How long had they been trapped here? Jake pressed his back to the hallway in the colony, a snuffling sound drifting down the cold, empty corridor of the remnants of Charybidis. One of those monsters sniffed the air, searching, hunting… He held his breath and remained still as possible. His blood pounded loudly in his ears, the noise muffled by his own heart beat and fear, yet growing ever closer. This was it, the last breaths he’d take in this terrible place before facing the same fate as so many before him.
He could almost feel the rancid breath of the monstrous creature filling the hall. The grotesque shadow of the creature drew nearer on the far wall around the corner, flickering with the unstable light left in the colony. His hand slowly went to the pistol at his hip. He had one shot left… Just one... and it wasn’t for that monster. You had to hit those just right to kill them with a bullet.
A high pitched shriek echoed down the hall behind the creature, angry and challenging. The creature turned and roared in response. Heavy stomping footfalls drew distant as it charged toward its assailant. Jake waited for the sounds of combat to replace the stomping before he acted. Angry bellows filled the hall, accented by the scrape of metal on metal, roars of pain, and the heavy thumping of blows. Jake pushed off the wall and ran in the opposite direction.
The sounds of combat drew silent before he stopped his flight. There was no escape from this world’s horrors, of course, but after two months of surviving here, you learned how to avoid them for the most part. The key was to keep moving and never stop. Avoiding the colony was a good rule for survival too, given the amount of Damon it attracted. Unfortunately, they need the medical supplies.
The med bay door groaned in protest with its movement. He grimaced at the effort just to slide it open, inch by agonizing inch, enough to slip his bulky frame through. The power in this section of the colony had gone out entirely, the circuits damaged by a bite from the more massive beasts that roamed this world. When he let go, it slammed back in place by the tilt of the colony. The angle wasn’t very steep, navigating this part of the colony was like walking up a steep hill. He moved quickly once in the room, ducking behind an over turned gurney. He waited in the dark for the slightest hint of having been spotted.
Silence. He risked a peek around the gurney to the massive bay windows. The sky hung black beyond the shattered glass, a sprawling abyss dotted with remnants of various types of debris. Fragments of obliterated worlds, varying in size and makeup; Moons, barren planets, fertile planets, hulls of ships, fragments of strange machines, and things he could not put a name to. Like the stars back home, motes of light and dust peppered the sky beyond, swirling like the milky way in disgusting shades of brown and green. He shuddered and looked away before the horrible and disturbing images that flashed in the sky appeared. He could not stomach those disturbing flashes, and there was no way of telling when they would happen.
Jake got to his feet and moved through the bay, gathering supplies as he went. He pointedly ignored the rotting bodies of the people who had died trapped in here. The Damon ignored the dead most of the time, they were of no use. The monsters didn’t eat the people they took, at least not that he was aware of.
Bandages, sterile kits, water, antiseptic, tourniquets, antibiotics, pain killers, and so on were carefully placed in the bag he had brought, his motions mechanical and deliberate. He ignored the world around him, running on a mental auto pilot to ignore the gore and smells. What he wouldn’t give for the nauseating sterile smells of a normal med bay, a bright blue sky, a cool fresh breeze…
His head snapped up as something massive passed by the window. Cold sweat prickled his skin, his stomach lurching in a small panic. He only caught the shadow, but it reminded him of those old horror movies, where some massive shark or monster passed by an inattentive hero, possibly striking the transparent shield separating the two for a good jump scare. Except this was no movie, and there was nothing between him and the outside in this room. It was time to go.
He zipped the bag up and flung it over his shoulder. With effort, he pried the bay door open once again. The door slammed shut behind him with a grinding whine. The colony shook, metal groaned, the lights down the hall flickered and went dead. It was definitely time to go, before the Damon who had made that impact found him.
He had no choice but to move on through the dark portion of the colony, toward the massive bite that had been taken out of the colony shortly after they had arrived in this place. The way he had come from was not safe, no matter which Damon had won the fight. The victor would linger, devouring the choicest parts of the defeated. It was something they had witnessed early on, two massive Damon fighting each other, until the smaller one managed to gore the larger one and kill it. It had feasted on the foe, growing more of those strange crystalline growths on its body and increasing its size.
He picked his way through the debris scattered along the halls. It was not long until the floors started to warp and bend. It wasn’t hard to miss the hole in the side of the colony, only an idiot would fall through it. It was dark on the other side of the hole, jagged metal and other debris free floating between the two sides. He shook his head at it and turned back to find another way around it, perhaps through the colony, though it was home to some of the smaller Damon…
He picked his way through the colony and eventually made his way out. One good jump and he landed on a small asteroid. This was the most dangerous part. Gravity didn’t really work the same way it did back home, but he was out in the open until he could make it to the safe zone. He ran, jumping from asteroid to asteroid, until he landed on a large free floating hunk of planet. He ducked into a cavernous tunnel and shimmied down through the darkness. The stale smell of dirt filled his nostrils. Small rocks tugged at his tattered jeans, another rip added to the collection in his once white t-shirt.
By the time he came out of the other end, his blonde hair had another layer of dirt smudged into it. What he wouldn’t give for a shower! How long had it been since he had taken one? He sighed and continued on, navigating through caverns and forests until he finally made it back to his ‘home asteroid’. It was a large one, clustered in with several others, lending some protection by sheer volume and obstructing the larger Damon.
He passed the supplies off to a man in a tattered uniform, then made his way to the small group of survivors huddled around a weak fire for warmth. There weren’t many left now… Twenty all told, mostly wounded soldiers or orphaned children. He was a soldier once… Stationed on Charibdis before the Huckbein did… something, and dragged them all to hell. He closed his eyes and leaned his head back against the rock. They had done their best since getting here. Half the colony initially made it to this little haven. Injuries claimed a handful within the first week, but the Damon claimed most of their numbers.
A handful of the soldiers, lead by himself, had tried a rescue mission. That was a whole new nightmare that still kept him up at night. They had tracked the Damon down to a rather large man with sharp teeth… He shuddered, thinking of the man again and what he did to the captives. He couldn’t dwell on those horrors, or the fate that awaited all of them if they were caught. Hopefully, they would all be dead of starvation or dehydration before that happened. They had to move farther and farther to get resources now, it was only a matter of time. He tried to give the others hope to get out of this situation, but he felt none. The only hope they had was one of those plane quakes that tore holes in the sky, but Damon seemed to sense those before they happened and used them to slip elsewhere, perhaps, back home.