Page 14 of Meat

The beast didn’t answer because it didn’t understand. Instead, its massive hand took hold of Alyx’s body and roughly flipped her onto her belly. She was too weak to even attempt any resistance. Between the running and everything that had come after, her limbs felt limp and useless. She had no choice but to let this creature manhandle her like a broken doll.

The shadow of the monster fell over her. She felt its muscled thighs straddling her own. With her face pressed into the dead leaves and dirt, she flinched in anticipation of the penetration that must be coming.

But it never came.

Instead, the brute pulled her arms behind her, crossing her wrists at her lower back. He bound her with the braided leather cord she had seen before, looping and tying her hands in masterful knots.

“Wait,” Alyx gasped. “What are you doing?”

Alyx tried, tentatively, to twist her hand free, but the supple leather cordage held snug.

Next, her legs were bent toward her butt. More bindings were lashed around her ankles, and these knots were bound to the ones on her wrists.

She was being hog-tied.

“Please,” Alyx begged. “Please don’t do this…”

But the alien brute ignored her helpless pleas. With a savage grunt, he flipped Alyx over again, hoisted her up like she was weightless, tossed her tied body over his shoulder like a caveman returning from the hunt, and set off through the trees toward some unknown destination.

CHAPTER 6

Darkfall came, drenching the forest in a blackness that was almost palpable. With her eyes robbed of vision, Alyx’s other senses seemed to become more attuned. The smells of the forest enveloped her—the warm earthy smell of decaying logs and the bitter perfume of crushed leaves.

Sounds became amplified in that stygian darkness. Foremost was the steady trudge of the alien brute’s heavy feet on the forest floor, making no attempts at stealth. But there were other noises out there too. Frightening, animals sounds. The flutter of nocturnal wings. Intermittent shrieks and whinnies and chittering cries of animals which Alyx didn’t even want to imagine.

The one that had her tied and flung over her shoulder was bad enough.

And as ashamed as she was to admit it to herself, Alyx felt weirdly protected by the monster that carried her. Had she not been caught in his trap, she would now be all alone in this alien forest, unable to build a fire, incapable of finding food. What would she have done then?

Alyx shook her head, silently chastising herself for such thoughts.

This creature that held her captive was no protector.

The rough treatment she had already endured under this brute’s hands—the spanking and what had come after—all of that was just the beginning. And then there was the leather binding her wrists and ankles. Alyx didn’t want to think of what other tortures lay in store for her.

A new noise was added to the soundtrack of the night—the gurgle of running water. The sound grew louder. Soon the alien’s footsteps were splashes followed by the wet chugging sounds of his powerful thighs wading through the deeper current.

In the all-encompassing darkness, Alyx caught a glint of gold on the water’s surface, then another.

She twisted on the shoulder that held her and looked over her own shoulder in the direction they were heading. There was light up ahead. The orange flicker of a campfire amid the dark silhouettes of the trees.

There were voices as well. Moving figures. Massive, brutish forms that cast outsized, mutant shadows in the dancing glow of the fire.

Alyx's heart thumped faster.

The creature that was carrying her let out a series of grunts. A moment later, a reply came from the campsite. There was an exchange of guttural alien words.

Alyx was brought into the circle of light. Her field of vision glittered as her darkness-dilated eyes struggled to contend with this new, almost painful luminance. She was slung off the alien brute’s shoulder and deposited none too gently on her side upon the ground.

As her vision gradually recovered, Alyx surveyed her surroundings in silent fear.

Dominating the center of the campsite was a stone-rimmed campfire. Orange tongues licked and devoured the hunks of wood there. Off to one side, at the edge of the shadows, more wedges of firewood had been piled, along with the primitive stone ax that had been used for splitting. There were some crude wooden crates, bound up with hemp-like ropes and huge sacks of animal hide.

There were strange animals nearby too, three of them, tethered like horses. Only these were no horses. Instead, they looked like freaking two-legged dinosaurs, built like velociraptors, but much, much bigger. Big enough to be ridden and to carry goods as well. Their primitive harnesses suggested they were used for just that purpose. Pack animals.

Then Alyx’s eyes came to the dead thing hanging from a branch, and a shocked gasp escaped her.

Her first thought was that it was a human carcass, like the ones she had seen back at that awful ship at the nith facility. But she quickly realized this was not the case. Too small. Wrong shape. It was some sort of wild animal—something like a very small deer, perhaps—gutted and dressed, its freshly skinned muscles glistening in the firelight.