Free The Klaatu Terminus by Pete Hautman

Tucker looked down. The stake was still protruding from his abdomen, dark with half-dried blood. It didn’t hurt. His entire midsection was numb. He thought he understood what the man was telling him — he had blundered into a trap designed to kill jaguars. A few yards away, a log was hanging from a tree. Several wooden spikes, each of them more than a foot long, were affixed to the end of the log, which now dangled six feet above the trail. He could see where one of the spikes had been cut off. When he had tripped the trap, the log had swung down from above and driven the stake through his body from behind.
    “You do not bleed,” the man said. “Are you a
bruja
?”
    “No . . . I . . . what’s a
bruja
?”
    “Evil magic thing.” The man looked up at the sky. “The sun is almost gone. You die soon, then I leave.”
    “What if I don’t die?”
    “Then you are
bruja
and I will kill you.”
    “What about my friend?” Tucker asked.
    “Another
bruja
,” said the man. He turned his head and spat. “She go with my brothers. Then I find you.”
    Tucker raised his hand and touched the bloody stake. The man was right — he should be dead, but he wasn’t. The healing technology the Medicants had implanted in him must have stopped him from bleeding to death.
    “Take me to her,” he said.
    The man laughed. “I do not talk to dead things.” He turned his back and muttered something in a language Tucker did not understand. The man bent over a cloth sack by the side of the trail and tugged open the drawcord top.
    Tucker wrapped his fingers around the bloody stake. It was sticky. He took a breath.
Just like a sliver
, he thought, and pulled. The stake came out of his body with a soft, sucking sound. There was no pain, but a wave of dizziness and nausea swept through him; he heard himself gasp. The forest spun crazily, then righted itself.
    The young man whirled at the sound. His eyes went wide. Tucker staggered to his feet, still gripping the stake. The man grabbed the machete from his belt.
    “Wait!” Tucker said.
    The man didn’t wait; he ran at Tucker, holding the machete with both hands, chopping down at Tucker’s head.
    Tucker threw himself to the side. He could feel the effort tearing something loose inside him. He hit the ground with his shoulder and rolled. He regained his feet just in time to dodge another slash of the machete. The man brought the blade back for another swing. Tucker moved in, knocked up the blade with the stake and delivered a sideways kick to the man’s belly. The man staggered back against a tree trunk. Tucker hammered the dull end of the stake against the man’s temple. The man’s eyes rolled up as he collapsed.
    Tucker took the machete from the man’s limp hand and backed away, panting hard. Whatever had kept his abdomen from hurting before was not working so good now. He looked down and saw fresh blood welling from the wound. He could feel more blood seeping down his back. His legs were shaking, but he couldn’t afford to rest. His attacker might recover at any moment.
    Using the machete, he cut the rope that had triggered the trap, and tied up the unconscious man. By the time he finished tying the man’s feet together, he was seeing spots in front of his eyes. He walked unsteadily to the tree where he had first woken up, and sat where he could watch the bound man. The bleeding from his wound had stopped; the sensation in his gut subsided to a dull throb. He could feel things moving inside him. He wanted desperately to lie down and let his body heal. Or not heal.
I could die here
, he realized, and was mildly surprised to find that his own death did not frighten him. What scared him was the thought that Lia might die, or be dead already.
    I suppose I should pray
, he thought, but he could not summon the desire to do so. What could God do? Why would God let these things happen? It made no sense to him. The machines inside his body would determine if he lived or died. Lia was