Page 89 of Stranded with the Alien

In seconds, the trail he’d been following was washed away in a torrential downpour. With mounting despair, Vahn raised his hands to his mouth.

“Kara!Kalehsha!Where are you? Can you hear me?”

The only response was the sudden commotion of a flock of birds as they took to the sky.

Rocky sniffed the churned soil, whining. Vahn knelt and placed a hand on his head.

“I know we have not always seen eye to eye, beast,” he said. “But we both care abouther. So find her. Lead me to her.”

Rocky put his nose to the ground again. And when he began to run, Vahn was right behind him.

Forty One

She couldn’t move. That was the first thing that filtered through as she fought her way back to consciousness. Her legs and body were pinned by something. Panicked, she tried to free herself and found she was trapped.

She forced herself to calm down. Reining in her fear, she let her training take over and tried to make sense of her surroundings.

She was in some kind of small cavern. It was dark but not pitch black. Daylight was coming in from somewhere. As her eyes adjusted she saw she’d been squashed into a narrow crevice a couple of feet off the ground.

The gap was barely wide enough to contain her. The top of it was an inch above her nose. Her arms were twisted painfully beneath her and her legs had been wedged in with rocks.

She craned her head, trying to see if the creature was lurking. But she was alone. She allowed herself to relax just the tiniest bit. That’s when she registered the smell.

The place reeked – a rotten, decaying stench that filled her nostrils and made her gag. And when she focused on the floor below, she saw why.

She was surrounded by the carcasses of small animals. Some had been stripped down to bare bones but others had been left to partially decompose.

I’m in its lair,she thought wildly.It’s waiting for me to soften up.

Bile rose in her throat and she gagged. Breathing through her mouth, she tried to assess her situation.

The creature had left her here to die. Or maybe it thought she was dead already. It must be a carrion eater or she would have been devoured by now. Instead, she’d been stuffed in its larder to rot down a little.

On the plus side, she didn’t seem to have any serious injuries. Her chest ached and it hurt to breathe, but as far as she could tell nothing was broken.

Her throat was sore where its rancid jaws had closed off her windpipe – and if she got out of here alive she was going to have to take a shitload of antibiotics – but it hadn’t punctured any blood vessels. If it had, she’d have bled to death in seconds.

Okay. So far so good.

Franken-Grizzly had put her in here for safe-keeping and then gone out to terrorize the neighborhood some more. This was her chance.

She tried to wriggle her way out of the crevice but it was too narrow to get much purchase and there were too many rocks weighing her down. Once again panic flooded through her, this time coupled with claustrophobia.

For fuck’s sake calm down.

She fought to steady her heartbeat and an image of Vahn came into her mind. Vahn putting himself in harm’s way to protect her.

God, she hoped he was all right. The thought that he might be hurt… or worse…

He might be dead.

The thought hit her like a freight train. He hadn’t been moving when she started to run. And he was injured. What if he’d bled out? Her stomach tightened painfully and she wanted to throw up again.

She had to stop thinking like that. Because if he wasn’t all right, it would be more than she could endure. And then she’d never get out of here. She’d just lie here until that thing came to kill her.

Move your butt, Singh.

Working methodically, she concentrated on freeing a hand from under her body. Just one hand. That wasn’t hard, was it? She twisted her fingers and wrist until finally, she was able to draw her arm out.

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