by Nicole Cyr
But the other species that can withstand earth’s atmosphere can also withstand most other atmospheres. In fact, they’re essentially the alpha predator of the known galaxies, and they are universally feared because of their adaptability, ferocity, and their absolute need to kill. Nothing is known about the species, not even their home planet, but they are known as hunters. There has been a theory that’s floated around for years that hunters don’t have a home planet and are actually some form of biological weapon that was developed thousands of years ago by a now extinct species, and pods of them were placed on every inhabited planet in the known galaxies and would only be activated if the population of a particular planet became too large to support its native life forms. Think of it as forced Darwinism. But, of course, it’s only a theory.
The reality of the hunters is once they appear, they will obliterate anything in its path, like a tornado, but made up of claws and teeth. Typically, only one will appear, and you need to kill it as soon as possible because they reproduce asexually. Basically, if you ignore the problem for too long, a single hunter can become 100, and then 1000, and then 10,000. If they reach that kind of numbers, you might as well say bye-bye to your planet.
“So how many of them are there?” I asked as we stood in front of his 3-D heads-up display.
“So far I have only tracked one here in southwestern New Mexico.”
“The painted desert.”
“Yes.”
D-Arin’s people are more or less like the police for the known galaxies. They’re an extremely old race and universally treasured for their fairness, ingenuity, and adaptability. Theirs’s was the race who made first contact after America detonated the atomic bombs and crash landed the nuclear powered air craft. They came because they wanted to make sure that we weren’t a threat to our neighboring planets or galaxies. Once they determined that we were only playing with our new found technology, they deemed the human race as a non-threat, but still kept an eye on us in case we ever became threatened by hunters. They also covertly recruited humans who they felt would be able to handle themselves against a hunter, and whose minds were adaptable to having their memories erased time and again. Because here’s another interesting fact about hunters: They can read minds, and the more native populations know about them, the more aggressive they became.
It was a double edge sword: Prepare certain members of the native population to defend their planet against a hunter, but wipe their memories clean of that training until they were absolutely needed, and then activate them.
I had now been fully activated and I was ready for whatever the hunters threw at us.
Of course, D-Arin wasn’t entirely convinced of my readiness and kept drilling me about weapons use and my combat training. I finally grew tired of his questions and tossed him over my shoulder and disarmed him of his synth blade. As I held it against his throat, I winked, kissed him, and then pulled him to his feet.
“Do you think I’m ready now?” I asked.
“Yes,” He said with a chuckle. “Yes, I do.”
“Then let’s get to work.”
The painted desert of eastern Arizona and western New Mexico is, for a lack of a better term, a complete wasteland. It is nothing but red, the wind blasted clay and scrub brush. It’s beautiful in its own stark way, but I wouldn’t want to be caught out here for longer than 24 hours without food or water. If you’ve never seen it before, think about all those photos of Mars that have been sent back by the space rover the US has wandering around on it right now. Well, that’s what the painted desert looks like, except more desolate.
D-Arin had detected the hunter because a small group of Navajo ranchers had gone missing (The painted desert is a massive chunk of the Navajo reservation.), but then their remains had been discovered just a few days ago by reservation police. The men and their horses were nothing grizzled and bloody bone. The Navajo police thought that the ranchers may have been attacked by a pack of rabid wolves or rabid dogs. But the locals whispered about skinwalkers and the men trespassing onto sacred land. The locals weren’t too far off the mark.
We teleported to the surface in full gray man gear. If we came across anyone out here in the middle of the night, we’d be inevitably blamed for the massacre of the ranchers. Which was fine, because D-Arin’s people were also big into injecting disinformation into the weird culture of UFO conspiracists. Also, the less the general population knew about the hunters, the better.
We communicated via our heads up display and attuned our visuals to the hunter’s heat spectrum. Hunters are like reptiles, they’re cold blooded (And they look a lot like giant worms, but with hundreds of rows of razor sharp teeth.) and largely travel underground, burrowing deep below the surface and only coming up to hunt when they’re hungry, or in a blood frenzy. With the 9 dead ranchers, D-Arin and I made the assumption that the hunter was now entirely out of control and looking to kill anything that crossed its path. If the hunter was above ground, we were in trouble, because despite their massive size, they could be very stealthy and quiet killers. If it was below ground, our armor would let us know that it was coming via seismic readings.
We scanned and searched the area both below and above ground for hours with no luck. We knew it was there, but it looked like we were going to have to flush out of hiding. Hunters are essentially blind, they can see a few feet in front of them, but they largely rely on scent and hearing. Their sense of hearing was particularly keen, so D-Arin activated a simple sensory pulse device and tossed it out into a large field of scrub brush. The sound the device omitted was entirely undetectable by humans, but I guarantee you that every dog, coyote, and wold within 100 miles of our location was going absolutely bonkers and howling in discomfort. We also hoped it was doing the same thing to the hunter and would bring it to our location.
We waited 10 minutes … 20 minutes … 30 minutes, and nothing happened. D-Arin turned to me, a video of his face appearing on my heads-up display. His brow was knitted with confusion.
“Do you think it’s moved on?” He asked.
“Or maybe it’s de—!”
The desert floor below us exploded, tossing me into the air and I was thrown two dozen yards from where I had been standing. D-Arin was no longer transmitting, and for a brief moment, I panicked. The only reason why he would no longer be transmitting is if he was out of range, or he was dead. Unfortunately, I didn’t have time to think about either possibility, because the hunter was now right in front of me. From what I could see, it was at its full, mature size and was easily 20 feet long and was nearly 10 feet in height. Even though I was easily 20 feet away from, I could feel its hot, stinking breath—the smell of rot permeated my every pore. Its front row of teeth were the size of tombstones but filed down to razor sharp points.
I rose to my feet slowly, readying my weapons, priming my in-suit lasers and activating my synth knives which lit up the black night air with an iridescent blue light. This monster had most likely just devoured the love of my life, and I was going to make it pay.
I charged the hunter just as it started to move towards me, firing my lasers. It was surprisingly fast for a creature so large, and it danced around the beams with only one or two of my shots hitting their target, but the hunter barely seemed to notice. It size was too large, so I would have to engage it directly with my synth blades. I leaped into the air when I was within 7 feet of its mouth, hoping to drive my blades into the tough skin of its head. By I moved too slow and the hunter anticipated me and knocked me hard to the ground. I was now right in front of its open maw, it teeth glittering dull in the wan moonlight. I would soon be joining D-Arin in death and the planet was most likely doomed.
But as the hunter moved in to devour me, it came to a halt, and I could smell the distinct stench of burning emanating from its mouth. Suddenly, the hunter’s midsection exploded in a rain of rotten flesh, and with it came D-Arin, covered in head-to-toe in carrion, his armor scarred, but he was alive!
He pulled me to my fee
t and then removed his helmet.
“I’m sorry that took me so long.” He said.
I stripped off my helmet, and even though he was covered in slime and stank of what smelled like burnt dog hair, I kissed him so harder that you would have thought I was trying to eat him.
***
D-Arin has decided to stay on earth. Well, not on earth, in his ship orbiting the planet in stealth mode. And I’ll be staying with him most of the time. I’ll occasionally travel to earth to visit my parents and my sister—and before you ask: No, my memories will not be intact when I am on earth that would be too dangerous, especially if the hunter laid any eggs. But D-Arin has vowed to reactivate my memories once I am back on board—but for the most part, I will stay in the ship with D-Arin, waiting patiently for the next time the planet will need us to defend it. My only hope is, it won’t be for a very, very long time.
THE END
MILITARY BILLIONAIRE: THE MATCHMAKER
-The lonely cutie-
Damaris was probably the cutest girl in the office. But from the look of things, the most lonesome too. There were plenty of guys who apparently liked her and wanted to take her out. But it seemed as though they were a little bit scared to ask her out. For a moment, she thought that maybe she wasn’t pretty enough, or maybe the guys just didn’t want to have a problem with the cutest girl.
And the latter was just too unfortunate since Damaris always wanted to be taken out on dates. She also wanted to turn up to work one morning only to find a banquet of flowers on her desk with a note to her so that she could make her colleagues a little bit jealous. But it just wasn’t happening for her. Every morning she would turn up to a cold, empty desk and the old faces in the office always reminding her of the importance of coming to work early.
Damaris had some serious punctuality issues, and she attributed this to the fact that she didn’t have a love life or anything that closely resembled it. And needless to say, it did make her sad for a bit. But that aside, she thought that it would be an excellent idea for her to keep the faith since she believed that maybe one day, a handsome price will come to her rescue and make sure that everyone else in the office was jealous as hell when that time came.
Her friends also didn’t give her a piece of mind with the fact that she was settling for being single. Of course, she was the prettiest girl of them all and the fact that she was still single and not dating some rich guy just didn’t seem to make any sense to them.
“Come on girls, you know it's all about love and not anything materialistic. Just make sure that you mind your own damn business and let me work on my personal life. I will let you guys know when I am unable to pay my bills so that you can get me hooked to a billionaire or a politician. But until then, just know your girl is beautiful!” Damaris would laugh
But her friends weren’t going to take that bluff. They were dead serious that she needed to have a husband and not just any other guy, but a guy who would match up with her class as well as looks.
“The last thing that we do want our girl is for her to get hitched to some good for nothing bastard. And I entirely agree, you need to have a guy who is in a position to get you all sorted out financial but also a beast who will ensure that you come to work glowing like a child in a Vaseline ad.”
Everyone at the lunch break laughed at Florence’s joke. Yes, she could afford a couple of jokes here and there, but in the end, she also knew that the most important thing at that moment was getting to find a man who will complete her best friend. Damaris just sat there, not knowing what to tell her friend at the moment.
But she knew deep down that they were right. It had been a while before she had the opportunity to have a man to love her for who she was. And now that she had just turned twenty-seven, she was starting to get a little too old for being single, and Damaris thought that maybe, just maybe, she should start listening to what her friends were telling her because they were right.
It was a little bit tricky because when her friends had started something, it was very hard for them to lay off. And now that they had decided to gang up against her, it seemed as though nothing could be done to make things better. And so all that Damaris could do at that moment was to watch and hope that they were going to drop the subject and just let her be.
But as they were discussing how much they loved her and how they wanted for her to get to enjoy life, Damaris thought of the men who were always giving her the look around the office. Of course, they were all charming and seemed as though they had something going on in their lives. But eventually, it seemed as though she had a copy of each and every one of their reputation and that reminded her of the main reason she didn’t even consider them.
Then there were the men that her friends had been trying to introduce to her. There was Mike, the biker who turned out to be a bisexual rock star after Damaris thought that maybe something incredible could get to happen between them. And just like that, she decided to ditch him like expired milk.
Then there was Peter, the pastor who always turned every situation and conversation into an opportunity to sneak in Jesus. Which left Damaris wondering how Jesus was going to help him last a minute longer during sex. And just like that, she decided to ditch him as soon as she refused an invitation to co-pastor in her church.
That was about three years ago. And that was also the time that Damaris decided to stay celibate for all she cared. Yes, she missed the dating life.
But that said, it also seemed as though it was best for her just to kick back and wait for some amazing miracle to happen to her. As a matter of fact, that was the last thing she believed in, but as long as it kept her friends shut, she thought she might as well tell them that she was confident that her miracle was around the corner. But sadly, it seemed as though that excuse wasn’t going to hold that much.
“So Florence, since you look like a person who knows what she is talking about, what do you propose we do to find our good friend here a man worth her salt?”
“And here I thought you guys will never ask. Well, I think I just know the right man for Dee here!”
-The war hero-
Denis had just retired from the military and was still sitting at home, wondering whatever the heck he was going to do with the billions that his father had left him in his will. His family had invested heavily in pharmaceutical industry and from the look of things, it was giving them incredible returns.
But since an experienced board was running the business, it seemed as though the only good thing happening to Denis would be to take a couple of billions and start something of his own.
And since he was a fitness freak, he thought about starting a world class gym which would offer all sorts of services to their clients and also make sure that the people were having the time of their lives getting fit. At first, Denis wasn’t that good with people because he was so used to the army that he dished out orders more often than not.
But with a little bit of training, he started doing things the right way and needless to say, the clients were more than happy with the kind of services that they were getting which was more or less an amazing thing. Thankfully, most of the people who came to his gym were the elderly who were rich and were more or less associated with his family, and so they were a little bit tolerant.
But then after he got better at this, more people started flocking in and without a doubt, it became an incredible place to be. And just like that, Denis made sure that he was making millions on the side thanks to his family funding him. But the problem was that he had a womanizing problem. He just couldn’t get to settle down no matter how hard he tried, and that was why he chose to get busy with the gym.
Despite the fact that he liked taking different women out, he knew that he was turning thirty-one the following year. And now that he was crossing over to the wrong side of thirty, he knew that Denis was going to be laced with lots of responsibilities and getting to settle down was going to be a prime move that he had to do. He had seen fellow billionaires screw
up their lives, and now they were languishing in a dreadful place in life just because they went too far with being bad boys.
And just as he was cleaning the gym after a long day of helping the elderly get in shape, someone paid him a visit.
“Hey, didn’t you read the sign? We are closed woman. Go back from whence you came!” he smiled right before dropping the broom and hugging his longtime friend.
“I know you want me gone. But I am sure after hearing what I have to tell you, you will be begging me to stay.” Said Florence with a smile on her face.
“I see you are still sly as you have always been. So tell me, what you have in mind. And I do hope it's something very constructive or else I will have to kick you out.”
“Jesus! Can you stop with the threats and offer a girl something to drink? Jesus Christ man! Ha-ha.”
