Alluvial Valos of Sonhadra Book 1 Page 5

  “Drogan gets growly when he gets scared,” I muse. “And remember when I said that being able to determine when a question was rhetorical would be a helpful skill? I wasn’t just talking about me.”

  A hand lands on my ribs and punishes me with the five-fingered spider-dance even as he claps a palm over my mouth so my protests are smothered.

  An unholy scream rips through the air.

  All around us, the flashlights that had been trained on the path ahead turn into panicked strobe light beams as the others try to pinpoint the what and the where of this sound’s origin.

  Drogan’s hand clamps down over mine, keeping our lights static, keeping us still.

  Unnecessary. I wasn’t moving. I can’t. My body has locked up as my programming informs me that moving targets attract attention.

  But ha, take that, programming: I was trained by the best. I already knew this. This leads me to a thought though; what if my program is based off of missions my dad and sister were successful in? Like during debriefing, the things they shared that helped them succeed in missions have now been programmed into me? Just the possibility that it could, in some way, be connected to them makes me resent its presence in my head a little less.

  At the very edge of our light, a woman stumbles—

  SNAP!

  And then it’s just a shoe.

  I think I saw teeth close over her. Lots and lots of teeth. It was so fast. The muffled sound of her screams devolves into a gurgle as something crunches down on her body.

  Panic erupts. Everybody’s running.

  “Preta, move! I hid packs!” Drogan shouts. “Get back to the ship; we’ll grab those!”

  I’m all for his plan, I’m more at a loss of how to execute it as we race along, inmates resembling orange wildebeest, all of us stampeding for the safety of the ship’s lights.

  The monsters aren’t afraid of the lights though, and they’re waiting for us here like we’re the platters that are finally being served to their table.

  “About those packs,” Drogan says before he forces a string of curses through gritted teeth. “Forget ‘em. C’mon!”

  I move to follow him.

  “Preta!”

  The warning shout comes from behind us, and I know this voice.

  I whirl around, and illuminate a nightmare.

  If you took a Utahraptor, a rock python, and the creepiest freaking bug you could imagine, this is what it looks like.

  But bigger.

  It had been heading straight for me.

  But now?

  It’s headed for Charlie.

  No!

  The look in her eyes; it’s apology, and regret, and worry. She gives me one nod.

  “PRETA! Your six ‘o clock! We need to go.”

  She can’t make it to me, and our flashlights are not exactly a match against the things converging on us, so I find my head bobbing back, before my body mechanically turns, and I fall in with Drogan, both of us racing deeper into the woods.

  CHAPTER 6

  PRETA

  Drogan breathes, “Try to hold still for a few seconds, then move slowly. Very slowly. Ghillie-suit slow.”

  Ghillie suit: when soldiers wear their environment as camouflage and tactically engage at a creeping pace, blending so well, you never know they’re there.

  I’m in a blaze orange fucking jumper. I don’t scoff; I don’t have to. I do send an incredulous glare at him out of the corner of my eye, and I hear him choke on a chuckle. “I’ll explain later,” he whispers.

  I edge over—

  “Slower,” Drogan cautions, and I pretend I’m a freaking chameleon, or a stick bug, or any of the things I’ve seen move super, super slowly. My heart’s racing like a cheetah, but my body catches on like it’s—ha, ha—programmed for this.

  Oh, hell. Thanks evil-scientist team. At this speed, using this pre-programmed method, surprisingly, the bug-snake-saur doesn’t see me.

  After everyone scattered, we found a path that cuts through the underbrush, and I was happy pretending that it was made by a species of adorable, harmless deer or maybe bunnies. Little ones. Something—anything—vegetarian.

  It’s kind of getting harder and harder to believe as we encounter yet another bug-a-saur. When they’re not shrieking, they’re so quiet they manage to get almost on top of us before we realize it. This one puts its head down, doing a frighteningly accurate rendition of ‘bloodhound finds trail’, going right to the spot I’d been standing.

  It moos.

  That’s the other strange thing. The last few have made that noise right before they grow very, very agitated. The globular red things emerging from its back pulse even brighter.

  Drogan encourages me to get farther away from it. Stay and be found, or amscray and be found.

  I don’t like this game.

  We could shoot them, but handguns are no match for aliens; we found that out early on. It isn’t a waste per se, because we survived the encounters unharmed, but we’re low on ammo to the extreme now. With the light of dawn making its way through the trees, at least our run-ins with them are happening less and less and the last few didn’t even try to attack. Maybe they’re tired. It’d be nice if they’re not in any way diurnal. That can take effect any time; they can go curl up in their caves of evil or wherever they call home.

  Please.

  The breath I just took freezes in my lungs when the creature swings its head in my direction. They don’t have eyes, yet we’ve witnessed their accuracy in peeling human beings right off their feet—and sure, maybe it hunts by smell, but I’m not much of a betting woman, so I’m not holding stock on it not seeing me.

  Except it doesn’t.

  I look down at myself… and I don’t see me either.

  “Shhh,” I feel more than hear Drogan breathe. “Tell you in a second.”

  Even my ugly shoes have gone camouflage. My self-cleaning, government-contracted suit? It’s got the staying power of a bad penny, because it’s still here.

  I get a flash memory of a lab tech’s face as they called out, “Nonreactive with fluorescence.”

  I hadn’t known what they were referring to then.

  I look down at my arms. Where my arms should be.

  I do now.

  I bring my hand up to my face—and I watch leaves dapple across skin, like observing a water ripple when you disrupt it with a pebble.

  I’m camo.

  They made me camouflage.

  “I didn’t know if it’d work,” Drogan says, and his tone is all awe. “It’s supposed to activate when you have a need for stealth, but I’d only ever seen it when they forced it in the lab.”

  I creep to my goal—that’d be off this path—keeping my pace slow enough that it looks like the ground is merely being windswept. What it is, is my skin pattern reforming to match our surroundings. I just have to give it time to… do it however it’s doing it.

  Drogan moves to the opposite side of the trail, also slowly, but without the benefit of skin that’s been scientifically altered. I know what he’s thinking: if the shrieker wants a meal, I’ll have the chance to run because he’s going to try to buy me the time.

  Using himself.

  I don’t put my hand on my stomach, but once again, I’m mighty aware of the tiny life I’m carrying.

  The shrieker tears up the ground with its rearmost set of back legs, kicking up the vegetation way too close to be comfortable, until all of a sudden, it shuffles past with its head low, thrashing its tail in what looks like a pretty good fit.

  I stare after it. “You know how in the books and movies the stranded couple befriends and tames the wild beast?”

  Drogan gives me the world’s most horrified look. “Fuck. No.”

  “I didn’t say I wanted to, I was just making conversation, sheesh.”

  We rejoin the path, still hoping that eventually it will lead to water, a thing we are becoming quite desperate for.

  I look up to see Drogan already watching me. He’s star
ting to look (more) worried. I distract him with a question. “When they’d strip me for experiments, I saw them holding up fabric swatches against my skin. I thought I was high on drugs.”

  “You were.”

  I roll my eyes at him and watch him grin before he continues. “But you weren’t wrong. Your clothes should change as long as they aren’t neon.”

  “How does that work?”

  “You know as well as I do that every answer starts with ‘Nanotech,’ so who fucking knows. Are the grape-things helping at all?”

  “Some,” I hedge.

  “So, no.”

  I give him a weak smile.

  “Have some more,” he says as he shoves his handful at me.

  Sometime in the night, we came across a giant leaf, with a massive pile of fruit sitting on top of it. It looked like it was gift wrapped for us. Obviously, food doesn’t collect itself; someone else must have come through, but we scouted a bit, yet found no sign of anyone else. For all we knew… maybe something had eaten them.

  We took some grapes.

  I push his hand back towards him. “I’m good.”

  He winces. “Intestinal… problems?”

  “Doesn’t hypermetabolism mean it’d be hard for anything to trip up my system?”

  He frowns. “Fuck if I know. You were a lab rat not meant to be released into the wild.”

  “Thanks.”

  He nods puckishly. I raise him an eyebrow.

  I grab his hand as he tries to force it at me again. “You need to eat too. You’re the stronger of the two of us and you need to stay that way.”

  His eyes drop to my stomach, and that gets me. Without further argument, I take his alien-grapes and shovel them into my mouth. I’m starving. He’s already worried, and it’s not like he can just pull over at the next fast food joint. Him having to watch me starve to death is bad enough; I don’t want him to be tortured before it happens, and me telling him how bad the hunger pangs are will torture him—I can see it as he watches me consume every last bit of fruit.

  I can almost feel the food disappear as it hits my stomach. I’m still so famished I don’t trust my eyes not to be playing tricks on me when something massive shifts.

  I peer at the spot I saw movement, and notice something else; I’ve seen this thing before. This same thing. “Ryan… did that tree move?”

  His fingers slide along my arm; he likes me calling him by his first name. He slowly scans the tree line with me as I point to the tree stump-creature. “Right there. It stopped moving.” I glance over my shoulder to see he’s way off, so I reach up and guide his chin so that his field of vision matches mine. “The topiary art right there—and with the way things have gone in this place so far, it can probably kill us.”

  “Cheery thought,” he agrees easily. “That’s the spirit.”

  “‘How neat, nice dragon.’ That better?”

  He frowns. “What makes you call it a dragon?”

  “See those things along the sides? Looks like folded wings, right? There is the long neck—”

  “That's another tree.”

  “Is not. And that’s the head—see the spikes, like horns?”

  “You mean the tree branches?”

  I let my hand drop. “So literal! Why can’t you agree that it’s a living thing?”

  He looks unimpressed. “Maybe because it’s just a dead tree.”

  I shake my head at him. “Cloud gazing with you must be fun times.”

  “Staring at an accumulation of frozen water molecules while you ascribe fantasy animal shapes to them? Sure is.”

  I wave his tiny, sad, no-imagination scenario away and lay it out. “Okay, well, the dragon topiary is following us—wipe that look off your face. I am telling you: I’m not crazy.”

  His eyes dance teasingly. “Says every crazy woman…”

  We resume walking, mindful to keep our squabbling at a low enough level that predators won’t be attracted.

  Attracted. He’s a bit of an ass, but the more time I get to spend with him, the more I like the man that’s arguing with me. I’m filthy, Drogan’s once-pristine uniform looks like it took a major beating, yet I still want to jump him. For now, I imagine all the dirty scenarios we could play out as I hope we can find a spot to rest at. I’m starting to feel a little sex-starved.

  And as if by magic, our path widens and our field of vision opens; there aren’t thousands of trees right in our face for as far as we can see.

  It’s a peaceful-looking clearing. And creepily enough, right in front of us is another big leaf, with a pile of food on it. Nuts of a sort, it looks like. They’re poisoned. They have to be. And the poisoners went too far, thinking that we’d be lulled into complacency after we didn’t die the first time—

  Drogan reaches for them.

  “Hold up there, Hansel! Aren’t you worried about this?”

  He squints. “The part where we crash landed and we’re going to die out here if we don’t drink and eat and if the animals hunting us don’t get us first, or the part where we see food, and we leave it because we’re scared something wants to eat us if only they could lure us far enough away from home?”

  I push him but he doesn’t topple over and the poor man can’t tell when he’s being insulted because he’s grinning like the fool he is. I scoop up the food, preparing to go down with my belly full at least.

  We find that we can pop out the edible soft part easily, which is good since we’re kind of lacking all supplies and amenities out here. “We’re going to get thirsty.”

  “We’re already thirsty. And… Preta?”

  I look to where he’s pointing.

  Giant grooves weave over dirt in pretty but alarming patterns. What made them? What do they mean? They lead to another leaf. But on this one, there are half-shells holding water.

  CHAPTER 7

  PETRICHOR

  If we capture this female, is it still considered poaching? We left our territory to investigate the thing that fell from the sky, and found females. We haven’t seen females in literal ages. Do the old customs and rules even apply? We don’t know who defends this area any longer, but if we did, we’d make an offer of a fair trade for this one. Of all the females that have arrived, she needs males the most; she is in the poorest condition. We’ve spied her husbandman attempting to obtain rations, but it isn’t enough to sustain her; she’s wilting right before our eyes.

  I’m not surprised they have ignored our note in the dust. We knew it’d be unlikely they’d be able to read our language, but Maceous had hoped.

  They do accept our offer of food and drink though, which is promising. They give a cursory look around for us but neither the female nor her husbandman call out for us to join them.

  Instead, once she has finished drinking and eating, the female rallies enough to boldly initiate a feeding, and finally, her husbandman seems interested in providing for her.

  He backs her to Maceous’ smooth-barked foreleg.

  We stare down at them in shock.

  “Are you inviting us to join?” Mace wonders hopefully.

  Her voice shakes with repressed laughter when she asks, “Yoor goeeng too fuhk mee agannst eh tuhree?”

  She isn’t responding to Maceous, but to her husbandman.

  He subdues her with a playful hand over her mouth. “Shuht uhp, en eye’ll geht yoo awf agannst eh tuhree, woomahn.”

  He keeps his hand over her mouth to maintain silence, and his unease when he glances around is palpable, wise, and understandable. I’m sure I’m not alone in feeling compelled to share our intentions, and make him a tribe-joining offer simply so he can have peace of mind in this moment.

  Yet I say nothing. None of us interrupts as he returns his attention to her, his hand cupping between her legs. It appears as if he possesses plenty of pollen, as he rapidly brings her to peak, and yet—

  “What is the knothead doing?” Bortammos whispers beside me.

  The husbandman takes a step back from her instead of
feeding her.

  “She is failing to thrive! Can’t he see he’s starving her?”

  I shake my head, confounded. “Maybe he’s young. Maybe she’s not yet a full scion and without her family’s permission he doesn't feel welcome.”

  She tilts her head up, looking in our direction. We fall silent, waiting politely for her to call out to us. They speak a stranger’s tongue; that’s not unexpected. She can still call for us if she is interested. That is one of the ways; the other two would be her tribe accepting a trade, or least desirable—we poach her.

  I’m hopeful that she is going to choose the most preferable option, until her husbandman distracts her attention from us. “Noww yoor woohred ahbowt teh tuhrees ahgann?”

  “Weer maykeeng sohm aneemahls vehree uhpset. Kant yoo heer tem? Leeson; eye thawt eye herd ah wuhrd.”

  “Trahnslayter leerns, ‘membr? Yoor prahblahblee leerneeng spaysuh sqkwerrl.”

  “Whut eef eets uhn aleeann mowntayn lyuhn? Yoo dohnt noh!”

  When they begin bickering, we resume our conversation. Bortammos slants me a look. “He doesn’t appear so young. If I were a sapling I would have fed that female. He must be soddish.”

  The husbandmen in question seems to be growing excited at her torrent of words as they squabble and even goes so far as to clasp her and bite her neck.

  Instead of struggling, she wraps all her limbs around him and relaxes.

  “He subdues her with his teeth like an animal?”

  “Interesting.”

  Yet he pulls back again. He looks around.

  Mace peers around with him. “He’s worried about an attack.” He attempts to sniff his foreleg without bringing his head any further down. “What he needs is the protection of a group.”

  “Yet they’ve left theirs,” I muse.

  “Let’s approach him. We can make an appeal to join our tribes.”

  I want to make this appeal. Caution holds me back. Uninterested females run. This one doesn’t look strong enough for a chase, and her male may be physically better off, but his exhaustion is apparent. “Let them rest; we can watch over them, give them until night’s fall. We can bring them more tapriklut to keep the Ak’rena from shrieking over them. She seemed to tolerate the taste.”