by Samuel Best
“Why?” he asked, suddenly defensive.
The woman looked surprised. “Because…there might be more of these inside. We need as many as possible to form a perimeter around the colony.”
“We’ll gather everyone together. Shrink the perimeter.”
“We don’t know anything about how the crabs affect the soil!” she protested. “They might ingest all the nutrients and deposit organics that will stop our crops from growing. There’s no way to know, so we need to find more radio spikes.”
He turned on her and jabbed a finger into her shoulder, eliciting a yelp of pain. She stumbled backward and the corporal caught her from falling.
“No one goes in my shuttle unless I say so.”
The corporal raised his gun and Tulliver took a step toward him. Then the corporal stood up straight and released his weapon as he looked down the hill.
Gavin Alder ran up the hill, staring at the new arrivals. He looked at them, then looked past them, as if searching for someone else. His hands worked quickly, signing words Tulliver didn’t understand.
“Your father’s not with them,” said Tulliver. “I told you he’s gone.”
The woman looked at Tulliver like he’d just shot her pet.
The boy ignored him, staring instead at the woman. His bottom lip quivered and tears welled in his eyes. He looked once more toward the western horizon, then turned and ran back down the hill.
“Gavin!” Tulliver called after him.
He sighed and flashed a congenial smile, as if he and the corporal hadn’t been about to kill each other.
“He misses his father,” Tulliver explained. “It’s a lot of change in a short amount of time.”
He frowned as Gavin ran back toward his farm. Tulliver would need to have a serious discussion with the boy about what he could expect from his future.
“Almost there,” he said, leading the way down the hill. “Let’s get you all set up at camp, then we can talk about those…those animals.” He glanced at the corporal’s rifle. “We’ll have to put your gun under lock and key. Can’t allow someone to grab it from your tent while you’re in the latrine.”
“They’re welcome to try,” Turner said casually.
“For a military man, you seem to have a dominant streak of insubordination.”
“Depends on who’s in charge.”
They entered the sparse forest surrounding the core of the colony and passed the blackened circle of burnt ground where Warden Cohen had made his last campfire.
“Some folks like sleeping under the stars,” Tulliver explained. “It’s a novelty they couldn’t enjoy on Earth.”
Samar was stacking crates just outside the circle of structures at the heart of the settlement. He stood up straight and grinned at Tulliver, who sneered in response. Samar shook his head, still smiling, and went back to his work as Tulliver led his two charges into the colony proper.
“You’ve been busy,” remarked the woman, looking around.
“Most of the shelters were put up before the Halcyon did her swan dive,” said Tulliver. He pointed to an open-air canvas shelter nearby. “Mess tent is there. That little one is the clinic, if you can call it that. Those are the bunk houses. I have some people digging trenches for the septic system beyond those trees, which we’ll install as soon as the supply manager can find the pipes. We’re in pretty good shape already. Once we find where the Halcyon landed more supplies on her previous visits, we’ll be able to get the farmers the homes they paid for and pop some more tents for the ship’s crew.”
A group of colonists had formed around Tulliver and the two new arrivals while he spoke. The colonists hung back quietly, observing.
“I’ll need your red cards before you get settled in,” said Tulliver, holding out his hand toward them expectantly. He shrugged. “It’s policy.”
“You need to send someone out to keep an eye on the migration,” said the woman, ignoring him. “We have to get these people to a safe place.”
“Is that the warden’s shuttle?” asked the corporal, stepping toward it. “There might be more radio spikes inside.”
Tulliver blocked his path, glaring down at the shorter man.
“What did I say about going on my shuttle?” he growled quietly.
“What’s underneath it?” the woman asked.
She knelt down and looked in the shadows beneath the shuttle. Suddenly she gasped and quickly stood up, looking at Tulliver as if he had suddenly shed his human mask to reveal the monster beneath.
“Yeah,” said Tulliver with a sigh. “That’s Warden Ramirez. Guess he wasn’t quick enough.”
But the corporal was.
He dropped his bundle of metal rods and rammed the side of his rifle into Tulliver’s stomach, sending him stumbling back. Then he aimed and fired as Tulliver charged him. The first bullet went wide but the second one hit his left shoulder like a hammer-blow.
Tulliver leaped forward, driving his bald head into the corporal’s stomach as the third bullet went high. The corporal fell on his back and Tulliver landed on his legs. He scrambled forward and grabbed the rifle with both hands as the corporal raised it to fire again. Tulliver ripped it from his grasp. His eyes were wide and terrible as he leaned his head back, then brought his skull down hard on the corporal’s with a loud CRACK.
The corporal went limp. Tulliver used the rifle as a crutch to stand, then wiped blood from his forehead as he turned in a circle to glare at the crowd surrounding him. He stopped when he saw the doctor woman and aimed the rifle in her direction.
“No guns,” he hissed.
Then he pointed the nozzle at the ground and pulled the trigger repeatedly until the chamber clicked empty.
The ground rumbled under his boots. He looked down at it, confused, and took a step back.
The colonists held on to each other for support as the quaking intensified. Tulliver lost his balance and fell to one knee. The corporal was on the ground, shaking as if he were having a seizure, and the woman stood in a wide stance, crouched low with her arms held out for balance.
As the quake subsided, a faint blue glow bloomed in the bullet holes that had punctured the soil. Tulliver slowly reached out for one. A blue sphere emerged from the hole, pushed upward by a thin, luminous plant stalk. He pulled his hand back as an identical plant sprouted from each hole.
The woman touched one with the tip of her forefinger and got a small electric shock for her curiosity.
After several long moments of exposure to the air, the spheres blackened and withered as if held under a torch. They sank into themselves as the stalks to which they were attached curled back into the ground. The blue light faded.
Tulliver grunted as he stood up, then stomped on the withering stalks, grinding them to dust. He tossed the rifle aside and probed the hole in his left shoulder tentatively, wincing as blood seeped from the wound.
“Can you stitch me up?” he asked the doctor woman.
“Did you see that?” she said, gently toeing the edge of a bullet hole in the ground.
“Hey, doc,” Tulliver barked, snapping his fingers. “I’m bleeding. Stitch me up.”
She dropped the three metal rods she was carrying and hurried to the corporal’s side as he groaned. His eyes rolled in their sockets as she helped him sit up. The woman delicately probed the firework of blood on his brow with her thumb, checking the wound beneath.
“I’ll take that as a no,” said Tulliver.
He picked up one of the metal rods the woman had dropped on the ground and used it for support as he made his way toward the shuttle.
The colonists parted to allow his passage, and he made eye contact with every one of them brave enough to return his stare. There weren’t many.
He had expected to leave the shuttle ramp up to keep out the riffraff, but after torching Ramirez upon landing, Tulliver was pleased to discover that the stink of burnt warden was enough to keep most colonists away.
As he mounted the ramp and began the steep, la
borious climb, something in the nearby woods caught his eye.
A boy, running.
Tulliver stepped off the ramp and hurried around to the back of the shuttle, blood trickling down his hand as he pressed it against his wounded shoulder.
It was the Alder boy, and he was making for the supply crates. He wore an over-sized backpack that bounced against the back of his legs as he ran. Sweat plastered his brown hair to his forehead. He ran in a wide circle around the settlement, avoiding the cluster of people near the shuttle.
Tulliver took a shortcut through the center of camp, heading straight for the stacks of supply crates. They had been stacked six-high in places, creating a small maze behind the supply tent. Their towers loomed over Tulliver’s head as he jogged through the maze.
He came across Samar, who was struggling with great effort to lift a heavy crate and set it atop another. The supply manager smiled and wiped sweat from his brow, then he said, “I knew you couldn’t—”
Tulliver put his broad palm over Samar’s face and shoved him backward, sending him tumbling over a crate.
Gavin appeared from behind a stack of crates and skidded to a stop in the soil, breathing hard, his frail bird’s chest shuddering with each exhalation.
The poor kid is going out to look for his father, Tulliver realized.
The boy’s gaze flicked to an open crate of freeze-dried food packets and sachets of lemonade concentrate. Samar stood up from behind the crate he’d tripped over and ran toward the other colonists without looking back.
Tulliver groaned with pain as he took a knee to look at Gavin eye-to-eye.
“Listen to me closely,” he said gently. “If you leave the colony, you die. Something is out there that your daddy could not survive. If you go looking for him, it will get you, too.”
The boy glared at him, disbelieving every word of it. Part of Tulliver was proud to see that defiance — proud that the kid wasn’t just another sheep. Another part of him wanted the boy to obey.
“I’ll make a safe place for you here,” said Tulliver. “I know it hurts to lose someone. I lost the two people I love most.” His hand drifted up to the chain around his neck. He pulled it from the neck of his shirt and opened the small locket to show Gavin the pictures. “I make…mistakes. I always make mistakes.” His eyes glazed over as he remembered the day he came back to his apartment to find a note on the kitchen counter — a note, but no family. “They were taken from me,” he said. Then he clicked the locket shut and slipped it through the neckline of his shirt.
Don’t lie to him, said a woman’s voice inside his head — a voice Tulliver hadn’t heard in a very long time. She sounded disgusted, as she always had in the final months before he lost her forever. I left because of the monster you were becoming. And now look at you. You’re a thug.
“I’m more than that,” he whispered.
Gavin turned and ran.
Tulliver lunged forward and caught a fistful of backpack. He pulled it hard, picking the boy up off his feet, and flung it behind him, toward the colony. The backpack, and Gavin with it, flew through the air and smacked into the side of a tower of stacked crates, then he fell in a heap on the ground. The tower teetered in place, then toppled over, raining crates down to the ground.
The first one hit on its corner, sinking into the ground next to Gavin’s head. It hit so sturdily, without bouncing, that Tulliver realized these were not empty crates.
He reached out for Gavin as another crate landed between them, on Gavin’s legs. The boy’s eyes shot open and he screamed silently.
More crates fell to the ground with heavy thuds. Gavin strained to push the one from his legs and looked up in horror.
A crate slipped off the tower and fell like a boulder. It landed flat on top of the boy, sinking him into the ground with a sickening crunch of bones, and all was silent.
“No,” Tulliver whispered as he climbed over the crates.
A small, bone-white hand stuck out from beneath the fallen crate. It twitched, tapping once against the side of the crate.
Tulliver stepped back, swallowing hard. He turned quickly, looking back at the settlement.
The colonists had returned to their own business. No one had seen what happened.
No one’s looking, said the internal youthful voice of Diego, the young warden, as Tulliver walked quickly away from the crates. It was an accident. No one saw you.
He bumped into someone with his injured shoulder. He growled but didn’t stop as he hurried toward his shuttle. He mounted the ramp and glanced back.
The woman.
The woman looked at him, then at the chaotic scattering of crates on the far side of the clearing.
She walked in that direction.
Tulliver huffed as he climbed the ramp, disappearing into shuttle.
MERRITT
His boots pounded the hard rock floor, echoing down the tunnel.
Aside from the limited glow of blue light from the cluster of luminous plant stalks he clutched in one hand, those echoes were the only way Merritt knew the tunnel wasn’t going to dead-end on him.
The sound of loose gravel grinding against stone grew louder behind him as something gained on him. It moved fast — at least as fast as Merritt could run, and probably faster now that the tunnel had leveled out.
He glanced back but saw only darkness.
After he heard the animal shriek from the left tunnel in the dome chamber where Ivan had died, Merritt yanked a fistful of glowing plant stalks from the ground near the central boulder and ran into the middle tunnel.
Something exploded out of the left tunnel shortly after, shrieking wildly. It blocked the light of the dome chamber as it crawled into the middle tunnel to chase after Merritt.
He caught a glimpse of a massive, armored, worm-like carapace as the creature stuffed itself into the tunnel, its tough exterior scraping the walls as it propelled itself closer.
Merritt forced himself to think of Gavin, and the thought gave him a small boost of energy.
The tunnel widened and narrowed, then widened yet again. Merritt risked a look back every time it narrowed, hoping the creature would get stuck. Each time, he was disappointed as it scraped through the pinch, shrieking.
His mind churned with questions as he ran.
Why the shriek? Is it calling its friends? What does it eat down here besides lost humans?
He tripped and almost fell, and the creature came closer. At times it sounded like it was immediately behind him, almost on top of him. Then the tunnel would rise slightly and the grinding echo of its approach would diminish by a fraction.
Merritt focused on putting one foot safely in front of the other in the darkness, pushing the distracting questions from his mind. The one thought he couldn’t shake was the fear of stepping over an open pit and plunging to his death.
He kept straining his eyes to look ahead, hoping for a gleam of daylight.
Should have checked the compass when I had the chance, he thought.
There was no way to tell which direction he was going. His pessimistic side told him it was probably north, which would put him on a long track under the mountains. He hadn’t bumped into any dangling roots nor seen any other sign that he was beneath a forest. Hopefully, that meant he was already under the mountains, even if he was moving north instead of east, toward the colony.
The sound of grinding rock grew closer behind him, but Merritt couldn’t go any faster. He ran with one hand dragging over the rough surface of the tunnel, feeling for a crack, an opening — anything too small for the creature to squeeze into.
Warmth filled the tunnel behind him and something bumped his shoulder. At that same moment, a crack in the wall opened to his right. He leaped into it and slammed against hard rock as the creature rushed past, shrieking when its prey suddenly vanished.
Merritt was in a narrow hollow with no other way out.
He held his meager bouquet of glowing plant stalks in front of him. Wet, gray flesh glistened in
the light as the creature squeezed down the tunnel, filling it from wall to wall. Stiff black spikes that had been compressed against its body popped up, flinging moisture on Merritt’s chest and face. He spat and turned aside.
The creature stopped.
Merritt tried to hold his breath as the beast slowly retreated back the way it came, its gray flesh undulating in waves as it wiggled toward the dome chamber.
The creature’s bulk disappeared from sight, leaving only the darkness of the tunnel outside the crack.
Merritt poked his head out after a long moment and looked up and down the silent tunnel. A sharp odor persisted after the creature’s passing, a mixture of unripe fruit and gasoline.
The rock walls shimmered as Merritt stepped out of the crack and held up his light. In the direction of the dome chamber there was only darkness. In the other, a small circle of light hovered in the middle of the tunnel.
Daylight.
Merritt took a step closer to the light.
The creature shrieked behind him — right behind him — and exploded forward with a rolling crunch of stone against stone.
Merritt ran for the light. His fistful of glowing plant stalks shredded to pieces as his arms pumped. The circle of light grew larger as he ran, but there was another sound behind him now, a sound like teeth sliding against each other as massive jaws snapped at his heels.
He burst into sunlight on a steep embankment overlooking a mountain pass and stumbled to a stop, shooting a terrified look behind him. The creature did not emerge. With a grinding of stone and one final, forlorn howl, it moved off down the tunnel, deeper into the mountain.
Merritt bent over and put his shaking hands on his knees as he gulped down fresh air. After catching his breath, he wiped his mouth, then held his arm up to shield his eyes against the bright sun.
Merritt took a few hesitant steps as he looked around, trying to gauge his surroundings. He patted the wet pockets of his coveralls, searching for the plastic snap-case containing the makeshift compass.
It was gone.
He had traveled such a great distance underground that he assumed he must be on the far side of the two mountains. If the narrow pass between them was aligned mostly on an east-west axis, then he simply needed to follow it toward the colony. Yet, if he was wrong, he would be walking back toward the Halcyon. He’d be forced to double back and pick a trail through the pass — a route that would take even more time.