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Page 34.
Chapter 12. Amela on the Beach
 Bright sunlight wakened Amela. She had survived the night.
Sheltered in the cliff face, she stood up stiffly and dusted herself off.
Ghoulish avians, circling high overhead, cawed and screeched at each other.
Amela rubbed her eyes. The sea glared along many kliks to her south. The furnace-reddish sun's rays glittered on myriad waves.
Amela sipped from her canteen. She fumbled for broken bits of fruit and vegetable meal in a bag of crumbs. As she hungrily ate, she stared across the vast enigma of Manaul 5D and the ocean, Manaul 5O, and wondered if she were to die here too. No Pitz Boat, no escape, no hope.
The air shook suddenly around her as a dull, booming roar sounded across the water from horizon to horizon. Each roar lasted about ten seconds and tapered off in a raw, truncated siren groan.
After being startled, Amela calmed down. She could be sure that, being just a speck in a vast world, she could not be the cause of whatever noise this was. It was not the staccato, relentless cry of a burp-siren such as she remembered from Aerag-78, whenever a prisoner escaped, or a trustie was hurt, or a Sekurita skimmer went down in wolvine-infested krumms beyond the dark horizon. This was different, and far more massive. The very sky seemed to shake with each mournful blast—if one could attribute humanian attributes to such unearthly booming. Maybe it was a form of thunder, she thought.
The noise ceased, and relative stillness returned. She heard the rhythmic breathing of the sea once again. Breakers gathered, rose, and thundered down. Avians flew overhead, rasping at each other. A bird with pelican beak swooped down, took a small fish, and fled back into the sky. A baby crocosaurian broke water in an instant, snapped its jaws into the sky, and disappeared back under the foamy, swirling waves with a bird in its teeth. It was the chain of predation.
Life went on, as hers must.
What was she going to do? With the Pitz Boat destroyed, her one big hope for getting off Manaul and returning to Belair had evaporated. She was marooned on an alien prison planet, and would soon be hunted by Major Texel's merks. She would still be Texel's pet project—of that she was sure.
What to do? Staying here had no future to it. Wandering into the desert had no purpose. The sea was a trap of deadly predators. There was nothing up the shore in the direction she'd come, or the skimmer and its dead pilot would have reacted—to ruins, to anything. There was nothing.
All she could do was hug the safety of the cliffs, and make her way east along the shore in hope of finding some sign of humanian life or hospitality. At any cost, she must remain free of the Swarm and their dirty adjutants.
She thought grimly about her husband and son, and then about her ancestors. Her father and mother were long gone, but their shades would welcome her with loving arms. Her ancestors waited at tables laden with all good things to eat and drink, in a garden with splashing fountains and playing children. All manner of lambs and fawns played in that paradise with wolvinel cubs and sunning crocosaurians. The spirits of mother and father god presided over paradise, and there would be a place at the table for her. Amela had no fear of dying, but she did fear becoming lazy and tired of life. She must not hurry to paradise. She must struggle to return to Solan and Nally.
Amela began walking. She was a tiny dot on a vast beach. She kept well away from the death-bringing surf. Bag over one shoulder, rifle in her free hand, she walked at a steady pace. She'd tied around her head akerchief, whose rag ends hung down over her neck to shield against the sun. Heat beat down, and macabs buzzed amid stringy black kelp decay. The air smelled rich with salt water, dead bugs, and hidden life. It was good to be free after two years of prison that slowly strangled one's very humanity and pride.
Hearing avians cawing with a sudden burst of energy, she instinctively whirled and looked up in the direction of possible danger. Avians whirled about at 200 heads, engaged in some game that made sense to them. Beyond them, however she spotted something else—a white dot in the sky. What could that be?
Amela knelt down, lifted her rifle, and peered through its powerful spy scope.
The object overing at 400 heads was artificial.
Amela's stomach churned. Waterfalls of acid poured inside of her. Fear made her entire body tingle. Everything about this object said Sekurita. And that spoke volumes about everything she had seen, done, or experienced in the past two days.
Should she shoot it down? Her finger dallied over the trigger.
No, because if there was this, there would be others. Best not signal them she was on to them.
Crouching low, she jogged toward the shelter and safety of the red hills overlooking the ocean.
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Copyright © 2018 by Jean-Thomas Cullen, Clocktower Books. All Rights Reserved.
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