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Chapter Three

Alliana

Icouldn’t tell how long I’d been running or how far I had traveled from the settlement. Only that somehow, night had turning into morning and day had folded over into evening. The beast chased me through rugged terrain—unfamiliar and uncharted territory for me. I was at a disadvantage because of this. I had nothing to guide me. Every trail, every path led to a dead end.

And the beast…it was as if it was deliberately drawing the chase out. At times, it would come as close as three feet behind me only to stop and watch me run off without giving chase. I’d hide under an overgrown shrub in a small cave or nook somewhere to catch my breath. With all the running and hiding, the effects of the poison was slowly wearing off. I caught myself nodding off a few times, but that couldn’t happen. I had to stop. I had to keep going. I heard whisperers of a colony of refugees not far from the main settlement. A trading post or something. And apparently, there were humans there. If I could just make it there, I could blend in. Many warned of the dangerous, but how much more dangerous can it be than being murdered by cloaked creatures or being mauled by beast in a secluded, dense forest.

I was tired and restless. I wanted to give up. Perhaps, that’s what the beast was hoping for…or did it enjoy making me suffer.

No sooner than I thought it would stop and watch me run away from it for the dozenth time, this time, it didn’t, It came straight for me. I bolted, but I wasn’t fast enough to outrun it, and it quickly bridged the gap between us. Its slimy paws cuffed over my shoulder and repelled me backward. I released an involuntary scream. A sinister chill cut through me like a knife. I lurched and tried to keep my balance, but the beast pinned me down.

With a bloodthirsty expression on it’s massive face, it looked like it wanted to rip me limb from limb, and I had no doubt that it would succeed if I gave in. I was fatigued, but I wasn’t ready to give up yet. I wouldn’t go down without a fight.

I clawed at the beast, raking my nails up and down its wretched, scaly arms as I attempted to free myself from its terrifying grasp. I kicked at its groin area. Its enormous penis and testicles were bulging and dangling from its crotch, swinging like a pendulum between its legs. It was somehow moving…growing in length.Not only did saliva drain from it’s mouth, the head of it’s barbed penis was also dripping with a milky white substance. Gross.

“You are not putting that thing in me, you filthy animal,” I hissed, barring my teeth, grimacing as I attempted to squirm away. I shouted out expletives aimed at the unidentified creature. I fought harder than I had ever fought in my whole life.

As I hit the thick-skinned beast, flashbacks flooded back to me taking me back to the hostile work environment that I endured on Earth for almost a year. I thought my promotion and raise while working for Lab of the Republic, LR for short, would help me fulfill my dream of healing others. Then I learned just how shady LR had become over the last few years or maybe the heads of the company were corrupt individuals with self-serving agendas from the beginning. They weren’t trying to heal people, they were misguiding the citizens and keeping them sick so they were all reliant on the Governor and never tried to escape the prime settlement.

I started in the mailroom in the labs and worked my way all the way up to assistant lab tech before I really began to see what was happening. My red-headed boss named Richard couldn’t take the hint that I wasn’t interested in dating him or even spending my lunch break talking to him. That didn’t stop him from stalking me and looking at me for long periods of time while I worked in the lab room. I was made to work mandatory overtime and in that case, he would come over to my station and start up a very uncomfortable conversation about his sex life. What made it worse was that Richard found out that I went to his boss to ask that I be transferred from the unit. Richard then played the victim, claiming that he was only trying to be nice seeing as though I had no family and no life. He threatened that if I left his unit that he would make it his priority to have me demoted. I didn’t care about the money then. If I were demoted, I would be free of his touches to my body and attacks on my personal space.

But then I discovered something….I learned that the vaccine I was working on had an ill-effect in the human trials. It was a conversation I overhead between Richard and another scientist while staying overtime one night. I wanted to find out more and to expose the lab, so I stayed. The deeper I delved, the more I realized that LR and the Governor were more corrupt than I thought. It was no wonder the resistance outside the walls of the settlement were closing in on them. Too bad for me though. I was caught red-handed rummaging through some paperwork. Held down against my will with my skirt bunched up all the way to my hips, Richard tried to force himself on me. Somehow, I got away. I ran and ran and I never stopped running. The next day, a foot soldier from the resistance found me at the bottom of a ravine. I was nursed back to health and taken in. I never told anyone who I was and that I had worked for the very labs that they were trying to take down. I wanted to leave it all behind and they told me if I stayed true to them and did my share of the work that I could stay. So I stayed…until I was picked up from Earth by seven-foot tall aliens who resembled Viking gods—the Zunatorians.

I squeezed my eyes shut, but tears burst through the ducts anyway. I never stopped fighting the beast.

“You dirty animal. Get off me!” The more I fought against it, the angrier it became. I dug my fingers into its eye sockets, trying to defend myself in any way possible. It grunted in pain but was practically phased by my feeble attempts to deter it.

The creature backhanded me so forcefully that I was sent reeling into a tree, seeing stars flashing in front of my vision. The beastly bastard had knocked the wind out of me. I lay in a heap on the ground, gasping for air and retching. He’d tossed me aside like a ragdoll.

It boomed toward me, its giant footsteps crashing to the ground like a tremor from an earthquake.

It was now undoubtedly going in for the kill. I was too weak to fight back at this point. I was still trying to regain my bearings from the blow my body endured as I was barreled into the side of that tree. The beast exhaled huffily, grunting again.

Its huge cock continued to grotesquely swing between its massive thighs. A furious expression was engrained in its already twisted and gnarly features. I held my breath and braced myself to be torn to shreds.

Out of nowhere, a giant Zunatorian male leapt into view, catapulting himself directly into the torso of the beast.

The pair collided and instantly began brawling each other. I saw flashes of figures attacking each other. Arms and fists were raised, crashing down on bodies in a hurricane of violence.

I scrambled to my knees and scurried across the bed of leaves and dirt on the ground below me. I finally forced myself to a stand position and attempted to free myself from relentless predators on this hellacious, nightmare of a planet.

Once again, I didn’t get very far before another obstacle was thrown at me.

I tried to lift my leg and continue running away. It felt heavy, weighted down by something. I glanced at the ground. I couldn’t see my feet. They were trapped by something that felt squishy and pasty, quickly coiling around my ankles.

It hadn’t rained, so I figured I had gotten myself stuck in the mud. But when I tried again to lift my legs and walk, but the muddy sludge was unyielding. Frustrated, I groaned and used my hands, hooking them around my thigh as I attempted to yank myself free of the mud.

It wasn’t working and instead of being able to lift myself out, I began to sink further. My heart leapt into my throat with panic. I broke out in a nervous sweat. It seemed like the harder I struggled to break free, the deeper and more rapidly I sunk.

I was almost shin deep now. It was then that I realized I had inadvertently trapped myself in a small pit of quicksand. I glanced in front of me where, only a few feet away, the Zunatorian and the beast were still locked in a battle to the death.

The Zunatorian, based on first glance, was easily seven feet tall, but the beast was taller still—and far burlier. The beast was winning, clawing its giant paws at the Zunatorian as if he was no competition to it.

I stopped moving and fighting against the quicksand.

It would only make me meet my fate even faster. If I didn’t resist, I wouldn’t sink as fast. This was my farfetched mentality of how to rationally deal with the situation, even if I didn’t feel very calm on the inside.

I was up to my waist now, and I was barely able to squirm against the weight of the quicksand at all. Gravity was pulling me down, and the quicksand threatened to soon make a meal of me, swallowing me whole one inch at a time.