Chapter 228: (Hesstla) (1/2)
The inside of the house was cold, the lights off, only the Tri-Vee flickering in one corner, showing a female Hesstlin, dressed in professional clothing, silently speaking. She looked exhausted, the chiron below her was scrolling by addresses, datalink hyperlinks, com-numbers, and warnings not to approach ongoing fighting.
Dambree glanced at it and dismissed it. She'd lost her datapad and now was just carrying a hacked on she'd stolen from a charging and convenience store. She padded through the front room, looking around carefully. The front room was empty, the dining room was quiet, but the windows were broken. She went around the table and saw the body of a male Hesstlin, not much older than her, the top of his head gone and the interior of his skull thick with insects.
She turned away, gagging, to stare at the table, breathing heavy and trying to keep herself from vomiting. She focused on the table, with the knocked over chairs around it. There were dishes with cold food, a few insects crawling on it, on the table, with a knocked over glass of juice. She moved to the kitchen and found left overs still on the stove and the dishwasher was open. By the broken open back door was a female Hesstlin that was her age, half out the door, with a pool of dried blood around the flattened top of her head.
Dambree turned away, opening the fridge door, trying not to think about how easily it could have been her.
The fridge door squeaked when she opened it. There was food and bottles of alcohol.
She grabbed one and opened it, taking a long drink off of it. It was sharp, bitter, and soothed her aching throat.
She moved back into the front room and slowly up the stairs, the bottle in one hand and the heavy pistol in the other. She still couldn't believe she had shot that man, more, she couldn't believe the way he'd just exploded into chunks. Dambree glanced down at the pistol and saw the light was burning green. The digital display on the side, that she hadn't noticed before, had several numbers on it and the letters LOW-V APERS on it. She had no idea what it meant and went back to paying attention to slowly moving up the stairs.
At the top she found an adult male Hesstlin. He had a rifle in his hands, but it hadn't helped and the top of his head was missing. Dambree carefully stepped over him, for some reason afraid of touching the dead man.
She opened each door, peeking in.
Her brain edited out the crib in one room where the window was broken next to it.
She started to close the door on one room, then opened it back up. There were posters on the walls that she recognized, all new stuff from the time Terrans had arrived. The same kind of music she liked.
Dambree moved into the room quietly, looking around.
It felt wrong. Like she was stealing as she opened the dresser drawers. She started pulling out clothing, heavier than the light and soft stuff she usually wore. The dead girl's chest wasn't the same so Dambree settled for just a shirt. Then a pair of pants, good heavy tough cloth. Dambree usually wore comfortable shoes that didn't need socks, but she took a pair of socks anyway and slowly rolled them onto her feet. In one of the pictures the dead girl, who still had a brain in the pictures, was wearing a checkered shirt on top of the shirt, the front unbuttoned. Dambree looked around, found a brown and gray one, and put it on, rolling up the sleeves slightly.
Looking in the mirror she felt stupid.
The girl's feet were smaller than Dambree's, so she checked the other room and found that one of the pair of boots worn by the boy her age fit. Part of her wanted to wear the soft shoes he had, but instead, remembering the last night, chose the heavy boots with the dirt on them.
She found the adult female in the bathroom, half pulled through a hole in the wall.
Sighing, she got blankets off the beds and moved through the house, covering the dead with the blankets, trying to be as quiet as possible.
Once that was done she went back out to the car. She woke up her siblings, the baby only biting her twice, and brought them inside, Mewmew following them. She moved her sister and brother over the couch, where they gratefully sat down then laid on their sides. She changed the baby's swaddling then fed her, holding her and using the slow rocking back and forth to help ease her own anxiety.
Dambree wanted to tell Mewmew to stay out from under the sheets and blankets, but was just too tired. Mewmew would move under the sheet, be under there for a few minutes, then come back out.
She realized she had dozed off when she heard the roar of aircraft going by overhead. First the sputtering thrusters of the fliers, then the roar of Terran aircraft's engines and the thunder of their guns.
Dambree sat up and looked around. The sun was high and the grain was quietly waving outside. The car was sitting near the front porch, covered in dust, and her siblings were still asleep.
She ached, her elbow, wrist, and shoulder ached and when she cried out in pain moving her arm Mewmew moved over and started rubbing against her.
The pain in her arms eased.
She stood up and yawned, then picked up the bottle of beer, taking a long drink off of it and looking around.
When she remembered that her mother would disapprove of her drinking alcohol she remembered what had happened to her mother, went out on the front porch, sat on the steps, and quietly cried. Mewmew curled up next to her, purring, as she cried for her twice killed mother.
Dambree hoped her father was dead, not powering some Slorpy robot. She closed her eyes and wished real hard that the Terran soldiers had killed the robot that had sucked out her father's brain.
The dataslate in her pocket pinged and she slowly pulled it out.
Another medical update. Minor exhaustion had been added as well as severe anxiety. Mewmew recommended more sleep.
”Thank you, Mewmew,” she said, petting the robot, which made it produce that low rumble.
She yawned and went back in, laying back down with her siblings, and closed her eyes.
”Bree, wake up. Bree,” Tru said, shaking her, her voice pitched low.
Dambree woke up with a jerk, the pleasant dream of sitting in class with nothing exciting happening dissolving.
”hwa?” Dambree slurred, then wiped her eyes and mouth. ”What?”
”Shh,” Tru said. She was crouching and pointed outside to where the sunshine had paled and rain was drifting down. ”There's things out there.”
”What?” Dambree asked, picking the pistol up off the floor.
She grabbed the bottle and took a drink off of it to ease her sore throat.
”They look like big bugs. Like, up to my knee,” Tru whispered. She looked around, ”Mewmew went out to see them and I think they did something to him.”
”Why?” Dambree got down on her hands and knees, wincing at the pain and stiffness in her joints, and started crawling to the broken from window.
”There's like two of the big black bugs just standing there, they have lights flashing over their heads,” Tru said. She peeked up. ”See, over by the car. They were doing stuff to the car.”
Dambree looked over the windowsill. The rain was coming down hard, the clouds low and heavy. She stared at them for a second, having never seen purple clouds before. The lightning in the clouds was green and orange, flickered up in the clouds, not coming down to earth. She could see flares of light in the clouds that for some reason she doubted were lightning.
Dambree looked at the car and frowned. The hood over the engine was raised up and the engine shroud had been flipped up.
”Behind the car a little bit,” Tru whispered.
Dambree could see Mewmew. The little robot was still, in between what looked like foot tall insects that had four legs, arms, and pointy arms. The insects were all in black and she squinted at them. It didn't look right and it took her a moment to realize the insects were wearing black armor and carrying tiny rifles and tubes the size of her finger.
”See, there's some in the car,” Tru whispered.
Dambree looked back at the car in time to see two climb out of the engine, one of them pulling a wire with it. The two insects quickly attached the wire, tugging on it to make sure it was affixed correctly.
”What are they doing?” Tru asked.
”I'm not sure,” Dambree admitted.
Mewmew suddenly turned around, trotting back to the house. The insects scurried away, off to the side, and Dambree wondered where they were going. The mewmew jumped in through the window, saw that Dambree and Tru weren't on the couch, and reoriented. When it saw them it made noises that sounded like ”murr-row” and ”me-ow” as it moved over.
Dambree's dataslate pinged and she pulled it out of her pocket. The picture on the dataslate was of the mewmew and the big bugs all dancing and waving pompoms with cartoon hearts for eyes.
”You know them?” Dambree asked.
The picture changed to the mewmew and the insects standing under a waving flag with the hand crushing a planet of the Terran Space Force.