2

         Will, Thomas, and Johnathan were inspecting the area when Thomas piped up, “so what do we do now?” Will looked back, “We can’t waste time moping around. Gather all the weapons they had, we can’t risk allowing too many people to have access to them.”

“Why should we be the ones controlling who gets what?” Thomas was always naïve.

         Before Will could respond, Johnathan already had an answer. “Because who else do you trust? Better we control these than someone else, frankly, Will’s the only one here I trust.” As he finished, they heard a commotion outside. They went outside to see Sean in a fight, and he was holding a knife.

         Will was absolutely shocked, but before he could think about how he could have possibly gotten on board, Sean took a swing. The blade missed it’s target and Sean looked back.

“C’mon motherfucker, fight me like a man, asshole. You’re such a pussy.”

“Guess that makes me brave.”

         Sean looked over to see Will had pulled out his revolver. He straightened up and slowly walked towards him.

“Wow, what a man, taking a gun to a knife fight.”

          Will pulled the hammer back and put his finger on the trigger.

“Better safe than sorry.” He gave Sean a smirk, “c’mon, come at me, unless you’re too much of a pussy.”

          Before Sean could do anything, Erik Dyron had come up behind him and flipped him onto his back, and disarming him in the process. As he pinned Sean down, he looked back at will, who was putting his gun away.

 “Where’d you get that?” 

Will had to tell everyone.

“The soldiers are dead, their restraints came undone, and they died in the crash. I got this off one of their bodies.”

          Everyone gasped and froze, realizing they may end up dying.

“It’s ok, I have a plan,” he said as he looked around, trying to calm them down, “I studied some maps I found, I don’t know exactly where we are but I have an idea. We have to work together to ensure that we survive. First, let’s take a look at our inventory and see if we can contact The Endeavor.”

          Everyone agreed with the plan and Will organized the counting of their inventory. Meanwhile, Thomas was inspecting the damage done to the pod and Zoe was managing the effort to see what remained undamaged on the inside of the pod. Thomas had discovered that the solar panels were intact but the communications were destroyed and half had been ripped off the pod entirely.

“We should have backup communications right?” Thomas asked Will desperately. “We lost them,” Johnathan was quick to respond.

“What do you mean we lost them? Did they grow legs and walk the hell away?”

Will pointed to the stack of boxes, “It seems our backup communications is missing, or it wasn’t loaded.”

         Thomas did a 180 and turned back around, processing what Will just explained to him, “SHIT,” he kicked dirt into the air in a rage.

          After the inventory was taken in, Will gathered everyone in front of the ship, all 600 of them, and told them the situation. He then made another announcement.

“We were given rations to last us five years, but since we can’t contact the Endeavor that means we don’t know when they may find us, for all they know we’re dead. So then, we must prepare for the eventuality that they never come for us. As such, we must use these rations sparingly. The easiest thing to replace is water, but eventually we are going to have to figure out how to grow our own food.”

          Will grabbed a friend of his, Carter Len, who was known for his stamina, and told him to gather a team of five and head down to a river he assumed to be a couple of miles away. He then had Sean locked in a storage room in the pod. 

         About half an hour passed and Will was worrying. “They should be back by now, what the hell is taking so long.” He pointed to Thomas, Zoe, Johnathan, and Erik, and let them know that they were heading out to find out why they’re still gone.

          They set out towards where they saw Carter heading last. As they did, Will looked around, appreciating the beauty of this world. It was a dense forest, with trees that have grown upwards of 200 feet. The ground was mostly brown dirt, with logs strewn about like a giant had dropped some fries. The branches of the trees were thick with vines growing down them. The vines were strong, like a cable meant to pull airplanes around. Many of the vines were so thick they would require two hands to hold. The ground frequently changed in elevation, the waves made maneuvering much more difficult.

          They arrived at the riverbank at a large clearing and were horrified to see two guys under attack by what appeared to be monsters. There were 2 of them, they were about 7 feet tall with slimy brown skin, and three large holes in their faces. All over their bodies were openings that were spewing out some black gas, and it was propelling them through the air allowing them to fly. They were lifting one of the boys up and dropping him into the water while the other was swimming to safety. Will pulled out his gun and took aim, but couldn’t find a clear shot. Thomas and Johnathan jumped in, while Zoe took some rocks off the ground and tried throwing them at the creatures. She distracted them and they started flying her way, all the while Thomas and Johnathan were helping the welp out of the water. Zoe, Will, and Erik ran off, acting as a diversion for the flying creatures. As they ran, they heard Carter screaming in the distance. They started heading in the direction of the screams, and eventually saw Carter just below them and to the right, being chased by another mysterious creature.

          This creature was even scarier than the ones that were flying. The one chasing Carter had blades where its right arm would be, and a large claw on their left arm, one that appeared like an oversized lobster claw. The creature had a plated exoskeleton, it looked like a large insect. It had a mouth like that of an ant’s, antennae like that of a cockroach’s, and eyes like that of a fly, only instead of being a couple of inches long, they were eight feet tall instead.

          Thinking quickly, Erik Dyron jumped down, landing a kick on the mysterious creature’s head. The creature tumbled and got back up, angry. Carter got behind Erik who told him to get with the others. The creature lunged at him, swinging its blade of an arm. Erik dove under it, using his hands like a pushup and thrusting himself backwards, landing a kick on the creature’s head and rolling away.

          Before Will could join to help, the flying monsters began flying around them. He pulled his gun and shot one out of the air. He and Zoe jumped down as Erik was fighting the blade-armed creature. Erik had his back to a tree and the creature threw its arm forward in an attempt to stab him, but missed and got its arm stuck in the tree. Before it could get its arm loose, however, Will took aim, and his bullet went straight through the monster’s head, killing it. Erik looked behind him, seeing another blade-armed monster rushing towards him. Before Will could shoot it, another flying creature flew in, he fired his last bullets, killing it, but realized he had to reload. The bladed creature was rushing to Erik, thinking quickly, Zoe grabbed one of the many fallen tree branches and tossed it to Erik. He slid under the blade, turned around, and landed three hits to its back before jumping backwards. As the creature turned around, Zoe stabbed it in the back with Will’s knife. Both Zoe and Erik backed away as the monster writhed in pain. “Oh come on now, why won’t it just die?” Zoe cried out, realizing the monster could still fight. “HEY!” the monster turned around, Will had grabbed a large branch and was ready to fight. The monster ran at him, Will’s branch caught the first swing, he got the branch free from the blade while kicking the monster repeatedly with all the power he could. He knocked the monster back, as it stumbled backwards and turned around, Erik came from behind and land a strong blow right where the shoulder would be, and another in its face. The monster stumbled back again into Will’s wrath before Zoe jabbed it right in its neck.

          Zoe took a look at the monster as it died on the ground, the world around her began to fade away, the sounds of Will yelling out to her were a foreign language to her ears. She could only look down, her mind cluttered with thoughts about how close she had come to dying, how scared she was, wondering where it all went wrong for her. She looked around, seeing Will had finally reloaded, and fired his revolver three times before yelling something that was nothing but blabber to her. The only thing she heard was “ZOE! ZOE, GET UP!” as Erik had pulled her up.

          She finally gained her senses back, and saw another bladed monster approaching. “Shit,” Will yelled out as he attempted to reload his gun, “He tanked three shots and still stands!”. Erik grabbed a branch and  ran at the monster. The blade and the branch were dueling, fighting for the lives of their wielders. Will looked around, seeing the first monster’s body, the head mutilated, and he had a thought.

“Zoe, give me that knife.” He extended his hand out.

          She gave it to him, and he ran towards the body. The blade only made up about half of the actual arm. There was a joint in the middle that the monster could use to reorient the blade and use it more effectively. It was connected to the edge by a round joint that rotated. There was a stem at the bottom, connecting the blade to the rest of the arm. Will took the knife and began trying to cut.

          Erik was showing signs of being exhausted, his reaction timing was slowly diminishing, his blows were weakening, and he was moving slower. The blade got caught on the branch and the monster grabbed Erik by the neck with its claw and threw him back. On the ground, Erik watched with fear as the monster approached, Zoe was screaming, too far away to do anything, and Erik thought he was a dead man.

          As the monster got close, it raised its blade, ready to kill. At that moment, time seemed to come to an almost complete stop for Erik, the seconds felt like hours. However, as a shadow grew over him, he watched, confused to see Will jumping over him, a blade in hand. Will deflected the monster’s arm and jumped in front of Erik.

“Get back, Erik,” he called out.

          The monster and Will rushed at each other, getting into a duel. They entered into a dance, their blades ringing and clashing, the dirt flying back as their feet pushed them forward, finally, Will saw an opening. He slashed the monster across the body, throwing it backwards. Within a fraction of a second, he stabbed the monster, thrusting his blade through the body, killing it.

          Zoe and Erik walked over, breathing heavily. “What the hell,” Zoe uttered through her hard breathing, “how does this even happen? How does something grow a fucking sword for an arm?” Erik kneeled, inspecting the dead body of the being that had been trying to kill all of them, “Guess they just hit the evolutionary jackpot.”

“We should head back to the river,” Will stood up, “make sure Johnathan and Thomas are alright.”

          When they got back, they saw Johnathan and Thomas, there were about eight other people there, three of them armed with rifles whilst the others were gathering water. “Thomas,” Will called out, “What’s going on?” Thomas walked closer, “Johnathan and I went back to camp and brought back some more people.”

“We came across another type of… I don’t even know what to call them,” Will told Thomas, “it was like a humanoid insect, but it had a sword for an arm.”

“You got to be shitting me,” Johnathan couldn’t comprehend it, “I thought those flying fuckers were bad, but the idea of a sword for an arm is fucking nightmare fuel.”

         After the group was done collecting water, Will went back with Thomas to show him the bodies of the sword monsters, which they called “blade-arms”. They brought one of the bodies back to the camp to show everyone. On their arrival, Will dumped the body down in front of everyone. 

“Everyone, Erik, Zoe, and I killed three of these after they attacked Carter. Today, we have seen things you would never have been able to even imagine. We have decided that on top of just bare necessities, we will also be assigning some of you to establishing, patrolling, and maintaining a perimeter. Meaning, not only will we need to secure food and water, we will need to build up our weapons. We can’t be wasting ammo, but luckily, these “blade-arms”, as we call them, can provide a source of metal. We’ll kill as many of these as we need to, and use their arms to make swords, knives, arrows, spears, anything we can use as a weapon.”

“Since when did you decide that YOU could make all the decisions,” someone asked from the crowd.

“If anyone has better ideas on how to survive, speak up. If not, do what I say and we will live. Take a step back! Look at yourself from a different perspective! You’re not American, you’re not white, you’re not black, you’re not asian, you’re not latino. You’re not rich, you’re not poor, you’re not defined by the uniform you wear or the flag you fight for! You are human! You are a member of the greatest race of beings to ever exist! The ground you walk on is yours, by virtue of being human! Everywhere we go is our territory. The life of this planet may think that because we came from far away, we don’t belong here. But they don’t know the power of humanity! We have so utterly won the competition of beings. We conquered natural selection, we conquered disease, we are the only beings in the universe to even know what the fucking universe IS! You are human! It may be hard, but we will plunder, we will fight, we will conquer and dominate!”