Youth is Wasted on the Young p.11
"Turn around," Amy said, as she stood in the middle of their paper cave.
"Why?" Stanley asked.
"Because I intend to shake the dirt out of my clothes and I want a little privacy."
"Oh," he turned around.
"You'd better do the same," Amy said, hauling her red top over her head. "If we manage to get out of here we don't want to leave them a trail to follow."
"Good point," he said. She heard his clothes rustle as he followed suit.
She shook the dirt out of her shirt then spread it on the ground. With relief she whipped off her bra and gave it a vigorous snap. That was better. It wasn't just dirt that covered them, but soil, rich and loamy, and itchy. She brushed herself off and slipped the bra back on.
She looked up and found Stanley staring at her. "What?"
"Do all grown-up females look like that?" he asked.
"Like what?" Amy looked down, she didn't see anything wrong.
"Sort of, lumpy?" He seemed honestly confused, as if he'd never seen breasts before. Come to think of it, Amy realized, he probably hadn't. Prepubescent girls didn't have breasts, that meant that Feyanoran women didn't either.
"Yes," she sighed. "All grown-up women look like that. It's part of being able to give birth."
"Oh. Are you going to give birth?" he asked, looking terrified.
"No!" She rolled her eyes. "It's normal, okay? And it's impolite to stare. Turn around."
He shrugged and turned back around. She heard the sound of his zipper and the shuffle and snap as he shucked out of his jeans and shook them out.
"What about him?" she heard him ask. Since they were the only ones in here she assumed he meant the tripod. She'd checked on the little alien earlier, he seemed to still be unconscious. She's shaken him lightly, scared that he was dead, but while he hadn't responded, he was still warm, and she'd felt a slight pulse under her fingers, so she assumed he was still alive.
"I don't know. Hopefully he'll wake up soon."
Amy held up the hose she had just skimmed out of and grimaced, it was going to be impossible to get all the dirt out of them. She considered leaving them off, but decided, dirt or not, she'd feel better-armored with them on, especially since she didn't have any idea what they were facing.
She looked back at the quiescent tripod.
She looked between the tripod and her tights. If she had to, she supposed she could make a backpack out of them to carry him out in. She shrugged and slipped them back on.
"How are you doing?" she asked as she brushed the dirt off of her skirt, fortunately it was leather so it brushed off easily.
"I'm done."
"Good." She gave her shirt a last snap and pulled it back on. She checked her pockets. She always carried the essentials. A pen knife that Rory had given her, mascara, nail polish, a comb, and her phone. She turned the phone on excitedly. No signal. Damn. She put everything back in her pockets and pulled the comb through her hair.
She turned to see Stanley staring at her again, his red hair standing up in tufts from where he'd scrubbed the dirt out of it. He was looking at her comb enviously. She tossed it to him. He slicked his hair down quickly and tossed it back. "Thanks."
"No problem."
Stanley looked around their prison, a lumpy gray dome with a dirt floor, no sign of any exit. "So how do we get out of here?"
"Well, we got in here somehow, so there must be an opening. Let's start by checking the walls. You start on that side." She pointed, then walked to the opposite wall and started running her hands over the papery surface.
There had to be a way out.
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Amy felt her way around the walls of their prison. The paper was lumpy, smooth, and nearly as hard as stone, she knocked her knuckles against it, testing.
There didn't seem to be any door, or openings at all, except for the circle of light coming in through the ceiling, and that was only about a foot across, too narrow for them to have been shoved in here that way.
Suddenly the wall gave under her fingertips. Not a lot, but enough to show it was thinner here. Excited, she skimmed her fingers along the softer section, pressing to see how big it was.
A slit opened in the wall under the pull of the paper. Amy jumped forward, pushing at the fiber wall to widen the slit.
She reached out to pull it open with her fingers, but jumped back as the curtain wall bulged outward under her hands.
A monster pushed through.
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Amy scrambled backwards. The creature was eight feet tall and loomed in the small cell. It was an insect, like a wasp, but green like a grasshopper. Its antenna brushed the ceiling then bent back down in squared off corners.
It had a triangular head, with a huge multifaceted eye on each side, a knobby proboscis projected from its forehead, and two sets of mandibles, a smaller upper set, looking like something on a crab, and a large lower set looking massive enough to bite a chunk out of a bison.
Its thorax and long abdomen were held up off the ground by six long spindly legs that joined the body under where, on a human, the throat would be. It stood upright, like a man.
The longest set of back legs was jointed backward, like a grasshoppers, the middle one's were straighter, and the front legs were held up, like the arms of a praying mantis.
Two other, smaller, specimens, only 7 feet tall, followed it in.
"Who are you?" Amy asked shakily, standing her ground.
The largest creature merely looked at her. It snatched her arm, stretching her high, hauling her up on her tiptoes, her wrist manacled in two bony, chitinous "fingers" that split off the end of the leg. It towered over her. It had her stretched as high as she could go, but she still wasn't level with its head.
"What are you doing? What do you want?" Amy struggled as it pulled her closer. But it was too strong.
It bit her arm.
Amy screamed.
The creature chewed, its smaller mandibles working. It dropped her. Amy collapsed, cradling her injured arm. She was bleeding, a quarter-sized divot bitten out of the inside of her forearm. It stung as the air hit it, burned, tears sprang to her eyes.
"Why?"
The creature stopped chewing and spat out the mangled remains of her tracer.
It turned and grabbed Stanley, who'd been cowering near the wall. It picked up the small boy, half its size, and dangled him like a fish. Stanley yelled, and fought, kicking and screaming.
"Leave him alone!" Amy yelled. She lunged at the monster, but one of the others swatted her aside.
She hit the wall with a thump, banging her head. Fortunately the paper cushioned the blow, but not before she heard Stanley scream. She almost threw up. Stanley was so much smaller than she was, a bite the same size on him...
The monster threw the sobbing boy aside and spat out his tracer.
"Why are you doing this?" Amy demanded, crawling over to Stanley. The boy was curled around his arm, sobbing. "We didn't do anything to you!"
"Not yet," the monster said, in English. Amy's eyes popped wide. It had a deep, guttural voice. "We are not yet ready to be found. And you may be of use to us."
Its squared-off antenna twitched, giving off a sound like high speed radio static. The other two monsters exited through the slit. The large one followed, then turned and stared at them.
Amy shivered at that dead-eyed, considering stare. It turned and left.
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