Page 1 of Twin Warriors

Chapter One

Desert as far as the eye could see. Amy stumbled over the hot sand, falling to her knees as the two blistering suns above her beat down with a fiery heat. She was so tired. So thirsty. So hungry.

She had been on this God forsaken planet for over five weeks now. The first four had been spent locked in a cage. A cage that was anchored to the back of a long convoy of wagons that floated above the sands. It was piloted by a group of strange looking aliens that walked on four jointed legs that bent backwards at the knee and were covered in a light, sand colored hide that looked as tough as leather. Two arms, with double elbow joints hung down at their sides, and thin wisps of hair stuck out around their flat, noseless faces.

She didn’t understand anything they said, nor did she understand what her captors wanted from her when they snatched her from the little cabin she was staying at in Washington.

All she knew with certainty, was that she was not on Earth anymore.

After she was taken from her father's old cabin, the aliens placed her into a clear gel-like liquid in a slim tube. While she fought, a mask was forced over her face, then darkness fell over her.

From the moment she woke up, locked inside the cage, all she saw was the endless desert. Nothing for miles in any direction. Nothing, except the ugly four-legged beings that walked beside the cage, shouting at her every few miles.

Amy had just curled herself into a corner and tried to make herself as small as possible. Without understanding what they wanted from her, or where they were taking her, fear cocooned her in its nasty web, making her shiver despite the heat.

For four weeks the convoy of cages, prisoners and strange alien creatures moved through the desert, day, and night, without stopping. The aliens fed and watered them through the bars. They were even forced to do their business through the bars as well.

Finally, after what felt like a lifetime, the convoy stopped close to a sprawling mass of jagged rocks. The soft, pale-yellow sands shifted to dark grey and brown rocks that rose from the ground in tall, sharp pillars all around them.

Voices carried over the rocks. Loud shouts came from the aliens in the front of the convoy as they called out a warning to the others. Amy watched as all the aliens around the cages grew nervous, drawing their unusual, black weapons and aiming them at the rocks. The suns began to set, casting the scenery in a pale orange glow.

She shook her head, trying to forget the bloodshed that followed, when the massive black creatures attacked from the rocks.

Their glowing red eyes still haunted her. The screams of the prisoners as they were torn apart still echoed in her ears. Her clothes were still stained in their blood.

The only reason she survived was because her fellow prisoner had knocked her over during the attack. She smacked her head on a rock and passed out.

When she woke in the pitch darkness of the night, she lay beneath a dead prisoner, covered in his blood.

Fear paralyzed her as she tried to see anything around her.

It took her all night to gather the courage to roll the dead alien off of her and rise to her feet. As the first light of the rising suns hit the desert, she saw the massacre that had ensued while she slept.

Everyone was dead. All the prisoners, all the guards, everyone was torn apart.

After expelling the meager contents of her stomach, she had gathered what little supplies she could carry, and anything she knew how to use. She swallowed her fear and made her way out into the barren wasteland.

Her food ran out first. The strange bland bars they fed them during their journey lasted five days, even though she tried to ration them as best she could.

Amy withered away over the weeks of travel. Her ribs protruded through her body, the bones pushing from her pale, sickly looking skin in hard, painful lumps. Her captors did not believe in three meals a day, preferring to feed them only once a day, in the evening when it grew a little cooler.

The long silver tube her captors used to give them all water was another strange device that she could not comprehend. All she knew was that it gave out a cup of water every three hours. But whatever science or magic that allowed for such a luxury ran dry yesterday.

Weak from lack of food and dehydrated from the baking suns, Amy stayed on her knees, licking her dry, cracked lips with an equally dry tongue.

The sands around her shimmered from the heat, making the desert dance in her vision.

She closed her eyes, allowing her mind to take her back to the beautiful, lush forest she had been in when she visited her father's cabin and recalled the soft rain that fell the evening before she was taken. She let out a dry laugh as she thought about how she’d moaned about the rain. What she wouldn’t do for just a drop of water now.

Amy lowered her head, her eyes still closed and thanked whoever could hear her silent prayer that her sister and two best friends had gotten stuck in traffic and were late arriving at the cabin. She couldn’t bear to think about her baby sister suffering like this or being torn apart by those creatures from the convoy. A silent tear slipped from her eye as she took in her own fate. The tiny drop of moisture dried up as quickly as her hope did on her sunburnt cheek.

She was lost in the desert on an alien planet and would die out here, soon.

Shaking off those thoughts, Amy climbed back to her unsteady feet, taking a moment to steady herself, and scanned the horizon around her. Her eyes moved over the wavy sands, but all she saw were endless dunes. Turning to her right, she scanned that area as well, but found only more sand.

“This is it,” she rasped through a dry, sore throat, “This is where I die.”

She closed her eyes, forcing one foot in front of the other as she moved in the same direction she had been for the last week.

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