(This story is still in draft form.)
It has been three weeks since the sun last rose over our horizon. This endless night continues, unabated. As I kneel before the king, he is troubled. "Reports," I tell him, "Have started to come in from our outlying farms. The crops are dying."
"Dying? They're dead, scholar, and you're trying to coddle me. Don't." He watches me, a gruff expression on his aged face.
"As you wish. There is... something else of note, my liege." I hesitate to impart the next bits of information to him. Already his burden is heavy, and what I have to say borders on unbelievable. But, as he says--it is not for me to soften the blow. "Strange creatures have been seen in the fields and in the northern forest. Descriptions are... uncertain, at best, but they appear as best we can tell to be something like rats the size of large dogs."
The king laughs, but it is a hollow noise. "I should be surprised," he says, smiling as empty as he laughs, "But I find that very little surprises me, as of late. Rats the size of dogs. Have you anything else, Elvic?"
"Nay, my liege."
"Very well." He gestures, and his Right Hand stands before him as I move aside. "Sir Aaron, take a sortie of soldiers out to the farmlands. Find me one of these... rats, and bring it back that Elvic might study it and learn of its nature."
Sir Aaron, First Knight, rises from his kneel and nods. "Alive?" The question is more for me than for the king. Sir Aaron is a good man, and I have known him since he was but a child. I nod at the king, deferring to his opinion.
"It matters not," our king replies. "But if it is possible..." His shoulders shrug.
"As you wish, my liege." Sir Aaron turns and strides out of the king's hall, his cape billowing in his wake, the coat of arms of his lord rippling with the motion.
"You can tell me little of this night, scholar," the king says to me as he rises from his throne. "For that I do not blame you--you are not an astronomer, the revolutions of the celestial bodies are not for you to know, nor are you a magician. If this is witchery--we may be well and truly helpless. But, perhaps you can tell me of the things that are coming out of this dark."
"Perhaps, my liege."
He takes the queen's arm, and together the two of them leave the hall, leaving me with only my thoughts. I make my way out into the courtyard, eyes on the empty sky above me. Not a single star shines, and no glowing disk of the moon. Since sunset three weeks ago--to the day? I cannot remember, with nothing to keep time but an hourglass--the sky has been utterly devoid of any form of illumination.
In my wanderings I find my way to the castle wall. From there I can watch Sir Aaron's sortie traveling along the torch-lit east road. By the king's command--and my suggestion--after a week without the sun we began to erect torches along every roadway, outside every shopfront and home, around every field, and along both the castle and town walls. If we cannot have the sun, we must make our own light.
The town wall is half a mile distant, but from here I can see the four huge signal fires burning above the gates, alerting travelers of our presence. Once every hour, an archer fires a burning arrow into the sky in each of the cardinal directions. It has been a week since these measures have proven fruitful, but we must not give up hope that there are still people out there, somewhere.
I give the sky one last baleful glare and begin the trek back to my quarters.
***
I wake to a fearful pounding on the door of my bedchamber. "I'm awake," I call out, none-too-polite. "I'm bloody awake, stop your racket and give me a moment, would you?" I don't know how long I have been asleep. I don't know, truly, if I ever was. "I'm coming, damn your eyes, I'm--Oh, my lord." It is the king's son, prince Obellas. I immediately bow, and begin to apologize, but he waves it off.
"Save it, Elvic, now is hardly the time," Obellas says. "After all, the old man has sent me--a prince!--to fetch his councilor. Truly these are mad times." He sneers as he turns away and, not for the first time, I am unable to draw a line from the sweet boy of his childhood to the man he has become. He has simply changed too much.
"Indeed. For what reason am I summoned?" We walk and talk, as it is evident from his tone and posture that there is no time to waste.
"Sir Aaron has returned with that which he was sent to procure."
The scene that greets us when we reach the king's hall is, to say the least, shocking. Sir Aaron stands before the king's throne, on which our liege rests, hunching forward, fingers criss-crossed before his mouth. The First Knight is covered in blood on one side. Two more knights, looking pale, stand behind him, fully armed.
"--tore his goddamn throat out," Sir Aaron is saying as we enter. "Like it was a wolf or a bear, but..." he gestures, at a loss for words, and I notice the corpse before him.
"The descriptions were accurate, then," I call out, to make my presence known. "Like a rat the size of a dog. A large dog. At least, in profile." The beast is solid black, but covered not in fur--instead, its body is skinned like that of a frog, in lumpy, soft, wet hide. "Strange that is has no eyes... You were unable to capture one alive?"
"Bloody thing killed two of my men," Sir Aaron snaps, clearly irritated. "We tried to capture it alive but I was left little choice. We found it eating its way through the farmer Mir's grain stores. It was docile until we tried to net it, at which point it went berserk, leapt upon Alrin and savaged his throat. It did much the same for Goil when he tried to stop it with his hands. When I stabbed it, it died easily enough, but it did not bleed."
"These looks like the burns of boiling water," I say, gesturing towards the creature's mortal wounds.
"Where my blade touched it, it burned and put forth a horrible odor. As well, a terrible sound. The metal seems to have hurt it more than the cut itself did."
"Your sword, sir knight," I request, once I have looked the body over externally. He draws it and hands it to me hilt first. I kneel down, and with clumsy hands I cut the beast from tip to tail. What I find is as troubling as the creature's existence. "You say it was eating from Mir's grain stores?"
"Aye," the knight replies. The king, silent so far, leans further forward to get a look at my work.
"I will not call you a liar to your face, Sir Aaron--I've known you since you were as high as my knee, and as such I know better." I hand him back his sword--hilt first--and look him straight in the eye. "Are you sure of what you saw? It was eating?"
"Aye," he replies, looking offended. "We stood and watched it for several moments."
"What was it doing? Down to the smallest detail, sir knight."
"Eating. It took the grain in its hands, brought it to the mouth, and placed it inside, where it was held while the beast chewed. After a moment, it swallowed. Is there anything I am leaving out? Does that define what 'eating' is enough for you, Elvic?" My name shoots from his mouth like a whip.
"Aye," I say, and with a booted foot I roll the corpse over so that Sir Aaron and the king can both see the cut I made. "My only question, then, is where the grain was going after the creature swallowed. Neither of you are animal experts, so I will point out--"
The king breaks his silence: "There is no need, Elvic. All present are familiar with the basic workings of the body. The creature has no..."
It is prince Obellas who finishes his father's sentence, a look of wide wonder in his eyes: "Innards. Guts. Organs. It's... it's..." He lets the word drift off; the rest of us look on in horror as he reaches out and touches the incision; his fingers come away sticky, and still he has no word for what the creature is made of: a sort of black ooze, like honey or molasses.
By now the substance has begun to puddle on the floor. Sir Aaron kneels down and examines it from a foot away. "But... I swear to you both, it was eating the grain. Where the grain went... Look not to me for answers. This is an impossibility."
The king sits back. "It is as empty as the night," he says to himself. "Sir Aaron, take a sortie of knights out into the farmlands and escort the farmers and any foodstuffs you can find behind the town wall. Elvic will accompany you, and keep a log. Should you come upon anything that is... like this thing, kill it. Without hesitation. Take no risks. Do you understand?"
"Yes, my liege," we both answer, bowing.
"Sir Aaron, get yourself cleaned up. Elvic, find a weapon and armor that suits you. You are not a fighter but I will not send you out helpless. You leave in an hour, make haste."
Prince Obellas speaks up again: "I will accomp--"
But the king silences him with a word: "No."
***
I pull my cloak tighter around my shoulders to protect myself from the cold, but all I succeed in doing is pressing my chain mail into my flesh where it is not padded with leather. "That's the last of the grain," I say to myself as I tally up the total of the final wagon, "With the salted meat and what little fruit we found, it's enough to last a while, at least." We are the last, as per the First Knight's wishes.
Sir Aaron stands with his back to me, staring east into the dark past the end of our torch-line. "There is something out there," he says, holding up an armored fist to silence me. "Listen."
I am an old man, and my hearing is not the best it ever was, but I cannot miss the sound Sir Aaron wishes me to hear: a shuffling, the sound of something being dragged along the road. I draw my sword--though I have no skills with which to swing it proper--and back towards the wagon. "Shall we depart?" I ask.
Sir Aaron shakes his head. "I want to see," he says.
"Sir knight, the king ordered us to not take any risks. By now the rest of his knights have reached the town with the farmers and their families. We are the last, as you yourself ordered. It is time to leave."
"Shortly," he replies, walking slowly towards the final torch along the road. With his free hand--for he, too, has drawn his blade--he yanks it out of the ground and holds it in front of him. Down the road he edges, nervous.
I wish to call him back. I wish to urge him to return that we may make our own ways home to relative safety. But I dare not raise my voice, for fear of whatever it is that made that noise. I climb onto the wagon and take the reins in my hands, ready to flee. I am an old man, and a coward--my place is beside the king, not in the thick of things; it takes all the little bravery I can muster to not abandon Sir Aaron and race home alone.
The knight's voice cuts through the night. "Who goes there?" There is no response. My eyes are not such that I can see far enough to make out to whom he speaks. "I am Sir Aaron, First Knight and Right Hand to the king of these lands. Make yourself known, that you may return with us to the safety behind the town wall."
Still, there is no response. Sir Aaron waves his torch in the air, left to right. The shuffling sound is gone; only the crackling of the torches remains. "Sir Knight!" I finally find myself calling out. "We must be off!"
Sir Aaron replaces the torch in its place and climbs aboard the wagon. "He is gone," is all he says. The knight takes the reins from me and the wagon lurches into motion. The noise is welcome to my ears.
"Sir Aaron, your skin is ashen--"
"It was a man," he says, before I can continue. "Of sorts. A man like the creature I brought before the king. Hairless, with black skin covering his whole body. I could make out no eyes."
I merely stare at him.
He continues: "A head taller than me. It was dragging a slain deer; bits of the animal's meat hung from its jaws. It... looked at me, I think, and then walked off the road and into a field, where I lost sight of it."
"We must inform the king," is all I can say.
"Indeed."
***
"We are being followed," Sir Aaron tells me when the town wall comes into view. He is riding in the rear of the wagon.
"How do you know?" I ask, giving the reins a little shake to hurry the horses. I hear Sir Aaron rummaging through the gear.
"Because the thing I saw did not walk off the road," he says. "I did not want you to panic. It pointed at me, then gestured to the darkness, and several more of its like stepped into view. Being a man alone I did not feel it prudent to try and fight them on my own, leaving you unprotected and unable to bring word to the king."
"How do you know they're still back there?" I query, panic mounting. I have not dared to so much as glance behind.
"The road was well lit," he says, and gestures back along it. I follow his gesture with my eyes. "As you can see now--"
"I can see it," I snap, returning my eyes to the road before me and urging the horses faster. The torches that had lined the road behind us are gone.
Sir Aaron lights the arrow on fire and let's fly. It strikes true--as true as it can in the dark--and we hear a horrid screech burst from the shadows. "My God," I whisper.
"With hope, that got the gate guards attention!" he yells over the sound of the wagon, which is now roaring down the road. "Blessed are we if they open the gate!" He lights another and fires, and again the horrible sound rends the air.
Indeed, we're blessed--or at least lucky. One of the other wagons arrived only just before us and the gate was already open. The knight in charge of it, Sir Penly, quickly leaps onto the bench and hurries the horses aside, clearing our path. He shouts something up at the gate guards; they do little. He flails at them angrily. They are frozen in their fear.
We race through the gate and Sir Aaron leaps from the back to the ground, shouting: "Close the gates! Close the bloody gates, you fools!" The guards finally snap into action and comply. The First Knight races up the stairs to the top of the wall, an arrow already on his bow string. I climb down from the wagon and stand before the gate as it closes; in that last second I can see out, I see the last torch as something grabs it and smashes it to the ground, snuffing the flame. A matter of instants later and something is pounding on the gate from the outside.
"Begone, damn you!" I hear Sir Aaron shouting as he launches arrow after arrow down from his vantage point. Sir Penly joins him, and soon the gate guards are firing down as well. The cacophony from the other side of the town walls is like to drive a man mad. I stand there, rooted in fear, heart thundering, and stare at the gate as something strikes it again and again, something tries desperately to get in. The world spins around me and I find the road is reaching up to smash me in the face, and I black out.
When I regain consciousness and wearily rise to my feet, the gate is still. "Scholar," a voice calls out. It is Sir Penly, from the top of the wall. "Come up here."
"What?" I ask dumbly.
"Come up here," Sir Aaron repeats him, without looking down at me. "As the king's scholar you need to see this."
The climb up the stairs is hard on my old bones, but I manage to mount the top. The stench is overwhelming; I press my cloak over my mouth and nose. "Look down," Sir Penly says, nodding over the wall.
I do as I'm asked. At the foot of the wall, sprawled out, are dozens--maybe a hundred--black corpses. At first, they appear vaguely man-shaped, but upon closer inspection the similarities fade: the arms are too long, the legs too short, the neck thrusts forward instead of upward and the head is too long, with a long jaw. Sir Aaron was right, there are no eyes. I shiver; not even the signal bonfire can keep me warm.
"Did you kill all of them?" I ask. Sir Aaron shakes his head.
"Eventually the rest wandered away," he tells me. "Like the first creature, they died very easily; it is their numbers I am concerned about. Their numbers, and this:" He lights an arrow on fire and lets fly; the shot sails through the dark, illuminating...
"Madness," I mutter. Moving slowly through the land on either side of the road are what look like large lumps of shadow. It isn't until the arrow falls to earth near one of them that I get a good look: black, amphibious skin on a round, humpbacked body, with a large eyeless head near the ground and six short, stumpy feet, which shuffle as the beasts move. "The world is madness." The creature starts and rears, revealing an underside as black as its top, and shuffles rapidly away from the flame.
"They arrived after the torches went out. I have already sent word to the other knights to man the wall," Sir Aaron says quietly. "You must return to the king, and tell him what you saw. The order needs to come from him--but we must pull our people behind the castle wall. If one of those things out there decides to push the gate... the town wall will not hold." He puts an armored hand on my shoulder. "Elvic. Convince him. We are already carting all of the food into the castle in preparation."
"I will," I say, trembling. "You must continue to fire the signal shots."
"Aye. They're our only way to see if anything is coming up the road now," Sir Penly replies, his voice bitter.
"If anyone is still out there," I continue as I mount the stairs and descend, "They need to know where to go for safety."
"If anyone is still out there," Sir Aaron says, looking me in the eye, "Let us hope they do not meet and of our new 'friends'."
***
"Would that you had brought us one of the corpses," the king says, "That we could see it ourselves." His voice shakes; he is a brave man, and was his father's First Knight before he was king. It pales me to hear such fear in his voice. "We will do as Sir Aaron suggests. Had I another messenger I would send him; I hope you do not mind relaying the word to him personally, Elvic?"
"I hesitate, but your word is law, my liege. Once the evacuation is underway I will stay with the First Knight until he falls back to the castle walls himself, acting as your voice." I bow low, chain mail clinking as I move.
"You will not travel alone, Elvic," a voice to my left says: Prince Obellas.
"My son, you will rem--"
The prince holds up a hand: "Nay, father, I would like to see this for myself. If it so displeases you, chastise me when we return." He sneers at the king, a look of bold defiance in his eyes not for the first time.
My liege pauses pauses; then: "As you will." He returns to his chambers without another word, visibly angered.
"You are not right to vex him so," I say as I turn to leave myself. Obellas falls into step beside me.
"It will not do to have the royal family holed up in the castle. Our people need us, and need hope. It has been a long night for them, as well." He smiles; it is an odd expression. "My father is not the man he was, and he forgets this."
"Perhaps."
At the castle wall, the two of us procure horses from the stable master and travel through the town streets, telling all we see of the king's orders. Half-way to the town wall we hear the great horn sounding from the castle's central tower, signaling the people to move within the castle's protection. The prince muses, wondering who the king found to blow the horn.
"Likely some upjumped bodyguard," he says, answering his own question. "He has never been one to follow with tradition."
"He is the king," I respond. "Tradition is what he makes of it."
Obellas snorts, choking back derisive laughter, and falls silent.
At the wall, Sir Aaron climbs down to greet us, leaving Sir Penly to watch the road. "The earth rumbles," he says, frowning. "I know not why. The road has been quiet; the lumpish beasts remain beyond the wall. We heard the horn--so the town is being evacuated behind the castle wall. And yet, the king's son finds himself so far from that safety." Sir Aaron bows, and smiles as the prince. The two were friends, once, but no longer.
"One need not be a knight to defend the realm," Obellas says coldly. "I would see these creatures. May I?" he continues, gesturing at the stairs leading up the wall.
"By all means, my lord."
As Obellas is climbing, I speak with Sir Aaron face to face. "His idea was that the people need to see a member of the royal family somewhere other than hiding in the castle. It is a good notion, I think."
"Perhaps," the First Knight replies, "But dangerous."
Atop the wall, I hear the prince speaking to Sir Penly. "Your bow, sir." With a salute, the knight hands over his weapon and stretches his tired hands. "In which direction should I fire?" the prince asks.
"East, along the road," is the reply. I can hear the bow's string, but cannot see its path. Obellas mutters an awed curse.
"You say they fear fire and metal?" he asks the lesser knight. I hear him pulling back another arrow and letting it fly.
Sir Penly replies, "Indeed, it's almost as i--Sir Aaron! Something on the road!"
"Something new?" he calls up.
"Something old," Sir Penly says. Sir Aaron scrambles up the stairs; I follow, significantly slower.
"Look there," the lesser of the two knights says, pointing east. "Where the prince's arrow fell, in the middle of the road. Do you see them?"
All the First Knight says in return is, "Aye." Where the arrow fell, still burning, we can see a cluster of the man-like creatures standing in the road, motionless. They are no more than fifty yards from the wall. One of them lets out a low hiss, it's arms raised, pointing at us.
I ask, "What are they doing? Preparing, perhaps? They seem capable of thought--of communication."
"Search me," Obellas mutters. "Damned hideous, though."
"That they are," Penly says. Before his words are finished, the arrow's flame is snuffed out, and we lose sight of the creatures. "Do you hear that?" he asks.
Obellas shrugs, and I am forced to comply. Sir Aaron simply holds a finger against his lips, listening. "Wings," he says.
The prince frowns. "Above us?" he asks. "Birds?"
Sir Aaron shakes his head. "I don't believe so." He slips an arrow onto his bowstring and sets the head alight, pulls back, "Don't let it hit you when it comes down," and fires the shot straight into the air.
It flies true in a very tight arc, and just as it begins to descend I catch a glimpse of something black, with wings like a bat--and then the light is snuffed out in mid-air.
"This does not bode well for us," Sir Penly whispers.
Sir Aaron simply nods. "We should leave now." The four of us remain rooted in place near the fire. It is only now that I realize the gate guards have fled--when they left, I do not know. There is a wet thump as something hits the ground behind us--all four whirl, facing back into the town; there, on the road, sprawls a what looks like one of the rat-creatures, with leathery wings sprouting from its shoulders. It is large enough to carry off a man, and it is between us and the horses.
"Let us be off," Prince Obellas whispers, starting for the stairs--but Sir Aaron restrains him.
"Wait," the knight says, nodding his head towards the winged creature. Less than a second later, another of them lands; the first moves its eyeless head from side to side, and lets out a high-pitched hoot. Then, with a clawed "hand", it grabs the nearest torch and thrusts the flame into the dirt, rubbing it there until it is extinguished. The second beast does the same with another torch, and in a matter of moments the area below the wall on the town side is drenched in shadow. The only light remaining is that of the signal bonfire, the torches that line the wall itself, and the new end of the road's torch-line, some fifty yards away. As we stand there, wondering what to do, we can hear more of the winged creatures landing at the base of the wall.
Sound comes from the outside the town wall itself: a shuffling sound, and low-pitched hisses. The man-like creatures, it seems, have come closer.
"Well," says the prince, "Will we fight our way through?"
Sir Aaron chuckles, but there is no humor in it. "Only if you wish death. The creature we brought in slew two men, easy as can be--I'll not go wading into the dark to fight who knows how many, even with all four of us fighting."
Obellas snorts at him, but keeps quiet. In his eyes, I can see the resentment clearly. I hear one of the horses give an uneasy whinny, but the sound seems cut off, interrupted.
Sir Penly offers a plan: "We should circumnavigate the wall until we find a road that is not darkened as such." As he speaks, we watch as the end of the torch-line grows more distant as torches are extinguished. None of us hold much hope of finding such a road.
"We've little choice," I say, speaking quietly. "We travel north, to the forest road. There is naught beyond the wall there but trees; perhaps these creatures have not pushed that way. Perhaps it was the farmland that drew them to this side of the town."
"Perhaps," says Obellas, eager for us to be on our way. "Let us be off." Without waiting for approval from the knights, the prince strides off along the wall.
***
"The eastern signal fire is gone," Sir Penly calls out, as we approach the northern gate. "The wall torches are following, but the darkness is not gaining on us."
"It seems you were correct, scholar," Obellas calls from two dozen feet ahead of me. He stops near this gate's bonfire and turns to face us as we catch up with him. "The other two bonfires still burn at the western and southern gates, as well. The creatures must have massed at the farmlands. Why, though, is beyond me."
I stare out over the town, comforted by the torchlight along the streets and buildings. "There is no citizenry here--the people have done as commanded and fled behind the wall."
"Or they've been taken by those things," Penly retorts.
"The fires still burn," Obellas says, standing beside me. "The creatures have not been in this part of the town. We should hurry, before that is no longer true."
Sir Penly nods. "Yes, we must warn the castle guard of the flying creatures--and the king. Likely he'll want to pull everyone inside the castle itself and bar the windows. Sir Aaron, what say you?"
"There is something out there," he says, looking out over the northern forest. Here, the ground slopes sharply down just past the wall, leading down into a depression in the earth that forms the valley the forest is nestled in. The wall looks out over the tops of the trees. "Can you see it?"
"Nay," I say. My eyes see nothing beyond the light of the signal bonfire beside me.
"Come over here," Aaron says, moving a few yards down the the wall. As he does so, he snuffs out several torches in line. "The glare is not helping. Now look, tell me what you see."
"Something... almost like a shadow," Obellas says. "Like the trees have grown taller."
Sir Penly adds, "It looks as if... it's impossible, but it looks as if we are looking at the bases of trees, as children might in the forest, but..." He drifts off.
Sir Aaron lights an arrow on fire and slips it onto his bow's string, then nods out over the forest. "Watch quick, now. I don't think doing this more than once is a wise move." He pulls back and lets the arrow fly out over the treetops in a high, smooth arc.
What we see affects each of us differently. Sir Penley's eyes widen and he takes two steps backwards, a hand over his mouth. I mutter a curse under my breath. Prince Obellas drops to his knees, a look of dark wonder on his face. Sir Aaron just watches as the arrow flies, frowning. "It's time to go," he says quietly.
What we see is this: the arrow flies through the air, lighting up the tops of the trees as it slips silently by, then illuminating what appears to be a huge, black tree covered in blisters, roughly as big around as a handful of houses all clustered together. In that bare instant of light, the tree moves, jerking back, as if burned--and lifts off the ground completely, showing us that at its base are not roots, but huge, talon-like claws. The foot at the end of the leg returns to the ground, crushing trees as if they were but blades of grass; above the foot is a bend--an ankle?--and father above that, another--perhaps a knee? As the wall beneath us rumbles with the impact, the arrow vanishes into some unknown darkness, and the unfathomably huge creature's leg vanishes, little more than a vague shadow in the distance.
A moment passes, and none of us move. "It's time to go," Sir Aaron repeats.
As the four of us run as fast as my old legs can carry me, Sir Penly asks, panting, "What was it doing? Simply standing there?!"
I take a deep breath, and respond, "We're little more than ants to something that massive! Blessed be that it has not the mind of a child--I wouldn't like to see our anthill crushed underfoot out of spite! But, nothing can be that large. Nothing can be that large!"
"Blessed be that it did not take offense to my arrow, then," Aaron says, as we round a corner; the streets on the northern side of the town are not as straight as the other quarters. "Then, nothing might have killed us." Then, "Stop!" All four of us skid to a halt in the middle of the road.
It is easy to see why: before us, the torches have been extinguished. Just on the edge of the light, one of the winged creatures is pulling itself down the road using claws at the ends of its wings.
"My prince, Elvic, stay back," Sir Aaron says quietly as he and Penly draw their swords. Despite the order, Obellas and I do the same.
"It's about time you did something other than run," the prince mutters under his breath. If Sir Aaron hears him, he ignores the insult.
The two knights spread out, approaching the creature slowly. It seems to be sniffing the air, waving its head from side to side and hooting softly. As the knights near it, I pull one of the torches out of the ground with my free hand and hold it in front of me. Beyond the creature, there is no light; I do not plan on wandering aimlessly through the dark, blind.
Sir Penly strikes first, leaping forward and swinging his blade low at the creature's head. The thing leaps back, though, and the swing goes wide, striking it in the wing. Immediately, the creature lets out a horrid screech, and the skin around the cut seems to bubble--and it lurches at Penly in a rage. The knight saves his own life by holding the sword before his neck: when the creature accidentally bites it, it screams again and stumbles backwards.
Sir Aaron moves in to take advantage of this, rushing forward in a flurry of blows. He strikes the creature twice, and it scrambles away from him--and towards the prince, who merely holds his ground, eyes wide. Penly throws himself in front of it, and the creature collapses on top of him, its teeth and claw clattering against the armor the knight wears.
Another horrid sound comes from the beast--and then from the man, for the claws have found purchase in his leg, and blood flows from beneath a joint in the armor. An instant later, Sir Aaron's sword takes the beast's head off at the neck, and his boot sends it tumbling off of Penly.
Sir Penly grinds his teeth in pain, holding his knee with both hands. Blood wells out between his fingers. "Can you walk, sir?" I ask him. The knight just glares at me.
"It feels like it's completely shattered. That thing was damnedably strong," he says, then spits, "All it had to do was squeeze."
"Come," Sir Aaron says, holding out a hand. "I'll help you walk." Clumsily, and repeatedly cursing through his pain, Sir Penly struggles to his feet, then balances on one leg and leans against Sir Aaron.
"Gentlemen," says Obellas' voice behind me, from where he's standing between me and the darkness, "We're not alone here." He draws his sword from its scabbard again, and bumps into me as he backs slowly away from the line of shadow.
I turn to face what he sees: a group of maybe a dozen of the man-like creatures. My own sword trembles in my hand. Sir Aaron, with his comrade still leaning on his shoulder, says, "Get behind me, both of you."
Sir Penly stumbles away from the First Knight, retrieving his sword from where it dropped. "Aaron, get them out of here," he says, face twisting in pain with each motion. "Take the scholar and the prince and run past me when I distract those things."
"Penly--"
"Don't you dare order me to do otherwise, Aaron. Get them out of here!"
Obellas moves past me, puts a hand on Penly's shoulder. "I'll stay with you. Once you've killed these things, you're going to need help walking to the castle."
The lesser of the two knights hisses out a laugh. Sir Aaron immediately protests, "My prince, I need to get you to--" But Obellas interrupts him.
"Get Elvic to my father. If there are more of these things between here and there, he'll need your sword. Our biggest responsibility right now is alerting the king and the guard to that thing beyond the wall, and to our winged 'friends'." He smiles ruefully at Aaron, a smile which turns into an odd grin. "That's an order, sir knight. Tell my father I'll be there shortly."
Aaron bites back a curse. "As you wish, my prince. Good luck to you both."
Penly simply nodds, takes a deep breath, and throws himself at the creatures, shouting wildly. Letting loose a similar cry, Obellas leaps into the fray himself, and before I can see anymore, Sir Aaron has tackled me up and slung my old body over his shoulder like so many sacks of potatoes. The impact of his shoulder knocks the consciousness out of me.
***
I wake to the sound of Sir Aaron pounding on the gate of the castle wall. The knight has left me on the grass beside the road, a torch propped up over me. I sit up, aching all over, and work my way to my feet. "How long have we been here?" I ask him.
"Not long," he replies. His voice is tense, his words are rushed. "Maybe five minutes. I can't tell. There's no one at the gate to let us in. And," he nods down the road we must have come down, "I can't say I blame them." In one hand, he holds our torch, in the other, his sword.
I turn to follow his gesture with my eyes. There are maybe forty yards of torchlight--then utter darkness. We have been followed. Even as I watch, another torch goes out, and the darkness grows closer.
"In the name of the king," Aaron shouts at the top of his lungs, "Open this thrice-damned gate and let us in!"
"There is no one to hear you--likely they've all moved inside." The knight has already come to this conclusion, I think. He is no longer pounding on the door to be let in--he is trying to open it. I watch him for a moment, then turn back to the approaching darkness. "You need not hurry for my part, my friend," I say, wearily. "I'm certainly ready to stop running."
"Someone," he says, "Must tell the king what is happening beyond his walls." He throws himself against the door, and I hear a creak as the hinge moves. "Slip through here," he says, waving his hand at the space between the gate as he leans against it, grunting. "I will follow."
I hesitate.
"Damn it, Elvic, get in there!"
"In the king's name," I mutter, and slip my old bones through the narrow gap--and behind me, I hear it snap shut loudly as Sir Aaron stops leaning on it. I spin around and throw my old bones against the heavy gate, but it doesn't even so much as budge. I try to lift the latch holding it closed, but it is too heavy. "Aaron!" I shout, pounding with my fists.
I hear his voice from the other side: "To the king, my friend," he shouts. Seconds later I can hear him fighting. Several minutes go by as I press against the gate, desperate for some tiny notion of hope--but then silence falls on the other side.
I take a step back, hands shaking; around me is utter darkness--there are no torches. "No," I whisper. "No no no, this cannot be..."
Something slams against the gate loudly, and I jump. Another tremendous slam. I think there are tears running down my eyes as I back slowly away from the gate and turn, running through the darkness towards the castle. Bits of torch-light peeking out from the windows and arrow-slits are my only guide.
Something moves near me, hisses. I stop in my tracks, nearly tripping over myself in the process. I hear the slithery sound of bat-like wings, and even my fear-scattered brain knows why the castle grounds have been abandoned. They must have come from the east and flown over the walls while we were running through the streets.
I let myself drift left, walking slowly, always facing the castle. I pray I am not noticed. A soft hoot to my left stops me in my tracks again; the hoot is followed by a wet crunching sound--the sound of bone being crushed and broken. A shudder passes through me, but I force myself to continue--someone must tell the king.
I lose track of time. The only sounds I hear are the pounding on the gate behind me, and the movements and vocalizations of the creatures around me. Somehow, I make my way to the drawbridge that spans the moat around the castle itself. I feel with my hands--the drawbridge is down, oddly, but once I've crossed it I find the portcullis and gate both closed and locked. I dare not pound on them, so I slide along the wall to my right, keeping my hands on the stonework.
Eventually, I reach my goal: the concealed door at the bottom of the western tower. I find it unlocked and slip inside, closing it securely behind me. Torchlight and warmth greets me, and as I lean back against the wall, I let my tears flow, unable to hold them back anymore.
***
"Where is my son?!" the king shouts at me. He sits on his throne in the audience chamber; around the edges of the room knights and soldiers and guards rest, some maybe eternally. "Where is my son?!" he shouts again, raging. It is a rage in him I have never seen.
"I am the last," I say. I relate the story of our journey down the wall and across the town, leaving out the presence of that thing in the forest. "Sir Penly and Prince Obellas gave their lives that Sir Aaron and I might reach you. Sir Aaron gave his to see me through the gate."
The king grinds his teeth. "Come with me," he says, turning on a heel and striding out the back of the chamber. I follow, accompanied by two guards. "My wife is dead," he says, opening and closing a fist repeatedly. "She took her own life. Would you like to know why, Elvic?"
"I am sorry, my liege--"
"It was not long after the flying beasts landed behind the wall. We pulled those we could into the keep, but many were lost--townspeople and my men both. We had no way to man the gates to the town, which were already closed and barred, and no way to reach them to open them again." He has calmed some, in the telling. "She gave herself over to mourning Obellas as lost. In that, perhaps she was right--perhaps we are all lost."
"My liege, there is one mo--"
"I found her in his room, sobbing. When I went to comfort her, she pushed me away--and I saw behind her, a passageway, hidden in the wall. I assume she had come across it accidentally, going through his things as mothers do. I left here there, in his chamber--a mistake, now, I think--and entered this passageway." His voice is tired, weary--and old beyond his years. As he talks, we enter the prince's chambers. There is a pool of blood beside Obellas' bed, and, as the king said, a passageway in the wall that I was not familiar with.
"My liege, whose--"
Again, I am interrupted. "I entered this passageway," he says again, as we do the same, "And found this." He gestures with a hand, which then falls to his side. Before me is a scene of horror: a flat table, across which is a corpse long-dead, with a dagger in its heart. The age and gender of the person is not known to me. On and around the table are strange carvings, filled with what looks like dried blood. The room reeks of death and decay, and other strange, unknown scents.
"Witchery," I breathe. "This is a place of dark magics."
The king heaves a great sigh, his shoulders slumping slightly. "How long would you say that body has been without life?" he asks me, though we both already know the answer.
"About three weeks," I reply. "Since the sun set."
My liege sobs, great tears rolling out of his eyes. "When I returned to my wife, she was dead--she had cut her own throat. She took her life--because of this. Because this night--this awful, endless night--somehow he brought it down upon us!" His grief turns so easily to rage, and he slams a fist against the stone walls. "Why?!" he screams. "Why?!"
"You know why," I say quietly. The king's sobs cease, and he looks at me with such rage and pain in his eyes--but it is not a rage and pain at me, but turned inwards, at himself. "You were right to do what you did. But now you see what your son has wrought, and you ask why--but you must not blame yourself."
"He is my son."
"He is a madman." I put a hand on his shoulder. "But you did not make him that way. This is his doing." We stand there in silence for some time. Then, from below us, we can hear shouting, and a pounding noise--then a crash. "The gate has fallen," I say to no one.
"So this is how it ends," says my liege, turning his back to me. "This is how it ends." Without another word, he strides out of the prince's chambers, his sword in his hand.
Ridiculously, I remove the dagger from the corpse on the alter, turn it over in my hands. The blade is wide and flat--it would not enter a man easily. Obellas must have fought with this poor soul before finishing him, forcing this horrid weapon through his sternum and into his heart. The wound is very exact: directly through the middle and into the organ, instead of between the man's ribs. His lungs are untouched--he must have screams. How is it that we did not hear him? Tasting bile in my mouth, I leave the dark chamber.
I move to sit on the bed, beside the pool of the queen's blood, and bury my face in my hands. Below me, in the halls of the castle, I can hear the fighting moving back and forth as the king and his men push and pull at creatures I dare not imagine. I hear the hisses and screams of the monsters, the shouts and cries of my people... but soon it is only the creatures I hear. A great sob wracks my body.
Eventually, silence.
Behind me, the door creaks open, then closes quietly. "Father seemed upset," the prince says. I don't look back at him. "I can't say I blame him."
"Then the king is dead?" I ask our betrayer.
"By my own hand, of course. Where is my mother?"
I nod my head at the puddle of blood on the floor.
"I see. Well, it was a cleaner death than what I had planned."
Only now to I turn to look at him. "A clean death?" I ask. He's closer than I realized, nearly standing over me, his eyes transfixed on the blood. "To die clean is to die defending those who cannot defend themselves. And you wonder why he made Aaron his Right Hand over you."
Obellas chuckles. "Sir Aaron the Brave, the Highhearted, the Right Hand. I'll give him this--when I found his body, he'd piled up many of my soldiers. I didn't expect anyone to put up such a fight unaided." He puts a hand on my shoulder, giving it a reassuring pat.
I stand up quickly, teeth grinding together, and turn to face him--and already the wide-bladed knife in my hand is between his ribs, through the chain mail like so much parchment, through his flesh as if it were nothing. I feel it puncture lung, push sideways. "There is no thing," I hiss, "That hurts a man more than hurting his children."
"Scholar--Wha--" He is interrupted by a spurt of blood between his lips; it runs down his chin.
"Your father loved you unconditionally. His only regret was not giving you Knighthood, not making you his Hand. He broke tradition because you were not worthy. And it killed him. Remember that, when you're rotting in whatever hell your monsters came from." And with a twist of my wrist and a shifting of my weight, I slide the blade into his heart. The prince falls bonelessly to the stone floor, into his mother's blood.
I stand over his body for several minutes, hands trembling. My eyes move to the door. Already the pounding has begun, as the princes servants try to reach their master, alerted somehow of his death. I spit on his corpse as the door gives way and black, eyeless shadows rush into the chamber. When they come for me, I close my eyes, and do not resist.
Monday, November 26
Tuesday, October 30
83. (In Space.)
I woke up to the sound of arguing coming from the front of the passenger cabin. A woman's voice, in a heavy accent--I couldn't place where it was from exactly, but I've always been bad at that--was knifing through the general murmur of the other passengers. I blinked once, then again, and shifted around in my harness, trying to get comfortable. The other coach passengers were agitated by something. Bleary-eyed, I looked out the port-hole and into empty space; once, the nearness of that cold blackness might have alarmed me, but I'd been to and from the moon so many times at this point that it was just another day's work.
"I'm sorry, ma'am, but there's nothing we can do," the steward handling the accented woman replied. At this point, I realized that the ship was not moving. "The captain has received a full-stop order, and we have to wait here until we are given permission to move again. To compensate, the crew has been authorized to offer free drinks from the bar to any passen--"
"I do not want your fucking drink!" the woman yelled, thrusting a finger in the steward's face. "I want to get to my destination on time! It is very important that I get to my destination on time!"
"I understand that, and again I apologize. There is nothing I or any of us can do. If you would, please return to your seat, or to one of the leisure cabins--to the bar, for those drinks, or the observatory deck." The steward bowed in the zero-gravity gracefully, one hand never leaving the support rail as he did so.
"I--" the woman started to shout at him again, but stopped, biting back her words. Seething, she spun around and floated along the length of the aisle using the handholds, and vanished into the rear passenger cabin.
The steward frowned, then retrieved the intercom mic from its holster on his waist. "Ladies and gentlemen, we apologize again for the delay, and assure you that we will be under way as soon as we receive the proper authorization. As you may have gathered," there was a twinkle of friendly mischief in his eyes, "We are now offering free drinks from the bar for the rest of the flight. Please place your order with the nearest attendant of make your way to the bar yourself. As we are inert in space at the moment, you are all free to move about the ship."
"What's a few extra hours," the guy next to me muttered, glancing back at the passage leading to the rear cabin. "It's a goddamn six-day flight. But hey," I don't know who he was talking to--me, I guess, "I'm startin' to feel a little crazy myself, being cooped up here for so long."
I mumbled a response as I unclasped my harness and let myself float out into the aisle. I wasn't about to take the crew up on those drinks--alcohol and space travel did not mix well in my system--but the observation deck sounded pleasant, and there were rarely people there; it was a little frightening.
I floated to the front of the cabin and worked my way towards the top of the ship, a blanket wrapped around my shoulders. Sure, we had colonized the moon and were building another colony on Mars, but damned if they couldn't keep the air in these ships warm. Soon I was seemingly floating in free space above the ship, drifting around the ovular bubble that formed the observation deck. It was a little disconcerting at first--it almost appeared as if you were outside the ship, as the glass was kept so clean it was almost invisible.
The ship stretched out beneath me, fifty yards long and thirty yards across, pale blue with dark blue lettering indicating the spaceline and model. The observation deck was situated near the front, near the pilots' cabin; from up here the moon was a massive disk of light dead ahead, seemingly motionless (we were, in fact, being pulled along in the gravitational pull between it and Earth, so technically the ship was not as still as the steward made it out to be). It was criss-crossed with industrial and military structures, as well as atmosphere domes and tunnels roofed with thick glass. To the rear, beyond the tail structures and still frighteningly large, was Earth. I was alone on the deck, so I floated towards the tail end and buckled myself to the metal surface; in a matter of moments, I was asleep.
The Lunar colony, in the beginning, was meant mostly as a storage area for one very specific kind of material--nuclear arms. When the great peace treaties were signed, and world-wide disarmament began, mankind was left with a large amount of highly-dangerous, highly-radioactive materials, mostly in the form of weapons. For years we struggled to find a way to completely remove the threat until one enterprising young scientist suggested storing them on the moon--a barren wasteland, where minimal damage would be done in the event of a cataclysmic equipment failure. There were no cities to be destroyed, no crops to be poisoned by fallout, no people to be wiped out, should a weapon of that magnitude be detonated.
Those storage facilities needed to be maintained, so at first they were staffed by a rotating skeleton crew. As years passed, that crew grew and multiplied and spread, soon forming the Lunar colony as we know it today.
I woke up again to voices, but this time they were quiet and subdued, but heated. Whoever it was sounded like they hadn't noticed me sleeping at the far end of the observatory, wrapped up in a dark blanket. There were several voices of both genders.
"Should we tell the passengers?"
"No more than they need to know."
"Are you sure the machine's working? It wouldn't be the first time they've gone on the fritz."
"They're working. We have contact with Earth, but we're getting nothing from Luna Tower."
"Nothing? Define nothing."
"No signal at all--not even silence. They're not broadcasting. At all. Anything."
"Then should we--.... What should we do?"
"Nothing, for now. Earth still hasn't given us authorization to move--we're stuck here."
"The passengers are getting restless."
"Let them, there's nothing we can do."
"Look, everyone get back to work--and get the word out to the rest of the crew, but discreetly. We don't want to start a panic."
There were several affirmatives, and the collection of crew members adjourned their impromptu meeting and went back down into the ship proper. I remained floating in my blanket for a few minutes, then made my way back to my seat and strapped in.
The general atmosphere in the passenger cabin was even more agitated than before; it didn't look like many of my fellows travelers had taken up the offer of alcohol either. I didn't blame them.
And then the woman was back, rocketing up the aisle at a rapid pace, with something clutched in her hand. I couldn't get a good look at it. The steward she had accosted previously made his way into the aisle and started towards her--and then a woman, a different woman, screamed, and there was a flash, and the steward's arm ripped clean off his body and went spinning through the cabin. Panic broke out, people started rushing around.
I lost sight of the woman, but her voice cut through the chaos like a sword. "Sit down and strap in! Sit the fuck down and strap the goddamnfuck in, or I swear I'll fucking shoot you!"
The steward wasn't screaming. I could see him floating towards the top of the chamber, trying desperately to stop the bleeding, surrounded by a cloud of his own blood. The woman's weapon flashed again--someone screamed, maybe someone died, but the crowd shut up instantly. She grabbed the steward by his collar and pulled him down, and shoved her weapon--it looked like a hodgepodge of various mundane items, but clearly it was deadly--into his mouth. "You," she said to the nearest crew member not missing a limb, "Tell the captain to get this ship underway or this bastard's gonna be missing more than an arm."
The crew member--I couldn't see him or her--apparently hesitated. "DO IT!" the woman screamed.
Silence, save for the steward's whimpering around the gun barrel (I was amazed he was even conscious), engulfed the ship. "I have to get to my destination," the woman muttered, "On time. Have to get there on time."
The captain made her way into the passenger cabin. "Miss," she said calmly, "Put down the gun."
"Fuck you. Get this ship moving."
She raised her gloved hands shoulder high, palms forward. "I can't. We don't have the authorization. The ship's computer won't let us move until we get authorization. There's nothing I can do."
"Bullshit!" she yelled, shaking the steward bodily. "Do it or he's dead!"
"Tom's already dead," the captain replied. From where I was sitting, I could see it was true. He'd bled to death. Disgusted, the woman with the gun tossed the body away and took aim at the captain.
"Fine," she said, "Do it or you're dead." Her arm moved, and she wasn't aiming at the captain anymore, she was aiming at one of the glass viewports. "Do it or you're all dead."
The attack came out of nowhere, or at least from where I was sitting I couldn't see it. A large man bulled out of his chair and slammed into the woman with the gun, grabbing at her arm. The weapon flashed once, twice, but the shots didn't hit the ship--the man winced in pain and I knew she'd shot him, but he pushed her hard against the bulkhead, knocking it out of her hand. The captain moved fast, grabbing the woman from behind and wrapping an arm around her neck. The wounded man let go, grimacing--the woman struggled, spinning through the open, zero-gee space with the captain--and struck her head hard against the hard floor.
There was a sickening crack, and the murderer went limp. The captain floated up and away from the body, bleeding from a broken lip. "A doctor!" she called out, immediately--professionally--turning her attention to the man who had helped her. "Is there a doctor on board?!"
I raised my hand.
I'm not a doctor, but I had medical experience from the military--a certified field medic. Twenty minutes later I had the good Samaritan bandaged up and resting on the observatory deck. He slept, drugged at one end; he'd only been shot in the leg, both shots hitting the same general area, and his life wasn't in any real danger but pain was intense. At the other end of the deck the three bodies--Tom the Steward, a passenger who had gotten in the way, and the woman--were lashed to the deck.
"Do you know what's happening yet?" I asked the captain after I had finished tending to her lip. "It's bigger than just this ship, isn't it? There's something happening at Luna Base, isn't there?"
"Jesus," she whispered. She wasn't listening to me, but looking forward at the moon and the structures that marred its surface. "Jesus, look at that."
I looked. It took a minute, and then I saw them--grey-white lines, hardly visible against the grey color of the moon itself, each led by a pin-prick of orange-yellow light.
"Jesus," she whispered again. "Jesus." And then she threw herself down the passage and back into the ship, presumably to get on the radio and warn Earth of what was coming: unprecedented nuclear holocaust.
It takes six days for a transport ship such as the one I rode on that day to pass from the Earth to the moon. This is because it is a leisurely passage slowed for the comfort and well being of the passengers. A missile--a group of missiles, even--could make the trip in a matter of hours, travelling at breakneck speeds through the gap the ship listed in.
I felt the ship vibrating beneath me--we'd been given authorization to move, I knew, to get the hell out of the way. "Whatever it was she was going there to do," the wounded man, awake now, mumbled, "Whatever her role was in... that... I think they pulled it off without her."
He went silent after that. I merely floated there and stared. Soon other passengers and crew members joined us on the deck, wide-eyed and slack-jawed. The missiles shot past us, hundreds if not thousands of them, shaking the ship--which jerked around and swung to avoid each one, narrowly doing so. Someone screamed.
We all stayed there, even when the crew told us to return to our seats. Hours later, when the first bright flashes of the missiles hitting home lit up the Earth, I was violently sick. They had no way to stop them--no one ever expected such an attack from our own moon. It was... inconceivable.
I look up at it now, sometimes. It's different. It's amazing how many people here on Luna simply stopped looking up, simply ignored it from that day on.
"I'm sorry, ma'am, but there's nothing we can do," the steward handling the accented woman replied. At this point, I realized that the ship was not moving. "The captain has received a full-stop order, and we have to wait here until we are given permission to move again. To compensate, the crew has been authorized to offer free drinks from the bar to any passen--"
"I do not want your fucking drink!" the woman yelled, thrusting a finger in the steward's face. "I want to get to my destination on time! It is very important that I get to my destination on time!"
"I understand that, and again I apologize. There is nothing I or any of us can do. If you would, please return to your seat, or to one of the leisure cabins--to the bar, for those drinks, or the observatory deck." The steward bowed in the zero-gravity gracefully, one hand never leaving the support rail as he did so.
"I--" the woman started to shout at him again, but stopped, biting back her words. Seething, she spun around and floated along the length of the aisle using the handholds, and vanished into the rear passenger cabin.
The steward frowned, then retrieved the intercom mic from its holster on his waist. "Ladies and gentlemen, we apologize again for the delay, and assure you that we will be under way as soon as we receive the proper authorization. As you may have gathered," there was a twinkle of friendly mischief in his eyes, "We are now offering free drinks from the bar for the rest of the flight. Please place your order with the nearest attendant of make your way to the bar yourself. As we are inert in space at the moment, you are all free to move about the ship."
"What's a few extra hours," the guy next to me muttered, glancing back at the passage leading to the rear cabin. "It's a goddamn six-day flight. But hey," I don't know who he was talking to--me, I guess, "I'm startin' to feel a little crazy myself, being cooped up here for so long."
I mumbled a response as I unclasped my harness and let myself float out into the aisle. I wasn't about to take the crew up on those drinks--alcohol and space travel did not mix well in my system--but the observation deck sounded pleasant, and there were rarely people there; it was a little frightening.
I floated to the front of the cabin and worked my way towards the top of the ship, a blanket wrapped around my shoulders. Sure, we had colonized the moon and were building another colony on Mars, but damned if they couldn't keep the air in these ships warm. Soon I was seemingly floating in free space above the ship, drifting around the ovular bubble that formed the observation deck. It was a little disconcerting at first--it almost appeared as if you were outside the ship, as the glass was kept so clean it was almost invisible.
The ship stretched out beneath me, fifty yards long and thirty yards across, pale blue with dark blue lettering indicating the spaceline and model. The observation deck was situated near the front, near the pilots' cabin; from up here the moon was a massive disk of light dead ahead, seemingly motionless (we were, in fact, being pulled along in the gravitational pull between it and Earth, so technically the ship was not as still as the steward made it out to be). It was criss-crossed with industrial and military structures, as well as atmosphere domes and tunnels roofed with thick glass. To the rear, beyond the tail structures and still frighteningly large, was Earth. I was alone on the deck, so I floated towards the tail end and buckled myself to the metal surface; in a matter of moments, I was asleep.
The Lunar colony, in the beginning, was meant mostly as a storage area for one very specific kind of material--nuclear arms. When the great peace treaties were signed, and world-wide disarmament began, mankind was left with a large amount of highly-dangerous, highly-radioactive materials, mostly in the form of weapons. For years we struggled to find a way to completely remove the threat until one enterprising young scientist suggested storing them on the moon--a barren wasteland, where minimal damage would be done in the event of a cataclysmic equipment failure. There were no cities to be destroyed, no crops to be poisoned by fallout, no people to be wiped out, should a weapon of that magnitude be detonated.
Those storage facilities needed to be maintained, so at first they were staffed by a rotating skeleton crew. As years passed, that crew grew and multiplied and spread, soon forming the Lunar colony as we know it today.
I woke up again to voices, but this time they were quiet and subdued, but heated. Whoever it was sounded like they hadn't noticed me sleeping at the far end of the observatory, wrapped up in a dark blanket. There were several voices of both genders.
"Should we tell the passengers?"
"No more than they need to know."
"Are you sure the machine's working? It wouldn't be the first time they've gone on the fritz."
"They're working. We have contact with Earth, but we're getting nothing from Luna Tower."
"Nothing? Define nothing."
"No signal at all--not even silence. They're not broadcasting. At all. Anything."
"Then should we--.... What should we do?"
"Nothing, for now. Earth still hasn't given us authorization to move--we're stuck here."
"The passengers are getting restless."
"Let them, there's nothing we can do."
"Look, everyone get back to work--and get the word out to the rest of the crew, but discreetly. We don't want to start a panic."
There were several affirmatives, and the collection of crew members adjourned their impromptu meeting and went back down into the ship proper. I remained floating in my blanket for a few minutes, then made my way back to my seat and strapped in.
The general atmosphere in the passenger cabin was even more agitated than before; it didn't look like many of my fellows travelers had taken up the offer of alcohol either. I didn't blame them.
And then the woman was back, rocketing up the aisle at a rapid pace, with something clutched in her hand. I couldn't get a good look at it. The steward she had accosted previously made his way into the aisle and started towards her--and then a woman, a different woman, screamed, and there was a flash, and the steward's arm ripped clean off his body and went spinning through the cabin. Panic broke out, people started rushing around.
I lost sight of the woman, but her voice cut through the chaos like a sword. "Sit down and strap in! Sit the fuck down and strap the goddamnfuck in, or I swear I'll fucking shoot you!"
The steward wasn't screaming. I could see him floating towards the top of the chamber, trying desperately to stop the bleeding, surrounded by a cloud of his own blood. The woman's weapon flashed again--someone screamed, maybe someone died, but the crowd shut up instantly. She grabbed the steward by his collar and pulled him down, and shoved her weapon--it looked like a hodgepodge of various mundane items, but clearly it was deadly--into his mouth. "You," she said to the nearest crew member not missing a limb, "Tell the captain to get this ship underway or this bastard's gonna be missing more than an arm."
The crew member--I couldn't see him or her--apparently hesitated. "DO IT!" the woman screamed.
Silence, save for the steward's whimpering around the gun barrel (I was amazed he was even conscious), engulfed the ship. "I have to get to my destination," the woman muttered, "On time. Have to get there on time."
The captain made her way into the passenger cabin. "Miss," she said calmly, "Put down the gun."
"Fuck you. Get this ship moving."
She raised her gloved hands shoulder high, palms forward. "I can't. We don't have the authorization. The ship's computer won't let us move until we get authorization. There's nothing I can do."
"Bullshit!" she yelled, shaking the steward bodily. "Do it or he's dead!"
"Tom's already dead," the captain replied. From where I was sitting, I could see it was true. He'd bled to death. Disgusted, the woman with the gun tossed the body away and took aim at the captain.
"Fine," she said, "Do it or you're dead." Her arm moved, and she wasn't aiming at the captain anymore, she was aiming at one of the glass viewports. "Do it or you're all dead."
The attack came out of nowhere, or at least from where I was sitting I couldn't see it. A large man bulled out of his chair and slammed into the woman with the gun, grabbing at her arm. The weapon flashed once, twice, but the shots didn't hit the ship--the man winced in pain and I knew she'd shot him, but he pushed her hard against the bulkhead, knocking it out of her hand. The captain moved fast, grabbing the woman from behind and wrapping an arm around her neck. The wounded man let go, grimacing--the woman struggled, spinning through the open, zero-gee space with the captain--and struck her head hard against the hard floor.
There was a sickening crack, and the murderer went limp. The captain floated up and away from the body, bleeding from a broken lip. "A doctor!" she called out, immediately--professionally--turning her attention to the man who had helped her. "Is there a doctor on board?!"
I raised my hand.
I'm not a doctor, but I had medical experience from the military--a certified field medic. Twenty minutes later I had the good Samaritan bandaged up and resting on the observatory deck. He slept, drugged at one end; he'd only been shot in the leg, both shots hitting the same general area, and his life wasn't in any real danger but pain was intense. At the other end of the deck the three bodies--Tom the Steward, a passenger who had gotten in the way, and the woman--were lashed to the deck.
"Do you know what's happening yet?" I asked the captain after I had finished tending to her lip. "It's bigger than just this ship, isn't it? There's something happening at Luna Base, isn't there?"
"Jesus," she whispered. She wasn't listening to me, but looking forward at the moon and the structures that marred its surface. "Jesus, look at that."
I looked. It took a minute, and then I saw them--grey-white lines, hardly visible against the grey color of the moon itself, each led by a pin-prick of orange-yellow light.
"Jesus," she whispered again. "Jesus." And then she threw herself down the passage and back into the ship, presumably to get on the radio and warn Earth of what was coming: unprecedented nuclear holocaust.
It takes six days for a transport ship such as the one I rode on that day to pass from the Earth to the moon. This is because it is a leisurely passage slowed for the comfort and well being of the passengers. A missile--a group of missiles, even--could make the trip in a matter of hours, travelling at breakneck speeds through the gap the ship listed in.
I felt the ship vibrating beneath me--we'd been given authorization to move, I knew, to get the hell out of the way. "Whatever it was she was going there to do," the wounded man, awake now, mumbled, "Whatever her role was in... that... I think they pulled it off without her."
He went silent after that. I merely floated there and stared. Soon other passengers and crew members joined us on the deck, wide-eyed and slack-jawed. The missiles shot past us, hundreds if not thousands of them, shaking the ship--which jerked around and swung to avoid each one, narrowly doing so. Someone screamed.
We all stayed there, even when the crew told us to return to our seats. Hours later, when the first bright flashes of the missiles hitting home lit up the Earth, I was violently sick. They had no way to stop them--no one ever expected such an attack from our own moon. It was... inconceivable.
I look up at it now, sometimes. It's different. It's amazing how many people here on Luna simply stopped looking up, simply ignored it from that day on.
Monday, October 29
Friday, August 24
81. (The Blind Bravery of Thieves)
An oldy but a goody. I wrote this back in 2003, 2004, and it's still one of my best stories. There are two sequels, which I am also very happy with. They can be found on my deviantart account (reido.deviantart.com). The three stories are the three oldest stories in the gallery.
*******
“Okay, here’s what we’re gonna do—”
“Does it involve wacky hijinks in a desperate attempt to get us out of this situation?” I asked, rolling my eyes.
Phia just looked at me. “No. We’re gonna—”
“Does it involve weapons? Violence? Physical exertion?” I continued.
“Yes, no, and yes,” Phia replied, "In that order."
I frowned, rubbing my chin. “What kind of physical exertion are we talking here?”
“Um…” Phia rubbed his chin too. “Some running, some jumping, and some faster running.”
“Jumping?”
“Over the dragon.”
“Over the dragon?”
Phia rubbed his chin some more. It's what he does when he's thinking. I think that's why he can't grow a beard. “Well, really, it’s not so much jumping as it is launching ourselves into the air.”
I leaned around the corner into the treasure-chamber, where the aforementioned dragon was still sleeping noisily. “How is that any different than just jumping, Phia?”
“Wait here.” Without another word, he turned and scampered off around the corner.
Maybe I should explain what’s going on here, if I plan on keeping your attention. I’m Elly, a treasure-hunter and all-around decent girl. You’ll notice I didn’t insult Phia because of his ridiculous plan. So maybe you’re wondering why in the nineteen levels of the Underearth we’re hiding around the corner from a sleeping dragon?
Well, the thing is this: when we got here, the dragon was out. He sorta… um… "owned" my village. Stealing from him was supposed to be a subtle way of getting back at him without his noticing—I mean, he’s got more treasure than he could ever possibly keep track of. We’re—or rather, we were planning on just stealing a little bit at a time until we’d taken enough for him to notice, and then stop.
Well, that plan sorta involved the two of us being alive still.
Oh! I haven’t introduced Phia properly yet. Phia’s my… um… business partner. We’re not friends—hell, I don’t even like him that much. But he’s the best at what he does, and what he does is getting me out of tight spots. I mentioned earlier that his plan is ridiculous, right? Well, it is, but that doesn’t mean it won’t work. Phia’s plans always work.
Okay, well, now I’m just interrupting the flow of my narrative, so I’ll get back to the story.
Phia came back around the corner carrying two very long pikes. “We’ll use these,” he said.
“Uh-huh,” I replied, dubious. “And when the hard, metal butts of those things hits the hard, stone floor, you expect them to not make enough noise to wake the great and powerful dragon?”
“Oh.”
Perhaps I should mention, here, that the reason Phia’s plans always work is because I’m always here to tell him what’s wrong with them. I honestly don’t know what he’d do without me. But, then, I don’t know what I’d do without him, either. Probably get eaten by the dragon.
Of course, I’d have been dead several times before this from various other adventures, so without Phia the whole try-not-to-get-eaten-by-large-beasts scenario is somewhat moot.
But I drift!
“Well, that’s where the whole ‘running faster’ aspect of the plan comes in,” Phia said. “Plus, once we’ve woken up his majesty—”
“Don’t call him that.”
“Right. Well, when we’ve woken up the pathetic dragon, we’ll have weapons to defend ourselves with. For once. See, that’s the beauty of my plan!”
I sighed. “So we run in, leap over the sleeping beast and, in turn, wake him from his peaceful slumber, run really fast, get caught, try to defend ourselves, get killed and-or eaten, recognized as citizens of the village, and are happily unaware as the beast burns our loved-ones to an ashy cloud of dust?”
“Well, when you put it that way—hey!” He exclaimed—whispering still—as I grabbed my pike and turned to sprint at the sleeping beast.
The dragon is massive, by the way. We had to jump over him—as opposed to something sensible like tip-toeing around his tail—because his neck and the aforementioned tail were both pressed against the walls of the chamber, effectively forming a big, green wall between us and our happy escape.
None of this was running through my head as I was sprinting towards him, though.
And none of anything else was really running through my head as one big, scaly, green eye-lid snapped open, the reptilian eye formerly hidden behind it staring straight at me. I skidded to a stop, pike in hand, and just stared back at it.
“Elly!” I heard Phia shout, just as he skidded to a stop next to me. “Shit!”
A thought struck me just then. I looked at the eye (which was at about shoulder-height, being just that damn big), and then I looked at my weapon. And then I looked at the eye again.
“No,” I heard Phia whisper next to me. “Don’t you even think—”
But by then, of course, it was too late. Before the word “you” had left his lips, I was already lurching forward, a battle-cry (which was less-than-impressive, I’ll admit) on my lips. At “even,” I was half-way to the eye, which was in the process of blinking in puzzlement as the small thing that was Elly, treasure-hunter came towards it. Right as Phia uttered the word “think,” I plunged the sharp end of the pike into said eye and pushed with the weight of my entire body.
I felt every aspect of that eye bend and shatter one at a time, “snap-snap-snap-snap”, and then a sickening “squish,” which of course translated in my mind as “push harder” and I did, then--I pushed harder, groaning.
All that took an instant, and with a screech of pain the dragon whipped his head around, spraying red blood and some kind of clear fluid all over my arms just before I was sent flying through the air right at the passageway we’d been trying to reach in the first place, and as I’m flying through the air all I can hear is screaming and thrashing about and I can think of two things: one, I hope I don’t break my neck when I land; two, I really hope Phia doesn't get crushed in all that writhing.
I got lucky on both counts, and as I lay there in pain, sore, covered in blood and eye-fluid (which smells awful, let me tell you), panting, groaning, wondering if I broke my arm, I couldn't hear anything but my own breathing.
Which, I suddenly realized, was a good thing. I sat up, winced, and looked around. Phia was suddenly standing over me. “Elly, the idea was to hit the ground with the pike and spring over him, not use his death-spasms to catapult yourself over here.” He was covered in smelly eye-goo and sticky blood too. Well, at least he hadn’t gotten squashed or something. He was laughing.
“I had to… um… sorta elaborate on your plan, Phia,” I mutter, standing up and, in vain, brushing myself off.
“So… what are we going to tell the townspeople now that they’re free?”
“Why,” I replied, “We’re going to tell them that we fought a terrible battle for hours and hours, and that some of this blood—we’re lucky it’s red—is ours--we're even more lucky it's not--and then we’ll be welcomed as heroes.”
“Your plans are terrible,” Phia replied, laughing harder.
*******
“Okay, here’s what we’re gonna do—”
“Does it involve wacky hijinks in a desperate attempt to get us out of this situation?” I asked, rolling my eyes.
Phia just looked at me. “No. We’re gonna—”
“Does it involve weapons? Violence? Physical exertion?” I continued.
“Yes, no, and yes,” Phia replied, "In that order."
I frowned, rubbing my chin. “What kind of physical exertion are we talking here?”
“Um…” Phia rubbed his chin too. “Some running, some jumping, and some faster running.”
“Jumping?”
“Over the dragon.”
“Over the dragon?”
Phia rubbed his chin some more. It's what he does when he's thinking. I think that's why he can't grow a beard. “Well, really, it’s not so much jumping as it is launching ourselves into the air.”
I leaned around the corner into the treasure-chamber, where the aforementioned dragon was still sleeping noisily. “How is that any different than just jumping, Phia?”
“Wait here.” Without another word, he turned and scampered off around the corner.
Maybe I should explain what’s going on here, if I plan on keeping your attention. I’m Elly, a treasure-hunter and all-around decent girl. You’ll notice I didn’t insult Phia because of his ridiculous plan. So maybe you’re wondering why in the nineteen levels of the Underearth we’re hiding around the corner from a sleeping dragon?
Well, the thing is this: when we got here, the dragon was out. He sorta… um… "owned" my village. Stealing from him was supposed to be a subtle way of getting back at him without his noticing—I mean, he’s got more treasure than he could ever possibly keep track of. We’re—or rather, we were planning on just stealing a little bit at a time until we’d taken enough for him to notice, and then stop.
Well, that plan sorta involved the two of us being alive still.
Oh! I haven’t introduced Phia properly yet. Phia’s my… um… business partner. We’re not friends—hell, I don’t even like him that much. But he’s the best at what he does, and what he does is getting me out of tight spots. I mentioned earlier that his plan is ridiculous, right? Well, it is, but that doesn’t mean it won’t work. Phia’s plans always work.
Okay, well, now I’m just interrupting the flow of my narrative, so I’ll get back to the story.
Phia came back around the corner carrying two very long pikes. “We’ll use these,” he said.
“Uh-huh,” I replied, dubious. “And when the hard, metal butts of those things hits the hard, stone floor, you expect them to not make enough noise to wake the great and powerful dragon?”
“Oh.”
Perhaps I should mention, here, that the reason Phia’s plans always work is because I’m always here to tell him what’s wrong with them. I honestly don’t know what he’d do without me. But, then, I don’t know what I’d do without him, either. Probably get eaten by the dragon.
Of course, I’d have been dead several times before this from various other adventures, so without Phia the whole try-not-to-get-eaten-by-large-beasts scenario is somewhat moot.
But I drift!
“Well, that’s where the whole ‘running faster’ aspect of the plan comes in,” Phia said. “Plus, once we’ve woken up his majesty—”
“Don’t call him that.”
“Right. Well, when we’ve woken up the pathetic dragon, we’ll have weapons to defend ourselves with. For once. See, that’s the beauty of my plan!”
I sighed. “So we run in, leap over the sleeping beast and, in turn, wake him from his peaceful slumber, run really fast, get caught, try to defend ourselves, get killed and-or eaten, recognized as citizens of the village, and are happily unaware as the beast burns our loved-ones to an ashy cloud of dust?”
“Well, when you put it that way—hey!” He exclaimed—whispering still—as I grabbed my pike and turned to sprint at the sleeping beast.
The dragon is massive, by the way. We had to jump over him—as opposed to something sensible like tip-toeing around his tail—because his neck and the aforementioned tail were both pressed against the walls of the chamber, effectively forming a big, green wall between us and our happy escape.
None of this was running through my head as I was sprinting towards him, though.
And none of anything else was really running through my head as one big, scaly, green eye-lid snapped open, the reptilian eye formerly hidden behind it staring straight at me. I skidded to a stop, pike in hand, and just stared back at it.
“Elly!” I heard Phia shout, just as he skidded to a stop next to me. “Shit!”
A thought struck me just then. I looked at the eye (which was at about shoulder-height, being just that damn big), and then I looked at my weapon. And then I looked at the eye again.
“No,” I heard Phia whisper next to me. “Don’t you even think—”
But by then, of course, it was too late. Before the word “you” had left his lips, I was already lurching forward, a battle-cry (which was less-than-impressive, I’ll admit) on my lips. At “even,” I was half-way to the eye, which was in the process of blinking in puzzlement as the small thing that was Elly, treasure-hunter came towards it. Right as Phia uttered the word “think,” I plunged the sharp end of the pike into said eye and pushed with the weight of my entire body.
I felt every aspect of that eye bend and shatter one at a time, “snap-snap-snap-snap”, and then a sickening “squish,” which of course translated in my mind as “push harder” and I did, then--I pushed harder, groaning.
All that took an instant, and with a screech of pain the dragon whipped his head around, spraying red blood and some kind of clear fluid all over my arms just before I was sent flying through the air right at the passageway we’d been trying to reach in the first place, and as I’m flying through the air all I can hear is screaming and thrashing about and I can think of two things: one, I hope I don’t break my neck when I land; two, I really hope Phia doesn't get crushed in all that writhing.
I got lucky on both counts, and as I lay there in pain, sore, covered in blood and eye-fluid (which smells awful, let me tell you), panting, groaning, wondering if I broke my arm, I couldn't hear anything but my own breathing.
Which, I suddenly realized, was a good thing. I sat up, winced, and looked around. Phia was suddenly standing over me. “Elly, the idea was to hit the ground with the pike and spring over him, not use his death-spasms to catapult yourself over here.” He was covered in smelly eye-goo and sticky blood too. Well, at least he hadn’t gotten squashed or something. He was laughing.
“I had to… um… sorta elaborate on your plan, Phia,” I mutter, standing up and, in vain, brushing myself off.
“So… what are we going to tell the townspeople now that they’re free?”
“Why,” I replied, “We’re going to tell them that we fought a terrible battle for hours and hours, and that some of this blood—we’re lucky it’s red—is ours--we're even more lucky it's not--and then we’ll be welcomed as heroes.”
“Your plans are terrible,” Phia replied, laughing harder.
Thursday, August 2
80. (Bits and pieces.)
Typing this on a laptop that isn't mine. A new experience. MacBook keyboard/mouse setups suck, but I'm making due because it's pretty, and because the front-desk computer at work is a pile of refuse. Normally I'd be writing this on my own desk's computer here at the library, but I'm using it as an excuse to test out the shiny new MacBooks we're going to be loaning out to people in the near future (for in-library use only). Suffice to say the lack of a [Home] or [End] key is going to drive me batty.
A bit of the previous story (which will likely never be finished, or worked on again in any kind of serious manner) that's been bouncing around in my head. An exercise, if you will.
The guy may come to take the pretty toy away at any second, so this might not even get completed.
The Creature
When he first comes to he's alone, naked, and weak. His suit is gone, bulky as it was, and he feels exceptionally exposed. Sitting up, Thomas Viancetti holds a hand out in front of himself--it's covered in blood, but more importantly, he's two-dimensional. Or at least it looks like it is. Wincing, he reaches up and touches his eyes--correction, eye: the left one is gone, a ravaged socket marking it's previous location.
He looks around. The room, perhaps cell, he finds himself in is round, shaped like half of a squashed sphere. To his left is what may or may not be a door. It's also round, a bump maybe ten feet tall. The room itself, he guesses, is about thirty feet in diameter and twenty feet in height, but it's hard to tell with no depth perception.
The "door" emits a soft humming noise behind him, and he quickly turns, still having not risen, to face the sound. The "door" itself seems to be completely gone, and in it stands his host, or who Thomas assumes is his host.
At first, wildly, he thinks he's looking at a centaur, but soon that image is washed from his mind--the only similarity with that ancient mythic beast that the creatures before him exhibits is a basic, general shape: four legs meeting in a barrel-shaped torso, from the front of which sprouts a more man-like torso. The creature has four arms, each sprouting from shoulders in a roughly human-like location, and four eyes, arranged in a square on the creature's face, just above what looks like a mouth--a straight cleavage in the flesh of the face apparent only from a thin line of darkness. The skin is a dark shade of olive-green and resembles, vaguely, that of a frog or other amphibian. On each of the four feet, which can be found at the end of long, muscular legs jointed in the middle like those of a human, are four toes, two in front and two to the rear, where a human heel would be. Each is devoid of nails. Each of the four arms joints not once but twice, and terminates in a four-fingered hand similar in design to the creature's feet, but to a more flexible degree.
Professor Viancetti tries to rise, and gets about halfway there before collapsing in pain. His leg, already hobbled by old age, cannot support him--the bone inside is shattered.
A bit of the previous story (which will likely never be finished, or worked on again in any kind of serious manner) that's been bouncing around in my head. An exercise, if you will.
The guy may come to take the pretty toy away at any second, so this might not even get completed.
The Creature
When he first comes to he's alone, naked, and weak. His suit is gone, bulky as it was, and he feels exceptionally exposed. Sitting up, Thomas Viancetti holds a hand out in front of himself--it's covered in blood, but more importantly, he's two-dimensional. Or at least it looks like it is. Wincing, he reaches up and touches his eyes--correction, eye: the left one is gone, a ravaged socket marking it's previous location.
He looks around. The room, perhaps cell, he finds himself in is round, shaped like half of a squashed sphere. To his left is what may or may not be a door. It's also round, a bump maybe ten feet tall. The room itself, he guesses, is about thirty feet in diameter and twenty feet in height, but it's hard to tell with no depth perception.
The "door" emits a soft humming noise behind him, and he quickly turns, still having not risen, to face the sound. The "door" itself seems to be completely gone, and in it stands his host, or who Thomas assumes is his host.
At first, wildly, he thinks he's looking at a centaur, but soon that image is washed from his mind--the only similarity with that ancient mythic beast that the creatures before him exhibits is a basic, general shape: four legs meeting in a barrel-shaped torso, from the front of which sprouts a more man-like torso. The creature has four arms, each sprouting from shoulders in a roughly human-like location, and four eyes, arranged in a square on the creature's face, just above what looks like a mouth--a straight cleavage in the flesh of the face apparent only from a thin line of darkness. The skin is a dark shade of olive-green and resembles, vaguely, that of a frog or other amphibian. On each of the four feet, which can be found at the end of long, muscular legs jointed in the middle like those of a human, are four toes, two in front and two to the rear, where a human heel would be. Each is devoid of nails. Each of the four arms joints not once but twice, and terminates in a four-fingered hand similar in design to the creature's feet, but to a more flexible degree.
Professor Viancetti tries to rise, and gets about halfway there before collapsing in pain. His leg, already hobbled by old age, cannot support him--the bone inside is shattered.
Wednesday, July 11
79. (Thomas Viancetti: The Gate at Raimos)
The small, black spacecraft lands on the platform outside Viancetti's estate at three hours past mid-day, as the local sun is just passing its pinnacle in the sky. It's a sleek craft, solid in color both on its frame and in its views-shields, all of which have been darkened for the anonymity of the pilot. It lands gracefully, but with a quickness that seems to indicate that the pilot is in something of a hurry.
A hatch on the side opens and a man steps out; he's wearing a long brown jacket and Earth-style horn-rimmed glasses. His hair is short and brown, cut in a vaguely military style. "Is this the estate of Professor Thomas Viancetti?" he calls out as he approaches.
Viancetti stands up from his deck chair, painfully aware of the creaking in his joints. The man approaching him is certainly not young, but to even be his age again would be a blessing. The professor's hair is grey, the hairline receding, and his eyes are a pale blue; he's thin, almost worrisomely so, and leans on a cane as he rises. "I'm Thomas Viancetti, yes, and this is my home. Might I ask you what your business is here?"
The ship's pilot flashes a badge of some kind, federal identification. Viancetti don't get a chance to read it. "I'm Agent Sam Burns, with the Expansionist Regime. Professor, there's a situation up at the gate. I've been ordered to take you up to examine it."
The professor laughs and sits back down. "You're kidding, right? I haven't been to the gate--much less in space--in thirty years. I'm retired, son. Find one of the younger researchers to deal with it--"
"That's not an option, professor. Travel registries tell us that you're the only gate expert on Raimos. The rest have been gathering over the last few days at Mars, dealing with the discoveries there."
"Discoveries?" Burns just nods in response and does not elaborate. "So if they're already on Mars, just have them come through the gate--I don't seen the problem."
The agent clears his throat. "That is the problem, professor. The gate is not operating."
Viancetti stands up again, slowly. "Not operating?" Is that even possible? he thinks. We've been flying our ships through it for over a century, with no negative effects or accidents--our record is perfect, the gate is perfect. The gate is always open. We wouldn't know how to shut it off if we wanted to. "Do you know why?"
"We suspect that possibly a ship passing through it clipped against one of the edges, or a piece of debris from some vessel or other smashed into it. With the hubbub on Mars security on this end has been a little... lax. We need someone who knows the gate's surface intimately, and you are, as far as we know, the only person on this side who's seen it up close."
Behind him--inside the house--Viancetti can hear the warbling of his vidlink trying to get his attention. It's probably just a videomarketer, he assumes. "Very well."
Minutes later he's sitting in the co-pilot's seat of the sleek black ship, breaking atmosphere. The gate, from this distance, is little more than a speck. It grows into an octagonal ring as they quickly approach it; a hundred yards in diameter, made up of a three-sided framework with glyphs carved into all three faces of each eight sides. Each side of the octagon officially denoted with a letter of the English alphabet--A, B, C, and so on--and each face of each side is given a Roman numeral--AI, AII, BI, HII, and so forth.
The ship floats in silence for several minutes while the pair inside visually regard it. "Do you see anything that stands out, Professor?" Agent Burn asks.
"Nothing... large. I expect I'll have to space-walk along the whole thing and examine it. This kind of operation is why I retired."
"Trust me, professor, if there was another way we would be more than happy to oblige."
Viancetti climbs into an excessively thick space-suit--a single-man transport frame, as it's referred to in official channels. His hands and feet strap in to levers that control the hands and feet of the suit, keeping his extremities safe and warm under several inches of heated insulation. His head and face, however, are not as well protected; for the sake of visibility, only a layer of tinted glass protects his face, held in place by metal and plastic shielding the rest of his head. Strapped to the back is a self-propulsion system, a small cluster of propulsion engines pointed in different directions.
He uses this propulsion system to leave the ship and float out to the edge of the gate. It is a long and painstaking process of surface examination, looking for new scratches or blemishes on the grey surface.
"Have you found anything yet, Professor?" Burns' voice hisses electronically in Viancetti's ear, two hours later.
"Nothing so far." Off in the distance he can see a cluster of personal craft of various sizes--travellers, expecting to make their way to Mars and, likely after, Earth. Black ships matching the one he rode up in fly circles around them, no doubt keeping them detained. "Do you hear that, Burns? There's some kind of... radio interference now."
"I'm picking it up on the sensors, yes. No idea what it is. I thought it was coming from the other ER ships, but it's not a frequency we usually use."
"Do you have a bad feeling about it?" Viancetti asks. Burns answers but the professor is no longer listening--he's not even breathing, for a moment. And then he's breathing very fast. "Burns, are you seeing this? Look at the glyph on EIII--facing you, you can't miss it." Of course he can't miss it. It's glowing a light green color. Over a century of gate use and each glyph has only ever remained dark.
"Professor, come back to the ship."
"I'm going to have a closer look." Viancetti uses the propulsion system to make his way across the full diameter of the gate, to the glowing glyph.
"Viancetti, I really think this is a bad idea." The agent is starting to sound panicked.
"There's no lighting mechanism, Burns. It's just glowing, with some kind of... radiation, maybe. This suit is insulated for radiation, isn't it? Good, I'm going to--wait. Wait. More of them are lighting up now--AII, BIII, FI--now all of them. All twenty-four."
"Professor!"
"Quiet, Burns. You brought me here to do a job." He uses the propulsion system to float out and away from the gate, trying to get a better look at it from a distance. His scientific curiosity has gotten the best of him--deep down, he wants to know why this sudden and new glow is happening.
"Professor, something is happening. Something else. I really think you should come back to the ship."
"It's moving," Viancetti mutters under my breath. The sides of the gate are rotating slowly, silently--and then they stop. The glow on the glyphs intensifies--and there's a flash, and for a moment the professor is blinded.
I can hear Agent Burns shouting over the radio, no longer just to me: "This is Agent Sam Burns to Expansionist Regime command! We have a code beta--repeat, a code beta!" The poor man sounds even more panicked now.
Viancetti's vision clears and he can see why Burn's is yelling. A ship--a clearly alien ship--has come through the gate. It is roughly the same size as the agent's black ship. It's green, ovular, shaped almost like an egg with small round bumps on its surface. It floats there silently, motionlessly. After a moment it rotates around to face the gate, and emits four lights, beaming them directly on four sides of the gate. The lights vanish, then reappear, shining now on the four remaining sides.
"Professor, I think you should come back to the ship now," Burns yells in my ear. "This is a really bad time to be unprotected out there."
Viancetti starts floating back towards the black craft, never taking his eyes off the new ship or the gate. The latter is breaking apart, each of the eight sides separating from its neighbors and floating outwards, triangular rods forming a larger, incomplete framework. He's halfway back to Burns' ship when the gate pieces stop floating and start projecting a bright blue light from each end. The lights curve and connect with each other, and suddenly the hundred-yard wide frame of alien stone has grown to a five-hundred yard frame of glowing light.
"Move it professor, we need to get away from--" A high pitched noise interrupts him. Before Viancetti can react a shock wave tears through space and he's sent tumbling head-over-heels away from both the black ship of Agent Burns and the green ship that came through the gate. As he rights himself and stops his tumble, his breath lodges in his throat. Floating silently in the midst of the gate is a massive alien craft. Easily a thousand yards long and four hundred yards wide, it's shaped like a huge, elongated egg with bulbous lumps covering its surface, much like the smaller craft. On these lumps Viancetti can see what looks to him like propulsion units, weapons, portholes, and hatches.
The high pitched noise ceases. The professor can hear Burns shouting more official code mumbo-jumbo into the radio, desperate now to reach his superiors.
This is it, he thinks, this is first contact. This is alien life making contact with humans for the first time. We've always known they were out there--we had just never actually met them.
The first, smaller ship floats up and into the larger ship. Several seconds pass.
"Professor, I've been ordered to get you the hell out of here, this is--Oh." An object--a missile launches from the massive ship. In hits Burns' ship dead-center, and the sleek black craft crumples, folds, and explodes. There's a burst of static in Viancetti's ear, then nothing.
A piece of debris hits the propulsion suit and again the professor is sent tumbling, this time towards the massive ship. The glass protecting his face cracks, and the crack widens. He breathes out all the air in his lungs and squeezes his eyes shut just as it shatters. Basic space-walk training conditions you to react as such, just in case there is a ship to catch you, though chances of survival are still almost nil. The last thing he sees is the massive alien ship turning its attention on the cluster of black ships rapidly approaching it, weapons blazing. They don't stand a chance, but it buys time for the civilian travellers to get away.
An instant later Viancetti slams bodily into the alien craft. It's almost soft, and gives a little with the impact. He bounces off, spinning end over end. All of this takes less than a couple seconds, and then he's hit with a blast of heat and can see light through his clenched eyelids--and then, nothing.
A hatch on the side opens and a man steps out; he's wearing a long brown jacket and Earth-style horn-rimmed glasses. His hair is short and brown, cut in a vaguely military style. "Is this the estate of Professor Thomas Viancetti?" he calls out as he approaches.
Viancetti stands up from his deck chair, painfully aware of the creaking in his joints. The man approaching him is certainly not young, but to even be his age again would be a blessing. The professor's hair is grey, the hairline receding, and his eyes are a pale blue; he's thin, almost worrisomely so, and leans on a cane as he rises. "I'm Thomas Viancetti, yes, and this is my home. Might I ask you what your business is here?"
The ship's pilot flashes a badge of some kind, federal identification. Viancetti don't get a chance to read it. "I'm Agent Sam Burns, with the Expansionist Regime. Professor, there's a situation up at the gate. I've been ordered to take you up to examine it."
The professor laughs and sits back down. "You're kidding, right? I haven't been to the gate--much less in space--in thirty years. I'm retired, son. Find one of the younger researchers to deal with it--"
"That's not an option, professor. Travel registries tell us that you're the only gate expert on Raimos. The rest have been gathering over the last few days at Mars, dealing with the discoveries there."
"Discoveries?" Burns just nods in response and does not elaborate. "So if they're already on Mars, just have them come through the gate--I don't seen the problem."
The agent clears his throat. "That is the problem, professor. The gate is not operating."
Viancetti stands up again, slowly. "Not operating?" Is that even possible? he thinks. We've been flying our ships through it for over a century, with no negative effects or accidents--our record is perfect, the gate is perfect. The gate is always open. We wouldn't know how to shut it off if we wanted to. "Do you know why?"
"We suspect that possibly a ship passing through it clipped against one of the edges, or a piece of debris from some vessel or other smashed into it. With the hubbub on Mars security on this end has been a little... lax. We need someone who knows the gate's surface intimately, and you are, as far as we know, the only person on this side who's seen it up close."
Behind him--inside the house--Viancetti can hear the warbling of his vidlink trying to get his attention. It's probably just a videomarketer, he assumes. "Very well."
Minutes later he's sitting in the co-pilot's seat of the sleek black ship, breaking atmosphere. The gate, from this distance, is little more than a speck. It grows into an octagonal ring as they quickly approach it; a hundred yards in diameter, made up of a three-sided framework with glyphs carved into all three faces of each eight sides. Each side of the octagon officially denoted with a letter of the English alphabet--A, B, C, and so on--and each face of each side is given a Roman numeral--AI, AII, BI, HII, and so forth.
The ship floats in silence for several minutes while the pair inside visually regard it. "Do you see anything that stands out, Professor?" Agent Burn asks.
"Nothing... large. I expect I'll have to space-walk along the whole thing and examine it. This kind of operation is why I retired."
"Trust me, professor, if there was another way we would be more than happy to oblige."
Viancetti climbs into an excessively thick space-suit--a single-man transport frame, as it's referred to in official channels. His hands and feet strap in to levers that control the hands and feet of the suit, keeping his extremities safe and warm under several inches of heated insulation. His head and face, however, are not as well protected; for the sake of visibility, only a layer of tinted glass protects his face, held in place by metal and plastic shielding the rest of his head. Strapped to the back is a self-propulsion system, a small cluster of propulsion engines pointed in different directions.
He uses this propulsion system to leave the ship and float out to the edge of the gate. It is a long and painstaking process of surface examination, looking for new scratches or blemishes on the grey surface.
"Have you found anything yet, Professor?" Burns' voice hisses electronically in Viancetti's ear, two hours later.
"Nothing so far." Off in the distance he can see a cluster of personal craft of various sizes--travellers, expecting to make their way to Mars and, likely after, Earth. Black ships matching the one he rode up in fly circles around them, no doubt keeping them detained. "Do you hear that, Burns? There's some kind of... radio interference now."
"I'm picking it up on the sensors, yes. No idea what it is. I thought it was coming from the other ER ships, but it's not a frequency we usually use."
"Do you have a bad feeling about it?" Viancetti asks. Burns answers but the professor is no longer listening--he's not even breathing, for a moment. And then he's breathing very fast. "Burns, are you seeing this? Look at the glyph on EIII--facing you, you can't miss it." Of course he can't miss it. It's glowing a light green color. Over a century of gate use and each glyph has only ever remained dark.
"Professor, come back to the ship."
"I'm going to have a closer look." Viancetti uses the propulsion system to make his way across the full diameter of the gate, to the glowing glyph.
"Viancetti, I really think this is a bad idea." The agent is starting to sound panicked.
"There's no lighting mechanism, Burns. It's just glowing, with some kind of... radiation, maybe. This suit is insulated for radiation, isn't it? Good, I'm going to--wait. Wait. More of them are lighting up now--AII, BIII, FI--now all of them. All twenty-four."
"Professor!"
"Quiet, Burns. You brought me here to do a job." He uses the propulsion system to float out and away from the gate, trying to get a better look at it from a distance. His scientific curiosity has gotten the best of him--deep down, he wants to know why this sudden and new glow is happening.
"Professor, something is happening. Something else. I really think you should come back to the ship."
"It's moving," Viancetti mutters under my breath. The sides of the gate are rotating slowly, silently--and then they stop. The glow on the glyphs intensifies--and there's a flash, and for a moment the professor is blinded.
I can hear Agent Burns shouting over the radio, no longer just to me: "This is Agent Sam Burns to Expansionist Regime command! We have a code beta--repeat, a code beta!" The poor man sounds even more panicked now.
Viancetti's vision clears and he can see why Burn's is yelling. A ship--a clearly alien ship--has come through the gate. It is roughly the same size as the agent's black ship. It's green, ovular, shaped almost like an egg with small round bumps on its surface. It floats there silently, motionlessly. After a moment it rotates around to face the gate, and emits four lights, beaming them directly on four sides of the gate. The lights vanish, then reappear, shining now on the four remaining sides.
"Professor, I think you should come back to the ship now," Burns yells in my ear. "This is a really bad time to be unprotected out there."
Viancetti starts floating back towards the black craft, never taking his eyes off the new ship or the gate. The latter is breaking apart, each of the eight sides separating from its neighbors and floating outwards, triangular rods forming a larger, incomplete framework. He's halfway back to Burns' ship when the gate pieces stop floating and start projecting a bright blue light from each end. The lights curve and connect with each other, and suddenly the hundred-yard wide frame of alien stone has grown to a five-hundred yard frame of glowing light.
"Move it professor, we need to get away from--" A high pitched noise interrupts him. Before Viancetti can react a shock wave tears through space and he's sent tumbling head-over-heels away from both the black ship of Agent Burns and the green ship that came through the gate. As he rights himself and stops his tumble, his breath lodges in his throat. Floating silently in the midst of the gate is a massive alien craft. Easily a thousand yards long and four hundred yards wide, it's shaped like a huge, elongated egg with bulbous lumps covering its surface, much like the smaller craft. On these lumps Viancetti can see what looks to him like propulsion units, weapons, portholes, and hatches.
The high pitched noise ceases. The professor can hear Burns shouting more official code mumbo-jumbo into the radio, desperate now to reach his superiors.
This is it, he thinks, this is first contact. This is alien life making contact with humans for the first time. We've always known they were out there--we had just never actually met them.
The first, smaller ship floats up and into the larger ship. Several seconds pass.
"Professor, I've been ordered to get you the hell out of here, this is--Oh." An object--a missile launches from the massive ship. In hits Burns' ship dead-center, and the sleek black craft crumples, folds, and explodes. There's a burst of static in Viancetti's ear, then nothing.
A piece of debris hits the propulsion suit and again the professor is sent tumbling, this time towards the massive ship. The glass protecting his face cracks, and the crack widens. He breathes out all the air in his lungs and squeezes his eyes shut just as it shatters. Basic space-walk training conditions you to react as such, just in case there is a ship to catch you, though chances of survival are still almost nil. The last thing he sees is the massive alien ship turning its attention on the cluster of black ships rapidly approaching it, weapons blazing. They don't stand a chance, but it buys time for the civilian travellers to get away.
An instant later Viancetti slams bodily into the alien craft. It's almost soft, and gives a little with the impact. He bounces off, spinning end over end. All of this takes less than a couple seconds, and then he's hit with a blast of heat and can see light through his clenched eyelids--and then, nothing.
Friday, July 6
78. (Days and Hours and Nothing.)
September. It was unseasonably hot, and the air was thick with insects as we waded through the tall grass to our secret spot, our clubhouse without a house. We babbled on about everything and nothing and everything again. Girls. Sports. It's sorta all blurry now. I remember dropping into the couch, casually, and Sam throwing himself into the broken recliner.
Some time passed. I don't know how long. And then there was a light, just floating in the air in front of Sam, and immediately after that the light was gone, replaced with...
With what, I don't know. A floating shadow? An emptiness? It defies me to this day how to accurately describe it. Sam looked at it cross-eyed, and reached out and touched it. "It's cold," he said--and then his hand was gone. There was no blood, there was just screaming, screaming from all of us. He tried to pull away but it was like something was holding him in place--no, pulling him in. Soon his arm up to the elbow was gone, vanishing into that floating shadow, that... void. I'll never forget the look on his face, such pure, uninhibited fear, panic, pain.
I grabbed his other arm and pulled--we all pulled, but it was like he was set in stone. It had pulled him in up to his shoulder, and was pressing up against his chest. I could hear his ribs breaking, shattering, crumbling inside. Sam let out a wail of agony--and he died. We fell away, screaming, and his body vanished completely, sucked into that glimmer of nothingness.
Only it wasn't a glimmer anymore. As it had pulled him in it had grown: the size of a baseball by the time it reached his elbow, as big as a pumpkin when it killed him. It wasn't growing anymore, just... floating there.
I blacked out after that.
When I woke up I was on a stretcher in an ambulance. Our secret hiding place was gone--someone had erected a huge white tent over it. Several large men with rifles and gas-masks stood around it in a circle. Men and women in lab coats bustled around. I didn't know what was going on. As I lay there staring at the white fabric, a gust of wind blew one of the tent flaps open and I caught a glimpse inside--the nothingness was the size of a large horse.
Suddenly there was a scuffle--someone was shouting something, some kind of horrible howl was coming from inside the tent--and then the scientist types came running out, and a moment later the tent itself vanished, replaced by... nothing, even larger.
The more it took in, the more it grew. I imagine some poor schmuck tripped and brushed against it and got sucked in.
It's still growing now. We're driving South, towards Mexico. Oklahoma is gone--totally gone. It just keeps getting bigger--we can't run forever. We're not the only ones. Everyone is running--North or South or East or West, everyone running out. It's only a matter of time before there's nowhere to run to.
Some time passed. I don't know how long. And then there was a light, just floating in the air in front of Sam, and immediately after that the light was gone, replaced with...
With what, I don't know. A floating shadow? An emptiness? It defies me to this day how to accurately describe it. Sam looked at it cross-eyed, and reached out and touched it. "It's cold," he said--and then his hand was gone. There was no blood, there was just screaming, screaming from all of us. He tried to pull away but it was like something was holding him in place--no, pulling him in. Soon his arm up to the elbow was gone, vanishing into that floating shadow, that... void. I'll never forget the look on his face, such pure, uninhibited fear, panic, pain.
I grabbed his other arm and pulled--we all pulled, but it was like he was set in stone. It had pulled him in up to his shoulder, and was pressing up against his chest. I could hear his ribs breaking, shattering, crumbling inside. Sam let out a wail of agony--and he died. We fell away, screaming, and his body vanished completely, sucked into that glimmer of nothingness.
Only it wasn't a glimmer anymore. As it had pulled him in it had grown: the size of a baseball by the time it reached his elbow, as big as a pumpkin when it killed him. It wasn't growing anymore, just... floating there.
I blacked out after that.
When I woke up I was on a stretcher in an ambulance. Our secret hiding place was gone--someone had erected a huge white tent over it. Several large men with rifles and gas-masks stood around it in a circle. Men and women in lab coats bustled around. I didn't know what was going on. As I lay there staring at the white fabric, a gust of wind blew one of the tent flaps open and I caught a glimpse inside--the nothingness was the size of a large horse.
Suddenly there was a scuffle--someone was shouting something, some kind of horrible howl was coming from inside the tent--and then the scientist types came running out, and a moment later the tent itself vanished, replaced by... nothing, even larger.
The more it took in, the more it grew. I imagine some poor schmuck tripped and brushed against it and got sucked in.
It's still growing now. We're driving South, towards Mexico. Oklahoma is gone--totally gone. It just keeps getting bigger--we can't run forever. We're not the only ones. Everyone is running--North or South or East or West, everyone running out. It's only a matter of time before there's nowhere to run to.
Thursday, April 5
74. (Big Bad.)
I love the woods. They're so full of leaves and animals and trees and plants, the scent of a human, sweating and bleeding and running for her life, stands out like a lighthouse in the fog. It's pretty foggy now, in fact, or I'd just be chasing her by sight. But she smells so sweet, so scared, I don't need my eyes.
You're not even a challenge, Red. But you will be delicious.
Even if I couldn't smell her, her scent tearing through these woods like wildfire, I could hear her. Red's not a forest person. Not a woodsman. Woodswoman. Whichever. Her footsteps are so loud in the underbrush, on fallen branches, on discarded leaves that I can't even hear her ragged breathing.
Ah, Red. You're so fun to hunt! I'm not exactly moving quietly myself here--hell, I want her to hear me coming. I want her to know where I am, just out of view, behind her, tearing through the woods hot on her heels. Young heels. Delicious heels.
Oh Red! I can taste you already. My mouth waters at the mere thought of devouring your flesh! My hands shake, tremble--ready to tear off your clothes before tearing you apart. To taste your sweat and tears and blood and flesh... oh, Red, it will be glorious. I really can already taste you.
If you taste at all like your grandmother, at least. Probably something similar, though less stringy. More tender.
Red, Red, Red. I'm close enough to see you now, or the fog is thinning out--oh, damnation. And again the sight of your blond locks is lost, the red of your hood, the white of your skin, the crimson of your blood. No matter, I can still hear you.
Animals scatter away from us as we rip through the fog, playing cat and mouse--hunter and hunted--wolf and girl. You can't escape me, Red, I'm not even really trying. I'm wearing you down. I'm softening you up. I want you worn out and exhausted, bones weakened, tired and panting and not strong enough to really fight, Red, but strong enough to struggle. Strong enough to squirm. Strong enough to wiggle.
But not strong enough to escape. Not again.
Oh, Red. I'm so close now. I hear you--I hear you fall, I hear that extra-loud crack. I'm sure you ran into a branch--your smell is so much stronger now! I'm getting closer, much closer. You're broken, exhausted. But don't you dare give in. Don't you dare. I didn't chase you across these damn woods for an easy kill. Oh no. Oh, no no no.
Your smell is all over the air now. All over! You're near. Very near. But where? You're not moving, now. Don't you dare think of giving up! Don't even let the thought cross your pretty little brain. I plan on eating that bit last, by the way. Not that you'll care.
You're not running. Where the hell are you, Red? You're close, but... that's all I can tell. No footfalls. No breathing. Did you kill yourself when you fell? Did that branch ruin my meal? That would be... most unfortunate.
Shoes. You abandoned your shoes! No wonder I can't hear you running--damn you, trying to outsmart me! You can't, Red. No way, no how. You're just a girl--I'm a wolf. A big wolf. A hungry wolf. A bad wolf. You should have kept running.
I jerk forward--pushed! Sharp pain pain pain in my chest. What? Blood smell--not Red's. Not yours. Mine! How how how?! This cannot be! My hands go to my heart, to the blood--but it's not skin and fur and flesh I find. It's wood. It's a branch. A broken broken branch. A good six inches protrude... from... my chest? No--you little bibibitch! You did outsmart me, you minx!
I hear you exhale, practically in my ear. You you you took off your shoes--and... and threw them? And got behind me, silent as the fog. Clever girl. Clever, Red. Clev... Held your... breath...
Little whore, you missed my heart! My my my my... heart... so... can't... I breathe in tearing gasps--lungs broken. You've killed me! You little trollop! You little witch! Red! I can't I can't breathe. Clever. I can't. You're. So hungry. Worked my self up. Nothing. For nothing.
Clever.
Girl.
You're not even a challenge, Red. But you will be delicious.
Even if I couldn't smell her, her scent tearing through these woods like wildfire, I could hear her. Red's not a forest person. Not a woodsman. Woodswoman. Whichever. Her footsteps are so loud in the underbrush, on fallen branches, on discarded leaves that I can't even hear her ragged breathing.
Ah, Red. You're so fun to hunt! I'm not exactly moving quietly myself here--hell, I want her to hear me coming. I want her to know where I am, just out of view, behind her, tearing through the woods hot on her heels. Young heels. Delicious heels.
Oh Red! I can taste you already. My mouth waters at the mere thought of devouring your flesh! My hands shake, tremble--ready to tear off your clothes before tearing you apart. To taste your sweat and tears and blood and flesh... oh, Red, it will be glorious. I really can already taste you.
If you taste at all like your grandmother, at least. Probably something similar, though less stringy. More tender.
Red, Red, Red. I'm close enough to see you now, or the fog is thinning out--oh, damnation. And again the sight of your blond locks is lost, the red of your hood, the white of your skin, the crimson of your blood. No matter, I can still hear you.
Animals scatter away from us as we rip through the fog, playing cat and mouse--hunter and hunted--wolf and girl. You can't escape me, Red, I'm not even really trying. I'm wearing you down. I'm softening you up. I want you worn out and exhausted, bones weakened, tired and panting and not strong enough to really fight, Red, but strong enough to struggle. Strong enough to squirm. Strong enough to wiggle.
But not strong enough to escape. Not again.
Oh, Red. I'm so close now. I hear you--I hear you fall, I hear that extra-loud crack. I'm sure you ran into a branch--your smell is so much stronger now! I'm getting closer, much closer. You're broken, exhausted. But don't you dare give in. Don't you dare. I didn't chase you across these damn woods for an easy kill. Oh no. Oh, no no no.
Your smell is all over the air now. All over! You're near. Very near. But where? You're not moving, now. Don't you dare think of giving up! Don't even let the thought cross your pretty little brain. I plan on eating that bit last, by the way. Not that you'll care.
You're not running. Where the hell are you, Red? You're close, but... that's all I can tell. No footfalls. No breathing. Did you kill yourself when you fell? Did that branch ruin my meal? That would be... most unfortunate.
Shoes. You abandoned your shoes! No wonder I can't hear you running--damn you, trying to outsmart me! You can't, Red. No way, no how. You're just a girl--I'm a wolf. A big wolf. A hungry wolf. A bad wolf. You should have kept running.
I jerk forward--pushed! Sharp pain pain pain in my chest. What? Blood smell--not Red's. Not yours. Mine! How how how?! This cannot be! My hands go to my heart, to the blood--but it's not skin and fur and flesh I find. It's wood. It's a branch. A broken broken branch. A good six inches protrude... from... my chest? No--you little bibibitch! You did outsmart me, you minx!
I hear you exhale, practically in my ear. You you you took off your shoes--and... and threw them? And got behind me, silent as the fog. Clever girl. Clever, Red. Clev... Held your... breath...
Little whore, you missed my heart! My my my my... heart... so... can't... I breathe in tearing gasps--lungs broken. You've killed me! You little trollop! You little witch! Red! I can't I can't breathe. Clever. I can't. You're. So hungry. Worked my self up. Nothing. For nothing.
Clever.
Girl.
Wednesday, April 4
73. (I've been trying to build on this image... but nothing will come.)
The ship's intercoms are silent. We float through space, idling, almost frozen. Shocked. I imagine the expression is visible even outside, as crazy as that sounds. The communications tech lets his hand fall away from the control panel which, only minutes before, had opened the relays to receive the planetary identification signal of Earth, our home. This signal is sent out from all Colonial planets to aid crews in the clumsy act of gaining ones bearings post-hyperspatial travel. His hand had, after hitting the proper keystrokes, remained frozen over the panel.
Utter silence. Traditionally, the signal is broadcast over the ships intercoms to reassure the crew--blind on the interior of the ship--that they are, in fact, not lost in space, as hyperspatial travel often leads one to believe.
"Open the relays," the captain had barked at him, "and be quick about it." An edge of panic had slipped into his voice.
"They're open, sir," the tech had replied. "Double-checked. There... there's no signals coming through. Silence, sir."
Fear rippled across the bridge crew, cold sweats broke out, hands started to shake. Silence generally meant one thing: there was nothing out there to broadcast an ident. signal, therefore we were no where near a planet. Before the adoption of the planetary ident. signal this was how ships became lost in space.
"Open the viewshields," the captain whispered. "Open them, damn it!" Stronger this time. The tech responsible jumped to his duties, fingers flying across the control panel. The gunmetal grey shields that close over the thick glass viewport at the front of the bridge during hyperspatial travel folded down and vanished.
The captain fell back into his chair, a hand over his mouth, his eyes wide. A man screamed. It was far worse than we had imagined.
We were not lost in the endlessness of space. In fact, we were right where we had expected to come out. Earth itself was even there, floating in the middle of the viewport. It was the state of the planet that brought us such shock. The spherical body was shattered in two and twisted, its molten core leaking out and cooling near-instantly, like a constant volcanic eruption. Chunks of shattered earth the size of continents floated amidst the wreckage, still green and blue as they had been when we had last seen the planet.
For a moment I held out hope that life remained on those broken, jagged chunks of planet, that people still clung to life on what remained of our world. I soon corrected myself. The captain came to the same conclusion moments later: "There are no clouds. Not a single goddamn cloud."
He was right. There were no clouds--because there was no atmosphere. Earth had been reduced to little more than a massive, broken asteroid, circling 'round its sun at a limp, dragging pieces of it self in its wake. The planet was as dead as everything that still remained on it. Judging from the wrecks of our defensive fleet, from the burns that scored the metal hulls... it was not a catastrophe that had come about naturally.
Utter silence. Traditionally, the signal is broadcast over the ships intercoms to reassure the crew--blind on the interior of the ship--that they are, in fact, not lost in space, as hyperspatial travel often leads one to believe.
"Open the relays," the captain had barked at him, "and be quick about it." An edge of panic had slipped into his voice.
"They're open, sir," the tech had replied. "Double-checked. There... there's no signals coming through. Silence, sir."
Fear rippled across the bridge crew, cold sweats broke out, hands started to shake. Silence generally meant one thing: there was nothing out there to broadcast an ident. signal, therefore we were no where near a planet. Before the adoption of the planetary ident. signal this was how ships became lost in space.
"Open the viewshields," the captain whispered. "Open them, damn it!" Stronger this time. The tech responsible jumped to his duties, fingers flying across the control panel. The gunmetal grey shields that close over the thick glass viewport at the front of the bridge during hyperspatial travel folded down and vanished.
The captain fell back into his chair, a hand over his mouth, his eyes wide. A man screamed. It was far worse than we had imagined.
We were not lost in the endlessness of space. In fact, we were right where we had expected to come out. Earth itself was even there, floating in the middle of the viewport. It was the state of the planet that brought us such shock. The spherical body was shattered in two and twisted, its molten core leaking out and cooling near-instantly, like a constant volcanic eruption. Chunks of shattered earth the size of continents floated amidst the wreckage, still green and blue as they had been when we had last seen the planet.
For a moment I held out hope that life remained on those broken, jagged chunks of planet, that people still clung to life on what remained of our world. I soon corrected myself. The captain came to the same conclusion moments later: "There are no clouds. Not a single goddamn cloud."
He was right. There were no clouds--because there was no atmosphere. Earth had been reduced to little more than a massive, broken asteroid, circling 'round its sun at a limp, dragging pieces of it self in its wake. The planet was as dead as everything that still remained on it. Judging from the wrecks of our defensive fleet, from the burns that scored the metal hulls... it was not a catastrophe that had come about naturally.
Thursday, March 8
72. (No, I don't have a Samuel L. Jackson obsession. Why do you ask?)
One day, I'll actually post something in here, instead of just posting videos.
Thursday, March 1
Thursday, January 25
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