Xenophobia (22 page)

For his part, Elvis had rolled over onto his stomach. He had both arms out in front of him, even though one had been torn off and was little more than a bloody stump. He was trying to bring the gun to bear on this creature from another world.

This was wrong, so wrong. Ever since the aliens had arrived, Bower had visions of a peaceful encounter, a sharing of knowledge and of culture, of art and music. How had mankind’s first encounter with another intelligent sentient being come to enmity and warfare? Intelligence should be about caring, not fighting. Reason should rule, not base survival instincts. Her heart sank at the bitter reality that faced her.

Bower slid down the mattresses, landing by Elvis.

The gun was shaking so violently in his hand he couldn’t have hit the side of a barn.

Bower pulled the gun from his feeble fingers and his arm collapsed, falling to the concrete.

The hammer on the Magnum was cocked, ready to fire.

Bower had one shot. She had to make it count, but how? She had no idea how many people Adan had sentenced to death in his so-called colosseum, but that none of them had stood a chance against this monster was plain to see.

The alien braced itself, drawing its tentacles in, protecting its central core. Although Bower hadn’t seen what the creature had done to protect itself when Bosco fired, she had seen what happened next. One bullet wouldn’t make a difference. She knew what to expect. Her hand trembled, shaking as she tried to gain some composure. Sweat dripped from her forehead, stinging her eyes. Her fingers shook. The gun felt so heavy, as though it had a will of its own and wanted to fall back to the floor.

Adan was laughing. His white teeth glistened in the low light.

Bower raised the gun.

Gripping the stock with both hands, she breathed deeply, calming her nerves. Her index finger squeezed the trigger. The sudden crack surprised her, while the recoil from the Magnum threw her hands up over her head and she lost her grip on the revolver. The gun clattered across the concrete somewhere behind her.

Whip-like tentacles lashed out before her, a blaze of deep-red knives slashing through the air.

Bower sank to her knees, grimacing, waiting for the inevitable.

Above them, Adan reeled to one side, having been struck by the bullet in the chest. Bower caught sight of blood spraying through the air as he fell from sight.

She closed her eyes, not wanting to see what happened next. Although she could hear voices calling to each other on the upper floor, the yelling and cheering of the rebels had stopped. Those voices she could hear sounded muted and distant. Silence followed her thunderclap of violence.

She couldn’t kill the alien creature and she knew it, but then she didn’t want to kill something from another world. Perhaps it was misplaced idealism, but she wanted to think that two intelligent species from different parts of the universe could meet as intellectual equals, regardless of their technology and background. And perhaps, just perhaps, she would have her revenge on Adan for murdering Bosco.

She’d struck Adan in the chest, of that she was sure, but quite where was difficult to tell. She had to have caught one of the lungs, but she doubted whether she had hit his heart. If anything, she was surprised she’d hit him at all. Would he have a medical team skilled enough to save him from such major trauma to the torso? She doubted that.

Bower could hear the alien moving toward her. She grimaced, keeping her eyelids pressed shut, not wanting to watch the horror unfold. Loose stones and debris crunched under the creature’s tentacles as it edged forward. Bower huddled, making herself as small as possible. Warm tentacles ran over her face, through her hair, across her shoulders and down her body. She was shaking violently with fear, resigned to her fate, but slowly, the alien withdrew, leaving her kneeling in a puddle of her own urine.

After what seemed like an age, Bower opened her eyes. The alien was gone. She looked up at the shattered concrete lining the hole above. No one was there.

Elvis was unconscious.

Bower felt alone, and yet something watched her from the shadows.

Night fell. Dark shadows crept across the floor. Moonlight shone through the gaping hole in the roof above the shattered upper floor.

Bower hadn’t heard anyone walking around or talking since the shooting, at least no one human. The alien creature moved around sporadically, but seemed to be giving her a wide berth, and that was fine with her.

Elvis gave her something to focus on. He hadn’t regained consciousness, and she was worried about him. There was no way of knowing just how much blood he’d lost. The shock of a major amputation would have killed most people, but Elvis was a fighter. Bower’s medical training kicked in and she set about caring for him.

Hah, what a joke, she thought, caring for a severe trauma case with no medical equipment while locked in a cellar with a murderous alien. Only it wasn’t a cellar, was it? The windows had been sealed from the outside with steel plates, but she could see through the cracks into the moonlit street outside. And it wasn’t a murderous alien, at least not in her case, not yet anyway.

Bower felt she had to stake out some territory. She didn’t feel comfortable remaining in plain sight beneath the gaping hole in the upper floor, but she didn’t want to chance upon the alien either. She dragged a mattress from the center of the floor, dragging it across beneath one of the steel plates blocking the windows. A thin strand of light pierced the cracks between the plates. Somehow, having a faint glimpse of the outside world gave her hope.

Two of the mattresses near the bottom of the pile were still in their original plastic wrapping. Bower smiled, lost in thought. This would be the closest she’d come to anything sterile. She moved those two as well, leaving the rest of the mattresses where they lay.

Bower tore the protective sheeting off one of the mattresses and reversed the plastic, reasoning that these strips of plastic and cloth taken from a sealed mattress were the closest thing she’d get to fresh bandages and dressings.

Elvis was more difficult to move than the mattresses. Bower pulled him over to the darkened window by grabbing him under his armpits and dragging his legs. She laid him on the plastic she’d turned inside out, with the mattress beneath him, all the while aware she was being watched by otherworldly eyes.

In the half-light, she got her first good look at his arm. The tourniquet was tight, much tighter than she remembered, but that was good. Not only would the tourniquet stem the flow of blood and compress the nerve channels, it would stop the spread of bacteria back into his body. Looking at Elvis, there wasn’t much that could be done for him outside of arranging a medi-evac, and that wasn’t going to happen.

Even if she could get a medi-evac, there wasn’t much that could be done for him in-country. In any other circumstance, he would have been sent to a specialist US military hospital, either stateside or in Germany. He needed skilled surgeons working on him. The nerves and arteries would require microsurgery to close off properly. His body armor had protected his torso, otherwise the blast would have killed him outright. Bower counted five scraps of shrapnel in his vest, each one larger than a silver dollar.

Bower figured an experienced surgeon would probably amputate the remains of his arm right around where the tourniquet was set. It wouldn’t leave much of an arm, but he’d live. She was daydreaming and she knew it. In reality, she was surprised he wasn’t dead already.

Combat morphine, she suddenly thought. No, it was fentanyl they carried these days, something much stronger than morphine, and it wasn’t in a syringe, it was like candy, something to suck on. From memory, it looked like an elongated lollypop, only without the stick. Bower rummaged through his pockets and the packs lining his belt. Nothing. As Elvis lay there, she inserted her finger gently into his mouth and felt around on the inside of his cheeks. She could feel a sticky substance inside his left cheek. He’d self-administered, and rightly so, and that had been how he’d endured the pain as long as he had.

Using a jagged scrap of metal, Bower cut into the edge of one of the mattresses and tore long strips of material to use as bandages. She wanted to clean and treat his wound as best she could. It was pointless; deep down she knew there was nothing she could do for him. He’d probably linger on for a few hours, perhaps a day, but then he’d die. She had no way of replacing the fluids he’d lost, let alone the blood, and no way of providing him with antibiotics or an intravenous feed, no painkillers, no antiseptics. She was staying busy while he died regardless, and that realization broke her heart.

Bower sobbed.

“Don’t you die on me, Elvis. Don’t you dare. You’re a soldier, damn it. You need to fight for your life.”

He couldn’t hear her, she knew that, but still she spoke, if only for herself.

“Come on, Elvis, you ain’t nothing but a hound dog ... Come on, you’ve got to show me those blue suede shoes ... Love me tender, Elvis. Don’t ... be ... cruel ...”

She pushed her fingers up against his jugular, searching for his pulse. It was there, but it was weak and erratic.

“I’m sorry,” she said softly. “I’m so sorry I got you into this. Oh, God, I’m so sorry.”

Was there anything she could do for him?

Sitting there on the side of the mattress, Bower heard a soft, steady drip. Somewhere, there was a water leak. It was just the distraction she needed. She could wet his lips. Even just a few drops of water in his mouth every minute or so would get absorbed by his body. It was pathetic, but she couldn’t admit that to herself. She had to get Elvis water. She had to do something, anything. In some ways, Elvis became a proxy for her own life. If she could keep him alive it gave her hope for herself.

Bower took several of the torn strips of cloth and followed the wall, listening for the drip. Rats scurried as she approached, or were they insects? And what about the alien? In her concern for Elvis, she’d forgotten about the terror waiting in the dark.

Bower stepped lightly, inching forward slowly with one hand running along the wall, as much for comfort as for guidance. Her heart was racing. Her ears pricked at the slightest sound. She’d never known such darkness.

Further along the floor, moonlight drifted through cracks in the various sealed windows, teasing her with the promise of light. Bower crept onward with one hand tracing the wall and the other out in front of her to avoid bumping into anything in the pitch black of night.

Suddenly, her outstretched hand touched something unearthly. Bower could feel the soft flesh of her palm resting against dozens of stiff spikes, sharp tips like needles. Her heart raced, her breathing stopped. Slowly, she pulled her hand away, only on breaking contact she had no idea where the alien was or what it was doing, and that terrified her even more. When she touched the spikes, the creature had been still. In the darkness, she could hear the alien moving, she only hoped it was moving away from her. Gingerly, she reached out again, feeling at the air. Nothing.

Why would it do that? Why would it block her path? Or was it as blind as she was in the darkness? What did it think of her approach? Did it think she was seeking it out? Her mind raced with the possibilities as fear welled up within.

“Water,” she said. It was irrational, that much was obvious, but Bower felt she had to declare her intentions, even if there was no hope of the creature understanding her. “I need water. We need water or we’ll die.”

There was silence.

“Water ... One hydrogen atom sharing electrons with two oxygen atoms, forming a simple molecule via a covalent bond.”

She wanted to explain what she needed in scientific terms, as best she could remember them from her high school chemistry classes, but none of this would make sense to an alien and she knew it. And yet, hearing words spoken in the darkness was soothing. By speaking she was making her presence known, she wasn’t sneaking around. She hoped the alien understood why she had spoken, even if it didn’t understand her words.

“We need water to survive.”

There had been no attack. Bower felt this was progress. She was communicating, even if it was one way and poorly understood. She figured the alien would hear that one word, water, repeated and at least understand that water was somehow important.

“Water, that’s all I want.”

Did aliens have ears? And what were ears except highly sensitive sensory measurements of waves oscillating in diffuse gases? Senses like hearing had to be fundamental, she figured. Every multi-cellular organism on Earth had touch as a sense. The evolutionary path from touch to hearing was well established, and some species, like bats, used sonics instead of sight. Would a creature from another world understand audible communication?

“Water is important for our biology.”

She could have kicked herself. Hell, most people on Earth didn’t understand biology, let alone an alien intelligence from another planet.

“We’re at least sixty percent water. All our chemistry takes place in water. Without water, we will die.”

Just keep saying water, she said to herself, try to get the message through. The creature had shown sensitivity to touch, hearing sound was simply touch sensitivity applied to vibrations in the air. Surely, it could hear something.

But what chance was there the alien would even register her speech as deliberate? Even on Earth, speech took multiple forms. Cuttlefish spoke with light, spiders spoke to each other through vibrations within a web, cats spoke more through pheromones, through chemical signatures in their urine, than they ever did with a growl or a snarl. And if humanity couldn’t converse with other species on Earth, what hope was there of talking to an alien? Even intelligent mammals, like apes and dolphins, were limited to the most rudimentary of human concepts.

“Water.”

She could hear water dripping nearby.

Moonlight drifted through the cracks. She could see the alien barely fifteen feet away, close enough to strike if it so chose. The alien had backed up, crossing into a thin stream of light breaking through the steel shutters. Its tentacles or fronds or whips or spikes or whatever they were waved in the soft breeze cutting through the stifling heat. The creature had positioned itself beside one of the steel panels covering the next window, drawing on whatever draft circulated within their dark tomb.

“All I want is the water. I’ll take some water and leave you alone in this dungeon. Do you understand. Water, and I leave.”

The creature remained where it was, its thin arms waving softly like wheat in the fields. If it had heard her it didn’t show. Bower felt like she was creeping up on a lion in the undergrowth.

As her fingers ran along the wall she felt a steel pipe running vertically. She followed it down to a dripping tap. Although she couldn’t make out the pipe in the dark she could tell it ran up from the ground to the floor above. There was probably another tap directly above this one on the upper floor.

Looking at the crack between the steel panel and the wooden window frame, Bower could see a large splinter of loose wood. It was no more than an inch or so wide but it was almost two feet in length. If she could pull that away she’d get a better look outside, not only that, she’d let in more light. What would the creature make of such an act? Would it feel threatened?

“Water,” she said, hoping to reinforce that she wanted nothing more, even with this act.

With her eyes on the alien fronds, Bower gripped the splinter and pulled gently on it, hoping it would give way easily. The shard of wood was still firmly attached at its base, but she was able to twist the splinter sideways, widening the gap.

Moonlight crept in through the thin crack.

The creature continued to watch her impassively, or was she imagining it watching her. Did the alien eye her with curiosity or malice? Did it recognize any such notion? Did it even have eyes? Somehow, the creature had seen them wielding the gun.

Water dripped with regular monotony from the tap into a puddle next to the drain. To her surprise, she could see insects swarming about the small pool of water on the floor. A trail of insects led back to the alien. For a moment, Bower lost her fear.

“Water,” she said. “You too need water.”

The alien didn’t respond.

Bower knelt down, looking at the insects swarming around the puddle. On one level, she felt repulsed, but what looked like cockroaches were clearly alien. The tiny creatures had segmented bodies with an exoskeleton much like an insect on Earth, and yet they appeared spherical, not just round in two dimensions. They seemed to be able to swivel beneath their shell segments, so there was no way of telling which way they were facing other than by the direction in which they traveled. That is, if facing in a certain direction held any meaning for them.

The insects varied in size from that of a small bead or a pea to a marble, with the largest being no more than tiny black Ping-Pong balls with crab-like legs. There had to be more to them than that, but in the half-light, that was all Bower could distinguish, and there was no way she was going to touch one of them or pick them up for a closer look. They were gathering water somehow, moving in a living stream as they scuttled between the puddle and the alien creature.

Bower turned the rusty tap, allowing water to flow softly. She cupped her hands and drank deeply. The water was fresh, as fresh as could be expected in Africa. Bower soaked the makeshift bandages in the water. She went to turn off the tap but thought better of it. Perhaps the alien creature would understand this as a gesture of friendship. The insects seemed excited by the additional water flow, even though all it did was to run out of the puddle and into the drain.

Bower couldn’t turn her back on the creature. She wanted to know where it was, so she retraced her steps as she moved back along the wall. When she was no more than two shuttered windows away, a distance of perhaps twenty feet, the creature moved forward into the moonlight by the water tap.

“Water,” she said as a means of bidding the creature farewell. Finally, she turned away and headed back to Elvis.