Well, let’s see if Otis can ruin an action scene shall we? Eve leaves her mini hole and surprises the idiots. Apparently no one thought she could escape from a prison with only one way in and out yet lacking any kind of impediment. She’s a master of escape, like Houdini would have been if he’d had both legs sawn off and his brain replaced with a kumquat.
She looks around and spots a lamp. For no adequately defined reason she actually stops and speculates what it is powered by. Um, Eve? It could be the souls of dead rock stars for all you care. You’re surrounded by humans, two of which think you should be dead. Do something!
Eve borrows the old ‘It’s me you want’ line. She tells Jared he shouldn’t sacrifice himself for her. She takes the noble approach and drops t her knees where she is executed in front of Jared. The rest of the novel is Jared fighting the aliens with a Mustang and dog a la road warrior.
Or they will struggle about weakly and stop when Jeb steps in among them. He sends each of them off to their rooms without dessert. Bad Alien! Bad Hoomans! No sequel for you. Oh and the best sound effect Otis could manage for a cocking shotgun was click click. Try chu-chack or something. Clicking implys something small like a cap gun.
They stop fighting for a few seconds. Kyle asks how long Jeb is going to play god. Yes because playing god means keeping someone imprisoned. I would associate that more along the lines of experimentation and the creation of abomination to blight the face of the earth but some of us are a little more melodramatic. Nice dialogue Otis, did you steal it from the same SyFy movie that inspired this?
Otis has a bad habit of being well over the top for drama. Eve calls the attackers assassins. She says that there are only two people that don’t want her death or torture-wrung confession. Jeb then banishes them because it’s his house or some such and he can make up rules on the fly.
First off, I don’t know if I’d call a couple of noisy idiots bumbling about in plain sight assassins. Again, unless we share completely different definitions for things. Am I next going to find Eve referring to a BB gun as a sniper rifle? Will she call a school bus a tank? A hamster a werewolf? I no longer trust anything in this universe.
Also, these people aren’t from the sixteen hundreds. They haven’t mistaken Eve for a witch. She’s not being forced to admit that she made anyone infertile or killed a calf with a look. There will be no barbeque featuring one Eve and a frenzied mass waiting to divvy up her personal belongings.
So Jeb says that it’s Jared’s call on what to do with Jeeve. Whew, it’s been at least a couple of pages since I could spot a sexist moment. Without them I am lost, like the sailors of yore without a sextant. Those moments ensure that I am still on course for Terrible Plot Resolution Island. It’s got an awful name but they have a great seafood menu and the exchange rate works in the favor of most tourists.
Jeb undergoes a magic transformation. Just a bit ago he wasn’t happy with Eve, now he’s looking out for her. He even winks at her which must mean that he too is possessed by an evil alien bug. So that’s you’re game Jebediah McAmish-Gunman.
Eve goes to sleep, Eve wakes up and smells food. Eve is groggy. Eve has to pee. Don’t care, don’t care and doubly don’t care. They leave the cave and the people, having the collective memory of a goldfish, are shocked to see her again. ‘Oh my, it’s the alien which we just saw arrive the other day. Where has she been hiding? She must be a witch! Get the stake and tinder!’
Things get kind of tense when one of the village women approaches Jeb and Eve with a crazed look in her eyes. She levels an accusing finger at her and begins screaming. ‘It was you!’ She cried. ‘You brought the birds!’
Or absolutely nothing happens. Eve gets one stern look and nobody gives her so much as a spit in the face. C’mon Otis, have someone spit in her face. That’ll make it all the more poignant when she saves a child from a burning hut and earns the admiration of the tribal leader.
Jeb explains how he found the cave and kept it hidden because he likes to be prepared. Not because he’s a weird survivalist that wears squirrel pelts and uses rat bones as a comb. Also, don’t mind the chair made out of skull and human clavicles in his den.
Also the cave is the remains of a not quite dead volcano which he is about to show to Eve. So Uncle Jeb is a supervillian and survivalist. Let me break out my checklist. Commands respect through fear? Check. Smarter, generally, than those he commands? Check. Has a secret volcano lair? Double check. All he needs is a simpering sycophant and a traitorous lieutenant and he’ll have the collector’s set.
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Click click makes me think of a platypus rather than a shotgun. If you had one and used it right you could poison someone. I’d personally choose that. Talk about an adorable way to die!