An Infinite Sojourn

III

   It was horrific. We stood there frozen in disbelief. Her limbs were twisted in gnarly, unnatural ways and she was covered in her blood. Her left eye was missing, and so was much of her hair. She had wounds all over her. They looked like bite marks of some kind. Her clothes were stained with the dark red color of her freshly spilled blood. Wait, the blood was fresh.

   "Everyone I know this is terrible, a tragedy, but, this happened recently. We need to get back to the ship and gather supplies. Whatever did this... could do the same thing to us."

"God man. That's seriously fucked up. But yeah let's get outta here." Oswald sighs in despair. This was a tragedy, a terrible thing happened. But none of us knew her, therefore it wasn't all that hard to move past what happened. It was certainly very sad but we were more worried about it happening to us.

I lead the group back to the ship. It had some pretty noticeable damage but in a best case scenario, it could be repaired and flown back home. We needed to find some sort of shelter, if something did something so gruesome then we need to be safe.

   "What should we do for shelter? I mean we have the ship but it's pretty damaged, we need to find somewhere safe to stay. I saw a few caves over there where we found..." Daisy stopped, realizing where we just were and what had just happened.

   "I have an idea. The gravity is pretty light here, and our ship isn't all that big. Let's push it out toward those caves, so it'll be close by. We can make shelter in a cave and have the ship with all our supplies outside it." No one argued and we all pushed the ship over where we saw a small cave, somewhat close to where we found the body. It was relatively easy, but we were still sweating by the end.

   I looked up. The huge orange sun was setting. I started looking through the luggage in the ship. I had packed a survival bag for an emergency, like this. After I found it I grabbed it and brought it into the cave.

   "What's that?" Oswald loudly asked.

   "I brought a bag of some survival items for emergency." I replied, emptying out the bag onto the ground.

   "Oswald can you gather some- wait is there wood here? Just try to find anything that looks like wood please." I asked politely. He agreed and went off to look.

   I organized the items from the bag into four piles: medical supplies, rations, tools, and weapons. I wanted to give everyone a weapon but at the same time I don't know these people. They could easily slit my throat in my sleep. So I took the medical supplies, rope, sleeping bags, bottles of water, and food out of my bag and left everything else in it. I then put my bag back in the ship.

   "Aarav, could you test the air for us please." I asked when I came back.

Aarav went to the ship quickly, and brought back some high tech gadget or gizmo. He turned it on and it made a loud suction noise and then started beeping.

He read the results aloud, "The pressure is 1019 millibars. It is composed of: 22.3 percent oxygen, 9.8 percent nitrogen, and 67.8 percent unknown."

"Unknown? Do you think it could be some sort of unearthly gas?" I asked, curiously.

He read the air a few more times. "It has to be. How strange. I wonder if the air is breathable. It has enough oxygen, and the pressure is close to that of Earth's."

"Take your helmet off." I asked sarcastically.

He immediately took his helmet off.

"I wasn't being serious dumbass. Put it back on." I panicked. He looked at me, smiling. His pupils were slightly dilated.

"No, there's no need. I'm fine, the air is breathable. I thought it would be." He explained.

   I put the helmet back on his head.

"Don't. We can't be sure it's safe." I said sharply. He understood and didn't take the helmet off again.

We sat down outside the cave, waiting for Oswald to come back. But after nearly an hour we started to worry. After what happened earlier, I think we were all on edge.

   "Oswald is taking a long time." I said, pointing out the obvious.

   "What if whatever got that one girl got him too?" Daisy exclaimed, worriedly.

   "Let us wait a few more minutes. If he still doesn't come back we can search. He might just be taking a while to gather as much wood as he can" Aarav explained calmly. I could tell he was also nervous, but he was good at remaining calm. Daisy and I agreed and sat back down.

   A couple minutes after this, Oswald rapidly sprints into the cave, where we are. He puts his hands on his knees and bends down, coughing.

   After he catches his breath he tells us what happened, "I saw smoke. I was past here, looking for wood. But I saw smoke in the air a little further ahead. Looked like it could've been from a campfire."

"Wonder if it's the native species or... could other humans be here?" I questioned. "However, a more important question is whatever it is, are they an enemy or an ally?"

thanks for reading XD