Taoree: Taoree Trilogy #1

by Michele Notaro

  Colt and I both fell into a bout of silent laughter, but eventually we settled down and I whispered, “Goodnight, Babe.”

  “Night, Starshine,” he whispered back.

  He was snoring a second later.

  Chapter Seven

  After Colt took his turn as lookout, we got to snuggle back together inside the sleeping bag. Nolan ended up going to a different tree so we didn’t have to move far, only far enough for us both to lie down, and we could move there without getting out of the sleeping bag. When birds started tweeting and chirping around us, I wanted to shoot them. I was so comfortable with my guy lying in my arms, I didn’t want to move. Plus, waking up would also mean going back to reality. And reality right now sucked giant donkey balls.

  We were all starving when we finally did get up, so we each tried one of those freeze-dried camping meals. As predicted, they were disgusting, but at least they were filling and had some meat in them. We had washed out our bloodied and gore-filled clothes and let them lie in the sun while we ate. We also took a chance by building a fire because we were almost out of water and needed to boil some so no one would get sick. Once that was all set, we consulted our map and decided to stay away from roads as much as possible, so we set a new path and headed out.

  Since our clothes were still wet, we all had various clothing items hanging off our packs while we walked, but as soon as they were dry, we packed them in our bags and continued our trek. We were in for the long haul, but by the time we rested to eat again, I was out of breath, sore, and exhausted. All of us had flushed cheeks, but I knew no one wanted to slow our pace because we wanted to get to our families. I wished we could take a car, but I was scared it would draw too much attention and we wouldn’t be able to hear an alien ship coming over top of the car’s engine, and their ships were so much faster than our cars that it was just too much risk.

  After our meager lunch of granola bars, we checked the map and continued on. Most of that day was spent with me holding Colt’s hand. It was nice being able to touch him like that any time I wanted, even if we were wearing gloves most of the day.

  Unfortunately, fucking Ferals found us again.

  “These fuckers are everywhere,” Cal stated unnecessarily.

  This time there were five of them. I turned Colt’s hat—that he insisted I wear—around on my head so I would be able to see better. I was getting pretty good at swinging a bat, so I easily hit the guy Feral coming at me with a knife. The bastard wouldn’t fall over, though, even after I hit him in the head three times. I got knocked down by the extra Feral, who luckily only had his fists and not a weapon, but I still fell onto my knees and lost my bat.

  I reached into my boot and pulled out my knife—not that it would do much good. When I stood, I had to duck under a punch from Feral Number Two, but was able to knee him in the groin. He didn’t go down. Number One swiped at me with his knife, but Colt hit the Feral’s wrist with his bat before refocusing on his guy.

  Number Two raised both arms up in the air, so I took the only shot I could think of and stabbed him in the stomach. When the blow still came down on my shoulder, I felt like an idiot. I re-gripped my knife and stabbed the bastard in his eye. He fell back, twitching, but at least out of commission for a bit so I could refocus on Number One who had recovered from Colt’s blow.

  I punched the guy in his face, attacking first this time, and he stumbled back. I had enough time to pick my bat up off the ground, grip it in two hands and swing it at his head. He tried to duck, but I still got the top of his head, throwing him off-balance even more. I kicked his stomach, sending him flailing to the ground. Then, with two hands, I slammed the bat into his skull. The sound made me want to throw up again, but I just tried to ignore it.

  I hit him in the head several more times. As soon as he was no longer twitching, I turned back to finish off the other one, only to find that Nolan had already taken care of it. Thank god.

  This is so fucked-up.

  “We need a better way to do this,” I announced once Colt finished his guy off.

  “Do what?” Cal asked.

  “Kill these bastards,” I answered. “We need a better way to…” I grimaced, “remove their heads.”

  “I don’t think a saw would be any quicker,” Cal pointed out.

  We all thought about it. “What about an axe or a machete or something?” Nolan offered.

  “That could work,” Colt said. “This,” he wiggled his bat in the air, “is absolutely disgusting and it takes way too much energy. If there are more than five of them next time, we might not be so lucky.” I couldn’t agree more.

  “Where the hell do we find an axe? We’re in the middle of nowhere,” Cal, the pessimist, said.

  “There’s gotta be some farmland around here somewhere,” Nolan pointed out. “Let’s start there.” He held out his hand to Colt expectantly.

  Colt pulled one arm free of its pack strap and reached inside for the map, then handed it over to Nolan. We all huddled around to try and figure out where a good starting place would be that wasn’t too far off our original route.

  We walked toward an area we thought looked promising, but ran across another six Ferals which we had to take out with our bats again. Then four more an hour later. I tried shooting one in the head and it worked, making him go all twitchy, so I shot the others too so we could, you know, kill them all the way. Unfortunately, the sound of the gun seemed to draw more Ferals to us. Suddenly three more were attacking us, and once they were down, seven more came. It was fucking crazy with some terrifying close calls, but we lucked out again. We decided not to use the gun anymore or to make any unnecessary loud sounds. That many Ferals all at once were hard to take down. Plus, it was gruesome and horrific. After that, I stopped counting them.

  We didn’t find a farm until we reached the second promising-looking area. And that didn’t happen until it was almost completely dark out. We crept up to a barn and listened, but like everything else, it was quiet.

  Colt took the lead, opening the door and looking in. We all snuck inside, and after checking for potential threats and finding none, we went looking for an axe or something to cut… well, you know, cut Feral heads off with. So gross. How is this my life?

  Cal lucked out after ten minutes of searching. “I found one,” he said excitedly as he held up an axe. It certainly looked big enough to get the job done. “We’ll have to search all the barns we pass tomorrow so we each have one. I doubt we’ll find more than one or two at each place.”

  After another ten minutes of nothing else showing up, Nolan suggested, “Let’s stay in here tonight.”

  “That’s fine,” I agreed. I was ready to sleep anyway.

  “I’ll take first watch,” Colt said.

  “You think we still need to have someone up when we’re inside?” Nolan asked.

  “I think someone needs to listen out for anything,” he answered, to which Nolan nodded.

  “I’ll go second,” Cal said.

  “I’m third tonight,” Nolan added.

  Guess I’m last.

  “Come on, Sweet Cheeks.” Colt smacked my ass. “Let’s set up our sleeping bag. You can keep me warm while I’m up.”

  I shook my head at him, but followed with a huge grin on my face.

  ***

  I was at the fence again, only this time I was waiting for him. I knew he would come and talk to me, so when his black eye finally found me, I smiled. Somehow I knew he was smiling back even though I couldn’t see his face.

  “Jeremy,” he said in his deep slow voice, although the more he spoke to me, the easier it seemed for him.

  “What do you want from me?” I asked in a soft voice. I wasn’t asking maliciously.

  “I need you to come home,” he said.

  “I’m trying. It’s hard with all the Ferals running around,” I responded.

  “Ferals?”

  “Yeah, those humans that are running around trying to kill us? We’ve dubbed them ‘Ferals.’”
>
  Oddly, I could hear a smile in his voice, “That is adequate.” But then his eye darkened even further, looking menacing. “You need to be careful. They are dangerous.”

  I snorted, “That’s an understatement.”

  We were silent for a while, just staring at one another.

  “Your brother needs you,” he told me suddenly.

  I snapped out of my stupor. “What did you say?”

  “Your brother… you need to hurry, he needs you.”

  “What do you know about my brother?” I asked, stepping closer, trying to figure out what the hell was going on.

  “I only know that he needs you. He is waiting for you.”

  “What do you mean, he needs me? How? Why? What’s wrong with him?” I was shouting angrily at him.

  “I do not know. I can just sense him… longing for you,” he answered my anger with a quiet voice.

  “He has my parents. He’s fine, he’s with our family.”

  He closed his eye, giving me a reminder that he was an alien with two eyelids. “He needs you, Jeremy.”

  I stared at him, furrowing my brows. “This isn’t real. This is just a dream,” I stated. His eye looked sad and I was able to see a little of his pale skin now, like he’d backed up an inch. “You’re not real,” I insisted.

  “Jeremy,” he said it like a prayer.

  I took a step back. “This is just some stupid dream. I’m worried about my family. That’s all this is.”

  “Jeremy…” The fence between us started to crumble, breaking the barrier that kept me safe from him.

  I turned and ran.

  “Jeremy,” the alien cried out behind me.

  I jolted awake and freaked out because I couldn’t breathe.

  “Hey, what’s wrong?” I froze at the sound of a voice, but when I recognized it as Colt’s, I calmed down and scooted up the sleeping bag to get some fresh air.

  Once my head was free and I breathed in the cold night air, I leaned my head on Colt’s shoulder. “I woke up and felt… trapped.”

  “Gotcha, Pookie Bear… Well, I can wake Cal and we can both sleep for a while,” he suggested, wrapping me in his arms. I nodded into his shoulder, feeling stupid for getting so worked up over a dream—again.

  After Cal woke up, we settled back down and I was able to drift back to sleep with Colt hugging me to him. It was like he knew just what I needed to calm my ass down. Apparently, he could read me like a book.

  The next day, we traveled from farm to farm until we each had an axe. It certainly did make things a little easier, even though we still had to knock their sorry asses over, or make them go all twitchy long enough for us to use the axes on them.

  Nolan accidentally discovered that snapping their necks made them go twitchy too, and for a much longer period of time than anything else we’d tried so far. He had hit a Feral to the ground and kicked him in the chin, making his head fly back. We all heard the snap of its neck because he was the only Feral around at the time. As soon as his neck broke, he went twitchy, so Nolan used his axe on him. It was gross, but effective.

  The guys kept yelling at me to slow down because I was walking faster than usual, but I couldn’t help it. I was worried about my little brother. That dream had freaked me out, and even though I knew it was only a dream, I couldn’t help but wonder if something had happened to Wesley. I was also thinking about my baby sister, Mina, who I was sure was terrified.

  We were walking within listening distance of a large road, but we stayed off of it, sticking to the trees and in yards. I had my bat between my back and my backpack on an angle so the bottom was rested in a side pocket of the bag and the handle was up by my head, so it was easy to grab, almost like a sword. My axe was hooked through my belt in front of my stomach. I had to move it to the front of my body after slicing my elbow on it when it was on my hip. My hunting knife in the sheath was in my boot. I had switched that spot with the other one because I didn’t want to slice my ankle or foot up with an unsheathed knife. The guys each had their bats, axes, and knives similarly positioned so they didn’t have to carry them, but were easily accessible.

  All of us had blood and…gore… on us… all over us, really. We had run into several groups of Ferals already today. The only good thing about it was that we got to practice our techniques on getting them down or twitchy and then finishing them off. I never in my life thought I would have to figure out the best way to remove a head. Every time I had to do it, I had to fight back bile, but it was slowly becoming easier to handle.

  I looked up to see where the sun was in the sky and decided that it was probably early afternoon. Colt walked closer to me and nudged my ribs with his elbow. None of us had been talking too much because we didn’t want to attract anyone, and I figured we were all dealing with the horror of our situation in our own ways. I reached my hand out and grabbed Colt’s, lacing our fingers together and bringing his hand up so I could remove his glove, then bring his skin to my mouth to place a kiss on it. Then I replaced his glove and re-laced our fingers.

  When I saw his adorable smile appear on his sexy face, I just had to bring him closer to me. I looped my arm around his head so it could rest over his shoulders and keep our fingers tangled together. Then I kissed his cheek, then his jaw and neck. He was squirming a little, clearly ticklish, so I licked up his neck, making him laugh, and when I got to his ear, I sucked his earlobe into my mouth. He groaned a little, waking my cock up. I wasn’t too surprised that this hot as fuck man could still make my dick twitch, even with everything going to shit around us.

  We had slowed down a little and Cal and Nolan were in front of us, so I stopped him, turned him to me, grabbed his face and kissed him, knocking his hat up a little on his head. I kept his face cradled in my hands and I stepped closer to him, bringing our hips together as he grabbed my ass. We were very close in height, but that was just awesome because our bodies lined up perfectly. He opened his mouth up to me and I dove in, making both of us moan. He was fucking delicious and I was dying to taste every inch of him. I could feel his hardening cock pressing against mine when I rocked my hips into him.

  “Guys, I hear something,” Cal’s voice called to us. Insta boner killer.

  “Shit,” Colt said.

  We let go and ran over to Cal and Nolan, listening for the threat. There were sounds of grunting and snarling and lots of footsteps. It sounded like there were people fighting up ahead. We all took a few small steps closer to get a better idea of who—or what—was making the sounds.

  “Fuck,” a man’s voice called, “These creepers won’t die.”

  “What do we do?” A woman yelled. “Hitting ‘em in the head don’t work.”

  I looked at my friends as the people up ahead kept talking and said, “We should help.”

  “Yeah,” Colt and Cal both said. Nolan nodded and we all took off at a run, Colt twisting his hat on backwards as we did.

  The people were on the main road. There were abandoned cars everywhere, but as soon as I saw what was going on, I stopped in my tracks. There had to have been at least twenty Ferals in the street and I picked out three humans right away, but there was so much going on that there could’ve been more.

  Colt ran past me and right into the fray, followed by Cal. Nolan and I looked at each other, then ran in after them. The first Feral I hit with my bat was taken by surprise, so she went down like a ragdoll. I yanked out my axe and cut her neck in three hits. She was pretty tiny, luckily.

  Unluckily though, a few Ferals around her had seen me and came at me. The first to reach me was swinging a bloody hammer. I was holding both the bat and the axe with two hands together and was able to knock his arm with my bat, but he held onto the hammer. I swung the bat back and knocked his head, but I was too close and didn’t have much power. I had to push a second Feral back by stabbing out my bat to his chest. He stumbled back far enough to give me room for a big swing at the Hammer Feral, who fell to the ground twitching. I would only have about thirty second
s before he got back up, but Feral Two was already coming at me again.

  I swung, catching him in the shoulder, and knocked him in the head on the back swing. He fell onto the hood of a car, so I brought the handle of my bat down on his skull. As he twitched, I turned back to Hammer Feral, who was luckily still in the twitchy phase. I put my bat between my legs and chopped him until he stopped moving.

  I turned back to Feral Two, but he jumped on me, making me fall on top of what was left of Hammer Feral. He wrapped his hands around my throat, choking the air out of me. I tried to push him off, but he was too strong. I didn’t know where my bat was and there was no way for me to get any leverage with the axe from my position. I started seeing stars as my lungs fought for air, but I remembered my knife. I bent my right knee awkwardly and fumbled with my fingers until I could get my hand around the handle of the knife.

  I pulled it out and with as much force as I could, I stabbed the guy in the neck. Nothing happened, so I pulled it out and tried again. This time he went twitchy and the grip on my neck loosened. I sucked in a much-needed breath and rolled the bastard off of me. I dropped the knife and held my axe above my head, then brought it down, killing the asshole.

  I looked around and didn’t see anyone about to attack me, so I picked up my knife and put it back in my boot. Then I stood, looking for my bat. I had to pull it out from under a nearby car and when I stood up there was another Feral running at me.

  “Jesus Christ,” I mumbled, then coughed because it hurt my throat.

  I knocked that bitch Feral down with one swing and finished her off with the axe. Then turned toward another lady near me.

  “Holy shit,” the lady exclaimed as she raised a shaky hand holding a gun and pointed it at my chest.

  I held my hands up without letting go of my weapons and shouted, “I’m human,” then proceeded to cough a few times as she lowered her gun. I wanted to tell her how to kill the Ferals, but one was standing on a car behind her, about to jump. “Watch out!” I yelled as I ran forward and pushed her out of the way.