Chapter 8: A Heavy Alien

She sighed then, bracing her feet against the cave wall, pushed her back against him, and heaved.

He rolled easily onto the hover board.

Terrified he'd woken up, she jumped away in fright, only relaxing when he didn't move again for a long moment.

"Just my luck. Why couldn't I have gotten one of those small, weak aliens? But no, I have to get an alien that weighs a ton, with muscles made of boulders." Still muttering angrily to herself, she punched in the command for the hover board to move to the opposite wall where the hook was installed.

Sore, tired, and frustrated, she lifted her foot, tempted to kick him again, only to drop it back onto the floor. "Can't kick a defenceless creature, alien or not," she mumbled.

Moving alongside the hover craft, she snorted at the ridiculousness of her situation. Here she was showing mercy to a creature that would more than likely chop her head off the moment he woke up.

"You know," she said chattily, the hover board softly humming as it moved ever so slowly across the cave floor, "I feel sort of bad about hitting you with my club. After all, I am grateful you killed those raiders."

Other than the weekly TC calls to Julia, she'd been alone, hadn't spoken face to face with another living creature in almost two years. And now she was carrying on a one-sided conversation with an alien.

"With my luck, you're the general of a whole army of aliens about to take over Earth. Or - " - she snapped her fingers - "you've no resources left on your planet and came to take ours." She snorted again. "If that's the case, you're SOL. We're in the same boat."

The hover board finally reached the opposite wall and stopped. Still foolishly hopeful, she rushed to the entrance again and pulled back the canvas. Snow continued to fall in a soft, white curtain. It blanketed everything, coating the mountain in silence.

Looking back at the alien, she briefly considered commanding the hover board to take him as far down the mountain as it could.

Yeah, as if he isn't pissed off at me already. She seriously doubted a little snow would stop him from exacting revenge for that little stunt.

She sighed. It's going to be a long winter.

Did he just move?

Inching silently toward the wall where she'd left the shotgun, Natalie reached for it, but changed her mind and grabbed the club instead, gripping it with both hands. Then, hunching on the cave floor, her club at the ready, she watched him for a long time.

Finally deciding the twitch she'd seen must have been her imagination, she straightened her aching body with a groan.

Was there any way she could convince him to go away and leave her in peace? Probably not. She wasn't even sure she'd be able to communicate with him.

She glared down at him. "The only thing that would make all this aggravation worth it is if you turned out to be friendly. And helpful." Her loneliness crept back in. "Someone I could talk to."

Sweating and groaning, she wrestled him off the hover board and propped him against the cave wall, only to jump back in surprise. Somehow, during the time she'd been moving him off the board and trying to get him to stay seated upright against the wall, he'd turned green and copper again, the color he'd been when slaughtering the raiders. His clothes changed color to blend with his skin and that, more than his speed and the way bullets bounced off him, showed her how advanced his technology was.

For a long moment, she watched his hands, expecting to see the silver sword miraculously appear again. When it didn't, she inched forward. She still had to secure his hands to the hook.

It took all her strength to move his hands over his head and fasten them to the hook. The muscles in his upper arms strained against the material covering him, and she could just imagine the material ripping to shreds. A claw still tipped each finger, though they weren't as long as when he'd been slicing through the raiders. She shuddered at the memory.

Natalie sat back on her haunches, gingerly studying him. Why, after all that pulling and heaving, didn't he come to already? She didn't want him to, but at the same time the anticipation was killing her.

Feeling lost and helpless, she felt the tears rolling down her cheeks and wiped at them angrily. Her father would've known exactly how to handle this situation. Loneliness tugged at her as it always did when she thought of her father. With her head bowed, she sat there, on the hard cave floor, for what felt like forever.

At last, blinking back the tears, she mentally shook off her melancholy. This is no time to feel sorry for myself.

She grabbed the rest of the rope, where it hung from his hands, and tied his legs together until he looked like a mummy from his ankles to just below his knees. She would have gone higher, but she ran out of rope. Feeling slightly better, she stepped back to admire her work.

Shivers racked her whole body, reminding her of how cold she still was. Cold and dirty.

She felt disgusting, like she'd been infected by a flesh-eating disease, and she could still feel the imprint of the raiders' groping hands on her thighs. Even her hair felt violated.

She grabbed the shotgun and staggered toward the back of the cave where a small alcove indented the wall. Calling it a bathroom was an exaggeration. All she had was a basin she filled with water, after heating it in an urn, set over her precious coals. But it was better than nothing.

Her father had originally planned to bring in water from the waterfall that cascaded down the valley. He'd even devised a plan to heat the water without using coal. But he'd passed away before seeing those plans realized.

Propping the shotgun against the wall, she gripped the edges of the basin to steady herself, her exhaustion finally taking its toll. She was too tired to feel afraid anymore, and the adrenaline that had been pumping through her system for hours now finally started to dissipate. Nausea rolled up her throat. She whirled and ran for the nearest bucket, making it just in time before her stomach expelled its contents.

Leaning over the bucket, she squeezed her eyes shut, trying desperately to rid herself of the memory of the raiders' leering faces, the blank stares on their decapitated heads, the blood gushing from torn flesh.

She heaved again. It took a long time for her stomach to settle, before she felt like she could move without vomiting.

Shivering and weak, she carried the bucket into the tunnel to leave it in a different cave. She didn't have the stomach to deal with the clean-up just yet.

When she returned to the bathing alcove, she clumsily turned the spout on the urn to fill the clay basin she used for washing with water. Of all the things she missed about the farmhouse, she missed running water the most.

She shed her down jacket then started to strip off the torn dress but hesitated. She could see, from where she stood, that the alien still sat unconscious against the wall, near the mouth of the cave, but that didn't erase her unease.

With a sigh, she moved some metal crates, positioning them in front of the alcove. They were empty, making them easy enough to stack. Ensuring he would only be able to see her head and shoulders should he happen to wake up, she then fished out a clean pair of jeans, a warm sweater, and socks from the wooden chest.

Natalie stripped off the rest of her clothes, tossing them into a pile to launder. The yellow dress, she'd burn.

Exhaustion weighed down her limbs as she washed her hair, constantly checking for signs that the alien was rousing. After wrapping her wet hair in a towel, she lathered up a washcloth with cold, soapy water. She cringed as the cloth touched her abused skin. Tears ran down her cheeks but still she scrubbed every inch of her body. The bite marks and bruises stung anew, when the cloth moved over them, and she winced. Her cheek still felt swollen and puffy from her captor's blows.

Every hair on her body stood on end, but it wasn't from the cold. Something in the air had changed, the eerie quiet of the falling snow intensifying.

Slowly, slowly, she turned her head.

Red, devilish eyes stared at her with unblinking menace from the mouth of the cave.

Natalie froze. The most savage gaze she'd ever seen followed her trembling hand as it crept up to cover her vulnerable neck.

He growled, and she nearly jumped out of her skin.