On the Fringes Part 2

Part 1, Chapters 1-14: https://pastebin.com/3NGXxFe1

-Chapter 15-

I was surprised for some reason to see daylight when I opened my eyes. I didn't know why, and I also had no clue why my ears were ringing and my head was spinning like I was on some cheap, vomit-inducing carnival ride. My entire body ached when I tried to get to my feet. After struggling for a few moments, I decided that simply sitting up would have to do for now. That proved difficult as well, but despite the pain in my joints I managed to hug my knees to my chest and see just what was going on. Moving was not easy with the weight hanging from my shoulders; I recalled then I had a backpack on.

I thought I called for Vee but what actually came out of my mouth was a groaning jumble of gibberish. There wasn't any reply. A crackling fire to my left ate away at a chunk of mangled metal, shorting the electronics that ran underneath and producing intermittent showers of white sparks. That was when I remembered, through the opaque fog of my thoughts, that I had been on an ADVENT airship dubbed the mosquito. Except it wasn't ADVENT's anymore -- it was David's and Caleb's. It belonged to Camp Bravo. And even in the rising terror that quickly tightened around me, I still had a moment to muse that they were going to be pissed when it never came back.

I tried calling out again and though the results were a little better, it still wasn't anywhere as loud as I was hoping. When I tried to get up, I felt I was on a slope; the entire airship was pitched sideways. When I finally managed to get one foot beneath me, its support didn't last long. I put barely any weight on it and lost my balance as the world continued to spin, tumbling down and out onto the dirt just past the compartment door. Behind the ship was a long trench gouged into the earth by the crash, scattered with bits and pieces of metal and broken, splintered trees.

The world seemed to mostly align itself a few moments later, and with a still-unsteady sense of balance and clearing vision I looked back to the ship to search for Vee. She wasn't inside, nor did I see her backpack. I didn't see any tracks that resembled the wavy line her body would draw into the dirt; I did see some footprints that resembled a human's, but nobody else was around. A door to the front of the ship was open, probably wrenched from its hinges in the crash. I peeked inside and wish I hadn't; the only thing I could see of the pilot was his outstretched hand frozen into a clawed grip. The rest of him was thankfully hidden behind the mass of metal crushing him. What was left of the instrument panel sparked and sputtered, thoroughly broken as it was, but a partially garbled message occasionally broke through the static. It warned the resistance forces at the commercial park of incoming enemy anti-air and called for rescue at a set of grid coordinates that never came. Either the pilot had died before he could say or the message was just cutting out.

Something new apart from the blood-boiling rush of fear that warfare had brought ate at my insides. When I called again for Vee and still had no answer, I realized it was the chill of true terror creeping up my spine -- honest-to-god fear that I hadn't felt since my parents had died, since my brother had left -- fear that she had died in the crash and I hadn't been able to look out for her at all. The only things keeping my emotions in check and the tears from spilling over was to tell myself to act like Vee. Be as confident as she had been, as exacting as she had been. Do not take chances, do not hesitate. What would she have done first? Observe her surroundings.

Wiping away the last of the blurriness from my eyes, I took a look around. I saw buildings everywhere just past the immediate vicinity, itself taken up mostly by dead trees and empty spaces. When I saw a broken stone path leading past a pair of benches I guessed this had been a park at some point. The surrounding buildings looked like old shops, broken display cases and neon signs long since devoid of color. A growing sense of unease began to muscle out the fear and sadness in my head. The area was heavily urbanized -- not quite a city, but I still couldn't remember why that was bad. All I recalled was that Vee and I had avoided the commercial zone beside Penny's neighborhood--

A flash of yellow strewn across a large, decaying bush caught my eye.

"Vee!" I rushed over to her, doing my best to ignore the aches that made me stumble halfway. She looked remarkably fair considering the fact she must've been thrown from the crash. A few cuts across her body dripped yellow blood, and her Megadeth shirt and hiking pack had some nasty rips all over despite holding together. I panicked a little seeing a bit of branch poking through her hood until I realized it was going through the hole Eric's gun must've blown through it before I had even met her. I held my hand in front of her slitted nostrils and frantically waited. When her chest expanded and then a single warm breath hit my hand, my heart could have just leapt out of my chest at that moment. I could have jumped for joy but nothing could have gotten me to let go of her. Instead I just mashed my lips to her forehead while patting her cheeks and running my hands over what I could reach of her hood. She seemed to shudder as she came around, weakly grabbing hold of my wrist in order to stop me.

"Oh my god, thank you, thank you. Are you hurt? Can you move?" I hugged her close as she lazily flopped her tail onto the ground, to keep her from falling entirely. I couldn't see her face with how she buried it into my chest, but given how her claws dug into me I assumed she was just as sore as I was. "Is anything broken? Are you okay?"

"Concussion -- I think. Very sore. All over. Will manage. You?" She spoke like she was learning English all over again, each word breathy and forced out alongside a ragged breath.

"I feel like a truck hit me but I'm not bleeding and nothing's broken. Do inertial dampeners help with a crash?"

"Supposedly." She rolled the rest of her body out to follow her tail. If I hadn't been hanging onto her she would've fallen face first into the dirt. I swayed like a tree in the wind as she leaned more and more weight on me. It was a struggle just to stay upright. "Where -- the pilot..."

"The pilot didn't make it. I think he got a message out to warn them about the gun but I can't tell if anybody knows where we crashed. I don't know where we are. Looks commercial. I think we're in an old dog park or something. There's streets boxing us in, lined with stores." Her tongue just sort of fell from her mouth, lolling about like it was moving in slow motion compared to how she normally flicked it with such precision. It went back in faster than it had come out.

"ADVENT coming," she said, pausing to catch her breath. "Need to get inside. Away from crash."

She threw one arm over my shoulders as I gingerly held her close, trying to support her as we walked. Helping someone out after a twisted ankle was easy. It was a much more cumbersome affair when the person I was trying to support had no legs. Normally the injured person would stutter-step or hop delicately to keep pace with their slow-moving support, but Vee could obviously do no such things without legs. Instead, I found myself matching her movements like I was trying to support a wet noodle. She would lean forward and slide the rest of her body up as if it were being dragged.

We picked a store at random -- an old brick-and-mortar pharmacy with a busted sign, the neon tubes dusty and broken. Glass crunched noisily underfoot but Vee made no objections as she tenderly scooted across the floor. The shelves were predictably bare, both on the floor and behind the counter, with only a few empty pill bottles rolling about as we walked. A set of stairs brought us to a storage room on the right full of pungently rotting newspapers and a soggy, wrinkled, pulpy mass of what looked like cardboard. A single window overlooked the street and the park, and from this distance I could fully appreciate the lengthy trench the ship had made when it had crashed. I only looked for a moment before carefully laying Vee down onto the messy pile of damp cardboard. A swarm of indiscriminate insects scattered when they felt their home had been disturbed.

Vee tried her best to get comfortable while I peeked outside the window, careful not to expose too much of myself. After a few minutes, a trio of ADVENT troopers marched up to the crash site, their guns drawn as they poked about the wreckage. A fourth trooper wearing a large helmet with deep red accents joined them shortly after. He pointed at the ground and the into the street, and as my alarm grew over the prospect of tracks, I saw that there was nothing in the street indicating which way we had gone. Still, they looked nervous as they gazed into the mess of buildings past the park. The red trooper pointed and shouted and everybody turned tail.

"What's happening?" Vee whispered.

"I don't know. Four ADVENT came out to check the crash, one of them was in red armor--"

"An officer."

"--and then he saw something that spooked everybody. They just ran -- hang on." Something resembling a person ambled out into view, wearing the ragged remains of clothing on its body. It's skin was grey and wrinkled but the shape was unmistakably human. It took off after the troopers with a horrifying screech. A dozen more just like it, all in varying states of undress, joined the chase, though some lost interest before even crossing the street. "There's people here. I mean -- they look like people but they're all gray and gross and all of them have green eyes."

Vee quietly groaned, clutching her head as she swayed like the room was turning in circles. "Be quiet. No sound."

I watched for a little while longer. These things acted like animals, mindlessly scrabbling over any obstacle between them and whatever it was that had their interest. They didn't move like a pack or a team, and it became apparent that they barely noticed one another with how they constantly bumped into each other. Through the shreds of clothing still left on one, I could see the flesh was almost nonexistent; it was barely more than a walking skeleton, the skin dotted with holes and stretched tight across the ribs, pelvis, and spine. One of them turned around and gave me a good look at its face. All of its hair was gone and the skin was pulled tight and away from its features, leaving a minimal nose and a permanent ghastly grin that exposed a set of decayed and jagged teeth. By far and away the most striking feature were the eyes that seemed to unsettlingly glow an iridescent green.

And being the idiot that I was, I didn't realize until too late why I had such a good view of this thing's face. It pushed past some of its kind and began making its way towards our building.

"I think one saw me." Even as dazed as she was, Vee still went through the effort of making herself combat ready. When her hands reached for a gun that had never been there, however, she gently whined and fell back onto her pile of paper and cardboard. I shrugged my backpack from my shoulders and quietly set it down. In one of the side pockets was the large hunting knife with the serrated edge, and I spent a moment more digging the pistol out to slip it into my waistband -- just in case. I wasn't ready for what I was about to do but Vee was in no shape to fight. I tiptoed past the top of the stairs and into another room across the way. Inside was an old box spring and moldy wooden desk, a dull brass lamp sitting atop of it. There was an open window leading to a fire escape, but before I could even think of going back for Vee and making a run for it, a commotion downstairs told me opportunity was gone.

An uneven gait and heavy footsteps scattered the debris across the floor downstairs as this thing searched for a way up. It sounded like it could barely keep itself upright, like it was falling into every shelf or crashing into the shards of glass still left in the displays. Its steps drew closer and closer until stopping for a heartbeat at the bottom of the stairs. I did my best to just will it away, to think as loudly as possible that there wasn't anything up here worth mentioning. Obviously, such thoughts were nothing more than wishes. I heard it totter up the stairs, hands roughly sliding across old wallpaper as it leaned for support, or slapping the wooden steps as it sometimes fell forward onto all fours. It made guttural sounds like a rabid dog, though somewhere in its throat I swore I still heard whispers of actual words. I had no misconceptions, though; I didn't need Vee to tell me these things were mindless.

I took one more look at Vee and mouthed I was fine, to try and dispel the worry in her eyes. I moved out of sight of the doorway and hugged the wall adjacent to it, anxiously readjusting my sweaty grip around the knife's handle as I waited for this cruel parody of a human to poke its head into my room. Or it would see Vee first and expose its back, and I would have to be quick to keep it from making noise. Despite the obvious I still found it comforting to repeat in my head that it was not a person. It might have been at some point, but it clearly wasn't now. Oddly enough, panic set in not because I was about to kill something, but because I had no idea how to do it. All I had to go off of were movies and video games from my pre-invasion years. Could I just jam the blade through the skull with enough force and kill it instantly? I shivered for a moment as I thought about cutting the throat, using the serrated end to try and saw through the flesh as quickly as possible. Or would the straight edge of the blade slice more cleanly?

Its footsteps paused at the top of the stairs. Hoarse breathing shoved a cloud of dust into the room, just past my face. The tightness in my chest let me know I was holding my breath, and I silently exhaled to regain some sense of self-control. I didn't know if Vee clapped her hands or what, but it was clear whatever sound she had made had been on purpose. An angry stomp was my signal that this thing was looking the other way and I decided now was the only chance I was going to get.

I rounded the corner with the knife held high and lunged, wrapping one arm around its waist as it tried to wheel around and face me. I didn't know where to bring the knife down; in my indecision I just plunged it into the chest as close to the heart as I could while in the scuffle. It cried out in a haunting mixture of shriek and zombie-like moan and I panicked. I withdrew the knife, trailing black blood and dusty flakes of gray skin, and dragged it up to the neck, sawing back and forth like I was cutting into a tough steak. Its hands grasped in desperation, reaching back to try and tug on my hair or to try and get the knife away. It wasn't long before its struggles weakened and its cry turned into little else than a gurgling last gasp that saw blood like crude oil pouring from the wound across its neck. Its body crumpled at my feet; I couldn't believe how quickly everything had happened, or how weak it had been. Or maybe how strong I was. I didn't know.

"Breathe," Vee said, slurring some of the word together. "Slow."

There wasn't any time to relax. A chorus of screeching sounded outside. I threw my backpack on again and went to help Vee up. Her condition had barely improved; she supported more of her own weight but still clung to me for support. At this rate it might be a few hours until she was at full steam again. I sure hoped we would last that long. I hefted her up and quickly made for the fire escape in the next room.

Only for our way to be blocked by an enormous man. He was dressed in all black save for the brown harness he wore over a gray vest labeled 'POLICE', and a long duster whose ragged ends didn't even reach the floor. He wore a peculiar sort of gas mask and what looked like some sort of high-tech goggle raised over his left eye. In his hands he tightly held a small gun with an enormous cylinder on the end that I recognized a moment later as a suppressor.

"Can it move?" he said, his mask muffling his voice. I assumed he meant Vee, who could only just lift her head to see what was happening. I was too stunned to do anything other than offer a simple response.

"Yes."

"Fire escape. Roof of the building next door. Go."

He let us past and crouched at the top of the stairs. As I helped Vee slide over the creature's body, the man's gun issued a subdued report that seemed quieter than the sharp clacking of the weapon's action -- a noise that still made me flinch while so close to it. I heard a body drop at the bottom of the first floor before we crossed the hall entirely and began to climb out onto the fire escape. A thick wooden board that hadn't been there before bridged the gap between our building and the next, and below it were even more of the things, howling and reaching up for us. There was barely enough room for us to cross it side-by-side but we managed it in record time with thoughts of those zombie-like creatures rushing up the stairs to grab us, and the not-quite-silent gunfire that was keeping them at bay. Once we were across our mystery savior turned up and quickly followed right behind us, pulling the board up after him and throwing it inside. The lack of a bridge made no difference to the creatures, however. They gleefully threw themselves over the railing in vain to reach us, snarling and screeching all the way down into the teeming mass that had gathered below us.

"This way. If the snake acts funny I put it down now. I'd rather not carry dead weight if I can help it." He pushed his way past us, always keeping the barrel of his gun aligned with Vee whenever he was within arms' reach of her. "To the roof. Watch your step."

"What are those things?" I asked him instead of Vee given her stunned state. The layout of this building was nearly identical to the pharmacy's second floor, but this one had a central staircase for roof access. The stairs leading to the ground floor had been entirely demolished, leaving a fifteen-foot sheer drop.

"You don't know? People call them the lost. You know of the shells ADVENT used during the start of the invasion, yes? Pods that billowed green fog that would condense into goo around human bodies."

"I saw them on television, before ADVENT took over the airwaves. What were they?"

"Perhaps some sort of biological weapon. Entire cities turned into these howling, decaying beasts who fly into a rage at every sound. Be thankful you did not meet any of the fast ones -- or the big ones."

"If they're drawn to sound, why weren't they around the crash site? We should be dead."

"They were, and had you been moving I'm sure you would have been. A noisemaker was triggered to lure them away so we could scavenge the ship, and then I run into you."

"We?"

After shielding my eyes to give them time to adjust from the dank darkness of an abandoned, we stepped out onto the roof. A metallic stake was driven into the ground, suspending a long, long line of cable to another, slightly taller further into the town. On top of that building was yet another pylon with a cable on it, and that one went to another building as well. As squinted and scanned our surroundings, I saw many cables all leading to various buildings. The tallest building resembled an apartment block and had at least a dozen different lines coming down from its roof.

"The roofs are safe," he said. "We go from rooftop to rooftop, all the way to the apartment. What are you, about one-fifty, one-sixty? I'll take you across first and then--"

"No. You're not splitting us up."

"Suspicious, no? Very well. I will go first and send the motor back. You only have yourself to blame if you fall out." He strapped himself into a harness that hung from the cable by some sort of motorized pulley. After tugging on each buckle to make sure he was secured, he flipped a switch on the contraption and it whisked him off to the next building a block or so away. He released himself from the harness and activated it again, allowing it to come whizzing back to us.

"Still doing all right, Vee?"

"Better."

"It looks like the harness only has room for one, and I don't trust this guy enough to be alone with either one of us. Can you hang on or do I need to strap you in?"

"I can manage."

"Okay then, it looks like the gear Caleb gave us," I let go of her to fasten myself in, "so the arms should go here and I guess this goes around my groin. And that leaves this buckle across the chest. This looks right, doesn't it?" She nodded, coiling her tail around me and tightly hugging onto my upper body, resting her head over my shoulder. It wasn't until I felt her cool scales against my neck that I realized how damn hot and grimy I was, and just how refreshing she felt. In a flash we were flying over the other buildings, the motor overhead loudly buzzing and the streets below still clogged with throngs of the lost. Vee and I would have never made it through this place. No wonder Commander Argo had said to avoid the dead cities at all cost. But weren't the dead cities supposed to be outside of the trade zones?

We slowed to a stop as we came to our destination. Our rescuer stood off a ways from us, leaning in and over every few moments to get a new angle on us as I unbuckled myself while making sure Vee was okay to stand on her own.

"I've never seen one so tame before."

"She's not tame," I said, "she's concussed."

"Of course. Well then, let's move quickly."

We zipped from rooftop to rooftop, always under the watchful eye of the creatures below who seemed to fill up all the empty space in this town. Every so often I'd catch a glimpse of one of the fog pods that had caused this mess. To think that I had thought they were just capture devices when I had seen them on television two decades ago. Did the fog only turn to that goop in high enough concentrations? Maybe it had been an unintended effect and the end result had always meant to be a city-killer. Whatever it was, its effects were horrifically, undeniably effective. People of all kinds -- mothers, fathers, children -- reduced to nothing more than decayed caricatures of humanity. I clenched my fists together as we ziplined to the next roof, trying to rub off some of the black blood and flakes of gray, ashy skin that I felt still stubbornly clinging to my fingertips. Eating with these same hands now seemed nauseating.

Our little jaunt was coming to an end. Halfway up the last line towards the roof of the apartment, I felt my stomach inexplicably drop. It was nothing but a hunch that had me holding Vee just a little more tightly, that had my palms sweating and my head pounding. Every time we had gotten involved with humans, things had always gone poorly. The house had been burnt to the ground, Penny had plagued me with nightmares, and our last run-in had seen us risking our lives in an actual goddamn warzone just for a chance to secure Vee's freedom. So while I was grateful to our nameless rescuer, it was hard not to feel like something bad was coming up.

When we rose over the lip of the roof to be met by a handful of gunmen, I wasn't surprised. Each of them looked just as ragtag as the man that had rescued us but there was an unmistakable paramilitary vibe about them, somehow separate from the resistance forces we had run into. There were also tents and tables set up and the alluring smell of cooked meat, like a steak or a burger. Other adults milled about just like Caleb's camp, and a few kids sat gathered around an older man sitting in a chair. He got up upon seeing Vee and I being detached from the cable, but the kids stayed right where they were. Compared to the vibrant community of Camp Bravo, the place sort of looked like a quiet commune, one of those hippie sites that I had only seen on old world television or in movies, but the militaristic look everyone had was impossible to miss.

"Welcome, welcome," said the old man, holding his arms out. His face and bald head were weathered and wrinkled by age or stress -- or both -- and a white beard and jovial, brown-eyed gaze gave off some grandfatherly influence. His clothing was just as ragged as everybody else's, and a pair of binoculars hung from his neck with the middle piece obscured by a thick layer of black duct tape. "Marquis told me you were coming," he said, pointing to the man who had saved us in the pharmacy, "and that your, er, friend was not feeling so well. We can fix that."

"She's got a concussion," I said, trying to sound steely and rougher than I was used to as I nervously watching Vee try to shrink away from the barrels she had trained on her. "And cuts all over. I don't know if any are deep. She's friendly. You don't have to threaten her."

"Is that so?" said the old man, stepping up to her afterwards without any fear in his voice. He looked her up and down, stepping over her tail as he circled around her. "You understand me?"

"Yes," said Vee.

He recoiled slightly in surprise, then smiled and leaned in again. "So how about we make things easy? Help us out to, uh, scavenge. I'm sure you have some knowledge of ADVENT sites nearby in that head of yours, yes?" He said, continuing to smile as she nodded. He spoke hesitantly, like he was nervous despite appearances or that his minor accent hinted that English could have been a second language. "We get you fixed up while I chat with your friend here, and then we can talk about those sites. Just don't cause trouble and everything will be A-okay, understand?"

Neither she nor I had much of a choice in the matter with all of these guns, and strangely enough I didn't feel like arguing and inviting any sort of violence while the kids looked on from the corner. Vee only nodded and did as instructed, following one of her escorts to the door before disappearing somewhere inside. Everyone else relaxed in her absence and life resumed as normal, save for the growing sense of unease that gnawed at my insides. At this old man's request I took a seat in a beat-up lawn chair inside of a small tent at the roof's corner, while he snapped his fingers at one of the children and told him to get me something to eat.

"I am Michel," he said as he sat across from me.

I only offered him a exhausted sigh in return. I wasn't going to offer anymore information than I had to this time. I was tired of being the first one to talk and I was certainly tired of repeating my life's story to every person we crossed paths with.

"We all saw the crash," said Michel, unconcerned with my lack of name. He took a sip out of a dirty white mug before offering it to me. After a quick sniff and a small taste I knew it was water. I wasn't thirsty until I felt the first drop pass my lips and then I shamelessly downed the entire thing, to Michel's apparent delight. "You should be dead. Very lucky."

"So you send one guy to scavenge it?"

"Teams are slow and noisy in the city, where speed and silence are highly prized. One man is all that's needed. Pray tell how you came to be in control of an ADVENT airship?"

"On loan from local resistance."

"Ah, I see, I see. I imagine they will be upset, no?"

"I imagine so."

He nodded in response to my continued silence, then, "So where will you go after this?"

"Around."

"Come now, you will be free. On my life, you are no prisoner. Tensions are understandably high these days even after victory. Please, please, I mean you no harm. When we are finished you may take the main line all the way to the edge of the town." He was disarmingly genuine like Caleb, and I figured what harm could it do to let my guard down just a little. The whole grandfather-thing he had going on helped as well.

"City 31."

"Ah, yes, we have heard much about this city on the radio. Of course you'd be heading there. Resistance speaks of it, the news speaks of it -- many people find it very interesting. Humans and aliens living together? Preposterous, is it not? Like spiders and flies sharing the same web, or foxes and rabbits sharing a burrow. It is a place destined for ruin. They will tear themselves apart soon enough."

"You don't know that for sure."

"Don't I? Don't you? Look at the world around you. This is what aliens brought with them. Earth had its problems before with the constant geopolitical posturing, global warming -- but they were our problems and we could fix them. Now we have alien problems and not even bullets can fix all of those. Some illness runs rampant across the globe; for now it only affects the hybrids, but what if it jumps to humans? Ecosystems the world over are ruined by the strange growth of alien flora and the relentless meddling of creatures like chryssalids and berserkers. It will take centuries of hard work to make Earth ours again, if at all. We won't live to see it. Our children won't. Their children won't."

"So you actually care?"

He laughed. "Oh, no, no. I used to, back when I was still a teacher. Back when people thought the world was still the same, just with alien rulers."

"And what happened?"

He sighed and slumped back into his chair. "In the beginning, day-to-day life was mostly the same for the cities lucky enough to just be occupied. When ADVENT had just taken over, they immediately suppressed broadcasts of the attacks around the world. Some of my students protested the control of information. One by one, the individuals present at the protests disappeared from my classes. Thirty-three in all. Their disappearances never made the news. No police ever answered my questions. Their parents never responded to my emails. They never had obituaries in the papers nor did their friends know what had happened. That was when I knew resistance was futile and that survival was the best we could hope for."

"So you're not resistance?" The kid from before pushed past the tent flap and plopped a plate onto my lap. It had a thin strip of meat on it, thoroughly cooked until brown and almost sweet-smelling. "What is this?"

"The world has gone to shit, my friendly hunter," he said, sparking a new question while ignoring my first. "Survival has been the name of the game since the aliens arrived and it won't change. Governments demonstrated the lives of their constituents were meaningless when they let ADVENT take over. Nations as we know them no longer exist. Cities are depressing facades on the brink of failure without ADVENT rule. Warlords have sprung up everywhere, carving out little pieces of the world for themselves. That's us -- we're in this for nobody but ourselves."

"What is this?"

"The Reapers were too soft -- once they allied themselves with XCOM and those disgusting skirmishers, I knew they could no longer be trusted. Even now they have abandoned the tenet of survival and think rebuilding is possible. I knew it was an impossible endeavor, so I and others who thought like me left to focus our efforts on ourselves. We had to start over but it has been worth it so far. We've flourished under my supervision despite our circumstances."

"What is this?" I said a little more forcefully.

I couldn't tell if he was surprised or annoyed by my constant question, either wondering why someone had interrupted his spiel or wondering why someone would ask such a question. "We ran out of sectoid. That's viper, my friend."

I didn't even have time to feel sick. Before the plate had even hit the floor I was on both feet with my pistol aimed squarely between the man's surprised eyes. I was a little shocked myself at how fast I had drawn my gun.

"You're not a hunter," he slowly said. "Or are you? Are you green? Is this your first claim?"

"Where's Vee?" I wanted so badly not to breathe, to not fill my nose and lungs with the sickly smell of cooked people. It took everything I had not to vomit on the spot.

"I assure you nobody within a hundred miles pays as well as we do. There's no need for theatrics. You will get your bounty. We have much to barter with--"

"I don't know what you're talking about."

"We broadcast on the short-range all the time. Anybody who brings us any invaders is compensated," he said. His calm, friendly demeanor never faltered. When I spotted his hands moving towards his waist I emphasized the gun pointed at his head with a purposeful twitch, and he froze in place again. "We have families here. Properly rationed, a viper can feed us for a several weeks. If you take it to another camp you're taking food out of our mouths."

The lump in my throat swelled to the size of a bowling ball and wouldn't go away no matter how often or how hard I swallowed. He thought I was a hunter? People would actually capture aliens and drop them off like cattle to slaughter? I understood hating one's enemies. Chopping them up for trinkets and keepsakes was bad enough, but this? Intelligent beings that could think and speak -- unconscionable didn't even begin to describe it.

"I can understand your apprehension, especially if you did not know what we used them for. You're green, it's okay -- we can all relax now, so put away your gun and we can get everything sorted, yes?"

"You have ten seconds to get the viper -- to get Vee back up here."

There was a moment's hesitation behind his eyes, something that told me he wasn't quite buying the hardened killer I was showing him. Nonetheless he fished a wire from his breast pocket and it clicked beneath his fingers before he spoke into it. "Marquis, I need a favor. Bring the viper back to the roof for a moment." Nobody answered back. "Marquis? Answer me, boy."

The radio remained silent. Michel's friendly mask cracked just a little as I clearly heard him swallow, but he still wryly smiled and said, "It's been ten seconds, Mister Green."

"I guess it has." Without another second's pause that might let him think I was bluffing, I pulled the trigger and perforated the tent fabric behind him. He jumped a little, surprise barely registering on his face while a haunting moan from somewhere in the distance answered my guns report. Michel chewed on his lip, perhaps still wondering if I was serious or not. I had no idea how to act tougher than I already was, so I hoped he wouldn't call my bluff a second time. "Take me to the viper."

I allowed him to circle around me and exit the tent first. I quickly followed behind him to make sure no signals, verbal or otherwise, were given to anybody standing outside. Everybody stood like statues, frozen in the middle of whatever they had been doing when I pulled the trigger. One man had been tossing garbage over the side of the building, two more had been reloading magazines and cleaning their firearms, and the children were stopped motionless in the middle of some game. Their stares were the most uncomfortable. They didn't even look scared or shocked. It was almost like this was business as usual to them.

I pressed the barrel a little harder into Michel's head. "Tell everyone to go to the other side of the roof, away from the door." He did as instructed and they all complied immediately, awkwardly shuffling to the far side, far away from us.

"This will end badly for you, Mister Green."

"You strike me as someone fairly important," I said as he opened stairwell door. I closed it behind us; if anyone followed, I'd hear them first. We carefully descended each step one by one so that the pistol was never more than a few inches from his skull. "The way you had the kids gathered around you, how everybody but you was working -- your men did as you said without any argument at all. And the monologue you gave me on the roof kind of made you sound a little cult-like -- no offense -- so I'm guessing you're high up the ladder, so to speak. So long as I remain a credible threat to you, nobody will make a move."

A grunt was all he could muster in response as we came off the stairs. Eerily, there was no activity inside. The hallways and apartments were empty despite showing obvious signs of life; ruts were evident in the tattered carpeted floors, handprints lined the walls up and down. The living conditions didn't look so bad, all things considered. The floors looked kind of clean and the walls weren't too badly marred by peeling wallpaper or discoloration. A pair of people ran by an intersection ahead of us, entirely oblivious to the hostage-taker inside their building. Michel led me up to this intersection and we turned left to find an crowd of men and women gathered around an open door. My heart sank; was I too late? Was everybody already waiting for a piece of what used to be someone else? Of what used to be my friend -- my Vee?

"Everybody stand the fuck back." Every head in the group snapped to the sound of my voice. When they saw me and my hostage, nobody uttered a single word before doing exactly as instructed. They all crowded together at the other end of the hall by a broken window as Michel and I approached. My legs felt heavier and heavier as I drew closer to the room they had all been gawking at; what was I going to do if Vee was gone? I couldn't even fathom not having her around. I was looking forward to seeing the city together, to find a place of our own, to helping each other acclimate to city life. To have that taken away from us by a bunch of savages who couldn't tell the difference between people and food seemed especially harsh after everything we'd endured. Dark, incessant thoughts deep down resolved to make sure Michel knew as much if it came down to it.

As we rounded the corner, I only barely managed to keep my heart from bursting; Vee was alive and mostly well, looking much more alert than before. Two of Michel's people had their weapons trained on her but refused to fire; locked in Vee's coils was a third individual, a young man doing his best to keep his adam's apple off the of the crusty-looking cleaver held against his throat. A partially open door at the other end of the seemed messily painted with streaks of mustard yellow, old blood of other aliens who had been unlucky enough to stumble into this slaughterhouse.

Vee's eyes widened. "You're here," she squeaked. The end of her tail twitched down by her captive's ankles, and the hand which held the blade seemed taken by fearful trembling that made me even more afraid than I already was.

"You two with the guns," I said, pushing Michel's head forward with how hard I was pressing the pistol into him, "drop them and back off. Now!"

"I'm sorry, Father." The man on the right was Marquis. If not for his voice I still would have recognized him for his linebacker's physique. "I'm so sorry, I--"

"I don't care for your apologies now, boy," Michel hissed. "Next time do as I say and kill it out there!"

"I didn't want to carry it from the outskirts. The motors can only climb the lines with so much weight, and then there were children on the roof--"

"I don't care."

"--I would have had to cut her up and make several trips to--"

"I don't care!"

"Both of you shut up!" My own booming voice surprised even me. "I said drop them and back up."

They barely looked back at me with just the corners of their eyes but when they saw Michel's predicament, they predictably acquiesced. Their stances faltered and a moment later, both rifles were laying on the ground. They took a dozen uneasy steps to press themselves against the far wall. With those two removed from the equation, Vee's grip relented and her captive stumbled to the ground, doing his best to stop his fall with what looked like a broken arm before he joined his friends at the other end of the room. Her tail whipped out to drag one of the guns back into her waiting hands as she hurriedly fell in behind me.

"Are you okay, Vee?"

"Y-Yes." She spoke quietly but her breathing was heavy and going mile a minute, like she was near hyperventilating.

"Okay. Watch our backs and follow me. We're just retracing our steps. Nice and easy -- right, Michel?"

"Of course," he said with a laugh. I found it hard to believe this man used to be a teacher. At the very least, he must have done something really hardcore before to have an attitude like his. No normal person should be so collected under this sort of pressure. He must have been a soldier or a cop or something in his much younger years. It reminded me of Mister Gerney -- one of my high school teachers -- who was formerly special forces during the Vietnam War. He never, ever spoke one word of his time overseas, and I always wondered what sort of things a man could do that would haunt him for so long afterwards. I think I had a better idea these days, but now the question was what sort of man would revel in such a past so much that they'd laugh with a gun to their head?

Again we passed by the crowd of onlookers, still gawking indignantly as I led their leader away at gunpoint. A few doors opened as we slowly made our way back to the roof; someone new would poke their head out, see what the commotion was, and very quickly retreat again upon sight of an armed viper prowling behind me. We found the stairs to the and shuffled up them. I made sure to have Michel open the door first. When no surprises waited for us, Vee and I followed him out. The same people were still on the roof, frozen as I had left them.

"All of you, get inside and close the door behind you. If anybody tries to come up before we leave, Michel is done. We'll send him back on the main line once we're gone." They filed past one by one in silence until something dangling from someone's vest caught my eye. Vee saw it too and snatched it from the person's vest as they recoiled in terror. It didn't look like any grenade I had ever seen before, but it had the same shape so it must have done something similar. Vee probably had the same idea I did. Hell, she probably had the idea the moment she had set foot in this place. Once everyone was inside and it was just the three of us on the roof, she grabbed a nearby chair and propped it against the door handle to jam it shut. She wiped a deck of playing cards and some empty shell casings off a small table and propped it against the door, too, before throwing any and every piece of clutter and trash she could onto the pile.

"Michel here said one of the lines from here was the main line, that it went all the way to the edge of town. Find the longest one and strap in, Vee."

After roughly ripping the binoculars from Michel's neck, she slithered around the perimeter of the roof, pausing for just a second at each post to stare into the distance. After making a full circuit, she picked one line out of the dozen or so set-up and confidently stood by it. "This one. It goes to the woods past the highway. No indications of a camp at the other end. Let me take him across first just in case."

"Are you sure? Why?"

"If any others are waiting there, they will hesitate if he is threatened. If we leave him here, he could disconnect the line while we're on it. And should he try to resist, I trust myself to kill him more than I trust you. No offense."

"None taken." I pushed Michel forward towards the harness. He offered no resistance. "You heard her -- strap in. Oh, wait," I said, lunging forward to flip his coat aside. I recalled how he had reached for his waist when I had initially threatened him. There was a holster sitting on his hip, partially hidden by the ruffles of his unkempt shirt. Vee hastily relieved him of his pistol and nodded her head towards the harness. The fear I had seen earlier in her eyes slowly hardened into something even beyond disgust or contempt. In her razor-thin pupils there was an undeniable measure of hatred that made evident the conflict inside; I knew she no longer wanted to kill people -- doing the Elders' work for them, she had once said -- but it was clear she was strongly considering an exception in this case.

The look of worry he gave Vee was the first crack I had seen in his persona since meeting him. He slid past her step by step, never taking his eyes from hers or the gun in her hand. With his jacket tossed aside, he slipped into the harness at a snail's pace to either annoy us or placate us -- I couldn't tell which now that his smile was gone but hints of his flippant attitude seemed to remain. When he was fully strapped him, Vee slung her rifle and wrapped herself around him, holding the handgun she had taken against his temple while her other hand tossed the grenade to me.

"I know you can throw further than me. Improvised explosive. I am familiar with the design. Press the red button in until you hear it click; it requires force. Once your hand leaves contact with the metal strip, the fuse is armed and the device will detonate in five seconds."

It was a small green sphere about the size of a baseball but there was no familiar ring to pull or lever that would pop off. A strip of dull metal ran around the equator of it, a wire spanning the distance between it and the button. It felt like it weighed about as much as a baseball, too, so I was instantly familiar with it. Vee hit the button on the zipline motor, and I hit the button on the grenade and sent it sailing off in the opposite direction of the zipline. While the two of them zoomed off into the distance, an explosion reverberated throughout the canyons and cliffs of the dead townscape. Equally loud was the spine-chilling chorus of shrieks and moans that arose to answer it. I swore I could feel the whole building shaking in the wake of what sounded to be a stampede of the lost, all hungering for whatever it was that had made that sound.

As I waited for the harness to come back, I began to worry more that the door wouldn't hold. I started piling whatever little things Vee had missed onto the door after realizing I didn't have a back-up plan. And Vee didn't either, otherwise I knew she would have mentioned it. I felt it prudent to send every harness currently at the roof down to its other point. That way they couldn't take one off of a different line to give chase, because I sure as hell wasn't sending the main one back. Having something to do kept my mind off of the anxious what-ifs and the slew of insidious thoughts that continued to buzz around inside of my head. Maybe I could have cracked the door and rolled that grenade down the stairwell. Maybe I could have used it to lure the lost right to this building, or dropped it right off the side and blew out a wall of rubble they could have used to climb up into this hell hole. I was beginning to disturb myself.

Thankfully nobody tried to bust the door down, and before too long the empty harness came back to my end of the line. I wasted no time securing myself to it. On my way down I thought how I had barely spent any time here in this place and it was still enough for two lifetimes. Below me the streets were nearly entirely empty; only a few of of the lost shambled aimlessly about while all the others must have headed for the explosion. Either way my traversal across the zipline went unnoticed -- or unbothered, anyway. I'm sure Michel's people could see me leaving from the windows.

Vee anxiously waited for me at the other end, her tail twitching even faster than before and the pistol digging rather hard into Michel's head. She looked a little wilder than I was used to, like she was fighting a losing battle.

"He doesn't stop talking," she said.

"There is a special place in hell for collaborators, Mister Green."

"Yeah, for people that eat other people, too," I said. "You still got that tripwire, Vee? Let's tie him to the post. His fellow savages can come get him."

"You said you would send me back. At least send the harness back for them."

"And you said you would fix her right up."

Michel scoffed as Vee rummaged through her backpack, but it turned into a sinister sort of laugh. "People!" he shouted, "I have never eaten a person in my life. Because they have faces and talk -- you think that makes them people? What about us then? Were we not people to them? For twenty years you have seen what they do to people, how much it means to be people. No, no, what it comes down to is survival but the difference is we were here first. Earth is ours and always will be. Survival is our right alone. If you would deny us that, if you would take food out of our bellies to save this thing, by what measure can you call yourself a human like me?"

"He does talk a lot," I said with a forced laugh as I helped Vee tighten the wires. In no time at all, Michel was bound to the zipline's anchor post. I was happy to stand there and let him talk until he was blue, to make him think I cared one bit for anything he had to say, but Vee clearly did not want to be anywhere near this place. She slung her pack on again and hurriedly slithered away. A quick jog and I fell inside beside her as Michel continued to shout.

"That alien of yours will teach you a valuable lesson, Mister Green! Not today, not tomorrow, but someday you will know exactly how much you mean to it! And someone like me will not be around to save you!"

Vee just started to run. I kept pace with her, only looking back once and being disappointed there was no berserker or ADVENT nearby to hear him yelling after us.