And so she kept moving, staying just ahead of the brutal aliens, her nerves full of electric fire from the relentless tension.
Twenty agonizing minutes had passed when she noticed something nagging at her senses, but she couldn’t quite place what it was.
Something doesn’t feel right, she thought, just as the realization hit.
It was quiet again.Tooquiet.
Oh, shit!
As if it had heard her thoughts, a massive blur flashed through the trees, easily seven or eight feet tall and as big as a grizzly, roaring fiercely as it charged. Margot felt strangely calm as she saw it barreling through the woods faster than she would have thought possible for something so large.
Well, this is how I die, she thought, knowing full well she couldn’t possibly outrunthat. She was as good as dead.
The Raxxians heard it too, the armed one quickly shouldering his rifle and firing several blasts of some sort of pulse energy rather than a projectile. At least, that’s what it looked like to Margot. She didn’t really care what it was so long as it drew the beast’s attention. And that it did, firmly locking its glowing orange eyes on the trio of lizard-like brutes.
The two other Raxxians drew their daggers just as the beast lunged through the air, taking the rifle shots as if it was no more than a nuisance, though she could clearly see blood flying from the impacts. But this monster, this enormous thing, was so enraged it was oblivious to pain, its only focus on the vicious and brutal slaughter of the aliens it had come upon.
The Raxxians fought hard, and they were not small men by any standard. On top of that, there were three of them, all armed in one way or another.
It didn’t matter.
At least, not for long. Arms and legs flew, blood spraying in geysers as the beast tore into them. An arm sailed through the air, the pulse rifle in its hand firing wildly as it tumbled end over end into the trees. It was carnage the likes of which Margot had never imagined.
She stood there, stock-still, frozen in place, watching in horrified fascination, her body unwilling to move as her mind threatened to break.
The beast was bipedal, she could see, with dark brown skin visible on its chest and the front of its arms. The rest of its upper body had thick, dark hair with streaks the color of a new penny sprouting wildly through it like weeds erupting from the cracks in a sidewalk. Its face was obscured by the locks of hair hanging in front of it, but she could still see those eyes, those glowing orange eyes, even through its hair, as it began devouring one of the Raxxians while he was still very much alive. In the distance, it sounded like more Raxxians were coming, alerted by the screams of their comrades or the bursts of weapons fire.
None of that mattered to the beast.
It moved with brutal efficiency and power, an absolute unit of a killing machine. It was not only tall and absolutely rippling with thick muscles, but as it didn’t have much hair on its lower extremities, she couldn’t help but notice with all the vigorous movement and swinging to and fro, that it was a very,verywell-endowed beast at that.
Her momentary fascination broke off as a quick jerk of its massive hand ripped a piece of meat from the Raxxian’s neck, silencing his shrieks in an instant, his dying feet rattling their last on the bloody ground. She watched in horror as the thing ate ravenously, eating its fill with sickening gusto.
You have to move, Margot, she told herself.You can’t stay here. You have to move. Now!
Amazingly, her body somehow obeyed, her legs more or less functional, moving faster and faster, putting distance between herself and that thing. She backed away several steps, then turned and hurried ahead, not allowing herself to run despite every nerve in her body screaming at her to flee. But she had to be smart. She had to be?—
Crack!
She’d stepped on a dry branch. In her urgency scanning the whole area, she’d somehow missed the thing right at her feet. The beast jerked its head and roared, making her body fill with adrenaline the likes of which she’d never felt in her life. Margot ran, off in a flash, her body moving in the most visceral fight-or-flight response she’d ever felt. And this was most definitelynotfight.
The beast pursued, its thundering stride clearly audible, its roars getting closer by the second as she ran and ran. Margot looked over her shoulder. It was gaining fast. In just another few?—
The explosions of weapons fire all around stopped the beast in its tracks, at least momentarily, as a dozen or more armed alien men swarmed out of the trees, charging it in a frontal attack. They were tall and blue-skinned, wearing their version of woodland camouflage. Were they hunters? She couldn’t say for sure, but they’d just saved her life.
Two were standing back, directing the others. A barrel-chested blue man much larger than the others, countless tattoos visible on his bare arms, and a light-tan-skinned man of the same height but with more of a fitness model’s physique, his own attire much cleaner and neatly arranged as well as being a different camouflage design.
Both men were armed, and both noticed her at the same time, yelling something in two different yet equally undecipherable alien tongues.
“I don’t understand you!” she tried calling out, but their attention shifted back to the fight at hand as more Raxxians joined the fray.
It was a vicious scene, the two groups of alien fighters and the raging beast all engaged in a three-way free-for-all of death and mayhem.
They bought you time, she realized.Don’t waste this chance.
Margot spun and took off at a full sprint, moving as fast as her legs could carry her. Caution was thrown to the wind. She may have been afraid of what was out there, but she was damn surenothingwas scarier than what she’d just found, and that was more than enough to power her legs in a way she’d never felt before.
It wasn’t a runner’s high by any stretch. This was pure adrenaline pushing her to her limits, tempting muscular failure, her body deciding it was that or death. And, given the choice, it would choose the former any day of the week, soreness, sprains, and strains be damned.
