Chapter 24

"They're cannibals!" Tilly shrieked in horror.

We'd gotten back to the settlement well before supper time. We were greeted by Rebecca, Brenda, Angela, and Melody. All of them came over and gave me a kiss to welcome me home. It was nice. It didn't last long. Tilly came running out of the tent complex a minute or two later. She'd heard our voices and she wanted to know everything. I had to silence her with a kiss. It was a nice kiss and she appreciated it.

She didn't appreciate being dismissed. I told everyone that we were going to unpack and take a shower and then we were going to have supper with the rest of the family. I made it clear that we weren't going to talk about the 'beings' that we'd seen until after supper. It didn't happen that way.

We did put our kit away and we did have our showers. Nothing happened in the shower with the three young ladies. There was no reprise of the last time with Lizzy and Vicky. The memory of what we had seen and the knowledge of what we were about to tell the other members of the family was still prominent in our minds. I don't think anything could have gotten our libidos going. Not without a lot of help.

What we found leaving the bath unit was another audience. The whole family were waiting for us at the picnic tables. All of them were looking very serious. Tilly was standing right beside Emma and the two of them were whispering. I knew there was trouble brewing. I sighed and the girls sighed as well. None of us were looking forward to the next few minutes.

"Hi there gorgeous," I said with a forced smile as I walked up to Emma, "have you missed me."

"Can the sweet talk Adam," my wife ordered, placing her palm against my chest and stopping me from leaning in to kiss her, "and explain to us what's going on."

"What do you mean?" I innocently asked, looking about sheepishly.

"You know exactly what I mean," Emma snapped back at me, "and if you don't spill the beans now, I'll make your life miserable. Just remember, there are thirty-five of us and only one of you. You're out numbered so come clean or we'll start playing dirty."

"What do you want to know?" I asked, trying to appear cooperative.

"You know what we want to know," Tilly interjected before my wife could slap me down, "so stop stalling. Why do you want to wait until after supper to talk about what you saw? Is it that bad? Are we in danger? Tell us!"

I sighed again. Vicky and the twins sighed as well. Emma's face went pale.

"It's that bad, is it?" she asked in a very low voice.

We showed them the video. Everyone remained silent during the playback. Then Tilly shrieked and that was that. All hell broke loose.

It took Sally to bring calm to the whole explosion of panic. She rang the dinner bell; loudly and continuously until everyone shut up.

"Enough!" my mother shouted as the voices died down. "Enough of all this screaming and shouting and wailing; if we're going to discuss this we need some calm and some quiet!"

"But..." Tilly started again, her eyes still bulging with fear.

"Enough!" Rebecca shouted sternly cutting her daughter off. "Nobody wants to hear from you Matilda. Now be quiet. If you don't, I'll get medicine from the clinic and put you to sleep."

That stopped Tilly. It didn't make her happy, her face showed that clearly to everyone, but she shut up.

"I think we should eat," I said, glancing about.

"I'm not hungry," Emma replied softly, 'and I think all of us would like to finish this conversation. Let's all sit and talk and then ... if anyone is still hungry they can get their own food. Personally, I've lost my appetite."

So we sat down and talked. Mostly they asked me questions and I tried to answer them. Vicky helped out a lot. Fiona and Francine just nodded whenever someone looked in their direction. They were overwhelmed.

"How much danger are we in?" Emma asked right off the bat.

"Zero," was my reply. It took everyone by surprise.

"What do you mean by that son?" my mother asked.

"I mean," I said with a deep sigh, "that at the moment we are not in any danger. I believe that our 'benefactors' showed us these 'beings' to forewarn us of the dangers that face us beyond the safe zone."

"Our 'benefactors'," Tilly spat out at me. "You're talking about aliens that allowed my Rodney to die. For all you know these 'beings' might be those aliens. Have you thought about that?"

"Yes I have," I replied quickly, cutting off anything else Tilly had to say and preventing anyone else from commenting. "I've thought about it and I've ruled that idea out. The 'beings' we observed were essentially cavemen. They had no advanced technology and their actions demonstrated a simplistic way of life. They certainly did not display the capability of snatching up thirty-plus humans off the face of the Earth and transporting them to another world, let alone reversing their actual age to the level that we currently are at."

"That still doesn't mean were not in danger," Angela pointed out, stepping up beside her sister Tilly as she spoke.

"No it doesn't," I agreed, "but I do believe that our 'benefactors' were forewarning us and now that they have, the danger to us has been removed."

"Why?" Emma asked, drawing questioning looks from the rest of the women, looks all directed at me.

"Because," I replied with another heavy sigh, "forewarned is forearmed. We know that these 'beings' are extremely hostile and violent. We can avoid them by not going near them. From what we observed about the lower valley, it appears that the 'beings' are confined to that area only and it is obvious that the escarpment and the growth of bush at the top of it prevent them from moving from the lower valley to the upper portion. They're contained. All we have to do is to stay out of the lower valley."

"What we need to do," Bethany weighed in forcefully, "is to stay away from the valley all together. That would make things a lot safer."

"Probably," Vicky piped up before I could answer, "but I doubt very much whether the aliens will allow us to stay away."

"What do you mean?" asked my daughter Sarah. This time all the questioning eyes fell on Vicky.

"It's just that the aliens have their own agenda," Vicky explained patiently, "and we don't have any say in it. Yesterday Adam wanted to head west and return to the same campsite that he'd visited before. The aliens decided that he would be going south and then south-west. Adam was driving for about fifteen minutes before he realized what was going on. Now I'm certain that he could have tried to head west at that point if he had wanted to, but I'm also certain that fifteen minutes later he would have found himself heading south again. It's that simple. We can try and avoid the valley, but if the aliens decide that it's time for us to get down into it and explore it, we'll have no choice but to do it."

"Fuck!" Sarah exclaimed openly, drawing a glare of annoyance from her grandmother and several nods of agreement from the rest of the women.

"There's another question that we should discuss," I pointed out before anything else could be said.

"What?" the women all said in a massive barrage.

"Well," I replied slowly, glancing about as I did, "the real question is whether these 'beings' are native to this planet."

"Why?" my niece Beverly asked, beating the rest to the question.

"Well," I said again, going slowly, "if the 'beings' are native to this planet, then we could be in real trouble. There could be more groups of them all over this planet and even if we avoid this group, we could run into another one at anytime. However, if they're like us and they've been planted here by our 'benefactors', then the threat to us is less. I don't plan to go to war with these 'beings' but if we come into contact with them, I do plan to shoot first. From what we've observed, talking to them isn't a good idea."

"So we hope that they're just like us," Emma stated, sighing as she did, "and we try to avoid them if we can. I don't like it but I think it's the best we can hope for."

"But," my mother-in-law Betty said, glancing about with a confused look upon her face, "if these 'beings' are like us;, if they've been transplanted here like we were, what does it mean?"

"It means that the aliens," Vicky declared with a hint of anger in her voice, "haven't been as forthcoming as we thought."

"True!" Sally stated firmly. "They told us one thing and we accepted it only to find out that they'd lied to us."

"I wouldn't call it a lie," I protested. "It was more of an omission of facts."

"Call it what you want son," my mother chided me sternly, "but I'm calling it a lie. Oh it was a little white lie, but it was still a lie and now we suspect that other 'beings' have been plopped down on this rock as well. It makes you wonder what is going on here. Are we truly supposed to rebuild mankind or do our 'benefactors' have another plan for us? We just don't know and it's beginning to piss me off."