Exiles of colsec (v1.0), page 10
The pale shadow reached the edge of the open corridor, still unseen, and slid behind the broad trunk of one of the larger trees. And there it seemed to vanish, as if the ground had swallowed it up.
Time passed, and Samella continued to concentrate on her work. And Jeko began to grow bored, and restless. He rose and began to wander around the open area, pausing now and then to peer into the forest. Hefting the rifle, he was almost hoping that some aliens would show themselves, if only to provide a little excitement.
Then his eyes narrowed. He had seen a tiny, flapping movement, on the side of one of the larger trees at the edge of the area. Probably one of the blue flying things, he thought. Grinning, he ambled over towards the tree, vaguely planning to catch the creature, and present it to Heleth as her midday meal.
He did not see the pale, lean shape lurking in the shadow on the other side of the bulky tree-trunk,
as he approached. Nor did he see, in time, the long arm that flashed out like a striking snake towards him.
Samella had been paying no attention to Jeko’s restless wanderings, but she looked up with annoy~ ance as a shadow fell across her lap, and the delicate computer connection she was making.
The annoyance turned instantly to a frightened gasp.
Several paces away, Jeko was slumped on hands and knees, looking half-stunned. And above Samella stood a white-haired, hot-eyed apparition, with the laserifle gripped in one bony hand.
“Told you I’d be back, sweets,” the Lamprey said, with a grin of pure savagery. “And when I’m done with the little blank-head, there—it’ll be your turn!”
14 The Search
Cord had led the others away from the clearing with the giant tree by a different route—curving deeper into the forest to be sure that no other obstacles would block their path when they passed that way again, with Jeko and Samella. They had travelled only about a kilometre farther when they came to another clearing. But this one held no lone tree. It held no living things at all.
They saw a huge number of dead trees, stacked carefully in intricate patterns. The leaf-branches had all been removed, and were piled at the edge of the clearing. Some of the trees, lower in the stacks, had obviously been dead a long time, and were decayed and crumbling. But others, those piled on top, seemed freshly dead—and many of the trunks were broken and splintered.
“It’s a. .. a graveyard!” Heleth said abruptly.
“That’s it,” Cord agreed. “This must be where the aliens brought the smashed trees from our clear-ing. And all other dead trees, I suppose.”
“Like the ones killed by worm-things,” Rontal added. “So that’s why we don’t see dead trees in the forest. ”
Cord nodded absently. He had noticed that the brain-growths had also been removed from the stacked trunks. But he could see no sign of them. Then Rontal, who had moved warily into the clearing, beckoned to the others. And when they joined him, they saw a broad stretch of freshly turned earth at the clearing’s centre.
“You reckon they bury the brains of dead trees?” Rontal asked.
“Must be,” Heleth said. “Maybe so those monsters don’t get them.”
“Looks like something’s been trying to get them,” Cord said.
They saw what he was looking at—ai small patch of the fresh earth that had been disturbed, dug into as if by some burrowing creature.
“Can worm-things dig, d’you think?” Heleth wondered. But then she paused—for Cord had stiffened, then crouched to peer closely at the ground.
A mark in the soft earth, next to the shallow hole that had been dug. A clear, deep footprint— made by a booted foot.
“The Lamprey,” Cord said grimly, straightening up. “It was probably him that was digging.”
“Just like him,” Rontal muttered, “to disturb the dead. …”
Cord moved away, searching the turf around the patch of bare earth. The signs were there,
though not easy to see—some slightly crushed turf, another faint imprint of a boot^heel. Rontal and Heleth were impressed, for they could hardly see the signs when Cord pointed them out. But they were clear enough to Cord, who had stalked red deer and other creatures all his life. And a few metres away from the stacks of trees, on the edge of the clearing, there was a sign that was clear to all of them.
The remains of a fire. And a few small bones of some creature—perhaps one of the furry waddlers.
“He wasn’t lying when he said he could live in the wild,” Cord said dourly. “Went off barehanded, but he’s hunting, making a fire….”
“He must be burning the trees!” Heleth said, looking shocked. “The splintered ones—from the graveyard!”
“That’s not goin’ to make those aliens any happier with us,” Rontal growled.
Cord bent and touched the ashes, finding a faint warmth at their depths. “He might have been here last night, or early this morning.”
“And maybe not so far away now,” Rontal said.
Cord rose, scanning the forest around them. It could well be, he thought, that the Lamprey was crouched nearby, watching them. But Cord felt that, if so, he would sense it—would somehow feel those glittering eyes on him.
“No telling where he is,” he said at last. He glanced up at the sun again. “Let’s go. We’re losing time.”
“Any time,” Heleth said fervently. “It’s getting a little creepy around here.”
So they set off on the return journey—still keeping up their swift pace, still maintaining a careful watch on the forest gloom around them. Kilometre after kilometre, they moved steadily on, rarely speaking now, each wrapped in private and troubled thoughts.
Cord was feeling increasingly uneasy. He had no wish to meet the Lamprey, but he would have liked to know just where the madman was, at that moment. For the hundredth time, he told himself there was nothing to worry about. Not with Jeko standing guard with the laserifle. And he knew he had been right to leave Samella behind, not exposing her to the pain from that monster tree in the clearing.
But all the same, the uneasiness grew within him, until he had to struggle against the urge to break into a run. And from the grim silence of the others, he sensed that they felt the same way. So they hurried on, anxious and determined.
Until the moment when their path was barred— when sheer horror loomed out of the shadows towards them.
It was a gigantic worm—one that would have dwarfed even the huge one they had killed the night before. The vast body stretched nearly fifteen metres along the ground, and the turf-covered, armoured back rose two metres from the ground. As it slithered among the trees towards them, it looked like an ancient, weathered hilltop on the move.
“It’s the one we saw before—that Jeko climbed on!” Heleth said, wide-eyed.
“Only it woke up,” Rontal growled.
The monster sensed their presence, and its front end reared up menacingly. The mouth gaped wide, like some ghastly cavern in a horror dream. And the tentacles around it were like lengths of the stoutest cable, with the hooks on the ends as large and evilly sharp as the barbs on a harpoon, and stained purplish’ green with the deadly venom.
Then it flexed its titanic body, and flung itself forward at its prey.
For all its ponderous bulk, it moved with amazing speed. The three young humans were barely able to hurl themselves aside as the ghastly head struck at them, the barbed tentacles whistling as they flashed through the air. Then the monster gathered itself, rearing even higher, and charged again.
Cord and the others had split up, in their first desperate scramble for safety, and it was Rontal alone that the monster slithered towards in its second charge. The tall Streeter sprang away, then glanced back—just in time to fling his spear up and ward off a huge, dripping, tentacled hook that had been slashing down at his back.
But then Rontal dodged between two trees grow’ ing fairly close together. The giant worm, moving at its full speed, slammed into the narrow gap—and found that it was too vast to force itself through. For a moment it seemed to be stuck, as it fought to reverse direction, tentacles flailing wildly. And in that moment the three humans leaped away in a frantic, headlong dash. They were a quarter of a kilometre away before they looked back, in time to see that the gigantic creature had given up the chase, and was slithering away in the opposite direction.
“I’m gonna be glad to get out of this place,” Rontal said fervently.
“One thing,” Heleth said, “that worm’s too big to climb trees.”
“It wouldn’t need to,” Cord said. “It could just push them over.” He paused, as a thought struck him. “Though there’s one tree it might climb….” The others looked startled as they followed his thought. “The biggest worrmthing, and the biggest tree….” Heleth said slowly. “And remember that rope around the big tree… ?”
“I was thinking about that,” Cord replied. “If the trees are special to the aliens, then the biggest tree must be most special. So the aliens must have to be sure to protect it, from the worms.”
The others nodded uneasily. “You think they tie somethin’ to the big tree,” Rontal said, “so a worm would eat that, ’stead of the tree’s brain?” “Could be,” Cord said. He was silent for a moment, feeling a strange uneasy chill. But then he shook himself. “It’s not our problem. We’ve got enough to worry about.”
Once again they set off at their steady pace, and the kilometres began to unroll behind them. And Cord’s uneasiness grew no less. If anything, it began to grow into a sense of foreboding. Aside from the giant worm-thing, there seemed to be almost no wild life stirring in the forest, and the normal silence among the trees was beginning to feel ominous. It was like the unearthly stillness before a storm—when the whole of nature seems to be holding its breath, waiting for the explosion of violence.
But there was no storm brewing. The sky was clear and the sun was bright, above the shadowing canopy of leaf-branches. And there was no sign of imminent violence. The aliens were clearly in an-other part of the forest, and so—Cord hoped—was the Lamprey. So he pushed the ominous feeling away, and also tried hard not to chafe at the fact that the return journey, to where Samella and Jeko were waiting, seemed longer than the outward stage, that morning.
He glanced up, worriedly, noting that the sun was dipping lower as the afternoon began to wane. What if the encounter with the monstrous worm thing had turned him around somehow, so that since then he and the others had been travelling the wrong route… ?
But almost as that chilling thought came to him, he found that his sense of direction had not let him down. Ahead, they could see the swathe of brightness that meant they were coming to the open area, the treeless corridor left by the crash.
They jogged forward happily, Cord’s mouth open’ ing to call to Samella. But then they emerged into the sunlight of the clear area—and Cord’s mouth stayed open, while no words formed, and no thoughts entered his frozen, stricken brain.
Two backpacks sat in the midst of the clear space, half unpacked, some of their contents strewn around. But that was all.
Samella and Jeko were not there.
“They wouldn’t just walk away,” Heleth said firmly, when the shock had worn off enough for them to find their voices.
“No chance,” Rontal said. “Anyway, where would they go to? And why?”
They turned helplessly to Cord. But by then the young Highlander had overcome his own feelings of helplessness and panic. He was crouching low, slowly and carefully scanning the turf around the two discarded backpacks.
When he straightened up, his gaze was bleak, and a granite harshness was in his voice.
“They were taken away,” he said. He pointed to the turf at his feet, where the others saw some odd brown smears. “That’s blood. Human blood. I’d say some aliens took them by surprise, and took them away after a fight.”
“Took the laserifle, too,” Rontal said quietly. “Aliens mightn’t do that.”
“Maybe not,” Cord snapped. “Maybe it was the Lamprey. Whoever it was, they’ve got Samella and Jeko. And we’re going after them.”
“Cord, they could be anywhere…” Heleth began. But Cord was not listening. He was making a wide, crouching circle around the backpacks. Then again he straightened, glaring into the forest.
“More blood here,” he said. “That gives us a direction. We’ll start off keeping about twenty me-tres apart, and we’ll look at every scrap of ground along the way, every tree trunk, for more blood spots or any other kind of trail. Let’s go.”
Shrugging off his backpack, he strode purpose-fully off towards the trees. The others, dropping their own packs, hurried to take up their positions, twenty metres on either side of him.
Half an hour later, they were still searching.
Cord had found more smears of blood on the turf at two more points, so he knew they were still on the right trail. But now a new problem had come to add itself to the rage and fear that were clawing at his self-control. The afternoon was fading rapidly into evening, and the gloom among the trees was deepening into murky darkness, made more dense by the newly gathering mist.
Yet he moved on, straining his eyes to see the turf on either side of him, refusing to admit that the darkness was impeding him. And he might have gone plodding on, looking for a trail of blood spots, all through the night, if he had not been halted by Heleth’s call.
The call was more like a shriek, and it sent icy terror through Cord’s veins as he and Rontal sprinted towards her. And even the gathering darkness did not prevent Cord from recognizing what it was, lying at Heleth’s feet.
The crumpled, motionless, blood-smeared body of Jeko.
15 Massacre
“It’s all right!” Heleth called. “He’s alive!”
The words eased some of the shock and rage that were knotting Cord’s insides. And so did the sight of the small crumpled form stirring, struggling to lift itself, as Cord and Rontal came up, and knelt beside Jeko.
The boy’s face was a mask of blood, the skin savagely gashed in places, eyes swollen half-shut. His tunic was shredded, and his pale upper body was almost a solid mess of livid bruises. And his left arm hung limply, oddly twisted.
But he was alive, and aware, struggling to find the strength to speak. And when he found his voice, his words came as no real surprise to any of the others.
“The Lamprey,” Jeko mumbled, through a mouth’ ful of blood. “Didn’t even see him… wasn’t careful enough….”
“Tell it,” Rontal growled.
And Jeko, haltingly and weakly, told them what had happened. How the Lamprey had appeared from nowhere, felling Jeko with one stunning blow, and taking the laserifle. And then how the Lamprey had set out, coldly and savagely, to beat Jeko to death.
“Samella got into it,” Jeko mumbled. “Tried to grab the gun. Lamprey just knocked her away. So she ran for it. Guess that saved my life.”
When Samella had run, the Lamprey had abandoned Jeko, and pursued her, still carrying the rifle. And Jeko, with a broken arm and more than half-unconscious, had staggered to his feet and tried to follow them.
“I heard Samella yell,” he said, “so I guess he caught her. But they never came back. And I kinda wandered around awhile, and then I passed out.”
Cord leaned forward intently. “Where were they, Jeko, when you heard Samella yell?”
Jeko raised a shaky hand and pointed. “That way, somewhere.”
Cord looked, and nodded grimly to himself. Even in the darkness, he could tell that it was the direction he had expected. He rose to his feet, his hand white-knuckled on the haft of his club, and began to move away.
“Where you go in’?” Rontal demanded.
“I’m going after them,” Cord said simply.
Heleth stared. “Alone? And at night? Don’t be stupid.”
“What should I do?” Cord snapped. “Sit here till morning, while Samella’s out there somewhere with that madman? I’d be insane myself, before dawn. And I’ll go alone, because Jeko needs looking after—we can’t leave him here all night.”
“And how are you going to follow them,” Heleth asked, “in full dark? You won’t be able to see a thing!”
Cord stared past her, into the mist and gloom. “It doesn’t matter. I think I know where the Lam’ prey will be heading. So I’ll head that way too.” Rontal followed his gaze, and nodded slowly. “Maybe you’re right. But s’pose you find them—you goin’ to take the Lamprey on alone, like last time?” “It won’t be like last time,” Cord said.
The words were spoken quietly, but their tone made Heleth shiver. And that tone, combined with the blaze of fury in Cord’s eyes, made the others realize that there was no more point in arguing further. They were, after all, members of gangs who had followed and obeyed their leaders all their lives. So they merely watched in silence as Cord turned away, swiftly vanishing into the deepening night.
“He shouldn’t do it,” Heleth said despairingly. “He could run into real trouble—not just the Lamprey, but some aliens maybe, even that huge worm…” “I know,” Rontal said, shaking his head. “But I got this feeling that I wouldn’t want to be anything that gets in that boy’s way, t’night.”
An hour later, in the silent depths of the forest night, the only thing that was getting in Cord’s way was trees. Above the forest, the night sky was clear and star filled, but not a glimmer of light seemed to penetrate down into the almost solid blackness. And Cord was moving like a blind man, blundering painfully into tree trunks that he simply could not see:—until he had the sense to hold his club before him, to warn him of the invisible barriers.
But he kept moving. Despite the long day’s travelling into the forest, his powerful legs seemed tireless, like the pistons of some hard-working machine. And his mind refused to admit that weariness was even possible—just as it refused to let him give way to anxiety and tension, or even to the frustration of having to move more slowly than he wished, in the blinding darkness. He was driven entirely by rage, and a rock-hard determination.
