Tango walks through the valley. A small, frozen river runs along their right-hand side that the two of them follow. The cliffs on either side of them rise up into the distance to create this passage that they’re in.
“Are we there yet?”
“What?” asks Tango.
Pen shifts around, clearly bored. “The city? Are we there yet?”
The bauble zooms in on the bloodied girl, sitting sideways in the seat, her feet up on the left inside wall, as she leans back against the right one.
“No, it’s still going to take uh…” Tango looks around the desolate, snow-covered pass. “- a while.”
“How long is a while?” asks Pen, fidgeting as she slumps deeper into her seat.
“A long time,” says Tango. “I don’t know where this ‘city’ of yours is -“
“It's to the north,” interrupts the girl, rolling her eyes with some flair for emphasis. She wants to be sure that he sees it.
“Sure, but. If it’s to the north of where we are now, it’s still going to take a while until we finish walking around the mountains.”
“Can’t we just go over them?” asks Pen, looking at the bauble.
“That’s a bad plan. The altitude was making you sick.”
Pen tilts her head, not understanding. “Huh?”
“Air gets thinner when you go higher up. That makes it harder to breathe,” explains Tango.
“How can air be thin?”
“Huh?” asks Tango, this time.
“Air,” repeats Pen, holding out her hands and grabbing the air before her. “It’s not there, so how can it be thin? And if there’s thin air, is there fat air?”
“Uh… no, that’s… never mind,” relents the man.
“You’re really dumb,” sighs Pen, crossing her arms and shaking her head.
Tango doesn’t respond, opting to simply take the metaphorical high road, as he continues following the river.
The two of them walk for a time, both of them deciding that they’d rather not hold a conversation right now. Soon, an hour passes. Then another. With each concurrent passing of time, Pen shifts to sit in a new, increasingly awkward position, eventually landing upside down with her feet on the hatch and her head drooping downward past the seat. Another hour passes, then another. Sometime in between, the girl had fallen asleep and Tango just keeps on silently walking, thankful for the reprise. She’s a difficult person.
The river winds on for a long time, the mountains at their side, the stone slopes growing higher and higher as they head deeper into the valley. The lush pine forest is still all around them, but grows tighter and tighter as the high walls of the mountains on either side come to make a choke point near the mouth of the river. A cave opens up on the side of the rock-face, on their side of the water.
[WARNING: HEAT SIGNATURE DETECTED]
>>>SCANNING...
CONCLUSION: Radioactive Raw Material Fragment
The author's tale has been misappropriated; report any instances of this story on Amazon.
“Hey, wake up,” says Tango in a loud voice. Pen stirs, grumbling as she shifts. “There’s something here.”
Pen yawns, stretching and rubbing her eyes as she sits back upright, her hands falling down onto her sore head as she scratches the top of her blood-crusted ears. “What?” asks the girl sleepily, looking at the window before her. “Hey! Look! There’s a cave!”
“Uh… yeah, there’s a cave,” says Tango, walking towards it. “The scanner says that there’s a rad-frag inside of it.”
“A what?”
“Oh, uh, a crystal,” says Tango.
Pen’s eyes light up as she leans forward, pressing her face against the projection on the flat metal surface. Her gaze greedily scans every inch of the screen, but she slowly loses interest and leans back again. “I don’t see anything.”
“It’s probably inside the cave.”
“Oh,” she looks up at the bauble. “Well?”
“Well what?” asks Tango, the glass bauble hissing as it zooms in on her dirty face.
“Why aren’t you going inside?”
Tango sighs and moves forward. “Buckle up. I don’t want you getting rattled around if something happens again.”
“Huh?” asks Pen, hearing the word. Her eyes go wide. “Don’t hit me with the buckle! I won’t move! I promise!” she shouts, sitting back firmly against the chair.
“What? No, look to your left. You see that little thing sticking out of the hole there?” asks Tango, not even sure what to make of her shifts in emotion anymore.
Pen fearfully looks to her side, at the little metal tab that she has seen a few times before.
“Grab it and pull it out over yourself,” says Tango and she does as she’s told. The dense, black fabric of the belt hisses as she pulls it out of the socket and holds it before herself, looking up warily at the bauble. “Down to your right, see that little red hole? Stick them together.” Warily, Pen does as asked and the belt clicks into place. It pulls back in an instant, pressing her lightly against the seat. “Okay, now do the same thing, but the other way around.”
Pen pulls the second belt from the top right down to the socket on the bottom left, crossing the second belt diagonally over the first to make an X that presses against her. “Great, that’ll stop you from flying around so much. If something happens, or if something is about to happen, put them on, okay?”
Pen doesn’t say anything, squirming as the belts press against her body, holding her in place. “I don’t like it,” mutters the girl quietly a moment later.
Tango walks forward, a heavy thud rings out as the light on the front of the suit turns on and illuminates the darkness ahead of them. “I don’t care. Wear it.” Pen grumbles, pulling on the straps. Why is she even listening to him?
The light shines out in the cave ahead of them, the controls hiss as they recede back into the panel, the metal covering sliding back into place a second later.
“Hey!” argues Pen.
“This could get dangerous. Let me handle it.”
“But what if you go to sleep again?!” argues the girl, trying to lean forward, but the belts quickly press her back into place and she snarls, grabbing the top one with her hands and biting down on it. “I hate this!” she growls, chewing on the tough fabric of the safety-belt.
“You can take it off when we get out again, okay? It’s just for your safety,” argues Tango.
“I’m safe without it!”
“No you’re not.”
“I AM!” says Pen, pulling on the belt in an attempt to get it off of her, but it doesn’t budge.
Tango looks forward, opting to let her squirm for a moment. He has to pay attention to what’s in front of them. The cave is fairly broad and straightforward, the light illuminating the gray walls reflects and shines along the matte, crumbly rock all around them as it bounds down the tunnel.
A hum can be heard.
Pen stops fidgeting and listens, her sensitive ears perking up in an instant as she differentiates the sound from all of the other noises around her. “There’s a crystal here!” she says excitedly, her doubts about the belt lost beneath her newfound excitement.
“Yeah, I told you,” says the man as they walk on ahead, deeper into the cave. The light shines on forward for a time, until the bright, shining ray falls over a large disturbance in the center of the chamber just ahead of them. Tango shifts, his legs locking into place, his arms at his side as he seems to get ready for something.
But nothing happens.
Pen squints, trying to figure out what it is that she’s looking at on the screen.
“What is it?”
“Dead,” is all that Tango says as he loosens his posture and carefully moves towards the thing. As they move closer, Pen is able to make out that there is indeed something there, some kind of animal, but she doesn’t really know what it is. The girl tilts her head, trying to get a better view on the carcass of the thing. It’s big, really big. As big as any of the giant rocks around them in the small cave. But it lays in a lifeless, brown heap in the center of the chamber.
“Can I eat it?” asks Pen, looking at the dead animal on the screen.
“No. I wouldn’t. It’s probably rotting. Besides, you just ate something, didn’t you?”
“I’m still hungry,” argues the girl, crossing her arms.
Suddenly, something lets out a whining noise, as something moves on the body, a pair of small paws climbing up over the side of the carcass. The baby bear lifts its head, looking over its mother as it screams at the intruders as ferociously as it can.
“What about that one? Can I eat that one?”
“It’s just a baby,” says Tango, the screen zooms in on the small animal.
“So?” asks Pen.
“That’s pretty cruel.”
Pen leans back, looking at the screen and then at the bauble confused. “Why?”
“What? Because it’s not even grown up yet.”
“So? Not grown up things die all the time,” argues Pen. “Besides, it’s going to die anyways. So I want to eat it.”
“Let’s just look for the crystal, it’s probably in here somewhere,” suggest Tango, ignoring her statement.
“I want to eat it!” argues Pen.
“You’re not going to eat the bear!” lectures the man.
“What? Are you dumb?! Berries are plants, that’s an animal!” argues Pen, shaking her aching head. She tries to pull herself free from the belts again. “If you’re going to be a dumb jerk, then I’ll just go and catch it myself!” argues the girl, wiggling out of the restraints.
“You’re going to get hurt!” says Tango. “Sit still! What if it bites you and it gets infected? You already have enough injuries!”
Pen stands up, her head bent forward as her neck presses against the roof of the cabin as she slips her legs out of the belt one at a time. “How are you alive?!” asks the girl with some venom, looking angrily at the bauble next to her face. “There’s free food right there! Meat! And you just want to leave it here to rot? Are you stupid?!” She turns around, grabbing the hatch. “If you don’t want any, then I’ll just eat it all by myself!”
“Even if you catch it, what are you going to do, just eat it raw?” asks the man, as she pulls on the hatch.
“If I have to!” yells the girl, the thin skin over her taut, bony face stretching as she glares at the glass eye inside of the cabin.
Tango sighs, looking at the malnourished creature and then turns around, gazing down at the bear cub that stands atop its mothers carcass and roars at them defiantly.