When It Rains It Pours By Kameran Reardon
There is nothing quite like watching a late evening summer rainstorm from a large covered porch in August. The heat had broken and lifted the unbearable humidity that had blanketed the town for several weeks and it was fifteen degrees cooler. Children ran through the rain laughing and playing, splashing in the huge puddles that were forming.
Grant Baker sat in a heavily padded chair with his feet on the porch railing sticking out far enough for the rain to hit them. His bright green eyes watched the kids out near the curb and he laughed as one of them pan caked into the water, causing dimples to form in his cheeks.
His normally medium blond hair was plastered to his head from his own excursion into the downpour. He couldn't help it. When Marc had shown up with his Frisbee it had been to irresistible. Leaving their shirts tossed over the chairs they'd rampaged into the rain and tossed the disk for each other for almost an hour.
Grant was entranced with the way Marc's body moved as he jumped in a full out stretch to catch the Frisbee, his eyes making rapid flicks over the other's abs, chest, arms, and angular face. Marc's light brown hair was usually kept in a shag cut, a little longer than shoulder length and parted in the middle, and was now soaked. He used both hands to smooth it back out of his eyes and focused his pale hazel eyes on Grant.
"So what are we going to do tonight?" He asked impishly. "Your parents don't get home until tomorrow night." He wiggled his eyebrows up and down and grinned.
Grant held his hand out just far enough so that he could brush fingertips with his boyfriend of two years. The standing joke between them was that Marc had been Grant's favorite gift on his fifteenth birthday. "Poor baby, did you think I'd send you home with your balls over flowing?" He stuck his lower lip out in a pout.
"I didn't think you send me home at all." Marc picked up his Pepsi and slid his foot over to rub Grant's. "Aren't you going to let me stay?" He offered his best lost puppy dog look.
Grant laughed out loud and laced his fingers into Marc's. "Oh, Weeza, you know I love ya more than my luggage."
"No!" Marc sat up and squeezed Grant's fingers almost painfully. "No Steel Magnolia quotes."
"Kill joy." Grant leaned over and kissed him on the lips. "I happen to like that movie."
"No shit? I couldn't tell." Marc rolled his eyes. "Everyone you know is aware of that." He looked towards the trees and the setting sun and stood up, pulling Grant up. "Wow, look at that." He slid his arm around the other's waist and looked out at the sunset, visible through the curtains of rain.
"I watched you feed your little sister's favorite doll to your mother's garbage disposal and I'm supposed to believe you're a romantic?" Grant leaned against his shoulder and sighed.
"Are you ever going to let that drop?"
"Yeah, when you pay me back what you borrowed to replace it." Grant yawned and turned to get his shirt off the back of the chair. "Come on, stud monkey, let's go get dry and see what's on HBO. I'll make popcorn."
"I'd rather get totally fucking sticky in your bed." Marc snagged his shirt and flopped it over one shoulder as he followed Grant into the house.
"I don't know why, it's my turn on top." Grant looked over his shoulder and grinned.
"Bitch, it is not!" Marc used his shirt to pop Grant in the ass. "I'm gonna go shower, kay?"
"Leave me hot water." Grant tossed his shirt to Marc on the way into the kitchen. "Throw that in my room."
"Okay." Marc jogged up the stairs.
An hour later they lay stretched out side by side on Grant's bed with a bowl of popcorn between them. They hadn't bothered to pull the covers back because it was still pretty warm, and Grant had opened the windows.
Marc absent-mindedly scratched the area between his pubic hair and his thigh and raised his knee up. "I don't get it. The Doctor could take out all her Borg shit except for left eyebrow?" He popped a couple of kernels in his mouth and crunched on them.
"Dufuss, that's her cortical node." Grant rolled his eyes. "How many fucking times have you watched this here? You use all my shampoo, you eat all my food, you fuck me until I can't walk on a regular basis, and you can't even have the decency to pay attention to my favorite show?"
"Yeah." Marc giggled and set the bowl out of the way and rolled over onto Grant, pinning him. "I can't even begin to tell you how unimportant Voyager is." He leaned down and kissed Grant on the lips, eventually pushing his tongue into the other's mouth.
Grant pushed him away and gasped for breath. "Traitor!" He reached down and wrapped his hand around Marc's thickening hard on. "Take that back."
"Make me." Marc ran his tongue along Grant's jaw line and pulled on his earlobe with his lips.
"Uuuuuughhhhh!" Grant shivered and closed his eyes. "You are so dead in the morning."
Revaan ducked as the controls over his head erupted in a shower of sparks and shards of metal. He realized that his fight with the planetary landing craft was nearly over and brought one of his four fists down on the console in disgust.
His mission had been a simple one, to recruit twenty-four humans into the sector regiment to defend their home world. Unfortunately the hope for Earth was diminishing rapidly. The small ship jumped and dove sharply, and he ran his large black orb-like eyes over the screens. The Markorah ship was still with him, and he'd led it right to the unsuspecting and defenseless human planet.
There was only one hope now, and that was with the enhancement crawlers he'd brought with him. He leaned back in his chair and activated the controls that would jettison the tiny capsules that protected the crawlers during re-entry and landing. Of the twenty-four he had on board only two were undamaged. His small slit of a mouth twisted in rage and he put his high forehead against the panel. He had failed. Two was not enough.
Revaan was a Talpin, a race that for six centuries had defended the free planets in the Sagittarius Arm from slavery and destruction. Their technology was advanced enough to easily manipulate genetics in certain members of a race so that they could defend themselves. They were also provided some types of equipment and training to the indigenous species when possible that allowed for defense without disrupting the normal development of a planet's culture.
Until today the short stocky Talpin had never missed at setting up a defense force. Dejected, he touched the controls that would drop the two remaining crawlers and went back to the pilot's seat to deal with the Markorah before they could attack any of the humans. He only had one weapon available, and his engines were near failure as he put the little ship into a tight turn and went to meet his death head on.
Grant tied a bandana on his head and grabbed his sunglasses and a t-shirt on his way out of the room. He jogged down the stairs to the kitchen and put his keys in the back pocket of his cut offs. "Hey, beautiful, let's go." He looked over at Marc at the table and jerked his head towards the garage door. "I promised dad we'd have the trailer back when they got home."
"Cool." Marc carried his cereal bowl over to the sink and followed Grant out of the house. "Is it up at the cabin?" Grant nodded and pulled open the door to his dad's Dodge pickup. "Let's stop and get a Mountain Dew, then." Mark tossed his shirt on the seat and climbed in. "Stop at Mike's and I'll buy."
The drive into the low hills didn't take long, and they sang along with the music at the top of their lungs. Grant deliberately didn't slow down at the turn off and thundered onto the dirt road and had to quickly correct to keep from sliding off the road, never slowing down.
"Bitch!" Marc grabbed the panic handle and laughed, pulling himself back upright. "I hope I'm not with you the day you piss off God."
"If he was going to get mad it would've been a hell of a long time ago, baby face." Grant grinned and whipped the truck around a fairly tight corner. "You're not getting old, are you?"
"No, and don't call me baby face, cupcake." Marc stuck his leg out the window and leaned the seat back. "I'm going to have a nap. You're driving isn't so bad with my eyes closed."
Grant giggled and smacked Marc's chest. "Jerk." Marc caught his hand and kissed his palm. "Oh, shit. Don't do that right now." He felt the hair on his legs stand up.
It wasn't far to the cabin, and Grant cranked the wheel over and hooked his arm over the seat and backed up. "Hop out and tell me if I'm close." Marc jumped out and jogged back to the trailer and waved his arm, motioning Grant back. Grant watched him hold his hand up and stopped the truck. He got out and walked back to where Marc was cranking the hitch up higher.
They had both spent a lot of time with Grant's dad getting the trailer ready for camping trips, and they hooked up the trailer with practiced ease.
Mark cranked up the rear supports and watched as Grant pulled the pieces of wood out that had kept the wheels from rolling.
As he stood up, Grant felt something fall on his shoulder. He brushed it away absently and walked back towards Marc. Bugs up in the hills were almost as common as dirt was. He reached down to pull Marc to his feet. "Let's get out of here so we can stop and wash......Ow!" He cringed and slapped at his neck. "Son of a bitch! That felt like a goddamn deer fly." He pulled Marc up and turned around, rubbing a bump about the size of a nickel. "Is it red?"
Marc leaned close and looked at the welt at the base of Grant's neck. "Wow, it's really big. Does it itch?" He pulled Grant's hand away and touched it. It was really hard.
"No, it burns." Grant went towards the door to the trailer. "I wonder if we have any rubbing alcohol."
Marc felt something on his shoulder and he jumped and tried to brush it away with both hands. "Whatever it was there's a ton of them up here. One almost got...Aaagh!" He felt a burning stab at the base of his own neck. "Christ it got me in the same fucking place!" He craned his neck and rubbed at the huge bump. "Did you find any alcohol?"
Grant pushed open the door and blinked as the ground seemed to waver. He caught himself on the doorframe and looked up at Marc. He couldn't talk, and he was having a hard time thinking. "Somethn.....wrng." He mumbled thickly.
"Grant?" Marc tried to move forward to catch the other but a wave of dizziness washed over him. His heart pounded in his chest, and he fell hard against the side of the trailer. "Uuuughn." The world swam and he slid to the ground, coming to rest draped over Grant's back.
The crawler's each dug their way under the skin of their hosts and locked onto the vertebrae, almost instantly fusing to it and sending filament connections into the host's spinal column. As soon as that was finished the crawlers released millions of molecule sized DNA resequencers.
Each tiny mechanism found a cell nucleus and went to work, creating new proteins and splicing them in, weaving a much stronger smarter host. The nervous system was augmented for faster reflexes, and the skeletal structure reinforced for strength. Muscle mass was increased, and senses improved. Several pounds of waste was shunted out of the nearest excretory orifice.
The sun was much lower in the sky when Grant opened his eyes. He had to work to figure out that he was looking at a clump of grass a few inches from his eyes. He coughed and spat out some greenish yellow slime and recoiled in disgust. As he sat up it felt like he was sitting in mud and he looked down to see similar mess on the inside of his legs. It smelled horrible.
"I think I shit my pants." Marc grumbled and pulled him self up to all fours. His basketball shorts were covered with the same thing, and it smelled like shit. "What the fuck happened?"
"I have no clue." Grant stood up and rubbed the back of his neck. The bump was gone. "Let's wash off in the creek. I think some of my clothes are in the trailer." He chose each step carefully, disgusted at the feel off sliminess between his legs and ass cheeks. He unbuttoned his cutoffs and stepped out of them and waded into the cool water. Towards the middle it was about waist deep. He began to rinse the muck away as Marc followed suit.
Something was different as he looked at his lover of two years, and he rubbed his eyes and blinked a couple of times. Marc had always been in good shape with a nice chest and flat stomach, but now all of the sudden his shoulders were wider and his stomach was a pretty well defined six-pack. He was suddenly very well defined, and he looked powerful.
Marc looked up and was instantly uncomfortable under the scrutiny. "What?"
He almost demanded, expecting a sarcastic joke.
Grant didn't know how to answer. "Do I, uh, look different to you?" He asked, becoming self-conscious for the first time in many months. It wasn't in his nature to care what people thought of him or his looks. Except for Marc.
Marc looked him over and then his eyes widened. He looked Grant over very carefully and he looked up shocked. "You're like suddenly way fucking buff, man. It's incredible."
"So are you." Grant splashed towards him and took his hand, placing it on his own stomach. "You'd have to do crunches for a year straight to get those, baby."
"Yours, too." Marc swallowed hard and reached up to put his hand on Grant's chest. "You're perfect."
There was a loud rustling on the far side of the small creek and they jumped, spinning to see what it was. A small figure stepped out of the tall grass and under brush and beaconed them towards him. It had four arms and two small stout legs, and it's two large black eyes looked impatient.
"Holy shit." Marc gasped. "What the flying fuck is that?"
Grant had a funny feeling shiver through him and he shook his head slowly. "No clue." His heart hammered and he felt adrenaline pour into his system like a caffeine bomb. The creature beaconed again more insistently, and Grant turned to look at Marc. "If we run the other way do you think it will kill us?"
"How many aliens do I know other than you, dumb ass!" Marc snapped. He reached down on the bank and got his basketball shorts and rinsed them in the water. "Better get yours unless you want to meet Elvis in your fucking birthday suit."
The little man stood with his lower set of hands on his hips and watched them dress, impatiently tapping his foot. Grant zipped up his cutoffs and carefully stepped the rest of the way across the creek. "Think he knows what happened to us?"
"The little bastard probably did it." Marc grumbled as he followed. "Good thing you're not a girl. You'd probably be infertile now."
"You don't need to imagine shit, okay?" Grant said irritably. He stepped up onto the bank and waited for Marc. "Just be calm."
"Be calm." Marc shook his head. "Good plan. Why are we following him?"
"I don't know." Grant pushed a branch out of his way. "I wouldn't miss this for the world though."
"Fucking Trekkies." Marc growled.
The little man said something in a very high-pitched voice and turned to walk into the woods. Grant followed, reaching back and taking Marc's hand. He was terrified, but at the same time he didn't really feel like their lives were threatened. He had absolutely nothing to base that on, but he couldn't get rid of the feeling.
The alien led them to a small clearing that was surrounded by trees. On the west side the mountain sloped up steeply from the forest floor, and there were several piles of huge boulders, each the size of a Volkswagen. The little man walked over to one of the large rocks and stopped to look back at them. He made a big show of which stone he touched, and the boulder suddenly had a large door in it leading to what looked like an artificial cave.
"Did you see that?" Marc's jaw fell open. "What was that?"
"A hologram maybe." Grant grinned despite himself. "Jesus, a real hologram." The little man pulled open a small cabinet and rummaged through it, producing what looked like two silver bracelets. He wandered over and slid one onto Grant's left wrist. It instantly shrank to fit perfectly. "Wow, that was cool." The little man smiled slightly and walked over to Marc.
"Do you understand me now?" the being said patiently.
Marc's knees buckled and he sank to his knees heavily. The little dude just spoke perfect English. He looked down at the bracelet and back up at the alien. "How did you do that?"
"Listen carefully and you will learn much." Revaan turned back towards the shelter and got two learning nodes out of the jump case. "My name is Revaan. I was sent here to help your planet defend itself from the Markorah." He handed one of the golf ball sized devices to each of them. "Before you ask a hundred stupid questions, Terrans, use those to learn what you need to know. Just hold it up to your head." He tapped his temple.
Hesitantly Grant raised the little silver ball up. "Are you out of your mind?" Marc demanded. "You don't know what that will do to you. What if your liver or something comes out next time instead of shit?"
"I need to know." Grant said with a calmness he didn't feel. He touched the chrome sphere to his head and stiffened as information was shunted into his augmented memory. His eyes rolled white and he trembled.
"Grant!" Marc cried out and jumped to his feet. "What have you done to him?" He spun on the alien. "Make it stop!"
Revaan sighed and held up a stun rod. He triggered it, paralyzing Marc. He shuffled over and took the orb out of the boy's hand and touched it to the side of his head. When he triggered the rod again, Marc also stiffened up and rolled his eyes up, absorbing the information.
Grant felt the euphoria of justification as he learned the history of almost a quarter of the galaxy. Hundreds of races were spread across the expanse of space, many of them stranger than anything imagined by a human. There had been wars, and entire planets had been destroyed. He saw the Talpins give up their history and culture to focus on technology and then put themselves into a galactic policing roll. It was very sad and incredibly noble.
The Markorah did not appreciate the Talpin or their interference with their natural expansion and subjugation of other species. The humanoid dragons were warlike and vicious, and thrived on the outright blood thirst of attack.
They devastated the Talpin home world, driving the Talpin in to space. The Talpin chose to live in space scattered among the peaceful species rather than risk the possibility of annihilation. For their service, the other races rewarded the Talpin with any support they needed.
Marc's experience was more troubling and more technical. He was given information about the various sentient races and their weapons, modes of transportation, and defensive capabilities. He was shocked by the appearance of the Markorah, and with their ability to destroy.
Both of them were given in depth details on their own enhancements, and learned what the waste was that had been expelled by their bodies. They also learned about matter creation technology, and how the wristbands could provide them with most of the items they would need until more reinforcements were created or arrived.
Grant opened his eyes and looked at the ground, blinking. He was very tired as he looked up slowly at Revaan. "Why did you choose me?" He asked, glancing over at Marc. Marc wasn't done yet.
"The crawlers choose you because of a number of variables." Revaan clasped his upper hands together in what looked like a gesture of idle boredom. "Part of which was my desperation. When I launched them I programmed them to find the first suitable host."
"Well that's cool." Grant said irritably. "Sorry if we didn't measure up."
"If you were not going to measure up the crawlers wouldn't have entirely ignored you." Revaan smiled with his strange little mouth and waved towards Marc with one of his lower arms. "I believe your mate is done."
"Mate?" Grant was startled and his face went red. "He isn't me mate."
"Oh." Revaan looked truly confused. "You were scanned by the computer while you were in learning sleep. The feelings you exhibited for him were those of his mate. Did I misinterpret?"
Grant smiled slightly and remembered that according to what he'd just learned the Talpins had no concept of gay verses straight. "No, I guess not." He watched as the orb near Marc's temple suddenly vanished and Marc blinked his eyes open and focused on Grant.
"This was not good, Grant." Marc swallowed hard, trying to get the image of the Markorah out of his mind. He could still see the cities on the Talpin home world burning. The images that had been imprinted in his brain had every taste, smell, and sound. He'd seen people die and new it was real. "We are so fucked."
Please tell me if this is even remotely entertaining. I always wanted to do a story on the famous Nifty Archives, and I hope you liked it. If anybody has any suggestions on if I should write more please tell me. I'm nervous as hell.
Kameran
kameranr@hotmail.com