Alien Mine (8 page)

She hurried to the cave door, desperate with hope that the weather had changed overnight. Lifting the canvas, she peered out. Snow lay thick on the ground. Her fingers instantly stiffened from the cold, and she quickly put them under her shirt to warm them.

When the hair on the back of her neck stood up, Natalie turned to found Zacar's eyes roving her figure. They'd been focused on her hips but now they lifted to stare at her breasts. Natalie swallowed and his gaze moved to her throat. He was looking at her as if she was some kind of delectable fruit.

She resisted the urge to squirm. "Good morning, alie--Zacar," she said, pleased at how chipper and normal she sounded.

He grunted.

Determined not to show him how much he'd rattled her, she kept her head high as she walked over to the bathing area. Warmth climbed up her cheeks when she remembered her last attempt at bathing, and she hesitated. Perhaps it was better to get breakfast going first. She couldn't deal with much before coffee, let alone an alien.

After the warmth of her tent and sleeping bag, the air in the cave felt icy. She quickly splashed cold water over her face and brushed her teeth while shivering in her pyjamas. At last dressed in her warmest clothes, she hurried to the kitchen area. She sliced the bread, she'd baked the previous morning, for breakfast and doled out a miniscule amount of coffee into a small pot. With a sigh, she put down the slice of bread she'd been about to take a bite of.

He was back to silent staring. She sighed again and went to the tunnel leading to the storage cave. Her teeth chattered from the cold wind blowing in. She quickly lowered the red canvas her father had helped her attach over the back entrance. Last night she'd been too tired and frightened to even think about it. She retrieved a tin of meat from the storage cave and returned to the main cave.

She'd bought tinned goods in bulk relatively cheap when the grocer in town went out of business. The synthetic meat and vegetables was supposed to last twenty years. The best feature was the way it instantly heated when opened. The lid made a small scraping sound when she pulled it back, the heat heavenly to her cold hands. He looked like a meat eater. She could sacrifice a few tins of meat until the TC came online again. Then she would hand him over with gratitude to whatever authority had a working hovercraft to collect him.

"Do you eat meat, b--" She gasped. Oh, God, she'd almost called him
baby killer
.

He only stared at her.

She grimaced. "All right, Zacar. I hope you like canned..." She turned the tin over, eying the long list of unpronounceable ingredients. "...whatever this is. It's supposed to taste just like real beef." She shuddered. "Heaven only knows how people ever used to eat real beef."

Kneeling next to him, she carefully speared some meat with a fork and held it in front of his mouth.

He turned his head away. "Zacar warrior."

She held the fork against his tightly pressed lips. "Yes, we've established that, but even warriors have to eat."

His head suddenly lunged forward, his teeth snapping at her fingers. The sound echoed around the cave, along with her startled cries. She jerked her hand back and meat went flying everywhere as the tin clattered to the floor.

Scrambling away from him, she held her hand against her chest, her blood instantly freezing as if she'd just done a swan dive into the snow bank outside. Afraid of what she would see, she held her shaking hand in front of her face and blinked furiously. All her fingers were still attached. She blinked again. No blood.

Her legs had turned to the consistency of cooked berries, and she sank down on the cold cave floor, the sound of those snapping teeth still echoing around her. "You miserable, rotten...You could've bitten off my fingers." Glaring at him, she lifted her foot to kick him but stopped herself. What had she ever done wrong to deserve this? "You ever do that again and I will kick you, tied up or not."

He cocked his head. "I warrior. Woman no hurt." His face might be expressionless, but his voice could fill books with its disgust.

"I don't need your permission. And if I kicked you, it'll hurt." Feeling at about the same emotional stage as a five-year-old she walked toward the kitchen area then turned back to the irritating alien again. "When you can promise me decent behavior, I will feed you."

For the next two days, he sat without moving against the wall, his hands tied above him. Natalie worried about his arms going numb, but was too scared to untie him. If she had any sense, she'd kill him and bury his body where no one would ever find it. But she couldn't make herself do it.

She tried talking to him every once and awhile, but it was as difficult as hauling in snow to melt for water. "Do you really kill babies on your planet?" Such a thing was still unthinkable to her and she hoped she'd misunderstood.

"Weak babies." He growled it, with no inflection in his voice that she could interpret as reluctance or disgust.

"And women. Do you kill women, too?" Would he consider a woman suffering from asthma too weak to be allowed to live?

"Weak," he said again.

"Why?" She turned her back to hide her reaction, putting the bread she'd just prepared in the oven.

He remained silent for a time and she had the impression he was searching for the right words. "No breed," he said finally.

She bunched her hair and twisted it until it pressed against her scalp. "No, no, I don't want to hear this. I can't talk to you anymore." The implication of his words was just too terrible to contemplate.

Rushing to the storeroom, she sank down on one of the boxes and clutched her roiling stomach as she rocked back and forth. Her mother had died from an asthma attack.

If he ever got loose--

***

For the following three days, Natalie started the long, back-breaking preparations for winter under his ever watchful gaze, which included canning the last of the vegetables. Having her every move observed with relentless menace put her constantly on edge. She would drop things and bump into the kitchen table. The number of bruises on her arms and legs steadily grew.

The fact that he hadn't eaten or drunk so much as a crumb since he'd woken from his coma made her feel like the worst kind of torturer. Every time she came out of the bathroom, or woke up, she expected him to be gone or waiting for her with his sword in hand. At night, she would wake up screaming from nightmares, dreaming he'd cut off her head at the first sign of an asthma attack, only to find him watching her through the sheer plastic door of her tent, his gaze unblinking and hot.

By the morning of the third day, her nerves frayed, she was jumping at her own shadow. The only thing he would stare at besides her was the TC. Luckily, he seemed to like the news, which was the only program she could receive until next week. Like her father would say, it was nothing but government propaganda and depressing nonsense.

Making jam to use during winter and to sell in town come spring, she lifted the pot of glistening red berries from the stove. She'd been carefully nursing berry-producing shrubs in the greenhouse for the last two years and couldn't help smiling at the delicious results of her hard work as the fruity sweet fragrance filled her nose. So different from the almost medicinal smell of her pine trees. If all her trees made it through the winter, the mountain would be in good shape come spring. It would take a lifetime to plant enough pines to replace what had been decimated by the beetles, but she had to try.

"What you do?" he asked as she set the heavy pot of berries on the table.

She glanced at the alien. He constantly flexed his muscles, but she couldn't see how it would help the blood flow to his hands. But she didn't feel guilty enough yet to do something stupid--like untying a monster three times her size. Still, if someone tied her up for that long, she would have been begging for a bathroom by now. Either he had the bladder of those long extinct elephants, or he was too proud to use the bucket she'd brought him. Trying to explain its use to him had been an adventure in itself. He hadn't even blinked an eye to acknowledge what she was saying to him, so she'd let it go. If he felt the need, he would no doubt make himself understood.

Even in the insulated coat and warm boots she wore, she shivered when a cold wind cut into the cave. The open space of the cave was large enough that none of the heat from the old-fashioned coal stove reached her, but the wonderful smell of bread baking helped ease the chill a little.

"Alien." He glared at her more than usual, so she amended. "I mean, Zacar, are you sure you're not cold?"

"I am warrior," he growled at her.

She threw her hands in the air. "I give up," she grumbled.

That was all he ever said. He didn't eat, didn't drink, didn't sleep, didn't get cold. She was starting to think he was a machine, instead of an alien. And she was more than done trying to show him any sympathy.

She walked over to the wooden chest. "What use is a government that can't even ensure basic emergency systems work," she muttered. Natalie pushed the button to activate the TC. It was high time they took this stubborn alien off her hands, if only she could actually reach them. Maybe today the stupid thing will work.

She pressed the
Activate
button. No such luck.

Her father had once told her about a time when snow wouldn't fall on the mountain until late October, but the past few seasons the snow had started falling as early as middle August, and not letting up until May. Every time she paused in the process of canning jam, realizing how early winter and the snow had arrived, her heart started to beat with frantic speed and her legs threatened to give way beneath her. The eerie silence outside had been magical during long ago Christmases with her parents in the old farmhouse, but now, it was menacing.

The thought of being trapped in this cave with the alien, with no way to contact authorities, made her want to run out into the snow and keep running until she reached town. But she knew she'd die of hypothermia before she even made it halfway down the mountain.

As she poured more stewed berries into a glass jar, she froze. Something in the air had changed. Her spine tingled from more than the alien's constantly burning gaze. She looked up for a moment, glancing around. She'd experienced that eerie change once before, but when?

Frantic with fear, she quickly wiped her hands on the wet cloth she used to clean the rim of the jars before sealing them then reached for the shotgun.

She'd seen insects trapped, unable to move while the sap of a tree slowly buried them alive. That was how she felt, with her limbs paralysed, her brain frozen, refusing to acknowledge what was happening as three more aliens walked into her cave.

She stared at them stupidly, only belatedly noting movement from where Zacar sat. His expression had finally changed, showing a lot of teeth. He shot up off the cave floor, easily breaking the ropes as if they were made of paper.

The shotgun was just within reach. She made a grab for it, but she didn't make it in time.

Chapter 6

Natalie only saw a blur before Zacar's strong hands clamped around her upper arms, his touch jerking her out of her paralysis.

She screamed and kicked back hard, but he easily lifted her away from the shotgun and pressed her against his hard body before she managed to land even one kick.

"Quiet, Natlia." His voice scraped over her nerves.

"How?" she shrieked. "How did you get over here so fast? How did you get loose?" Her heart thundered in her ears. Everything around her had a surreal quality, as if she was in the midst of a nightmare she couldn't wake from.

Not answering, he held her trembling body welded to his warm, muscular chest. Her breath coming in short bursts and her panic rose. They'd kill her. If she had an asthma attack now, they'd surely kill her.

She tried to squirm away from him, but froze when he growled into her ear. Goose bumps broke out where his warm breath passed over her skin, like a small smouldering volcano.

As the three alien warriors marched forward, Zacar's arms around her almost made her feel safe. She shrank back against him, his body rock hard and warm against her back. She forced herself to look at the newcomers. They looked exactly like Zacar. Big, with copper-green skin, they appeared creepy and tough, with ridged bald heads that intensified their sinister looks.

For a moment, she just stood there, held against Zacar, stupidly watching their every move. She looked up at him. The insufferable jerk had been playing her for an idiot all this time. "You could've gotten loose at any time, couldn't you?" She felt a strange sense of betrayal. Why did he allow her to keep him tied up? Something warm prickled the skin of her cheekbones, and it took her a moment to realize tears were running down her cheeks.

He turned her face toward him and wiped the tears away with his forefinger then looked down at the wetness as if he didn't understand it. He turned her again, pressed her back against his chest harder, resting his hands against her stomach, effectively caging her. Natalie tried to ignore how her skin burned where he touched her, but failed, almost certain she would soon see smoke coming out of her belly button.

The newcomers walked forward with clipped military precision, the sound of their boots loudly ringing her doom on the floor. It echoed around the cave until all she could hear was the noise of their approach. When she dared to look up, their scary red eyes surrounded her, their claws shining like polished metal in the muted light from the lamps.

Broad shoulders blocked the light, shrouding her in darkness until only the bright crimson of their eyes stared out at her. Their uniforms, made of the same metallic-like substance as Zacar's, molded to their muscled bodies. Snow had melted on the bald head of one alien, and it trickled down his badly scarred face, but he didn't even flinch. He just kept marching. She swore the temperature in the cave chilled by a few degrees.

Natalie pressed back against Zacar. To her relief, they stopped a few meters from where Zacar held her. They saluted him, and Zacar moved against her back. Was he acknowledging their salute?

Great, seems she'd captured their leader. She wanted to cry and a moan of fright escaped her trembling lips. He shook her slightly, apparently annoyed at her show of fear then said something in his guttural language. She bit her lip to stop the wail, building in her throat, from escaping.

As Zacar spoke, the warriors in front of her came to attention. Then the tall, scarred one stepped forward, lifted his hands and retracted his claws. He looked straight at her, his red eyes turning to shiny, endless black, until she stared into bottomless pits. The green color faded from his skin until he was the same brutally handsome copper as Zacar.

She couldn't stop the trembling that racked her body. The scarred alien continued to stare at her, even after his transformation was complete. "Why--why is he doing that?" she moaned again and, as before, Zacar shook her so softly it was almost a rocking motion.

"Quiet, Natlia," he said, bending down to speak in her ear.

His warm breath caressed her skin and shivers of pleasure zipped up her spine. Obviously, her nerve endings haven't realized the seriousness of this situation.

The scarred alien appeared to be the same height as Zacar but leaner. The scar running down his face and neck made him vicious looking. A sword appeared in his hand. When he opened his mouth, she flinched and shrank against Zacar.

"ZZZrgeeean," he said. Unlike Zacar's voice, his gravelly and rough voice didn't interfere with her nerve endings.

"Uh, nice to meet you." Not really, but what else could she say.

"Still, Natlia," Zacar growled in her ear, his breath blowing over the side of her face. Did he know how it affected her and was doing it on purpose?

She focused back on the aliens in front of her again as the scarred one stepped back.

The second alien stepped forward and brought up his hands. Prepared this time, she didn't flinch when he retracted his claws, but she still thought the whole eye changing color thing was creepy.

"Zzziggllr," the second alien said.

They're introducing themselves
, she suspected. But whether all this ceremony was a friendly gesture or was something they did before an execution, she had no idea. Or maybe they were blessing their food. Her stomach turned at the thought.

The third alien stepped forward. Slightly smaller and younger looking than the other two, he went through the same routine of retracting his claws and changing his eye and skin color. Producing a sword as if by magic."Azzzgr."

While the other two had simply said their names then stepped back, this one continued to stare at her until Zacar snapped his teeth at him. Natalie jumped and the third alien stepped back immediately, keeping an eye on Zacar.

Then, just as suddenly as they had arrived, the three aliens turned and left the cave with the same clipped military movements. She sagged and Zacar released her arms, gently pushing her toward the kitchen table. She walked toward it in a daze. Before she could drop into one of the chairs, soft sounds brought her head up.

The aliens returned, carrying rectangular metal boxes they stacked against one cave wall. Apparently, they were moving in.

She lifted the pot of berries then put it down again. What was she supposed to do now? Continue with her normal life, while aliens made themselves at home in her cave? Natalie gripped the table with trembling hands.

Zacar glanced at her every now and then, his black eyes bleeding back to red. In those brief glances, she knew he missed nothing.

If she wasn't so scared, she would've been fascinated by their lack of facial expressions or mannerisms. They moved mechanically. No one scratched an ear, coughed, or slouched. They barely even blinked.

Once they had finished moving the boxes, they stood with their hands lightly balled at their sides, focused on their conversation, speaking in that harsh, guttural language.

Fiddling with the pot of berries, she looked at them furtively. She could tell Zacar from the others by his more muscular build and the defined lines of his cheekbones. She swore his teeth were sharper than the others as well. She must've been isolated out here on the mountain for too long, because her alien appeared dangerous and very scary, but with his skin that copper tone, it was strangely sexy.

Could she trust them? Trust Zacar?

Too scared to breathe, she silently inched past the table toward the back cave. From there, she could escape through the tunnel and into the hidden valley.

She hadn't gone more than a meter before Zacar growled at her without so much as glancing in her direction. Natalie froze, her eyes darting to Zacar then back at the entrance to the tunnel. Could she sprint fast enough over the uneven cave floor before he caught her? Her shoulders slumped. Probably not. With his speed, she wouldn't get two steps before he had her.

Disheartened and fed up with everything, aliens in particular, she growled back at him. Shoulders still slumped and glaring at her feet, she walked to the table and stared dully at the pot of berries on the table.

Silence.

She looked up to find them staring at her. Her blood froze in her veins, and she had to force herself not to shrink away in fear. Her hand gripped the table top harder.

"What? Women on your planet don't snarl back?" The words left her mouth before she realized what she was saying. Her heart almost crawled out of her chest, like a pine beetle fleeing a burning tree. She kept her hands on the table top behind her to hide their trembling.

Zacar's hot gaze held her motionless and she felt like the dead, frozen animals she sometimes found come spring. At last, he turned away and grunted something at the other aliens.

For the next hour or so, Natalie pretended to can the remaining berries while keeping a close watch on the four aliens. She didn't want to spend her life afraid they would kill her for the slightest infraction, but how could she escape from them? Which was worse? Being their prisoner or escaping down the mountain to suffer a cold, lonely death?

When she realized the aliens were dangerously quiet again, Zacar was already advancing on her, a wicked knife clutched in his hand. Natalie felt her blood thicken and stall in her veins, her heart struggling to pump oxygen to her brain. She moved around the table, away from him, and he followed. She stumbled backward until her back was pressed against the cave wall.

"Please don't," she pleaded tearfully, her hand clutching at her throat.

When he kept coming, she squeezed her eyelids shut, waiting for the curved knife to slice across her neck.

Suddenly, she was airborne, a squeal escaping her lips. She'd spent a lifetime of being called too tall and gangly for a woman, and Zacar threw her around as if she weighed nothing. Afraid to look, it took a moment for her to realize she was cradled gently in his arms. Then something hard touched the back of her legs, the cold seeping in through the fabric of her pants. When she lifted her eyelids, she found herself sitting at the head of the kitchen table.

He moved in front of her and she braced for the moment the knife would penetrate her fragile skin. Instead, he turned, opened the oven, and took the bread out, gripping the hot pan with his bare hands without even wincing.

She sat up straight. "What are you doing?"

"Zacar feed Natlia."

What? Was this some kind of weird ritual on their planet, to feed prisoners their own food before executing them?

"It's Natalie," she corrected him automatically, her eyes glued to his actions.

He used the wicked looking knife to cut a thick slice of bread. With great care, he buttered the slice with the large knife and cut the bread into smaller pieces. Then kneeling in front of her, in a movement that still managed to look dominating, he held a chunk of bread against her lips.

"Eat," he ordered.

Why did her stupid body shiver in pleasure every time he opened his mouth?

Relieved that wicked knife had only sliced through bread and not her, she obediently opened her mouth for him and he placed the small piece of bread on her tongue.