Title: The Desert Children (1/?)
Author: klmeri
Fandom: Star Trek TOS
Characters: Kirk, Spock, McCoy
Summary: Abandoned to a dire fate in the wilds, McCoy learns that every tale has a dark origin.
A/N: One would think after reaching 1,000,000 words, I would be content to end my writing career on a positive note. Sadly, the muse doesn’t stop with a mere million! There’s no good way to describe this story except to say I love to mix in fantasy when I can. :) Oh and, to make McCoy suffer while I’m at it!
Also, I’m not expecting this to be long? IDK.

Part One

The sun is setting, casting long shadows of the distant red rock bluffs across the desert. Leonard lingers in the open, eyes on the horizon, as if caught by a hypnotic spell, because like any sunset it will be gone forever in matter of moments. At his back, the wind stirs up a dust of tiny dirt particles and sends them spiraling toward the sky. Automatically he lifts an arm to shield his mouth and nose, a gesture now as ingrained as the downturn of his face from the sun during its migration from morning to afternoon.

His skin bears a fine coating of several days travel, and red sand highlights his brown hair in thick streaks. His clothes are stiff, dirty, patched by sweat; the left sleeve of his shirt, appearing ragged, has been torn from wrist to elbow. One of its missing strips of fabric is wound and knotted about McCoy’s right leg just above the knee. When he moves, he drags that leg slightly behind.

Leonard would stop moving altogether; he would stop walking if he didn’t know it would be the death of him. There are seconds, long tempting seconds of despair, when he simply wants to lie upon the ground and close his eyes. The one time he did so, an insect which looked too much like a scorpion crawled onto his shoulder and stung him. He spent half of a day trying to decide if he had been poisoned enough to die and realized dying wasn’t what he really wanted. He would be a fool to give up so easily. Isn’t that what Doctor McCoy would tell anyone else?

Eight days is not that long to be alone. For three of those days, he has not had water, having shaken the last droplets from the bottle in his pack, which inevitably did nothing to appease his thirst. Technically he knows he should suffer from dehydration before the effects of this stifling, mindless solitude but he cannot stop longing for company. Maybe he is afraid to die alone, he’d concluded numbly after his fifth day lost in the desert.

His gait has slowed considerably since the initial onset of his trek to find civilization or rescue, attributed less to the dull pain in his leg and more to the dwindling of his will. Under a constant baking heat, he loses the ability to imagine reprieve, or to remember a time when he wasn’t miserably hot, gritty, or hungry; a time when the only liquid in his mouth wasn’t his own blood welling up from the cracks in his lips, or when the reddish dirt on his fingers didn’t seem like a permanent stain.

Once the sun is fully below the horizon, he staggers forward, forcing his aching body into movement again toward a sporadic patch of small desert shrubs. Unfortunately, near his destination one misstep pitches Leonard sideways into a stumble; his right leg buckles immediately, already strained and unable to aid him, and he falls, catching himself on his hands and knees as he makes a jarring impact with the ground. The dull pain of the wound in his leg becomes fresh again, as searing and sharp as the moment the metal of a hand-made weapon had ripped into his flesh.

Leonard had thought his body hadn’t moisture enough to cry, but he was wrong. A tear escapes the corner of his eye, cutting a clear, jagged path down the side of his face. The shrubs, or at least the comfort and (albeit meager) protection of them he had hoped for while he divided minutes between resting and hating this empty no man’s land, seem too far away. He could crawl, perhaps, the remaining distance but exhaustion won’t allow it. Slipping fully to the ground and easing onto his side, he curls his head into his arm and tries not to think and tries even harder not to let the ever-present despair fisted in his chest escape.

Only fools give up; only fools want to die.

I’m a fool, he silently repeats. A fool, fool, fool. When his body is found, if it’s ever found, he will probably be pitied as one.

He had been wrong not to listen when they said to wait, a stubborn-minded ass per usual. Now he’s paying the price for his mulishness and his pride with this penance, which is to experience a lingering death far away from anywhere he could have imagined dying with dignity. Far away, too, from the people he imagined he would die beside—friends, family, maybe at the very least someone who respected him.

Jim will try to give him a post-mortem commendation for valor and brave service anyway.

The thought, as his only consolation, makes Leonard laugh. But soon quiet misery takes away his laughter and, thereafter, darkness takes the misery.

“Any report of contact as of yet, Spock?”

“Negative, Captain.”

Jim Kirk briefly touches his fingertips to his closed mouth, tapping them once, before dropping his hand back to the arm of his chair. “I’m beginning to regret giving my consent to let him go,” he confesses to his First Officer.

“The alternative was, I believe, not a matter worth consideration,” the Vulcan comments mildly from behind his computer console.

Jim turns amused eyes upon his friend. “Truer words never spoken, Mr. Spock.”

Spock does not reply. Jim’s attention returns to the Bridge’s screen currently displaying a view of a rust-colored planet. “We cannot accept their assurance of his well-being as fact for much longer. If Doctor McCoy hasn’t personally communicated with the Enterprise by tomorrow’s alpha shift, I want to a team ready to beam planet-side.” But even as Jim says the words with a leader’s confidence and ease, clearly following the standard protocol such a situation warrants, the red alert creeping up the back of his neck is hard to ignore.

He had made a mistake, he thinks, by allowing Bones to leave the ship to help the colonists.

When Leonard opens his eyes, a woman is sitting cross-legged next to him. Her face is thin and old and darker than his. The hands resting peacefully in her lap have broken, brittle nails.

Leonard blinks grit from his eyes but the woman doesn’t disappear. His raw throat works with hollow clicks as he swallows against dryness. When he is finally able to ask her who she is, her watchful dark eyes skim his tired face. “Gram,” she answers slowly, deeply, in a desert’s voice.

A flash of white envelops the world behind her, and her shape, along with the twisting branches of the shrubs at her back, darkens into a strange silhouette, like a many-armed creature rising from the ground. There is a distant sound of thunder, and a slow rumble which trembles through the earth and sinks into Leonard’s bones. He pushes himself upright, squints and shades his eyes against the sky’s heat lightning to see the details of her face. There is little to be seen, however, except for a stoic expression edged with eerie calm.

Suddenly Leonard has a fierce desire to see Spock there instead, a wanting which he shoves aside as forcefully as it strikes him. “Gram,” he says, “I need help.”

“I know. I can help you.”

Maybe she doesn’t understand the true gravity of his situation? He rubs his hand carefully against the cloth binding on his leg but feels no pain. “I was left out here to die, Gram.”

“I know.”

“How’d you get out here? Were you left too?”

Her gaze sharpens. “I was born here.”

“Where?” He looks around as if there might be a house he had mistaken for bushes and rocks in his delirium.

Her face, tapering into a point, tilts downward and for a moment Leonard thinks he sees something entirely inhuman in her features. “I will show you.”

His hands are surprisingly cold; he rubs his fingers together to bring back the warmth his flesh had collected during the daytime. There’s no better choice, he decides.

She doesn’t look frail but she isn’t young so he doesn’t ask her to support his weight, though his movements are sluggish and his limbs highly uncooperative. Get up, he silently commands of his legs. Get up, you stupid things, and get us to shelter. Then take me back to where I belong.

His eyes turn up to the starless sky at that thought, and wistfully he pretends he can seem a glimmer of the Enterprise’s hull from space. Home, for him, is far beyond reach while he stands here, small and alone and indiscernible on this planet.

No, not alone, he reminds himself as the woman rises to her feet. Shadows flow from the ground with her. She is small too, much smaller than he is. Her hair isn’t white or gray, he realizes, only silvered by the moonlight; such an odd contrast to the age of her face. He keeps his eyes fixed on her shape gliding through the night. She pauses at intervals, a faint outline branching upward from the flat land, to make certain Leonard is following her.

“Come,” his rescuer beckons more than once when he stumbles over a root or hesitates, glancing back over his shoulder. Eventually, his spot of shelter recedes into the surroundings, finally into nothingness.

“Leonard,” the call is clear, “come now.”

He shivers and limps after her.

There is no reply to the radioed missive stating Kirk intends to send down more of his men to the colonists’ base. Because there is no reply—and because Jim was unable to sleep due to a feeling of unease nagging at him—he adds himself to the roster. If Commander Spock is surprised when Kirk strides into the transporter room, outfitted with a phaser and a smile, he does not express his surprise. Jim suspects Spock had already guessed he wouldn’t opt to stay on the Enterprise. That Spock intended to lead the investigative team is answer enough for Jim of whether or not the Vulcan himself shares a measure of Jim’s unease about McCoy’s silence.

The party of four doesn’t immediately land into trouble, but Jim senses it the moment they materialize on an empty street. He signals to a security officer to explore the outpost in one direction. With Spock at his back, he cautiously enters what should be the headquarters of the base.

Empty as well, and quiet, except for the noise of a generator through a half-open door.

“Where’s the medical facility?” Jim wants to know, ready to be rid of this strange, too-still atmosphere.

“I have the location, Captain,” Spock offers, speaking as he adjusts the settings on his tricorder.

“I don’t like this, Spock,” Kirk mutters quietly. They leave the building and step back onto the street. The security officer and his companion, one of Spock’s science officers, hails Kirk with an ‘all-clear’.

The Vulcan takes a moment to share a look with his Captain. “Nor I, Jim,” he agrees.

“I-I’ve got to rest a minute,” Leonard pants after tripping over his own feet for the third time. His arms and legs shake as he lowers himself to the ground.

The woman, still wearing a serene mask, drifts back to him in an odd fashion, as if she is tracing the line of some invisible circle carved into the earth. Her body seems tiny now, unimposing, and she is utterly silent as she walks.

Leonard’s sense of time must be skewed because it feels as though they have been traveling endlessly in one direction, but they can’t have walked far yet; there are no signs of settlement. He desperately wants four walls around him. He doesn’t like being exposed to the environment, both for security and medical reasons, while in pursuit of a goal he cannot see.

Weary and heartsick, Leonard drops his chin to his chest. His hand rubs at his leg again, but it doesn’t hurt at all. He should worry about that; he would worry if he could summon the energy to properly connect two thoughts together. His hand falls to his carry-pack and picks it up. He could close his eyes for a moment, just a moment…

There is one thing Leonard can do even if he can’t think coherently, and that is talk. He’s been told he can talk more than a Tellarite ambassador can argue.

Ha, Jim thinks he’s so hilarious sometimes. The thought comes from nowhere and leads to another thought: if the Captain was lost like this, he wouldn’t be depressed about it. Grim, tough as nails, determined to live—that’s James T. Kirk.

Leonard almost says that out loud but discovers he doesn’t want to speak of Jim and any of his ship-side colleagues to a stranger. Instead, “It’s funny, how this all came about,” he begins, not bothering to open his eyes. He wonders idly if his voice sounds as terrible as it feels when he produces words. “Well, funny’s not the right way to put it… Nothing’s funny about being hoodwinked by a bunch of people you think you’re helping.” His shoulders slump. “I was so damn eager to come down here…serves me right, I guess. What’s that old sayin’? No good deed goes unpunished.”

There is air on his face suddenly; no, not air—it’s foul-smelling, rancid. When Leonard opens his eyes, something large, black, and hirsute is crouched in front of him blocking the moon, only inches from his face and breathing in hot gusts against his cheek. He catches a quick glimpse of yellow teeth in a mouth, almost canine in shape and size, and screams on instinct, falling onto his back with abject horror and squeezing his eyes shut against the unexpected hideous sight.

“Get away!”

The arm he brings up to his face, a detached part of his brain says, will do little to stop an attack when the thing leaps for his throat…

Silence. Nothing happens. Then something touches him but lightly and lacking threat.

“Wake.”

Leonard opens his eyes and peeks over the top of his arm.

The woman, not a beast, is squatted before him, staring. Her long hair, a moon-silver, is flat and stringy, and it certainly doesn’t cover her face or body like fur. Heart in his throat, Leonard scoots away from her slightly. “Wh-what was that?”

“Come,” she tells him and points in direction. “I can help.”

“What are you?” he insists. No, of course she can’t be human. There are no humans on this planet except for Leonard and those designated to live here as part of the Federation’s colonist program. Think, Leonard! Homo-sapiens originate some thousands of solar systems away. “What are you?” he repeats, trying to quell the fright in his voice.

“Gram,” she answers. She questions, “Nightmare?”

“I wasn’t asleep!”

She points. He realizes she is indicating his pack, the one that had been tossed with him out of the hovercraft when he had been dumped in the middle of nowhere He cranes his neck around to look at it, situated in the perfect spot to support his head should he stretch out to sleep. His neck hurts with the familiar ache of using it for a pillow. But he hadn’t been sleeping, had he? He had wanted to rest, picked up the pack and—laid down?

“I can’t remember,” he admits, touching his red-crusted fingers to his forehead.

“Come,” she says again. “I can help.”

But the beast…? Her hands flex; he looks at her ragged nails.

“How much can you help?” he whispers.

“This is my desert,” she says. “Leonard, come now.”

He thinks about saying no, but dawn is curling at the edges of the night sky. If he’s alone, there is only more cruel sun and no food. No water. It will be the fourth day without water. He isn’t going to survive much longer by himself.

“Okay,” he agrees and pulls his legs under him, careful of the one which is injured. “Let’s keep goin’.” The decision, it turns out, isn’t that difficult to make after all.

The woman’s mouth stretches in a smile that could easily be described as a jackal’s grin. Leonard pauses, one hand upon the ground and the other on his uninjured knee. He stares at the glint of yellowed enamel inside her mouth. Their eyes meet.

“Gram,” he murmurs, “what big teeth you have.”

She doesn’t respond, but then again he doesn’t expect her to. It’s a human joke—a joke that, as of now, he doesn’t find funny at all.

Next Part

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• The Desert Children (3/5) – from May 4, 2012
• The Desert Children (2/5) – from May 2, 2012