Page 1 of Caveman Alien's Bride
1
- Bryar -
“This feels really dangerous.”
My voice is wheezy and weak. Walking up a hill in this alien jungle means getting around trees, ducking under vines, trying not to trip over roots, and making sure I’m not walking straight into some kind of nest or web or trap. Or a swarm of mosquitoes the size of seagulls.
And, most of all, staying quiet. There are actual dinosaurs around, and some of them have really good hearing.
“Everything here is dangerous,” Piper wheezes from behind me. “But if we don’t want to starve to death, we have to take some chances. Just look at it as getting out of your comfort zone.”
A big drop of something cold hits my forehead. I gingerly test it with one finger to check how disgusting it is. Thankfully it’s only sticky sap from one of the giant trees. Bad for my hair, not going to kill me. “You know, they say that outside your comfort zone is where life begins. But here, it feels like that’s where your lifecould really easilyend.”
“We agreed to be positive,” Piper reminds me. “Can we stop? I just want to breathe.”
We go up to a tree and stand with our backs against the huge trunk. On this crazy planet, you don’t want to leave any angle unguarded.
I straighten my ripped t-shirt. “Let's breathe while we can.”
We’re not here by choice. Both Piper and I were abducted from our college one night, beamed aboard a flying saucer, and then kept in some kind of cargo hold until we were dumped here.
At first we hoped we were still on Earth, despite the sun looking weird and the trees being mostly the wrong color. But then we saw the first dinosaur. It was the size of a pickup truck turned over on its side, it had claws like bread knives, and its teeth would have made a shark envious.
It chased us for several minutes until we threw ourselves into a big thorn bush. The dino gave up and sauntered away. But Piper and I still have the scars from those inch-long thorns.
We both wept for a good while after that. Days, probably. Both from the pain and from the total hopelessness of being stranded on an alien planet that was doing its best to kill us.
That was years ago. We’re not sure how many, but we think three or four. The small, gray aliens that abducted us have not been seen since. We have no idea what their plan was.
I look Piper up and down. “How are you feeling?”
She adjusts her skirt, made from grass and leaves that have dried out and rustle with each step she takes. “No worse than usual.”
With her tangled, dark hair and dirty Hanes top, she should look like a scarecrow. But because she’s Piper, with flaming red hair, blue eyes, and the most elegant manner I’ve ever seen, she could walk straight into a Zara commercial and be a sensation.
Whereas I, mousy brown and always chubby, would be a scandal. I'm dressed in much the same way, except my top is the tattered remains of a flimsy t-shirt. The jungle isn’t nice to fabrics, and one day we’ll be wearing only leaves and grass.
Piper twisted her ankle a couple of days ago, and she can’t move as fast as me. Which isn’t that fast, but it’s kind of important to be able to run in this damn jungle. She can’t do that right now.
“You should have stayed back at the hut,” I tell her. “I can do this by myself.”
“We agreed to not split up,” she points out. “And two can carry more fruit than one.”
I touch my hair, trying to pull out the gob of sap before it sets and becomes like hardened chewing gum. “I just hope we’ll find a good tree soon.”
“We will,” Piper says confidently. “It’ll be real good. With big, juicy fruits as sweet as… lemons, with our luck.”
“If life gives you lemons,” I recite mechanically, concentrating on removing the sap, “plant the seeds and soon you’ll have more lemons with seeds that you can plant and then you’ll have even more… I’m not sure where I’m going with this.”
We’re nearly at the top of the hill. Below us I can just about spot the turquoise ocean and the beach we live on. We’ve built a hut and we do some fishing, but it’s not enough to keep us from starving.
Sometimes we have to leave the somewhat safe beach and venture into the dense jungle to look for food. There are fruits and berries and some roots that we can eat, but most trees don’t bear edible fruit, and the ones that do are so tall we can barely see the red and yellow and orange bulbs up there.
Climbing is out of the question, so we have to hope to find a tree that’s not fully grown. Or a bush that’s getting enough sun from above to bear a lot of berries. The bushes near our hut have been picked clean, so now we have to get deeper into the deadly jungle.
“All right,” Piper says and shifts the grip on her stick. “Lemons aren’t all bad. Nice try. Let’s get to the top so we can go downhill for a while.” She sounds tired and just as hopeless as I feel.
I look around before I walk on, making sure there’s no monster waiting.