It's easy to post regular updates when the story has already been written! :/
Disclaimer: For Mature readers. Story contains bad language, a good amount of gore, and an attempted rape somewhere down the line. Predator(s) does not belong to me but the characters and plot are mine. I'm not making any money off publishing this little ditty, but I'll take payment in the form of reviews!
My ankle was killing me. I stared at the roof of the tent, lying on my back while the sounds of the night creatures filled my ears. The jungle was loud as hell at night and all of us were certainly used to it by now. So used to the din that when it fell silent you woke up instantly, all nerves on edge. Usually it signaled the passage of something, a jungle cat or some other predator...native or alien. They did their hunting at night, our keepers. In the morning there would be a fresh kill or four hung on their end of the clearing, skinned, gutted and dripping. We'd understood from the beginning that that could be any of us; the symbolism wasn't lost just because it was a deer or a tapir.
I had to move. Lying here was killing me as much as my ankle. It throbbed and burned, pulsing in time with my heartbeat. It needed, I decided, a dunk in the cool river to calm it down.
I sat up, then rolled quietly to my feet. Since no one else in the tent said anything, I knew they were sleeping. Fuck it. If I get eaten by a jaguar, I get eaten. I wasn't about to wake any of the girls up to accompany me, since they all had to get up in a few hours and participate in the hunt. Me, I had all day to relax, take a nap, recover from my midnight stroll, whatever.
I slipped from the tent and stood outside it a moment, letting my eyes adjust and see what they would. Very little sun, moon or starlight filtered down to the jungle floor, but given long enough, the human eye could acclimate to some pretty deep darkness. Helped that I was intimately familiar with my surroundings, and as I started to pick out landmarks I started to move. Sarge's group's tent, then Carter's. Someone was snoring loud enough to wake the dead in there. Must be another one of those things humans could acclimate to, since I couldn't imagine trying to sleep through all that racket.
The path to the river was cool and damp under my feet, and I moved slowly and carefully, but steadily. My ankle felt stiff, like it had swollen and locked up in the few hours of sleep I'd managed to grab. On the face of it, a relatively minor injury. In our current environment and situation, it probably ranked right up there as one of the worst. Couldn't keep my boots on for support; because of the dampness I'd risk a lovely foot rot. Rendering me immobile meant I wasn't going to get very far, a necessity for my squad's possible escape, possible rescue, definite moral boost and continued survival.
The river. I paused, still under the canopy, and stared, keeping my senses open while at the same time, admiring the view. It glittered and hissed under the moon and stars, streaming past its banks at a good clip. It reflected the sky's light, creating a white, ethereal haze around itself, like it was glowing.
Limping forward, I found the flat rock I'd sat on with Patty, and eased my foot and ankle into the cool, flowing water with a sigh of relief. The trip back was going to be hell, I realized belatedly. My eyes would adjust to the light here and I was going to be effectively blind when I stepped back under the canopy. That was gonna suck.
I had just started to relax, leaning back on my elbows and closing my eyes as I listened to the night, when I heard a rumbling purr, then felt the impact of something heavy hitting the ground nearby. The usually loud darkness went silent in an instant.
One time I'd gone to this small, rinky-dink backyard zoo in Pennsylvania when I was a kid. Couldn't believe it when, as my family made its way further in, there were chain-link enclosures containing tigers and lions. Full grown, out in the woods of Pennsylvania. I'd stopped in my tracks and stared, and heard the same sound that had just come out of the jungle: a deep-throated throbbing rumble, coming from a massive orange and black striped tiger standing at the fence. My older brothers had run to it in excitement and it had rubbed its cheek against the chain-link then turned away, lifted its tail, and hosed them down with a spray of stinking urine just as they came in range.
The memory brought a smile to my lips as I turned my head toward the sound. Similar to a five hundred pound tiger, what had issued that warm, masculine sounding purr was deadly and powerful. The dark-skinned predator stepped into the reflected, dappled light cast from the sky to the river and out again, moving with quiet, agile grace. The tiger had hid its musculature under a loose pelt with magnificent, striking markings; this predator's build was on display, each and every muscle clearly defined beneath a tough hide that bore similar, but more muted markings. Black and grey, lighter and creamier under the arms, on the belly and palms. Similar to a human build, the musculature of his body was familiar but hugely exaggerated: trapezius flaring from neck to massive shoulders, bulging biceps and triceps of his arms. Huge pectorals, each bigger than my head, tapering to the ripple of abdominal muscles and a narrow waist, the cream of his hide dappled with speckles of darker color and what looked like scars. His quadriceps, the four big muscles of the thighs, made his upper legs like tree trunks, fat and powerful, decorated with smudgy markings of darker color.
"Hola, novio," my own voice greeted me as he paused ten feet away.
I nodded. "Aw Fuck."
Trilling, he resumed his approach until he was standing next to me, then he stopped and eased down into a crouch at my side, masked face tilted downward as he scanned my leg, seeing my foot in the water. He was, I noticed, pretty much naked. The keepers wore armor, pitted and scaled, a dull gunmetal grey. The kind of armor that protected specific body parts but still allowed full freedom of movement: a partial breastplate, greaves and spaulders, shin guards, codpiece, mask. All separate and not interconnecting with each other, fastened with straps and clamps. Just right now, Aw Fuck was wearing nothing but his gauntlets, mask, and a loincloth. Rolling casual, as it were. Apparently they were permitted to dress down for the off-hours.
He shifted beside me, placing his left elbow on top of his thigh and holding his hand out, turning it palm-up, fingers extended. I stared at his hand, noting the absence of things I hadn't ever taken conscious notice of before, but now that they were missing...
No more tightly fitting, darkly colored fingerless glove. No more knuckleduster rings adorning the heavy knuckles across the back of his hand as well as the knuckles in the middle of each ungodly huge finger. His palm was a lighter shade of black than the back of his hand, the creases dark cracks. At the base of each finger was a well-defined callus, further proof -as if I needed any- that this creature was no stranger to hard work.
The long fingers wiggled impatiently and I heard a quiet rumble, something similar to a growl but lacking its threat. I'd missed the how of it but I found myself sitting upright, no longer leaning back on my elbows. He wanted something. This gesture had become associated in my mind with the pulse rifle, Aw Fuck's way of telling me to hand it over. Not only was I currently unarmed; I, like him, was barely dressed. I mulled it over, wondering what he could possibly want, then it occurred to me and my eyes skipped from his extended hand to his mask.
"My ankle?" I asked tentatively.
He grunted, almost a snort, and I blinked at the 'well, duh' implication in the sound. Then he nodded.
I considered a moment, staring at the eyes of the mask. This time I couldn't pick up any hint of coffee-smell, though I imagined he was close enough that I could feel his heat. It meant, I realized, that this was probably the most easy-going and calm mood I'd ever seen Aw Fuck in. He was perfectly capable of lunging at me and grabbing my leg; as a matter of fact, I almost expected him to do that. Instead he remained utterly still and waited, hand proffered palm-up.
Moving carefully under his scrutiny, I lifted my foot from the water and eased myself into a partial turn on my stone seat, leaning back on my hands and tilting my hips to raise my leg up higher. I tensed as my keeper's huge left hand wrapped around my calf, his right one going to my foot as he began touching. His grip was as I remembered: hot and firm, his hands as hard as the rest of him looked. My foot looked comparatively tiny and pale as he pressed his palm to my sole, wrapped his fingers over my arch, and began to gently manipulate my ankle. I hissed in pain, trying to snatch my leg back, and he stilled, masked visage sweeping from my foot to my face.
There was a quiet sound that started building, lost at first beneath the cacophony of the night creatures and insects. My eyes widened as I stared at him, part of me straining to hear and understand what I was hearing, what it was, where it was coming from. Sounded, to be honest, like a distant engine. Sort of a droning. Too low pitched to be a chopper; maybe a plane?
It was a plane, I decided, and automatically looked away from what I certainly should have been paying close attention to, the fucking predator that had me by the leg. I cast my eyes to the sky above the river, searching for lights, tension zipping up my spine as I debated my next move. I had to signal somehow. Had to get out in the open...
The sound built and grew, a throbbing, steady drone. But it wasn't coming from the sky. Keeping my face turned up, I slowly slid my eyes back to my keeper's mask, narrowing my gaze on the slits that covered his eyes. It was him, I realized.
He lowered his attention back to my foot and continued right where he'd left off as I continued to stare. He had the ability to be remarkably still, freezing like a statue. With no perceptible breathing, even. I didn't like it; it was creepy.
The sound continued to intensify, taking on a life of its own as he ran the pad of his thumb down the front of my ankle. He did it again, down the right side then the left. Two fingers along either side of my achilles tendon all while he emitted that steady, measured throbbing from somewhere in his chest. It wasn't particularly loud, but it had the power to block out all other sound, filling my ears, resonating inside me as I tuned into it and listened. I could feel his touch but was more detached from it, not so focused on what he was doing. Here and there when he did something that hurt I would flinch in reaction, a twitched response from pained nerves.
When the sound abruptly stopped I blinked and jerked my head, snapping out of it. My keeper was easing my foot back down, then he rocked his weight back from the balls of his feet to his heels and stood. He stepped past me and out of eyeshot behind me.
It was a gravelly purr, I realized belatedly. Only one much more evolved than a cat's. A feline's purr existed to soothe the cat; I had a sneaking suspicion that this creature's purring had the ability to hypnotize and soothe someone other than the creature making it. Worked for me.
My ankle ached a little bit and I looked at it. Felt like someone had been messing around with it, twisting and pulling and flexing it. I knew Aw Fuck had done it, but for the life of me I couldn't actually remember it happening. I had to really apply myself to go through what had happened in steps, piecing together what I saw and felt. It brought me to the conclusion that the joint felt much better now, since Aw Fuck's prodding and poking really hadn't hurt all that much.
I pulled my legs beneath me and shifted to stand, then collapsed back onto my butt with a hiss of pain. Okay, ankle's not so good. There was a low rumble, a brush of heat, and Aw Fuck's huge hand on my head, pressing me down as he strode past me and into the river. Telling me to sit still, knock it off? I wasn't sure. Again, though, I sensed a total lack of aggression in him.
He went into the river with his usual confidence, huge legs kicking up splashes as he strode out into deeper water like he was expecting it should part for him at any moment and allow him to just march across. The gauntlets were gone, I realized, watching his arms swing with his strides. Then the water hit his hips, his waist, then he went under. I watched and waited as the river swept away all evidence of his passage, as the sounds of the night resumed.
The knives...
I twisted on the rock, my eyes searching the ground behind me. If he'd taken off the gauntlets, that meant they were probably somewhere behind me. The right one housed the huge blades, stored inside them on the back of his forearm until he did something that made them spring out over the back of his hand. I didn't have any particular thought in mind as to what I would do with them if I found them, but weapons were weapons.
A careful look didn't reveal them. He wasn't stupid; none of the keepers were. He'd hidden them, then, while my back was turned.
My ears picked up a discordant splash from the river, something different from its usual sounds, and I looked. Aw Fuck had re-emerged and was heading back my way. The brief opportunity to search for his weapons had passed. I casually slid my injured ankle back into the cold water and held my ground as he forged toward me with the same powerful surges he'd used to enter the water.
He was unmasked, I noticed, now that he was facing me. Even from a distance I could see the amber glow of his gaze. These predatory aliens were ugly, yes, but like the rest of my squad I'd gotten past my initial revulsion and terror that their faces inspired. Though their bodies were humanoid, bipedal, two arms, four fingers and thumb, they were crab-like in the face. Spider-like. The mouthparts moved constantly, restlessly.
They had no face, per-se, and so were incapable of human expression. They had huge foreheads that looked armor plated, ridged with bone, tipped with spines. Behind that was where the fat strands of fleshy black hair started, dangling down to their elbows like an octopus' arms, decorated with rings and bands. Below the forehead was a thick, bony, heavy brow that overhung their deep-set eyes. Bifocal vision, two eyes on the front of the head that moved in tandem, thank god. A googly-eyed chameleon looking thing would have only been that much more off-putting.
And below the eyes was the fearsome mouth, sort of an outer one and an inner one. The outer one was topped by two fangs just below the eyes. They were somewhat mobile, but not nearly as much as the lower fangs. Those bad boys pointed straight upward, bone white, each as long as a finger and sharp at the tip. They were attached to a mandible that framed the lower jaw on either side but were independent of it, able to flex and spread, pulling the cheek flaps wide enough to show their insides, turning the lower fangs sideways so their tips pointed at each other with probably a good thirty-inch spread between them. The inner mouth was also topped by two sharp teeth, with a relatively small chin and equally sharp teeth below. Clear carnivores. We just hoped that human beings weren't on the menu.
His loincloth was in his hand, I realized suddenly. His loincloth was in his hand. I stared for a few seconds, then averted my eyes and lowered my chin. Definitely male, no doubt about that. Unless their females sported a bat and a pair of baseballs? No twig and berries here.
He splashed to the bank and rumbled quietly as he strode past me and I turned my face away. Did not see...did not see...
Then he was behind me somewhere, probably retrieving his gauntlets and mask. Hopefully making himself decent, for god's sake. Had any of the guys in my squad just pulled that on me I would have punched them in the face.
Then I thought about what Ramirez had told me, that Aw Fuck had the hots for me. Could that possibly be true? Had he followed me here? Was he sort of displaying himself to me? Or had he just happened to come here for a bath and found me sitting here already? Nursing my wounded ankle, no thanks to him. If he thought he was about to get lucky he had another think coming.
There was a chuff from behind me that I ignored. He was standing, I was sitting. If I turned around, would I have his dangly bits in my face? Not gonna chance that, no way. I could hear him moving around as I stayed frozen on my rock, then he issued a low growl. Heard that one before. That was his 'I'm warning you...' sound. I made full use of my privileges as a female and kept still. The girls had learned that, when in doubt, it was better not to move than to make the wrong move. Were I male there would be no quarter given. Disobey and get roughed up, period.
Aw Fuck moved around me, into my line of sight. I almost deflated in relief when I saw the loincloth was back in place. Gauntlets and mask, too. He bent over me, reached for my front, then hesitated, talon-tipped fingers spread. Usually he grabbed me by the shirtfront. Just right now I was wearing a tank top with very little front to grab. His hand moved and I recoiled as he closed it around my throat, so big he only encircled my neck with his thumb on one side, two fingers on the other. I had to lift my chin anyway as he shifted his grip, then used my neck to pull me to my feet. Not a pleasant experience; I much preferred the uniform grab.
I gasped and sputtered, instinctively raising my hands and grabbing at his wrist to prevent him from pulling my head off. Setting me on my feet he released me, then motioned toward the dark path back toward the camp. I hesitated, for once seeing his chest without the breastplate covering it, and honestly and truly stunned by the sight. Dear god, he was huge. And ripped. Massive pectoral muscles, a clearly defined and sculpted six-pack made of keg cans. Shoulders the size of basketballs. Human-like, but definitely not human.
He grunted, becoming more annoyed the longer I just stood there stupidly staring at him. "Move, soldier!" Sarge's voice barked out, an angry command.
"I'm movin', I'm movin'," I muttered, instantly stirred into action by that voice and tone. Had I been dead asleep I would have responded to Sarge's orders, so this was an effective way of forcing my compliance.
I shuffled from the water, my eyes wide as I belatedly remembered that I'd blown my night vision by hanging out at the river. In front of me was a wall of black. It slowed my already slow pace, and again I heard my keeper's low growl of irritated warning. I stepped out on faith, lengthening my stride, then hissed as my ankle shot a bolt of pain when I stepped on an invisible root and twisted it. Great. Now I was terrified I would hurt it even worse.
"Should have stayed in bed," I muttered to myself, too late.
Aw Fuck nudged my spine right between my shoulderblades with a knuckle. It wasn't gentle but it wasn't forceful enough to knock me onto my face, either. I'd seen them do that to the males in my squad often enough. I shuffled faster, favoring my injury and walking blind, then my tormentor grabbed me by my upper left arm and tugged me back.
"Ow!" I barked, startled and more than a little afraid. "Would you make up your-what's that?" I squawked, sensing something just in front of my face but unable to see a damned thing. I squeaked, literally let out a girlish beep as something touched my nose, then I batted at it instinctively. And connected with something hard and hot. His hand, I realized. I'd just taken a whack at a keeper.
He chortled, the sound revealing more amusement than I'd ever heard from Aw Fuck, then he moved around me, still holding me with a monstrous hand so big it completely encircled my upper arm. He slid his hand to my wrist and pulled it out from my body, and I felt a simultaneous brush against my belly and side, then I was hoisted off my feet. I flailed a moment in panic, folding as my weight was forced onto my stomach and I pitched forward, searching for something to grab with my right hand. It closed on something smooth and warm and fleshy, firmly anchored but with some give to it. I heard and felt a rumble before I was jostled and I let go, placing my hand below my precariously-pitched weight and touching rough heat. Sonuvabitch had picked me up, I realized. Tucked his hot, humongous shoulder into my belly and lifted me off my feet.
The hand on my wrist let go and I felt him press his gauntleted forearm across the backs of my calves to pin me in place. Then I felt him step and turn beneath me and start walking.
Wow. Just wow. Aw Fuck was transporting me back to camp in a fireman's carry. I hoped like hell that no one else was awake and around to see this shit.
Hands free, I pressed them against his back to prop myself up, still staring blindly around me. I could feel the bumps and pebbling of his sorta reptilian hide beneath my hands, and below that, the slide of tough muscle in his back as he walked. This close, my nose was filled with the smell of him, faded after his dip in the river with the added fishy tang that rode all of us. I always craved coffee when I got a whiff of one of the keepers, since that was what their scent made me think of. With a dash of vanilla and cinnamon thrown in. And now, a side of gefilte fish.
I was able to make out the trees and I knew we were at the edge of the encampment. The fire in the pit had been allowed to die low but it still cast enough flickering orange light to allow me to see.
"Okay you can put me down now, thanks," I hissed, keeping my voice low so as not to attract anyone's attention. He ignored me and kept walking, fairly cruising into the clearing with long, smooth strides that made no sound. I pressed myself more upright and tried to slide down, but his forearm kept my legs pinned. "That's good, now," I said, trying again. "Here's fine." Face down from seven feet off the ground was definitely unnerving. If he was planning to deploy me like I was an Airborne paratrooper I was going to perform an epic faceplant.
We passed one tent then another, rounding to the front of the girls' tent before he came to a stop. He sank into a crouch and let go of my legs, shrugging to shift me forward. I found the dirt with my feet and staggered back a bit, getting my balance with a few hops on my good leg and favoring my sore ankle. Aw Fuck cocked his head, forearms on his wide-spread thighs, his clawed hands tucked close to his body.
"Thanks," I said, a little unsure. He motioned toward the tent's entrance with his head, then rose and walked off. "You're welcome," I muttered under my breath, then gimped my way back to bed.
