4

- Sophia -

The silence inside the alien cargo compartment is deafening for three heartbeats. Then they all react in their own way. Some start talking loudly, some start sobbing and some frown in disbelief.

Emilia is among the latter ones. “A dinosaur? Are you sure?”

My heart is still beating so fast and hard I can feel it in my whole body. “Pretty sure. I mean, it was huge. And ...” I'm not sure how to describe it. Because I'm basing my dinosaur theory mainly on the hugeness and the feeling I got when I looked at it. As if I was looking millions of years back in time. “Well, it looked like a dinosaur,” I add lamely.

The girls exchange glances. “Okay,” Caroline says. “The thing is, we don't have anything in here. No food and no water.  Also, there's no plumbing in here and some of us really have to go. Like, now. Ideally not in here.”

I just nod. I understand all of her points. It's all very convincing. It's just that I saw a dinosaur and I'm not super keen on looking into a giant, yellow eye like that again.

Aurora straightens her white lab coat. “We really have to get out of here. So we know more about where we are. We have to somehow do something about her, too.” She nods towards Alesya's dead body. “At the very least put her outside before she starts smelling. I think this room is heating up pretty fast. Hey, I hate having to say it. But someone has to.”

“All right,” a woman calls from further back in the room and comes forward. “You lab coat girls have had your fun. And you've pretty much killed us all with your assholery. Let the adults take over now.”

She comes over to me. She's tall and probably about thirty-five. I vaguely recognize her as one of the roaming security guards on campus, but she's not in uniform and she has no weapon that I can see. She's just wearing jeans and a t-shirt, like the aliens just took her out of her own living room while she was lounging. She's pretty bulky and tattooed, and I get the feeling that if the ceiling hadn't been so low, she would have towered over me. I'm not usually intimidated by women, but this one is doing her damndest and getting a little too close for comfort.

“You want to get out of my fucking way?” she sneers, then pushes me aside and hits the button to the door. It slides aside and she leans out, looking around. “Where's that dinosaur of yours, science girl? You don't think it could have been a tree you saw?”

She steps over the threshold and pushes some greenery aside. I clench the gun in my hand. Any second now she will see the creature ...

But she just stands there and looks in all directions. “Come on out, guys. Any dinosaurs here are just fantasy. It's just plants and trees.”

I stand back as some of the girls come up to the door and look outside before they gingerly take a step out onto the ground. It's covered in fresh and rotting leaves.

Caroline flashes me an apologetic smile when she passes. “When you gotta go, you gotta go,” she says. And that's true, of course. I kind of have to go myself. I take one careful step out and look around. The dinosaur is gone. Did I just imagine it?

Nope. No way. That was a living eye I was looking into, bright yellow and with deep, dark pupils. The skin around it looked thick and rough, like elephant skin, except different. Very different. And I think I spotted some things that looked like feathers.

There are some tinkling noises from all around, and for a moment I think that maybe there's running water close by. Then Caroline steps out from behind a bush and I realize that a lot of the girls had to go and are making the most of the opportunity right now. I probably should, too.

I walk behind a bush of my own and look back at the thing we've been inside. It's not a flying saucer anymore, just a part of it. Like a giant, squat and shiny tuna can that the label's fallen off. The aliens just jettisoned us like we were trash. When it crashed, it flattened some trees and made a hole in the leafy canopy of treetops.

The sky is blue and the sun looks yellow enough, like our own Sun. Except this one seems larger. Or closer. Maybe that's the way it looks in the tropics? This could still be Earth, for all I know.

Except for the dinosaur.

I take a chance on using one of the nearby leaves as toilet tissue, and it doesn't appear to sting me. On the other hand, it's not too effective, either. 

Finally the kidnapped women are lounging outside. Some are sitting down, some are standing in loose groups. We six translator girls are standing around in a huddle. No one's too talkative, and we all keep looking over our shoulders. Things are too uncertain, I guess. Well, someone has to say something. And since I've turned out to be the bitch of the group, I don't really have much to lose.

I put the gun into one pocket, making a mental note to give it back to whoever it belongs to. “Well, the good news is that we have air and that it's not too cold. Also, that we're alive. Most of us, I mean.” I look towards the door to the can we came in and take a deep breath. “Yeah, I guess I'll start digging a grave for ... for Alesya.” I force myself to say her name. The guilt is getting worse and I feel all numb inside.

Heidi puts a hand on my arm, and I'm grateful for the look of understanding in her eyes. “We'll all dig. It just has to be done. And we'll share the burden. You didn't kill her, Sophia. Those aliens did.”

“Damn right,” Caroline agrees. “We're all in this together. No one blames you for any of this.”

The other girls express support and I give them a thankful smile. It's not making much of an impact on my guilt, but I'm glad they're trying. “Thanks, guys. Shall we just get it over with?”

There's a lot of sticks and old branches lying around, and we each find one and start digging into a flat spot of ground fifty feet from the tuna can we came in. The ground is loose and pretty easy to dig in, so we soon have a shallow grave ready.

We lean on our sticks and Aurora wipes sweat off her brow. “Guys, just for the record: this is the most terrible thing I've ever had to do.”

“Oh, this was nothing,” Emilia says. “Now we actually have to put her in here.”

Heidi scratches her head. “Yeah ... should we, though? I mean, what if this is Earth, and we're just a half mile from a city or a town or some kind? I'm sure the forensics guys would hate it if they had to dig her up again.”

“It's not Earth,” Delyah states flatly. “These plants share no characteristics with terran species, except for the chlorophyll. They're entirely alien. And that sun in the sky is about thirty percent larger or closer than the Sun is to Earth. Further, this planet rotates faster than Earth. Notice the shadows on the ground moving faster than back home. Finally, the gravity is slightly lower. It's a little easier to move here.” She bends at the knees and then jumps straight up. “Yes, I'd estimate the gravity at about ninety percent of the one on Earth.”

We all just look at her in silence for a moment. No one likes the bearer of bad news, but it's pretty hard to dislike Delyah. I can almost see us all sagging a little at the shoulders. I guess we were all hoping that we hadn't actually left our home planet.

Caroline clears her voice. “Well, can't ask for a clearer answer than that. Let's just go get her. We'll feel better afterwards.”

- - -

As it turns out, we don't feel that much better when we have placed Alesya in her grave and filled it back up. We keep sniffling and weeping while we do it. It is pretty terrible and I can feel that this is traumatizing me pretty bad.

But finally she's in there and there's a mound of alien dirt over her. We don't know if she was religious, but we place rocks in a cross shape on the mound as a way to mark it.

“Should we maybe say some words-”

I'm interrupted by an excited yell from further away in the woods. The tall woman who was the first to leave the can for real comes crashing through the vegetation. “Hey! Come here and look!”

We all follow her in among the tall trees and the strange bushes until we see what made her excited. It's the view from a cliff that we're suddenly on.

We're apparently on a mountain in the jungle, and from this point we can see the landscape around. It's all jungle and huge trees, green and purple and yellow all the way to the horizon.

“Pretty nice,” I say and shield my eyes with my hand. “Looks deserted to me.”

“Yeah, yeah,” the woman says. “It's a jungle, big whoop. But this is more exciting.”

She walks to the edge of the forest and points triumphantly. “Now, that can't be natural.”

We follow and peer in among the trees. There's a large pile of rocks, roughly cone-shaped and very carefully constructed, like masonry. A whole lot of wooden spears are stuck into its sides, pointing straight out like the bristles on a round hairbrush.

“It really can't,” Caroline agrees. “Some kind of beacon?”

“Clearly man-made,” the tall woman says and walks into the woods again. “I'm going to see if there's more. Meanwhile, you lab geniuses should try to get lost. No one will miss you.” She soon disappears in among the trees and bushes.

Delyah takes a step forward and studies the mound from ten feet distance. “No,” she says thoughtfully. “It's not a beacon. You can't burn anything in it. It has no obvious practical function. But similar things exist on Earth. It's a message. Sharp spears pointing outwards. That usually means stay away.”

We all look at each other, then at the dense jungle around us. It suddenly looks much more threatening. If someone doesn't want us to be here ...

“Let's get back to the ship,” Aurora says. “It's our home base, more or less. We have to think of what to do. I don't like this place. It makes my skin crawl.”

As soon as the words leave her mouth, there's a blood-curdling scream from the woods and we all freeze. Then there's a flapping sound in the air and something comes flying out of the woods. Something big.

“Oh fuck,” I hear myself say before I throw myself on the ground, then turn around to keep an eye on the thing.

It's a huge bat. No, it reminds me more of the flying dinosaurs with the bat wings and the long heads and beaks with sharp teeth. Except this one has four wings and two tails that remind me of sharks.

The beak is long, though. And it's clearly more than big enough to comfortably carry the tall, unpleasant woman in it. She's still screaming, and I feel a chill going down my back. That's the worst sight I've ever seen and I want to cry.

“Looks like a pterodactyl,” Delyah says from beside me. “Except they're clearly not. Completely different in most respects. Very interesting. We might be the first to discover it.”

“Them,” Emilia corrects her. Because now we can see that there's more than just one. There's a whole flock of gigantic not-pterodactyls coming out of that jungle.

The woman's scream is cut off like a switch and I see her hanging limply in the beak of that terrible monster as it flaps lazily away. Then I see that the flock of those things isn't following the leader. No, they're circling back. Back towards us.

“Fuck,” I gasp and scramble to my feet with jerky, panicky movements. I've never felt my skin crawl like this before. “Run!”

More of the girls have had that same idea, and suddenly we're all running for our lives in the direction of our tuna can.

Then the not-dactyls scream. And I stumble and almost fall headlong into a tree trunk. Because that screechy noise is the worst I've ever heard. Nails on a chalkboard is a soothing Enya song compared to this. It goes through my bones and makes me feel like death itself is right on my tail. Which of course is totally true.

I can hear the other girls running alongside me and behind me. A couple of them are in front of me, too, both wearing white lab coats. That means that most of the kidnapped women are behind me. I'm both relieved and frightened by that. Because on one hand the not-dactyls will eat the stragglers first, but on the other hand I want all of us to make it.

But even I realize that right now, it's each woman for herself. I hear someone scream in terror behind me, but I don't turn around. I know what happened. One of them got taken.

Then there's another scream of despair, and another. The swarm is descending and picking us off, one by one.

I run as fast as I can towards where the trees are the densest, hoping that they can't follow me there. The not-dactyls are the size of big pickup trucks, and their wingspan has to be twenty feet at least.

I zigzag between alien tree trunks and try to keep my speed up. But my throat is closing up from panic and sadness and anger and just pure terror, and I was never the most athletic chick on campus.

Then I have to stop. There's running water straight ahead. My shoes slide on the ground and I fall on my butt as I desperately try to break my speed before I fall in. I manage to stop at the bank with both feet in the water, then jerk them back before any terrible water monster can bite them off. I don't trust this planet one bit.

I turn around and look behind me. Yeah, the not-dactyls have a little more trouble flying among the trees. And I can see some white lab coats fluttering through the woods ahead of them.

I take three breaths and then I'm back to running. I can see the metallic shimmer of the tuna can in the distance and I speed up even more, jumping over roots and bushes and knowing that I can't keep this up much longer. My lungs ache and my legs protest with every terror-stricken step.

Then I hear another not-dactyl scream behind me. Close behind me. And I can hear the beating of its bat-like wings and how it makes the leaves on the trees rustle when it passes them.

I throw a glance behind me. The beak is wide open, the teeth are ugly and brown and its gape is slimy and grayish pink. Yep, that one is coming for me.

Then I swear I can feel my heart in my mouth as I spot my dinosaur right ahead of me, the one I saw from the tuna can. Yep, that's the one. The yellow eye is unmistakable. Now I can see the rest of it, too. It has three legs and a round, massive body with scales and feathers here and there. It's about the size of a bus and has a short, thick neck that supports its immense head. I now understand why that yellow eye made such an impression on me – it's the size of a car tire and it's the only one the creature's got. One big eye right in the middle of its face. Or rather, right in the middle between its two huge mouths.

I scrub with my feet and instinctively make myself as small as I can. I'm right between two dinosaurs, and at least one of them wants to eat me.

Fuck. This is it for me.

I kneel down and hug myself as I wait for one of them to snag me and chew me good. I'm so paralyzed I'm not even sobbing.

There's no way out of this.

Then a flash of an idea goes through my mind: the gun!