Lives Of The Unknown Book 1: The Legend of Andrew Lockeford (14 page)

Andrew had been eating for an hour and
a half before he saw the hupac come back with another squid in its
mouth. This time the hupac kept this squid to itself, leaving
Andrew be.

As grossed out as he was in his state,
Andrew had all he needed where he lay. The squid blood was his
water source, grossed out as he may be by it, and there was
definitely food and air. The only problem here was that he needed
to find a good way to “relieve his waste.” The first and only time
he dug his fingers in the ground and proceeded to pull himself
forward, his legs spiked with pain and he dared not move for at
least ten minutes. He thought about crawling again, then he decided
to roll himself over, creating an equal amount of pain, and dug out
some pits large enough to take care of his feces. When the time
came, he took the feces with one hand, put it into a pit, and
covered it with dirt. He made sure that he would never let that
hand touch anything else until he could walk and wash it in a
river. Or at least wipe it on a leaf. For urine, however, all he
did was let loose and end up stinking for hours in horrid
self-pity.

He thought about how great he had it
on Earth, how comfortably he lived. He never had to worry about
running out of food or water. He never had to worry about being
chased down and killed by wild animals. He never worried about lack
of sanitation or plumbing or hot water. Most of all, he never
worried about dying alone in the middle of nowhere, in which he
never lived his life with purpose. Andrew suddenly thought about
his friends and family, how emotional they must have been when they
heard that he was nowhere to be found. Chances are, there would be
a funeral, and no one could find the body since the only thing
remaining in that Nevada desert was his car.

Andrew began to shed
tears again—he had never cried or endured so much emotion within
just a matter of days. He was sure that he would go insane within
the next few months;
Perhaps I already
have
, he thought. The hupac looked at
Andrew during this depressing scene, staring with a sense of pity
for the human. It was the kind of pity similar to what most people
have when they hand a few cents to a hobo on the street. This alien
animal had already given this pathetic human an entire squid, so it
had given this hobo plenty. In the hupac’s mind, it decided to
“take care” of Andrew for good once he had fully
healed.

It took days for Andrew to eat the
entire squid and regenerate his legs. Sixty pounds of meat passed
through his digestive system, but not all of it went to waste.
Another part of the regeneration gene includes the restructuring of
existing body parts. In short, he increased muscle mass without
doing any exercise. He was completely healed down to his toes, and
he could feel the results once he stood up. The hupac was waiting
patiently for this moment, as it knew that Andrew would be fully
functional soon. Much to both Andrew’s and the hupac’s surprise,
the human had gained ten to fifteen pounds of muscle mass while
losing some fat along with the process, making himself appear more
formidable.

The hupac wasted no time and lunged towards Andrew
once he stood up. Andrew widened his eyes as he dodged in response,
trying to kick the animal when it missed. He failed miserably as
the animal ricocheted from the ground and pounced onto him. Clawed
and torn, he seemed to fare no better than before, but his luck
soon began to change. He pushed the hupac off his body using all
his arm strength and lurched for its neck. It pawed at Andrew some
more while he held it to the ground at the neck, then he delivered
the first strike—he drove one finger into the hupac’s left eye. It
let out a shriek while Andrew bit into the hupac’s neck, which may
have been a tough job for someone with no fangs. The animal was
much more stunned by its eye rather than its neck—Andrew knew this
wasn’t going to work. Finally, in a desperate and stupid attempt,
he punched it in the head as hard and as many times as he could.
The human just kept hitting the hupac until it was unconscious,
then he stepped off.

His flesh was torn on his torso and
all over his face, but his body had released a lot of endorphins to
hide the pain for now. He didn’t want to face this creature ever
again, and yet, at the same time, this creature was the closest
thing he had to keeping himself somewhat sane. This alpha hupac was
capable of responding to his sentences, so there was the comfort of
mild communication. But what could he do if this animal wanted him
dead?

Andrew found a solution to this and
forcefully stepped on the hupac’s legs. Centering all of his weight
onto one foot as he jumped, he broke each leg and waited a minute
for the animal to regain consciousness. A thought suddenly came to
him: what if the hupac was dead? He checked its torso and he could
sense some breathing under that furry body, as well as a pulse. No
problems there.

There was only one major thing left to
do: find some food for himself and the animal. He cared less about
having himself killed now, although it still lingered in the back
of his mind. He knew that he needed to wash up in the river, to do
something about his befouled hands. Problem was, though, there was
no way to really get them clean; he needed soap for that. He winced
at the idea of having crap hands for the next few
months.

Andrew took some long and hard work
finding some food; this time the dead animal in his hands appeared
to be something indescribable, save the idea that it was large,
with six legs and a head. Perhaps it was some kind of giant spider.
He went back to the hupac’s den to find out it was gone. It left a
trail, though, looking as if it had dragged itself for a while.
These animals do have the regeneration gene, so Andrew
underestimated how long it would take for the hupac to be up and
running again.

He followed the trail for about ten
minutes, taking the food with him, and found the hupac, standing on
four legs. It growled very deeply, but there was no hiding the fact
that it was starved. Its eyes focused interchangeably between
Andrew and the dead animal in his hands. Andrew threw the meat
right towards the hupac, waiting for it to eat it. The only
response he got was blank indecision.

“Dammit,” said Andrew, “If your not
going to eat it and you’re just gonna kill yourself, then do
it!”

The starving animal put forth its
attention towards the human.

“I don’t know what you’re really
thinking, so I don’t really know what you want. All I know is….is
that you can understand me. Is that right?”

Its eyes looked towards the
ground.

“Move your head up
and down if you do!
”

Although he expect the hupac to
understand him, he was quite surprised to see it follow his
directions; its head nodded just like he wanted it to.

“Wow, looks like you can. But why? Do
you have a translator gene?”

The hupac shuddered at this statement.
Perhaps this animal had been experimented on, like Andrew had, and
it retained some unpleasant memories.

Andrew stepped forward a few paces,
building up the conflict in the atmosphere.

“Looks like we ought
to work together. I’m not some crazed alien scientist who’s gonna
experiment on you. I’m just a human, and
you
are not some animal, if you can
understand language.”

The hupac, leaving its eyes fixed on
Andrew, slowly moved towards its food and began eating.

“It would be a bitch
for the both of us to keep on fighting, and if I can find a way for
you to communicate with
me,
then it would make things that much better. But
don’t get me wrong—I don’t need you and you only. If you die before
I do, then I’ll just find another animal like you, like another
hupac.”

The hupac just kept on eating the
spider-like creature as it listened to Andrew’s speech. If there
was some other human or intel-being around listening to this, it
would appear that Andrew had already gone insane.

Chapter 15

Meanwhile, on Earth, it is well-known
by Andrew’s friends and family that he is nowhere to be found. In
the spot where Andrew was abducted, only his car remained, and the
footprints he left behind in the desert sand had nearly
disappeared, swept away by the wind.

One day after the incident, his
relatives began to worry, hearing no calls or texts from him about
his progress on the road trip. A couple days more, and many of his
friends, including Troy, took note as well.

“Hello, is Troy there?” said a
feminine voice, slightly anxious, over the telephone.

“Yeah, who is this?”

“It’s Elise Lockeford. Andrew’s
sister?”

“Oh, yeah, yeah! I remember now—what’s
up?”

“Fine, I’m okay.” Whenever some people
say that they’re “good,” then they may have nothing troubling them.
When they say “fine,” however….

“Andrew came by a couple days ago, and
he should still be on his trip. Are you calling ‘cause of that, or
what?”

“…
.No one has heard from
him in days.”

Troy left his mouth slightly open in
silence as he grasped the idea.

“Well….he was here not that long ago,
and he was in a rush to get from my house to….Ely, I think he
called it.”

“And you haven’t heard back from him
at all, either?” Elise became more emotional asking this question,
not wanting to hear the answer.

“No, not really. You saying Andrew’s
dead?”

Elise hung up the phone.

“Hello? Elise, you still
there?”

An investigation
party set out to know how and why Andrew went missing, but after
finding only a car with his fingerprints on it, there weren’t many
answers. The most likely answer stated that he got out of the car,
waited for some random person to pick him up, and then it trails
off into
more
explanations, such as kidnapping or an affair. Everything
just sounded ridiculous because there was no good reason for Andrew
to stop in the middle of nowhere and leave his car. Where would he
go? More importantly, why would he do it in the first
place?

The investigators had to withhold
their case until further evidence came up, which could be never,
and all that Andrew’s friends and family could do was accept the
most likely scenario: he would never be seen again.

Friends either
contacted other friends to spread the lookout for Andrew or prayed
to the heavens in hopes of bringing him back. Usually both. Former
peers of his remarked how good, nice, or whatever he was when he
was still around. There were a select few people who were glad that
he was gone, and a few more who completely did not care. Out of all
the people that heard Andrew was nowhere to be found or heard from,
however, few individuals such as his family members cared to know
more on the
why
.
Only such a few desired the need to figure out what happened to
him, exactly, and how it happened. Two individuals—friends of
Andrew’s from high school—were the most zealous about
this.

“There’s no way that
he could’ve just parked his car in the middle of nowhere, at
night
, and just walked
away!” said Drake.

“I know, I mean, unless he hitched a
ride, or if there was a house or two a couple miles away, it
doesn’t add up,” said Keith.

Drake was a friend of Andrew’s
throughout most of high school. He was fairly short, about
five-foot-five, with a head of thick, short, brown hair. His nose
was pointy, his was mouth narrow, and he had a nasal voice that was
surprisingly not annoying. Sometimes he preferred to grow a
mustache, and he had a thing for carrying a pocketknife at his side
at all times, even if it got him in trouble. He went on to
community college like Andrew did for a while, but afterwards he
pursued a job in the military where he could handle guns as he
pleased.

Keith didn’t get to know Andrew until
the latter part of their high school years. He was also close
friends with Drake, more so than with Andrew, and he had a way of
analyzing a person’s social capabilities. On the first day, he
could tell that Andrew had Asperger’s Syndrome within seconds, but
he didn’t mind that one bit. Keith was tall and stout, with curly
red hair and the occasional beard, which was there just for the
sake of being stroked while he was deep in thought. He was an
excellent singer, but he was also rather crude, so although his
social tendencies reached far, they did not reach to everyone’s
preferences. He was the type of person that one could talk to about
anything—including ordinarily unmentionable subjects—without the
fear of judgment.

Keith and Drake were
at their own houses, talking to each other on house phones. Cell
phones were convenient, but why waste minutes and money talking on
a cell phone when you were right at home with a house phone?
Although, some people’s house phones
are
their cell
phones.