**
I woke up before dawn. Martina and Andy were both still asleep. I looked over and saw Doug’s silhouette leaning against the rock, staring up at the stars. He saw me getting up, sore and tired, and put out his hand to help me up.
“Thanks buddy—can’t sleep,” I said.
“I slept a few hours, but rocks aren’t that comfortable.”
“No, they’re not.”
We stood there staring at the stars, mesmerized as the sky transformed, our first Earth dawn. The sounds of birds were echoing throughout the valley. The stars and darkness were fading away, replaced by golden hues of red and orange. The giant fiery ball, that we call the Sun, started shooting preliminary rays up over the back of the mountains. For the first time, I thought I felt its rays heating my environment. All the shadows that had owned the night retreated in submission. Chirping, cawing, and rustling could be heard from different directions. Signs of life were returning to the landscape, creatures of the day were coming alive. Soon enough, the sky was returning to the familiar blue we had been flying through the day before, and all the familiar sights were visible. The meadow and the Covert were clear to see, and the mountains stood in the same position as the day before, the same position as thousands, millions of days before.
It was soon after that when we heard voices. Doug and I hunched down, hiding behind the rocks. The guns were leaning against the rocks beside us and we each reached over to grab one; the security of the trigger felt good in my hands.
“Do you know how to shoot one of these things?” Doug said.
“Sure, police academy, history of guns,” I said.
The voices were growing louder. They sounded like they were trying to whisper, but they were too excited to keep their voices down.
“Look, there!” Doug said, pointing to the other side of the meadow. They were coming around the same mountainside that Martina and I were climbing the day before. I could not make out what they looked like. I could see more of the trees rustling than the actual people. They were just two figures tramping through the woods. Any thoughts they may have had about keeping quiet were disappearing as they caught sight of the Covert. They were coming to the clearing and we could see them a bit better now. They held their guns up as they made their way out to the clearing. One was pointing up at the devastation to the trees where the Covert had slid down the mountainside. The other was ignoring him and concentrating on the Covert. He crept up to the vehicle, his gun raised. Just then, Andy started stirring, talking loudly in his sleep. I went over quickly and put my hand on his mouth.
“Whad de hedd” he said, his voice muffled through my fingers.
He knocked my hand away, but I put one finger quickly to my mouth. He saw the gun in my hand, the urgency in my eyes, and he understood. He was silent and got up slowly. All the commotion had woken Martina too, but fortunately she woke up in a much quieter fashion.
“What’s going on?” she whispered.
We waved her over and she followed us. We all heard the voices now; they were talking excitedly between themselves, waving their arms and looking around.
“That’s no World Government troops,” Doug said.
“Ya think?” Andy said.
All four of us looked in silence as the two were now banging their rifle butts against the Covert. They were looking frustrated. We had left the Random Molecular Displacement system in defence mode. It had proved to be less than impregnable to missile attacks, but I would hope that it could stand up to a rifle butt. It was holding up well and we watched, wondering what to do. They were banging away for a while but then stopped. They talked for a while and then started looking around the landscape.
“I could pick them off no problem,” said Doug.
“No,” I said, but a millisecond later the gun shot sounded from right beside me.
Doug fired and one of them dropped. The other one did not even run to the woods. It was if he was frozen in his tracks as he looked at his fallen comrade. Doug fired at him too, but he narrowly missed, whizzing a bullet past the unsuspecting terrorist into the trees. He turned to run into the woods. I raised my gun to fire also, but before I had it aimed, Doug fired again and the second soldier fell to the ground. He rolled over, appearing to still be alive. Doug fired again. The soldier stopped moving.
The four of us burst into a triumphant cheer. Andy clapped Doug on the back. Doug let out a long laugh as he pumped his rifle in the air.
“Okay guys, shhh…” Martina warned. “Who knows who else is around?”
The thought brought us back to reality. We sat down again, waiting to see what our successful attack would bring as far as reprisals. I remember sitting there behind the rocks, my knees pressed into my chest, my heart pumping, thoughts disappearing from my mind. I was caught up in the moment, working on instinct like a primitive Earth animal, feeling powerful.
We sat there about five minutes, each taking turns sneaking quick glances over the rocks, but still—no sounds that led us to believe other humans were around. The birds had dispersed during our attack, but quickly returned as silence returned to the valley. We were intruding, disturbing the natural order, yet it always returned to normal.
“I’m not waiting here any more,” Andy said, jumping to his feet.
“Wait,” I said.
“He’s right, let’s go,” Doug said. His face was looking pale. The primitive euphoria of the moment had disappeared; now there was time for reflection on what had taken place.
We hurried down the side of the cliff, excruciatingly careful, as we had to be to avoid falling to our deaths to the rocks below. Doug was in front for the first time. He was down alongside the meadow while the other three of us were still halfway down the cliff. I could hear his feet sloshing in the water. He did not bother going around the entire meadow. He was cutting through it, wading waist deep in water. He was at the Covert, at the site of the dead soldiers, by the time we were going around the meadow. The entire time we were racing across the meadow, I could see him standing there, like a statue, his stance wide, unmoving. By the time we arrived beside him, the last vestiges of the look of a conquering warrior had left Doug’s face. One of the dead soldiers was on his back, the other lay face down. The one he shot first, the one who was face up, lay there, almost peacefully; his eyes open, staring straight up into the heavens like he was enjoying the landscape. A solitary trickle of blood dripped from his slightly open mouth. Apart from that, he looked positively peaceful.
He was young.
The closer I got, the younger I realized he was. We all stood staring at his angelical little face, so similar, yet so strange. He had strange dark eyes, and dark skin. He was wearing a uniform, one much too big for him. From a distance, it made him look like he was much bigger, but as you closed in you realized he was floating in that uniform, like a boy trying on his father’s clothes. As I stood over him the realization washed over me, almost drowned me in the feeling that this was indeed nothing more than a boy. Like a reed, he had just had a young adolescent growth spurt, which gave him some height; and the uniform gave him the illusion of size from a distance, but this was a boy, a young boy.
“He’s just a kid,” Doug said finally, his whole face trembling.
I looked at Doug. It was as if he didn’t know what expression to have, his mouth quivering between a smile, a grimace, a sneer—stuck at the crossroads, not knowing which way to go.
“What’s that around his neck?” Andy said.
In the center of the boy’s chest was the bloodstain from the bullet that sealed his fate. Blood was trickling down onto a long chain that was around the boy’s neck. The chain had a key on it. Andy leant over and took the chain from around his neck. He held the key in the air. It was a large, formidable, shiny metal key; with a drop of blood on the handle. Andy held it up in the air and it glistened in the sun
Martina rolled over the other soldier. He was as young as the other boy, but the look on his face was starkly diff
erent to the one with the key. His look was one of fear, of desperation, of horror. Doug never looked at that face. Later, I was thankful for that. That look was one that would haunt you.
“Do you think they got here alone?” Martina said.
“It looks like it,” I said.
“But where did they come from? We were on the other side of that mountain. It’s dense bush. That isn’t easy to hike through. Why would they come on foot?” Martina said.
“Maybe that’s all they had. Maybe these people left on Earth have been surviving with less than we thought. Those catastrophic nuclear attacks were a hundred years ago, but maybe it knocked the Earth back into the Stone Age, maybe it wiped out as much technology as it did people.”
“But we flew over the mountains from the direction they came. It looked like it was all wilderness. How could they travel through that?” Martina wondered.
“Unless,” I said.
“Unless, what?” Andy said.
“Unless they traveled down the river.”