islands of the South Pacific, and no one would ever have noticed. They could have lived hidden in plain sight, claiming to be just taller, stronger, and more beautiful, and nobody would’ve ever been the wiser. I took a brave step forward and said, “You’re trying to hide it, but I’m seeing right through you. Alien.”
His eyes stayed glued to mine. I could tell from his passive expression that he knew I was on to him, and I wondered
if he would deny it or try to play innocent.
Orthon raised his eyebrows, a smile playing on his lips. “Feel free to disagree, but I think that title might belong to you. Aliens are foreigners to their surroundings—someone who is a citizen of a country other than the country in which he or she is visiting…or in your case, is shipwrecked upon.”
I wondered how he’d so easily managed to turn my words around. I understood what he meant, but it didn’t explain why he couldn’t come up with a clear answer to my accusation. I still had to wonder if Orthon was an alien from another planet.
“What?” asked Mike. “You’re calling us the aliens when you can jump ten feet in the air? There’s clearly something off about you, buddy. So how long have you been here, breathing our air, drinking our fresh water, and mingling with the locals over a pint or two?”
I glanced at Mike’s rosy cheeks, now slick with sweat. He was having one of his detective moments again, ready to dive right in regardless of consequences, and I was doing the exact same thing. I wondered if I should take out my black robe and gavel and start the trial right then and there. I decided I needed to calm down and back off. Grabbing Mike’s hand, I said, “Let’s give the poor guy a break.”
Orthon shifted his stance. “It’s okay. I will have to tell you sooner or later anyway.” Mike shot her his usual I-told-you-so look as Orthon continued, “I was born about three hundred years ago.”
My jaw dropped. It was freaky, but I believed Orthon wholeheartedly.
“I knew it! I think your race has set up shop on one of our islands,” Mike blurted out. “I hope you’ve asked someone for permission. It’s not like you don’t have millions of other planets to choose from, but I kinda get it. It’s beautiful here. And the rainforest, back over the wall, is amazing. Who wouldn’t want to live on a tropical island?”
Orthon turned and started walking again as he resumed the conversation, “Funny you should think you are on an island.”
I hurried after him, my thighs on fire again as I tried to keep up with his hasty pace.
Trapped in the Hollow Earth Novelette Series Omnibus Edition (Books 1 - 4) Page 28
