And yet they were a good-looking people. Perhaps none of the females in this group were as hot as the one in the tree, but they weren’t bad, either. The whole group looked young and healthy and clean, which was a good thing. And they were wearing clothes, which was a plus. They were not wearing a lot of clothes, which was even better. Both males and females wore flappy little skirts and fabric arm- and leg bands like bracelets around their arms and legs. And yes, he could see now that they had breasts. The females had, if he was not mistaken, four of them.
One of the males broke the silence by reaching out a hand and poking Denton in the chest, as if to see how solid he was. It hurt.
“Hey!” Denton’s heart picked up speed again. “I mean, uh, hi. Nice to meet you.”
Sixty or so big, round eyes blinked at him.
“I hope you guys are friendly. I come in peace? Does that mean anything to you? No? Didn’t think so. Maybe you have a town around here, huh?” Denton smiled hard. Nothing.
He was afraid. It wasn’t as though he wasn’t. But, he reassured himself, they didn’t look dangerous. They weren’t carrying weapons or anything. And he could probably take a couple of the guys at a time if he had to, they were so slight. As for that silliness back there about the trees and the blood, well, he already knew that was just stupid.
Even so, his every bunny instinct wanted to run away. But his fear of being alone won out. True, these things were not human. But they wore clothes and had campfires. They made paths and had females and, hey, if this was the only scene on the planet, Denton was willing to adapt.
“Here,” he said, taking off his watch. It had been a gift from his mother, which meant it was expensive. It was platinum, though at the moment he wished it were flashier. Yellow gold, perhaps, with diamonds.
He held it out to no one in particular. “A gift. Take it.”
They looked at it. Denton stood there holding it out, feeling scared and foolish.
Then one of the males reached out and took it. He looked it over, mildly curious, then passed it along. It made the rounds.
“Denton,” Denton said, pointing to himself. He smiled harder, though his teeth were still chattery.
“Allook saheed,” one of the men said.
“Allook saheed!” The words rumbled happily through the group, and then he was being patted and smiled at and offered pieces of fruit that had materialized from nowhere.
Denton Wyle had found a home.
14.2. Denton Wyle
Calder Farris opened his eyes to a nightmare. Somehow, someway, he’d gotten himself into the middle of a battlefield. He wasted only seconds on confusion. His body had been in war before and it took control, shoving away anything irrelevant to survival like, for example, questions about what the fuck he was doing here.
He began panting, heart pumping fresh blood double-time, nerves responding to the fire alarm, all systems go. Stress kills, but bullets kill quicker. The body makes the expedient choice.
It was daylight, but the light was dim from smoke and heavy cloud cover. There was an icy drizzle that struck his face and hands like tiny chips of ice flung hard. It was freezing. All around him were the explosions of heavy artillery and the crack of rifles. He saw no one, had no idea where he was in relation to the line, but the sound of bullets whizzing through the air told him he was not anyplace he wanted to be.
He dropped to the frost-crusted earth, began crawling on his belly, stopped. Which way? Was he crawling toward the enemy or away from them?
Who was the enemy?
The fact that he knew none of these things caused a moment of panic. He got it under rigid control and began crawling perpendicular to the shots, hoping to work his way out the side of the line. He elbowed his way past a corpse wearing a thick, heavy uniform in a silver color. He paused to look at it, hoping for information. The jacket was well made and was decorated with elaborate insignia he didn’t recognize. At all. He blinked at it for a moment, stupidly, then grabbed the rifle from the dead man’s hands. Long barrel, foreign. He didn’t stop to examine it, just kept crawling.
Two massive explosions battered his eardrums and sent earthen projectiles into the air, hitting his back. It was only dirt, but it was moving fast enough to cut. Blood dripped into an eye.
Voices shouted. He didn’t recognize the language. He saw shadowy figures moving to his right. The line was advancing. He crawled faster.
The panic was returning, slowly, but with every intent to stay this time. He knew he wasn’t dreaming. The smell and sounds of war were too real; the physical sensations of the ground and of his own body, too real. And he had no idea where he was or why. He had just been…
Tracking Dr. Talcott through the woods. Had that happened years ago? Had a head injury erased his memory of more recent events, like this war? He hazarded a glance down at himself. If he belonged in this battle, why was he still dressed in civilian clothes? In his black trench coat?
He heard movement to his left—the advancing line, close now, and he was right in its path. He looked around desperately and saw a mounded darkness a few feet away that he prayed was a bunker. He reached out to grope its perimeters and slipped inside like a snake. It was a tiny hole and thankfully empty. Troops were creeping up on all sides, stealthy, moving low. He shrank down inside the hole, his breath steaming against the frosted dirt near his face.
Oh god, he was terrified. Absolutely fucking terrified. He felt a rising urge to scream and had to use all of his training to get it under control. His eyes darted, ears strained. He could figure this out, goddamn it. He just needed information.
He picked up two voices nearby, speaking in hushed whispers. Through the smoke, he detected two men crouching together, a flash of silver uniforms, heavy braids on a shoulder. He recognized the scene—it was a commander giving orders for the advance. But he didn’t recognize the uniforms or the language. It wasn’t the U.S. Army, so he must be behind enemy lines. How the hell had he gotten behind enemy lines?
A freezing current of wind cleared the smoke a little and he saw the two figures clearly. Caucasian, very Caucasian, with white-blond hair. They wore heavy black boots, highly polished, with a square-toed design. Their uniforms were similar to the one on the corpse.
Words wafted to him between explosions. He strained to identify them. Not German. Not Russian. Not Serbian… Not Arabic. Not Chinese.
Fear shot through him then, a whole new level of it, deep and churning in his bowels. He had been fucking trained by the fucking Pentagon. Anyone dressed in uniforms of this quality, this organized of an army, this white of an army, carrying heavy artillery like this—he should recognize the damn language.
He must have made a sound. The officer’s head swiveled toward him, eyes searching the gloom.
Calder panicked. He slipped from the hole and began running. He knew he didn’t have a prayer, but it still was a shock when the mortar hit, blasting the earth beneath his feet.
And then he was flying through the air like Superman, mind peculiarly free.
14.3. Seventy-Thirty Jill Talcott
“Jump!” Jill screamed.
They were not in Poland, not in the snowy woods, not in the dark, but on some red rock plateau in the middle of a hot and sunny desert. That in itself was strange enough, but they were also surrounded by enormous insects. The insects were as large as medium-sized dogs, heads antennaed like ants, and entirely disgusting. Their iridescent eyes mirrored Jill and Nate like a semicircle of fun-house mirrors as they backed toward the edge of the plateau.