Horizon Alpha: Transport Seventeen

by D. W. Vogel

  I peered over the hilltop. Nothing up on the rocks.

  “It’s down in the jungle,” I whispered to Shiro and he nodded. Keeping low, we crawled over to the edge of an overhang to peek down to the trees below.

  The noise grew louder and even before I saw it my brain made the connection.

  “It’s the tank!”

  Our huge green tank burst through the trees below, grinding on wide metal treads, chewing up bushes and knocking down small trees in its way.

  I jumped up and waved my arms over my head, shouting down even though I knew there was no chance the driver would hear me. Shiro and I raced down the hill.

  The tank rumbled to a halt and the hatch squealed open.

  My brother Josh popped his head out the top and called, “Once again, Josh Wilde arrives to save the day!”

  Chapter 43

  I climbed the side of the tank and threw myself into Josh’s hug. He squeezed me so tight I thought my ribs would break.

  “You look awful,” he said, pushing me out to arm’s length.

  “Yeah,” I grinned. “It’s been a rough month.”

  “Where are the rest of the people?”

  I gestured to the hill behind me. “Hiding around the side of those rocks. We thought you were a ‘saur.”

  Shiro climbed up beside us and embraced his old friend. “So nice of you to join us out here. Finally.”

  Josh shrugged. “We did the best we could. Transmission on this thing wasn’t fixable. Had to get some parts.”

  “From where?” Shiro asked.

  Josh looked out over the jungle. “Fortunately I knew where another tank was.”

  The enormity of his words washed over me. He’d gone out into the jungle, hours’ walk from Carthage to the site of the Wolf massacre that killed most of his platoon. He’d risked Rexes, Gilas, Crabs, and all the other predators of this planet to scavenge parts to fix this tank and come get us. After saying he’d never leave our valley.

  “Can’t believe Mom let you go out there,” I said.

  He rolled his eyes. “She didn’t. I didn’t tell her. And she was royally ticked when she found out I did. But what was she gonna say? Can’t leave you out here all alone.”

  I glanced over my shoulder. “Well I’m not alone. And there’s a bunch of folks who are gonna be pretty excited to see this rust bucket. We’ve got a really sick little kid, too.”

  The tank driver, an older guy named Jerry, handed up bags of meat and fruit. “Thought you guys might be hungry out here.”

  We grabbed the food and told Jerry to wait in the tank. Hatch closed. Shiro, Josh and I carried the heavy bags up the hill.

  “So Mom let you come out here today, though?”

  “Kid, I’m almost twenty. Mom doesn’t have to ‘let’ me do stuff. But yeah, I told her I was coming. She was okay since I’d be in the tank the whole time.”

  We reached the waiting group. Mouths dropped open when they saw us with Josh, though many of the party didn’t recognize him after three years away. He greeted everyone in turns, sharing a huge hug with Ryenne and an elbow bump with Rogan.

  “What have you got there?” he asked Ryenne, noticing the two baby ‘saurs at her feet.

  “They’re mine. They’re coming back to Carthage with me.” The ‘saurs crowded close to her, hearing the firmness in her voice.

  “Great. They look delicious.”

  “Josh!” Ryenne turned a pleading look my way, but I decided to play along with Josh.

  “Yeah, she’s been fattening them up real nice. Should be ready for a welcome home feast tonight.”

  Ryenne grabbed her babies, her face starting to crumble. Before the tears fell I laughed and gave Josh a shove.

  “Or maybe we can just eat whatever’s been growing at Carthage all this time. Get some fish from the lake. These little guys are probably too stringy to eat anyway.”

  Josh shrugged. “That works too.”

  Shanna was awake, her little lips dry and chapped. She kept reaching for the bandage around her leg, and Laura gently kept her hands off the smelly wrap.

  I pointed her out to Josh. “Shanna’s not doing well. We need to move her. So how many people fit in that thing?”

  He handed the bags of food to Kintan, who started distributing it. “We can cram in about seven. Maybe nine if it’s the kids.”

  I nodded. “Of course it will be the kids. Honestly that thing is so slow, you won’t make much better time than we will. But I want the kids safe inside.”

  We could fit the kids and the women in the tank, and the men would keep walking. We were close enough that it didn’t make sense to drop them off and turn the tank around to pick us up. The remaining men would finish on foot.

  Josh looked serious. “You know you can’t come all the way in the hills. It’s too steep. You’ll have to cut down around the edge of the jungle for the last bit.”

  Shiro sighed. “We know. But it isn’t far. We won’t be there until evening anyway, so we’ll be all right. Leave some juice at the bottom of the climb.” To cover our scent coming out of the jungle we would douse our trail in fermented fruit juice like we always did when we had to climb down to the shuttle that was parked at the bottom of our mountain.

  “Right. Time to move.” I herded everyone to their feet and we trudged toward the tank. It heartened me to hear people laughing, full of joy when they saw it. Almost home.

  Jerry popped the hatch and we started loading. Shanna and Laura went in first, followed by the other kids and the rest of the women. “Whoa, hold up there. Those things aren’t riding,” Jerry said, seeing Ryenne’s saurs peeking out of the top of her backpack.

  “Then I’m not riding,” she answered. “Take Rogan instead.”

  “Ryenne,” I said, “it will be all right. They can follow me. Just get in the tank.”

  She shook her head. “They won’t. I’m their mommy. They walk, I walk.”

  I knew that voice. There would be no convincing her. “Fine. Get Rogan in so they can take off. It’s still a long way.”

  But Rogan refused. Ryenne tried to cajole, but he was getting more anxious, rubbing his arms. His eyes had the faraway stare they got when he was starting to shut down. He hadn’t had a full-fledged panic attack since this expedition started, and now was not the time.

  “Rogan,” I said quickly, “How about you walk with me instead? Tell me about the . . .” I searched my brain for the name of a dinosaur. “Spinosaurus? How big was it? What did it eat?”

  “Fish,” he muttered. “Fish. Fish.”

  Ryenne led Rogan away toward the rest of our party.

  Don Rand sidled up beside me. “I should probably go in the tank. If it breaks down, I’m the best equipped to fix it.”

  I stared at him for a hard moment. On one hand, I couldn’t wait to be rid of him. But there was no way I was putting a healthy adult onto that tank while we had older folks who needed the space.

  “Jerry’s driving. He can fix the tank. Get back to the rest of the group.”

  Something in my tone made his eyes go wide. He turned and followed Ryenne and Rogan up the hill while Shiro helped Mr. Branz, the oldest and most exhausted, into the tank in Ryenne’s place. We were partway up the hill when the tank roared to life.

  Kintan looked longingly at the tank. “Why don’t we just all jump on it and ride back?”

  “No way,” Josh answered. “There are ‘saurs around here who know that sound. We’d be a slow-moving lunch wagon all piled on top of that thing with nowhere to run. They’ll park it right at the bottom of the cliff and make a dash for it.” We had sent a pistol and two of the grenades with Jerry in case he had to scare anything away for them to exit the tank.

  We plodded on in the dry, scorching heat. Josh chatted about Carthage and what we’d missed. “Mr. Borin is Mayor now. After you guys got stranded, everybody got all paranoid and we spent two weeks kitting out his wheelchair back into a dolly so we could hoist the embryo storage freezer out of the dead shut
tle and get it into the caves. Took an entire day and it got dented all to hell dragging it up the cliff, but it’s in now. Jeannie and Brett got married last week, which was pretty cool. We planted another field with corn, and three of the sheep are pregnant.”

  The day passed slowly as weariness caught up to us. So close now. I used the last of my sat trans’ charge to check our position one more time. Rogan walked behind me, muttering about Officer Halsey, and I filled Josh in on what had happened to her. Finally we ran out of passable hills and had to drop lower. The chatter stopped and our party of eleven moved closer together. The sun was still visible on the horizon.

  “We should wait here,” I said. “Cut around this edge once it’s dark.”

  Shiro sighed. “I think it’s okay. Let’s just go now. We’re not even half an hour out.” The other men nodded.

  “Not safe,” I insisted. “We need to wait.”

  “But we’re not really going into the jungle. Won’t be anywhere a Crab could hide. Better to see where we’re going.”

  I peered down the hill. Our path wouldn’t take us into the trees, but along the edge through the high grass. Shiro was right. Crabs and Gilas were too big to hide there. My stomach growled.

  “Okay. But everyone stay close.”

  We trooped down the hill, which gave way to the sheer cliff face of our mountain home. Pistols drawn, we shuffled forward around the rock face. The evening cries of the jungle reassured me that no large predator was in earshot.

  Finally the last rays of sunset lit up the nose of our grounded shuttle. Parked just behind it, the tank was still warm. I sighed with relief. They made it.

  Ryenne’s little ‘saurs chirped their hooting call.

  “We’re almost home, guys,” I said to them, and immediately felt silly for talking to Ryenne’s pets. They hooted again, pressing up to Ryenne’s legs.

  We passed the entrance to the tiny cave where Josh and his buddy Erik had hidden for three months, healing from their disastrous mission.

  The ‘saurs hooted and Ryenne scooped them up, stuffing them into her backpack. “Quiet, Sparkle, hush, Princess,” she cooed.

  “Sparkle? Princess?” I stared at Ryenne. “You named them?”

  “Of course,” she began but I hushed her with a quick gesture as the hairs on the back of my neck stood up.

  I saw nothing among the rocks.

  But I heard it.

  Click.

  Chapter 44

  “Where are they?” I whispered. “Get up the cliff now!”

  Click behind me.

  I whirled around and saw nothing.

  Click to my left.

  “Get them up now!”

  Josh grabbed Ryenne and pulled her behind him. The men of transport Seventeen and the Carthage soldiers followed, scrambling up the rocks. I was the last to go, scanning the tall grasses waving in the wind.

  Evening light distorted my vision, casting purple shadows around every rock and bush. I backed up to the cliff and shuffled up sideways, gripping my pistol.

  The Wolves burst onto the hills.

  There were four of them; two behind me and two to the side. They hurtled up the rocks after us, trying to flank us front and back. I unloaded the pistol, firing into the approaching darkness.

  The Wolves didn’t slow.

  I reached for the grenades on my belt. The first two Wolves were almost up to the entrance to Carthage’s cave system. If they get in there . . . I didn’t let my brain finish the thought. We had come way too far.

  I pulled a grenade and launched it past the front of our group, right at the two Wolves scrambling up the hill.

  BOOM!

  It exploded right under one of the Wolves, blowing it to shreds. The other flew out from the cliff face and crashed to the rocks below. A rain of rocks rumbled down from the hole blown into the cliff.

  “Get them in! Get them all the way in!” I braced my back against the rocks and reloaded my pistol, firing down at the other two Wolves behind me. The pounding rattle of another gun joined mine and Josh pressed himself up next to me.

  “Shiro’s got them in,” he yelled over the gunfire. “Let’s go!”

  The last two Wolves lunged into view. They stood on the rocks just below us and I stared down at the leader.

  It walked with a limp. One eye was missing.

  Sweet shining stars. It followed us.

  I fired at it, and it lowered its neck, taking the shots on the top of its bony skull. It shook its head and lowered its haunches to jump.

  It followed us.

  “Get up, Josh! Get up high. We can’t let them get inside.”

  Josh turned to climb and I followed him, awkward with one hand on the pistol. He said, “We can defend from inside the tunnel.”

  “No, get above it!”

  The lead Wolf lunged. I grabbed at a rock above my head and swung my legs up as the Wolf leaped from below me, jaws snapping inches from my feet. It was too big to get footing on the cliff face and fell back below.

  “We can make it inside,” Josh insisted.

  I didn’t have time to explain. He didn’t know this Wolf. But it had followed us all the way around the hills, probably staying on the edge of the jungle just out of sight. It had found a new pack. And somehow I believed it had told them about us.

  It would never stop. If this Wolf or the one that followed it escaped here alive, they’d never forget where we lived. And Carthage would never be safe again.

  Josh ducked inside the mouth of the tunnel, turned and fired past my shoulder at the Wolves below us.

  “Get inside. Josh, run all the way in!” I yelled.

  “Come on!” He turned to run. “Let’s go!”

  “I’m right behind you! Just keep running and don’t stop!”

  He disappeared into the tunnel and I jumped up above the cave mouth, climbing as fast as I could, following the wire Stacy and I had laid a million years ago.

  When I thought I was safe I turned around.

  The Wolves were almost to the tunnel. I raised my pistol and shot at them to get their attention.

  The second Wolf turned toward me.

  The leader didn’t. He sniffed the air and his one eye fixed on the tunnel mouth.

  One chance.

  I pulled the last grenade off my belt and lobbed it down the hill. It rolled into the tunnel mouth just as the Wolf’s front claws gripped the edge to pull itself up and inside.

  BOOM.

  The hillside jerked and rocks crumbled away from me. I scrambled higher, peering over my shoulder.

  The Wolf was blown out from the cliff face and into its pack mate. They fell twenty feet down onto a plateau of jagged rock.

  With a sickening rumble, the tunnel collapsed. Boulders from above it careened down the hill onto the stone below.

  My sweaty hands gripped the rocks and I pressed my face against the side, feeling the mountain vibrate against me. I coughed and gagged, squeezing my eyes shut against the grit flying through the air, praying the ledge I clung to would hold on.

  When the rumbling stopped and the dust cleared, I looked down the hill. The Wolves were buried under a ton of rock.

  And the tunnel into Carthage had disappeared.

  Chapter 45

  Ryenne’s Diary: Year 3, Day 109

  There’s so much to tell that I have no idea where to start.

  We made it. Most of us did. I’m not even sure what happened at the end of that horrible journey. We heard this clicking sound and all the Carthage guys freaked out. They were screaming at us to run, and we climbed up this cliff and into a tunnel. Nobody knew what was going on, but my cousin Josh pushed in behind us and told us to just keep running. We didn’t know where we were going, just following along. I didn’t even want to be in the tunnel at all because I thought we had learned about caves weeks ago, but Josh was pushing us and all of a sudden there was a huge BOOM.

  The floor shook under our feet and rocks were falling down and there was dust everywhere. We c
ouldn’t see and some of the people behind me were trapped in the rubble. Shiro and Kintan started pulling people out, and I got shuffled away into this huge cave room while they figured out where everybody was.

  The room was just astounding. It’s huge and the ceiling glows in the dark, although there were lights strung around the whole edge. There’s painting all over the walls, but I’ll get to that in a minute.

  Finally everybody was pulled out of the collapsed tunnel and we counted off.

  Everybody was there except Caleb.

  By now there were people everywhere, hugging us and bringing us food. The people who rode in on the tank told them we were coming, and they had everything ready for us. Caleb and Josh’s mom was busy taking care of baby Shanna, who is still really sick, but they think she’s going to be fine. Mr. Borin is in a chair with wheels now, because he got injured in the early days when they were out in the middle of the jungle. He’s in charge here, and he got all the new people paired up with people who have lived here for a while. Rogan and I have our own room, which is unbelievable. After three years in the transport on the beach, living all together like we did, it’s really strange to have a place that’s just ours. They even have clean clothes for us, and we got to take baths. I’d forgotten how it feels to not be filthy.

  Rogan went into a panic ball and didn’t calm down until we got him outside into the valley where they’re farming. He went running up to the sheep and just plopped down in the middle of their pen and wouldn’t move. I have a feeling we won’t be sleeping in our room in the cave for a while. Maybe never. Good thing I don’t mind the smell of sheep.

  So back to that cave. It’s all painted on the walls, and they say it was painted by some kind of alien bird people. There’s even a dead one, so I know they’re not just teasing us. I’m having a hard time thinking about that. I mean, obviously I know there’s life on other planets besides Earth, which doesn’t even exist anymore. We’re surrounded by life on Tau Ceti e, and none of it is friendly. But it’s one thing to find big dumb dinosaurs. It’s totally something else to think that there are birdmen out there who came here in spaceships and flew away. Where did they go? Are they coming back? Are they friendly? Nobody knows, and I kind of hope we never find out. I’m not sure how much non-Earth life I can handle.