The Atomic Sea by Jack Conner

Author:Jack Conner [Conner, Jack]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Epic Fantasy and Science Fiction Books
Published: 2014-12-01T05:00:00+00:00

* * *

His arm itching, Avery traipsed through the forest the next day, right behind Muirblaag. Between them they carried Layanna on a makeshift stretcher. Avery’s arm burned, but he held on tight. Sometimes Layanna slept, sometimes not. Avery would catch her staring up at him, or the sky overhead, and he felt oddly self-conscious. He felt closer to the others than he had before, and it may have been his imagination, but he thought they acted more openly around him, too.

Toward afternoon, Layanna climbed out of the stretcher and walked a ways by herself, limping along with the help of a wooden stick Muirblaag carved for her. She could only walk for a short period before she needed the stretcher again, but in another hour she was once more afoot. The periods of walking grew longer and the periods of resting shorter. Avery was amazed again at her recuperative abilities. He reflected that nothing about her should shock him after seeing her turn into an amoeba monster. He still remembered the screams of the soldiers dying in her stinging tentacles or engulfed in her otherworldly acids.

That night the band came across the ruins of a small village that crept up a mountainside. Stone houses jutted like crumbling teeth through undergrowth, and large spiders wove webs between half-collapsed walls. After burning out the spiders, the band made camp for the evening. The mountain winds blew very chill that night, and Avery only protested a little as Janx and Hildra made a fire in the shelter of a wall. Layanna was placed near it and fed with the meager foodstuffs they possessed. She tore into the jerky and gulped water like a fish.

Avery smiled. “You have a healthy appetite.”

Smacking her lips, Layanna glanced up at them. “What I need now is something from the sea.” She’d spoken in Octunggen and Avery had to translate for the others.

Hildra smirked. “The only thing fishy we have is Mu.” She slapped him on the shoulder. “Eat him with my blessing.”

Layanna’s gaze moved to Muirblaag as if sizing him up, and the fish-man shifted uncomfortably.

“Hildra was joking,” he said.

“Good for you,” Layanna said in her thickly-accented Ghenisan.

The others chuckled nervously.

“Why don’t we get some shut-eye?” Janx suggested. “We’ve gotta go down into the valley tomorrow, or find a way across to the next mountain. We need our sleep.”

“Fuck that,” said Byron. He was staring at Layanna. “It’s been long enough. She’s awake now and I want answers. For starters, what the hell is a Collossum, honey?”

“I don’t think that now is the time,” Avery said.

“Not human,” said Layanna, surprising him.

The others leaned forward. “Where are you from, sunshine?” Hildra asked.

“Not here.”

“Did the Octunggen make you in some lab?”

“No,” Layanna said. “I say further nothing about that.”

She doesn’t trust us with the truth, Avery realized. The thought that she couldn’t even tell them what she was, after all they’d been through already, disturbed him more than he wanted to admit.

She yawned, and Avery said, “I think that’s it for tonight.

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