Monster Girl Page 2

  The hound stumbled, a low moan emanating from deep within it as it struggled to stand again. Evelyn relaxed her grip on Joseph’s collar and placed her palm on his back, trying to steady herself as she watched the little beast. The twinge in her chest turned into a simple sigh. She wanted to help it, but wasn’t sure how.

  The crashing of branches beyond the brush sent a jerk through both of them. Evelyn stumbled back, digging her fingernails into Joseph’s back to steady herself. Joseph winced and Evelyn winced in reply, but no sooner had her eyes readjusted to the hound than she wished she could look away.

  No fewer than three of the red wolverines were on top of the little hound in seconds, tearing into it, its yelps echoing through the trees and still audible over the grunts of its predators. Evelyn quickly put her hand to her mouth, shocked at the violence. Her stomach flipped.

  Joseph grabbed her hand and started pulling her down the path, obviously thinking faster than she was about the danger they were in.

  “Run, Evie!”

  Barely able to maintain her footing, Evelyn glanced again at the carnage and noticed that one of the wolverines was looking at her, blood covering its black muzzle and dripping from its mouth. She gasped, a fleeting thought of seeing it bolt after them making it hard for her to breathe.

  “Oh my God!” she spat, barely able to contain the fear welling within her.

  “Just move!” Joseph replied through his clenched jaw.

  Coming through the last of the trees, they sprinted toward the shuttle. Evelyn couldn’t help glancing over her shoulder, hopeful not to see anything in the trees. Lowering the ramp through her nanites, they bolted into the belly of the shuttle, turning at the top, gasping for breath, and looking out of the bay at the forest beyond.

  “Whoa,” Joseph said, as if to echo her own thoughts.

  In the woods, deep in the shadows, they saw more flashes of red fur. How many of them there were, she couldn’t count.

  “We could have been eaten,” she said, holding her hands to her mouth, the shaky feeling of the adrenaline wearing off washing over her.

  Joseph pulled her in close, wrapping his arms around her. She buried her face in his chest, a stillness washing over her slowly. She breathed.

  “That was … disgusting,” he said over the top of her head.

  Evelyn let out an unsure laugh, trying to get the grisly images out of her mind, knowing they would also be there forever. She felt a chill creep around her. “I’ve never seen anything like that … that poor thing.”

  Joseph pulled back to look her in the eyes, his brows raised and a concerned quirk to his lips. “You okay?”

  “Yeah, I’m fine,” she said quickly. “But we have to be more careful.”

  “Okay. From now on, we’ll wear full body armor and carry rifles whenever we leave the shuttle. I don’t think they make body armor in a bikini top, though, so you may have to go for a different look.”

  Evelyn followed his eyes and realized the reason she felt a chill was because her shirt had ripped up the side, almost up to her armpit. There was nothing covering her bare midsection, and she could only figure she had caught her shirt on a branch in their mad rush to get away from the wolverines.

  “Darn it, I liked this shirt,” she said, mostly to herself as she tried to pull the strips of fabric back together.

  “Me too,” Joseph added.

  Evelyn looked up to find Joseph’s eyes locked on her stomach. She whipped her blanket closed around her. “I think you’re more interested in what’s underneath.”

  Joseph shrugged his shoulders, his mouth stretching into a mischievous grin. “Well, you know what they say … It’s what’s inside that counts.”

  Evelyn shot him a pair of raised eyebrows and untangled her arm from her blanket. “I think they are referring to something else,” she said, punctuating her point by punching him in the arm.

  “Ow.” Joseph laughed, rubbing his shoulder in a mock gesture of pain.

  Evelyn smiled, stood on her tiptoes, and gave him a quick kiss. “You’ll live,” she added, giving him a lingering glance as she turned and walked toward the cockpit.

  She remembered her stomach, and it growled again. As she grabbed the box of meal replacement bars from the galley on the way, her heart sank as she realized that there were only a few sliding around in the bottom.

  Sitting in one of the captain’s chairs, she started sifting through the box.

  “Anything good left in there?” Joseph sat in the seat next to her and leaned over to peer inside the box, a quizzical look on his face.

  “Nope. Just the ones you hate.”

  “Banana Dream? That’s all that’s left?”

  “Unfortunately, yes.”

  The meal bars had been made on Vista from pure protein, fiber, and the basic nutrients essential for life. All the research showed a human could eat nothing but the bars for months if necessary, and apart from possibly dying of boredom, no other health risks were noted. But the bars had synthetic flavors added. Most were okay. Evelyn had no idea what real chocolate tasted like, or bananas for that matter. She thought the chocolate ones were pretty good, but the banana cream ones were another matter altogether. They smelled like banana but chewed and tasted like how she imagined it would be to eat a rubber glove.

  “Just hold your nose,” she added, flipping one of the metallic yellow packages to him.

  Joseph sighed, reclined in his seat, and propped his feet up on the console.

  Peeling back the flimsy wrapper on her Banana Dream bar, she bit into it and began the long, slow task of gnawing the pasty concoction into something she could swallow.

  “You know, apart from the fact that we might starve to death out here, I think we’re doing okay … on our own, I mean.”

  Evelyn grinned, swallowing hard to get the gummy substance down her throat. “You did catch that squirrel thing … I suppose we could eat that.”

  Joseph laughed. “I’m glad you have a sense of humor about this. That squirrel thing looked as bad on the inside as it did on the outside. I think I’d rather eat these,” he added, flipping the bar end over end into the air.

  “Yeah, me too, but unless we want to invade the space station to get more, I think we’re stuck with the squirrel.”

  Joseph grimaced and stared out the window.

  The way the shuttle was situated, they had a perfect view of the mountain lake by their camp, and Evelyn found herself spending more time in the cockpit with each passing day. It wasn’t just because she felt safer there inside the ship that no creature she had seen or studied on Orsus could penetrate. She knew it was also because she had always lived a life of confinement. When her mind was just artificially intelligent, she was confined to the servers that ran her thought programs. Then she had a body, but she was confined to Vista. In her whole short life, she had spent the overwhelming majority of those days surrounded by steel, carbon fiber, and synthetic glass walls. She loved the outdoors, but she also felt exposed in a way she couldn’t explain, except to say that it made her feel small.

  Evelyn looked at the lake and propped her feet up on the console with Joseph. “You’re thinking we need to go back to Earth, aren’t you?” she said more than asked, glancing at him sideways.

  Joseph waggled his head as if he was thinking about her question for the first time. Evelyn knew better, though. Joseph was street smart in a way she couldn’t really comprehend. Growing up on the streets had made him resourceful, and with their stores of food already low, she knew he had already given a lot of thought to what they should do next.

  “Well, we can’t go back to camp … Vandergaast might have us both executed,” he added, a note of mockery in his voice even though he was stating a fact.

  “Yeah.”

  “And we can’t really go back to Vista either, for the same reason.”

  “Yeah, sorry about that,” Evelyn said, feeling the bite of remorse in her gut again that Joseph had chosen exile with her over life with a communi
ty of other people.

  Joseph smiled. “I told you before, Evie, you don’t get to leave me behind anymore.”

  “Thanks,” she said, returning his smile. She took another bite of her banana bar, feeling her face flush as she realized she probably looked as much like a cow chewing its cud as a girl gnawing on a protein supplement. Sometimes she wondered what Joseph could possibly see in her that he would choose exile with her on a planet trillions of miles from Earth.

  “And winter’s coming too,” Joseph continued, speaking now probably as much for his own benefit as for hers. “We can try to catch more of those fish, but I have a feeling we’ll be sick of those before too long. So, yeah, I’m thinking we might want to go back to Earth, at least for a little while.”

  Evelyn didn’t want to worry Joseph, but she figured they were facing some tough odds for survival even if they went back.

  “You’re not worried about getting caught back on Earth?”

  “Well, you …” Joseph started, and then paused, glancing at Evelyn with a cocked eyebrow and a quirked lip, as if he was unsure he wanted to say what he was about to. “You took care of President Coleson and all those soldiers. And from what you said, he had lost a lot of control over the people anyway. Maybe it’s safer now,” he added, shrugging his shoulders.

  Evelyn shook her head. “I don’t know,” she said, and in the next second, her mind flitted past the worry that they didn’t have enough provisions on board to survive if they were stranded in transit, to the memory of the street tacos she had eaten with Tate in San Antonio. Her mouth immediately started to salivate at the thought of the salty, rich tacos, and she quickly brought the back of her hand to her mouth to keep from drooling down her chin.

  “I don’t know if it’s safer, but the food sure is better back on Earth.”

  Joseph laughed and tossed the bar, still wrapped in foil, onto the console.

  “You aren’t going to eat it?” she asked, a note of surprise in her voice. It was already midafternoon, and as far as she could remember, Joseph still hadn’t eaten anything all day. In the two weeks they had been together at the lake, she figured they both had lost more muscle tissue than fat, as neither of them had any fat to lose. Living on the streets and in the orphanage, Joseph had learned to go for a while without eating, but he was still a seventeen-year-old boy, and not eating for a whole day really wasn’t an option.

  “Naw,” he said, standing. “You know, I’m just not feeling all that well.”

  Evelyn sat up on the edge of her seat, realizing a look of worry had washed over her face and feeling it pinch in her chest. “You’re sick?”

  Joseph shook his head and gave her a smile over his shoulder. “No, no, no,” he stammered, clearly trying to undo his earlier remark. “Just feeling a little tired, that’s all. I’m gonna go lie down for a while.” Joseph leaned down and gave her a kiss, a little spark of static stinging her lip, the warmth from his lips warming her.

  As he pulled back, Evelyn felt the quick twist in her gut telling her something was wrong, but she was momentarily unable to detect why.

  “That was hot,” she mumbled.

  “Thanks,” he said through a light laugh and an ever-widening grin.

  Then, in a split second, Evelyn realized what was bothering her.

  “No, I mean your lips … your skin … They’re hot.”

  “What?” Joseph said, a look of confusion washing over his face. He stood slowly, putting his palm to his forehead.

  Evelyn started to stand, watching the blood drain from his face, his skin turning a sickly pale white in the sunlight streaming through the cockpit window. “Joseph!” she screamed, feeling the fibers of his shirt slip through her fingers and watching helplessly as he collapsed with his eyes rolling back into his head.

  UNSETTLED

  His scream woke her up, but it was Joseph’s elbow in her hip that sent Evelyn sprawling onto the floor. Evelyn remembered little of the few minutes after Joseph collapsed, mostly because she had soared through a fit of panic and tears, rushing to his side and trying in vain to wake him. After realizing he was still breathing, she spent ten minutes dragging him twenty feet to her quarters, spent that long again just trying to get him into bed, and then collapsed in the bed next to him out of sheer emotional and physical exhaustion.

  The hours since had been just as bad. Joseph couldn’t seem to lie still. He was either shivering from his fever, or shaking and moaning uncontrollably, and it wasn’t until well into the night that the worst of the shakes had passed. Evelyn hoped that the worst was behind them, but as she sat on the cold metal floor, staring through her own bleary eyes at the writhing figure of her green-eyed boy on the bed, she knew it hadn’t.

  A surge of alarm had her standing upright and wide awake in seconds. “Joseph!” she screamed, trying to wake him from what was undoubtedly a night terror of some sort. Throwing herself onto the bed, she tried to press his body into the mattress to limit his shaking, but it was no use. She was probably barely over one hundred pounds in her malnourished state, and Joseph outweighed her by at least half as much. Jerking his arm away in reflex, he smashed his forearm into the wall, recoiling into her and sending her flying back off the bed again.

  “Dammit,” she seethed, more pissed at herself for her actions than at him for his.

  Realizing she wasn’t going to outmuscle him, Evelyn darted around the corner to the medical closet. All the shuttles had been outfitted with a complete set of medical supplies to assist with anything, including minor surgeries. Evelyn had performed more medical procedures on the shuttle then she ever thought she would—once to drain the blood from Marcus’s lung after he had been shot escaping from Earth, and the other patching herself up after she had her final battle with Doctor Pretty and the soldiers who were invading Orsus. And even though she still had the collected works of humanity’s knowledge of anatomy and medicine tucked away in her gray matter, she was reluctant to use it on Joseph. It was one thing to know what to do, but it was quite another to actually do it. While Joseph flailed on the bed, seemingly intent on bludgeoning himself with the shuttle, she knew the time for being cautious had passed.

  Grabbing the hypospray gun from the medical closet, Evelyn ripped the package of sedative open. Jamming the cartridge into the gun as she bolted back around the corner to her quarters, she didn’t even bother to try to slow herself. She crashed into the bed, landed on top of Joseph, and pressed the nozzle into the back of his neck.

  She pulled the trigger, and other than a whimper, Joseph didn’t make another sound, instantly slumping into the mattress.

  Evelyn stood, staggered back, and dropped the gun on the floor. Brushing the sweat from her brow with her forearm and sitting on the edge of the small metal desk set against the wall of her quarters, she sighed, immediately feeling tears prick her eyes as she processed the previous ninety seconds of hell.

  She stared at Joseph, waiting for a moment. She didn’t know his weight, or her own for that matter, so she couldn’t know if she had used the proper dosage. Holding her breath waiting for him to take his, Evelyn counted the seconds, and then, barely perceptibly, she saw his chest expand.

  “Ha!” she exhaled, not knowing if she wanted to laugh or cry. She stared for another moment, watching him inhale and exhale. She realized she was gripping the edge of the desk hard enough that the corner cut into her palms, but she didn’t dare let go. The pain helped clear the fog from her brain, and she needed to think.

  Another moment passed, and Evelyn pushed herself away from the desk. She wandered into the hallway, her stomach growling as she walked past the kitchen.

  “You’ve got to be kidding me,” she said, looking down at her midsection and stopping in front of the open doorway. Being in a constant state of hunger, her stomach didn’t seem to have any qualms with alerting her to its needs, despite the inappropriateness of the timing.

  As if in defiant response to her thoughts, her stomach growled again, this time leaving a linge
ring hollowness behind to emphasize the point.

  “Fine,” she said, flipping her hands in the air and walking to the cooler. She knew they didn’t have much in there, but to satisfy her stomach, she opened the door anyway.

  As she expected, inside there was nothing but a steel plate covered with the graying meat of the squirrel Joseph had speared a few days before. Evelyn wasn’t worried about whether it had gone bad already—the oily sheen of the meat made it look like it was encased in plastic. Evelyn had seen pictures of aspic, and even though meat covered in jelly was a delight in some cultures, she didn’t find the thought very appetizing. The greasy squirrel had all the appearance of aspic but none of the cultural charm, and she found herself poking at the meat with a fork, wondering for a moment if it might come back to life. It didn’t, but the way it sprang back with just a little pressure from the tines made her queasy, and her stomach, perhaps also sensing the work it might have ahead in digesting such a thing, quickly quieted.

  “Yeah, that’s what I thought you’d say,” Evelyn said, glancing at her stomach. Standing straight, she closed the cooler door in defeat. Reluctant to give up completely, though, Evelyn poured a mug of hot water from the wall dispenser, dropped in a sugar tablet, and let the hot cup warm her cold hands as she made her way to the front of the ship.

  The cockpit was dark, and even though she could have turned on all the lights through her nanites, she chose not to.

  Evelyn sat in her captain’s chair, curling her legs next to her and hugging her mug for warmth. She looked through the glass at the monochromatic purple of the landscape, only illuminated by the ghostly glow of the twin moons above, orbiting the planet.

  There was a moment on Earth when Evelyn had gazed at the moon from the surface. Though most people would be hard-pressed to name any feature, she knew the names of all the ridges and craters, valleys and mountains on the surface. Here, though, the features of the moons had no names, and neither did the stars above or the mountains on the other side of the nameless lake before her. Almost nothing had a name—or maybe it did, but the name just hadn’t been revealed to her, she reasoned. Even so, Evelyn sat in the dark, staring at the nearly dark beyond, sipped her water, and felt a pinch of longing in her chest for something—anything—familiar.