Sex, Love, and Aliens 2 (22 page)

“They want to leave,” she murmured, getting to the heart of what the argument was really about. “But I don’t want to leave without you.”

His grip was tight, but she loved that fierceness about him. Kory didn’t work in the mines, at least not yet, but already his lanky form was filling out with muscle. Soon he’d be digging for the minerals the TEV wanted, just like his father and grandfather before him.

“If you leave, I’ll go with you,” he vowed. The promise fell so easily off his tongue. “I’ll always be at your side.”

The knot in her stomach slowly unclenched. She could face anything as long as Kory was next to her. “Promise?”

“I swear it.”

Chapter 1

Freya woke with tears still fresh on her cheek. Damn it. She hated dreaming about Kory, or about her parents. Nothing good ever came from remembering the past. After she and Kory had crawled away from listening to their parents, they’d gone to their special place, a hideaway, where they usually vented about how unfair life was. That day, she and Kory had kissed. They had declared their love, their intentions to always be together.

That night she and her parents had left the mountain thinking Kory would meet up with them, but as each day slipped by she’d come to the horrible conclusion that she had been the one to break their pact by leaving him behind. She’d begged her parents to go back, had even tried running away only to get hopelessly lost. It had been a bitter revelation that they were forever parted.

She impatiently wiped the wetness off her face and rose to stretch before moving into the bushes to relieve herself. It got harder and harder to wake up, to find the energy to continue moving forward. Hopelessness was fast filling up her heart.

As she walked back into camp, the rest of the group stirred to wakefulness. Presently, she was with a bunch of people that didn’t seem to know that staying in one place, singing songs, and building homes wasn’t the smartest thing to do. Yet she’d been sick and desperate when she’d stumbled into the settlement and so she’d stayed far longer than she should have, only to have to scatter in the night when the invaders had come to annihilate them.

The invaders, or TEV as they called themselves, were humanoid looking creatures with large oval eyes and defined cheekbones. They’d arrived a couple of generations back, taking over Earth, reducing the population by half and turning the survivors into their own mining slaves. Freya had lived her childhood inside a mountain, until her parents had run away.

They’d been gone a long time, and her soul was completely alone.

Shaking her head, she pushed aside the memories. There was no room in this world for memories, for “what-ifs”. If she wanted to survive, she had to set one foot in front of the other. It was depressing as hell, and once again she wondered what, exactly, there was to live for.

It had been two weeks since the attack and all she wanted to do was forget, but the quiet gloom that hung over everyone made sure that couldn’t happen. Children had been lost, and there wasn’t anything sadder than burying the body of a little boy or girl. Freya stayed with the group because she didn’t know what else to do, or where to go, but she would never consider herself part of them.

The morning rays woke the rest of the people up. They all ate jerky for breakfast and washed it down with water. She hated jerky. Hated the fact they would be on the move again, pushing ever closer to the mountain. Why they were going back she didn’t know, except maybe that was the only place to survive anymore. The scouts were numerous now, seeking out any humans and killing without mercy. Men, women, children. It didn’t matter to the TEV. Those outside the mountain were expendable.

They got moving sometime after daybreak and headed north. The days were growing shorter, the nights a little chillier. Freya had no idea what they would do once the winter winds came. The men talked about joining up with another group, but she thought maybe they were trying a little too hard to be optimistic. She no longer believed in a happy ever after, or luck. Or peace. Life wasn’t peaceful, or easy, or even good. It was just…moving.

They stopped for lunch and ate jerky. Freya knew they would soon have to scout for something different, wild vegetables or berries or something. The human body needed nutrients to survive, more than just dried-out rabbit or squirrel meat.

One of the survivors named Ben meandered up to her and sat down next to her on the cool ground. Freya looked at him out of her peripheral vision but didn’t acknowledge him outright. Ben had lost his wife in the TEV attack, and while she felt sorry for him, she didn’t like that he’d invaded her space.

“You’re going to have to choose,” he said abruptly.

“Excuse me?” she asked, confused.
Choose what?

He pointed to the assembled group. There were six men and two women, counting her. Suddenly, she understood very well what he meant.

“Resources are going to be tight,” he replied. “We no longer have the settlement, and we need to rebuild. That means children. So you’re going to have to pick which man you want to protect you.”

Anger swelled within her. She glared at Ben. “Didn’t you
just
lose a wife?”

He shrugged. “If it had been me, I wouldn’t expect her to remain faithful to a memory. This world doesn’t let us mourn.”

She didn’t tell him she’d been mourning her lost love for thirteen years.

“Besides, you’re slightly long in the tooth,” Ben said, looking her over. “Time you had a man.”

Freya shot to her feet. There was no way she was going to continue to sit next to him while he talked about being an undesirable because of her age. Yes, she was older than most, but that meant she’d learned how to remain hidden far better than others.

She hurried away, from him, from all of them. The stares of the men scorched her back, but she ignored them. Ben’s words were an unwanted reminder that she was all alone in this world, unwanted except to be Eve to an Adam.

Once she was far enough away from them, she sat dejected on a log and stared into the forest stretching out endlessly in all directions. Tiredness wrapped its chain around her shoulders, a never-ending feeling of desolation and melancholy. Ben’s words made the weight almost unbearable because she couldn’t deny them, unfeeling as they may be. She had a choice to make. Go on with them and become the next
wife
to one of the men, or branch out on her own. Neither prospect was very appealing, but the latter she could live with. The former...well, Kory’s ghost made that option intolerable.

She got to her feet and took a deep breath. Without looking back she continued her trek deeper into the wilderness, away from the survivors.

Chapter 2

Freya had no idea where she was headed, except for the fact she was walking west. She had no desire to return to the mountain her parents had left. That night had been fraught with tension as they’d followed Adam and his family in complete silence through the winding corridor of rock. She still remembered the first time she’d smelled fresh air. Had seen the sun and the moon. A bird. A fox. Fish. It had all been new and wondrous, and yet sad. She’d been the only teenager and had deeply missed Kory, wishing he’d been there to explore the freedom with her.

Toward evening she came to a wide river and bit her lip. It was too dangerous to travel at night, so this would be the best place to make camp. In the morning she’d reevaluate her situation. Nestled at the base of a tree, she closed her eyes.

A noise jolted her awake and Freya sat up quickly, listening. The ominous absence of sound shook her, and she quietly scrambled to her feet in order to be ready to flee if need be. As her heart thundered in her ears, she waited, running her sweaty palms down her trouser legs. How long she stayed poised for flight she didn’t know, but gradually the tension through the night creatures relaxed. Crickets chirped. The leaves blew. Freya felt whatever presence had been close disappear, and she slumped against the tree trunk.

She couldn’t sleep for the rest of the night, and when dawn finally broke she hurried to clean up in the ice cold river. Her belly rumbled, reminding her to find some food. Scavenging, she came across gooseberries and along the shady tree line she found Indian cucumber root. The plant itself was poisonous, but the roots could be eaten raw, and right now, she wasn’t picky. A quick rinse off in the river and she happily had enough to munch on through the day.

The river blocked her from heading west, forcing her to turn north. About midmorning, something ahead caught her eye. Curious, she hurried forward, and as she crested over a hill, she saw a TEV warrior. Her breath hitched with fear, and she ducked down so he wouldn’t see her. She was downwind from him, so that eased her panic a little. Still, she wondered why he was walking. Why wasn’t he using a hover disc to travel? And where was he going?

Following him would be completely foolish, and yet she couldn’t help herself. Like a marionette being guided by invisible hands, Freya stalked him. Several times he looked behind, causing her to hide, and each time he did that she held her breath, waiting. But he’d continue on his journey, so she continued hers, keeping far enough away to blend into the wilderness.

They walked for hours, and she munched on gooseberries. She’d gotten used to always being hungry, so her rumbling belly didn’t faze her at all. When the sun cast long shadows over the land, the TEV warrior entered a clearing and halted.

She skirted the perimeter and saw a narrow, rectangular building emitting a low, humming buzz. What was that thing? A generator? If so, for what? The questions tumbled through her mind, and she couldn’t help but wonder what would happen if it was turned off. What calamity could befall the TEV, if any? And once that idea tumbled through her head, it was like a snowball rolling along, gathering mass.

How could it be disabled?

As she sat in the thicket of trees and studied the strange, pulsating edifice, the warrior lifted his arm and tapped on a small computer strapped to his wrist. Then he held up his wrist toward the building and slowly walked around it. Why he needed it scanned confused her, but whatever it did had to be important to the TEV, because the warrior had traveled a long way to get to it. They were in the middle of nowhere.

When he disappeared around the side she silently, carefully, left the grove of trees and walked toward the generator. Why weren’t there any guards? She stopped about ten feet from it, picked up a broken stick, and threw it at the generator. It sizzled and bounced off the force field protecting it. She’d been expecting one, of course. Still, it would have been nice to have been proven wrong.

Freya looked around the small clearing and knew she couldn’t stay out in the open. At any time that TEV warrior might come back, and she had no way to defend herself. So she backtracked the way she came, back to the deep shadows of the trees, to wait. She didn’t let herself think about later, or the next day, because no real plan had formulated in her head yet. What was she going to do, just wait there until the warrior left? Divine intervention? Help?

She snorted to herself.

She had a better chance of taking that generator apart with her bare hands. So she sat and waited and stared, wondering what she could do to destroy it. As the minutes drew out, it became the only thing she could think about. She had no weapons, no way to breech that force field, still, getting through it became an obsession.

Just as twilight began to bathe the land, and the cool evening breeze penetrated her clothes, the lone TEV warrior returned and stood at the threshold of the force field.

Her heart thundered because it dawned on her that this might be her one and only chance to do something. Go down like a hero, even if no one ever knew her name.
She
would at least know that her life hadn’t been in vain, that she wasn’t one more human clinging to the notion that things were going to get better. This was it, this was life, and reality sucked.

She missed her parents, and she missed Kory. Ever since they’d left the mountain they’d been on the run, never finding peace or sanctuary. One by one, those who had run with them broke away, because it was safer. Being alone was safer. So if death was her fate, then she wanted to do something of value for the human race. And that’s what the generator had become... her mission.

The TEV warrior continued to fiddle with the computer on his arm. The wind shifted and he suddenly raised his head and looked around. His nose lifted just a little, as if he were smelling something, and Freya hoped it wasn’t her. Just then the force field shifted, buzzed for a long period, and retracted. The warrior did one more searching sweep of the perimeter before he marched forward.

Large doors to the rectangle opened, big enough to allow him entrance, and as he disappeared inside, Freya made her move. She hurried from her hiding place to follow him, running as fast as she could. Not only did she shoot past where the force field had been, but she skidded up to the open doors. Once inside, she quickly glanced around to see if any TEV were waiting, but the coast seemed clear so she jumped inside.

Quietness met her. No warning bells, no warrior. She was inside the generator, but what the hell was she supposed to do now?

Pipes ran in every direction, a minefield of vibrating cases for the machinery running the power. It was dark, lit only by the glow of the panels on the sides of the walls. This was a world she didn’t know. All this technology confused her, and she spun around in a helpless circle.

If her heart beat furiously before, it almost stopped when she came face-to-face with the TEV warrior. Her eyes widened as he pushed her against the wall, big brown eyes staring at her angrily and his lip curled at one corner.

Kory used to curl his lip just like that…

“What are you doing here, woman?” he demanded in a hushed tone. “Don’t you know they will kill you if you’re caught?”

“They? Don’t you mean
you
?” Her voice came out in a high-pitched tremble.