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The Seventh Escape

By Amanda Flieder

www.amandaflieder.ca

Copyright © 2018 Amanda Flieder

Cover Art Photograph by Gateway to Astronaut Photography of Earth

Httph://eol.jsc.nasa.gov/collections/Composites/

All rights reserved.

No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means – electronic, mechanical, photocopying, and recording or otherwise – without the prior written permission of the author, except for brief passages quoted by a reviewer in a newspaper or magazine. To perform any of the above is an infringement of copyright law.

1

Abby sat in the dark and listened. She knew she should be sleeping, that it would be easier to fall asleep if she could just stop listening, but she couldn’t turn off the audio and drift away. She could close her eyes and not see them huddling around their makeshift table and plotting, but she couldn’t turn off the whispered and rushed audio.

After a while she just rolled over to face the wall and pulled the thin blanket up so that she could cover her open ear with her hand without being obvious about it. Obvious just made them all angry with her. Well, angrier. The six of them were already so scared even though nothing bad had happened. Sure, they had been abducted off the street and were being kept in a large cell by strange, birdlike creature-people, but they still had indoor plumbing, three meals a day with snacks in between, and showers and clean clothes every other day. There wasn’t much to be scared of here, Abby thought. Well, except for the other six she had to share the sleeping quarters with.

Mostly, Abby thought, it was like an adventure; the kind that happened to interesting people in books with a strange solar system or a space ship on the cover. It was exciting, in a way.

The small meeting ended and the others shuffled off to their bunks. Charlie stopped and poked her with his foot as he was passing by, not hard enough to be a kick, just a poke, but Abby didn’t move. That was the best way to deal with him when he acted like that. He waited for a minute, then huffed and tromped away when she didn’t react. She had learned how to deal with him when they had been married, and it was over five years ago now since he’d gotten out of jail. When they’d been married, she had learned how to avoid him as best she could. Once he was in lockup, she’d counted her lucky stars every day up to now that he’d been in jail when she went through with the divorce.

Actually, she could thank Charlie for really making it possible for this abduction to turn into an adventure for her. Even with the restraining order, she’d still had to avoid him so much. He was always a few days or a week behind her that first year he’d been out, hunting after her. She learned to stay ahead of him by learning how to simply be not seen, and then – as she got better at it – the time had started getting longer and longer between when he would catch up. (She could even get jobs that didn’t pay cash at the end of each day during his second year out, and had had a salary job for the past few months before getting nabbed and brought here.) Now all that sneaking about was coming in handy: she’d been able to look out of every window she’d found whenever they were allowed out of the sleeping quarters, and none of them that she shared this cell with had even noticed when she was gone. The birdlike people didn’t seem to mind that she wandered as long as she went back where she was supposed to be when they found her. They were very gentle about taking her back, too.

Of course, she didn’t tell Charlie and his little five-person mob about looking out the windows. Then they would want to know what she had seen. Abby didn’t want to tell them anything about that because it would just make them more scared. If she’d learned anything about people over her life, it was that scared or angry was better than scared and angry.

Slowly her cellmates started drifting off to sleep, some of them starting to snore. Once everyone else was asleep, Abby finally dropped off.

* * *

It was a shower day. The water was the perfect temperature, Abby thought, but the other woman complained bitterly. As Abby dried herself off she noticed that her hair was touching her ears. Her adorably perfect pixie cut – Rosy, her last hair dresser, called it that anyway – was long overdue for a clean-up trim. Abby tried to think back and remember how long she’d been here and guessed it at about two and a half, or maybe three, months.

Opposite to the other six abductees, she was enjoying herself. They got exercise days now, actually had been getting them for nearly two months, and she loved being able to jog the track or try the solo stuff she could remember from that kickboxing class she’d taken for about a year as a teenager. Her cellmates had mostly stopped trying to talk to her, except Charlie, and even he was leaving her alone for longer stretches of time. That probably had more to do with one of the... she couldn’t pronounce it yet. Anyway, one of them had grabbed Charlie when they had seen him grab her and Charlie hadn’t liked it too much. She’d seen the bruises on his arm that night from those vise-like fingers. His bruises had been darker than the ones he’d left on her arm.

That had scared the gang freshly, that the... geesh she wished she could pronounce it. Their language was so hard to mimic. Throaty and whistley and warbly all at the same time, like a canary crossed with a crow. Their name sounded like a whistle with the hick-ups. Not like you were trying to whistle when you had the hick-ups, but that the whistle itself had the hick-ups. For now she was just thinking of them as ‘Others’.

2

It was an exercise day. On her twelfth lap around the big track a side door slid open and one of the Others came out. The sky-blue crested one. It turned away, not noticing her, and Abby ducked into the room behind it as the door slid shut again. As neat a feat no feet could beat – as her dad used to say. Usually when she did this, there would be more Others in the room and she would just be gently led back to wherever she had come from. Now and then she’d find herself in a long hallway, and usually could wander a bit and just look around at the strange place she was being kept. Different times, there would be an empty room and she would get a few minutes of looking around at things she’d never seen before. Always, though, she would then get caught and gently led back to where she was supposed to be.

Right now, the room was empty and had an enormous window. Completely ignoring the familiar strangeness of the things in the room, Abby sprinted up the few steps to look outside. She pressed her hands against the slick, perfectly clear material and gazed out at the spectacular view of the planet below her backed by the thousands – maybe even millions, or billions! – of stars.

She had grown up down there never even once dreaming that she might one day be up here. Now she was having the adventure of a lifetime, it was catered, and there was a private training program. Abby smiled. She was eating right and exercising and had never felt better in her whole life.

Abby was way too absorbed in the view to notice one of the Others walk up behind her. She nearly jumped through the window as she spun around and let out a yelp of surprise when it first touched her arm to take her back to the exercise area. (Probably ‘arena’ would be a better description, the place was massive.) The Other struck out at her defensively, the razor-sharp claws stopping less than an inch from her throat.

They stood still for a moment, frozen. Abby suddenly exhaled in a rush, her right hand moved to cover her heart and her left to her mouth. She closed her eyes so she would remember to breathe in again and when she opened them the Other was watching her warily, golden eyes gazing out from the coppery-colored, scaled skin behind the hardened mask. Her breath came out in giggles and the blood rushed up to make her face hot and uncomfortable. The Other’s stance finally relaxed and, with a head shake and a soft ruffling sound, the crest of feathers settled smoothly against the back of its neck.

Those feathers were a shiny, copper-tinted red, Abby knew. This was the same one that had grabbed Charlie. Abby watched for this one. She liked this one.

The Other waited for her giggles to subside and then, with the careful attentiveness humans would usually attribute to a pediatric surgeon, lifted the short sleeve of her tee-shirt to check her arm for the injury that had made her yelp. She giggled again as its head ducked and bobbed and those golden eyes darted back to her face, the sharp talons at the ends of its fingers piercing small holes in her shirt-sleeve as it paused. She bit her lips together to try and stop the embarrassment from escaping like this and failed miserably when it mistook her silly reaction to being startled as a further sign of injury.

She caught its big hand in both of hers when the Other moved to slice open her shirt with one of its talons.

“I’m okay,” she told it. “You...” she pointed at the door then mimed walking, then covered her ears. “So quiet.”

The Other’s head cocked sideways, curious and uncomprehending. Abby gave up with a sigh. They’d been trying to talk to each other since three times like this ago and had yet to get beyond being relaxed with each other. The Other took her arm carefully. Abby put her hand over its, patted the leathery skin and smiled what she hoped was a reassuring smile. It paused to allow her another moment of looking out the window at all those stars beyond the planet, its eyes kind, and then gently tugged her arm to lead her toward the door.

* * *

The Charlie Gang, as Abby thought of them, attempted their first escape at the end of a shower day. They made it down the hall. Charlie was so proud of himself and they all hailed it as a breakthrough that they’d even gotten the door open.

Abby had gone with them. Charlie was scared and angry and that scared her, like it had scared her when they’d been married, so it had been easy for him to make her go. She’d spent the entire five minutes in a panic and trying to see anywhere that she could get away from the Charlie Gang. There was no police station she could walk to barefoot up here. Much like when Charlie had grabbed her and pulled her into the alley seconds before they had been abducted, there wasn’t a soul around who knew what was going on well enough to help. And the ones who did know, wouldn’t.

The Others that caught them had been firm with them. Abby had hung onto the one that took her back to the cell so strongly that her knuckles had turned white where she grasped its fingers. She stood stiffly under the watchful eyes of Charlie as the sand-colored eyes set in light blue scaled skin darted from her hands to her blank face to its comrades. Through sheer will power, she didn’t grab at it again after it carefully pried her fingers loose.

It looked back at her once as it left the cell. Abby stood where she had been left, watching its back, and its metallic-teal crest feathers ruffled uneasily as the door closed.

3

Abby woke up as all the air painfully rushed out of her lungs. The panic didn’t start until she tried to breathe back in and nothing happened. She was pulled up to a sitting position by her hair and Charlie’s hand clamped over her mouth. Her bangs fell past her wide eyes and tickled at her nose as her stomach clenched and she was able to draw in small puffs of sweet air. He had kicked her awake. One of his old favorites.

“Let’s go, babe,” he whispered harshly into her face, his breath stinking, and then pulled her to her feet.

Abby knew better than to whimper or cringe even though it hurt her insides fiercely to stand up so fast. Another escape. This would make it an even six over the past year if you included the first attempt as an escape. The Charlie Gang looked excited, like zealots that were going on the bus to meet their television idol. Abby steeled herself for whatever was going to come next in their latest plot and simply clung to the hope that she would find a way to get away from them.

The Gang popped the cell door and scurried down the winding halls, Charlie dragging Abby along by her arm. He was angry tonight. And scared. His hand wrapped above her elbow so tightly that his fingers felt like they were crushing the muscles. She tripped and he hit her across the mouth. He didn’t even snarl at her when he did it. Abby tried harder to keep up as her heart pounded in her throat and her ribs burned around the spot where he’d kicked her.

The soft clicking sound of heel spurs against armored boots alerted the man in the lead and he popped another door. They all darted into the room without looking first, and the door slid smoothly closed before the approaching Other saw them, softly thumping locked under Charlie’s skilled hand. Time paused for a minute as Abby realized that Charlie wasn’t going to let go of her this time, not even to lock a door.

* * *

Abby watched the sealed door longingly for a moment before time started up and she noticed she wasn’t getting pulled along. She turned cautiously to look at what was holding the gang in stunned silence. The window was massive. They could see the darkened planet above them back-lit from the sun on the other side, a ribbon of stars trailed across the bottom of the window.

“We’re in space?”

“Told you so.”

“Must be a picture.”

“I don’t believe it.”

Charlie’s Gang milled about and glanced frightfully at the window. Abby barely heard them over her terrified heartbeat. The room itself was full of low tables, starlit shapes resting on most of them. It was eerily quiet.

“Cots?” the woman asked Charlie, her voice barely at a whisper.

One of the men stepped up to the nearest shape and prodded at it with the ends of his fingers. After a moment he chuckled quietly.

“Corpses.”

“Door,” Charlie commanded.

The Gang started searching the perimeter of the room. Abby tried to shrink away from Charlie and he hit her in the mouth again, drawing blood this time. He barely glanced at her and his painful grip on her arm never changed. He was focused and he was angry and she was scared.

“Found one,” one of the men announced quietly from the shadows somewhere off to the right.

Nobody else found anything, so Charlie pulled Abby between the tables and started toward the new door. He struck out at the dead Others with his free hand as they passed. He shouldn’t do that, she thought.

“Don’t,” she said quietly after he struck each one, and he ignored her. The fourth one he hit hard enough to rattle it, the fifth he knocked partly off the table – seemingly no simple feat as the Others were on average about a foot taller than Humans. The way it moved on the table, though, she wondered if they were about the same weight, or maybe lighter if they didn’t have all that armor. Abby heard something solid hit the floor and roll for a moment.

Her quiet ‘don’t’ turned into a blank ‘no’. Charlie grinned at her and then snarled as he hit the sixth one like he had hit the fifth. Abby watched the corpse’s hands bounce apart and a small shiny object fell out of them and dropped to the floor, making a solid thump and rolling in a crescent around the end of the table before stopping just in front of Charlie. It looked like a rounded, lava-glass stone in the starlight. Charlie stepped out, not seeing it. His normal stride would have easily taken him past it without even knowing it was ever there.

“No,” Abby said with finality and shoved him hard enough knock him off balance so that his foot landed right on the smooth little stone.

4

They had all been given new shoes that morning. The shoes had hard soles and soft liners, slip-on things that were pliable and comfortable after a couple of days and replaced every month. The shoes they were all wearing were still in the brand-new and hard-soled phase of their life span. Charlie’s new shoe rolled off the stone and he tipped a little further. In slow motion, just like right before she had walked to the police station barefoot, his head turned so he could glare at her and she could see the blinding madness in his eyes. Just like that night, she balled her fist and drove it as hard as she could right between his eyes.

Time sped back up to full speed as his head snapped back and blood sprayed from his broken nose. He didn’t let go as he was falling, so Abby hit him again on the way down. His grip finally loosened and she jumped to her feet. She took two steps back from him and looked down. He rolled over onto his stomach and started moving towards her, reaching out to grab at her ankles. She stepped once and kicked. Charlie’s head snapped up and then dropped forward hard enough to bounce off the floor. His fingers twitched, but otherwise he’d stopped moving.

Abby remembered the rest of the Gang after a moment and spun around to face where they were standing, but they were all at the door about twenty feet away. All five of them were watching her. She could see the uncertainty, the contrary knowledge of Seeing slowly taking over from Blind Believing. They looked scared, the anger gone for the moment.

She turned away from them and started hunting for the stone that Charlie had stepped on. It was important for her to find it. A person didn’t give tokens to the dead for no reason, and now it might be lost... it had rolled into a shadow two tables away. She walked over, picked it up, and carried it back. The Other on the table was remarkably light for its size and Abby was able to shove it around so it was completely on the table again. She tried to put the arms and legs like the ones beside it and tucked the stone back into its hands as she folded them together, careful to avoid the sharp talons.

The Charlie Gang murmured to each other as she straightened out the next Other and replaced its stone, too. One of the Gang tried to approach her and stopped dead in his tracks under her accusing glare.

“We’re going to go,” he blurted out quietly. “You can come if -”

“Just go,” Abby interrupted him.

Her voice sounded flat and strange in the stillness. The remains of The Charlie Gang scurried out the door together, closing and locking it behind them.

Abby spent what felt like a long time straightening out the armor of the tussled corpses, trying to get them looking like the ones that lay undisturbed. Eventually the Gang burst back into the room, but this time the door didn’t shut. Abby let her hands fall to her sides as their pursuers lithely entered and firmly collected the wayward Gang members. And Charlie. The coppery-red colored Other entered with the rest, but instead of simply collecting Abby it stood across the table from her. After a moment of watching each other, it turned and pointed at a glossy, silver lump on the nearest wall. When it turned back, it tapped at its helmet beside its right eye.

Abby understood immediately. Those lumps were not common, but they were in many places. Cameras, or whatever kind of surveillance the Others used.

Suddenly her knees gave out. The Other came around slowly and knelt beside her. They still couldn’t understand each other, but were getting closer to it. She realized she was crying when it touched her cheek and lifted a tear onto the back of one of its talons. It gently checked her split lip and bruised arm. Abby leaned her forehead against its armored chest plates and sobbed.

* * *

When she woke up, she was lying on a bunk in a small room with a partly-open doorway into the hall. A group of Others – and a few different races she'd never imagined – walked past, talking quietly to each other over what Abby could only refer to as a tablet, barely glancing into her room as they went about their day. She sat up carefully, understanding slowly that she wasn't with the Charlie gang anymore. She was in the part of the ship where everyone lived and worked.

Her bruised arm could barely move, but her lip was stitched and her chest didn’t hurt so much from where she’d been kicked. She glanced around and saw that one whole wall of the room was a window, and that day was just breaking around the horizon of the planet outside. She stood and walked over to the window to stare out at the most beautiful sunrise she had ever seen.