Extinction (7 page)

“Drink this,” he said and tipped the bottle so that
the cool water ran down my throat. I swallowed thirstily and some of the water
trickled down my chin. He waited patiently until I had enough and then he took
the bottle away.

 He reached for the chains and rearranged them so
that the blood flowed painfully through my veins to my hands. His fingers
tilted my head and he examined the wound on the left side of my forehead where
the rifle hit me. Another string of curse words spilled from his mouth.

“Who are you?” I whispered.

 “My name’s Erich. I’m a friend.” He unzipped his
jacket and placed it over my chest, covering me from the cold. 

“Thank you.” I whispered and wondered why he was
helping me. The soldiers were very loyal to my father. Helping me would get him
back in the slave quarters.

Don’t thank me.” He looked at me pityingly and a
lump formed in my throat. “I wish I can do more.” He stood and took his
position in front me, scanning the streets.

      My arms were tender
and stinging as the sun warmed me. It was just after sunrise and the soldiers
were herding slaves to the square. They were making an example of me – I was
the picture girl for what would happen if you went against the New Order, as
the Vandelrizi liked to be called. With the first rays of daybreak, Erich
removed his jacket and gave me another sip of water. He didn’t speak to me
again, though he gave my hand a quick squeeze as if to encourage me. 

I could see Rosa among the slaves, gathering around
me on the square. Tears streamed down her cheeks, glistening in the rays of the
sun. She tried to push past the crowd to get to me; angrily shoving people
aside and I slowly shook my head at her. She would end up in chains with me if
she tried to help. She stopped and her whole body shook as she stood crying. There
was nothing she could do to save me. She clasped her arms around her body and
rocked herself. I wondered where Emily was. I didn’t see her among the crowd.

The people in the crowd were unhappy. I could hear
more and more shouts of rage as the minutes ticked by. Nuevo was wrong if he
thought I would be a warning to them to not disobey the Vandelrizi. They were
angry and frustrated at being treated like this. Today I wasn’t Minister
Millers daughter, but another human being mistreated by the Vandelrizi. Today I
was finally one of them. The soldiers were getting restless, they could handle meek
slaves, but if they waited another minute a riot would break out. 

Benson stepped forward and undid the chains from the
lamp post and hauled me to my feet. It was time for me to leave before the
situation with the crowd got out of hand. My legs were weak and I could barely
walk. He pushed me toward a truck, parked in the square, and shoved me roughly inside
so that my face met the leather seat first. I stiffly pushed myself upright. Emily
was in the seat next to me. Her eyes wide with fear in her pale face. She
clutched her chained hands on her lap.

“What’re you doing here,” I rasped. Emily hadn’t
done anything wrong. Why was she in the truck with me?

“They say I’m a traitor like you. That we’re helping
the rebels,” she stammered. This couldn’t be happening.

“No!” I screamed at the soldiers outside the truck
and hammered against the window. But no one was listening.

I glanced back as we left the city through the gates
of Palasium. Robert didn’t even come to see me before I left. He had nothing to
say to me, his own flesh and blood. Not even goodbye. I took a look at the city
which was my home for the past seven years. I had seen it grown from tents to a
full-grown concrete city. I would never come back here. I would never again see
the people I cared for. Before sundown I would be dead. I had heard about the
trials in Cyrius. Trial was another word for torture. They would extract what
they needed from me and kill me in the process. They would make me beg for
death to come and release me. 

I watched the endless dunes roll by – one after the
other until they blended into one sandy blur. I rubbed my eyes. There was a
truck in front of us and two more behind us and all were filled with soldiers. They
weren’t taking any chances in me escaping, as if I stood a chance against only
one soldier. I didn’t even know how to fight. In the distance I could see the
outline of a mountain. Strangely it had survived the terraforming and now stood
proud against the horizon after it conquered the endless desert. Before I
always thought it was a beacon of hope, now it was just another lonely mountain
fighting against the endless onslaught of sand and wind until one day the
desert would swallow it whole. I was beyond tired, nearing physical collapse, but
there was no chance I could sleep. 

This was my fault. Emily didn’t deserve this. She
didn’t do anything wrong. Because of me she would be punished too. I was the
reason she was going to die. We were heading towards our death. I didn’t want
to die and I didn’t want Emily to suffer because of me. It wasn’t fair. I never
had the chance to live – to really live and experience life. Rosa always said
fate had a hand in everything that happened to us, but what plan did fate have
that included my best friend dying, because of me.

I stole a look at Benson in the seat in front of me.
He stared sternly out the window. I wondered if the Vandelrizi hadn’t invaded
our world if he would still be this sadistic individual. Was he the product of
our circumstances or was he born this way? Did he have parents or siblings? Though
he and Robert were so close, I knew nothing about him. 

At least Chai was safe. The guards searched the whole
city and couldn’t find him. By some miracle no one thought of the tunnels and
that he might have used it to escape.

Suddenly the truck in front of us exploded in a huge
ball of fire. Our truck sharply swerved to the side of the road to avoid the
mangled mass off burning metal and we skidded to a halt. Soldiers peeled out of
the trucks behind us and aimed their rifles at the dunes surrounding the dirt road
ready for anything. Benson cursed loudly and slammed the door open. He jumped
out, rifle in his hand, leaving us behind. Immediately I could hear the popping
of automatic rifles and I ducked down on the seat as the front window exploded
in a thousand shards of glass. The drivers head lolled to the right and blood
seeped through his shirt. The convoy was under attack. It could be the
Scavengers or the rebels and I didn’t intend to stay and find out. Emily’s
screams tore through the inside of the truck. I took her by the shoulders and
forced her to look at me.

“Run!” 

This was our chance to escape. I threw open the door
and landed on all fours on the sand. I could see Emily doing the same. Ignoring
the pain slamming through my joints, I scrambled to my feet and staggered
across the sand, heading towards the nearest dune. My head pounded with every
breath I took and I choked on the thick smoke coming from the burning vehicle. 

The metal bands on my wrists started to vibrate and
hum, before penetrating pain shot through my body, paralyzing me. One of the soldiers
had the device that activated the Vandelrizi torture device. I screamed in
frustration and agony as my body hit the sand. My arms and legs convulsed while
my back arched and I felt the numbness setting in. A few more moments of this
and I wouldn’t be able to use my arms and legs for hours.

“Think you can run away from me, princess?” Benson
towered over me with the hated black device snugly in his hand. His lips
twitched sadistically as he watched my body spasm and contorts in pain. 

He took immense pleasure in my suffering. He let go
off the button and the pain lessened leaving me too weak to move. He grabbed the
back of my shirt in his fist and dragged me back to the truck. All around us I
could hear shouts and gunfire, but Benson looked totally unaware that the
soldiers were busy fighting a full out war against their attackers. His only
focus was me. He dropped me at the truck, removing his gun from the holster on
his hip and pressed the tip of the barrel against my skull.

“I think I’ll finish it now. Why wait for a trial? Let’s
have some fun now.” He smirked viciously at me and his finger curled around the
trigger.

“Why do you hate me so much?” I managed to croak.  He
glared at me, his grey eyes filled with hatred.

“You disgust me. You are like vermin infesting this planet
with your humanity. We’re superior to you.” I gulped. He actually thought in
his warped mind he was one of the Vandelrizi. He didn’t see himself as human
anymore. He was even more deluded than I realized. Did they brainwash him?

“You’re human! Don’t you get it? The Vandelrizi are
going to kill us all – you included.”  The look he gave me told me I was
wasting my breath on arguing with him. His eyes shone with insanity. I braced
myself as I waited for him to pull the trigger. At least it would be quick and
I would be spared from a slow and painful death at the hands of the Vandelrizi.

One moment Benson was next to me and the next he was
ripped from his feet in a flash of lightning. A second later his body smacked
next to me in the sand with his open eyes staring lifelessly at me. His head
was bent at an unnatural angle, his neck was broken.

The scream that erupted from my mouth sounded more
like a broken howl. Chai, dressed all in black, stood a few feet away from us. His
legs were spread wide in the sand with his fists balled at his side. His face
was like granite, cold and unyielding as he glared at Benson’s lifeless body. I’ve
never seen so much anger compacted in one body. I didn’t know if I was looking
at an angel or a devil.   

A soldier jumped him from behind and curled an arm
around his neck, trying to choke him, but Chai reached behind him with one arm
and threw the guard straight over the truck as if he weighed nothing. The
soldier hit the sand with a thump on the other side and groaned. Two more
Palasium soldiers circled Chai and he moved unbelievably fast, sidestepping the
first and plunged a knife in the second guard’s chest. The soldier’s jaw went
slack and blood trickled from his lips before toppling over face first in the
sand. Chai moved in a blur and snapped the first soldier’s neck as if it was
nothing more than mere twigs in his hands. He moved faster than humanly
possible. 

Squinting, I saw two more black clad figures
fighting the remaining soldiers. A tall girl, with long raven hair cascading
over her shoulders, wielded a sword with graceful movements as if she was a warrior
princess. Next to her was a blonde, broad chested boy with the biceps the size
of tree trunks, slamming a huge fist into a soldier’s face. They both moved
with the same speed and agility as Chai, taking down one soldier after the
other with deadly precision. One thought stood painfully out in my mind – they
were not human. No ordinary human being could move with their speed or had
their strength. The realization hit me square in the chest – the Vandelrizi
wasn’t the only aliens on earth. Humanity would not survive another alien race
invading earth, intent to destroy us. We barely survived the first invasion.

 I rolled onto my stomach and crawled to the other
side of the truck, willing my numb limbs to cooperate. I had to find Emily. We
had to get away from here. A Palasium soldier lay in front of me, his eyes
staring unblinkingly at the circling smoke in the sky above him. Blood seeped
into the sand beneath him, leaving a dark circle around his body. I pried the
gun from his lifeless fingers and kept crawling. A leg with a foot in a white
boot lay before me. Where the knee was supposed to be, red flesh was torn in
strips. Blood dripped with slow precision from the mangled piece of meat that
once belonged to a body. All around me was the pungent smell of death and I
heaved. The throbbing in my head became a roar as I struggled to my feet and
stood swaying in the sand. The roar was so loud it blocked out all other
senses. I felt the screams forcefully tearing free from my body but I couldn’t
hear them. My legs wouldn’t move forward. I was stuck in hell.

The blonde boy landed in front of me as if he was
flying and sand whirled around his feet. He held his hands out towards me and
his mouth was moving, but I couldn’t hear what he was saying. I aimed the gun
at him with trembling fingers and every cell inside me yelled at me to shoot
him. He should have moved – got out of the way or attacked me, but he just
stood there, his blue eyes wide as he kept speaking silent words. I couldn’t make
my finger pull the trigger. I didn’t want to kill him. I couldn’t do it.

The gun fell from my hands and I sunk to my knees. His
mouth was still moving and it looked like he was yelling at someone, but I
couldn’t care anymore and I closed my eyes. My fingers clawed into the loose
sand beneath me as I struggled to breathe. The more I tried to inhale, the less
any oxygen reached my lungs. It was as if a gigantic hand pressed on my chest,
forcing all the air from my lungs.

“Lexie!” Chai’s voice was loud and crystal clear
above the noise in my head. “Lexie, look at me!” 

I slowly opened my eyes. Chai was on his knees in
front of me with the palms of his hands pressed against both sides of my face. His
beautiful eyes were full of concern as he scrutinized my face. I reeled back
and scraped at the sand to get away from him. He was not human. He was
something else – something infinitely dangerous. His arms shot forward and he
grabbed my hips and swiveled me around so that my back was pressed against his
chest and his thighs pressed against my hips. Again, he placed the palms of his
hands on my face.

“Lexie, listen to me! You have to breathe.” I tried
to struggle from his grip, but my body was too weak to obey. “You have to
breathe,” he repeated. His voice was so clear, almost as if he was inside my
head. 

 I tried to take a breath, but the pressure on my
chest increased and I arched my back. Chai’s left arm encircled my waist
pulling me closer to him. He kept one hand pressed to my face as he held me
close to him. 

He said something in a language I couldn’t
understand. It sounded soft and musical and he kept repeating the words. Warmth
filled me - a soft and caressing smoke that drifted inside me, filling every
corner of me with its soothing heat. The roaring in my head slowly subsided and
I could feel air filling my lungs. 

“That’s my girl,” Chai said as I inhaled deeply.