An Unexpected Legacy

The three men and dragon sat idly outside the cavern. They had slightly investigated their surroundings, but decided it was safer to wait for the sun to light up the strange world as it was preferable to stumbling around blindly in some unknown area. So, while they waited they sat in a row smoking what cigarettes the trio had on them at the time they fell into the abyss. Gale rested in the crook of one of Andy’s legs, her paws placed neatly on the side of his boot as she stared intently out at the world around her.

“I have to piss so bad...” Matt commented distractedly.

Danny found it almost laughable at how random it had been, “If it makes you feel any better, I’m dying.”

“That’s not funny.” Andy stated, his gaze sweeping the endless horizon.

“Well, excuse me for trying to make light of the situation!” Danny defended jokingly. He figured he had a risky chance of survival lost in the middle of some wilderness where an undeterminable number of predators would be able to sniff out his blood from over five miles away. He wasn’t planning on dying a boring death and had since recovered some of his spunk, siding with Matt’s laughter-is-the-best-medicine plan.

It was a morbid thought, but it might’ve just been because he didn’t truly think he was going to die deep down.

Overall though, they all seemed to be handling the situation surprisingly well.

Andy was taking it a little more passively, emotions a bit more dulled than his companions’, but other than that, they were all back to themselves. The threat wasn’t really reaching them yet.

They were confused, of course, but nothing too out of the ordinary had happened. The landscape looked similar and strange at the same time, never enough to give them the impression they weren’t on Earth, though. No bizarre animals revealed themselves to them, just some small birds taking flight for another day of foraging and singing.

The sky above was oddly paler, clearer than the one they remembered, but it was easy to write it off as just a place somewhere very far from industrialized civilization. Other than Gale, nothing was really different.

In shorter words, there was nothing to set them off to the fact that they weren’t on the same planet they thrived on.

In a way, though, they were procrastinating. They had yet to fully address that they were nowhere near the bustling cities and towns they were used to. None of them really wanted to. Not yet.

The trio was thinking silently to themselves while sitting in the comfortable companionship they knew. Plans needed hatching, ideas needed popping, directions needed to be set, a path needed to be decided on.

The time they currently had was best used to survey the surrounding area.

Andy could see the sun rising to his right, east, and nothing but billowing plains for miles past the horizon. Danny, sitting to Andy’s other side, could just make out a crag-like area on the line between the sky and earth to the north. Matt, next to Danny, could see a massive forest stretching to the west with the faintest line of mountains far behind the endless army of trees.

Gale, who could see much farther, observed the rock field to the north, the never-ending prairie to the east and the intimidating forest at the base of towering mountains to the west. Gale’s sense of danger was a birthright in a way, dragons were rightfully very cautious of their surroundings.

Her survival instincts trailed away from the forest, not liking the density of the trees but fighting over the indefinite predatory protection. She had an even more memorable battle over the prairie, which had plenty of room to run, but no means to hide if necessary. Eventually, she rested her gaze squarely on the quarry, where it remained. The rocks would provide protection without creating congested paths that would hinder their ability to move and flee.

Now, all she had to do was wait for Momma, Uncle and Grandfather to dispose of the horrid-smelling white sticks and start moving.

Gale didn’t exactly appreciate the scent of the cigarettes, but she could see it relaxed her stressed family and so, she let it slide. In fact, she preferred it to the rotting smell that still assaulted her sensitive sinuses. However, if she could choose, she would remove both scents from her proximity.

“So, where do we go?” Andy decided he was done dancing around this, smothered his cigarette beside him on the ground.

Matt only let out a smoky huff of air in response. He wasn’t sure. None of the ways available to them looked particularly promising, but open land was needed for civilization. The endless prairie seemed like the best bet they had to find other humans.

Danny had been watching the surroundings as closely as he could from his position, watching Gale stare determinedly at the crag, watching the other two look around confusedly. He watched the battery on his phone die, watched the troubled expression on Andy’s face as he also realized his cell phone had since stopped working, watched Matt make a fool of himself to lighten the mood, and watched Gale occasionally perk in the direction of the forest.

“The lizard-Pegasus seems to like the rocks over there,” He nodded towards the rock field.

Matt and Andy gazed down at Gale before returning their attention to their previous areas of interest. Neither men were exactly oblivious to Gale’s rigid posture and locked-on-target pose. It was that they weren’t sure what to think of it. Gale was a baby, what did she know about the outside world? She only knew this small fraction of the planet for about two hours, after all.

“I don’t,” Matt disagreed.

“Do you prefer the fucking jungle instead?” Danny gestured to the forest.

“Nope,” Matt stated with conviction.

“I see what you’re thinking, Matt, but I don’t think it’s a good idea to be stuck wandering through the plains when noon comes around. There aren’t even any trees out there,” Andy was thinking back to Warped Tour, the heat, how dangerous the sun could be.

“But people could be there! What if there’s a town just over that hill?” Matt argued.

“What if there’s not?” Andy fought back.

“Then...we’ll try something else! I’m not saying we go trooping through there like the dumbasses in the movies, I’m just saying we investigate a little bit, and then come up with something else if it fails.”

“You know? I think I’m with Matt on this...” Danny interrupted.

“Um...?” Matt pointed curiously at Gale.

Andy and Danny looked down to see the dragon facing the way of the prairie, slitted pupils stretched wide into a large, black circle that nearly drowned out the jonquil color of her eyes. She wasn’t moving, but her tail twitched agitatedly, like a cat hunting its prey. The look in her eyes didn’t quite match that comparison.

Danny looked up to see what was getting under Gale’s skin, spotting a group of maybe seven dark silhouettes on the horizon.

“People?”

Matt and Andy also noticed the figures, but experienced different emotions. Matt only saw sanctuary with the sight of human figures but Andy was...anxious. The shadows walked strangely, drunkenly almost.

Something was wrong.

Gale didn’t seem too happy with this turn of events either. In fact, she was freaking out.

The smell was simply horrid and a disturbing sense of fear filled the pit of her stomach. Danger. She felt it coiling within her as the silhouettes came into view. It squeezed her ribs and tried to strangle her lungs. It was terrible. She hated this feeling.

Get away! Get away!

Matt was oblivious. He got to his feet and started towards them, a relieved grin on his face. He was about to call out when Gale shot off Andy’s leg and rammed right into him, throwing to the ground with unexpected strength.

“Holy shit!” Andy and Danny scrambled to their feet, “Matt, are you okay?”

“The fuck just hit me?” He rolled over to find Gale standing there, body tight and back arched like a frazzled feline. She stared down at him with big, startled eyes that made Matt worry that she wasn’t in the right mind.

However, after three short seconds, Gale remembered her vocal chords and released a distressed
rumble.
“Get away!”

It drove a spike of fright into all three men.

Something was wrong.

“Oh...oh, shit...” Danny swore in downright shock as the silhouettes came into full view.

Their skin was a deathly gray, some having more of it than others. They stumbled brokenly towards them on shattered limbs, and as before, some had more than others. One was missing a jaw, tongue flapping out and dangling loosely at its neck. One was missing both eyes, but it was hard to decide whether the dark empty sockets were scarier than the dead, whitish-yellow saucers peering at the men only so many feet away.

No emotion, no sound but the dragging of limp ankles and a legless body across the ground. Some raised their hands, trying to reach out and grab the only breathing creatures they’d seen for days.

“Oh my fucking shit,” Matt rushed to his feet as Andy struck out and grabbed his arm, started pulling him away before he found his balance.

Danny turned on his heels and started running for the woods. There was no way those things were getting through the trees.

Gale tugged harshly at Andy’s pant leg, just about pulling his foot out from beneath him before hauling around and rocketing after Danny. Matt and Andy were close behind.

Gale really wanted to go towards the quarry, but the forest was closest. Besides, anywhere was safer than where they were.

Danny just wanted to get back home. He wanted to get to a hospital to make sure his shoulder wouldn’t turn into a fatality. It ached with each step he took, adrenaline and gaping holes in flesh don’t mix well; his blood was rushing again, he could almost feel it. It was also clear the movement was agitating the wound, the friction caused by the cloth wasn’t too pleasant, either.

Matt didn’t know what he wanted anymore. He certainly didn’t want to get eaten by zombies, but he didn’t want to be bursting through foliage and disrupting some nesting birds as he barreled through the tight-knit trees with two other men and a dragon. It was a complicated life.

“Fuck.”

Andy just wanted to avoid running into any trees and breaking something else in his body. He wasn’t nearly as graceful as Gale, who wove skillfully in and out of obstacles, but at least Matt was stumbling along with him. He couldn’t even see Danny ahead of them, but he could hear his British twang emit a swear here or there.

“Shit. Fuck!”

“Danny?” Matt called after the sharp yell.

Matt was next to make his own.

“Fucking-!?” Hell.

Andy fell through the bush almost immediately after, his heel slipping on the edge of some form of impact.

Gale didn’t make any sounds when she had fallen into the ditch seconds before Danny, but she didn’t like the feel of the dirt she had face-planted into. She didn’t really like the feeling of three much larger bodies crashing into her, either, but that wasn’t as important.

What was important, however, was the fact that she was looking around a giant hole in the middle of a forest with a gang of monsters wanting to hurt them somewhere behind. She was able to dig herself out from underneath Grandfather and Uncle’s bodies as they too tried to get up with Momma on top of them. The problem lied in the unfortunate realization that she couldn’t climb out, the surrounding dirt was too soft and quick to give.

It took a minute of scrambling around for the realization to become apparent to the men as well.

“Fuck,” Andy swore, “Fuck...fuck...fuck, fuck, fuck no!”

Gale was beginning to associate this word with distress.

“Fucking damn it!”

She quickly recanted and made it anger.

“Shit, this is like...” Andy thought, “like that fucking...ant trap...”

“Ant trap?” Danny questioned, attempting to stand for the ninth time.

“Like...those little...uh, watchya call its? Um...Antlions!” Matt snap his fingers at the memory.

“Those little funnel things in the dirt...? Oh,” Danny had always wondered what those were.

Indeed, the hole they had fallen into was very similar to the pitfall trap Antlion larva made to snag any bug that was unfortunate enough to fall into it. The difference was that there was, luckily, no hungry predator waiting drag them under at the bottom. No, there were only the “people” chasing after them from above.

“How the hell do we get out?” Danny pawed at the fine dirt that made the trap as effective as it was.

“...like fucking quick sand...” Matt muttered strings of mostly incoherent sentences under his breath.

“The point of these traps is that you can’t.” Andy pointed out, scanning the edge of the funnel for the creatures chasing them.

“I’m not dying here of all places!” Danny complained, trying again to get to his feet, “I’m not an ant! I’m not a bug! I’m not prey!”

“They might beg to differ...” Matt peered up at the zombies as they finally appeared on the scene.

“Fuck.” Andy crawled back away from his side of the pitfall, where the monsters stood.

“Fuck!” Danny scrambled to find some footing in the dirt.

“Fuck!” Matt swung around and started clambering up the slippery slope opposite the creatures when the legless one reared up and pushed itself into the funnel with them.

Gale rumbled in fear as she darted to and fro, trying to get out.

Danny and Matt had taken similar approaches, struggling to get up the slipping sides while Andy just tried to avoid getting accidently hit by one of them or buried by the dirt they sent cascading down. But he had a whole different problem crawling towards him, reaching for his foot.

He tried scrambling away from it, but the nature of the trap just had him sliding back towards it.

It wrapped its gray, bloody fingers around his left boot and started pulling itself up, reaching out for his throat.

Andy reacted the only way he knew how.

He cussed it out and threw a punch...and then another.

“Motherfucker!”

“Ah!” Danny yelled upon realization of the monsters coming down into the trap with them.

Matt turned to look long enough to let out a string of “Fuck!”’s and grab Gale as she ran past him.

“Do something!” He held her out to the gray creatures hunkering towards them.

Gale curled in on herself at first, terrified and unsure of what Uncle wanted of her. But when one of the rotting humans reached out to take her, her chest suddenly inflated like a frog trying to look big.

Then, she opened her mouth and let out a screech so loud and sharp, even the zombies covered their ears.

“Heh, she is your child.” Danny found the time to quip at Andy, who shot him a disbelieving look.

“I... I don’t even know how to respond to that!”

“Was that a sexual thing?” Matt inquired jokingly.

“Maybe that’s what you want it to be, Matt.” Danny retorted flatly.

“Hey, just saying...”

“Ugh.” Andy rolled his eyes in distaste.

“Fire!”

The men looked up in time to see a small rain of arrows coming down on them.

“Aahh!” The three screamed in terror, unsure which threat they were more afraid of as they huddled together: The zombies or the arrows.

Gale too cried out in panic, still in Matt’s arms.

Andy closed his eyes, not wanting to watch the arrows turn him and his friends into Swiss cheese, but the yelling had stopped and all had gone silent.

He quickly assessed that there wasn’t any holes in his body, and impishly dared to look and see exactly what happened.

“Oh...” He found his companions unharmed as well, but the rotting corpses were all punctured and motionless at their feet.

“Ew...” Danny poked at the loose tongue of the one missing its jaw.

It had been penetrated through the head by what was actually a spear, not an arrow, in a way that bent its neck all the way back and left its tongue sticking almost straight out.

“Don’t touch it!” Andy punched the Englishman’s arm in protest.

“Hail, strangers!” A strong female voice echoed to them from above.

The men and Gale looked up to see a small group of tan, reddish-skinned humans. A woman with long, dark hair was waving to them at the front.

“Do you think they’re gonna try and eat us, too?” Matt whispered uncertainly.

Danny and Andy had no words to reply.

Gale rumbled curiously, however.

She didn’t feel threatened by these humans, but she didn’t exactly feel safe in their presence, either.

The woman made some gestures to her group and reached for something as it was handed forward. She proceeded to drop a long, leather rope down into the pitfall.

“Grab on, we’ll pull you out!” She shouted, taking a firm hold of her piece of the rope while her soldiers took their places behind her.

The men looked between each other, unsure if they should trust these people. Andy was the first to reach for the rope.

Gale leapt onto his back as he was pulled up and out of the pitfall.

The first thing he saw upon arrival at the top was the wide, flat face of large, hunched reptile with rough, bumpy scales and unimpressed orange eyes.

“Ah!” Andy yelped and nearly fell back into the hole.

Fortunately, he was saved by a rather large man with many red ring-like markings all over his body. The man easily (effortlessly, even) hauled Andy’s much smaller frame up to solid ground.

“Shoo, Shisheru!” The man waved the reptile away, and it scurried off to the back of the group.

“Don’t mind him,” The man turned to Andy and Gale, “he’s really a big baby.”

“...definitely big...” Andy grumbled under his breath.

“I am Ronno,” The jungle man introduced himself as Danny was pulled up.

“Andy. That’s Danny.” Andy nodded in his friend’s direction.

“This is Gale...” He pointed to the green lizard on his shoulder.

“A dragon! A rare sight.” Ronno leaned down to investigate Gale further.

She snapped warningly at his hand when he moved to pick up her wing.

“Feisty, too!” Ronno laughed, clearly amused.

Andy was more bewildered than anything.

“She packs a punch, too, dude! She knocked me flat!” Matt pulled himself up.

“Um, that’s Matt...” Andy explained, befuddled as to how calm he was with the situation.

“Yes, even young ones are packed with muscle. Much more dangerous when they are older.” The woman interjected.

“I bet!” Matt seemed surprisingly energetic.

“S’wrong with you?” Danny observed this with the same befuddlement as Andy.

“There is no time for idle conversation. More of the Dead Ones could be around.” The woman turned to walk away.

“Come, we shall take you to the safety of our settlement.”

She paused and regarded them one more time.

“My name is Peony, by the way. It is an honor to meet you.”