Confrontation (The Seamus Chronicles Book 4) Page 11

  I still want to communicate my thinking to the two injured men and that means leaving a note. Unfortunately my backpack is off in the jungle. I’ll need to retrieve it to get the pen and paper I need.

  Gingerly getting to my feet, I realize that more than my ribs are sore. Getting to my backpack feels like it will be an epic chore. The walk back to the village may be more than I can handle.

  The little bit of movement loosens my muscles and dulls the pain slightly. By the time I reach my backpack, I am feeling better about the walk home, though I still wince in pain with each step.

  Deciding to write the note in the jungle gives me pause to think about my actions. Am I running away?

  The simple words I jot on the paper provide my answer.

  “Going for help. –Seamus”

  It’s the sincere truth. The only question is who I want to receive the help: them or me.

  Without fanfare, I return to the cabin and place the note in David’s hand. I feel bad for hoping he doesn’t wake up while I am still here. My decision is made and I don’t want his voice giving me any new data points and calling it into question.

  Part 3

  Chapter 20

  Several days after leaving Mike and David at the creature’s cabin, I arrive back at our village. My injuries and my experience have me in a sour mood.

  If only one species can survive on this planet, which one will it be?

  Do we have a right to survive at the expense of another race?

  I didn’t think it was possible, but our two groups are now even more divided. The McMurdo people are using words like “abandoned” and “deserted” to describe my leaving Mike and David.

  None of them have suggestions about what I should have done or how I should have handled things. If I had stayed, they wouldn’t know what happened to us. If I tried to help the two injured men get home, we would still be in the jungle, possibly dead. They are angry and scared and, whether they realize it or not, they are taking it out on me.

  I have confided in my father that I think Mike and David were blinded by war. They wanted a conflict so badly that it became the only way they could ever have interacted with the natives. He doesn’t disagree; in fact, I’m guessing all the real adults realize this, but his advice is to keep that thought quiet. There’s no sense in agitating the others more.

  Horst and Francisco were back at camp about one cycle before I was. It seems that they had made an agreement with Mike about how long they would wait at their station, which highlights another part of the plan I was left out of. More evidence that the McMurdo people are equally guilty of not talking to us.

  Right now the other two explorers are sleeping, but Dad tells me they shared a little bit of their experience. He’s not sure why, but my father suspects that there is more to it than they are letting on. With Mike gone, there is a bit of a power vacuum. Dad thinks Horst is trying to step up and lead, but he is extreme and rough.

  To Francisco’s credit, he is keeping Horst in check. His strategy is to acknowledge and redirect Horst, and watching him work is a lesson in mediation.

  I had been doing so well in understanding others’ motivations and working to satisfy them while I pursued my own goals. The emotions and adrenaline from our conflict have set me back. My instinct to react and lash out clouds my judgment.

  If I can’t sustain the practice, maybe it was flawed to begin with. Each of us is motivated by a common thread: survival. Everything else is a means to that end. Meeting everyone on that same level is not just a strategy, it’s a real way of connecting.

  When Horst and Francisco finally awake, we all sit down for a debrief. I need to choose my words carefully and think before I speak. The goal is a factual retelling about the events, but I can use tone and word choice to direct interpretation.

  I’ve never liked using words to manipulate a situation. Facts should always carry the day and sway an intelligent mind. Maybe adults have seen too many facts manipulated to trust them. Emotions can be manipulated too, but at the end of the day, if you can live with yourself and sleep at night that is the most important measure.

  “We can kill them,” I say to start.

  My goal is to address their fears first. If I can put their minds at ease about our safety, they will be more open to hearing my other ideas.

  “They are strong and they are big, and their bodies are covered in armor, but their head is a vulnerability,” I try to answer their pressing questions before they can ask them.

  “So you killed one?” Jane asks.

  “David did. He shot it in the body several times with seemingly no effect. Then a single shot to the head dropped the creature almost instantly,” I clarify.

  “Then we all need to work on marksmanship. Even with their size, the head is a small target.” Horst has a steely look in his eye.

  I surprise them all by saying, “I think that’s a great idea. But I would like to talk about a couple of other things, too.”

  “You abandoned two of our people. I vote that you don’t get to have any more ideas,” Marybeth spits.

  “Where did you wind up?” Rather than engage in debate, I shift the conversation to Horst. This allows the McMurdo team to talk, but keeps us on a useful topic.

  Francisco speaks first. “We found that city Jake saw. We hid out for two cycles, watching for you guys to enter, but you never came.”

  Between Francisco and Horst, we get a massive dump of intelligence.

  The city is big, physically, but not in terms of population. The creatures all appear similar to our human eyes, so they had trouble counting. They believe that there are well over one hundred creatures, but less than one thousand.

  They saw no weapons and no defensive walls. If we wanted to walk into the city, we could.

  As far as the architecture is concerned, the natives build with stone. The structures were massive and strong-looking, much like the creatures. Horst believes that they were all single-story and Francisco agreed that they did not build vertically.

  No towers or turrets implies that there are no defensive positions. In my head, I wonder if it’s possible that a species capable of independent creative thought can truly live in peace. How do they handle differences of opinion?

  “Did you see them communicating?” I ask when their information dump feels complete.

  “What?” Horst looks at me sideways.

  “Where they talking or using sign language or generally stopping to engage one another?” I struggle to maintain a patient tone with my follow-up question.

  “No. The animals didn’t sit down for tea and hug one another,” Horst snaps. He has let anger and fear cloud his judgment. He has set me up perfectly to make my point.

  “On the battlefield, communication is a key. If we can learn how they communicate, we can use it to our advantage.” I’m serious. What I am holding back, of course, is that I believe our advantage will be to make peace with them, not to conquer or destroy them.

  As Horst and Francisco begin to understand my point, we hear a loud moan.

  With a thundering crash, Mike’s body slams into the central cabin. It seemed to fall directly out of the sky. I cannot determine where the noise came from, but I quietly grab the handguns that Horst and Francisco left on the table.

  Every instinct in my body tells me to run. My mind is screaming, ‘Find Sofie and RUN!’ but I fight it. Instead I slide off the bench and sit on the ground.

  As cautiously as I can, I scoot back until I am sitting in the foliage that surrounds the central cabin. I strain to listen for signs of creatures, but do not detect any.

  “Mom!” I call out.

  My parents must have scattered just like the others. I don’t remember what happened in the minute following the first noise. The only thing I can see in my mind is Mike slamming into the cabin. I don’t remember any other people, but I’m not sure when they all disappeared.

  From the direction of the quarry Sofie and Cassandra come running. They are looking
behind them, as if they are being chased.

  “Sofie!” I call out to her.

  She looks in my general direction, but our eyes do not meet. She cannot see me. I watch as she looks at Mike’s body and the central cabin and then in the opposite direction.

  Sofie pushes Cassandra off the path and into the bushes. For a moment, they both disappear in the camouflage. When I am about to call out again, I detect Sofie’s face peeking from beneath a leaf.

  Two creatures enter the clearing. They stand still for a moment and look around the space. I listen intently for sounds that may represent language, but there is nothing that my human ears can detect. If they speak at a pitch or frequency above what we can physically hear, communicating with them could be difficult.

  After what feels like an eternity the creatures turn and face one another. From my vantage point, I see nothing remarkable. I have to remember that my ability to gather data is hampered by my position. The back of one creature is obscuring most of my line of sight.

  Sofie and Cassandra are in the perfect position to observe and I hope that they are watching and not simply cowering in fear.

  The creatures break their stance and one goes directly to the cabin. It pushes aside the leaf and carefully sticks its head through the doorway.

  Meanwhile, the second creature walks over to Mike’s body and lifts it off the ground. Holding Mike high in the air with one hand, the creature uses the other hand to smash our table. The table legs splinter and snap like twigs. The tabletop remains generally intact, but now it rests directly on the ground.

  It places Mike’s body on the tabletop and carefully arranges the arms and legs so that it looks like Mike is sleeping. I watch Mike’s chest, hoping to see the rise and fall indicating breath, but it does not move.

  Once the creature seems satisfied with his work, it turns to the cabin. With a quick silent step, it joins the other creature and takes a turn at sticking its head into our cabin.

  The creatures are not behaving violently or reactionary. They appear to be deliberate with their actions. Nothing about their demeanor is rushed or random, but I sense confusion.

  Both withdraw from our cabin and turn back toward Main Street. I follow their gaze and am startled to see a third creature standing on the path.

  The creature on the path is slightly smaller than the other two and has a colored shape on its chest. Again I am blocked from seeing anything more than an armor-plated back.

  After a few moments, they fall into line and head out of our clearing and down Main Street. The smaller creature is in the lead and they walk without making a sound.

  Chapter 21

  I crawled out of hiding before Sofie and Cassandra. I have a feeling that they watched me for a time before they emerged. Sofie did not speak to me and as soon as I met Cassandra’s eyes, the lecture began.

  “So you just cowered in the bushes while two defenseless women ran for their lives?” she bites.

  “We were under attack, too. One minute I was talking with Horst and Francisco, the next I was on my ass in a shrub. I can’t even tell you what happened to the others,” I spit back.

  “Did you watch them?” Sofie asks me.

  “I tried, but all I could see was the back of the big one.” I’m not surprised that Sofie observed them, but I am surprised that Cassandra has not taken a more academic view of the encounter.

  “Is everyone okay?” Henry enters the clearing and surveys the scene.

  “Mike is dead, probably, but the rest of us are fine,” I answer factually. Immediately I know that my tone is wrong.

  Someone else that I kind of respected is dead. It makes me sad that Jake and Mike, two of the people from McMurdo that I thought were generally decent, are no longer with us. My assumption is that the others are sad, too; talking about Mike’s death does not feel important, though. Remembering his life and what he brought to our group feels like the better way to respect him.

  Henry crosses the clearing and kneels beside the table where Mike rests. He reaches out a hand, searching for a pulse. After a minute or two, Henry places his hand on Mike’s chest and bows his head.

  Without thinking about it, I also bow my head and close my eyes. Emotions wash over me. I breathe deeply and fight back tears. My mourning is for all of us, not for Mike and certainly not for anyone else to see.

  A hand appears on my back and I turn to see my mother standing beside me. All of the survivors from Earth stand in silence and look at our second confirmed death. The logical conclusion is that David, Sonjia and Luke are also dead, but without seeing their corpses I refuse to accept it. At this point, it’s not just our resources but our gene pool that is shrinking.

  My thoughts slide to the negative. What’s the point of all of this? The human race is doomed. The wrong people survived and any belief that we would succeed was foolish.

  Perhaps those who died first during the sore loser outbreak were the lucky ones. They had no foreboding or fear or dread. They wouldn’t even have known that the coughing would lead to their death. The end of the human race would not have even been a concern for them.

  Now I feel like Sofie had it right in wanting to live in that little house by the ocean. In the beginning, it kind of felt like we were doing a version of that here on Locus. That is, until the group decided that we needed more and had to go off and seek out the natives.

  Maybe humankind’s biggest problem is curiosity. We had food, water and shelter, plus a vast library of books. Life was simple, but we couldn’t sit still.

  What’s over that hill or behind that tree? How long would it take me to walk around the lake? Is the whole planet covered in forest, or are there different types of terrain? Curiosity.

  “We need to counterattack. We should track them and strike them where they live.” Horst slams his fist into his open palm.

  Bloodlust seems to be gone from the rest of the group, though. We look at each other and then back to the corpse lying on our table.

  Sofie is next to break the silence. “I saw them talking,” she says.

  Horst maintains his aggressive tone. “What does that mean? ‘Saw’ talking?”

  “I think they communicate with facial expressions and hand motions. The middle set of hands, to be precise.” Sofie looks at me when she says ‘precise.’

  “But you didn’t hear anything? So they weren’t really ‘talking,’” Dad tries to clarify.

  “Right. It was like watching a conversation in sign language. Except their hands were only a little active, while their faces changed expression frequently,” she explains.

  “How many different facial expressions did you count?” I ask.

  She shoots me an annoyed look. “I didn’t count. I was too busy cowering in fear to record data,” she says.

  “Could you replicate any of the expressions or hand movements?” Henry asks.

  “I could try, but I’m not sure.” She hangs her head.

  Henry goes deep into thought. Horst storms out of the clearing and my mother sets to picking up the pieces.

  Dad looks like he is waiting for Henry. I have an opinion, but I’m going to follow my father’s lead. This is not a physics or scientific issue, so my expertise is limited.

  In my opinion, we should relocate. We should gather the supplies we have and walk in the direction opposite the city that Horst and Francisco found. After two full Locus days on the move, we can stop and establish a new camp.

  The containment field can be kept small and no one will ever have to leave. It’s security by obscurity. We won’t be hiding, but we will not be doing anything to draw attention to ourselves.

  Some would call it running away.

  I don’t care. The goal is to survive, not to be cool.

  It would also keep us busy. Village 2.0 would be better and take time to build. Knowing that we have food and can grow more would allow us to be more deliberate with our construction.

  Instead of clearing a space to get plants in the ground as quickly as
we can, there could be a bigger-picture approach. We could lay out canals and an irrigation system. There could be multiple areas for crop rotation and different cycles. Cold storage could be built in the center of it all so that transporting food will be easier.

  The whole thing could be positioned as bettering our situation. It’s just that we would have a few less bodies to do it with. Someday, if our population grows enough, we could come up with a new plan, but my guess is that would be long after I’m gone.

  Henry interrupts my thoughts. “I think we send Sofie and Seamus.”

  His comment reminds me that I’m being selfish again. My relocation plan was all about making things more comfortable for me. It didn’t include any thoughts for the others, including Sofie. I believe it would make things better for them, but only because it would make things better for me.

  “Send us where?” Sofie asks.

  “To the city. We can’t just run and hide; that’s not a long-term strategy. Buying ourselves days or even months does humankind no good. We need generations to rebuild our species,” he says, giving some insight to his thoughts.

  “Why us?” I want to know.

  “Sofie thinks she has an idea of how they communicate. Having that hint of a clue is important. You’re a problem-solver. Between the two of you, I think it’s our best shot of knowing what to say and how to say it.” Henry looks uncomfortable.

  “Okay by me,” Sofie declares.

  “I have some concerns,” I say. I’m not ready to head out so blindly.

  “Of course you do!” Cassandra groans and throws her head back like I’ve created the biggest obstacle in her life.

  I ignore Cassandra since she is not really any part of the plan. “Whoever stays behind needs to make sure that Horst and Francisco don’t leave. I don’t want to be off with the natives and find out that they decided to storm the castle,” I explain.

  “I’m not sure we can place anyone under house arrest, but I see your point,” Henry says, and nods.