The Spawning (26 page)

Or, more likely, they were confident they’d so captivated the men they’d screwed that they figured they really had nothing to worry about in the foreseeable future.

Getting up decisively, Miranda surveyed her clothing and debated whether it was worth the effort to bathe off before she set out. Deciding she was just too miserably uncomfortable caked in mud, she took off her beautiful new pants and boots and carefully spread both along the roof of the hut to dry, hoping that they weren’t completely ruined, and then headed down to the water. Seeing her intent, the rest of the women got up and followed her down to bathe.

“Are we still going to try to go over the wall to see if we can find some food?”

Stacy asked.

“That’s the plan—especially after last night’s rain. The meat’s turning because it didn’t cook long enough.”

“We should probably try to get more water while we’re at it,” Deborah put in. “I think some of the bimbos have been sneaking fresh water for their damned hair.”

Anger surged through Miranda. “You’re not serious? Even they can’t be that

stupid.”

“Au contraire!” Mary Jane contradicted her. “They can and they are. I’m

surprised they remember to breathe.”

“I’m going to beat the fatal shit out of the whole bunch of them if I catch them at it!” Miranda growled, but then tamped her anger with an effort. “Alright, we’ll check the bottles before we go, pour everything together and take the empties with us. Mary Jane, I want you to find a couple of women to help you watch the water while we’re gone—

guard
the water. We should be able to find something after the rain, but you never know.”

Miranda hadn’t bothered to remove her gown before she went in. It was muddier than she was. When she’d slogged out of the water, she took it off and wrung as much water out as she could, then put the gown on again. She supposed she should’ve tried to wash the mud out of her new clothes, but she’d been afraid the salt water might be even worse for them. They were completely ruined, she was sure, but there wasn’t anything she could do about it.

Weeping hadn’t helped, surprise, surprise!

When Deborah and Stacy had followed suit, the three of them set out toward the plank they’d been working on the evening before and squatted down to finish tying it off.

They had to have help lifting it to the wall and bracing it. The angle was steeper than Miranda had wanted, but they couldn’t find a gentle slope that would put them close THE SPAWNING Kaitlyn O’Connor 116

enough to the top and, moreover, the plank wouldn’t stay up. Leaving a couple of women to brace the bottom to keep it from slipping, Miranda started up.

Her wet, muddy feet were slick and so were the poles. After a couple of attempts to scale the plank, though, she’d smeared most of the mud off and finally managed to get some traction. The cross pieces they’d used for bracing helped with the climb but they were too far apart to be as much help as they might’ve been otherwise and she resolved to cut a few more and add to it the first chance she got.

It also didn’t help that she’d burned her fingers and it was hard to ignore the pain and grip the slick wood tightly enough to climb. Eventually, huffing for breath, she made it to the top. Fearful the damned plank would drop from under her, she didn’t wait to catch her breath. Instead, she straightened and grabbed at the top edge of the wall and began trying to heave her lard ass upward enough to throw a leg over and finish the climb.

Damn it! She hadn’t realized just how heavy her bottom end was until she tried to drag it up the wall with her arms! Either her arms were weaker than the last time she’d tried pull-ups, though, or her ass and thunder thighs were gaining ground.

Fortunately, she discovered the top of the wall was as wide as the bottom, nearly four feet. That made it impossible to reach across for a grip on the opposite side to help with the climb, but at least she had a flat surface to collapse on when she finally made it.

She lay huffing for breath, trying to ignore her sore throat and lungs from the smoke inhalation the night before. Finally, she pushed herself up onto to her hands and knees and looked down toward the gates. “It’s … been barricaded!” she called down to the women down on the ground looking up at her.

“A tree fell on it or something?” Deborah called back, obviously confused.

“They barricaded it!” Miranda said angrily. “This isn’t something that got blown down against the gates! It’s a huge pile of stones!”

“I’m coming up for a look!”

Miranda shrugged. She didn’t see how Deborah’s assessment was going to

change anything. There was no way that they could move the stones, she knew. They were just too big.

Damn Khan’s hide! She knew he had to be behind it even if he hadn’t done it

himself. He was their leader. They didn’t argue with him when he told them they needed to do something. They just did it!

After glancing down to gauge Deborah’s progress several times, she finally

nerved herself to stand up. The wall was wide, but it was impossible to stand without getting vertigo since there wasn’t anything solid on either side of her. When she’d stood and braced her feet wide for balance, she scanned the forest, discovering she could actually see over a good bit of the growth from the vantage point of the wall. There were tall trees, but they were a good bit taller than the wall and most of them didn’t actually have branches except at the very top, that formed an umbrella like canopy. The brushy growth beneath them didn’t grow nearly as tall as the wall, however. The trees grew thickly and the trunks impeded a good bit of the view, but she could still see a fair distance.

She could see the clearing where the trader’s ship had landed when it brought

them down. Some of the underbrush had recovered from the landing, but she saw the glint of sunlight on water—a puddle, maybe?

THE SPAWNING Kaitlyn O’Connor 117

The Hirachi, she realized, had done quite a bit of clearing themselves near the compound. Something prevented the plants from encroaching within six to ten feet of the walls anyway—she supposed. She hadn’t seen that the Hirachi cleared it and it was bare to the dirt. They’d cut down, with Khan’s help, most of the bamboo like plants close to the enclosure, which had cleared a fairly wide area, and the Hirachi excursions to collect wood to burn had thinned the jungle growth a good bit, too.

At least she could see well enough from where she stood to see that there weren’t any animals close by—at the moment.

Deborah reached the wall. “I’m not sure I can make it up,” she said, huffing for breath.

Settling on her belly since she didn’t want to take the chance that Deborah would pull her off, Miranda grabbed both of her hands and tried to pull her high enough that Deborah could get one leg over the edge of the wall. She slipped a couple of times trying to ‘walk’ up the wall, but finally managed to get one leg over. Releasing one of her hands, Miranda grabbed her leg and pulled until she was on the wall.

Closing her eyes, Deborah lay huffing for breath as she had.

“Ready?” Stacy called up to them.

“Not yet!” Deborah said gustily. “Give me a minute.”

She finally managed to get to her hands and knees but after one attempt to stand up, she simply crawled over to the edge near the gate and looked down. “Well shit! We can’t move that. What now?”

Miranda glanced a little doubtfully at their plank. “I suppose, if we can pull it up we can use it to get down and then up again when we get back. We could jump down, but then we wouldn’t have a way back in.”

“No way in hell am I jumping!” Deborah said emphatically. “I know it isn’t

really that far, but it
looks
a long way from here and I can’t do it!”

Miranda shrugged. “So we get Stacy up here and see if the three of us can pull the plank up.”

Stacy managed it with seeming ease, earning her a resentful glare from both

Miranda and Deborah. Getting to her feet, she looked around with interest. “What’s next? Water bottles? Or the plank?”

“Let’s get the plank up. That’ll probably take all three of us.”

It actually took the three of them up top and four of the women below. When

Miranda and Stacy had managed to lean down and get a grip of the top edge, the women below grabbed it and walked toward the wall, then shoved it up as high as they could reach. It still took all Miranda, Stacy, and Deborah could do to hoist it the remainder of the way up using the top end to help lever part of the weight.

They dropped it when they tried to carefully slide it over the other side.

The three women stood staring down at their plank in consternation for several moments. “I’ll jump,” Miranda finally volunteered, “and then push it against the wall for you two.”

“I can jump it,” Stacy assured her. “We’ll both do it. It’ll probably take both of us to lift it.”

Miranda wasn’t going to argue. Nodding, she turned and looked down at the

women on the other side. “Throw the bottles up.”

It might have comical if it hadn’t been so pathetic and frustrating. Not only could THE SPAWNING Kaitlyn O’Connor 118

nobody throw, nobody could catch when the women on the ground finally did manage to pitch the bottles high enough. Neither Deborah nor Stacy could decide whether to try to catch the bottles that did make it up to them or dodge them. Within a few minutes it began to sound like a baseball game. The majority of the women came close enough to play spectators and cheerleaders, screaming encouragement and directions. Several volunteered to have a try at pitching the bottles to the women on the wall. Miranda narrowly missed being clocked by one in the head—which she didn’t catch.

She’d finally managed to gather four in the pocket she’d formed with the tail her gown when there was a rumble in the distance loud enough to catch everyone’s attention.

Everyone froze, scanning the sky for any sign of thunder. They didn’t see

anything, but they heard the rumble again—felt it.

Frowning, everyone looked at each other.

“What was that?” several women called up in unison. “Do you see anything?

Deborah, Miranda, and Stacy began looking around, searching the landscape as

far as they could see for any sign of anything that might account for the noise. When Miranda heard it the third time, though, she realized it seemed to be coming from beyond the sea wall. Her heart thumping with uneasiness, she headed in that direction to look out to sea.

The Hirachi village, Khan had told her, was out there … somewhere, and

Miranda’s first thought was of them. Hurrying as quickly as she dared, she walked until she was beyond the water’s edge, craning upward to see if she could see anything. She wasn’t reassured when she didn’t. She hesitated, but she needed to know that whatever they’d heard wasn’t an explosion, or maybe a quake beneath the sea—or a volcanic eruption.

The last two thoughts made her heart race even faster. Clutching her gown close to keep from dropping the bottles, she increased her pace until she was almost running.

She stopped abruptly when she reached the corner where the wall turned, scanning the horizon and then the surface of the water between the wall and the horizon.

The water, she saw, was churning.

Abruptly, she
felt
the rumble beneath her feet.

Before she could whirl and race back, something broke the surface of the water and shot upward in a flying arch. She’d already sucked her breath in to scream when it clicked in her mind that it was one of the Hirachi, though he was too far away for her to recognize him. He hit the water nearly on top of a second Hirachi.

Feeling perfectly blank, Miranda stared at that point in the water until the two surfaced again and she realized they weren’t trying to get away from whatever it was that had made the wall shake. They were fighting!

The moment she realized that, she discovered that she could see dozens of others fighting just beneath the surface. That was what had the water churning, the battle in progress between the Hirachi.

She still felt blank. She couldn’t make any sense of it.

A rival tribe?

Were
there other Hirachi on the planet?

Dimly, in the distance, she could hear the women calling questions. She glanced back toward the beach. Deborah and Stacy had both started down the wall toward her. It shook again. Her heart leapt into her throat. She braced herself, trying to keep her THE SPAWNING Kaitlyn O’Connor 119

balance. “Go back! It’s the wall!” she screamed. “Quake!”

Deborah and Stacy both halted, their eyes rounding, their lips parting in dawning horror. Miranda glanced behind her, wondering whether it would do any good to try to warn the Hirachi.

She discovered she’d already captured the attention of several of them.

They were swimming
toward
her, though, not away from the threat!

“No! No! Go back! It’s going to fall!”

Khan’s head appeared above the surface, close enough she recognized him. After staring at her for a split second, he dove. Vaguely relieved, certain that meant he’d heard her warning, she turned and began to jog back toward safety herself, afraid to run very fast for fear the thing would shake again and she’d lose her balance.

A wet splat behind her caught her attention and she halted, turning to look.

Khan had landed on the top of the wall where she’d been standing moments

before.

She stared at him blankly, her mind scrambling to figure out how he’d managed

to get from the surface of the water to the top of the wall that quickly. Even as she stared, however, another man shot up from the sea and landed almost on his heels.

Teron.

Uttering a snarl of rage, Khan slammed his elbow backwards into Teron. Teron’s arms pin-wheeled in an effort to regain his balance and then he disappeared over the side again.

Miranda’s jaw dropped.

Khan met her gaze, his own piercing. His expression, even at the distance that separated them, unnerved her. He smiled abruptly.

Actually, it was a lot closer to a feral grin.