The Beginning of a New Race

Chapter One

It felt like someone was drilling into my head.

That was the first thing that went through my aching mind as I realized what had happened. The pilot had lost control during those last few seconds. I was quite surprised that I had not gone deaf from the terrible explosion of sound as if the titanium that was holding everything together had been shredded through in an instant. After all that we still hadn't stopped moving, as we skidded closer and closer towards the lake. The right side of the craft couldn't have fared well, being that we were skidding on that side of the ship. When we finally hit water it was like hitting a wall, the ship was almost stopped in its place. That was when my head collided with the chair in front of me, easily above 20 miles per hour.

And to think that was the softest landing I had ever experienced.

As I looked around I saw that I was correct, the right side was not in very good shape. Quickly filling with water from several holes, the passengers located on that side could not be doing too well, but I did see a few surfacing from there. We needed to get off this ship quickly.

“Hey! Everyone needs to evacuate this Goddamn ship!" I heard the pilot yelling from the front. I was amazed that he had survived; he didn't have much protection in the very front. “I need men to help get the wounded and unconscious out of here!"

Counting myself as a man, having just turned twenty years old two months back, I searched for people in need of help. I checked on my family first. My mom and dad were on the outside, with only a few bruises on their arms and legs. My mother had a rather large cut on her leg, but she immediately nodded at me to keep moving. My sister, a little younger than me at 18 years old, was almost unscathed besides a small cut across her left forearm. After the once-over I then turned my attention to the rest of the ship.

The ship had tilted almost 45 degrees up into the air, making it impossible to get out without getting wet. So why wait? I slipped into the water, hating the feeling of the stuff. Notice how I called it stuff, this water was thicker than any water I'd ever drank or touched before. I'd also never swam before, but it wasn't too hard due to the thickness of the water. It was almost like crawling through the little jelly cups we had every once in a while.

The passengers on the right side were not going to last much longer under this water stuff; they had been in it since soon after the initial impact. With how easy it was to move through the water, it wouldn't take long for me to find someone in need of help.

As I went under the surface I opened my eyes slowly, not wanting to ruin them from the jelly-like water. I almost immediately located a family struggling to get out of their seats. I approached the first one, a man of about 40 years of age and got to work. Why he couldn't get out of the seat on his own, I had no idea, for his arms were at least two times as large as mine, with zero fat.

This dude is built like a truck. Why can't I look like that?

After yanking on the belt buckle as hard as we could at the same time, it came loose and he swam to the surface to get air and returned to help me with the others. I could only hope that the other passengers were getting help as well.

We repeated the process 3 times until we got to the last person in the row, a small girl that could have only been fifteen or sixteen years old. Because she was on the outside, her buckle had almost melded into the wall beyond repair. There was no way that we were going to be able to unstick the buckle, so we turned to our other option. We started to tear at the place the straps connected to the seat, ripping the first one off easily because of the damage done to it already. The girl started to try to wiggle out, but she couldn't fit. It was just too tight for her to squeeze through. We turned to the other buckle and started to work on it. I felt stupid as I realized that this buckle had just withstood a spaceship crash and was perfectly fine, yet I thought that I could yank it off? I looked around frantically for anything I could possibly use to get her out of her restraints, all three of us running out of air. There were no tools in sight that I could see, and the man beside me, who I guessed was the girl's father, couldn't find anything either. He looked at me with his eyes full of pleading. I could tell what he was thinking; don't let this happen to her.

I knew in that instant what this girl meant to him.

I looked at the floor and saw a somewhat large piece of titanium that looked amazingly close to a knife settling onto the ground. I picked it up, fighting the urge to drop it as it cut into my right hand. It was terribly unusual to feel as if my hand had caught fire while surrounded with water. I started to tear at the belt that went from the top of the girls left shoulder to the middle of the seat, fighting to stop myself from breathing in the gelatinous water. Now my hand and lungs felt like one large burning inferno waiting to be put out by my lack of air. The water surrounding us had started to turn red with the blood gushing out of my hand. I was losing blood fast, but the girl was losing consciousness even faster. The makeshift blade finally ripped through the last few threads of the inch thick belt, releasing the nearly unconscious girl. I dropped the titanium and grabbed one of the girls arm and her father did the same, and we pushed ourselves to the surface.

My vision started to cloud and fade away, my muscles screeched in protest as I urged them to pull me up, and my lungs felt like they would pop under the pressure. I couldn't stop myself any longer, I had to breathe. I drew in a large breath of the bizarre water like substance, instantly regretting my decision. I started to falter and the man-truck must have noticed, because he grabbed onto me and continued the painfully slow rise to the surface.

As we broke through the surface, I instantly started throwing up and convulsing, barely keeping my head above the water. The man-truck grabbed my shoulders as I started to fade away again, sinking deeper into the water. I could have sworn that he was either going to give me a concussion or break my neck from an overdose of whiplash.

You aren't really helping man, please just stop. I didn't have enough strength to talk; my lungs were still on fire.

“We ain't done yet sonny boy!" he hollered in a very weird accent I had not heard before. In fact, I didn't even know that he had existed before the crash, which was quite odd being that we had been on such a small ship.

The pilot was still helping the others evacuate when he saw us and promptly swam over, trying to help with my dreadful state of well-being.

“Well you don't look too good lad, need to get you to dry land pronto." He yanked me over to the door everyone was exiting out of and waved down a ragged looking young man. “Get this one on shore first Richard, he isn't going to last long without some medical attention."

“Okay Sir, I'll make sure he gets into good hands." I looked up at Richard, and screamed when I realized what I was seeing. His face was melting off and his bone was showing, yet he wasn't showing any pain.

“Holy shit lad, what's the matter!" The pilot swam over and started searching the water something that could have bothered me, but quickly gave up and shook me, bringing me back into reality. Richard was fine, nothing wrong with his face at all. What the fuck is in that water, why am I seeing these things?

During the next few minutes I tried my hardest to swim, but in the end I was just dragged through the water to the shore by Richard. He looked at me and sighed, probably wishing that I'd stop being lazy and help some with moving, but after I didn't respond he started to lift and carry me over to some soft grass. Or at least I thought it was grass, I hadn't seen any real plants my entire life, only things in books on survival that were brought along on the ship.

 The land was scattered with debris, ranging from scraps of metal to one of the gigantic thrusters that had failed to stop the crash.

Richard pulled my head over to look at him; He had called for me to look at him several times now. I guess I might have had some hearing problems anyhow.

I had just finished my teenage years, yet my attention span hadn't changed in the slightest.

Now that I was paying attention Richard started to ask me questions.

“What's your name boy?"

“Austin, but you can call me Ozzy."

“What hurts?"

“Well I know this isn't the response you want, but I gotta go with everywhere hurts." It was not a lie, not at all.

“If you want to act like that Ozzy, then you don't need help."

“The hell I don't!"

I should really start taking this seriously, I could very easily be dying and I'm starting to piss off my one chance for survival.

“You need to tell me right now where you feel terrible or I am moving on to the others in need of help." Richard was nearing the end of his patience quickly, that I could tell.

“Well for starters, I have to have some type of rusty piece of metal stuck in my head, cuz it feels like it's about to explode and catch fire afterwards. If that isn't enough exaggeration on the pain, I don't know what is." I said with as much emphasis as I could muster in my pained mind.

“What else?"

“If you hadn't noticed I'm kinda painting the beach red with the blood from my hand, and besides that my lungs feel like I've been used to store Jelly."

Richard opened a bag I had failed to notice earlier and started to clean and wrap my hand, which hurt even more than cutting it due to the amount of disinfectant that he poured on the bandage. After that he checked to see if I had any signs of a concussion, flashing a light in my eyes to check dilation and then asked me to say my months backwards.

Shit, I don't even know them forward without singing a little song my mom taught me, how am I going to do this?

Amazingly, I passed with somewhat flying colors. The only thing that would ever fly around here.

15 Minutes After Impact

I had started to look around at the ship's landing site after getting cleared from Richard on the shore.

The ship was in literal pieces. The entire cargo bay had been lost, probably somewhere towards the initial impact site. The right side of the ship was slowly getting deeper into the water, creaking and moaning as it tore itself apart. There would only be a few more minutes before the entire ship would be under the surface along with everyone unlucky enough to not get off in time. The part of the right side that was still visible was in tatters, with pieces of titanium hanging off everywhere. It looked as if the ship was made of nothing more than some clothe that had been found lying around at the build site.

Most people had gotten off and were sitting around on the shore, including me, waiting for the pilot to give us orders. A few others were still out in the water searching for some people that hadn't come out, but if they hadn't by now they most likely wouldn't be for a long time, and not on their own will.

I started to take in the surroundings, after realizing that this was the place I would be calling home for the rest of my life. The star that occupied this solar system was very bright making it hard to look anywhere for long before closing my eyelids or shielding my eyes, but I had been living in space for my entire life, and it was pretty dark up there. There were what I guessed were trees and shrubs that hung around at the top of the shore just waiting to be explored by the newcomers, though I probably wouldn't be participating in any such ventures due to my injuries. There was also a two large moons that I could see on either horizon poking their heads out as if they were curious what had just landed on their planet.

Once again, I looked back at the actually important places and found myself face to face with the pilot, along with Richard standing behind him. They both looked annoyed, and my first guess was that my attention had slipped out of my own grasp again.

“Are you gonna participate or not Ozzy?" The pilot asked me, thinking that I had heard him before.

“Well I think I've participated enough to last me a lifetime, even said lifetime was just shortened by the current events, but I could do with some kind of activity. What is it?"

Richard started to speak up and move in front of the pilot, who didn't look too enthused about the move. “We need to track down the cargo bay, or at least what's left of it. That's where all the tools and food items are. After all this we can't start losing more people."

My heart sank when I heard the last part. “How many people did we lose exactly?"

“Thir…" Richards's voice cracked. I could tell that he felt a lot worse than I did about the loses. As far as I could tell, everyone I knew had arrived on shore. He coughed and began again, “Thirteen are unaccounted for, but we still have search parties taking turns sweeping in and out of the ship. Without supplies such as flashlights we can't do too much."

“Well then I'm up to the challenge. We'll find that cargo bay before you notice we're gone. Talking about us, how many people are going?"

“Just seven, all guys 'cept for two gals. We don't really know what's out there yet, so it'll be a very slow task, lots of stoppin and listenin." I had been wondering why so many people on the ship had weird accents for a long time. I finally gave up.

“Let's get going then, can't just sit around here all day without goodies!"

1 Hour After Impact

The four guys that surrounded me had to be the most girly looking dudes I'd ever seen.

Not that you look too manly yourself.

The guy to my immediate right was named Jesse, and his sole purpose so far had been to maintain the cleanliness of the ship and not get in the way too much. He was about a foot shorter than me, probably about 5'4'' or close to that height. He couldn't have weighed more than a toothpick, and he surely had to be related to one.

The guy beside him was named Osborne, and the moment I heard that I decided against talking to him. Too fancy of a name for me, probably wears the gold his ancestors brought on the ship. I didn't really know why he had volunteered for the search; he was about 5'11'' and weighed as much as his height without the apostrophes separating the numbers. At least if anything charged us, I would not be the first to get attacked.

The two men on my left were twins, Darren and Donald, and very comical ones at that. The double D's were completely identical, which ended up making my already damaged brain a little more confused. Both of them had even started to bald in the exact same spot. The only thing that could be used to tell them apart was a slight scar located above Darren's left eye on top of his brow. They were around 6 foot, and looked to be an average weight. They also shared the same type of humor, cracking jokes no matter what the situation was. They'd make the excursion interesting if it started to get too slow.

Then came the two females. One was the girl I had saved from the ship earlier, which amazed me because she had been under even longer than me, and I had almost passed out. I made a mental note to have a talk with Richard to go over some safety precautions, such as not letting someone go explore after they nearly die.

Can't really blame him; he didn't go to… what did those books say? Used to be on Earth… College!

Her name was Amita, and she had turned out to be 18 years old. She was pretty short, not anywhere close to my height of course. Maybe something like 5'2'' or even shorter, but either way she looked tiny. Her hair was almost bleached white and longer than anyone else's, making her stand out amongst the ninety-four people on the shore. Wasn't really hard to, in my eyes at least. I thought at the time that she was the best looking lady on this planet; my eyes had a magnetic pull to her.

Even if there were a billion people on this planet I would still chose Amita.

The other girl was only a couple inches taller than Amita, which wasn't very impressive due to her shortness. Almost everyone was taller than her except for the kids below ten years of age and Amita's relatives. I could pick them out pretty easily besides her dad, who showed no relationship. The other girl's name was Rachel, and she wasn't a very special character from what I observed. Just a typical women, nothing that stood out.

Holy hecklenuts would you look at that, you're a scientist Ozzy!

We were at the end of the scorched path that had been left by the ship, only a few feet away from the water that the craft would claim as its final resting place. Our objective was to find the place where the ship had touched down first and then scour the area for any sign of the cargo bay, which couldn't be too hard to find being that it was easily the size of a small two story house. We didn't have any tools or supplies to take along with us, so besides waiting on the pilot to wave us off, we were ready to go.

Everyone in the group was getting to know each other if they hadn't before, and I, being my oh so social self, had to get to get to know everyone in the group. We had already done introductions before, so now we were just telling stories, jokes, or talking about our families. It was about midway through the conversation when Darren called for silence.

“So as we said before…" Darren started out.

Donald quickly caught on and finished, “…we're twins. But did you know…"

“…that our father had a twin?"

“And if you couldn't figure this out…"

“…we're very good at guessing each other's thoughts." At the time Darren had finished saying the last word he and Donald were laughing at the faces of the rest of us.

Everyone was speechless after learning that the two of them were in perfect sync.

At this point the pilot had arrived after talking with some of the other groups on the shore and we all started to quiet down.

“All of you know what you're doing on this venture, correct?"

There was a collective “yes" from the people around me.

“Let's just cover some rules. You're to be back here by sundown, even if you don't find the cargo bay. This is purely recon, not a salvaging mission. That means there is not to be anything, if there even is anything, disturbed on that part of the ship." The pilot looked at us individually throughout the small speech, making sure he made eye contact.

“Yes sir!" I looked at Darren and saw him saluting. What an odd sight for a balding middle-aged man.

Donald, Osborne, and Rachel joined in only seconds after, trying their best to sound serious and keep straight faces. I could tell that this venture wasn't going to be taken seriously with this group of clowns around.

Jesse had been elected the leader of the group, and I could only guess that it was because he was part of the ship's actual crew, not just another passenger. He was the smallest guy in the group, and I surely couldn't see him lead us through anything more difficult than a tour of the shore. If anything, being that he had been taking orders from the pilot for a long time, he would at least keep the jokesters at bay and help everyone stay on track. He started to lead the way onto the path that was heavily surrounded by trees and large scrubs and thickets, waving as the pilot walked back towards the camp site that was being put up.

1 Hour and 30 Minutes After Impact

About fifteen minutes after leaving the end of the crash site, I could no longer see the shore, and I still couldn't see what waited ahead of us at the impact site.

There was a lot of conversation about each individual's lives or their family's history, with small jokes being cracked every few minutes from Darren or Donald.

The twins were really interesting when I first met them, but now they were becoming more of a nuisance with each passing minute.

Darren spoke up after being silent for a really long time, as in two minutes, “I would be telling you guys all my really good jokes, but I'm afraid that some of them would crash and burn. Too soon?"

Another round of laughter started up from the clowns, who obviously didn't take anything serious at all, even if it contained the death of innocent people. I wondered why they had decided to come on something this serious if they couldn't stop laughing for more than a few seconds.

On the other hand Amita, Jesse, and Osborne were having a conversation about the people that had not been found since the crash, and when Darren said the joke they looked at him with disgust.

“What, you people can't laugh?" Darren looked at them with a fake frown on his face, making it look as if he was sad about their lack of interest.

“Can you show sympathy for the people that just died without control over any of it?" I slowed down out of shock from what had just come out of Amita's mouth. I agreed with her completely, but I just couldn't see her getting angry, at least before that outburst.

“What's done is done Amita. There's no way to change that. And there's also no reason for us to mope about it for the rest of our lives." Rachel tried to back up the clown leader, only making the other side angrier.

We can't let the group get torn apart, we just started out.

“At least we still have our lives! We could have been the ones on the bottom of that lake!" Osborne spoke up for the first time since we had left shore. He didn't seem to enjoy conversation much. But arguments were a different story apparently.

Darren no longer had a fake frown; I could see anger in his eyes. “It's not like this is the best way to live your life! We don't have anything and there's…" At this point my hearing started to falter and shut out his words, and I couldn't have been happier.

I started to think about my hearing and how it was beginning to be selective. Some things just didn't come through to my brain anymore, mostly at truly important times, but also at times like this when I just didn't want to listen. Some new things had started to come through though, such as the very light breathing of the others in the group which I wouldn't have been able to pick up before the crash.

Or the whispering coming from the trees.