Alluvial. Valos of Sonhadra Book 1

Chapter 6

PRETA

Drogan breathes, "Try to hold still for a few seconds, then move slowly. Very slowly. Ghillie-suit slow."

Ghillie suit: when soldiers wear their environment as camouflage and tactically engage at a creeping pace, blending so well, you never know they're there.

I'm in a blaze orange fucking jumper. I don't scoff; I don't have to. I do send an incredulous glare at him out of the corner of my eye, and I hear him choke on a chuckle. "I'll explain later," he whispers.

I edge over—

"Slower," Drogan cautions, and I pretend I'm a freaking chameleon, or a stick bug, or any of the things I've seen move super, super slowly. My heart's racing like a cheetah, but my body catches on like it's—ha, ha—programmed for this.

Oh, hell. Thanks evil-scientist team. At this speed, using this pre-programmed method, surprisingly, the bug-snake-saur doesn't see me.

After everyone scattered, we found a path that cuts through the underbrush, and I was happy pretending that it was made by a species of adorable, harmless deer or maybe bunnies. Little ones. Something—anything—vegetarian.

It's kind of getting harder and harder to believe as we encounter yet another bug-a-saur. When they're not shrieking, they're so quiet they manage to get almost on top of us before we realize it. This one puts its head down, doing a frighteningly accurate rendition of 'bloodhound finds trail', going right to the spot I'd been standing.

It moos.

That's the other strange thing. The last few have made that noise right before they grow very, very agitated. The globular red things emerging from its back pulse even brighter.

Drogan encourages me to get farther away from it. Stay and be found, or amscray and be found.

I don't like this game.

We could shoot them, but handguns are no match for aliens; we found that out early on. It isn't a waste per se, because we survived the encounters unharmed, but we're low on ammo to the extreme now. With the light of dawn making its way through the trees, at least our run-ins with them are happening less and less and the last few didn't even try to attack. Maybe they're tired. It'd be nice if they're not in any way diurnal. That can take effect any time; they can go curl up in their caves of evil or wherever they call home.

Please.

The breath I just took freezes in my lungs when the creature swings its head in my direction. They don't have eyes, yet we've witnessed their accuracy in peeling human beings right off their feet—and sure, maybe it hunts by smell, but I'm not much of a betting woman, so I'm not holding stock on it not seeing me.

Except it doesn't.

I look down at myself... and I don't see me either.

"Shhh," I feel more than hear Drogan breathe. "Tell you in a second."

Even my ugly shoes have gone camouflage. My self-cleaning, government-contracted suit? It's got the staying power of a bad penny, because it's still here.

I get a flash memory of a lab tech's face as they called out, "Nonreactive with fluorescence."

I hadn't known what they were referring to then.

I look down at my arms. Where my arms should be.

I do now.

I bring my hand up to my face—and I watch leaves dapple across skin, like observing a water ripple when you disrupt it with a pebble.

I'm camo.

They made me camouflage.

"I didn't know if it'd work," Drogan says, and his tone is all awe. "It's supposed to activate when you have a need for stealth, but I'd only ever seen it when they forced it in the lab."

I creep to my goal—that'd be off this path—keeping my pace slow enough that it looks like the ground is merely being windswept. What it is, is my skin pattern reforming to match our surroundings. I just have to give it time to... do it however it's doing it.

Drogan moves to the opposite side of the trail, also slowly, but without the benefit of skin that's been scientifically altered. I know what he's thinking: if the shrieker wants a meal, I'll have the chance to run because he's going to try to buy me the time.

Using himself.

I don't put my hand on my stomach, but once again, I'm mighty aware of the tiny life I'm carrying.

The shrieker tears up the ground with its rearmost set of back legs, kicking up the vegetation way too close to be comfortable, until all of a sudden, it shuffles past with its head low, thrashing its tail in what looks like a pretty good fit.

I stare after it. "You know how in the books and movies the stranded couple befriends and tames the wild beast?"

Drogan gives me the world's most horrified look. "Fuck. No."

"I didn't say I wanted to, I was just making conversation, sheesh."

We rejoin the path, still hoping that eventually it will lead to water, a thing we are becoming quite desperate for.

I look up to see Drogan already watching me. He's starting to look (more) worried. I distract him with a question. "When they'd strip me for experiments, I saw them holding up fabric swatches against my skin. I thought I was high on drugs."

"You were."

I roll my eyes at him and watch him grin before he continues. "But you weren't wrong. Your clothes should change as long as they aren't neon."

"How does that work?"

"You know as well as I do that every answer starts with 'Nanotech,' so who fucking knows. Are the grape-things helping at all?"

"Some," I hedge.

"So, no."

I give him a weak smile.

"Have some more," he says as he shoves his handful at me.

Sometime in the night, we came across a giant leaf, with a massive pile of fruit sitting on top of it. It looked like it was gift wrapped for us. Obviously, food doesn't collect itself; someone else must have come through, but we scouted a bit, yet found no sign of anyone else. For all we knew... maybe something had eaten them.

We took some grapes.

I push his hand back towards him. "I'm good."

He winces. "Intestinal... problems?"

"Doesn't hypermetabolism mean it'd be hard for anything to trip up my system?"

He frowns. "Fuck if I know. You were a lab rat not meant to be released into the wild."

"Thanks."

He nods puckishly. I raise him an eyebrow.

I grab his hand as he tries to force it at me again. "You need to eat too. You're the stronger of the two of us and you need to stay that way."

His eyes drop to my stomach, and that gets me. Without further argument, I take his alien-grapes and shovel them into my mouth. I'm starving. He's already worried, and it's not like he can just pull over at the next fast food joint. Him having to watch me starve to death is bad enough; I don't want him to be tortured before it happens, and me telling him how bad the hunger pangs are will torture him—I can see it as he watches me consume every last bit of fruit.

I can almost feel the food disappear as it hits my stomach. I'm still so famished I don't trust my eyes not to be playing tricks on me when something massive shifts.

I peer at the spot I saw movement, and notice something else; I've seen this thing before. This same thing. "Ryan... did that tree move?"

His fingers slide along my arm; he likes me calling him by his first name. He slowly scans the tree line with me as I point to the tree stump-creature. "Right there. It stopped moving." I glance over my shoulder to see he's way off, so I reach up and guide his chin so that his field of vision matches mine. "The topiary art right there—and with the way things have gone in this place so far, it can probably kill us."

"Cheery thought," he agrees easily. "That's the spirit."

"'How neat, nice dragon.' That better?"

He frowns. "What makes you call it a dragon?"

"See those things along the sides? Looks like folded wings, right? There is the long neck—"

"That's another tree."

"Is not. And that's the head—see the spikes, like horns?"

"You mean the tree branches?"

I let my hand drop. "So literal! Why can't you agree that it's a living thing?"

He looks unimpressed. "Maybe because it's just a dead tree."

I shake my head at him. "Cloud gazing with you must be fun times."

"Staring at an accumulation of frozen water molecules while you ascribe fantasy animal shapes to them? Sure is."

I wave his tiny, sad, no-imagination scenario away and lay it out. "Okay, well, the dragon topiary is following us—wipe that look off your face. I am telling you: I'm not crazy."

His eyes dance teasingly. "Says every crazy woman..."

We resume walking, mindful to keep our squabbling at a low enough level that predators won't be attracted.

Attracted. He's a bit of an ass, but the more time I get to spend with him, the more I like the man that's arguing with me. I'm filthy, Drogan's once-pristine uniform looks like it took a major beating, yet I still want to jump him. For now, I imagine all the dirty scenarios we could play out as I hope we can find a spot to rest at. I'm starting to feel a little sex-starved.

And as if by magic, our path widens and our field of vision opens; there aren't thousands of trees right in our face for as far as we can see.

It's a peaceful-looking clearing. And creepily enough, right in front of us is another big leaf, with a pile of food on it. Nuts of a sort, it looks like. They're poisoned. They have to be. And the poisoners went too far, thinking that we'd be lulled into complacency after we didn't die the first time—

Drogan reaches for them.

"Hold up there, Hansel! Aren't you worried about this?"

He squints. "The part where we crash landed and we're going to die out here if we don't drink and eat and if the animals hunting us don't get us first, or the part where we see food, and we leave it because we're scared something wants to eat us if only they could lure us far enough away from home?"

I push him but he doesn't topple over and the poor man can't tell when he's being insulted because he's grinning like the fool he is. I scoop up the food, preparing to go down with my belly full at least.

We find that we can pop out the edible soft part easily, which is good since we're kind of lacking all supplies and amenities out here. "We're going to get thirsty."

"We're already thirsty. And... Preta?"

I look to where he's pointing.

Giant grooves weave over dirt in pretty but alarming patterns. What made them? What do they mean? They lead to another leaf. But on this one, there are half-shells holding water.