Jason Frost - Badlands

Wendy stuck out her chest and closed her eyes, offering herself up as sacrifice for the children's sake.

"Don't," Eric said.

Paige stood in front of the girl, her hand clutching the knife, her body shaking with rage. Finally she flung the knife to the floor. "Let's get out of here." Her voice was hollow, almost an echo.

Sound filtered in from outside. Men approaching.

"Drop it, kid!" a man shouted.

Another man laughed harshly. "What the fuck is this? Disneyland?"

Eric ducked out of the pantry, peeked out the kitchen door, saw nothing, slid along the side of the house and glanced around the corner.

Col. Dirk Fallows and his men were marching across the lawn. Next to Fallows, Tim. Eric noticed the Walther, his Walther, tucked in Tim's waistband.

Peter had managed to work the arrow free from his leg and was standing now, leaning on a couple of the children with one hand, holding his machete in his other.

"What do you want?" Peter demanded.

"Want?" Fallows repeated with a smile. "We're just weary travellers looking for a couple friends of ours."

"Damn," Eric whispered to himself, spun and ran back to the kitchen door.

Paige was waiting there, silently threatening the children with the knife to keep them quiet. "What is it? What's going on?"

"No time," Eric said. "Let's go."

"OK, I'll grab my gun and the tapes."

Eric gripped her arm and yanked her out the door. "No time. They're coming in. Now."

"But the tapes-"

His fingers dug into her arm. "Forget them."

They ran full-speed across the back yard, Paige's ankle screaming from the deep cut Wendy Had given her. They were into the woods just as some of Fallows's men burst into the house and herded Wendy and the children out into the yard with the others. One of them carried Paige's HK 93 with the laser scope.

"Hey, Colonel, looky here."

Fallows examined it, then glanced around, staring for a few seconds right through the trees where Eric and Paige were hiding. Eric knew he couldn't actually see him, but it was a chilling feeling anyway.

Fallows tossed the gun back to his soldier. "Looks like we got them while they were on the toilet. Took off with their pants still around their ankles." His eyes swept the grounds again.

"You want us to go after them?" one of the men asked.

Eric and Paige listened from their prone positions, exchanging looks.

"Not yet. Not until we see if they found what they were looking for. We'll tear this place apart first."

"Colonel!" a soldier shouted, stumbling out of the kitchen door, holding his stomach. "Jesus, Colonel." He doubled over and retched onto the ground.

"Christ, Bedlow," Fallows said with disgust.

Bedlow spat out what was left of his lunch and wiped the mess from his lips. "Cannibals, Colonel. These little bastards are cannibals. They got a fucking butcher shop in there. Arms, legs, everything. They eat people, for Chrissake."

"Really?" Fallows smiled with amusement as he looked the children over. "So you kids been chewing the fat, huh? Been biting the hand that feeds you?"

"What are you going to do?" Peter asked.

"Whatever we want," Fallows said. "So you and your brats just keep your mouths shut until we're done."

Peter stormed a few steps toward Fallows. "This is our home. You have no right to-"

Fallows tugged his Walther from its holster and shot Peter in the face. The bullet removed Peter's left cheek and a quarter of the back of his skull. Some of the younger children screamed and cried. Most followed Wendy's example and just watched quietly.

"Shouldn't we do something?" Paige whispered.

"What?"

Paige thought about it, sighed. "Yeah."

But Eric wasn't concerned with what was going on as much as he was with Tim's reactions to it. He watched his son's face as Fallows blasted away Peter's face. There was the shock of the noise, but otherwise nothing. No reaction. Of all the dangers and life-threatening situations Eric had faced in his life, this frightened him the most. Come on, son, he begged silently, show me something.

Fallows left a man to guard the children and lead the others into the house. The loud sounds of the house being savaged, furniture being smashed, cupboards torn apart, drummed through the woods.

Eric nudged Paige. "Come on."

"Where?"

"Away from here."

"But the tapes. My father's tapes."

Eric shook his head. "Fallows has them now. It won't take him long to figure it out."

"Then what?"

Eric considered that for a moment. "If he found us here he must have gotten the info from Steve. That means he knows when the shuttle takes off again. He'll have to decide whether he's got enough time to come after us and still get to the shuttle in time." Eric pulled Paige to her feet and handed her the HK 93. He unslung the crossbow, cocked it, and fixed a bolt in the groove.

"What about them?" Paige asked, hooking a thumb over her shoulder. "What do you think those kids will do now that Peter's dead?"

"Eat him," Eric said.

"My God, Eric, even that little girl-"

"Sarah."

"Yeah, Sarah. She was the one who hit me. Tried to kill me."

Eric brushed aside a branch and waited for Paige to walk through before letting it swing free. They'd retraced their trail for about five miles. Paige had babbled the whole time about their ordeal, trying to talk herself down, make some sense of it.

"It's like Twilight Zone, you know," she said. "Innocent faces invite you to dinner. Only you turn out to be the main course. Jesus."

"You've got to let it go, Paige," Eric said. He'd let her talk uninterrupted for the past forty-five minutes. Now he sensed she wanted some answers. He didn't have any, but he would try.

"But they're kids, damn it. Children. Where'd they learn to do something so horrible?"

"That's just it. They're too young to have a clear sense of it being all that horrible. All they know is that when you get hungry, you eat. Peter would have had to be a hell of a hunter to provide enough game for all of them to eat. And they don't look like they know much about gardening. So they ate the bodies that were lying around. Like that family Tracy and I saw earlier in a cabin, just before the shuttle landed. Some of these kids had the same symptoms, probably from eating the contaminated flesh."

"But why us?' "Maybe they were afraid we'd tell others where they were. Maybe we just looked too tasty to let slip away."

"That's not funny."

"Sure it is. As funny as you're going to get here. You just arrived. Wait until you've been here awhile. You'll be slapping your knees at the strangest things."

She glared at him. "That's one delight I don't have to worry about. As soon as I get back to the Columbia, we're taking off. They had to do some fancy redesigning so it could take off on its own, and I don't intend to let their ingenuity go to waste. I just wish you'd let me go back for the tapes and my pack. Now I can't even contact Dr. Piedmont."

"They were already marching across the front lawn. There wasn't time to go back."

"Maybe," she said."Or maybe you didn't want me to be able to contact the craft. Maybe you just want to stall me until you can get your son back."

"That's our deal, lady. I help you find your father's papers in exchange for Tim's passage. I kept my side of the bargain."

"But now Fallows has them."

Eric shrugged. "Not my problem. I found them, that's all I said I'd do."

"Fine," she spat. "But I'm heading straight back to the ship. If you and your son are there when we take off, we'll talk about it then."

"That could be too late."

"I promised to hold a seat open, not wait."

Eric grabbed her under the arm and spun her around. "There's still almost twenty-one hours left."