I felt so full of hope that I had to fight the urge to sing.
Despite my renewed hope in gaining an ally and sister in the faith, I didn't wish to press my luck. Fearing another, possibly worse incident, I rushed through the task of breaking and entering as fast as I could, hurrying back to the children the moment the teacher's window dropped to the ground below.
Both Rebecca and Timmy appeared unhurt. I once more asked Pain to perform her unlocking services. "Your assistance has been of great value. I hope that I do not tax the limits of our friendship by asking you to do these things."
"Nonsense. All you do is climb up on a panel and push a button."
I leaned out the window hole, pointing to the opening. "Careful. The slickness will resist your slulwidmi."
"I will exercise caution."
I and the children anxiously watched the larva climb out, trembling with discomfort as she slipped, then righted herself, scrambling for the hole I'd created.
Once she got in, we dashed to the door to the dwelling, and waited.
Beep. Sparks flashed from the exposed door panel wires.
Nothing.
More beeping. More sparks.
After another long wait, the larva climbed back in through our window, gasping and panting for breath. "I pushed the door button and a button that said `intercom.' Neither one opened the door."
I explained what an intercom was.
She paused a moment. "What is an Emergency Override Lever?"
The lever worked, revealing a small jungle of a very questionable sort: A variety of large stalks of budding five leaved plants under fluorescent lamps, and near them, poppies and plants bearing cocoa nuts, all of it brown and dying from lack of water.
The stacks of cellophane wrapped green and white substances, and the associated chemistry sets did not look entirely legal. "Does Mrs. Pedersen know anything about all this?"
Both children shook their heads.
Finding a bottle of ammonia, I quenched my thirst, searching the floor for a weak spot.
False paneling in a number of places. I found more wrapped green stuff down there, plus packages of a white powder labeled `China White.' It seemed the stacked piles outside resulted from running out of space down there.
Not wanting to make a mess, I carefully stacked each package around the dead plants, then knocked on the panels beneath, testing for vulnerabilities.
"What's China White?" Timmy asked me.
"I'm not sure. Perhaps a dish detergent?"
Rebecca now wore a mask with filter knobs on it. Her voice came out muffled. "This thing smells funny."
After a few moments of breathing through the mask, she giggled. "I'm Batman."
I frowned. "What?"
She laughed. "Nothing. You see any cookies down there?"
Like many illicit businesses, certain zoning considerations had been, for the most part, ignored, specifically, the issue of plumbing.
The pipes set up to irrigate the small plot of Cannabis Brazilius had sprung a small leak, which, in turn, rusted components of the school teacher's ceiling.
"Mrs. Pedersen always complained about there being a leak in her closet," Timmy said. "I thought it was because of all the rain. It only started when the terraformers came on."
Rebecca removed her mask, chortling a little. "She said it was the rain."
"She uses the water on her ferns."
Someone had shut off the irrigation system, but I could tell by the trail of rust where the drainage typically flowed, pooling around the corners of an oxidized orange square of metal.
A couple strikes with the heel of my palm, and some spit, and the square came crashing down on a metal shelf below, knocking over sloshing containers of water in the process.
Urging the children to stay close, I peeled back a few adjacent panels and hopped through the opening.
The result proved to be rather noisy and disastrous.
The shelves, not designed to hold the weight of an adult human or Ss'sik'chtokiwij body, collapsed beneath me, taking at least five gallons of water with them.
A mound of towels surrounded the closet, but they only served to slow the spread of the stagnant tide. A fog of mildew clung heavily in the air.
"Ugh," Timmy groaned. "It smells like sweaty socks!"
The closet lay across a hallway from a bathroom, which also had towels all over the floor.
I helped the children down onto the towels, and we squished up the molding carpet to a living room with potted plants of a more respectable type, mostly ferns sustained by plant lights, now brown around the edges. As low maintenance plants, they still looked somewhat healthy. The same went for the cactus.
A dead orange cat lay sprawled on the floor. It appeared to have starved to death.
No sign of Mrs. Pedersen. Perhaps it was for the best.
The teacher's walls contained some rather interesting images. Einstein with his tongue sticking out, a portrait of Charlotte Bronte, photos of smiling Chinese people and their letters, an inspirational poster of people climbing a mountain...I quickly became distracted by all the fascinating educational materials.
Mrs. Pedersen had lost her husband a few months ago. Vehicular accident out in the field. I found his portraits everywhere.
Timmy pointed to an open laptop computer on her desk. "There."
The screen displayed the image of a Missouri Riverboat Queen with an endlessly turning paddle wheel, a reference, perhaps, to author Samuel Clemens. Of course it had a password lock screen. We made several attempts to type in the secret code, but the task appeared to be impossible. We decided to take the device and its charger back to the hideout and try again at our leisure.
At dinner, Rebecca did eat several cookies.
I am not a parent, just someone trying to keep a pair of children alive.
ACD 3:
Hacking into a laptop of a smart person is difficult. We tried the name of Mrs. P's husband, we tried Charlotte Bronte, and a Chinese penpal mentioned in a letter I brought back, but none of it yielded anything.
Timmy kicked a wall. "I knew it wasn't anything that simple. If it was, I would have changed my grades long ago."
I sighed, typing in `Montessori', then `Valley Forge'. That didn't work either.
"When you want a password to be hard to guess. You sometimes just make up a nonsense word."
I typed in `Jabberwocky', and the desktop immediately presented itself. It seems great minds think alike.
The desktop contained many folders: Photographs of art projects, collections of correspondences from everywhere from Argentina to Thailand, music samples, `Creative Teacher Plans', grades, and financial records.
After wading a quarter of the way through a folder full of diary entries (the woman was very lonely, felt she was not respected by the children, and found the men on the base undesirable for various reasons), I at last came to a spreadsheet containing the names and contact information for all thirty students in second grade.
Once we'd had lunch (synthetic bacon for me), I and the children located a phone and dialed the various extensions. I knew they wouldn't answer, but I desired to please Rebecca.
In between these calls, I asked the children how to use the little device I'd taken from Dalgren's pocket. They plugged it into the USB port for me.
Dalgren had a few skeletons in his closet.
The device contained documents regarding a few legally questionable activities: Extortion and tax evasion, among others. Not sure why he didn't just destroy it.
Selected news articles seemed to connect Dalgren to two murders, the second one a `Fed.' An indirect reference, `conspiracy to commit murder,' but it seemed somewhat compelling.
Ss'sik'chtokiwij care very little for currency, and I personally still failed to understand why one would murder for it.
Although I could relate to the need for the food it can sometimes purchase, and the fear of imprisonment, I could see no other appeal to this man's multi-layered schemes. Greed for the sake of greed. Some of these concepts, like money laundering, embezzling and racketeering, went right over my shiny alien head.
And even if I could comprehend them, what good was a dead man's criminal record to me?
I tossed the device aside, returning to making my radio-phone calls.
As I began work on the third grade roster, Timmy suddenly blurted, "Everyone on the base has a tracking chip, right?"
I shrugged. "I...suppose?"
"Well...You can't have a tracking chip without a track-er."
I frowned. "And where would we find this...`track-er?'"
[0000]
We found the security station on the upper floor, along the brightly lit aisle of aboveground bridges. A white structure with blue police stripes running along the top and bottom, its windows made of the impenetrable stuff they used on cells in the DAMBALLAH compound.
"This is definitely the security area," Timmy said. "That Weideca guy always yelled at us for running around up here."
I sighed.
Locating the security station was easy, as we faced much fewer barricades. Getting in, however...
The door had a card scanner, a numeric keypad and a thumbprint scan. I tried removing the panels and crossing the wires a few times, but found the complicated computer system invulnerable to such tomfoolery.
I considered breaking through the roof and dropping into the room, but decided this would make the building drafty, so I instead broke into the unit below, removed its ceiling panels, and carried the children up into the large white room.
Security contained an assortment of computers of different models and ages, locked cabinets full of guns, night sticks, and gas canisters. The room connected to a small prison, also security locked.
A dead officer lay slumped over a computer. Suicide. In his despair, the man swallowed an entire bottle of pills, washing them down with his coffee.
A ring of keys hung from the cadaver's belt, and a key card dangled from his neck, but we had no use for the items, except for the acquisition of weaponry, and the gun racks only contained the nonlethal variety.
We activated the computers, examining their readouts: Weather stations, a computer full of news and policy, several password protected systems.
We tried a few word and letter combinations, mostly wild guesses. I sat on a desk and sighed.
That's when I heard knocking. Shave and a haircut.
The rapping came from within the prison. I'm told this is not the first time rap music has originated from such a place.
The corridor beyond the guard station's security gate held ten cells with bulletproof glass doors, housing eight dead bodies, their heads draped with strange black shrouds. The symbols on the fabric indicated this to be something to do with Ssorzechola.
Sandwiched between the cells of two shrouds, a tall bony man knocked on his glass door with a food tray. Shave and a haircut.
A poorly groomed individual, his Afro lopsided, beard patchy and unkempt. The expression on his face could be read either as boredom or `dead inside.'
When the man saw me wave, he jerked back with a start.
But then, perhaps out of desperation, he cautiously returned to the door, pantomiming a telephone call, flashing six digits.
At first I didn't understand. As he kept doing it, though, mouthing "Phone" and "Six," I noticed a yellow phone by the door.
I dialed six. "Hello?"
The man used an intercom in his cell, his voice was low and gravelly sounding. "You ain't gonna eat me, are you?"
"Only if you touch the children."
The man's face flushed with rage. "Shit, man! I'm a rapist! I ain't no damn pedophile! Give me some credit!"
I sighed. Humans like these I couldn't trust. I felt like leaving him in his cell to starve to death. "What's your name?"
"Robert. What's yours?"
"Sh'kassk'dwuissueblik."
He laughed. "Shaka Zulu. I like it! Hey, man. You think you can get me out of here? I'm kinda hungry. Candy assed Mr. Frazier walked off a couple days ago, so I ain't got Jack to eat in here, and even less to drink."
"Is that what happened to Jack? Someone ate him?"
Rob chuckled and shook his head. "The guy's a comedian. Look, just get me out, all right? I'm dying in here."
I eyed him with suspicion. "What killed the other prisoners?"
"Their own damn fool selves, that's what. Pulled fucking plastic bags over their heads. Bunch of nuts. Now. Shaka Khan. Will you please let me out?"
Timmy hid behind me like a child at his mother's apron skirts. "Ask him if he knows their computer passwords."
Robert grinned. "Did I mention why else I'm here? No? Okay. Breaking and entering. A little cracking and computer hacking. It's a lot easier to commit rape when the bitch's bedroom door comes open by itself."
"You're not making me want to open this door."
"How about this? I'm the Magic Key Man. Regardless of intentions, I can open locked doors and those security computers. How's that?"
I frowned. Like it or not, he was the best chance we had. "Fine. How do I open this door?"
"Next to the phone is a numeric keypad. The code is Old MacDonald with a couple notes wrong. I've heard it enough damn times."
With a lot of experimentation, I made the device play the specified notes, and the door clicked open. I propped it in place with a chair, nervously creeping into the jail, armed with a stun rifle.
The cells didn't contain much, as one would expect. A flat bed on a steel shelf, a metal toilet with no lid or tank, a basic sort of sink (which explained why Robert could talk, despite his claims), a slot for serving trays (all empty, save for the rotten one in a cult member's cell).
I used the card key to open the man's cell, my other claw training the gun on him.
Robert looked like he wanted to hug me, but my weapon gave him pause. "Chill, Shaka Khan. We cool."
I glanced around, but saw no other prisoners. The tenth cell lay empty.
Robert glanced at my face and snickered. "Bad fight?"
Catching my puzzled facial expression, he ran a finger across his teeth. "`Someone pop you in the mouth, or were you born that way?"
"I...was...popped."
Robert made tsk sounds. "Gotta keep your guard up." He held his fists in front of his face, making sharp hissing sounds as he gave a few demonstrative feints and a punch. "See?"
"Uh...thank you for the hint."
The moment the prisoner entered the guard station, he rushed to the hole we'd made in the floor, ready to disappear.
"Wait! I understand you're hungry, but could you please help us with these computers first?"
He sighed. "All right, all right."
The man squatted down in front of Rebecca and Timmy, giving them a wide smile. "Hey, kids! What's up?"
They just stared nervously.
"My name's Robert. What's your name?"
Neither child answered, backing away from him.
The man stood up, clearing his throat. "Your mama must have taught you well. Robert's a bad man!" He sat on the edge of a desk.
Timmy grabbed a stun gun, aiming it at him. "Don't touch me or my sister. Don't even come close."
Robert burst out laughing. "Okay, kid. But the safety's on." He crossed his arms. "I don't know who you think I am, but I don't mess around with shrimp. I prefer someone with a little meat on her bones. Some tits, and an ass, and I don't see neither one in this room. If I find your mother, though..."
Timmy gave him a cold look. "Mother's dead."
Robert winced. "Well ain't you just a little ray of sunshine."
An alarm went off, due to the prison being open for more than five or ten minutes, but no one would come running to answer it.
Robert tore into a box of donuts, stuffing one after another into his mouth.
"Shit's stale," he mumbled between bites, but he licked his lips and grabbed another. "Dry as hell and taste like wax. Probably explains why they're not moldy as shit." Icing poured down his beard. "What do you need? If you want my criminal record, you don't need no computer for that."
Rebecca crossed her arms. "I want to see the tracking chips."
Robert took a deep breath, then blew a raspberry. "That, little girl, is a little complicated."
He opened the dead man's wallet, read a few cards, and tried about five passwords on a computer. Seconds later, we stared at a map of the base.
He pointed to the glowing dots. "Them's people." His index finger waved over a cluster of dots inside a diagram of the atmosphere processing station. "Fuck, looks like the party's going on down there!"
I sighed, shaking my head. "If a party is being held there, the humans are the refreshments."
Robert shuddered.
We did find other locations with orange blips. Several parts of the base contained at least one, somewhere. I stared at the screen a few minutes, trying to imagine the areas of the base in relation to the person.
Robert opened a cabinet, offering me a device resembling an inventory bar code scanner. "You might need this."
"What is it?"
He pressed it to his arm, and beeped. "Congratulations. You found a dot."
One handy function of the chip tracking system: Searching for a specific name and pinpointing exactly where someone was. I found this infinitely more useful than a big map with a bunch of dots on it.
Using notes from the tablet computer in my little purse, I determined that twenty of Rebecca's classmates resided at the atmospheric processing station.
For the other ten, Robert said, "We're going to need the Name Your Price Tool."
I took careful notes of each student's position, departing there with the aforementioned Tool and a stun rifle...and the children, of course.
[0001]
Although he followed us, Robert really didn't care that much about our mission. Once he'd swiped a small computer device from the contraband locker, he busied himself sticking the thing in door locks along the hall outside, stuffing whatever he could into the pockets of his jumpsuit.
He stole cigarettes, ate a tin of oysters, devoured some imported Ritz crackers, which he also declared stale.
As we explored a dwelling, I told them man we were departing to food storage, but he only shrugged and uncorked a bottle of wine he found in someone's cabinet.
I noted, with some amusement, that the dwelling he'd chosen to loot contained an African statue that looked like a Ss'sik'chtokiwij. Not sure what god it was supposed to be, but it looked humanoid, with a long banana shaped head. I chuckled as I turned it over in my claws.
Setting it down, I impatiently watched the man pour himself a drink. "Will you be okay here?"
Robert raised his glass, as if in a toast. "Shaka. I've never felt better." He took a sip, waved me off. "See you around."
The children, exhausted from their journey, ate dinner and returned to their sleeping bags in the hideout.
At about three in the morning, a gravelly voice screamed, "Oh my God! Who leaves that lying around in a tunnel!"
I poked my head out of the hideaway, looking around.
Robert was alone, his screaming merely the product of an overreaction to the dead pedophile.
"What are you doing here?"
The man shrugged. "Would you believe I couldn't sleep?"
Knowing he only had a basic human sense of smell, I cried, "How did you get in here!"
"Security cameras. This place looks comfy. Mind if I crash in here?"
"You're...not afraid I will eat you?"
"Shit, you could have done eaten me at the security station, and got those kids as an appetizer." He stretched himself out on the floor by the wall. "You shouldn't leave food wrappers and shit lying around like that. Someone will see it."
We didn't especially want this grown man in our hiding place, but, well, he was smart, and didn't seem that dangerous.
The children noticed the man's presence right away, and after feigning sleep for roughly an hour, they made a stealthy exit past his somnolent form.
"Can we please do something about the dead guy?" Timmy hissed as I followed him through a maintenance tunnel. "He's stinking the place up."
To be fair, not much of the carcass remained. I'd consumed most of it before it rotted. "I'll take care of that as soon as Robert has left."
The children returned to their parents' home, retreating into their shared bedroom.
Rebecca and Timmy pushed their two spring beds together, up against a wall. Instead of sleeping on top of their mattresses, they actually climbed beneath the beds, using them as a fort. Thus they slept.
I curled up at the mouth of this little shelter, prepared to stir and move at a moment's notice.
In the base kitchen a few hours later, when the children breakfasted, we found the man sitting on a milk crate, smoking and eating a stale croissant. "`Kids got something against black people?"
They didn't answer.
"They're just afraid of people. Bad things have happened. Plus you were in jail."
The man just stared at me and the children, taking a drag of his cigarette before eating another bite.
The children silently ate cereal for awhile, well away from him.
All of a sudden, Timmy blurted, "Mom used to scold us for crawling around in the tunnels."
I and Rebecca just looked at him, waiting for the punch line.
"`I'll tan your hides if you play in those ducts again!' She'd yell. But Newt would say, `Mom, all the kids play in there!'" He sighed. "Sometimes I wonder if mom would still be alive if she let us do that more...or played in there herself."
We had nothing to say to this.
We searched several areas for Rebecca's classmates. A little challenging, going by `address' instead of scent is a little challenging, but we found four of them. The `Price Gun' actually worked.
When we discovered the first couple dead kids, Debbie Reyes and Joey Brewer, Timmy and his sister cried and held each other, but the other two kids they either didn't know so well, or they had gotten used to seeing death, because they didn't react. I hoped for the former rather than the latter. I'd hate to have my children so jaded.
I lovingly wrapped the little dead bodies in sheets, carrying them one by one over my shoulders to hydroponics for a proper burial.
The short haired young woman from before, it appeared, had been attacked, for now only the cobbled together android staffed the farm.
At first, I merely told the robot to watch the bodies of Rebecca's classmates until we could bury them later, but when I came back with the second one, she had already dug a grave, so I let her take care of it.
Rebecca and Timmy gave their friends one final longing look as I placed them to rest, but had no prayers or last words to say. We left there to retrieve the next victim.
Along the way, I stopped by the safe house I'd selected for Kumar's wife. She wasn't there, but I smelled blood. Whatever had happened, it wasn't good.
Saddened, we continued on.
We passed through darkened hallways where someone had cut the wires, depriving the area of current. Even the dwellings lay in shadow. Although easy to access due to the disabled door locks, I had to use my night vision and scent to locate the victims.
In one room, I found the cadaver of an electrician. I guessed, judging by the damaged site, he'd been the one sent to restore power to the region.
Past this, we had power again.
The humans had abandoned several of their dead and wounded in their hasty retreat. Even now, my aunts (and their larva) gnawed on the corpses.
One victim appeared to have been missing an ear before the attack, and now a Ss'sik'chtokiwij `evened it out' by eating the other one. I urged my companions to press ahead.
When I got to the third student, a boy named Louey Crocker, seven young Ss'sik'chtokiwij impeded my progress.
I tried to convert them, but it didn't work. They said I helped the humans kill Sfirihupa, Ssagauet, Takabrek, and made `big booms' that killed many others.
I tried scaring them with my severed worms, but that only repelled three of them. The rest wanted blood, and wouldn't go away.
I didn't want to do it, but I killed them. Timmy killed one with a pistol he carried (we'd found usable guns back at Devon's compound). The others...something of a tragedy.
"Just give us the humans," they'd said. "And we'll leave you alone."
I tried to offer them Louey Crocker, but even this they refused.
"It smells funny. The other ones are fresher."
I clenched my fists angrily. "I have tried everything in my power to be fair and decent to you, but my Lord has commanded me to protect these children. If you attempt to make a move, it'll be the last thing you do."
That's when the first one struck.
I retaliated with an attack I hoped to be both quick and painless, twisting the young Ss'sik'chtokiwij's neck until their spinal column snapped and their head came off.
A second one, furious at the death of her companion, shrieked and clawed my face, but I only had to snap her head back until she stopped moving.
These were smaller Ss'sik'chtokiwij, therefore easier to overpower. You might even call it `bullying', had they not been a real threat to my little human friends.
The last Ss'sik'chtokiwij just froze in a staring pose, as if observing a mentally deranged serial killer.
She fled, leaving me to weep over the lives I'd destroyed.
Pain cried too, but I didn't have anything good to tell her.
"We were saving lives." I said this to make both I and her feel better. "I had to."
"There could have been another way," she sobbed.
"Perhaps. But they would come back."
"Still, I wish you could have found a better way."
"Me too."
I hefted poor dead Louey over my shoulder, trying to put the whole sorry business behind me.
No Ss'sik'chtokiwij bothered us for a long time after this. They lurked around the hallways, growling and watching us from a safe distance, but otherwise kept away.
I took care of the unpleasant business of the leather clad corpse in a fashion similar to the other victims, but politely asked the robot to bury him apart from the others, perhaps in one of the greenhouses.
When I returned to the farm with a fifth child we had newly discovered, the man's body had disappeared. Even with awkward, poorly assembled body parts, the android was efficient.
Also, along a hallway, I caught Sarah's scent. When I looked down, I found a clavicle, a pair of cuneiform bones, a talus and a calcaneus bone. I found her distal and proximal phalanx bones along another corridor.
An incomplete foot. I placed this with the rest of her remains.
I supposed, that if God could resurrect someone who is beheaded or cremated, He would have little difficulty bringing back someone with a few parts missing.
I became in heat, my egg laying sacs swollen. It felt like they would explode at any minute, if I didn't start laying immediately.
The lust had come upon me.
For an hour, I lay curled in a ball on the floor, moaning and fantasizing about sticking my suaakudsi down Robert and the children's throats, laying eggs in their chest cavities.
I had felt the urges before, but never like this!
I couldn't even use a dead body. To birth a larva that is weak and emaciated...it would be akin to a woman intentionally giving herself a miscarriage. Looking at your own larva, seeing it die within a rotting carcass...the idea turned my stomach and made the heart sick.
[0001]
My heart pounded, my body feeling like a bow string that had just been stretched taut.
My body throbbed a message, Morse code-like, from my face to the tip of my tail: Lay the egg. Lay the egg. Lay the egg.
I chewed my knuckles, but still the message traveled through me.
Lay the egg. Lay the egg. Lay the egg.
My exoskeleton, being resistant to biting attacks, required me to drive my teeth down hard to reach my pain receptors, but I had to do it.
Rebecca.
Place the egg in Rebecca.
"No!" I growled to myself. "I won't!"
Then lay it in Timmy.
Timmy.
Lay the egg.
I rushed out of the Jorden dwelling, into an empty hallway, shrieking at the top of my lungs.
ACD 4:
"Why did you leave us?" Timmy asked when I returned from hours of aimless prowling.
"Well..." My voice took on the tone of a sitcom mother explaining the birds and the bees, "When aliens grow up and become mommies, their bodies start changing, and they begin to have certain feelings. Unfortunately, these feelings might actually hurt you."
He flexed his hands, but did not retreat from me. I respected him for that. "Sometimes I get those feelings too," he said rather innocently.
I half laughed, half sobbed.
"Wait. Are your feelings anything like how mom had that time of the month?"
I frowned, trying to decipher the comment.
"One time she threw a frying pan."
This made me laugh again. "Perhaps."
After breakfast, I used the computer to track down Kumar and his wife.
To my sorrow, I found that Aphita had been relocated to the processing station.
The husband hid within a building above Aphita's previous residence.
The moment Robert opened the door for me, a hail of bullets came flying out.
I tied a piece of white cloth to a metal stick, waving it in front of the doorway, but Kumar shot holes through it.
A roll of red tape lay in the same unfinished room where I found the cloth. Knowing the man to be Christian, I made a tape cross on the fabric and waved it across the doorway again.
This time he didn't fire.
Promising. I set Pain on the carpet, telling her to stay outside.
Still nervous, despite the temporary cease fire, I held the flag out in front of me as I crept into the room.
The unit did not look lived in. A pair of sofas, a coffee table, a kitchenette and dining table, but no TV or decoration.
The Indian wore a cast on his leg now, and used a cane. He looked so bitter that he still would have shot me, had I not been accompanied by Robert and the children. "Your little friend killed my baby!"
"I'm not going to argue with you, but even if she made your daughter sick, is it a rat's fault that it gets the plague?" I gestured to Timmy. "He's been with me a long time, and hasn't once gotten sick."
"I started coughing when we were crawling through the tunnels," Timmy added unhelpfully. "`Course, I think those were allergies..."
The boy backed toward the door. "You were that guy from that crazy cult!"
Kumar sighed. "I was not myself. I can only hope that God will forgive me for all those deaths I caused." His expression darkened. "Maybe that's why He took my baby. I'm like King David after the death of Uriah the Hittite."
I was the only being in the room that understood his bible reference. "Yes, I have read that God allows rain to fall on the just and unjust alike."
Kumar stared absently out the door. "God has a sick sense of humor. He takes away my wife and child, then sends me you, and these brats."
"Where's Calvin?"
Kumar shook his head sadly. "He didn't make it." He glanced at Robert. "Who are you?"
"Robert Washington. I'm the general handyman up in this base."
That, I realized, was creative writing.
"Can you fix the toilet? It keeps backing up."
"Yours runs on water?"
Kumar only shrugged.
"Funny, most of them are lubricant based these days." Robert walked down a back hallway to check on it.
Pain slowly crept into the room. "Please don't harm me. I am as saddened by your losses as you are."
"No." Kumar pointed his gun at her. "You're not."
I stepped in between them. "Please, Kumar. Forgive me little aunt. She is a committed follower of Jesus, just as I am."
"Bullshit!" Kumar choked down a sob, the hand holding the gun trembling as he pointed it.
"Waste of ammunition," he muttered, putting the weapon away. "As Christians, we're supposed to be predestined for heaven. We put in our good works, and God meets us halfway. He's supposed to reach down to us, so we can be saved. But Aphita...She never brought any new converts to the faith. What if her other works aren't enough to save her?"
"Faith is a work," I said.
"No. Faith is faith."
"Fine. But it's odd that I have more confidence that your wife is in heaven than you do."
He scowled at me. "I saw others like you, putting a thing down her throat."
"Then she is lost. Physically, at least."
"Even in space, this existence is full of nothing but evil."
"Yes. But sometimes there's love. And beauty."
"You have no eyes."
"I get that a lot."
Robert returned from the bathroom. "I cleaned out the trap. You're good to go, no pun intended."
Kumar ignored him. "Why would a loving God let something like this happen?"
Robert missed the whole context. "Shit, man, I thought you'd be happy I fixed the toilet. You want me to break it again?"
I told Kumar about our mission to find Rebecca's classmates.
"You're too late. I saw your friends dragging them all away. They escaped before I could stop them."
"The computer shows twenty at the processing station, and we buried five. That leaves five unaccounted for." I listed off the names.
"They're dead. Believe me when I tell you this. I saw those creatures attack."
Rebecca gave him a stern, serious look. "I still want to know."
"Well. At least you've done your homework, and narrowed it down to five..."
Out of a lack of anything better to do, Kumar loaded up with ammunition and accompanied us on our search. Even with a leg in a cast, he climbed with us, across feeble planks, up and down stairs, leaning on the rails and his cane. He never once complained.
As we recovered a small curly haired corpse from an open dwelling, four Ss'sik'chtokiwij approached us. I recognized two of the nonhuman survivors from my last tragic conflict.
Kumar didn't stop to ask questions, he just shot a couple until they stopped moving. The others fled from us.
Once more we found ourselves stalked, but not openly confronted.
On our way to the fourth dead student, I nearly stepped in the remains of Mr. Rockett.
Several yards away from his home, his body ripped open like a post Thanksgiving Day turkey.
Kumar scowled at the victim's face. "Poor bastard. I know it's not Christian, but I'm not really that sorry he's gone."
We found some of Timmy's third grade classmates among Rebecca's dead peers, but after uncovering the first couple, Timmy didn't want to see anymore.
Kumar carried a satchel with him, slung over his shoulder. I thought it only contained guns and ammo, but as we stood by the grave of the last dead child on the list, he pulled out Rebecca's second grade citizenship award, preparing to throw it in with the body.
"No!" Rebecca cried, snatching it out of his hands. "That's mine!"
Kumar raised his hands defensively. "No one said anything to the contrary. I just thought you would want to put all this tragedy behind you."
Rebecca frowned, unable to formulate a good comeback. Kumar returned the award to her.
Throughout this time, Robert had stuck around with us, unlocking doors and such, because we promised, at the end of the day, safe passage to the bar.
Being the more religious man, I expected Kumar to abstain, but it seemed he'd been through too much, so to the bar we went, with the children in tow.
Unlike the all wood taverns I'd seen in pictures, `Tars Bar-kkas' was your standard metal trailer unit. The bar itself was wood, but tables and booths had been manufactured from recycled plastic.
Their jukebox had the classic rainbow neon tube design, but of course it ran CD's and computer files rather than records. When we entered it played Thunderstruck by AC/DC.
Pool table, darts, and a collection of beer signs. A few of the signs had been crafted by local artists, most notably a large mural depicting a large breasted green bikini clad woman with a Mason jar in each of her four hands, the caption reading, `Star Shine now available at the Bar-Soom.'
A human body lay sprawled on the floor next to one end of the bar, but its bones had been picked clean. Only a few bits of meat hung to the carcass.
Out of courtesy, I dragged the near skeletal victim out of the room.
As the children commenced a dart game, Robert climbed behind the counter, pouring a couple foamy mugs of beer.
To my surprise, he poured a third one for me.
Teetotaling only makes sense if you believe alcohol is a snare. I'd never tried alcohol before, so I didn't see any harm in imbibing.
No effect on my nervous system, and I didn't care for the taste, like drinking another form of ammonia. You could compare it to a person used to drinking water being presented with plain tea.
The jukebox changed to Going the Distance by Cake. The two men drank and talked.
"I used to help a guy named Noah with his bible study group," Kumar said. "One to One Bible Study. We got together on Sundays and had church services, and the rest of the time we tried to get people to meet with us once a week, have bible study, and get them to start studies with other people."
Robert took a swig and nodded. "Like a pyramid scheme."
Kumar frowned. "I...guess you could describe it as that. But it's for spiritual gain." He drank his beer. "That was before the Ssorzechola thing."
He told Robert about the worms and the other events that happened before we found him upstairs. "It was like someone else was driving my body. It was the damned worms."
Robert shrank away as Kumar spoke about this. "But you're better now."
[0002]
"Yes, but I don't think I'll ever get over the guilt. As a Christian, I'm supposed to be forgiven. The blood of Jesus is supposed to cover all my sins, but Jesus doesn't remove the memory of the sin. The memories haunt me. I try not to think about them, but they're still there."
Robert silently stared and drank for a moment. Metallica's Seek and Destroy filled the tense silence.
At last, he set down his beer, "I stole from some folks and raped two women."
Now was the Indian's turn to be silent.
Kumar emptied his glass. "`With the wicked, thou showest thyself to be perverse'."
I returned the children to their home. Kumar insisted on keeping watch in the living room, which made me feel more confident in their safety.
Robert slept in the parents' bedroom, despite how it once held a dead body.
Although scared of having Kumar the serial killer in the room next door, Robert had a greater fear of Ss'sik'chtokiwij, so there he slept. I think the alcohol helped.
The children didn't like this arrangement at all, but they seemed to sleep better with more people guarding them.
The lust came upon me again. It seemed to overwhelm me during the night time hours, for me a literal `dark night of the soul.'
I moaned and thrashed on the floor, scratching my egg lobes, then, fearing I would disturb the children, I crept into the bathroom.
I didn't see the bathroom, I saw through it, to the man snoring in the next room.
No, not X-ray vision, tunnel vision. A blindness to everything but egg lust.
Ever so quietly, I cracked open the door to the next room, gazing at the figure sprawled on the mattress in the dark.
He snored with his jaw hanging open, seeming to wordlessly mouth, `Egg, please.'
I trembled as I approached the bed, limbs shaking with each step.
Egg, please.
Lay the egg. Lay the egg.
You don't know the man.
He won't be missed.
Lay the egg.
I leaned over the bed, drawing my face close to his.
Alcohol fumes wafted from Robert's open mouth. He mumbled incoherently.
He's a rapist, my body said without speaking. Impregnating him is a just punishment.
My suaakudsi came out, unbidden. I didn't even think about it. It just emerged.
Even he won't notice, my body said. He's drunk.
Lay the egg.
"No!" I moaned, causing the man to stir and blink at me in puzzlement.
Letting out a low squeal, I leapt off the bed and climbed through a vent, to howl in a secluded corridor.
ACD 5:
As a Ss'sik'chtokiwij grows older, her body heals, and she sheds her exterior shell like a cicada. I grew like this overnight, my metal patches peeling off as the flesh beneath recovered from its wounds.
Even my probe holes began closing up. I felt refreshed, renewed.
We found a copy of The Hunger Games film, watching it on the laptop. The part about the eyeless creatures attacking people in a sewer reminded me of the Ss'sik'chtokiwij human hybrid in the DAMBALLAH complex. Once I saw it, I couldn't watch anymore.
And then I got to thinking. How long would our little group survive in the midst of so many Ss'sik'chtokiwij? And to what end? Eventually the food would run out, and everyone would die anyway.
But then I remembered the bible verse about God providing food for the flowers, and birds not needing clothing, and prayed for the Lord to be true to His promise.
From time to time, I glanced back in the unit, to see if the movie had ended.
Robert, unable to sustain an interest, lay slouched in a chair, mouth hanging wide open. Teasing me, tempting me to use him as a host body.
I forced myself to look away, returning to the hallway.
Pain and I had a bible study while we waited for the program to end.
Some time around noon, the base got hit by the heaviest storm to date. The lights dimmed and flickered, and after a careful check, Kumar announced that the intra-base communications system had been damaged. We would have limited radio contact, and that would be all. This little tablet and the laptop were now without a network.
Kumar mentioned sending a distress call via transmitter, prompting me to explain the mediocre results of our last expedition.
For a moment, this gave the men pause.
"What about that robot down in hydroponics?" Robert asked. "Couldn't we get her to go down and fix the machine?"
We presented her with the request.
"I must maintain adequate food supplies for the base. The terraforming process must complete."
"We will need those crops eventually," I agreed.
Robert shook his head. "There has to be an override system for this android around here somewhere."
"Please don't override my system. There is a perfectly serviceable Mara unit located in laboratory 220."
We located the lab, carried the inactive robot down to Celarent to get repairs and advice.
Despite all that work, for the remainder of the day, Mara only charged her batteries in her old hut.
"What's China white?" I asked Robert. "Is it a detergent? If so, why does it come wrapped in cellophane?"
Robert laughed and told me about opium. "Where did you learn about that shit?"
And so I told him how to get to the little farm.
Kumar didn't approve of coke or pot or heroin, refusing to let the children go near the place once he heard Rebecca talking about eating lots of cookies and how her "Head felt kind of swimmy."
I thought Robert would never return from his solo pharmaceutical expedition alive, but as we loaded Mara, charged and repaired, onto a cart, I witnessed him marching into hydroponics with a strange looking cigarette in his mouth, and a bulging knapsack slung over his shoulder.
Kumar promptly made him extinguish his funny cigarette in the children's presence. "You're being a very bad example to the children."
Robert answered, "I don't believe you're qualified to tell me what is or isn't a good example."
At this, both men fell into a sullen silence, dragging Mara's cart through Devon's compound and the corridor beyond, en route to the transmitter.
Mara gave me a sweet smile as she gazed at me. "You've grown into a beautiful female, Sh'kassk'dwuissueblik."
I cried.
Outside the base, the rain had stopped, but we had found ourselves wading through a thick fog.
"It will be a fair walk," I told the men. "And I know where to find the vehicles. Should we stop there first?"
The two adults and two children agreed that we should, but as I led them in that direction, Kumar's slowed, and eventually he stopped all together, panting as he leaned against a wall.
"You go on ahead," he gasped, sitting on a projecting pipe. "I'll stay here with the children and rest awhile."
"I need the children to help me unlock and control the vehicle."
"Did I mention I was in the motor pool?" Robert asked.
I eyed him with skepticism, but his face remained sincere.
"Fine," I sighed.
But then I glanced into the fog. "This isn't safe. You cannot see like I can. What if others of my species attack you?"
Kumar looked dismayed, but as he opened his mouth, Mara replied, "My infrared scanners are functioning normally. No lifeforms detected within the nearest five kilometers."
My own infrared confirmed this. "Very well, Kumar. I am relying on you...and Mara."
Pain also volunteered to help.
[0003]
Kumar still wasn't sold on the idea.
"In case Mara has a malfunction, Pain also has night vision, and an enhanced sense of smell."
"My olfactory sensors can detect more than one hundred and fifty thousand different chemical compounds," Mara said, but we ignored her.
"All right," Kumar grumped. "Hurry back."
Hurry we did. Robert ran pretty fast, so we made it to the garage in no time.
Robert hadn't been lying about the motor pool. He knew how to get vehicle security codes from a database and inspect vehicles to ensure their proper working order.
Unfortunately, he also had pot, so after topping off the engine oil and adjusting the tire pressure, Robert wasted time topping himself off with a lit spliff in the back seat.
For five whole minutes, he just puffed and giggled, blowing vapor clouds as he stared absently at the cabin roof, mouth hanging agape.
I leaned over the man, staring at his dull, vacant expression, his open inviting mouth.
Robert chuckled and blew smoke in my face, adding to the sexual confusion I felt.
I came closer, my heart pounding as I tenderly caressed his face.
I shouldn't, I thought. I can't.
The man is high. He won't care if an egg is in his chest.
He needs to understand his victims' perspective.
You are not the judge and jury, I argued with myself. Vengeance is mine, sayeth the Lord.
It is not revenge, it is lust. What if this is how the Lord administrates his fair impartial justice?
You are only seeking your own desire.
Robert looked up at me and laughed.
"What are you going to do?" he giggled. "Kiss me?"
"Perhaps," I breathed.
He chuckled, stroking my head. "I always said the ladies found me irresistible..."
He blew more smoke in my face.
I should have stopped there, but I was in heat, and he had just invited me to kiss him. At least, that's how I interpreted the statement.
I pressed my slimy lips to his relatively dry ones. He reacted with discomfort at the burning acid.
Even then I knew this was wrong.
He's high.
He doesn't care.
To be fair, he didn't fight me as much as you think a man would. He really was that high!
I tried to be gentle.
Oh Lord, I did. I tried.
I attempted that French kiss thing I'd seen in recordings, and for a brief, sexually confused moment, the guy actually kissed back.
But then my suaakudsi shot out, and a soft oozing object the size of a billiard ball slid into the man's esophagus.
He screamed through his nose, his arms flailing around helplessly as my egg began its journey down his trachea.
I hurriedly removed myself from my victim, simultaneously awash in guilty pleasure, and horrified at the unspeakable act. "I'm sorry! I'm sorry, I'm sorry! Lord Jesus forgive me, I'm sorry!"