by Louise Wise
She caught sight of Fly’s distant figure on the far side of the river. He was busy felling trees, which were lacking this side; trees that would eventually become fencing to hold the soon-to-be cattle in confinement.
She smiled at the sense of peace within herself. It was something she had never experienced before it, but only able to admit now.
In her old life she was a prisoner to the twenty-four hour clock - forever rushing from one appointment to another. She had thought she led a busy but fulfilling life, but in reality it had been routine and boring.
Here her life really was in Eden.
SEVENTEEN
Laying on his stomach, Matt crawled beneath the twisted chunk of metal that had trapped Bodie, and using his back as leverage he pushed upwards with all his strength.
Each movement caused pain, and for every action his eyes rolled, and darkness fogged his brain, but gritting his teeth he struggled to his feet and inch by inch the bar lifted away from Bodie.
But then his feet slipped on the watery floor of Taurus and he stumbled with the pole still against his back, and he collapsed against the other man, cracking his forehead against the back of Bodie’s scull.
Bodie screamed, and the sound pierced through Matt’s head causing a million fairy lights to blink and flash in his perennial vision. His skull felt too tight for his brain; his head throbbed with the pressure.
Panting nosily, Matt took a steadying breath before trying again and pushing upward.
His legs buckled, and he almost gave up to allow the pole to pin him alongside Bodie forever in a metal grave. And as if sensing the other’s surrender, Bodie dragged himself forward, muttering incoherently.
Matt’s legs shook from exertion; one was angled abnormally. Then Bodie was free, and Matt ducked out from the metal prison, and it crashed to the ground causing more debris to rain upon them.
Both in pain, both exhausted, neither noticed.
Matt slumped against the wall, fighting against unconsciousness. Bodie lay on his front. His eyes were open and they stared across at Matt.
“I don’t suppose there’s any food?”
Matt smiled despite his desolation. “Food, Commander? You must be feeling better. “
Bodie continued to lay motionless, but he didn’t answer. Matt doubted he had even heard, locked away in his fevered thoughts.
“We’ve eaten all the salvageable stuff,” Matt said at last.
“We’re done for, Zack,” said Bodie. “Have… tried yelling? Maybe Logan will hear. Is Jen OK…?” his voice began to fade. “Check that’s she’s OK…” until it disappeared completely.
“She’s dead, Bo.” Matt’s voice was gentle. “Remember the wolves?”
“Ah, yes,” he said as if he’d been told to remember something trivial. “Tell Diana and Zack I’m sorry… tell them I’m sorry I can’t come for Sunday dinner. “
His eyes fluttered shut, and Matt leaned his head back against the wall. His throat became constricted with tears, but he had no energy for the pointless emotion. He was thirsty, but walking hurt and wasn’t worth the light relief a drop of water would create to dispel his thirst.
Jenny wiped sweat off her brow with the back of her hand. She was dressed in clothes made out of animal skin, and a grubby white skirt, sarong style, from the rags of her old spacesuit. She straightened and flexed her hands, they felt stiff from holding the woman-made fork, which she used for preparing a tilth in the new grazing land. She thrust the fork into the moist ground and rolled her head back on her shoulders.
Fly stood waist deep in the river, wrestling with a metal structure that would be the frame for the bridge. His huge arms shook in effort, and he grunted and shouted like an animal as he heaved it about. Plain old-fashioned nagging had won in the end, and Fly humored her by tying a rope (painstakingly hand plaited twine) around his waist, which secured him to a tree root on the riverbank as he worked.
But as she watched, he stopped and bent down in the water. He looked like he was searching for something at his feet. He straightened, with a large, flat object in his hand. It was white, and had the beginnings of a word… T A U.
Jenny paled, and as Fly turned towards her with a strange expression on his face her world crashed around her feet.
As Taurus came into view they saw its main bulk was stuck fast to the riverbed, which only a few meters on flowed into a deep canyon that churned with white rapids. Angry water slapped around the ship, urging it to move, and its debris floated away into the deep swell before disappearing beneath the current.
Jenny began to moan, already believing the occupants dead. Fly couldn’t understand her anguish, not yet. Jenny was a bag of emotions and, just when he thought he was beginning to understand her, she said or did something totally unfamiliar. He hadn’t come that far to see it as caring, to Fly Jenny needed him for protection, food, and for shelter; she needed him full stop. And the way he saw it, she was sobbing over her failed rescue.
“Stay here,” he had to shout over the turbulent water. He killed the engine of the buggy, climbed out and began to wade into the river.
“Be careful!” she called. “I couldn’t stand it if I lost you too.”
Fly glanced briefly at her, and acknowledged her words with a small wave of his hand, even though he didn’t understand the meaning.
Slivers of ice cut against his body, sharp as glass, and the water pulled on him, sucking him down. It was a struggle to stay upright. As he reached the shuttle, he felt his body slide beneath him. He lunged an arm at Taurus’s side, and forced his claws into the metal structure until his balance was corrected. He edged around the ship, using the strength of his clawed hands to keep himself above water.
The small rounded door of Taurus was shattered. Glancing momentarily at Jenny, he stepped into the spaceship.
Matt opened his eyes as an unfamiliar noise alerted him that he and Bodie had a visitor. He gritted his teeth, and stood up, clutching a length of tubular steel in his hands like spear. He was in no doubt that he would die here, but he’d die from hunger first before becoming lunch for alien river creatures.
An ancient looking caveman from yesteryear with black, dead eyes entered the room. It was the alien. The creature responsible for all their misfortune. Matt’s hand tightened on the pole, and he thrust it forward. The alien ducked, and the pole struck Taurus’ metal structure behind with a clunk. Matt pulled it out, and aimed again, but the alien swiped at him with a clawed hand, knocking him down.
Matt fell heavily, yelling out as his knee made painful contact with the floor. He lay panting, fighting consciousness, feeling weak and unable to defend himself. He lay and waited for death. He could only hope it’d be quick.
Bare feet stood in front of him. Size fifteen at the most, Matt thought. F’sake, even his thoughts were becoming hysterical!
“Are you Bodie?”
Matt gawked at up him, and Fly repeated his question.
“N-no, I’m Green, Matthew Green.”
“Bodie alive?” the alien man demanded. His voice was sharp; brittle.
Matt nodded, his throat had seized up. The alien looked so hostile. Its face was pockmarked with all kinds of scars. It looked at Bodie, the empty eyes intent on the rise and fall of his chest, before backing out.
Matt felt paralyzed with fear, then hope flared as he heard another person shouting above the roar of the water - Jen!
For a while the alien was engrossed with something outside, Matt could hear him thrashing in the water and cussing angrily in a strange language. He closed his eyes, feeling drained.
When Jenny entered, he stared. She had thick rope tied around her waist, and Matt realized that the alien man had been engrossed in securing them both to the main structure of Taurus to prevent them from drowning beneath the current.
“Jen…” his voice was husky. Ridiculous tears started and he didn’t have the energy to brush them away.
“Oh, Lord, Matt,” she said, but then she noticed Bodie. She
fell to her knees beside his still form, automatically reaching for his pulse.
Matt slumped against the wall; every muscle in his body was nothing more than runny goo, even the tiny muscles in his lips failed when he tried to speak. He could only watch as the big alien turned his attention on him, and Matt physically cringed when the man bore down and seized him roughly beneath the arms.
He was dragged out; the alien oblivious to his pain.
The man lost consciousness before he was out of the ship, and Fly took advantage and roughly dragged him through the river. Once, his hold slipped and the human disappeared beneath the froth. The coldness revived him, and after he had come up, coughing and spluttering, he helped his own fate by holding on and allowing Fly the use of his arms.
Fly dropped him in the back of the buggy before climbing behind the wheel. He drove to the old spaceship and dragged the half unconscious man inside. He laid him on the cockpit floor and stood looking down at the unconscious man.
The human looked harmless; oblivious on the ground at his feet. But he was a species of male, and even though not Itor, Fly knew his life would be in danger if he allowed him to live.
Fly’s face was a hive of active emotion. His throat expanded and a small bubble below the skin tissue fast-forwarded to eject a small hard object beneath his tongue. He turned his head, and the tiny toxic bullet was fired harmlessly into the wall.
An old, old memory returned to mock him. It spoke of an ancient love; an emotion so old it was believed to be dead. He didn’t want these men here, but Jenny did, and somehow that alone had stopped him from killing Matt. He cursed in his alien tongue, and almost fired another pellet out of pure anger for his own foolish emotions, the same emotions that he had pitied Jenny for having.
Leaving Matt in his own private agony, he returned to Taurus with a slow burning anger festering inside. Damn the humans for returning! Surely, this would mean the end of his relationship with Jenny?
She was kneeling over the man she always spoke of with such love and affection; and with her lips pressed against his cheek. Fly felt a surge of jealously, so strong it almost drove him to grab her by the hair and drag her away.
“How is he?” he asked instead.
She jumped slightly, and then brushed her eyes with the back of her hand. “I’m not sure. We all know a bit of first aid, b-but Bodie’s the real doctor.” She looked as if she was about to cry, but managed to contain herself. “How’s Matt?”
“Alive. I have taken him back to the spaceship.”
Swallowing on some sentiment, she nodded.
“I have brought a flat piece of board that we can slide beneath Bodie. It will help keep his body still until we can look at him properly. “
“I can’t believe they came back for me,” she said. “But I should’ve known he would have. Even thinking I was dead, Bodie would still have returned for me.”
Fly didn’t answer. He slipped the board beneath the lifeless form and fastened the man to it with rope.
Matt was fully conscious when they carried Bodie into the ship. He sat on a chair awkwardly, his leg turned unnaturally inwards. His body was shaking but he looked stable, so Jenny tended to Bodie’s head wounds, making slight sounds of dismay as she found yet another purple bruise or welt.
“I think they are all flesh wounds,” she said.
“His legs are broken,” Matt said.
She looked at Bodie’s shattered legs. “How long have you been in this state?” she asked, shocked at how close to death they had been.
“Not sure… don’t know if I’m disoriented from sh-shock or lack of food.” His head dropped wearily towards his chest and his eyes rolled. “Maybe a couple of weeks, maybe years…” his eyes closed and his head lolled on his chest.
“He’s in such pain,” she said to Fly, feeling helpless. “They both are.”
“I know of a pain killer - mine. “
She looked horrified. “Your venom! But.” she lowered her voice. “Won’t that be lethal?” She looked at him keenly, as if realizing his mood.
“I can control the amount,” he said, as if she’d insulted him. “I can give them both enough for a deep sleep; time for us to tend to their injuries.”
Jenny stared hard. She had seen what the poison could do, and everything had shriveled and died under its effects. Fly stared back, his face was so familiar, yet all of a sudden, hostile. Matt’s face contorted with pain, and he groaned loudly, causing Jenny to go to him in alarm.
She looked up at Fly. “OK,” she nodded. “Do it.”
Fly’s smile was a mere twist of lips before he, almost aggressively, pulled Matt off the chair to lay him on the floor and then spat a hard object into his upper arm. Matt’s scream, made as Fly moved him, was silenced abruptly.
Jenny turned away so she couldn’t see if the poison had its known destructive after-effects, and continued to dab Bodie’s dry lips with water. Hearing nothing to indicate one way or another whether the poison had worked, she looked over and was gladdened to see Matt’s chest rise and fall. Fly met her gaze and she lowered her eyes sadly, knowing he realized that she had mistrusted him for a while.
Fly straightened Matt’s knee, then cleaned all the open wounds with the strong-smelling iodine, which they had previously made from seaweed.
They kept all their home-made medicine in old cleaned pharmaceutical bottles found from a medical room in the spaceship. The room had been trashed, but they had managed to salvage a few supplies.
Their one and only medical kit had also been discovered whilst Fly had been removing materials from the ship for their house, and although most of the medicine had became a sticky gloop of nothing, there was precious nursing equipment inside.
Jenny used their tree bark secretion antiseptic to dab at the wounds on Bodie’s head. She felt helpless and frustrated at being able to do so little, and had to be content with watching Fly as his deft fingers flew over Matt’s leg.
She watched with a new respect, feeling ashamed of her feelings of doubt. He took out a long pointed object, which hummed from a tiny engine, and began to stretch torn muscle and tendons together and, flicking a tiny switch, he was able to fuse them in their correct places.
“You look like you know what you’re doing,” she said, and immediately wanted to retract her words for they sounded suspicious.
“I have used this on myself.”
He hadn’t looked at her, and the small operation was over quickly.
Fly wiped his brow with his arm, and continued to stretch and glue the skin over the repaired kneecap. With that done, he left the ship but returned a long moment later with a splint made from wood sacrificed from his unfinished boat still sitting outside the spaceship. He bandaged the knee, then tied the splint to the leg tightly with ties made around the thigh, calve and ankle. Finally, he turned his attention to Bodie leaving Matt to sleep off the effects of the venom.
Fly knelt behind his head, his fingers large but gentle as they inspected the battered scalp. He tipped the head to one side, and his probing fingers searched behind the skull.
“I think his skull’s fractured,” Jenny said. “God, I wished we had more supplies!”
“He is badly injured,” Fly said. “His legs are.” he spoke the last word in his own tongue, but the meaning was all too clear to Jenny.
She began to bandage Bodie’s head, murmuring words of encouragement as the man moaned. She felt disheartened by his pallor and passive body and wanted to share her fears with Fly but one look at his face made her realize he wouldn’t understand any of her emotion.
They discovered that all of Bodie’s ribs were broken, his right collarbone and right arm. Jenny had previously sliced off his upper clothes with a knife, and Fly wrapped a tight bandage around his chest.
When both men were bandaged and asleep from venom-induced shots to their upper arm, Fly left, leaving Jenny staring after him in confusion.
She stared down at Bodie, unconscious, on a dirty mattress. His co
mplexion was sickly white beneath his bruising. Jenny bent down and kissed his bandaged forehead, then slipped outside after Fly.
Fly stood with his back towards her, his head tilted as he drank thirstily from a flask. She was filled with gratitude. Never could she have pulled them out from Taurus alone. She owed Fly not only her life, but theirs too. Smiling, her lips tremulous with appreciation, she moved towards him and linked an arm around his waist.
“Your rescue has failed,” he said, moving from her. Her arms fell to her sides. “And you cry tears.”
“They are hurt, of course I’m upset.”
“They need to be dead,” he said, and before she could answer he had walked away up the hill.
Jenny stared after him, feeling shocked. Rescue had been the last thing on her mind. She had cried over Taurus, believing Bodie and Matt were dead, not because she was now forced to stay here for the rest of her life. Hadn’t Fly known that?
She was intelligent enough to realize his possessiveness could become dangerous to her friends, and she now knew the reason for his earlier silence. Jenny shivered. What would have happened if they had been found before she and Fly had become friends? She knew he’d be a possessive lover, but with only the two of them it didn’t seem to matter.
“They need to be dead”, what had he meant exactly? He often mixed up his words and got his pronunciation wrong, and Jenny could only hope that’s what happened when he’d said those words. Except, his face had been so glacial. As if he hated Bodie and Matt.
Jenny titled her chin. She loved him, but she would not allow him to return her to that pathetic person she once was a few months back.
Fly arrived back late afternoon, with a large, yellow mottled creature. He skinned and dismembered it while Jenny lit the old barbecue. He kept his head bent, and she suspected it was done on purpose so he didn’t have to acknowledge her.
The chill was thicker during dinner and, unsure how to break through, she ate in silence.
Twilight fell over them, and the native-wolves, as predictable as the stars, began their evening calling. But Jenny, for the first time, didn’t find comfort and security beneath Fly’s arm.
