Survivors
Chapter Forty Four

When Holly and Joe finally caught up with Luke he had landed in an area of dense woodland. They came across him huddled in a ball sobbing.

“Wh, what’s wrong Luke?” Stammered Holly “Where’s Bretnel?”

Luke didn’t reply, he just hugged his knees even tighter to his chest.

“Luke” tried Joe “Whe..”

“He’s dead, isn’t he! I would have thought that would have been bleeding obvious even to you. Otherwise he’d be here wouldn’t he” raged Luke.

“Dead!?” Said Joe in shock “What happened?”

“They shot him, they, they shot him”

“Oh my god” whispered Holly clamping her hands to her head “He can’t be, he can’t be”

“Well he is!” Shouted Luke “I saw him, I saw him die”

Joe knelt down beside his brother and without saying a word just hugged him. There weren’t many time in his life Joe instinctively did the right thing as far as Luke was concerned, but this was one of them. No words were needed, in fact any words no matter how carefully chosen would probably have just made Luke even more angry.

They sat there not talking for a while, with just the odd sob breaking the silence. It was Holly who finally took control and stirred them into action. She took out the map Bretnel had given her and began to look around for clues as to where they were. After several minutes of frustrated studying she said “I can’t work out where we are. I’m going to shrink myself as small as I can and then fly as high as I can to see if I can make out any landmarks”.

She carefully placed the map under a rock and changed into a tiny sparrow and took off up through the overhanging branches. Luke barely registered that she had gone, but Joe heightened the level of his hearing sharpened his eyesight and peered after her into the canopy of the trees. He watched the little bird flit skilfully through the branches. Fairly soon she disappeared from view, but he stayed watching even though he couldn’t see anything.

Joe felt like he had waited for about an hour, in truth it was only a couple of minutes. He was just about to change into some sort of bird and follow Holly up into the trees when he suddenly saw her coming back. He sighed a huge sigh of relief as she landed back on the ground.

“Could you see anything?”

“Yeah. Give me a moment” she chirped.

Joe turned away as Holly changed back into human form and slipped back into her stretchy costume. Holly picked up the map and studied it intensely, turning it round in her hands. Then with a little shout of triumph she pointed at a spot in the middle of a large wood.

“That’s where we are!” She said emphatically “There’s a river a couple of miles over to the west and there are a couple of large hills just over there” she went on pointing to the south of them. “So the only place we can be is in this wood is around here”. She tapped the map again.

“Great” said Joe smiling. “So where do we need to get too?”

Holly turned the map over and pointed at the spot Bretnel had showed her. “I reckon that it’s about thirty miles away. I think we should stay here till it gets dark and then use our bat sonar to replace our way there”.

“It doesn’t make a lot of difference you know” mumbled Luke.

“What?” Asked Holly.

“It doesn’t make any difference to the Aliens if we travel during the day or at night. They use some sort of radar or heat sensitive tracking or something, Bretnel told me that once. They don’t depend on eyes you know”.

“I know that” replied Holly trying to sound rational and keep any annoyance out of her voice. “But they may have spies watching for us, or someone might see us and think we’re birds and take a pot shot at us. I just think it will be safer if we flew at night”.

“Whatever” said Luke. “What does it matter”.

“Luke” said Holly softly “We can’t just give up. Bretnel wouldn’t have wanted that. He would have wanted us to be safe and replace the other base”.

“He wanted us to make friends with the Aliens” stormed Luke “So I don’t think what Bretnel would have wanted actually counts for very much. Not to me anyway” He paused “But you’re right, we shouldn’t give up. I for one intend to take the fight to the Aliens from here on in. We know we can kill them now. We know that we’re physically ready to take them on. What Bretnel got wrong was that he didn’t have a proper plan. We were fighting under their terms. I intend to fight under my terms. I’m going to choose when, where and how I fight. So let’s replace this base and see what it has to offer. I’m not going to cry for Brentel anymore, I’m going to avenge him!”

“I’m not sure that..” Began Holly, but Luke shot her such a glance that she decided not to finish what she was going to say.

“Are you going to lead the way then?” Asked Luke after a short pause.

“Errr yeah, yeah” replied Holly, sounding a little confused “But shouldn’t we wait till it get’s dark?”.

“I’ve told you” snapped Luke “It doesn’t make any difference, let’s go. Now”

Again Holly looked like she was going to speak. Joe reached out and gently touched her arm, he shook his head. Holly sighed and said “Come on then follow me”.

They all took off into the clear afternoon sky, each one carrying their energy rifle slung over their shoulder. Anyone looking up would have seen them quite clearly. However describing exactly what it was that they had seen would have been pretty difficult. “A small group of heavily armed birds, with strangely human features and hands” would probably have only raised suspicions about the persons sanity.

In the end it was a good job they did set off in the daylight. The base was extremely well hidden. It took them a good couple of hours and a great deal of tetchiness with each other before they finally found the entrance. Joe came in for a considerable amount of abuse when they did replace the way in. He had walked within a few feet of the trapdoor at least four times before he finally spotted it.

It then took them another half an hour at least to work out how to get in. After trying numerous codes on the keypad Luke had finally lost his temper and short-circuited the whole mechanism by changing one of his arms into an electric eel and putting 20,000 volts through it.