Page 14 of Rebirth

I try not to stare as his massive shoulders lift and fall, muscles rippling under his ridged skin as he pushes his hands deeper into the Earth.

“There is something…unnatural,” he says. “The frequency has been...altered by outside interference.”

Frequency? Interference?

Something unnatural…

Images from before shoot through my mind of the first time I saw one of the great machines that almost ended us all. Of the sound it made. The way it chilled the air, rattling the flesh on my bones and spelling doom for us all.

“Them? Are they back?” I manage to keep my voice steady. To control the sudden spike of fear. But the hairs at the back of my neck stand on end, my intestines coiling in my gut.

Those icy eyes fall back on me as the alien lifts his head. “You are a scientist. You study the flows and pulses of existence. Do you sense it?”

My brows rise as my mouth opens for a response I don’t have.

“I am—was—an epidemiologist. I studied patterns of disease, not this “energy” or “frequency” you refer to.” I swallow hard, eyes falling back to the earth his hands are buried beneath. “You can feel something? Vibration? Frequency? Energy?”

Slitted eyes watch me. There is no emotion within them. And I realize at this moment that I cannot use human indicators to read him. For he has none.

He is not like us. He may be bipedal. Two arms. One head. Similar frame. But he is nothing like us at all. He is something different altogether.

But his words…they wake a deep fear within me that I’ve tried to bury, ever since I exited my bunker and entered the silence.

“I feel…everything.”

Again, he has me speechless and I get the sense his words are deeper than they appear. That if he cared to explain, I might not like the answer.

And yet… “Everything?”

He studies me for a moment before his hands slip from beneath the soil and I watch, hypnotized, as the dirt falls from his skin in little particles without him shaking it off his hand.

“The greed. The pain. The yearning…” he suddenly says. My eyes snap to his and I’m once again greeted by twin glaciers.

“What about it?” I whisper.

“I feel it all.”

I swallow hard. I’m not sure exactly what we’re talking about here. Something tells me this is more than I currently am capable of understanding. But I want him to speak. I want him to continue.

“And?” I ask.

He pauses, staring at me for so long I squirm under his gaze.

“And their hunger,” he finally says. And for the first time since I’ve invited myself on his journey, he moves in a way that chills me completely.

In a mere second, the alien is before me.

Face to face with this pale entity, I can’t move. I am frozen, fear holding me captive.

His nostrils flare as he inhales, but he doesn’t move further.

This close, I realize just how much bigger he is. How vulnerable I am. And I wonder if this conversation was the precursor to my doom.

I’d felt he was going to attack me. I’m sure of it now.

And when he bares his sharp teeth, I force myself not to tremble.

“Hunger,” I whisper.

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