1 Chapter 1: I Caught Me Two More Birds

BOOK ONE: ALIEN MINE

Her captor's overwhelming stench of old sweat, booze, and bear scat assaulted her nose. Her arm throbbed where he gripped her with fleshy fingers, jerking her along the rough mountain path. Natalie stumbled over an exposed tree root, but he continued to drag her, only stopping to raise the dirty bottle of alcohol he clutched in his hand for a long swallow.

"Move, woman. Ain't got all day." He slurred the words, belching them in her face before taking another swig. The carcass of a tiny bird was sandwiched against the bottle, beneath one fat finger, its stick like legs bouncing around with his movements in an obscene dance. Natalie gagged.

Goose bumps followed the creeping sweat, down her neck, beneath her thin sundress. She'd chosen a bright yellow dress this morning, well aware that the unpredictable weather could turn cold within minutes. The cheery color mocked her earlier optimism and did little to ease the fear coursing through her.

A faint, strangely chaotic humming threatened the mountain's usual peaceful atmosphere, silencing all other signs of life. As they moved closer, it morphed into boisterous singing.

Oh dear God.

He'd brought his friends, all of them drunk, by the sound of it.

Her pulsating heartbeat hammered louder in her ears, in rhythm with her heavy breathing.

Just ahead of them a plume of gray-white smoke reached toward the sky, like a snake lazily uncoiling. She stared at it in shock. Making fires in any of the sparse forests left on Earth had been outlawed ages ago in the year 2350. A fire large enough to cause that much smoke could easily spread over the parched mountainside, killing her beloved trees and every living thing in this part of the Rocky Mountains.

This morning she'd checked on the trees she'd planted for the Forestry Department as she'd done every day for the last two years, and for the first time, she'd seen a tiny bird that had fallen out of its nest. She'd cried as she held it in her hand and tried to soothe the quivering little fledgling. Few bird species had survived the drug-resistant chicken flu of the 2380s. Now, almost a century later, the earth was mostly bare of feathered creatures.

The stinking drunk, his hand still locked in a vice around her arm, had stumbled upon her while she'd tried to put the baby bird back in its nest. Natalie cringed at how easily he'd disarmed her and dragged her off. Her father would turn over in his grave if he knew she'd froze, unable to pull the trigger of the shotgun he'd given her on her sixteenth birthday.

"Let go of me," Natalie said through gritted teeth. "I'm an official of the Forestry Department." While being paid by the government agency to plant trees didn't give her any kind of official title, she'd use any edge she had.

His grip around her arm strengthened as he jerked her toward the ominous singing. The wind must've changed direction, for she could smell the warm, ashy fire now.

"Please let me go. I have to make an emergency call. Can't you smell the fire? Look over there - it's smoke." Natalie pointed frantically with her free right hand.

"Yeah, I smell the smoke." He smirked and almost lifted her off her feet when he tightened his beefy grip on her arm further. "Move, woman."

She winced then screamed. Hunched over from the force of his grip, she was sure he'd break her arm. How was it possible that a drunk could be this fast and strong?

The murmur of male voices, mixed with the singing, penetrated her terrified senses. Her body began to shake so much she could barely stumble along behind her drunk captor.

He was taking her to his friends.

What would they do to her?

Would they even care about the fire? Surely one of them would have a TC with them. The Touch Cell Communication Device, TC Comm, or TC for short, was invented by Soft Cell a century ago and it allowed the user to make calls. It also functioned as a holographic device for watching movies and news programs. Even vagrants like these wouldn't dare allow a mountain fire to go unreported. She refused to believe that they'd deliberately started the fire.

The breath in her lungs stuttered as she watched the smoke plume grow ever bigger. If she didn't get to a TC to call for help, the trees, and what little vegetation was left on the mountain, could burn to nothing in a matter of hours. It'd happened once before and she never wanted to witness it again. Centuries ago the vegetation would come back stronger than ever after a fire. But now the mountain struggled for life even at the best of times.

"Why did you come up the mountain? There's nothing here." Natalie gasped, out of breath. He'd dragged her over what felt like half the Rockies, drinking steadily from whatever was in the bottle he lugged around, while she grew more and more thirsty.

"How did you get through the pass?" she asked. Years ago, her father had blasted the only road into the mountain. Now the only way to reach the mountain was on foot.

He didn't answer, just grunted and walked faster.

She tried to wriggle the fingers of her left hand, but they had long since gone numb from his cruel grip on her arm. Her heartbeat thundered louder in her ears as they abruptly entered a clearing surrounded by pine trees. The smell of smoke intensified, rising from a crackling fire right in the middle of a crude camp.

Natalie peered through the mass of brown hair, hanging over her face, and staggered. Pale yellow flames were eating away at one of her precious pine trees with obscene efficiency. The crackling of the fire sounded like gunshots in her ears, each time startling her to the point her bladder threatened to embarrass her. Never before had fear invaded her body so completely.

Through the haze of smoke, she saw men lying around in the dirt in drunken stupors. Her stomach reacted to the smell of roasting meat, and she gagged when she saw the same type of small bird her captor carried, speared on a stick stretched over the fire. She wanted to scream at them for their senseless cruelty. Didn't they care that they burned a dying species? Burning a pine tree meant jail time, but the penalty for killing an animal or bird meant incarceration for life.

"I caught me two more birds," her captor said, laughing uproariously at his own joke as he lifted the bottle where he still clutched the carcass of the baby bird he'd killed.

Natalie closed her eyes as the foul-looking bunch of men leered, whistled, and made obscene gestures. Her captor hurled her forward and she fell with a painful thump, scraping both knees raw. A soft groan slipped past her lips without her permission.

She knew she should try to run, but the orange-yellow fire mesmerised her. She stumbled upright and something dripped down her leg, but it hardly registered as the dancing flames held her gaze.

"It's against the law to burn wood and kill animals," she murmured, as if making dinner conversation. Her mind screamed out against the atrocity in front of her, but her vocal chords simply wouldn't cooperate. Even so, her softly spoken words seemed to cut like a bullet through the chaos around her.

"Shurrap about it, bitch. No one wanna know." The slob who'd brought her here pushed against her back with his dirty paw, and she stumbled into the midst of the group, each man looking as though they would make her sorry she'd ever been born. Every horror story she'd ever seen on the Touch Cell News flashed through her mind. If her ears weren't ringing, she'd probably hear her knees knocking together.

Never show fear to predators.

Her father's words, one of the many lessons he'd drilled into her head before he'd died.

She took a deep breath, pressed her trembling lips together, and lifted her chin.

"See? Told you we won't have to go look. She was just walking on this here mountain." Her captor swaggered to where a bottle of yellow liquid sat on the ground. Grabbing it, he took a swig then belched.

"This is private property, and you're trespassing," she said, injecting as much authority as she could into her voice. "As the designated forestry official for this area, I order you to put out the fire and leave the mountain." She was proud of how firm she sounded, though she doubted it would make a difference to this bunch.

A month ago, a group of men had come up the mountain and raided her house before burning it to the ground. Natalie had watched, helpless, from the cover of the trees, while they destroyed the only home she'd known. She'd thought she would never be that frightened and helpless again, but she was wrong. This was much worse.

She had to find a way out of this, but her legs trembled so much she doubted she could take even a single step. And if she did manage to get her legs to run, they'd just catch her again anyway.

She stared at the fire, watching the bird's flesh slowly char. Disgust rose up her throat even as her mouth watered from the smell of roasting meat.

Did they think they were above the law? That they wouldn't get caught? Sure, the police were slow to react these days, but they dealt swift justice to anyone harming plant or animal life.

"The penalty for burning wood and killing animals is a lifetime in jail."

The massive hand of her captor made contact with her jaw and a dull crack echoed around the clearing. The force of the blow jerked her head to the left with such violence, it slammed her to the ground. Her ears rang and black spots stole her vision.

It took a moment to realize he'd slapped her so hard she'd almost lost consciousness. Dazed, Natalie shook her head and tried to focus through the thin layer of black spots still flashing in front of her eyes. Slowly, the scene around her came into focus. The men were closing in, leering down at her. She bit her lip raw trying to suppress a moan of fear. The mountain was isolated. Even if she screamed her lungs out, no one would come to her rescue.

"You don't stop yer preaching, there's more where that came from," her captor threatened.