Chapter 4
Jaime
My eyes drift shut as exhaustion pulls me under. I should be doing something, some survival stuff, but at the moment, I’m too tired to even lift my hand. Just a moment. I’ll rest for a moment and then figure out the next step.
Hah. The next step. English has a sense of humor.
The dragon birds are making a ruckus, clapping their beaks and chirping so loudly I can’t sink into deeper sleep, but I do rest. It’s difficult to say how long since the red sun barely moves on the lavender sky.
The planet does, though, its green bulk setting behind the mountains on the horizon until only the icy ring surrounding it remains visible.
It’s beautiful, truly. I only wish I was enjoying it from an observation deck of a spaceship, not all alone down here on this alien world.
Silence.
It pulls me out of my drowsiness. Why is it quiet?
Forcing my eyelids open, I see that the birds are still, like statues, their sudden silence a sharp contrast to their earlier noise.
The skin on the back of my neck prickles, my heartbeat quickening as I look around.
Something is here. Something is watching.
The primal part of my brain knows it, and it’s screaming at me to run. Except that’s something I cannot do.
“Fuck,” I mutter. “Fuck, fuck, fuck.” My hand finds a stone. It’s a stupid weapon that’s unlikely to help me at all, but it’s something. Anything is better than facing the threat empty-handed.
The birds take off as one, the air full of the flapping of their wings.
Once the silence returns, I hear it. A soft crack of a twig here, a rustle of the leaves there.
Something is stalking through the nearby bushes.
I can’t see it to tell how big it is. Bigger than the birds since it scared them away.
But how much bigger? Cat-sized? Bear-sized? Bus-sized?
My breaths come in desperate gasps and are easily the loudest noise in the silent forest, much louder than the approaching creature.
It moves in half circles, using the underbrush to stay hidden, each time drawing closer.
Is it hunting or just curious? I’m a new thing here, perhaps it doesn’t know what to make of me.
How do I pretend I’m a dangerous predator so it leaves me alone?
“Fuck it. HEY!” I shout as loud as I can. The low noise dies out instantly. “I’m not afraid of you, you hear me?! Back on my planet, I’m an apex predator! I can hunt a pizza in a supermarket in under two minutes, so if you know what’s good for you, you’d better leave me alone.”
The creature either hears the panic in my voice, smells my fear, or it simply doesn’t care about my pathetic whining because it resumes its approach. Finally, it peeks at me from behind a tree trunk.
My breath catches as my eyes lock onto a huge maw full of sharp teeth. Yeah, that’s a predator if I ever saw one. Its head is lizard-like, with two pairs of eyes, all trained on me. Spikes run from the top of its head down the back of its neck. Sharp claws glint on the one paw I can see.
I’m so dead.
The creature’s skin is a similar shade and pattern to the surrounding vegetation and, as it moves, the patterns ripple and shift. A murder-chameleon. How fun!
Probably seeing I’m all bark and no bite, it abandons its stealthy approach and steps out into the open, its scales shifting to emerald green, which I assume is its natural color, since there’s nothing green around here for it to mimic.
Knowing I’m dead anyway, I observe it with clinical curiosity.
Four pairs of limbs. It’s standing on the bottom two and the top two seem to be mainly arms, though I think it’s been moving on all eight before.
A long tail. The spikes from its head continue along its spine all the way to the tip of its tail, turning it into a formidable weapon.
As a whole, the creature mostly reminds me of Randall from the old Pixar movie, Monsters Inc.
Honestly, the resemblance is uncanny and I idly wonder if the creators of that movie ever visited this planet.
Moon. God, why am I thinking about a kid’s movie when I’m about to get eaten by a murder-chameleon?
I force my fingers to tighten around the stone in my hand. With the amount of adrenaline now coursing through me, they better work. “Why don’t you come and get me, then, huh? You’ll find out I’m difficult to swallow.”
The creature tilts its head in an angle that would break my spine, its four eyes blinking.
Not all at once. First the front pair, then the pair on the sides of its head.
It’s…weird. Sharp, long tongue darts out from its mouth as if tasting the air before it sniffs through its narrow nostrils.
It seems to like what it’s smelling because the fingers on its upper limbs twitch, ready to grab me.
As it lifts a leg to step closer, I throw the stone. It clatters uselessly on the ground by the creature’s feet without even hitting it. Yeah, I know. I’m terrible at this. Sue the cripple for not being able to throw stuff properly.
The creature freezes, more surprised than scared, surely.
It observes the stone for a long time before leaning down to sniff it.
When it discovers the stone is just a stone, it steps closer to me.
I have another stone ready and, this time, I hit the creature’s leg.
It freezes again, its two pairs of eyes blinking independently.
Staring at its leg, then at the second stone, it sniffs both again.
Its confusion is hilarious, and if I wasn’t about to get eaten, I’d laugh.
As it turns its attention back to me, the creature’s posture changes instantly. Hissing violently, it lunges right at me, teeth bared and claws extended.
Determined to at least make its dinner uncomfortable, I scramble to find another stone, stick or anything else that could be used as a weapon, all while sending mental apologies to my brother. “I’m sorry, Steven. I tried.”
Eyes clenched shut, I expect sharp pain from the claws digging into my flesh, but none comes.
There’s some rustling and odd screeching close to my right, and when I open my eyes, I see the murder-chameleon prying a…
something from between the roots I’ve been leaning against. It looks like a terrifying, mutated scorpion with multiple stingers on lashing tails.
It’s bright green with yellow stripes, nothing like the vegetation anywhere else here.
Venomous. I shudder, thinking how close it got to me without me knowing.
Wide-eyed, I watch as the murder-chameleon deftly grabs the creature by one tail and throws it on the ground, using another limb to smash it with a stone. The screeching halts.
With a disgusted huff, the murder-chameleon tosses the scorpion’s corpse far away.
Then its attention is fully on me again.
It’s less than a foot away from me now, its toothy maw so close to my throat I feel its breath on my skin.
Fuck. Except, it doesn’t attack me. It doesn’t even hiss like it did at the scorpion thing.
It just sniffs, once, twice, its snout closer to my jugular with every inhale.
I fight to control my erratic breathing, biting the inside of my mouth to keep from whimpering.
This thing is going to eat me.Any second now, it’s going to sink its many teeth into the soft flesh of my neck and bite my head off. It’s going to—
I scream as something wet touches my skin. The creature reels back, startled, but when I don’t follow my scream with any kind of attack, it resumes licking me. Licking me. Oh my god, an alien predator is licking me. What am I supposed to do?
“Okay, this is weird. I usually want at least dinner before the licking part of a date but, yeah. Go ahead. Lick away. That’s, um, fine. As long as you’re just licking, we’re fine,” I ramble nervously, teetering on the edge of a panic attack.
The creature isn’t hurting me, though. It just explores.
It cautiously tugs at the holes in my jumpsuit, sniffing at the skin beneath before flicking its tongue against it.
I can’t decide if it’s just curious or tasting me for dinner.
It clearly saved my life before, but why? Just to have me all to itself?
As it continues sniffing and licking, I contemplate smacking it away, or perhaps getting another stone and smashing it on its head, but I like my hands too much to have them bitten off.
Besides, the creature seems calm now, emitting a low rumble that sounds almost like a purr. Angering it now would be stupid.
“Okay. I’m fine. We’re fine. This is all fine.” My chuckle is more than a little hysterical. “You’re not going to eat me, right? I’m not that tasty. I’m sure you could find something better-tasting around this jungle.”
I yelp out when two hands grab my thigh and the creature lowers its head to the gash that’s still slowly oozing blood.
Oh no. What will it do once it tastes my blood?
I try to squirm away but it’s holding me tight, its other two hands grabbing my shoulders to keep me in place as it sniffs at my wound.
At least it retracted its claws and keeps its grip light.
It’s odd, really. I’ve never heard of an animal acting like this but then again, I never crash-landed on an alien moon before, so my experience is unimportant.
“You really shouldn’t do that,” I say as the murder-chameleon takes a long sniff. Its purr intensifies at the smell of my blood and it doesn’t take a genius to know that’s bad news. “Really. Don’t do that. Mate, come on. You don’t want to—”
My words come to a screeching halt as the creature freezes, turning its head at me, all four of its eyes staring straight into my two. Its upper lip rolls back in a silent snarl, its hands gripping me tighter. It looks like my time is up.