Survivor- World of Monsters 2 Read online

  Survivor: World of Monsters 2

  By Michael Brightburn

  1

  The monsters were coming.

  Cal Colt glanced quickly back as he darted through the forest.

  He could see them, far away but gaining so quickly as they ran through the trees and foliage, devouring the ground separating monster from human.

  He had only one hope, and it wasn’t the wooden spear he held.

  No, he had to get back to his hilltop base.

  If he didn’t, he was done for.

  The strange interface in his head had given him the choice between two upgrades, and the one he’d chosen didn’t help his feet move faster over the forest floor, didn’t help him take in more oxygen with each gasping breath—didn’t help him outrun these monsters that would soon devour not just the ground between them, but him as well.

  The day was hot, like all days here on this alien world, and the air he breathed in as he ran was sweet and musty and humid. The tall trees all around shielded him from this planet’s dual suns, rays from two different directions piercing the canopy and casting unfamiliar shadows for someone used to only one.

  His bare feet crunched on dried leaves and fallen plants as he tried to keep his bearings, tried not to get turned around. Another thing neither his upgrade nor the alien-implanted display in his vision gave him: GPS.

  He heard a noise from beside him and looked just as one of the mountain-lion-sized alien monsters leapt out from between the trees and right for him.

  It had used its greater speed, gone around him, hidden in the trees, then struck, cutting him off.

  Cal screamed and tried to dodge it by jumping into the air just before it collided with him, simultaneously jabbing his spear down into its hard, carapace-covered back.

  To his surprise the spear actually pierced it, sinking deep.

  But this didn’t stop the creature from colliding with him, its head slamming into his lower legs and flipping him in the air, once, twice, then the third flip was abruptly halted as he slammed face-first into the ground.

  2

  OPPONENT KILLED

  1 POINT GAINED

  Cal groaned, realizing he was still conscious.

  He pushed himself up, so eager to be running again that even before he got his feet under him he was already moving forward on hands and knees.

  But actually getting to his feet was a struggle—he was dizzy and disoriented and tired and in pain—but he finally managed it.

  Just in time too, as his fall had let the other monsters almost catch up to him.

  Then he was running again.

  Unfortunately he wasn’t putting any distance between himself and the monsters, only losing it more slowly.

  He could hear them getting closer and closer.

  They were coming for him, they were gaining on him, and he was almost out of time.

  And now he didn’t even have his spear anymore, only the flimsy loincloth he wore.

  He’d wanted to make armor, but hadn’t yet had the time or materials to do so.

  Maybe after this—if he survived—he could use the corpses of the alien monsters. Their carapaces would probably make good armor.

  He checked behind again. A hundred feet away at most, the dense forest making it hard to be certain.

  Then he looked forward and put on a final burst of speed, pouring everything he had into it.

  They had almost reached him, but he had almost reached the hilltop. Up ahead he could see his beautiful, beautiful base, the steep rear path leading up to the gate.

  A gate which stood open, and at which an even more beautiful Eliza stood waiting, spear in hand.

  She shouted something to him, but over the beating of his feet, the pounding of his heart, and the heaving, ragged breaths he was sucking in that made him sound like a dying asthmatic aardvark, he couldn’t make out the words.

  He reached the bottom of the path and ran up it, but soon slipped, scrambling up on feet and hands as the monsters grew ever closer.

  “Down!” Eliza shouted.

  He dropped flat to his stomach just as her spear soared overhead.

  A horrific screech like metal on metal came from—far too close—behind him as the projectile found its target.

  He surged up to his feet and ascended once more, not daring to look back to see how close to being eaten he was.

  Cal didn’t know if the aliens could climb up the hill faster than he could, but he imagined so. They had sharp talons and limbs suited to running on all of them, while he had rounded stubby toes and too-short arms which were barely suited for crawling.

  At least he and the others had gotten more logs up in the palisade surrounding the hilltop.

  Only a few on each side of the gates, but enough that no human could get around the gates by making the jump from the path to the hilltop’s unprotected edge. It was a good twenty feet from path to open edge, and he didn’t think even the aliens could make that jump, not with the change in elevation.

  “Hurry up!” Eliza urged, already holding another spear she was waiting eagerly to throw.

  He didn’t bother responding that he already was hurrying as much as he could.

  He was over halfway up now. That meant less than half to go.

  I might actually survive this, he thought with both surprise and jubilation.

  Something whizzed overhead and he let out a burst of surprised air, winding him even more.

  Then he saw Mirabelle in the tree, balanced on the end of one of its large branches, and realized it’d been one of her arrows.

  She was an excellent shot with a gun, he’d seen that much for himself back on Earth, and from what he’d seen of her practicing with the bow, she’d seemed to know what she was doing.

  If only she’d had more than one day to practice with it.

  But, her arrow didn’t hit him at least. That was good enough for him.

  Then again, judging by the lack of shrieking from behind him, she hadn’t hit any of the aliens either, or at least not pierced their armor.

  Cal finally reached the flatter part of the path, slipped and fell, got to two legs again, then pumped them for all he was worth, diving through the gate as Eliza slammed it shut and braced a branch against it just as an alien crashed into it.

  3

  “Where’s Imogen?” he asked Eliza, not seeing her anywhere. He grabbed a spear from the several she had leaned against the palisade.

  While Cal was tall enough to see over the roughly six-foot gate, none of the women were, so they’d built steps on either side of it, the left of which Eliza now climbed up.

  “We were running low on fruit she liked. Went out to get more.”

  Cal swore. Imogen still didn’t have a display, so she wouldn’t know the aliens were here, wouldn’t have gotten the incoming wave warning he and the others had received.

  He climbed the steps on the right side and stared down at the aliens clawing at the thick, stacked branches the gate was composed of. Only two could fit side by side, the others stuck behind them, useless.

  That was good, because going by how the gate was shaking, it wouldn’t be able to withstand an assault from all of them at once.

  He looked past the two at the gate to the four behind them, eager to join in.

  Based on the rate of growth—doubling—of the previous waves, this wave should have eight. Given that both he and Eliza had killed one each so far, that meant all six monsters still living were accounted for.

  Good. None had gone after Imogen, then.

  Unless there were more than eight in this wave. The display gave no indication of the number, only a countdown to when they were coming. Something that hadn’t eve
n happened this time. Instead there had been a warning that there was a wave incoming, and then moments later the alien monsters appeared, causing Cal to drop what he was doing—gathering cordage—and run for his life.

  “I can’t hit them from this angle,” Mirabelle called from the tree. “And I don’t want to risk hitting you two.”

  “We’ve got it,” Cal called as he stabbed down at one of the monsters.

  It screeched at him and clawed at the spear with one of its long appendages, knocking it away and out of his grasp.

  He cursed, hopping down and grabbing another spear and swearing he was going to make that appendage into a weapon once they’d killed them all.

  Eliza was stabbing down at the monster on her side, but they were quick, and even when she did hit, it wasn’t with enough force to pierce the armor-like carapace.

  She grunted as she stabbed again and the spear again deflected off the creature. “Their backs are too hard,” she complained.

  Cal stabbed down with his new spear and this time the creature used its mouthparts to grab on to the end of the weapon, then got its front limbs up around it.

  He at first thought it was trying to pull it away again, then his heart leapt into his throat when he realized it was trying to use it to climb over the gate.

  He hastily released the spear, feeling like a person in one of those fail videos trying to kill a spider only to have it jump at them and land on their faces.

  The creature slid back down, the spear dropping to the ground and snapping under its feet.

  That made three spears he’d lost today.

  Cal went to pick up another from the pile but before he could, Eliza screamed.

  “It’s climbing!”

  Cal was ready to tell her to release her spear, but then he saw that wasn’t what she meant.

  To his growing horror, he watched as the monster dug its long, talon-like appendages into the wood of the gate, climbing it.

  The logs were arranged horizontally and it used this to its advantage, using them as claw-holds.

  Then before either he or Eliza could stop it, it was over the gate, leaping between them and into their base.

  Cal spun to deal with the threat, but an arrow slammed into it, right into one of its eyes.

  It let out an ear-piercing screech as it ran around wildly.

  It wasn’t watching where it was going, apparently, because it ran right off the edge of the hilltop, plummeting off the sheer side.

  “Nice shot,” Cal called up to Mirabelle, who gave him a thumbs up.

  Then her eyes widened and Cal spun to see another monster coming over the gate, Eliza stabbing her spear up into its underside.

  This was softer than their hard backs and the spear stuck firmly.

  Too firmly, Cal saw, as it was yanked from Eliza’s hands as the monster fell screaming.

  Then the gate was unguarded as Eliza struggled with her spear stuck inside the flailing, screeching monster now inside their base, trying to finish off the creature.

  Motion drew Cal’s gaze and he saw two ugly alien heads pop up over the top of the gate.

  “So you figured out how to climb since our last encounter, huh, you ugly bastards?” Cal grabbed up a spear. “I’ll make you regret that.”

  He jabbed at their heads, causing them to drop down, but they popped right back up, and this time they were too fast for him, one getting over while he was distracted with the other.

  Then another made it over, and another, and then all four monsters he’d been trying to stop had made it in.

  Mirabelle hadn’t been idle, however, and when Cal turned to attack the monsters now inside their camp, he saw one of them had an arrow sticking out of its back that had somehow managed to pierce its hard carapace.

  “Eliza! Look out!” Cal called as one of the monsters charged her while she still struggled to get her spear free from the now almost dead monster.

  He’d go help her, but was himself preoccupied: while the one with the arrow in it was trying to climb up the tree to get to Mirabelle, the other two were focused on him.

  Eliza looked over her shoulder, saw how close this new threat was, then with a surge of adrenaline yelled out, the spear yanking free just in time for her to get it between herself and the approaching attacker.

  It had no time to react and the tip slammed into its chest, piercing it.

  But this didn’t stop its momentum.

  The monster slammed into her and knocked her to the ground, the spear digging into the soft soil and shattering.

  She screamed out as the thing slashed at her with its long talons.

  Cal was too busy with his own monsters to go help her, and Mirabelle was trying to keep the remaining one from climbing up the tree.

  Then one of the two he was facing off with knocked his spear sideways and lunged.

  He lifted it between them, jamming it lengthwise in the thing’s mouthparts as monster and human collided and went down.

  It chomped the spear in half and pushed forward its assault, going for his throat.

  He heard one of the creatures scream in pain, but couldn’t spare a glance to see which, or why.

  He turned the broken ends of the spear inward, jamming them down into the thing’s mouth, shoving as deep as he dared, the sharp mouthparts grazing his knuckles.

  He worried it wasn’t long enough, that he was going to have to push even deeper, risk losing his hand, then green fluid spurted out as he pierced the soft tissue they had inside their throats, and the monster retreated, stumbling back, futilely using its talon-like front limbs to try to claw the embedded foreign objects out.

  Pressing the advantage, he grabbed another spear, got close as he dared to the flailing creature, and stabbed down.

  He hit his mark, and the thing screeched as his spear pierced its eye.

  He yanked it out, tried for the other eye, missed, tried again, and this time hit.

  It fell to the ground, twitching.

  He checked on the others.

  Eliza was pushing a dead alien off of herself, in so doing revealing that she was covered in blood, slashes on her arms and face and chest, even on her legs, blood oozing from all of them.

  Mirabelle was sending arrow after arrow at what Cal saw was the last remaining alien—the other already lying dead and filled with arrows a few feet away from him.

  She had saved him, he realized. If both of the ones he’d been facing off with had attacked, he’d be dead right now.

  He’d have to thank her for that.

  Which he could do by helping her out, as most of the arrows she sent down deflected off this final creature’s carapace, only about one out of every eight going in.

  “A little help?” he called up.

  “That’d be nice. Almost out of arrows.”

  “You got it.” He yanked his spear from the now-unmoving creature’s eye, and turned back to the one at the tree. “Hey!” he shouted at it, and was somewhat surprised when it turned toward him, seeming surprised itself. He charged at it, aiming for its eye.

  He missed, slamming the spear into its mouth instead.

  Eh, good enough.

  The monster fell over on its back like a dead spider, its limbs twitching as they slowly curled in on themselves.

  And then it was only humans left alive.

  4

  Cal rushed over to Eliza, who was sitting, holding her arms out in front of her, dazedly looking at the damage.

  A moment later Mirabelle scrambled down from her perch and joined them.

  “Are you hurt?” Cal asked, feeling like an idiot even as the words left his mouth. Of course she was hurt, anyone could see that. “I’ll get some bandages.” He looked around for the basket they used to store their food in, but Imogen must have taken it.

  They didn’t actually have bandages, but soft leaves which served if not just as well, then at least passably.

  But the basket was gone, and he realized anyway they had gathered neither those nor the T
ylenol flowers recently, a kind of flower Eliza had given Cal when he’d first arrived and gotten a concussion. They helped with pain, either by eating them, or directly applying them topically to an injury.

  “Oh God,” Mirabelle said, hand to her mouth as she stared down at Eliza.

  “Help me with the gate,” he told her.

  “Why?” she asked.

  “Need to get bandages for her.”

  She nodded, but Eliza stopped them. “Wait,” she said. “I’ll be okay.”

  Cal let out a disbelieving laugh.

  “Really. They’re superficial. Let’s make sure there aren’t any more before you go running out there again. Help me up.”

  “I don’t think you should stand,” Mirabelle said. “You’re already bleeding a lot.”

  It was true, her skin was more red than not, and her scant clothing was drenched in the stuff.

  Cal shook his head at Eliza. “You’re not going anywhere. There aren’t more. We killed eight. I counted. I also need to find Imogen. When did she leave?”

  “Not long ago. I told her not to go far.”

  “She go out the front?”

  Eliza nodded.

  Cal got up and went to the gate, easily tall enough to see over the roughly six-foot barrier. He cupped his hands to his mouth. “Imogen! If you can hear me, come back.”

  He waited for a response.

  After ten seconds without one, he called again.

  This time he heard a response. Faint enough that he couldn’t make out the words, but at least it meant she had heard him.

  He rushed back over to Eliza, Mirabelle standing beside her, gnawing on her thumbnail nervously.

  He studied Eliza’s body; everywhere he looked, a wound. “Jesus. That must sting.”

  She laughed ruefully. “Only when I breathe.”

  “We’ll get you some of those flowers,” Mirabelle said, referring to the Tylenol flowers.

  Even though Eliza seemed in no danger of bleeding out, Cal was still anxious. He didn’t like her being in pain, and he wanted to get the wounds cleaned and bandaged before they could get infected.