0 Seconds
Leaning over the small fence around the domicile, I carefully tied to lead to appropriate peg. The creature on the end of the lead, an Earth ‘pig’, let out an odd sound but otherwise didn’t protest to being fixed in place. I continued down the row of domiciles, fixing other animals in place from the small herd of them behind me. More and more families were trying the Human’s animals, but I had not had one yet. Getting past the odd smell of Human that clung to them was apparently too difficult for my stomachs.
I saw a group of Humans on the other side of the road, just ahead of me. A full two lengths shorter than me and smelling absolutely horrible, Humans were something I avoided. Unfortunately, being behind schedule, I didn’t have much choice but to see them; Humans had the annoying habit of eating three meals a day, with one in the very middle of the day. Why they couldn’t eat the normal morning and evening meals, I had no idea.
Checking the street and moving across it, I led the small gaggle of animals which were under my care into a large apartment complex. Several of the Humans followed me; I wasn’t quite sure what they were doing in a complex built for my species, but so long as they stayed I couldn’t really complain.
The creatures behind me all froze as a mass. Turning back to look at the prey, I tugged on their leashes, trying to move them forwards. The animals, however, both those from my world and the ones from Earth, were all displaying fear.
Something exploded.
I immediately let go of the leads. I heard the animals scream. The Humans cried out as well.
I was thrown backwards away from the door of the apartment complex. All around me I could hear and see the building collapsing. I closed my eye stalks and waited to be crushed.
300 Seconds
“You alright?” asked the Human.
I glowered up at him. “Do I look alright?”
“To be perfectly honest, I have no idea what you looked like beforehand, although I’m assuming that stuff coming out of your body is supposed to be inside of it.”
I gnashed my outer teeth in frustration at the small, smelly creature. “Obviously!”
He nodded and pulled himself across the floor of the compartment, making a sound like a wounded prey-creature and leaving a streak of red liquid on the floor behind him. His version of blood, most likely; it looked no different than the blood of the pigs from his world.
“I would imagine you are in much the same predicament.” I said as I tried to get over the horrible smell of the Human’s flesh and innards. Whatever species hunted them on their home world had to have a completely different nose; most creatures usually smelled somewhat appealing as a meal, even if they were sentient, but the Human smelled like something I wouldn’t even eat if I were dying.
Which, at the moment, I was, except starvation was not the issue. The hole in my lower chest cavity was bleeding profusely, purple blood gurgling up from the wound.
The debris from the explosion had punched straight through my plating. How the comparatively squishy Human had survived at all I had no idea.
“Eh, I’m fine,” said the Human. He put his hand to his own abdomen and pulled it away, the appendage stained red. “We can take a lot of punishment. What about you?”
Leaning forward, the Human looked at my wounds. Had I been able to move, I would have snapped my arms at him. The razors at the end of my talons would perhaps remind him that I was a predator, and not something to be ogled by a weak prey-creature. Unfortunately, my arms were buried under the assorted metal and building materials that were all around the two of us from the explosion. I was fairly certain my two left arms had already been detached, and that my lower right arm was about halfway through the same process. It was going to take months for them to grow back. The beam laying across my upper chest which had me pinned was causing my plating to creak in protest, barely able to hold the weight up. I couldn’t move anything except my eye stalks.
“That looks bad,” said the Human as he continued to stare at my wound.
“It is!” I growled, annoyed with the puny thing.
The Human moved its head up and down, then rolled up the clothing around his two small, pale arms.
“I’m a doctor for my own species on the colony. We both agree you’re in serious danger if this bleeding doesn’t stop, right?” asked the Human.
I looked at him for a moment. The still eyes in the round skull were disturbing to look at. His head looked like a gas canister round and full of energy. He was right, but admitting my mortality in front of an animal that was almost prey – despite being sentient – was challenging.
“Yes. The bleeding needs to stop,” I hissed.
The Human moved his head up and down again. “Alright, any quick first aid tips on your biology before I try to staunch the bleeding?”
The Human was going to try and help me? I wasn’t even his species, and despite his smell, I had a difficult time not thinking of the small Humans as food, like most of my kind on the colony. That fact had actually been causing some tension in the different districts that separated us. Nothing had happened, but the animosity was evident on both sides.
“Don’t allow my blood into the digestive tract, and try to stop it from going in if it already has. I will be poisoned if my blood enters my digestion tract,” I said, trying to recall the basic first aid I knew as well as the basic biology of my species. Then again, I couldn’t name every specific plate, nor tell my right sub stomach from the left. I was by no means a doctor.
“Your own blood is poisonous? Interesting.”
Reaching into my lower chest cavity, the Human squinted for several moments, looking at what was in front of him. I had been told that their eyesight in the dark was rather bad, like most prey-species, but that they could detect the slightest movement.
Hopefully the light from the small damaged fixture in the rubble near my legs was providing him with enough light to navigate. I loathed the idea of some alien blindly poking around inside of me, but I was at his mercy for the moment.
“Yours is not?” I asked as I turned my eyes away from him and my innards that he was poking at through the hole in my armor. I did not really care, but the conversation was mildly distracting from what was going on.
“No. It’s not good to get it elsewhere, but it’s not lethal. Between other humans it can be close, though.”
“You poison one another with your blood?”
The human chuckled. “No, its rejection. Humans have different types of blood amongst the population. Those with the different types shouldn’t allow their blood to mix with another of a different type. It won’t kill, it’s just very unpleasant, although it can cause other complications that may be lethal.”
“Ah, I understand.”
The two of us were silent for several minutes. I could hear the cracking of the wreckage on top of us settling, but nothing else besides the Human’s labored breathing.
“Alright, I don’t think you’re bleeding into your digestive tract. What else?”
“I am losing too much blood. I will die I lose more than around thirty percent of it.”
The Human nodded, and without any hesitation reached into my abdomen and clamped his hand down on several large arteries. He grasped them with the air of someone who was not the least bit disturbed by the practice. Perhaps he really was a skilled doctor.
“I have to ask though, do you not feel pain?” asked the Human.
I bobbed my head side to side for a moment, thinking.
“I’ve been told that we do not process it as Humans do. I am aware of the injury, and that I should not be moving, but that is it. I am told Humans scream or cry out like they are fighting if injured?”
The Human displayed his teeth. “More often than not, yes.”
“You are not screaming?”
“I’m running on a natural stimulant my body produces when in danger. It allows me to completely ignore an injury or trauma for a short amount of time.”
I was surprised by that. I had been told that Humans always mewled in agony like prey when injured.
The Human was still bleeding, his shirt was drenched red and it was sticky from what I could see. He wasn’t crying out in pain though so I had to guess he was at least going to survive the injuries.
14444 seconds
“What is it you do?” asked the Human, speaking for the first time in several hours.
I slowly moved an eye stalk to look at him. I had lost enough blood at this point to feel woozy.
“I’m the Deliverer.”
The Human took a labored breath. He seemed to be having difficulty breathing now for some reason. I could still smell fresh blood from him, but he hadn’t removed his hands from my chest where he was staunching my blood.
“What does that mean?”
I considered for a moment how to describe it. The job was one that ran back to antiquity on my world. Then again, Humans were omnivores; they perhaps did not need food like I did.
“I take prey to those who do not have time to hunt. I tie up their ordered creature at their home so they can feast upon returning home in the evening.”
The human displayed his teeth again.
“You’re the milkman!”
He made an odd cry, almost like a laugh for half a moment before his face screwed up into an odd expression, after which he leaned forwards and vomited red blood down his front.
I stared at him for a moment until he finished; I was now sure something was wrong with him.
“Are you alright?” I asked.
The Human coughed again, wiping his mouth with his shoulder, and looked at me with an oddly hopeful expression.
“No, I’m not. I’m bleeding out as well.”
It took me a moment to process that.
“So why not stop it?”
“I could, but then you would die. I don’t have anything to pack your wounds, not with any amount of pressure at least.”
I moved my eye stalk as close as I could to the Human, ignoring the smell that was rolling off of him.
“Is your species suicidal?”
The Human coughed again and closed his eyes, making lines form on the top of his face.
“No.”
“Then why are you doing this?”
The Human considered for a moment. “I want to.”
“You want to help me even if you should die in the process?” I asked, still confused.
The Human coughed and another small spurt of blood welled up from his mouth. His skin was even paler now, probably not a good sign.
“I could quote the Hippocratic Oath. It’s a promise human doctors make saying that we’ll help whomever needs it, but right now it seems empty.”
The Human paused and drew in a shaky breath.
“I’d rather I die than condemn someone beside me to that fate if I had it in my power to prevent it.”
The Human made that odd laughing sound again.
“I can’t watch anyone else die, even someone as ugly as you!”
I blinked, somewhat affronted.
“You’re no better looking Human.”
30000 seconds
The Human hadn’t moved in the past hour. I could still hear his ragged breathing, but other than that, nothing.
I could smell death approaching him; it was disturbing. So much like prey-creatures, yet different. I fed my community non-sentient prey so similar to these Humans on a daily basis, but I was never this cruel. I never allowed an animal to suffer, or for death to slowly approach.
I always delivered them to death as expediently as possible; death was sadistic and cruel given the chance to be so.
“Human, are you alive?”
A grunt was the only response.
“You are close to death, but you do not let him take you?”
Another noncommittal grunt.
“We’ve been down here for hours, Human. He is coming for both of us, you do not need to continue to fight him. I can smell him on you, how you are still alive I do not know.”
The Human remained silent, and shifted slightly where he was leaning on my lower chest.
Something banged above me and I quickly moved an eye stalk up, listening. The sound repeated again.
“Human! Someone is digging in the wreckage!”
A shaky cry was the only sound from the Human. His breathing stopped, and he collapsed down onto my lower chest.
For a half beat of my hearts, I was stunned. I had expected him to expire hours ago, but now that there was the hope of survival, he dies?
“I’m getting a heat signature over here!” shouted another person. A Human, judging by the accent.
I winced as the wreckage above me was pulled away, letting the light from the twin suns stream in and fall on me and my Human companion.
Several Humans in complex looking harnesses quickly jumped down into the small cavity of the wreckage.
“Help him!” I said, my voice cracking with exhaustion.
The two Humans’ heads both snapped to look at me, and then turned down to the first Human, the Doctor.
“God damn it, that explains where the head surgeon has been,” growled one of them.
Stooping down, he carefully moved the Human draped over my body to the side.
“He’s gone.”
The Humans looked at their fellow for a moment before quickly turning to me.
I stared into the face of the closer Human.
“He saved me.”
The Humans looked at one another, moving over to where I was and began to examine the debris around me.
“Why did he save me, and let himself die!?” I directed an eye stalk towards each Human, looking for an answer.
The one to my right showed his teeth slightly.
“That’s just who he was.”
“Why though?” I asked, still confused by these prey- creatures.
The rescuer to my left stood up and began to remove some section of the wreckage, managing to lever the bar on my first chest up.
“He’s a better person than me, I can tell you that.”
Mollified by the strange answer, I watched as the two Humans carefully extracted me. All of my arms were gone and my lower chest was starting to bleed again. Despite all of the injuries, one thing burned far more urgently, a single question.
Why?