Day 0

I had been out hunting all day, the night it came from the sky. Hunting always brought back memories from overseas, but I had to eat, and I could never help but face my demons head on.

"Always look what scares you in the eye," my pop used to say. He ended up catching a bullet to the back of the head from a tweaker who needed a fix. Shows what he knew. By the time midnight had hit, i was halfway through a bottle of Red Breast. Sometimes I wonder if I'll wake up on the floor of my cabin and all of this will have been an alcohol fuled dream.

But I've never been that lucky.

BOOM!!!

I remember seeing the streak of flame come down about a mile away into the woods, and I half thought I was bekng bombarded. The pimes melted away for a second, giving way to dunes. I shook the memory away and argued with myself for what seemed like an hour.

"That wasn't a missle, thats for sure," I remember slurring to myself. I sighed and stumbled inside to grab my Krag. An old family heirloom, but it still worked like new, and it kept me fed and alive. I loaded it, grabbed some shells, and stuffed them into my coat pocket, spilling a few on the floor. I headed towards the door and stopped. Going back to the table, I grabbed the bottle and took another swig, just for good measure. Then, I shouldered my rifle and stepped out into the cold.

Wandering through the forest at night, drunk, and towards the unknown, one would think i was a bit frightened. You would be right; I was scared shitless. Who knows what I would have found. I went over all the possibilites in my head. Maybe it was a plane? Ok, civies or military? Maybe it was a meteorite, or a satellite, or waste from a jet liner? I mulled all these over in my mind, ignoring the last option that tugged at the back if my brain. Eventually i saw the glow of fire between the trees, and picked up my pace (as much as you can when you're piss drunk and in the woods at night). I knew these woods well. Well enough to know that the clearing i entered wasn't there before. Between the booze, the smoke, and the stench of burning God-knows-what, I didn't quite realize what I was looking at until that thought in the back of my brain said "I told you so,"

It was a Goddamned Spaceship.

As far as I could tell, it wasn't your typical "flying saucer" U.F.O. There were too many hard angles and cylanders. To be honest, I couldn't tell you what it had originally looked like either. It was just a pile of scrap now. I stood there, rooted in the treeline, trying to process what was before me. The acrid stench of what I could only assume was the vessel's fuel, couple wi th mild shock, was sobering me up. I wanted to run. "You've seen enough movies to know what happens next, Johnny." I said to myself, half aloud and half in my head. I began to turn to run far away, when I saw movement in the crater. It was a piece of scrap, 5 foot by 7 foot. It was rising and falling at irregular intervals. Suddenly it lurched forward and fell to the side. From beneath it, and figure crawled out and began to shimmy away from the wreck. It tried to stand, but collapsed and tumbled about 6 feet down a bank of tossed up earth and metal before falling down onto it's stomach a mere 10 feet from me. It didn't move after that, but I could see it's back rise and fall with shallow breaths. I just stood there, like an moron, while my mind screamed at me to run.

But I couldn't.

I was a medic, when I was tromping around the Middle East. I suppose you could say I felt a sense of duty to try and help this....thing, desoite how it might repay me. I slowly began walking toward it, keeping my rifle raised. As I got closer I noticed that it was wearing a helmet of some kind, with tubes and wires running into a pack on it's back. It's suit (or whatever ot was wearing) was padded on the shoulders, biceps, waist, lumbar and on the backs of its legs. I got about a foot away before it noticed me. It turned it's head to me and raised it's hand to try and fend me off, but failed. There was no visor or opening in the helmet, just a smooth black surface. It kept making weird gasping and hissing sounds between it's haggard breaths. Was it talking to me?

I flipped it on it's back and chacked it over. I dont even know what I was looking for. It's a fucking alien! I pulled my hand away and say that it was cover in an oily, black substance. Blood. Or at least whatever kind of blood was pumping through this thing's body. All my equipment and supplies were back at the cabin.

"Well fuck," I slurred, "I guess you're coming home with me, buddy."

I don't know how I got it home, but I remember putting all my equipment on the table next to the couch where it laid, unconscious. Now that there was more light, and I was less intoxicated, I got a better look at it. It was definalty wearing some kind of flight suit. It was black and padded with a strange design on the right breast. However, it looked too small for it. It was baggy on the arms and legs, and around it's chest it was quite loose. It's left side and right leg were oozing the black blood from tears in the suit, and the helmet was crack at the left temple. I began to search it, looking for a zipper, or buttons; anything to help me remove the suit. While searching I found a depression on the helmet, just under the jaw, and pressed it. A seam appeared up the middle of the from of the helmet and it fell away in two parts.

"God, you're ugly," I mumbled. It's head was shaped like a wedge, with the wider part on top extending a few inches laterally to either side. It had two sets of eyes; one was in front of the lateral ridge and were the size of baseballs, the other were 6 jnches forward and the size of eggs. It's mouth kind of looked like a lizard, a snout with skin instead of scales. A cluster of small holes were just below the smaller set of eyes and two large holes covered by a membrain behind the larger ones, below the ridge. It's skin was purplish, streaked with grey veins and mottle with black spots along the bone structure.

"Yeah, really fucking ugly,"

I went to dressing it's wounds. I thought about cleaning them with anti-biotics or runbbing alcohol, but i had no idea what that would to to it. I opted to just stop the bleeding and wrapped the wounds with gauze. Lots of gauze. I sat back in an arm chair and looked at it as I sipped from my bottle of whiskey. It was almost 7 feet long; it's legs dangling off the armrest just below the knee. It's hand clenched and unclenched in it's sleep. Four fingers and two thumbs.

"I bet you're a hit with the ladies," I chuckled, taking another swig. As my vision darkened, I prayed that I was just having a dream.