Planet Urth (Book 1) Read online

  Chapter 5

  I wake with a start, struggling to catch my breath. My heart is racing, hammering as if trying to break free of my body. My hand flies to my forehead. The skin there is slippery to the touch, coated in sweat. I look all around me. It takes a moment for complete consciousness to return to me, for my brain to register that I am awake now. Beside me, June is sleeping, snoring softly, swathed in inky shadows. Just a thin stream of predawn light streams in and I know it is not time to rise, yet I cannot imagine going back to sleep.

  I comb my fingers through my hair and discover that the front is wet. I am not surprised though. I have had a nightmare, the same nightmare I have had almost every night for the last six years. None of what I am experiencing is new.

  I push myself up to a sitting position. The act requires effort, more than I feel capable of using. I exert myself against a rushing current of emotion that crashes over me, intent on drowning me. My clothes cling to my skin. I run my hand down my neck then over the top of my covering. My body and sleep sack feel damp. Though I am sweaty, tremors rack my body. I draw my knees up and hug them to my chest, still haunted by the vivid images that flashed through my mind’s eye.

  When I sleep, a mere dream does not plague me. It is so much more, so much worse. They are horrible, violent memories that replay in my head with striking clarity over and over again. I relive the day my mother was killed.

  I rub my eyes, wishing to purge all of it from my brain, but know it is useless. I cannot rid myself of the memory any more that I can rid the sky of the sun. And just as night surrenders to day powerless against the rise of the sun, I am powerless against recollections that are branded into my brain. They are always with me, always lingering at the surface of the dark ocean of my heart I keep it in. Each time it surges forth, it feels as if I am experiencing that day all over again.

  I was eleven years old playing with June, who was just two at the time, on the dirt floor of the hut I shared with my parents. I was making her laugh; crawling around on all fours, grunting and snorting like a boart. My father sat on a tattered piece of wood and fabric he said had survived the war. He told me it was called a couch and that people used to spend hours at a time sitting or lying on them. I couldn’t imagine anyone wanting to do either. The few times I’d sat on it, I found that it smelled strange, like decay and smoke. Regardless, my dad did not seem to notice and rested on it, beaming each time a fit of laughter overtook June. My mother sat beside him, her head nuzzled against his shoulder. Every so often, she would rub her round belly and sigh. My parents looked so content, so happy.

  I remember that moment. I remember that it was the last time in my life I felt safe. That moment ended abruptly.

  Screams ripped through the peace we’d been enjoying, piercing the very air we breathed, and echoed outside our hut. My father jumped from the couch, a look of concern etching his features as he crossed the small space and went to the door. I sprang to my feet and my mom leaned forward to the edge of the couch. My father turned and leveled a serious gaze our way. He told us to stay put; that he was going to see what was happening.

  More screams rang out followed by a flurry of inhuman sounds. My father glanced over his shoulder with his hand perched on the doorknob. A look unlike any I’d ever seen flashed across his features; one filled with dread and fear, of awareness that life as we knew it had just changed.

  As soon as he opened the door, he was met by one of the men from our village. The man’s face was pale, his demeanor horror-stricken.

  “They’re here, Gerald,” he told my father. “The Urthmen have found us.”

  As soon as the word “Urthmen” was uttered, my stomach lurched before it nosedived. We had spent our entire existence either fighting them or avoiding them, but never at our camp. We’d always encountered them out in the forest when we’d wandered too far, but never near our camp, never close to home. They’d never made it into our village; not until that night.

  “How many are there?” my father asked, and the urgency of his voice raised the fine hairs on my body.

  “It’s hard to tell,” the man replied.

  My father did not wait for the man to speak another word. His look of worry was replaced with steely resolve. He drew his sword and clutched it in one hand. With the other, he reached out to my mother and helped her up from the couch. Her belly was swollen, and pulling herself to her feet from a seated position was a challenge as she was eight months pregnant. My mother scooped June from the floor and followed my father as he led us out of our hut and into another, one that had a tunnel burrowed beneath it that led deep into the woods as an emergency escape route.

  “Wait here,” he told us once we were inside. “If I am not back soon, or if you hear voices close by that aren’t human, take the tunnel and get out of here as fast as you can.”

  My entire body shook when he gave us his instructions, when I realized there was a chance he would not be with us, that he was preparing for his death.

  “Gerald, no,” my mother started, her voice smothered by emotion. One hand flew to her belly while the other clutched June. “We need you. We can’t survive out there alone, if we even make it out there. Please,” she pleaded. “Please, come with us.”

  “No,” he replied, his tone firm. “I will not run and leave our people to die. I am not a coward. Besides, surviving the night with or without me will be next to impossible,” he said, grief lacing his words. He looked at June and me then said, “Hopefully there aren’t too many Urthmen and we can fight them off.”

  My mother’s gaze locked on my father’s face, holding him there for a moment before she hugged him and whispered something in his ear that I did not hear. He said good-bye to her in a hoarse whisper. He kissed June’s forehead and my mother’s belly then the top of my head before he walked out. He left us there and went to join the others in their fight against the Urthmen.

  The hut where we waited was one of many that comprised a community. Nearly two hundred humans lived there. We were lucky to have found them. The complex was tucked in the woods, deep enough within its protection that we were hidden from the Urthmen that patrolled, but far enough from where the trees grew close together and the terrain became too difficult to navigate. A high stone wall had been built and was heavily guarded. Lurkers shared the woods with us. We needed protection from them as well as Urthmen. No one wanted to lose the only sense of belonging they’d ever had. No one wanted to lose the complex, or each other, but they did.

  As time passed, more men from our community placed their families in the hut with the tunnel beneath it and gave them instructions similar to the ones my father had given. Many of the people left behind were women, children, and villagers too old or too ill to fight. Some of them cursed and expressed outrage, but most of them just stood where they were placed, clinging to whichever family member they’d been left with. We all wore the same expression. We all looked equal parts terrified and confused. I was anxious too; worried in a way I’d never been before about my father.

  My mother rocked June, cradling her tightly in her arms with their cheeks pressed together. I felt pressure build in my body with such force it strained against my skin. Tortured cries rang out; the sorrowful sounds of life ending brutally, of suffering, shrieked through the hollows of my core as they grew closer, and I thought I would explode. All around me, women and children wept. June wailed and even my mother cried. I held my tears in, balling my fists so tightly my nails bit into the tender skin of my palms and drew blood. I wanted to help. I hated not knowing exactly what was going on, being incapable of playing a part in my own fate.

  When I’d finally reached my breaking point, I moved to the door. With my hand on the knob, I turned to my mother and said, “I can’t take it anymore. I need to know what is happening out there. I have to know what’s happening to Dad.”

  My mother’s face contorted
. “No!” she hissed. “Come back here now and wait for your father.”

  My mother had never raised her voice at me. I never remembered her even being angry with me. But she was beyond angry.

  For a moment, my hand recoiled from the handle as if it were on fire. Then I placed it there again and, ignoring my mother, I pulled it open.

  “Avery! You heard what your dad said!” I heard my mother say, but I had already taken a step outside.

  My eyes swept the area just beyond the hut. I didn’t see anyone, so I took several more steps, venturing further. And when I did, my brain was unable to process what my eyes were seeing all at once. Urthmen were everywhere, flooding our village in a tidal wave of frenzied violence. Many were atop fallen men, rearing their misshapen heads and baring their oversized teeth savagely. The metallic stench of blood hung in the air like mist and I fought the urge to gag.

  “Avery, come back here this instant!” my mother called. But her voice sounded muffled and distant, as if it were echoing from the end of a long tunnel.

  My feet felt as if they were being swallowed by quicksand. I was unable to move, paralyzed by fear, by shock. The carnage before my eyes held me hostage. I tried to breathe, but each time I inhaled, my senses were assaulted by the smell of bloodshed. I looked around for signs of survival, of any of my fellow villagers, but only saw countless mutant Urthmen slaughtering everything in their wake. My gaze zeroed in on an Urthman who hefted a club high overhead. The man beneath him was one I knew. It was the man who’d come to our hut to warn us. The Urthman was about to bludgeon him. I wanted to scream, to shout for the beast to stop, but my voice was strangled somewhere deep in my throat. I watched in horror as the Urthman brought his club down hard against the man’s head. The fiend raised it again and hammered the man’s face until his features were pulverized. When the Urthman had finished, gore had splattered all over his distorted face.

  I turned from the massacre, from what must have been thousands of Urthmen butchering our village, and ran back to the hut.

  Once inside, I leaned my back against the door and immediately said, “We need to leave now!”

  “Avery, your father,” my mother began.

  “He’s dead, Mom. They are all dead,” I said to her.

  My mother’s face paled. She nodded slightly, agreeing that the time to leave had come. “We have to leave,” my mother informed the others in the hut, but none of them were willing to accept what they’d heard. They refused to leave and said that they would wait for their husbands.

  “There are thousands of Urthmen out there!” I screamed. “All of our men are dead! If you want to live you have to leave!” But the others refused. No one would follow us. So we went alone.

  After opening a hatch in the floor, my mother handed June to me, and I climbed down a long ladder that led to the start of the passageway. My mother followed right after me.

  A yawning pit of darkness stretched before me. It smelled of wet earth and lime. The only light I saw was feeble and came from the hut above us. But it did little more than create a weak beam of light that crawled across the floor and revealed a narrow swath of glistening, gray stone. The pitch-black shadows seemed to continue endlessly.

  The tunnel was huge, about ten feet wide and eight feet high. It ran underground, beneath the stone wall and out deeper into the woods. Years had been spent constructing it. I never understood its purpose, after all, I’d enjoyed the security and safety of the village for so long, I’d come to almost take it for granted. But all that had changed. Reality had come to call.

  I began to run, holding tight to June. I could not clearly see what was ahead, but heard my feet slapping against the hard ground as I raced as fast and as far as I could from the hut we’d just left. My heart contended with the sound, and I swore it echoed along with my footfalls down the tunnel.

  I looked over my shoulder, though I could not see my mother, when a loud thump rattled overhead and rumbled like thunder, shaking the walls all around me.

  “Oh no,” I muttered and June began to cry.

  “Just go!” my mother urged. “Keep running, Avery, and don’t stop!”

  Suddenly, a high-pitched whistle filled the air all around me, clawing at my eardrums, before an unearthly din howled out and resonated through the endless hollow. The sound beat against my skull with such force I thought the bone would crack. Urthmen had arrived.

  Bloodcurdling screams immediately followed their call, the sound of women and children dying. I covered June’s ears with both hands, trying desperately to shield her from their cries. The people we’d just left, all of them, were most certainly dead. I wanted to scream, to cry, anything, but could not. I had to keep running.

  I pushed myself harder, faster, until my lungs burned and my muscles ached as I rushed headlong into the blackened abyss. I peeked over my shoulder to see my mother’s dark form behind me and saw something that made my breath catch in my chest.

  Behind my mother, the tunnel was lit. Four torch-wielding Urthmen made their way toward us, gaining ground fast. In the firelight, I could see their faces clearly. The closer they progressed, the more horrific they became. Nearly transparent skin did little to cover the expansive, vivid entanglement of veins that webbed their malformed heads. Lidless eyes shrouded in a thick, milky film darted wildly, bloodthirsty. They did not have noses but two asymmetrical holes that appeared to serve the purpose of nasal openings. Lips were also missing from their faces, though lines gave the impression that mouths may reside beyond them. They were monstrous, my worst fear realized at the time.

  With my heart threatening to beat out of my chest, I pressed on, testing my muscles as they’d never been tested before. But I was small and weak, and carrying June was hard.

  My mother caught up to me. “Keep going and don’t look back!”

  She slowed down and I did not see her beside me anymore. Then I heard her footfalls stop altogether. I looked back. She stood there with her arms out in surrender.

  “Run, Avery!” she yelled, but I stopped moving. I could not believe what I was seeing.

  Panic seized every cell in my body. “Mom!” I cried out. “Mom, what’re you doing?”

  She did not answer me. She spoke to the four Urthmen that approached.

  “Please don’t kill me,” she begged. “I am pregnant.”

  But her pleas fell on uncaring ears. The Urthmen did not care that she was pregnant. In fact, in hindsight, they probably saw the unborn child she carried as a bonus kill.

  While my mother raised her hands and submitted, one of the Urthmen hoisted his club high in the air and whipped it forward until it crashed against her skull. My world went completely still. My beautiful, kind mother, pregnant with my next sibling, had been hit. She sunk to her knees, a thin rivulet of blood streaming down her temple. Another strike followed, and she collapsed to the tunnel floor. And then the Urthmen swarmed, beating her feverishly.

  I tried to scream, to shout at the beasts to stop, but I could not breathe. My lungs refused to fill and remained frozen, like blocks of ice so cold their chill burned.

  “No,” I tried, but the word came out as a raspy whisper.

  Pain radiated from the center of my chest and branched out, throbbing and aching as my heart shattered into a million jagged pieces. My knees threatened to collapse beneath me. The woman who gave me life, the one who protected me and taught me, fed me, and cared for me, was dead, murdered by monsters.

  I wanted them dead; all of them. I wanted them to suffer for what they’d done to my mother.

  When finally I was able to draw a breath, I heard a female scream tear through the chaotic grunts of the Urthmen and soon realized the scream was mine. And I wasn’t the only one to realize this.

  The Urthmen spun to face me. “Get the humans.” One pointed a blunt, stubby finger at us, as his voice scraped like metal against me
tal.

  But before he could say another word or make a move toward us, his head was lopped from his body. It tumbled from his neck and landed against the ground with a thud. Two of the others with him turned and were carved at their waists. They dropped to the earth below, eviscerated like the animals they were.

  When they fell, I saw my father square off with the last of the Urthmen in the tunnel, and for the first time in my life I saw him as the fierce warrior he was. He looked deadly.

  The Urthman swung his club recklessly several times. My father dodged his attack with the calm and poise of a predator. The next swing the beast took was met with my father’s blade. His sword glinted in the glow of the fallen torches right before it cleaved the Urthman’s arm. The arm fell to the ground, and my father immediately veered and decapitated the monster.

  For a moment, my father just watched the fallen Urthmen, his chest heaving. Then he fell to his knees, to where my mother’s body lay still, and released a guttural cry of agony so profound, I felt as if my bones shook.

  I wanted to go to him, to crumple into his arms and cry until my body was emptied of tears. But the sound of footsteps approaching kept me in place, still holding June. My father stood and ran toward me. He ripped June from my arms, then flung both of us over his shoulders. He took off, away from the looming Urthnmen, and sprinted faster than I thought was humanly possible.

  Each step he took punished my ribs and back as I jerked and flopped against him. But none of the physical pain I felt compared to the heartache of witnessing my mother being murdered.

  When we reached the end of the seemingly endless tunnel, my father stopped and began kicking a thick log.

  “Come on,” he spat as he continued to kick a support beam.

  “Dad, put me down. I’ll help!” I shouted above the ferocious cries of the Urthmen echoing down the passageway.

  He placed me on my feet and I helped him. We kicked until the rafter gave way and he gripped my wrist. We ran several yards then stopped again. We climbed out of the tunnel. We were in the forest. It was dark and damp and there was a nip in the air. Bare tree limbs gashed the night sky, black and skeletal against the navy heavens. The musky, moldy scent of fallen leaves that I would’ve usually found pleasant terrified me. I knew that Lurkers waited, their movement muffled by the hoots and calls of nocturnal hunters. My father placed June in my arms, and then dug with his hands through leaves and brush until he pulled a length of thick rope from it. He leaned back, pulling it with every ounce of his weight, until the sound of wood splintering snapped through the night. Another beam toppled, only this time it was followed by a low growl, deep in the bowels of the dirt. The growl rolled and shook, and I understood in that instant that the tunnel had been booby-trapped. The passageway was collapsing on itself.

  Chunks of soil sprayed as it caved in. Pebbles flew in every direction and pelted us. Confused shouts turned to wails of agony as the Urthmen were buried alive. But we did not stay to hear them go silent. We ran.

  That was six years ago.

  Six years have not dulled the pain I feel each time I dream of that night.

  I swipe beneath my eyes with the tips of my fingers to clear the tears there. I do not want to risk June waking and seeing me like this. She does not remember what happened. She is lucky.

  Each day since my mother was killed, I regret that her body was left behind, that she will rest for eternity alongside Urthmen, monsters. She deserved better than that. I also regret that I spoke harshly to her and disobeyed her when I left the hut. I never got to ask for her forgiveness. Now it is too late.

  A silent sob shakes my body and I hug my knees to my chest as tight as I can. I breathe deeply, trying to calm myself until it passes, until the knot of pain inside me loosens enough for me to breathe. I must hold myself together. I must be strong. I concentrate on relaxing every muscle in my body and breathe through my nose, sucking in air until my belly puffs out. I blow it out in a thin stream through my lips, repeating the process until I feel more in control of myself.

  I glance at June and see that she is still asleep. She is unbothered by my crying seconds ago. I am thankful for that.

  I force myself to lie back down. My eyes burn and I am thirsty, but I close my eyes and push both discomforts to the back of my mind. Neither is of any consequence. I remain still and rest until threads of light slip through the cracks of the boulder and another day of hunting begins.