Title: The Desert Children (4/6)
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.
Previous Parts: 1 | 2 | 3

I guess there isn’t a good excuse to quit this fic after all!

Part Four

nine days prior

“Hello there, darlin’,” McCoy says in a soft, coaxing voice to the next patient waiting to be seen. She comes to his side, a shy child. Leonard smiles at her, reminded of the shyness his own daughter around strangers at that age. “My name is Doctor McCoy,” he introduces himself and holds up his medical tricorder. “Now, this little thing here won’t hurt you a bit but I need you to stand still for me.” He waves it over her chest, stares at it for a second, then turns the instrument around for her to look at. “See that screen and those numbers? That tells me a lot about the healthiness of your body.”

He lets her inspect it, pleased that she isn’t as afraid of him as some of the others. It hurts his heart to see a frightened child, who’s shaking so badly his tricorder readings come back with an error message.

The girl-child returns the device to him with careful hands, perhaps afraid she might drop it. He asks her to sit down in the chair next to his then taps the tricorder with a finger. “This can tell me how your body might be feeling but that’s not to say you don’t feel something your body doesn’t. I’d like to know how you think you feel right now. Is that okay?”

She considers him solemnly. “I don’t hurt nowhere.”

“That’s good,” McCoy agrees lightly. “Anything else? Do you feel happy a lot, or sad?”

“Don’t know.”

“Ah. How about angry, or maybe… afraid?”

Her gaze lowers; she swings her legs slightly, reaching down to touch the floor with the tips of her toes. She shrugs.

Leonard makes a hmm-ing noise. “You know how I’m feeling right now?”

She shakes her head dutifully.

“Nervous,” he says.

Her mouth opens a little in surprise. “How come?”

“I always feel nervous in a new place.” He pats her knee. “I like to think I’m a homebody but somehow I have a job where I travel to far-away places.” He looks around. “Just like here. Do you know what’s scariest about this place?”

Her eyes widen but she bites her lip, as if to stop herself from blurting out an answer.

Leonard pretends not to notice her hesitation. “I’m scared by that big man over there,” he leans in to whisper, pointing at the statue-like person looming in a corner of the room. “He’s mighty frightening-looking, don’t you think?”

She scoots closer to whisper back, “That’s Mr. Commander’s bodyguard. He’s supposed to look scary, ’cause it’s his job to scare the bad Ones away.”

“No kidding!” the doctor gasps. “You mean there are scarier people around than him?”

She nods fiercely. “Yes, sir, very bad!”

“Well,” he grumps a little, “nobody warned me about that. Now I’m gonna be afraid to close my eyes at night!”

“I am,” she confesses, worrying her lip again. “But Papa says I shouldn’t be afraid to go to sleep because They cannot come into our houses unless we invite them in.”

Leonard doesn’t like the sound of that, or the fact most of the children he has spoken with have told him something similar about bad Ones, or Others, creatures that seem to hold a strange power over the colony. At first, the doctor had attributed this to one or two over-active young imaginations, or the result of an adult who likes to scare little children with horror stories, but now that it seems as though every child sincerely believes they have reason to be afraid… and Leonard is beginning to wonder if he too should be looking over his shoulder for monsters in the dark.

But the Others, or whatever they might be, do not explain the lack of disease in these children. Had the Starfleet report been a lie? But no, Leonard has been to see the grave markers for the children lost over the years. He’s tried talking to the parents, only to be told he shouldn’t bring up a painful past for the bereaved. Children are dying here but each day Leonard becomes more and more convinced the cause isn’t medical. Which means somebody—or a group of people, maybe the entire colony, Leonard hasn’t decided yet—wants to cover up what is really going on.

“Doctor McCoy?” his patient questions shyly, no doubt wondering about his silence.

“Sorry, sweetheart,” he apologizes, “my mind wandered. I’m getting old, I guess.”

“I know somebody lots older than you.”

He lifts an eyebrow and tries to sound serious rather than amused. “Do you? And who would that be?”

“The Storykeeper! She’s the oldest of all of us, and she knows everything.” The child’s eyes dart to the silent guard and back. Her voice drops to a hushed quality that has Leonard straining to catch her words. “She can tell you about the bad Ones. She talks to Them, and takes us…”

But the child draws back and does not finish her statement. Leonard is left slightly chilled. He thanks her with a nod and, more loudly, declares that she is a fit young lady. Soon, as if the person had been waiting on the other side of the door, a young adult male enters the small room with an expression of trepidation and leads the child away. Leonard sighs and fiddles with a PADD designated as his medical log, waiting patiently for the next child waiting to be seen but none come. He rises from his chair and looks to the guard. “The rest?” he asks.

The guard moves stiffly through the door. He does not return; in his stead comes the man Leonard has no love for, the one the girl had named ‘Mr. Commander.’ In Leonard’s opinion, the man definitely has the appearance of a commander who knows when to draw the hard line and how to keep an unruly platoon in order. However, the fact that he fixes such a look on McCoy is less than pleasing to the doctor, who does not consider himself to be required to answer to an authority other than Captain James Kirk.

“I’ve only seen a third of your children,” McCoy begins, noting the set line of the man’s shoulders, one which speaks of hostility.

“A third is enough,” interrupts the Commander. “You should return to your ship, Doctor McCoy. As I stated before, we have no need for your assistance. The medical supplies will suffice.”

Leonard puts his hands behind in his back in a mimic of a certain Vulcan then rocks on the balls of his feet, the heat of argument already adding color to his face. “Funny thing, Bob—can I call you Bob?”

“No.”

“You see, Bob, I’m here for one reason—and that’s to determine if you genuinely need our supplies or not.” Just a tiny white lie, McCoy thinks. Jim wouldn’t get mad at him for that! “Far as I can see, you don’t,” he ends bluntly.

The Commander is swift on his feet. Leonard doesn’t expect to the recipient of a jarring shove into his desk. His lower back protests sharply as it hits the desk’s hard edge, and Leonard hears something break as it falls to the floor behind them. “Get your hands off me!” he snaps, shocked.

The hard-eyed man twists his fists into Leonard’s Starfleet uniform. “You will NOT jeopardize my colony,” the Commander says darkly. “Go back to your ship, McCoy, and tell them there’s nothing you can do here to save us. Believe me when I say it won’t be a choice you regret making.”

He used the word ‘colony’, not people. That tells Leonard more than the man’s threatening tone does. “And if I don’t?” McCoy challenges.

“Then we’ll find a use for you.”

Leonard shoves an arm against the other man’s chest in protest. “You think I can walk away? Are you a fool? There is something wrong here, and it’s not a disease! What are you doing to these children?” He hadn’t meant it to sound so accusatory but the sudden flash through the Commander’s eyes hints that Leonard has struck at a truth.

Oh God, Leonard thinks, horrified, maybe the adults are responsible for the deaths of their children.

The doctor is released, and the Commander steps back, putting distance between them. Yet the dangerous air in the room does not abate; it seems to intensify, like a balloon swelling to the point of bursting. “Take him to the meeting hall,” the Commander orders the two men who appear in the doorway. “Doctor Leonard McCoy of the starship Enterprise wants to help us, so help us he shall.”

That sounds ominous enough that Leonard backs away from the grim-faced colonists and turns to sprint for the small side-room where his personal belongings are—and his communicator. It would be smart to call for an emergency beam-out. He shouldn’t be here alone, he realizes too late; by himself, he cannot handle whatever this nefarious thing is hidden beneath the seemingly innocuous surface of a farmer’s colony. But Leonard doesn’t make it to his communicator, and the real fight begins. In the end, the doctor is overpowered by brute force. As the guards drag him from the facility and into the street, uncaring of how they’ve injured him, Leonard thinks of one, hopeless thing:

Please let there be something left of me. Please, something at least, for my Captain to find.

present

“You’re not taking me to your house,” Leonard says conversationally.

“The desert is my home,” his companion replies.

Of course. Leonard should have understood that distinction from the beginning. More the fool he is, he thinks. “So I’m doomed to wander across this hellish wasteland with you. That makes me feel much better,” he remarks with only a nuance of dry humor.

Gram stops walking. She turns to him. The moonlight glints against her dark eyes, causing them to shine like polished black stones. “Leonard, I am the Guide.”

“Guide,” he murmurs and looks at her for a long moment before turning to survey the desert, which seems stuck in a loop between the edge of twilight and a new dawn. Leonard is certain, as many days as they have been traveling (it could be forever, couldn’t it?), he hasn’t seen a noon sun since he met the woman.

It finally occurs to him to ask, “What is this place?”

“A land that is of the earth but not, here and yet nowhere. It is our home,” she finishes simply.

He has to argue with that. “Not mine.” Leonard points to the sky. “My home is up there, and that’s where I want to be.”

Silence drifts between them until, inflection-less, she says, “I’m sorry.” Then the woman resumes walking again, leaving Leonard to follow her while he ponders her apology.

Jim stares across the red-rusted sand with his heart in his mouth. “A week,” he repeats slowly.

“Nine days,” Spock corrects without his usual preciseness, perhaps as a mercy to them both.

Jim feels guilty enough over the sickening truth: McCoy has been wandering endless miles of desert for over a week. He’s dead is his first flash of thought, searing like pain but entirely rational nonetheless.

Don’t let Bones be dead! the rest of Jim cries in response.

Saying nothing of his fear to the men gathered around him, Jim Kirk turns to his First Officer. “I want the entire area scanned for signs of life. I don’t care how far out they are.”

“I relayed the orders to the Enterprise not long ago, Captain. Chekov will contact us with the results.”

“And transportation,” Jim adds, his gaze drawn back to an outline of red rock bluffs in the distance. “We need fast transportation and protection while we search.”

“Shall we utilize the transporter?”

It’s the best technology they have, but beaming back and forth within a short period of time will likely have ill effects on them. At least, that’s what McCoy would say. Jim wrestles with a decision for a split second then relents. “If Chekov pinpoints a life-sign he believes to be McCoy, we will use the transporter. Finding our CMO is a top priority but I won’t risk more of my men.” Bones wouldn’t forgive me if I did, he doesn’t add.

Spock seems to follow his train of thought, regardless. “Understood, Captain.” There’s an almost hesitation from the Vulcan. “Should we request a guide from the colony? A native would be more familiar with the land.”

“No.” Jim’s mouth thins into a line. “I don’t trust them” is his only explanation.

That too his First Officer accepts without protest. “Lieutenant Uhura is due to arrive in approximately nine point three minutes. If she is successful in her task, she will uncover information we have not.”

“I hope so, Spock. For McCoy’s sake, I hope so.”

Kirk doesn’t think about the mess he had left behind at the colony. He doesn’t let the visage of a cold-eyed man, the Commander these people name their leader, sneak into his mind’s eye; nor does he follow the train of thought that if they cannot recover McCoy, that man is responsible for the death of not simply his officer, but his friend. There is no time to wallow over what Kirk cannot change, or feel terrible anger at the colonists’ lack of cooperation. He has a single focus for himself, trusting his ship and his people to deal with the other details until he can return to them with a clear mind.

McCoy must be found, must be saved.

And if he cannot be saved, Jim owes the doctor the very basic of rights: to have his body returned to the Enterprise, to Earth for burial. Bones would want that, Jim knows. He would want his family and friends to have closure.

Jim is under no illusions. The loss of Leonard McCoy wouldn’t be a trifling event to be endured, to regret and forget about, to move on from; Bones’ death would hurt Jim deeply—and the Enterprise, he thinks, would be scarred most of all.

“Is that,” Leonard asks, voice subdued with wonder, “a river?”

Gram merely touches his arm and urges him forward.

In the desert, twining like a shimmering-scaled snake through the earth, he can see the subtle ripple of the river’s body. In the near-dark, its color is a complimentary midnight. When Leonard and his guide reach the river, the sand turns into red silt that tugs at his boots. Strangely enough, Leonard hears no trickle of water, no sound of lapping; the water is remarkably calm. He stares into the black surface, which is too dark to reflect more than an outline of the two people along its edge, and ponders if there could be life sneaking beneath what he can see.

Fish, perhaps. Leonard remembers then he hasn’t eaten in a very long time, though the pangs of hunger have all but vanished.

He crouches down at the border between the desert and the river and touches the smooth, dark water. Distantly, the monotonous sound of the desert is broken by a soft splash.

“Is it safe to drink?” he wants to know. His carry pack doesn’t contain a water testing kit, and his tricorder… gone. The bottle of captured rain is still halfway full because each swallow seems to quench his thirst for most of a day.

“The river is not safe,” he is told. “We cannot cross here. Come, there will be a bridge.”

Leonard means to stand up, he does, but something unexpected happens. A bluish light flickers in the depths of the river’s center, tiny at first then growing in strength; when it reaches the surface, it forms into a glowing circle. As Leonard watches, the circle comes alive with an image of daytime, of the desert as he had seen it in the week of his painful travel. Red rocks to the east; in the sky a sun so hot it burns white in the water.

Except, it isn’t the same vision, not quite. The desert, which should be empty, desolate….

“Jim!” Leonard whispers, gasping the name with his next breath.

The tiny image of the man, as if sensing Leonard’s cry for him, stops walking. Jim turns to look behind him and is joined by a companion.

“Oh God,” the doctor says upon seeing the unmistakable visage of Spock. His hand goes to his forehead but he knows he isn’t suffering from heat stroke. He hasn’t been hot in days.

Jim is talking to Spock, indicating an outcropping of rock. Leonard watches, captivated, as Spock inspects his tricorder, so familiar a gesture. The image is vividly real, like a mirror’s reflection of a live video feed. Suddenly, the aching in McCoy is fierce. He wants to be with them. What is the point of this mindless traveling? He doesn’t belong in this otherworldly desert; no, he is part of that one.

The one with Jim and Spock in it.

Another splash comes again, not so distant, and in its wake is a gentle wave stirring the water; the image blurs for only a moment. Leonard realizes the figures upon the river’s surface are moving away (his Captain and the Vulcan, his friends, the thought curls through his mind), soon to leave the image entirely, and he cannot let them go without him. His fingers reach out, trembling, to cross the chasm separating them but he is too far away. Without thinking, Leonard wades into the river, unmindful of a growl of warning behind him.

The image brightens then, shifting, a palette of lively colors upon a black canvas. For Leonard, it is a siren’s call. He would go to it, sink into the water mindlessly, except a hand has caught the fabric of his shirt. Leonard stumbles when he is wrenched backwards.

“Leonard!” Gram calls sharply in his ear. “Do not take that way. Come.” She is leaning out over the river; her feet dig into the sand as she reels him in like a fish.

And like a fish that doesn’t want to leave its home, Leonard fights her.

“No! They’re here!” he cries, not even knowing where this desperation is coming from, only that he feels it keenly. “Let me go to them!”

“Leonard!”

He wails upon seeing that the image has disappeared. The water quakes around him. “N-No,” he chokes, “come back!”

As if hearing his plea, light glints deep within the river again, coming toward him. He strains against the strong grip on his shirt and throws out his arm. But the image doesn’t reform on the surface. A person takes shape in its place; liquid seal eyes, a feminine mouth, long drifting hair made from bluish light. It rises out of the water, a pale, moon-blurred face belonging to a slim body. Those arms lift invitingly to Leonard, fingers coiled with weeds, loose and dripping black river water like ink.

He cannot think, only stand shivering in water nearly to his hips. The river woman’s smile says she understands his need; she can give him everything he desires if he will simply follow her to the river’s bed.

Snarling behind him. Nails, sharp like claws, dig into the flesh of his back. The river woman bobs in the water, floats closer to touch him; her smile is gentle, sweet, beckoning.

Something bites hard into Leonard’s shoulder then, and the pain of it is like a slap. He pitches backward at the same time the river woman, suddenly shrieking, launches herself at him, her mouth opened wide to display unnaturally long teeth. With new clarity, he sees the river woman for what she truly is—no, it is. It isn’t human, or beautiful, or anything he would want to get close to without a weapon in his hand. The creature nearly catches his leg in its dive but misses. Leonard, splashing down into a heap at the river’s edge, sees something darkly furred and long-snouted snap its jaws over his head. In fear, he scrambles up the river’s bank on his hands and knees, only turning around once he is safely away. His shoulder stings where he was bitten.

The river is smooth again; its monster gone. So is the other thing, the one Leonard had glimpsed from the corner of his eye.

“Gram, what was that?” he whispers.

The answer is there: selkie. Somehow the name, belonging to the river creature, comes to him, startling and bright and dangerous—knowledge he has never before had. He shudders, bombarded by a vision of his fate if the woman, his guide, hadn’t refused to him give over to the water-spell. How many bodies, how many bones, lie at the heart of the river?

“Thank you,” he says to her, hating that no other words can express the depth of his gratitude and sincerity.

Crouching next to Leonard, the woman’s eyes do not linger on him and move past, unreadable. Her face, furless but animal-like, points to a path by the river, a path McCoy thinks hadn’t been there before. “Come,” she says. “The bridge is ready.”

It is some minutes before Leonard can get up, thinking of little else except that he has fallen into a place he may never be able to leave, and she waits rather than forcing him to his feet. At last he lifts his wet, chilled body from the sand, ready to move on. It occurs to him later the path they walk isn’t visible to the eye but all the same he recognizes it. Something has changed in him, is changing as they travel. With each step that brings them closer to their destination, he gains one thing, something unearthly in knowledge or ability or feeling, and loses another.

It’s the loss that frightens Leonard most, because he knows now without a doubt that he is less human than he used to be.

Next Part

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• The Desert Children (6/6) – from May 21, 2012
• The Desert Children (5/6) – from May 14, 2012
• The Desert Children (3/5) – from May 4, 2012
• The Desert Children (2/5) – from May 2, 2012
• The Desert Children (1/?) – from April 30, 2012