Dinner Bell
Paul was trudging through a desert. He was sweating profusely and his clothes were soaked.
His only aim was a small dot in the distance. He couldn't decide if it was his eyes playing tricks on him, or if there was something actually out there. Paul had also noticed that this desert smelled, and it was getting worse as he was getting closer to whatever that thing was in the distance.
He could swear he occasionally felt a rumble from under the sand somewhere.
Paul's hopes sky-rocketed when he got close enough for a good look at the object. It was actually multiple buildings. All of them looked like giant white cardboard boxes with windows. Some were stacked on each other.
But it also looked like this place had gone through hell. Some buildings were toppled over, others were in pieces, and most had half-dissolved walls. He kept moving forward.
Paul knew now where the smell had come from.
He was standing at the edge of a large, seemingly bottomless pit. There were houses surrounding it, and some even hanging from it's edge, occasionally creaking as if they were about to fall.
It reeked of something Paul couldn't even describe, and it made him gag.
He quickly stepped away and decided to check out some of the buildings around him.
Paul noted that most of the buildings had opened doors when he stepped in one of the houses.
He saw that the inside only had basic furniture. Couch, tables, a bed. It was one giant room with all the basic comforts for living.
What slightly unnerved him, was the half-eaten food on the floor. Whoever had been eating it had overturned the chair, and spilled the food everywhere.
He slowly came to a realisation that this was a civilian settlement. He thought that this was probably a recent colony of some sort, as it would explain the bland box houses. He figured that practicality over art in these kinds of places would serve you well.
What Paul couldn't figure out, was why everyone had abandoned their homes.
He decided to think on that later, and slowly stumbled towards an object he hoped would be a fridge.
When he opened it, he nearly fainted. There was a single water bottle in the fridge.
He grabbed it, opened the cork and started chugging the water frantically. Paul immediately started coughing and sputtering. Half of the water was now on the floor.
He looked at it for a minute, then sighed, shook his head and cursed his idiocy.
He threw the water bottle away and walked outside. The sun's searing heat forced him back into the house.
Paul decided to sleep instead, and flopped down on the bed.
He woke up to a distant rumbling noise. He got up, and walked outside.
Paul noticed that the sun was slowly setting already. Then he saw the source of the rumbling: a bunch of vehicles heading towards the settlement from the same direction he came from.
When the vehicles got closer he saw that they all had large cannons mounted on them and looked suspiciously similar to the M29 Grizzly from Mass Effect.
Paul was a bit frightened of these facts, and decided to hide in the house to see what the newcomers want from there.
He was crouching behind the bed, listening for any sounds.
Soon enough, the vehicles stopped nearby. Afterwards he heard numerous footsteps and talking.
"Alright everyone, teams of five! Spread out, search the buildings for survivors!" a voice called out.
Paul heard quite a few "Yes, sir's" from outside. Then he started thinking on what their apparent leader had said. He figured that if they're looking for survivors, he shouldn't be in much danger.
His confidence disappeared when five armed and fully armored men found him.
One of them pointed his weapon at Paul in surprise. He went into panic.
"Oh Holy shit, don't shoot me, don't shoot me! I didn't do anything to this colony, it was like this when I got here!"
Then he ran towards a window and jumped out in an attempt to escape the 'crazed humans'.
It only served to cause him even more trouble, as running from military is generally seen as a suspicious activity.
So there he was, kneeling in front of those people, with his hands behind his head.
One of them, a woman, was apparently their appointed interrogator, because she started asking questions.
"Who are you?" the lady asked him in an extremely stern voice.
"My name's Paul," he mumbled quietly.
Then the woman leaned closer to him, and spoke right into his ear: "I'm sorry? I couldn't quite hear you. What. Is. Your. Name?"
"It's Paul! And I swear I have no idea what the hell happened here! I got here just a few hours ago myself, looking for water. Then you people showed up, and one of you shoved a gun right into my face! Of course I fucking ran!" His words were getting more frantic by the second.
The lady stepped back, and looked at her companions.
"Okay, which one of you morons scared our only possible witness on this?"
A man spoke up: "He was hiding behind a bed, and when I saw him, I just reacted, ma'am!"
She sighed. "Alright... Try not to do that next time we get into a situation like this. Am I understood?"
Her subordinate couldn't answer though, because another voice cut in: "Corporal Shepard, Toombs! You might wanna come over here, there's something you're going to want to see!"
"Alright, I'm heading over there! Keep an eye on this kid. Don't let him run away. He might be able to tell us what went on over here," Shepard ordered the other soldiers.
Paul looked at Shepard in complete surprise for a second, and then towards the hole in the middle of the colony. Then something clicked in his head.
"Oh... Shit... Oooooh shit!" Paul got up slowly while shaking his head in denial.
"What is it pal, constipation?" one of the men guarding him asked.
Paul was not able to talk anymore. He was in too much of a shock by then.
The soldiers were starting to get slightly concerned.
"Uh'... Corporals? The civilian is getting... Agitated."
Paul spoke up with a voice of pure fear: "If she's near a big-ass hole at the center of the colony... tell Shepard that a Thresher Maw made it."
The soldiers suddenly looked extremely uncomfortable, and one of them asked Paul: "Wait, what the fuck do you mean Thresher Maw? Those giant worms the krogans keep talking about?!"
"That's exactly what I'm talking about!" Paul responded in an agitated voice.
A soldier took off his helmet and threw it on the ground. "Oh shit, oh shit! What are we gonna do now? There are no civilians except for this clown here, we've got a giant worm crawling somewhere right under us right now... We need to get the hell out of here!"
Paul cut off his ranting. "I got more news... There may be more than one."
He could see all of their eyes going wide. One of them touched the side of his helmet.
"Ma'am? Sirs? Did you hear all that?" He nodded a few seconds later.
"Okay... What are your orders?"
"Are you sure?"
The soldier looked up at the others dramatically.
"We're staying here. They say they need time to confirm that it was in fact Thresher Maws."
"Are they fucking nuts? We stay here, we get eaten," Paul hissed at him.
"Pal, if that's their orders, that's their orders! We're staying right here until our superiors say otherwise."
Paul shook his head, and was about to run towards the pit to yell at Shepard, when he felt a distinct rumbling.
Before anyone could comment on it, a building got smashed from the inside as a Thresher Maw rose out of the ground.
They all gaped at it in pure awe.
One soldier managed to speak up: "Holy... Shit... It's bigger than I thought."
They heard more rumbling, and another, much bigger Thresher Maw rose out of the already existing hole.
Most of the teams had managed to make it back to the vehicles by now, but it also meant that they were all bunched up together.
Shepard and Toombs ran back to the Grizzlies, only to notice that Paul was missing.
They didn't have time to question it, as the Maws were done inspecting their food, and started claiming it.
The two Thresher Maws shot a glob of acid at the vehicles to prevent any soldiers from getting into them.
But before They could start killing the humans themselves, one of the Grizzlies suddenly opened fire on the smaller Maw.
What nobody knew, was that Paul was inside it.
"Yeah, motherfucker! Take that!"
He was about to press the trigger again, when the Grizzly suddenly lurched. He felt the vehicle being lifted into the air, and his heart was suddenly filled with dread.
"Anybody know who the fuck is driving that?!" a soldier managed to ask while they were all shooting at the closest Thresher Maw.
"No idea! Let's just use the poor idiot's distraction to get the hell out of here!" Shepard responded.
Everyone agreed with it, and got into whatever vehicles they had left.
Right before Shepard got into her own vehicle, she noticed that the two Thresher Maws were fighting over that Grizzly. It got sheared in half, and a figure dropped out, yelling:
"Sheeeeepaaaaaaaaaaaaaaard!" right before it hit the ground.
Shepard saw immediately that it was the civilian.
She ran over to him and tried to lift him up.
He only responded to that in a weak voice: "You all were gonna run when I did that, weren't you... Commander Shepard, the great Alliance hero... My... Fat... Hairy... Ass..."
Shepard heard Toombs yell: "Shepard, we need to go NOW!"
She looked up, and saw that the Maws had realised that there was no one inside the mangled Grizzly anymore. They spat their respective pieces out and looked at her. She dropped Paul and ran.
The Grizzlies all drove away from the colony at full speed, while the smaller Maw attempted to eat Paul.
But suddenly the larger one slammed into the smaller one and it fell right on top of Paul with all of it's body weight.
It took both of them over half an hour of snuffing the ground to come to the conclusion that their food is gone.
Yet another chapter of Arrivals In Effect!
Credits: Chaszcz for the idea.
Tell me what you think, people, and I'll see you in the next chapter!
Oh, and if you notice some weird updates with this, it's because I fixed some more errors I found in the previous chapters.