Fire in the Woods (24 page)

“Why do you care?”

“Because he’s my friend.”

Cranky laughed. “He’s not your friend.”

I squirmed in my bindings. “Yes, he is.”

He spit out part of the peach skin. “And what makes you think he’s your friend?”

My gaze trailed to David. “He cares about me.”

Cranky slapped his knee. His laugh echoed through the night. “He cares about you? Now that’s riper than this piece of fruit.” He turned to the blond girl. “The base, rudimentary reactions of these creatures disgusts me.”

Blondie tucked the jacket around David’s shoulders. “But we have seen high levels of intelligence.”

“Intelligence does not equate to sentience.” He threw the core of the pear into the woods. “Their animalistic nature makes them no better than the vermin infesting the cartilage tubing in our ship.”

“We’re not vermin,” I whispered.

He walked toward David, and stood over him. “No? Then why would you be so blinded by our young pilot, I wonder?” David turned in his sleep. “He’s handsome, isn’t he? You find this form attractive?”

I fought against the ropes. “I don’t know. I hadn’t really thought about it.”
More than 1,000 times.

Cranky placed his hands on the edges of his tattered blazer. “Here I chose a form of an elder, one I thought would evoke feeling of knowledge and warmth, and I received nothing but sneers and disdain. He takes the form of a young, virile male, and finds a pathetic, affection-starved little girl to help him. Smart boy.”

“I’m not pathetic.”

“You’re entire race is pathetic.”

I tugged on the bindings, but they gashed deeper into my flesh. “David cares about me. He does.”

Cranky stood. “And such devotion! This pilot must be a master at manipulation.” He walked toward me. “He doesn’t care about you.”

“He does. I know he does.”

Cranky leaned close to my ear. “He used you.”

I shook my head. “No.”

“Oh, yes, he did.”

“I’ll never believe that.”

“What’s easier to believe, that he’s using you, or that someone that looks like this…” He pointed at David. “Would actually be interested in the pale, sniveling likes of you?”

Tears welled in my eyes, my lungs constricting my breath. “Stop it.”

He turned back to Blondie. “You see? They’d rather cling to impossible hopes than face reality.” His fiery eyes returned to me. “Want to know the truth, little girl? He’s going to get on that ship, and not even think of looking back. We are going to fly to safety, and he won’t even shed a tear when the scourge takes you.”

A pain tore through my chest. “The what?”

The woman pulled Cranky back. “Leave her alone.”

He chuckled, and they both sat by the fire.

“What’s the scourge?” I asked again.

Blondie looked away. “It’s nothing to worry yourself about.”

Cranky huffed. “I’d be worried if I were her.”

Blondie shot him an angry glance, and returned her gaze to the fire. The flames continued to flash shadows across David’s sleeping form. I hung on my tree, arms too numb to feel the pain.

Complete darkness surrounded us. The firelight didn’t seem to reach the neighboring trees. No smoke rose from the flames. David turned in his sleep. A smile touched his lips. He looked no less menacing than the night he slept in my closet.

Cranky was lying. David would never hurt me.

I shifted, testing my ropes again. The movement sent a stinging jolt through my knee, and my scraped knuckles throbbed. “Please let me down. This really hurts.”

Cranky grumbled as he stood. “I’m done listening to this talking rodent.” He opened his sport coat and extracted a long silver instrument. “In the name of
science
, I’m going to see how long it takes her to bleed out.” He lunged for me, the sharp silver object twirling in his fist.

I screamed and recoiled as the point spiraled toward my eye.

“No!” I cried.

Cranky grunted, and I looked up. The old man stood before me, fist and blade still poised and pointed in my direction. His lips curled back in strain, as he hissed through clenched teeth.

A hand held his arm in mid-swing…a bandaged hand with four fingers. Cranky twisted and growled as he fell to one knee.

David hovered over him, his fingers indenting the skin on the older man’s arm. “Let go of it,” he ordered.

Cranky’s lips formed a sneer, before the blade fell to the ground. David kicked Cranky’s chest, sending him on his backside. Smoothing the hair from his eyes, David plucked the instrument from the brush, and pointed the object at the older man. “Stay down.”

Cranky flared his nose and turned away. Blondie sat by the fire, snickering.

Warmth circled me as David rubbed the silver-thingy against my ropes. The severed bindings slid to the forest floor. Relieved beyond belief, I threw my hands around his neck.

“Are you okay?” he asked.

“Yeah. I’m so glad you’re awake.” I clung to him, reveling in the safety of his arms, allowing my fear to fall away.

“Look at that,” Cranky said. “How touching. What’s your name, boy?”

“David.”

Cranky’s lip curled. “That’s a human word. What is your
real
name.”

I blinked and looked up at David. It never occurred to me that he had a real name.

“David,” he repeated.

Blondie rolled her eyes, and Cranky chuckled. “Suit yourself. So how did you get that annoying creature so devoted to you…or is it simply carnal attraction to the form you chose?”

David tightened his grip on my arm. “You obviously wouldn’t understand.”

Cranky snickered. “Please enlighten me.”

David stared him down. “She helped me. She has a good, kind heart. Human beings are a strong, thriving race.”

“The Caretakers would disagree.”

“The Caretakers haven’t been down here. They haven’t experienced life with them. We have.”

“Yes, we have, and I see no reason to counteract the timeline.”

Blondie lowered her eyes and shook her head.

“You can’t do this,” David said. “You need to tell them what we’ve found.”

Cranky sneered. “By this time tomorrow, it won’t matter.”

I turned to David. “What is he talking about?”

Cranky smiled, folding his arms. “Yes David, what
are
we talking about?”

David’s gaze fell to the forest floor. The light of the fire cast a sparkling glow about his raven hair.

“David?” I put my hand on his arm. “What’s going on? What’s the scourge?”

David’s eyes darted fierce anger across our camp. His chest rose and fell in deep, careful breaths.

“This is going to be good,” Cranky said, his grin nearly touching his ears.

“Can we have some privacy, please?” David grasped my hand.

“No,” Cranky said. “We need the heat of the fire, and I don’t want to miss a second of this.” He sneered. “Go ahead David. Tell her why we’re here. Tell her about the scourge.”

Blondie threw something into the fire, sending sparks into the air. “Leave them alone, Cassum Ael.”

“David, what’s going on?”

The confusion in his eyes frightened me. He slid my other hand into his. “Okay…I told you I was born on a ship.”

“Yeah. Alien. Got that.”

“Everyone in my generation was born on a ship, and I think most of the generation before us as well. Our planet became unlivable some time ago, and we had to leave it. Ever since, we’ve been searching for somewhere else to live. We came across several planets, but they were inhabited, like yours. So, we collected data from them, and moved on.” David’s gaze trailed to the fire. “We came across the fourth planet in this system. I studied it. There are enough building blocks from its previous life to bring it back.”

“Which one is that?” I asked.

“The red one. You can see its glow in the morning and early when your sun sets.”

“That’s, umm, Mars. So, you’re going to terraform Mars? That’s actually cool. We’ll be neighbors.”

David’s nose flared “No. The Caretakers rejected my proposal. They said it would take too long to warm the planet enough to support our race.”

“Okay, so, what does that mean? Can you use Mercury or Venus?” David tilted his head. “I mean the other two planets that are pretty close to us.”

David blinked. “No. They are both
too
warm. It is easier to harness the power of a sun to warm a planet than it is to fight a sun in trying to cool it.”

“I guess that means you’ll have to look for another solar system?”

David closed his eyes, and inhaled. “The reason they won’t wait for the terraforming project, is that we are low on fuel and supplies. The planet won’t be ready before our people start to starve, and we haven’t found another planet close enough.”

My stomach sank. “What does that mean?”

David rubbed his face with his hands. “We’re not monsters. We’ve been waiting for years. Your planet was getting warmer. You were destroying yourselves, and fixing the climate for us all at the same time. So we sat back and waited for your natural demise.”

“You mean that global-warming thing everyone talks about? You just sat there and watched us ruin the planet?”

“Yes, until the ozone layer started to repair itself in the past several years. The Caretakers decided to scourge the planet before the climate had a chance to recover more, so we’d be able to warm it faster.” David chewed his lip and looked at the ground.

Why had he turned away? “David, what-is-the-scourge?”

He grimaced, before slowly raising his eyes. “A scourge is the removal of an offensive life form…before colonization.”

I leaned back. “Offensive life form. You mean humans?”

“Yes.”

My hand darted up to my lips.

Cranky laughed. “So, is your boyfriend still the man of your dreams? Do tell.”

I steadied myself, doing my best to push aside the thought of global annihilation. “Okay, wait. They are picking you three up, so that means you won’t survive this scourge thing either. Right?” Their uncomfortable glances gave me my answer. “Then we can stop it. Just don’t get picked up.”

David placed his hand on my arm. “No, Jess. Three lives are not worth risking our entire race. The scourge starts at sunrise, whether we’ve been extracted or not. By noon tomorrow, it will be over.”

Rage throttled through me with the force of a seven-forty-seven. I slapped his hand off me. “So that’s it? I’m supposed to stand here and let you kill us?”

“Jess…”

I shoved him with all my might. “No, David. I’m going to stop you. I’m going to tell someone.”

I turned and tore into the woods, intent on putting as much space between me and the aliens as possible. Where I was going or who I would tell were lost thoughts, but if the Army was still looking for us, they had to be out there somewhere. I had to find them. They could stop this. They
had
to stop this. I swallowed down the painful ball of dread building in my throat. Dad was right. David was using me. How could I have been so stupid?

Strands of hair stuck to my tear-dampened cheeks as I ran deeper into the trees. The sky above loomed, devoid of stars. Was the ship already there, waiting to do whatever the scourge was to my planet…to wipe us all out? I quickened my pace. There had to be a way to stop this.

David stepped out from behind a tree in front of me. I plowed into him at full speed.

“No!” I said, propelling off of his chest. I ran in a random direction, no longer sure which way I should go.

David appeared from behind another tree. “Please can we—” I stopped short, dirt and plants piling at my feet as I changed course. I managed ten steps before a firm grip jolted me backward.

I pounded my fists into David’s chest. “I hate you. I hate you!” I repeated between my sobs. “Cranky-guy was right. You were going to leave me here to die.”

He slipped his fingers around my face. His hands were gentle but strong, immobilizing me. “No, I wasn’t. I never intended to leave you.”

“Yes you were. Cranky guy said—”

“I have never met that man. He doesn’t know me. He doesn’t know anything about me. He doesn’t know anything about
us
.” He closed his eyes and took a deep breath. “I’m not leaving you. I was never going to leave you.”

I wiggled out of his grip, and wiped my nose. “You weren’t?”

“No. I need you, Jess. I was going to bring you in front of the Caretakers. I was g-going to prove to them that you’re s-s-sentient.”

“That we’re what?”

“Sentient. A th-thinking, developing and emotional race—s-something worth saving.”

A light breeze surrounded us. David began to tremble. Part of me wanted to watch him freeze. Part of me wanted to wrap him in my warmth.

“Really? And that would make them stop?”

The cool night air tickled my damp cheeks. David ran his fingers down my shoulders, his hands shaking.

“I don’t know, b-but it’s the best chance we have. And if it doesn’t work, at l-l-least I know you’ll be safe.” He stroked my cheek with his.

My body tingled, my pulse quickened. Could it be that easy? “I’m scared.”

“I’d never let anything happen to you.”

I fell into his embrace. A swirl of energy spun through me, radiating from his warmth and encompassing my entire being. Comfort, safety, love, a gamut of emotions reached inside and injected themselves into every sense, filling every void with a small packet of joy. My head tilted back, and a sigh escaped my lips. So warm, so perfect. So…

I pushed him away. “Wait. How do I know you’re not lying to me again?”

“I never lied to you Jess.”

“But you didn’t tell the whole truth, either.” How many of my friends had fallen victim to a handsome face and a mouth filled with lies? I refused to be one of them.

Pain reverberated from his eyes. “Jess, I’m not lying. How can you think that after I just gave you my affection?”

Affection? “
Wait. The feeling that was just inside me—did you do that?”

David shrugged. “I gave you my affection. Didn’t you like it?”

I moved closer, part of me desperately yearning for the tenderness of that touch, that insane feeling of intimate connection, but reason prevailed. I stepped back.
“Yeah, so, how do I know you’re not faking it?”