“Come on, assholes,” Cal’s voice suddenly yelled from outside the door, “Orrean is taking his shower and the rest of us are downstairs. Hurry the fuck up so we can get out of this freaky-ass place.”
Colt and I smiled against each other’s lips and wordlessly moved back into the warm—no longer hot—water to rinse off without letting go of one another. Once we were done, Colt figured out how to turn the water off and we stepped out, dried off with some towels we found, and put on clean clothes from our bag. Then we headed back downstairs with our fingers laced together.
When we got there, everyone—minus Orrean—was sitting around the large room. No one said anything, but I did notice my brother smirk at me. I just smirked back because I knew he had to be jealous that I got some when he obviously hadn’t. I heard him chuckle at me as he turned away.
When Orrean came down from his shower, Wes surprised me, and probably everyone else, by asking him, “How did your people implant these Qiren robot things?”
Orrean eyed him for a moment, then quietly asked, “Do you know what the regulations of the peace treaty between our races were?”
“Um, just that we were giving the Taoree a place to live since your planet is dying,” Wes answered.
“It was a lot more complicated than that,” Orrean said. “I know your government didn’t divulge much, but is that really the only thing they told you?” After all of us nodded, he shook his head in displeasure and explained, “Part of the treaty was a deal between our races. There is far too much to go into it all right now, but we, as in the Taoree, agreed to supply humans with a… well, they called it a miracle drug, and in return we would receive some of your land. The Taoree have had great advancements in the medical field and we discovered that our anatomy is so similar to humans that most of our… drugs and procedures work on humans as well. We have a drug called juioangiuno, or juio as your government dubbed it, that helps accelerate healing and prevent infection. We showed this to your government and they accepted the deal with us.”
He took a breath before continuing, “Taoree scientists implanted the Qiren—the robots—into the drug before we distributed it to the human government. Your government started using this drug widely. They gave it to surgeons, dentists, pediatricians, and any kind of doctor that performed surgery. It helped keep infection down and saved many lives, so your government started using it more and more. I believe they even put it in the flu shot this last season. They have been updating the models, the Qiren, to make them more efficient—more deadly and fast-acting, so the newer models have been easier for them to call upon.”
“How does that even work? You get a shot in your arm, but you say these things are in your brain,” Wes said a short moment later.
“They travel through your blood vessels until they reach your brain, then they attach to your brain tissue until they are activated. They are so small that they would go unnoticed by human doctors, but there are probably at least twenty of them in each human.”
Colt quietly asked, “Are you saying that anyone that had surgery, or even a shot in the last two years, could be infected with these Qiren things?”
“It is likely, yes.”
“Surely if they haven’t been affected yet, then that means they don’t have them?” Cal asked from the other side of the room.
Orrean grimaced again. “It will probably take the Taoree Legion a couple of months to call on all the strains of Qiren, so there are still humans that could turn Feral.”
Colt and Cal exchanged a look that I didn’t understand before Cal asked, “Is there a way to remove these things?”
“Yes.” Orrean looked a little relieved to be giving some good news. “If they are not active yet, we have a surgeon at the Independent camp with a machine she made that will remove them.”
“So, if someone,” Cal waved around the room, indicating all of us, “here had them, we’d have to get to your Independents in order to remove them?”
“Yes—”
I cut Orrean off, “Cal, what do you mean if one of us had them? You haven’t had surgery or anything.”
Cal glanced at Colt again before saying, “No. I haven’t had surgery.”
The way he said it made my heart squeeze as I turned to look at my boyfriend. “Colt?”
He stared at me with sad eyes. “I had my wisdom teeth removed last year.”
I gasped as we stared at each other and the revelation of what he meant finally dawned on me. “What? I don’t remember that,” I whispered as tears filled my eyes.
He shrugged. “I was still at school and you were here, so…”
“No… no.” I felt a tear slip out of my eye.
Colt reached up and wiped it away. “It’ll be okay,” he whispered.
“Oh god,” I said as I grabbed him to me in a crushing hug, closing my eyes and willing my tears to go away. I didn’t want to upset Colt any more than he already was. I had to be strong for him. I was momentarily distracted when I heard crying from a chair in the middle of the room, and I looked over and said, “Wesley?” I didn’t think he would be crying over Colt when he was still clearly alive and well.
Colt let go of me, and we both walked over to my brother hand in hand. I knelt down in front of him. “Wesley? What is it, buddy? Are you hurt?”
He removed his hands from his face to look at me with tear-streaked cheeks. “My knee,” was all he got out before he started crying again.
I suddenly remembered and understood what he meant, so I grabbed my brother and pulled him into my chest, wrapping my arms around him as we stood there together. Wes had injured his knee playing basketball and had surgery on it about eighteen months ago. I whispered, “It’s gonna be okay. We’re going to go to this Independent camp. It’ll be okay.” I tried to keep my tears at bay, but a few stray ones escaped.
I looked over my brother’s shoulder at Orrean who was standing there, looking sad and uncomfortable, and I said, “Can you get us to that camp now? Please?”
He nodded. “I’ll get the rest of the supplies, then we can start the journey.”
“No,” I insisted, “Can you get us there now? Today? Can we take that ship I saw outside?”
He rubbed a hand across his forehead and I noticed it shaking. “I cannot fly it,” he whispered. “And they would track us down and shoot us before we got to the camp, even if I could. I am so sorry.”
“You don’t understand,” I said angrily, “My little brother had surgery last year. And so did my boyfriend. We need to get there. Now.”
“Jeremy, I am sorry. I do not know how to fly the chuve—the ship.”
“But you’re a fucking Taoree. How can you not know how—”
“Jeremy,” Colt interrupted me with a hand on my shoulder, “he can’t fly the ship, Sweetheart. And he can’t lead the others to the Independent camp, anyway.”
I was clinging to my brother. “But you and Wes… I can’t lose either of you.”
“We’ll just have to walk, Honey,” he said quietly.
A few more tears fell, but I still said, “You already used that one.”
“I know,” he said with a smile. Then he stepped right next to me and Wes, and wrapped us both in his arms. Wes let go with one of his arms and wrapped it around Colt’s back. Soon after that, Mandy wrapped her arms around both Colt and Wes’s backs.
When we finally broke up our little group hug, Nolan and Cal were right there, too. They hadn’t joined in on the group hug, but they pulled us each into a quick one, though I noticed them both hug Wesley longer than anyone else. He was like a younger brother to them too, so I wasn’t surprised by their reactions.
Wesley started whispering, “They all got the flu shot back in October.”
“Who did?” Nolan asked just as quietly.
“Our parents… my… my sister.” Wes looked up at me, then over at Mandy. “Remember?” Mandy nodded sadly and Wes continued, “I had basketball practice and Mandy had dance. I had to pick her up after practice and the cl
inic had already run out of flu shots. We’re the only ones that didn’t get one.” My brother looked at Orrean with tear-filled eyes. “How could your people do that? How could they just kill my family? All our families?”
Orrean’s dark eyes were glistening and sorrowful as he looked at him. “I am so sorry, Wesley.” He looked at each of us in turn. “I am so sorry.” He turned away from us, but not before I saw the devastation on his face. I had the irrational urge to go to him and make that look disappear, to comfort him. I had to take a deep breath and clench my fists and jaw to prevent my feet from moving. With much effort, I turned away and hugged my brother instead.
When I finally pulled away, Orrean was waiting by the door with a bunch of bags that looked like backpacks, but were made of a very thin material, and instead of zippers, they had these sides that hooked together with little threads. You just pulled on them to open it, and when you wanted it closed again, you pushed the sides together and they stitched themselves closed. It sort of reminded me of blue whale teeth, which was gross and gave me the willies. We each took a bag, except Mandy—she was pissed about that—and we followed Orrean outside.
“We have been here for far too long,” Orrean said once we were outside. “We will need to hurry out of this town before the Taoree Legion find us.”
Chapter Thirteen
Orrean was carrying two bags and as we walked out of the camp, he opened one and started passing out those stick-gun things. One to each of us, even Mandy, who was immediately pleased to be included. I personally didn’t want to have to think about her needing to use it.
We kept walking as he showed us how to unlock the shoian and how to use it. Apparently the thing was solar powered, so as long as we had it outside during the day, it would charge and have enough power to kill Ferals. We had to press the tip of it against a Feral and hold down the button in order to kill it, so we’d have to be in close range, but it seemed a hell of a lot better than what we’d been doing to kill the bastards thus far.
After everyone practiced on random things as we passed, like cars and fences, Orrean gave us each a belt-like thing to carry the weapon in, then he pulled out another weapon. This one looked more like a gun, but was made of a shiny black material that didn’t look like anything I’d ever seen before. When he passed it to me, I tried to hand it back because it felt kinda gross, almost like my hand could go through it, or move into it, even though it didn’t. It felt like if I squeezed hard enough, I would squish it. It sort of reminded me of a more solid Jell-O.
“What the fuck is this thing?” I asked as I held the offending item away from my body.
Orrean reached over and moved it in my hand so it was facing a different direction. “Be careful with that. It is a reelian. It is one of our most powerful weapons.”
My eyes felt like they were going to bug out of my head. “And you think I should be carrying it around?” I didn’t like the sound of that.
“I am going to teach you how to use it,” he said matter-of-factly.
“I already have a shoian,” I stumbled over the strange Taoree word for the ‘Feral Stick’ as I liked to refer to it. “Why would I need to use this thing?” I gingerly lifted it in my hand a little, staring at it with unease.
“It is one of the few weapons that can kill Taoree,” Orrean said, without taking his eyes off of me.
“You trust me with a weapon that could kill you?” I asked, but before he could answer, I asked, “Can these Feral sticks not kill you, then?”
He actually smirked at that. “No, the shoian cannot kill me. It would hurt like…” he trailed off like he was unsure of how to finish that sentence.
So, I happily supplied, “Like a bitch?”
He nodded and smiled at me. “Yes, it would hurt like a bitch, as you say. But a reelian would kill me if you know how to use it. And to answer your question, I do trust you.”
He said it so surely, so nonchalantly, that all I could do was stare at him for a while. Finally I asked, “Why would you trust me?”
He ran his hand over his forehead again; a movement I was beginning to think was a nervous gesture. “I know you would never hurt me,” he stated quietly. His words sounded sure, completely positive, but his movements seemed to show otherwise. I couldn’t get a good read on him at the moment, but I figured he really must trust me or he wouldn’t have given me such a dangerous weapon. I was unsure of what I had done to gain his trust, but I decided not to dwell on it.
“Okay, so how do I use this gross thing?” I asked after overanalyzing him.
“There are always bullets ready to go in the… barrel?” he asked it like a question.
I didn’t understand why he was asking me that question, but luckily Colt was not as much of an idiot as I was, because he answered from next to me, “Yes, that’s what we would call it, the barrel.” Ohhh… duh.
Orrean nodded, but I noticed that he didn’t really look Colt in the eyes. I mildly wondered what that was about, but Orrean distracted me by saying, “And the… handle?” Colt and I both nodded, so he continued, “is where the new bullets are made. It only ta—”
“Did you say the bullets are made? As in bullets are made inside the gun itself?” I asked, interrupting him to be sure.
“Yes. The bullets are made inside the gun. The reelian is completely self-sustaining,” he informed us.
“What exactly does that mean?” Colt asked.
“As I said, the bullets are made inside the handle part of the reelian. The,” he tilted his head back and forth as if searching for the right words, “inside of the handle pulls pieces of the reeli—that is the material the reelian is made of—it pulls pieces of the reeli into the chamber to form the bullet. The reeli replenishes itself when it is exposed to the sun, much like the shoian.”
“So, you’re telling me that this gun-thing makes its own bullets out of itself and it just… grows back?” Nolan asked from behind us.
Orrean looked over his shoulder at him. “Basically, yes.”
Wes spoke up from the other side of Colt, “How can you touch it, then? If the material can kill you, shouldn’t you avoid touching it?”
Orrean smiled at my brother. “There is another element in the… barrel of the reelian that combines with the reeli when the bullet passes through the barrel. It is that combination that makes it deadly to Taoree.”
“What is the other element?” Wes asked.
“It is called jian. It is similar to some of the mold you have here on Earth,” Orrean answered. When everyone just nodded, he added, “Can I show you all how to use it? I brought enough with us for each of you.”
“You’re seriously going to give us all weapons that can easily kill you?” Wes asked him.
Orrean shrugged, kind of, it was more of an awkward shoulder roll, but I took it to mean the same thing as a shrug. He answered my brother, “You did not know that the weapons I already provided could not kill me, right?” Wesley shook his head, so the alien said, “And none of you tried to hurt me, so I can only assume that you trust me enough not to kill me,” he stated this like it wasn’t a big deal, but more of a logical explanation. “Also, I want you all protected if we come across any enemy Taoree.”
As we continued walking, he showed us how to unlock the reelian and how to shoot it. He also told us that it could take anywhere from one to two minutes for the gun—er, reelian—to create another bullet once the barrel was emptied. So we needed to shoot wisely if there were many Taoree around.
Orrean continued his lesson, “You should also know that you need to aim for the head or the heart. But Taoree hearts are on the right side of the body. Yours are more in the middle or left side, but ours are farther to the right and protected by more bones than human hearts are. So the head is the best place to aim. Have any of you humans shot a gun before?”
I snorted at his wording of that question, but answered anyway, “Yes. All of us have. Our dads used to take us shooting,” my voice cracked on the last part of that. Colt
reached over and squeezed my hand, then laced our fingers together and pulled me close until we were bumping into each other’s shoulders. I lifted our joined hands and kissed his, and I swear I heard that weird hiss-growl sound again, but no one else seemed to notice. Then I turned back to Orrean, who was very clearly avoiding looking at us.
It made me wonder if he was uncomfortable with people showing affection, or if he was uncomfortable with the fact that it was two men. He’d allowed me to hug him—which was weird, anyway—but maybe that was a fluke. I opened my mouth, about to blatantly ask him, even if it was a rude question to ask someone who had done nothing but help us—but I couldn’t put up with homophobia if that was the case—but unfortunately, Mandy screamed rather loudly.
Colt, Orrean, and I all turned toward her just in time to see two giant Feral men running straight for her. One of them had a butcher’s knife raised above his head. Colt and I took off running, but somehow, Orrean was faster than any of us, even Cal who was right next to his sister. Orrean almost seemed to flash across the distance and put himself between the Ferals and Mandy. It only took him about fifteen seconds to take down both Ferals, making them twitch. Then he used his Feral Stick—I mean his shoian.
When they were dead, he turned around and scooped Mandy into his arms, lifting her off the ground and against his chest. I expected Mandy to freak out, but as Orrean briskly walked past us, I watched with a slack jaw as she wrapped her arms around the tall alien’s neck and buried her face in the space where his neck and shoulder met.
Orrean sounded concerned as he basically yelled, “Every Feral in the area will have heard that. We need to move quickly or we will be overrun.” Then he marched away with Mandy in one arm and his Feral Stick in the other.
We all had to run to keep up with his long strides. The man, or alien or whatever you wanted to call him, was over six-and-a-half feet tall and he was walking quickly with a sense of purpose, which made it very hard to keep up with him. We walked at this fast pace for at least thirty minutes before he abruptly turned to face us. “Is everyone okay?”
Taoree: Taoree Trilogy #1 Page 19
