Testing Grounds (On Dangerous Grounds Book 1)

by G. Allen Wilbanks

  “We’re through,” Annie announced with obvious relief in her voice.

  “Thanks to you,” Leon told her. “You figured out the pattern.”

  “You figured out what we were looking for. I just drew a picture in the dirt and got lucky.”

  “You need to learn how to take a compliment,” Leon said, leaning and bumping Annie lightly with a shoulder.

  Hiss interrupted the banter by pointing at the closed portal in front of them. “We, through, now go? Or we, rest, need?” he asked.

  Michael surprised Leon by answering first. Michael so rarely spoke that Leon had become used to being the unofficial spokesman between the humans and the Many.

  “I think we are all tired, but we’ve reached a point that stopping has become detrimental to our survival. Until we find water and food, we need to press on as long and as fast as we possibly can.”

  “Concurrence?” asked Hiss, turning to Leon. He too, apparently viewed Leon as the final word for the humans.

  “I agree with Michael. We should keep going.”

  After checking for Shoo’s permission, Hiss moved to the door, grasped the handle, and turned it. It did not move. This door was locked.

  Closer examination of the door revealed a small triangular hole next to the handle. Hiss fished through the pockets of his vest and retrieved his set of keys. Flipping through the metal items on the ring he located two possible keys that might fit the triangular lock. The first key he tried slipped easily into the opening and, to everyone’s surprise, turned in the hole without resistance. A light click could be heard as the locking mechanism holding the door latch in place released.

  Hiss returned the keys to his vest and pushed the door open. The next room was smaller than any they had seen so far, only about a tenth the size of the library space where they had all started, but it was still large enough for dozens of people to congregate easily without worrying about bumping into one another. Also unlike the first room, this floor consisted of polished concrete or rock rather than shag carpet, and all four walls were smooth and uncluttered by shelves or cabinets. The ceiling towered twenty feet overhead and connected to the walls without any decoration or molding to join the edges. They were stepping into a plain stone box.

  What caught everyone’s attention as they wandered in was not the room itself, but rather the object that dominated the central space. A massive wooden table, ten feet wide and over forty feet long, had been erected in the geometric center of the room, each edge equally distant from the walls on either side. Ten wooden chairs lined the longer edges of the table, five to a side. In front of each chair, a china and crystal place setting waited, complete with silverware and cloth napkins. Covering every other square inch of space on the expansive wooden surface were bowls and trays laden with food.

  Leon could see trays of fruit, breads, and cheeses, as well as bowls and tureens filled with stews, soups, and meats of all kinds. There were cooked fowl, roasts of some sort of red meat, and one platter that was covered by a large fish that he did not recognize. More important than the food, at the far end of the table there were over a dozen large glass pitchers filled to the brim with various liquids. Most were clear, and Leon prayed that these were water. The other containers held unidentified fluids of orange, red and brown.

  Thirsty and hungry from marching through miles of inhospitable terrain, the five humans moved toward the table.

  “Wait!” called Hiss.

  Leon turned in time to see Shoo place a small hand on Hiss’ waist and make a quick gesture for him to be silent. The rest of the group paused, waiting for Hiss to elaborate on his warning, but the large alien remained still and said nothing further.

  “Hiss?” Leon prodded. “Are we in danger?”

  “I…” he glanced toward Shoo, who gave no further direction. “I do not know.”

  Leon tried again. “Is there something we should know? Or are you suggesting we should be cautious?”

  Hiss was either unsure how to respond or else chose to ignore Leon’s query, so Michael asked a more direct question. “Hiss, when you went through this test before, did you find food?”

  “Yes. We, food, received.”

  “Was it safe to eat?”

  “We, the food, ate. It, safe, was,” Hiss confirmed.

  “But there was a problem, wasn’t there? What are you afraid of?”

  Hiss lowered his head, his posture indicating his internal struggle between following Shoo’s direction and answering Michael’s question honestly. “The food, safe, was. Danger, in the room, was. Traps, there were.”

  Shoo did not react to the revelation other than to click her mandibles together in silent rebuke of Hiss’ disobedience. Leon decided that he had not been paying close enough attention to the female alien previously. In the earlier trials with the rockadillo, he had thought Shoo was acting in the interests of the group, but in retrospect, he could see she had carefully placed herself in the safest possible position in both alleyways: as far from the creatures and as close to the doors as she could get.

  In the wilderness, she had been an active participant in figuring a way out, but the greatest threat at that time had been remaining trapped. Her contribution to the discussion was motivated by self-interest. And now, she had been prepared to stand back and let the humans play guinea pig in the room to determine if it was safe for her enter.

  While Leon could not completely fault her behavior, he made a mental note to himself to double check her motivations before he took anything else she said at face value. Annie stood next to Leon, and the look he noticed on her face as she glared at the female Many suggested her thoughts were running similarly to his own.

  “That ball you were faffing about with earlier. Do you still have it?” asked Michael, gesturing at Leon’s backpack.

  “Yeah, I think so.”

  Michael held out his hand. “May I borrow it. I’m relatively certain you’ll get it back.”

  Leon rummaged a hand through his backpack until he located the ball he had collected from the library. He handed it to Michael. Michael hefted the spherical object a couple times, gauging its weight, then he shuffled to one side of the room, moving to the left of the large table. He bladed his stance toward the far wall like a baseball pitcher setting up on a pitcher’s mound and flung the ball across the room. It arced through the air, nearly brushing the ceiling before striking the far wall. The small green missile impacted with a hollow thud then bounced and rolled back toward Michael, who stooped and scooped it up as it dribbled to his feet.

  Nothing in the room moved. Michael repeated the throw and again the ball returned without mishap. Shifting to the opposite corner so he could clear the space to the right of the table, Michael hurled and retrieved the ball twice more. He handed it back to Leon.

  “If there’s a trap in the room, motion doesn’t trigger it. I think it’s safe to approach the table.”

  Surprisingly, Malcolm was the first to go for the food.

  “I’m not sure we should risk it yet,” Leon said, noticing that Shoo and her two escorts made no move toward the cornucopia laid out on the table.

  “If I die here it’s going to be because something killed me,” said Malcolm. “Not because I was too much of a ponce to eat when I had the chance.”

  Michael did not respond, but he followed Malcolm’s example and approached the food. Annie and Sofia stayed with Leon, waiting on his decision.

  Malcolm grabbed a loaf of bread as he passed it, tore it in half and took a bite from one end. The other half he dropped back onto the tray where he found it. He did not stop walking until he reached his primary destination: the pitchers at the far end of the table. Grabbing one of the containers holding a clear liquid, he held it up to his nose and sniffed at it while still chewing a mouthful of bread. When he found nothing offensive in the odor, he drank, first a sip, then several deep gulps.

  Michael also started with the drinks, although he collected one of the crystal goblets from a place s
etting and filled it rather than drinking directly from the serving ewer. After emptying and refilling his glass, he set it down long enough to grab a plate and begin selecting several pieces of what looked like a hard cheese and an assortment of the available meats. He sat down in a chair, picked up a fork from the proffered utensils and began to eat. Malcolm had by this time set down his water pitcher and was tearing large bites from a leg he had pulled from one of the cooked birds.

  The others watched the two men eat for several seconds before Annie broke ranks and moved toward the table. She strode past Michael, picking up a glass from the place setting next to his and heading toward the selection of drinks. As Annie reached for the handle of a pitcher, Michael stood up abruptly. He rushed toward her and slapped the glass out of her hand.

  “What the fuck!” she yelled, jumping back as the glass shattered on the ground at her feet.

  But Michael did not answer. He couldn’t. He was clutching at his throat and coughing violently. Turning to face the wall behind him, Michael dropped to his knees and vomited onto the floor. The ejecta was bright red, although nothing he had consumed in the past few minutes had been that color. Blood, Leon guessed at the sight of it. And there was a lot. Michael was bleeding internally, and from the amount he was expelling, it had to be bad.

  Michael collapsed onto his side as Annie and Leon rushed toward him. Annie, being closer, reached him first and dropped down beside him. When Leon arrived, Michael had already gone completely limp and did not appear to be breathing. Annie placed two fingers to the side of his throat.

  “I can’t find a pulse,” she said, her voice rising in pitch. “I don’t know what I’m doing. Fuck, I can’t find his pulse. Leon, you do it.”

  Annie moved out of the way, letting Leon take her place. He also put fingers to Michael’s neck but had no better luck. Next, he placed a hand near Michael’s mouth, trying to see if the man was breathing. Again, he could find no signs of life.

  “Do something,” Annie yelled in his ear. “Don’t let him die. Try CPR. Roll him over. Do something!”

  “I think he’s dead,” Leon said. His shoulders slumped, defeated. “Something caused him to bleed internally so badly, it killed him. CPR wouldn’t do any good. Compressing his heart would only have made him bleed out faster. I think the food killed him.”

  Malcolm spat out a mouthful of meat and threw down the stripped leg bone he had been holding in his hand. “The food?” he asked. “What’s wrong with the food?”

  “The timing is too much of a coincidence. Maybe something ruptured inside of him because he was already sick, but I doubt it. I think he was poisoned.”

  “Fuck, fuck, fuck,” muttered Malcolm, pacing frantically. He placed a hand over his stomach as though waiting for his internal organs to liquify and begin spewing out of him.

  “Do you feel sick?” asked Leon. “Do you think you need to throw up?”

  Malcolm paused, doing a quick self-assessment. “I don’t think so. I … I feel okay. Maybe I drank too much water a little too fast, but otherwise right as rain.”

  “What happened to Michael?” asked Sofia. “And why didn’t it affect Malcolm? They both drank water and they both ate, but only Michael got sick. Why?”

  “Because Malcolm is a fucking pig,” growled Annie. She brushed a fist across her face angrily and Leon could see her cheeks were wet.

  Malcolm wiped his greasy hands on his pants, defensively. “What’s yer point, princess?”

  “I don’t think that’s helpful, Annie,” Leon told her. “I’m sorry about Michael, but we need to figure this out, fast. If we don’t want to die of thirst, we need to know what’s safe to drink.”

  Sofia placed a hand on Leon’s shoulder to quiet him. “No, Leon. I think Annie might be right.”

  “Well, fuck you, Missy,” said Malcolm, offended that the others were now ganging up on him.

  “Not the pig part,” Sofia corrected. “Well, sort of. Malcolm ate with his hands and drank directly from the pitcher. Michael used the silverware, plates, glasses. He sat in the chair, too. Could any of those things be the source of the poison? I’m only asking because Hiss said there was food available to them last time, and it doesn’t make any sense for the Apex to bring us here only to starve us to death.”

  Annie, Leon, and Sofia gathered around the plate Michael had used to eat. They were careful not to touch anything as they examined the place setting. Malcolm hovered behind them, watching nervously over their shoulders. Sofia was the first to notice something amiss.

  “Look at the fork,” she said, pointing to the utensil still on the plate. “On the base, those three markings. I thought at first they were manufacturers’ stamps. You know, like silver markings? They usually stamp silverware with hallmarks that tell you where it was made and the quality of the silver. But these are something else. Look at the one on top.”

  Leon followed her finger to the three small images at the base of the fork. The bottom two he did not recognize, but the one on top was a tiny skull floating over two crossed bones.

  “Poison,” he said. “They’re marked with a warning. But it’s so subtle no one would ever see it unless they were looking.”

  Hiss wandered over to see what they were discussing. Leon pointed to the skull and crossed bones on the fork. “On Earth, that’s a symbol for poison. Do you recognize the other two images?”

  Hiss waved one small hand over his chest, a gesture Leon had learned meant, yes. “I, one of them, recognize. The middle one. It, yellow serpent, symbolizes. It, a very venomous creature, is. When you, this image, see, it, poison, means.”

  The middle image on the silver fork was a circle over two parallel wavy lines. According to Hiss, this represented a deadly creature on his world. The final symbol was a triangle balanced over two five-pointed stars, however no one in the room had any idea what it was supposed to mean. Obviously, it was another warning, but the origin of the hallmark remained a mystery to everyone.

  “Well, the first two mean poison,” said Leon. “I think it’s safe to assume the third one does, too, even though we don’t know the language it represents. Maybe Vinod would have recognized it.”

  “Or it could be an Apex symbol.”

  Leon nodded at Sofia. She could be right. Although, ultimately, it did not matter who the warning was meant to alert. The first two markers made the message clear enough.

  “The plates, too,” said Annie, pointing at the edge of Michael’s plate. The smooth white surface of the plate was unmarked except for a delicate gold tracery two inches long at the top rim. Inside the seemingly random decoration, the same three dire symbols appeared.

  Once they knew what to search for, the group spread out and examined every dish, tray, and utensil on the table. The food, and the serving dishes it rested in, appeared safe. Similarly, none of the glass pitchers containing drinks had any markings. The most disturbing discovery was when Annie upended one of the glasses on the table and found the three hallmarks etched into the base of the stemware. The glass Michael had slapped out of her hand would probably have killed her if he had not stopped her.

  Annie shuddered and threw the goblet she held against the wall. It shattered in a sparkling rain of glass.

  In addition to the goblets, silverware and plates, the cloth napkins had the poison warning stitched into them like a deadly monogram. The table and chairs were unmarked. Leon and Sofia even did a visual search of the floor under and around the furniture to be certain they weren’t missing something. When everything had been examined and the items pronounced unsafe had been removed from the table and placed in a pile in one corner of the room, the exhausted party sat and began to eat. The humans placed themselves on the side of the table opposite from where Michael had died. No one wanted to move his body, and nobody wanted to sit too close to it. The Many did not seem bothered by the proximity of the dead human, so gathered on that side of the table without comment. They chose to stand, however, as the anatomy of the chairs provided did n
ot match their own.

  The reluctant travelers felt fortunate to have found food and water. It meant there was still a chance to survive these trials. By providing food, the Apex demonstrated they did not seek to kill the abductees out of hand. The group’s relief, however, was greatly subdued by the loss of Michael. The knowledge that if they had overlooked something in their search, at any moment another of them might begin to vomit blood and drop dead further dampened their enthusiasm for the meal.

  Most of the food appeared to be designed for human consumption, as did the liquid in the pitchers. In the forest, Hiss mentioned that the Many did not consume liquids. Further confirming this statement, the aliens ignored the array of drinks at the end of the table. They also showed no interest in the majority of the food items on the table. Two lidded tureens drew their attention, however. When Hiss removed the covers to reveal the contents, one bowl overflowed with hard-shelled, multi-legged, creatures that immediate tried to scamper to freedom when the light reached them. A thin mesh of see-through material kept them from spilling over onto the table as they scuttled over one another in their attempt to escape. The second serving dish contained a mass of writhing, squirming maggots. The pale, soft bodies of the larvae were each about the size of Leon’s little finger, and they wriggled and crawled in their container in one large, pulsing mass of sallow flesh.

  The Many went to the larvae first. Kack and Hiss consumed several of the puss-filled delicacies while Shoo watched intently. When neither of her companions seemed inclined to regurgitate their insides onto the floor, she squeezed between the two larger males and helped herself.

  Each member of the group ate and drank his or her fill but did not consume the available items to excess. While unsure when their next opportunity for a meal might come, they were still careful not to overdo it, lest their stomachs rebel and they lose the calories they had gained. The humans emptied several of the water pitchers, but the containers holding the colored liquids had thus far remained untouched. Initially, no one had wanted to try anything they could not identify, but as the meal slowed to a more leisurely pace, Annie was the first to grow more adventurous. She picked up a pitcher containing a brown liquid and carefully inspected all surfaces of the glass container, making sure there were no warning symbols that had been missed earlier. Next, she sniffed the contents and took a small sip.