FREE STORIES 2012(24)

He quickly scanned the area over the barrel of his gun and saw nothing. "Okay, we’re going to make a run for it. Are you ready?"

She nodded, but her eyes were closed. Had her eyes been closed the entire firefight? Then she whispered, "Hersh, we slaughtered those little kids."

"You didn’t do anything, Ameera. This is on me! I pulled the trigger. You were just trying to land the plane and save our lives. Your conscience is clean."

"Why doesn’t it feel that way?" She leaned in and dug her face into his chest and he hugged her. He could no longer smell her perfume over the smoke and dust.

He saw the shadow of a winged woman through the soot, hunched over the body of a dead fledgling. She tenderly draped her wings around it and rocked back and forth. For a brief moment, both their gentle movements mirrored each other, and aching doubt crept into his soul. Then the creature let out a piercing, grief-filled shriek that shattered the Martian silence.

"Come on." He dragged Ameera into the twisted open transit tube. They walked through the long, dark tunnel that led into the domed city of Candor.

In the utter blackness 200 million years of evolution evaporated; all identity, all culture, all humanity vanished and they were simply mammals scurrying in the dark, hiding from the terrible reptiles.

"Hersh, if we survive this, will you marry me?" she asked in the same hushed, sleepy tones she often used after sex, trying to keep him from falling asleep in her bunk.

"Yes." They walked-dragged in silence for a bit, then he added, "After I get you out of here your dad is going to love me. Our wedding is going to be the best, I promise."

They didn't speak anymore, but she clumsily kissed the corner of his mouth.

The dark ended when they entered the city. Hersh had never been inside a harpy aviary before and the sight of it overwhelmed him. The bare canyon walls of Candor Chasma had been carved with laser precision to look like the Treasury at Petra on a metropolitan scale. Entire housing blocks and districts sprawled vertically up the sheer cliffs. This was a living space designed by natural flyers. Immense statues of stiff-winged people, like ancient Sumerian or Egyptian gods, stood guard in the magnificent, desolate city. There was imagination and history here. Generations of avian humans had built this place and now they were being forced out or destroyed.

"Here the repellent harpies make their nests," Ameera murmured to herself. "It’s beautiful."

"We have to find a communications station."

They walked two more steps, then a thin ribbon of light shot across the chasm and hit First Pilot Ameera el-Ayeb square in the back. Her body spasmed in Hersh’s arms then went limp.

"No!" he screamed. For a second, Hersh was mystified. He laid Ameera on the polished stone ground and fired blindly toward the direction of the beam. A harpy—the grieving harpy—flew out of a darkened balcony like a demon. Hersh fired frantically. She flapped hard, banking this way and that, an awesome display of aerobatics. He kept shooting but was tired and scared and angry and failed to make contact with his target. She dipped into another stone-cut terrace. She was toying with him and he understood the tactical error of getting caught in a canyon. He suddenly felt like a desert mouse being hunted by a hawk.

The harpy exploded into the sky and he sprayed the air with crackling light trying to aim where he thought she would be a second into the future, but she was fast and cunning. He held the trigger down until the power cell of his weapon went dry. Was this what she was waiting for? Could she see the gun’s power readout from up in the air? It was clear she didn’t want to kill him from an impersonal distance; she wanted to hunt on the wing. Hersh looked for Ameera’s sidearm, but couldn’t find it. She must have dropped it in the tunnel.

The harpy circled above. He unsheathed his bowie knife, and spun around, keeping his eyes on her. Even with the thirteen inches of glinting steel in his sweaty hand, he felt ridiculously inadequate against her six sickle-shape claws and razor-sharp fangs. Without warning, the harpy tucked in her wings and dove straight at him.

The creature struck like a whirlwind, pouring all her fury into rending his flesh. Hersh foolishly swung his knife around, but the attack was a blast of black plumage and pain. He fell on his belly and he was vaguely aware that he was screaming. He was pinned. Then something sharp and hot slid between the vertebrae of his spine and blinding agony washed over him.

###

Anton Hershkovitz awoke with the horrible realization that he could not feel his legs. Then pain sharpened his awareness to the rest of the world. He was in an empty room. There was nothing, it was just a large cube cut into ochre rock. Ameera lay a few meters away. He couldn’t tell if she was alive or dead because he had blood in his eyes. Deep cuts stung all over his body. He could move his arms and neck. So he wiped his face on his grimy sleeve and tried to slide to Ameera.