by Adam Moon
Crab Monster
Mike unlatched his head armor as they got right up to the water. He crouched down and looked at it. It was clear. He didn’t see anything floating in it.
Recklessly, he cupped his hands and drank down a gulp. It tasted cold and fresh.
Melanie said, “I’m going to wait a few minutes before I have a drink just to see if you die.”
Just then a dark shape came rushing out of the mountain at them. It was a hideous beast, with matted black hair all over its body and crab-like legs. Its eyes jutted out like a snails eyes do and its lipless mouth was crammed with sharp fangs.
It clawed at the air on the other side of the lake and screamed at them. But Mike understood it.
It was yelling, “This is my lake. Get away from here. Go and die like you’re supposed to.”
Mike looked at Melanie but she was backing away fearfully.
He said to her, “I can understand it. It’s saying this is his lake and we’re trespassing.”
He yelled back across the water, “We mean you no harm. We just need water.”
Melanie looked at Mike like he had ten heads and said, “Where the hell did you learn to speak Martian?”
Only then did he realize he’d used the creature’s native tongue to address it. Maybe the gray jelly bean let him do that as well as understand alien languages.
The alien said, “Who are you? How do you know my language?”
“The aliens that brought me here put a device in my head.”
The furry crab creature paused for a full minute. He seemed to be trying to decide what to do.
Then he said, “Come to me. I have much to tell you. It might just save your lives.”
The Truth
When they tried to swim across the lake, the suits lifted them into the air with little unseen thrusters and they managed to float all the way across like human hover boards.
They got to their feet shakily and were shocked when the creature ran at them at lightning speed and grabbed a protruding nub on each of their chest-plates. He tore them off and then crushed them beneath his claw-like feet before they could defend themselves.
He said, “I apologize if that terrified you but I must make sure they don’t know I’m here. Come with me.”
They didn’t know who they were but they didn’t have the guts to ask.
They followed the crab monster through a small cave entrance in the mountain. The cave went deep in, snaking this way and that. It was lit every twenty feet so they didn’t have to worry about hitting a wall or anything in the dark.
Only now did Mike start to feel some trepidation. Was this how the crab creature survived out here, by luring prey into his lair?
The temperature cooled down as they came into a cavernous room, lit all the way around. There was a rough hewn rock bench and what looked like a rock bed. In the center of the room was a small fire. The creature slowly lowered himself down beside the fire and then looked up at them with his creepy eyes, bidding them to follow suit.
They sat on the opposite side of the fire just in case he turned out to be a threat.
The creature said, “My name is Coalic. Who are you?”
“I’m Mike and this is Melanie.”
Coalic pointed at one of the walls and said, “Do you recognize that?”
Mike stood up and went in the direction Coalic was pointing. Standing against the wall was a mechanized suit, similar to theirs but suited to the crab creatures shape.
He said, “Where did you get that?”
“The aliens that brought me here gave it to me. They are the same aliens that brought you here.”
Mike sat down again and said, “I don’t understand. What does that mean?”
“I mean they tricked you just like they tricked me and my people.”
To her credit, Melanie sat through the entire exchange even though she had no idea what they were talking about.
Coalic said, “I bet they told you that they were saving you from a terrible catastrophe. I bet they told you that by now your planet and your species are long gone and you are clear across the universe from your star system.”
Mike shook his head in confusion but he was intrigued. “Actually they did tell us something like that. They said our planet would be destroyed in ten years time and that they had hand picked a thousand of us to create a new colony. They also told us that while we were in cryo-sleep, we’d traveled seventy six million years.”
“I guess they change up their stories a bit, but that sounds about right. Everything they do has a purpose though. They made you desperate by telling you you’ll never see your home again and by tricking you into believing that you’re your species’ only hope.”
“Why would they do that?”
Because they want you to fight for your survival. It’s a ruse to trick you. I bet your planet’s less than a month’s journey from here using their propulsion systems. I’m also pretty sure your planet is still intact. There never was a threat.”
“I still don’t get it. Why would they do any of that to us?”
“For entertainment. They probably told you that another race of creatures had already taken over this planet. They probably told you to be on your guard around them. Then they supplied you with weapons and suits to fight them off if that became necessary. But the thing is, they told those other people the exact same thing. They created a powder keg. Then they probably sabotaged something in each camp to force you to fight each other. Neither side knew they were being tricked. With my race, they burned down our dining hall and set fire to our crops. With the people we fought, they stole all of their seeds and caved in their well. We blamed each other.”
Mike nodded. “Yeah, something like that just happened to us.”
“This is sport to them. They find alien beings, transform their genetic material so they can survive on this planet, and then make them fight another group of equally duped aliens. If you look at the sky long enough, you’ll see the cameras flying around. I ripped the cams from each of your suits so they don’t know you’ve deviated from the plan.”
Mike was having a hard time coming to grips with what Coalic was telling him, but he was enthralled nonetheless. And some of it made sense so he asked, “So what happens to the winner then?”
“You mean the winner between you people and the people you’re fighting? The winners get destroyed.”
“Shut the fuck up.”
“It’s true. If you wander around long enough, you’ll find skeletons and shells all over the surface of the planet. The aliens send clean-up crews but they miss stuff all the time.”
“How will they kill us?”
“They’ll wait until there’s a clear winner. Usually it takes a day or two for one side to obliterate the other but it can take much longer in some cases, hence the genetic modifications to allow us to survive here. Then they use a bio-chemical weapon of some kind. It kills all living things instantly but it dissipates in just a few minutes. Then they remove the corpses, replant the crops, fix the damage to the structures, and go off in search of more victims.”
“I get what you’re saying but it still makes no sense. Why use all of those resources for something as stupid as interplanetary cock-fighting?”
“Because they’re bastards. They’re a high and mighty race of decadent freaks. They think their victims are primitive insects to be stomped beneath their boots. I wouldn’t be surprised if the whole race is watching your people struggle for survival as we speak. It gives them a thrill, I think. I bet they place wagers and treat it like a holiday. They only supplied the mechanical suits to make the fighting more exciting to watch.”
Mike shook his head. If Coalic was telling the truth then their so-called saviors were really just sadistic scum, using their deaths for entertainment.
Coalic added, “Oh, and that orange planet you see in the sky that they told you was harmless to you here but impossible to survive on; that’s their home world. At just the right angle you can make out city lights at
night. This planet is a little smaller and they kind of orbit each other.”
“How can you know all of this? How have you survived so long?”
“I’ve survived six exterminations, including the extermination of my own people. The biological poison they use doesn’t travel down these tunnels. I was lucky to be exploring down here when they killed the dregs of my camp. Now, whenever I see a fresh crop of aliens, I lay low and wait it out. I steal some things from camp every time they start over. Truthfully, if they stopped coming here, I’d starve to death.”
By now Melanie was getting restless. She interrupted, “What the fuck are you two clicking and garbling about?”
Mike took the time to explain the whole elaborate hoax. The look on her face made him want to take it all back and lie to her, but it was already too late. She started to cry.
A Plan
Coalic’s tale rang true even though Mike had no way to verify it. It just felt right.
Mike asked, “What should we do then?”
“You can stay here or you can move on. Just don’t go back to camp ever again.”
“But my people are there.”
“I doubt they’re alive any longer and if they are, they’re about to be wiped out with the bio-weapon I told you about. If you go back, the aliens will see you. You were able to escape because there were so many of you that you got lost in the mix. But by the time you get back, you might be the last of your race still alive. Then they’ll watch you keenly and you’ll never escape.”
Mike asked, “Is there a way to escape the planet then? I don’t want to just survive, I want to go home.”
“I’m afraid the only beings that can take you home, want you dead. You’re stuck here for the rest of your lives.”
“Bullshit. There has to be a way.”
The crab creature called Coalic pondered it for a few seconds and said, “The drop pods don't have enough fuel left to lift off but the aliens do send two ships down, one for each camp. They drop the bio-weapons and then they wait for everyone to die. I’ve often considered waiting for them to touch down and then try to find a way to hijack one of the ships. But the problem is that I don’t know how to navigate to my planet. I couldn’t pick out my sun among the stars if it was directly overhead. And if I could, I don’t know their language to control the ship. I’m marooned here forever and so are you.”
Mike said, “I know their language.”
Coalic got to its many claw-feet and said, “That’s it then. We need to see how far along the massacre is. If it’s over, then we can rush over to one of the camps, hide out, and wait for them to drop from the sky.”
Mike was in the middle of saying, “Great, let’s get going,” when a loud boom shook the cave.
Coalic clutched at its chest and fell forward into the fire, dead.
Mike whirled around to see what happened and saw Paul standing in the tunnel that led to the inner cavern. He was sweaty and soaked in blood. He was holding his stomach as blood seeped out from under his hand.
Paul wheezed, “What the hell was that thing?”
Melanie shot to her feet and hit him square on the nose. Before he could react, she disarmed him.
He said, “What the fuck was that for?”
Mike said, “He was a friendly. He might have been our only hope of ever getting off of this rock.”
“Why would we want to get off of the planet? There’s nowhere else for us to go. And how was I supposed to know that he was a friendly anyway?”
“We were sitting around a fire chatting. We weren’t locked in a fight to the death. It should’ve been a dead giveaway.”
Paul shook his head. “Who gives a shit? It’s just us now. Everyone else is dead. We took out most of them but they sent a team to the camp while we were away and they massacred everyone we left behind. I’m lucky to be alive.”
“Yeah, just our luck? The biggest douche bag got to live.”
“We need to work together now guys. We only have each other to rely on now.”
Mike said, “There’s more to this than you know but I don’t have the time to explain it to you or argue with you about our escape plan.” He raised his rifle and shot Paul in the forehead.
Paul’s body fell backwards, dead before he hit the ground.
Melanie’s mouth fell open. “Why the hell did you do that? You just murdered him in cold blood.”
She was clearly upset by what he’d done, and for good reason. He knew he had changed on a fundamental level. They’d been on the alien planet for less than a day and he’d already murdered several aliens and now a human being. He knew it had to have something to do with the genetic engineering performed on him. The aliens had made him more aggressive the same way a dog fighter withholds food and throws the poor dog a beating right before a fight. But that didn’t excuse murdering someone in cold blood. He still had a brain; he still knew right from wrong. But that didn’t take away from the fact that it was the right decision under the circumstances. Of that he was certain.
He explained, “That asshole got our entire camp killed. You have to know he’d get us killed too. He was an arrogant idiot.”
“I know that. But we could’ve just left him here to die. He had a gut shot. I’m surprised he even made it this far.”
“Then I guess I put him out of his misery.”
Her head did a quick nod and she said, “I guess so. What’s the plan?”
“We get back to camp as soon as possible and hijack an alien spaceship home.”
Race Against Time
They ran as fast as the mechanized suits would go.
Sure enough, the camp was in ruins just like Paul had said. Half of the houses were demolished and bodies littered the ground. Some were the Talls but most of them were human.
They made sure to stay far enough away from the bodies so that the chest cameras couldn’t see them.
If this was entertainment to their alien abductors, they had a lot to answer for. Mike was kind of looking forward to hijacking a ship and killing its occupants.
Melanie said, “Are you sure this will work?”
Mike laughed out of frustration. “Of course not. I’m taking the word of an alien crab monster that I met less than an hour ago. Not only that, but the plan he had wasn’t thought all the way through either. He was just toying with the idea before we took it as our own. Maybe he missed some detail that’ll get us killed. I just don’t know. But if we do nothing, then the best we can hope for is a terrible existence of hiding and running on this crappy, barren planet. I’d rather die than live like that.”
Melanie said sadly, “Well, I’d rather live, given the option.”
“Yeah, that’s the plan.”
They crouched down in a still intact house and waited for what seemed like an eternity.
Melanie asked, “What if the aliens find out that we escaped and they chase us back to Earth and kill us anyway?”
Mike sighed. Before he could explain that they had no other option and that it was worth the risk, they heard thrusters rumbling, getting closer by the second.
Mike’s heart was hammering. He was angry that Melanie was so negative about the plan. It meant she’d be worthless in the fight to come because she wasn’t invested in it. He’d just have to fight for both of them.
Hijack
The ship was small and cigar shaped with antennae jutting from the top and tiny pock marks all over it. It was perfectly black just like the ship that had dropped them on the planet.
To Mike’s utter surprise and elation, it landed just a dozen feet from the house they were hiding in.
A few seconds later, a hatch opened in the side with a slide-out ramp and two aliens in plain green clothing appeared.
They looked as terrifying as he remembered from Melanie’s room. In the sunlight, he could now see they slithered along the ground like oversized slugs.
They were each carrying a silver canister covered in alien markings. He assumed the markings were like HazMat sy
mbols.
Just then he realized his error in judgment. He couldn’t read the alien language so if the ship didn’t respond to his voice, he couldn’t fly it. But the plan was already set in motion. If they did nothing, the alien bio-weapon would kill them soon.
He reached back to tap Melanie’s shoulder and tell her to get ready to attack but she was already gone from that spot, moving past him, weapon raised.
She fired two quick bursts and both aliens exploded like water balloons, pink blood and slimy guts gushing all over the place. She was already running past them into the ship before Mike had even left his mark.
He took off towards the ship, and halfway there, heard another bang and the sickening sound of slime and entrails slapping against the floor of the ship.
He rushed inside and saw her standing there in a pool of alien slime, hyperventilating and frightened.
He approached and she jerked when she saw him. Then she started to come down fast. The adrenaline dump made her woozy and tired in an instant. She dry heaved on the floor right into the gore she’d created.
Mike said breathlessly, “Holy fucking shit. Good work.” Then he tried to remember the alien language he’d heard in Melanie’s room when he first met these aliens. If the ship was voice activated, they stood a chance at getting home.
The alien consoles had no seats. It had square white plastic pads to stand on instead. He stood on one and the ship said, “Returning to base captain,” and then the door closed up tight and the thrusters shot them upwards.
This wasn’t how he’d envisioned their daring escape at all. Now they were headed into the belly of the beast.
He said to Melanie, “I hope you’re ready to kick the shit out of some more of these guys.”
She tried to smile but her eyes were already welling up with tears.
Belly of the Beast
The atmosphere in the little ship became too thick to properly breathe so they were forced to snap their head armor into place. The artificial gravity was too strong too. Without their new, more powerful bodies, it would have been debilitating.