HIs to Take, page 11
part #1 of New Earth Series
They all yelped in surprise and Mary quickly pulled her pants on. Ann’s body went on alert, and she somehow knew who was there. Even before she looked up into a pair of orange eyes, she knew.
“That’ll do, Ann. It’s a beautiful wedding dress.” The alien from her dreams stood in the doorway, as if he’d walked through it a hundred times before and hadn’t just shocked her into immobility.
How could he be real? He was just some fantasy her brain had dreamed up, wasn’t he? But then, he was right there in the door, as if he owned the place, his gaze a hot wave as he looked her up and down. His eyes said he knew her thoughts, knew her dreams, and couldn’t wait to make those dreams reality.
She’d have said he was more handsome in the flesh, that he was a supreme example of masculinity and strength, but she couldn’t think. Her tongue was glued to the bottom of her mouth, and she was certain she’d never be able to lock her jaw again, it hung open so long. He was real.
Ann’s frozen brain suddenly came back to life. Did he know her plans with Rex? Did he approve of them? Had her father planned this as a surprise?
“Dad?” she called out and saw her father come to stand behind the man. He wouldn’t look at Ann, though, still, and that worried her.
“Yes, Ann?”
“What’s going on?”
The man dragged her father into the room, a broad grin on his face. It would have terrified her if she hadn’t been so shocked, that menacing grin.
“Well now, you see, I’ve decided to come out of the clouds, and live down here on Earth with you mortals.” The man chuckled as if he’d made a great joke, but everyone just stared at him. Even her mother and Amanda were frozen, Ann noted.
What the hell was going on and why did her father continue to hide behind the man?
“It’s been a long time since I’ve seen a woman as lovely as you, Ann. You’ll be the perfect wife, I’m sure.”
That made her uneasy and the way her father flinched made it even worse.
“I’m sure you can find a suitable place to live and have all the women you want around you.” She wasn’t sure what to say to him, but she knew she couldn’t look away from him.
She was terrified of him, in the flesh. She’d been afraid of him, in her dreams, but that had been because he made her feel so much. She’d been afraid of herself in those dreams, of the things she wanted, things she wanted from him.
She didn’t know if this was some kind of new alien seduction technique, or what, but she knew he was the man that appeared in her dreams every single night now.
“I’m sure I could, but I only want one wife. We aren’t doing too well at finding women. It’s a shame your race of humans has so little value for female life. I’ve seen cases where, what are they called these men that spent fortunes on building underground homes?” He snapped his fingers, and the leather gloves that his hands were covered in didn’t dare to do anything but snap.
“Preppers?” she asked as she finally took him in. He was dressed in leather, from head to toe, and he must be steaming hot in the California heat. At least the shirt looked like a thin version of the material.
“That’s it. Preppers!” He spun his head back to her and she saw his black hair had shimmering brown beads tied through the strands. Beads the color of her eyes. She frowned, apprehension a knot that made her stomach queasy. “Anyway, these preppers, all of them determined to save their women and children, ended up trading their women for food, of all things. Can you imagine? And some, well, some used the women as food. Quite nasty, those fellows.”
He wandered as he spoke and took a seat on the couch that she’d covered with wedding finery. “Your race of humans, Ann, they aren’t to be noted for their compassion, are they?”
“My father and Stephan kept us alive, not all of the humans here are bad, you know. And Stephan’s a wolf too, but they still did their best to keep us safe.”
“Ah, but there’s the problem, Ann. Your father should have thrown those dangerous elements out into the cold. The wolves were far more hearty than you pure-bloods. They could have survived out in the cold.”
“But they might have been forced to kill and you kill all the wolves that killed humans,” she protested, her chin up in defense and defiance.
“We’ll have to discuss the wolves another time, Ann. We have other matters to sort out now.”
“And what might those matters be?” She’d started to relax a little, now that he wasn’t standing up, so tall and looming over them.
“Surely your father has told you the good news, Ann.” He looked up at her father and then back to her. “That’s why you have the dress on, right? You know we’re going to be married.”
“What?” Ann screamed the word, and her eyes went to her father. He looked as if he wanted to crawl into a hole and die, he looked so miserable.
“Yes, my dear. I’m Rager. The man you will soon call husband.” He looked at the other women, who’d all kind of whimpered at the news. “You should be happy, my dear. I’m the supreme commander, the Overlord of the overlords. You’re about to marry a very powerful man. But don’t worry, I’m repairing a house not far from here, so you can visit your parents when you like.”
Married? To an alien? But that meant they didn’t plan to leave, that they were colonizing Earth and didn’t plan to go. And she was supposed to just marry one of them? Even if he was the man from her dreams, she didn’t know him, didn’t like what he made her feel in those dreams. Well, the pleasure part was nice, but she never wanted to feel that. Even in her dreams, her brain thought of Rex, and how she was betraying him with this man.
This man whose name was Rager. That couldn’t be a good sign either.
“Cat got your tongue?” he asked and then laughed. It was a booming sound that filled the room, until Ann thought the house might very well shake down around them all. “No matter, you’ll soon become accustomed to the idea.”
15
“Dad, you have to stop this. He can’t be serious! I’m not marrying an alien!” Ann said as soon as the man left, all of the women still too stunned to offer any kind of refreshment to the supreme commander of them all. She paced in front of him, where he still sat, merged with the couch to all appearances.
“He’s very serious, Ann. So serious, he’ll kill us all if you refuse or try to run away.” John’s words were little more than a whisper by the time he finished.
“What?” She sat back down on the couch, her pacing at an end at that news.
“If you don’t agree, every man and woman in this district will die. I tried to remind him that he needed all of us, and that there were other women, some being found every day, but he wants you. And insisted that you were the only one he wanted.” He was too ashamed to look at her.
So, she didn’t need to be saved by a marriage to a man, her brain stupidly thought, she needed to save her district by marrying the man. Her parents, the Wolfsons, all the other families that worked at their place, and lived in the surrounding area, they would all die, if she chose to be obstinate or refused to marry the man. Alien.
“Damn, Dad.” She took his hand and squeezed his fingers; she knew it wasn’t his fault and couldn’t be mad at him.
“I’m sorry, honey, I tried to change his mind, I really did.”
“You didn’t try hard enough!” Mary cried and threw her hands out in front of her body. “Look at all of this stuff, it’s for her wedding to Rex! Not some crazy, giant alien!”
“Mom, Dad can’t do anything about it. And neither can we.” She’d given up already. There was no way around this. None at all.
“I’ll tell Rex, Ann. It would be better coming from me. You know how he’s been lately,” Amanda sighed as she let the dress slide from her fingers and back into the bag.
Like all of her dreams, suddenly useless and unnecessary, she thought as she watched Amanda put the dress away. I won’t need them anymore now. I’ve got to go off and marry this alien. Sure, he was a great lover in her dreams, but pleasure wasn’t always the best thing to build a marriage on. There was no trust, no loyalty, and no friendship. They were strangers, and more than that they were two different races of human.
He’d said it more than once, your race of humans. As if they weren’t the same. She had to guess that was what he meant. Just like Neanderthals were a separate species, maybe she was different from the aliens. She didn’t know and couldn’t figure out what it all meant, other than the fact that it meant her life was over.
She didn’t care about his power, or who he was, he wasn’t Rex, and that’s what she cared about. So, Rex was an asshole a lot of the time, he’d calm down once she showed him what it was like to be loved by a woman. He’d come to see that women weren’t useless. Or he would have.
“I’m going to check on dinner,” she said and left the grown-ups alone in the room. She wanted to scream, to cry, to beat her hands against the walls and refuse it all. But there were so many lives on the line. That brought calmness to her like nothing else could.
She could marry Rex, in a fake little sham of a marriage, or she could marry this alien. One wedding could bring about her own death, and that of Rex and any children they might accidentally have and kill off an entire district. Or she could marry the alien and save them all some grief. She didn’t want to, the thought of it made her skin crawl, but she would do what she had to do.
If that meant throwing away the only real hopes she’d had in life, then so be it. But she’d make sure her family, her district, received the fruits of that sacrifice. She would make him pay, every single day that she was his prisoner wife, one way or another.
“Amelia, what’s for dinner?” she called out as she came into the kitchen. Amanda went out to the back door and her parents had gone up to their room.
“Chicken and dumplings, Ann. Something your mom asked for.”
“She’s always cold in this house. It’s the air conditioning. When I was little, she’d make that on rainy days, in the summer, because we’d all be so cold in the house, but if we turned off the air it would be too hot. She’d make it in the wintertime, too, but it was always nicest in the summer like that.”
“It sounds like a good memory.” Amelia, a wolf that had survived in a bunker somewhere in Colorado, was on her own.
She didn’t talk about her past or her family, but she enjoyed hearing Ann’s stories.
“It is. We only had MREs down in the bunker, but she’d tell me to pretend the chicken stew dinners were chicken and dumplings when we found new boxes of them.” That didn’t happen often; chicken hadn’t seemed to be high on the list of things to stick in an MRE, but they’d all enjoyed them when they found them.
“I had cans and cans of food. Took me years to get through them,” Amelia said softly. “And then I started on the MREs, that’s when I started to wonder if it was worth living, if that was my future.”
Ann didn’t say anything, she just let the woman speak. She’d mentioned her past so little that Ann wanted to hear more. She wanted to know the woman’s story. A thought occurred to her then. Maybe they should write these stories of survival down, just in case there was a future generation.
“I’d collect water from this stream that melted into the bunker my grandpa had dug during the cold war. It kept the place dry and gave me water, so I didn’t complain about it. Probably didn’t do me any favors, that water, but I’m still here so it couldn’t have been too bad.”
Ann’s family had so much water they thought they’d never use it. Bottles of all sizes, barrels, all sorts, stored water down in the bunker. It had kept them alive and was clean. They hadn’t had to worry about that at all.
“It doesn’t sound too bad,” Ann said softly and sat down at the table.
“It wasn’t, just lonely. For a while, I’d talk to people on the radio, the CB, but after a while, the tower must have come down. I couldn’t find anybody, no matter how hard I tried. Maybe it froze and shattered, I don’t know. After that, yeah, I think I went a little crazy.”
“But you didn’t leave it?”
“That’s what’s so funny. I couldn’t leave! I tried so many times, crazy with the need to escape those same walls.” She paused, stirred the pot she had the chicken cooking in, and scoffed to herself. “The hinges had frozen shut on the hatch. I couldn’t get the damn door to open. I was stuck down there. I thought about suicide, but, well, I was raised Catholic. It’s a sin.”
And that was the end of her story, as far as she was concerned, Ann could see. “Thank you for telling me, Amelia.”
“Thought you should know something about me.” The woman with dark hair scraped back into the world’s tightest bun and dark eyes was tough, often brusque, and her arms were covered in tattoos. But she worked hard and meant well. She didn’t cause problems, and Ann could see now that she was shy more than anything. “Tell your parents dinner will be in 25 minutes. I have to put the dumplings in, let them cook for 15 minutes, and then I’ll bring it all out to the dining room.”
“Thanks, Amelia.” Ann smiled at her as she left the kitchen and headed up the stairs. The house was filled with the scent of bay leaves and sage, some of her favorite smells. The plants grew in their backyard secret garden, and their freshness made their food amazing, even if it was only chicken or fish.
“Mom, Dad? Are you ready to eat?” she called softly and knocked.
“Come in, baby.” Mary’s voice was tinged with tears, and Ann could see her eyes and nose were red. She’d been crying. “Come here to me.”
Ann did, and let her mother embrace her without complaint. “It’s alright, Mom. Really. Maybe it’s better this way.”
“How? You’re going to be married to some kind of barbarian!”
“Of course, he’s not, Mom! He traveled across the galaxy, somehow. Have they explained that yet, Dad?”
“It’s some kind of wormhole. Something about folding points in time and getting from point to point. Apparently, it only took them a couple of months to get here.”
“Wow,” Ann said, her thoughts on how far they must have come. “It’s millions of light-years to the edge of our galaxy. They must have come from somewhere beyond there, for us not to know about them.”
“I think Amanda would understand more about it than I do,” he said, but then looked away. “Not that they’ll ever explain it to her.”
“You can, Dad, between the two of you, I’m sure you could figure it out.”
“Not how to replicate it, I’m sure, but maybe how it works.”
“I’m still here, you know,” Mary snipped and Ann sat up with a laugh.
“Sorry, Mom. Look, I’m okay with this. I don’t have a choice, and maybe I’ll freak the fuck out tomorrow, but right now, I’m calm. I get why this has to happen, and I’m good with it.”
“I wish I was as brave as you. You always were brave though. That’s why you beat Rex at sports all the time.”
“What?” Ann asked, her gaze on her Mom. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“Of course, you remember, honey. All those games you had during the school’s field days, when you were little kids? You always beat him. He hated it, but Amanda and I used to laugh about it at the time. She thought it was good for him.”
“I really don’t remember that.” She didn’t like to play sports at all, how could she have been better than him?
“I’m surprised. But then, you’d always give him your ribbons and medals. He tried to take one once, after the principal gave it to you. He’d come to expect you’d give them to him. You socked him right in the eye and told him not to be rude.” Mary laughed, and John joined her.
“I remember that,” her father said. “I thought the Wolfsons would sue us, but they thought it was funny too.”
“Have you two been smoking weed or something?” Ann asked. She couldn’t remember any of that, at all.
“No, honey, ask Amanda. She’ll tell you it all happened,” Mary said and got up from the bed, in a lighter mood now. “I was so upset when you didn’t want to play sports, but you said it wasn’t fair to Rex because you always beat him.”
“Nope. Don’t remember that either. I just remember I hated sports.”
“Not when you were little. You wanted to play baseball with Rex, and track, and you loved volleyball. But then, you stopped playing, and I had to get used to it.”
“It’s just so weird that I can’t remember,” Ann said and tried her best. She remembered Elizabeth in a volleyball uniform but couldn’t remember ever having played it at anything other than in her gym class.
“You were taking up for him, even then, Ann. It’s not surprising.”
“Hmm. Well, I can’t take up for him anymore, it seems.” She regretted it as soon as she said it.
“I’m so sorry, honey.” Her mother’s eyes filled with tears, and Ann knew she had to start all over again.
“Mom, stop.” She wrapped her hand around her mom’s face and looked at her. “It’s alright. I’m going to make the most of this. I promise.”
“I’m sure you will, honey. I don’t like it either, but there’s little choice, for any of us.”
“I know, Dad. Mom, don’t be upset. I’m not. I’m looking forward to the things that we can do to help our people. It’s going to be alright, really.”
She didn’t know if that was true or not, but she wanted it to be. And she had no other choice. She could cry, and whine, and protest, but it would do no good. There was no higher authority to appeal to. He was the supreme commander, and he had chosen her.
She wondered, for a moment, if he’d been in other women’s dreams. Or if it was some kind of connection that only they shared? She wasn’t so romantic, or naïve enough, to think that he wanted her out of love. He didn’t know her and there was only sex in her dreams. She didn’t know if he had the same dreams, either. She might be the only one of them that had them.
There was no way of knowing anything, at this point, and there was nothing she could do about it. She wondered if Rex would be relieved. He wouldn’t be stuck with her, after all. He’d said she was the best-looking woman their age around, but she’d wanted him to love her. He never seemed to really care about her though, now that she was being frankly honest with herself.
