Blood Moon (25 page)

He could understand the
revulsion of such a drastic measure to a degree. It
was
disturbing that these
creatures had been cast in a distorted image of the
udai
themselves—which, to
the squeamish, made that solution seem rather too much like
genocide—but the similarity went no deeper than that general
appearance and he was more inclined to agree with the faction that
wanted to simply eradicate the ‘problem’. In their opinion, it
wasn’t genocide, regardless of that physical similarity, to destroy
the weak and sickly and foul and violent
things
that infested the world they’d
found and crippled attempts to recover it by terraforming. They
were a pestilence, a blight that strained the few resources the
world had remaining to it.

These creatures had to be
something that had evolved
after
the city builders had vanished. They were
scavengers, living primarily off the labors of the race that had
vanished—and raiding the colonies of critical supplies. They did
nothing but fuck and produce more to overburden dwindling resources
and what they didn’t consume, they destroyed.

The first colonists to arrive had
nearly starved because the pests invaded their fields, trampling
down the delicately nurtured plants they didn’t uproot and feed
on.

It hadn’t aroused any pity or empathy
for them in the hearts of the colonists.

Not surprisingly, the majority of the
colonists, at least the first colonists, sided with the faction
that thought eradication of the pests was the best
solution.

The scientists believed that the event
that had brought the world of the builders to an end was a cosmic
collision—one devastating enough to cause a mass extinction—or at
least set one in motion. As far as he was concerned that nixed any
possibility that these beings were related to those who’d built the
cities they’d unearthed.

The problem with being too
dependent upon the technology of an advanced civilization was that
the typical citizen had no real knowledge or understanding of the
technology they were so dependent upon and when it was taken away
from them they had no skills to survive.
That
, he was sure, was what had
become of the builders—who’d been intelligent enough to build great
cities and advanced technology but too arrogant to husband their
resources or prepare themselves for disaster. They’d died out and
this savage species had survived
because
they were savages.

Lifting his
nitin
for a drink,
Gah-re-al tilted his head and looked up at the star the natives
called the sun. It rode low on the horizon, edging toward
sunset.

It was dangerous to enter a human
village in the day time but even more so after dark.

Particularly if one
happened to be
udai
.

The humans were terrified of
them—which meant they attacked viciously and killed on sight if
they could manage it.

He shrugged. One
udai
of the
Elite
was more than a
match for a dozen humans—no matter how savage.

Of course, he thought wryly, if there
were more than a dozen, he might be in trouble.

Shrugging inwardly, he headed toward
the gate. It wasn’t likely he could get the information he wanted
out of the guards without alerting the entire village. He’d just
have to take care of that little problem and do a little
reconnoitering before he confronted the village king.

* * * *

Lexa paused and looked at the rise
that loomed in front of her, wondering if she had the energy to
climb it and if it would even be worth it if she did. She tried
several times to swallow before she managed to gather enough
moisture in her mouth to accomplish it. Taking her water bottle
from her supply bundle, she removed the lid and turned it up,
waiting in vain for a stray drop to slide from it and hit her
tongue. After a few minutes, she gave up, carefully replaced the
top, and returned it to her bundle.

There were some things one never got
used to—not really—hunger, thirst, being too cold or too hot, being
so tired you felt like you would drop where you stood and simply
cease to live … being afraid. Lexa had never been able to get used
to it, at any rate.

She’d hardly known anything else in
her life, and yet there’d been moments, brief segments of time when
none of those things had been the case, and it only took the
absence of complete misery sprinkled throughout her memory to make
being miserable from one thing or another, or many of them at once,
nearly intolerable at times.

Mostly, she’d been cold, hungry,
thirsty, and afraid. Being hot and exhausted were fairly new
miseries.

She didn’t remember
‘before’, at least not the ‘before’ that most people meant when
they talked about before. She remembered
her
before. Even though the memories
were faded and ragged around the edges, she remembered the father.
She vaguely remembered her mother. She remembered best the baby
brothers and sisters she’d helped the father take care of because
her mother was gone. ‘The day’,
her
day
, was foggy in her memory, not because
there were gaps but because it had been like an explosion, so many
things happening at once that it had been hard to grasp anything
but terror.

It was the day the raiders had
descended upon them and her whole world changed.

Most people, though, were referring to
‘the day’—before ‘the day’. There’d been an explosion then, from
what she’d heard, but she’d been born after that. She wasn’t
certain how long afterwards, but the only world she’d known was
nothing like the one she’d heard olders talk about. That place was
so very different from everything she’d always known that she
wasn’t completely convinced it had ever existed. So much of what
they talked about was hard even to imagine.

Like the cold that was no more than a
‘season’ and then went away—a blue sky, green things
everywhere.

She’d seen blue sky, though—not when
she was young. It had been after she’d finally escaped King Ralph,
after she’d fled the nightmare her life had been since ‘the day’
because she’d finally realized that anything was better than that.
Even death would have been more welcome. When she’d realized that
truth, she’d ceased to be afraid of being alone, of facing the
scarred Earth, the unknown, by herself. It had given her the
courage to flee.

The first time she’d seen blue sky,
she wasn’t sure whether she’d been more awed or terrified. No one
else had been certain either, at least no one who, like her, had
been born ‘after’. She supposed because they hadn’t really believed
in it either. But one day the thick, boiling clouds that formed a
roof over the world had seemed to thin and then tear, and there it
was, pale streaks briefly visible far above and a near blinding
glint of something up there that poured heat down on them. She’d
thought it might be the sun, but it was a monster unlike the hazy
ball of light she was used to seeing when night gave way to
day.

That warmth had felt glorious at
first. It had warmed her like no fire ever had. It seemed like
she’d been cold her whole life, sometimes colder than other times,
but always cold and she’d thought it must be a good sign. But then
the numbing cold had begun to subside and she’d gotten warmer and
warmer until she’d begun to fear she would catch fire.

The first few times she’d seen blue
sky, she’d felt much the same—not quite as awed, not quite as
frightened, but still uncertain of whether or not she liked it or
should be afraid. Slowly, so slowly she was hardly aware that
things were changing at first, the thick, boiling gray and white
clouds she was so used to began to vanish little by little and she
could see blue sky more and more often. And as it did, the ice that
covered everything began to shrink and melt away. The mud and the
heat from that enormous, fiery ball in the sky began to war with
the misery of cold and then she began to see green things, many
green things, not just the occasional stubby brownish-green things
she was used to, but tiny, bright carpets of green bursting from
the soil almost everywhere she looked.

It was scary the way things had begun
changing. She wasn’t certain if it was a good thing or a bad thing.
Mostly it was just something else to worry about—whether it would
make life harder than it already was or not.

Lexa stopped abruptly as she topped
the rise she’d been struggling up, realizing she’d allowed her mind
to wander from her purpose to her misery—a very dangerous thing to
do.

Before her in the gathering gloom of
dusk was a village. Her throat closed. Her stomach growled and her
heart commenced to pounding more rapidly with a combination of fear
and excitement.

She’d run out of water almost two days
earlier and she was so low on food that she hadn’t eaten more than
a few bites here and there for nearly a week. Before her lay the
possibility of replenishing her nearly exhausted
supplies.

And also the possibility of getting
killed or raped or enslaved.

For once she didn’t debate the wisdom
of going in or avoiding it entirely, however. She had needs she
couldn’t ignore anymore. She couldn’t afford to bypass the village.
She was going to die if she didn’t get water at least and, as
dangerous as it would be to approach the village with the hope of
bartering for what she needed without getting killed in the
attempt, she really didn’t have a choice.

Strangers were never welcome. On one
level, she resented it, but then again she understood their
position. Strangers represented a threat. At the very least, it was
another hungry mouth and no one wanted to share what little they
had with strangers when it might mean someone they knew and cared
about could go hungry, or starve to death, in the stranger’s
place.

At the worst, a stranger could be a
spy, someone sent in alone to assess the fortifications, the number
of able-bodied defenders, weapons and munitions, and the food and
water supply.

Water was pretty much a given.
Villages were few and far between and they only sprouted up where
there was water, a supply sufficient to make squatting on it, and
fighting to defend it, worthwhile.

Food was another matter. Any time
enough people squatted in one place to form a village it meant
feeding them was going to be more of a problem the bigger the
village got … and this one was a fairly sizeable village. Even from
a distance and with the shadows gathering because the sun was
riding low in the sky, Lexa could see upwards of two to three dozen
huts.

Clearly, it dated back to ‘before the
day’. Besides the inevitable rickety shanties and huts she was
accustomed to seeing, there were quite a number of skeletal remains
of buildings that were more than one story tall. There were
actually two or three of those buildings that were nearly intact …
or at least looked like they were from where she stood.

Naturally, it was fortified. It
wouldn’t be there at all if not for that because of the bands of
roaming gangs. Rusting vehicles had been dragged into a rough
circle around the village and rubble from the useless buildings
piled on top and around them to form a wall eight to ten feet high.
Jagged, spear-like posts were wedged into the rubble pile at angles
and jutted outward like the quills of a porcupine.

There were a couple of
dangerous-looking men wielding guns guarding the only gate Lexa
could see and she eased back down the rise and sat down to consider
whether she ought to risk going in after all or not.

Only two guards could mean several
things.

The village hadn’t had a lot of
trouble with the gangs and didn’t see a need for more than two
guards.

Or the village had been taken over by
a gang and they were confident they had control over the whole
territory.

Either one, she decided, was as likely
as the other.

She hadn’t seen a soul in weeks, which
might support the latter theory.

Of course, she went out of her way to
avoid running in to anyone. Traveling alone was a sure way to get
killed if one didn’t make it a habit to avoid people.

Unfortunately, since she didn’t dare
make contact with other people except when it was absolutely
necessary, she was now in a position where it was absolutely
necessary. She couldn’t make it much further without water. She
wasn’t going to last a hell of a lot longer without
food.

Getting up after a few minutes, she
began to circle the village, easing up whenever she found a vantage
point that would allow it, to check out the
fortifications.

The best thing, for her, about the
fortifications, was that they were designed to keep attackers out
in general, not to keep people in, and there were usually several
places where escape was possible if not a breeze.

By the time she’d circumnavigated the
village, she’d spotted three possibilities for a quick exit if she
discovered that was desirable and she felt better about approaching
the gate and asking permission to enter.