There was nothing. They were scientists and engineers, not soldiers. They had come to the moon to collect rocks and take photographs and make history. They had not come prepared to fight a monster wearing their Commander's face. The lander contained geological tools, sample containers, cameras, and scientific instruments. Nothing sharp. Nothing heavy. Nothing that could hurt a creature that had survived billions of years buried in the moon.
The creature grabbed Thorne by the collar of his suit and threw him out of the lander.
Thorne's body tumbled across the grey dust, arms flailing, legs kicking uselessly. His scream cut off as he left the lander's atmosphere, the vacuum swallowing the sound. He landed hard, rolling across the lunar surface, his suit scraping against the abrasive regolith. He came to a stop against a small boulder, stunned and struggling to rise.
"ARIS!" Chen screamed. The sound echoed inside his helmet, trapped with him.
The creature ignored him. It stepped out of the lander, its boots leaving perfect prints in the grey dust. It walked toward where Thorne lay, its movements still slow, still patient, still savoring every moment. It had waited so long for this. It was not going to rush.
Chen watched in horror as it reached down and grabbed the flag pole again. The pole was still wet with frozen fuel, still sharp at one end where the metal had torn. The creature held it loosely, casually, like a man carrying a walking stick on a Sunday stroll.
It walked past Thorne.
Chen didn't understand. It was walking away from Thorne, toward him. Why was it—
The creature moved so fast Chen couldn't track it. One moment it was walking past Thorne. The next it was in front of Chen, the flag pole already driven through his left thigh, pinning him to the lunar surface like an insect on a collector's board.
The pain was beyond anything Chen had ever experienced. Beyond description. Beyond comprehension. It was white-hot and freezing cold at the same time, the vacuum pulling at the wound, his blood boiling and freezing simultaneously as it escaped his suit. He tried to scream but the sound died in his throat, choked off by pure, overwhelming agony.
Warning lights flashed across his visor. Oxygen leaking. Suit pressure dropping. Heart rate critical. He was dying, slowly but surely, pinned to the surface of the moon by his own nation's flag.
The creature looked down at him and smiled. That same wrong smile, but wider now. Happier. It was enjoying this. Chen could see the pleasure in those red, glowing eyes. It had waited billions of years in the dark, dreaming of warmth and light and prey. Now it had all three.
"Stay," it said. "We will come back for you. We promise. You will not die alone. We will taste you before the end."
It turned away and walked toward Thorne.
Chen could only watch. His leg was pinned. He couldn't move. He couldn't stand. He couldn't crawl. He could only lie there in the grey dust, bleeding and freezing and dying, and watch as the thing that wore Evans' face approached his friend.
Thorne had managed to get to his hands and knees. He was crawling, desperately, pointlessly, trying to get away. His suit was intact but he was disoriented, his movements slow and clumsy in the low gravity. Each crawling step only carried him a few inches. He was going nowhere. He was just prolonging the inevitable.
The creature reached him in three unhurried steps.
It looked down at Thorne, tilting its head to one side. The smile never left its face. If anything, it grew wider. More eager. It raised its right arm—Evans' arm, but wrong, wrong, wrong—and the arm began to extend.
Chen heard the sounds through his failing suit systems. The crack of bones breaking and reforming. The wet tear of muscles stretching beyond their limits. The arm grew longer and longer, the hand reaching down, the fingers spreading wide. It wrapped around Thorne's waist like a python, the fingers meeting on the far side and locking together.
The creature lifted Thorne off the ground effortlessly. Thorne weighed less on the moon, but he still weighed something. The creature lifted him with one hand, holding him at eye level, bringing him close until their faceplates were almost touching.
Through his own failing suit systems, Chen could hear Thorne's terrified breathing over the comms. Rapid. Shallow. The breathing of prey that knows it is about to die.
"Please," Thorne whispered. "Please don't. I have a wife. I have two sons. Their names are David and Michael. David is eight and Michael is six. Please. Please don't kill me. They need their father."
The creature's mouth opened.
It opened wider than any human mouth could open. The jaw unhinged with a wet, grinding crack, dropping down past the point where human anatomy should have stopped it. The cheeks split, the skin tearing to accommodate the impossible gape. The mouth became a dark red void where the throat should have been, a tunnel leading down into the creature's ancient, hungry core.
Rows of teeth lined the inside of that horrible mouth. Not human teeth. Not even animal teeth. They were needle-thin points arranged in concentric circles, rows upon rows of them, each one sharp as a surgical blade. They rotated slowly, independently, the inner rows moving counter to the outer rows. Like the blades of a meat grinder. Like a machine designed for one purpose only.
Thorne screamed.
The creature bit down on his head.
The teeth punched through the helmet like it was made of wet paper. Through the reinforced visor. Through the layers of radiation shielding and impact protection. Through skin and bone and brain. Chen heard the wet, grinding crunch over the comms—the sound of a skull being crushed, of a brain being pulped, of a human consciousness being snuffed out in an instant. He felt his stomach heave, acid rising in his throat.
-Will be continued 😎