by Susan Laine
Marcus blew out a breath, wiped a hand over his forehead, and blinked up at the sky. “Gonna be a hot day. You think this oppressive heat might bode another storm?”
Sam shrugged. “Back home it often does. Here? Who knows. We can only hope.”
“Even though we didn’t receive a jolt, there could be some residual charge left in the energy collectors from the storm last night,” Marcus stated, frowning as if he’d just thought of it.
“Yes, it’s possible,” Sam concluded. “That’s one of the reasons we should get on with this.”
Marcus snorted and rolled his eyes. “Yes, master.” Sam shoved him in the arm, but the guy was an unmovable object, clearly amused by the geek boy’s effort. He swiped a hand across his forehead again. “Jesus, it’s fucking hot out here.”
“No wind yet.” Sam studied the cloudless skies and the tops of the gigantic trees, and not a thing stirred. “As irritating as this heat is, the weather’s promising for us. No wind means that the pressure’s gathering.”
The soles of their boots clopped against the stone slabs of the ceremonial pathway across the mountaintop. To Sam, the sound was awfully loud, and his gaze kept returning to the thick underbrush by the sides of the road. He wasn’t sure if he was expecting rampaging animals or hungry vines, but he refused to relax even for a second.
“There. The stairs are close.” Marcus pointed in the direction where they had climbed up the stairs from the underground chamber. “We’re almost there, and according to this app, we’ve traveled about two and a half hundred meters.”
Sam let out a tiny whoopee. “That means the vines we’ve gathered might be enough.”
Marcus glanced at him over his shoulder, grinning lopsidedly. “Yeah, looks like. Now all we need to do is to figure out how to combine the cut vines to each other, and then we’re home free. Man, I’m super glad we don’t have to go back to that fucking plant with its tentacles and—”
A low growl stopped both of them dead in their tracks.
Out from the underbrush on the other side of the path, a razor beast sneaked, hunched and cautious, its long curved fangs bared. It inched toward them, menace in its slow, steady approach. Its gold-black-green striped fur stood on end, blue cascades of electricity covering it like a fluttering veil, and its butterfly-winged ears flapped rapidly. On its forehead, the single black horn curved backward instead of straight up, like that of a rhinoceros, and behind and above its body swished its long tail with its row of razor-sharp spikes.
“Oh. My. God.” Sam couldn’t breathe, and his vision blurred in pure panic, his whole body buzzing with adrenaline, his instincts crying for him to run or die.
“Slowly back away toward the temple,” Marcus whispered, stepping in front of Sam, his movements appearing almost leisurely.
“We’re over two hundred meters from the entrance. We’ll never make it.”
“Shit. Fuck.” Marcus sounded breathless and more angry than frightened. “Why the hell didn’t we remember to bring the spears with us?”
“Maybe that thing won’t enter the chamber beneath us, same as at the temple,” Sam said, racking his brain to find them a safe haven close by. “Could we make it?”
Sam backed off, his gaze glued to the beast creeping toward them, its growl growing louder, its hackles sending off sparks.
Because he was retreating with his back turned, Sam didn’t realize how close he was to the edge of the path—until his foot slipped and he fell backward, flailing helplessly and quite comically. Not that he was in a laughing mood.
He caught Marcus’s arm with one flailing hand, grabbing desperately for purchase. Shouting, they both tumbled and hurtled down the mountainside.
They rolled over bushes and rocks in a heap of limbs, unable to stop their rapid descent down the steep hillside. Not plants, mudslides, or even tree trunks slowed them, as they merely bounced off them like a couple of Ping-Pong balls thanks in part to the lower gravity.
Sam couldn’t see anything but the jungle spinning madly around him. It was as though he were watching a rinse cycle through the round window of a washing machine. Everything was a jumble of green and blue, gray and brown, and Sam couldn’t focus on anything.
He didn’t know what he kept hitting, but he was getting tiny shocks, as though he were the target of constant static bolts of electricity. But he couldn’t see what caused them.
A large paw smacked him in the chest and sent him cartwheeling through the air until he hit a huge tree trunk, fell painfully over the roots of a tree, and then resumed rolling, barreling down by the force of gravity, as light as it was.
Sam had no idea where Marcus was. It was clear the razor beast had jumped over the edge and dashed downhill after them, catching up with Sam along the way and swatting him away like an annoying bug. Please God, don’t let that thing eat Marcus.
A loud hissing noise sounded close by, but he couldn’t pinpoint the direction. Out of the corner of his eye, though, Sam detected puffs of purple vapors spreading high and wide.
Another meat-eating plant.
Sam shielded his face with his arms and tried to roll into a ball. That was what he’d been trying to do all along, and even succeeding, at least until the alien feline had hit him square in the chest. But he was aware he’d have scrapes, bruises, and perhaps even cracked or broken bones and internal bleeding before he hit rock bottom, wherever that was.
His final landing surprised him.
Golden-white sand welcomed him like a soft mattress as he spun helplessly onto the beach at the foot of the mountain. He lay there on his back, his vision dancing, his mind reeling, his body aching all over. His breathing was labored, but at least he could draw breath. His sides hurt, but he figured he’d be screaming in agony if he had broken ribs or limbs or internal bleeding.
Once his vision cleared and his head stopped humming, Sam pushed himself up until he sat upright. His jeans had tears and holes in them, and he could see bloody scratches through them. He still had his boots on, for whatever that was worth.
Sam peered around, but the beach was empty of animals and people. Slow waves sloshed against the shore, the turquoise waters glittering in the bright sunlight. If Sam had been at a tropical beach at home, he would have lain back down and relaxed. But here he couldn’t.
Marcus was nowhere in sight.
“Marcus?” Sam hollered in panic as he staggered onto his feet, shaded his eyes with a hand, and scanned his surroundings.
A steep incline covered in green-blue trees spread out above him like an impenetrable wall of vegetation. Only everything was supersized. He couldn’t even make out the cleared top of the island where the temple was. From his current vantage point, the whole world seemed to fold over him like a vaulted ceiling, and Sam had to tamp down a sudden rush of claustrophobia.
“Marcus? Marcus!”
No one replied. Sam was aware that if the razzie was still alive, which was probable, it wouldn’t do to grab its attention. But if Marcus was injured, unconscious, or dead… that was a far worse prospect than getting eaten by an alien feline. Sam couldn’t do this on his own.
He started to limp toward the edge of the jungle, his left foot hurting. His ankle had to be strained, but he gritted his teeth and decided to tough it out. An unprecedented act of bravery, Sam might have felt proud of himself if his mind and heart weren’t filled with worry.
He kept calling out Marcus’s name until he reached the distinct line between the sandy beach and the lush tropical forest. There, buried under decades or perhaps centuries of neglect and overgrown vegetation, he spotted the stone stairs, mostly in ruins but climbable. They had to reach the chamber and the mountaintop.
A flourishing forest teeming with life surrounded him. Sam had to push through the verdant obstacles, using his arms to shove dense growth of ferns and flowers, branches and hanging moss, out of his way. He couldn’t see more than a few feet ahead of him.
As he ascended slowly, he kept taking hits from tendrils of
bioelectricity off the trees around him. Every time he stepped over an invisible line between two trunks, it was like he had crossed a closed circuit—which resulted in him being struck with shocks. None of them hurt him badly, but he estimated that the compounding effect couldn’t be healthy for him.
His feet slipped and stumbled on the cracked and broken stairs. He started to wonder if he’d make it back up to the top of the island without further injuries. Sam didn’t stop calling out for Marcus until his voice was hoarse from exertion and breathlessness.
“Shh, bae.” Then Marcus was there, standing in front of Sam, a finger over his lips as he shushed Sam silent. “We don’t wanna wake that thing up.”
About to hug his apparently safe and sound companion, Sam stopped midmotion and frowned. “What?”
Marcus leaned on his knees, blowing out a breath. Blood spatter decorated his cheeks and forehead, and his clothes appeared as torn as Sam’s. “As I fell, I bumped into another of those dangerous plants. I rolled past it too fast for the vines to catch me, but it launched a noxious cloud. I managed to grab on to tree roots and stop myself. Then I retraced my path and found that the razzie had been knocked out by the narcotizing vapors. It’s out cold a little ways off.”
Sam closed his eyes and sighed in relief so deep he almost passed out from the force of it. “Jesus Christ, you scared the shit out of me.”
“I did? Not that flash-vamp-puss?” Marcus chuckled, but his eyes were round and his skin pale, so he clearly was more shocked by what had happened than he liked to admit. “Listen. If and when that thing wakes up, it’s just going to rain on our parade again. I think…. We have only two choices: Trap it somehow or… or kill it.”
Sam gulped. Could he murder an alien life-form to save his own life?
“No. I don’t want to kill it,” Sam replied emphatically. “I just don’t want it to kill us either.”
Marcus nodded. “That’s why my other option was to make a trap, not that we’d trap it only to kill and eat it. Though the meat—”
“Don’t even think it. We’re not eating an alien animal. No freaking way in hell.”
Marcus grinned, seemingly back to his old self. “That’s a no, then, is it?”
“Shut up.”
Marcus glanced over his shoulder and straightened. “I have no idea how long the razzie’s gonna stay down, so we should come up with a plan pretty quick. I mean, typically if an enraged animal threatens a person, a cattle prod or a shock stick comes in handy. Here, though, a shock might have a different effect, and we might just get the predators excited and humping our legs while they simultaneously try to eat us.”
Sam couldn’t help himself; a burst of laughter escaped him. “Can you be serious for a second?”
Marcus shrugged playfully. “Don’t know. Haven’t often tried that option.” He winked and waggled his eyebrows at Sam.
Sam shook his head, chuckling. “You’re nuts. Okay. What’s your plan?”
Marcus frowned pensively. “We could create some kind of shackles to fasten the thing to a tree or a pillar in the temple.”
In Sam’s ears that sounded monstrous, capturing an innocent animal that just followed its instincts, a beast that deserved the right to roam free same as any other. “But then the razzie will die of starvation once we leave. It’s inhumane and cruel.”
“But if the binds are too loose, it’ll break free before we get out of here.”
Sam merely shook his head more fiercely. “We’re supposed to be ambassadors from Earth, so I think we should avoid destroying things. I mean, the UN has a treaty in place about not polluting or owning heavenly bodies. Who knows what our microbes or germs have already done to this moon? For all we know, we could have unwittingly contaminated this whole place. No, I don’t like either of those two options. No killing and no shackles. What else?” Sam knew it was probably impossible to hold the creature off without hurting or killing it, but he really wanted them to avoid that if they could.
“Okay.” Marcus cocked his head, obviously going over possibilities. “We could build a rudimentary cage to trap the razzie by baiting it with, like, a piece of meat.”
Sam pondered the idea. It sounded acceptable—but was it feasible? “What else?”
“There’s always the old way, which is to dig a hole deep enough to trap the razzie and then cover it with branches, twigs, leaves, and plants. There are problems with that plan, though, as we don’t have adequate tools for digging, a beast that size would demand a huge hole, and the fall might maim it. Or it might simply leap over the hole since its leaps are huge, or it could drop in and jump right out thanks to the lower gravity.”
Depression sank in when Sam comprehended the enormity and difficulty of their plan to subdue the razzie. “Damn. Anything else…?” He was almost afraid to ask. Every option seemed to be worse than the last. Realistically, preserving alien life vs. self-protection wasn’t an easy feat to accomplish, finding a balance a precarious effort.
Marcus hesitated, and Sam feared the worst. “There’s one last option, but it’ll be a hell of a Hail Mary.” A pregnant pause made Sam cringe in dreadful anticipation. Then Marcus drawled, “We could… harvest buds from the carnivorous plant that creates the sleeping gas, and every time the razzie wakes up, we just… give him a new naptime.”
They had little factual knowledge how those noxious fumes worked. Perhaps the fauna on the isle were immune to the effects? The razzie wasn’t, that much they could confirm from personal experience, but the rest? No way to know in advance.
But it wasn’t like they had options coming out the wazoo.
Sam had been right on the money. One bad option after another. Out of the frying pan and into the fire. Shit.
Chapter 12
“I HATE to say this, but… knocking that razor beast out with the sleeping gas sounds like our best option if we don’t want to do the animal permanent harm.” Sam hedged, displaying his concern with a tiny frown and downcast lips.
Marcus smiled. He’d expected Sam would go for the nonviolent alternative. Even if it was a fool’s errand. “Then we have to wait for nightfall when the flower sleeps. But we need a plan for how to extract the buds without alarming the plant and getting ourselves either stung or gassed.”
Sam rubbed his forehead as if he had a headache. Marcus could relate. He didn’t relish the idea of having to extend their stay on the alien moon for the sake of a predator that wanted to eat them.
Then Sam glanced around himself, obviously fretting. “We, um, should go back to the temple. I don’t think it’s a good idea to be here when the razzie wakes up.”
Marcus stopped him with his hand over Sam’s arm. “If we use the shackle option, we should try it now that the beast is out cold. That way we could finish taking the measurement for the distance between—”
“No, we’re not doing that.” Sam’s pursed lips and glare warned Marcus not to pursue the notion further. “Besides, we weren’t far from the chamber, so I think we can safely assume that we have enough vines.”
“That’s one thing,” Marcus cut in, vexed at Sam for shooting him down. “I just don’t want to spend any more time here than absolutely necessary.”
“Then we’re wasting time arguing,” Sam blurted out. He turned his back on Marcus and resumed his climb up the stairs.
The reaction reminded Marcus of all the times before they’d ended up on the exomoon when they’d disagreed about everything, at least on the rare occasions Sam hadn’t run away from him. Yet Marcus said nothing. Sam had his prejudices and preconceptions, and Marcus wouldn’t be able to disabuse him of them, not when it came to the protection of wildlife.
So he followed Sam, silent as the grave.
“Why have we only seen one single predator? Where’s the rest of the pack?” Marcus asked after they’d climbed for a while in eerie quiet.
“You mean pride,” Sam corrected him prudishly, then blushed and ducked his head. “They could be highly territorial, I suppose, or t
he island’s not big enough for more than a few of them. Of course, they need a large enough gene pool to avoid inbreeding, but for all we know, maybe they’re exceptional swimmers and leave this place for other islands to mate? Maybe each island on this moon is a home to only a couple of them? Many predators are really particular about what’s theirs.”
Marcus touched Sam’s shoulder and turned him to face him. Sam’s downcast lashes fluttered as he blinked, but then he met Marcus’s gaze. “Listen, bae—”
“No, I’m sorry.” Sam sounded miserable. “I shouldn’t have talked to you like that, like an asshole—”
“You didn’t. You stuck to your guns about not causing harm to an animal. That’s not a bad thing. It’s commendable.”
“Maybe. But you were right too. We shouldn’t dawdle but try to get home as soon as possible. God, our folks must be out of their minds with worry.”
Marcus pulled Sam into a hug, placing soft kisses on his temple and caressing his back with slow strokes, soothing and grounding them both. “We’ll get home, I promise.”
“I know.” Sam sniffled against Marcus’s chest. “When you say it, I believe. Not when I say it to myself.” Suddenly he pushed himself off Marcus, blinking his watery eyes. But Marcus could see gears already turning inside Sam’s mind. He was onto something. “The razzie’s asleep for now, right? And it’s daytime.”
“Yeah…?”
“I could make a small personal sacrifice in order for us to harvest a couple of those buds.”
Marcus sure as shit didn’t like what he was hearing. “Come again?”
Sam flashed him a shy smile that tried to be self-confident but failed in its shaky delivery. “The flower reacts to sound. I could use music on my iPhone to distract its vines while we sneak in from another direction. If the plant doesn’t destroy the device, we could go back later to collect it, but… it’s not necessary. It’s just a phone.”
