Page 7 of Meteor Storm

Rolling my head from side to side to relieve some tension, I bent and started slicing my dress with my knife. I tore it right up to the top of my thigh in case I had to scale a tree or kick something.

No matter what, you fight. Always fight. Never lie down and take it, my own voice echoed in my head.

Of course, I was talking about a few middle school bullies who were bothering Natascha at the time, but that wisdom could be used in my current situation, too.

The crowds went absolutely wild again and the valerian woman beside me chuckled.

“They announced you. The crowd is eager to see how long you last.

“Perfect,” I said under my breath.

It felt like the voice in the speaker talked on for ages. My palms were sweating, and my skin was crawling. I skimmed over the males standing across from us, a line of hungry beasts. My brain still couldn’t wrap around the idea that they were alien men. Aliens. And beside me stood alien women. The point of the game I’d just been thrown into without an ounce of instruction or preparation was still a puzzle, but I was starting to suspect the worst. The worst, as in the men were there to fight over us and then screw our unwilling brains out in front of a sick, perverted crowd.

I felt ill. My insides were turning. Maybe the food they kept giving me really wasn’t sitting right after all this time. Maybe this is what true nervousness felt like. Shock. Dread. I pressed a hand to my chest, trying to steady my breath. I could tell my heart was about to beat its way right out of my chest.

And then my eyes settled for a moment on the tall, gray one. As if he could feel my eyes on him, he looked at me. Straight at me. Or, at least, I thought he did. A tremor ran through my body. I fought to keep myself steady, straining to hold together the splintering pieces of my overwhelmed mind before it got away from me.

The gray one stared for a while and then turned, glancing at another one of the males beside him. My eyes followed his gaze to one of the ape-like creatures on four legs. He was looking at me, too, though it was more like a starved hound looking at a chicken carcass.

My stomach flipped again.

Maybe I was imagining things, but it felt an awful lot like the attention was on me.

“Don’t surrender easy, human,” the valerian said, her accent almost too heavy to understand. “These men may kill you and then fuck you. You must fight.”

“Huh?” I said just as the speakers shrieked with a loud, high-pitched horn of some kind. It nearly startled me out of my skin.

In less than a second, everyone started running. The females scattered, heading in all different directions. For a moment, my feet didn’t know what to do. I’d hardly processed where I was let alone that I had to flee. But when the males started to sprint, I reacted like a zebra spotting a lion.

My first thought was to head for the trees. They were thick and the added obstacle might be harder for bigger creatures to navigate. The sand was fine, but sand in general made running difficult. It was hot once I sprinted further into the environment, too. Not so hot that it was painful, but hot enough for me to notice on my bare soles.

Looking to my right, I saw not one, but two males fighting to catch up to me before I met the tree line. I picked up my pace, hoping I was running as fast as I felt like I was.

The two males in hot pursuit consisted of the ape creature, who ran on all fours like an actual animal, and one of the thin, tall ones with the spikes on its head. Maybe the big gray one decided the competition was not worth it and had gone after someone else.

I would have called that a win, but I was convinced it didn’t matter how many males I had coming for me. I wouldn’t be able to survive even one.

I reached the trees just as the males got close enough for me to hear their thundering footsteps. The ape lunged and I quickly ducked behind a tree. The creature ran into it with a thump, splintering the wood in my wake. I kept pushing, harder than I’d ever pushed before, to escape whatever was supposed to come next.

The skinny one entered my peripheral, running parallel until I veered off between two thick branches, putting space between us. But when I did that, the ape reappeared, reaching toward me through the brush with a long, thick limb and extended fingers. He said something so inhuman, I almost didn’t think it was words at all. But the more he spoke, the more I realized he was speaking a language and not just growling and grunting.

I wasn’t sure why that was so unsettling, but it was. It was Planet of the Apes shit that I wasn’t ready for. He reached for me again and I sidestepped, but that was a mistake because I moved right into the spindly arms of the skinny spike-head.

I screamed and thrashed, swiping at him with my dull blade. I felt it hit his skin, but it did nothing, as I expected. I was thrown to the ground and just as I rolled over to face my attacker, the ape came barreling out of the trees in a mess of dust and broken branches, colliding with the skinny one. I crawled away from them as they quarreled, and the crowds went wild with excitement.

I climbed to my feet, seizing what I knew was probably my only chance to get away, and ran for it again. Passing a few more trees, I came to a clearing and found myself faced with a violent sight. The valerian was pinned beneath another skinny spike-head. She was struggling on her stomach, clawing at the ground while the male fought to rip through her thin clothing. On the ground beside them was the spike-head’s weapon. It was a curved blade of some kind, clearly more useful than mine.

I thought nothing of it and rushed forward, picking up the blade. When he noticed I was there, it was already too late. I moved up behind him and just as he turned, I drove the blade across his neck, slicing it clean across the middle. His blood splattered across the sand and before I knew it, he was slumping onto the valerian woman, a twitching mess of body parts that didn’t know they were dead.

I didn’t know if the game had rules, but I didn’t give a damn. In a fight for survival, as far as I was concerned, rules didn’t exist.

The valerian woman pulled herself out from under him, covered in his dark red blood, and looked at me, eyes wide and crazed as she registered what happened. Then her gaze darted past me and she grabbed her dull knife and took off.

“Run,” she barked.

Glancing over my shoulder, the ape, clearly the victor of the fight, was stampeding toward me, stained with the blood of his opponent. I took the curved blade with me and sprinted onward, breathing so hard I thought I might faint from exhaustion. I was on the verge of collapse, and the crowds were loving every moment of the twisted show, waiting for it all to end in a sick, rape-filled bloodbath.

Finally, fatigue got the better of me and as I was leaping over a stone, I missed my step by a hair and went careening to the ground. I rolled, praying the knife in my hand wouldn’t slice me open in the tumble. On my hands and knees, I tried to crawl forward and felt a big, heavy hand on my shoulder. I was tossed onto my back, forced to stare up at the ugly, alien face hovering over me. His skin was leathery. His eyes were intelligent, but his expression was beastly. His blunt teeth were humanlike, but so much of him was not.