Page 28 of Crash Landing
One little tear fell on his cheek and I quickly swiped it away. I was so pathetic. He trekked through the woods to find me and killed a big beast. I could look after him for a couple of hours. I had to.
Suddenly, the cracking branches grew louder, followed by a solid thud on the forest floor across the stream from us. I scooted out from under Saleuk’s head and stood, pistol raised shakily in front of me. The sound of something trudging through the woods grew closer and I dreaded seeing another giant spider beast. I couldn’t blink. I couldn’t breathe. I waited for something to show itself, my finger trained on the trigger.
Finally, something did. A great massive shadow loomed in the thick fog, tall and giraffe-like. I backed up against the cliffside and pinned myself there, staring at the huge creature as it slowly emerged from the haze. Lines of faintly glowing dots ran down the length of its dramatically angled body. Its front legs, which were two powerful limbs supported on its knuckles, were twice as long as its back legs. On the top of a long neck was a slender, long head that was tapered at the nose with whiskers that were tipped with tiny glowing specks.
I watched the thing enter the clearing, frozen in place as it sluggishly moved toward the corpse of the creature a few steps from us. It bent to sniff it, then raised its head. Two big, slanted eyes spotted me and it froze for a moment before snorting and turning to lumber away. Trembling, I watched it disappear into the fog a bit before it stretched up onto a thick tree trunk and started to climb like a great big, hairless sloth.
I let out a breath and slumped down the cliff wall onto the ground, nearly shaking out of my boots.
Ok, so not everything on Phesah wanted to eat me. Noted.
I took a moment to breathe and gather myself when I heard the faint sound of skittering up above me. Looking up, I saw nothing.
But then something fell on my head. I jumped and quickly started ruffling my hair to get it off of me when I saw a fist-sized scorpion-like creature fall at my feet. It quickly rushed me, two sharp spines on its front trying to pierce the toe of my shoe. I stomped on it only to see it still wriggling under my foot. I stomped again with a yelp until dark liquid spurted out around it.
Spinning, I saw more barely distinguishable shapes moving down the cliffside. In a fit of fear and anger, I picked up a rock and rushed to start crushing them before they reached the ground. One of them jabbed my hand with its little needle-likeappendage and I screamed, hoping to the heavens that I wasn’t going to end up like Saleuk.
The puncture stung like a bitch, but otherwise didn’t make me feel lightheaded or dizzy. So I continued crushing the vermin under the rock until I was too disgusted and disturbed to continue.
“No,” I chanted. “No, no, no!”
I quickly gathered up my bag and tightened it over my shoulders. Then I fastened Saleuk’s bag to his back with a lot of tedious maneuvering. With the gun in my back pocket, I had two free hands to loop around the straps of Saleuk’s pack. I gave him a good yank. He barely moved. I pulled again and when I gained the tiniest amount of speed, I did my best to keep that momentum.
Fucking hell, he weighed a ton. I got five steps before I was winded and that wasn’t much distance at all.
“Down the stream. That’s where I was heading,” I said to myself. “You said that’s the right direction and so that’s where we’re going.”
I pulled again, making it a few more steps. My hand was burning and my only hope was that it was just pain and there were no other effects.
“Come on,” I grunted, heaving again. “You big, fat. Alien.”
That’s when I glimpsed the water. It was knee deep last I checked and water certainly made things lighter.
“Ok, we’re getting wet.”
I dragged Saleuk into the stream where some of his weight was taken off my hands and was proud to find that I could drag him along with much more ease that way. As the water got deeper, I got more afraid of what was in it, but Saleuk just got easer to move around.
“We’ve got this. This is fine,” I said, finding that the sound of my own voice was a comfort.
I made sure Saleuk’s head never dipped beneath the surface, I stayed close to the bank, and I slogged onward, getting the hell away from the critters swarming the cliffside.
12: Saleuk
The moment I heard sound, I knew I was waking up. I let the noises sink in for a bit. The drip of water on stone made a soft rhythm, echoing off someplace enclosed. Then I heard the smooth hum of a breeze through a narrow opening. It was all very soothing except that the last thing I remembered was the look of panic on Sam’s face.
Sam.
I peeled my eyes open to see a cracked stone roof above me with plant roots webbing out like sutures to stitch the fissures back together. Beams of orange light bled into a shaded enclosure with four walls and a space where a door would have been had it still been intact. I was lying on the hard ground with a thin layer of spongy moss against my back and my pack under my head.
My limbs were stiff, but not so stiff to be useless. I pushed myself up on my hands and looked around to find Sam’s pack sitting against the old metal frame of a sleeping pod. On the sleeping pod was the symbol for Sylos Orimos, the research company that built the base on Phesah in the first place.
So we were at the research compound. Or, we were in the ruins of it anyway.
I listened for Sam’s presence as I lurched to my feet. A lingering pain pulled at my hip as I stood. Looking down, I saw two layers of white bandaging wrapped around my midsection. Lifting it, I saw a large black leaf pressed against my skin. Underthat was a layer of damp mud over where the kilor had managed to stick its little hairs in me. The punctures themselves looked dried out. There was no bleeding or oozing or swelling.
Soft footsteps approached the opening into the building and when I looked up, there she was, staggering through the doorway with a certain slouch to her shoulders like she was barely awake. She had a jar in her hand filled with red seeds, but when she saw me, her tired eyes lit up.
“Saleuk,” she exhaled, stumbling toward me.
