Chapter Twenty-Four

“CANNIBALS?” SOMEONE ASKED rather than said.

Kayleigh had gotten to her feet and was moving from raider to raider, opening their mouths and examining their teeth. More than once, she looked as if she might be sick, but she carried on. In a few minutes, she turned to us again and nodded. “The bite wounds are inflicted by human beings. And the ones we fought…they’ve still got strands of human tissue between their teeth. They must have—” She cringed at the word. “—dined before they set out.”

“My God,” a voice gasped.

Dr. Verner crossed himself.

“Cannibals,” I repeated, less as a question and more a stunned proclamation. “You mean…we’re on a cannibal planet?”

It was a stupid thing to say because panicked murmuring started immediately among the civilians. I wasn’t so far from the sentiment myself as to have demonstrated the forethought to keep this idea to myself.

Caspersen shot me a glare. “Not necessarily. Not all of them. We don’t know that these guys—” She gestured at the fabric-clothed dead. “—are cannibals.”

“But they’re the ones getting eaten,” the professor protested in a tone halfway between a shriek and a shout. “They’re not the ones I’m worried about.”

“Calm yourself, Dr. Carter,” Kim put in. “Remember, we have the guns. And these fine soldiers, who have already kept us safe once.”

“My point is, there are obviously different communities on Kepler,” Caspersen continued. “It’s unlikely they’re all going to be foes.”

“Great. So as long as we don’t get eaten before we figure out who our friends are—provided there are any friends out there—we’ll be fine,” the professor said, again in a wailing tone. “And now we’ve killed them—you’ve gone and shot a bunch of them. They’ll be after us for sure. And we don’t know where they are, or—”

“Come on,” Matt put in. “This isn’t helping.”

The professor’s eyes flashed. “Helping? As if you even know what that word means, Frat Boy.”

“Hey,” I objected. It didn’t seem right that the phrase I’d coined for Matt should be thrown out by someone other than myself, especially in the circumstance.

“All I’m saying is—” Matt continued.

“I don’t give a fuck what you’re saying,” the professor interrupted. “We’re dealing with cannibals—fucking cannibals. I’ve never given two shits what you think. You think I give a fuck now?”

A few voices rose in protest, with Dr. Kimutai trying again to soothe the professor.

Matt, characteristically, was perfectly capable of expressing his own thoughts. “Jesus, grow a pair already.”

“Dr. Carter,” Caspersen cut in, “I’m going to need you to focus.”

“Focus?” He snorted. “Focus on what? Focus on the cannibals? Focus on the fact that we’re all going to die?”

“Focus on staying alive.” Her tone was even, and she held the professor’s gaze so intently that he shrank back. “Focus on the mission. Focus on getting to that ship so we don’t end up dying. Because if you want to sit down and wait to be part of their next buffet—” She gestured to the fallen cannibals. “—you’re free to do that. But I’ll be damned if I’m going to allow you to endanger the rest of this crew. So unless that’s your plan, I need you to take a deep breath and calm down. Right now.”

The professor stared for a few moments, flapping his mouth wordlessly as if he was trying to say something or think of something to say. But no sound came out.

In a minute, Caspersen said, “Good. Now, you should join the rest of the group.” She gestured toward the civilians who were not otherwise engaged. They’d huddled together at the edge of the battlefield, staring aghast at the fallen.

“Patiently await my slaughter, you mean,” the professor mumbled as he brushed past her.

Caspersen ignored this and crouched, resting on her heels beside Kayleigh, who was bagging hair samples. “Dr. Ellis,” she said, her tone low. “The sedative these sons of bitches hit Dr. Kimutai with at the river…how long does it take to take effect?”

Matt frowned. “Were you hit?”

She nodded. “Multiple hits.”

“Fuck.”

I cleared my throat and moved toward them. “Me too. One full hit, one graze.” Following her lead, I kept low and kept my tone subdued. I’d gained enough control of my wits to realize what an injudicious comment could do to the morale of the crew.

Caspersen grimaced. “I need to know, Doctor…how long do we have?”

“You pulled them out? The quills?”

We both nodded.

“When?”

“Right away.”

“Immediately.”

Kayleigh shook her head. “Then you should be okay.”

“What?”

“You may experience some temporary light-headedness, some dizziness, but you won’t lose consciousness. You’d have to be consistently exposed for a few minutes to be in danger. Or inundated with darts, all at once.”

Caspersen, Matt, and I breathed a sigh of relief simultaneously.

“Well thank fuck for that,” I muttered.

“They’re not heavy on ranged weapons, then,” Caspersen observed. “The only thing they have is nonlethal.”

“They had spears,” I reminded her.

“These guys were gathering food,” Kayleigh put in. “This was a hunting party, nothing more. And judging by the victims’ wounds, they seem to prefer blunt weapons and melee combat to stealth. The darts are probably a secondary measure. Like if they find someone sleeping, like Kim.”

“They sure were making a hell of a lot of noise when they stumbled on us,” Caspersen agreed. “So they weren’t worried about a counterattack.”

“Captain?” It was Cohen. “You still want us to try to find the boy?”

“You up to it?” Caspersen asked me.

I nodded.

“Okay. Watch your backs out there. And get back at the first sign that something’s not right.”

“All right, Lieutenant.” I was on my feet again. “Let’s move out.”

“Ma’am,” he said and nodded.

I headed to where I’d last seen the boy. That had been in the midst of the pile of victims. We found a mess of blood and dirt, with pieces of flesh and entrails joining the putrid soup of death. Footprints led in every direction in such a convoluted mass I wondered if we’d be able to even find the boy’s.

But in a minute, I pinpointed a half print, smaller than the others and seeming to have been made by a distinct sole. The raiders all wore leather wraps around their feet, so their prints more closely resembled the nuance of the human foot. “Here,” I said.

Cohen scrutinized the imprint and nodded. “And here,” he declared in a minute, pointing to a second partial mark a stride away, heading toward the woods. Though less complete than the first, the shoe type was unmistakable.

For a few strides, we found nothing distinguishable. And then we found another print, and another, heading in a generally southwest direction from the site of the battle. A few more strides, and his prints were the only ones visible.

We followed quickly but cautiously. At last sighting, the boy had been bound. But we had no guarantee he hadn’t freed himself since. And either way, he’d be panicked and desperate and wouldn’t necessarily have any reason to trust us.

If we did locate him, our primary objective would be to avoid frightening him. If he bolted, we might never see him again in the mist. More than the boy, though, I worried about the raiders. If there were any more of them in the woods, I didn’t want to stumble upon them unawares.

This, however, proved to be an ill-founded concern. No one harassed us as we searched. The boy’s trail was easy to follow, and we made good time. We got a little ways into the woods, and then it ended abruptly at the base of a broad tree.

We scouted a good section of forest in every direction and found neither sight nor sound of the prisoner.

“How the hell could he have vanished?” Cohen wondered. “He couldn’t have gone up the tree.”

I nodded. The tree had no branches, or nooks, or anything on trunk’s surface that might lend itself to climbing. It was, for some fifty or sixty feet, a great, smooth pole. It would have been nearly impossible to climb it without tools, even if he hadn’t been bound. Nor did we find any evidence on the tree itself that he’d attempted it. We found no scuffs or damaged bark or mud.

“Well, whatever the hell he did, he’s gone. Let’s get back,” I said.

We returned without incident and found everyone ready to head out after we gave our status report. No one else had found anything useful in identifying either our attackers or their victims, and Caspersen itched to be underway. I don’t think anyone disagreed.

With more unanswered questions than ever, we headed out in the direction of the ship. Where before there had been a muted sense of unease among us, now the feeling of dread that hung in the air was thick enough to cut with a knife. The military and Matt encircled the civilians, providing a rather thin barrier between them and any unknown threat, and we neither pretended to ourselves nor to them that it would be sufficient against a surprise attack.

It wouldn’t. Our best hope lay in finding some sort of defensible position, like the ship, to set up our base. We’d be little better than sitting ducks on the march or encamped in the woods. Our only advantage was that we seemed to have surprised the cannibals as much as they’d surprised us. If we were to make the most of that, we had to travel as speedily—and silently—as possible.

No twig snap, no murmur of the wind, no distant sound failed to trigger near panic during that long march. Nothing put our minds at ease. Not even the weather showed much sign of improving. The mist remained, and now and then the rumble of thunder far above the trees warned we might be in for a second downpour.

Still, in spite of all of our desperation and fear—or, perhaps, because of it—we kept at it, making remarkably good time. The civilians, even the professor, showed near-legendary endurance. We were all footsore, all suffering the discomforts of chafing clothes and soggy shoes. We had already endured poor sleep and had done so without a meal.

Now, we kept walking. When it was time to eat, we ate on the march. We walked until it was too dark to keep walking and then sought out a thicket of brush in which to set up a makeshift camp. Caspersen allowed us a shift of an hour’s rest apiece, but for the military, the majority of the night was spent on watch.

Despite my exhaustion, I didn’t sleep a wink. I spent my time huddled under a bush, trying to brush off the occasional dripping from above. Before I knew it, I was back on watch.

Shortly thereafter, the rain broke, and we endured a short but icy downpour. Anyone who had managed sleep by this point woke to a cold, wet night. We spent the rest of the evening in miserable, teeth-chattering expectation.

And with the first hint of morning light, we set out again.