“What is that?” I asked as Leo smoothed it out.
“To heal,” he replied simply, and he gestured for me to remove my hand and shirt from the wound.
I let go, and Leo quickly pushed away the torn material of the man’s own shirt. Then the alien smoothly pressed the lilac patch onto the top of the wound, and I heard Kat gasp as the blood didn’t seep out around it.
Adhara quickly applied a second patch to the lower half of the wound, and the lilac substance actually seemed to absorb into the guy’s torso. Somehow, the wound was no longer bleeding, and it looked like the man suddenly had a purple area of fresh skin. It seamlessly joined with his own, pale body as if it had just melted into his waist, and my jaw went slack.
“Holy shit,” I muttered as I studied the patches. “That’s amazing.”
“That looked like magic,” Hae-won said in awe. “Is he going to be okay?”
The man suddenly opened his eyes fully and spluttered as he coughed up bile.
“Hey,” I said and clutched his shoulder to steady him. “It’s okay, we’re here to help you.”
“What?” the man gasped. His voice was shaky, and he stared at Leo with wide eyes.
His confusion was understandable. He had just woken up from a near-death experience to find two aliens in his hut and a pool of his own blood around him. The man backed up as far into the wall as he could, and his breathing quickened as he gawked at the aliens.
Adhara seemed to understand the cue, and she gently pulled at Leo to give the guy some space. Then the two aliens shuffled back a little, and the man let out a deep breath as he straightened up.
“I’m Jason,” I repeated. “Sorry that we startled you. Are you a scientist here?”
“I-I am,” the guy stuttered, and he managed to peel his eyes away from the aliens to look at me.
“Arnie?” I asked hopefully, and I couldn’t help sigh with relief when he nodded.
“What is this?” the man demanded as he ran a hand over the newly-healed skin on his waist. “Who are you people?”
“That’s kiiind of a long story,” Becka muttered. “But, uhhh, hi. Nice to meet you. We’re just a ragtag group of hotties trying to save the world.”
“And we need the Hadron Collider to do that,” Hae-won added.
“So, if you could turn it on, that’d be great,” Kat concluded.
Arnie looked at each of the girls in turn and then shook his head slowly.
“Th-Those are aliens,” he stammered as he stared at the lilac beings again. “Those are… what the hell is going on? Is this to do with the dinosaurs? Is this--”
“It is,” I sighed as I stood up. “Adhara and Leo here are aliens, the rest of us are just regular old humans.”
“Hardly regular,” Becka snorted. “We have killed like, a million dinos, and look at Jason’s abs. There’s nothing normal about that. He’s practically a dino-slaying god.”
I suddenly remembered that I had given Arnie my shirt, and I awkwardly slipped my jacket back onto my naked torso. It looked like I would have to rock the bare skin look until we got back on the ship and I could grab one of the spare shirts I packed, but I kind of felt like those assholes in biker movies who just strolled through deserts with only a leather jacket and pants on.
It was a decent vibe.
The scientist slowly got to his feet, and he looked down at his blood-stained clothes as he ran a hand over the new patch of lilac skin. It looked like it had always been part of him, and there were no harsh lines where it was attached. It was as if he just had a lilac square tattooed on his waist, and not another drop of blood seeped out.
“Extraordinary,” he muttered as he looked at the patch. “This is alien medical care?”
“Yes, you can be grateful.” Adhara nodded, and Leo packed up his silver box. “This will be your body now. I hope you do not feel too much badly about the color.”
The gorgeous alien wiggled her fingers as she looked at the patch, and to my shock, Arnie’s face suddenly broke into a huge grin.
“Aliens!” the man yelled, and he threw his hands up in the air. “I get to meet freaking aliens before I die. I can’t believe this. This is a dream come true. You’re aliens. Real ones!”
I don’t think Adhara had ever had that reaction from a human before, and I watched her fingers go perfectly still as her mouth twitched.
“You… do not hate us and want to scream?” she asked quietly.
“Hate you?” Arnie laughed. “My dear, I’m a scientist, I’ve spent my whole life wanting to know everything there is to know about the universe. Now, I get to not only confirm that aliens exist, but meet them? This… fuck. Am I dead?”
“Nope.” Becka smirked like a smug mother. “Our beautiful little alien friend is the real deal, and she’s an absolutely gorgeous creature to boot. You’re welcome for changing your life.”
The scientist scoffed through another laugh and hurriedly stuck out his hand, and Adhara looked excited that she knew what to do. She shook his hand enthusiastically and looked over to me with a huge grin, and I gave her a thumbs-up that made the beautiful alien do an adorable little wiggle with her hips.
Then Arnie stuck out his hand toward Leo, but the male alien just stared at it.
“What you want?” The scout scowled. “I heal you. This is plenty.”
Arnie erupted into laughter, and the rest of us chuckled along as well.
“What is this contraption?” the scientist asked, and he walked toward the floating orb that I had forgotten was even there.
“That is pretty cool,” I agreed. “Just a portable lamp?”
“Light ball.” Leo shrugged. “When it is dark, and you need to not be dark. Why do humans not think of such things?”
“I mean, we have,” Becka clarified. “Just not so fucking cool as your design, that’s all.”
“Phenomenal,” Arnie said, and he walked around the ball slowly as he stared at it.
I had to admit, it did look awesome. The ball just hovered at head height, and the gentle glow it gave the cabin illuminated every corner. Between the light and the skin patch, I was feeling pretty blown away by the alien advancements today, but I did feel a slightly smug sense of pride over my beautiful, lilac girlfriend.
Arnie muttered to himself as he examined the light, and he happily gave Adhara a pat on the shoulder when he passed her. His excitement seemed to lift the atmosphere of the whole group, and for a second, it was nice to just watch a guy being hyped up over the existence of aliens.
Then something nearby roared, and the urgency of the situation came flooding back to me.
“Sooo,” Becka announced. “Super love how excited you are for aliens, we love them, too. But we kind of need your help.”
“Ah,” Arnie said. “Yes. What exactly is the reason you came here and saved me? Which I thank you very much for, by the way.”
“Good.” Leo nodded.
“We need the Hadron Collider turned on,” I said, and the scientist raised a bushy eyebrow.
“Whatever for?” he asked. “It hardly seems like a pressing matter just now. All things considered.”
“We need it for the black holes,” Hae-won said. “Adhara can use them to transport onto her people’s mothership.”
Arnie stared at the Korean beauty for a moment, and his forehead wrinkled as he rubbed his beard.
“You can use black holes for travel?” he asked slowly. “But… our own scientists have essentially disproved this theory based on the fact that any object being sucked toward the event horizon would be stretched beyond--”
“Your scientists know nothing,” Leo said flatly. “Do not try to think beyond primitive brain. I do not like it. Wastes time.”
Adhara nodded.
“Incredible,” the scientist muttered with a glazed look in his eyes. “May I ask how--”
“No,” Leo refused.
“I see.” Arnie nodded reverently. “Well, why do you need to transport to this mothership so urgently?�
�
“To stop the attack,” I answered. “Long story short, an alien fleet is going to come down and destroy humanity if we don’t get on board that ship. The dinosaurs were sent to wipe as many of us out as possible, and it won’t be long until thousands of spaceships come and finish the job.”
Arnie nodded as if I was explaining something as simple as a rise in gas prices, and he rubbed a hand over the lilac patch of skin before he spoke.
“Very well,” he agreed. “I will need to go to the power source nearby, but I’m afraid the area around the electrical box is rather littered with dead bodies.”
“Not a problem,” Kat said. “We can evaporate them with these.”
She gestured to her sharp gun, and Arnie nodded with a smile.
“Alien weaponry?” he guessed.
“Very superior,” Leo assured him in the same unimpressed tone.
“To be sure,” the scientist chortled. “How fascinating.”
“Probably best to just leave bodies where they are, though,” I pointed out. “The dead bodies might help to mask our smell.”
“I have many questions,” Arnie admitted with the enthusiasm of a child, and I couldn’t help grinning at the man. His mind was probably blown sideways over all of this. “Perhaps we could sit down and talk when time is a little less urgent? If that is acceptable, of course.”
He looked at Adhara when he spoke, and the alien blushed with pride as she smiled a little.
“Yes, is acceptable to share knowledge.” Adhara nodded. “I tell you all things you want to know after we save world.”
“You have yourself a deal,” Arnie said. “Now, how exactly will we get there without being eaten?”
“We have shit-loads of guns,” I assured him. “Alien weapons really are awesome, as you can probably imagine. We’ve done more than our fair share of dino slaying, too, so we’ll keep you safe. How far away is the power source?”
“Not too far,” Arnie answered. “It will only take a few minutes if we are quick.”
“So, walking distance?” I asked, and the scientist nodded.
“But the power source is not particularly covered,” Arnie said. “I’m not sure how easy it will be. As you saw, I barely stepped out of this door before I was nearly slashed in half.”
“What was it that wounded you?” Kat furrowed her brow.
“Some form of raptor,” Arnie replied. “It ran off right after it raked me with its claws, like it only had one job and didn’t care to stick around after.”
“They just want us all dead.” I nodded. “Even if they don’t feel hungry, they will kill any humans they lay their eyes on.”
“We make them very effective,” Leo added. “Good killers now.”
“Fascinating,” the scientist muttered with another glazed look at the stoic alien.
I made my way over to the door and carefully opened it just enough to have a view of the ships. It looked clear outside, and the sounds of roars and footsteps were far enough away. I studied the sky and couldn’t see any leathery wings or sharp beaks, and I figured it was as safe as it was ever going to be out here.
“I think we’re good to go,” I told everyone. “Arnie, stay in the middle of the group.”
“Certainly,” the scientist quickly agreed. “Thank you again. This is very honourable of you to go through all this trouble--”
“Quiet is better,” Leo told him. “Ommati will hear.”
“Omm--”
“Alien dinos,” Hae-won clarified for the scientist.
He muttered one more quiet “fascinating” to himself before I opened the door further, and I stepped out into the daylight with my sharp gun ready for action. The rest of the group followed behind me, and I glanced back at Arnie who gestured to go around the back of the hut.
As we left behind the cover of the ships and truck, I felt incredibly exposed. The stretch of land we were on was very flat, and there were only a few clumps of trees and bushes that could be used to hide behind.
I looked to the right and could see multiple dinos in the distance, and my stomach lurched at how easy it would be for them to spot us.
“It’s over there,” Arnie hissed, and he pointed to a square fence made of tall, metal sheets. There were yellow signs on the entrance gate warning that the barbed wire on top was electric, and it looked like some dinos had found that out the hard way.
Several bodies slumped over the gate, and as we got closer, it smelled like they had been dead for a while. A stegosaurus had ultimately been the one to break the barricade, though, and it looked like the massive beast had crashed into the structure. Half the gate was crushed under the weight of the dino, and the top of its massive body had come in contact with a tangle of the electric wires, so the dino had clearly been fried on impact with the defensive mechanism.
“What were they trying to get to?” Becka whispered as we approached the corpses.
The crushed gateway exposed the inside of the enclosed area, but there didn’t seem to be anything inside other than a locked electrical box.
Clearly, the dinosaurs had been determined to get to it.
“Maybe they knew,” I said. “They figured out that this had something to do with the Hadron Collider, and they wanted to destroy it.”
It sounded insane, but I had a strong suspicion that the dinosaurs could have worked it out. They’d already shown us how much their intelligence had evolved, and it would make sense for them to be programmed to destroy what they thought was our biggest weapon.
When we reached the dead dinosaurs, I could see that there were two raptor-like dinos near the stegosaurus, and something with a large dome on its head like a helmet.
The raptors were about five feet tall and had a reddish tint to their skin. Both of the dinosaurs had clearly been in the wrong place when the stegosaurus brought down the gate. The electric wire from the top of the structure had been pulled down, and it looked like it hit the raptors on the neck.
Their skin was burned, and they had already begun to rot in the sun. I tried not to look too closely at the colony of bugs which had started to eat away at the decaying flesh.
“Buitreraptors,” Arnie said as he looked down at the bodies. “And I believe this is a pachycephalosaurs.”
“A what?” Becka scoffed.
Arnie pointed to the dino with the helmet-like head. It was about fifteen feet long and clearly walked on its thick hind legs when it was alive. The skin on its head was bumpy, and up close, it almost looked like it was made of gray stone.
“Do you have the key for the electrical box?” I asked, and Arnie nodded.
“Thankfully,” he said as he pulled a long, silver key from his back pocket. “But this could take a while. There is quite a process to restart the system, I’m the only one left who knows the sequence.”
“Take all the time you need,” I said.
“But also be as fast as possible,” Becka added. “I do not want to have to smell these dead fuckers for any longer than I need to.”
“I will do my best.” Arnie nodded, and he unlocked the box to reveal a whole world of wires and switches. Then the scientist got to work as I looked around to suss out exactly how much danger we were in.
The dino corpses gave us some cover, and Arnie was basically hidden from view behind the stegosaurus.
We spread out around the silver fence, and I could see a herd of mixed dinos in the distance. There were a couple of trees between them and us, but if one of them caught a whiff of our scent, then there really was nowhere to hide.
“I don’t like this,” Kat said. “We’re so exposed.”
“Yeah,” Becka agreed. “That herd isn’t that far away, it would only take them a few moments to get over here.”
I watched the distant dinosaurs carefully, and I counted six of them in total. It was too far away to tell exactly what they all were, and I didn’t want to find out.
Arnie muttered to himself as he flicked switches in the electrical box, and I felt a gu
st of wind blow through my hair.
“Shit,” I said. “We’re upwind of the herd, they might catch our scent.”
“Maybe we hide behind bodies?” Adhara asked as she watched the herd warily.
“That won’t make a difference if they smell us,” I said. “We just need to be ready.”
I swapped my sharp gun over for my blaster and rested the cylindrical weapon on my shoulder.
“I think I see something over there,” Hae-won said, and I turned to see her pointing out in the opposite direction than the herd.
There was a line of trees a few yards ahead that made it difficult to see past, but it did look like there was something big moving in the distance beyond them.
Then I heard the sound of wings flapping above us, and I knew we were about to be in big fucking trouble.
I looked up at the clear sky to see something that looked like an evil puffin gone horribly wrong. The dinosaur was about five feet long with a decent-sized tail and sharp talons on thick back legs, and its wingspan looked to be around seven feet. Its face was much rounder than any of the flying dinosaurs we had met before, and its curved beak was a bright yellow color with red stripes.
I aimed my blaster at the approaching dino as it let out an ear-piercing screech, and I knew that all chances of going unnoticed had been blown to hell.
So, it was time to have some fun and blast these fuckers to shreds.
I pulled the lever back on the blaster and released it as something else behind me let out a howl.
The purple ball of alien plasma hurtled through the sky and right into the body of the flying creature. The dinosaur exploded into a cloud of red slop, and bits of wing and tail spun in the wind like a grotesque kite.
“Jason!” Hae-won yelled, and I spun around to see dinosaurs coming from every direction over the green landscape.
The mixed herd was charging toward us at full speed, and the shape behind the trees on the other side of the fence had revealed itself to be a massive ankylosaurus. It lumbered toward us with alarming speed, and I knew it would only take a few minutes until it could crush the electrical box, and all chances of us saving the world.
Dinosaur World 8 Page 10
