Authors: Kathleen Edwards
We laid cradled in each other's arms for what seemed like hours. I dozed restfully, my body humming with our love as he held me tight against his chest, his heart acting like a metronome.
It felt like it had been years since I was this happy, this content with my life. And it had been years, and all because something vital was missing from it. D-Arin was what was missing, and I was determined to never let him go again, no matter what.
Despite the comfort and well-being I was feeling, I knew that D-Arin had returned to earth for a reason. He’d come in search of my uncle because of what was coming to earth, or what was already here. And now that Dale was gone, I would be the one who would have to deal with whatever was here alongside D-Arin. As comfortable, content, and warm as I was in D-Arin’s arms, my blood was beginning to turn cold. I sat up and stroked D-Arin’s cheek, gently waking him out of his slumber.
“So tell me about the hunters?” I asked.
***
There’s a “secret” UFO document that has been making its way around the internet for the past decade called Project Blue Book. UFO conspiracies claim that Project Blue Book is a government document proving that the United States of America and aliens have been in contact with one another for decades (Ever since the “crash landing” of a UFO in Roswell, New Mexico back in 1947. But I’ll let you in on a little secret, the only thing that crashed in New Mexico in 1947 was a human-made nuclear-powered air craft. It did cause us to gain the attention of several alien races, but that’s about it.), and that all of the technological advances we’ve made during that time is because of technology was given to us by alien races in exchange for god knows what. Most conspiracists believe the US government agreed to let the aliens kidnap and experiment on a certain percentage of the population.
With my memories now restored, I can tell you in all honesty that this claim is completely false. In fact, although the government knows that aliens exist, they consider them to be a hostile force, and Project Blue Book is nothing more than a CIA created document. It’s something the intelligence community refers to as a false flag. It’s basically a counter-intelligence method to lull people into believing that aliens and UFO’s exist and they’re constantly buzzing around the earth, pulling people out of their beds with tractor beams and then sticking probes up their asses for some unknown reason. By planting these stories and documents, what the government is really accomplishing is distracting people from what they’re actually doing, which is typically developing high-speed air craft built with less than stable materials and laser-based weapons.
I know this seems a little overly complex, but there’s some serious logic to it. UFO people—and conspiracy people in general—are all very intelligent and obsessive human beings. They’re the types who most likely would’ve made great investigative journalists if they weren’t so obsessed with pop culture. So what the CIA does is they feed their obsessions so that the conspiracy nuts keep their noses out of what’s really going on.
The one thing Project Blue Book does get right—and it’s the one piece of truth the CIA purposely allowed into the book—is a glossary of known alien types that have visited earth over the decades. Almost every single one of these, with the exception of only a few, is completely accurate. D-Arin and his people are listed in it, although the gray men are also listed as a separate species, as well as another dozen non-hostile aliens who supposedly live among the human population. Once again, this is nothing but disinformation. Aliens have all evolved in different atmosphere types for the exception of D-Arin’s people and one other species. The rest need complex breathing apparatus in order to even step foot on earth.
But the other species that can withstand earth’s atmosphere can also withstand most other atmospheres. In fact, they’re essentially the alpha predator of the known galaxies, and they are universally feared because of their adaptability, ferocity, and their absolute need to kill. Nothing is known about the species, not even their home planet, but they are known as hunters. There has been a theory that’s floated around for years that hunters don’t have a home planet and are actually some form of biological weapon that was developed thousands of years ago by a now extinct species, and pods of them were placed on every inhabited planet in the known galaxies and would only be activated if the population of a particular planet became too large to support its native life forms. Think of it as forced Darwinism. But, of course, it’s only a theory.
The reality of the hunters is once they appear, they will obliterate anything in its path, like a tornado, but made up of claws and teeth. Typically, only one will appear, and you need to kill it as soon as possible because they reproduce asexually. Basically, if you ignore the problem for too long, a single hunter can become 100, and then 1000, and then 10,000. If they reach that kind of numbers, you might as well say bye-bye to your planet.
“So how many of them are there?” I asked as we stood in front of his 3-D heads-up display.
“So far I have only tracked one here in southwestern New Mexico.”
“The painted desert.”
“Yes.”
D-Arin’s people are more or less like the police for the known galaxies. They’re an extremely old race and universally treasured for their fairness, ingenuity, and adaptability. Theirs’s was the race who made first contact after America detonated the atomic bombs and crash landed the nuclear powered air craft. They came because they wanted to make sure that we weren’t a threat to our neighboring planets or galaxies. Once they determined that we were only playing with our new found technology, they deemed the human race as a non-threat, but still kept an eye on us in case we ever became threatened by hunters. They also covertly recruited humans who they felt would be able to handle themselves against a hunter, and whose minds were adaptable to having their memories erased time and again. Because here’s another interesting fact about hunters: They can read minds, and the more native populations know about them, the more aggressive they became.
It was a double edge sword: Prepare certain members of the native population to defend their planet against a hunter, but wipe their memories clean of that training until they were absolutely needed, and then activate them.
I had now been fully activated and I was ready for whatever the hunters threw at us.
Of course, D-Arin wasn’t entirely convinced of my readiness and kept drilling me about weapons use and my combat training. I finally grew tired of his questions and tossed him over my shoulder and disarmed him of his synth blade. As I held it against his throat, I winked, kissed him, and then pulled him to his feet.
“Do you think I’m ready now?” I asked.
“Yes,” He said with a chuckle. “Yes, I do.”
“Then let’s get to work.”
The painted desert of eastern Arizona and western New Mexico is, for a lack of a better term, a complete wasteland. It is nothing but red, the wind blasted clay and scrub brush. It’s beautiful in its own stark way, but I wouldn’t want to be caught out here for longer than 24 hours without food or water. If you’ve never seen it before, think about all those photos of Mars that have been sent back by the space rover the US has wandering around on it right now. Well, that’s what the painted desert looks like, except more desolate.
D-Arin had detected the hunter because a small group of Navajo ranchers had gone missing (The painted desert is a massive chunk of the Navajo reservation.), but then their remains had been discovered just a few days ago by reservation police. The men and their horses were nothing grizzled and bloody bone. The Navajo police thought that the ranchers may have been attacked by a pack of rabid wolves or rabid dogs. But the locals whispered about skinwalkers and the men trespassing onto sacred land. The locals weren’t too far off the mark.
We teleported to the surface in full gray man gear. If we came across anyone out here in the middle of the night, we’d be inevitably blamed for the massacre of the ranchers. Which was fine, because D-Arin’s people were also big into injecting disinformation into the weird culture of UFO conspiracists. Also, the less the general population knew about the hunters, the better.
We communicated via our heads up display and attuned our visuals to the hunter’s heat spectrum. Hunters are like reptiles, they’re cold blooded (And they look a lot like giant worms, but with hundreds of rows of razor sharp teeth.) and largely travel underground, burrowing deep below the surface and only coming up to hunt when they’re hungry, or in a blood frenzy. With the 9 dead ranchers, D-Arin and I made the assumption that the hunter was now entirely out of control and looking to kill anything that crossed its path. If the hunter was above ground, we were in trouble, because despite their massive size, they could be very stealthy and quiet killers. If it was below ground, our armor would let us know that it was coming via seismic readings.
We scanned and searched the area both below and above ground for hours with no luck. We knew it was there, but it looked like we were going to have to flush out of hiding. Hunters are essentially blind, they can see a few feet in front of them, but they largely rely on scent and hearing. Their sense of hearing was particularly keen, so D-Arin activated a simple sensory pulse device and tossed it out into a large field of scrub brush. The sound the device omitted was entirely undetectable by humans, but I guarantee you that every dog, coyote, and wold within 100 miles of our location was going absolutely bonkers and howling in discomfort. We also hoped it was doing the same thing to the hunter and would bring it to our location.
We waited 10 minutes … 20 minutes … 30 minutes, and nothing happened. D-Arin turned to me, a video of his face appearing on my heads-up display. His brow was knitted with confusion.
“Do you think it’s moved on?” He asked.
“Or maybe it’s de—!”
The desert floor below us exploded, tossing me into the air and I was thrown two dozen yards from where I had been standing. D-Arin was no longer transmitting, and for a brief moment, I panicked. The only reason why he would no longer be transmitting is if he was out of range, or he was dead. Unfortunately, I didn’t have time to think about either possibility, because the hunter was now right in front of me. From what I could see, it was at its full, mature size and was easily 20 feet long and was nearly 10 feet in height. Even though I was easily 20 feet away from, I could feel its hot, stinking breath—the smell of rot permeated my every pore. Its front row of teeth were the size of tombstones but filed down to razor sharp points.
I rose to my feet slowly, readying my weapons, priming my in-suit lasers and activating my synth knives which lit up the black night air with an iridescent blue light. This monster had most likely just devoured the love of my life, and I was going to make it pay.
I charged the hunter just as it started to move towards me, firing my lasers. It was surprisingly fast for a creature so large, and it danced around the beams with only one or two of my shots hitting their target, but the hunter barely seemed to notice. It size was too large, so I would have to engage it directly with my synth blades. I leaped into the air when I was within 7 feet of its mouth, hoping to drive my blades into the tough skin of its head. By I moved too slow and the hunter anticipated me and knocked me hard to the ground. I was now right in front of its open maw, it teeth glittering dull in the wan moonlight. I would soon be joining D-Arin in death and the planet was most likely doomed.
But as the hunter moved in to devour me, it came to a halt, and I could smell the distinct stench of burning emanating from its mouth. Suddenly, the hunter’s midsection exploded in a rain of rotten flesh, and with it came D-Arin, covered in head-to-toe in carrion, his armor scarred, but he was alive!
He pulled me to my feet and then removed his helmet.
“I’m sorry that took me so long.” He said.
I stripped off my helmet, and even though he was covered in slime and stank of what smelled like burnt dog hair, I kissed him so harder that you would have thought I was trying to eat him.
***
D-Arin has decided to stay on earth. Well, not on earth, in his ship orbiting the planet in stealth mode. And I’ll be staying with him most of the time. I’ll occasionally travel to earth to visit my parents and my sister—and before you ask: No, my memories will not be intact when I am on earth that would be too dangerous, especially if the hunter laid any eggs. But D-Arin has vowed to reactivate my memories once I am back on board—but for the most part, I will stay in the ship with D-Arin, waiting patiently for the next time the planet will need us to defend it. My only hope is, it won’t be for a very, very long time.
THE END