//------------------------------//
// Chapter Two: Numb 
// Story: Unknown 
// by Divide 
//------------------------------//

Unknown

Chapter Two: Numb




The rest of the day was devoted to dragging the eviscerated pieces of helicopters, tanks, and whatever else I was strong enough to move into place. I was building a wall where the hangar door once stood to prevent any creatures attempting to enter the ship. My ship. My home.

It felt strange to think of it that way. For what felt like the majority of my life, it had been my prison. Now, it was all I had left.

The majority of the creatures had left after I collapsed the ramp, but some stayed and watched me as I worked. It was slightly unnerving. They simply stood there and stared, but after I realized they were going nowhere, I pointedly ignored them and concentrated on my work. The seconds and minutes and hours melded until the sun set and I was dripping with perspiration.

By nightfall, I had erected a wall of metal twice as tall as myself and nearly as thick across the gaping entrance. It did not quite reach the roof of the Hangar, but I figured it would still effectively serve its purpose to keep the horde out. I left a few small gaps that acted as windows for me to look out, or if need be, shoot through.

Tired, I scavenged a dinner of tasteless rations from the Kitchen before returning to the Cryogenic Chamber Room. I laid down in front of my old chamber.

I wasn't sure why I chose there. Perhaps it was the familiarity. Regardless, I slept for the first time that night.

Or at least, what felt like the first time: I couldn't remember the last time I had honestly and truly slept. Cryosleep wasn't true sleep; it was more akin to controlled-unconsciousness. One did not dream or feel the time pass in cryosleep, but the rest one received was more concentrated than natural sleep.

I dreamt of killing and dying.

Unlike some of the others, I wasn't afraid of death. Death was inevitable, and it would happen to everyone, just some earlier than others. If someone wouldn't die for something they believed in, they weren't meant for life.

I wasn't afraid of killing, either. Killing was no more than an unpleasant chore, one that I took up to allow my people to remain safe and secure. I've killed thousands, possibly more, so it was no surprise that I would dream of the task I was most accomplished in.

What was surprising to me was dreaming of dying. And that, in my dream, I feared the Reaper's embrace.

After I crushed a screaming soldier's head between my hands, his scream echoing and distorted, I woke up in a cold sweat on the floor. I hadn't bothered to remove my armour, and my muscles and joints were sore because of it. I shrugged off my feelings of trepidation and stood up, moving my limbs to the extent of their reach to stretch them out.

I was glad to be awake and free of the nightmares, though I wondered why the scream had brought me back to reality. My eyes were still heavy, and there didn't seem to be any reason why I was conscious. Perhaps a noise had awoken me? The helmet muffled noise, but did not mute it.

Feeling an uneasy sensation in my chest, I walked out of the room on high alert, head swiveling and suspicious. I was hungry again, so I made my way back towards the kitchen. I stopped when I heard a growl.

Dogs didn't normally faze me; their teeth couldn't penetrate my armour, and they were more of a nuisance than anything, but that growl was much deeper than any canine's I had ever heard.

I stepped as quietly as possible with boots capable of crushing a man's skull like an egg. When I turned the last corner of the hallway and stepped into the Kitchen proper, I was presented with a dog-like creature the size of a large car, but coloured translucent brown and green underneath the still-active lights. It was tearing at something on the floor with its back to me, and the sounds I heard could be nothing else but meat being torn from bone.

I slowly reached over my shoulder to equip one of my guns, but stopped when I felt nothing but air. I had placed them back in the Arming Room before I started work on the wall.

The creature paused mid-tear and cocked its head in my direction. It sniffed the air a few times, then turned around, slowly at first, but quickly when it finally noticed me. It growled, sounding like two trees rubbing in a harsh wind. Its maw was dripping with crimson. I barely had time to jump out of the way before the giant dog's snapping teeth landed where I had been a second before.

I scrambled to my feet, arms raised in a defensive position: I'd have to deal with this creature the old-fashioned way.

When it pounced at me again, I dodged and threw a punch with all of my considerable strength into its lower throat. With a crunching sound akin to snapping a piece of wood, the beast let out a yip of pain and retreated a short distance away. It circled me, wary this time.

The giant dog did something that normal dogs didn't and couldn't: it lunged forward on all fours, then hit me on the side with a massive paw. Surprised by the speed and fierceness of the blow, I stumbled. The giant dog took advantage of my imbalance by swiping with its other paw, knocking me over. Then it bent down and picked me up in its mouth.

I could feel its teeth sawing, trying to pierce my armour, while its rough tongue tried to find some purchase. One arm was trapped inside its mouth while the other was free, so I began driving my elbow of the trapped arm into the floor of its mouth while pounding on its nose with my free hand. Letting out a howl that made my hair stand up, the giant dog spat me out and retreated once more.

I attempted to stand, but slipped on a combination of saliva and brown blood, landing face-down. I flipped myself over, expecting the giant dog to be assaulting me once more. I was not disappointed.

Out of pure reflex, I swung my arms up and clamped onto the upper portion of its jaw just as it was about to snap at me once more. I couldn't stop it from clamping down over my head and shoulders, but I made it pay for every second. As its tongue smeared my visor with blood and mucous, and its serrated teeth worked on splitting my armour, I squeezed the upper jaw, and felt it break and splinter beneath my hands.

The beast howled in pain and frustration, and flung me aside. I landed in a pile of shredded metal. Panting, I shook off my dizziness and returned to my feet. I tried to clean my visor, but that only smeared the blood and saliva. I removed my helmet and let it bounce off the floor: I would rather be able to see than benefit from its protection. My hands ached and it was likely that least one of my fingers was broken.

The giant dog had it worse than I. It had its head lowered to the ground, and brown, viscous blood was leaking from its ruined face. It made no move to defend itself as I walked closer, so I unceremoniously stomped on its head, repeatedly, until I was satisfied that it posed no more threat.

Even after all of that, it was still alive and letting out a high-pitched whine.

If there were bigger things possessing the same will to live, I was in serious peril. I retrieved my helmet, and walked back to the Arming Room, believing that it could not go very far in the state it was in. I placed my helmet on its stand and grabbed a submachine gun—anything heavier would be unnecessary.

Plodding back to the Kitchen, my gas mask sounding strangely quiet without the echoing effect of my helmet, I returned to see a trail of brown blood heading through the ruined remains of the Kitchen, but no giant dog creature. The body of the impaled chef was missing the entire right side of his body, his eyes staring up lifelessly and his mouth open in a silent scream. I regretted not putting the man out of his misery when I first saw him, though it was possible his death knell was what woke me up in the first place.

Gun in hand, I followed the trail through the Kitchen remains, wondering where the creature had gone.

The answer came in the form of a torn hole in the metal wall towards the end of the Kitchen, which was hidden from sight until I was almost directly in front of it. Had the blood trail not shown me, I might not have found it. I ducked my head and climbed through.

Following the path, the blood trail lead back to the Hangar, on the opposite side from where I entered from the Arming Room. If I so needed, I could use that path as an escape route should the need arise. More options were always welcome.

Around the middle of the area cleaned of helicopter bits, the trail ended and the giant dog could be seen. It was dragging itself away with a speed I hadn't expected. I aimed, and shot a couple bullets into both of its hind legs, earning more high-pitched squeals and spurts of blood. Now unmoving, I was free to walk in front of the beast and empty the rest of the clip into its head, neck, and torso. For good measure, I picked up a large, sharp chunk of metal and used it like a guillotine, severing the head from the neck.

After the echo of the clang had faded, I heard a loud, clonking noise in the direction of the hangar entrance. I was half-expecting some of the horse creatures to be knocking on my wall, but to my surprise, one of them had somehow entered and was currently standing a bus-length away. Even from that distance, I could see that it was frightened: their eyes were the size of saucers and very expressive.

Before I could act, two wings spread from the creatures back and it flew over my wall frantically without a backward glance.

I stood there for a moment, pondering the implications. Some of them could fly, which meant the wall would have to cover the entirety of the hangar entrance. I also had to search for any more entrances that had cropped up from the crash, as I wasn't entirely sure that the dog-creature had come from the nearby hole—it seemed too small for its large frame.

With a plan set, I returned to the Arming Room, cleaned and equipped my helmet, and grabbed a light machine gun. I didn't want to be caught off-guard again. I would think of some way to perform the dead chef's last rites when I had some spare time.

If I ever had spare time.

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I found where the giant dog had come from, and I promptly plugged the hole with the remains of a small, two-seater helicopter. I briefly wondered if the horse-like aliens were the owners of the giant dogs, but I quickly dismissed the idea: larger animals were not normally submissive to smaller ones.

My mind kept going back to the flying horse creature, and why it had come inside. It had watched me kill the giant dog and was obviously fearful because of it. The only question was: Was it more afraid of the giant dog or me?

I kept that question in the back of my mind as I walked along the entirety of the hangar, searching for any more breaches. There weren't any that I could find, and I didn't know how I was supposed to block off the entire hangar doors, so I decided to start digging through the debris that blocked off the cockpit and the other half of the ship.

Several hours later, and drenched in sweat once again, I had cleared a pathway large enough for me to squeeze through. I kept my light machine gun at the ready and my finger directly behind the trigger.

I was glad I did, for I might've shot the three horse creatures that were exploring the shattered monitors and exposed wiring of the cockpit. Either I was quieter than I had previously thought, or they simply weren't paying attention, because they did not notice me approach and watch them from the shadows of the hallway.

One of them had a protrusion on its head, similar to the first creature that had approached me. Another had a small pair of wings that hugged its body tightly, which explained why I hadn't noticed them before. The last had neither, but it had what looked like a bow on its head. They were all significantly smaller than any others that I had seen. Perhaps they were children, or the child-equivalent of the horse aliens.

But if they were children, why were they in the remains of my ship, exploring? Curiosity?

I lowered my gun and stomped on the floor, startling the three creatures and making them jump. They quickly huddled together in an attempt at protection. They backed up until they hit a wall. I saw them glance to my right, and I followed their line of sight.

Another hole, this one only just large enough to fit the small creatures if they went one at a time. I could see a makeshift ramp of metal leading up to it. Clever.

I turned back to the three cowering creatures, and they all flinched when I did. I did the only thing I could do: I pointed at them, then at the hole.

They didn't move, so I repeated the gesture.

The final time, they seemed to understand. Faster than I thought them capable of, they nearly pushed each aside in their haste to escape, making high-pitched squeals as they ran away, getting fainter as they distanced themselves.

I shook my head. I'd have to work nonstop if I wanted to remove every entrance and prevent the giant dogs, curious horse creatures, and whatever else from investigating my home. Sighing, I ripped off a piece of titanium sheeting and laid it across the hole before pushing a heavy, metal desk overtop.

I had a lot of ship left to explore.

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In the next several hours, I found and patched up four more holes, along with removing a strange creature that seemed to be a cross between a snake and a chicken. The oddest part was that it simply stared at me as I put a hand around it neck, and make no attempts to defend itself. I ended up throwing it out the hole that it had come in through, and it made an angry squawk when it landed.

When I finished, tired and hungry, I decided to detour along the hangar to make sure that nothing else was roaming the confines of my home.

Instead, I found a basket full of round, red fruit and an incredibly large, dull grey article of clothing that seemed like it was meant to fit over my Juggernaut suit. I stared at the gift for almost a full minute before mentally shrugging. I decided to carry it with me as I returned to the Cryogenic Chamber Room to sleep. The day-night cycle of this planet seemed to be nigh-identical to Earth's, for my sleep schedule was already attuned, and with the last vestiges of light disappearing, I was ready for sleep.

I heard the flutter of wings as an alien hiding in the criss-crossing support struts revealed itself as I picked up the basket. It was gone in a flash of vibrant colour. Sighing, and realizing there was nothing I could do, I began the long walk back, wondering the purpose of the basket and the alien that was waiting for me to pick it up. I needed to sleep. Perhaps my subconscious would figure it out by morning.