Return to Eden (3 page)

Muffled sounds penetrated the roaring
in her ears but between her inner focus and the partial deafness,
she couldn’t make heads or tails of what she was hearing. Slowly,
the dizziness and disorientation subsided. Once it did, she began
to feel a multitude of aches and pains but, to her relief, nothing
intense enough to suggest that she was seriously damaged. Realizing
that she was just bruised and that she’d probably been too shocked,
and limp, to sustain anything serious, she opened her eyes, slowly
pushed herself upright, and looked around.

The light around her had dimmed enough
that she realized she’d lost a good bit of time while she lay
stunned on the embankment, but there were no cars moving on the
interstate and no lights—anywhere that she could see. In point of
fact, the interstate looked like a parking lot, or rather more like
an untidy child’s car collection. There were cars on top of cars,
crushed cars, cars and trucks laying crazily on their sides. Clouds
of steam were rising from busted radiators. The smell of burned
rubber was thick in the air.

For many moments, Anya merely stared
open mouthed at the pile up, searching with her gaze for any
movement. Where were the people, she wondered blankly? As
horrendous as the pile up was, everyone couldn’t be
dead.

Unable to process what she was seeing,
Anya’s mind abruptly leapt backwards to the falling star, her
conviction that it was going to land on top of her, and her race to
escape. Grunting, she heaved herself to her feet, looked around to
get her bearings and began climbing up the hill she’d rolled down.
Slipping and sliding on the grass, she finally managed to reach the
top again. Shock rolled over her when she took in the sight that
met her gaze.

Both gas stations appeared to be
intact—basically. Most of the cars were gone and despite the fact
that it was almost completely dark by now, there were no lights—and
no signs of any people.

Blinking a couple of times, Anya
scanned a wider survey. From her vantage point, she could see up
and down the interstate in both directions. The entire highway, as
far as she could see, looked like a parking lot. There were no
lights anywhere. In the distance, she could detect some movement
and thought it was the people who’d abandoned their cars. Most of
them seemed to be running.

From what, she wondered
blankly?

Her heart skipped several beats as the
primal instinct to run from threat went through her in a rush that
seemed to sap every ounce of strength from her muscles for many
moments when her mind abruptly answered the
question—missile.

She whipped a look around, but there
was no sign of an explosion—nothing except the glass blown out of
windows everywhere and toppled signs.

That brought the memory flooding back
of the forceful concussion that had helped her down the
embankment.

There were no emergency lights. There
was no sound of sirens. There were no planes overhead.

She spied the obelisk then.

She didn’t know how she’d missed it
before—except maybe her mind had simply dismissed it as something
that belonged. It looked to be made of metal. It was almost the
same dull silver color and size of the massive high power towers
she was used to seeing, but there all similarity ended. Part of it,
she was certain, was buried in the ground from impact, and yet it
looked taller than the towering high power poles she was used to
seeing and beyond that, it seemed … almost sculpted. It reminded
her of pictures she’d seen of totem poles, except this was made of
metal, she thought, not wood. It wasn’t painted and the odd
sculpting didn’t feature a series of mythological monsters. It
looked—more like some sort of modern art, or alien glyphs ran the
length of it.

The moment the word ‘alien’ popped into
her mind, certainty sank through her.

It wasn’t a missile or a
misplaced rocket from NASA. This wasn’t something from
any
place on
earth!

Almost the moment that thought sank in,
she heard a whirring noise and saw cracks begin to open along the
length of the strange missile. Her heart hit her chest wall and
dropped to her feet.

“
Oh my god! It’s about to
blow!”

Weak with terror, she looked around
frantically for some sort of protective shelter, but both of the
buildings within easy reach were way too close to the thing for
comfort. Ditto her car. She looked at it longingly for a moment,
but she realized she had no idea where her purse or her keys
were.

A sound drew her gaze back to the
strangely alien obelisk and she saw that it was slowly opening
…almost like a flower extending new stems. There were posts now
sticking out from it in different directions and more
opening.

Uttering an animal noise of terror, she
raced across the road, instinctively running in the direction of
home even though she was still miles and miles from that safe
harbor. Mindlessly, she ran down the embankment on the other side.
The urge to scream ‘wait for me!’ struck her as she pierced the
darkness in front of her and saw tiny, dark shadows of people
running away, probably several miles from where she was by
now.

Cringing with the expectation of
feeling a blast from behind at any moment and fire melting her into
a puddle, Anya ignored the pain that developed in her side and her
breathlessness and struggled to reach safety before the bomb went
off.

Chapter Two

Aidan lost sight of the artificial
satellite as it pierced the planet’s atmosphere and the fire from
its entry went out. “The object! The satellite we collided with!
Follow it! I need it!” he commanded the onboard
computer.

Instead of responding immediately to
his command, the computer continued its damage report.

It was unfortunate that Aidan wasn’t
technical minded enough, or familiar enough with interstellar
craft, to understand a word of it. “Is the ship capable of
landing?” he demanded impatiently.

“
Unknown.”

That response shook him. “What the hell
do you mean by that? Are you suggesting we’re going to
crash?”

“
Barring other breakdown
from damaged navigational and landing equipment due to the impact,
I believe I can achieve a controlled crash.”

That didn’t sound good, Aidan decided.
“Can you control it to crash close to the object we struck?” There
was no point in worrying about repairing the damage to his ship, he
reasoned, until they’d landed. It wasn’t as if he could repair
anything quickly. Even with the computer’s assistance in repairs it
was likely to take him a while to figure it out.

“
Calculating the
trajectory of the object in question.”

Aidan drummed his fingers impatiently
on the armrest of the control chair while he awaited the
answer.

“
The object has crashed.
I’ve located a potential landing site for this craft within 15
kilometers.”

Aidan frowned. That sounded like a long
walk—particularly considering it was an alien and totally
unfamiliar landscape and the fact that the terra-formers had
already landed. Even with the accelerated evolution, though, he
thought he might be able to make it there, collect what he needed,
and return to the craft before anything truly terrifying evolved.
“Alright. When you’ve set the ship down, I’m going to need a map to
the object.”

“
Affirmative. Might I
suggest that you abandon ship? You have ten seconds to enter the
escape pod.”

A jolt went through Aidan, but he was
out of his seat and racing toward the emergency escape pod almost
before the computer began the countdown. He leapt inside and
secured the hatch just as the computer announced, “three!” He was
only halfway into his safety harness when the pod was ejected.
Aborting the attempt to get the last two straps into the locking
mechanism, he merely gripped the two straps frantically and gritted
his teeth as his stomach lodged itself into his throat. It was as
well he did. The pod almost immediately began to bounce and shake
with so much violence that he was relatively certain his teeth
would have perforated his tongue pretty thoroughly if he hadn’t had
his jaws clamped together.

The deployment of the chute sent a hard
jolt through his body that traveled up his spine and gave him a
splitting headache. It was his cue that the pod would be slamming
into the planet’s surface very shortly, however, and he unclenched
his eyes and fought another round with his safety harness, finally
managing to get the last two straps secured seconds before
impact.

Feeling a little outdone when the
actual contact with the ground paled by comparison to ejection and
freefall, he unfastened his harness and looked around for the hatch
release. The pod was tilted crazily and rocked unnervingly as he
struggled out the hatch once he’d opened it. When he emerged and
looked around, he saw why. The pod was perched precariously on a
rather steep drop off.

No doubt the trees between his position
and the bottom would halt its progress even if the pod did begin to
roll, but that thought didn’t particularly comfort him and Aidan
eased the remainder of the way out of the pod with great care. His
knees were a little wobbly, he discovered, once he was on solid
ground and he sat down to allow the weakness to pass, studying the
terrain around him with a good bit of dismay.

He hadn’t expected to find himself in
the middle of a jungle, on the dark side of the planet, and he had
the uneasy feeling that it was going to take him a lot longer to
find what was left of the satellite than he’d
anticipated.

* * * *

Physical distress superseded fear after
a time. Anya stopped to catch her breath when she realized she was
in danger of passing out and turned to look back at the threatening
obelisk, mildly heartened that it hadn’t blown up … yet. As she
stared at it in the gathering gloom, however, she thought she
detected a dark plume of smoke rising out of it and forming a
shifting cloud. She stared hard at that shifting cloud, huffing for
breath and trying to figure out what seemed strange about
it.

There was no wind to account for the
shifting, she realized after a moment, instinctively looking up at
the tops of the trees to see if there was wind higher up that might
explain the phenomenon. There seemed to be a slight wind ruffling
the tops of the trees, but it didn’t seem to be enough to explain
so much movement.

Transferring her gaze back to the
obelisk, she realized the movement seemed more purposeful than
random—like a swarm of insects.

Bees.

She didn’t stop to consider the
unlikelihood that it would be bees swarming from something that
seemed so alien—or in fact a missile or rocket of earthly origins.
Swarm connected in her mind with danger and she whipped a frantic
look around for cover.

There was a virtual sea of smashed and
crumpled cars on the highway. Not only did they look to offer
little in the way of shelter in their current condition, however,
the thought instantly leapt into her mind that there could be a
body or bodies in any of them.

All of them weren’t wrecked, she saw
now that she was close enough for a better view. Quite a number of
them appeared intact or relatively intact, as if the drivers had
skidded to a halt and merely leapt out and abandoned them but the
possibility of finding a body was enough to instantly redirect her
mind to some other shelter.

That stretch of highway seemed bereft
of human habitation, though. Nothing but woods and more woods
bordered the highway without a sign of a friendly light to indicate
the presence of people. There was an overpass behind her and
another that looked like it might be a mile or two away.

A culvert caught her eye and she rushed
toward it before she had time to consider what might be
inside—besides water. She’d had time before she reached it to
consider slithering things, though. Bending down, she grabbed a
handful of dirt, grass, and rocks and pitched them inside. When
there was no telltale rattling, she crawled just inside and curled
into a ball.

It was uncomfortable but at least dry
and she felt safer as soon as she thought about the fact that it
was made of reinforced concrete and buried under asphalt and dirt.
Surely, even if the thing blew up, she was far enough away by now
and had enough protection to be relatively safe?

She was still working on convincing
herself when she heard a sound similar to the sound she’d heard
before the obelisk landed. The world outside her cramped hiding
place brightened. A fireball shot through the trees within view and
then disappeared.

Anya tensed. Another one of those
things? Or something else?

She heard an impact, like distant
thunder. Faint vibrations traveled through the culvert.

A shiver ran along Anya’s
spine.

What was going on?

Were they at war, she
wondered?

If they were, she realized in a few
moments, it wasn’t with some other country.

They were being invaded by
aliens!

As soon as the thought occurred to her
she tried to dismiss it. The conference had gone to her head! She’d
spent days watching people stroll around the hotels and Atlanta
streets dressed as aliens and galactic warriors and ‘acclimated’ to
the idea of intergalactic travel and alien
civilizations.