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You would never think you'd get used to sleeping in caves, really. Not even when your head was resting against a nice, soft deercat as you did so. But Joey found that she was fairly quick to adapt to sleeping like that, despite a lifetime of having gotten used to her own nice, comfortable bed (located in a lovely little alcove in the room beside a window, accompanied by such stuffed animals as mother Puppy Surprise and what remained of her litter.) After a few nights (or, days, rather, stupid day-night difference acclimation), Joey found that she could drift off into a deep slumber rather easily. Helped along by the fact that she was usually bone tired when she did so, and she had the warmth of both Mononoke and Xefros to lull her off compared to the chill of their selected cave for the night (DAY, gosh darn it!!).
But such a deep slumber certainly didn't keep her from starting sleepily out of her sleep when she heard a heavy pounding noise from somewhere. In her mostly asleep state, she grumbled and tried to turn over, unwilling to wake up yet.
“Jude, 's not even morning yet. Go back to bed,” she muttered as she tried to ignore the noise. But a much closer sound, namely, the high pitched, angry hissing that reverberated through the furry white body that served as her pillow, roused her a bit more from her sleep. She looked at Mononoke, only to find that the deercat was looking highly agitated. Almost every square inch of fur on its body was standing on end, and a low sort of growling hiss was rumbling menacingly in its chest. “... What's wrong, buddy?” she asked, trying to stroke down the hair to no avail. Xefros had been roused himself, looking sleepy yet trying to make himself more alert.
“What? What's happening?” he muttered, looking around. Off in the corner, even slow but steady Treetoe had been awakened, and was staring in the same direction that Mononoke was. To the front of the cave where they had propped up a large, thick piece of bark to serve as both a shield against the sun and as camoflauge.
“I don't know. The animals are getting all upset for some reason,” Joey replied softly. “I wonder what could be-” The sound of force against their makeshift door sounded again, and she yelped in surprise now that she was fully awake to comprehend what she was hearing. A glance at Xefros to ask what that was had her see the pallor of his face, already grey, fade to a sickly looking asheny color. In a moment, she saw him hold out his hand, into which his cuebat appeared and was tightly gripped in his hand.
“Joey, get behind me,” he said softly. Before Joey could even ask just why he would want her to do that, there was the sound of wood splintering into a hundred tiny fragments, and moans filled the cave that grew louder and louder the more they bounced off the walls. Mononoke jumped to its feet and roared loudly, baring its fangs.
Three figures shambled into the cave, moaning with their arms stuck out stiffly in front of them. Their grey flesh, partially blackened but also half rotting to the point some of them looked like it was dripping off of them, brought with it the stench of rot and death. There were several missing teeth between them, some had bald patches on their heads (and some patches without any scalp at all). And the moaning. The awful, awful moaning somewhere between a death rattle and the bubbling of muck in the deepest, darkest of swamps.
Joey gasped and scrambled to her feet, pulling out her flashlight out of instinct. Mononoke leaped onto one of the figured, growling and smacking it away with claws extended. Xefros himself wound up and hit one of them in the face, while trying to avoid the other one.
Joey, far out of her element in this scenario full of violence, trembled as she watched the scene of chaos unfold in front of her. Watching as the majestic deercat proceeded to deftly maul the assailant that it had captured, while Xefros struggled with the other two at once. One of them managed to grab Xefros by the arms, pushing him down onto the ground where he struggled with it, and the other one lumbered closer. Joey gasped as she saw it bend down, aiming to attack Xefros while its fellow kept him against the ground, and her mind raced for something to do.
With nothing else coming to mind, she held out her flashlight and flickered her thumb over the button in a panic. The flashing light cast even more terrifying shadows over the creature's rotting and gory face, but it appeared to do the trick. The new stimulus drew its attention towards Joey, fixing blank, jaundiced eyes on her, before reaching out its arms again and lurching towards her. A deep, guttural moan bubbling from its throat.
Joey gasped as she tried to dance out of the way of the creature, but within the cave, there was only so much space to avoid its grasp, and no room to abscond. On her third move to dodge it, the thing managed to grab her by a wrist, and shoved her hard against the stone wall of the cave. With her trapped between a monster and a hard place, the thing started to move in with a gaping, reeking mouth of broken and missing fangs.
“No! Get away!!” Joey shrieked as she struggled to get free. With her free hand, she did the only thing she could think of and shoved her flashlight lengthwise into its snaggled maw. It still held onto her and attempted to chew and bite into the flashlight's thick metal body, making for a fairly unpleasant sound of what was surely its remaining teeth continuing to grind, chip, and break against the metal.
A thought intruded its way into her mind for just a moment. A memory of a couple years previous when Pa had come home, a week late for Jude's birthday. Faced with the fact that he had missed his youngest child's birthday (again) he had gone ought and gotten him a very expensive late present by way of apology (buying Jude's forgiveness, more like, Joey thought). Said present had been a movie projecter along with a roll of film, said film holding a copy of the movie 'Night of the Living Dead' which had come out a few years previous. Jude had been terrified and Joey had hated it for all the guns, violence, and death in it.
And yet, here before her, loomed a creature with the exact physical points of the monsters in that movie.
Of course. Of course this weird alien planet just HAD to have zombies. Why not? There were giant white animal-monster-parents and a sun that was so strong it could burn you in a moment and tons of trigger and weapon happy Trolls just waiting for someone to stab. Why not zombies?
Joey came back to herself as the Troll zombie growled around the flashlight again, struggling to push it away but still not managing it.
“Xefros!” Joey shrieked for his help, as she was putting all her strength into trying to keep it from biting into her tender flesh. Not even kicking at its decaying knees was deterring it. For something half rotted, it was strong.
“Joey! Hang on!” She heard him shouting, but had no idea what he was doing or if he could help her in time. She struggled in vain, feeling the flashlight, and that dangerous bitey mouth, push closer and closer as her palms sweated and threatened to slip from it entirely.
Out of nowhere, a blur swung towards the zombie, and connected with a loud crack that forced the zombie away from her. Joey hardly had a moment to register what had to be blood on Xefros's cuebat, as the stumbled zombie soon made itself rise, jaw dropping as arms rose to aim towards them. Even with one cracked horn and a partially caved in head, it was still determined to eat them. Xefros gritted his teeth in a way that almost made Joey think he was baring them like an angry dog, his eyes wild and in a panic, as the zombie made a lurch towards them.
Then, a large, furry hand-like appendage closed around the whole of the zombie's body, and pulled it away from them both. They both looked up, and saw Treetoe sitting above the two of them on its haunches, holding the squirming undead in its large, strong paws. The thing moaned and squirmed, but Treetoe seemed to pay it no mind. With a simple turn of its large body, it pressed the monster up against the rough walls higher up the cave. Joey chose to look away and cover her ears in an attempt to block out the gross, squishy sights and sounds of the large lusus grinding the undead to bits between the rough rock and its paw like an exceptionally large bug.
With the threat out of the way, Xefros turned to Joey, shaking and looking over her with fright.
“Oh my god, Joey, are you okay?! Did it hurt you!? Are you bit anywhere?!”
“N-no, nothing like that. I'm fine,” she managed to breathe out. Was she in shock? Well, she was dizzy and disoriented and felt kind of nauseous and not exactly in her own body. This was probably what being in shock felt like a bit, she supposed.
“I'm so sorry I let it get close to you like that, I had no idea that there would even be zombies around here, it seemed so deserted, and when they came in I had no idea that one of them would come at you like that so fast!” he blurted out in a rush.. “You hate violence, and I shouldn't have let it get so close to getting you and it was so dangerous...” He babbled on until he had to stop to breathe, looking at her with such wide, terrified eyes. “I'm... I'm sorry. But I'm glad you're okay,” he managed at last with a few panting breaths.
“Xefros...” she murmured, looking right back at him. “You don't need to be sorry. You had your hands full with that one, and we were alright in the end... You were trying to protect me, and I'm grateful that you did. I probably would've been a goner otherwise, so... thank you,” she managed with a shaky smile. He gave her one in return, and they both chuckled a bit, slightly high on the sheer relief of still being alive.
Mononoke wandered back in right about that moment. Muzzle stained all around with the dark ichor of rot and Joey really didn't care to imagine what else. She made to move towards the Deercat to see if it was alright, but was stopped by something holding on to her. That something, as it turned out, was Xefros's hand, which had grabbed onto hers sometime during the relieved exchange a moment ago. They both blushed upon realizing this, and Xefros let her go, looking away as if that would hide how red his face had gotten.
“I'm, um... I'm going to go see if I can put up another door,” he murmured, before scurrying off toward the front of the cave where sunlight was still streaming in.
“Okay, you do that,” Joey murmured. “I'll just... tend to the lususes.” Like cleaning off what she had to assume was gore from Mononoke, and the stain from Treetoe's clawed appendages. With a sigh, she set to work, wiping at the stains and trying to focus on not being too freaked out over the fact they had nearly been eaten by zombies.
This planet was just too crazy.