The Next Sacrifice

Prologue

It’s that time of year again, when one person is chosen as a sacrifice to be sent to the colony on the moon.

It started almost three hundred years ago, when one of the landing parties from Earth discovered an underground lair by drilling into the moon’s surface. They disturbed the beings that had been peacefully slumbering beneath the moon’s surface, and they reigned down terror and destruction on the Earth. So much was destroyed in the long war between Earth and the Moon.

We never knew that it was actually a ship, and that the creatures on board had been sleeping for over a millennium. But once awake, they saw what we had done. We’d landed on their ship, taken chunks of it home with us. It enraged them.

After their own planet had been destroyed, they’d turned their own moon into a spaceship, traveling across galaxies until they’d come across Earth. It was uninhabitable for them, so they’d gone to sleep to wait. And while they were waiting, man had taken over the world they’d wanted for themselves.

It wasn’t our fault that we’d come into creation on Earth, but what we’d done to their moon had crippled it. They’re no longer able to leave, to find a new home.

And so, every year in remembrance of Earth’s surrender to the Moon, someone is chosen. Those beings we live in constant fear of send a rocket to the surface of our planet and whatever community it lands in chooses a sacrifice. That person then is sent to the moon, never to be seen again.

We don’t know what the creatures on the Moon do with the people who are sent to them, and we know better than to ask. All we know is that they’re never seen or heard from again.

When the rocket landed in my community, my parents hid me away because I had entered the age of consideration. They never take the young or the old, but starting from the age of twenty you are entered into the drawing.

I thought hiding would save me, that if they didn’t find me they couldn’t count me, but I was wrong. I was sitting in the dark, my knees in my chest, when they came for me. My parents tried to guard me, but I was drug past their beaten bodies, crying out for them as they still tried to reach for me. I was their miracle child. They couldn’t have children before me, and now they’re too old to have anymore. I know my being taken will crush them.

But this year, I was chosen to go up in the rocket.

Chapter One

The walls around me are painted an off white.

I hate them.

The small cell I’m being held in is barely big enough for the twin sized bed, toilet, and sink crammed in here.

It’s only temporary, while the rocket is refueled and stocked with the yearly tithes that are sent to the Moon. Different crops and other goods which aren’t available on the Moon will be loaded inside, until finally the only thing left to go in is me.

One of my guards unlocks and opens the door. He sees my untouched meal and slowly picks it up, his face impassive. I know I’ll get no sympathy from him, because his son is my age as well. Better for me to be sent away than his own child.

Not that anyone is likely to help me anyway. Everyone knows that, should a sacrifice or the tithes not arrive, the creatures will destroy us. No one has seen them for generations, so no one knows what they looks like, but we still have the fear of them ingrained in us. They’ll destroy us without ever leaving the inner circle of the Moon.

He closes the door and leaves me alone once more, but I know it won’t be for long. I was told when the tray was dropped off that it would be my last meal; that the last of the goods were being loaded into the rocket and then they would come for me.

I know it’s only a matter of minutes now.

I wish I had more time. The two days I’ve been in here, I’ve refused to eat anything, not that it’s done me any good. I should have known they would send me off before the lack of food or water would kill me. I can only hope that I won’t survive the trip to and landing on the Moon.

When the door opens next, I recognize the two burly men standing on either side of the opening. They’re the same men who drug me out of my parents’ home and into this cell. It seems only fitting that they’re the ones to escort me to my doom; that they’ll be the some of the last humans that I see.

Even though I know they’re only doing their jobs, I hate them as well. Knowing they have escorted countless people along this same hall, to load them into the same rocket I was being taken to…it made my stomach turn. I felt bile trying to crawl its way up my throat and fought against it.

“How can you stand to do this?” I spat at them.

“They do it to save their own loved ones,” a voice said from in front of me.

I looked up to see a pretty woman, not much younger than my parents I would guess, by the grey beginning to show in her blonde hair. She wore a long white coat, a doctor of some sort, and black framed glasses over her blue eyes. She was tiny, shorter than I was at five and a half feet tall, with a petite build that most women would kill for.

“What do you mean?” I asked as I drew alongside her and she fell into step with me, the two behemoths still trailing along after me.

The woman kept looking me over, scribbling away on the clipboard held in one hand. “Simple, they have one of the worst jobs available to them. Not much else they can do. They’re not smart enough for many professions, and they have the muscle and discipline to follow the orders they’re given.” She met my eyes, and something about her had the hairs on the back of my neck standing on end.

I swallowed hard and looked away. There was something in her eyes; something that made my skin crawl and a nagging start in the back of my mind. Something about her wasn’t right.

“As long as they volunteer to be the executors, their own families are safe from the drawing. Their children won’t be entered into consideration as long as they hold this position.” She shrugged and scribbled some more. “Still, many don’t last long. I suppose it can be difficult to send your fellow humans off to some unknown future, to be at the mercy of a species that you don’t understand.”

She gave me what I’m sure she thought was a smile, but it seemed more like baring her teeth to me. But maybe that was because this woman was giving me the creeps.

“Most of them only volunteer when their children enter the age and quit as soon as they’re old enough not to be picked. Others can’t even manage to stay that long before they begin to let their emotions get the better of them and quit their positions.” She shrugged and held open the door before them, leading into the tunnel that would take us to the passenger section of the rocket. “Of course, it’s typically their own children who wind up taking on the executor position after them. Not many of them go on to have overly intelligent children.”

I couldn’t help but glance back at the men behind me, trying to judge their reaction to her words. She was insulting them, but their expressions remained as impassive as they’d been when they drug me screaming out of my home. Either they really were so stupid they didn’t understand what she was saying, or they were smart enough not to mess with her.

I had only been beside her for a few minutes, and already I would do anything to get as far away from her as possible. I was used to people showing no sympathy about what was happening to me, but she seemed almost delighted by it. For such a terrible job, she seemed too happy to me.

“So you don’t care about what you’re doing? It doesn’t bother you that you’re sending people off to die at the hands of Moon Men?” I asked, the large metal door appearing as we rounded a corner. My heart began to beat faster, my palms slick with sweat. There was nowhere to escape to. This was really happening.

I’ll never see my parents or my friends ever again. I’m going to die on the Moon…

The doctor laughs, a lilting sound that should have been pleasant but only made me want to turn and run the other way. What was wrong with her? Why did she scare me so much?

“Moon Men, that’s a good one. Most people are crying by now, too far gone for conversation.” I could see her smiling out of the corner of my eye. “I like your spirit, your spunk.”

I felt my blood run cold when, standing outside that metal door, I looked her straight in the eyes and she blinked at me. Her eyes weren’t normal. She had two sets of eyelids, like some amphibian. And her pupils were too pointed, more like slits than circles.

She wasn’t human.

She smiled again, pressing her palm to the pad by the door so it whooshed open quietly.

“This is when they all notice the little differences.” She said, sweeping a hand for me to enter the dimly lit rocket. When I didn’t move, she cast a glance at my escort and they moved forward as one, forcing me into the ship and to the chair where I would be strapped down.

I was too stunned to fight them though. All this time we’d been lead to believe the Moon people weren’t able to live on Earth; that no one had seen them in generations, but here one was right in front of me.

“Put her in the chair,” the doctor instructed.

The two men practically lifted me off the ground. I was suddenly being strapped into the seat, but I couldn’t take my eyes off this creature. She looked human, except for those eyes. How could she look human? Did they all look like this, like people? Did this mean there are other ways in which we’re similar?

“Are you human too then?” I found myself asking.

She moved forward, the behemoths quickly backing away from her, and I understood why they didn’t respond to her comments before, why they’d dropped further back when she’d joined us. They knew what she was and wanted nothing to do with her.

She inspected the straps running up my arms and legs, the thick one around my waist, and the last one over my forehead. Satisfied they were tight enough, she glanced at the men ad jerked her head at the door. Despite their hulking frames, the big men hurried from the room on silent feet. She might think them unintelligent and unable to do anything else, but I had the feeling it wasn’t a lack of intelligence that led to one getting their position.

After all, a stupid man would probably run his mouth about how he worked with their enemy every day. An idiot wouldn’t see the danger in the creature standing by my side, being as well built as they were and as tiny as this woman was.

No, these men were likely far more intelligent than she would ever give them credit for. And that meant their job probably tormented them much more than they would ever show.

I finally found myself feeling bad for the same men who’d forced me out of my home and into this rocket that would blast me away from everything I’d ever known, and into the waiting arms of creatures that I was sure would kill me.

“Earth isn’t the only place where humanoids flourished, you’ve just never been to any planets outside of your small galaxy,” she finally said when we were alone.

“So is the only thing different about you people your eyes?” I asked, finding myself curious despite my fear.

I tried to jerk away from her when she face suddenly shifted. Her eyes became slits, her mouth and nose extending into a sort of snout. But it was the wicked fangs in her mouth that had my heart trying to beat its way out of my chest.

“There are many things different about our kind, little girl,” she hissed at me in a reptilian voice. Her face shifted back into human form once more, the snake-like features vanishing before my very eyes.

Before I could say anything else, or ask any more questions, she gave me a shot that had my eyes drooping and my body shutting down. Soon I was asleep, so I didn’t hear when the engines roared to life, didn’t feel the rocket taking off. I wasn’t consciously aware of how much time passed until I landed again.

But when I opened my eyes next, I was on the Moon.