Understanding

Before leaving, he stood by the closed door with his head turned to listen for anything outside. After a moment of silence, he slid it open and stepped outside.

I poked my head around the doorway before creeping after him. Down the corridor, the creatures were still squealing and cackling. At some point during our first aid session, the aliens had come stampeding by our room and I hadn't even noticed.

"What is that thing?" I asked, squinting into the darkness. Speech was slowly becoming easier and easier. "It's different from the others."

He gave me a pointed look and growled. I grimaced and shook my head. "Never mind. I don't know why I ask. It's not like you can answer my questions."

I'd have to limit them in a way he could answer "yes" or "no" with ease.

The alien studied me for a moment, then growled and led me down the path in silence. I tried to think of a way to form my questions so he could answer in a simple manner.

It was necessary if I wanted to figure out how these things worked, where they came from, and what they wanted. If I knew those things, then maybe I could help kill them easier.

/Fat chance./

I waited until I was sure it was safe to start asking him questions—though, it should have been fine anyway. I was supposed to be drawing these things out so my escort could kill them, right?

Or had we given than up with the arrival of the one super beast running around? I didn't know. Everything was fucky now and I was still a little woozy from blood loss.

Whatever drug he'd given me was keeping me on my feet, at least.

With my questions formulated, I dove into it.

"Is that big thing the same type of creature as the others?" I asked.

When he answered in the positive—a single nod and a hiss—it left me wondering why it looked different if it was the same. Was it just another mutation like the strange, smaller creature he'd killed earlier? A different life stage?

I wished I could rapid-fire the questions at him but I had to go slow.

"Is it . . . um . . ." I scrambled for which to ask first. "Does it play a different role than the others?"

My reasoning was simple: ants and bees were different sizes depending on their role in the hive. These pest aliens kind of reminded me of a hive. They had eggs that hatched and drones that tended to and protected them, and there was a big one running around.

He had to think about it for a moment but eventually responded in the negative: a dismissive wave and a short grunt.

"Does it look different because it's older?" I ventured.

The answer I received was another no.

Frustrated, I racked my brain for anything else that made sense. Anything at all that would possibly make it so much bigger and dissimilar to the rest of them running around. I wished I had gotten a better look at it earlier.

It wasn't its rank, and it wasn't its age, so what else was there? There wasn't anything I could think of, except maybe—

Hosts. The things needed a host to breed. That had been my intended fate.

"Do these things take on traits from their hosts?"

That was a yes and I swelled with pride. My problem solving skills weren't failing me.

"So, then, was it born from . . . something . . . not human?" I kept my voice quiet as I drilled him. I didn't know how far ahead the creature was, and I didn't want to find out.

Yes, he signaled. Something else had sowed the giant thing hunting us down.

"From here? From Earth, I mean?" came my follow-up question.

The area was known for its elk population and sometimes the occasional bear, after all. There would have been plenty of other things wandering around, though I hadn't seen any animal corpses as of yet.

However, my escort told me that that wasn't the case.

"So . . . from another planet?"

He indicated that I was right.

I tried to pay attention to the path we were taking as well as the information that I was gathering. It wouldn't matter, though. All the halls and doors looked the same so I was bound to lose my way if I was ever separated from the big goon leading me around.

After a few minutes, I asked, "How did it get here, then?"

He didn't respond except for a few strange sounds and I grimaced at my slip-up. /Right. Yes or no questions only./

"Was . . ." I stumbled for the right wording. "Did you bring it here for some reason?"

A grunt in the negative.

"On accident?"

He hissed in the affirmative.

Considering that for a moment, I next inquired, "Did it cause the ship to crash?"

His steps paused and he grumbled, then nodded and continued onward.

It was enough to sate my curiosity: the weird creature was a stowaway from another planet. It was still the same species, but their host determined what they looked like, or something like that.

There were no parasites like that on Earth that I could think of, ones that took on traits from their hosts. I didn't see much of anything human-like in the smaller bugs running around, though.

They walked kind of upright, but that was the only similarity at first glance.

The strange brown one had been entirely a quadruped, like the one that had snatched me up. Maybe they were from an animal host.

Any other questions bouncing around in my brain were far more complicated than any yes or no question I could formulate. What sort of traits did they inherit? How did it work?

There was no way I was going to understand any biology lessons this guy gave me, and no guarantee he'd know how it worked, either.

Overall, though, I was satisfied and content to follow after him in silence, stewing in my own curiosity. I'd probably never know the answers, and I figured that was just fine.

I just wasn't any closer to knowing how better to kill one.

We walked for another few minutes and I realized how empty I felt; like I was forgetting something. I racked my brain trying to figure out what it was; my shirt? No, I'd left that behind on purpose.

My phone? No, that was still in my back pocket. I checked it for reception again, but there was still nothing. A few more cracks in the screen, though.

Another forty minutes had passed since the last time I'd checked the clock.

At least if the armed forces didn't call in at some point, reinforcements would arrive. Maybe just a small team of people to figure out what was going on before they called the rest of the military.

Still, it was something to look forward to.

Finally, after staring at the gauntlet on my escort's arm, trying to figure out where the blades went, I realized what I was missing.

A weapon. I had left behind my chunk of metal.

Fat lot of good it did me, anyway.

"Wait," I muttered, matching his strides to walk next to him. "Let me have a weapon. And not another piece of junk this time. I want to be able to defend myself."

He pretended not to hear me and turned down a fork in the road. I glared at him and decided to try again in a couple minutes. Maybe he was busy concentrating.

The screeches receded further into the ship, as did the roars. Whatever was patrolling the halls, we had tricked it into wandering away from us. How long until it circled back, though, I wasn't sure.

The place was enormous. Surely we had plenty of time.

I watched him with sharp eyes, noting the way his head inclined at every noise. The grumbling that came from his chest was almost like he was muttering to himself. I didn't know what it meant, but it made him seem less alien somehow.

Maybe not quite human, but at least more of a person than a mysterious alien creature. I was somewhat fascinated by him, how humanoid but inhuman he looked.

I wondered what he looked like under that mask, if he was so buff because of his job or if all of his kind looked like that. I tried not to stare, but if he noticed he didn't let on.

I decided it was time to try again.

"Can I PLEASE have a real weapon? I promise I'll—"

He stopped without warning and I almost bumped into him. Unaware, he turned toward the wall and pulled down a section of crust the pests had left, revealing a control pad. He dragged the claw of his index finger down it, activating the pad, then pressed some keys.

The door slid open with a hiss and I jumped.

Assuming this was another hunt for some survivors, I made no move to enter. The few times I had before, he'd stopped me. This time, however, he motioned for me to step inside and stood out of the way so I could enter first.

Initially, I thought it was some sort of trick so I remained at the threshold, staring in. He chittered in a hushed tone and shoved me inside, making me stumble.

I spluttered some choice profanities at him and straightened up, looking around the room. It was much darker than out in the hall, so it took a moment for my eyes to adjust.

When they did, all the color drained from my face. I made to backpedal from the room, but he herded me inside with his bulk and closed the door behind him.

Standing outside was dangerous, after all. If the pest aliens came by while he was in the room doing his business, I'd be a goner and could bring more than just the drones on us.

He seemed able to handle them no problem, but the big thing running around had him a little jittery.

Regardless, I wasn't very keen on being inside the room, either.

Lining the wall were dozens of strange, alien skulls. Some were as big as me, some were animal sized, a few were similar to the serpents running around and . . . I looked away from the familiar skulls, unwilling to acknowledge them.

It wasn't hard to figure out what they were there for: trophies.

But it wasn't the trophy skulls that had me clamoring for the exit. My grandpa had an elk head mounted on his wall, one that had almost broken a record. I wasn't a stranger to trophies.

No, it was the humanoid slumped over in the corner, their expressionless gray mask staring straight at me.

It took several seconds of cowering to realize that the new alien wasn't awake. He might not have even been alive: three ragged claw marks were scored across his chest, raw and bloody and DEEP.

As tough as these two looked, there was no way he would have survived having his chest cleaved open like that.

He was just as big and bulky as my escort was, leaving me to wonder if they all looked like that even though it was a small sample size. They were probably just of a similar job type, right? Not all humans looked the same and neither did the pest aliens.

My escort strode up to the fallen humanoid, kneeled in front of him, and put a hand to the helm before lowering his head in respect. I left him to give his buddy his . . . last respects or whatever and used the time to examine the bleached trophies adorning the walls.

The lights hovering over them gave off waves of heat and I rolled up the sleeves of my jacket. I unzipped it far enough that my bra was still hidden, though I doubted this alien cared.

It wasn't so much for modesty reasons anymore as it was for protection. I had no shirt, so I needed something to protect my delicate human skin.

"Who killed these?" I asked, glancing over my shoulder. My escort wasn't paying attention and I blushed in shame.

He was grieving. My questions could wait.

All the skulls alone pieced some of the puzzle together. They enjoyed hunting as a pastime, at least.

Maybe they had been hunting the big pest running around but it had snuck aboard, made the ship crash, then started infecting anyone it came in contact with.

Or maybe someone had just been hunting something on the planet it came from and the big guy snuck aboard, an unwitting space cockroach that infested everything.

Grandpa had hunted many deer and elk, but had only one trophy head. It had been two inches away from a record buck, so I assumed all the skulls present were the same. Trophy creatures that held some sort of prestige.

Or maybe they just liked the way they looked. I wanted to ask instead of speculate, but I also didn't want to be an imposition.

So far, nothing he killed had been claimed as a trophy, which made sense considering the circumstances. He wasn't hunting so much as he was exterminating, though I did spot several skulls that resembled the drones.

I checked in on him: he was standing and picking up the pieces of a few skulls that had fallen and shattered during the crash. Now it was probably safe to ask.

"Who killed all these? Was it you?"

His head turned toward me and he grunted the sound I took to mean "no". He instead motioned toward a single wall against the far back.

The room was the size of one of my classrooms at school, and each wall had its own section of trophies.

Sparing a final glance over my shoulder, I walked to the wall he indicated. There were only a few, most likely his crowning achievements. Some were the elongated skulls of the serpents—all in varying designs.

The two biggest ones were in the center. They were roughly the same size he was, with the skulls fanning out like a crowned crest. I almost assumed they were a different species, but when I moved closer I saw the second set of jaws nestled inside.

There were some other creatures present, but it seemed these mega pests were prominent. The two center pieces looked strong and important, but it might have been a specific host trait.

"So these are all yours," I muttered. He was standing now, replacing several dislodged trophies to the wall. The ones that hadn't been broken into bits.

My escort chittered in response, but I couldn't understand. He made his way toward me, stopping to pick up a few pieces that had fallen.

"Do you have more somewhere else, or is this it?" I faced the huge cranium and reached out to run my fingers down its high crest, but a scaled hand grabbed my wrist. I inhaled a sharp breath and stumbled when he pulled me back, barking out an admonishment.

I pulled my hand out of his grasp and recoiled from him, rubbing where he'd squeezed too hard. "Ow! I'm sorry! You were touching THOSE ones, I didn't think—"

Growling, he thumped me upside the head. I grunted and shot him a sour look, but backed away.

"God damn, sorry. The human's not allowed to touch . . . fucking got it," I mumbled, glowering at his back. He hadn't hit me hard, but my head was still throbbing as a side-effect of the alien painkiller.

He leaned down to pick up another skull from the floor and examined a coin-sized chip with an irritated trill and disappointed head dip.

"So," I started, "is hunting your hobby?"

He considered the question, then huffed. I asked, "Your job?" and he hissed the word I'd come to learn was "yes".

It seemed like hunting was a pretty prolific job; there were several different sections marked with various symbols. A showcase of different members' favorites.

A select few had the same large serpent skull, but only my escort had two. One had three, and several dozen other skulls.

"Are you a pretty good hunter, then?"

My escort set aside his now-fixed skull (when had he done that?) and gave himself a shake. I wasn't sure how to take it, so I dropped the question altogether. Maybe he was being humble.

Rolling my eyes, I turned back to his wall and looked at some of the other skulls. Up until then I could ignore the heads I wanted to, but my eyes finally came to rest on the morbid familiarity of the bones lining the bottom of his showcase.

Human skulls. In a neat little row. He didn't have many, but there they were.

I turned away from the wall and indicated toward the human skulls. "You hunt humans for trophies, too?" My voice was low, and I hoped he had heard me.

At first he didn't acknowledge my question. When I was about to ask it again, he turned toward me and nodded once. My heart stuttered and I looked away from him, hugging myself.

They killed humans for sport.

I was human.

We were silent for several heartbeats while he let that sink in. I forced myself to remember that he wasn't trophy hunting right now. If he had been, he would have killed me when first we met.

No, probably not. I was hardly worth anything, young and weak.

But if he hunted humans, why was he helping me? He shouldn't care if I lived or died. I couldn't even claim he was using me; I hadn't done a single bait-like thing since he'd agreed I could follow him.

Then he'd come back and saved me when he'd hidden me from the big one! Doctored my wounds, let me inside this room instead of making me stand outside and look tasty.

It didn't make any fucking sense.

My lips pressed into a thin line. If he wanted to kill me, he would have done it already back when he first met me in the egg room. He'd all but pulled the trigger then, but stopped for some reason.

There was only one hope should he turn his murderous gaze on me—convince him to give me a weapon. At least then I'd be able to defend myself for, oh say, three seconds before he cut me down.