Doomed (6 page)

Mountains

Mike was pissed that so many people were following Paul’s ill-conceived advice. Paul’s attack might do nothing more than create a blood-feud between the two species.

And something didn’t make sense. When the alien spaceship had dropped them, they’d landed just a few thousand feet from the Tall alien camp. Surely the Talls would’ve seen that. So why didn’t they fire upon the pod as it fell to the ground?

He shook it from his thoughts and cheered up immediately when he saw Melanie smiling at him.

He said, “Let’s run to the mountain. You’ll be surprised at how little effort it takes. The suit does all the work.”

Before Melanie could tell him she already knew that, h
e ran off.

She wondered how he’
d managed to move past the fact that they’d just been in a blood-soaked battle. He was acting like it had never happened. Then she realized she wasn’t all that bothered by it either. The aggression seemed like second nature now.

They’d seen people bleed out. They’d killed. And yet they were unaffected by it.
She had a vague realization that it probably had something to do with their altered DNA but there was no way to know for sure.

She
realized she was dwelling on it too much. What was done was done and they had to keep their head in the game to find another camp site to ensure their survival.

She
ran after him and caught up pretty quickly.

She
yelled to him, “The wearer of the suit has to be athletic too, which you are not.” Then she overtook him and leapt in the air. She landed at a run thirty feet distant.

Mike felt a little slighted by the insult but she’d meant it only in jest so he let it go. She was righ
t anyway. He’d become a couch-potato over the course of his last summer on Earth. But the DNA alterations should have made up for his laziness.

He exerted himself now to test out his theory and sure enough, he caught up to her. Once he was ahead of her, he did his own little leap to show her he could.

By the time she caught up to him again, they were already close to the lake.

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 ch
est-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 sta
rt 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 sai
d, “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 t
he 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 a
n alien spaceship home.”