Chapter 11
The initial shock of having a gun in my face overwhelmed all of my senses for a moment. I could hardly focus on anything other than the tip of the deadly weapon, which was pointed right between my eyes. One twitch of a finger on the trigger, and I was in for a world of pain. I knew the suit would stop the bullet from killing me, but I also knew that the impact from a bullet at this range would still hurt like a bitch, even if the weapon was old and scuffed.
Once my brain started working again, I slowly put my gun back in its holster to show that I wasn’t a threat, and then I raised my hands to show there was nothing in them other than my flashlight, which managed to light up the person in front of me. When I realized I was still standing, I peered past the barrel of the gun and had a look at who was holding it.
It was a woman. There was no doubt about that. She was wearing dark, dusty clothes that hugged her athletic figure and complimented her curves. She wore heavy-duty, slightly worn, black boots, gray trousers with pockets down both legs, and a utility belt around her waist that I was sure was filled with useful tools and extra ammunition. Her torso was covered in a form-fitting brown fleece that concealed her arms, chest, and neck, and her hands were hidden inside a pair of black gloves.
I could just pick out the rucksack she carried on her back as the top of it poked out over her shoulders, but it was hard to see any more of it in detail. A large, thick scarf had been draped over her head and then wrapped around her neck so that the ends settled on her shoulders like a cloak. Whenever she moved, the cloak wafted the small particles in the air out of her personal space as though she had some kind of invisible forcefield around her. At this point, as I had now seen so many things that I hadn’t thought would ever exist, it wouldn’t have surprised me if she actually did have one.
Her pale face was hidden almost entirely behind a black mask that covered her nose and mouth so tightly it almost looked like it had been glued on. A few dark blonde wisps of her hair had escaped from her hood and framed the side of her face, but what was really stunning, and practically the only difference between her and a human that I could see, were her eyes. They were the only part of her that was uncovered, and I found myself staring at them without shame.
The whites of her eyes seemed light gray in color, which could have just been a result of the dark room we were in, but it was her irises that were the most wondrous part. They were bright, luminous green, and seemed to glow in the dim light inside the nuclear plant. It was like she had somehow implanted two emeralds into her eyeballs, only these were neon and pierced their way into my own dull, brown eyes. Every time she blinked it was like a light had been turned off, and every time she opened her eyes again, I found myself transfixed on the small, green orbs that were set into her face. I had never seen anything like it, and yet, something about them drew me in and made me want to know more about her.
Her brows were furrowed as she looked me up and down just as intently as I studied her. I realized I was completely covered in my own suit, so she probably had no idea that I wasn’t a local.
She kept her gun trained on my head while she tried to figure out who, or rather, what I was. She took in the fact I had five fingers on each hand, the same number of limbs, and a similarly shaped head, but she didn’t seem convinced that I wasn’t some strange monster that lived in the depths of the plant, rather than an alien lifeform that was strangely similar to hers. I couldn’t blame her, to be honest, as the suit covered my body from head to toe and didn’t give too much away about what was beneath it.
I moved my hand the smallest amount, but it meant that she took another step forward and jammed the end of the gun into my forehead.
“Please, don’t shoot,” I said.
It was only then that I wondered if she could understand me, or if she even had an earpiece that would translate my words for her.
She looked at me with a confused expression for a moment, but said nothing.
“I come in peace,” I said. “Just, wait, please.”
“Really, you are using that line?” Francine scoffed.
I slowly moved my hand up to my neck.
“Will, while I am not detecting a dangerous amount of radiation in the air, I would not recommend removing the headpiece,” the AI said.
“Well, it’s that or a bad headache,” I said as I touched the neckline of the suit.
Her eyes widened as she watched the head section of my suit retract back down from the top of my head, and she looked surprised when she saw what lay beneath it. I kept the breathing tube in my nose, of course, but the rest of my head was exposed. She took in each of my features carefully, my brown hair, my jawline, my lips, but her eyes kept flicking back to look right into mine.
I realized that to her, my eyes must have looked incredibly strange, as they were dark and devoid of any kind of glow whatsoever. I wondered if all of the people on Wildern had the same eyes as she did, which would explain why she was so startled by mine. The fact they were a dim brown color was a clear indicator that I was from somewhere that wasn’t her world. I could see the questions begin to swirl around her mind as she wondered where I had come from, if I was from Wildern or not, and what I was doing down here in the nuclear power plant, much less on her planet.
I assumed that she was from one of the nearby villages, and when she shifted slightly, the contents of her rucksack seemed to confirm that. I could pick out what looked like a couple of pipes and another chunk of metal that she must have scavenged from the plant.
After walking past all the skeletons in the hallway, I’d honestly expected to find myself dodging some sort of ferocious mutant creature. But if this was the only other living thing down here, I wouldn’t complain. Unless, of course, she turned out to be some sort of ferocious mutant creature with very sharp teeth that planned to eat me.
I tried to smile, but that only seemed to make her more suspicious. Her frown deepened, and I saw her finger tighten on the trigger.
And then her eyes drifted down from my face to the container on the floor beside me, which housed the uranium I had traveled all this way to retrieve. She also saw my rucksack on the ground beside it, and put two and two together. I had planned to take the uranium with me, and she didn’t seem all too pleased about it.
“Can you understand me?” I asked.
She stared at me for a moment as though she was sizing me up, and then must have decided she had the upper hand still because she pulled the mask away from her nose and mouth to reveal her petite nose and plump lips. There was a hiss of gas as she did so, and I figured that the mask operated similarly to my breathing tube and supplied her with the air she needed to breathe down here.
“Yes,” she replied.
I watched her lips as she spoke, but strangely, her lips matched what I heard inside my ears. She was speaking English as far as I could tell. Jesus, I thought to myself, Wildern really was weirdly similar to Earth. She spoke with an accent I had never heard before, but the closest thing from my planet that I could compare it to was an English accent mixed with a bit of a Spanish twang somewhere in there.
“Good,” I said. “I mean you no harm.”
“I don’t think you’re the one who’s in a position to do any harm right now,” she said as she pressed her gun into my forehead again.
“Fair point,” I said.
“Who are you?” she asked.
“Will Ryder,” I replied. “Who are you?”
“I ask the questions,” she said as she shook her head.
“That doesn’t seem fair,” I replied.
“Nothing is fair,” she said with a bitter edge. “Your eyes aren’t like mine.”
“No, they’re not,” I replied. “I must say, yours are lovely, though.”
“Thank you…” she said in surprise before she regained her tough composure. “You’re not from Wildern, are you?”
“No,” I replied. “The eyes gave me away, huh?”
“And the weird suit,” she replied. “And your weird accent.”
“Right,” I said. “Well, you got me. I’m not from around here.”
“Then where are you from, Will Ryder?” she demanded.
“Earth,” I replied.
“Never heard of it,” she said.
“You wouldn’t have,” I admitted. “I’ve come to learn that not many people out here have, actually.”
“Where is it?” she asked.
“The Sol System,” I said. “It’s a few systems over.”
“So you came here on a spaceship?” she asked as her curiosity overpowered her suspicion momentarily.
“Yes,” I replied. “It’s up top right now.”
“I have never seen one up close,” she said.
“Well, if you promise not to shoot me in the head, I’ll give you a full guided tour of it,” I chuckled nervously.
She smiled as well, but never let her gun drop from my head.
“Is that really necessary?” I asked as I gestured to the gun.
“I wasn’t born yesterday,” she scoffed. “You don’t survive as long as I have by not being cautious.”
“After a quick scan of her body, I can confirm she is around thirty Earth years old,” Francine said.
“Thanks so much for that information,” I muttered.
“Who are you talking to?” the woman demanded. “Your ship? Are there more of you?”
“No, no, it’s just me,” I said as I pointed to my chestplate and the small sliver of Francine’s shell that was implanted in it. “This is Francine. She’s my… AI. Do you know what that is?”
“Of course I do,” she said.
“Right, well, I have a sort of AI assistant with me all the time,” I said.
“Assistant?” Francine huffed.
“Why?” the woman asked. “Are you incapable of doing things on your own?”
“No,” I chuckled. “But a little extra help never hurt anybody.”
“Hm,” she said as she looked down at my bag and the uranium container beside it. “What are you stealing?”
“Is it stealing?” I asked. “Does someone own this place?”
“It’s on my village’s land,” she said. “So, technically, yes.”
“I didn’t know that,” I replied. “I’m pretty new here, as you know.”
“What are you taking?” she pressed.
“I would not tell her, Will,” Francine said. “She may want the uranium for herself.”
“Well?” she asked as a ferociousness came into her eyes.
She clearly didn’t trust me one bit, but I couldn’t really blame her. She’d just found an alien in the basement of a nuclear power plant that was claimed by her village, and given how the planet’s last encounter with aliens had gone, I was surprised I was still standing on my own two feet.
“Something I need for my ship,” I said. “To make it go faster.”
“To make it go faster…” she sighed. “So, men are the same on every planet, then.”
“Apparently so,” I said. “Look, I can see that you’re here to get things just like I am.”
She put a hand protectively over her rucksack.
“This case is all I came for,” I assured her. “All I wanna do is take this and get out of here, and by that, I mean leave this planet and never come back. If you just let me go, everything else down here is yours.”
“Thank you so much for your permission,” she hissed.
“No, that’s not what I meant--” I said.
“So, you just want to rob us and run away,” she interjected. “Do you have any idea how hard it is to survive here, or to find useful things to keep your village alive?”
“No,” I said. “But, like I said, I don’t need anything else. Just this case.”
“Well, I want it,” she said.
“You don’t even know what’s in it,” I argued.
“If it’s of interest to an alien, then it’s of interest to me,” she said.
“You’d have no use for it,” I said.
“How would you know?” she asked. “You don’t know anything about my people.”
“Just let me take the case, and you’ll never have to see me again,” I said.
“I don’t take orders from you,” she replied.
“I don’t want anyone getting hurt,” I said.
“One of us won’t be,” she replied.
“Listen, you can’t just say that because something is vaguely near your village that you own it,” I said.
“Yes, I can,” she said. “It’s the law here. Not that you would know.”
“I’m trying to be reasonable,” I said. “Just let me take it and leave. What do you gain by keeping me here?”
“Oh, I don’t know, all of your technology and your ship, for starters,” she said. “And you--”
We both froze as a guttural growl echoed eerily around the room from somewhere that wasn’t far enough away. It went on for a couple of seconds, and then the sound dissipated and the silence returned, although now it had a very different atmosphere to it.
“What the hell was that?” I whispered.
She put her hand to her mouth, which I assumed was her way of telling me to be quiet, and then she reached behind her back and pulled a much larger gun from her rucksack. This one had a longer barrel on it and looked handmade, which made sense, all things considered. It looked like the parts had been pulled from a thousand other machines, but she had cleverly and resourcefully compiled the parts to create… well, whatever the hell that thing was.
She scampered silently out of the sightline from the doorway and pressed herself against the wall by the door. She put her rucksack down beside her, and all of her muscles tensed. She looked ready for a fight.
I took out my own gun, shoved the uranium case back into the trapdoor to keep it safe, and then hurried over to join her beside the wall. Once I got there, I switched off my flashlight and flattened myself against the wall next to her. She looked slightly irritated that I had followed her, but she could see that I was fully cooperative and happy for her to take the lead on this one, so she seemed to relax slightly.
There was a faint click, and I realized she had moved a small switch on top of her weapon. But there was no burst of light like I’d seen with some of the other weapons I’d encountered so far, so I wondered if it fired good, old-fashioned bullets.
She had to hold the gun with both hands to keep it steady, and she pointed it right at the doorway. Her hands were steady, at least, but her eyes were alive and flicked around at the faintest noise.
I had no idea what was about to happen, but I held my gun tightly in hand and set it to laser, since that was the most universal setting I had at my disposal. I wanted to ask what the hell had made that growling sound, but I had a feeling she’d shoot me in the head just for speaking right then.
That was when we heard footsteps. The sound slowly closed in on the room we were in, and I could hear a crunch every time it stepped on another bone. It let out another long groan, and I clamped my mouth closed to stop myself from making a sound, although I was sure that the woman I was standing beside could hear my heart beating loudly in my chest. I quickly pressed the section beside my neck and the headpiece grew back over my head. A moment later, the night vision on the visor kicked in, and I was able to see perfectly in the darkness.
“Will, the creature is seconds away from the room,” Francine said.
“It’s almost here,” I whispered to the woman. “Get ready.”
She nodded, but she didn’t take her eyes off the doorway.
“I am not able to identify it,” the AI said. “My systems do not recognize the species.”
That was weird. Francine knew a lot about Wildern, but couldn’t identify one of the creatures on it?
“Three,” Francine said.
I held my breath.
“Two,” the AI said.
I put my hand on the woman’s shoulder.
“One,” the AI said.
I squeezed the green-eyed local’s shoulder to warn her.
A moment later, the creature appeared.
My mouth dropped open in shock before I could stop it. The creature wasn’t a human, but it looked like it had been at some point in the past. It lumbered over to the doorway and stood there for a moment as it smelled the air, which gave me a chance to study it.
It had the bloated look of somebody that had drowned, particularly around the head, legs and belly. It was completely naked, so every sinewy section of its disgusting body was on show for us to see. Its arms were muscular, its shoulders were broad and solid, and its fingernails had grown into long, jagged talons. It had bite marks and bruises on its skin, and I could see black veins that looked like the scars people get when they were hit by lightning. The smell that came off it was disgusting, too, and I had to try to refrain from gagging at the stench of blood, rotting flesh, and ancient BO.
It had long, greasy hair that hung down over its face in ropy, dirty, worm-like strands. Beneath the hair, I could see its nose had rotted off its face and peeling skin covered its cheeks. Its mouth hung open in a permanent scream, as though its jaw was broken, and I could see the dangerously sharp, needle-like teeth inside it, as well as the long tongue that twitched like an eel. I also heard a squelching sound as saliva dripped from its open mouth and onto the floor.
It was missing its eyelids, so I could see the red irises around its large, black pupils. It had a vacant, hungry stare on its face that was hauntingly animalistic. It must have been able to see in the darkness, though, because my flashlight was off, and yet, it was still able to navigate its way through the doorway without difficulty. It grunted as it walked, and all of the air seemed to get sucked out of the room as it stepped inside. This was a creature that would eat whatever came into its path without hesitation. There was no compassion, emotion, or thought behind those eyes. It had been reduced to its very base nature. To hunt, to eat, and to survive.
I realized that after the nuclear war, the radiation and the fallout could have led to some of the humanoid population mutating into creatures like this horrific monstrosity. It was a terrifying thought, but it was the only theory that made any sense. It looked like a human, but one that had been experimented on, or one that had grown up in the wilderness without any human contact.
I thought about the bones all over the corridors, and realized that the creature, or one like it, had probably eaten those people. I remembered the scratch marks I had seen on the walls and how the finger span had been so similar to mine. That made a lot of sense now that I was seeing this thing before me.
Under my hand, I felt the woman’s shoulder tense as the creature entered. But, she didn’t fire right away, and I realized she didn’t have a clear enough shot. She waited patiently as it edged into the room, and I saw her chest rise and fall as she took a couple of deep breaths.
It stalked into the room like a bird of prey would walk toward a small animal. Its naked form was entirely tensed, ready to fight. It must have heard us talking and come from whatever dark corner it had been hiding in to investigate. By the look of the place, no one had been here in a while, so when it heard us talking, it must have been eager to see what its evening meal would be.
The scavenger woman kept her weapon trained on the thing as it crept over to my backpack, which I had left on the ground beside the closed trapdoor. It bent down slowly, picked the bag up, and brought it up to its sickly face. It took a deep breath in, as though it was sniffing my scent, and then it growled as it threw my backpack to one side. It raised its head up again and took another deep breath of the air.
I wondered why the hell she wasn’t firing at the thing. She had a clear shot at it as it shuffled into the middle of the room, but she didn’t pull the trigger. I was tempted to fire my own shot, but something told me to hold off.
Suddenly, the monster whipped around and looked right at us.
At the same moment, the woman fired.
A fireball flew out of the end of her gun and hit the creature square in the chest. In the brief light of the fire, I was able to see its gray, rotting skin and the organs and muscles underneath where the skin had already dropped off.
It was a disgusting sight, but thankfully, I didn’t have long until the creature was totally consumed by the flames. It screamed as it was burned alive and dropped to its knees. Its skin dripped off it like melting ice cream until the flesh burned away to reveal its thick bones below.
It only took about ten seconds for the creature to die. It continued to burn as it laid face down on the floor, and the stench of the burned body filled the air like the most unappetizing barbeque I had ever been to.
Once the body stopped moving, the woman immediately bent down and picked up her rucksack, while I tried to process what had just happened. She unloaded a couple of the heavier pieces of metal that she had scavenged to lighten the load, and then she slung the bag onto her back. She didn’t seem to have much trouble seeing in the dark, and I wondered if that was one of the perks of how her eyes had developed compared to mine.
“Why did you wait to shoot it?” I asked.
“Because I didn’t want to,” she replied.
“Why?” I asked.
“Because I didn’t want to make so much noise,” she said as she turned toward the door.
“What the hell was that thing?” I asked.
Instead of answering, she just ran toward the doorway and disappeared through it. I glanced at the burned body, and that was enough to convince me to follow her. I needed to know more about the creatures down here, and the woman was my best chance.
“Hey,” I called out. “Where are you going?”
“Would you shut up!” she hissed as I joined her in the hall. “We need to get out of here.”
“Why?” I asked. “It’s dead.”
“Something you should know about those creatures,” she whispered with a grave expression on her face. “They always hunt in packs.”
Right on cue, I heard a few more growls, this time from one of the other doorways along the hall that I hadn’t looked in earlier.
“Oh, no,” she sighed, and she reluctantly took off her precious backpack and set it down on the floor.
“We’re leaving our stuff here?” I said.
“I’ll put it this way for you,” she said. “You die with your haul, or you run and you might live.”
“Right,” I said.
We both turned to look down the hall as a clawed hand crept around the last door frame.
“We should move,” she said.
Suddenly, it was as though a dam had burst. Out of the doorway at the end of the hall came a wave of snarling creatures that looked like the one the woman had just killed. Some were female, some were male, and some I wasn’t quite sure, not that it mattered. They could smell the burning flesh, and now they could see us in front of them, and they were ravenous.
The creatures fought with each other as they raced to see who would get to us first. As they clawed their way past one another, I saw fingernails gouge eyeballs and dig into skin, while others simply used their larger size to knock down the competition. And all the while, the wall of writhing monsters got closer and closer.
“Agreed,” I said.
She launched one fireball at the swarm, which slowed the pack down long enough to allow us to escape through another doorway. I was confident it would take us back the way I had come, but it was hard to be sure in the darkness. And there was no time to ask my companion about the creatures or to figure out how to get back to the uranium. My new cohort was fast and didn’t wait for me, which meant I had to keep up with her, or else I would be on my own with those things.
Bones crunched beneath our feet as we raced along the hall toward what I hoped was the stairwell. We bolted through the computer room, and I risked a glance over my shoulder. I was sure we must have put some distance between us and the creatures, but I saw that, unfortunately, the creatures moved a lot faster than I would have thought. In fact, they were actually gaining on us.
“Shit,” I muttered as I pushed myself to run faster.
My leg muscles were screaming, and my lungs were huffing, but I could still hear the creatures behind us. I wanted to shout when I saw the door to the stairwell, but we still had a long way to go before we’d be safe.
We started up the steps two at a time, and though we were both panting heavily by the time we reached the next floor, neither of us slowed down. The sound of the door below us crashing open only spurred us on, and soon the stairwell was filled with the sound of dozens of bare feet climbing up after us.
We shot past the next landing and were on the first steps to the next level when another pack of the creatures appeared on the stairs above us. They screeched and wailed when they saw us and began to descend toward us. A quick glance behind us revealed that the original horde was nearly to the landing as well.
“Come on!” I shouted as I pulled the woman toward the door. “This way!”
I kicked the door open, and we ran inside. I slammed it shut and slid the metal bolt into place, but the doorframe was so rotten that I was sure it wouldn’t hold them back for long.
I turned around and saw that we were in another hallway lined with doors on both sides. The doors on this level were all intact, unlike the rest of the nuclear plant, and there weren’t any bones down here, which was a relief.
We slowed the pace as we jogged down the hall a short distance. I could hear the creatures scrabbling around outside, though it sounded like they were fighting each other more than they were working on the door. Maybe that was why there weren’t any remains along this hall.
“Is there another way out?” I asked.
“No,” she sighed. “There used to be, but that stairway collapsed years ago.”
“Damn it,” I said.
“How are we going to get past all of those things?” she groaned.
“Well, that weapon of yours is great,” I said.
“I don’t have many shots left,” she said.
“How many?” I asked.
“Maybe fifteen,” she replied.
“Shit,” I said. “How do you kill these things?”
“Well, the only thing that’s ever worked for me is to burn them alive,” she said. “Although, that was only the third time I’ve killed one.”
“Great,” I sighed. “But if, say, we blew their heads off, another head wouldn’t grow back in its place, right?”
There was a loud thump as some of them rammed themselves against the door, and I could see the bolt start to loosen.
“I have no idea,” she said.
“I guess we’ll find out,” I said.
We started to back away down the hall. She had her fire launcher in one hand and her regular gun in the other, and I had my gun raised and ready to fire as well.
The creatures must have settled their disagreement, because it sounded like they were focused on the door now. They hit the rotting wood over and over again until the doorframe started to come loose. There was a celebratory growl from the other side, and then the banging resumed. The bracket for the bolt started to come out of the wall, and I heard myself sigh.
We kept our eyes locked on the door. The moment it opened, we would open fire and hope that the two of us would be able to take on about a hundred of these things on our own. All I could do until that moment was stare at the slowly disintegrating door while my breathing fluttered, my brow began to sweat, and my mouth went dry.
I could hear the alien woman breathing heavily as well. She was scared, but I could tell that if she was gonna go down, then she was gonna make it as difficult as possible for those creatures to take her out.
I focused on her breaths to stop myself from obsessing over the door, and as I did so, I suddenly became aware of another rumbling breath as well as hers.
I tore my eyes away from the door and looked over at her. She had just stepped in front of another doorway along the hall, but she hadn’t looked away from the door. Like me, she’d assumed that all of the creatures were on the landing.
But one of the bloated beings suddenly came tearing out of the darkness toward her.
She turned too late to see it, and it grabbed her so quickly that she dropped her guns out of shock. It picked her up and tried to drag her into the room, and she screamed as it dug its nails into her shoulders.
I immediately sprang to action. I aimed my gun down, since it was holding the woman in front of its body, and fired the laser at its ankle.
It roared in pain as I cut its foot clean off and a disgusting smell of cauterized flesh burst from the wound. It stumbled and lost its balance now that it was without one of its feet, and that was enough for the woman to throw her head back into its face. Her skull collided with its head, and it dropped her, dazed.
“Down!” I shouted.
She instantly crouched down, and I fired the gun again, this time at its head. The laser beam went straight through the center of its face, and a moment later, its entire head exploded. The body fell back and twitched for a moment before it lay still.
The woman got back to her feet and wiped some of the creature’s blood off her face. She seemed shaken, but glad to be alive. She picked up her guns quickly and turned to me with a surprised, yet grateful look on her face.
“Are you okay?” I asked.
“Yes, I think so,” she replied. “Thank you.”
“Don’t mention it,” I said.
“You could have let it take me,” she said.
“Why would I let it do that?” I asked.
We smiled at one another, but the moment didn’t last long. We heard the door to the stairwell burst open, and when we turned to look, we saw the wave of creatures charge toward us.