by J. N. Chaney
He was larger than I was, a few inches taller, more muscle wrapped around his body, adding on an extra ten pounds or so.
“I’m not lying down on this one,” I told him, sending a light jab to the side of his body, then his face. I barely made contact. If I was going to win, I didn’t want any cheap shot to count. I wanted to beat the champion at his best.
A look of confusion swept over Jason’s face, then one of determination.
The fight was brutal. Jason was the reigning champion for a reason. Even not expecting to actually fight, he was a beast to handle. He knocked me down in the second round. I spat blood and got to my feet again. I knocked him down in the fourth, then again in the fifth. In the sixth, he didn’t get back up.
There were a lot of people smarter than I was, and there were a lot of people stronger too. But I didn’t know a lot of people who were more relentless than I was. I didn’t stay down. That was how I lived my life, that and the ferocity in Natalie’s eyes was what got me through the fight.
My memory of that night skipped forward, past the fight, past the belt being wrapped around my midsection and the celebration. The next thing my memory showed me was driving back to our house in the city. Natalie drove. I sat in the passenger side seat, a huge smile plastered on my bruised face.
I hadn’t broken any bones, but I was black and blue. A few days of recovery would see me in fighting shape again.
It was in the early hours of the morning when we finally got home. It was dark. We were both exhausted and drunk with happiness. Natalie clicked our automatic gate, and we pulled through our short driveway to our home.
“You were amazing in there, my love,” Natalie said, bringing the car to a stop and leaning over to give me a peck on my cheek. “You’ve always been my champion.”
I grinned, so happy and full of joy, I didn’t have words to express. We exited the vehicle. Walking to our front door, I didn’t see them waiting for us until it was too late. Two figures stepped out of the shadows of the house with heavy repeating blasters in their hands.
They wore black masks with openings for their eyes and mouth.
“Mr. Dell says you should have taken the dive,” one of the men said in a thick Hispanic accent.
That was it. They opened fire on us with their blasters.
BAM! BAM! BAM! BAM! BAM!
I threw myself in front of Natalie, but the thing about blaster rounds is they move a lot faster than a body. Red light streaked through the empty space between us. Pain erupted into my abdomen, shoulder, and leg.
I fell to the ground, gasping for breath.
I heard the men running from our home. I didn’t take the time to look over and see which way they went. Natalie was lying on the ground, shaking. A blaster round had hit her in the neck, another in the chest.
I crawled through the pool of my own blood to where she lay. She was clawing at her throat, trying in vain to stem the bleeding.
“Nat—Natalie, no, Natalie.” I could barely get the words out. Not because my own pain ravaged my body, but the dread of losing her and our child had taken hold. “No, Natalie, stay with me.”
I finally made my way over to her. I held her head in my lap.
“Help! Someone, help! Help us!” I lifted my head to the dark night sky and screamed. Only the stars were present to witness my plea.
Natalie’s throat was a smoking mess. Somehow, the necklace around her neck had managed to dodge the blaster round. I didn’t know what she was doing until she placed the medallion in my hand. She was trying to mouth something I couldn’t hear.
“I got it, I got it,” I said, taking the medallion she was so desperately trying to give me. “Hold on, Nat. You hold on. It’s your time to fight right now. You’re going to make it.”
Tears fell freely down my cheeks as I screamed for everything I was worth, hoping a neighbor, a passing car, anyone would hear me. “Help us! Please, help us!”
“You—you don’t give up,” Natalie said. I don’t know to this day how she got the words out. “You don’t give up when I’m gone. That’s not—that’s not us. That’s not who we are. They’ll need you.”
That was it. She was gone. They were both gone.
18
My lungs filled with warm water as I came to after the blast. I was so disoriented, I didn’t know which way was up. My lungs burned and panic set in. I looked all around, finally reorienting myself and seeing the light glistening off the surface of the water.
The last words my wife spoke to me echoed in my mind as I fought my way to the surface. My lungs felt like they were going to explode in my body. My mind was a foggy mess by the time I began swimming to the surface. Lucky for me, I was only a few feet from the top.
A furry mouth reached into the water. It grabbed a maw full of my shirt and drew me up the rest of the way. I gasped for air, sucking the much-needed oxygen into my lungs and the rest of my body.
Mutt growled and licked my face as if to ask if I was all right.
I wasn’t the world’s best swimmer, but it had been part of my training when I was a gladiator. It promoted overall muscle health and lung strength. I was able to tread water, even wearing my clothes.
The events surrounding how I came to be in the water collapsed on my mind. I looked up to people screaming on the beach and in the water.
“Something’s in the jungle!” Mark yelled over his shoulder.
“Stay back!” Boss Creed ordered. “Whoever you are, stay there. We’re here to help!”
More than anything, I wanted to look to the beach and try and figure out what was happening. I couldn’t afford even the few seconds I’d need to do that. Stacy’s body was floating in the water, her back to the sky overhead. Elon sat on the prison cell level, dazed. He had been the one farthest from the blast when we opened the door. Apparently, he had been thrown backward into the level while Stacy and I catapulted into the water.
I swam toward Stacy’s still body as fast as I could, the shouts from the beach still echoing in the back of my mind.
Come on, Stacy, come on. Not you too, I thought to myself as I crossed the distance between us. You’re all right. Just be all right.
I grabbed her with Mutt barking and swimming by my side. I flipped her over on her back. Her eyes were closed, wet lips not breathing.
“Here, bring her here,” Lou was halfway to us, already waist-high in the water.
More shouting came from the beach, someone’s voice I didn’t recognize.
“You fools! You idiots! We’re all dead now! That explosion will bring every single one of them here!”
“I’ve got her,” Lou said, reaching us at the same time my feet made contact with the sandy floor of the ocean.
“I don’t—I don’t think she’s breathing,” I gasped. “Hurry, get her on the beach.”
Together, the padre and I carried Stacy’s limp form to the beach. We placed her on her back.
Doctor Allbright was by our side a moment later. She checked Stacy’s pulse then listened for her breathing.
“Stay with her. I’ll get Elon,” Lou said, rushing off again.
Tom stood at the edge of the beach with his mouth open, his face a picture of shock.
I knelt next to Doctor Allbright, helpless as she performed chest compressions and CPR on Stacy.
More screaming erupted from the beach about ten meters away, right between the water line and the edge of the jungle. A man exited the jungle. A stranger, clearly a transient, but there was a look of wild fear in his eyes. He was the one yelling.
On the opposite side, Boss Creed, Hannah, and Mark leveled their blasters at him.
“They’re coming now, you idiots,” the man yelled with frustration. “They’re coming, and they’re going to kill us all. Why don’t you make more noise and tell the jungle monsters we’re out here too? Why don’t you just tell the whole damn world?”
I saw but didn’t fully comprehend what was happening at the beach. My focus was on Stacy.
&nb
sp; “Is there something I can do?” I asked, hating the feeling of sitting by and not being able to do anything to help someone I had begun to care for.
“Chest compressions, one hand over the other, here.” Doctor Allbright showed me. She placed her hands on Stacy’s chest and gave a brief compression. “Like this. Give me thirty and then let me breathe into her.”
My hands shook as I counted to thirty out loud and provided the needed compressions. Flashbacks of Natalie dying in my arms wavered in and out of my mind as I counted along with the compressions.
“One, two, three…” I rattled off. “Don’t you die on me too, Stacy. You come back. You come back. You’re not allowed to leave!”
“They’re coming!” The lunatic from the jungle fell to his knees in the sand sobbing. “And hell’s coming with them.”
“Fifteen, sixteen, seventeen…” I continued on.
Stacy’s body felt cold and lifeless under my hands. There was no way in hell I was giving up on her. I just wondered if she was there at all to keep fighting.
“What are you talking about?” Mark shouted. “Keep your hands where we can see them. Who’s coming?”
The man who came from the jungle was performing a laughing kind of sob as the first shriek echoed from the jungle interior. First just one, then more and more screams added to the call as if a hundred voices rose together at once answering Mark’s question.
“Twenty-eight, twenty-nine, thirty,” I said, resting back on my knees to let Doctor Allbright lean in and perform mouth to mouth.
The doctor tilted Stacy’s head back and made sure the airway was clear. She pressed her lips around Stacy’s and blew twice.
“Again.” Doctor Allbright’s voice was firm and commanding despite the circumstance we found ourselves in.
“One, two, three…” I said. On the third compression, Stacy trembled. Coughing, she spat up a lungful of ocean water.
“There you are,” I said, rolling her onto her side so she could expel the water from her lungs without fear of choking on it again.
“I found Elon!” Lou shouted from his place on the Orion. “He’s breathing, but I could use a hand.”
“Stay with her,” Doctor Allbright ordered and ran off to assist.
“What—what happened?” Stacy panted, sucking in the oxygen she so desperately needed. “Did I—did I die?”
“You’re all right,” I told her, pushing my long hair from my eyes. “You’re okay. You’re going to be okay.”
There were so many shrieks coming from the jungle, it was hard to talk. They were still distant but growing both in quantity and volume as they approached.
“My blaster, I lost my blaster somewhere in the water,” Stacy said, fighting her way to her feet to try and take in the scene unfolding around us. Stacy directed her attention at the man laughing and crying in the sand. “Who are you?”
For the first time, I was able to give him my full attention. His hair was greying, and he wore some kind of armored suit designed for walking outside the hull of the Orion while in space, or that was what it looked like. His face was filthy. Hair askew, trails of tears cutting through the dirt on his cheeks.
“Who are you?” Stacy demanded, joining Boss Creed, Mark, and Hannah, who trained their weapons on him.
“My name’s David. I’ve been running from the infected since we landed on this hell hole,” David said, leaning back to sit on the sand like a child who had given up. “I managed to survive against all odds. Even found this suit of armor in a crashed section of the Orion in the jungle. I even managed to escape the monsters in the jungle. Then you people show up. Set off an explosion to tell the entire infected population where we are and now, I’ll tell you where we all are, we’re dead.”
The entire time David was speaking, the frantic shrieks and howls in the jungle came closer. I caught movement in the woods behind David. Not just one person—a hundred, a thousand running bodies.
“We need to get to high ground,” Hannah warned.
“Too late,” Mark said as we caught sight of the first howling maniac to emerge from the jungle.
It looked exactly like the woman we had seen in the pod. The one who had strangled the man in front of her. This person who exited the jungle, if you could still call it a person at all, had the same black veins coming from his mouth and eyes. His shirt was ripped in a dozen different places, showing black lines crisscrossing his body. His hair was falling out in clumps.
“Stand down!” Boss Creed yelled at the maniac. “Don’t come any closer!”
It was obvious the crazed man wasn’t going to obey. He did talk, however, and that was more than I expected.
“No!” he yelled through broken teeth. “No! Get off our planet!”
With that war cry, he shrieked again and ran at David’s back with extended arms.
“I’m going to take him,” Mark said, half in permission, half as a statement.
“Do it,” Stacy answered.
BOOM!
Whatever branch of the military Mark had been in taught him how to shoot. A single red laser blast shot forward, catching the running man in the chest. He fell with a smoking hole in the center of his body, blood oozing over his charred flesh where the impact of the round hit him.
“Get up, you moron, and get behind us,” Stacy yelled to David. “We have a chance here! Get up!”
I’m not sure if it was the force in Stacy’s words or seeing that we had a trained marksman and weapons with us that changed David’s mind. Whatever it was, he actually did struggle to his feet and began to run toward us.
“More inbound!” Hannah yelled as an entire mob of the crazed Transients exited the jungle.
Whatever happened to them between landing and now had to wait to be explained. Right now, we needed to focus on survival.
Mutt was barking beside me. Hannah, Mark, and Boss Creed opened up, sending bright red beams into the oncoming horde of infected transients.
They charged us en masse. There was no way we were going to get out of this alive. Maybe with a dozen blasters on our side, but not with three. I looked around, desperate to get into the fight. The sandy beach was littered with small stones and random pieces of driftwood here and there.
Blasters roared behind me, minglinging with the shrieks of the infected as I spotted a piece of driftwood to use as a weapon. I ran to it, grabbing the solid piece of wood. About a meter in length and slightly curved, it was notched on the top like a hammer or hatchet.
“Fall back!” Stacy ordered. “Fall back to the Orion!”
I turned in time to see the impossible. Mark, Hannah, and Boss Creed were laying into the enemy, dwindling their numbers, but there were just too many of them. Every single round of their blasters seemed to find a target. Still, the infected came howling their manic war cries.
David made it behind our lines a second before I joined the group.
Already our expedition members were beginning to back into the water. The crazed Transients were already on top of them. They were close enough for me to lay into. I positioned myself on our right flank and prepared to do what I did best.
19
The first unlucky one to find my tomahawk-sized club was an older man with a balding head and a limp. He screamed something at me I didn’t understand before lunging with open hands aimed at my throat.
He never got the chance to touch me. I brought my weapon sideways, landing a blow on the left side of his head that would be enough to give him a concussion, maybe even splinter his skull.
CRACK!
The infected Transient went limp in front of me. Whatever was wrong with them, it was comforting to know they went down with a swift blow to the head like any other normal human.
I was surprised to find myself grateful. A tiny voice in the back of my head had been telling me stories of zombies, that they were out to eat my flesh, that they wouldn’t be put down.
The second and third came at me. I decided to further test the limits of these infecte
d people.
I struck out at the next one with a boot to the chest. I heard a crunch as my foot made contact with his sternum. The infected went down on impact. The next was a younger teen raving about me getting off of his planet.
I took out his knees with my club, then the next one and the one after that. I didn’t think about my moves. I just reacted. Spinning this way and that, I used my body as a weapon. The club in my hands was just an extension of me. My hair flew wildly all around me as I struck out, crushing the infected.
Before Natalie’s death, I wasn’t an angry person. Even when I got into the pit, I didn’t hate my opponent. They were just an obstacle, a day at the office at a job I loved.
I wasn’t angry then, but I did channel anger to use as a driving force. Flash forward years later on the beach of an alien planet, and I was angry. I channeled that anger in my blows and used it as fuel for my actions.
I thought about Natalie, Mr. Dell, the thugs who killed her. I fed off my anger and my frustration. I thought about Stacy nearly dying, Maksim loose on the island somewhere, of Ira dying for no other reason than the planet was filled with horrific creatures.
Over and over again, I cracked skulls, broke bones, and put these maniacs down for good.
“Dean! Get back to the Orion!” Stacy yelled.
By the tone of her voice, I knew she had been yelling at me for a while now. My arms felt like they had lead in them instead of blood. My lungs burned almost as bad as when I was drowning in the water.
I looked back for a second to see that I was the only one on the beach. The rest of the team had retreated, still shooting from the water. They were waist deep and about to ascend the platform to get into the Orion.
Stacy had her knife out, impaling one of the infected through the eye. Boss Creed, Hannah, and Mark fired rounds into the enemy like red hail falling from a particularly deadly storm.
My look back cost me. A hand grabbed me around my right arm, which held my club, and another infected tackled me to the ground. The air was knocked out of me as I fell backward.
You knew better than that, I told myself. Never take your eyes off the opponent.
