Chapter Fifteen
The sun had already set when Zhor landed and released Annika from her safety harness. She looked around curiously while she worked the kinks out of her muscles from being strapped to Zhor’s back for hours, wondering why he’d decided to land in this particular place.
He had never actually landed on the ground—not when she was with him anyway.
And the only thing that seemed of any significance at all near where they’d landed appeared to be a ... well a junkyard—or maybe just a pile of rubble from something that had collapsed?
Zhor headed directly for it.
Disconcerted, Annika followed him, studying what seemed to be nothing more than a mound of garbage—a curious assortment of cast-off things.
A half a dozen figures abruptly appeared at the top of the mound.
“Halt! Do not come closer! State your name and your business here!” one of the men of the group growled.
Annika jumped at the bellowed demand, glancing at Zhor uneasily.
Zhor said nothing for several moments. “We are only seeking shelter for the night. We have been searching for a place to dwell ... but it is not safe to be exposed after dark as you well know.”
There was no response. The man who’d spoken merely studied them assessingly.
“I lived in this place ... once. With my parents and my sister,” Zhor persisted. “Raiders destroyed it ... killed everyone who was not fortunate enough to escape.”
That comment got a reaction.
“And yet I do not recognize you,” the man said after a long pause.
The comment startled Zhor. “I am Zhor ... son of Eonid and Stark Qurillian.”
A jolt went through the speaker. He stepped closer, paused, and then leapt from the wall to land only a few yards from where they stood. It startled and unnerved Annika enough that she moved a little closer to Zhor—and slightly behind him, wondering if she was the subject of the discussion since the man had stared straight at her when he had landed.
He lifted a hand in a gesture unfamiliar to Annika. She couldn’t tell, therefore, what he meant by it—if it was some sort of challenge or a gesture of peace—and that made her even more uneasy.
“I am Baden. Do you not remember me, Zhor? Am I so hard to recognize?”
Zhor stared at him hard and then laughed and surged forward, gripping the other man’s shoulders.
Despite the fact that he’d laughed, Annika wondered if he was about to throw the man to the ground. Instead, the other man laughed and grasped Zhor in a similar hold.
“I thought everyone had died, truthfully,” Zhor responded finally. “I did not expect to find an old friend.”
The stranger smiled, but it was less friendly ... almost uneasy. “My memories of our time to together are good ones. I do still consider you a friend and for that reason I will tell you there is no place for you here. It is dangerous for you to be here at all with that female. There were strangers here looking for that one only a handful of days ago. I wish I could offer shelter—for more than one night—but there are many who are afraid.”
Zhor’s own smile died. “Her people?”
Baden shrugged. “I have to suppose it was her people who offered the reward they found so interesting, but no ... there were two bounty hunters—one a zorph and one a conkerrie. They were very hard to dissuade. They promised to come back with more and take the walls down and slaughter everyone if they found her here.
“You understand that is why I cannot welcome you? We have our mates here and our young.”
Zhor frowned, uneasy when before he had been mostly just dismayed to find proof that Ah-na’s people were looking for her.
“You should look worried. The bounty was for her corpse,” Baden said grimly. “And that is another reason you should not stay here. It was a handsome enough bounty that I could not guarantee that no one here would try to collect—and that’s assuming the threats from the bounty hunters were idle.
“The Outlanders made no friends here when they came before, but it is difficult to turn down an offer of food when that is so hard to come by.”
Disbelief and suspicion replaced Zhor’s uneasiness. “You are suggesting ... they want her dead? You must have misunderstood! Or they did. She and several others crashed. Her people would have reason to think she might be dead ....”
“There was no misunderstanding,” Baden countered grimly. “They made it clear they did not want or expect to have her returned still breathing. This was part of the threat—that the outlanders would send soldiers to wipe out the village if we were harboring her. They say she has stolen something of great value.”
Zhor nodded, but he hadn’t accepted what Baden had said as truth, couldn’t digest it. The last comment infuriated him enough that he broke off any attempt to discuss the situation further, however. “She has taken nothing. That part, I know, is a lie.”
“You cannot know that.”
Zhor’s jaw tightened. “I can and I do know it.” He shook his head. “She is not like that.”
“She is not one of us—not like us. You cannot know the way of her mind.”
“I know.”
Grasping Ah-na’s arm, he led her away from the village wall.
“I guess this means we aren’t going to spend the night here?” Annika guessed, wondering what had transpired between Zhor and the village man. Some discussion that involved her and wasn’t pleasant, she was convinced, although she hadn’t understood nearly enough of the conversation to grasp what it was about beyond that.
“No safe,” Zhor responded distractedly, trying to dismiss the discussion and think of some place they might stay the night in relative safety when he had been certain this place would shelter them.
Unfortunately, nothing occurred to him and spending the night exposed was not an option—at any time. The fact that Ah-na was being hunted made it all the more important to find a safe place for her.
Actually, that was not altogether accurate. One place did occur to him but he dismissed it at first as being more dangerous in and of itself than camping in an exposed position. After some thought and a relatively brief search for an alternative, however, he revised that opinion. He could not simply fly around with her strapped to his back all night or even half the night. It was sapping his energy and strength—which left both of them dangerously exposed and vulnerable.
In any case, he managed to convince himself that so much time had passed that the threat had passed with it. The city represented less of a threat than a lack of shelter.
He did not waste more time debating the matter once he had arrived at that conclusion—however unsupported it was by anything more than current need. He took as direct a path as possible and settled in the first structure he came to that looked to be relatively intact and stable. Fortunately, his first assessment proved accurate. There were some weak places in the floor and holes where the weather and time had created an ever widening crevasse, but he did find a sheltered spot large enough for the two of them to curl up in his furs and rest.
* * * *
As convinced as Zhor was that the abandoned city offered the most protection from anything that might be a problem—beyond the sickness that might still linger—he slept only fitfully. The information he had gotten from his childhood friend, Baden, was mostly at fault. Every time he cycled toward lighter sleep patterns, those thoughts rose with his consciousness and woke him enough to make it difficult to reclaim sleep.
He had been worried that Ah-na’s people might come to reclaim her.
Worried primarily about himself, he realized with more than a touch of disgust.
It had not once occurred to him that her people might be a danger greater than the daily threats they faced of being attacked or running out of food or clean water.
Was there any place on the entire planet—given the capabilities of her people—that would be safe?
Would she be just as safe anywhere in the area that he could find that was defensible?
Or safer if he took her further from the place where her ship had crashed?
He didn’t know, and it was that uncertainty that kept him awake more than asleep.
Not surprisingly, he woke feeling like hell.
He dismissed it as he lay staring at Ah-na’s sleeping face. He did not think he would ever grow tired of waking to see her beside him.
It was the fear that she would vanish that tormented him.
Shaking that thought, he sat up and examined the place he had taken for shelter.
In the light of day it looked far worse than he had realized.
“Well, this will certainly not do. Not at all,” he muttered under his breath.
Ah-na stirred and looked at him questioningly.
He struggled with the temptation to make love to her.
“I believe you will be safe here. It is not comfortable, but the city has been abandoned for many years and most are too frightened of the disease to come into the city for any reason.” He frowned thoughtfully. “I do not know of any place where you would be safer than the city. I wish I did. I am not fond of the notion of living in a dead city, particularly when there is no way to know if the sickness is still here and could strike. But that is a maybe. The other is a certainty.
“I think we must take our chances here ... at least until the threat has passed. They will not look forever. Eventually, they will decide you have died and go on about their business.
“In the meanwhile, I need to see if I can find something more comfortable and defensible. And we will need supplies. I had little to bring with us. And there is nothing at all to eat now.”
Annika stared at him. “I got the part about nothing to eat. And something about safe or not safe.” She thought it over. “I suppose, maybe, you were talking about the virus? Unfortunately, it is still present and living—and probably right here in this area—but I’ve been inoculated. I think you must have developed an immunity, too. I still feel like I can feel it crawling on me, and I don’t like it, but I think we’ll be ok. Hope.”
Zhor scrubbed a hand over his face tiredly. He was almost a hundred percent certain she had not understood what he was trying to tell her, but he did not especially feel up to trying to explain it after the night he had had.
Ordinarily, he did not really mind spending an hour talking, gesturing, and pantomiming until he was certain she understood—and that he understood what she was trying to tell him.
At the moment, he was feeling a little ill from little sleep and little food. He could do nothing about the sleep. But he was hopeful he could do something about the food.
“Ah-na stay here. Safe. I go. Get food.”
Annika was tempted to argue with him, but she decided against it. She could just as easily wait until he left and look around as much as she pleased.
In fact—better. If she tried to get him to take her to explore, he’d just argue that it wasn’t safe. “Ok.”
He studied her, instantly suspicious that she gave in without argument. “Stay here?”
She looked around rather than meet his gaze. “Right here? In this very spot? What if I have to pee?”
He gave her a look.
She batted her eyelashes at him and made a shooing motion. “Go find food. I’m hungry.”
When she was sure he was gone, she got up, dusted her suit and looked around curiously.
She hadn’t actually lied. She did need to relieve herself, but she saw no reason not to look around while she was at it—because she damned well wasn’t going to just squat right there!
And she might find something useful to take back with her as proof that the people of DFY1360 were an advanced civilization—or at least had been—which made them peers not inferior animals.
The climb down, she discovered, was definitely hazardous. The place was cracked, crumbling, and littered with debris. There were some pretty big holes in the material they’d used to build the structure—something that looked very similar to the concrete used by Earth people.
She considered just picking up a piece, but even though it was clearly manufactured material, she didn’t want to load up with rocks. Maybe a piece just big enough for testing? Then she would look for something mechanical or electronic in nature—nuts, bolts, maybe circuits from something?
She had to find something that couldn’t be discounted out of hand, dismissed as being something dropped by Earth explorations.
There had to be a lot of stuff left!
She didn’t believe the place had been abandoned more than fifty years—possibly a lot less than that. Anything like paper that was exposed or iron would probably be long gone, but conglomerates or metal alloys should still be relatively intact since that sort of ‘unnatural’ thing was designed to last and not break down.
And the key word was abandoned. She doubted anyone had taken much with them when they’d fled the city.
As she carefully picked her way down, pausing to look each floor over carefully for the proof she was seeking, she realized she didn’t actually feel the urgency to get back and report that she knew should have felt.
Truthfully, she supposed she’d felt way too comfortable around Zhor even in the beginning considering he was a stranger—and alien at that! And she supposed that accounted for the lack of desperation.
Well—she’d felt pretty frantic to search for the others in the beginning, but the discovery that she was living in a hole on the side of a mountain had curbed a lot of her enthusiasm.
That and the realization after she’d convinced Zhor to let her look that her crewmembers were long gone and well beyond her help.
As much as she liked her job, she wasn’t especially anxious to get back to work.
It wasn’t as if ‘comfortable’ was part of her job description. Most of her time was spent on board the ship in pretty tight quarters sharing supplies and space with two guys. Roughing it certainly was, and although the equipment and supplies furnished by the company were the very latest thing, the running water Zhor had had in his cave dwelling beat that all to hell.