By Alexis Aurol
Searchlights lit the night sky, mounted on the aliens’ vehicles that raced over the hill. Iya, ever on guard, barked orders. “Tembo, quickly, to the trees. Tiou, help the young. Indloyu, with me.”
There wasn’t much hope. Someone was going to die. Iya pushed two of her daughters out of the way and stood her ground. When the vehicles were almost upon her, another motor could be heard. The two machines turned off their lights and bounced away. Reprieve!
The aliens had become problematic. For centuries Iya’s tribe had lived with them, if not in harmony, at least in a state of balance. Through the generations, each side had been responsible for the deaths on the other. Neither group lost too many. Then the aliens took aim and decimated the tribe with new and unnatural weapons. So many bones left to whiten in the blistering African sun. Reservations sprang up. No longer was the family able to move freely.
Even daylight offered no protection. Iya had seen her tribe experimented upon. Each sound of an engine could presage a group arriving to observe them—or something more nefarious. Kidnapped! Only sometimes reunited. Returnees spoke of being half-awake while the aliens drew blood, probed their bodies, and performed strange experiments. Sometimes her brethren returned with strange instruments embedded in their necks—irritating, physical memories of their time taken from the tribe. She could only wonder at their purpose. They were those targeted most often.
Even the young weren’t spared the trauma. Seeing your mother helpless—well, there were no words. Their sense of safety had been ripped away.
Iya thought herself lucky. At fifty-five, she had been taken numerous times. A bang and she dropped to the ground. To awake some time later, groggy, disoriented, angry. Yet, she felt profoundly lucky. The chip in her neck was small. She had always come home. But she had no privacy. The aliens watched her sleep, eat, travel, and even have sex. They were heartless.
Dawn a few days after the night assault, there was another raid. Almost a third of the family were taken. The tribe waited by the trees and watched them being taken away.
“That is my oldest daughter in the lead vehicle! This isn’t fair. We must get her back. It’s time to take a stand,” Tiou said.
“At least they took her baby too,” Iya said. “He wouldn’t be able to survive without her.”
“At least? At least! You’re trying to find a positive side to an abduction. You know when they take that many, they won’t be returning.”
“Tiou is correct. When they perform their experiments, they don’t move us.” Wise Indlovu would succeed Iya as matriarch when the time came.
“It is hopeless.” Nzou let out a mournful wail. “We don’t know where they are being taken, and the aliens have weapons that we can’t hope to match.”
Iya hated to see her tribe so beaten down. Enough was enough. “Quick! Scale the hill, Tembo. Hurry!” What did it mean to be matriarch if she let these atrocities continue?
Tembo returned several minutes later, breathless. “They are heading away from the sun, where the road branches.”
Iya rumbled. “We’re heading out. We’ll try to catch up.”
She drove her tribe mercilessly. They hadn’t traveled this far in a single day since migration during the last dry season. Eventually, they came upon a compound where the abducted were corralled behind high fences. Mothers cooed to their babies, comforting them. Others rumbled low, with an occasional trumpet.
“How do we get them out?” Giwa looked at the sky where the sun was dipping. “We don’t have any better resources than those trapped.”
“There are more of us, and we aren’t unsteady from the drugs.” Iya kicked at the dirt. “We aren’t leaving without our coterie. We’ll smash our way in.”
“But the aliens will kill us,” Enyi said.
“There are only a few. We outnumber them. We may not win, but they will know that they have met their match. We are a great species. Even the lions don’t mess with us. The aliens need to understand that.”
“What is the plan?” Tembo, young and eager, started to raise his trunk, then thought better of trumpeting.
“We kick our way in. Use your tusks. Form a line so that the entire fence is under pressure simultaneously.” Iya trumpeted the charge.
Tembo was still young enough to remain with the herd, but as an adolescent male, he relished using his strength against the offensive boards. The cries of the babies further enraged him and added to his strength. Iya watched as the largest females joined him in the effort. Indloyu used her massive tusks to slice into the fence.
The counterinsurgency went well. Only Tembo was injured. He had cuts on his legs from the fence boards. But he was tough. He’d heal.
“What do you think set the elephants off?” Okello stacked the broken wood. Most wasn’t salvageable. “I know they sometimes rampage, but this attack seemed so directed.” To his dismay, the elephants had broken into their homes, even stomped their vehicles. He considered the wood that was now only good for kindling. “I don’t know how we are going to get funding to rebuild this research station. I wish we could make them understand that we are here to help them. They have done too well in this park. We need to move some of them to another area to protect their food supply.”
“Would you understand if someone took your family?” Riitho replied. “I sometimes think I can feel their emotions—so much sadness.”
Iya watched over her family, sighing. It was time to move again. The vegetation was depleted. If only the aliens didn’t hate them for being different. Life would be hard, but not unbearable.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Mysterious *and* thrilling!
Fascinating point of view through the elephants’s eyes! And so sad! Elephants are extremely intelligent. Great story!
Moving story
A surprising twist to this one! All the initial markers point to the stories of space aliens abducting humans, but then this story isn’t actually about that. Well done!
I wondered if the aliens were humans. It’s a nice twist.
I wondered… great twist!!