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“All clear” Dys muttered into the microphone, trying quite desperately to not alarm the other undead in the spaceship but just enough for the person on the other end to pick it up. He heard the noises in the other room, a faint rattle, then scraping, then heavy almost-breaths as the zombies desperately tried to break the line of life and death. There’s other surveyors in the lifeless colony, all meeting in the center of it in order to discuss the plan before moving in, Dys didn’t need to think much until his body subconsciously left the crowd. The engineer which listened to his calls and signals had known him long enough, luckily, and given up with the concept of bending the man to traditional Helios policies in and outside of the shelter.
It’s horribly rotten, crumbling and broken at the seams. In such a poor quality Dys could only wonder the stress the habitants would have had when the colony was alive, the walls were small and could topple over in one wrong shove. They lacked food, he learned, staring at the cafeteria windows from afar when he just entered the grounds and looking at the nothing in the kitchens and shelving. He hadn’t thought much at first until he stood over empty domes, they were supposed to be under construction, he decided, staring at poor soil and broken windows, but then they weren’t. The last remnants of garden remained, soil untouched for at least a year or maybe four seasons, there wasn’t anything planted in even the built and sturdy domes and he doubted survivors would rip whole dead plants to bring home far, far away.
Footsteps of others rung quickly in his ears—Helios made a policy that they moved as groups when they first founded, though not entirely unreasonable, Dys still found the rule disagreeable. Their feet were synchronized in pace—not even a second off from each other, loud rhythmic booms which all sounded and silenced at the same time. He watched the noise. Not listened, watched. Dys had seen the garrison’s unfortunate military training videos way too many times and every single one of them was never for the intent of enlisting, he knew the claps and calls per step, and it somehow made him feel like home when he heard it biomes off in the distance and away from base.
The unfortunate, single different of this group and all the tapes were how footsteps couldn’t conceal noise the same as a pack of army. Helios surveyors, more so the Helios surveyors that weren’t Dys, has some effortless loudness and impact which shattered and plunged thorns into tension. He found the practice quite impractical, to say the least, as it warded off any prey or animal and alerted predator, but maybe what Lum truly cared about was the effect. The power that the alarm of herds of marching men held was too important to get rid of, the signal to nomad, lone survivors to leave or they’ll be dealt with. This time, the broken, weak replaying of the effect may be the thing that made it matter compare to all the other times Dys didn’t. The normality of the footsteps which didn’t stress anyone as much as the large military did. There was a croak underneath the footsteps, then a shuffle, then silence. Lonely silence but it also wasn’t. It made Dys feel painfully aware more than anything, painfully aware that he was the only heart that was beating in the room.
Dys might have not known how to be afraid, but he knew how to be vulnerable. He knew how to appeal to some of the animals. He lunged backwards and kept the flame-based device (similar and commonly used by some as a weapon, just in case) tight against his arm and side. Then there was crackling, popping noises like bones being moved in and out of their correct places, a low, consistent bellowing noise that didn’t feel right, like an extra fold in the windpipe. Dys hoped with one arm on his chest in front of his heart, hoped hard that he wouldn’t need to get others involved, and his other hand’s fingers dug into the metal frame up against the edge of the geoponics structure’s shell. He hoped that whatever this was wouldn’t make him kill it, or at least, make it easier for him to do so.
It didn’t make it easier. It made it worse with its almost human body, how some of the fingers were twisted the wrong away around and how desperate it was.
Inside the Helios quarters, different people had different words for the same thing, the same monsters which were everywhere and preyed on them for survival. Dys never particularly understood any of the terms besides undead—-children usually were the ones which called them zombies and he wouldn’t get in a debate with someone half his age, if they weren’t, he would simply look the other way. Other phrases never stuck with him, fancy, scientific terms which you couldn’t yell to alert others without cutting corners on pronouncing, or fancy but fantastical titles. Almost as if those horrors were villains of bad dreams, giving them too much of an honor and name for someone (now something) with barely the idea of thoughts. Dys debated the term undead just for a second, and just because of this one of them.
It?—His? decayed body represented a young man, older than him but not by much, and he was terrified. He, as in the zombie. He, as in the green haired man with tan skin, who was making creaky, hoarse noises with what was left of his vocal cords, one leg battered, hoisting himself across the room to Dys. Inch by inch, somehow desperate for food but being so kind and gentle to him about it. Is it gentle, if it’d been struggle as the body ached? Was it kind, if maybe it was so needing of food and malnourished that the amount of time it was taking for it to bite wasn’t on purpose?
Dys couldn’t think about that right then, he was about to die if he didn’t do anything. Dys watched, he felt wrong. Everything about the situation felt wrong. There was someone who was supposed to be dead, supposed to be a monster and feasting on him that second, but more human—just a normal, surviving person— than he had understood. There had been cases like this before, someone about to turn, or trapped, or dying alone, and Dys was forced to do the honors. He was the person trapped. The zombie had all the honor, all the time in the world to do it. Dys stared, he tried to not blink, just in case, but he watched. He watched like he used to every day in between training, it was something he was best at as a surveyor, and he waited. He waited for something to be off, it worked.
Words. Words words words. Words it wanted to say. Words it couldn’t pronounce with parts of jaw ripped out. Words which had somehow, miraculously, clicked at exactly the right time on what it actually wanted in Dys’s brain. He ducked, slowly and painfully like a turtle retreating into a shell. He watched as the rotten arm—no, the rotten everything—of it narrowly miss him by bare centimeters, he tried his best to move his hand without a noise just to cover the lower half of his face due to the stench. The putrid smell of animal which came from him. The aroma of something alive but the smell faint and old enough for everyone to know that whoever the stench had originated from is already long gone. Dys didn’t like it when you had to assume an animal was dead or that there was no hope, because when it happened he felt like it was there and it was supposed to still be there, but it wasn’t. He didn’t like how the number of surviving livestock animals dwindled, the numbers lowering every day as he looked at the list of beasts and skimmed past old livestock. He was upset that humanity brought down so many things and people and places just for themselves.
His eyes, if almost like it was hand in hand with his nose, darted away from the smell. Something almost a flinch but wasn’t. It clothes were unwashed and only an uncomfortable amount of centimeters away from his face, moving around with its body as it searched for something with its hands. Dys shuffled around to grow the distance between them, scooting off to the side with rigid movement and brief pauses between every single push in the other direction. He might be able to get away. Then there’s a hand on his shoulder, not literally, as Dys would’ve shot them the second palm made contact with armor, but he is startled in almost the same way. It refused to leave him, it made him refuse to leave. It spouted nonsense that he only understood half of, something he must of picked up from Tangent—oh, dammit. Tangent. It’s horrible whenever he realized the effect she had on him.
Dys waited, patience slightly thinning over time but knew he had to preserve. There was something about it like watching a dinosaur in old Earth movies that completely enamored him, something about how he should get out of there and he could get out of there that kept him stuck in place. Maybe, this would be Dys’s dinosaur. Its elbows stuck out in weird angles like it had nerves to its hands—and maybe half of its fingers?—but not the rest. Then it felt something right, grabbing hard at a tiny metal canister on the table above them both. It hauled itself over with shaking legs and used its arms like metal pillars which held up everything else of a house. Then it ran off in another direction.
“Ran” is a strong word, not something one would particularly use to describe the awkward scuttling and almost animal like movement undead had, but Dys was never one to care for specific definitions. In his eyes, it ran. It ran away and it wasn’t from him, it wasn’t because he was going to kill it, it had ran just to run. It didn’t know he was here, he was almost offended. He was almost tempted to follow it.
“Dysthymia, yes?” A voice rung throughout the communication device strung up with his ears, harsh and almost stern. Not Utopia, or even Tonin, but someone unrecognizable. He should get used to being bossed around my strangers by this point.
“Uh huh.”
“The others are setting up for the night. Haven’t gotten confirmation where you are, or if you’ve prepared.”
The monster-yet-human stood only meters away, at the doorframe between cold malnourished dirt and equally cold lifeless floors. Dys looked at its eyes, then back to his own world, staring at the holopalm with the person speaking to him. “It’s complicated.”
They sighed, some of it cut out in small bits as air hit their microphone. “It was a yes or no question, what’s your location?”
“Who knows.”
Dys, despite the answer, did want to see another day. As much as he wanted to stay here forever and bask in the weirdly pacifistic monster’s lair, he would let the Surveyors know, going out like this, and the Surveyors would let the hunters know. He quickly left the office, trying his best to keep his eyes locked on the ‘target’ though it has no idea of his presence. The door shuts. He leaves.
He almost imagines the monster cry in vain, missing it’s guest, pretending he had a reason to ever come back again.