But it also hadn’t landed as hard as it should have in an actual crash.
There was no sign of smoke or fire and very little damage.
“The question is, what the hell is it?” she muttered.
It wasn’t a helicopter or a piece of one.
It wasn’t the fuselage of a plane—minus wings and tail fin.
It damned sure wasn’t anything like any satellite she’d ever seen pictures of.
And it sure as hell wasn’t a weather balloon.
A shiver skated down her spine.
What it was, was something she had no desire to examine too closely.
Ok, well some desire, but she damned sure wasn’t going to.
It looked like bad news.
Even as she tensed for flight, though, she heard a sound that made her heart trip over itself and then just stop dead still in her chest.
The whimpering cry of a frightened baby—a young one.
She froze. Every ounce of her being focused on her ears, strained to hear the sound if it came again.
It didn’t and it left her torn.
Had she imagined it? Or was it something in the woods that made that sound?
That made sense—a lot more sense than the possibility that she’d heard an actual baby.
She’d heard wildcats were known to scream like a woman.
She didn’t remember hearing about anything that sounded like a crying baby.
But there was something in her that absolutely compelled her to check. She discovered that, as strident as her survival instincts were screaming at her to run that she couldn’t. She had toknowwhat had made that sound.
“I’m here, baby!” she called out, beginning to pick her way around the strange, lozenge shaped object that she knew with every fiber of her being wasn’t of human origins. “I’m coming.”
Almost as if it responded to her, she heard the whimpering cry again.
It sounded close and she saw why as she rounded the end of the ship and was able to see the other side. It was damaged, fairly extensively.
The craft was dark inside.
The hair on the back of her neck stood up. Her belly knotted with fear.
Because she heard a furtive, shuffling sort of sound.
But she also heard a faint whimper and that time there was absolutely no doubt it was coming from inside the vessel.
She thought if her sphincter hadn’t knotted with terror she might have soiled herself.
Or wet her pants.
Or ran.
Or all three at once.
She couldn’t seem to make herself move in any direction for many moments.
But the cloud of terror parted sufficiently to allow brain function—of a sort—and it occurred to her that it was frightened. That’s what she’d heard that had, almost literally, scared the piss out of her.
It still took all she could do to force herself to follow the sounds inside.
As she stepped through the tear in the side of the thing, a few lights flickered on—and kept flickering.
There was almost nothing inside.
Nothing but the thing that looked more like a casket than anything else that came to mind.
The lid, which was transparent, was standing up—fractured, no doubt, by the jarring impact.
That thought produced her first fear—that someone was hurt and needed help.
It made it possible to inch closer to the casket thing. She strained from what she thought might be a safe distance, to peer inside.
And then she saw it.
It was a little thing … relatively speaking.
Maybe a baby.
Definitely alien.
Logically, she decided, it was so small compared to the size of the thing it was in that she must conclude itwasa baby … alien.
At that thought, she whipped a sharp look around in fearful search of the parents.
The infant, though, if it was an infant, was the only occupant. The craft looked more like … well, she supposed a raft. There was the one thing inside it that could contain a life form and nothing else—no seats or other caskets.
The baby had been in the life raft inside a hibernation unit, she thought, convinced of that assessment even though she had no certainty of where it had come from.
Hollywood, she supposed.
Trying to convince herself nothing truly horrible, deadly, terrifying was going to jump out at her, she moved a little closer and crooned soothingly as she had before. “It’s ok, baby. Are you hurt, sweety?”
Two huge eyes stared at her solemnly from the shadows, unblinking.
But she thought those eyes were full of tears and that shot straight through her heart.
She moved a little closer. “Come here, sweety. I won’t hurt you.” Then she muttered under her breath, “Please, please don’t hurt me. I’m just trying to help.”
The tiny being studied her for several long moments and then shuffled a little closer, out of the shadows and into the flickering light.
It was so alien—humanoid, but clearly alien—her blood froze in her veins. Goosebumps broke out all over her and raced around in a cascading way that made her teeth begin to chatter.
It was cold as hell, she reminded herself, trying to dismiss her terror.
And she could see the poor little thing was next door to naked.
It was shivering.
“I should’ve learned a long damn time ago not to make stupid wishes,” she muttered under her breath.
The infant seemed to sense the anger in her tone even though she hadn’t frowned or yelled. It almost seemed to shrink away from her.
Or maybe it did because it saw her as alien?
“Come on, sweety. You’ll freeze in here. I can’t leave you. There’s no telling when someone will come looking for you.”
If ever.
Because she knew as soon as she said it that it was true.
Why would they have put it in something like this and sent it off by itself unless it was the best and maybe only chance for survival?
“I’ll bet you’re hungry, too.”
And what the hell was she going to do about that?
She glanced away from the baby and searched the area for anything that looked like supplies.
She wasn’t really surprised when she didn’t see anything when she’d already deduced the child had been put in some sort of suspended animation, but
