Return to Eden (8 page)

On the other hand, should she lead an
invader to a water source?

One look at his expression was enough
to convince her that a) he hadn’t caught one word out of three and
b) it didn’t matter what she said. He was going to
investigate.

He studied the thing on his arm for
several moments, frowning. “Big ting no harm here.”

It took Anya several moments to
translate, but she had to agree with his assessment once she had.
They were going to be a lot safer underground—well, unless there
were big things that could and would crawl underground with
them.

Of course, there was the fact that the
pipe wasn’t big enough for anything really big, but she didn’t want
to meet up with anything that could if it had a lot of really sharp
teeth like the things she’d seen so far.

She didn’t understand what was
happening. She hadn’t exactly had a lot of time to think about it
since she’d been awakened at daylight by those things eating her
clothing and the pipe she’d taken shelter in. She hadn’t had time
to do anything but absorb one shock after another, but she didn’t
think quiet time was going to help a lot.

The monster bugs and then the … Well,
they looked like dinosaurs. They didn’t look like any pictures
she’d ever seen of dinosaurs, but they sure as hell weren’t natives
to Georgia! She supposed something similar might have roamed the
earth millions of years ago, but she was pretty sure this area had
been part of the ocean then.

So she was also pretty sure that ruled
out any kind of sci-fi time warp.

Granted, she’d already been shook up
when she first saw the obelisk, and it was huge, but she didn’t
think these things had crawled out of that thing, either. In any
case, she couldn’t figure out any reason why the alien invaders
would’ve sent these things down. That was probably the most bizarre
way to invade another planet that had ever been thought up! Surely
they would’ve used technology?

The alien—Aidan—nudged her and
indicated with a jerk his head that he wanted her to follow
him.

Duh! Like she was going to go the other
way!

Particularly when he had the
light.

Her bare butt felt cold and wet when
she got on her hands and knees to follow him, reminding her that
she hadn’t had more than a couple of sips of water since the day
before. The hope that the pipe might lead to a reservoir encouraged
her to ignore the pain the rough concrete inflicted as she
crawled—to a degree. She paused after a few minutes and pulled the
sleeves down over her palms. There was nothing she could do for her
knees, unfortunately, and the crawling was way worse on them than
her palms.

She began to consider whether she was
more worried about her modesty or her knees and decided the hell
with it. The jacket was way big on her. She thought the sleeves
might cover her legs.

Stopping again, she pulled the jacket
off and shoved her legs into the sleeves. It was a struggle to get
her feet through the wrist holes, but she managed it and pulled the
jacket up around her boobs. When she’d finished adjusting the
jacket she discovered Aidan had stopped to see what she was
doing.

She could well imagine what was going
through his mind, but he didn’t say anything. He merely turned and
continued crawling.

The makeshift trousers
were a mixed success. The sleeves fit her legs pretty tightly, but
they
did
protect
her knees and shins. It was loose everywhere else, though, and she
had to keep pausing to adjust it.

They’d been crawling for an hour or
two, pausing to rest briefly about every fifteen minutes or so,
when Aidan stopped in front of her again. Instead of turning and
sitting down as he had been doing, though, he remained motionless
long enough to arouse her curiosity. She discovered when she leaned
over to peer around him that there was an iron grate blocking their
path.

“
Could anything
else
possibly
go
wrong?” she wondered out loud, dismayed and envisioning another
several hours crawling back the way they’d come.

Aidan settled his light on the bottom
of the culvert and sat back on his legs. The pipe was small enough
he was still hunched over as he grasped the bars with his hands and
shook them experimentally. Anya hadn’t expected them to move at
all. A flicker of hopefulness went through her when she saw that
they were loose.

“
Can you get it out, you
think?”

He flicked a glance at her face. His
gaze moved downward from there to her boobs for a few seconds and
then he returned his attention to the grate that was blocking their
path.

Anya hiked the jacket up again, but
although it flashed through her mind that he seemed way more
interested in her anatomy than she would’ve thought an alien would
be, she didn’t spend a lot of time dwelling on it.

Correction—more interested in her
anatomy in what seemed like a sexual way.

Then again, she’d heard of men screwing
animals—no firsthand knowledge of that, but when rumors persisted
there was usually some truth somewhere.

Not that she considered herself in that
light, but he was an alien from a race capable of space
travel—across vast distances, because they sure as hell weren’t
from the ‘backyard’. They would probably consider humans as far
down the chain as humans did monkeys, wouldn’t they?

They must or they wouldn’t have
invaded, she thought angrily. Surely they wouldn’t treat a species
they considered equals like they had?

Honesty compelled her to reconsider
that assessment, though, when she thought about all the wars humans
had waged between themselves.

Was it a territorial thing, then? The
typical ‘you have something we want and we’re stronger so we’re
going to take it’ thing that humans did to one another?

“
Get back,”
Aidan said, breaking into her
thoughts.

Anya stared at him blankly since she
didn’t understand what he was saying, but he moved back,
repositioning himself, almost as soon as he said it and she backed
off instinctively to get out of his way.

Bracing himself with his hands, he
lifted his legs and began pounding at the grate with his feet. Anya
covered her ears since the noise inside the small tunnel was
painfully loud. Thankfully, it didn’t take him more than a few
minutes of pounding before the grate came loose and fell through
the hole.

Picking up his light, Aidan extended it
into the area beyond and discovered that it was far larger than the
tunnel they’d been following. The bottom dropped several feet from
the pipe where they were. Scooting to the edge, he dropped,
straightened to his full height with a sense of relief and turned
to the female. He saw she’d followed him and was peering down from
the tunnel.

It was ingrained courtesy that
compelled him to offer to help her down and yet when he’d caught
her against his chest, pulled her from the pipe, and lowered her
until her feet touched the bottom he was far more aware of her as a
woman than he wanted to be. She didn’t feel like an alien female of
another species. She felt like the women he was accustomed
to.

That made it hard to view her as
nothing more than a specimen he’d collected as proof of his
theory.

Frowning, he let her go,
trying to ignore her as she sat down to tug the sleeves of his
jacket off of her legs. It would’ve been easier if he hadn’t gotten
a really good look at her genitals as she did.
That
image seemed to burn itself
into his brain.

Dragging his gaze from her with an
effort as she began trying to struggle into the jacket again
without unfastening the front closure, he lifted the light and
examined what he could of the space they found themselves in. The
larger tunnel seemed to go on for miles. He didn’t see any way out,
any choice for them except to continue to follow the
structure.

It was evidence of a higher
intelligence in and of itself, though, not nearly as impressive as
some of their technology would be, but certainly worth recording.
Lifting his arm, he used the camera on his computer to collect some
images, frowning when he saw there wasn’t enough light to record as
clear images as he’d hoped. Still, he reminded himself, he thought
they’d be able to make out the regularity of the form and see that
it wasn’t a natural cavern but one that had been designed and
constructed.

He still needed that damned satellite!
That was key to proving the species that inhabited this world was
technologically advanced. No one could dispute that they were
higher life-forms if he took something like that back!

If he could get back.

The onboard computer had indicated that
it was still capable of controlling the crash landing, though.
Hopefully, there wouldn’t be any damage that couldn’t be
repaired.

He decided there wasn’t any point in
worrying about that, now, though. He needed to focus on collecting
whatever evidence still existed to prove his theories. Then, if he
had to, he thought he could hang on in these underground tunnels
until the colonists came—somehow.

That could take years, though, and
didn’t bear thinking on. Even with the acceleration of the
evolutionary process, it still took time to complete the
cycle.

He was sorry now that he hadn’t paid
closer attention to just how long that process took, but then again
it differed with each planet they terra-formed. Some, like this
world, were already habitable—just not particularly
comfortable.

Of course, now he knew that the poor
air quality and excessive levels of methane, carbon dioxide and
carbon monoxide were due to the inhabitants’ poor husbandry of
their world. Or he suspected that was the cause. He didn’t know
that for a fact—there were natural explanations for the poisoning
of the world—but they’d nearly destroyed their own world in their
wastefulness before they’d wised up and cleaned up and developed
less wasteful and destructive ways of living. He thought it was a
good guess that Anya’s people had done much the same—used up
resources as if they were infinite.

It hit him abruptly as he turned to
look at Anya again that he’d been so focused on his own concerns
that he hadn’t considered what the terra-forming meant to Anya and
her people.

It was the nanites’ job to break
everything down to enrich the soil and air. He’d never considered
what they might do to anything manmade—or unnatural. He didn’t
think anyone else had either, but it seemed obvious that they were
going to erase any evidence of her people’s civilization long
before his own people arrived to colonize.

That didn’t bode well for Anya’s
people. He didn’t know how he could’ve been so focused on
collecting evidence without actually considering the other side of
why it was important to gather it while it was still possible, but
he couldn’t deny that that had been the case.

Not that there was anything he could do
about it that he could see—not for Anya and her people. If he
survived and managed to get proof back, it might help others on
other worlds, but Anya’s civilization would be gone and the biggest
majority of her people with it if any survived the terra-forming at
all.

They’d never stopped the process that
he knew of. Could it even be done?

Chapter Five

Anya was ready to drop by the time
Aidan stopped to rest. She’d muttered complaints for a while—for
all the good it did. She doubted he would’ve paid her any attention
if he’d been able to understand, but since he didn’t the
complaining served no purpose at all beyond relieving some of her
frustration.

Like the cussing.

She wasn’t prone to it. She rarely let
her frustrations get the better of her. Somehow ‘shoot’ and
‘dog-gone-it’ didn’t seem powerful enough to vent the sort of
emotions she’d been experiencing lately, though.

She was still uncomfortable that she’d
used the ‘f’ word and he’d picked up on it—partly because she was
worried that he might be really pissed off if and when he ever
figured out what that word was.

Beyond taking her captive, though, he
hadn’t seemed threatening. She still thought it would be wise to
ditch him at the first opportunity. She didn’t know what his plans
were for her after all and she didn’t think it would be anything
good considering his people had invaded earth.

She was keenly aware of not being
equipped either physically, mentally, or otherwise to survive on
her own, though. She didn’t have a weapon, any supplies—like water
and food or even clothing that would protect her from the elements.
And beyond that, she hadn’t seen a living soul, of her own kind,
since she’d seen the people that had been in the cars heading for
the hills.

Well, actually, the flatlands because
the hills were the other way.

For all she knew she was the last human
left.

She didn’t believe that.
She
couldn’t
believe that. There
had
to be other people out there. She just needed to
find them.