::The Last Epoch-'9'::

Sunrise Hostiles
I was awakened up by Gig tapping on my face. “Rise and shine, Commander,” he said. “Where are we? Where is everyone? Did we find help?” I panicked as I sat up. “We were washed up into a cove and have set up camp here. The guys went out for firewood with Adrianne. Doc and myself are making dinner.” “Have we tried the satellite phones?” “Yeah there’s nothing but static.” “Damn it, where are we!?” I asked confused. “The guys should be back any minute,” Gig said.
Entering the cave at nightfall, Axel exclaimed frustrated. “Nothing, there is no wood left on this wretched island!” “Yeah, just dirt and this dry, dead grass. This should kindle a fire to cook our dinner, but it’ll never last through the night.” Adrianne said carrying a brown heap of grass.
We put all of the grass we could find into a pretty impressive fire where we cooked a can of beans and corn. It was delicious considering we hadn’t eaten anything decent in five days. After eating, I dozed off. Belly full and a heavy, warm blanket, I slept dreamlessly.
As I awoke some time later, I could see a glorious sun rising over a sea horizon. I sat up quickly to rub the sleep from my eyes. I opened my eyes to find the sunrise being obstructed by a silhouette of a very large man. Two more men seemed to appear behind him. I turned to Axel and shook him, “Axel, Axel, Axel wake up stupid. Help is here! Help,” I whispered. “What . . . Help!?” he yelled. Everyone else around slowly started to wake up. His yelling seemed to turn the visitors hostile. They started yelling in some strange language, “jee` ye Tay you` pi,” I stared puzzled “See oh`may oh`en! Jee tay`u pay,” they hollered. All the sudden I saw another figure dart across the cave’s mouth. We all stood up in fear with our hands in the air. “We come in peace. Our space craft crashed in-.” The intruder gesturing angrily interrupted me. They yelled at us in their gibberish.
Just then I noticed an extreme temperature change in the climate. It went from tropical morning humidity to seeing your own cold breath. My attention was drawn to the walls where something very peculiar was forming. Frost was spreading into the cave covering everything in sight. All of us just stood there looking like fools with our hands in the air as this ice slowly crept into the cave’s mouth. As the strange intruding men noticed the coldness and the frost coming into the cave they calmed down seeming nervous and scared.
Paul picked his rifle up off the ground and aimed at the head of the hostile. “No don’t shoot, we don’t know enough yet!” Gig called to Solo.  “Shoot first then take names,” he said mounting his eye on the open sight. Just as he was about to take the shot the seemingly frightened intruders started pushing us to the back of the cave. We grabbed what we could and ran.
I still hadn’t caught a good look at their faces until they turned on a light hanging at the very back of the dark cave. Their faces were covered with tattoos of some foreign symbols. They were about 9ft tall and wearing blood red cloaks. They were clearly some sort of military agent. One of them wore red tinted goggles over his eyes and seemed to be their leader.
At the back of the cave, the men joined us inside of a large cage, which turned out to be some sort of freight elevator. The lead man spoke something in his language, “De ah dubu` ein.” that must have activated something because the elevator suddenly dropped. Everyone was staying silent and sitting in fear. We were all fine except for solo who doesn’t react well to fear and drew his 20mm rifle behind the back of the leader. I shook my head in disagreement. Leaned over and whispered, “No, lets see where this goes.” Paul nodded and unarmed himself.
“These sure don’t look like our guys and are certainly not friendly,” Axel spoke under his breath. “Yeah, but they’re the best hope we’ve got of surviving.”
I look at my watch and we’d been riding this elevator for about two hours. I wondered if we were going to the center of planet or something. We all were looking at each other wondering who would say something. Axel leans over at me and says, “Come on, we can take `em. We outnumber them two to one.” “No. Besides they’re huge, and armed,” I replied.
A half hour later I looked down through the mesh floor and saw the most promising light I had ever seen. The light at the end of the tunnel was coming fast. When we reached it I didn’t know what to expect. But what I saw was unbelievably strange.