Irritated as she was, she tried to brush it off. It wasn’t like she was likely to get the chance to find something to help her in an emergency situation. She’d have to be able to climb without help.
Over the next week, instead of going to sit to try to make conversation, she walked, round and round until she was huffing for breath, paused long enough for her breathing to even out and walked some more. It gave her an excuse to avoid Kole without seeming to, and by the end of the week she had progressed to the point that she didn’t have to stop to rest as often. The carrier for the baby was not only awkward, though, Cory pressed so heavily against her chest that he made it harder for her to breathe when she was struggling for breath.
He didn’t like it when she shifted the carrier to her back, at least not when he was facing outward. She’d thought he would like that since he could look around, but apparently it made him feel like he was going to fall. When she turned him to face her back, though, he nearly pulled her bald besides choking on her hair, which he stuffed in his mouth.
She tore off a strip of material long enough to tie her hair up high on her head and twisted it into a ball, securing it with another strip and then adjusted the carrier to hold him high enough on her back so that he could peer over her shoulder.
The first week she carried him like that was pure agony. It felt as if her spine was going to buckle, but it didn’t hurt as much the second week. Encouraged, she set herself a goal of being able to circumnavigate the entire yard twice before stopping to rest and then building up to a jog, and then a run.
Consuelo looked so abandoned and dispirited when she stopped going to sit with her that after a week she couldn’t ignore it anymore. As she passed near Consuelo, her back to Kole, she caught the other woman’s eye and motioned for her to follow. Perking up at once, Consuelo glanced toward Kole as she got to her feet and then turned to keep pace with Bri as she followed the line to the far corner. “You need to walk,” she told Consuelo in a low voice, using her fingers to imitate a walking motion.
Consuelo seemed to grasp the walking part, but Bri could see she didn’t know why Bri was so determined to walk.
God! It was so frustrating not being able to just talk to explain things! Especially when she needed to try to get across a warning that was complex, fears, speculation. She lifted her arms, flexing them like a body builder showing off their muscles.
Consuelo snickered at the puny muscles in Bri’s arms. Her smile faded as Bri made a motion toward the aliens, though, and she lifted her hand high above her head to point out how much bigger they were. She used her fingers on both hands to act out a little skit, two people running, the one in front screaming ‘eke’. A smile flickered over Consuelo’s face but quickly died, a look of fear widening her eyes.
She was pretty sure Consuelo had gotten the general idea when she cut loose with a string of Spanish that sounded like a dozen questions colliding. Unfortunately, she didn’t know what the questions were and couldn’t have answered them anyway. She had to fall back on the ‘Tarzan/Jane’ language of grunting, motioning, and acting out.
“I think we’re in serious trouble,” she said finally in a low, frightened voice, hoping Consuelo could understand at least some of the words, or the urgency behind them. “I think the ones who took us mean to put us out together--with those huge aliens, and they don’t seem to like us much. If they don’t protect us from them, we’re going to have to run for our lives.”
She was almost sorry she’d even tried to warn Consuelo because the woman looked absolutely terrified--which meant she’d gotten the general idea.
Maybe she shouldn’t have tried to warn her? What if she’d scared the poor thing half out of her wits and she was wrong?
She shook the thought off. Better to prepare for the worst than just to hope for the best. She might not have much experience of the ‘street wise’ kind, but she hadn’t exactly had a cushy life. In her experience, anything that could go horribly wrong usually did.
For all her diminutive size, Consuelo was a lot stronger than she looked and in better shape, Bri thought wryly, than she was. As soon as the woman grasped the situation, she took to walking, as well--except she was jogging.
Dismayed to discover even Consuelo was better equipped than she was, Bri ignored the doubts clamoring in her mind and pushed herself harder.
Unfortunately, despite the great effort Bri had gone to to make sure Kole could neither hear her conversation, nor see the hand motions she’d added to try to get her point across, it seemed to her that he caught on really quickly to what she and Consuelo were doing.
He’d watched them thoughtfully at first, even looking vaguely amused at their antics, but his expression had turned speculative fairly quickly.
As unnerving as the thought was that he seemed to have figured out the game plan, that wasn’t the worst of it.
The slavers figured it out, too.
Chapter Six
Strength, speed, agility--Bri was surprised to discover that she had more of all three naturally than she’d thought she possessed--a hell of a lot less than she needed, but she decided she wasn’t hopeless. She still deeply regretted that she hadn’t spent more of her life previously in being in the best shape she could be. She’d watched her weight, but she hadn’t worried about anything but keeping a neat figure and good grooming and trying to stay healthy because she didn’t want to be sickly like her mother--because she couldn’t
afford
it, financially or otherwise. Unlike her mother, who’d had
her
, she had no one to take care of her.
After the first couple of weeks, she’d gone back to trying to climb the tree again, but this time she’d focused on just trying to pull herself up over and over, trying to build up her upper body strength. Her legs were strong, but she couldn’t very well push herself up the damned tree. She needed strength in her hands, her arms, and her back and chest.
Mindful of the view she’d inadvertently given Kole before and his interest in that direction, she’d knotted the back and front of the gown together between her legs before she tried to climb up again. Unfortunately, it wasn’t really enough to preserve her modesty very well, and the knot in the sensitive crotch area was downright painful when she finally managed to sling her leg over that first branch and haul her heavy ass up on top.
It brought tears to her eyes. Trying to rub the sting away, she glanced down at Cory, whom she’d left lying of the ground beneath the tree, and discovered he’d turned over and was trying to wiggle off the ‘blanket’ she’d spread out for him. She was going to have to master this soon, and with him on her back, she realized, or he would be able to wander off while she was climbing.
She didn’t even want to
think
about what might happen to him if he managed to cross the boundary before she could catch him.
She hadn’t meant to do more than get over the first hurdle, but that thought encouraged her to push herself further.
She had her back to the trunk. After trying to solve her dilemma for several moments, she finally concluded that she was going to have to ‘mount’ the limb differently if she wanted to climb higher. Sighing, she got down again, dragged Cory back to the middle of the blanket, and faced the challenge again, sifting scenarios in her mind.
Reversing directions, she gripped the limb close to the trunk, but she quickly discovered that she wasn’t strong enough to just lift her lower body and grip the limb with her legs.
Dropping to the ground again, she blew on her burning palms until they stopped throbbing and went up the same way she had the first time, hung beneath the limb for several moments and then struggled up on top of it, trying to ignore the knot digging into her sensitive cleft when she sat on it.
There was another limb, she knew, a few feet above her head. Vertigo hit her when she tried to look up, though. When the dizziness had passed and she’d managed to stay on the limb, she pushed back until her back was against the trunk and felt around blindly until she managed to catch a hold on the limb above her. Feeling a little more secure, she released her death grip on the limb beneath her and caught another hold above her head and then brought her legs up one by one and used them to push her upward.
She was shaking so badly she almost fell twice executing the maneuver, but she managed to turn as she went up and the move from the second limb to the third was a little easier.
She was weak with exertion and fear by the time she managed to get to the top, but triumphant--until she looked around.
One of the dreaded many legged bots had appeared, and it was heading straight for her. Uttering a sharp squeak of fear, Bri reversed directions with more haste than caution and scrambled down the tree as quickly as she could. The fear and probably her weakness cost her. She slipped about half of the distance down, scraping the hide off her hands, arms, elbows, and knees as she clawed to catch herself, and lost her grip altogether before she could drop from the last limb. She hit the ground so hard it gave her whiplash, knocked the breath out of her, and jarred every tooth in her head. Ordinarily, that would have been the end of it, but fear was driving her, and she scrambled in a crab walk toward Cory before she had even managed to catch her breath or gather her wits.
Grabbing him up, she looked around frantically for the bot, saw it was nearly upon her and fled, hoping against hope that they’d call it off when they saw she’d come down from the tree. They didn’t. The next time she looked back it was virtually on her heels and reaching for her.
Uttering a scream, she ducked, reversed directions, and ran between the thing’s legs. It halted abruptly, seemed to hesitate, and then turned. The ‘confusion’ she’d managed didn’t give her much in the way of leeway, though. She gained a little distance, enough to dodge it, but the thing was between her and the habitat, even if she could get inside.
Defeat settled in her. She wasn’t going to be able to evade the damned thing. She couldn’t because she was hemmed in by the boundaries. Without consciously making a decision, she locked her arms around the baby, whirled, and dashed straight toward Kole.
The jolt that went through her when she broke the barrier snatched the breath from her lungs. Darkness followed like a light switch had been flipped. She caught a split second image of Kole’s face, fought the darkness and paralyzing muscle spasms to hold onto Cory, and then nothingness.
Cory’s panicked wails of distress ripped through her mind before awareness of anything else. Her arms tightened instinctively, and she realized with relief that she’d managed to hold on to him in spite of everything.
The sensation of movement layered over the wailing, and then pain. It took her several moments to pinpoint the pain because it was slamming into her from so many directions at once.
She was being dragged, she realized even as she managed to open her eyes. Part of the pain was friction from being dragged, part from the metal clamped around her ankles, and part from the fall down the tree.
Dimly, she recalled that she’d led the damned robot to Kole. She didn’t know why she’d done that. If she’d been able to think at all she would’ve realized he was no more capable of fighting the thing than she was. He had no weapon. The robot couldn’t feel pain.
Remorse settled in a knot in her stomach, and she struggled to twist around enough to try to look to see if Kole had been hurt. She couldn’t manage more than a glimpse, but it was enough to see he
had
been hurt, whether from trying to protect her, or just fend the thing off, or because he’d just felt like trying to take it down, she had no idea, but she saw him crumpled on the ground and bleeding near the wall of his habitat, as if he’d been flung there.
He wasn’t moving that she could see. She couldn’t tell if he was dead or just unconscious, but a wave of nausea washed over her as it flickered through her mind that he might be dead.
Trying not to think about the possibility that she’d gotten him killed, she focused on trying to sooth Cory. She’d didn’t know if he was hurt or just scared, but he responded to her attempts to quiet him--or he had just exhausted himself--she hoped it was the former.
When the bot had dragged her to her room it more or less scooped her up and shoved her in.
It was too big to get inside, she noted absently, more focused on trying to catch herself without dropping the baby or falling on him.
When the door had closed and locked behind her, she stood shakily for a moment more and finally wilted to the floor. Settling Cory on the floor in front of her, because she was too weak with reaction to continue holding him, she examined him carefully for injury. She found a couple of scratches and a pretty nasty looking bruise on one cheek, but he seemed to be relatively unscathed.
She wished she could say the same for herself. Her entire body hurt. She wanted nothing more at the moment than the chance to doctor her wounds, but Cory had been through a traumatic experience, and he needed more soothing. Finally, she managed to get him to sleep, settled him carefully in the center of the platform bed, and then went into the bathroom to try to clean her scrapes and scratches.
As poor as the reflecting surface of the ‘mirror’ was, she could see she looked like hell. Her hair had been torn from the strip she’d used to tie it up and was a tangled mess filled with dirt and everything else small enough to catch in it. Her face was bruised and scratched. Her gown had been torn half off of her--probably, she realized, when the bot had tried to catch her and managed only to grasp the material--or maybe from being dragged across the yard, or when she’d slipped climbing down from the tree. Otherwise, she had scrapes and cuts and bruises all over the parts of her body she could see, and probably the parts she couldn’t see if the pain was any indication.
She bathed off the dirt and blood, washed her hair and untangled it. She couldn’t do anything about the gown, so she simply discarded it. Still weak from her ordeal, she returned to the main room, lay down beside Cory, and tried to ignore both the pain and the anxious thoughts running through her mind, and eventually managed to sleep.