THEM: RAPTURE (Book Two)

Chapter Seven

     Brock and the Rick waited out the night and the rain in the shelter but were up with first light. Brock shared some of the food from his pack with the others before heading out. Both men stood up at the top of the hill, seeming to both be figuring out where to go next.

     They moved through the valley, seeing strange things altering the landscape. It was easy to think the area was like what they were used to but there were constant reminders that there was much more alien things going on. They soon came to an area that seemed to have a kind of strange neon orange mold growing on the ground. Brock was about to step forward to examine it when he was halted.

"Stop!" a feminine voice called out. "Do not touch the mold."

     Both men looked over to see what seemed like a pile in the stuff, but the person stood up to reveal a young woman, half covered by the mold. "You don't want any of this stuff on you."

"What is it doing to you?" Brock asked as he looked at the woman. She seemed to not be in any pain just coated in the moss.

"It is technically not doing much," the woman replied. "It seems that whatever it wants to do to us it is incompatible with our body chemistry. The only thing to worry about is its nearly indestructible and once it gets a hold of your skin it is like permanent superglue."

"You can't get that shit off?" Rick asked.

"Not at all," the woman replied as she tugged at some of the moss on her bare bicep, the stuff simply stretched her skin, giving her no leeway. "This stuff is pretty much surgically attached to us. Nothing takes it off. Ever."

"There are more people caught up with this stuff?" Brock asked. "How many?"

"About thirty of us," the woman admitted. "We were escaping together on a bus when we drove into this stuff. We tried to escape but before long all of us ended up hopelessly stuck in it."

"There's got to be something we can do," Brock insisted. "There has to e a way to remove it."

"Trust me we have tried everything," the woman admitted. "Well, at least everything we have available. We can move around in this stuff. Think of it like a giant amoeba to all that is in it. We have food and supplies but we are wandering the perimeter, trying to warn others not to set foot in it. We tried making signs, but they just get grown over and we cant reach out of the perimeter for obvious reasons. Anything we touch is potentially infected with this stuff."

"We got to go," Rick commented. "If we gotta go around this area we gotta get a move on."

"We can't just leave her in this crap," Brock protested.

"You got a lab full of astrobiologists I don't know about?" Rick asked. "Best we can do is leave her and try and send help when we can. We are not equipped to deal with a situation like this."

"It's okay, really," The woman replied. "We have accepted our fate. Help if you can but lease just stay safe and out of it."

Brock signed, joining Rick as they continued on their way. It seemed the world had no shortage of horrors for them every single day.

     The pair spent some time going around the moss patch and soon fond themselves back to normal looking terrain. The area was quiet and peaceful, very little of the war that had come had damaged much. The terrain turned rocky and it became a challenging task to make their way through. A wrong turn could mean a dead end and it was a delay that they could not afford. After several unsuccessful attempts to pass through the pair found a way through. However, waiting for them a group of aliens. They all kind of swayed back and fourth as if they were sleeping standing up.