Page 17 of The Commander

Cara left the bedroom wearing the clothes he’d left for her when she heard the front door close and peeked out the window. Commander Bastian walked toward the school. He wore old style magazine clothes now, the kind that Danov and his men kept for themselves: a button down gray shirt, folded to the elbows, with gray slacks that curved over his bubble ass with perfection.

She had to blink to drag her eyes away from the muscular round shape. Damn. Did it look biteable? Was she really thinking that? Wanting that? She didn’t just want to bite him; she felt possessive of him. And hungry. Where were these feelings coming from? Why would it even enter her head?

She couldn’t take it. Not going there. Spending her life fucking an alien and raising his babies was not in the plan. Not that there was a plan. Who had time for dreaming of a future between the daily workload and just existing?

Despite Brenda’s bedding advice, Cara never wanted to bring children into this world. The idea of creating a happy little family in this shit show of a world was pure fantasy. Getting birth control was impossible. The aliens didn’t see it as a priority and wouldn’t provide it the same way they ensured basic antibiotics, clean water, digestible food, and shelter were available in their towns of sheep workers. This wasn’t a world where good times existed.

She couldn’t bring a child into it.

As soon as the Mister Giant Ass was out of sight, she slipped on her shoes. The door wasn’t locked. He’d just left her. Maybe, after everything, he expected her to leave and go back to her life. She’d never forget what he forced her to do and made her enjoy. He’d probably forgotten already.

He got what he wanted, hadn’t he? She’d answered all his questions. He’d taken her body. And as far as she knew, this was how most males acted. That’s what happened to Brenda and several other women Cara knew. And even if he was alien, he was still arrogantly, narcissistically male.

She wouldn’t stay here and wait for him to come back like a good little human captive. It wasn’t right. She had to get away. Go back. People who needed her help were waiting to hear from her.

She no longer had her backpack, the knife Brenda had given her to trade for food, or the snares used to catch food. If she couldn’t find the people to trade with she’d have to go back empty handed and start over.

Brenda would be upset. The others, crushed by her failure to find food. Everyone had been so helpless. She hoped they were okay.

Cara opened the door, her heart beating hard. He hadn’t even left a guard. The area was so quiet. The aliens didn’t fear attacks from wankers, she knew. The roaming gangs were ants compared to the invaders at best. Outclassed, lowly, shamed humans who were still trying to get enough resources to fight.

Leaving the apartment, she had an irrational impulse to go back inside and see if she could build a pipe bomb, just to use it and show them all she wasn’t one of their pacified sheep. She still had fight in her after being captured. They all deserved to burn.

Even if it wouldn’t kill them. It would alert them that she was making an escape attempt. Building a bomb and using it on the base was also breaking the peace, one of the commander’s laws.

She’d already been tied up in that school fearing for her life, running through the halls. Pressed up against the wall and eaten out.

Nope. She didn’t want a repeat.

As if she knew where she was going, she kept her eyes forward, retracing her steps out of the base until she could guess the right direction better. Dad told her that people broadcast the energy of their intentions in waves that the muzzle heads could pick up from miles away. Their fear and nervousness were lie detectors in their sweat. Acting with purpose and confidence was the secret to going unnoticed.

Captured at dusk, it was now near dawn. The muzzle heads were as good as hunting hounds for tracking people. Her best option was to get to the river. She’d wash, get new clothes, then get Brenda. And hope the commander didn’t chase them down. Why would he? He got what he wanted from her.

The aliens chose an old suburb as their base, which Cara assumed was part of old Dalewood. There were remnant signs of twenty-first-century buildings and roads everywhere.

Over time, nature reclaimed the once populated place in stained greens and muted, weathered yellows of branch and bark. With the uneven terrain and all the overgrowth, she hadn’t realized how close she’d come to the alien base of operations.

Had the wankers who stole her traps known where they were? Cara had seen a couple of groups milling about at the gates, their faces shadowed by the hoods of tattered jackets. He’d let them inside at least once, their presence a red flag if she’d ever seen one.

Dalewood lay two miles away. The central city area of the small town, the collection of weathered brick buildings bore the weight of its history. With the townspeople struggling to survive, the aliens swept through, erecting their stark, centralized power and water structures alongside a streamlined food processing factory. They left the original town untouched, complete with an ancient defensive wall with its moss covered stones, barbed wire, and wooden pikes.

Dalewood had a heavy, menacing feeling, different from Springfield. She should have turned around the first time she saw it. Mighty Joe and his refugees lived in the wall’s shadow, making do as best they could.

“You’ll learn, cuties,” Danov had said with a chuckle. “Hunger has a way of changing minds.”

Cara hadn’t been raised as a sheep worker. She didn’t have people in her life bent on teaching her how bad it was outside of the aliens’ towns and making her afraid to leave. Danov couldn’t change her mind. That left poor Brenda, who was more malleable but furious with Andy and three months pregnant.

Cara made it off the base and into the tree cover easily; she didn’t even see one face. No one cared about her. Good then. Deciding to avoid the road, cautious of the patrolling wankers, she hit her stride at a fast walk and made good time. It was daylight. She wasn’t breaking any laws by being out.

Sore when she woke up in the alien’s shower, she felt better now that she’d eaten and was moving. The ointment he used penetrated deep. Nothing really hurt except a few places, like her head. Leaving everything behind made her feel much better. There was a lot she didn’t want to think about right now.

She hoped Brenda and the others were okay. That made Cara’s head spin. She’d made a lot of mistakes, befriending Brenda and finding out too late how poor a decision it was.

But you don’t turn your back on your only friend just because a man turned her bitter.

Finding where she needed to go and staying off the road the muzzle heads might use involved guesswork. She had to climb over something or go around it until she found herself far enough between the town and the school that the wildlife felt comfortable making a lot of noise. Birds. Bugs. No squirrels that she could tell. None of it sounded easy to catch or tasty to eat. At some point, she should start to hear the chug and bang of the processing plant where most of Springfield’s people worked.

She enjoyed the noise. It folded her into another world and another place, taking her to a time without aliens and without Brenda. Had it been like this before? In ancient times? It had to have been before all the old, crumbling things she climbed over existed. She’d read books on that world and time, but Cara couldn’t picture it. She could hardly believe it wasn’t some fable.

A branch caught her as she moved, and she had to stop to pull her shirt free. The sounds built into a chittering crescendo. She looked up and saw ten crows flying in the same direction she was going, followed by a flock of sparrows.

What the hell?

Sometimes a storm made the animals go weird, but the day was shaping up to be the same gray as the ones before it. It might even rain—but there was no wind and no reason for this reaction.

The sound built, and Cara had to cover her ears. More birds. Something dashed through the bushes on her right, making her jump.

As suddenly as it began, all sound stopped. Totally stopped. She could hear herself breathing and her heart beating in her ears. It must be a storm.

Or something worse.

Something dangerous enough to make birds and insects go quiet was following her. Not a storm. She didn’t smell smoke, so it wasn’t a forest fire. It could only be one other thing. The ultimate predator.

The commander.

She didn’t know how she knew, but she did. It was him. He’d come for her. The hair raised on the back of her neck and her arms. She had a thought flash through: act smart.

Hide. Find some way to defend herself.

How could she defend herself against that? Her muscles jumping, body reacting, she tore herself free of the branch and ran in the opposite direction of the feeling at full speed.

She couldn’t let him catch her. Her core became wet at the very idea, and her braless nipples had the audacity to harden underneath the shirt she wore, becoming painful and sensitive.

What part was she missing? That he was a monster? That he was an alien? That she might never escape him? This was crazy. Why was she getting a flutter of excitement? Just like before in the school, when he let her loose, but worse.

She stumbled, her knee hitting the dirt. So much worse. This time she had intimate knowledge of the consequences of being caught.

She’d lose herself in him. His smell would go to her head, his growl would make her whine like an eager, helpless, needy bitch in heat. Her self-control would deteriorate into whimpers and kitten mews.

What else did Cara have to herself but the shreds of her self-respect? It was the dearest thing she owned. That bastard didn’t just get to ruin her and then leave her waiting behind him like some pet. She was no one’s pet.

Had he told her not to leave? No. He said jack shit. It didn’t matter that she was sure he was creep enough to think he should punish her for leaving.

Pumping arms and legs, she ran, her breath stealing the silence, becoming a pounding primal drumbeat.

He was coming.

She had to get away.

A vine snagged her foot, and she fell. That hurt.

Where was he? She paused for a second and heard nothing at all. Her heart was beating too loudly, and her breath was coming too fast. Nature hadn’t come back to tell her she was wrong, to laugh at her. To wrap her up in sound.

He was out there. Somewhere.

Picking herself up, she ran. All she had was speed and determination. She ran as fast as she could, wary of hidden holes in the uneven ground. This was no good. She couldn’t move here, and she wasn’t going to be stupid and try to hide from him.

There wasn’t time to argue with herself that there was no rescue from this predator, not when her instincts were screaming at her to run. Run. Run!

She climbed up the shell of an old truck and fell off with a crash to the other side, clumsy with urgency, then climbed up the bank of a rut to a smoothed out cleared road.

She’d gotten all turned around and gone the wrong way. The open was the last place she wanted to be.

There was something ahead of her. Smug. Tall. Powerful. He was far enough away that she couldn’t see his expression. A flash of white teeth? No clothes? Not human. None other than her captor, walking casually toward her without a care in the world.

She gave him her back and went in the other direction; even if she wanted to stay still, she couldn’t. Every freaking nerve in her body screamed move. So, she moved.

She didn’t hear anything but the wind in her ears and silent fury in her heart. But something hooked her around the waist and swung her into the air.

She screamed.

Legs still kicking, the most outrageous thing popped out of Cara’s mouth. “Let me go! I thought you were done with me!”