After a moment of staring at John, the alien tensed up. It seemed he recognized John as well.
"No kill?" He asked hesitantly. Hoping the human wouldn't take advantage of his injured state.
John tightened his grip on the handle of his knife and stared at the alien across from him. The two of them sat in tense silence for several minutes, neither one daring to make the first move. Eventually the alien broke the silence.
"Name, rank?" He asked.
"Private John Doe." John responded. "And you are?" He gestured to the alien.
"Charrack, hunter."
John nodded. He did his best to remember as much of their language as he could. After another minute he asked a follow up question.
"How did we get here?"
Charrack scratched his head before answering, "You demolition portal, you explain."
"The word is 'destroyed', Charrack." John responded in English.
"Destroyed," Charrack mumbled.
Rather than communicating in this manner to pick up scraps of a bigger picture they decided to ask each other what different things where. After a few hours back and forth, John's vocabulary had significantly improved and he added hundreds if not thousands of nouns. Charrack already seemed to have a decent grasp of English, but he was a little rusty.
The night seemed particularly long and eventually the "conversation" died down. A wave of exhaustion swept over John. To his surprise, he no longer felt any animosity towards Charrack. They would need each other's help if they wanted to survive this, and try as he might John couldn't keep his eyes open. Next thing he knew, he fell into a fitful sleep.
...
He awoke the next morning to see something shaking him. He instinctively lashed out with his knife and the creature barely managed to leap back and dodge his attack letting out a cackling laugh. The creature had pointy ears and two sets of limbs, both with opposable thumbs and clawed fingers.
"Charrack!" John shouted, "wake up you stupid lizard."
A moan escaped Charrack's lips and he sat up.
"Lizard? That doesn't look like a lizard to me." He said, rubbing the sleep out of his eyes.
John switched to Charrack's alien tongue, "Not him, you!"
He leapt at the cackling beast as it deftly dodged his fruitless attacks, swiping it's front limbs at John as it did so.
"I'm no more lizard than you are ape. My people are called the Valk"
"Good to know." John remarked sarcastically as the strange beast tackled him to the ground.
The creature started scratching at John's arms but one of it's hands got lopped off in turn. It leapt off of John, clutching it's wrist and hissing at him. It's crazed brown eyes darted back and forth from John's face to the knife.
Charrack finally woke up enough to realize what was going on and quickly snatched the animal by it's legs and face. It clawed desperately at his arms but the claws couldn't penetrate the scaled arm.
John finally looked around now that things were under control. Their campfire had gone out, and the body of the beast they slew last night had been dragged to the treeline. The carcass had been torn up and half eaten, which was a problem for two big reasons; first, they could have used it for food, and secondly it meant there were more scavengers.
John looked into the trees and could see several more creatures that looked just like the one that had woken him up. They were moving slowly and silently until John made eye contact. Then they all charged at him, screaming in a horrible falsetto.
"We might want to run." John suggested in Valken to Charrack.
The stubborn Valk shook his head, "No, I have a better idea."
He ripped the head off of the strange beast and threw it on the ground face up in front of the approaching horde. The leader of the pack came to a skittering halt and spun around at the sight of the head. The rest of the pack followed close behind, screeching and yapping in turn.
John stood for a moment, breathing heavily. "How did you know that would work?" He asked.
Charrack shrugged, "Lucky guess."
"Do you think they'll come back?"
"Maybe."
Their strange method of communication had evolved into speaking the other person's language to each other, so John spoke Valken and Charrack spoke English. For some reason it was easier to understand someone speaking your own language than trying to understand the other.
John started scattering the charcoal from last night's fire rubbing some on his skin.
"What are you doing?" Charrack asked.
"Making it so that nobody can tell we were here and covering my scent." John assumed this would be obvious, especially to a hunter.
Charrack shook his head, "There are no people on this planet, and that will do little to cover your stink." He stated plainly.
"Ouch." John straightened up and brushed his hands off on his legs.
After deciding the "boar" wasn't worth scavenging the two unlikely companions set off to find water and fresh food. On the way John thought to ask what Charrack thought of humans in general. As touchy a subject as this was, John was curious.
Charrack thought for a moment before answering. "Until yesterday, I thought all humans were murderers, killing just for the fun of it, taking whatever they could with no thought of others. But you saved my life, I'm not sure what I think anymore."
Charrack's initial words surprised John. Based on what he was told the Valk were bloodthirsty monsters that attacked humans who attempted first contact.
"From what I heard, your people started the war when we attempted to make contact."
Charrack laughed humorlessly, "I mean no offense, but that is just political lies."
"Propaganda you mean?" John clarified.
Charrack nodded, "I was there when the humans first landed on one of our worlds. They rained fire on our civilian populous and demanded payment in exchange for mercy. We gave them our portal technology, but it wasn't enough to satiate their greed. They returned and struck again, but we decided to fight back. Unfortunately the war has continued for more than a decade now and it seems there may never be an end to the slaughter."
John stumbled to a halt, "You're saying the war has been going on for more than ten earth years?"
Charrack sighed and sat down under a tree, "Where have you been living? Do people on earth even know what's been happening?"
John scratched the back of his head, "Full disclosure, I have no memories from before I arrived at the military training base. That's how I got my name, people who nobody knows are called a 'John Doe'. I just woke up at the entrance of the base without a name or identifying mark."
Charrack's eyes widened, " No memories?"
"None." John shook his head.
"That must have been rough." Charrack mused.
The truth was it made everything easier, but John didn't feel the need to respond. Charrack suddenly interrupted their break, "I can smell water."
He rushed off in the direction of the sunrise and John followed close behind. "How can you smell water?"
They scrambled through the trees as silently and quickly as they could. And came to a stop at the edge of the treeline overlooking a flowing river. There was one problem though, the water was red with blood, and without water they wouldn't last long....