"Y'know what, forgive me for not wanting to walk RIGHT into one of those giant octopus's nests, okay? One temperamental extraterrestrial at a time, please."

A low warning rumble told me to shut my mouth. I bared my teeth at the giant creature's muscled back, but made sure not to hiss between them. Apparently that's disrespectful and gets you slammed up against a tree. Or impaled.

"… You got a cigarette?"

I dropped at the waist to avoid an annoyed backhand. "Right. Silent. Like a ninja. Got it," I whispered, absently checking the cartridge on my skorpion. I'd been dropped onto this God-forsaken planet with that and my sniper rifle, the M107 .50. They were old models, but when I'd been taken, the family was trying to start their own mercenary operation. Older brothers and cousins get first dibs in that kind of business.

The giant grey muscleman I was dropped here with stopped and crouched. I immediately went down on my knees perpendicular to it, him, whatever, with a moss-covered tree at my back. I tried hearing or smelling whatever he did, like I did every time he stopped, but couldn't get a hint of anything in any direction. It was incredibly frustrating.

Six rounds left in the rifle, with three extra cartridges in my old Army pack, and two extra cartridges for the skorpion. Right next to the tampons. I just had to be on my fucking period when this went down. HAD to be.

After crouching so long my thighs went numb, he moved forward again. I followed. I didn't understand why we had to head right back in the direction we'd barely escaped from. I didn't understand him, either. Clicks and tittering like a pair of those walking wind-up dentures did not a conversation make.

For that matter, I didn't understand why I was following this lug. Maybe because we'd been dropped by parachutes twenty feet from each other, so I knew it wasn't his idea? Apparently logic didn't run thick for both our species, though, because the moment he dropped, a second after me, he was trying to kill me. This is where the 'slammed against a tree' part comes in. In New York where I grew up there weren't many trees, and the few there were in the parks were like saplings compared to these monoliths. And they hurt.

"Strength in numbers," I'd choked out repeatedly like a mantra, before he'd finally let me go and walked - clomped - away. It took me taking out a giant squid on land from 200 feet away before he let me follow without trying to disembowel me for doing so. I didn't know what else to do. His whole demeanor told me he did, so I followed the leader.

Helluva leader, taking me right back into the nest of the things that tried to eat us. But when I threw a hissy fit about it, he brought his arm up so fast I ducked, thinking he was going to hit me. He didn't. Just showed his bare forearm, where a piece of armor with a pop-up screen had been before the attack.

"For fuck's sake, you want to die for a bracelet?" I'd snarled, earning a short, loud bark-roar. And ended up following him again anyway. Maybe it was important. Maybe it was a tracking device to get off this hell-hole. And apparently he could understand me, because every time I made a smartass remark, I was reprimanded in the least gentle of ways.

I was going on a bunch of 'apparently's.

The only time we stumbled on anyone else, they saw him first and shot first. The man looked like Mafia muscle, screaming in Russian. Russian or German, hell if I know. I don't like either of 'em. He was big, he was pissed. But my companion was more big, more pissed. He was hit twice in the chest and didn't bat an eyelash (if he even had them. With that mask, fuck if I knew). He took up the space between them in three quick strides and shoved the Mafia man into a tree trunk so hard by the skull that his head burst. I counted myself lucky that our 'shoved up a tree' encounter had ended a little nicer than that. And maybe wet myself a little. Couldn't tell with the humidity. It managed to intimidate me either way. Just a little.

He never bothered to do anything about the fluorescent green splotches on his chest, and I was too terrified of him at the time to say anything about them. I suddenly felt that if he bled to death I might be just a wee bit better off.

But the same thing happened that always happened when I was scared and wouldn't admit it. I mouthed off. My reflexes thank me for that, because Lord knows my head would be all kinds of splattered all over this forest if I hadn't done six years in the US Marine Corp. prior to this nightmare.

"Hey. Randy Savage."

He whirled with a stance that obviously stated 'I'm going to kill you now'. Oh, there went another little pee.

I held up my right hand defensively and pointed to the left with a trembling finger. In the distance, in a break in the foliage, we had a clear view of the hill next to ours that resembled more of a cliff. Scaling it were three figures too big to be human. When I looked back, he was gone.

"Oh, you motherfucker." He turned on his goddamn camouflage thing. I watched him use it against the squids. Neat trick. Even neater when you actually had it on. Not knowing whether he'd stuck around or not (he didn't strike me as a coward, but fuck, they looked bigger than HIM), I crept closer to the edge of the hill and crouched behind a tree. I zoomed in on them with my sniper, trying not to give off any kind of vibe that I was eyeing them. They looked almost identical to my ex-companion, only much taller with darker skin complexions and longer dreads. In the scope's peripheral I caught what looked to be giant mutant rats with tusks creating a circle around their moving group, muzzles to the ground once every few seconds. It looked like a hunting party.

That whole trying not to give off a vibe thing? Yeah, didn't work. The most slender of the three stopped, stopping his buddies one-by-one in return, and tilted his head slowly up my hill and to me. My heart stuttered. I couldn't move. I felt like the mouse, and he was one big fucking cat.

I saw the shimmer of his camouflage being activated and didn't think about anything other than the fact that he saw me. I pulled the trigger. The damn silencer cut the damage done in half, the bullet pinging loudly off his helmet instead of going through.

"Shit," I said and fled in the opposite direction.

It didn't take long to hear the snarling of the dogs. My legs pumped faster. Downhill was my best option. If they were anything like the dogs back home then they could run longer and faster than I could. I needed all the help I could get from the environment.

A shrub tripped me. For one terrifying minute I tumbled on my side. I fumbled for my skorpion during the fall, and when I finally hit a jutting rock with my back, I didn't give myself a chance to shriek at the pain. I came up guns blazing. And caught one of the fuckers dead in the mouth as it was about to rip my face off. Then I DID scream. I had no idea it was that close, or that fucking fast. Gore spattered my face and I barely took notice. There were at least two other dogs and three big ass hunters right behind them. And I was on my own.

"FUCK you, asshole!" I screamed at the alien who had left me to fend for myself. He was probably watching the whole show.

I braced my feet and slid up the rock with a grunt of pain, knowing it had broken at least two ribs. Growing up with meathead big brothers, you get used to some things.

The other two mutant dogs were circling me and my rock.

"Fucking great," I whispered, spinning back and forth to try and keep my eyes on both of the hissing creatures. The two remaining hunters, not bothering to hide themselves, stood one hundred feet away, arms crossed and watching the fun. Like I was a bait poodle in a pitbull fight. But just because they could be incredibly silent on the rush of the forest floor didn't mean the dogs could be.

I lost track of the alien mutt furthest away from me, trying to keep my sight on the closer one, and it attacked. I heard it before I saw it, ducked my upper body and roundhouse kicked the dog in the chest mid-leap. It wasn't like an Earth dog. It was a lot heavier. Although the hit stopped it from it's initial ripping of my face, the weight of the animal fell on top of me. I jerked my head to side so the massive fangs dug into dirt, and shoved my skorpion into its belly, pulling the trigger hard. It screamed, hot innards flowing onto my torso as the beast was ripped open.

I didn't have time to sit and think about it. The other animal snarled and leaped. I used all my upper body strength to lift its gored, dead partner as a shield. More wicked black blood oozed over my face as the thing's teeth tore into the dead animal's throat instead of mine. I shoved them both away with a scream and stumbled up and onto the rock, then further back, and fell.

I fell a lot further than I thought I would. The brush on the other side of the rock outcropping had hidden the cliff on the other side. I didn't have time to scream again as I fell two hundred feet to the river below.