After the Colcoa stripped earth of all of her natural resources and left, the planet’s average temperature soared as the population dwindled down to the thousands. The few humans that survived the invasion are forced to live underground to escape the oppressive heat. Joe, his daughter Willa, and son Ezekiel are among the few brave enough to venture outside to gather food and supplies in the arid, rocky landscape. Their job is to bring enough food, water, and materials for their town to survive the summer in the cool caves of Red River Falls.
The world outside isn’t safe. Genetically altered animals, experimented on by the Colcoa, roam the surface. When a pack of experimental grizzly bears attack the family, Willa’s life is altered forever. What she learns on her journey will change the world.
Together with her new friend Xander, Willa will explore their world and uncover clues that lead her through a doorway into the unknown.
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A mostly gray-haired man and a boy walked across a barren boulder-field. The boy’s long brown hair streamed to the side as the two of them skipped from rock to rock. They moved quickly and silently, their soft-soled greenish leather boots made no noise, and neither shifted a single pebble as they moved. The wind blew from the west, whipping their thin dust-infused shirts in the hot, dry air.
The man’s face was leathery from years in the sun. His eyes seemed permanently squinted behind the scratched aviator-style sunglasses held to his temples with a leather cord, the stems long-since broken. Despite decades of scraping a living off the land, the man had an easy look on his face, one that proclaimed more happiness than grief in this harsh world.
Thirty years before, the field had been lush, green Minnesota pasture. It had probably been littered with ponds and creeks. Or maybe this was an old lake bed; there was no real way to tell anymore. Anything that would have been an indicator had long since been scoured away. Today it was just part of a large rocky barren. It was already over a hundred degrees, and the sun was not up yet. In another hour or two, they would have to find shelter for the day.
“When I was a boy, this time of year would have been much cooler, and some years there would have still been snow on the ground,” said the man to the boy.
The pair reached the first of the scraggly old trees. “Do you see these trees, Ez? Do you see how the oval-shaped leaves crawl up the branches, lining up two by two? This is a walnut tree. Do you remember eating walnuts last fall?”
“Yea, Pop. I remember,” said Ez, clearly bored with the conversation. His father was certain the boy would much rather be talking about one of the two girls his age in their town. That was not a conversation he was looking forward to having, although he knew he was going to have to have it soon. At least these days there isn’t much need to talk about STD’s and using condoms, he thought.
“Good! This fall, after the summer heat, we need to come back here. This grove will keep us in nuts for most of the next summer while we’re underground. What do we say about nuts, Ez?”
“Where there are nuts, there are squirrels, Dad.” Ez sighed as he spoke, having had this exact same conversation with his father dozens of times.
“Right. Let’s hurry; we need to dig in soon.”
The two of them had been hunting and gathering food all night, and they were tired. The boy’s father had learned years before that hunting during the day was too dangerous. Even in what passed for winter in Minnesota these days, the UV radiation and heat from the sun was far too powerful to be exposed for more than a couple of hours, but that wasn’t the biggest danger. The experimental animals were out during the day.
In this part of the country, they mostly encountered experimental grizzly bears. They were slightly smaller than normal grizzly bears and had a greenish tint to their fur. By the time their prey realized the clever animals hunted in packs and communicated with each other, it was too late. Experimental grizzlies were the apex predators on the planes; that position was no longer occupied by humans.
Joe and his son walked through what passed for a forest in this time, although it was barely more than a handful of trees and some pathetic scrubby vines.
Most of the trees left standing were mature years ago when the ships first came. Many species of trees were dying off, their seeds finding only rock and hardened clay in which to make purchase. Joe’s hope was that one day the trees would rot and leave a strip of fertile dirt where they’d fallen. He collected and stored seeds on these gathering trips, just in case.
Joe had dozens of burrows ranging out from their town, places to stay when he was outside the walls gathering food, each of the burrows stuffed to the gills with supplies and each of them a secret storehouse of seeds, buried in the cool earth, far from the sun.
“When can I go by myself like Willa?” asked Ez, snapping Joe out of his thoughts.
“When you’re sixteen. Until then, you’re stuck with me, pal,” said Joe, tousling the boy’s hair. “Besides, I’d miss you too much!”
Joe broke into a trot, hopping from rock to rock, trying to leave as little scent as possible behind. The father and son moved along silently for the last mile, listening for some sign of game and looking for any wild edibles they may have missed on the way out. They found none and returned to their burrow with the day’s gatherings.
Willa was already there, sitting on the lip of the burrow beside a much larger pile of dirt than they’d left the day before; she’d been busy digging the burrow out to make room for the day’s gathering. Willa was very tall, nearly a foot taller than her father, and very lean. Everyone was lean these days from a life of hard labor. She had long sandy brown hair that she kept tied up on top of her head.
Willa had grown up spending the winters outside their town with her dad. They were foragers, tasked with finding food to feed the entire town. It was, without a doubt, the least desirable job in their society. There were kids in their underground village that had never seen the sun. They were born after the Colcoa came and never felt the need to get out and roam. Those people felt like it was a small price to pay for never having to face the experimental animals or the hard, burning planet above.
Willa thought those people were crazy. After being in the dark underground town for the three hottest months of the year, it was all she could do to avoid running up to the surface to spend two minutes outside in the scorching heat. Surely the sunburn would be worth it. Down in the cool cavern they called home, a reminder of the sun and how good it felt for the hour or two she got to see it every day during the fall, winter, and spring.
“Get anything good?” Ezekiel asked his sister.
“Naw. Just these fish,” she said, grinning while she held up two trout. Each was as long as Ezekiel’s arm and still flopping on the end of the stringer.
“Fish? Where did you find fish? Where did you find enough water for fish that big?” exclaimed Joe, a look of amazement on his rugged face. He sat down on the hard earth and dangled his legs into the burrow, feeling the cool air inside.
“There’s a creek running out of the rocks about twenty miles south of us. You two just went the wrong way! There’s dirt there, Dad. Real dirt. With plants growing in it. I didn’t bring any, but Dad, there were flowers! They smelled so good! Once I got there, I didn’t ever want to leave.” Willa’s excitement was contagious. Ezekiel was grinning from ear to ear, watching his sister practically bouncing while she told of it.
“I also found these berries,” she said, pulling a pouch out of her backpack. “There were tons of them!” She opened the pouch to show off the beautiful red berries, grabbing one to toss it in her mouth.
“Willa, NO!” Joe was staring at the berries in her hand. “Those are poisonous. They are brindleberries. You would be dead within minutes of eating one of those.”
Willa looked sheepish as she dumped the contents of the pouch out on the ground. “No wonder the bushes were so loaded. I should have known. How could a bush right next to a water source have any berries left this late in the season unless they were poisonous? Sorry, Dad.”
“You covered forty miles today?” asked Joe. “What if something had attacked you? How would I ever have found you? I’d never be able to live with myself if I lost you. You know not to go more than five miles from camp.” It was hard for Joe to scold his daughter; he thought she was better able to take care of them than he was, but rules were rules. Out here in this place, not following the rules was what got people killed. It was exactly what got her mother killed.
Willa looked slightly abashed, and her cheeks and chest turned bright red. “Dad, I found moving water. And food. We could spend the next summer there.”
“Can we, Dad? Please? Please don’t make us go back to Red River Falls this winter. I can’t stand another year of being cooped up with nothing to do,” said Ezekiel.
Joe gathered his kids into a big group hug and said, “Let’s not get crazy. The water will probably dry up once the real heat sets in. Do you remember how hot Mrs. Aberfinch’s rooms get? And she’s, what, thirty feet below the surface? Willa, it gets over a hundred and thirty during the summer. The only surface water we’ll find during summer is up on top of the world.” Joe shared their hopes, but he wanted to hedge them, just in case. “Any plants growing there will almost undoubtedly be poisonous or else something would have eaten them. We’ll head out there as soon as it’s cool enough tomorrow and check it out. There may be some things we can take back to Red River Falls with us,” Joe said. “Willa, hand me the fish. I’ll show you how to clean them. I haven’t had trout since I was a kid; this is going to be good.”
Willa handed him the two trout, and Joe stood up. “Come on. We can’t clean these near where we sleep, and we’ll have to eat fast. The grizzlies will smell the fish from very far off.”
The three humans bounced nimbly from rock to rock, keeping up a fast pace for about a mile from their burrow. Willa started digging with her stone knife, and Ezekiel gouged into the rock hard clay with a sharp piece of flint. When they’d dug down about a foot, Joe lopped the heads off the fish, pulling a string of guts and organs from the body cavity.
“See how I cut that? Cut from this fin to here and then around the head. That lets all the guts stay intact. By cleaning them that way, we don’t spoil the fish with waste. Now in the old days, I would have used a really sharp knife to filet these, but since I don’t have a filet knife, I’m just going to scale them.” As he spoke, he scraped from tail to head with his flint knife, sending shiny fish scales into the hole at his feet.
When he was done, he handed the first fish to Willa. ”Be careful, there are sharp bones in there. The backbone runs the length of the fish, so pull the meat off with your teeth,” he said.
The next fish went to Ez, who devoured the raw fish in several huge bites. “So good!” he exclaimed between stuffing his mouth and chewing each bite at least two times.
Willa saved a half of her fish for her dad and handed it to him when he was done filling in the hole. “You take the rest. I’m full,” she said. “You were right. It was very delicious.”
Joe took a bite of the fish, savoring the taste of the meat. Fresh meat was one of the reasons he chose this profession. Even though the townspeople looked down on him and his family as outsiders, he got to spend most of the year with his children, teaching them everything he knew about plants and animals. It was dangerous, but he was good at it. His children were learning the things that would keep them alive when he wasn’t around to protect them anymore.
Suddenly, all three of them froze in place. Something changed in the air around them. Seconds later, the sound of a twig snapping somewhere behind Joe dropped them all flat on their bellies. They lay on the rocks, each facing one another, trying to present the smallest possible target for the bears. Without turning around, Joe said, “Stay very still. We have to figure out their plan. Willa, how many do you see?”
“Three, close together behind you,” she replied.
“Ez, can you see any? There are never just three. They’re going to be all around us.”
“I think I see one,” whispered Ezekiel. Fear was apparent on his face.
“Stay calm. Remember to breathe. I think the three behind me are going to charge and drive us into the group behind Willa. We can’t fall for their plan. Willa, take Ez and run straight back to the burrow. Block the entrance and hunker down for the day. I’m going to lead them off.”
“Dad! No! I can outrun a Griz. You take Ez back,” said Willa, and Joe knew she was right.
“Willa, I need you to keep you both safe. If I’m not back by night fall, come look for me. I’ll be at the river you spoke of.”
“Dad…” Willa protested.
“Do as I say, Wil. I don’t have time to argue. When I have their attention, you and Ez go straight to the burrow.”
Joe leapt up from his prone position and yelled, charging the three green-tinted bears. All three stood up on their hind legs, fully two feet taller than the human. The middle bear growled, and the two on either side dropped down and charged at Joe, and two more broke from either side. He’s the pack leader, thought Joe.
Joe stopped running and started singing as loud as he could.
“Three blind mice, three blind mice,
See how they run, see how they run,
They all ran after the farmer’s wife,
Who cut off their tails with a carving knife,
Did you ever see such a thing in your life,
As three blind mice?”
The bears all stopped charging, looking at him. The lead bear tilted his head, as if it was questioning the sanity of this human.
The pack leader growled softly, and all five bears started advancing. Joe sang the song again, as loudly as he could, charging the bears himself, hoping to break up their plan. He ran straight for the pack leader, arms outstretched. He had a rock in one fist and his flint knife in the other.
The bear reared up as it closed with its opponent, but Joe was faster than the bear expected, bringing his jagged flint-knife down the bear’s face, opening a bright red cut from its ear, through its eye, to the underside of its greenish-brown muzzle. The bear dropped to all fours and let out a loud, low rumbling roar.
Joe wasted no time. He vaulted over the grizzly’s back and ran for all he was worth, away from the safety of their hole, dragging the danger away from his children. He ran north with energy he hadn’t felt in years, out into the barren rocky plain.
Willa applied a poultice of crushed cabalage root and honey to the cut. The cabalage root was to draw out any poison that might be in the wound, and she added honey because it killed germs, and germs caused infection.
There wasn’t anything to do but wait. She tried to get comfortable beside him and plan her next move. Her dad would be back as soon as it was safe for him to move, she had no doubt. If Ezekiel was better, she would wait for him, but if he worsened over the day, she would leave him a message and take off with him.
It was about eighty miles west to Red River Falls. She’d have to stop at least once for the day. That’s not the closest town, she thought to herself. Duluth is closer. It’s probably only forty miles from here.
Her father would kill her if she took him to Duluth. She could just hear his voice. “Duluth is full of snakes and grizzlies. They just look like people. They’ll kill you for your boots.”
Ezekiel stirred, groaning. She re-wet the compress on his head and laid it back on his forehead. “Shhh, Ez. Everything’s going to be okay. I got you.” He seemed to calm back down after a few seconds. His fever seemed about the same, which was a bad sign. About an hour later, she washed the honey off, added more, and flipped the cabalage root pad over. She tossed the part that had been in contact with the wound and re-tied the bandage. The cut was less angry looking but was showing some grey flesh along the edge. Come on, Dad. I need you, she thought.
It was hot in the burrow that day. Normally, they sealed off the door and hung a blanket over the entrance, but today Willa needed some light, so she left the door to the burrow cracked just a hair. The heat in the entry way was intense, so she kept Ez back against the far wall, where some coolness remained in the earth.
She tried to sleep. She knew she had a long run ahead of her. If she was going to get Ezekiel to Duluth, she could make it in one long night. If she went to Red River Falls, she would take two. If her father was here, he’d never let her go to Duluth, but if he was there, he’d slow her down. Even if she had to carry Ezekiel the whole way by herself, it would take half of a third night. Her father just didn’t have the stamina he used to, although he wouldn’t admit it. Willa knew she was in the best shape of her life. Her feet were a little sore, but her legs were still strong. She guessed she’d run fifty miles that day.
All day long, Willa argued with herself over her course of action. Late in the afternoon, she peeled Ezekiel’s eyes back. They looked yellow. His fever broke soon after. Willa checked the wound; there were red streaks running in every direction from the cut. Blood poisoning, she thought. That answers that. I’m going without Dad.
It was about an hour until she could go; she made the decision to go to Red River Falls. Her dad could catch her at the first burrow and see if there was anything he could do. She only had enough cabalage root for one more change here, but she knew her dad left some at every burrow.
The sun was still streaming in the crack in the door when she started packing her backpack. She refilled her water skin and then added some fresh bandages and a few pieces of dried meat. She put it on backwards, so the pack was on her chest, and slung Ezekiel over her back, tying his arms and legs together so he’d stay. She threw her sheet over her head, draping it over Ezekiel, and climbed up the stairs.
The heat hit her when she shoved the door open; it was still over a hundred degrees. She affixed her smoked glass goggles and made sure all of Ez’s skin was covered. She climbed out, slid the door back in place, and picked up a stick and wrote “Ezekiel hurt. Headed to”. She paused for just a second before scratching “Duluth.” Underneath that, she drew a circle with a bowed line through the middle and an arrow pointing in the direction she would be travelling. It was a sigil she and her father had worked out long before. It was quick, easily recognizable, and informative.
South was the worst direction to run at night, and she’d never actually been to Duluth, but while the sun was up, she knew she could just keep it on her right shoulder. Once the sun was down, she’d have to work harder to ensure she was headed south.
She ran rather than think about her decision. It was made, and that was that. She maintained a punishing pace. Willa bounded from rock to rock, each step causing Ezekiel to bounce mercilessly on her back. After a few miles, she hit the gravel south of the boulder field, and she was able to lengthen her stride and set into an easy lope.
She estimated four miles an hour across the boulders and then six miles in the hour she ran across the gravel before stopping for the first time under a scrubby pine tree. She ate some venison jerky, drank some water, and tried to get some water into Ezekiel. She sat for ten minutes, stretching her legs. Just before she took off, she scratched another bow and arrow sigil pointing south. Under it she wrote “8:30pm.” She was making good time.
When Willa and Joe used to run together, he always pointed out how fast she was. She had huge feet with toes that were almost as long as her fingers. Joe said that’s why she was so fast on the rocky terrain; her toes could grip the rocks.
Ezekiel called her Bigfoot, but for Willa, it was just the way she was made. It was nice to be able to pick things up with her feet around their burrow, and her toes helped with tree climbing.
She suspected her father was at least two hours behind her, and now that she was in the flats and her legs warmed up, she’d start expanding that lead.
She’d been travelling by herself for a long time. It was almost second nature to keep track of the miles as they ticked by. She knew her paces. Her father had worked with her for years to drive the importance of knowing where she was into her brain. “When the Colcoa came, I couldn’t even drive home without my GPS,” he’d said so many times. “Now we don’t even have a paper map.You have to keep the map in your head. Getting lost out here will get you killed.”
She kept up the twelve miles per hour for another three hours, before she started seeing signs of an old city. The Colcoa hadn’t had much interest in concrete, but they did want all of the metal pipes that humans laid under most roads. They had a machine that drove along ripping up the road to get the iron water and sewer pipes up and to get the steel bars out of the concrete. Her father called those piles of concrete ‘tailings,’ the parts left behind after a mine had extracted everything useful out of the soil. The whole world was tailings.
As Willa climbed over the pile of concrete, Ezekiel stirred and moaned in her ear. She set him down and checked the wound. The red streaks were getting worse. His face was clammy, and his eyes rolled back in his head. She sat on the ground next to him, breathing hard, and tried to get some water into him. He coughed the water up but managed to get the second gulp down his throat, then took two long pulls herself. She was down to about two cups left and found herself fantasizing about the cool, crisp water in the river she’d found.
The first thing she’d done when she found it was jump in and suck down as much of the water she could hold. Then, just before she left, she drank at least two more skins’ worth. That was the first time she’d ever been underwater, because it was the first time she’d ever seen enough water in one place to cover her.
There were tracks all along the road bed, most of them heading east. Not knowing where Duluth was, she decided that most of the people would be walking towards the city this time of year and followed the tracks.
She ran along, her legs screaming at her to stop, but she ignored their protestation; she was so close to saving Ez. A cramp developed in her calf from where she’d altered her stride to keep Ezekiel from bouncing so much on her back. There wasn’t much she could do, so she ignored it as well and tried to adjust her step back to a more normal motion, shifting more of the work to her abused thigh muscles. More and more tracks added to the set she was following, confirming to Willa that she was heading in the right direction.
She passed a tree, then another. Ahead, the lane she was following entered what could only be described as a forest. Willa studied the trees to keep her mind off the pain in her body, pushing herself well past what she thought was her breaking point.
The trees were lined up like soldiers, row after row, well tended and apparently disease free. There wasn’t any scrub or brush under them or around the trunks; instead, the ground was covered in dead leaves, spread evenly throughout. Whoever was in charge of this land was doing their best to make it fertile, returning nutrients to the soil.
She saw oaks and maples mostly, with some walnuts and pecans. She had to be getting close to town. These trees were new, planted after the Colcoa wiped out the population of this area, less than ten years old.
Duluth must be rich to have this much dirt, she thought as she ran. Just a few steps later, she felt a sting in her thigh and looked down to see a feathery dart sticking in her leg. She had just enough time to swat it out before she collapsed to the ground, unconscious.
Joe ran as hard as he could for their burrow. He flew into the section of woods where their home was, darting and zig-zagging through the trees. As his heart felt like it was going to explode in his chest, his only thought was to get to his children. He skidded to a halt in front of the burrow door. His heart sank when he saw the words, “Ezekiel hurt” and “Duluth” scratched into the dirt at the entrance.
“Oh no, Willa, no!” he cried, putting his hands on his knees, huffing. He had no idea if Franklin was still alive, but no good could come of his two children meeting his former best friend.
Joe took a minute to head down into the burrow to refill his water skin. Hidden deep in the back of the burrow behind all the provisions, Joe pulled out a small piece of canvas and unrolled it. Inside was a steel tomahawk, enough metal to buy his way out of this mess.
He slipped the tomahawk into his belt and ran, propelled by his love for his children. He ran as a man with nothing to lose.
Marna had hated that tomahawk. One morning in the earliest days of Duluth, Joe was getting ready for work in his apartment and having a briefing with Franklin. Marna came into the bedroom as he was slipping the hatchet-like weapon onto his belt. “It’s a weapon for killing people,” she’d said.
“Sometimes, people need to be killed,” was his response back then. To Joe’s left, Franklin stood, nodding, looking back and forth between Marna and Joe.
Joe had always loved to run. He let his mind roam and put his body on autopilot, ticking the miles off towards his children. His pace was fast. He needed to catch Willa before she got within the perimeter of Duluth. She was quicker than he but was heavily burdened. He was confident he could catch her in time if he could sustain the pace he’d set.
His mind wandered back to when he and Marna had just arrived in Minnesota, after months of walking north, desperate for cooler temperatures. Joe grew up in South Carolina. In high school, he’d been a cross-country track star, winning a scholarship to Clemson University, where he’d met Marna. The two of them fell in love in college. They were both majoring in agricultural studies; Marna’s specialty was horticulture, while Joe was majoring in farm management, with a focus on the cattle business.
When the Colcoa came, they’d been in their final year of study. The world changed so much in that year; people rioted in the streets, the stock market crashed, and money became virtually useless. The stores emptied out. The Colcoa were handing out food rations. The rations were a useless, tasteless gel that kept people alive but did nothing to satisfy their hunger or their spirit. With free food and free energy, people stopped going to work, and infrastructure broke down. People barricaded themselves in their homes. There was chaos and anarchy.
Joe and Marna went to Montana in the middle of their final year of college. It had the lowest population of any state other than Alaska and was the farthest away from any trouble. They sold everything they owned and bought a little cabin and a thousand acres of land.
When the Colcoa turned on mankind, neither of them was surprised. They wiped out the highest population centers in one morning. Both coasts went dark. The last news Joe ever saw said the same thing happened all over the world.
Joe and Marna lived quietly, working their land and hoping the Colcoa would leave them alone. They hadn’t had much; Joe scrounged junk yards and odd jobs for their tools. They bought a pair of horses, and Joe traded their truck for an old plow and a wooden cart. They ate well, lived in solitude, just the two of them, and were more in love than any two people had ever been.
When the Colcoa rolled through the town outside their house, Joe was there trading his rifle for their winter provisions. After the aliens arrived, the price of firearms skyrocketed. Ammunition was in short supply; the manufacturers were unable to keep up with demand. His rifle and one hundred bullets would buy him years’ worth of provisions. There just wasn’t a year’s worth of food to be had. He was currently negotiating for the last fifty-pound bag of flour and all the salt Wayne, the store owner, had.
Wayne and Joe watched in horror as the gigantic Colcoa machines rolled over the houses and buildings of the small town, spitting out a row of splintered wood and concrete in their wake.
The pair realized the machine would crush them in a second. Joe grabbed Wayne’s hand in an attempt to drag him out. Wayne snatched his hand free and darted into the back room. “I gotta get Baxter!” he yelled.
“No time, Wayne! Come on!” Joe called, planting one hand on the counter as he vaulted over it heading for the side door. The machine was just feet from the back of the building when Joe leaped out the door, over the five steps, and rolled onto the ground. He heard Wayne scream in pain as Joe barrel-rolled to his feet and sprinted across the dirt road.
He hid in a ditch as the hundred foot tall machine rolled past. Armored Colcoa walked on either side of the machine, a hundred yards in front of him. Their battle suits made a low, rumbling hum. That sound invaded Joe’s nightmares. Just the faded memory was enough to bring him near to panic; at the time, it was all he could do to sit still. There was something primal about the fear it instilled, like the sound of a rattlesnake. He was certain the sound was specifically designed to invoke a panic response in humans, and it worked.
From the opposite edge of the small settlement, several men stood from where they were hiding and opened fire. The retorts of their rifles had barely faded when the armored units decimated them. Streaks of blue light erupted from the cannons on the robotic arms, engulfing the entire group of men. Joe kept his head down and focused on surviving long enough to get back to Marna.
The next time he looked up, the giant steel wheel had crushed everything in its path. Inside the machine, something happened to the debris before it was ejected in long rows from the back. Once everything was over, Joe ran to the pile and kicked through it. He was sifting through the tailings when he realized there was no metal in it. No pipes, not even a single nail.
It dawned on him then, as it had to thousands of others around the world, that the Colcoa were mining. They were stripping the land of every piece of metal.
He ran to his horse and galloped home to Marna.
“Marna! Marna! he yelled, approaching the house. She came out the door of their tiny ramshackle dwelling to see what he was screaming about.
“The Colcoa are in town. They decimated it. They’re harvesting the metal. We have to go, and we have to go primitive. They killed Wayne, Marna! They rolled right over the store with him inside. We have to go, and we have to take as little metal as possible.”
They packed light, cutting everything metal from their saddle bags. Joe used twine to tie the bags together. They threw their pack blankets over their horses’ backs and climbed on bareback. They decided to take one piece of metal each. Joe chose his tomahawk while Marna picked a knife.
The couple headed out into the bush, where they lived for the next two years. They never stayed in one place, running north every time the Colcoa got close.
Coming out of his reverie, Joe shook his head as he ran after his son and daughter. He was struck by how naive he’d been, thinking they were just after the metal on the surface.
He thought about a frigid morning years before. The pair of survivors was near the Canadian border and hadn’t seen another living person for months. “Do you think we could get through their line? If we could head south and get through, we could set up where they’ve already been, and we wouldn’t have to run.”
“Do you think they’ll leave when they have all the metal?” Marna asked.
“That’s what they came here for,” Joe said firmly. “Once they have it all, there’s no reason or them not to head to the next planet. We can’t keep heading north. It’s almost winter time, and it’s only going to get worse the farther we go.”
“I think we have to try,” Marna said, and the two of them planned their escape. The next day, they rode south towards the Colcoa. From miles away, they watched the lines of the huge alien mining machines, sucking up everything in their path and spitting it out in straight rows behind them. These were much larger than the one Joe had seen in town the day they’d left their home. Each machine covered several acres. Dozens of them were staggered in a series of V shapes, one overlapping path of the next. Occasionally, the machines would veer around a group of trees or a small hill, leaving tiny spots of green.
“If we can figure out why they leave certain spots, maybe we can hide out in one of those,” Joe said thoughtfully.
Marna replied, “I think we need to go higher up into the mountains. We need to go where their machines can’t go and wait for them to pass, then we come down.”
As he ran towards Duluth, Joe said aloud, “Marna always was the smart one,” grinning to himself.
Marna’s plan worked, and the pair crossed the country. Once they were below the Colcoa machines, they headed east, across the Great Plains. Day after day they walked, across South Dakota, Iowa, and Illinois, until they came to what had been Chicago. Massive mountains of concrete, asphalt, and glass rubble were all that was left of one of the biggest cities on earth. From Chicago, they turned and headed south, scrounging food and supplies as they went. The two of them began to think they were the only people on earth. Despite that, they both felt an intense drive to find their family, knowing, but never admitting to themselves, that they would never see anyone they loved ever again.
Willa was born in the first summer spent in South Carolina and did much to bring Marna and Joe closer. They’d both been so hopeful that they would find some evidence of their family, or at least some humans, but there was nothing left.
For the first two years of Willa’s life, the three of them lived pretty well. They had a small garden of a few vegetable plants Marna found and brought back. Joe often remembered those years when he was lonely or missed his wife. Many nights when one of the kids was sick, he’d sit up all night holding them close, thinking about those happy days.
In order to feed their small family, one or the other of them would often leave for a few days, Joe to hunt, fish, trap, and gather things and Marna to look for plants they could use. When one was gone, the other stayed home with Willa.
Joe learned to eat tomatoes, something he couldn’t stomach as a child. Marna constantly teased him about that. Every time Joe ate a tomato, he said, “Desperate times call for desperate actions,” and the two of them would laugh, which would set Willa off, her sweet peals of laughter lighting up their small shack and chasing away their fear.
Marna taught Joe how to identify plants and their uses. She taught him medicinal plants as well as edibles. Joe taught her how to track, kill, skin, and clean an animal and how to preserve the meat.
Willa was two when the Colcoa changed the weather. A huge earthquake woke the little family in the middle of the night. Marna grabbed Willa, and the three of them escaped to the garden as their shack crashed down.
Over the next week, the temperature rose drastically. Although it was early fall, it was hotter than Joe ever remembered, and every day the sun baked the earth even more.
On the fifth day of well over one hundred degrees, Marna begged Joe to go north. “Who knows what they’ve done this time, but I think that earthquake was the Colcoa screwing with the planet. I think they’re raising the temperature. We have to go. I think it’s only going to get hotter and hotter. We need to travel at night, and we need to go now.”
Once again, Joe recognized the wisdom of his wife’s words. They picked their garden, packed up whatever supplies they could, and headed north. Joe strapped his tomahawk to his waist, and Marna hung her worn knife from her belt.
The Colcoa were headed south this time. The machines were different, much bigger this second time. They were bigger than any machine Joe had ever seen made by man, bigger than most buildings. Each covered ten or more acres, and they were hundreds of feet tall. They were like high rises flattening the landscape. That was when Joe realized the line they’d seen years before was just preliminary work, taking the easy metal. These left nothing behind, taking virtually everything, including the soil. Once again, a few trees were left standing here or there.
Joe later decided that in the first wave, the Colcoa pilots drove the machines, and subsequent machines followed the lines the first ones made automatically. He was never sure if that was the case, but it was the only explanation anyone had ever come up with for why a few trees were left.
Between each machine, two armored Colcoa walked, several hundred yards apart. This time, there were no mountains to hide in.
“We’re going to have to try to hide right at the edge of the lead machine. When it passes, we pop up and try to get into its wake to let the next pass,” Joe suggested. “Unless you have a better option.”
“I don’t, Joe. And I’m afraid,” Marna replied. “Maybe we shouldn’t try this.”
“We’ll burn up. It’s already getting too hot to be out in the sun. It’s gotten hotter every single day. We have to try.”
They dug a hole, about fifty yards to the west of the first machine, and waited for it to pass.
Tears fell down his cheeks as he ran towards Duluth, thinking back on that day. “I promised, Willa. I promised, and I’m coming, baby,” he said, running even faster towards his son and daughter.
In their fox-hole, fifteen years before, Joe held Willa to his chest. When the machine passed, the earth shook. “Whatever happens, Joe,” said Marna, “I love you. I wouldn’t trade our time together for anything in the world. I am the luckiest woman on the planet, besides maybe Willa there. Always take care of her, Joe. Promise me that,” said Marna.
Joe promised and kissed his wife. “I love you too, Marna. We’re going to be fine. We’ll head north until it’s cool. We’ve survived this long; we’re not giving up yet.”
Joe stuck his head out of the hole, handed Willa to Marna, and said, “Go now. I’m right behind you.” Marna and Willa took off, staying low to the ground. A forty-foot drop down to massive bedrock boulders was behind the machine. A huge field of car-sized boulders stretched out to the south. Marna sat on the edge and slid down, a small avalanche of gravel and dirt following her.
Joe looked to his right as he ran for the drop off. The armored Colcoa turned, heading straight for the three of them.
“Run and hide!” Joe yelled down, turning towards the alien. He drew his tomahawk and charged the creature. It raised its arm and fired blue bolts of energy at Joe, but the man was too fast. He closed the distance and leapt at the steel-encased Colcoa. He could see the creature’s terrible face through the glass, some thick gooey liquid running down channels in its cheeks. Joe brought his tomahawk up and down while the thing battered him with its robotic arms, trying to dislodge the human from its metallic shell.
Joe reversed the tomahawk, driving the spike into the glass over and over again, prying and chipping his way into the armor. The second Colcoa headed for Joe as he pried the glass away from his target. Inside the cockpit of the armored carrier, the Colcoa operated a number of levers. Joe reached in and pushed its hand, trying to get his tomahawk into the tiny cockpit. As Joe pushed, the suit spun, slowly revolving as the second armored unit closed on them.
In one final heave, Joe leaned in, grabbed the Colcoa inside, and pulled, ripping the Colcoa from the cockpit. The armor fell over sideways, and the man rolled over and over, tangled with the alien. Joe was pinned down. He felt around in the dirt beside him as the green monster pushed down his throat. Joe’s hand closed on a rock, and with the last of his strength he smashed the rock into the Colcoa’s head. It went limp, collapsing to the side. Joe wearily climbed to his feet, gathered his tomahawk, and ran towards the second armored Colcoa.
There wasn’t much time before more Colcoa would be there. He sprinted to close the distance, hoping Willa and Marna were far away. He didn’t hold much hope of surviving; he just wanted to buy them time.
He heard the armored suit behind him stand up, and then he heard Marna’s voice. “Joe! Get down!” she yelled as the armored unit fired. Joe dove to the dirt and watched the Colcoa he was heading for crash over onto its side, engulfed in blue light.
Marna hopped down out of the cockpit and grabbed her dumbfounded husband.
“How did you do that?” he asked as they ran. “And where’s Willa?”
“She’s in the rocks below. I couldn’t let them kill you, Joe.”
They scooped Willa up as the giant machines came to a halt. The two tiny humans ran as hard as they could, but it appeared the Colcoa didn’t chase them. They ran all night long, Marna struggling to keep up with Joe. They slept in cave that night, far underground. They went back into the cave until they found a crevice Joe could barely squeeze through and slept safely in the cavern behind it.
That was the start of becoming nocturnal and living underground, Joe thought as he neared the outskirts of Duluth. He stopped in some brush to gather his thoughts and catch his breath. He couldn’t be that far behind Willa.
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Vaughn worked around the ship doing routine maintenance for the rest of the afternoon. In the late evening, he walked downtown, towards the market to get a bite to eat and a change of clothes.
After growing up and spending the first half of his life in the military establishment, Vaughn was accustomed to wearing a uniform. When he left the military, he’d adopted a kind of civilian uniform in a similar fashion. Hanging in his berth back on the ship were five pairs of brown pants, each spaced five centimeters apart. Next to that were five cream colored shirts with brown buttons. Five soft, form-fitting shirts were folded on the shelf next to five pairs of socks. His closet was a model of organization. On this trip, he’d added a formal suit for the funeral.
AUTHOR’S NOTE: This book skips around in time a bit. Not in a timey-wimey time-travel sort of way, but through flashbacks and Vaughn’s memories. The heading at the top of the page tells you the year. The “main” story happened in 432, this chapter, for example, takes place in 430.
430th Year of
Emperor Valek Foger XXVI
Two years earlier, when Vaughn got word that his best friend Fresia’s father was dead, he set out that afternoon for Foger. Matthew was sick, so Sarah stayed home with him. She gave her husband strict orders to send Fre her love. After the funeral, the pair walked a block over and two blocks up to a little bar called “Twinings.” Vaughn slipped the bouncer at the door a few crench and he led them towards the back, past the stage where a Human girl danced, grinding on a pole to the bass-heavy music. She peeled a tiny string-top off and tossed it to the side, shaking her breasts at Vaughn and Fresia as they passed. “Hey, Fre,” she called. “Who’s the hunk?”
Fresia smiled slightly as she looked at the dancer. “Hey Skye. He’s an old war buddy,” she replied as she slipped into a booth. The bartender arrived seconds later with two moges. The thick, dark brown, malty beverages were their drink of choice. “Thanks Bode,” she replied and took a long drink.
“I’m so sorry about your dad, Fre,” Vaughn said. “He was a good man.”
“He was.” Her eyes were distant as she dwelled on his memory. Vaughn didn’t bother pushing her for conversation. Eventually, her eyes refocused on her friend. “That’s kind of why I asked you here. You’re the only one I knew to call. Dad was murdered, Vaughn. They called it an accident, but he was killed, I just know it. He was in great shape, and had a physical two weeks ago.”
Vaughn took a long drink from his moge. “That’s a big accusation. Do you have something we can go on? If you do we’ll find the bastard and I’ll skin him alive.”
Fresia took a long drink herself, draining her glass. “When we find the bastard, I’m going to skin him alive. Then I’ll apply dermal bandaging, and skin him again. When I’m done with him, he’s going to wish I’d fed him to a heard of gnarg.
“Tell me what you know, Fre.” Vaughn nodded to the bartender who brought another moge for Fresia.
“Dad was into something. He told me he was going to do this one deal, and then he’d be out. This one was going to set him up to retire.”
“Any idea what it was?”
“I don’t have anything concrete, but I’m pretty sure it was worine.”
Vaughn suddenly knew why Fresia had chosen this bar. The music made it impossible for anyone to eavesdrop. “Shit, Fre. What was he doing mixed up in worine? That shit is big time. People die from just one small dose. What the hell was he doing pushing?”
“I dunno, Vaughn. I don’t even know for sure that’s what it was, but he was hanging out with a bunch of Geraldinian thugs.”
Vaughn took a sip of his moge and set the glass down on the table. The girl over Fresia’s shoulder was working hard to get his attention in hopes that he’d slide a few crench into a lacy band on her thigh. She was extraordinarily beautiful, but Sarah would never approve. He tried not to look, but she was good at her job, and she was physically perfect. He briefly wondered if she could carry on a conversation.
“Where can we find these guys?” Vaughn asked, tearing himself away from the beautiful woman.
“They hang out at a club on the outside of town. Skye dances there sometimes. She got me in last night to check it out. Small joint, front door has two bouncers. Kitchen door leads to an alley. Main room has a big bar, maybe fifteen tables, and there’s a back room. I couldn’t get back there; Skye says that’s where they hold private parties.”
Vaughn pictured the place in his mind. Since his mother passed away he didn’t ever come to this part of town when he was on Foger. “What’s the name of the joint?”
“It’s a Human bar, taken over by Geraldinians. They just showed up and muscled all the regulars out. Called the Alley Cat.”
“What’s the plan? What do you need from me?”
“Skye got me a gig dancing there tonight. I’m going to kill them all, but I won’t have anywhere to hide a weapon. I’m worried I can’t take them all unarmed.”
Vaughn laughed. “You’re going to be dancing? After our homecoming gala?”
“Skye’s shown me a few moves,” she replied with a smirk. “I got the job, so I can’t be that bad.”
“Fair enough,” he smiled and then asked, “How’s security? Am I going to be able to carry something in?”
Fresia shook her head. “I don’t think so. Just gonna be us.”
Vaughn thought for a minute. “How are we going to handle Empire Security? They’ll be there in just a couple minutes.”
“Skye’s my backup on that. She’ll say one of them grabbed me, I slapped him and things got rough.”
“Think it’ll fly?” Vaughn looked doubtful.
“There’s been a huge influx of incidents involving Geraldinians sexually assaulting Human women. Ever since they took over the low-quarter, it’s like they have something to prove. Bunch of macho assholes.”
Vaughn resigned himself. Fresia was his best friend, and had been by his side since his third year at the Institute. When he was named Captain of The Reetus, she was his only choice for first officer. “I wish Hold was here. Geraldinians are fucking tough bastards.”
Fre nodded. “Me too, but he’s busy on Savye, he’s up to his ass in debt and the ruling council is breathing down his neck. He can’t get away.”
“Anything else I need to know before this goes down tonight?”
Fre shook her head. “I think that’s it. Get in, bust heads, get information, and get out.”
“Alright, I need to run a few errands; I’ll head to The Alley Cat about twenty-six hundred?” A Fogerian day ran for thirty hours. The longer days and nights had significantly upset the circadian rhythm of early Humans. These days, Humans were used to it, although their bodies never developed a need to sleep longer.
The pair stood up. Vaughn hugged Fresia and said, “We’ll find out what happened and there will be justice.”
She looked at him squarely in the eyes. “Thank you, Vaughn. For everything. I don’t know what I’d do without you.” As Fresia passed Skye, she paused, slipped a handful of crench into her garter. Skye bent down and kissed her with a passion that surprised Vaughn.
When it was his turn to walk by, she shook her boobs at him. He turned slightly red, slipped whatever bills he had in his pocket into her garter, and walked out, rubbing lipstick off of his cheek.
Vaughn headed straight for the central market. He passed store after store, selling everything from gnarg steaks to hand-made tak bars, moge and harder liquors, flowers and transports. Anything legal could be purchased there in the central market. For those looking for less-than-legal items, as Vaughn was that afternoon, one just had to know where to look.
He buttoned his coat and slipped into the side door of Miss Autumn’s, one of Vaughn’s old haunts when he was a bachelor living on Foger. The side door was reserved for special patrons. Vaughn hoped that title was for life, because he hadn’t been a good customer for a number of years. As he closed the door behind him, a high pitched voice called out to him. “Vaughn! Honey, I’m so glad you’ve come home. Finally decided to ditch that old ball and chain?”
“Hi, Misty,” said Vaughn, looking over at a beautiful blonde. She was wearing a completely see-through bikini with tall heels and nothing else. Eight years hadn’t changed her a bit. She was sitting on a long sofa, with her legs crossed. She kicked one leg innocently when Vaughn looked up. “I’m still married. Sarah’s doing well. I have a son these days,” he said, smiling.
“Oh, Vaughn. It’s a shame to see a man like you put out to pasture.” Misty put one foot over on the couch and ran her hands down her body, lingering between her legs. “Almost ten years I’ve been waiting for you to come back. No one makes me scream like you.”
Vaughn shook his head. “I got everything I need at home.”
“Why don’t you bring her along next time you come?” Misty ran her hands up to her breasts and squeezed them. “I play well with others.”
“That’s great, but I don’t. It’s been good catching up, baby, but is Mikey still downstairs? I need to have a talk with him.”
“Yeah, fine, whatever,” said Misty, standing up. As she walked past Vaughn to a small desk on the far side of the room, her skin went from milky white to dark green. Her legs and arms lengthened, and a tail peeked out from her backside and waved at him. She pushed a button on the desk, causing a door to open right beside Vaughn.
Her voice was much lower this time, as she said, “Last chance. I can look just like her if it makes you feel any better.”
Vaughn nodded his head towards her and stepped down the stairs.
Halfway down he heard a voice call up, “Vaughn fucking Troupe. What brings a badass motherfucker like you to my little hole in the world?”
“Mikey,” said Vaughn, stepping out into the underground shop. “It’s good to see you man.”
Mikey was less than a meter in height and covered in shaggy green and brown fur. He moved with deadly grace, in contradiction to his comical exterior.
“What brings you down?”
Vaughn held his empty hands out. “I’m in a spot. Some shit going down tonight and I could use something concealable that can even the odds. Gotta get past a couple door guys.”
“Must be something big if you’re looking for a force multiplier.” He held up his hands to stop Vaughn, who wasn’t going to say anything anyway. “I don’t want to know. I have enough problems with the ES as it is. I got just the thing for you, check it.”
Mikey disappeared behind the counter. It sounded like he was throwing pots and pans, guns, knives, sticks, and batons aside. When he reemerged, he was triumphantly holding a crench.
“Look at this son of a bitch. I swear The Emperor, may he guide us safely through, would take this note himself. But… you pull just right… and a little twist.” Mikey fumbled with the note for a second. “Hold on, it’s something like this.” He fumbled with the note a little more before it tore in half. “Alright… That was a real crench. But hang on. I got more shit.” Mikey ran off to the back of the store.
Vaughn passed the time looking at the high-end plasma rifles hanging on pegs on the wall. Everything on display was legal to sell, although some of Mikeys sources were slightly less than reputable. Finally, the small man bounded out of the back room, backflipped off a Human size chair and landed in front of Vaughn holding up a ring.
“Tenth-gram of Argimonium. Delivers ten thousand volts on contact. Turns your punches into real stunners.”
“That’s perfect. How much?”
“Can you bring me half a gram next time you’re in town?” Mikey looked up at Vaughn. His eyes were impossibly big.
“Half-gram? Mikey… I’d take an ass whupping for a half-gram. I’ll bring you a fifth.”
“Make it a quarter gram and we have a deal.” Mikey reached up to shake Vaughn’s hand.
Vaughn looked down at his old friend. “Fine,” he said. “One quarter gram.” The pair shook hands to seal the deal, and then Vaughn headed back to the ship to find some way to pass the time.
Vaughn worked in the cargo hold, stripping panels that lead to power conduits and reconnecting old circuits. “How many can I run based on our current generation capabilities, without disabling any of the modifications?”
“I was originally designed to host a compliment of seventy five guns. Pushing the current generators to one hundred ten percent would allow for seventeen.”
A week after Matty was stung by the shrolg, the ship’s computer woke Vaughn from his nap in his seat in the galley. Her soft, silky voice came from everywhere and nowhere. “Sir, we are nearing Vaughnville.”
Vaughn sat up in his berth and scrubbed his fingers through his long, dirty hair before wiping the sleep from the inside corners of his eyes. The transport captain cleared his voice and spoke out loud, “Halle, drop us out of the fold. I’ll come up and pilot the approach. Vaughnville? Really?”
“You’ve lived there for fifteen years, Captain. It needs a name.”
“I know. But Vaughnland? You make me out to be quite the egotist.”
“Perhaps something historic then? The name of the earliest Earth settlement in my memory is Sharonton. There was also an earth city called Duluth, and one called Red River Falls. Queen Willa the Great was from Red River Falls.”
“I remember history classes, Halle. Sharonton? I like it. How about New Sharonton?”
Instinctively, Vaughn reached out and grabbed the railing high along the wall. The entire ship shuddered as Halle unfolded space around the bubble containing the ship.
“Argimonium levels at eighty percent. Approaching New Sharonton at one quarter light.”
“Slow us to approach speed. How is the field looking?” He asked, letting go of the railing and swinging his legs off his seat and into his boots on the steel flooring. Every floor of the ship was metal. If the gravity generators failed, he could slip magnetic soles into his boots and still be able to maneuver around the ship.
“Magnetic field strength around New Sharonton is forty one percent above operational parameters. Full systems shutdown will be required during ionosphere re-entry.” That magnetic field was the reason Vaughn Troupe had chosen this particular moon to call home. It kept the E’Clei sensors from detecting the argimonium fields on the moon, and that kept his family safe. The field was caused by the gravitational interplay between the iron core of the moon Vaughn called “home” and the massive gas giant it revolved around.
When the system’s sun and his moon’s gas giant were in alignment, the tidal swell was enough to bring the ocean to his doorstep. At low tide, the ocean was almost forty miles away across a massive salt flat.
Vaughn sat down in the captain’s chair and punched a series of buttons on the arm rest. Three virtual screens appeared in the air in front of him. The far left showed the optimal approach path and his ship’s trajectory. The far right was the tactical screen, weapons systems and sensors. The middle screen had his focus at the moment, it was the flight controls. He adjusted speed and attitude, pitched over and started the descent.
“Halle, full shutdown. All controls to manual.”
“Yes Sir. Have a safe landing, Vaughn.”
“Thanks, Halle. Have a nice nap.”
Seconds later, the projections disappeared and the cover of the dash rolled back to reveal a large ball and dozens of buttons and levers. He put one hand on top of the sphere, and rolled it back and forth. Thrusters fired from the left and right side. He pushed the levers back and felt the drive thruster spin up. A huge ball of blue flame shot out the back of the ship, which lurched forward and nosed over towards the surface of the moon.
Manual reentry was always a thrill for Vaughn. As the air thickened outside the ship, the hull heated, causing it to expand. Tings, pops, creaks and groans sounded off all throughout the aging ship. “Come on baby, hold together for me,” he whispered.
Halle was a great ship. Just after the Battle of Bruth, Vaughn had found her floating in space, lifeless, not a soul aboard. He ordered her dragged into his cargo bay of his independence class warship, and there she sat, waiting. He spent most of his off time working on her.
This ship had started its life as a short range intra-stellar fighter for the Fogerian Empire, but Vaughn had other plans for a second life. He installed her AI, renamed her Halle, and every hour he wasn’t on the bridge, he spent inside Halle dreaming of the life he’d have afterward. A second life for both Vaughn and Halle, exploring deep space with his wife and the son he hadn’t yet met in person.
Folding space required a massive amount of computing power. Without the exact calculation, a ship could end up millions of light years from its target destination. Even with the most up to date star charts in the Fogerian Empire, a captain who was a million light years off course could spend months or even years trying to figure out where they were and which way they should go.
Throughout the war Vaughn requisitioned computer parts as replacements or spares for his battle ship, The Reetus. High Command didn’t complain about the extra parts, they considered them an investment. All the improvements Vaughn made to his battleship’s navigational computers benefitted the entire fleet. He never told them that he used all of those improvements in Halle’s core, let alone that she was the reason he was ordering all those parts.
As far as his superiors knew, he blew out a processor testing improvements to his own ship. Halle could compute coordinates in a fraction of a second that took the E’Clei an hour to compile. She was designed to function in deep space; Vaughn wanted to expand The Empire’s star charts. He wanted to find a sector of space where there were no E’Clei. No threat of the microscopic parasites invading his brain, killing everything that made him unique and wearing his corpse like a suit.
Sitting in the completely redesigned cockpit of his ship, Vaughn pushed the throttle and rolled the thruster control sphere forward. He reached up and hit several buttons on the ceiling, causing the ship to roll again until Vaughn was facing straight up in the captain’s chair. Another button activated the Cockpit Angle Servos. A regular Interceptor class ship was a long, skinny tube, pointed at one end with four massive engines at the other. Interceptors were capable of landing on the surface, the housing around the four massive engines served as landing gear, but the vehicle was primarily designed to stay in space. Halle was built to dock with a larger ship or space station; the crew would then take a shuttle to the surface. In her previous life, she was a space faring war-bird, but now she’d been repurposed for long-range exploration. Vaughn wanted to be able to live in the ship while she was on the surface of a planet.
Vaughn fired the landing thrusters, slowing the ship through the upper atmosphere, before reaching up to the ceiling once again to restart Halle.
“Nicely done, Captain. Shall I take over?”
“Take me home, Halle,” Vaughn said, unbuckling his harness. He walked down the hall toward the cargo hold where he had a month’s worth of supplies strapped down and waited until the ship touched down to open the door. He bounded out of the ship and crossed the hundred meter landing pad in three steps. The half gravity of his home was familiar to him. These days he was much more graceful than when he’d first arrived, although back then, he’d only had one leg.
The surface of New Sharonton was something of a kaleidoscope. The land shifted with the tides twice a day. Often, entire hills would move several meters. There was almost no vegetation on this part of the planet but on the opposite side, there were massive rainforests with trees over a thousand meters tall. They were so tall that the tops peeked above the ever-present clouds. The purple leaves gathered sun while the lower leaves soaked up moisture and released oxygen.
Vaughn looked out across the sandy planes. The sky was blue between the clouds, which created massive shadows rolling across the salt-flat to the south. His house was built just on the far side of the dunes at the edge of the massive salty desert. Twice a day, ocean water covered the desert in water, and for an hour or so at high tide, Vaughn had an oceanfront home.
At the edge of the landing pad, he expected his son Matt to be waiting for him. Matt always greeted Vaughn when he returned. Sarah sometimes came, but his son never missed a trip.
“Halle,” Vaughn said aloud, the chip in his ear connecting him with his ship. “Scan the area. Where’s Matt?”
“Sir, there are no life-signs in the immediate area. Perhaps he’s gone hunting again?”
“Where’s Sarah? Widen the search.”
“Ionospheric interference is keeping me from accessing my satellites, Vaughn. Would you like me to launch probes?”
Something wasn’t right. He was home right on time. They should be here. “Not just yet, Halle,” he said, leaping towards his home. He bounded up a large hill in one push off his artificial leg and tripped over a body in a white robe.
Now panicked, he rolled to his feet and jumped again and again towards his home, over hundreds of bodies. They all looked the same.
“Halle,” he started, out of breath in the thin atmosphere. “Dead, bald men in white robes. Gold “M” on their foreheads. Who are they?”
“Searching, Vaughn.” Seconds passed as he neared his home. “Their description matches those of Maxist priests. An ancient religion, The Maxists believe that a boy named Max was a god sent to Earth in the earth year 2010 to save Humanity from the E’Clei. The religion believes that Max will return and provide a safe place for all of Human kind. You know the name as the consortium that controls the vast majority of the argimonium in the galaxy.”
“How many years have they been waiting?”
“Unknown. It is rumored that Max was a mutated Human immune to the E’Clei parasites, who developed special abilities from their attempted infection.”
“Why would they be here?”
“Also unknown. I could create suppositions, but there are seven million three hundred thousand six hundred forty two possible reasons there could be dead Maxists on your moon. The probability of any of them being true is nearly six billion to one. The most likely is that they were monitoring your argimonium production, although they have no history of being involved in production.”
“Just tell me you have nothing,” he said, running.
“I have nothing, Vaughn. I suggest launching the probes.”
Desperation crept into Vaughn’s voice. These Maxists all had plasma burns. He’d seen these wounds before. They were from E’Clei weapons. “Launch them. Find Matty and Sarah.”
Vaughn reached his house, a solitary circle of green in a vast desert. The grass was perfectly manicured. Plants grew up under the windows, and a single tree, planted in the front yard had a swing hanging from one of the limbs, all surrounded by a white picket fence.
The house itself was a replica of an ancient earth home. When Vaughn was a child, his parents told him stories of Earth and how the E’Clei had come dozens of times over tens of thousands of years in an attempt to take over the planet before it was destroyed in The Colcoa War. Not much information survived the war, but Vaughn’s home planet was ravaged and then destroyed by the E’Clei. Less than a thousand Humans, led by Queen Willa the Great managed to survive the destruction of the planet.
Vaughn had built this house as a tribute to his ancestors, a small outpost of Humanity in a universe where his people had no real home. The front door was knocked off its hinges. Just inside the door, Sarah was laying on her back, clutching a communications link in one hand and an ionic pulse gun in the other. “Matty! Matt! Come out! I’m home!” he shouted. There wasn’t a sound in the house as he knelt to check Sarah for a pulse. She was cold.
“Vaughn,” Halle said in his ear. “The corpses are between twelve and fourteen hours old. Sensors are expanded out twice as far as Matthew could have travelled in that time. There are no Humanoid life-signs. I will continue the search.”
“Matty!” Vaughn called, grabbing the IP gun from Sarah’s hand and placing it gently on her chest. “Matty! Where are you!” He ran through the small house, searching every room. He checked every closet, under the beds, everywhere someone could hide. There was no sign of his son.
“Captain, Matthew is not on New Sharonton. I have scanned all of the bodies. His is not here. Heat trapped in the concrete of the launch pad indicates a ship left between eight and ten hours ago.”
Feeling utterly lost, Vaughn sat down on Matt’s bed, buried his face in his hands, and wept. Sarah was dead, his son was gone. And the E’Clei were to blame for it. All of years he spent being careful and trying to stay off of the radar had been for nothing. None of it made any sense.
After several hours, Vaughn headed towards the mine, fired up the excavator and dug two holes. He dug the first right beside the house, just big enough for Sarah. The other much more massive hole was over the hill behind the house. He was sewing Sarah into her favorite sheet when Halle spoke in his ear. “Captain, I have completed an exhaustive search of the entire moon, including sub-surface scans. There is no sign of Matthew on the planet. The plasma burns on the dead Maxists indicate E’Clei involvement, although there is a twenty seven percent chance that is a ruse. Footprint analysis indicates Romjini E’Clei.”
“How quickly can you get to Romjin?” Vaughn knew the planet, although he’d never been there. Part of his duty as captain of The Reetus was to know every E’Clei stronghold, even those on the farthest side of E’Clei space.
“Forty-Seven hours, sir. The Romjini ship would take nearly sixty to make the trip.”
“Halle, you’re not outfitted for war anymore. And what if they didn’t go to Romjin?”
“It is among the least likely places they would take him, Sir, but I calculated a ninety-seven percent chance that your follow up question would be to ask the time it would take them to travel there.”
Vaughn stitched Sarah the rest of the way up, and lifted her up on to his broad shoulders. Talking to Halle and creating a plan of what to do next helped him process his emotions. Being able to take the time to put Sarah to rest allowed him to deal with his grief. As he walked, he asked, “Where did they take him?”
“Statistically, based on seven hundred eighty thousand known E’Clei tactics, they would have taken him directly to E’Clei.” Vaughn’s heart sank. The most defended planet in the known universe. No Fogerian soldier had ever gotten within two light years of E’Clei. Not even spies implanted with genetically engineered parasites had ever returned.
The Fogerians were the most advanced race in the universe, other than the E’Clei, who only needed infect a handful of people of any race to have all the knowledge of that species. The E’Clei were technologically superior and when they killed an enemy, that enemy became one of them.
The Fogerian War ended in a drawdown of hostilities. The people of Foger said it was because they had done so much damage to the bugs, but Vaughn thought differently. Vaughn knew the E’Clei would never give up; instead they just altered their priorities. There were hundreds of trillions of habitable worlds in the universe, and billions of species. The E’Clei had conquered thousands of them, but as his mother used to say, “There were other fish in the sea.”
With Sarah buried in her garden beside the house, Vaughn started loading the Maxists into the bucket of the loader and dumping them into the massive grave. He thought best when he was busy, somehow physical labor always made his brain function better.
As he filled in the dirt, the thought struck him. He ran towards the house and grabbed the communicator Sarah had been holding.
“Halle, find the frequency of this comm. Adjust for the Doppler effect of the signal bouncing off the magnetic field. Find the last signal and amplify it.”
“Calculating… I’ve found it sir. Would you like to hear it?”
“Yes!” he shouted, and then static filled his ear. Just under it he could hear the occasional note of Sarah’s voice.
“Filter out the static. Rebuild the signal based on Sarah’s speech patterns,” he commanded.
Slowly, the static disappeared out of the sound in his ear, until all that was left were a few sounds of Sarah’s voice. Just syllables and single letter sounds.
“I’ve analyzed all recordings of Sarah’s voice in my database. Applying suspected patches now. I’m afraid it doesn’t make much sense, sir.”
“Vaughn. T.. Avenue. Flat. Romain.”
“Factor in that she was under attack, and The Maxists being here. She had to have been under extreme stress,” the Captain said.
Sarah’s voice changed again in his ear. “Vaughn. They have Matt. Low eighty…” Sarah’s voice was cut off by Halle. “Sir, I cannot guess the number. From her inflection, there was more than eighty. Probability indicates she was telling you how many Humanoids had Matt.”
“Her mind didn’t work that way, Halle. Sarah isn’t a soldier. Enemy combatants wouldn’t matter to her.”
“Recalculating with additional parameters.”
Sarah’s voice again appeared in Vaughn’s ear and he had to choke back tears as she spoke. “They have Matt. Low eighty. Ours.”
“You’re a god damned genius, Halle! They’ve taken Matty to Loe. We have eighty-something hours to meet them there. Calculate the fold. Warm up the engines, we’re taking off.”
“Sir. I’m a computer, I do not have intelligence as you would categorize it.”
“Shut up and do the math,” Vaughn yelled over the noise of the loader he was riding towards his space dock. He climbed up the ramp into his ship and hit the button to close the cargo hatch. “How long?”
“Five hours, thirty four minutes.”
“Recall the probes.”
“They’re on their way back. Six minutes to planetary probe docking.”
“Organize the satellites, Halle. We’re going to pick them up too. We have less than four days and we need to make a stop on the way.” Vaughn’s boots clanked on the metal catwalk that led up to the galley.
“She won’t be happy to see you, Sir,” Halle said.
“I can’t get my son back without her,” Vaughn replied, buckling himself into the captain’s chair.
“I’ve adjusted our course. Four hours to the Foger home-world. I suggest you get some sleep once we get past the field.”
“Too much to do.” Vaughn piloted the ship through the magnetic field for the second time that day before turning Halle back on and heading towards the back of the ship.
“All six satellites are recaptured and safely stowed. Brace yourself for the fold.” Vaughn grabbed on to the railing in the cargo hold. He heard the familiar sound of the Alcubierre field generators winding up, and then the ship rattled and shook as it rocketed off down the wormhole created between the two layers of folded space-time.
If you are enjoying The Evolution of Vaughn, and would rather read on your kindle or other device with the kindle app (Or just think it’s worth the price of a cup of coffee, you can purchase the book on Amazon.
The Evolution of Vaughn is a work set in the same universe as What Zombies Fear, but hundreds of years in the future. Several key players from What Zombies Fear make appearances, including the E’Clei. If you have read that series, you will pick up on some of the Easter eggs, but having read it is NOT a requirement to fully enjoy this story.
Thanks for reading,
Kirk
Before we begin. This is sci-fi, and there are often words that you may not recognize. Most of them, like Alcubierre Drive, do mean something, but if you don’t know the science I do try to leave enough contextual clues that it doesn’t matter.
Date: 432 Year of Emperor Valek Foger XXVI
Vaughn and his son Matthew walked across an empty desert of salt and sand. A slight breeze blew from the west. The sun was still an hour from rising, but the blue light reflected from a massive gas-giant that filled a third of the sky illuminated their path. Matthew was almost as tall as his father, both had long, powerfully built legs and a thick torso from hours spent in their gravity chamber.
Vaughn was carrying two fishing poles and a tackle box while his son pulled a small boat on massive balloon-style tires. In the low gravity of their home moon, it wasn’t a difficult task. But on any planet, it was a long walk.
It was a cool morning, but that would change quickly once the sun was up. Vaughn looked back at their tracks in the salty sand. “Do you know why the Fogerians love Humans so much, Matty?”
“No idea,” the teenager said.
Vaughn leapt high into the air, sailing more than five meters up before drifting back to the surface. “When we were a new species, back on our home world, we were the top predator on our planet, even before we had tools. Does that make any sense? We have no claws, dull teeth, and we’re not particularly fast on our two long legs.”
“How did we catch things?”
“We out-endured them,” Vaughn stated. He glanced over his shoulder at his son before continuing. “Our species has stamina unmatched in the galaxy. We can walk for days without stopping. When I was a soldier, I could run two hundred kilometers in a day. Sure, Fogerians are faster than we are. But after four or five kilometers, we’ll catch them when they have to stop to rest.”
“Two hundred kilometers in a day? Really Dad…” Matthew rolled his eyes.
“One time Uncle Holdan and I covered almost twice that in a day. Although part of the trip was in a transport. And the last fifty kilometers I only had one leg.” Matt snorted in disbelief. “Humans are the endurance champions of the universe,” his father continued. “We are stronger than most races, other than perhaps Geraldinians, but they have to eat every two hours.” Vaughn paused, watching his son’s reaction. “We are relative newcomers to this galaxy. We don’t have a planet of our own anymore, but several planets have allowed us to live on their home-worlds. This makes us second class to many people, but don’t ever let their attitudes convince you that we’re not as good. Every race in the cosmos has its strengths and weaknesses.”
“Is that why you fought the war? To get back at the E’Clei for blowing up our planet?”
Vaughn shook his head. “Nah, that was eons ago, and revenge never solves anything. I fought the war because the E’Clei are a threat to you and Mom. I fought them because they take over your body and turn you into one of them. And because someone had to stop them. If I didn’t volunteer, who would?”
“I don’t wanna go to war. I want to go to Foger and start a restaurant in the Human district. Find a girl, maybe two, and have some adventure.” Matthew said with a smile.
Vaughn laughed. “I’d come eat in your restaurant every day.” A moment passed in silence before Vaughn looked at his son. “I hope you don’t have to go to war. I fought as hard as I could so you wouldn’t have to ever do that. Adventure is overrated. I’ve had my share; I’ll take my normal, quiet life.”
The two approached the edge of the vast ocean that covered the majority of the moon. Vaughn set the tackle box he was carrying in the boat and handed a rod to Matthew. They both climbed up in the boat and cast their rods far out into the ocean.
As they sat, the water rose all around them. Matthew was unhooking his second fish when the boat lifted off the bottom. The pair drifted towards home with the tide, reeling in fish as they talked.
“So, tell me about her,” Vaughn said with a sly smile.
Matty turned red. “Who?”
“The girl you’re talking to. What’s her name?”
“Oh. Uh…Seegu. She’s just a friend.” Matthew practically tripped over the words getting them out.
“I’ve had a few friends that made my cheeks turn that color too. Your mom was one of them.” Vaughn grinned at his son. “Seegu. That’s a Foger name, no? When I was about your age, I had the hugest crush on a Fogerian woman. What do you two talk about?”
“She’s a musician and plays in a gonse band. She’s so talented, Dad. She is talking to a guy who works for a producer. She’s really got a shot.” Any nervousness Matt had melted away as he talked about Seegu.
“Gonse, eh? Like ‘Fong Dolls?’ I dig that one song; what’s it called…”
“Forever Girl. That song’s like six months old.”
“Yeah, Forever Girl.” Vaughn started singing the chorus in an incredibly high falsetto. “Don’t you know, For all eternity, I’ll never go. So come on, let’s give it a whirl… I’ll be, your Forever Girl.”
“Dad, stop.”
“What? I’m a pretty good singer.”
“Yeah, but you’re wrecking the song! Now it’s going to be stuck in my head.”
“So what does Seegu sing?”
Matty had a far-away look in his eyes. “Oh, she’s not a singer. She plays the jusuede. She holds four mallets and she’s so fast! It’s really amazing to watch. And I’m pretty sure she can play any song ever written.”
“So,” said Vaughn, not really sure where to start. “You know Humans and Fogerians can’t…uh…Well, even though they look a lot like us on the outside, on the inside we are very different.”
“Dad, it’s not like that at all. We’re just friends.”
“Okay. But this is one of those conversations dads have to have with their sons.”
“Really. Dad… I have signal access. I’ve seen it done.” Matty shifted uncomfortably in his seat and tried to look everywhere except at his father.
“Whoa. Some of the things you see out there… They aren’t how it really is. Some of that stuff they do for the recorders is pretty crazy. Mostly, it’s about two people who love each other coming together. It brings new intimacy to the relationship, and that’s how children are created.”
“Dad, I’m going to swim home…”
“Okay… Fine. But if you ever have any questions, about anything, you know you can ask, right?”
“Sure, Dad. Whatever.”
“I love you Matty. I don’t often tell you this, but my life changed completely when you came into it, and I wouldn’t trade it for all the crench in the world. You’re the best thing that ever happened to me.”
“I love you too, Dad. Can we just fish now?”
Vaughn clapped his son on the back. He opened his mouth to reply, but his vision saw something bug move in the water below. “Shit,” Vaughn muttered, looking over the bow of the boat. “Don’t move. Quiet,” he whispered.
“Shrolg?”
“Yeah, big.” Vaughn slowly reached for his tackle box. They’d seen shrolg before, but Vaughn hadn’t ever seen one this big. They were the apex predator in this ocean. The creatures boasted ten long tentacles with razor sharp tips that reached out from a huge, circular mouth lined with row after row of inward facing teeth. Vibrations in the water attracted their attention; their tentacles had sensors in them that could feel a single drop hitting the surface from half a mile away.
It was close, about four meters away with all of its arms pointing towards the boat. The beast was trying to decide if the boat was random junk floating on the surface or something edible. Vaughn carefully opened his fishing box and removed the tray, gently setting it down. In the bottom of the box, he carried a small ionic plasma gun. He drew the gun and waited. Except for the tips of their tentacles, shrolg meat wasn’t poisonous, but they tasted horrible; there was no reason to kill this one unless it was absolutely necessary.
Suddenly, Vaughn’s comm started vibrating in the bottom of the boat. The tentacles honed in on the vibration, and the shrolg lurched forward, driving its arms up through the bottom of the boat. Letting out a surprised shout, Matthew was thrown overboard.
Vaughn threw the gun to the side and dove into the water, pulling out a long thin bladed knife used for skinning and cutting fish. When he hit the water, one of the tentacles lashed out at him. The creature threw the boat high into the air, scattering its contents across the surface. The number of items hitting the water temporarily disoriented the creature and it let go of Matty to investigate. Vaughn slapped his hands on the water over and over, furthering the shrolg’s disorientation.
“Matty, are you hurt?” he yelled.
“I’m okay. My leg is cut, but it’s not bad.”
Narrowing in on the sound, the creature converged on Vaughn, wrapping him up in its arms. Vaughn hacked furiously at it, severing every tentacle he could.
The massive shrolg pulled him towards its mouth.
Vaughn realized that dismembering the creature wasn’t stopping it. As it drew him closer to its gaping mouth, Vaughn arched backwards and drove his knife into the creature’s head. Instantly, the tentacles went slack.
“Matty, there’s a lot of blood in the water. Other predators will be drawn. We have to swim for it. Can you swim?”
“I can’t feel my leg, Dad!” Matthew was having trouble keeping his head above water. The shrolg’s paralyzing venom was coursing through his son. Soon it would reach his arms, and then Matty would no longer be able to swim.
Vaughn paddled over to the container they used to keep the fish cool in the hot sun. It was large enough to float Matthew. “Hang on, Matty. I’m coming,” he called to his son. “Relax and try to float!”
Vaughn pulled his son up onto the container, looped the carry strap over the teenager and started dragging him towards their home, which was just barely visible in the distance. If he didn’t get there soon, the tide would start going out, and they’d be washed out into the ocean.
“How you doing, bud? You okay? How are your fingers?”
“Okay. I can still feel them.”
Vaughn swam harder. After forty minutes of hard swimming, Vaughn’s feet touched the bottom. He stood and dragged his son out onto the sand. “The venom will pass. It just takes some time but you’re going to feel like hell tomorrow. Just try to relax.”
Vaughn tapped his ear. “Halle, can you connect me to Sarah’s comm?”
“Yes Captain. Are you alright?”
“We’re fine.”
“Vaughn, are you okay?” It was Sarah’s panicked voice now. “How’s Matty? When you didn’t answer my call, I got worried. Why are you calling through Halle?”
“We ran into a shrolg. It’s dead now and everything is fine, but Matty got stung in the leg and we’re on shore. Can you bring a table? I’m going to need some help getting him to the house.”
“I’ll be right there,” she said and disconnected the line.
Minutes later, Sarah approached at a dead run, pushing a floating platform in front of her. Vaughn rolled over in the sand and stood to meet her. “Mom’s here, Matty.”
“Mm sgood,” Matthew replied through numb lips.
Vaughn picked up his son and set him on the table. “Oh, Matty! We need to get you into the house,” Sarah said. “Once we get you dried off, you’ll feel much better.”
The two parents pushed their son back to the house. Vaughn spoke quietly. “I’ve never seen one that big, Sarah, especially not that close to shore. We were only in two or three meters of water. I killed it, but we’ll have to figure out what one so big was doing in the tide.”
Vaughn knew there were massive creatures in the deep ocean, but the speed of the tidal changes and the distance covered by the rising water usually kept them way off shore, where water conditions were more stable and large prey was abundant. The fish that used the tidal surge to feed were usually small, fast moving fish that could get in to feed on the mollusks, clams and plants that lived in the tidal field, and then get out before the tide receded.
“I’ll put off my trip until late tomorrow, but I have to make the delivery,” Vaughn said. “Making sure Matty is okay is more important.”
Sarah turned and put her hand on Vaughn’s face. “It’s just a shrolg sting, Vaughn. Handle your business; we’ll be okay here at home. Matt’s going to be fine.”
Vaughn pulled her tightly to him and kissed her. “I love you, Sarah Troupe. You’re the most amazing woman. You know that, right?”
“I do know that,” she said, between kisses. “I just try to be as amazing as you. You really took out a shrolg with a fillet knife?”
“Don’t mess with my kid,” replied Vaughn, puffing his chest and grinning. “I’ll cut your heart out with a spoon.”
I know sci-fi isn’t the typical genre of zombie lovers, but I really love this book. I thought if I posted a few chapters, you might give sci-fi a chance 🙂 -Kirk
The Fogerian War Book 1
Vaughn, a human born on a distant planet long after earth has been destroyed, is the first of his race to be invited to the prestigious Fogerian War Institute. After glory in the Fogerian War with the parasitic E’Clei, Vaughn is raised to the rank of Captain, and given command of The Reetus for the duration of the conflict.
Long after the war, Vaughn is married and lives a simple life, mining his remote moon for a precious mineral and raising his son. He arrives home from a routine business trip to find dead members of an ancient human cult called The Maxists littering his moon. Vaughn goes on a quest to find out what happened.
The action heats up when he discovers his son is still alive, and has being held heart of E’Clei territory.
Going to get his son could disrupt the shaky cease-fire between the Fogerians and the E’Clei, igniting an all new war. Leaving his son in the hands of the parasites he spent so much of his life fighting is not an option.
How far will he go to retrieve his son and exact justice from those responsible?
After the Colcoa stripped earth of all of her natural resources and left, the planet’s average temperature soared as the population dwindled down to the thousands. The few humans that survived the invasion are forced to live underground to escape the oppressive heat. Joe, his daughter Willa, and son Ezekiel are among the few brave enough to venture outside to gather food and supplies in the arid, rocky landscape. Their job is to bring enough food, water, and materials for their town to survive the summer in the cool caves of Red River Falls.
What Zombies Fear 