A Soldier in Love by A. Petrov

like your plan. I hope you didn’t give him a concussion,”
Aaron gave Michelle a stern look.

 
    “He
was only out for a few seconds. He’ll be fine, he’s used to it,” Michelle
replied with a sly smile.

 
    Michelle
followed Aaron to his office.

 
    “I
have something to show you…”

 
    “OK,”
Michelle replied.

 
    Aaron
revealed the journal hidden in his desk.

 
    “What
is this?” Michelle said looking over the handwritten pages he had bookmarked.
It seemed so foreign to her to see something handwritten instead of typed.

 
    “Does
it say how to kill them? I haven’t finished reading and I know you’ve been
through this whole thing,” Michelle asked.

 
    Aaron
shook his head. “No, not really. Whoever wrote this journaled almost every day but then the writing just
suddenly stopped.”

 
    “Well
then, we are going to trap one and find out. Any luck on the trap and the
supplies?” Michelle asked.

 
    “One
step ahead of you, Z,” he grinned.

 
    He
rummaged around the supply closet and retrieved a cage like contraption.

 
    “I
found this out back. I made a few adjustments to it according to this,” he said
as he took the journal from her and flipped to the page with a crude drawing
and scale of the contraption. It was the same one that he had shown her before.

 
    “Let’s
go set up a trap,” Michelle replied as she clasped her hands together.

 
 
    ***

 
 
    “Are you sure this is
going to work?” Aaron said to Michelle with great hesitation.

 
    She nodded. “Yeah, it’s
what the IS said. They hate anything acidic in nature.”

 
    “That doesn’t make
sense. Our skin is slightly acidic, it is covered in lipids
that make it hard for germs and bacteria to enter our bodies. We’re slightly
acidic. Why do they keep trying to attack us?” Aaron questioned.

 
    “They’re vicious but
dumb. They think everything is an enemy,” Michelle replied. She had to admit
she had never been the expert on anything in her civilian life, well, maybe to
her students she was the expert on some things, but not like this. It felt
strange to have Aaron, who was a doctor, look to her for the answers. It seemed
as though he had held all the information until now.

 
    “I guess not everything
makes sense here. I mean we are another planet. Maybe here we are way more
acidic than what we consider normal on Earth,” Kate added.

 
    Michelle nodded. “We’re
not on our turf. This place has different minerals, different soil, Hell, it’s
a giant fucking desert, maybe that’s why it can’t handle anything acidic.”

 
    Aaron nodded. “Yeah, I
just wish we had more information.”

 
    “I guess all you have
is me,” Michelle replied quietly before the three turned their attention to the
trap.

 
    “Aw, shit,” Aaron
muttered as his flashlight went dim.

 
    “Damn, I thought I
charged it,” he said hitting it with his palm.

 
    Kate shook her head.
“It’s OK, you can share with me.”

 
    “I hear it,” Michelle
said over them.

 
    Aaron nodded. “Yeah, I
can smell it.”

 
    “That thing smells
horrendous,” Kate replied as she crinkled her nose.

 
    The three stood back
from the cage as the thing shrieked in terror. Michelle shined her flashlight
at it.

 
    “I’m sorry, I know this
thing… I know it is bad, I just I’m not a good soldier, I hate killing things,”
Kate said with a look of fear in her big brown eyes.

 
    “It’s either us or them,”
Michelle said shifting the flash light between her armpit and putting down the
pack of supplies she was carrying.

 
    She opened the pack.
From a distance she then proceeded to squirt the molcos hund in the eye with
vinegar.

 
    It hissed and let out a
piercing screech before it lurched to the front of the cage attempting to claw
at whatever it could between the bars. It retaliated towards the back of the
cage before lunging forward again hitting the bars with its claws.