Alien Terrain (12 page)

The car was easier to manage than expected.
Finding north on that thin stretch of highway, easier still.
Raj let himself relax—as much as a man bent on murder could afford to—and
scanned the road for Jane’s previous home. He was confident he’d recognize the
place. A man like her ex-husband would make sure his customers could find him.
Raj would find him too.

As he drove he stared at the long stretch of black between
the fields of dust on either side and let himself imagine all the ways that he
might fail. Those men had weapons. He had none. Nor any true idea how many men
there’d be. The first time he’d seen roughly half a dozen. Now, there might be
more. He didn’t know.

He didn’t care. He’d fight. He’d fight until he had her
back.
In this life or the next.
He’d do whatever was
required to be with his mate.

His mate.

Even now the word made Raj supremely happy.
And surprised.
He’d thought he knew exactly how and where
he’d end his life, but fate had chosen to astonish him with love. He was
grateful, and he was possessive of his prize.

A spot on the horizon made him redirect his focus toward
impending battle. Raj knew that clarity of purpose would be his greatest
strength. It was a force not shared by his opponents. Earth men hesitated. All
Backusians marveled at the fact. There was always the pause before the shot,
that tiny hesitation between the closing of the fist and the delivery. What was
that?
Conscience?
Fear?
Whatever the source, it wasn’t part of his Backusian DNA. And Raj had no
compunction about taking full advantage of the difference.

He was drawing closer now. They’d recognize the car, of
course. That was his biggest problem. For a moment, Raj considered stopping out
of sight and coming in on foot. Attractive in some ways, except that it would
take more time than he was willing to invest.

And so he sped along the road and found that he’d been right
about the sign. It was painted four feet high across the barn. He registered a
house to the left before his focus narrowed on his target. Raj closed the
distance and then gunned the engine, knocking down the split-rail fence and
spewing gravel as he took on speed, the blue sedan now weaponized by his dark
fury.

He headed nose first through the wide door of the garage;
then Raj slammed the brakes and fishtailed into a half-gutted car. The impact
slid him over the bench seat into the passenger door. A workbench clattered to
the floor. He thought he saw two men in dark blue overalls go down. Around them
nothing moved but him. Raj opened the car door, then bent and grabbed the first
thing that he saw—a heavy pair of pliers, as it happened. That would do.

* * * *

Jane lay beside Rick in their bed and tried to overcome
a clamminess
between her legs that seemed to seep into her
soul. Why he’d wanted to have sex she didn’t know.
A mix of
ego spurred by a base itch or just the hurt of her abandonment.
Whatever
led to his advances, Jane knew that she’d accepted to survive.

Could her husband stop Dancer from killing her? Would he
have the nerve to try?
Maybe.
Not a given. She
wouldn’t leave it up to him.

Now that Rick had satisfied himself, she wondered if he’d
want to talk. Jane prepared herself to make another show of her repentance, but
he just stretched and giggled, glancing at her, like he always did. And so she
waited. When he got up, she’d get up too. She’d wash. She’d go downstairs and
cook something with salt and spice to spur their taste for beer. Then after
dark she’d find some keys and put on shoes and run.

* * * *

The men in overalls were dead but one. The lone survivor’s
arm was held behind him in a grip designed to make each movement sing with
pain. Raj marched him out into the gravel as an object he could trade for Jane.
But now there was another man.
A cooler man, holding a gun.

“Where’s Jane?”

The question caught the man off guard. The pistol lowered
almost imperceptibly. “Christ,” he said. “It’s true you bastards all live for
your dick, ain’t it? I thought that was just some hateful shit people said. But
no, you really are pathetic gigolos, aren’t you.
Lotharios
who go to school to learn how to eat pussy.
If that
ain’t some shameful shit.”

“Kill him, Bill.” The man in overalls rasped the words and
spat. “Everyone inside the barn is dead. The bastard killed them all.” Raj
pushed a little harder on his elbow until he gritted out a wailing curse and
bent nearly in two.

“Easy there,” said the man named Bill. “Jane’s upstairs with
her husband working on their wedded bliss. The two of them were snug up in
their bedroom with the door closed last time I checked.”

Raj was surprised at how much information he’d been given.
Far more than expected.
Doubtless the man meant to aggravate
him with the thought of Jane in bed. It didn’t aggravate him. It meant she was
alive—that he would have her back again. The man let the gun waver for the sake
of gesture, pointing toward a second-story window. He grinned and winked,
enjoying his own show, the theater of being a real bastard.

The last mechanic tried to free himself again. Raj snapped
his arm. It splintered noisily at wrist and elbow. A shard of bone protruded
from the flesh. That was impressive, but the howl of pain and spurt of blood
was what gave Raj his opening. The man in front of him seemed to forget that he
was armed. He stared in fascination at the savagery of what Raj had just done.
That was enough time to exchange his grip on one man for another. He pushed his
victim forward. The armed man stepped away like death was catching. And it was.
Raj leaped on him and flattened him completely. He got both his hands to his
throat and pushed his thumb through cartilage, through bone. The gun was inches
from his victim’s fingertips and yet the shock of a crushed larynx prevented
him from making any real attempt to get his hand around it.

Surprise again.
Surprise at savagery and
ruthless speed.
Earth men just didn’t see it coming. Clarity of purpose
did a lot of damage in their world.

Raj took the gun and shot the whimpering mechanic, then the
leader who was not a leader anymore.

He looked up at the house. Would anyone have heard the
shots?
Four windows.
All of them
ideal for firing at him several times.
But he saw nothing. No movement.
Not a shadow.

He started for the door with all his consciousness focused
on Jane.
His warrior.
His lioness.
His love.

Inside, he had his pistol ready, body ready for attack. But
there was nothing. An empty kitchen filled with something of Jane’s spirit. He
paused to take it in and heard the creaking of floorboards on the second story.
A man was coming down the stairs, pulling a T-shirt over his head.

“Stop,” Raj said. The man stumbled on the last step, taken
by surprise. Both hands pulled in to his body as he recoiled from the stranger
in his kitchen.

“Where’s Jane?”

“Who the hell are you?” The man was thin, boyishly
attempting to mask fear with looks of irritation and confusion.

“Where’s Jane?”

The man brought his hands to his hips,
then
folded them over his chest. “Is that your business? What happened out there?
Did I just hear a shot?”

“Two shots,” Raj said. “The others are all dead. I’ll kill
you too, unless you give me Jane.”

The man went very still. His attention shifted toward the
door, then down the hall behind the staircase where Raj had to presume he kept
his guns. “She’s upstairs.” He seemed to think he’d have a chance to reach
those guns of his. But he was wrong.

“Turn around and show me where.” Raj raised the pistol.

The man grew paler. Blotches stood out on his face and neck.
The floorboards creaked again. He turned his head toward the staircase and Raj
saw bare feet. A faded pair of jeans and Jane appeared, misbuttoning a shirt
over her bare breasts.

She was silent. Hollow. Absent. In her eyes he thought he
saw remorse, defeat. That made him angrier than he’d yet been that day. There
was much that he needed to tell her, that he should have said before. He should
have promised his allegiance above anyone and anything.
Soon.
Alone together he would listen, he would heal her. They would slip back into
timelessness together.

With his expression, with his tone, he told her what he
could. “Go back upstairs and finish getting dressed,” he said. “I’ll get the
car and we’ll go home.

“There’s a black car outside,” Raj said to the thin man.
“Where are the keys?”

“Ah shit,” he said. “Don’t take my fucking Off-Roadster.” It
was the first time there’d been any real fight in him.

“We won’t keep it.” That was true; this man, however,
wouldn’t live to care.

There were two dead bodies about twenty yards from her front
door, strewn in the dirt like broken toys. Jane made herself keep moving until
she was beside them, staring down.

Dancer lay flat on his back, his vacant blue eyes gazing at
the sky. He had it easy, but not Joe. Pain still clung to poor Joe’s broken
body. It hovered over him like a bad smell. His arm was flung overhead at the
wrong angle, everything about him wrong. She pressed her sleeve against the
wetness on her face and stared toward the barn.

“All of them?”

No answer. She’d heard his footsteps in the gravel. She knew
that he was close enough to hear.

“Did you torture them, like Joe?” she asked, sounding
pathetic.

Still no answer.

Jane took a step toward the barn and felt his hand close
like a trap around her elbow.

“It was violent,” he said tersely. “It was quick. And now
it’s done. Let’s go.”

She turned to him full-on and let the sickness in her heart
show on her face. “Go where?”

“Back.”

She thought that he’d say
home
, but he’d been smart. She hadn’t noticed that before. How much
he thought before he spoke. She’d been too caught up marveling at that face,
that body, how much he looked like someone’s made-up prince.
And
how she’d wanted to believe.

All that time, he’d just been watching like the keen
observer he admitted being. He’d told her everything. She’d give him that. He’d
told her of his schooling in the art of war and blood. That he was a trained
warrior who didn’t lose. She’d heard him, but she hadn’t known it meant he was
a monster and a murderer.
An animal.
A freak.

She hadn’t known.
Although she’d been told
by just about everyone.
Her husband and their friends.
A thousand teleposters, infoscreens.
Just common sense
should have told her aliens weren’t normal. It was obvious.

But she’d wanted a nicer story. Just like her parents had.
It was a family tradition to be a great fool. Subject to blindness that
believes its blinding intuition.
He’s
special. It’s special. We’re special. I know it
. That kind of self-delusion
was disgusting.

Jane let Raj lead her by the arm, not knowing where he meant
to take her, only that movement was easier than standing still. A sharp tug
made her stop cold in her tracks. For the first time since she’d met him, Raj
felt tense.

“What is it?” Jane looked around and found the sickening
answer.
A pair of dusty jeans.
A
faded denim jacket.

Rick.

His body lay crumpled a few feet from the driver’s side of
his new car. He’d curled up on his side, the way he always slept.
His cap still on, she saw an inch of blond hair at the back.
Who was he? She’d married him, and she had no idea.

“Don’t,” said Raj.

Jane dug her nails into his skin until he let her go so she
could kneel beside her husband. An instant later, she tried to get back on her
feet so quickly that she fell. The ground was hard and cold beneath her jeans.

“You cut his throat.” She stared at Raj. He offered no
excuse. Rick’s own knife was lying in the dirt beside him. She scuttled
backward on her hands and knees. Away from her rejected past, away from her
imagined future.
Murdered husband.
Murdering
lover.
She wanted out of the entire nightmare. Out.
Out
and away.

Every time she blinked she tried to burn another image over
what she’d seen. The garden hose coiled at the corner of the house.
The wild spill of rosemary from her spice garden by the kitchen.
The white rocks she and Rick had used to section off the flower beds. Yellow
patches in the grass.
The distant hills beyond the
interstate.

Nothing Jane made herself look at stuck. She only saw Rick’s
bloodless face and then her lover’s body framed against the colorless sky.
Violent.
Pitiless.

Alien.

There was a telepost in Rick’s new car. As wary as he was of
big brother technology, he hadn’t been able to bring himself to get rid of a
standard feature in a classic model. Raj drove them south again in silence.
Jane fumbled with the mechanism—clumsily but well enough. It wasn’t all that
hard to figure out.

On.

Search.

The Body House.
She used her
fingers rather than the voice command. An instant contact link appeared. She
tapped the letters of her message.
I have
a rescued Bod named Raj with me. He is unharmed.
Twenty-seven
miles south of Nordhup.
Lot 2065 on old Highway 68
.
She pressed the button that said
Send. And it was done.

They went into the tiny house together, sitting ten feet
from each other: he at the small kitchen table, she in the hard wooden chair
beside the bed.

If he’d spoken to her, it would have been easier for Jane.
She could have closed herself against his explanations. There was no way to
justify the things she’d seen.

But Raj said nothing, and their mutual silence bled together
into some common accord of separation that was unbearable. How long it lasted,
she had no idea. They sat. They waited. Shadows gathered.
Lengthened.
Gave way to darkness.
Jane’s hands and feet grew cold
and numb. Then after what must have been hours, she heard a car pull up beside
the house.

The engine was so quiet Jane had only just been getting up
when they were at the door. The doorbell chimed its cheery dyad of sweet notes,
and she felt sick. She ran a hand through her hair, straightened her shirt, and
turned the knob.

The long, sleek city cruiser she saw on the street should
have been surrounded by a string of male admirers. Had there been some group of
teenage boys to peer in through the windows and admire the black rims and
silver armored alloy, its presence would have been less grim, less like the
sign of something bad arriving at her door.

There was a woman standing there and that surprised her. She
had no idea what she’d been expecting, but certainly not this stunning image
from the glossy cover of a magazine. The man behind her wore the same
fashionable gloss over a distinctly rougher look. She spotted other people too.
Two men in suits stood at either end of the expensive car, eyes sharp as they
surveyed the street. Bodyguards, she supposed.

“Hello.” The woman had a sweet, round face, surrounded by a
mass of curls as pale and pretty as a polished stone. She glanced over Jane’s
shoulder and her eyes lit up.

His world had come here to reclaim him at Jane’s invitation.
She had to let him go so they could finish this. But now it hurt. She didn’t
know there’d be this lovely, happy woman. She didn’t know the markers of his
life were so unlike her in so many ways. If he lived with people who wore silk
and pearls inside their urban tanks, what reason would he ever have to think of
her? She’d be forever absent from his world, and he was now forever part of
hers. It wasn’t fair.

“Thank God.” The woman stared at Raj; her eyes sparkled with
happiness. She turned that beaming smile on the somber man behind her, and Jane
made herself move away from their reunion. She stepped around them and leaned
against the porch rail, thankful for the stinging crispness of the air.

“You let Solange come to the door?” Raj asked.

“We scanned the building first,” the man answered. “Not much
that’s dangerous here from the look of it.”

It went on but her back was to it all, her eyes fixed on the
farthest point that she could see.
Time to get on with it.
Time for the next part of her life to start.
That was
her mantra now.
Her promise to herself.
This will be over, and I’ll start again.

The woman pulled Raj into her embrace. Jane sensed it, heard
them murmuring to one another but kept her eyes fixed on the distant purple
hills. She didn’t want to think about the bubbling up and over of this
stranger’s obvious delight. Her cool, watchful companion also seemed
pleased—for his woman, for himself. Raj was as good as home again.
A foot away from her and gone.
Their moment ended. Chapter
closed.

When everyone was finally gone, she’d cry. Her chest and
throat felt full of tears.
Enough to weep for days.
That was okay. It wouldn’t be for him she cried. He was an alien, a murderer.
Irrational, remorseless, terrifying.
No, Jane would cry
because it had gone wrong again. A good deed ended in the same bad way.
First Human, her idealistic parents’ failure.
Then Rick and
all the time she’d spent trying to make
herself
believe
she loved him.

And now this last insanity.
The most embarrassing of all.
He’d given her an expert fuck,
and she’d been dumb enough to think something had passed between them.
Something rare.
Something pure.
A connection that was soul deep and important.

More than the thrill of sex, Jane had felt the purest form
of sheer benevolence for Raj. He’d lain beside her, and she’d wished that she
could press well-being into him by touching her palm to his skin. How often had
she looked down at her hand against his chest, dreaming she could make the
whole world better for him?

Jane lowered her eyes to the gravel of the street and tried
to make the image go away. The hollow sound of footsteps on the wooden stairs
gave way to heels on concrete. They were leaving. When she heard the car doors
open, Jane looked up.

“Do you really want me gone?” The strangers disappeared
inside the car, but he was still beside her, speaking his first words to her
since their return. Jane registered the hushed sound of his voice and didn’t
trust her own enough to answer him.

“Come with me.” This time he placed his hand on her arm.
The weight of it.
The warmth.

She shook her head.

Raj sighed.
Exhaustion.
Worry.
Resignation.
“I couldn’t let them take you from me.”

Was that his reason? Was it a good one? She didn’t know. Her
mind was gone. Her eyes were wet, and she was on the brink.

Go
. One easy word
but she just couldn’t get it out. If she tried, it would squeeze from her
throat garbled, soppy. She did not want that memory ringing in her ears. With
her attention fixed on the worn wood beneath the peeling paint, she took his
arm and followed the smooth skin down to his hand. She made herself look deep
into his eyes although it hurt as much as leaning into nails.

And Raj stared back at her.
Silent,
thoughtful.
He watched her body speak to him. She let him see the
wounds, the misery, the desperate need to be alone so she could fall apart.
Eventually he turned away, walked down the stairs, and got into the car. The
shining vehicle pulled away from the curb.

Jane felt a howl rise in her throat. Somehow she managed to
get back inside and stuff it down, only whimpering a little as she closed the
door.