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He took a few seconds to collect his thoughts before speaking. “Humans are alien food,” he finally said quietly. “Condolences. I shouldn’t have... That was wrong of me. I’m sorry.”
His words bounced and buzzed in my brain like a swarm of bees. My chest and stomach yawned like I was falling through the sky. I swayed on my feet. With a firm grip still on my wrists, Bo steadied me.
Remembering what he’d said the night prior, I admitted to my inability to comprehend. “I…don’t… I don’t understand.”
“Listen to me.” He used his hold to draw me closer, to invade my space. “I’m not going to candy-coat this for you. I will not disrespect those who’ve died before you by softening the truth. Sloths— you pampered humans who live in cities— are to the aliens what domesticated farm animals are to us.”
My brain fell silent.
*crickets*
Bo shook me lightly, as if to bring me out of my trance. “It’s important for you to grasp this. Just like we humans give food and shelter to our domesticated animals, providing for them so they don’t have to hunt or forage, the aliens do the same for the humans in the metro areas.”
“No-noo,” I whispered, shaking my head. This was a horror I could not fathom. He didn’t know what he was talking about. “I don’t believe you.”
“Well, you should,” he insisted. “Because all us humans did the same thing with other animals until alien Ai technology made ranching obsolete for humans in the city. We all used to make sure our animals were healthy and strong and fat, living in blissful happiness on the pasture until it was time to go to slaughter.”
“The aliens can grow lab food.”
“But that’s not what they want.”
Bo looked to convince me that my family and friends were gone, killed by aliens to become intergalactic food. It was both ridiculous and terrifying. I wasn’t saying that the man was lying, but he was surely mistaken.
“Look,” he continued, “the point is that humans have been added to the domesticated food chain. That’s all you need to know.”
I felt my eyes water yet fucking again.
“No tears,” he said. “You promised.”
“Why do you care?”
“Because I do. Because I can’t make this better for you.”
I wanted to express that he was full of shit anyway. Why would aliens, who could travel across the cosmos, bother eating humans when they had access to creatures that we couldn’t even imagine?
“Let me try,” Garrett said. “I think she’s just confused, being that humans were on top of the food chain for so long.”
I looked over to him, the moisture in my eyes making it almost too hard to see his features clearly.
“Sloths— you humans in the cities— used alien technology to provide food and health and happiness to the population without effort. In return, Sloths were tagged like cattle. Now the aliens are here to take everyone in the city off to the market. And you, little Acedia, are too rare a commodity for them to just give up on. So for a while, you will have to lay low with us until they depart the area. This is why you cannot go back to the city.”
“Why here?” I asked. “Why did they come here?”
Garrett swung his rifle onto his other shoulder, as if uncomfortable. “The aliens go to different cities around the world. We never know which one will be next until it’s too late. But you Sloths hear about this and don’t care. Sloths act as if it’s common for all the people living in a metro area to suddenly disappear.”
“Those are just natural disasters,” I whispered, my voice trembling as bad as my hands. Was I cold? “Too dangerous to visit, uninhabitable.”
“That is the Ai telling you what those hungry aliens want you to hear so you don’t descend on those targeted cities looking for your missing loved ones. This is the price of your easy lifestyle.”
“That’s enough, Garrett,” Huck grumbled. “She’s traumatized enough.”
“What happened to ‘not candy-coating it’?” Garrett countered.
My lungs seemed incapable of drawing in air. I waved at my chest as it tightened.
“I hear Sloths are slaughtered humanely,” Huck offered, as if to comfort me. “The aliens don’t exsanguinate all the babies. Those kids who survive will be raised by the Ai. And they will start a new generation to harvest sometime in the future.”
Harvest?
