Although I'd indeed sworn an oath, difficult to say whether the individual I had killed and eaten could truly be considered human. Someone who would do such perverse things to an innocent child seemed considerably less than human.
Perhaps I only stated these things to justify a sin to myself. But then again, my act was a just killing, like David slaying Goliath, as opposed to cold blooded murder.
To save lives, and thus, I reasoned, the man's flesh was a rightfully earned spoil of war.
Regardless of how it got to be placed in front of the fort...mine.
The body smelled safe enough. I could detect no poisons. In fact...
Ss'sik'chtokiwij teeth marks around the missing chunks of flesh, and scent.
I swallowed hard. Who would do such a thing? Pain didn't have the size to move a body this big, and I had no other Ss'sik'chtokiwij friends who could possibly want to bestow this sort of favor...
Except...
But why would my sister do this thing?
Shaking my head, I said grace, and ate a few more mouthfuls of the cadaver.
Since the children hadn't followed me to merely watch me eat, I prepared a few bites for later, melted off the man's leg at the kneecap, tying off the ends of its leather wrapping with a shoelace.
Rebecca and Timmy stared at me in silent terror, backing away.
"You need not fear, dear children. I would not risk life and limb on your behalf, and kill this man just to devour you. I have sworn an oath before God never to eat human flesh, but this man shed his humanity a long time ago. I need food."
I spasmed as I felt the gunshot wound in my back throbbing once again. I wished I knew how aspirin affected Ss'sik'chtokiwij.
A constant, but bearable pain. I tried not to think about it.
I tucked the severed limb into the dufflebag with the guns, for convenience, and a theft deterrent.
Guns. That reminded me.
"Rebecca, I found a doll you might like..."
I showed her the nice little toy I found in Kihoon's room.
The girl shook her head. "That's not the same. Kaycee was a gift. From mom and dad." My audio receptors still rang from the shotgun blast. Her voice, still audible, but clouded by the sound.
"Very well."
A lot had happened between the moment Timmy left Rebecca's doll with me and the present moment. I realized the difficulty of the situation the moment we set off.
If the doll had been among the wreckage in that demolished unit, it was most certainly gone. "Timmy...Where did you see Kaycee last?"
"I gave it to you, remember? You said to set it down in that vent and we'd come back for it later."
I groaned. "Then it may very well be nothing but a piece of shredded plastic."
Rebecca suddenly looked resentful.
"I was busy trying to save lives. I did not have time to save a doll."
"Is that why Landon died?" Timmy asked. "Because you were saving lives?"
It felt like he had just slapped me. "Please, Timmy. I am only one Ss'sik'chtokiwij. I can't be everywhere and do everything. I am not God." I broke down in tears. "You're lucky I've even been able to keep you alive. I'm really nothing special. I live and die just like you."
Timmy stared. "Do you need some allergy pills or something?"
"I was weeping. You've made me very sad."
He frowned.
I cleared my throat. "This is going to be dangerous, children. There are hungry Ss'sik'chtokiwij all around that place. They wouldn't think twice about eating you. But, as I cannot with any confidence leave you to your own devices, you must accompany me."
They both nodded seriously.
"I'm not scared," Rebecca said. "I've faced others of your kind before. One time a giant one chased me, Lacy and Kamara through hydroponics. Mom helped us out. You'll defend us, won't you?"
Again, her mind had distorted events strangely, erasing me from the equation.
I whimpered, gave her a nod. "Yes."
I loaded bullets into a shotgun.
The base had steadily become a debris strewn chaotic mess, the walls pockmarked with bullet holes, pieces of modular structures and connecting corridors collapsing or lying broken on the floor, human and Ss'sik'chtokiwij bodies sprawled on the carpets.
I would have preferred to take the ventilation tunnels all the way up to Ssorzechola's room, but the children couldn't crawl up walls very well, and it seemed more expedient to use the hallway.
The problem: All the ceiling to floor barricades.
At the first barrier, I got shot at. I hurried the children into a nearby maintenance duct before they could get caught in the line of fire.
We had to take the roundabout way to get to the next section of corridors, and about halfway through, a socmavaj came scurrying up the cramped workman's tunnel so fast that I had to open fire, for the children's sake.
As before with the molester, I only managed a direct hit because we stood in close quarters.
We reached the exit hatch, but the moment I touched a claw to it, I heard two men shouting at each other, each vehemently expressing doubts regarding the other's leadership capacity.
I couldn't see anything much but the general shapes of their bodies through a small, filth covered triangle of glass above the handle.
A bald, muscular, but aged man, facing down an athletic (but not as thickly built) youth, his hair well trimmed.
Having no other way out but this door, we couldn't leave until these men had departed.
I partially unwrapped my human roll-up, swallowing a few bites as I eavesdropped on the conversation.
"I don't care what you were in the military!" the young one shouted. "This is a civilian base, and I will not stand for it being run like a military dictatorship!"
"These miners have no discipline!" yelled the older one. "They won't last a day against these things without someone telling them how to wipe their ass! Do you want freedom, or do you want to live?"
"We can do both!" Young Man growled.
"Really? And how many people have died under your command? I distinctly remember taking over your teams because you, newly elected president for a day, couldn't handle them!"
"Do you have to do that?" Rebecca hissed as I consumed my snack.
I sighed. "I do not do this all the time. For the most part I enjoy tofu bacon, just like you, but the situation at this base is rapidly deteriorating. I may be doing you a favor by not depleting your food resources."
"You crooked son of a bitch!" the civilian now yelled. "You know damn well that's not why I gave you those assignments! It's just like you small brained military dicks to play fast and loose with the truth whenever it suits your little military pissing party!"
Army Man spoke through his teeth. "Survival comes before civilization. Anyone with a science degree can tell you that."
"Then maybe you should get your head out of your militaristic ass and start studying what really matters! Like Civil Rights! Democracy! The Constitution! This is my base, not yours! These are my people, and, like it or not, I'm in charge, and if you don't like it, you can take that science degree and go straight to hell!"
"I'm sorry you feel that way." Army Man fired several shots. The younger man spoke no more.
The children flinched.
"Are you going to eat that guy too?" Timmy asked.
"No," I whispered, wrapping up my `leg of man'. "But I am tempted by that scoundrel that shot him...Let's keep going."
I slid the access panel open an inch, peering out. The coast, it would appear, was clear.
The hallway had been scattered with broken ceiling panels, pipes and bits of metal. A ceiling to floor barricade lay behind us, but no people could be seen, except for the dead young man.
The victim, round jawed, black haired, large eared, despite being in an alleged position of power, dressed simply in coveralls, now bloodstained and perforated by bullet holes.
We hurried on.
I nearly bumped into another Ss'sik'chtokiwij.
Upon seeing its shiny black exoskeleton, the children cried out in alarm.
I shushed them, addressing the stranger. "Hello?"
[0000]
No answer.
"Greetings. How is Grandmother?"
Nothing.
And that's when I noticed the wheels.
The humans, in their ingenuity, had built a sort of Trojan horse from a dead Ss'sik'chtokiwij.
Deep down, this unsettled me, and for a moment, I thought I understood the children's squeamishness about my human drumstick.
"It's a device." I urged them down the hall.
Alas. Another barricade blocked our passage.
No other humanly accessible route. I melted through a simple deadbolt on the back of a nearby dwelling, scratching off the layer of paint that held it stubbornly shut.
The unit belonged to a woman, now sprawled dead on a pink bed, blood covered larva nibbling her ruptured lung.
The woman had an untidy mess of black hair, snow leopard print pajama pants, and an oversized t-shirt with some rock band on it, unreadable due to the ripped fabric and blood.
A dead socmavaj lay upturned next to the woman's bed. I gathered it must have visited her during the conflict.
The victim, a scientist, possessed a wall featuring a large moving video poster of the LV426 planetary surface, and a display of interesting rocks, some with fossilized animals in them, and a partial socmavaj in formaldehyde.
.
Other walls held framed pictures, some of family, though mostly the beautiful things of the universe, such as Saturn, an aurora Borealis, and whales splashing up from arctic seas.
Upon seeing the body, and the larva feeding from it, the children backed away, but I approached the young one and waved. "Hello."
The larva nodded. "What are those you've got there?"
"They're pets. I'm going to let them mature awhile before eating them."
I hoped my bluff would compelling enough to make her not hurt my friends.
I tried the door to the opposite end of the room, but it refused to budge.
"I heard a big heavy thing hit that, immediately following the loud thundery thing," the larva said. "I think you need to move the big heavy thing to get over there, but I'm not sure. I was just recently born."
I glanced at a vent near the ceiling. It appeared to be our only way upstairs from there.
I frowned at the larva. She seemed content with her corpse, at least for the time being.
"Children, we're about to do something dangerous, so you're going to have to trust me." I pointed at the vent. "We're going up there."
"How," Timmy said.
I waved him toward a bookshelf full of science books. "Stay here. The larva has food. It should not hurt you."
I climbed up the wall, and found the cover to the vent already loose. No surprise, since I didn't know how else a socmavaj could have gotten in there.
I hurriedly shoved my supplies into the duct, then gestured to the children. "Who wants to go first?"
Timmy frowned. "What? You want me to climb up there?"
I shook my head. "It would be nice, but no. You will have to ride piggyback."
"Will Newt be safe?" It seemed he had already decided.
I sighed. "If we hurry."
Without a word, he jumped on my back, wrapping his hands around my neck.
I rushed the boy up the wall, and he actually laughed. So that's all it took to cheer him up!
I quickly shoved him into the vent (which of course involved him pushing the bag in further), then swept down to grab his sister.
Although visibly nervous, and still casting worried glances at the larva, Rebecca smiled a little.
We crawled down a dark ventilation shaft.
"Ernie," Timmy called back. "What happens...if one of your friends shows up at my end?"
"There's still some room. I can crawl over you and stop them."
But then I sighed. "Pass me that bag."
I took his father's pistol out of the sack, loading it with bullets. I passed the weapon to the child. "Don't use this unless absolutely necessary. It's best at close range. If it doesn't fire, it has the safety on. Point it away from your body. That's all I know."
"Thanks." But then he became troubled again. "It's dark. How are we supposed to know where we're going?"
"Leave that to me."
Because no one expects you to be up there, crawling through air ducts is generally peaceful and quiet.
Of course, the old tunnels did prove rather dirty. A couple times I had to stop myself from offering condolences when the kids merely sniffled from the dust.
A rather straightforward path. I had to sniff the adjoining passages a few times, and crawl over the children to ascertain direction once or twice, but soon we passed through the aboveground bridge.
Timmy cried out in alarm when a larva approached, but I explained the children were mine, and they hadn't ripened yet.
Although the young Ss'sik'chtokiwij accepted this, and the situation would have been resolved peacefully, Timmy flipped the safety off the gun and blew the larva to pieces anyway.
"You didn't need to do that. She was going to leave."
He only replied, "What if he came back?"
Shaking my head, I urged him to keep going, careful to avoid the caustic blood.
In order to trace the path, and help the boy remember the location, I had to let the children out in the hallway near Ssorzechola's den.
A desolate area, save for a brown skinned man in a white robe and kufi hat.
The stranger knelt on a rug with his little book, praying, I believe, in the direction of Mecca.
Whether Mecca was actually in that direction, I cannot say. Although his phone had a compass program, I'm certain that, more than five times a day, Mecca would be someplace you couldn't actually bow to, like through the core of the planet, or straight up to where you'd have to somehow bow from a supine position. I'm uncertain even Moslems know the answer to that one.
When the man noticed me approaching, he got scared and rolled up his rug, disappearing into a nearby room.
Timmy directed me to a maintenance tunnel he'd used previously, and I, with caution, took the lead, hoping and praying that nothing had collapsed while we traversed the passage. I somehow doubted even facing Mecca would increase the odds of that prayer being answered.
The passage ahead groaned and swayed and sagged a great deal, but held our weight adequately enough. That being said, I felt it unwise to tarry any longer than we had to.
Timmy's old scent trail became clear as his recollection, so we soon arrived at a section of metal crawl space that looked familiar.
Well, familiar if you didn't count the section that had broken off, leaving a six foot gap between us and the next section of tunnel.
The doll dangled precariously at the mouth of the other section. Only its head balanced it inside the compartment, the wind and the rain from the damaged roof pounding against the structure, threatening to knock it into the room below.
To be practical, I would have to let the children out of my sight for a few seconds, but they would not be out of reach.
I hoped. "Stay here. I will get your doll and return forthwith."
I carefully crawled across the wall, reaching for the dangling piece of plastic.
The moment I reached for Kaycee, the doll bounced off my claws, flipping out of my grasp.
I let go of the wall, leaping after the toy.
After free falling for a few seconds, I caught the item and landed.
Upon looking down from a secondary perch lower on the wall, I discovered my progress had been observed by four adolescent Ss'sik'chtokiwij.
Their presence did not disturb me. I waved to them politely, stuffing Rebecca's doll into my little purse.
What did disturb me: The groaning sound above my head.
That, and the sound of bolts snapping.
I watched with dismay as the maintenance compartment I'd exited slanted at a forty five degree angle. The children whimpered, desperately trying to hold on.
Like hungry lions during feeding time at a zoo, the young Ss'sik'chtokiwij watched the aluminum box with eager anticipation, licking their lips.
The compartment groaned, tilting at a severer angle as another bolt snapped off.