Broken Earth

by S. J. Sanders

  Ignoring the smell of cooking meat, she dug into her pack and pulled out a tin of SPAM. She pulled the tab and grimaced at the slimy contents. Eating the sludgy meat was less appealing than ever. She poked at it and started when Veral chuffed.

  “Do not eat that vizi,” the alien growled as it thrust a skewer at her. “That is not food. This is food. Eat.”

  Setting the can down, she gratefully accepted the skewer, her mouth watering from the aroma.

  “What’s vizi?” she asked as she blew on the hot meat to cool it.

  Veral huffed and regarded her with amusement. “Vizi is a way of saying the foulest of the foul. By the smell alone, I can tell that whatever that is, it is barely edible.”

  Terri pinched off some of the seared, flaky skin and stuffed her mouth full of the tender meat. It burned her tongue, but the flavor was so welcoming that she moaned with pleasure. Veral glanced up at her at the sound, the whips around his head puffing out as he watched her. She gave him a sheepish look as she stuffed more into her mouth.

  “Sorry,” she mumbled around the meat. “It’s been so long since I had real meat. This is delicious.”

  The alien continued to stare, frozen in place, before making a low trilling sound and turning its attention back to its own food. As she ate, she watched in fascination out of the corner of her eye, trying not to stare as Veral’s mandibles widened as its mouth opened to receive food. The sharp, serrated mandibles seemed to cut through the meat even as they guided it into the alien’s mouth, where the chunks were chewed a time or two before he swallowed. It was both a fascinating and unsettling sight.

  Clearing her throat, Terri looked away and nodded to the carts in the middle of what was left of the living room. “So, what’s all that?”

  Veral grunted and gestured to the nearest cart. “Quality scrap metal.”

  Obviously a being of few words. Terri continued to chew as she leaned forward to glance into the cart nearest her. One section was filled with random bits of metal, while another held works of art. She raised an eyebrow as she looked at Veral’s findings.

  “You actually get paid for this junk?”

  Veral swallowed the last bites of its meal and jerked its head roughly in the affirmative. It was less a human nod and more a rapid circular motion of its head that culminated in a downward tip of its chin. The motion sent the whips on the back of its head moving.

  “The metals are accumulated and melted down. The relics are bought by collectors. Many credits to be made from simple salvage.”

  “Wow, incredible! It’s almost hard to believe.” She grinned at Veral and the alien stilled, its mandibles widening as it bared its teeth at her with a threatening rattle. Her smile wilted and alarm surged through her. But she refused to be cowed. Instead, she glared up at it. The alien’s whips writhed in a clear show of dominance. Her skin shivered in reaction, but she didn’t back down.

  Finally, Veral chuffed and leaned back, giving her another peculiar nod.

  “You are brave, but do not threaten one who is stronger unless you are prepared to fight,” Veral admonished her with another loud chuffing sound.

  Terri’s mouth dropped open. “I wasn’t challenging you. I was smiling!”

  The alien narrowed its eyes on her. “That is not a smile. This is a smile.” It gestured to its mouth as its lips twisted upward as the corners, seeming to align with the tips of its mandibles, making the smile all the more unsettling and alien.

  “Humans smile that way too, kind of, but we also smile more fully like this.” She demonstrated by grinning at him again, although this time it felt considerably more strained.

  “Humans are a strange species. Very well… if you insist.” She laughed at his grudging acceptance, and the alien’s bright eyes fastened at her before something behind them seemed to soften with humor.

  It was a start.

  With a chirp to Krono, Veral turned to head out to the street, leaving Terri to scramble to her feet and follow after them.

  Outside, the alien stretched, seemingly soaking in the sun before it reached for its belt and unclipped three large, dull gray discs. Veral showed them to her before putting one on the ground. With a touch to a band around its wrist, the disc unfolded into the familiar shape of one of his carts.

  “Once these three are filled, we will return the units to the cargo hold on my ship and retrieve more.”

  Terri scratched her nose where her latest sunburn was peeling. “How much are you planning on salvaging? To be honest, there are a great many cities on this planet. You could spend a lifetime here salvaging for scraps and still not get everything.”

  “My storage only has room for twenty units of cargo. Once I have filled my ship to maximum capacity, I will alert a team to the coordinates. They will continue to salvage while paying out a percentage to my accounts while I search for other salvage opportunities.”

  Terri’s eyebrows flew up. “Wow, that must be lucrative.”

  “It is satisfying,” Veral said.

  They went from residence to residence, looking for bits of metal, circuitry, art, and jewelry. More often than not, she found herself forced to pry open old electronics and pull out the tiny metal bits. These she deposited in the cart. There were some metals that Veral wasn’t interested in. Copper seemed to interest the alien the most whereas steel wasn’t bothered with. She discovered that after Veral threw out the set of knives she’d put in the bins. The result was that, even after hours of working, there was barely more than a few inches of shiny metal at the bottom of the first bin. Her back ached and her mood was souring. Reminding herself that she had a free ride to the coast coming her way, she kept silent and continued to work at a driven pace.

  For the most part, they worked side-by-side wordlessly. The alien rarely spoke except to issue commands to Krono when he began to wander. It took them a full day to half-fill one of the carts. Terri found that depressing. It was almost tempting to recant on her offer and make tracks while she could, but then she reminded herself that there was a huge expanse of merciless desert between her and the coast. Even if it took a week to gather salvage, it was preferable to attempting that trek. So she continued to work without complaint, and in the evening they went back to their shelter, where Veral left her in order to hunt for their evening meal. Eating regularly almost compensated for her sore muscles.

  They soon fell into a routine, spending the days filtering through the remains of hollowed-out homes, looking for anything that the Reapers hadn’t already taken. The alien’s constant, silent presence felt more comforting even though she didn’t know anything more about it than she had when they met. She’d tried to engage Veral in conversation, but her companion only spoke to issue orders, which became more and more annoying as the days passed. Despite that, she grew accustomed to its inhuman features, and that lessened her fear of Veral, making her increasingly bold.

  She blamed that as the reason she finally snapped impatiently when the alien had—once again, for the hundredth time—grunted and gestured to a corner of a room that they were picking through.

  “Pointing at something and grunting doesn’t tell me what you want very well. You’re going to have at least try to talk to me,” she retorted in exasperation as she threw down her bag. She immediately snapped her mouth shut, almost biting her tongue when Veral’s eyes narrowed at her, a menacing sound dragging up from the back of his throat. A cold sweat popped over her skin, but she didn’t move as it paced closer to her in an attempt to intimidate her.

  She had no doubt that dominance displays were in equal part a way to control her and a form of entertainment given how frequent they had become. Still, this time Terri knew she’d finally pushed the alien too far and that it was about to kill her and leave her carcass for the buzzards. Her muscles tightened and twitched anxiously. Yet, to her surprise, Veral snapped the whips draping from its head with a loud hiss before gesturing again.

  “Search over there, female, through the remaining debris for anythin
g of value. Let us be on our way before night comes.” The alien turned away from her and stalked over to another area, tossing furniture out of his way, and he dug back through the more difficult section of the room where a wall had caved in.

  Her lips quirked and a wave of endorphins flooded her system after escaping that confrontation unscathed. “See? That didn’t hurt you any, did it?” Her eyes widened in horror as she pressed her lips together and cursed her mouth which apparently had a death wish.

  The alien snapped around, its whips flaring around its head as it glared at her. She smiled sheepishly and scampered to her duty before the alien second-guessed its decision not to kill her for her impertinence.

  Clamping her lips shut, lest she provoke its ire again, she worked tirelessly throughout the day. She was rummaging through a big bin when he shifted a large section of a crumbling wall with a loud snarl. She stopped, squinting through the dust at Veral as the alien stepped into what had obviously been some sort of storage space. The growl turned into an interested trill as Veral pulled something out and set it on the floor.

  Curious, Terri crept forward, waving one hand through the air to disperse the dust motes and plaster fragments away from her face. What did Veral have there? She walked over and leaned forward to see around the alien’s massive body. She hadn’t even been aware that she brushed against her companion until it jerked and whirled on her, its whips snapping around it so aggressively that one caught her across the cheek before she managed to scramble away to a safe distance.

  Bringing one hand up to her bleeding face, she stared at the alien in shock.

  Veral snarled and shook its head aggressively but it crept closer, its eyes inspecting her face. “You are damaged,” it observed gruffly.

  “I was only trying to see what you found and you sliced the hell out of me!”

  A low hiss came from its throat. “My apologies. I reacted instinctively. Never touch an Argurma uninvited. Make certain you remember this. Humans are very fragile, it appears,” it murmured, its eyes softening slightly. “Now hold still. I will heal you this time.”

  “Heal me? How?” she asked.

  “With my saliva.”

  Veral’s long, dark tongues emerged then from its mouth, the pair twining and flexing, the tapered tips oddly flexible. She wrinkled her nose as it leaned forward. The alien’s breath didn’t smell bad like she expected it would. Instead, it had a curious spicy scent. Its two tongues lashed forward, slipping over her skin, depositing a trail of something sticky where they touched her wound. She lifted a hand to explore the cut, but Veral grabbed her by the wrist and held her still while the substance dried. Only then did the alien release her. Glaring at him, she ran her fingers over a hard, raised trail.

  “The cut is sealed. In two days, my hormonal saliva will crack and fall away, leaving only healed skin in its place,” Veral grunted before turning away from her once more to empty the contents of what she now saw were several lockboxes cracked open.

  Terri cleared her throat awkwardly and wandered back to where she’d been working once more. She hated to admit that she spent the rest of the day tiptoeing around the big alien, but Veral really did prefer maintaining its own personal space and she had no problem giving that. She probably went overboard, venturing nowhere near touching distance, but that was her prerogative, even if on several occasions she felt his eyes watching her curiously. Despite the fact that those whips didn’t hurt more than a papercut, she was determined to not risk a repeat performance.

  When they returned to their shelter that night, they huddled once again in a shared room. Veral never attempted to lay closer than a foot or two away from her. She almost wished the alien would. The temperature dropped at night in the desert, and the body heat would have been welcomed. She suspected that Veral didn’t suffer from it the way she did, the same way that the alien never seemed to be uncomfortable even in the midday sun that sent Terri looking for shelter to wait out the worse hours.

  It was late into the fifth day salvaging that she heard the familiar roar of a Reaper engine, and Terri froze. It was some distance away, probably chasing after other “prey,” but she couldn’t ignore the gut instinct to run and hide. If it weren’t for the fact that she didn’t want to seem like a complete waste of space to the alien standing stoically nearby, she would have. If Veral was unconcerned, she had little reason to worry. They had a bargain, and she didn’t think the alien would just abandon her to be captured. She shrugged it off and continued searching through the rubble of an old cinema.

  The alien didn’t seem to be fooled by her pretense of nonchalance. Veral turned and looked at her, bony brow raising with interest. “You are afraid of them.”

  “Well, yes, of course I am. I’d be suicidal to not be at least a little afraid of them. They would capture me if they had the opportunity.”

  “They hunted you that day.”

  She had no need to ask what day Veral was speaking of. “They tried to,” she said.

  “You survived and, even though you were afraid, you still entered their abode and freed me.”

  “Yes.”

  Veral considered her in silence for a few minutes, its blue eyes never shifting away from her. Suddenly, its lips tilted up in a closed-lipped smile and it nodded.

  “You are fierce, Terri… for a human,” Veral amended with a loud chuff of laughter.

  Terri smiled in return, flattered despite the indirect insult to her species. She stretched her back, her loose shirt pulling taut as she attempted to ease her muscles. Veral’s blue eyes shifted to her before again focusing on its work. She thought she’d seen something flicker in that gaze, but shrugged it off—she was likely mistaken. They continued to work in companionable silence for the rest of the evening.

  It was very late at night when they heard another engine rev nearby, this time passing so close to the house they were sleeping in that it woke Terri up. Her heart pounded wildly in her chest and fear seeped out of every pore as she heard the laughter of Reapers. She nearly jumped out of her skin when she felt a warm, dry hand on her shoulder. She skittered to the side and glanced behind her, meeting Veral’s luminous eyes.

  The alien’s pointed ears shifted forward in their limited range of motion. Although Veral’s head turned slightly as a rat scurried by in the dark, the alien’s focus was entirely on the noises outside their hiding place. A loud crash near the door made Terri jump, but Veral’s arm banded around her, steadying her. A single hand stroked her hair soothingly as it whispered to her in a low voice.

  “Males seek females. Breeding is a prerogative among most species in the universe. The impulse to hunt out one’s mate doesn’t cease to exist because one’s civilization falls. Perhaps the need becomes even greater then. I do not know. It is a natural desire, but they seek to terrorize females. I do not approve of this. The Argurma are not gentle mates, but even we are not so cruel. Do not worry. I will protect you.”

  She shivered and leaned against the alien, allowing its warmth to flow into her body. She needed the distraction, so she asked the first question that came to mind.

  “Have you ever had a mate?”

  Silence descended between them, and Terri worried that she’d asked a taboo question. At length, she heard a raspy sigh. “I came close once, but my intended decided in the end to pair with another. Mating is competitive. No male is guaranteed that a female will choose them, and every male desires the best female. If you were Argurma, you would have been courted by hundreds of males. Your nature is strong like ours. Many would have desired to impress you, even if you have a kindness in you that my people would consider a debilitating weakness. Yet, I find even that I like.”

  Terri grinned in the darkness, forgetting that Veral could see her. As always, her alien stiffened as she bared her teeth but was reacting less every time she smiled. She tensed as a small, nagging thought filtered through her brain.

  Veral had informed her in not so many words that he was male, and that as a male, he wa
s showing admiration for her by comparing her to the females of his world. She no longer felt threatened in his company beyond the dissipating unease she usually felt. Truth be told, she felt far safer with him than with any human male. She pulled back as she eyed the alien beside her.

  “You’re male?” she whispered.

  Veral bristled in offense, his arms tightening protectively around her. “Yes.”

  She couldn’t think of anything to say to that. It didn’t bother her, so it seemed pointless to make a big deal out of it. Instead, she wanted to enjoy the offered comfort. She leaned forward and rested her head against his chest. His body tensed beneath her and his skin seemed to shudder where her breath brushed it. He didn’t object and, if she wasn’t mistaken, it felt like he settled more comfortably against her. The strange rhythm of his heart filled her ear, providing a soothing sound that drowned out whatever noise the Reapers were making on the streets.

  She felt… safe.

  “Oh, okay,” she mumbled against his chest. She could feel the tension easing out of him even as her own body relaxed. Terri yawned, and to her surprise he didn’t pull away to his customary place. This time, he continued to hold her long after the sounds of Reapers had faded and sleep had claimed her.

  7

  Veral followed the small human down the road. Like every other street, it was cracked in many places. Appropriate for a city of crumbling buildings. The species was dying as assuredly as the city was returning to the sands. Even the humans he had seen appeared to be barely clinging to life. Although the Reapers had spoken of pregnant females, he couldn’t imagine offspring thriving in such desolation.

  Not that he had seen any since his arrival. All he’d seen were fragments of playthings. The sight had brought a hazy feeling to him that he couldn’t quite define. Like fragments of his past drifting on his conscious mind seeking to reclaim him.