The ravine provided enough cover to keep them out of sight, and Jack suspected the aliens’ scanning technology wasn’t very thorough. Less sensitive than a leviathan’s by a wide margin, at least. Several times during their journey, the silhouette of one of the cuttlefish passed overhead, and each time, Jack expected it to swoop down and incinerate them, but it never happened.
After more than three hours and fifteen kilometers over broken terrain, Nikitin’s hunch panned out. The dry ravine met a live river, knee deep with fresh water. Another hundred meters on, they could just barely make out the shadow of a settlement. They’d made it.
Jack motioned for a huddle. “Me and Nicotine are gonna scout ahead. The rest of you, break out purification kits and refill your packs, then find somewhere to setup camp. Gather brush for camouflage while you’re at it. If the village is a bust, we’ll overnight here. Got it?”
“Roger,” they said and broke from the huddle. Everyone sounded exhausted.
Albright patted Jack on the shoulder, then held out the flare gun and two shells for him to take. The gun was made of brightly colored plastic and looked like a toy, but never-the-less filled him with unease. He’d cleaned and bandaged so many wounds that the thought of any gun made him angry.
“For emergency use only. Load cartridge, cock hammer, aim at sky and pull trigger,” Albright said. “I’m not sure if we’ll come running or get the hell out of dodge, but either way, I’d feel better if you had it.”
“Fair enough,” Jack said. “If you see the flare, just leave. If we’re not back in two hours, do the same.” He took the gun, popped the breach and looked inside to make sure the chamber was empty, then tucked it into the strap of his service-pack and dropped the shells into his pocket.
She didn’t say a word, just nodded her head and joined the others busy at the waterline.
Nikitin appeared beside him, raring and ready to go. “Makes ya feel like a big man, don’t it?”
Nikitin didn’t have any aversion to firearms, and never failed to give Jack crap about his. He had a small collection of rifles back home that he treated like children, and he usually spent his vacation time alone in the wilderness, hunting big-eyed creatures that never saw it coming. Jack never could figure out how Nikitin dealt with the cognitive dissonance.
“I don’t want the damned thing. You want it?”
“Naw. Might confuse it for a real gun and try to play hero. Better leave it with someone level headed like yourself. Come one. We should get a move on before it turns dark.”
The two of them climbed up the side of the ravine and back into the battering winds of the dust storm. They kept their heads down and scurried from one pile of debris to the next, creeping up on the village in ten meter bursts. They could make out more details at each stop, and it wasn’t a pretty picture. Broken walls and shattered wooden beams came into view, against a hillside in the background which had long ago been cut into scalloped and irrigated terraces, now pockmarked with jagged craters.
They stopped at a pile of masonry and waited, on the look-out for any kind of movement, but there was too much dust in the air to see anything clearly. For a moment, Jack was tempted to grab Nikitin’s binoculars, but he only would’ve seen dust and more dust beyond it.
They crossed the last stretch of land and immediately pinned themselves to a brick wall. It was connected to two others which were still standing, the third having fallen in towards the center of the building along with the roof. Every other building in sight was much the same: barely held together, with hand-painted Chinese signs on whatever walls remained upright.
From there, Jack and Nikitin skirted the edges of the village and listened for voices—for any signs of people—but there were none. They silently passed one shattered building after the next, some still smoking from recent attacks. Jack imagined that Nikitin was feeling just as hopeless as he was.
Then they caught sight of movement. Both men reacted the same way, instinctively ducking for cover in a darkened doorway. The building’s roof was in pieces, and the rubble inside left only as much space as a closet. It was a wonder both of them fit inside.
They tried to breathe as quietly as they could while they watched the road and awaited the silhouette’s approach. It was moving slowly and coming straight down the center of the pavement, and as it drew closer, Jack thought for a second that it was wildlife. Another moment later, he changed his mind completely.
It wasn’t large, maybe as big as a teenager, and it walked slowly on all fours while calmly surveying the area. Its body looked oddly shaped for that kind of movement, though, with proportions that were altogether too human. Front and rear legs were the same length but shaped differently, the front pair being more spindly and ending in fully formed hands.
As the creature passed by, Jack could see that it was wearing a mechanical mask not unlike his own, from which two long, pointy ears protruded outward and upward. It was also carrying some sort of ornately decorated rifle on its back. Although distinctly exotic in design, an embossed branch-and-leaf design made the weapon look like some kind of Victorian relic.
A noise sounded in the distance, like a horn or an animal howling, and the creature stopped in its tracks. It stood up on its hind legs, took a last glance around the area and thankfully missed Jack and his partner in their hiding spot. Then it turned toward the source of the noise and leapt off, returning to all fours and sprinting as a jackrabbit would.
“Follow it?” Nikitin asked quietly.
“Unless you’ve got a good idea,” Jack replied.
They crept out, making sure the coast was clear, then started off towards the source of the noise. They moved from one broken building to the next, using rubble piles for cover. It didn’t take them long to make it to the far end of the village, where another discovery awaited.
They crawled on their bellies to the top of one particularly large mound of debris and peeked over the edge, only to find one of the alien cuttlefish sitting motionless on the other side. Nikitin took a quick scan with his binoculars, then handed them to Jack who took his time studying the scene.
There was something going on in the space between the ship and the village, but Jack wasn’t sure what it was. The aliens had collected a pile of human bodies, which were watched over by a handful of the jackrabbit creatures, and another type of alien that couldn’t have been more different.
The new type reminded Jack of nothing so much as a bipedal rhinoceros, although the similarity only went so far. They were massive and walked fully upright on thick, tree-trunk legs, while their equally thick and muscular arms hung far out to the sides. Jack could just barely make out another, smaller set of arms closer to the middle of their torso, which they kept hidden away. What skin he could see was rough and grey, but most of it was hidden beneath an armor that glittered like the inside of a geode. Those armor plates extended to their long heads, where it ended in a sharp horn at the tip of their snout.
The rhino creatures had something even weirder on their backs. At first, Jack thought they might be backpacks or machines until he saw one move. It was twitching. He continued to stare in wonder, making sense of the shape little by little. It looked like a giant water strider, with its long legs clinging to the rhino’s back. He briefly wondered if the bug might be controlling the rhino, but there was no way to know.
“Whaddyu think?” Nikitin asked in a hushed voice.
“I dunno. Collecting them for food, maybe?” Jack was a little surprised at how detached he sounded. At how detached he felt. He couldn’t figure out where all his moral outrage and disgust had run off to. He felt as if the pile of bodies should affect him more.