Ice Planet Barbarians (Ice Planet Barbarians, #1)(10)

I look for living creatures or water. Something. Anything. There’s nothing but white.

“What’s it look like?” Someone else calls up.

I lick my lips, hating that they already feel numb with cold. I’m a Southern girl. We do not do well with cold. “You ever see Star Wars? The original ones?”

“Don’t tell me—”

“Yep. It looks like we landed on fucking Hoth. Except I see two itty bitty suns and a huge-ass moon.”

“Not Hoth,” Liz yells. “It was the sixth planet from its sun, and I don’t recall it having a moon.”

“Okay, nerd,” I call back to her. “We’ll call this place Not-Hoth then. You guys cover this hole with the plastic while I’m gone. It’ll help keep things warm.”

“Stay safe,” Liz tells me.

“Your lips to God’s ears,” I yell. Then I haul my ass out of the protection of the ship.



? ? ?





Walking out into that snowy landscape with nothing but borrowed alien clothing and a gun I don’t know how to fire? Pretty much takes every ounce of courage I have in my body. I tremble as I trudge through the snow. I don’t know squat about winter conditions. I’m from Florida, for chrissakes. Palmetto bugs, I can handle. Gators, I can handle. My pinching boots sinking up to my knees in the snow with every step? I cannot handle that.

But there are half a dozen girls waiting for me back at the spaceship, depending on me to find something. Anything. And we don’t have much in the way of options. I can always turn around. I don’t think anyone would blame me for being afraid.

And then I’ll just sit in the cracked hull and slowly starve to death with the others. Or we’ll get picked up by the aliens again.

Or I can risk freezing and try to do something out here.

So I walk on.

I’ll say one thing for the ball-headed alien I killed: His clothes are decently warm. Despite the fact that every step is a struggle and I sink into the powder with each one, my feet are doing all right.

My face feels like a block of ice, though. My hands, too. The sleeves are too tight for me to pull them down over my hands, so I walk with one hand tucked inside my shirt and the other under an armpit. When it gets too cold, I switch them out. My bad wrist hurts like hell, and my ribs still burn. Actually they burn worse, now, because I have to take deep breaths, and that makes a stabbing pain shoot through my chest each time.

Most of all? I just want to curl up and cry.

But there are others depending on me. So I can’t.

After walking for what feels like forever, the ground starts to slope a bit more, and I follow it down. In the distance, I see stalk-like tall, skinny things that I think are trees. At least, I hope they’re trees. There’s no other foliage to be found, so I head toward them. The wind is picking up, and my suit—no matter how well it endures the weather—is starting to feel cold. Actually, I’m cold all over. It sucks.

I wish I was back at the hull. I turn around and squint up the side of the rocky hill. The hull is like a small black dot against the hillside. It looks fragile from here. Broken. And there’s still no food or animals or even water. Just snow.

Well, shit. I guess I’ll keep walking.

The stalks are further away than I realize, and it feels like I’m walking forever down the slope of the mountain. As I do, I start to see things. Foliage-looking things. At least, I think they’re foliage. There are tufts of pale bluish-green that look more like feathers than actual leaves, but there’s a veritable forest of them. These must be the trees of this strange place. As I pass through them, I touch one. The bark—if you can call it that—feels moist and sticky, and I wipe my palm with a wince. That was gross.

Okay, I’ve found trees. If there are trees, I’m hoping there’s a way the trees are getting nutrition. Trees need sunlight and water. I squint up at the double suns. They’re moving toward the edge of the sky, and the enormous moon is rising higher.

A sudden thought occurs to me. What if I’m out here alone overnight? “That’ll suck,” I mutter to myself. I pull out the gun just because it feels good to have a weapon at hand. It means my fingers feel like ice as I hold it, but I don’t care. I’d rather have a shitty weapon than no weapon.

As I trudge onward, I’m starting to feel despair. What if they dropped us here on this planet precisely because we won’t be able to fend for ourselves? Even as the terrible thought occurs to me, I hear the sound of trickling liquid.

Water?

I stop, my heart hammering. Oh, please let it be water! If it’s water, that means it’s warm enough to not turn to ice. That means something is warm. And right now? I’d take a hot drink.

I rush forward. The water sound seems to be coming from the same direction as the weird, tall stalks. The stalks keep growing bigger the nearer I get, and by the time I find the edge of a burbling, steaming stream, the stalks are taller than some buildings. They tower over me, like a forest of bamboo shoots that stick out of the water. Each one is tipped in a pale pink, sluggish-looking thing. It’s rather bizarre looking, but maybe it’s normal for this place.

There are a few stalks close to the muddy bank that are human-sized. I grab one. It’s warm under my hand. That’s a good sign that the water’s warm too. Maybe too warm to touch. I lean down to the surface, holding on to the stalk.