by Pj Belanger
the woods. No arrows came flying as I dragged the man outside, making one last effort to clear the doorway.
Both Lars and I forgot the arrows, forgot the man, as our eyes took in the humungous foot print that lay right next to our cabin. The Great Beast had missed our cabin by less than a foot. I tripped falling into the impression. I still had hold of the native; both of us rolled down into the footstep, the man rolling on top of me.
In my panic, I flung him off, grabbing onto a protruding rock and lifting myself back up out of the hole, to the doorway. “Holy shit,” I heard Lars mumble. He had flung himself against the entranceway to keep from falling down with me. I scrambled into our stink smelling hovel of a room, finding comfort instead of the usual disgust.
“That was close,” my roommate muttered as he ran to the back of the cabin, flinging open the back shutters. “Look at this!” displaying utter astonishment with his voice.
I looked out over the small cleared field that graced the backyard of our house before the forest jungle took over again. Not far was another footprint. The monster had literally just missed us - it had just straddled the cabin. I felt my heart speed up. How long before the thing squishes us? I looked at the roof that we now had to patch. Was that the tail that we had heard dragging over the roof? The immensity of the creature made my body shake, just the thought of it.
We spent the afternoon fixing the roof. I climbed up with the extra shingles we had found in the small side shed and hammered in the holes. Lars, in full body armor, stood outside with his rifle. No arrows came. Perhaps we would see no more. After being in the room for so long, I enjoyed the slight breeze and the view of the overcast sky, despite the intense heat. From the top of the cabin I saw only immense jungle as far as the eye could see.
“Hurry up,” Lars yelled from below. “You’re a sitting duck up there.”
We ate our rations early that night and sat in the dark not daring to put up any light. I lay in the black gloom thinking of my family, of the home on my native planet of Obie. I even thought of our base camp on Silva. I had been so impressed when we had landed there as newly sworn-in recruits. The whole planet was just for the Marines. I had trained there and thought it so purposely rustic. Perfect for training recruits how to survive war.
War! Yeah this was some war; all that training to sit here and rot.
Fort Silva seemed like heaven now. My home planet Obie was now an unimaginable luxury. Command had promised me an extended leave. Would they keep their promise? Christ, would they even pick us up next month? I fell asleep sobbing.
The morning brought a surprise. Sunlight was actually filtering in. I ran to the door and flung it open. Lars slammed it shut. “Are you crazy? You want to get yourself killed?”
“It’s sunlight. Sunlight!” I went to open it again but he put his arm in the way.
“Let’s do this right. Put our armor on. We might have just been lucky yesterday. “
I would have agreed to anything, I wanted out. Perhaps the air from yesterday lingered in my brain. I wanted to feel the sunshine. So we armored up, even face masks. It was stifling but we slowly made our way out. The first thing we noticed was that the native was no longer in the bottom of the hole. Someone or something had come to collect his body.
“See, I told you.” Lars hefted his rifle but no arrows came. I followed him as we inched our way around the large footprint. We walked slowly across the yard and crossed the dirt road that lay in front of the cabin. Who built it, us or them, we didn’t know. The road was hard packed and went into the thick jungle. No arrows came, nothing.
On an impulse I took off my face mask. Nothing. I then stripped the rest of the armor and let the slight breeze caress me. “Come on, it’s great,” I told my roommate.
Lars followed suit. I could tell he was enjoying the sunshine and the breeze. The cabin lay in front of us. I could see my patches on the roof. I shuddered as it was very apparent from across the road that something did indeed scrape along the roof. Large footprints headed past our cabin into the jungle. Huge banyan trees lay knocked over, a large patted down jungle lay past our cabin. We could see the imprint of the monster’s tail. Holy crap, I thought, trying to imagine the immensity of the beast.
I turned my back to our self-imposed jail and looked at the thick greenery that looked more like impenetrable wilderness close up. I wondered where our antagonizer had hid himself. I hefted my rifle over my shoulder and drew closer to the vines that seemed to overpower the huge trees. I felt one of the trees, it felt like rubber. No sign of any wildlife; no boars, bull deer or anything.
It wasn’t until Lars yelled that I noticed the snake. It had been coiled around one of the trees. It was the same color as the tree. Its good sized head, about the size of hover craft, swung in our direction with its huge green eyes giving us its full attention. “Backup,” Lars yelled but it was already uncoiling and advancing. It made six of us.
I backed up to my roommate, who also had his fire arm aimed. We both shot. The bullets ricocheted off the Boa’s skin. “Aim for its eyes,” I screamed at Lars.
It was coming fast. Lars reached into his pocket bringing out an M58 laser generating grenade. I hadn’t even thought to bring any. He heaved it into the snake’s mouth. The snake automatically closed its green scaly jaws over it. The grenade blew its head apart.
It knocked us back at least fifteen feet. We sat on the ground dazed. To our astonishment, from the jungle came what looked like lions. They pounced on the snake, tearing it apart to get at the meat. You could hear the gnawing of their teeth. The ferociousness of their hunger stunned us immobile with fear. It was easy to imagine them tearing us apart.
“Let’s get the hell out of here before something eats us.” Lars had his hand on my arm pulling me back. We started grabbing our armor when the wind suddenly picked up. It was astounding how fast the squall came upon us. I looked over to the snake, the lions were gone. They obvious knew something was about to interrupt their easy meal.
I didn’t even get to tell Lars to run as the sandstorm hit. It hit so fast that it spun us around. We grabbed onto each other but it knocked us both down. Holding on to one another we fought the wind towards what we thought was the cabin. We weren’t sure if we were heading in the right direction as the wind had spun us around several times.
The sand hurt. We closed our eyes but it hurt everywhere. We fought our way forward. Each step took forever. “Keep going or it will bury us,” Lars yelled in my ear but I just faintly heard it. He pushed me forward when I didn’t think I could go any further. Then I pushed him when he faltered. Finally we couldn’t do it anymore. Clinging to each other we stood as the sand got deeper and deeper. The darkness became absolute.
I began to wonder what it would be like to get smothered by sand. Would they find our bodies? I had no idea where we were. It was getting harder and harder to breath. We were clinging to each other, each using the other’s jacket to create a breathing space. I don’t even remember passing out.
I awoke to what I thought was a cloudy sky above us. My eyes and nose were ringed in sand. It took several minutes just to clear them. Sure enough, that was our cloudy everyday weather. I could see the clouds rolling within themselves, as if there was a great battle going on with the massive billows. I tried to move and then realized half my body was buried in the sand.
Lars was half on his side as if the sand had bent him sideways. I reached over and shook him. To my relief, he groaned. I couldn’t even recognize his face, it was so crusted with sand. I brushed his mouth and nose, making sure he could breathe.
It took him several minutes to free his arms. Then he cleaned his eyes and looked at me. “We’re alive,” was his only surprised comment.
“Barely,” I answered him. We looked around us. Astonishingly, we were just feet from the cabin door. I realized we were where the dinosaur footprint used to be. It was all filled in.
It took us a long time to get out of the sand and crawl to the doorway which amazing
ly was free of most of the sand. Still we had to push the door opened, falling in together on the cabin’s floor. We crawled forward. I kicked the door close. We slept right there, right where we had fallen.
Sometime during the day or night, whatever it was, I made it to my cot. I slept the sleep of the dead. When I awoke it was the same gray sky I’d woken up to for over five months. Lars was still sleeping on his cot. My mouth felt so dry, I couldn’t get a sound out. Going over to our precious water tanks I took the longest drink and then took some more. It would leave us with precious little but I didn’t care. My throat and mouth were burning.
I went over to Lars’ cot and poked him until he awoke. I made him take a long drink which he gagged on and ended up throwing up, but in the end he did drink. We both looked over to the door. To our amazement, both our rifles lay where we had fallen.
“I guess all that training never to leave our rifles evidently worked,” Lars laughed but it came out more like a croak.
I suddenly felt itchy. I shook the last of the sand off my body. Small insects were embedded in my skin. It totally freaked me out. I started jumping around brushing myself but the little buggers were under the skin. It was Lars that grabbed me, stripping my torn clothes off and dragging me over to the sterilization booth. He
