Page 22 of Feast

Were these monsters planning on cooking and eating her?

“Zkkkt! Let us proceed then. Load the human meat into the storage compartment.”

Another underling ran over, and together with his partner they lifted Ika’s cage and set her in the bed of the hovering vehicle.

At last Ika broke down. “Where are you taking me?”

She felt the mask tighten around her lips again, silencing her voice. The nith leader came into view again, closer to eye level now.

“We are taking you back to where you belong, human. To the facility. To the slaughterhouse.”

Slaughterhouse? Ika had never heard that term before, but she knew its constituent parts. A house was a kind of building, like a den. To slaughter meant to kill an animal for food. Ika gasped behind the mask and her eyes rounded with fear. The nith read that emotion on her face and chuckled.

“That’s right, human. We are going to use you for meat. Delicious meat. Kzzzssttk!”

Ika shivered at the nith’s words. Images conjured in her mind. Nightmare images of nith feasting on her bloody, mangled body.

“Let’s go,” the leader called to his companions.

The nith all loaded into the seats of the vehicle, the engine rumbled to life, and they started to drive away through the snowy forest. Mentally, Ika bid farewell to the environment that had been her lifelong home, bid farewell to her beloved Rolf too, and tried her best to steel herself for the fate that lay ahead of her.

The vehicle picked up speed, and the trees whooshed past in the growing morning light.

Suddenly, a sharp whistling sound came from the forest, and a thrown spear landed square in the nith leader’s heart, puncturing all the way through the back of its seat. Green-black blood spattered over Ika’s face and skin, and she screamed silently behind her mask.

The other nith went into a panic, chittering and hissing excitedly.

The vehicle sped up as the driver punched the throttle to escape. The passengers raised their weapons and began firing aimlessly into the shadows of the surrounding forest.

Another sharp whistle. This time an arrow skewered the driver’s throat.

“Kzzsskktt!”

The vehicle swerved wildly. A boulder loomed in front of them, and the front end smashed into it at full speed, crumpling the engine compartment and sending the remaining passengers, Ika included, hurtling through the air.

Ika’s cage spun wildly. Her vision blurred with a swirling pattern of ground, sky, ground, sky.

Her heart lurched so high into her throat it felt like she might vomit it out.

There were sounds of guttural screams and snapping bones as the airborne nith bodies crashed into tree trunks and stones.

Ika braced for her own inevitable impact.

But instead of a brutal, bone-crunching landing, she came to a cushioned stop. When her dizzied senses finally finished reeling, she realized that she had not actually hit the ground.

Her cage had been caught by a pair of strong and skillful hands.

Ika was looked up through the bars of her cramped little cage and found herself staring into the face of an ukkur.

A handsome face with one scarred eye.

CHAPTER 9

Gunnar stared down at the animal shivering in its cage on the floor of the cave where they were now hiding. They had gotten a good fire going, and the animal’s smooth, hairless skin shone like red gold in the warm glow of the flames. The creature had a peculiar scent which the smoke and aroma of charred wood did not hide. It was a scent that caused an inexplicable throb in Gunnar’s balls.

“So…what the rot is this thing?” Thusar asked.

Among his ukkur brethren, Gunnar was respected for his vast knowledge of all things natural and unnatural. He knew all of the trees and plants of the forests and fields. He knew which ones to eat, which to use for medicine, and which to avoid as poison. He knew every animal too, could identify them by their tracks and their droppings. He even had some mastery of nith technology, which he and his pack brothers occasionally scavenged from raiding nith patrols.