Uninvited Ch. 04: The Way Home

"Vi...that Viper of yours doesn't seem too happy about it."

I took another drink from the can, scowling.

"I don't know what's gotten into her, she hates the Mutons, like 'really' hates them. I don't know if she's had bad experiences with them in the past or something, we sometimes have trouble communicating, but she seems convinced that they're going to kill us in our sleep."

"Well, wouldn't she know? She is an alien after all."

"A few years ago I would have said the same of a Viper, that they were alien monsters out for blood and that they were beyond reason, but Vi proved me wrong. I don't understand why she can't see the parallels between her own experiences and that of the Mutons."

"May I remind you that you don't know the first thing about running a farm yet," Kadavy chuckled. "What are you going to do with them if you manage to convince them to work for you? How will you pay them?"

"I'll pay them in food, they can live in the barn. If you can teach me how to run a farm, I can teach them."

"Damn it kid, can't you let me enjoy my old age? A couple of days ago my biggest concern was a break in my chicken fence, and now you're gonna have me training giant aliens to operate plows."

I joined him in chuckling, it was an absurd situation, but this was the world we lived in now.

"Hey if you come around to the idea of working with aliens, you can borrow them. Oh by the way, I wanted to ask, what's the situation right now? Are you harvesting? Is someone buying your produce?"

"Used to be ADVENT would send haulers to cart off the crop for processing, they'd show up in huge floating trucks and load it all up, then they'd pay me in ADVENT scrit. You know, those weird I.O.U type documents they'd give out instead of pay. You had to go to the city to get them exchanged for currency. Since you guys killed the Elders I haven't seen them. I assume they're not operating now that there's nobody left to run them. This year's harvest is sitting in the silo right now, it'll go to waste if I don't find a buyer soon."

I finished off my beer, thinking about the situation. We had taken the supply system for granted for so long, it had operated continuously without interruption for all of our lives. ADVENT had run it, and before them the local governments. Harvesting food, processing it, getting it onto store shelves, it wasn't something any of us had ever needed to think about before now. The people in the population centers were going to run out of food quickly, what was that old saying? Any civilized country is only three missed meals away from anarchy? Something along those lines.

"We're gonna need to run this operation from the ground up, 'we' need to find the buyers, 'we' need to ship the produce for processing. Maybe I can arrange it through XCOM, they have to be in contact with whatever local governments have emerged since ADVENT fell."

"Things are really that bad in the city, then?" Kadavy asked, nursing his beer.

"Oh yeah, last I saw it was complete chaos. Massive riots, street to street battles, things looked bad. I'm sure it's all cleared up by now, but I don't know what kind of state the economy is in. I know there are factories near the cities, they put me to work in a bottling plant when I was relocated. There must be flour mills, there must be idle workers, we just have to get the harvested crop to them."

"Easier said that done," Kadavy chimed, gesturing at me with the beer in his hand, the froth dripping onto the varnished wooden table. "We'd need enough trucks to cart off the produce, and we'd need them to give us a fair pay for it if they want us to be able to keep operating. That kind of deal doesn't happen overnight."

"It might if they're starving," I laughed, I had meant it as a joke but it was sobering. I quickly changed the subject. "So you keep chickens? Do you have any other livestock?"

"Some pigs, why?"

"Can I buy some for slaughter?"

"How many?"

"As many as you can spare and I can afford, I need to feed Vi and she can't subsist on spam, those Mutons are probably gonna need fresh meat too by the looks of them. Could be a good incentive, a way to convince them to work for me." Kadavy thought about it for a few moments. I knew it was a tall order, but I wasn't convinced we could hunt enough wild game to feed Vi, never mind a whole pack of Mutons.

"Depends what you have to trade, really. ADVENT currency doesn't hold value anymore. I can probably part with a couple of pigs a month if you can give me a fair price for 'em."

"The Mutons stole your tools, right? Come over to my place and take whatever you need, farm equipment too if they took anything important. I'll make do." Kadavy took my hand across the table and shook it.

"Deal, I won't leave you without the essentials, and I'll give you a couple of pigs for it."

"Can you bring them around tomorrow, before we go back to the Daugherty farm? Some pork chops might sweeten the deal."

He nodded, and saw me off as I left the house, making my way back to the truck. It was getting late, and I wanted to be up early the next day. Vi yawned conspicuously as I approached, making a show of being bored, and I climbed into the driver's seat.

"Yeah yeah, we're going home now. Don't be moody, I made a deal with Kadavy, you'll have some fresh meat tomorrow."

She perked up at that, her hood flaring, and she gurgled appreciatively. I started the truck and turned us in the direction of our farmhouse.

The next day Kadavy arrived with two slaughtered pigs in the back of his Ford pickup, he had done the job himself, assuming that I wouldn't have known how to. He was correct of course, I had never killed livestock myself, nor did I know how to prepare it. I greeted him and showed him to the barn as Vi heaped the animals off the back of the truck, and he took his pick of the tools. If he took anything I sorely needed in the future, I could always ask to borrow it back, and I might still recover the stolen goods from the Mutons. I instructed Vi to take one of the carcasses to our own truck, I would be presenting it to the Mutons as another gift. She rolled her eyes at that, a human gesture I was starting to regret teaching her, but did as she was asked. She still seemed to be sulking, and I wondered how long it might go on for. She was a rapacious lover, that alone would weaken her resolve eventually. She didn't seem to want to talk it out, she expected me to fail and be proven wrong, and that attitude irritated me.

When Kadavy had loaded the tools into his Ford we piled into my truck, Vi coiled in the back clutching the pig in her tail, and we set off towards the Daugherty farm. I wanted to arrive at roughly the same time of day, I wanted to be predictable so as not to surprise them.

I drove a little closer this time, less afraid of alerting the aliens, and we dismounted. Vi lifted the pig carcass off the back of the truck, it was too heavy for me to carry and so I dragged it by the rear legs. As I struggled towards the center of the courtyard where I had placed the first gift, I noticed there was something already there. I dropped the pig when I drew near, wiping my brow with my sleeve, and examined the pile. It was a tub of Kadavy's dried food and a few assorted pieces of scrap metal of indeterminable origin, arranged in a kind of pattern. The Mutons had left me a gift in return, it actually seemed to be of greater value than what I had originally given them upon closer inspection. What did that mean? Was it a reciprocation?

In any case I was now sure that they weren't going to hurt me.

"Hey, Mutons!" I shouted. I heard Vi hiss a warning from her position near the house, but I repeated the call. "Hey Mutons! Come out here!" My companions probably thought I had lost my mind, but hostile aliens would not reciprocate my gifts, they wouldn't barter, if indeed that was what they were doing. I shouted again at the top of my lungs, and waited. After a few moments the doors of the barn creaked open, and two Mutons peered out at me suspiciously. I waved to them and shouted again.

They withdrew, and I waited patiently, after a couple of minutes three Mutons left the barn in a group. Their size always surprised me, no matter how many times I had seen the aliens, or how close I had gotten to them. They were built like giant gorillas, their massive, disproportionate arms covered in interlocking tattoos swinging as they lumbered towards me. They were all dressed similarly, those same green underclothes, but each had subtly different patterns on their pink skin. Did the tattoos have some cultural significance or were they merely decorative?

I trusted that Vi would not shoot, if she did I would surely be torn apart before she could come to my aid. The larger of the three Mutons was in the center of the formation, with the two somewhat smaller examples of his race flanking him. They came to a halt a short distance away from me, examining me with their beady eyes, their faces contorted into a perpetual scowl by their heavy brows.

I crouched and lifted the pig, flinging it towards them as far as my strength would allow, which wasn't very. I made it clear that the carcass was intended for them, however. The larger of the three cocked his head, walking forward cautiously and prodding the belly of the dead animal with his thick finger. He was only a couple of meters away from me now, his sheer scale was imposing.

The giant Muton gripped the pig by its rear legs and lifted it off the ground, its enormous, tattooed bicep bulging through its suit. It brought to carcass near to its flat face and sniffed, then lowered it. It slammed its fist to its chest, grunting loudly, and I hopped backwards in alarm. Its companions repeated the gesture, slamming their massive fists against their broad chests. Was it some kind of thanks? I didn't know if I should try to imitate them, and so I did nothing. Their leader pointed to the pile of scrap and food they had left out for me, and grunted. I gathered the scrap, trying to balance it on top of the food bucket, and decided to copy their chest-pound gesture before lifting it. They seemed satisfied by this, and turned to leave, carrying the pig with them. I retreated in kind, making my way back to the house as the aliens disappeared into the privacy of their barn.

"You're fucking crazy," Kadavy chuckled as I rounded the corner of the house and dropped the tub of dried food to the floor. "I thought that big one was gonna pound you into the ground like a tent peg!"

"Well, I got some of your food back at least," I grumbled, stretching my arms into the air. Why was everything so damned heavy? Were there no aliens of human size or less that wouldn't eat me out of house and home?

"That you did, if you can get the rest of it back off them I'll give you a couple more pigs next month. I think your plan might just be crazy enough to work."

I turned my attention to Vi who was still eyeing the barn with her weapon readied.

"Hey Vi, can I bring your tablet computer tomorrow? Can it translate all ADVENT languages or just your own? I'd like to try communicating with them."

She sighed, then nodded reluctantly.

"Hey, you have to admit I'm making progress. This time next week we might have Mutons plowing the fields."

"What now?" Kadavy asked. "We still need a way to get the crops to the processing plants, regardless of how many farmhands we have."

"Let me take care of that," I replied, lifting the tub of food and starting back towards the truck. "I'm gonna call in some favors with XCOM and see what they can come up with."

CHAPTER 7: UNDER THE SKIN

I walked around the courtyard holding the cellphone over my head, searching for a signal. God damn it, how many satellites had the ADVENT fleet plowed through during their time blockading the planet? I couldn't get any damned bars. Vi watched with amusement from her perch on the roof of the barn, idly guzzling barbecued pork as I wandered around the property cursing. I hadn't had any idea how to prepare the pig carcass Kadavy had given us, but Vi apparently did. I had given her a knife and left her to it, and after an hour she had brought me some cuts of meat to cook. I didn't care to ask where she had learned the skill, on her home planet before ADVENT had conquered it maybe? Was it some cultural thing passed down from snake to snake? It didn't matter.

I kicked the dusty ground, frustrated, then turned to look at Vi. She had no problem scaling structures, what if she lifted me up onto the grain silo? Might I get a signal up there?

"Hey Vi, Vi!" She rolled onto her back, pretending not to hear me, swallowing a cut of pork as she basked in the midday sun. "Come on Vi, this is important!" She peeked her head over the side of the roof as I approached, looking down at me with a disinterested expression, and huffed. 'Go on.'

"Can you lift me up onto the silo? I need to get a signal on my phone."

She smirked and crossed her arms, lounging lazily.

"Come on!"

She slithered down off the roof, her body long enough that the lower fifth of her tail could be on the roof while her torso flopped to the floor. I yelped in surprise as she plucked me off the ground and slung me under her arm, winding her way across the courtyard with alarming speed. My stomach turned as she climbed the tower, curling around it and placing me gently on the top. She steadied me with her hand as I got my bearings, huffing with amusement at my dizziness, then returned to the ground.

"T-Thanks," I muttered, watching her scale the barn and return to her stash of pork, letting the sun beat down on her white belly as she spread out across the tiles. I raised my phone, waving it over my head, and saw one bar light up. Yes! My idea had worked. Maybe I could put a satellite dish up here or something to make it easier to get reception, the house had a landline but the service was extremely spotty lately.

I fumbled in my pocket for the number I had been given when I was discharged, along with the promise of help, should I ever need it. I was a little embarrassed to call in the favor so early, but it was the ideal way to get in touch with the local government, if anyone knew what the situation was it would be XCOM. I dialed the number, and put the phone to my ear tentatively, listening to it ring. After a moment there was a click as someone at the other end picked up, a woman's voice coming through a little distorted due to the inconsistent signal.

"Avenger here, report." Report? Whose number had they given me? Logistics? The control room?

"Er...hey. I was given this number when I was discharged, they told me to call if I needed anything."

"Oh, ok, hold please." I waited, and after a moment I was transferred to some other department, a male voice greeted me this time.

"Hello, how can I help you?"

"Hello, I was er...given this number when they discharged me from XCOM, the Commander told me that I should call it if I ever needed help with anything."

"Oh, I see. Can you give me your service number, Sir?" I relayed the six digits of my service number and waited for him to check it against their database. "Ah yes, I have your service record here Sergeant, what is it that you need?"

"Ok, bear with me because it's going to take me a minute to explain my situation. So when I was discharged I returned to my family's farmhouse, we own property in Kansas. When I got here, I figured I would start up production again and start harvesting crops, because without ADVENT operating the supply system there are likely to be food shortages in the cities. My neighbors are doing the same. Problem is the haulers that ADVENT used to send to collect the grain aren't running anymore, we have whole silos of food going to waste because we don't have a way to get it to the processing plants, and no way to get in touch with any local governments who might be able to help us. I wanted to know if you guys were in contact with any authorities, and if they might be able to arrange transport?"

"Give me a moment Sergeant, and I'll get back to you about that." He left whatever console he was operating, and I heard muffled speech in the background. After a few minutes he returned, and there was interference as he put his headset back on.

"Hello, Sergeant? Are you still on the line?"

"Yes I'm here."

"The United States government is operating in Kansas, but their control is tenuous at the moment. We do however have both resistance and local government contacts in Wichita, Kansas City and Topeka. If you can hold for a little longer I will contact them and see what their situation is."

"Thanks, that would be great, I'll hold."

I watched Vi sunbathing on the roof as I waited for the operator to return, her belly slightly distended from all the pork she had eaten. I felt like telling her to pace herself, but she knew her metabolism better than I did, she might not need to eat for a week after such a large meal. She seemed to be sleeping now, her ample chest rising and falling softly.

I realized suddenly that I was frustrated, going two nights without sleeping with her felt like two years, this little spat we were having was starting to drag on longer than I would have liked. We were both stubborn, each biding our time in the expectation that the other would soon be proven wrong, that couldn't be a healthy way to resolve the conflict. Maybe I'd try talking with her again, try to get her to see my side of things.

"Sergeant, are you still on the line?" I returned the phone hastily to my ear.

"Yes I'm still here."

"Good news, our resistance contact in Topeka confirms that the city has a supply issue, they have processing plants standing idle. If you can give me the coordinates of your farm, they can get trucks out to you. I'll give you the number of their office so you can talk to them yourself."

"Brilliant, that's exactly what I had hoped, thank you."

I took down the number, then thanked the operator again and hung up. I would give the guys in Topeka a call later in the afternoon, right now I had a prior appointment with some Mutons. I stood up and called to Vi, waving my arms.

"Hey Vi! I need to get down!" Either she was asleep, or pretending to be. I called her again, and this time she stirred, flexing her winding body and looking up at me drowsily. "Come get me!" She slid lazily off the roof and made her way over to the silo, crawling up the cylinder and lifting me below my arms, she deposited me on the ground then returned to her perch again. "Where are you going? We need to visit the Mutons again."

She grumbled unhappily, waving her hand at me dismissively as she lay on the roof.

"Oh fine, later then, but it's important. I'll give you two hours, ok?" She chirped her understanding, then rolled out of view.

I sat alone in the living room, lounging on the couch as the embers of the previous night's fire glowed in the hearth, tapping at Vi's tablet and trying to figure out how it could be used to communicate with our alien neighbors. The text menus were all in ADVENT script, impossible for me to read, I would probably have to employ Vi to guide me through the user interface.

I heard the front door open, and turned to look over the headrest of the couch to see Vi slinking into the farmhouse.

"Hey Vi, you ready to go?"

She didn't reply, and slid her way around the side of the couch, planting her heavy head on my lap. I set the tablet aside, surprised.

"What's with the sudden change of attitude?"

She rolled her eyes, huffing dispassionately, and raised her long fingers to scratch at her head.

"You got an itch?"

I rubbed the top of her head, her scales shiny and smooth under my fingers, and she wriggled her long body. Her hood was drooping and she was avoiding eye contact, as if she were embarrassed by something.