Survivors

Things were, to put it mildly, frosty for a few weeks after the latest Bretnel, Luke confrontation. Bretnel spent a lot more time off in his (still) secret part of the base working on his latest Alien studies. Luke spent a lot of his time sulking and muttering words like “spineless”, “wimp” and mostly “traitor”. He really wasn’t a lot of fun to be around. Consequently Holly and Joe found themselves on their own a lot, which to be honest they didn’t mind. It was nice to be away from Luke’s moodiness and free from Bretnel’s weirdness.

On one of the days they when it was pretty obvious that they were going to be on their own Bretnel had said it was okay for them to go out flying without him. Bretnel had said it was okay as long as they;

Didn’t go too far

Were very careful

Avoided all contact with the Aliens

Did no observable damage

Had no contact with any other humans

Left not litter or traces of themselves

Followed his rules about returning to the base. Which involved;

Doubling back at least three times

Covering any tracks they made

Waiting 10 minutes while hidden at three different locations

Checking for pursuit every 2 minutes

Leaving several false trails

“Apart from that” he’d said “have fun”.

“Fun and Bretnel don’t really mix do they” said Joe later as they flew high above the forest. “Do you know, I’ve never heard him crack a joke. Do you think he can?”

“Oh he’s alright” said Holly “I like him”.

“Seriously?!” Squeaked Joe “Help, help there’s a mad woman here. She’s gone completely nuts!”

With that he folded his wings and dropped like a stone in an almost vertical dive. Holly grinned and swooped after him. Even though Joe was heavier, even as a bird, Holly was speedier and more agile. She easily caught him up and proceeded to give his tail feathers the slightest of tweaks. This was more than enough to send Joe tumbling over and over in mid air before he hurtled uncontrollably towards the earth. The crashing and the splintering of the wood as he disappeared into the trees proved he hadn’t lost his touch when it came to his woodlouse trick.

Holly doubled back and swooped into the trees following the trail of devastation. She found Joe, still in woodlouse form in the middle of a pile of small and somewhat splintered saplings.

“You are a ...” He croaked as he turned into a huge cow. Holly landed laughing.

“I don’t think Bretnel would call this being careful do you?” Mooed Joe accusingly.

Holly turned back into herself, he stretchy costume fitting very snugly round her body.

A thought popped into Joe’s head “Crikey, she looks good in that!”

This thought was quickly followed by another one which was “Where the hell did that come from!”

Joe felt himself blushing so instead of sharing either of these thoughts with Holly he said “Are you alright, you look a bit... A bit... Well not happy”

Holly didn’t say anything for a while then appearing to make up her mind she said “First things first, can you change into you. I’m not discussing anything with a cow!”

“Oh yeah” sorry said Joe changing into human form.

“And the...” Said Holly pointing at the snail eyes on the top of Joe’s head.

“Damn” hissed Joe “You know I really thought I’d mastered that” The horns sunk into his head “Woooa, that always feels odd. Ready now!” He grinned.

“It’s Bretnel” sighed Holly “I think he’s sick”

“Yeah well, we’ve always known that haven’t we” chuckled Joe.

“No!” Insisted Holly “I mean it. Haven’t you noticed he seems to be blacking out a lot more and for a lot longer than he used to.He seems to spend a lot more time lying down after each blackout and I’ve seen him taking loads of drugs as well”.

“You keep saying that Hol, so what!”

“I don’t know what” snapped Holly “But I think we need to really keep an eye on him from now on. I want you to watch him and see if you think I’ve got it right”. Joe smiled. “I’m mean it Joe, you’ve got to take this seriously. If anything happened to Bretnel we could be in real trouble. There’s still so much we don’t know about the base, the drugs, keeping safe from the Alines... anything. Besides we need to look after him, just like he looked after us, because it’s only fair and, and it’s seems like the right thing to do. It’s what Darius would have expected us to do”.

“Okay, okay I’ll keep an eye out from now on. Okay?”

“Okay”

There was an uncomfortable silence.

“ I guess it’s time to get back to the base then” said Holly

“Okay...” said Joe sadly. Then suddenly he grinned “Last one back to checkpoint three is a rotten egg” snarled Joe as he turned into a giant leopard and bounded off into the trees.