The Village
Linda walked for a long time. And after a while she started to regret ever leaving. She should have waited till tomorrow it was dark now and she was all alone. She began to wonder what terrible thing had killed her Matthew, her friends and her people. It had to be strong if it was able to take hundreds of men all fully armed. Think of how much easier it would be for them to take her all alone and without a single weapon. She imagined a monster with a hundred heads and a thousand teeth in each head coming out of no where and eating her whole.
She turned back toward the city she would come back tomorrow. A rustle of leaves and the sound of a stick cracking stopped her and her tracks and her heart began to race. A piercing laugh rent the air around her. She was frozen to her place unable to move her feet for all she was worth. The laugh reached her ears again closer than it had been moments before. She heard the rustling footsteps of something coming near her and she squeezed her eyes shut waiting for the creature to sink its vicious teeth into her. The laughter came again and she felt something touch her shoulder. A shiver ran through her body as she felt the creature breathing down her neck. She felt the gun at her waist with her finger tips. She had made it a habit over the years to always carry a light gun loaded with trat fluid.
She felt something that felt like claws snaking up her arm and in one fluid motion she twisted away, snatched out the gun and sent 3 bullets into the creature. It fell and she let out a deep breath lowering the gun at her side. She walked to the creature’s side and dropped down beside it. It was fairly small not coming much higher than her waist, it had two small feelers that twitched involuntarily and its bulgy little eyes stared at her lifelessly. It’s sharp teeth gave her the shivers.
So this was the creature that had killed everyone. It wasn’t much to look at and she found it hard to believe that it could take out a hundred men when it couldn’t even take her. She stood and brushed the dirt off of her then nudged the monster with her foot to make sure it was really dead. It was.
She smiled to herself Cake! Another laugh split the air around her and a chill ran up her spine. There were more. She checked the fluid on her gun, barely touched. Even still it was best to be completely fresh. She popped the vile off and pulled another out of her stomach latching it back on with expert precision. Then looking around through the darkness she moved on.
After what seemed like hours of walking she saw what looked like the glow from a fire. As she made her way over a small hill a small village soon came in sight. Little oval people sat around the fires laughing and joking among each other. They had small lean-to like houses but they obviously had plans for bigger things. One of the creatures laughed and she jumped at the nearness of the piercing laugh. A screech from her left caused her to jump she looked to see one of monsters that she had just killed. One of the creatures snapped something and Linda was shocked to see a man she recognized come with a tray of something.
The creature looked at what was on the tray. His anger suddenly flared and he knocked the tray to the ground and grabbed the poor man by his tattered clothes. The creature stood and walked in the direction of the monster on her left. Linda instinctively grabbed the gun at her side and aimed for the man who held the man. He screamed and fell. Dead. The man stood completely caught off guard by this sudden turn of events. Then as he realized what had happened he quickly leapt to the fallen creature’s body and grabbed a small dagger from his belt and raced in the direction of one of the huts.
The other creatures were beginning to realize what was going on and were pulling out their weapons and were heading in the direction of their escaped captive. She sent a couple more bullets in their direction causing them to stop and look in her direction. She shot a few more times and watched as a couple of the braver ones broke away and started heading in her direction. The man had reached the hut and cut away the vine lock that had been keeping the door closed and about 10 more captives had come join the battle.
Linda noticed one of the creatures break away from the group and race into the big house in the middle of the village. The creatures were getting closer to her hiding place so she sent a couple shots in their direction and took down about 5 of them but their were still about 10 coming. She pulled the trigger again but got only a clicking. Jammed. She slammed the gun on the palm of her hand and tried again. Still nothing. The creatures were almost upon her. Suddenly a loud voice stopped all of the creatures in their paths “Stop!” They froze in their paths and everyone looked in the direction of the voice.
In the doorway of the middle hut stood a tall creature with a small stubby creature standing beside her. “This is no way to treat our guests. How many times have I had to tell you? Now get back to work.” The rest of the creatures moved back to what they had been doing heads hanging in shame. The voice carried across the village again. “You can come out now they won’t bother you. Please you have to forgive them.”
Linda took a deep breath and stepped out into the open and headed slowly down the hill in the direction of the middle hut never once lowering her gun until she was safely inside the hut or maybe not so safely.
Linda sat in a seat in the large room that the woman led her too. The table beside her was set with a tray of food and a glass of some kind of juice. The woman motioned toward the food as she and the man sat down across from Linda “Please help yourself.”
Linda ignored the invitation and got right to the point “First as Zotac of this planet I demand answers.”
The woman was shocked for a moment but quickly recovered. “Of course where are my manners? My name is Mernas I’m an Utavi from the planet Uta and this is my husband Miko.” She indicated the man sitting beside her. “Our planet was destroyed when Mt. Fyun erupted leaving our planet unlivable.
6 years earlier
Mernas ran into the house her husband Miko who sat cooking dinner glanced up as his wife entered the house. Mernas ran over to him and grabbed his hand and dragged him out of the house. “Mernas what’s going on?”
“It’s Mt. Fyun it’s going to explode we have to get out of here.” Miko tore himself from his wife’s grip “We can’t forget Kwibble.” He said running back into the house and running out a moment later with the family Kockel an oval shaped creature that was about half his size and about a third the size of his taller wife. It was white except for a red belt that went across its waist and squawked in protest as it was carried over the rolling landscape “Keeawk, Keeawk.” Its owners ignored its protests as they ran to a large spaceship in a field many of their people were clambering aboard with their own pets and families.
Miko and Mernas clambered aboard the ship and found a spot and settled down the ground rumbled underneath them the engine started up and soon they were off the ground and out of the atmosphere there was a bang behind them as the volcano erupted.
The ship landed back on the planet. Mernas was the first out of the ship her husband following close behind her holding Kwibble. Mernas gasped as she stepped out of the ship and tears filled her eyes as she looked out on the barren waist land that was their home planet “it’s completely destroyed.” Someone said.
“What are we going to do now?” no one said anything then someone spoke up
“Mernas what do you think.” Mernas was startled she knew that she had a high status in the Utavi government but was she really the highest official left.
She climbed up onto the gangplank where she could see everyone.
“It’s obvious we can’t stay here.” She began. “I don’t think the ground will ever bear food again and there is no more water we must leave.”
“Where can we go?” Spoke up a mother balancing her young baby on her head in a nest of hair.
“there is no place that we can go in this galaxy all the planets here are too alert and would never allow us to land on their planet.”
“Where then?” asked the woman.
“I know of only one other place we can go, it’s a planet in the Milky Way its called earth and I know of many aliens who have landed there and no one knew.”
After traveling out of the galaxy and into the Milky Way they began to head to where Mernas estimated earth was. They soon found it “It looks just like all the pictures” Mernas stated her husband came to stand next to him.
“Well this is it.” he whispered “are you sure that they won’t notice us there are a lot of us you know?” Mernas sighed.
“Let’s hope they don’t other wise I’m in a lot of hot water.” The ship jolted and landed in a large wood with a lake in the middle and streams flowing out everyone stepped out cautiously and looked around but there was no one to be seen. Kwibble came running out and jumped into the water and began to drink it. Mernas turned to the people and said “it doesn’t look like anyone has seen us land but if they did they will probably be scared we must be friendly and show them that we come in peace. But for some time we should stay here in this wood and get used to the land and see if it will work for us. So let’s get started Hadu go and…” she was cut off by a scream from one of the woman.
“Mernas it’s Kwibble he’s shrinking.” Mernas swung around just in time to see Kwibble disappear. She ran over to where he was last seen. Their sat Kwibble he looked almost the same except now he was yellow with an orange stripe. She picked him up carefully and carried him slowly back to Miko. But before she got there she tripped and landed in the water she got up and began to search for the bug whispering under her breath. “Stupid creatures always got to be in the water now look what’s happened should have gotten a gupta instead. Suddenly there was a flash and a gupta bird flew out of the water.
The bird flew to Mernas and landed on her head. “Kwibble?” the bird cawed Miko came up to her now
“It’s Kwibble the water has changed him.”
“It turned him into a gupta bird?” someone in the crowd asked.
“No, no.” Mernas corrected “the water changes them into a bug and then once you get them wet they turn into the animal you wish. I was wishing for a gupta bird when Kwibble fell in the water and so he changed into one.”
“Huh?” the same person said.
“Here” she said “let me show you. Do you have a Kockel that I can try my theory on? The Utavi that had asked hesitated before producing his Kockel “You realize your taking a risk right.” The Utavi nodded and bit his lip. Miko walked to the water’s edge and dropped the animal into the water the people crowded around the water. “It’s shrinking” shouted someone from the crowd sure enough the Kockel was shrinking. After it completely disappeared from sight Miko bent down and scooped up the creature. He frowned for this time instead of being yellow it was green. She shrugged and then motioned for the woman whose pet it was to come over to her. She came over and she whispered something to her. She closed her eyes and then he dropped it in the shallow water by his feet. Nothing happened. “Try saying it out loud “I wish for a Zelka.” She said. Still nothing happened “maybe you have to wish for a specific creature like maybe yellow is a bird and green is…”
“Reptile’s” someone from the crowd shouted.
“Yeah.”
“Ok then” said the woman “how ‘bout a Jus.” There was a flash and the reptile came crawling out of the water. She ran and grabbed it and cuddled it. They spent all that day figuring out all the secrets of the creature and in the end called the mutated creatures’ pill bug.
“Why did you kill all my people?” Linda asked as Mernas seemed to finish her story.
Mernas looked at her for a moment uncomprehending then realization dawned on her. “It started with a man named Quince Uppity.”
“What did he do?”
“He stole Kwibble and a few other Kockel’s and sold them to people in the city. He told people that he had discovered a new species. He sent a raiding party to us in the night and stole all our Kockel’s.”
“You killed my men because some nut job stole your pets?”
“You don’t seem to understand. The Kockel’s aren’t just some pet. The Kockel represents life to the Utavi. They are one of the most important things a person on our planet can own. That is why your planet is so important to us now. We would have moved on, found another planet but this planet has changed the Kockel it’s a sign of new life.”
Linda rolled her eyes at the load of hogwash that the woman was feeding her and nonchalantly took a drink of the juice on the table beside her.
“You had no authorization to live on my planet you and your people will have to be tried for illegally living here and for killing a hundred of our husbands, sons and brothers.”
“A hundred men?” Mernas glanced at Miko who was just as surprised as her at this and then back to Linda. “We haven’t killed a hundred men. Ten or twenty maybe but nowhere near a hundred.”
“Then what did?”
“No one did. I would say a good eighty or ninety of your men are still alive.”
Linda was taken aback at this bit of new. Her men alive? “But I saw one of your men trying to feed someone to a monster.”
“Yes well like I said some of the men are dead.”
“What about the rest?”
“Prisoners.”
Anger was boiling up in Linda “I demand for them to be released at once.”
“Well that depends on who you define release. None of them are under lock and key if that’s what you want.”
Linda clenched her fists and gritted her teeth together as she spoke “Then where are they?”
“Anywhere they want to be as long as it’s within a hundred yards of the village. And see what you don’t know my dear Zotac is that you are just as much a prisoner as they are.”
Linda felt her hand close around the gun in her arm pouch it would be so easy to pull the gun out and demand release but she needed more information. “What do you mean?”
“I do believe you’ve had some of our juice haven’t you?” She said indicating the glass in Linda’s hand. “You are now unable to leave this forest.”
Linda put a hand to her head. A headache had been coming on for the last hour or so but she hadn’t taken the time to notice it but now as all the weight of what was happening settled on her the headache seemed nearly unbearable. She stood leaving no doubt in the Utavi woman’s mind that she was angry. “Just watch me walk out of this forest don’t underestimate Su Kutcha.” With that she turned and walked out of the hut.
As Linda got closer and closer the parameter of the woods she became more and more determined. She couldn’t help but think that this was stupid and that she shouldn’t try this but adrenaline pushed her on. What if no one had ever tried? What if the only thing separating her people from freedom was their own fear? She had to find out. She neared the fence and hesitated for a moment. This was it! She would either expose these Utavi for the frauds they were or die trying.
She made her way to hole she had dug earlier that day. Took a deep breath and worked her way under the fence. As soon as she thrust her head through the hole her head exploded with light. She had never felt such pain and never wanted to again. At first she thought she was dying then her head cleared and she saw that she was on the other side of the fence. Her head pounded more then before but she was free. Now if she could only make it back to the city she could find help for the people that were still trapped in the forest.
Mernas watched from the shadows as Linda plunged through the gap in the fence. At first she had thought the girl was dead but then she had stood up and stumbled in the direction of the city. How was that possible? Anyone else who had tried had ended off either dead or seriously brain damaged. But Linda didn’t look like either.
Fear gripped Mernas as she realized that this woman might just be able to save her people after all.
She turned back in the direction of the village. And stopped when she saw a man standing watching Linda’s receding figure. “Don’t get too excited.” She stated trying to sound more confident then she felt. “Just because she got out doesn’t mean you’ll all be able to follow. She marched away then satisfied that she had reestablished the fear.
But fear could not chase the hope out of this crippled man. His body was beaten and broken but although Mernas had tried no one could break his spirit.
Jatar paced in front of the door looking out the window anxiously as he passed. Linda had been gone for over an hour and he had begun to get worried. He had sent a couple of people out in search for her but although Alita pressed he had yet to tell her his reasoning behind his worry.
He glanced out the window again and saw a group of people heading toward the palace. Quickly he raced for the door and threw it open, running out to greet them.
The two men in the center of the group were carrying something and as he got nearer he noticed that it was Linda. And then all his fears were realized quickly he ran to her side. He instructed the men to get her to her room quickly and sent for Dr. Utopia to meet him in the room.
Linda was dying and it was his fault. He would do everything within his power to save her now. She would not die as long he had anything to do with it.
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