by G. L. Argain
The hupac dragged the human to its den, a few hundred feet up the mountain.
Chapter 14
In any normal circumstance, Andrew would have died.
His windpipe wasn’t punctured too badly, although the flesh wounds were very deep. What kept him alive was the regeneration gene. That, and the fact that the hupac began its meal at Andrew’s legs.
The animal’s lair was simply an open space of ground, hidden well by lush bushes and thick conifers. The canopy of the tree leaves shaded almost everything in the area, not including the few patches where the bushes were able to grow under direct sunlight. The forest is pitch black during the night, not just because of the canopy but also considering Ku-an Doel has no moon.
Andrew regained consciousness on the damp ground in the morning, marveling at the idea that he was still alive. His neck was indeed painful, even though it had mostly healed up. This pain, however, was overshadowed by the nerves in what remained of his legs, sending powerful signals constantly to the brain to tell him that something was obviously wrong. Both of his calves had been eaten off, leaving behind only bones and some flesh on his feet, all in a bloody mess connected by ligaments. Some of the muscles and flesh had already regenerated, but Andrew only had so much protein to give for repairing them.
Nauseous and terrified upon the sight, the human came close to fainting. The leftover nerves changed his pain into a sort of numbness as he endured a silent panic; he never screamed, since his throat tightened to keep most noise from escaping his mouth.
Tears came down his cheeks as the hupac walked back in, carrying within its jaws a land squid, dead and fresh. The carcass smelled less like seafood and more like red meat. It dropped the squid in front of Andrew’s face, as though hinting that he should eat it. As he stared at the dead squid, the hupac walked over to the human’s legs and started sniffing them, considering where to start off its next meal.
Andrew realized that the hupac was using him as a long-lasting food source, being alive and regenerative, and wondered why this animal couldn’t just eat the squid. Deep down, he knew it would be stupid to ask the creature to change its food choices, but his mind had lost the ability to care at this point.
“Why can’t you just eat this thing….eating me while I’m alive is just God damn cruel….”
The hupac stopped sniffing in response to Andrew’s words and their eyes met. He was surprised to see the animal respond, but it showed no change in its expression. Andrew wondered if and how the hupac could understand him.
“Are you not killing me because I can regenerate? That you can just keep me alive and have an easy food supply?”
The hupac still wanted to eat Andrew’s legs some more. Still not caring.
“If your gonna eat me, at least wait ‘til I’m in better shape. Right now, I’m just a skinny-ass guy with no good legs.”
The animal let out a loud roar—according to Andrew, it was intended to shut him up.
“If you can understand me, then just eat this squid or some other squid or….just don’t let me die like this.…”
The hupac paused, then it inhaled and exhaled deeply, similar to a sigh. It nudged the dead land squid closer to Andrew and then left. I am pretty damn lucky, Andrew thought. He raised his arm as well as he could, laying it upon one of the tentacles. After pulling the tentacle towards him, he began eating.
The taste of dirty flesh and blood made that red grapefruit he had earlier taste like sour candy in comparison. He wished that the carcass was at least washed first, but this was definitely no situation to complain. He found out quickly how hungry he was; the tentacle was eaten to the bone and he still needed more. Looks like land squids actually have bones whereas Earth squids do not. The bones in the tentacles were segmented like how a spine is.
He had the energy now to pull himself towards the entire body so that he could eat it where he lay. The sight of some things such as bones and organs from the squid didn’t creep him out as much as he thought it would, and he gobbled up a considerable amount before feeling the sensation in his legs change. He looked towards them and realized that his legs redeveloped about three more inches down from where they were last seen. The protein that he took in from eating the squid had almost entirely gone to his legs, which tingled as he saw—with his naked eyes—muscle fibers reforming onto the bone and overlapping each other. This regeneration was extremely rapid, considering how lizard tails regenerate as well, yet those can take months to grow back.
Andrew had been eating for an hour and a half before he saw the hupac come back with another squid in its mouth. This time the hupac kept this squid to itself, leaving Andrew be.
As grossed out as he was in his state, Andrew had all he needed where he lay. The squid blood was his water source, grossed out as he may be by it, and there was definitely food and air. The only problem here was that he needed to find a good way to “relieve his waste.” The first and only time he dug his fingers in the ground and proceeded to pull himself forward, his legs spiked with pain and he dared not move for at least ten minutes. He thought about crawling again, then he decided to roll himself over, creating an equal amount of pain, and dug out some pits large enough to take care of his feces. When the time came, he took the feces with one hand, put it into a pit, and covered it with dirt. He made sure that he would never let that hand touch anything else until he could walk and wash it in a river. Or at least wipe it on a leaf. For urine, however, all he did was let loose and end up stinking for hours in horrid self-pity.
He thought about how great he had it on Earth, how comfortably he lived. He never had to worry about running out of food or water. He never had to worry about being chased down and killed by wild animals. He never worried about lack of sanitation or plumbing or hot water. Most of all, he never worried about dying alone in the middle of nowhere, in which he never lived his life with purpose. Andrew suddenly thought about his friends and family, how emotional they must have been when they heard that he was nowhere to be found. Chances are, there would be a funeral, and no one could find the body since the only thing remaining in that Nevada desert was his car.
Andrew began to shed tears again—he had never cried or endured so much emotion within just a matter of days. He was sure that he would go insane within the next few months; Perhaps I already have, he thought. The hupac looked at Andrew during this depressing scene, staring with a sense of pity for the human. It was the kind of pity similar to what most people have when they hand a few cents to a hobo on the street. This alien animal had already given this pathetic human an entire squid, so it had given this hobo plenty. In the hupac’s mind, it decided to “take care” of Andrew for good once he had fully healed.
It took days for Andrew to eat the entire squid and regenerate his legs. Sixty pounds of meat passed through his digestive system, but not all of it went to waste. Another part of the regeneration gene includes the restructuring of existing body parts. In short, he increased muscle mass without doing any exercise. He was completely healed down to his toes, and he could feel the results once he stood up. The hupac was waiting patiently for this moment, as it knew that Andrew would be fully functional soon. Much to both Andrew’s and the hupac’s surprise, the human had gained ten to fifteen pounds of muscle mass while losing some fat along with the process, making himself appear more formidable.
The hupac wasted no time and lunged towards Andrew once he stood up. Andrew widened his eyes as he dodged in response, trying to kick the animal when it missed. He failed miserably as the animal ricocheted from the ground and pounced onto him. Clawed and torn, he seemed to fare no better than before, but his luck soon began to change. He pushed the hupac off his body using all his arm strength and lurched for its neck. It pawed at Andrew some more while he held it to the ground at the neck, then he delivered the first strike—he drove one finger into the hupac’s left eye. It let out a shriek while Andrew bit into the hupac’s neck, which may have been a tough job for someone with no fangs. The animal
was much more stunned by its eye rather than its neck—Andrew knew this wasn’t going to work. Finally, in a desperate and stupid attempt, he punched it in the head as hard and as many times as he could. The human just kept hitting the hupac until it was unconscious, then he stepped off.
His flesh was torn on his torso and all over his face, but his body had released a lot of endorphins to hide the pain for now. He didn’t want to face this creature ever again, and yet, at the same time, this creature was the closest thing he had to keeping himself somewhat sane. This alpha hupac was capable of responding to his sentences, so there was the comfort of mild communication. But what could he do if this animal wanted him dead?
Andrew found a solution to this and forcefully stepped on the hupac’s legs. Centering all of his weight onto one foot as he jumped, he broke each leg and waited a minute for the animal to regain consciousness. A thought suddenly came to him: what if the hupac was dead? He checked its torso and he could sense some breathing under that furry body, as well as a pulse. No problems there.
There was only one major thing left to do: find some food for himself and the animal. He cared less about having himself killed now, although it still lingered in the back of his mind. He knew that he needed to wash up in the river, to do something about his befouled hands. Problem was, though, there was no way to really get them clean; he needed soap for that. He winced at the idea of having crap hands for the next few months.
Andrew took some long and hard work finding some food; this time the dead animal in his hands appeared to be something indescribable, save the idea that it was large, with six legs and a head. Perhaps it was some kind of giant spider. He went back to the hupac’s den to find out it was gone. It left a trail, though, looking as if it had dragged itself for a while. These animals do have the regeneration gene, so Andrew underestimated how long it would take for the hupac to be up and running again.
He followed the trail for about ten minutes, taking the food with him, and found the hupac, standing on four legs. It growled very deeply, but there was no hiding the fact that it was starved. Its eyes focused interchangeably between Andrew and the dead animal in his hands. Andrew threw the meat right towards the hupac, waiting for it to eat it. The only response he got was blank indecision.
“Dammit,” said Andrew, “If your not going to eat it and you’re just gonna kill yourself, then do it!”
The starving animal put forth its attention towards the human.
“I don’t know what you’re really thinking, so I don’t really know what you want. All I know is….is that you can understand me. Is that right?”
Its eyes looked towards the ground.
“Move your head up and down if you do!”
Although he expect the hupac to understand him, he was quite surprised to see it follow his directions; its head nodded just like he wanted it to.
“Wow, looks like you can. But why? Do you have a translator gene?”
The hupac shuddered at this statement. Perhaps this animal had been experimented on, like Andrew had, and it retained some unpleasant memories.
Andrew stepped forward a few paces, building up the conflict in the atmosphere.
“Looks like we ought to work together. I’m not some crazed alien scientist who’s gonna experiment on you. I’m just a human, and you are not some animal, if you can understand language.”
The hupac, leaving its eyes fixed on Andrew, slowly moved towards its food and began eating.
“It would be a bitch for the both of us to keep on fighting, and if I can find a way for you to communicate with me, then it would make things that much better. But don’t get me wrong—I don’t need you and you only. If you die before I do, then I’ll just find another animal like you, like another hupac.”
The hupac just kept on eating the spider-like creature as it listened to Andrew’s speech. If there was some other human or intel-being around listening to this, it would appear that Andrew had already gone insane.
Chapter 15
Meanwhile, on Earth, it is well-known by Andrew’s friends and family that he is nowhere to be found. In the spot where Andrew was abducted, only his car remained, and the footprints he left behind in the desert sand had nearly disappeared, swept away by the wind.
One day after the incident, his relatives began to worry, hearing no calls or texts from him about his progress on the road trip. A couple days more, and many of his friends, including Troy, took note as well.
“Hello, is Troy there?” said a feminine voice, slightly anxious, over the telephone.
“Yeah, who is this?”
“It’s Elise Lockeford. Andrew’s sister?”
“Oh, yeah, yeah! I remember now—what’s up?”
“Fine, I’m okay.” Whenever some people say that they’re “good,” then they may have nothing troubling them. When they say “fine,” however….
“Andrew came by a couple days ago, and he should still be on his trip. Are you calling ‘cause of that, or what?”
“….No one has heard from him in days.”
Troy left his mouth slightly open in silence as he grasped the idea.
“Well….he was here not that long ago, and he was in a rush to get from my house to….Ely, I think he called it.”
“And you haven’t heard back from him at all, either?” Elise became more emotional asking this question, not wanting to hear the answer.
“No, not really. You saying Andrew’s dead?”
Elise hung up the phone.
“Hello? Elise, you still there?”
An investigation party set out to know how and why Andrew went missing, but after finding only a car with his fingerprints on it, there weren’t many answers. The most likely answer stated that he got out of the car, waited for some random person to pick him up, and then it trails off into more explanations, such as kidnapping or an affair. Everything just sounded ridiculous because there was no good reason for Andrew to stop in the middle of nowhere and leave his car. Where would he go? More importantly, why would he do it in the first place?
The investigators had to withhold their case until further evidence came up, which could be never, and all that Andrew’s friends and family could do was accept the most likely scenario: he would never be seen again.
Friends either contacted other friends to spread the lookout for Andrew or prayed to the heavens in hopes of bringing him back. Usually both. Former peers of his remarked how good, nice, or whatever he was when he was still around. There were a select few people who were glad that he was gone, and a few more who completely did not care. Out of all the people that heard Andrew was nowhere to be found or heard from, however, few individuals such as his family members cared to know more on the why. Only such a few desired the need to figure out what happened to him, exactly, and how it happened. Two individuals—friends of Andrew’s from high school—were the most zealous about this.
“There’s no way that he could’ve just parked his car in the middle of nowhere, at night, and just walked away!” said Drake.
“I know, I mean, unless he hitched a ride, or if there was a house or two a couple miles away, it doesn’t add up,” said Keith.
Drake was a friend of Andrew’s throughout most of high school. He was fairly short, about five-foot-five, with a head of thick, short, brown hair. His nose was pointy, his was mouth narrow, and he had a nasal voice that was surprisingly not annoying. Sometimes he preferred to grow a mustache, and he had a thing for carrying a pocketknife at his side at all times, even if it got him in trouble. He went on to community college like Andrew did for a while, but afterwards he pursued a job in the military where he could handle guns as he pleased.
Keith didn’t get to know Andrew until the latter part of their high school years. He was also close friends with Drake, more so than with Andrew, and he had a way of analyzing a person’s social capabilities. On the first day, he could tell that Andrew had Asperger’s Syndrome within seconds, but he didn’t mind that one bit. Keith was tall an
d stout, with curly red hair and the occasional beard, which was there just for the sake of being stroked while he was deep in thought. He was an excellent singer, but he was also rather crude, so although his social tendencies reached far, they did not reach to everyone’s preferences. He was the type of person that one could talk to about anything—including ordinarily unmentionable subjects—without the fear of judgment.
Keith and Drake were at their own houses, talking to each other on house phones. Cell phones were convenient, but why waste minutes and money talking on a cell phone when you were right at home with a house phone? Although, some people’s house phones are their cell phones.
“Man, he was a pretty awesome guy, come to think of it,” said Drake.
“Yeah, but everyone says that when someone dies,” said Keith.
“I know, but it’s just a matter of courtesy. Besides, he was never all that annoying or dumb—all I’m thinking about is how he never really talked or hung out with us that much.”
“During or aside from school?”
“Well, just in general! Hell, you never heard of him going out with friends a lot, have you?”
“He was autistic….and introverted….I suppose he just liked to be alone most of the time.”
“Yeah, of course, but whenever we started talking to him, he was just fine with it. It’s just that he never took the effort to start a conversation with us, really.”
“Right.”
The two guys paused for a few seconds, recollecting their breath and their thoughts.
“You know what we should do?” said Drake. “Seriously, we should drive to the place where Andrew’s car was, then we could find out for ourselves what could’ve happened.”
“Okay, first of all, that’s a lot of money right there that we would need for food and gas. Secondly, how would we know any more than the investigators?”
“Think about it, it’s not too far from Area 51, it’s in the middle of nowhere, and—”