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and take in the scene unfolding around us. Stacy directed her attention at the man laughing and crying in the sand. “Who are you?”

For the first time, I was able to give him my full attention. His hair was greying, and he wore some kind of armored suit designed for walking outside the hull of the Orion while in space, or that was what it looked like. His face was filthy. Hair askew, trails of tears cutting through the dirt on his cheeks.

“Who are you?” Stacy demanded, joining Boss Creed, Mark, and Hannah, who trained their weapons on him.

“My name’s David. I’ve been running from the infected since we landed on this hell hole,” David said, leaning back to sit on the sand like a child who had given up. “I managed to survive against all odds. Even found this suit of armor in a crashed section of the Orion in the jungle. I even managed to escape the monsters in the jungle. Then you people show up. Set off an explosion to tell the entire infected population where we are and now, I’ll tell you where we all are, we’re dead.”

The entire time David was speaking, the frantic shrieks and howls in the jungle came closer. I caught movement in the woods behind David. Not just one person—a hundred, a thousand running bodies.

“We need to get to high ground,” Hannah warned.

“Too late,” Mark said as we caught sight of the first howling maniac to emerge from the jungle.

It looked exactly like the woman we had seen in the pod. The one who had strangled the man in front of her. This person who exited the jungle, if you could still call it a person at all, had the same black veins coming from his mouth and eyes. His shirt was ripped in a dozen different places, showing black lines crisscrossing his body. His hair was falling out in clumps.

“Stand down!” Boss Creed yelled at the maniac. “Don’t come any closer!”

It was obvious the crazed man wasn’t going to obey. He did talk, however, and that was more than I expected.

“No!” he yelled through broken teeth. “No! Get off our planet!”

With that war cry, he shrieked again and ran at David’s back with extended arms.

“I’m going to take him,” Mark said, half in permission, half as a statement.

“Do it,” Stacy answered.

BOOM!

Whatever branch of the military Mark had been in taught him how to shoot. A single red laser blast shot forward, catching the running man in the chest. He fell with a smoking hole in the center of his body, blood oozing over his charred flesh where the impact of the round hit him.

“Get up, you moron, and get behind us,” Stacy yelled to David. “We have a chance here! Get up!”

I’m not sure if it was the force in Stacy’s words or seeing that we had a trained marksman and weapons with us that changed David’s mind. Whatever it was, he actually did struggle to his feet and began to run toward us.

“More inbound!” Hannah yelled as an entire mob of the crazed Transients exited the jungle.

Whatever happened to them between landing and now had to wait to be explained. Right now, we needed to focus on survival.

Mutt was barking beside me. Hannah, Mark, and Boss Creed opened up, sending bright red beams into the oncoming horde of infected transients.

They charged us en masse. There was no way we were going to get out of this alive. Maybe with a dozen blasters on our side, but not with three. I looked around, desperate to get into the fight. The sandy beach was littered with small stones and random pieces of driftwood here and there.

Blasters roared behind me, minglinging with the shrieks of the infected as I spotted a piece of driftwood to use as a weapon. I ran to it, grabbing the solid piece of wood. About a meter in length and slightly curved, it was notched on the top like a hammer or hatchet.

“Fall back!” Stacy ordered. “Fall back to the Orion!”

I turned in time to see the impossible. Mark, Hannah, and Boss Creed were laying into the enemy, dwindling their numbers, but there were just too many of them. Every single round of their blasters seemed to find a target. Still, the infected came howling their manic war cries.

David made it behind our lines a second before I joined the group.

Already our expedition members were beginning to back into the water. The crazed Transients were already on top of them. They were close enough for me to lay into. I positioned myself on our right flank and prepared to do what I did best.

19

The first unlucky one to find my tomahawk-sized club was an older man with a balding head and a limp. He screamed something at me I didn’t understand before lunging with open hands aimed at my throat.

He never got the chance to touch me. I brought my weapon sideways, landing a blow on the left side of his head that would be enough to give him a concussion, maybe even splinter his skull.

CRACK!

The infected Transient went limp in front of me. Whatever was wrong with them, it was comforting to know they went down with a swift blow to the head like any other normal human.

I was surprised to find myself grateful. A tiny voice in the back of my head had been telling me stories of zombies, that they were out to eat my flesh, that they wouldn’t be put down.

The second and third came at me. I decided to further test the limits of these infected people.

I struck out at the next one with a boot to the chest. I heard a crunch as my foot made contact with his sternum. The infected went down on impact. The next was a younger teen raving about me getting off of his planet.

I took out his knees with my club, then the next one and the one after that. I