Monster Planet(15)

'Just... just the woman I'm looking to rescue,' Sarah told him.

those alike i seek triumph are my family together we are seek alike we will triumph together

'Yeah,' she said, when the vibrations from the scarab had calmed down, 'great.' She cocked one thumb over her shoulder at the helicopter. Should we get started?'

Osman grabbed her arm after the mummy had walked past. “They are very, very strong,” he said. There was something in his eyes. A basic mistrust. “And they are not human. You know what that means.”

Sarah was pretty sure that she did.





Monster Planet





Chapter Eight


Light spilled across Ayaan's sweaty body like scalding water and she convulsed away from it, pulling her blanket into a tight embrace that covered her eyes. Shouted words reached her but she refused to move, even when her cage was yanked out of the back of the truck and thrown rudely into the mud.

It had been at least three days since she'd been taken captive. It could have been much longer'she had trouble remembering how many stops they'd made. In her weakened state she couldn't seem to keep anything straight in her head. She was relatively certain at some point the truck had been put on a boat: the jouncing and pitching of the road had turned into the rolling and yawing of waves. Beyond that she had no idea where she was.

Underfed, unbathed, battered by the bars of her cage and severely dehydrated she was totally unprepared when a living man came by and unlocked the top of her cage, sliding it back and beckoning to her to get up and out. She pulled down the blanket and looked at him. Thin, beardless, white, maybe half her age. He had the same carved, emaciated features and the dull unassuming eyes of the Belorussian soldier Ayaan had known a lifetime before, a weapons instructor paid to teach her the basics of the AK-47 when she was ten and there were no ghosts yet. 'Where am I?' she asked in her paltry Russian.

'Our place here, is on Cyprus. You speak tongue of Russia? Is good. Come now, come, you will be not harmed,' he told her. 'Come.' He smiled broadly.

She got up slowly, kneeling on the soft ground, letting her eyes adjust to the light.

'This is enough. Take time, yes? Take time and grow accustomed.' He smiled at her again a sad, knowing smile this time that told her he understood what she was going through, that he was so very sorry she had been cooped up in that cage but her suffering was over. The smile said she could trust him.

She wished she had a rock so she could knock that smile off of his mouth. She knew exactly what he was up to. The long ride in the truck should have broken her resistance. Any shred of human kindness now would be so welcome to her she would latch on to it like a babe at the teat, desperate for warmth and acceptance. It was a classic interrogation technique. She thought about spitting in his eye but thought better of it. He might give her something to eat or some clean water if she played along.

It occurred to her, though it changed nothing, that he didn't care if she believed. Her playing along with his game was all he really wanted. It was a game. If she followed the rules she could feel however she wanted about it.

'I am Vassily. Please to come, I will show you way.' He took her hand and lead her on unsteady legs through a gate in a big cyclone fence. Beyond lay a petroleum cracking plant lit up like... like... like cities used to be, full of burning light even in the day time just like cities were in the before, in the days when the dead stayed dead. It was one of the most beautiful things Ayaan had ever seen.

She looked back at the truck that had brought her there. The unloading was going smoothly. Each of the prisoners was met by their own guide'the Turks she had spoken with looked scared but unwilling to fight. She wasn't surprised. Another truck rolled up and its gate opened and she expected to see more cages. Instead dead bodies flopped out of it, rubbery and grey. The ghouls staggered away from their conveyance, streams of them headed right for her. Ayaan pulled her arms in, covered her face but the dead walked right past her. They didn't even glance at her.

'Is okay,' Vassily told her, taking her arm. 'Here, we live community with our ancestors. One big family.'

Ayaan watched in horror as the rotting corpses tottered past her. Their limbs and faces were streaked with decay, their eyes cloudy'she knew that look, knew what dead bodies looked like. She hadn't seen them so focused, though, so determined, not for a long time, not since... not since she had fought Gary in New York. Puppets, she told herself, they were puppets. Nothing to fear.