Jeff was too big to eat… and Sam wasn’t hungry anyway. He dropped the librarian, who fell the hundred thirty feet to the street in only a few seconds.
The expression on Jeff’s face as the pavement rushed up to him was one of relief.
~*~
THOUGHTS AS WATER
A.K. Meek
~*~
Valley of Misery, the Last Human Encampment
~*~
Thoughts dripped from battlefield flowers already bowed heavy under morning dew, a terrible morning for the humans that fell in those early hours.
And the alien with an unpronounceable name drank in those thoughts like water.
The drinking brought understanding of those thoughts and language, the foundation for comprehending any species. Victorious, and after a moment of digesting in a strange, unimaginable way that only an alien can, it had begun to understand the new, conquered humans and their land.
It was one of a handful of its kind still standing.
It stood in a wide valley.
Humans would call it a valley. Yes, a valley.
In the distance, land rolled up, turning into mountains that reached into the sky, not hampered by cloud or wind.
But in the valley, humans were strewn over the battlefield flowers and more of its alien-kind. Bodies side by side, alien and human, collapsed, folded, crushed like the flowers crushed underfoot. A wide valley of… thousands. Yes, thousands. That was the word.
The humans had brought weapons that fired elements. They had used once-raw minerals formed into base metals. Manufactured.
The alien turned the concept of manufacturing over in its head, or what could most nearly be considered its head. The idea was incomplete, though, because these humans did not think of things such as that while in the heat and fear of battle. They thought of aliens, rifts, living, and dying.
Thoughts not only dripped off gore-spattered flowers, but also wisped off the fallen humans, the dead and dying, and formed a battle fog, a haze that now obscured the flowers in thin blues and reds and yellows.
The alien could see what no human could see, could taste with its grotesque black tongue and bumpy, hoary-haired skin what humans could only understand with their minds. It shuffled through the fog, tasting, understanding the last thoughts of those warriors, those fallen flowers.
It paused next to a man curled in a ball, knees to chest, eyes frozen wide in terror. His last thoughts rose from his head and neck, steaming up, forming a pinkish cloud over him like the cloud that now obscured the top of the mountain.
His last thoughts were of securing the left flank after a wave of aliens (that’s how it learned what the humans called them) rifted in right on top of their heads.
It bent over the human warrior, immersing itself in the pinkish cloud, and the cloud gathered around the alien, sticking to its skin, revealing every secret this human harbored at his time of death.
The alien drank in the man’s thoughts. It fed on him until the pinkish cloud grew thin, then finally disappeared. The alien moved on to the next man. This one still grasped his element-firing weapon. His rifle.
His thoughts escaped him through his torso, billowing in thick plumes of sky-blue. The alien shoved what could be considered its head into the cloud. The human’s dying concern was the alien weapons, not able to comprehend what they fired.
A twig… branch… pole. Yes, pole, the alien thought. They would call it a pole.
With this reminder, the alien swirled its pole-weapon in the cloud, and likewise, its weapon absorbed the remaining thoughts of the fallen man, also drinking it in like water.
Its weapon didn’t fire elements, bullets of metal, but something much worse.
The poles swallowed the anguish and horror of one hundred dying species and bent that terror, folding it like paper, turning it inside out, and firing it back as projectiles that did more than simply rip through flesh; it tore and ripped sane thought and actions.
Many humans withered in terror like the flowers that would soon wither under the noonday sun. Others turned on their brothers, using their own weapons to kill one other.
But there were those that weren’t affected at all. They took the projectiles and winced, but didn’t falter or fall. They kept fighting.
Never had the alien seen such strength in a species.
Daisies.
This last human knew the name of the battlefield flowers. A field of daisies, yellow and white, covered in thoughts, morning dew, and green and red blood.
Early scout reports indicated that the humans were a fragile species, easily susceptible to the pole weapons and the incomprehensible projectiles. Despite the reports that said humans were ready to fall before their weapons, not all succumbed. Many did, but not all.
That was all it ever took to turn a battle; those few that could control their thoughts, their fears, enough to continue fighting.
Those few humans fought off hundreds of its kind. Killed them. Only by amassing from multiple rifts were they finally able to break this last encampment, sending the last remaining humans fleeing into the mountains that rose up into the sky, hidden.
Behind the alien, the rift, a tear in distance, time, and comprehension a quarter mile across, hung in the clear morning sky—a hole of black that exposed uncharted stars against velvet, a distant world of its kind, teeming with more aliens and more poles. And more hunger.
The edges of the tear sparkled in blue electric fury as the familiar odor blended with the thoughts that lingered on the field.
Yes, ozone. Oooh-zone the alien thought to itself. So many terms to absorb from this species, these humans.
Not many of the aliens had survived the battle. These few survivors moved, shuffling, through the body-strewn battlefield, doing likewise: bending over fallen humans, drinking, absorbing, recharging—a good word to describe it—their pole weapons.
With a sudden bang of thunder and a shockwave that ripped through the valley, echoing off the mountains in the distance, the last rift slammed shut, leaving those few survivors in the valley with nothing more than the memory of their home world and the smell of ozone. It would not open for another ten cycles. Days.
The alien maneuvered through the battlefield, left it behind, and finally stood at the edge of where the valley ended and the mountain began, first as rolling hills that graduated in height, reaching upward.
Here, leading away from the battlefield, were several trails that disappeared into the mountain… canopy. Yes, the few humans sought shelter in the… canopy.
Flowers had been brushed with quick steps of thought, painted in the colors that painted the fallen human warriors, each a paint trail indicating which direction the human survivors had scattered. A trail of memory that humans never knew existed. A trail they couldn’t erase.
The aliens that were left on the battlefield had already reached the thought trails and shuffled along, bending, tasting, following their human prey.
Prey.
That word sounded pleasant to the alien as it struggled to connect meaning and assemble context. Prey. Pray.
It continued up the gentle slopes until it reached a trail that none of the others had latched onto. It brushed its pole against the grass where the human had brushed its feet and ankles earlier, leaving a steamy wisp of thought to linger, beckoning to be followed.
A human who had fought, prepared to die, against the invasion of his planet. He fled only after his weapon failed.
The alien followed the trail into the dense mountain forest of trees.
Alien tracker, that’s what the humans would’ve called it now.
~*~
Trees, odd, foreign trees of twigs and branches, arched overhead, blocking the sun, cooling the air. But it couldn’t smell air, only thoughts.
Their attack on the humans had to occur during the day. Reports had stated that there was a period in the cycle—night—when they would be blind. Not that they relied solely on sight. In fact, their senses exceeded humans’,
except for sight. And war was never exact. So they attacked in the early morning.
Stumbling in the dim light of the forest, the alien tracker sniffed, tasted the air for the remnants of human thought.
There, to the left, just a fleeting moment of fear. But the fear wasn’t of the alien; it was for his species in general. The alien paused near a tree on the edge of the forest. From here, the human had watched the collapse of his encampment, the last vestiges of his kind being cleansed from the earth.
For himself, he felt disappointment that he couldn’t save his people. How could one human think he could save everyone?
It breathed in deep, rubbing against trees and gnarled limbs with strange hands to collect the thoughts of the man who had fled through here hours ago. It stopped mid-taste.
Another human!
The human sought to find another of its kind.
An idea called wedding flitted through its mind.
With renewed purpose, the alien followed the trail as it wound its way into the forest, deeper in, back and forth, around thick shrubs and changes of direction to avoid fallen, rotting trees that its heavy body couldn’t maneuver past.
It slowed after a mile more, pausing so that its body could acclimate to the elevation and gravitational pull of this strange planet. It brushed against a bush, tasting that the human’s mind had grown frantic as he reached here. He’d called out for Adele.
Ah, a name. The human called for Adele, his wedding.
No, not his wedding… mate. Yes, mate.
These humans had mates. Obviously, they hadn’t learned the ineffectiveness of having a mate. This man, this human warrior, sought his mate. That would be its weakness.
Maybe the scouts had overestimated humans. Maybe they weren’t as strong as the invaders had thought, had seen, in battle. It drank in the human’s fear; fear of the aliens, fear of death, fear of the forest, fear for his mate, his Adele.
A noise broke through the trees, a bleat of death. With its pole before it, the alien tracker sniffed the air with extended arms. Suddenly, with a change of wind direction, there were many senses, smells, but little rational thought that it could discern. The dark forest had hindered its sensors, its skin, blocking any rational input. The dark was blinding.
An object crashed through the trees, bouncing from limb to limb. The alien darted underneath an overhang of wild vines and growth, blindly swinging its pole before it to block any attacker. A squawk and a flutter of wings echoed off the trees far above.
Bird. A harmless earth creature.
It moved from the protective overhang and intersected the slowly fading human thought steam. Here, he continued calling for his Adele. Calling for her to come to him, assuring her the human was fine, but they needed to flee, escape deeper into the forest.
It followed the human’s thought trail deeper into the forest.
Half a mile more and the alien tracker stumbled over night-hidden roots that ran upturned along the earth, obstructing forward movement to almost a crawl. The trees had no senses, no thoughts which the alien could leech so that it could maneuver in the dark night.
Suddenly, an unexpected thought flitted across its mind, causing it to stop and lean against an old, tired tree, a pine. The thought was of hunger, but not hunger like the human had felt as he made his way up the mountain—an overwhelming hunger, one that drove all other thoughts aside. The alien knew of hunger, too, but not like this hunger.
Hunger… irresistible hunter… hunting… feeding the pack.
This was a foreign earth creature that the scouting reports hadn’t identified.
Not just one, but many thoughts of hunger. Creature upon creature. Individually, they would have been weak, but their thoughts merged into one overwhelming thought.
Hunger!
The alien scrambled upright from its fallen position and lumbered through dense forest, pole clacking against bark and short, jutting rock ledges. In the distance, a howl cut through the night. Long, mournful… calling came to its mind, but it couldn’t decipher its meaning.
Another howl, this time, from behind, echoed through the forest that was almost perfect in its pitch black. For an instant, the alien thought of the rift to its home world, the rift of velvet-black. How far away it was from this world.
It scrambled up a ten-foot-high outcropping of rock and wedged its ill-formed body into a crevice. The creature that was one but wasn’t one, but many closed in, hungrier than moments ago.
The alien backed itself deeper into the crevice. The human’s frantic calls for its mate, its fear for his fellow humans, now rested on the tip of the alien’s black tongue. Fear.
It fired its pole weapon, two projectiles screaming into the night to stop an unseen foe. Fired out of fear.
A howl, so near now, mocked, challenged the alien to crawl out from its crevice to face the pack of individuals in the night, their night, on their ground. They wouldn’t run. They would fight. They would defeat it, and they would eat.
The alien invader knew they would win.
The crescent moon arced across the mountain, and all the while the alien that had wedged itself between the rocks, pole in front for protection, waited for the formidable foe. Waited to die like so many humans that died on that battlefield.
But they never came.
~*~
Morning sun broke through the canopy in fits and starts, bathing the outcropping and the surrounding forest floor in a mottled camouflage. Emboldened by the breaking day, the alien peeled itself from the crevice and stood upright, flexing its body from the long night spent cramped, hiding.
Thoughts of the pack faded like the night, but still lingered enough to corrupt the human’s trail. It would be more difficult to pick up the scent since so much time had passed.
The alien moved back to where it had last tasted the human’s thoughts, but the pack’s hunger still covered the forest floor enough that the alien had to take extra time to find the trail again.
Finally, already losing its blue tint, a thin thread of a whisper of a thought clung to a leaf. The alien licked the leaf, then continued on the trail for more miles in dense forest.
At one point, somehow, it lost the scent and wandered, meandering in a large circle. It came across a tree, tall and thin and withered, that reminded it of the species from the last conquered world. They were docile, not willing to resist, not willing to fight. They tried to communicate, offering resources from their world.
The alien liked the term docile.
Their world was quickly consumed by the alien invaders.
With another sniff and taste, the alien found the blue trail of the human that had fled into the forest. The alien’s mind recreated the human’s memories of life before the alien invasion, of a wonderful job now lost, constructing domiciles for other humans. A domicile… a home.
It scampered along the trail, tumbling over a dead, fallen tree, popping upright, continuing, and using its pole to sweep aside vines and shrubs.
The thoughts the alien absorbed as it drank them in ranged from fear to escape—it stopped in place, suddenly overwhelmed by leftover thoughts.
Wolf… no, wolves.
This spot in the forest was where the human had also heard the wolves… howling. Yes, howling. Those terrifying creatures that were one but not one, but many.
But how could these humans know about wolves and still flee into the trees, the forests? The alien used its pole and scratched what could be considered its forehead.
Maybe they were strong, after all, despite them still having mates.
It pushed through a large row of hedges, and branches, thorns raking across its rough folds of skin. Several times the brambles caught in inhuman skin, sticking, tearing tiny, superficial wounds. Green blood welled in the scrapes.
A scream shattered the forest chatter of insects and rustling leaves.
The alien stopped and listened, instinctively raising its weapon.
Another scream, a human scream, cut the air.
A scream of terror. A delicious human scream. It raced through the forest to a tree line and peeked through, still under the shade of the tall pines.
In a clearing, yards away, another alien, one of hundreds that had poured through a rift hours ago, stood over a couple of humans. They crouched on the ground, clutching each other.
Mates clutching each other in terror. Their weakness.
The other alien with an unpronounceable name stood tall over the couple and lowered its weapon. It fired once, the projectile coming out as a scream, hitting the one human, the male human, square in the chest. He screamed—just like the pole had screamed—and jerked away from his mate. In a wild instant, he grabbed at the hair on his head and pulled a handful out and shoved it into his mouth and chewed. His mate, who had reached out to him, withdrew her arms, staring, and shrieked.
The alien projectile continued to affect him, as expected.
The male, now driven mad, scrambled along the ground, scratching, clawing, still screaming, hair falling from his mouth. He found a rock, partly buried, and ripped at the ground, slinging handfuls of dirt in the air, digging it up.
Triumphant, he held it above his head and gave a blood-curdling, coarse yell until his voice broke.
He turned to his mate, who had now gone silent in sickening wonder, leaped at her, and swung the rock with every last bit of his strength. It came down on her head, onto her delicate head of blonde hair. The last species of conquered enemies had blonde hair.
He swung again as her body slumped to the grass. A thick puff of green billowed from her fallen body and crept along the ground.
The male stared at the body for a moment, breathing heavily.
The alien waited, its pole pointed forward. But it didn’t need to fire again.
The human, still holding the rock, slammed it into his head. Two times was all it took.
He collapsed next to his mate, his cloud of dark blue spraying from his torso, mixing with the green into a sickening kaleidoscope.
Tales from the Canyons of the Damned: Omnibus Page 13
