Caveman Alien's Rage Read online

  Aurora grabs her bundle of arrows and places them in her quiver. “I'll just remind everyone that Bune is where the not-dactyls live. It's the most dangerous place we know of.”

  A cold shiver goes down my back at the memory of our first day on this planet. So many women were taken by the dactyls, the flying dinosaur horrors that we fear more than anything else here on Xren.

  We start taking down hanging skins and packing our leather sacks.

  None of us state the obvious: that 'something' in the spaceship Bune that sometimes responds to Delyah's little pad could just as well be someone.

  2

  - Heidi -

  It's a long walk. Jax'zan and Ar'ox are in front, clearing the way of predators. We sometimes hear the clanging of their swords as they fight off attackers, and Aurora fires a couple of arrows at lurking predators she spots in among the trees.

  We've brought everything we own. Which isn't much. Some fabric, the translator device that we were working on when we were abducted from the university in the first place, some minor odds and ends.

  And the little black gun that Sophia's had since the first day. We have no bullets for it, but we make sure to take good care of it. It's one of the few concrete strands that still ties us to Earth and reminds us that there is such a thing as a home planet. If we somehow never get home, but still survive as a tribe here, we want our descendants to have it as an artefact from Earth. Our home planet will only be a legend to them, but the gun will be conclusive proof that it exists.

  Sometimes one of the girls will quietly take it from its shelf in the cave, hold it and turn it over in her hands, reading the text engraved on the side with the exquisite, industrial precision that nothing else here on the stone age planet Xren possesses:

  GLOCK 26 Gen 4 AUSTRIA 9x19

  It's simply to feel that it exists and that Earth is still a real thing, not something we've all just dreamed. I've done it myself, just to ground me during moments when things feel hopeless. Its compact weight is strangely reassuring, even though I never thought holding a gun would make me feel better. I suppose it's pretty weird, but we're only human. And this planet has reduced us to a pretty basic humanity.

  Of course the gun is also the most advanced weapon on this planet, even if it doesn't work without cartridges.

  I've been practicing with a sling and rocks, just the primitive weapon David used to kill Goliath. I had no idea Sunday school would come in this handy. But it's a weapon that suits me, because I can find rocks just about anywhere, and I can now semi-reliably hit a tree trunk from ten yards distance. It's a simple thing, easy to make and pretty hard to use. I have to release it just right to not miss my target completely. Well, it's better than nothing.

  The rain has stopped, and the jungle is damp and even more squishy than usual. Huge, warm drops of water fall on us from the tall trees and make us jump, because it just might be some kind of terrible insect or newly hatched dino or other horror.

  Jax'zan leads us around most of the muddy patches, but sometimes we get stuck in swamps that seem to have formed as soon as the rainy season started.

  I seem particularly prone to get my feet stuck in disgusting mud, and soon I'm straggling behind the others, carrying my almost empty sack over my shoulder and clutching my sling with the other, hoping I won't have to use it. Mostly because I'm not all that accurate yet, despite practicing a lot.

  Emilia notices that I'm not keeping up and waits until I can catch up with her.

  “I don't remember this way being so muddy,” I pant and support myself on a tree trunk. “Last time, it was pretty much all on bare rock and nice meadows.

  “I think we're taking another route this time,” she says and hands me a salen fruit. “The guys are worried about being predictable.”

  I bite into it without delay, because the sight of that delicious fruit make my mouth water. “Okay,” I say, with fruit juice running down my chin. “Makes sense. Does Alice know we're moving?”

  Emilia has befriended a local animal which the cavemen just call a 'gray ghost', and which we call 'Alice'. She looks like a mix between a monkey, a mouse and a kangaroo. And a spider, because she has eight arms. She's the only one who can climb the tall salen trees and pick the wonderful fruits they bear. And since I'm munching on one, I can only assume that she's close by.

  Emilia takes my hand and we walk on, very slowly, trying not to sink too far down into the soggy ground. “She knows. She's around here somewhere. She comes by and gives me fruit now and then.”

  “Kind of guarding us, I guess.”

  Emilia smiles. “I don't know if she knows what that is. But it seems like the cavemen really fear her kind, so if she can contribute to keep them away, then that's probably a good thing.”

  “Definitely,” I agree. “Oh, damn it!”

  I've gotten my foot stuck in the mud again, and as I pull it up again, I can feel that my rough sandal is not coming up along with it.

  Emilia shows me her own bare feet, caked in mud. “I lost both mine hours ago. It's actually easier like this.”

  “Yeah, I guess-”

  I break off and do a double take as I see movement from the corner of my eye. Far behind us, right on the edge of the bushy ridge that we're walking along.

  Emilia stiffens and clenches her spear. “What? Did you see something?”

  I adjust my glasses and squint towards the ridge, but nothing's moving there now. “I thought maybe I did ... no, I can't be sure.”

  Emilia stares back the way we came. “There was probably something. So many living things in these damn woods.”

  I grab her hand, and we walk on, faster now. “I hope nobody's stalking us. If it's cavemen, then this whole moving operation is totally useless. We might as well have stayed home.”

  - - -

  It's late afternoon when we're finally back on Bune. Everything looks just like the top of a normal mountain, with bushes and pebbles and trees and grass. But we know where to find the opening into the ancient spaceship that's hidden below the ground.

  We all sit down on the grass, taking a little break after the long walk. Except Jax'zan and Ar'ox, who're patrolling the area.

  Emilia passes out fruit, and now Alice is hanging from a tree branch beside her, swinging back and forth as if bored. Emilia has tied a white strip of fabric around her neck, like a collar or a necklace, so that we can tell the difference between her and others of her kind. Not that we've seen that many other gray ghosts, but you never know.

  “The tuna can is still there,” Sophia says and points to the squat, round alien cargo container that we were inside when we were dumped here. It's hardly visible among the bushes that have grown up around it in just a few months.

  I change the grip on my sling, as the dark memories from back then come back to me. “Shit, everything grows so fast here!”

  “It's a fertile place,” Aurora agrees. “And the monsters grow big here, too. Just keep lookout straight up. Those damn dactyls can come at us before we know it.”

  I look up and make sure I have a round rock ready for my sling. “How did you get Jax'zan to agree to come here, Sophia? I thought this was a forbidden place for him.”

  Sophia glances over at her husband's broad, red-striped back at the edge of the jungle “He doesn't like it. But he sees the logic. Others from his tribe will hesitate to come here. And maybe that goes for other tribes, too. Also, I'm not sure he believes as firmly in his Ancestors and their rules as he did before he met us.”

  “Ar'ox didn't mind it,” Emilia adds. “Coming here is not forbidden for him. But his tribe lives so far away that they think Bune is a mythical mountain that doesn't exist.”

  “So not all tribes will hesitate to come here if they think they have a reason to,” Delyah says. “We should probably avoid drawing more attention to the mountain.”

  Emilia puts the pit of a salen fruit into her bag. “You see any more of that movement, Heidi?”

  Everyone is looking at me.
>
  I'm not sure what to say. I feel like I've seen the same thing a couple of more times now, but of all the girls here, I'm the only one with bad eyesight and glasses. “I can't be sure. It was probably nothing. Just ... I thought I saw something move far behind us.”

  “Lots of things move in the jungle,” Caroline says mildly. “And we're so on edge now that we could easily imagine things. Not that I think you imagined it, Heidi. But I'd say there's no reason for alarm before we know more. Might be just an alien mouse.”

  “Yep,” I say with a bravery I don't feel. “There's enough stuff to be alarmed about here if we're not going to freak out over imaginary things, too.”

  “I don't know,” Sophia says pensively and fiddles with the empty gun. “I think I prefer the imaginary monsters over the real ones.”

  A horrible shriek fills the air, and I bounce to my feet, panic tugging at the edges of my mind.

  All the other girls are up, too, looking up and around. But the sky looks clear.

  “Case in point,” Sophia whispers. “That's a very real dactyl. Somewhere close.”

  Jax'zan and Ar'ox are suddenly here, huge swords in hand, each one beside his wife, staring up at the sky.

  Both Sophia and Emilia are so nice that it's impossible to begrudge them their caveman husbands. But shit, right now I'd love to have one of my own. The screech of a not-dactyl sends a hard, cold shiver down my spine, and I feel very exposed and vulnerable.

  “Let's enter the spaceship,” Delyah says. “We'll have to think of a way to deal with those things if we're going to live here for any time at all.”

  We quickly pack up and walk down into the little valley that's probably a part of the spaceship's outer design, but which looks like just any valley if you don't look closer. And the door into the ship looks like a cave, irregular and dark.

  Delyah lights a torch and walks in like she's lived there for years, and the rest of us reluctantly follow. We've been here once before, just checking if there was anything inside the ship we could use. But we found nothing much then, although we didn't search nearly all of it.

  Caroline is right – this old derelict alien spaceship creeps me out, too. But the dactyls scare me more. So I slink inside.

  The torches cast a flickering light on the alien materials of the walls. It's a corridor of some kind, rounded and narrow. It continues further in, and right here by the opening there's a lot of mud and old branches and leaves and stuff from the vegetation outside. And some bones and such, where animals have eaten other animals.

  One reason we didn't settle in here the first time we searched the ship was that there isn't really room – the corridor is too narrow to sit or lie down comfortably in. We have to walk single file, with Delyah and the two cavemen in front and me bringing up the rear.

  The walls aren't smooth, but kind of ridged and uneven. I have no idea what the material is supposed to be – it's not plastic and not metal, and certainly not wood. It's just white and feels strangely soft to the touch. It doesn't reflect sound like I'm used to from our cave, and every sound is strangely dampened.

  There is technology here, too – weird alien machines that are a part of the walls and have functions that I don't dare even guess at.

  Caroline is walking in front of me with a sputtering torch in her hand, and now she turns. “Stay close to me, okay? I hate this place. It's like I expect some terrible alien monster to jump out from somewhere and be all slimy and terrible.”

  I clench my sling and the one rock I have as ammunition for it. “I know, right? It's like some scary movie. With stone age stuff mixed in.”

  We continue along the corridor until we find a much bigger room that I remember from last time. It has a high, domed ceiling and there's all kinds of mysterious equipment all over the place, all looking dead. No animals have dared venture this far into the spaceship. I guess they've got more sense than we do. Because now I feel something I'd never have thought possible: I miss the old cave.

  Delyah looks around the room. “I think this place here might be our new home.”

  “It's a pretty long way to get out,” Sophia says and peers skeptically down a dark and unexplored corridor. “It'll take us almost ten minutes just to get out to get a drink of water.”

  Aurora holds her torch high. “And we'll always have to burn something in here for light. But there's no chimney. Might get stuffy.”

  “Can't we,” I suggest, “build a little house right outside? I mean, this could be a storage room or a safe room in case we're attacked. But then we could live most of the time outside. We can make bricks from mud and clay and build a sturdy house. It doesn't have to be big, just large enough to sleep in.”

  “A house will immediately tell anyone who sees it that someone lives there,” Emilia objects. “And the point to this was to hide from other tribes. But yeah, I'm actually willing to take my chances with that. This seems a little too dark and cumbersome. I mean, maybe later we can live here. When we've searched the whole ship. We might find a better room than this.”

  The two cavemen stand there with their torches and one hand on their swords. They're looking around with obvious awe. To us girls who've seen dozens of sci-fi movies, this doesn't seem that weird. Some strange materials and artefacts, sure. But nothing here is that fundamentally bizarre, more like alien spaceships are supposed to look. To Ar'ox and Jax'zan, it must look pretty strange. Even if none of the stuff here seems to be working.

  “Sounds good,” Delyah agrees. “We'll stay in here to have a roof over our heads tonight, and then tomorrow we'll start building a house right outside the opening. We'll try to camouflage it, too. It's much easier to hide a simple house than a cave. We can have that in mind from the beginning. Make it look like a small hillock and not a house. Igloo-shaped, maybe?”

  The girls nod in agreement, and I immediately feel much better. So much better that I start to feel confident. “Still not bedtime. Should we split up and check some of these other corridors? Might be some things that actually work here. I mean, if it responds to your pad, Delyah.”

  “Sure,” she nods. “We explore this thing for an hour, then we'll think of getting some sleep. Right here, for now. We're too close to dactyl country to take a chance with sleeping outside.”

  So everyone pairs up. The two married couples are obvious pairs, and from the excited sheen in Emilia's and Sophia's eyes I'm more than half suspecting that both of those exploration teams are planning some very particular explorations that have nothing to do with the spaceship. They didn't have much privacy in the old cave, and I don't blame them for wanting to take this opportunity to strengthen their interplanetary marriages. I'm pretty sure I would have done the same. If I had my own caveman. Say, a big and strong one with piercing yellow eyes, riding a huge dinosaur without a care in the world ...

  I team up with Caroline. She has a torch and I have a sling and a rock, so it's a perfect match. Also, I like her. She's not the most talkative girl, but she has a nurturing streak and often does little thoughtful things for the rest of us without drawing attention to them.

  I point to one of the corridors that lead away. “How about this one?”

  She shrugs. “Sure. I guess one is as good as any other.”

  “I'll go first,” I say generously. “I have the sling.”

  We tiptoe down the winding alien corridor. Caroline's torch throws long, yellow shadows into the darkness, and the hand clenching my sling is slick with sweat. This place was just made to spawn alien monsters. I already regret suggesting this exploration.

  The corridor is lined with mysterious consoles and devices and things that look like screens but are clearly long dead. We walk on the soft floor without a sound.

  The silence is getting to me. It's such an alien silence. “I bet Sophia and Emilia are having a pretty good time right now,” I whisper.

  Caroline chuckles. “I know, right? They couldn't wait to get away. But you know, I actually wouldn't have minded having a caveman of my
own right about now. See how calm those two look when they're around their husbands? They feel totally safe. And then some private time ...” She sighs theatrically.

  I chuckle. “Yeah. Private time with a huge caveman in an alien spaceship on a jurassic planet. That's actually pretty cool. Something to tell the grandkids about, huh?”

  “Yep. They'll think grandma was the coolest chick ever. Huh. End of the road, looks like.”

  The corridor ends at what looks a lot like a door, but which has an opening mechanism so weird we have no idea how it can work.

  Caroline examines the door. “Yeah. Looks like it's electrically operated or something. Just as well. I'm getting creeped out.”

  Then I see that there's a smaller corridor that goes off to the left, and I think I can see light there. A very faint light that I can only spot because my eyes have gotten kind of used to the darkness in here.

  Seeing the end of our exploration so near makes me brave again. “I'll just check out this little room before we turn back.”

  “Uh-huh.” Caroline says and looks nervously over her shoulder. “I'll wait right here.”

  I tiptoe towards the dim light, immediately regretting my ill-advised bravery. I really have to get control over my spontaneity. But there's nothing that moves in the room I'm going to, and the light is so weak it reminds me of moonlight.

  Then the corridor suddenly widens out into a large room, and the soft floor gives way to crinkly leaves.

  Yeah. I'm outside again. And that light was actual moonlight from the blue moon they have here.

  Well, maybe it's useful to have two exits from the spaceship. I take a deep breath, although the air here isn't any fresher than inside the spaceship. I guess it's just the feeling of being outside.

  I walk a little further out to see if I can tell where this door is in relation to the other entrance.

  “Hey,” Caroline suddenly yells from inside the ship. “Heidi, come look at this!”