* * * *
“It’s snowing,” Monica murmured, trying to wrap her mind around it as Kael and Dar hustled her across the uneven landscape.
It took a little while for that to sink in as an evil omen.
At first, she wasn’t even sure that that was what had caused the sense of urgency—almost of panic.
But they kept looking at the sky and there was nothing else. There was lightning, no booming in the distance to indicate the approach of a dangerous storm or an eruption.
It was the snow that had caused the abrupt change in them—the shift toward survival mode.
That had to be it.
She just wasn’t accustomed to thinking of snow as a serious danger.
But none of them were dressed for the deep cold that went with ice.
She’d been miserable when it was just ‘chilly’ and her suit was far better protection than what they had.
The sense of urgency went beyond that, though. She was sure of it. They behaved as if they were facing a complete disaster.
She supposed snow would qualify when they didn’t have a warm place to stay, but even in such a devastated landscape they’d always managed to find shelter of some kind.
They needed a little better than that, she acknowledged, if the snow kept up.
It was that thought that finally brought complete understanding.
It wasn’t supposed to be snowing!
“Oh god! Oh my god!”
Was that it? An ice age?
Was she letting her imagination run wild?
It had been cool the entire time she’d been on their world, and cold enough at night she was sorry they didn’t have any kind of camping equipment to comfort them.
Maybe it was their cold season? Their winter?
Why would they seem almost desperate, though? Why wouldn’t they have been expecting something like this?
Maybe it had started earlier than normal? Maybe that was why they’d set such a grueling pace? They were trying to find the shelter they needed to make it through a hard winter?
Food. Water.
They were screwed!
They didn’t have anything!
At this point it didn’t matter if they were facing a regular snowy season or an extended-into-forever snow season. They had nothing to get through it, no supplies whatsoever.
Well, except the lake.
Even if it iced over, they would have water.
She felt confident they could find a way to break the ice sheet and get to the water.
But food.
And shelter against the cold.
They had almost nothing that could be burned to make heat and even if they found anything it would be virtually useless without a shelter to help capture and hold the warmth.
Their pace was grueling, exhausting to the point that Monica pretty much abandoned speculation and focused on putting one foot in front of the other after little more than an hour.
At first, the snow didn’t seem to ‘stick’. Even though the light, occasional drift of a flake turned into a brisk and then a steady, heavy flow, there were only small patches of ice that accumulated here and there. In time, however, and despite the heat they generated by their fast walk, the air temperature began to fall noticeably enough Monica felt it through her suit. The sweat dried and then began to feel like ice under the suit and her feet and toes grew colder and more block-like.
Dar and Kael were suffering worse, she knew.
There was no point in complaining except for the exercise and she was too winded and tired to spare the air and the energy.
It was almost dark by the time Dar and Kael paused and Monica was so weary by that time it took her a few minutes to figure out they hadn’t merely stopped to catch their breath. There was something in the near distance that had prompted it.
Dar turned to her, looked her over carefully, and then grasped her shoulders and guided her down to sit. Almost the moment she settled she felt the ice on the ground began to penetrate her suit.
“Sit, stay,” Dar said firmly.
Monica stared at him glumly when he walked off, resentful to be relegated to the ‘dog’ status but too damned tired to demand that she be considered as an equal partner.
Too damned tired to be scared for that matter.
She glanced around the area where Dar and Kael had left her, but she didn’t see anything that worried her and returned her attention to them.
It wasn’t until they stopped beside it that she realized that they’d found something that might be shelter. A black hole indicated an opening, but the sides seemed way too regular to be the work of nature. It was some kind of stone structure that predated the extinction event.
It looked like nothing more than a pile of rubble, but then it was nearly dark and the dimness coupled with the fact that the snow had turned the world into black and white made it hard for her to tell much about it.
The opening was big enough that they could walk through it, but not big enough that they could go in together. They seemed to conference over their next move and then, gripping their weapons in attack stance, Dar rushed inside and Kael followed.
Monica’s heart skipped more than one beat when she heard the roars and commotion from inside the hole.
She shot to her feet despite the fact that, only moments before, she’d wondered if she would ever be able to get up again.
Trying not to think the unthinkable, she whipped a look around for anything she might use as a weapon and finally dropped to her knees and started feeling around the ground. She found a rock about the size of her fist and a charred branch that shattered into a million pieces the moment she swung it through the air.
After staring at the rock in dismay for a handful of seconds, she tossed it and dropped down for another search.
The sounds of battle diminished and then silence fell.
Monica whipped a frightened look at the dark hole, waited with baited breath for the guys to come out, refusing to accept the possibility that they might not.
After what seemed like forever, someone appeared at the opening.
He was hunched over and unidentifiable.
It didn’t help that Monica’s eyes instantly filled with tears—briefly of relief and then fresh terror because he was bloodied and bent over.
Struggling to her feet, she plunged down the slight incline, racing to him when she had no real notion of what she meant to do.
It was Kael, she discovered, just before she slammed into him hard enough he dropped what he’d been dragging and grabbed at her to catch his balance. Hearing a metallic scrape behind her, Monica jerked a shaky glance and discovered Dar with his weapon half drawn.
He relaxed his attack stance almost instantly, but she’d seen and she knew it had been a close thing, that he’d thought she was attacking Kael.
She released her grip on Kael and rushed to Dar, flinging her arms around him and bursting into noisy sobs.
He seemed too disconcerted to react at first. After a moment, though, he returned her embrace, hugging her tightly. “Someting scare Meeka?”
Monica struggled to regain her composure. “I thought you might be … hurt. And Kael. I didn’t know what had happened.”
She was afraid they were dead and she was alone.
She pulled away and examined him with her gaze. “Are you hurt?”
He shook his head. “Safe … you go in now.”
Monica blinked at him, digesting that slowly, and looked beyond him.
Dar saw the doubt in her eyes. “I will take care of the beast. You take her inside and do another sweep to make sure we got everything. When you are certain you can come and help or look for something to make a fire.”
“You should go in with her. She will feel safer with you,” Kael responded in a carefully neutral voice.
Dar gave him a long look. “But we are bond brothers—equal in every way—and I think she may not understand that. She will only feel that she belongs to us equally if we behave
that way.”
Chapter Nine
When Kael only stared at him blankly, Dar set Meeka away firmly. “We do not have time, now, to debate. We have to act or none of us will be here to consider it.”
Kael nodded jerkily as Dar grasped the beast they’d slain and started tugging it away from the entrance.
Bracing himself for rejection, Kael stepped forward, grasped Meeka’s upper arm and urged her inside. “Safe, Meeka. Kael check ebery ting.”
When he spoke, Monica dragged her gaze from Dar’s retreating form, staring at him without comprehension for several moments.
Because her mind was preoccupied with trying to understand Dar’s behavior.
He had hugged her as if … she meant something special to him.
And then he had handed her over to Kael.
She was more bemused than anything as Kael led her inside, but her mind shifted to the black hole he’d tugged her into. She blinked, repeatedly, but the darkness didn’t lift significantly.
Could he see, she wondered in alarm?
How could they be certain nothing else was inside the cavern if they couldn’t see any better than she could?
He led her deeper into the darkness, where she couldn’t even see the feeble light pouring through the mouth of the cavern, and then guided her to a seated position. She felt her rump touch something that seemed solid and she settled.
She sensed more than saw Kael kneel before her. He settled his arms around her loosely, caging her in. “Ok?”
Monica nodded before she thought better of it and answered instead. “Yes. I’m fine.” She hesitated. “Are you ok? Not hurt?”
Thankfully, he didn’t take it as an insult to his manliness. “Scratch. Nuting bad.”
Monica was immediately alarmed that he was downplaying something much more serious, but she decided that what they all needed was calm reflection of the situation—not hysterics. “You wouldn’t … just say that to keep me from worrying?”
She doubted he understood half of what she’d said, but his response seemed to indicate he’d understood well enough. “Is ok. Need fire, ok?”
Which meant he was going to leave her all alone in the black pit and look for something.
Monica curled her fingers into the thing she was sitting on and made a discovery that distracted her completely as Kael took her silence for acquiescence, rose, and left.
Still focused on her discovery, Monica used her fingers and hands to examine it.
She wasn’t sitting on a strangely smooth, flat rock.
It was … a chair of some kind.
Or maybe a stool.
She couldn’t find a back, but it had been formed by hands not nature. She was sure of it.
So it probably wasn’t a cave where she was sitting and she’d been right before about the regularity of the entrance.
That intrigued her enough to beat back terror for a handful of minutes.
Then she heard movement that seemed to be coming from further back in the ‘cave’ than toward the entrance.
She held her breath, listening, struggling to hear above the pounding of her heart in her ears, trying to think.
Which way had Kael gone when he’d left?
She’d been too preoccupied with her discovery to really pay attention, she realized in dismay.
It might be him she was hearing. It would help her feelings considerably if she could be sure, but her instincts were screaming at her that calling out wasn’t a good idea.
It might be something looking for dinner.
Would it help to stay quiet?
Or would whatever it was be able to see her with no problem?
It didn’t necessarily follow that nothing would be able to see just because she was blind.
Or maybe it could smell her?
Most any Earth animal would have been able to smell her.
She didn’t actually make a conscious decision to stay quiet. She couldn’t seem to unglue her tongue from the roof of her mouth when the sounds only increased until she was absolutely convinced that whatever it was, it was very, very close. It almost felt as if her ears were stretching and enlarging as she strained to hear every slight sound and interpret it.
There was a flurry of movements not far from her that she couldn’t interpret to save her life.
Then there was a scraping noise. Stone against stone? Abruptly, sparks erupted and flew outward. In the brief, faint, shower of light, Monica caught a glimpse of Kael’s hard features. Knee weakening relief flooded her.
Anger swiftly followed that he’d nearly scared the life out of her!
But then she tamped it with the reflection that he probably had no idea she was so blind in the darkness. He’d been moving around like someone who could see—not blind or half-blind.
Had that occurred to her because they seemed cat-like to her? Or was it completely reasonable because she was sure he’d gone deeper into the darkness and she hadn’t heard him trip or fall or stumble into anything?
She dismissed her irritation and her speculation when the sparks ignited a tiny flame. She could hear Kael blowing on it, see just enough in the tiny bit of light to see that that was what he was doing. Slowly, he was feeding tiny bits of … well something that was burning.
It stank.
The stench didn’t grow in direct proportion to the flames. It grew faster.
It was fortunate that that circumstance led Monica to take shallow breaths because the smoke began to outstrip the stink.
She covered her mouth and nose with the suit, trying to filter it.
“Smoke rise. Sit low,” Kael advised.
Duh! He was the one who’d sat her in direct line of the damned smoke, which she could now see was snaking toward the entrance.
Well, it did until a gust of wind pushed it back inside and dispersed it.
Monica fought a round with the coughing, waving her hand in front of her face.
Kael turned from the fire and began gathering bits of stone and building a small wall around the fire. When she was sure that was what he was doing, Monica got up to help. He glanced at her a couple of times, apparently decided she didn’t know what she was doing, and carefully instructed her.
Resentment flickered to life again.
She had been trained in survival, damn it!
She knew how to build a frigging fire and a frigging fire ring!
Unfortunately, he seemed to sense her annoyance even though she didn’t voice it and it spawned a response of anger in him.
Remember your psychology, Monica!
She took several slow, deep breaths to dismiss her irritation. “Like this?”
He glanced at her when she spoke, studied her face longer than the movement of her hands, and finally nodded. She saw he looked less tense than before, though, and mentally kicked herself.
Humans were prone to reacting to emotions in others. There was no reason to think that might not be the case in aliens.
And clearly it was.
And she needed to be very careful in the way she behaved around them when they were not just strangers, they were also aliens.
She hadn’t really thought of them as either since they’d been constant companions for weeks, but that fact remained. They were able to communicate after a fashion, but they still hardly knew one another—what they were capable of, inclined toward.
Kael seemed the most open of the two men, or at least disinclined to hide his feelings like Dar.
And yet Dar seemed the more predictable of the two.
Except for that kiss.
She’d been carefully avoiding thinking about it, but as she settled down to stare at the fire and try to absorb some of the feeble heat it was putting out, it was hard to keep those thoughts at bay.
Images flickered through her mind that generated internal heat and with it a restlessness that had her struggling to be still.
Kael flicked a long look at her, almost as if he sensed her inner turmoil and recognized it.
She didn’t meet his gaze, afraid she would see knowing there. She would’ve been uncomfortable, she thought, under most any circumstance, but she was beginning to feel completely rebuffed and that added to the discomfort.
If she’d even encountered a promising glance since the kiss, she thought she would have felt better. But it wasn’t as if it had never happened. It was as if Dar, maybe both Dar and Kael, had been repelled by the incident—either physically—because they weren’t as drawn to her as she was to them. Or possibly because she had done something taboo, behaved in a way so contrary to their customs that they now felt uncomfortable being around her.
It frustrated and embarrassed her that she didn’t have a clue of why they were so standoffish since or even if it was just her imagination.
Thankfully, Dar returned before she could get herself too worked up.
He might not have been a welcome distraction just then except he returned bearing a bloody, unrecognizable piece of flesh.
Monica’s stomach growled the moment he arranged the meat carefully on the rocks they’d gathered and placed around the fire.
Both men turned to look at her.
Embarrassed, Monica got up and moved to the opening of their ‘cave’ for a breath of fresh air.
It was cold enough to freeze her breath, though, and she moved away fairly quickly and began to search for anything that might be used to cover the gaping hole that was letting more heat out than smoke.
When she failed to find anything useful in the ‘room’ they were in, she turned to stare speculatively at the darkened interior. There were cracks, she realized, that were allowing specs of light in here and there, but not enough to help her see and they were probably allowing the majority of the heat to escape.
Almost as if Dar and Kael had read her mind, they began to prowl the space, as well, studying the cracks and then looking around. After a few moments, both men disappeared into the black cavern to the rear.
Monica was tempted to sit down again, but she was a long way from comfortable and thought some modicum of physical ease was worth pursuing. After examining the area as thoroughly as her limited eye sight would allow, she found an empty container that was relatively intact. It looked as if it had been made from stone and she decided it must have been some kind of pottery. Moving to the entrance, she braced herself against the cold and stepped out to use the snow to clean the container the best she could and then packed fresh snow in it and returned to the fire.
Exodus: Extinction Event Page 8
