[T: 10 Hours]
A man yelps, then swears in the dark. “Fuck. I hurt my toe. I think I kicked my foot into a rock stuck in the ground. I didn’t see it ‘cuz of a bush and ‘cuz it’s dark.” The darkness is contrasted by the faint golden light of the Beam of Light still emanating from the direction of the glade. However in the opposite direction is the black of the night, where behind the trees, opposite the direction of the glade, nothing can be seen.
The man in front of the man who just swore turns around, turning his back to the darkness of the forest and facing the direction where light still shines from the glade. “Yeah, I can’t see anything in front of me anymore every time I pass by a tree. I can see a little once we get out of the shadow of the trees, but it’s hard to see even with the light behind us.” He looks at the man who stubbed his toe, a larger than average male, with a beer belly and a shirt that reads Beer for Life, with a logo that looks like a tankard holding ale in it. “Think maybe we should go back?”
Beer for Life keeps swearing as he crunches down, holding his foot, taking deep breaths and huffing it out. He grins as he grimaces, an odd combination of facial expression, and his voice is strained as he lets out, “Yeah… maybe we should go back. There’s nothing more we can do. Let’s go check out another direction tomorrow. Just… hold on one moment.” Beer for Life sits down against the trunk of a tree, still clutching his foot. “That was one of the worst stubbing I’ve had in my life. I’ve had my toe smashed against the edge of many things but this trumps all the other times. Feels like I stabbed my foot or something.”
His companion tries to look at him, but Beer for Life is sitting in the shadow of the tree, and the contrast between the faint light coming from behind the tree trunk and the utter darkness of the forest makes it impossible for him to see him. All he can note with his senses is the voice of Beer for Life coming from a void, where even the tree trunk is so black it just looks like a floor mirror is just reflecting an emptiness of color or light. He takes a moment to look into the darkness, noting that Beer for Life is in pain, an excruciating one at that, and leans on one leg, thinking for a moment as he looks down toward the ground.
Beer for Life’s companion decides that waiting a few minutes for his companion to recover isn’t such a bad idea and is about to tell him this when he hears a rustling noise. He stops. He freezes and becomes alert. He is sure he didn’t imagine it. He can already hear Beer for Life’s groaning and huffing of pain, which should be the only sound, but something foreign made a sound further to his left. He turns his eyes towards the direction. He waits as his eyes scan the contrast of faint light and pitch-black darkness. He hears it then. Another rustling sound.
He glances once at Beer for Life, even though he can’t see him. Beer for Life is still making sounds of a groaning bear. He hasn’t noticed. He’s too preoccupied with his foot. Beer for Life’s companion leaves him and walks toward the direction of the rustling sound, walking cautiously. He makes an effort to make as little noise as possible. He wants to hear the noise again. To be sure that he heard it, even though he is sure he heard it. There! That bush. It moved a little. He looks at it. Hard. It rustles. But it’s dark. A tree is blocking the light, casting its shadow over the bush. It’s really hard to see. He thought he had seen the darkness move.
He crouches down a little and walks slowly. He’s right in front of it. He can see it better now. The bush is no longer moving. He parts aside the stems of the bush, parting it away, to uncover the mystery. He looks inside. He blinks. He’s trying to see. He squints.
Something that looks like a rake of blades thrusts out, the middle blade stabbing him in the throat, two other blades slashing his throat open from the sides.. He gurgles as he looks with eyes wide, his hands reaching for his neck, shoulders stunted. Surprised, frightened and unbelieving of what he is seeing, he dies as blood flows down from his throat, spilling onto the ground.
Beer for Life has not noticed that his companion has just died, as he is still in pain. Not understanding why he’s in so much pain he clutches his foot as he sits against the trunk of the tree. Still groaning and moaning in pain he proceeds to take off his shoe. He feels a wetness in his hands as he takes the shoe off and he mutters, “Fuck that rock must’ve been sharp as hell. The shoe has a rip in it.” He puts the shoe aside and feels his feet. The sock is wet. He takes it off and throws it aside. The sock lands outside of the shadow of the tree and into the faint light. It is bloody. The sock is bloody.
Beer for Life stares at the sock. It takes a second. Some faint idea of what might be wrong with his foot runs in his head. One second. Two seconds. Three seconds. Four seconds. Five seconds. At the sixth second he compresses his lips, opens them, and with gritted teeth he hisses a long, “Fuck.”
He nudges his butt closer to the light and sticks his foot out. The faint light sheds enough light for him to see. He can’t see the cut. It’s bleeding too badly. He can see where the blood is pooling out of, but the cut is so wide and deep that the blood coming out obscures the true extent of the damage. His big toe and the index toe next to it is just a mess, with the middle toe having its side damaged, also leaking blood.
Beer for Life keeps looking at his foot, whether he is in shock, or either he doesn’t know what to do, or even thinking about the fact that he needs a hospital but that there are no hospitals for him to go to. Either way he is so focused on his foot that he does not notice when the bush next to him, not the bush his companion died to, but the bush next to him, sprouts out a six hundred pound figure, with five blades the length of seven inches, on each hand, which oddly doesn’t seem to be an external tool it is holding. One of claws protruding from the creature’s hand is dripping blood, seemingly seeming to be the “rock” Beer for Life has “stubbed” his foot on.
It isn’t until the creature takes a couple of steps towards Beer for Life and coming into the light, right in front of him, that he notices yellowish feet the size of a football, with three clawed toes on each foot. His cheeks drooping a little, his jaw unlatched while still having his mouth closed, Beer for Life raises his gaze above the yellow feet. The being seems to be missing its legs, or its fat is simply enveloping its legs too much for one to perceive it, so the next thing he sees is a rounded abdomen and torso. And above that, is a sort of unnaturally large oval-shaped head nearly the exact same size as its body, with pointed ears. The neck cannot be seen. It either doesn’t have a neck or its fat is also enveloping its neck. It has a wide mouth, half the length of its face. It has tiny eyes the size of a button, which makes it look demonic, as only the blackness of its pupils can be seen.
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Beer for Life still wrestling, in his mind, with the impossibility of his circumstance; holding his crippled foot, just looks, empty-headed and going into shock, unable to even think about thinking. The creature doesn’t blink and it drools as it makes a faint croaking sound. The creature looks at him with its beady eyes and opens its mouth revealing dozens of small, sharp teeth. Then it lurches forward, in an action that can only be seen as having the intention of swallowing Beer for Life. And Beer for Life can only look on, not even wondering where his companion is right now, the only thought running in his mind being Ureeeeuhhgggggg Guh?
[T: 10 Hours]
The Corporal walks up to one of the Privates eating an MRE at the edge of the glade. The Private looks up, starts to get up to salute, but the Corporal shakes his head and waves downward with one of his hands, telling him to not bother. The Corporal nods at the MRE, “Which one you got?”
The Private sits back down and holds his up, “Chilli Mac, hash brown, chocolate bar, and um, for the drink, this fruit powder to mix with water.”
The Corporal nods, “Nice. That’s got to be one of the best.”
The Private nods as he sticks a plastic utensil into his mouth and gives a “mm-hmmm”, affirming in agreement.
The Corporal sighs, as he looks away to look at the glade, with the large number of refugees, with more coming every three to five minutes, just magically appearing from the Beam of Light. Across the glade a lot of eyes glance in the direction of the Corporal, specifically at the Private, who continues to eat.
[T: 10 Hours]
The man in the red shirt and red cap comments, as he turns his gaze from the Private eating his meal, back to his group, “I wonder if they’ll do something about this. There are a lot of hungry mouths to feed here, but I don’t see any food anywhere. I think we can hold up for a couple of days, but we are going to need to find food fast.”
Gold, the golden-haired man, with golden beard offers up his own thoughts, “Well I did ask one of the guys over there, just small talk, and he admitted he doesn’t know what is going on and based on what he has heard from his superiors, he figures they don’t know what is going on either.” Gold pauses, “ From what I could tell, based on what he knew and didn’t know, and I don’t think there’s like a “Top Secret” label on this anywhere, so he’s probably told me everything he knew, but according to him, there isn’t a nearby base for us to go to, there isn’t a camp anywhere, and there is no food.” Gold looks around, his gaze looking at each member of the group, “And they have no plans on doing something about it.”
The young asian man asks, his tone that of a scoffing man “ Aren’t they supposed to look after us? Doesn’t the human body last only two weeks without food and one week without water?”
Red turns to the young asian man, “Yeah, but I don’t think we’d last that long. That’s like only the physical limit. What about the mental limit? You think people will just wait till they die? A lot of them will probably want to do something about it before they start dying.” Red takes a look around the glade, “I’d give it maybe one day for people to start asking those military guys questions, because of course they would, they’re hungry. Then I’d say maybe in two or three days they start to get very, very upset about it.” Red looks back at the group, “We gotta find at least water before the third day, or things will start to get serious.”
The young asian man asks a little sharply, “Well who’s going to do it? The military isn’t. Are we going to do it? Are you going to do it? Is the fifty, sixty, seventy, eighty people here going to get off their ass to do it?”
Red looks at him with disapproval, “Well we’d better. Or we’ll end up fighting each other. And I’d imagine there are some people here with us, who would not give a second thought about killing all of us.” No one can find anything in their thoughts to disagree with the logic of Red’s words and the dangerous implication of it, and some nearby groups overhear and can’t help but silently agree. Red straightens up, sitting upright, back straight, with a gaze of determination. “Tomorrow I am going to search for food or water.” He looks at each member of his group, searching their faces, looking, gauging the thoughts of each person through the expressions on their faces. “I’m going to ask for volunteers. And I’m going to ask those volunteers to ask for more volunteers. Then WE are going to SAVE OURSELVES from our impending doom. We are not going to wait for anyone else to save us. Not the military, not our government. Us. We can all see it. The basic human needs food, water, clothes and shelter. We are missing three of those four basic necessities. And”, he continues taking a breath, “I don’t know where we are. No one knows where we are. The military doesn’t know where we are. That”, he points at the six hundred foot tall wall, “ that doesn’t exist on Earth. Now I don’t want to talk crazy talk and say that we are on another planet. But I’m already assuming that we are not on Earth. I have never heard of a wall that’s as high as a skyscraper. I have never heard of us having a Sci-Fi technology, where we go “beam me up Scotty”, then teleport. For this to be Earth, it would have to be missing those two things. That wall and that sci-fi beam of light that teleported us here.” He pauses again, taking in the reactions of the group.
Red speaks a bit more softly, controlling his excitement. “I don’t believe we are on Earth.” He thinks. “And I don’t think this land has been explored by anyone from our planet. Thus, the government and the military would not have set up anything here. I am assuming the worst and that we are alone. There is no help, there is no cache of food and water. There is no law and order here. There is no infrastructure of any kind to dispense of any comfort and safety that technology offers. There is no technology here; only the ones we brought back and can use within our memories.” He takes one final pause. “We need to act now before all hell breaks loose. I don’t know what hell will break loose. But something will happen. I want us to act before that happens. What do you guys think?”
The young asian man, after a moment hesitantly says, “Yeah… I get you…”, he looks at Red sheepishly, “But it’s gonna be hard… and maybe you might be overthinking things…”
Gold has a calm, sort of indifferent face as he addresses the young asian man, “We might not have a choice in the matter. Sooner or later, we are going to have to act. This is based on our lack of resources and assuming there is a lack of civility. We are simply going to attempt to circumvent our dilemma and future fate. Or at least make the attempt to. We know how we are going to end up. The question is, do we act now, when we have the opportunity to prevent our doom? Or do we wait for it? It might just be better, logically, that we simply act now, while we have time. Not when we’ve run out of time. Then people would start dying, or worse, we might die. At the very least, we shouldn’t be thinking about if we can or can not do it, even doubting ourselves that we are imagining things. We should be motivated for our own safety. And in this case the safety of everyone ensures our safety. Our motivation for our safety, based on the safety of everyone should be what we should be thinking about. Again, not if it is hard or not, and not if we are overthinking.”
Red takes in the emotions that are emitting around the group, even from those who have remained silent in the discussion, and feeling reassured says, “Okay”, with a sort of self-calming sigh, “ So let’s talk about how we are going to do this.”