Page 3 of Broken Earth

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Veral squinted as lights hit him, his pupils retracting into narrow bands. He flared his vibrissae, allowing them to rattle threateningly around him as he growled, baring his fangs and extending his sharp mandibles. The aliens on the transport with him shouted to each other and began to fire at him. A few projectiles glanced off him, but most didn’t come close to hitting his shielding technology. Irritated, he lifted one of his blasters.

“Fuck me, it’s armed! Take it out, boys! Phil, deploy the net! Don’t look at me like that! We aren’t going to catch that girl if this big bastard kills us all. Fire it!”

A large net shot over Veral with such force that it knocked him off the back of the transport and onto the ground. It was soon followed by several others. Despite their weight, he pushed himself to his feet, determined to destroy them all when booted feet surrounded him. Veral growled threateningly, promising them a painful death in the most intimate manner of his people when sharp spikes hit him, and electric currents swept through his body. His organic mind whited out even as his circuitry went offline.

2

In a dark corner of a crumbling building, two walls shy of anything remotely resembling suitable shelter, Terri hissed as she dug a ricocheted bullet out of her thigh. It was painfully obvious that the Red Reaper Gang was getting worse. She’d heard rumors that many of the local boys started joining up in droves soon after they arrived in Phoenix at the promise of plenty of food, moonshine, and women.

It was the latter that had Terri preparing to leave the city.

The gang was rounding up every woman in sight. Phoenix was a dangerous place for anyone female. It wasn’t particularly healthy for the guys either. Not that anyone could tell any of them that with the way so many were flocking to the gang. Most of the men who had families were smart enough to leave when the rumors began. She should have left with them while she had the chance. Instead, she’d been among many of the women who had refused to be ousted from their homes.

At the time she had reasoned (as many women had) that they had survived all their lives living in a harsh world—how much worse could the gang make it? Her father objected strenuously but she’d refused to leave him. His body had become frail since he suffered a debilitating sickness, making him dependent on her for everything. With her mother dying years ago in childbirth, along with her baby brother, all they had was each other. She had stuck by him and laughed at any threat.

Now she had to admit that she had been very wrong.

Not for staying with her father—she refused to regret that—but for not taking the gang seriously. The Red Reapers were not just another nuisance but a living, breathing plague, infesting everything around them. They claimed women as their right. Any woman who didn’t submit to them was hunted down like prey. It was bad enough that some women she’d known all her life, strong women as hard as standing rocks in the desert, willingly sought out the gang to be welcomed into their protection.

Terri snorted a dismal bark of laughter.Protection?Ha!

“Protection” meant that, instead of being hunted and passed around the members of the Reapers indiscriminately, she only had to please one master and anyone he might decide to share her with, if he shared at all. Or so she had been told by one of the women when she came across her foraging for food for the camp.

Terri refused to be one of them. A little more scavenging for food and water and she should be able to acquire enough to get her to the next settlement. Being injured would be a setback, however, although it could have been much worse.

She’d been lucky that catching a ricocheted bullet was all that happened. She’d come very close to being caught when that monstrous creature distracted her pursuers, prematurely pulling them from the hunt. She heard it roar and then their terrified shouts as she retreated. Although part of her wanted to go back and watch, she had beat a hasty retreat out of gratitude for her narrow escape. She would rather dig a bullet out any day.

Her blood ran cold as she remembered the men hooting and howling like wild beasts as they chased her in their attempt to herd her. They had been close on her heels when the sounds of chaos had erupted, among them a bellow of an enraged creature. Something inhuman, born from nightmares. She’d recognized it immediately. That terrible, rattling growl like death itself. It was when she paused to listen amid that distraction that she’d caught the stray bullet.

She clenched her jaw as the bullet slid out of her flesh, blood flowing freely as it emerged. Gritting her teeth, she doused the wound with the last bit of her alcohol, groaning with agony. Fuck, it burned!

“Son of a bitch,” she panted as she wrapped her thigh tightly. She hoped there wouldn’t be repeat occurrences. She was now out of alcohol, and while that seemed easy enough to replenish, medical gauze was getting harder to find.

She needed to get out of this hellhole. But she didn’t think that the other cities fared much better. Chaos had erupted when the last wars destroyed their planet. It happened when her grandparents were young, and they told her stories of how life had been before the wars. Then, just like that, it was gone. Humanity turned on itself. Those who didn’t die from airstrikes and biological weapons were picked off over the years by disease and the worst humanity had to offer: rape, murder… cannibalism.

Terri leaned back, her head falling against the wall, and stared at what had once been a family’s living room. A faded portrait hung over a broken TV screen coated with dust, a smiling couple with two smiling kids and a baby. Infant toys still littered the living room from the family’s final moments in their house. A broken Tonka truck was tilted on its side, forgotten by the little one who once loved it. A baby doll stared sightlessly nearby, its cheerful face broken, now a home for the insects that were skittering in and out of its cheek. Like many houses, it was a home of ghosts. The sooner she could get out of there, the better.

Her thoughts turned to the massive creature she’d encountered earlier. It most certainly hadnotbeen human and, given the technology it seemed to possess, she had little doubt as to what it must be even if her brain had difficulty accepting it.

An alien.

An actual, living, breathing alien had come to Earth when it was nothing more than a cesspit.

Terri closed her eyes at the irony of the situation. Humans had been so interested in contact with alien lifeforms when there had been something left of humanity to share. Then again, this alien didn’t appear as if it were looking to communicate peacefully or share anything.

No, it had arrived among them like a jackal in the night, hunting for bones.

She shivered as her mind conjured its image. It was huge and sleek, every line of its body powerfully built with muscle like that of the jaguars that were occasionally seen on the outskirts of the city. There had been no empathy or pity in its glowing gaze, only raw, predatory interest. She’d been terrified and then thankful that its attention had been redirected to the gang members hunting her. She had no doubt that after her reactive assault, driven by her instinct to attack anyone who intruded uninvited on her hiding place, the alien would have happily torn her apart piece by piece for her daring. Certainly, it had sought to intimidate her.

What was there not to be intimidated by? The alien easily stood taller than seven feet, its entire body covered in dark silver scales. Large spikes curved out from the hip joints, shoulders, wrists, and elbows like some sort of natural armor, and the claws on its three fingers and thumb were terrifying. She hadn’t gotten a good look at its face—the whip-like, rattling coils framing its head absorbing most of her attention—but she was surprised that what she had seen hadn’t made her piss herself. Yet, other than intentionally scaring her, the alien hadn’t made a move to hurt her. That had been kinder than anything her pursuers would have done.

Who was the true monster in that scenario?

Resting her cheek on her dirty jean-clad knee, she sighed, wondering what happened to the creature. The sounds of pain and anger rang through her mind. What had the gang done to it? She felt certain that they would find someone to torture it just for shits and giggles if nothing else. She’d watched in horror, helpless to intervene when several of the men set an elderly man on fire. They’d laughed when he ran terrified and in pain through the city center. They would have no trouble tearing apart an alien to satisfy some perverse amusement.

Shaking her head, she leaned over and pulled a dusty can out of her scavenging bag. She held it up to the light and sighed. The label had fallen off long before she found it but given the size of the can, it was unlikely to be fruit or vegetables. Those had been exhausted some time ago.

Oh well. Mystery meat was still food, and Terri wasn’t one to turn her nose up at what scraps she could find.


Tags: S.J. Sanders Argurma Salvager Science Fiction