Onio (32 page)

Then,
Two Horses’s spear entered O’Dell’s body so hard he flew through the air and
crashed into one of the parked Hummers, pinning him to the metal like a
butterfly on felt. The last thing he heard was the sound of automatic gunfire.
Two Horses, mighty as he was, jerked like a puppet on a string as bullet holes
etched their way over his body. Groaning harshly, the northern king managed to
find his way to the body of his queen and gather her up in his arms before he
died.

Then,
what might have been a meeting of two races, a melding of two minds,
degenerated into a colossal battle under the hot grey sky. The MPs rushed
General Liddy into one of the Humvees and sped away, while the Army soldiers shot
indiscriminately into the crowd of sasquatches. Males, females, little ones…it
didn’t matter. Bodies fell bleeding, while the sasq warriors flung spears,
clubs and war-hammers.

As
Onio suspected, the sasq’s weapons tore through the small human’s flesh like
hot knives through butter. He saw one of the warriors’ spears skewer three
small humans, one after the other, so the soldier’s bodies were pinned to the
ground like pieces of meat. He watched as his mother Petal turned the soldiers
own weapons into the stuff of nightmare. One by one, the small humans dropped
their rifles and handguns, screaming in fear as giant snakes, scorpions and
centipedes crawled away and disappeared.

With
every victory, however, the sasquatches suffered defeat. Onio turned to face an
advancing soldier, taking a knife wound to the shoulder before hitting the
soldier hard enough to knock him unconscious. Hearing a shout of alarm, Onio
turned around and saw that Pony was on the ground, bleeding from multiple
gunshot wounds. The king’s personal bodyguards, Ramsey and Willow, had fought
furiously but were also down now, either dead or dying. Onio saw that his
father was fighting two small humans at once, and then he spotted Blue Sky, who
was threatening a small human soldier with his spear.

The
females picked up their young and ran back the way they had come. They ran so
fast that the small humans that had followed them there, now fleeing for their
lives, saw only a blur. The warriors, however, fought on. Onio ran like the
wind and picked a small human up in his hands. He threw the soldier so hard he
landed in a field thirty feet away and laid still.

Then
the tanks moved toward them. The few human soldiers left standing took off
running as the tank’s cannons took aim and fired. Two volleys of cannon-fire
killed thirty-two sasq warriors outright, and Onio’s eardrums felt as though
they might burst. Smoke filled the air and he cried out in fear.

When
the fighting started, he had picked his wife up in his arms and carried her
into an adjacent field before returning to join in the fray. Now, he couldn’t
see where she lay. The cannon shot had left the road they were on a broken pile
of burning rubble, and black smoke filled the air. He knew that she couldn’t
hear his song from so far away, and knew she must be terrified. He was
terrified…everywhere he looked he saw dead bodies, big humans and small humans
alike. He heard the whine of the tanks’ guns winding up again, and took off
running to try to find his wife.

Sasq
warriors were trying to retreat now. Through the smoke and haze he saw the high
king being carried at a dead run down the road, but in the distance Onio saw
the Army’s grey, flying gunships coming in low. They laid down rocket fire, and
the sasq warriors in front of the charge fell dead. Turning around, he tried to
spot the field he had taken Melody to but it was unrecognizable. Small fires
dotted the landscape and one pinion pine had caught fire, blazing like a torch.

“Melody!”
he screamed. “Mel!” He ran, tears streaming from his eyes, as he tripped over
his old friend and mentor Wolf, who lay broken and bleeding on the ground at
his feet. Blue Sky lay a little to the left. He was alive but badly wounded.
His right arm was broken and shredded, his shoulder set at the wrong angle. He grinned
though, as Onio knelt over him.

“I’ve
got her, my brother…Mel’s safe,” he whispered, and indeed, Blue seemed to be
lying half on top of his wife, shielding her from the bullet fire and
percussion of the tanks’ missiles. Large gray eyes stared up at him, and she
said, “Onio, Blue’s hurt. We need to get him some medicine.”

Knowing
that they were surrounded, and hearing the military’s terrible weapons moving
closer and closer, he smiled. He moved his friend’s arm and, lying down on the
ground, he gathered Melody close and waited for the end to come.

Then
the sky opened up.

Chapter 37

A
human soldier named Larry Stevens woke up to a bright, blinding light. He had
been battling a huge sasquatch, or trying to anyway, when the sucker
cold-cocked him. It only took a second for Larry to understand that the beast
was holding back in the fight. First, when Larry tried to use his assault
rifle, the creature plucked it out of his hands and broke it over its knee. Then
he tried his pistol, to the same effect. Then, when it came down to fisticuffs,
Larry got in one good shot before the tall, dark haired, handsome sasquatch tapped
him lightly on the tip of his chin.

Now,
Larry was waking up to the brightest lights he had ever seen. They pulsed
behind his closed eyelids and made him cringe in fear when he opened his eyes
to see what was going on. Ghastly beams of white, blue and purple lights
emanated from some sort of necklace that lay on the ground by his right hand. He
remembered now…he had tried to punch the beast in the neck but only managed to
get his fist tangled up in the leather cord it wore. He recalled the necklace
coming loose before the monster’s fist tapped him and all the lights went out.

He
was lucky, he knew, massaging his sore chin gingerly. That creature could have
torn his head clean off, but for some reason, decided to be gentle instead. Looking
down at the dirt-encrusted gem that threw out the pulsing beams of light, Larry
thought it was growing less bright now, like its batteries, or whatever, were
running low. Then, with a small puff of smoke, the rock jumped slightly and
turned to ash.

Weird
! Larry thought,
poking the little pile of ash with one finger. He still felt a little woozy, so
he lay back down on the ground for a minute to catch his breath. Then his eyes
grew huge and his mouth fell open in shock. The storm clouds had parted, and an
enormous space ship sat in the heavens above him.

It
was wedge shaped, and had to be at least a mile long. The running lights that
ran the perimeter of its outer edge pulsed with blue, white and lavender
lights. Its skin was a mottled grey-green metal that seemed to shimmy and warp
if observed too closely. A huge hangar door in the undercarriage of the craft
was slowly opening. Larry strained his eyes to see if some sort of God-awful,
green monsters were lurking on the other side of the doors, but all he saw was
a glimpse of a fast-moving transport vehicle, which whizzed from left to right
on some obscure mission of its own.

Larry
knew he should get up and run for his life, but it was just too fascinating to
leave now. He felt something strange, as though he was being blessed with a
gift, a sudden enlightenment, a glimpse of destiny. Hell, he couldn’t have
moved if he tried. It was too cool.

The
sasquatches traveled with many dogs. Larry, a dog-lover himself, saw them and
hoped they would run when the fighting started. Now though, the dogs that were
left sat up on their haunches, pawing at the air and grinning with delight at
the spacecraft. Larry shook his head, marveling when some of the dogs started
up an impromptu welcome dance.

Larry
Stevens sat cross-legged on the ground, staring up at the spectacle in the sky
with a dumbfounded grin on his dark face, as did all of the sasquatches and
soldiers within the spaceship’s force field parameters. The tank commanders and
helo-pilots felt no compulsion to admire the new hostile in their midst, but
when they tried to fire their weapons they found the trigger mechanisms
unresponsive.

It
seemed like their vehicles were slowly being encased within invisible
marshmallows. The chopper blades on the attack helicopters slowed and stopped,
despite the pilots’ best efforts, but instead of falling to the ground and
bursting into flame, the birds set down as weightlessly as feathers. The tank
commanders knew the same frustration…the cannons and guns mounted on their
machines were about as useful as spaghetti noodles. The men inside the tanks
looked at one another and shrugged helplessly.

Fighter
jets suffered the same fate. When they dared fly close enough to target the
spacecraft, it felt like an invisible arm reached out and seized the jet. It
also felt to the hapless pilots trapped inside the aircraft that the arm
understood gravity and centrifugal force. The captured jets would go around and
down a number of times before being placed gently on the ground.

Twenty
minutes later, all the Army’s cars, helicopters, tanks, Humvees and fighter
jets were effectively disabled. The freak storm had blown away at the ship’s
arrival, and the creatures trapped within and without the ship’s force field
saw that the sky was blue and perfect, and the sun’s rays illuminated the small
ships that flew out of the cargo bay in the ship’s belly.

General
Liddy sat in the back seat of the Humvee, smiling in wonder. He had always
believed in aliens…always. Finally, at sixty-three-years old, he could honestly
say they existed. Tears ran unheeded and unremarked from his gentle brown eyes
as he watched the little transport vehicles pop in and out of the force field
around the space ship and the Army base.

Onio,
Mel, and Blue Sky got to their feet and watched the show in awe. They felt the
same fear as anyone else when the alien ship first arrived, but it did not take
long to realize that the ship was there to help save the sasquatches. The
smaller vehicles that flew from the ship were about as big as Grey Hound buses.
They zipped here and there, picking up the fallen sasq, male, female, and
youngster, alive or dead.

The
pilots were sasq themselves, at least partly. They looked a lot like Onio and
Blue Sky, huge and formidable, but softened somewhat, as if the small human
gene was as prevalent in their bloodstreams as pure sasq. At one point, one of
the buses flew close to where they stood watching. A human woman sat in the
passenger seat and smiled broadly at the astonished look on their faces. Then,
she tossed a bundle out the window and Onio caught it. It was the healing moss,
only slightly different…reddish, glittery. It smelled the same though, so Onio
applied it to Blue’s wounds.

Another
of the transport vehicles stopped close to the force field’s perimeter. The
pilots had opened a sort of doorway and it looked as though they were allowing
any small human who had become trapped within the barrier access to the outside
world. Mel saw another small human pilot, a man, talking with the citizens,
some of whom clearly did not want to leave. She watched one woman shake her
head no, and the man shrugged and handed her a sheet of paper to sign. The
woman, grinning broadly, sat down on the ground and began filling out
paperwork.

“Mel,
look!” Onio urged, and she turned around to see what he was pointing at. Some
sort of platform was emerging from the ship. On it stood a number of sasquatches
and small human beings. They were dressed beautifully, and seemed to shine
slightly in the sun’s glare. A huge sasquatch stepped forward and placed some
sort of clear mask over the lower part of its face. Then she said, “Mighty sasq,
please come forward.”

Onio
gaped and Blue Sky murmured, “Stars above,” but Mel smiled and said, “Come on
you guys…this is for you!”

The
sasquatches shuffled toward the stage. They looked shocked and frightened,
clearly at a loss for words, but the majesty of the female on the stage
compelled their complete obedience. The huge female looked almost
overwhelmingly joyful, her grin stretched from ear to ear and she seemed to
almost dance with pleasure. She waited as the three hundred and fourteen
surviving sasquatches made their way to the foot of the stage.

They
looked up at the sasq and small humans on the stage and the looks on their
faces expressed equal parts joy and fear for this strange new phenomena. Onio
took his wife’s hand in his and tried to hide the tears that fell from his
eyes.

The
female on the stage whispered, “My lost children….” Her voice shook with
emotion and one of the humans by her side placed his hand on her shoulder and
spoke soft words of comfort in her ear. She sagged briefly and then dashed the
tears from her eyes.

“My
children, our hearts rejoice to have found you at last!” she managed, and at
the look of consternation on their faces she laughed aloud.

“I
am sorry, my name is Leona, and I am your queen. I will try to explain and we
will show you ancient documentation, but I know you from the bottom of my
heart…this same heart that has been torn asunder with loss until today!”

Mel
realized, with a start, that this female was very old. Her hair was silver, and
tiny creases waffled her cheeks. Her brown-green eyes were clear though, and sparkled
with life.

“Onio…Daughter!”
Mel turned around and saw that Rain, Petal, Hunter, and Bouldar approached. Mel
let out a cry of joy and threw her arms around her new mother, while Onio
placed a hand on Blue’s shoulder in acknowledgement of his loss.