When Aliens Weep (2 page)

“Like what, Johno? Something wrong?” They eyed him with concern.

Johno gulped a deep breath, calming down. “We thought we saw something on the hill. It looked like Echo or Baby to me . . . I’m not sure.” He stared at the large box that hung from Hud’s side. “Where are you going with that, my friend?”

Ginger Mae tugged on Hud’s arm. “We need to get going, Hud, no telling how long we’re going to have access to the Hive. Johno, we have no idea what you’re talking about. You want to come with us? We could use some help.” Turning, she waved at Peter returning to the kitchen, motioning for him to join them. Jogging up to the base of the hill, he asked. “What’s up, guys?”

“Johno thinks he saw Baby and Echo on the hill.”

Johno raised his hand, “No, not on the hill . . . at the top. My men thought they saw Cobby and Bonnie.”

Peter screwed up his face. “No, not Bonnie. She’s in the kitchen. I’m on my way there now.”

“Can you spare another half hour or so?” Hud asked.

“Yeah,” interjected Ginger Mae. “We could use the extra hand to carry some of the last of the good stuff from storage. I know it’ll be needed eventually. Why waste it?” She turned her charm on Peter. “Please . . . Bonnie won’t mind waiting with the babies.”

He dismissed Johno’s concerns, “Wish we could help you.” Looping her arm through Hud and Peter’s, she proceeded to tug them up the hill.

Peter cranked his sweaty neck back to Johno. “Can you stop by the kitchen, Johno? Let Bonnie know?”

“Sure. You guys go on. I’m headed for the kitchen anyway, got to feed the crew. You be off now. Keep your eyes open.” He waved at the chummy threesome but they’d already turned their backs to him, deep in conversation, their laughter carrying back down the hill.

Johno watched quietly, his wise eyes scanning the quiet woods. Ginger Mae’s voice was now a distant musical note fleeting and fading as they moved among the trees. The viper in his stomach twitched a warning.
Yeah, yeah, I hear you, my friend. Please . . . just settle down for me. I pray you’re wrong and it’s just my imagination
.

Johno hurriedly made his way back to the kitchen, Crystal now weighing heavily on his mind. He needed to find her and get her up to the Hive. Just on the off-chance that the viper in his stomach was correct.

Rounding the side of the kitchen, he observed the door closing behind someone. He heard voices inside as the door swung back open to admit him.

“Johno, what are you doing here?” Crystal approached her husband to give him a resounding kiss then turned back to the other survivors, who watched with stupefied faces.

Clyde, Salina and Jennifer stood examining the empty kitchen; there was no sign of Dezi or the lunch fixings that would normally be apparent. Dezi’s counters sparkled clean and clear. Not a crumb in sight.

Clyde escorted his two women to a table, leaning in to be extra solicitous toward Jennifer who had yet to recover fully from her mental breakdown suffered the night they’d met the members of the tribe from the Franklin Mines. It was forbidden to mention the names Lorna and Seth around her even as Lorna’s revelation about her parentage brought great bittersweet joy to them all. All the survivors had great hopes for the future and the uniting of Lorna’s tribe with their group.

Father Garcia and Maddy approached from the confines of the nursery, worried expressions now shared by all.

“I don’t understand. Where are the babies? Where’s Cobby? And Chloe? They were here when we left.” The blank looks on everyone’s faces told Johno everything he feared.

“We need to leave now.” All traces of the wise man they loved now vanished as Johno’s face sagged, looking chalky and threatening panic.

From their table, Clyde’s voice boomed out. “Settle down, everyone. Salina, why don’t you go rustle up some grub? Dezi won’t mind.” He slapped her on the rump as she rose to obey. “You can still cook up some fine vittles, can’t you?”

She gave him a quick glance of annoyance. “Try that again and the only vittles I cook up will be the ones I rip from your big belly.” Salina huffed her way to Dezi’s kitchen and grabbed some bowls amid the laughter from Father Garcia and Maddy.

“No, no . . . you don’t understand. Something’s going to happen. Something
bad
. That’s why the kitchen’s empty. We thought we saw them on the hill to the Hive. My men thought they were trying to get our attention
.
We need to
run
. Now!”

Clyde stood with his hand raised. “Now just a gosh darn minute.”

Johno shook his head sadly and grabbed Crystal’s hand. “Good luck, everyone.” He dragged her out the door.

***

Ginger Mae stood with her husband and Peter in the old supply room surveying the shambles left from their effort to salvage what they could. The beam of her flashlight lit up what was left: long discarded shelves broken by the Kreyven when it had brought the contents of a department store to the Hive in preparation for their arrival so many decades ago.

“I think I saw the box of penlights under that junk.” Ginger Mae lifted a piece of metal off a smashed box.

Hud hurried to her side. “Let us handle that, hon. If you’re right, we could sure use some more light right now.”

Peter knelt at the other end of the pile. “I wonder when the membranes disappeared. It never occurred to me that we’d no longer be able to see in here.”

“Do you think they’ll just leave what’s at the mouth of the Hive and in the big cavern?’ Ginger Mae asked.

“I don’t think so, hon. Wil said it’s the Kreyven’s job to secure the Hive. They can’t have anyone accidentally getting into the portal. They’d never find their way back. Even though there are now only two paths, one to Oolaha and one to . . . hmmm . . . I don’t think he told me. I wonder where the other path goes to? Oh well . . . doesn’t matter now. We better just concentrate on grabbing anything useful that’s left and get out of here.”

The threesome went to work, Ginger Mae with her flashlight and the men with the tiny pocket lights. It didn’t take long to fill their big box. Hud managed to find a pile of work boots sitting on a heap of fabric as if someone else had readied them and promptly left them behind. Ginger Mae found a small cookbook in the rubble and slipped it into her pocket to hand over to Dezi. She was pleased with the tiny treat she could take to surprise him.

“I think we’d better head back now, Hud. The box is full.”

Hud bent over to heft the box onto his broad shoulders. “Wait, what about some of this broken metal shelving? We could find a handy use for this someday. We might be grateful we grabbed some of it while we had the chance.”

Ginger Mae bent down to gather it in her arms. She glanced up to see Hud heaving the box. “Come on, Peter. Gather some of this up with me. It’s too heavy for me to carry more than a couple pieces by myself.”

“Let me tie a few pieces together for you. Hand me that twine. It’ll be easier to carry that way.” After tying two bunches of the metal together, Peter slipped one bundle under Ginger Mae’s arms. “How’s that feel?”

Ginger Mae gave it a test. “Good. Not too heavy.”

Hud nodded in their direction. “We gotta move. Peter, can you tuck in the tail of that twine? I don’t want her to trip on it.”

Peter wrapped the tail of the twine around her hand, securing it tightly then bent to do the same for his bunch. “Okay. We’re set.”

The three of them headed back down the lonely winding corridors, the shuffle of their feet on the rock floor the only sound as they conserved their strength for their burdens. Ginger Mae took the lead since she still carried the only flashlight, tucked into her breast pocket and sending most of the light straight up. Still, it was enough. She honestly thought she could traverse the corridors blindfolded anyway.

Before long, they arrived in the main cavern; the cavern of hellos and goodbyes, wedding and funerals, joy and sadness. Setting down her burden, she complained, “I need a rest, Hud. This thing is killing my arm.”

The men halted, Peter moving over to Ginger Mae to examine the twine wrapped around her wrist. “Too tight?” he asked.

“Yeah, but I don’t want to redo it now. Let’s just get out of here.” She bent to pick up the metal rods again. The beam of her flashlight moved with her, now focused on the cavern wall near the portal.

“Wait,” Hud commanded. Setting down his heavy box, he walked to the wall. “Ginger Mae, can you train the light back over here?” With her free hand she removed the flashlight from her pocket to illuminate the wall.

Hud ran his hand over the wall.
The membrane was gone
.

“It looks like the portal has closed too.” Peter’s voice trembled.

“Wow, we really
are
alone now. Hud? Come on. I just want to get out of here.’ Ginger Mae sniffed while Hud turned his back to the wall and hoisted his box.

“Okay, babe. I hear you. Let’s go see what Dezi’s cooking up for lun—”

With a terrific rendering, the wall exploded and the Kreyven burst into the cavern, lighting it up with its flashing iridescent streaks of illumination. It descended down on Hud, crashing his box to the rock floor. Ginger Mae screamed as her husband was sucked into the gelatinous mass without a sound.

Before she had a second to finish her scream, the Kreyven was on her, wrapping its sinuous mass around her, metal burden and all.

As Ginger Mae fought with the shock and surprise, she heard Peter scream and felt the beast move, carrying them along with it.

Hud, where’s Hud?
She found she was unable to speak as she felt an unfamiliar constriction at the same time as her light dropped from her hand and she was engulfed in a moving darkness.

***

Johno and Crystal ran through the woods. If Crystal stumbled, he simply yanked her back on her feet and ignored her protests. The heat from the sun intensified, drenching them thoroughly with their sweat. The urgency of their run forced them to look ahead and miss the dynamics of the solar flares headed to Earth and illuminating the gargantuan metal chunk of meteor that engulfed the sky from the west.

The comforting granite rock that marked the entrance to their salvation loomed in his eyesight, but he didn’t slow down. The safety of the Hive lay yards away. Finally, plunging into the cooler darkness, he let Crystal catch her breath, his anxiety slowly abating.

“We made it, my love.” He held his wife close, searching for moisture to loosen his parched and gummy tongue from the roof of his mouth. For once in her life, Crystal kept her smart mouth closed; only gently begging him to explain.

“Johnny . . . please. What in tarnation’s going on?” Her brows knitted into a furrow.

“Not now
,
Crystal.” He held her tightly in his arms, averting his terror-filled face. The viper in his stomach uncurled as his senses shrieked that his ordeal was not over. “I think . . . I think we need to keep moving.”

They stumbled on, the darkness their friend as its slight coolness revived them. Johno moved on, the cavern of the portal dead ahead.

As they plunged into the cavern, they heard a muffled scream. Staring ahead, they were greeted by the stunning sight of the Kreyven in all its iridescent glory. Before they had a chance to call out, it plummeted into the rock wall to disappear, plunging them back into darkness.

Like zombies in a frenzy, the pair rushed to the cavern wall. Crystal tripped over Hud’s fallen box, dumping the scavenged treasures. She bent down, her searching fingers discovering the tiny penlights. When she clicked one on, she was met with the sight of her husband pounding on the solid rock wall; there was no membrane, no portal . . . just unbroken rock. Tears flowed down his ebony face, freezing her to the spot.

“
Quick
, woman. Bring that light here.” His fingers moved more frantically, nails splitting and bleeding. “We need to find it, Crystal.
Help me
.”

She rushed to her husband’s side in a daze. Her stalwart rock, her love, the calmest man she had ever known . . . was ungluing in front of her eyes.

It was their good fortune that, when the blast came, the shockwave swept through the tunnels of the Hive, blowing them apart with such force that Johno and Crystal never knew what hit them.

***

Ginger Mae felt herself surrounded and compressed by the undulating mass of the Kreyven; the motion much like the beating of a giant heart. She tried to remove the twine from her hand but it now dug painfully into her skin and she couldn’t locate the end that Peter had so carefully tucked away.

Instead, she wrapped herself around her metal bundle, hoping to stabilize herself. Her senses registered a strange pull exerting pressure on her body.

She tried to scream but to no avail. Where were Hud and Peter?
Please save me now, Hud,
I need you so.
She felt herself moving through the mass of the Kreyven, its constrictions slowing her movement but not stopping it. She felt safe with the Kreyven, absorbing a calmness from the beast yet unable to negate her growing panic from her slipping-away sensation. She scrambled to hold on to something; her hands and feet unable to find purchase. Instinctively she knew she must stay with the Kreyven. It would take her to Hud.
It’s in the service of the Womb, isn’t it? Perhaps it’s been sent by Netty or Daisy to take us somewhere
.

The darkness burst suddenly with agonizing light as she was pulled free of the comforting embrace of the Kreyven. She clung tightly to her metal bundle as she felt herself in a freefall, the pulling sensation growing stronger. She landed with a hard crash after what felt like an eternity, the light still blinding and her captive wrist now in pain so intense that she fainted.

Oolaha

Day One AE (After Earth)

Chapter 3

The survivors stared as Kenya marched up to Kane and ripped the Good Book from his hands. Shaking it in her fists, her fingers trembling with anger, she lashed out.