"Now what do I do? no working ship, no signal, and no water, and gods know if the animals here are edible" john stared into the distance, weighing his options and wondering if he was truly stuck here for good.
He sat on the mountain's peak thinking strategy after strategy for getting out of the planet, but no amount of thinking would change the fact that his ship was broken. He knew how to fix it, he had done enough repairs on it at this point that basically half of the ship was re-installed or re-arranged by him. But that was back at the bases where he had been stationed during the war with tools and resources that were nowhere to be found on this planet. And without a ship, there was no escape.
He contemplated the situation as he ate some of the rations, but snapped out of his daydream as he noticed the sun's position in the sky. "It will begin setting in a couple of hours, I need to hurry back to the ship before night comes. The forest and these mountains are still too unknown to think about setting camp anywhere."
John grabbed the transmitter and put it back in the suitcase. After putting his items together and finishing his meal, he began the journey back to the ship's landing site, if you could call it that.
The trip back was faster than the trip from the ship since he had cleared all of the necessary vegetation before so he could go much faster now. After about 3 hours he had made it to the midway point. As he made his way down a gully, he noticed some movement at the bottom. He stopped moving for a moment before making his way back up the side of the gully quietly in order to get a better view. Looking down he could see 3 creatures, they were quadrupeds. They were about the size and figure of large wolves, though there was a smaller one that was only about half as big as the other two.
They seemed to be slowly making their way through some foliage at an angle towards John's general direction, their dark purple fur making them quite hard to see in such a dark environment. At first, he thought that his smell betrayed him, but after looking further forward he realized that they were actually stalking another beast that was feeding off the bark and berries of a small tree. The prey was rather tall, its shoulders reaching about 8 feet tall. Its fur was off-white, and most interestingly, its horns were sort of translucent and John only noticed them after taking a good look at the head of the deer-like beast.
The three stalkers had their prey surrounded in a triangle preparing to strike. As they lunged toward the target, John realized something too late. When the horned creature realized what was happening, it used its strong legs to jump over one of its attackers and sprinted up the hill where John was observing this all transpire.
"Not this way, go another way," John cursed internally realizing what was about to happen. Seeing the three attackers not far behind, the horned creature ran as fast as it could up the hill and passed by John -who was now doing his best to hug the giant tree beside him in hopes of not being seen- and continued to run up the hill before disappearing from view. The Wolf-beasts came charging in not 2 seconds after. They sprinted for about 200 feet before one of them sniffed the air and looked back. Its gaze met John's and with a slight gurgle, the other two beasts realized what their companion had noticed. With the same momentum with which they were running, they turned around and began running toward their new prey.
"Time to go."
John stood back up, tightened the straps of his backpack, and ran like hell.
"Fighting here is too much of a risk, even more so at this hour. I need to get to the ship."
John ran the entire way back to the edge of the forest, and all three of the beasts were still hot on his trail. Even running at full speed, he was only managing to keep a 40-50 feet lead on his pursuers. Seems like once he arrived at the ship he was going to have to fight regardless. He had been slightly hoping that they would get tired or bored at some point and leave him alone but after a whole 4 hours of running up and down hills, around many trees, and through extremely thick foliage trying to outmaneuver them and make them lose track of him, they were still able to keep up with him without much trouble. He had even run in circles a couple of times trying to have them confuse his scent and run off in the wrong direction, but it seemed it was all for naught. He only had about another hundred feet or so before the edge of the forest so he gripped his rifle and got ready.
The sky was noticeably darker, but he could still see the light at the edge of the forest. With one long leap, John reached the clearing. He dashed about 30 feet into the clearing before making a hard stop. He then dropped his backpack, got on one knee, and aimed his rifle toward the forest. He could hear the gurgles not far off. A moment of silence fell upon the clearing, the air itself seemed to take a pause. John held his breath.
In an instant, two of the beasts burst out of the green wall. It was the one that had seen him, and by its side was the smaller of the three. With a slight pull of the trigger, John's rifle glowed blue for a second before releasing its charge. The large bang shattered the silence, and before it had even landed, the smaller beast hit the floor dead. The other beast that had jumped out into the clearing made a high-pitched gurgle after seeing its companion fall. John then took aim at it and fired again. Dead.
Both beasts now laid not far from each other, an inch-wide hole on both of their heads.
John then laid his aim back into the forest, waiting for the third one. Its eyes appeared behind one of the large trees. It stood at the very edge of the forest, burning a hole through John's face with its stare.
John adjusted his aim toward where it was, but before he could fire, the beast disappeared back into the forest.
"Damn it."
John stayed kneeling for a couple more seconds, thinking that it might still jump out, but it didn't happen.
He quickly grabbed his backpack and began to back away toward the ship while keeping a close eye on his surroundings.
That night he stayed up all night long, keeping his rifle within reach all night atop the ship's wreck in case the wolf-beast came back for him.
…
As morning came, John was trying to decide his next move. After some ideas, his eyes happened upon the two dead beasts he had killed. Still cautious of the forest, he slowly made his way toward their bodies.
He had experience with alien animals, but these were creatures that he had never even heard about. He grabbed both of the bodies by one leg each and then proceeded to drag them back deeper into the clearing. After being confident in the distance between him and the forest, he began to inspect the bodies of the beasts.
After a short inspection of the corpses, he noticed that the big one had three small horn-like protrusions on its back and the smaller beast had something similar, but it seemed that the spikes hadn't sprouted yet from under the skin. Their tails were about as long as the main section of their bodies, and their teeth and claws were so sharp that John accidentally cut his hand open when he grabbed their paws to inspect them.
"I have a slight suspicion and if I'm correct, I should probably get out of the area for a while in case the other one comes back with others." At the thought of what might come, John began to get all of the equipment that he would need for the long term, he wasn't sure how long he would need to be gone, but he knew that he would have to plan as if he wasn't coming back at all. All of the medicine, food, water, and gear that he could salvage from the wreckage made its way into any pocket or strap that John could fit them in.
After about 2 hours of this, John made his way back to the ship's safe. He opened one of the shelves and pulled out a metal box. He stared at its contents for a couple of minutes before closing it, "I'll come back for it eventually. Too much weight for the journey ahead."
After a while of putting things together, John walked back to where he had left the bodies. To his surprise, something very strange had happened to the beasts. They looked dry, and as he touched them, the bodies were extremely hot as if they had been in an oven for hours.
"What the hell? how did this happen? Do they normally get like this after dying?" John studied the bodies closely, "If they have something that makes them hot after dying, I might be able to extract and use it in the future in case I encounter cold weather."
John grabbed his knife ready to open the beasts up, but before he put the knife in, he heard something. A gurgle coming from the forest.
"Shit, I thought I'd have more time!"
John quickly grabbed his rifle and got ready for action. One distant gurgle turned to two, which turned to three, which then slowly turned to so many that he couldn't get an estimate on how many beasts there were. One thing was certain though, He was surrounded.