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Addie had been leading the group through the next growing field for most of the morning when he suddenly halts, stares ahead for a moment, then he pushes the others behind the boulder next to him.
“All hide now...!” Addie hisses. “Hurry...!”
“What’s wrong?” Brianne asks, glancing past her friend towards the path ahead. She frowns when the plants in the growing field ahead of them move somewhat.
“There’s an alien up ahead on the path,” Addie replies, nodding sideways with his head.
“Really? I’ve seen none of them before,” Brianne says as she glances past the boulder briefly, which they’re now using as a hiding place. All of them glance at one another, then each person copies Brianne when she looks around the side of the boulder.
“How are we going to get past it?” Sam asks.
“I think we need to lure it here and kill it...” Joey suggests, “and we can bury it in the neighbouring growing field...” As an answer where the burial place could be, Joey points south from their location. “The grounds there are acidic so will eat up its body fast...”
Kaylee smirks a moment and then she cocks her head and makes her observation of their situation, “You know that it’s claimed that the ‘terraforming’ is an ongoing process,” she says bluntly, “and it’s claimed that in the end humans become the compost for the growing fields... or so it’s claimed—”
“I heard some people in my Habitat claim that before the aliens arrived, they had a way to show stories on walls and in boxes,” Joey interjects, “and in one story they made people into food because there were too many people...”
“We have too few people—there are already too few humans to do anything about them,” Kaylee whispers. “How can the six of us take out one of them...?”
“We kill it,” Joey repeats. “It means they have one fewer...”
“If that’s the plan, then how will we lure it to us, and then how will we kill it?” Brianne asks, while also wrinkling her nose in disgust at the thought of what they’d end up having to do soon. “Because I don’t know about any of you, but we know nothing at all about them. We don’t even know if we’re strong enough to kill it in the first place...”
“I guess that if they were talking about Old Earth as they approached the planet that someone among them asked a similar question,” Taylor grunts. “It’s ironic to think that we’re having to do to it they did to humans of a hundred years ago...”
“Or perhaps longer ago...” Sam says. “At least that’s what I’ve been told...”
“Longer? Why do you suggest that even...?” Taylor asks.
“After what you just said, don’t you find it odd how easily they captured the world? Our world. Our planet—” Sam continues. “Suddenly, out of the blue, they’re here. Hostile. Able to kill most of the people. And within a few years they’re already changing how the world looks... That’s what my Pa said...”
“So, we need to sneak up on it,” Taylor says. “Any volunteers?”
“I can go,” Addie hisses.
“I’ll go with you,” Brianne says, “as two of us can do over one on his own.”
“Believe her,” Kaylee says. “She’s got a mean fist when she needs to use it...”
“After the things you did over the last few days of travel, I’m not doubting that” Addie says. “But remember that we’ll have to be careful. We know nothing really about them...”
Addie and Brianne slide quietly in between the plants growing around the rock, circling to the east of the creature, busying itself at the corner of one growing field. From the fact it holds a device they realise both it’s an ‘alien’ commonly referred to as a ‘drone’ who seems to do the commands of the higher-ups; that is those who live on the floating decks they call their ‘home’ just outside the edge of breathable atmosphere.
The stale stench that enters their noses confirms this alien drone is a freshly emerged creature that may have been lying dormant in an ‘egg’ until just a few days earlier. Or at least that’s what the older folk at the Habitats would claim. No one is totally certain of it being true or not.
“Ugh, that stink is horrendous,” Brianne hisses.
“Put your work mask on, like I’ve done,” Addie whispers back. “Do you have one?”
“No, they never allowed me in the sewers for work,” Brianne answers.
“Here, use mine. I’ve been so often around them that my nose has stopped smelling them,” Addie says as he hands his work mask to Kaylee who quickly places it over her nose and mouth then glances up at Addie, asking him, “What’s this taste on my tongue?”
“That’s the gas they let out while breathing in our atmosphere,” Addie answers.
“It tastes like a week’s old ration food,” Brianne grunts.
Addie smirks and points down, whispering, “Remember where the ration food comes from...”
“YUCK!”
“Shush or it hears us...” Addie hisses, placing his hand over Brianne’s mouth. “But you’ll eat proper human food when we get to where we’re going... okay?”
Brianne nods, and Addie takes his hand away from her mouth after a few seconds.
“Please don’t refer to it as ‘human food’ after what we have said about the growing fields,” Brianne says. “I’m now imagining them grinding up humans for—”
“Sam’s Pa says there was a movie about two hundred years ago where they did that exact thing,” Addie says, smirking at the disgust becoming more prominent on Brianne’s face. “He doesn’t know if it was a story movie or a movie about history, but the movie was supposedly of them eating people...”
“Please, stop,” Brianne says. “Or you’ll be in the ground beside the alien...”
“Okay, I’ll stop...” Addie says. “I never liked the ration food either, by the way. Sam’s Pa knew a place to catch fishes—where some water still exists underground, and where a few fish still live. We ate that mostly as I was growing up...”
“My Ma knows how to make sweet bread,” Brianne says. “She learned it from her Ma.”
“Maybe you should show me how when we’re safe...” Addie says softly, while he stares a moment at Brianne.
Her words had suddenly altered the way he regarded her. For the last week or so, she’d been the person in their small group who would constantly complain about anything; how long it took to ‘get there,’ or about rotten food they were eating, or other inconsequential things. Addie was certain she was likely from one group of humans that most referred to as the ‘elites’ which was mostly because they skirted the whole situation of what humans had become in reality - that a hundred years ago some sort of alien invasion occurred that happened so fast that most humans were dead before the governments of the time had time to react and that of those left over would end up as the work force...
“We’re just slaves.” That’s what Addie’s Grandpa had asserted until the day came when an alien deemed him to have lost all usefulness as a worker in the fields, and then Addie had to watch on in horror as they marched his Grandpa and about a hundred others to the grind machines... and made them into the manure that was regularly spread over the growing fields.
Addie had a personal reason for wanting to kill this alien. He’d told Brianne a lie just now. This alien hadn’t just emerged a few days ago from an egg pod. This was the very alien who’d pulled Addie’s Grandpa away from a small boy who’d screamed at them to let go of his Grandpa...
It was an older boy, Taylor, who had pulled Addie back, and then told him to stay silent or he’d join the group. The boys became friends in a matter of days. They’d keep one another safe. Then when they killed Taylor’s Pa, they decided to ‘do something.’ It was when Taylor’s mother told them in hushed tones about a ‘plan’ that they changed how they behaved. Instead of behaving to make the aliens interested in them, they’d keep in the background, keep silent, became some kids that the adults referred to as the ‘silent kids.’
There was a reason for their actions. As the aliens lost interest in their Habitat, and those of the other silent kids, they could plot a bold escape plan between the kids. Then news came that changed everything. A rumour that some humans had always been free, and they were organising for the escape of as many of the youngest humans.
A story that had made its rounds in Habitat 4-C and 5-A that the people in a ‘cave’ were the descendants of some last surviving defenders fighting the aliens as they captured more and more of Old Earth. It was supposedly where they dragged a captured spaceship of the aliens inside, then four subsequent generations were preparing it to allow humans to use it and live on it. The last scientists inside the cave who’d lived in Old Earth calculated where the aliens came from, and where humans had to go to get to safety.
Addie and Taylor got told by Taylor’s mother that they were among a hundred thousand young people - all below the age of twenty - who had been told to go to this cave. “It is a race against time,” she had whispered. “The race to get humans to become free again.”
Addie asked her, “But what about you? What about everyone else who lives here?”
“We’ve been working on a way to stop the aliens from being able to come after the spaceship when you get there,” she had said, sounding bitter and maybe also scared, “and remember that when you go, you have ten days to get there...”
Addie frowns when he recalls the conversation. Ten days was yesterday, and we have three entire days to travel still, probably.
Everyday Addie and Taylor would stand close to one another and look up at the skies, which were no longer the pale blue that the elder people of the Habitats had claimed it used to be. It had slowly become a permanent dirty green tint, no clouds, no rain or snow, no stars...
“Hmm, why are you looking up instead at it?” Brianne asks, nudging Addie.
“I remembered something Taylor’s Ma told me,” Addie answers. “I was checking for the bio-scanners.”
“I’ve not seen any for the last two days,” Brianne says after also looking around for a time. “I see none...”
“I think the next one will come here in two hours from now,” Addie says, “but I can’t see the sun right now, so it’s hard to tell...”
“Maybe we can hammer the answers out of that monster,” Brianne says, pointing ahead where they know the alien to be scurrying around between the plants. Addie frowns a moment, then he nods. She was right. The aliens were monsters if you thought about it. He glances around and wonders how the world would look if the aliens had never come to Old Earth. How do our lives compare to those of the people of Old Earth? Would I go to one of those schools the old folk speak about? Would we have machines and individual houses? Might Taylor and I be friends in such an existence...?
Addie bends down and grabs hold of a fist-sized boulder. When he straightens, his normally placid face has a folded into a deep frown, and his lips have tightened. He glances at Brianne for a moment, then he asks, “Are you ready?”
Brianne quickly grabs the nearest rock she can find, placing her forearm against her nose when a waft of the ‘smell’ blows up at her. When she straightens, she nods once, now she also looks as grim as her friend does...