Eden (8 page)

Bodie, in Taurus XI, sat at the controls with his head in his hands.

Matt, his eyes fixated with horror, stared at the bluey globe of Planet Eden from the porthole. His lips parted in a soundless cry as Jenny
’s
screams sliced into his brain from the headset. He ripped it off.

Bodie
’s
head spun round towards him with a hopeful look on his face.

Seeing the expression, Matt picked up the headset and listened, but could only hear the inhuman howling.

Jenny lashed out blindly. Her fist made contact with something hard, and a hiss of warm breath on her face caused her to open her eyes.

An Indian warrior, with a terrifyingly ugly face, stared down at her. It was a face that had already been to hell and was only half way back again; a face that was distorted through scarring amassed from a violent world. Its disfigured mouth was a twisted line, and the eyes were as cold and as black as the river that twisted its way through the dark foreboding jungle.

She should scream. She should feel in terror for her life. Instead she felt a calm wash over her. Then her head rolled on her shoulders, and her eyes closed.

Fly pulled her out, her weight mere air to him. He tossed her over his shoulder and carried her over to the spaceship. Lowering her to the ground with a gentleness that embarrassed him, he shouldered up the door, and with a last look at the natives that fawned before him, he picked her up and carried her inside.

Jenny came into awareness slowly. The ground below was a long way off, and it took a moment to
realiz
e she was upside down over Flitespinter
’s
shoulder. She must have made some sort of noise because the ground became still and the hand that held her allowed her to slip down the long length of his body.

She became as still as a terrified rabbit before a car
’s
headlights as, for a fragment of a second, her face was inches from his. She noticed his eyes weren’t completely black, but dark brown. Only the widening pupils, were black.

His arousal became apparent the moment she slipped down the long length of his body. It strained against the fabric of his clothes, and pressed hard against her as she was held tightly against him. Her mind registered what was happening, and her fearful reaction was almost violent in its suddenness.

He didn’t bother to hide the lewd expression in his eyes.

She stared up, and tried hard to mask her revulsion at his open appraisal, and when he tilted her head back by pushing her chin up with his fist, she planted a placid expression on her face.

“You hurt?” he asked, surprising her. His eyes flickered over her face as if trying to read all her thoughts. “You stay here. Not safe outside,” he spoke slowly, stumbling over words that, without his computer, were strange.

Not waiting for an answer, he closed his fingers around the nape of her neck

Jenny cringed, but was unable to duck away from the offending hand. He turned her around and pushed her forward towards the dim corridor, and his cabin.

TEN

Bodie was frantic. He tried the transmitter again and again.

“It
’s
no use. She
’s
dead,” Matt said. “Bodie,” he shouted as the other man refused to hear him. “She
’s
dead.”

Bodie turned to him, his breathing was rapid. “I swear I heard the alien. He may’ve rescued her...”

Matt gripped Bodie
’s
shoulders as the other man
’s
voice faltered and broke. He shook him roughly. “What you heard were the
wolves,
and nothing could’ve survived them. And even if you did hear the alien -”

“I did!”

“If
you did, then the wolves killed him too.
I’m
sorry, Bodie, but there
’s
nothing we can do for her anymore. We have to look after ourselves before Taurus runs out of fuel.”

Bodie smacked the solid screen of Kate with his fist. “Damn it, Kate, why’d you allow us to take off without her?”

“I detect three persons on board, James: Commander James Bodie, Pilot Jennifer Daykin, and Mission Specialist Matthew Green.” Only a computer, yet Kate still managed to sound indignant, Matt however was too preoccupied to notice. He watched worriedly as Bodie raked a shaking hand through his hair.

“Kate needs to be repaired,” Matt said. “This isn’t our fault, Bo, we both thought Jenny was with us when Taurus took off. I swear I heard you urge her to run, and
I’m
sure I saw her dive into the rear of the buggy. We panicked, that
’s
all I can say.”

“Cowards,” Bodie groaned. He sounded in pain. “We were cowards! Christ, I should’ve known Kate wasn’t working properly, should’ve checked Jen was behind us.”

“This isn’t your fault.”

“
I’m
the commander. Of course it
’s
my bloody fault!” he exploded.

“I’ve one more alteration to make on Taurus
’s
underside, then
we -”

“Then we
’ll
go down, I know. By the noise the wolves were making there won’t be anything left of either of them. Jesus Christ.” he swallowed several times, and sat with a hand over his mouth as if to stifle weeping.

Matt didn’t answer; he was feeling uncharacteristically the same. As engineer of the voyage he understood Taurus
’s
innards better than anyone, but after hearing the voice of the inhabitants he had no intention of risking re-entry into Planet Eden
’s
atmosphere.

Jenny plodded along, stupefied. The fingers circling her nape were biting and painful, but she barely noticed. The echo of the wolves” howling was still too strongly embedded in her mind. Part of her knew Fly was leading her to her rape, and that part of her was going to allow it to happen because the other side was lying dormant through fear and exhaustion.

The corridor was laden with dirt and grime. Animal excrement, electronic debris lay in her path, but she continued to walk where she was urged. His cabin door was open, and he nudged her towards the bed.

While she sat nervously on the edge, he heated a metal canteen over a crudely assembled grill, wired haphazardly to a small accumulator. She watched as he stirred in the same beverage that she had yesterday morning. When it was steaming, he filled a cup and gave it to her.

He sat on a chair opposite, and observed her with his usual disconcerting stare.

She stared back, confused, until her fingers began to burn from holding the cracked cup. She pressed it against her lips, and it was only then that she
realiz
ed her teeth were chattering.

“You are not going to survive,” he said finally using one of the small computers he had taken from the shelf.

She gulped a mouthful of the liquid, and tried to disguise the unwelcome tears that pooled in her eyes. Already he thought her a weak, pathetic female and, for some strange reason, she didn’t want to give him further evidence to think any worse of her.

“How do you stand it,” she asked quietly, “the endless howling, night after night?”

“There is a worse sound, and that is no sound at all.”

She fell silent, acknowledging this and feeling her own loneliness magnify. A lone wolf from outside, or even inside the ship, howled. She closed her eyes knowing she would never be able to forget how close she was to being eaten alive.

“Th-the wolves,” she said, shuddering, “what
are
they?” “Wolves?” He looked at her in confusion when the translator offered no other information other than describing the canine creature that lived on Earth.

“It
’s
what I call the howling creatures,” she explained. “Their noise is similar to the animals back home.”

“The wolves dominate over every animal here, and I regard them as the natives. To you they may seem savage, but they have shown me intelligence not normally found in animals. “

“Natives?” she half laughed, shaking her head in denial.

“Yes.” He was patient with her constant questions, as if he knew they were making her calmer. The violent shuddering had left her, and her pulse slowed to a steadier pace, but her ears still rang with the voice of the natives.

“You
’re
very kind,” she said after a while.

He seemed to hesitate. “You are wrong. I am not kind.”

She looked at him. “You are to me.”

“Loneliness has taught me something.”

She swallowed, thinking of her own fate. “It
’s
something you can never imagine, isn’t it? Until you need to depend on another, and find nobody there.” She nodded around at her surroundings. “Finding yourself the only survivor of this crash must have been horrific. Did, er, you lose anybody very close?”

He consulted his small computer. “No,” he said, and added as if he wanted to explain. “We are not a peaceful species, and do not feel any of the “gentler” emotion of the human. “

“We aren’t exactly peaceful either,” she said, thinking of the never-ending war between the Nordic nations and Russia over the oil in the Arctic.

“Your race has many emotions that our species has grown away from. “

“Like what?”

“Love and compassion.”

She frowned, disturbed. “But you must feel compassion - you saved my life! You would’ve walked away and left me to die if you didn’t hold such an emotion.”

“We are the only intelligent life forms here - why would I allow your destruction to be alone again?”

It struck her that he was trying to warn her of something important; his rape of her hadn’t happened, and it was almost as if he were cautioning her that it was still to come.

She swirled the chocolate
colored
liquid around in the carton with great deliberation. The natives, with their fierce snarling and howling, as they attacked the buggy, shaking it like a toy, had terrified her, and whatever his intentions she had to be grateful of this small interlude.

*

She had burrowed down in Fly
’s
bedding like a small animal seeking the security of its nest, sleeping away some of the exhaustion she was feeling.

She began to awaken as a nightmare took hold of her consciousness and she surfaced breathing rapidly. Gradually her heartbeat slowed to its normal pace, and she pulled the cover off her face and lay staring up at the low ceiling.

The cabin was light. Daylight spilled in from a hole in the lower wall. She touched her throbbing head and wondered how long she had been asleep. The way she had been feeling it could have been years.

She lay listening for signs of Fly. The spaceship was eerily silent. Its musky smell of rot mingled with the lingering smell of cinders - and him.

A muffled bang caused her to jump. It was followed by a single exotic word, and even in another language, she
recognized
it as a curse.

She swung her legs off the bed and turned towards the cabin door in time to see a large melon roll passed the doorway. She stepped into the corridor and noticed a couple more lying against the wall.

The unfamiliar language gathered momentum and, picking up the three fruits, Jenny followed the sound. The corridor darkened with each step she took, almost as though she were walking further underground. When the corridor branched off into several she stopped, but noticed a crushed fruit on the floor to the right, and took that road. In the distance, Fly
’s
back was disappearing around a corner. His arms were loaded, and a flashlight was secured around his waist.

Jenny stared at it in amazement - it was her lost torch!

The light disappeared as he turned the corner, and if she didn’t hurry, she would lose sight of him. Rounding the corner, she
realiz
ed with horror he wasn’t in front. He was nowhere, yet the corridor had no doors and stretched on in one straight line.

As the dark was about to engulf her something fell from above and landed at her feet, sending a spray of juice over her. She looked up, first noticing hand-repaired boots, before
realiz
ing Fly stood on a sheer metal ladder and was on the verge of disappearing to the next floor. He stood looking down at her and at the dropped fruit at her feet.

She indicated to the fruit in her arms. “You left a trail.”

“Come,” he said, after a lengthy pause, where she shuffled her feet uncomfortably under his stare. “I show you food.”

Jenny, grinning with relief, began to climb clumsily, following in his tracks like a faithful dog.

The top was a small landing with a large heavy door. Inside, the room was huge, but cluttered with containers of every description, and all
labeled
with strange symbols. He placed the large box he’d been carrying on top of such a container, then turned to face her. He reached for the computer in his pocket, and then pointed around the room.

“This is where all the reserve food is kept,” he said with every syllable singly pronounced. “I also store fruit, nuts and vegetables when I can find them. They will be coming back into season soon. “

Jenny placed the fruit she was holding next to the box. “Is there much food left?” she asked hopefully.

“Only the dehydrated. The fresh food rotted soon after the spaceship came down. “

She would have liked to poke around, but Fly was at the door, and with one last lingering look, she followed him out and down the ladder.

Soon they were back in the cabin. “The space vessel is not safe,” he told. “You must not explore it in great detail. I am telling you
this because I am giving you the cabin. “

“Where will you sleep?”

“Outside.”

“Outside? Won’t you be cold, and what about the wolves, er, natives?”

“The natives and the cold will not harm me,” he said. Then continued through the aid of the small translator, “This spacecraft will not last another winter, and I am building an alternative shelter. I need to purge from the vessel as much material as I can before it disintegrates.” He fastened the computer around his thigh and ushered her out to the cabin adjacent to his as if before she could ask any more questions.

The room was trashed, the walls blackened from fire. The floor was cracked, and grass had found its way in. It pushed up through the floor causing other gaps to branch off from the first. Fly lifted the cabin bed, which had been ripped off the wall in the explosion, and stood holding the rotting mattress. He dropped it and pulled off the single foil-type cover; rolling it up he threw it out into the corridor.

“What can I do?” she asked.

He looked at the blackened and dented cupboard. “Look for anything that can be of use.”

The closet doors had been fused together beneath the intense heat, and forcing them apart would have been impossible. She doubted the contents would be serviceable anyway. She proceeded to search the vertical cupboard beneath the shelf.

Fly had gone next door, she could hear him as he wrestled with heavy equipment.

She wondered briefly why she was helping him remove objects from the ship that
she
may find useful, but she continued to search the dark interior of the cupboard gingerly, not keen to find anything
unsavory
. She pulled out another foil-blanket wrapped in a plastic cover and tossed this out to join the rest of the salvaged goods in the corridor.

Becoming confident, she plunged her arm back in, but withdrew at speed with a shriek of alarm. On her arm was something that looked like a large black spider with more legs than she cared to count. As it scuttled away, Jenny noted with a shudder that its “legs” were thick hairs that rippled like the fur of a cat, and the actual legs were among this hair.

“Woo-man?”

She jumped, and then pivoted round to face him on the balls of her feet. Crouched as she was, she lost her balance and promptly fell backwards on her behind.

Fly watched her with his large eyes. “We have enough, carry what you can outside. “

Jenny nodded from where she sat. “I was just, er, you know, taking a little rest,” she said, and leaned even further back, crossing her legs at the ankles.

Fly looked from her to the spider trying to burrow its way into a tiny crevice in the wall. “Harmless,” he said, and turned and walked away without revealing anything on his blank face.