The Ziliazer

Chapter 1 - Winning Big

Ella

I always wanted to win lotto, hoping it would solve all my problems. Surprise! I finally won one… this one, the worst one. The one where the dickheads in charge of global leadership auction 30 million of us to any alien species that could prevent our sun from dying. All without letting us know that was the plan. I stood in the middle of roo knows where staring at about forty black ships, one of which I am being loaded on to.

The ships were enormous with wide flat wings reminiscent of a manta ray. I searched the lines of unwilling people- sorry winners- to find my brother. The smell of shit and nail polish hung faintly in the air. The Australian sun beat down on us with a vengeance. My skin tinged, sweat dripped down my face. Would it be cold where we were going or just as hot as here? The soles of my feet stung as I sway from side to side. I couldn't tell if I was struggling to breathe because of the heat or the raising panic that came with each step forward.

Not the way I thought I would go to space, but what can you do when government dickheads with guns show up at your unit before sunrise? Invite them in for a cold one? Ask them to go down to the pub for my last chicken parmie? Yeah, that didn’t work. Begging didn’t either. My heart pounded in my ears as I kicked up red dirt, earning a glare from a soldier - sorry, my escort to the true prize winners, the Klards. We were being handed over to one eyed, four-armed, horrid fucking smelling aliens. Aside from the ethical what the fuck of this situation, why did these aliens want us? Tiny fragile humans?

We were going to be snacks for them, probably grilled on a barbie with their version of snags. We solve two problems for them. The first being we were food. I swallowed a groan. The sharp clang of my chains pierces through the sound of rushing blood in my ears with each step to the imposing ship. My heart thumped against my ribs rapidly matching the frenzy of my mind as I looked for escape. I needed to stop spiralling. It wasn’t going to help me find a way out of this. I glanced around again, hoping to spot Jeremy. Both of us had to escape the hell we were headed for.

To my left, two ships down dead bodies are loaded onto a ship in mass with only two living people. That brings up part two of why the Klards wanted us. Fertiliser. They over-farmed their planet, and our dead bodies would rejuvenate their soil. The living ones were a temporary solution until they could regrow their regular fix. Our prime minister stated from here on out any dead would be shipped to the Klards. I knew deep down that we would not be the last 30 million auctioned off, repairing an ecosystem didn’t happen overnight and the governments knew this wasn’t the end. We would feed them for years to come.

The woman in front of me made a run for it, dodging and weaving away from the soldiers before the butt of a rifle brought her to her knees. She hit the ground hard, skidded to a stop, a cloud of red dust surrounded her. Two soldiers pulled her up by her shoulders and dragged her to one of the waiting ships where our new owners- sorry- where the aliens held the cheque in their oh so smelly glory.

Head turning in hope to catch a glimpse of Jeremy’s red hair in the forty lines of people. I hoped we were at least together and not shipped to different parts of the planet.

A stable life was all Jeremy and I ever wanted and after all the shit we’ve been through, we finally had it. A great job at the hospital, my comfy apartment, and by some miracle I kept a plant alive for more than three months. My brother had an amazing girlfriend and they were browsing for their own home together. We were living our dreams. The stench of shit and nail polish grew as the path of red dirt ended at the edge of the metal ramp that would be my red carpet to doom. I forced my gaze up from my toes to the ship entrance.

My chest was painfully tight, each breath like pulling air through a straw. I made the mistake of looking over the head of the person in front of me. The Klard’s appearance sent chills down my spine and put my stomach on the verge of falling out of my ass. From the sickly white of their skin, to the single large eye centred in its amphibian head above an uncomfortably wide mouth. Down to its four arms that would make gym junkie jealous, but a stomach that bulged out like a patient in late-stage liver failure. It shifted on birdlike feet ending sharp talons that scrapped on the metal as the person in front of me was shoved inside.

I was next. The want to run took over, my body lurched backward, swivelling on my heels. I pushed past the person behind me, getting two strides down the ramp, only to feel the cool wet grip of a three fingered hand on my upper arm. The Klard's grip was so tight I yelped as he snatched me and swung me towards its body. My eyes shot from the aussie desert to the massive amphibian eye as the ugly creature opened its frog-like mouth, showing me its hooked jagged teeth and tongue covered in black taste bubs so sharp they looked like glass. Two long vine-like appendages slither from its mouth, each splitting down the middle to hiss at me. They glided along the side of my face. I recoiled with a whimper as slimy goo dripped over my face. Well, fuck me dead.

Screw calling them Klards. They are one-eyed shitheads now and any other shitty name I can come up with. My gut roiled, acid burning up my throat. Nope, I was not gonna puke, gulping it down. Who knows, this shithead might eat vomit as an in-flight snack. The huge sack of flesh on chicken legs pressed a gun shaped device to my shoulder, a sharp pain shoots through it. My body shook for a second at the sharp prick leaving a sting in my shoulder disappeared. Did they just shoot me? A red light flashed its little heart out under my skin. A tracking chip, maybe? Or a thermometer to know when I am perfectly cooked later? It was probably the former, but I didn’t think these fuckers would pass up on the perfect roast.

My body stiffened so tight I couldn't bend my knees as I was shoved down into the women's cell. I hit the floor, landing hard on my shoulder, pain throbbed through my collarbone, my gaze drifting into the cell. There were two other women in there, their bodies racking with sobs. Their cries were nothing like the worst cries of pain or loss I’d heard in the emergency room. Their cries were chilling to my ears. I forced myself to take a breath through my throat tightening as it threatened to suffocate me. The cell was massive, with thick black metal bars matching a cell on the other side of the ship. A large tank with a spout at the bottom was mounted against the wall in the corner of the cell. Clear liquid sat still. Wow, we are human hamsters caged with a water dispenser. My skin prickled at the cold air pumped out of the vents in our cell, cycling the stench of its owners over and over. I stared at my captor looking for a way to get around it and to get out of here.

The door was open and the ramp down, but the sheer strength of the froggy faced fucker made me think the shove it gave me into the cell was considered gentle. Hard lines of protective bone laid under the strained skin of the one-eyed fucker’s chests and sides and they were eight-feet tall. I shrank down. Maybe I could poke its eye?

Nah, I would barely poke them in the holes they called a nose if I had a run up. I could kick it in the gut. I cringed, staring at the rounded gut as it moved. Fuck knows what is going in in there. I curled in on myself as I realised how little I could do and how much damage they could do to me. The belt around his waist was covered in tools and I didn’t know many of those were weapons. My body felt heavy, my hands going numb.

The cries of the women behind me grew harsher and more broken with each breath they took. My heart pounded against my ribs fiercely as the sounds of banging and cries got louder with each new person dragged into the hold. A pale woman with brown hair was ripped up the ramp while she kicked at the alien with every bit of strength she could muster. She was fighting it with feral rage, gnashing her teeth and clawing with her free hand at the Klard's hand clasped around her wrist. The twisted monster seemed to think it was funny, egging her on to fight more by shaking and hissing at her.

She swore, biting into the alien's arm. The muscles around the it’s eye contorted into an unsettling glare. Two of it’s spare arms encased her waist as the Klard stopped hauling her along. Every muscle in my body pulled tight, trapping my breath in my lungs. My mind silenced everything aside from her screams, my vision tunneled on her as I watched the alien grab her brown hair and yank her off the ground in one quick motion. The woman continued fighting frantically, her limbs flying even as the alien began twisting her skull with one hand while it held her body still with its other three arms. Cold was all I felt as I watched her limbs stop jerking with the sickening crack of her vertebrae, her once bright brown eyes became void of life.

The alien, satisfied by the unmoving body, leaned its head down, the jaw hyper-extended until its entire mouth fit over her head. The one eyed-shit’s jagged teeth pierced into the flesh at the back of her neck. Its tongue scraped off layers of her flesh from her neck, blood seeping down the front and back of her clothes. The dickhead only stopped when I could see a sliver of bone. I cringed away, shuddering.

My mind was quiet until the alien’s jaw snapped closed and the crack of her cranium vibrated in my ears. The alien’s stomach writhed and wriggled as its vines extended out of its mouth. Slurping sounds filled the cargo hold as its appendages slithered into the woman’s flesh. The muscles of her neck pulsed, her whole body down to her pelvis writhed and wriggled. Her legs swayed with each movement, dripping her blood onto the metal below.

Once the slurping stopped, I learnt that there was a new horror to witness. The alien whipped its head back, the woman’s spinal cord tearing from her body along with it. The long greenish appendages split open, wrapped around the cord like vines crushing the life out of a bloody tree. I ground my teeth together to stop the scream that curled in my throat. It retracted its appendages, pulling her bloody spinal cord into its mouth, spraying blood across the cargo hold. Their belly twisted and shook, loud sloshing sounds echoing as its odour became more putrid.

The one-eyed fuck dropped her body to the floor and with it I could hear the rest of the world around me. The yelping, crying and shuffling. My view shifted to the floor, unable to look at the horror anymore, simply watching the blood drain away through the gaps in the panels. The sound of her skull cracking and the slurping of her spine replayed through my mind over and over. My hands quivered, my mind unwilling to accept what the fuck I saw. The women near me pushed themselves into a corner of the cell, huddling together until all I could see was the mixture of their blonde and black hair. Fuck, fuckity, fuck. They eat humans. My heart clasped tight enough I thought it might stop. It might be better if I died here. If I had a heart attack.

I shook my head, gasping. I didn't want to die without seeing my brother one more time. Leaving this world without my twin, leaving him to face a fate as horrid as what I witnessed, I couldn't fucking do that. Tears flowed over my lashes, my lips wobbling.

I shoved myself further back as black dots filled my vision. That was going to happen to me, wasn’t it? An alien was going to crack my head like an egg and tear my spine from my lifeless body like it was fucking spaghetti. I forced down a whimper.

My chest wanted to heave again, begging to take short sharp breaths. I couldn’t let that happen. I had to stay calm. Another alien walked out from a room next to a cell across from ours, grabbing her headless body and dragging it through the sliding door, leaving a trail of blood in its wake. The metal warped as her body dragged over the floor panels, creating an awful banging sound. I squeezed my hands over my mouth to hold in my scream. What was going to happen to that poor woman’s body now? Stop thinking and start doing… just not anything that makes them hungry or mad.

My body shuddered, as a young woman with tight black curls and pale brown skin came up the ramp. Her brown irises nearly swallowed her pupils. Did I look as freaked out as her? The Klard shoved her forward, allowing her to hit the cage bars on the way down. I rushed forward to help her get up.

“It’ll be right, come this way. They’ll leave ya alone if you are in here.” I whispered, putting on my softest strained smile. Her brown eyes were wild, shooting around the cell. “Focus here, it’ll be right. Come closer. I am Ella. What’s your name?”

Her hands took mine when the ramp creaked with the weight of the next person being dragged up. “Marcella,” she mumbled, her hands holding a death grip around mine. Her breaths were erratic, tears streaming down her cheeks with no sign of stopping.

“It’s okay Marcella, you’ll be right. Stay close to the girls, okay? I’ll stay in front of you guys. They can’t get to ya if I am in the way.” She nodded. It was stupid lie to tell her, when we both knew I couldn’t stop them. She crushed my hands, her nails digging into my palms as I helped her crawl to the deepest corner of the cell. Am I going to die alone and scared? or live a life where I am forced to make more humans to feed the froggy cyclops?

“You’ll be right. I'm going to be right near the front and I’ll get the next person, okay? ” She nodded at me, hesitantly letting go of my hands. I gave her my best ‘Everything will be right’ smile.

There’s nothing okay about what was happening. I couldn’t see a way out of here and I didn’t know how many of those ugly googly eyed aliens there were on this shit box. Even if we got around them, our own people were just gonna hand us over. Our Prime minister made sure of that. If one of us escapes, the government will give our own people cash and offer them safety from being selected for catching us. The pressure around my heart grew. Okay, I needed to breathe. I wished Jeremy was by my side. If I had him close by, I could calm down. Breathe.

I tried again. Breathe. I placed my palm on my ribs. My lungs expanded as I inhaled, but it felt like there was no air in them. I couldn’t breathe. What if I die? What if I was having a heart attack? Stop it! This was a panic attack, and I knew how to prevent this. I proved to myself that I was indeed breathing by the rise and fall of my ribs. I was in control. My mind doesn’t rule me.

Bullshit! My mind ruled me. This was the perfect time to panic. A one-eyed, six fucking limbed alien tore a woman’s spine from her body. Tears brimmed in my lashes and my lips trembled. The other women and Marcella were weeping and yelping. Why couldn’t I be like them? I was just as frightened of what was happening as they were. I was not at work. I had no fucking training for this.

They looked so small huddled in the corner. Shaking my head I fought to ignore the memories clawing their way up. I never wanted to be that scared again.

I couldn’t let him see that again… if I ever saw him again. Attempting to put all my focus on helping the others and looking for Jeremy. Perhaps If I had distracted the soldiers he would have gotten away. No, no more what ifs. If I started going down the what ifs road, I’d be spiraling out of control.

The next woman was dragged up the ramp, her face wet with tears. She could barely keep her feet. The government agents must've drugged her. Her black hair roughed up and, by the look of it, her wrists were bruised from struggling against the chains. The one-eyed dickhead pushed the woman forward, sending her flying into me, a frightened sound leaving her lips. With my chained hands, I gently ushered her to the corner where the other women all sat huddled together, and found out her name was Jane. Whatever they gave her made even sitting up difficult. I felt my fear coil tighter around my throat, my saliva choking me. I kicked down another whimper, my gut heavy. This should be a dream. The sounds of people panicking pulled me to do something. This wasn’t covered in my training but I could be useful here like I was in the hospital. I needed to stay calm and look after the others. If I don’t look scared, they will calm down too. Deep breaths.

Across from our cell I saw the men being ushered into their own. I could see that Jeremy and I weren’t the only ones who attempted to fight our kidnappers. Bruises littered some of the bodies coming up the ramp. Two more women were pushed into the cell, a seemingly sweet sun kissed blonde called Hannah and a fiery woman named Evelyn with golden skin and long black hair braided down to her waist. Evelyn spent most of the time I was leading her back muttering about how this was unfair and how she wanted to put them in a pot and see how they felt about it. She continued quietly muttering as I left her with Hannah, who tried to soothe her. I noticed that all the women here seemed to be in their late teens to mid-thirties, of all shapes and sizes, and aside from a few bruises, they all seemed to be in perfect health. Same went for the guys . Most of them looked to be taken either as they slept or rudely awoken, like we were.

I choked when Jeremy came up the ramp. A small cloud of relief settled over me, loosening anxiety’s grip on my throat. It left as quickly as it arrived. The whole right side of his jaw was bruised and his bottom lip split. His eyebrow ring had been torn out, leaving a trail of blood over his eye and cheek. Two aliens dragged him up the ramp as he struggled against them looking behind him. Jeremy’s green eyes were wild, scouring the hold, glossy with tears finally settled on me, all I could see was utter despair. The pressure around my heart tightened to the point I thought it would burst. My heart was breaking as he fought to take a step towards me. I shook my head frankly, silently begging him not to fight them.

I fought tears as I shot him a gentle smile, mouthing stop fighting, they will kill you, it will be okay.

The dickhead tagged him and shoved him into the cell. Nervous laughter bubbled up in my throat at the murderous glare he shot at them. He mouthed to me across the cargo hold, asking if I was okay.

I wasn't okay. I was the most un-okay I had ever been in my life. My lips trembled as I forced a smile and took my quivering hand to point at the corner of the cell. He would be safest there. Who the fuck was I kidding! We weren't going to be okay. I couldn't protect us from this. I watched as the men mirrored the women in our cell, sheltering themselves as far away from the mono ocular frogs.

I continued with each new woman, asking her name, and getting her to sit with the others in the corner. This shit bucket of a ship was full before I knew it. From what I could tell, there were thirty women and about twenty-nine men. The one-eyed stinkers shut the cell doors.

One more man was dragged up the ramp and thrown against the wall next to the sliding door. He hit it with a metallic thud. The guy was small and wiry, his face so badly bruised, the one side was swollen. The guy curled up away from the one-eyed fucker pulled a clear tube from a hidden panel in the wall, sticking it into his arm over the implant. His body stiffened, the chip glowing blue under his skin. The man's breathing changed from rapid and short to slow and steady. His eyes glazed over as the Klard attached a tube to his right arm. A yellow liquid flowed through the tube to his right arm. His body spasmed, horrid screams poured out of him. His skin yellowed as whatever it was perfused into him. Was it his liver struggling to process what they put into him? Was this jaundice? I swallowed vomit down, my nails biting into my palms.

I couldn't look away from him as a shadow rolled over him. A whirring sound rang in my ears. The lights flickered on with the bang of the hold shutting, my head snapped to the sound. I didn't even see my world disappear. I missed the last time I would see the red dirt. The last time I would feel that warm sun on my skin. My vision swam. This was my fucked-up reality. My heart pounded in my ears, the crying around me the only thing breaking through it.

A loud banging and hissing snapped me out of it. The one eyed fuck pulled a square box from the tool belt from their waist. They brought it to their mouth, hissing into it. The device crackled.

"Shut up or you will be next." The sound boom in the hold, when we didn't quiet down immediately, they slammed their fist against the wall again, eyeing all of us. The Klard pointed at the last person to shut up. "You'll be next unless someone else more disruptive becomes an option."

The Klard glared down at the man connected to the wall, kicking his foot before tapping a panel by the sliding door and disappearing inside. That should’ve brought me relief, but I was more frightened than ever. I worried about when they would return and what they would do next. The hold was eerily silent, my body flinching when a horrid vacuuming sound started from the tube in the man's left arm. Bright orange liquid sucked through the tube. I gasped, launching myself backwards. That is how they do it. We are a bypass. They cycled their food through us and infused it that way. We were officially fucked. Probably to be fed, bred and then sucked dry. Eating us was a quick hit, this would be their long term solution.

It made sense why there were only two live people on the other ship now. How long would he last with whatever they were putting into him? Maybe that fast death was better than whatever the fuck was happening to him. A roaring engine came to life, and I assumed we took off. Take off didn’t feel the same as it did in a plane. It was surprisingly forceful and happened swiftly; I felt every one of my limbs pulled down to the panels and I couldn’t lift them. It wasn’t long before I could lift my arms again and I assumed we were out of earth’s atmosphere.

My stomach turned. Without thinking, I had let the fear creep up. The pressure around my chest didn’t want to subside. I couldn’t let an attack happen here. Steady Ella, I repeated in my head. We would find a way out. We always did. I would get us outta here. I would figure it out