Sloth, p.2
Sloth, page 2
Anachronist.
The name buzzed through my brain with an echo of disbelief. Oh, my God, like the aliens, they too were real! He was an Anachronist.
Have I died? There is no way this is all really happening.
Like many of the mythical creatures of lore, I had learned about the Anachronists in school, but never thought I’d ever meet one. They were the wild people of the forest who’d—for unknown reasons—shunned modern technology to live short, simple lives in poverty.
Though Anachronists were human, their existence as a people living on Earth was nearly as fantastical as unicorns and dragons… or extraterrestrials.
“Wake up,” I told myself. “This is a dream.”
It had to be.
When we entered the creepy forest beyond the vast flower field, I was immediately disoriented. Dusk had been illuminated by the full moon, but the trees obscured much of the light from the sky, leaving us mostly in darkness.
However, my rescuer seemed to know his way, and didn’t even slow down as he dragged me along the trail.
After a couple minutes of running across uneven terrain with rocks and roots in thin slippers, I stumbled over my own feet and fell into him, out of breath and about to vomit.
My rescuer caught me before I hit the ground, wrapping strong arms around me, bearing my weight as he lowered me the rest of the way down. Sitting in the dark, damp soil, the mysterious stranger crouched next to me and swung the large sac from his back.
My brain had apparently had enough. Overwhelmed, I covered my face and sobbed into my dirty hands.
“Stop that.” he demanded gruffly as he retrieved an old-fashioned lantern fastened to a strap. Suddenly, a warm glow illuminated the small area around us. “Let me see your arm.”
Sniffling pathetically, I uncovered my face and looked at him. With the soft light cast on him, I was instantly stunned by his beautiful eyes.
“Now,” he insisted, “you’re bleeding.”
I instantly complied. Blood still oozed from the gash and dripped down my elbow. It didn’t even hurt anymore. I wanted to tell him that, that I was just dizzy and nauseated more than anything, but I couldn’t seem to express the words.
“Dammit,” he muttered. “Hold this.”
He thrusted the lamp into my other hand and quickly opened his sack. He retrieved a white cloth of sorts and began tying it around my forearm to staunch the bleeding.
“Are you injured anywhere else?”
I shook my head. Other than the scratches on my legs from the trek through the forest, I was okay. At least physically. I couldn’t say for sure I was mentally.
As he finished first aid, I studied him. My little afternoon cocktail dress and ballet slippers were out of place next to this bear of a man. He was very different from the other males I knew, who seemed pale and insipid in comparison. My rescuer was quite frightening. Dark, muscular, and hairy. Yes, he had facial hair. But more shocking were the rippling muscles that threatened to rip the seams along the long-sleeved plaid top he wore.
Flannel. So strange to me. His shirt and pants were made of a material that I was familiar with but knew to be antiquated. No one wore flannel or denim when there were softer fabrics for the skin. There was no longer a need for people to wear the heavy materials of an everyday laborer. And the Ai technology controlled the ambient temperature outside when the winter months came. There was also no need for jackets unless one went beyond the city.
I was startled out of my thoughts by the sound of cracking flora and heavy steps.
“Those are my brothers,” my rescuer murmured. “You’re fine.”
“Fucking Christ,” a man of similar dress and stature muttered as he approached us from the shadows of the trees. “You saved a Sloth?”
This large man, too, had a weapon. Multiple, in fact. The main ones being a rifle— or something akin to it— and an overly large knife. I think they were called machetes.
A third guy appeared from the wilderness. God help me, he was carrying dead bunnies by their feet. “Why bring this trouble on us? They’re going to come after her,” he complained.
“No, they won’t,” assured my rescuer. “They’ll send the Ai. But they never stay long. If we can hide her from the androids long enough, they will abandon her.”
“Hide? More like defend,” the third guy grumbled.
My rescuer grasped me by my upper arms and helped me onto my feet. He then turned off the flame to the lamp, casting us back into utter darkness. He took the lamp from me and handed it to his heavily armed brother.
“Garrett, take this.”
“Yep.”
My rescuer’s strong, rough fingers gripped my hand firmly, and he resumed pulling me along, albeit a little slower than our initial pace.
Avoid. Abandon. They. They. They. Strange how those words buzzed in my brain.
The three brothers seemed to know where we were going. Though my eyes were adjusting to the dark, I might as well have been blind. I could not make out anything of use. The world around me was nothing but shadows blurred by fear.
“Careful,” the rabbit killer suddenly said. “Watch your step.”
I looked to where he pointed and saw the outline of a fallen branch sticking out from a bush. I nodded my gratitude. Wake up. Wake up. This is a dream.
The men spoke quietly to each other about things I didn’t understand. I tuned them out, replaying the last few hours of my day. I was having a hard time coming to terms with what I had seen.
After a few minutes more of traveling, the heavily armed one grumbled to his companions. “Does she not speak?”
Garrett. He had been called Garrett.
“She’s in shock,” my rescuer replied. “Her android attacked her.”
“Jeez, it’s not like it would have actually harmed her,” the bunny murderer stated, waving a flippant hand. “The domesticated human must be healthy and happy before reaching the dinner table. They don’t want to ruin the meat.”
The ship cannot leave unless all domesticated human livestock are accounted for, processed, and loaded into cargo.
Freaking out, I pulled back, slowing my rescuer to a stop. I tried to jerk away from him.
“Whoa, that got her attention,” Garrett snorted in amusement.
The bunny murderer chuckled. “Yeah, it did.”
I wanted to run. I wanted to go back. I wanted my heroic rescuer to let me the fuck go so I could go warn the citizens. Was what happened to me with my android happening to them as well? What did the bunny killer mean? Why was I being referred to as a domesticated human yet again?
I whimpered and sobbed and kicked and twisted to be free, but to no avail. When my rescuer tried to get a better hold, I bit him. Hard.
The slap across my face was shocking enough to produce stars, but he did not let me fall from the force. He simply righted me, grabbed me by the shoulders, then turned me toward him.
I cupped my cheek and ducked my head to hide behind my hair.
One of the brothers put on the lantern.
“Look at me,” my rescuer-turned-captor demanded.
I stared at our feet and ignored him.
“Will I need to smack you again?” he asked quietly.
“Damn, bro— fucking dark,” the bunny killer said. “I know we are a bit heavy-handed but give the poor girl a break.”
“I can assure you that the next smacks won’t be to her face,” my captor clarified. “She is not going to like where these next smacks end up.”
“Fuck,” swore Garrett. “Can we at least get home first?”
I knew I was the asshole here. My rescuer had saved my life, and I had bitten him for it like some wild animal. I deserved to be slapped. But it wasn’t the sting on my cheek that upset me. Rather, it was his tone that had injured my feelings. He was growly, and it made me anxious in ways I couldn’t quite define.
On a night when I’d been attacked by the android that practically raised me, and I’d learned that both aliens and Anachronists were real, facing him in this moment was the scariest thing yet.
“I have asked you to do something,” he rumbled, leaning in close to speak to my ear. “If you don’t, I will flip you over my thigh, bare your ass, and spank it raw until you get it through your brain that I am not the one to be trying— especially not tonight.”
That threat did it.
I lifted my head and stared into his startlingly beautiful eyes, even as my own welled. His hard, angry expression seemed at odds with the gentle way he smoothed my hair away from my damp lashes.
“You will never, ever run from us,” he said low. “Or even think to try to run from us. Got it?”
I tried to remember if anyone ever spoke to me this way in real life. Outside the realm of virtual reality where we could roleplay in theatrics or reenact historical events, most people were emotionally stable if not downright distant. Anything more would be considered overly dramatic. Yet, these three spoke this way naturally.
“Do. You. Understand?” he gritted.
Unable to bear the intensity of his glare, I simply nodded and returned to looking at our feet.
“I will not tolerate lying, little girl. If you don’t understand, just say so.”
Since I had lost my ability to speak, I shrugged my shoulder. I didn’t understand any of this. Nothing in life made sense anymore. Did I understand what he wanted? Yes. Did I understand why? No.
He put his hands on each side of my head and forced me to look up at him. “The world outside the city is extremely dangerous, even beyond the Ai and aliens that are after you. There are wild animals. There are hidden animal traps. There are sinkholes, tree wells, and pools of quicksand, as well as several other hazards for those who don’t know the area.”
The passion he used to get his point across moved me. I was rattled by it. Not once in my life had anyone seemingly cared what happened to me the way this stranger did.
I realized I was becoming overly emotional. I wanted to cry because of him, yet I also wanted to seek comfort from him even though he was the cause of my distress.
He used the pads of his thumbs to capture the two stray tears that leaked from my eyes. “What did I say about crying?” he groused.
“Not to,” I mouthed.
“Exactly.”
Goodness, he made me feel brave. I had never met someone so strong that I could take some of their strength as my own. I had known the guy for an hour, a mythical guy at that, and with my world falling apart around me, he seemed like the only safe thing in it now.
He released me, removed his backpack, and handed it to his bunny-killing brother. “Take this. I’ll carry her. She’s injured, exhausted, and in meltdown mode.”
Protesting this new arrangement, I shook my head and took a step back, but he put a finger in my face like I was an errant child.
I lifted my brows and tried to focus in on the fingertip near my nose.
“What I say, goes. Always,” he added. “Understand? If I give you directions, you follow them to the letter. Immediately. This is not up for debate. You will simply obey without question. If you don’t, there will be consequences, and you will not like them.”
The energy he gave off was incredibly conflicting. It was like father, brother, and lover rolled into one. It was messing with my traumatized brain.
Because of his vague warning of punishment, and the fact that I had no choice or say in the matter anyway, I didn’t stop him when he effortlessly picked me up like the sloth he called me and forced me to wrap my legs around his waist and link my arms around his neck.
He was huge. And so freaking strong.
It was almost too easy to feel safe in his arms.
As we returned to the journey, I realized this one act was way more intimate than any sex I’d ever had in virtual reality— even the VR orgies where multiple people engaged me at once. Because I was wearing a dress, only a thin slip of panty fabric separated my most private center from the heat of his torso. Tingles erupted where my pussy rubbed against the hard planes of his stomach with each step he took.
In some ways, I was grateful for the break in walking. I was tired. Physically, mentally, emotionally drained. I laid my head on his shoulder. He smelled good. Like wood and mint.
The lamp was turned off again, and the men spoke in low murmurs. I closed my eyes and rested for a moment.
Chapter Three
I woke up to the smell of cooking food. I could hear it sizzling in a pan, which was strange because my android never cooked without first asking me what I wanted, and the kitchen was on the opposite end of the house.
Though it smelled amazing enough to make my mouth water and my tummy rumble, I couldn’t quite place the scent. My throat was tight, and hoarse.
“Computer, what is the android cooking in the kitchen?” I croaked.
“I’m cooking bacon and eggs,” responded a male voice.
I scrambled from beneath the warmth of the covers then pressed myself against the headboard. I had been changed out of my bloody birthday dress. I now wore some kind of cotton shirt from the old days. The bandage on my arm had been changed.
My gaze darted around the home of wood, filled with rifles and other assorted weapons, before settling on Garrett.
“Bo and Huck are out doing chores. I got babysitting duty.” Putting aside his utensil, he retrieved a glass from a cabinet and poured a clear liquid from a metal pitcher of sorts. “Glad to see you got your wits back and can speak again.” He walked over and held it out to me.
I took the glass and eyed it warily.
“Water,” he said.
I looked at the pitcher. “It is safe to drink?” It looked like it had been sitting out for a while. Weren’t there germs to be worried about?
He chuckled and went back to cooking. “Bo should have left you to your android. You are not going to be happy here.”
My rescuer’s name is Bo. Bunny-Killer is then Huck.
After committing the names to memory, I studied the water before taking a tentative sip. It tasted good. I drank more—and more. I didn’t realize how thirsty I was until the cool liquid passed my parch lips and met my dry throat.
“I’m grateful,” I murmured.
“For?” he said over his shoulder.
“The water. And for Bo not leaving me behind.”
Garrett retrieved dishes from the cabinet. “My older brother is a bleeding heart. Always has been.” He sighed. “Life is hard on the outside,” he reasoned as he plated the food. “We have technology, but only that which predated Ai software. Most we come across is obsolete or unsalvageable. The Universal Ai that took over the world made sure that we Anachronists, as you Sloths like to call us, do not have access to grid electricity or running water.”
“Why would the computer do that?”
Garrett set the two plates on a rustic table not far from the bed. “To break us down. Many eventually moved to the cities, taking their chances to enjoy creature comforts, like modern medicine.”
“I still don’t understand why my Ai attacked me. Are the aliens dangerous?”
Garrett waved me over.
The shirt was long enough to be a dress, but I managed to crawl off the bed despite the abundance of fabric. Once my feet met the floor, I padded barefoot over to him. Strangely, he moved the chair out for me. When I sat in it, he pushed me toward the table. That was some old-world chivalry there.
He sat across from me, which gave me an opportunity to really see him. Like Bo, he had those striking eyes. However, they seemed a bit softer.
“Yes, they are dangerous.”
“The aliens?”
He nodded.
“Are my friends and family safe?”
“I don’t know.” He looked at my food and gestured for me to eat.
“Can we go check?”
He gruffly cleared his throat. “No. It’s not safe to go there.”
“But you just said—”
“I know what I said,” he interrupted. “That I didn’t know. I’m an optimist. We can hope for the best and still be cautious. If your family could tell you, they’d tell you to stay far away from the city.”
“If the aliens are dangerous, why don’t the people just leave?”
“They can’t. The Sloths—and you—have a chip in your body that allows the Ai to know who you are and where you’re located. When the aliens arrived, the city locked down. You were only able to be rescued because you were already outside the city limits, and Bo had the means to eliminate your personal android.”
My eyes burned. Was it wrong that I mourned more for that robot than I did my family and friends? It had always been a non-judgmental and encouraging part of my life. It raised me. Then it turned on me.
“Please eat.”
I nodded and picked up my fork. “What is it?”
“Bacon and eggs.”
It smelled amazing, but… “Are these from animals that were once alive?”
Garrett pressed his lips tight, as if sucking them into his teeth to seal them. But the sparkle in his eyes showed he was trying not to laugh at me.
“You think I’m stupid,” I added.
“No, no,” he rushed. “Just naïve— sheltered, I mean. What did you eat in the city?”
I shrugged. “A lot of plants. We had protein, but I believe it was lab grown.”
“Eww. That’s gross.”
I lifted my brows. “But murdering for protein is not?”
“Hunting is natural.”
Rolling my eyes, I lifted a piece of meat that seemed both soft and crunchy. “What is this?”
“Salted bacon,” he replied. “From a pig.”
“Oh.” I’d had pork before, but it looked nothing like this. It usually came in square chunks or ground up from the factory. It was a mild, pale meat that was not that different from chicken. This slice of meat was darker and smelled stronger.
When I took a bite, I gasped at the flavor that exploded on my tongue. “Wow! This is good! I’ve never had pork like it.”
“Likely not. Too unhealthy for the city folk to enjoy. The Ai won’t supply it.”
