Bebe (5 page)

Travel never failed to leave her a little sick to her stomach. Bebe closed her eyes and struggled not to make any further unpleasant noises, but she could feel the stress of the speed pressing her into the seat. Breathe, she told herself. Just breathe.

They drove for what seemed like forever. Twice the vehicle shot into sudden and sharp turns that had Bebe grabbing for the door handle to help keep her balance. Then her whole body jerked forward again, throwing her into the restraining belt as the transport fell from the sky and rapidly began to slow in preparation for connecting with the ground. She heard the whine of the wheels lowering, and felt the sudden not-so-gentle bump as they landed upon a very rural and uneven road.

Only after they pulled to a complete stop, did Bebe dare to open her eyes. She looked first at the shadowy surrounding of trees, still dark and without definition against the lightening dawn. Then she turned her head and looked at Sir, who sat staring back at her, an odd look on his face.

“Good girl, Bebe?” she asked hopefully.

He didn’t even crack a smile. He simply got out of the car, leaving his door open while he walked around to her side.

He was still angry with her. Nothing had changed from last night, and that realization left her crushed almost to the point of fresh tears. She swallowed hard to bite them back and held herself still while he unbuckled her from the restraining belt.

“Out,” he said listlessly.

Head bowed, Bebe climbed from the car. She stepped away from it when he nudged her to, the sharp-rock gravel digging into the tender bottoms of her bare feet. Shivering a little in the morning chill, she glanced around at the surrounding overgrowth. They were in the middle of nowhere, contained on all sides by a heavily forested landscape, completely devoid of homes, streetlamps or even signs. There wasn’t even a proper concrete street under the transport. There was a fence, however. Made of sturdy metal and at least three times her height, it followed both ends of the road, stretching out into the distance to either side of her for as far as she could see. Bebe looked from right to left, then straight up. She couldn’t even see lights from any other transports, shooting across the sky.

Where were they?

Sir ruffled her hair again, and she turned to him expectantly. He opened his mouth as if to say something—maybe Good girl, Bebe, and she perked hopefully—but after a brief pause, he changed his mind. He took off her leash and collar, and stuffed them into his pocket. Her shoulders drooped, but when he nudged her even further back off the road, she found a soft, damp clump of grass to stand on and watched him close her door.

A tiny tickle of nervousness began to wind inside her. She pet at the stuffed toy, as if she could soothe herself by soothing that small, inanimate creature in her arms. He walked back around the transport the way he’d come, and without a word, climbed into the driver’s seat. Then he simply drove away. He never looked back. Bebe knew, because she watched faithfully until the engine flashed hot and bright and the car shot up into the heavens, rapidly vanishing from sight.

He'd left her there. He'd just...left her.

Bebe stood on that tuft of grass, the morning sky brightening all around her, holding onto that piece of bread and stupid stuffed toy, petting and petting it over and over again as she struggled not to panic. Nothing like this had ever happened before. Ever.

She waited, staring up into the blushing sky until long after the sun had come up. Then, not knowing what else to do, Bebe sat down to wait.

CHAPTER THREE

Lost.

Bebe was starting to panic, and night had fallen. It was getting cold. Very cold. She didn’t have her shoes or her coat. She didn’t even have her blanket. Her toes were starting to ache again. She tried tucking her legs up under her, but then kneeling on them made her feet go numb. So she shifted constantly from cross-legged to kneeling and back again. Her stomach rumbled, but she was too scared to eat her bread. She simply sat there, rocking and watching the sky, furiously petting the tentacles on that silly stuffed toy, over and over, harder and harder. Her fingers were aching too, cramping from the cold.

What had she done that was this bad?

In a moment of panicked bitterness, she realized she should have let the baby fall off the couch. She shouldn’t have stolen the sour fruit, either. Why had she done that? To go hungry for one day—just one—wouldn’t have killed her, and she never,
never
should have brought that box in from the porch. Bursting into tears, Bebe threw the stuffed animal at the ground. All around her the woods were coming alive with sounds. Branches were rustling. Unseen things scampered through the deadfall in search of late fall nuts and seeds buried in the leaves. The biting cold of the evening breeze whispered over her bare skin, and Sir was not coming back.

A far way in the distance, something let out a screeching cry and behind her something very large was moving through the overgrowth. Sticks cracked under heavy, lumbering feet. It didn’t sound very far away at all.

Bebe stared stubbornly up at the sky, the stars wavering behind a sheen of tears. She shook and shivered, more scared than she’d ever been in her life. She didn’t want to turn around. Looking might make whatever it was real. Looking might make it notice her, and the only thing she wanted to see right now was the flash of amber engine lights as Sir sped his way back to get her.

Unfolding herself from her crouch, Bebe crawled upon the ground just far enough from her tuft of grass to grab her discarded toy back again. She hugged it to her chest and scrambled back into position, wrapping her arms around her legs for warmth and rocking miserably. This was all a mistake; it had to be. Sir and Ma’am loved her. She knew they did. Otherwise, they never would have rescued her from the Awful Place and taken her to their home.

Another stick snapped. That large thing was directly behind her now.

She smothered a frightened cry into the back of her toy, and her squeak of a sound was echoed by a long, low grumbling growl.

Bebe closed her eyes. She didn’t want to look. Don’t look, don’t look!

But then the ground shook under an enormous, stamping hoof that refused to be ignored, and Bebe twisted back over one shivering shoulder to steal a peek through a wavering sheen of tears.

At first, she saw nothing but shadows, the black shape of skeletal trees reaching up with claw-like branches to rake at the star-lit sky. They swayed in the whip of a sudden gusting wind. But then an even darker shadow separated itself from the brush, its hooves crunching on the gravel as it moved towards the her and the road, another lowing grumble issuing from the barrel of its chest, and Bebe all but wet herself. She had no idea what it was but it was monstrous, huge, with a high and sloping back, a long head that curved into a long and hanging trunk-like snout, and a wide crown of antlers stretching farther apart than she stood tall.

She shot to her feet with a shriek, and the beast snapped its head only a few degrees to the right, locking her in its sight. She bolted when it charged, head down, its massive hooves pounding up onto the road as it chased her across to the other side. It was so dark that Bebe couldn’t see when the ground dropped away, but suddenly the biting gravel was no longer beneath her feet. There was nothing at all beneath her feet and she fell, a rush of hot breath billowing against her back as she did. The pounding hooves charged right over the top of her, and Bebe tumbled down a sharp incline directly behind it, peppered by clumps of dirt and pebbles kicked up by its hooves, crashing through unseen brambles and over jagged rocks, somehow missing two trees and the stamping hooves of the beast before she crashed into the metal fence. It rattled loudly, vibrating like thunder at her back.

Shaking, spitting dirt and leaves, Bebe lay where she was, too stunned at first to move. Not until she felt the fence shake and rattle and the horrible beast let out a deafening bawl of fury. It shoved against the fence, bucking once as it lashed out with both back legs and very nearly stepping on her ankle as it stamped and jerked. Kicking backwards, Bebe scrambled out from under it. When it bawled again, she realized its antlers were caught in the fence.

Her heart hammering in her chest, she stared at the black shadow of it, her eyes barely able to follow its struggles in the dark. She really didn’t want to still be sprawled here when it finally wrenched itself free. And it was that realization more than any other that finally got her moving again.

Clawing at chinks in the metal, her body awash in a myriad of aches and pains, Bebe stumbled to her feet. Her instinct was to return to the road, to try and find her tuft of grass, her piece of bread and stuffed animal so that she would have them when Sir deemed her punished enough to finally return. But all of that faded from her mind when the beast reared, bucking and kicking and in a loud clattering of hooves and horn, ripped free of the fence.

She ran, her frozen feet burning in pain with every step. Vines tripped her in the dark and she fell again, landing hard against the fence while the beast let out another furious bawl behind her. By sheer happenstance as she fought her way to her feet, her wildly flailing hand found a hole in the metal chinks just large enough for her to squeeze through. She scuttled through crunching dead leaves, fell over a protruding root, but didn’t stop moving, crawling on her belly those last few feet to get the fence well behind her and herself tucked safely—she hoped—behind the trunk of a massive tree.

There she crouched, quaking and struggling to quiet her frantic sobs until the snorting, restless beast ceased butting and rubbing at the fence. It lumbered through the brush, pawing and stamping, stalking the length of the chinked barrier that separated them. When it paused again, Bebe covered her mouth with both hands to keep from wailing her fear out loud. Eventually, satisfied that she was gone, it simply walked away and Bebe was once more left alone.

She shook and shook. There were stickers in her feet, legs, hands and stomach. Fingers trembling, she tried to find them in the dark and pluck them out, but suddenly something in the branches above her head let out a piercing scream, and terrified, Bebe bolted, fleeing through the brush. She had no idea where she was going; she just ran.

* * * * *

Dressed all in white and gray camouflage, Tral stood as still as the rocky outcrop behind him. Only his fingertips moved as he adjusted the focus on the long-range lens of his camera. The big male had led his wild pack on another successful hunt. In the distance, they all four gathered around their freshly killed bull
ank’ta
. He snapped a picture, forever immortalizing the image of two humans carefully cutting away the hide while a third vigorously strived to start a fire on top of the snow by rubbing two sticks together. Very primitive. Very ingenious, and Tral took another picture, catching that moment when smoke began to pour from the tinder and sparks finally caught.

Lowering the camera a scant inch, he quietly adjusted the lens and peered back through the viewfinder to focus on the big male again. He was standing slightly apart, the butt of his bloody spear planted in the snow as he leaned against it, relaxed and yet not. His shaggy head turned, his eyes constantly scanning the distant surroundings. Probably looking for him, Tral thought and smiled. He shook his head and took another picture. And his superiors still argued over the intelligence of humans. Ha! For Tral, after six years on the job, that particular argument had long been solved.

Human beings weren’t just clever, they were smart. Some, like the big male fixed into the eye of his camera, were scary smart. Tral wasn’t quite ready to go so far as to say they were ‘people’ smart, but there was definitely more to them than simple basic instinct or mimicry. Basic instinct didn’t drive an animal to knap tools for instance; Tral focused in on their stone-skinning knives for a close-up picture. Or wield spears, his camera clicked again. Or wear the hides of other animals as clothes. Click, click. Or even to adorn themselves with simple decorations: teeth and claws, smooth river stone beads, and carved bits of hoof and antler horn. Click, click, click.

Mimicry, his superiors said. Obviously the wild humans had seen him in clothes; they were simply following his example.

Tral knew better. For one thing, he had never tanned a hide in all his life. The big male had been dropped into the Preserve knowing how to do that from the very start, and from him the others had very quickly learned. And now, wrapped from head to toe in leathers, furs and strips of gut thong, they were, in Tral’s estimation, very well equipped to survive another six or seven months of winter here in the Preserve.

The male turned his head in Tral’s direction, and Tral quickly moved his hand to cover the front of the camera, shielding it from telltale glints of the sun. They knew he was in the Preserve, but if they didn’t already know he was this close, he preferred to keep it that way. He meant them no harm, but the wild humans had no way of knowing that, and Tral was under no mistaken impressions about their willingness to attack and even to kill him if they found the chance. They were, after all, quite wild and could be extremely aggressive, especially when they thought themselves to be cornered.

The big male stared in his direction for a very long time, but only until the fire became established and the first slab of meat was laid across the flames. Hefting his spear, he turned to rejoin his companions and Tral breathed a steamy sigh of relief.

That was enough pictures for one day. It was cold, and despite his many layers of protective clothing, he was ready to go indoors. A hot cup of tea and a roaring fire; both would be equally welcome.

Turning the camera off, he bent to gather his equipment, (lunchbox, medical supplies, dart gun—just in case) and begin the long hike back through the nature preserve towards home: a small, one-man station where he’d been assigned to live ever since his uncle landed him this rather cushy (all things considered) job. Cold, but cushy. And he enjoyed it, truth be told. He much preferred working out in the middle of nowhere, than to be stuck crunching numbers or shuffling perpetual stacks of paperwork in a stuffy city office. Or worse, he could just as easily have been assigned to some claustrophobic space station somewhere and left there to monitor far-range radio signals for signs of rogue mercenaries or pet smugglers flying in violation of the no-trespassing ordinance around the very distant plant of Earth.