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I retreat swiftly into the cabin, grabbing Bilbo by the collar as I go. I won’t leave him to whatever wild things are out there, stalking us, wondering if we’re edible, and on the verge of finding out that we very much are.
Some of the cabin’s technology still works, and that means I have a camera feed to the outside. The camera has more than one mode. It can look out like a digital window, or it can use sensors to feed back information about heat patterns. I flip it from visual to infrared and gasp as the screen lights up.
There’s something out there alright; a red-hot shape is moving between the cooler trees and bushes. It’s an animal of some kind. A predator probably, judging by the way it is skulking and stalking.
Bilbo contents himself with nibbling on the bed while I sit glued to the monitor.
“What the fuck is that?”
It looks bigger than a person. I’m not expecting a person here anyway. I don’t know what I’m expecting. Probably an apex predator of some kind. An alien analog of a bear or a tiger, maybe. Whatever it is, I’d feel a lot safer if I had a weapon at hand.
Again, I’m digging through the stores of this place. There are actually a lot of weapons. I’m spoiled for choice. I don’t think a blade would be very useful. I want to maintain distance, after all. There’s one very large gun that I can barely shoulder, and that I think is supposed to be mounted. I wish Kurt and Steve could have sorted that before they left. I wish they’d never left. They’d still be here. They’d still be alive.
I take the medium-est gun, the just right weapon, and I sit back down at the monitor. The hot shape is gone. I can’t see it anywhere, not even when I circle the camera around the entire outside of the cabin. The forest is a dapple of green and blue with no blaring red blotches to frighten me.
Whatever was there has either lost interest, or simply retreated outside the range of the infrared speakers. I have an eerie feeling of being watched. I half-think that I would like to be watched. That would at least mean that I am not alone.
Am I going to end up risking being eaten alive just to feel less alone? Fortunately not, because I have Bilbo.
“You need to be careful,” I tell him. He’s laid down next to the bed and is quietly chewing his cud. “There are usually animals that like to eat meat, and we are made of meat, so we can’t wander off, or let them sneak up on us. We have to watch one another’s back.”
“Meheheh,” Bilbo agrees.
It’s bedtime.
* * *
“What the fuck was that?”
I wake up in the middle of the night. Bilbo has cuddled into me and is snoring. He smells like goat. Not a scent I’d usually enjoy, but under the circumstances, a warm body attached to a sentient-ish mind is better than nothing. I wrap an arm around him and pull him close, like a teddy bear. Steve was right. This goat is an excellent emotional support. If I didn’t have him, I truly think I would have lost my mind when the shuttle exploded. Everything about this attempt at becoming richer than my wildest dreams is proving to be a complete disaster. At least in the dark of night I can pretend this is a night like any other. There’s something about being tucked up all warm and cozy in bed that makes everything okay.
There’s just one problem. There’s always just one problem. On this occasion, I have the strangest feeling that I am being watched. I try to go back to sleep, but the feeling doesn’t go away. If anything, it grows.
I open my eyes and look into the face of a big, furry, terrifying creature with great glowing gold eyes and a maw of teeth so long and sharp I do not understand how I have not already been turned into diced Penelope.
“Arrggghh!” I scream at the top of my lungs.
“Woorgghhh!” the creature screams back, then turns around and runs at full speed through. The. Fucking. Wall.
Bits of cabin tumble about in its wake as it runs through the forest from whence it emerged, leaving me panicked and with a sudden major breeze to contend with.
Bilbo has not moved throughout the exchange. He is chewing his cud again with all the concern of a creature who does not understand what is going on.
“What the absolute fuck was that, and what the hell did it do to my wall?” I ask questions the goat will not answer.
As the adrenaline subsides, I realize that it must not have intended me any harm. It was probably more curious than anything, to sneak into my cabin and watch me.
