Page 11 of His to Mate

She didn’t run anymore, she used a treadmill in their home, and tried to maintain a pace that would mean she could walk for hours if she needed to. That fear of being out in the world, of having to walk far distances, hadn’t left her, and she liked to keep fit, anyway.

They both went quiet as they flew over the tall hill that had sheltered them and found a small city on the other side. It was flattened, nothing left, and no hint of mankind was in sight.

“It’s so sad,” she whispered, not for the first time that day.

“I know, baby. I’m sorry. Do you want to take a nap?” His concerned eyes scanned her face, but she refused to be so soft.

“No, I’d like to know what we’re really facing. I’m not a child. I can do this.”

They flew on for a few more hours but the world here was empty. There were no signs of life, despite the disappearance of the ice. There were no tent cities, no clothes blowing on clotheslines, no fires, nothing that she might have hoped for.

They flew up the western coast of what had once been the United States but was now just more real estate for the invading aliens. Would they all end up speaking the same language, with the title of earthling as the only thing that separated them? Ann didn’t think that was necessarily a bad thing, it was about time the people of the planet realized they were all riding the same rock through space, but she did wonder how many of them were left.

“How many have you found so far, in this part of the world?” she asked as he steered them through the air. The sun had started to go down and he turned on the navigation lights, but there were no headlights. They wouldn’t really work this far up. There were landing lights, but they didn’t need them right now.

“A few thousand so far. We’ve only really looked around southern California and the section to the south that belonged to Mexico. We found more people down there than up here. It was cold there too, but not as bad. We’ll find more though, you people are resourceful and there was time to prepare. The really bad snows didn’t start for a few months, so we’re hoping to find more.”

“I hope you do.” She’d often wondered who would survive, what kind of people they would be. Would they be bad people that took advantage of others to stay alive, or would they be the good kind of people?

“Don’t worry, we won’t allow criminals into the places we’re setting up. They’ll be taken to a separate place. Where they can feed off of each other if that’s what they choose. We keep it all under control there, too, though.” He gave her a reassuring look and drove on.

Ann scanned the darkness below for signs of life, lights, fires, anything that might mean another human being existed out there. There was only darkness, though, and she was glad when Rager finally set them down for the night.

They had a meal of hot pinto beans, cornbread that had been kept hot in a special bag, and a salad. An odd dinner, but a part of their daily diet now. There weren’t enough animals to have a solely carnivorous diet so they were forced to rely on other means of nutrition. None of them complained, they just took what they were given.

The spices she’d brought home had made a lot of the food far more delightful than it would have been. Even now, she could taste a hint of chili powder in the beans and smiled. That taste was there because of her, she thought with a sense of pride. She wasn’t completely useless, at least.

“What do you want to watch?” Rager asked as he put their empty dishes and the bag back into the cubicle they’d been in. “And should we set up the tent?”

“I think I’d like to set the tent up.” It wouldn’t take long, they just had to undo a strap and the tent would do the rest. There would even be a bed and a door once it was all set up. She was thinking about the fact that they’d have to go out of the transporter to go to the bathroom and the process for opening the hatch on that was more complicated than setting up and taking down the tent.

“That’s cool. I’ll bring in the video viewer and we can still watch a movie if you want.”

“That sounds good.” She went off for a minute on her own and looked around. They were on top of a mountain, covered with trees now, and she needed a place to ease her bladder. She found a spot and did her business. When she stood up, she saw the face of a woman through the trees. She gasped as she did her pants back up and stared at the woman. “Who are you?”

“Please. Don’t tell him you saw me. I have a husband, children, in a bunker not far away. I came out to get fresh water from the stream over there.” She pointed to somewhere behind Ann and deeper into the trees. “We don’t want to go with the aliens. We just want to be left in peace. Please, don’t tell him you saw me.”

The woman looked clean, healthy, and perfectly capable of making up her own mind about how her life went. Ann understood the sense of Rager’s words, but she could see the fear on the woman’s face and the way she glanced behind her shoulder, as if her entire world lived just beyond where she could see. Ann decided to not say anything to Rager. Let one family have a little more time on their own, before their world turned upside down.

“I won’t tell him. We’ll be gone tomorrow, so when you get back, stay down there until at least mid-afternoon, okay?” Ann held her hands out flat, palms down, in a motion meant to keep the woman from feeling threatened. “How did you know about them?”

“We have a radio. And my husband’s seen a few of those plane things they have. Thank you, miss. You’ll never know how much I appreciate it.” The woman melted away then, into the trees and back to her life.

Ann stood there, guilt a rat that gnawed at her brain. She should tell him, but she remembered the fear, the terror, of being captured by the aliens not so long ago. They weren’t allowed to decide where they went, or what they did. They were told. And that still irked Ann. They were treated like cattle, even if that treatment was humane. Surely, people should be allowed to decide?

She had a feeling the aliens would find the family, eventually, but for now, they were living in their own happy world. Ann decided to let them have that for a while longer. She walked into the tent-room and closed the door behind her. It was twelve feet square and had an inflatable bed, a small inflatable couch, and recessed lights that were battery operated but still produced a good deal of light. A small podium to the left side of the bed served as a table and a nightstand.

Rager had set up the video viewer on it, basically a 15-inch tablet, and had one open and loaded when she crawled into bed, naked, to curl around him. The covers were soft and heavenly and smelled of her favorite fabric softener. “Lets just lay here together, shall we?”

“Are you alright?” His arm curled around her shoulders and pulled her tight to him. She felt his warm mouth on her forehead and smiled.

“Yeah, I’m just tired. I need quiet for a little while. To be here with you and quiet, that’s all.”