by Samuel Best
“This man needs to be disciplined,” said Tulliver, addressing the crowd. “Without discipline, we’re animals. I will tell you one more time. Go back to your business.”
“This is our business,” said a familiar voice.
Merritt lifted his head from the ground as Uda pushed through the crowd of colonists. She held a metal radio spike like a weapon, ready to swing. Niku stepped forward to stand beside her. Behind them, Henry Tolbard supported Willef, who winced and put a hand to his bleeding side.
Despite his own pain, Merritt smiled. He rested his forehead on the soft ground as he got his hands under him, then pushed off with great effort and stood.
Tulliver’s gaze drifted over the colonists and he took a hesitant step back.
Merritt wheezed with each laborious breath as he limped past him to join the others. It felt like a boulder was pushing down on his rib cage, crushing his lungs. He stumbled and Niku caught him before he fell, then wrapped one arm over his shoulders and helped him to stand.
“Good timing,” Merritt whispered.
“Looks like you had it all under control,” Niku replied.
Tulliver growled as he looked around the crowd.
“You need me!” he shouted. “This a dangerous world. How will you survive without someone like me in charge?”
“We’ll figure it out,” said Uda. She nodded toward the forest. “Go.”
Tulliver looked at her in disbelief, then threw back his head and laughed. He wiped a tear from the corner of his eye as he calmed down, then he said, “No.”
Uda stepped forward, brandishing her radio spike.
“You think I’m afraid of your little stick?” asked Tulliver, walking toward her. “I’m going to take that away and make you regret picking it up in the first place. ALL of you!” he roared, addressing the colonists as he broke into a run, heading straight for Uda. “I’ll make you regret EVERYthing!”
Corporal Turner appeared in the crowd as Tulliver charged. A red spot of blood decorated the middle of a white bandage wrapped around his head. He lunged forward as Tulliver grabbed for Uda and brought his closed fist down on Tulliver’s neck like a hammer, catching him on the carotid artery.
Tulliver stumbled to a stop and slapped a hand to his neck. He glared blearily at a small spot of blood on his palm as he swayed in place.
“Whass that?” he asked drunkenly, eyes swimming in their sockets as they tried to settle on Turner.
He threw a lazy haymaker over the corporal’s head, spun around, and fell on his face in the dirt with a heavy thud.
Merritt kicked Tulliver in the rib cage just to be sure he was unconscious.
“That was some punch,” he said to the corporal.
Turner held up his fist and opened his hand to reveal a palm-sized medical injector.
“Animal tranquilizer,” he explained. “For the real beasts.”
“How long will it last?” asked Uda.
Turner looked at the injector and shrugged. “I don’t know. I just told the lady to fill it up.”
Merritt extricated himself from Niku’s helpful support and winced as he walked away.
“You have some time to figure it out.”
“Where are you going?” Niku asked.
Merritt kept one hand over his burning chest. “Back to my son.”
He deflected multiple attempts to help him walk to the grove of red moss. The going was slow, but necessary. Merritt needed time to prepare himself for the possibility that Gavin wasn’t going to recover from his injuries.
He came into sight of the tree-dome over the grove after cresting a low hill. Wincing with each step, he trudged forward, passing a patch of red moss resting half on the ground and half on a tree.
Skip stood at the edge of the small clearing, nervously chewing his fingernails. He heard Merritt approaching and turned quickly.
“You’re not gonna believe this,” he said quickly, rushing to Merritt’s side.
Merritt allowed Skip to help him down the gentle slope leading to the clearing. Leera knelt down next to Gavin, who lay on his back as if sleeping. Rectangular patches of gray moss covered the ground nearby. One of them had crumbled at the corners, scattering a fine gray dust across the green-streaked soil.
Merritt hobbled forward and collapsed at Gavin’s side. He picked up his son’s hand and felt warmth. His pale skin flushed a healthy red. It was covered in tiny red dots, like a rash.
Leera smiled and squeezed Merritt’s shoulder as he held the back of Gavin’s hand to his cheek. Tears streamed down over the boy’s fingers.
“Is he going to be okay?” Merritt whispered.
Gavin’s eyelids fluttered open and he looked at his father. A faint grin tugged at the corners of his lips as recognition settled in, then his smile faded.
I had a bad dream, he signed with weak hands.
Merritt laughed as he cried. He kissed Gavin on the forehead and told him, “It’s over now.”
TULLIVER
Whispers swam around him as he floated in darkness, whispers of those he had left behind on his journey through life — those whose own journeys Tulliver had cut short.
His eyes popped open and he sucked down air as if he’d been drowning. He lay on his side on the soft, moist ground, the jacket of his right shoulder soaked through to his skin.
The whispers of his dark memories faded, and Tulliver rolled slowly onto his back. The sky had taken on the particular orange tint of late afternoon. A vaporous thought tickled the back of his mind — a warning that wouldn’t materialize.
He heard voices nearby.
Tulliver forced himself up on one elbow and groaned with pain. The bullet-wound in his left shoulder burned as if being hollowed-out by a red hot poker. The horizon tilted sickeningly. He was alone in the middle of the clearing at the heart of the colony, but a dozen colonists milled about the perimeter, talking amongst themselves.
None of them had noticed that he was awake.
Then the warning that had been floating around his drugged mind solidified.
The crabs, he thought as a cold fear gripped his heart. Much as his fear of spiders had nearly paralyzed him as a child with each encounter, the mere thought of the churning, segmented legs of those alien creatures made him shiver.
He blinked hard and looked around the clearing. The radio spikes that the scientist woman said would keep the crabs away from the colony were nowhere to be seen.
Lara? Lora? What was her name?
It didn’t matter.
Tulliver rolled onto his stomach, pushed himself up on his hands and knees, and began to crawl.
She thought there might be more spikes in the shuttle. He could put them around the ramp and keep them away while the crab-things swept over the colony like a plague.
But then Tulliver would be alone.
As he crawled across the wet ground, parts of which had turned to mud from the constant foot-traffic of the colony, he realized that might not be such a bad thing after all. Another ship would come, eventually, and he could make up any story he liked as to why he was the only survivor of this ill-fated attempt to tame another world.
But you’re never really alone, are you, old Tull? said the distant voice of Roland Day in his mind.
We’ll never let you be lonely, added Diego.
Tulliver stopped mid-crawl and harshly rubbed his eyes, trying to clear his vision.
“Hey, he’s awake!” one of the colonists shouted.
Tulliver lurched to his feet and took a few unsteady steps sideways before falling back on his side in the mud with a loud squelch. As he looked frantically behind him, a gnarled bush on the edge of the clearing caught his eye: the same bush into which Merritt had thrown his locket.
Tulliver changed course and crawled on all fours, hands and boots squishing in the mud. A look of pure triumph lit up his face as he plucked the locket and its chain from the twisted grip of the gnarled bush.
“Over there!” a colonist shouted.
&nbs
p; Tulliver ran toward the shuttle and fell, one fist still closed tightly around his locket.
He crawled through the mud until his open hand slapped down on the cold metal of the shuttle’s ramp, then he used one of the ramp pistons to pull himself to his feet.
They were coming for him.
Several of the colonists ran toward the shuttle, calling for help.
Tulliver scrambled up the ramp, breathing like a chased animal. He lunged for the ramp controls at the top and punched a large red button.
The colonists stopped short as the ramp rose quickly. Tulliver panted as he watched it rise to block his view of their knees, their chests, their angry glares.
He closed his eyes and laid back on the cold metal floor as the ramp sealed shut with a satisfying whumpf.
Now he could relax. Now he could take his time.
Unless one of them figures out how to open the ramp with their red ticket, Diego warned. If you did it, one of them could do it, too.
Tulliver sighed with exhaustion. The effects of whatever tranquilizer the corporal had injected him with were fading, but slowly.
He performed a woozy search of the shuttle’s small cargo hold, but couldn’t find any more radio spikes. The others had probably taken the spikes for themselves and holed up somewhere in the forest where they hoped they’d be safe.
No matter. Tulliver had another plan, and it involved putting as much distance between himself and the approaching crabs as possible. He could come back to the colony after they passed. One thing was certain: things would be a whole lot quieter after he returned.
He climbed the ladder up to the cockpit and plopped down in the pilot seat. There was no glowing beacon on the control panel screen for him to tap like there was the first time he’d flown in the shuttle, so he simply tapped a section of the screen to the left of center. Razor-thin green elevation lines on the screen seemed to indicate the selected area was a small plateau on a mountain to the west. Tulliver would land there and wait for the migration to pass him by.
He grinned with sudden satisfaction as the shuttle engines roared to life, shaking him in his seat. He might even be able to roast a few crabs along the way.
The shuttle lifted off the ground and swung about to face west. The nose dipped as the craft rose higher and accelerated passing over the center of the colony. It gave Tulliver even greater satisfaction to see a few people dive out of the way to avoid the heat of his engine wash.
Dizziness swept over him and Tulliver nearly cracked his head on the control panel. He shook the feeling away and buckled into his safety harness.
The control panel beeped at him, and the faint green elevation lines on the screen changed to red as the shuttle’s sensors detected movement below.
He was flying over the crab migration.
Tulliver shuddered with disgust and settled deeper into his chair. He briefly entertained the idea of tilting the shuttle so he could get a look at them, then easily dismissed it.
The control panel beeped again. A tiny yellow indicator light blinked off and on near a circular display.
He was almost out of fuel.
Tulliver sat up in his seat and tentatively grabbed the control stick. With the vessel in auto-pilot, his shaking hands did nothing to affect its course.
Oops, said Ivan in his mind. Looks like you didn’t think of everything.
“Shut up!” Tulliver yelled frantically.
He tapped the flashing yellow button and got the expected result: it didn’t stop flashing.
Find a new place to land, he told himself. Tap the screen.
He tapped the screen, and it flicked off. The entire control panel went dark, and the engines cut out.
Tulliver held his breath as he glided in silence. Sweat dripped into his eyes and he hastily rubbed it away.
The shuttle tilted on its nose-tail axis, one wing dipping toward the ground and the other toward the sky. Then the craft rolled over until it was upside-down. The straps of Tulliver’s safety harness dug into his shoulders as they strained to keep his bulk in the seat. Blood rushed to his head.
A world of solid gray rushed past the cockpit window above. All Tulliver could do was stare at it as the shuttle rapidly descended.
The craft exploded through a tree with an ear-splitting CRACK. More sharp cracks followed until they came as fast as gunfire, ripping away parts of the hull. Burst trunks scraped over the cockpit as the shuttle rolled onto its side.
The cockpit shattered and broken shards ripped through the cabin. Tulliver screamed as a dozen knives sliced his face, then he jerked forward in his seat as the left side of the shuttle hit the ground.
The vessel pitched forward so the nose hit next, spewing dirt and gray crabs into the air. Tulliver slammed back and forth in his seat as the vessel tumbled nose-to-tail on its side, metal crunching against tree trunks and large boulders as pieces of it flew off into the forest. The tail hit a boulder and the shuttle flipped up into the air, twirling like a tossed coin.
Tulliver went limp in his seat, no longer able to fight the forces that were pulling him in every direction.
The shuttle crashed to the ground on its crumpled side and finally came to a rest.
Steam hissed from somewhere inside the cabin, then stopped. Metal groaned as the broken hull settled.
After all was silent, Tulliver grasped for his safety harness release. He found it and hesitated. He drooped sideways against the harness in his chair, parallel to the wall several meters below him, which had become the floor.
You can catch yourself, Diego assured him. You’re fast enough. You’re the fastest.
Tulliver pressed the harness release and fell. He grabbed for the chair’s armrest and missed, then slammed down in a kneeling position against the interior wall of the shuttle with a metal CLONG.
He yelled in pain and flopped onto his side, cursing the dead warden as he seethed with rage.
Since the shuttle was missing almost everything besides the central cylinder containing the cockpit, cargo hold, and engine room, the shattered window was nearly on the same level as the ground outside.
Tulliver crawled toward it, over scimitar shards, his knees throbbing with a pain more intense than the bullet wound in his shoulder. He was sure his kneecaps had each cracked into a hundred pieces.
He wormed his way over the shark-tooth edge of the broken cockpit window and crawled across the spongy ground. There was a large boulder no more than ten meters away. He could get on top of it and wait out the migration.
My locket, he thought suddenly.
He grabbed for the chain around his neck, but it was gone. Tulliver looked behind him quickly, realizing he’d lost it in the crash. Smoke streamed up from the back of the shuttle, black against a clear blue sky.
He tried to stand but screamed when he put pressure on his knees, then collapsed back to the ground and crawled arm over arm toward the boulder.
A clacking sound came from behind.
He looked back as the first of the crabs appeared near what remained of the shuttle. They formed a single line on either side, and that line stretched into the distance as far as he could see.
Tulliver turned away from them and made for the boulder.
Plenty of time, he told himself. Go, go, go!
He made it.
The crabs were only seconds behind him when he pulled himself up onto the boulder with shaking hands. He climbed to its blunted peak two meters off the ground and flopped onto his stomach.
He lay there with a serene smile on his face, panting, as the crabs swarmed around the sides of the boulder below.
Gotcha, he thought.
His smile evaporated as a crab tapped the side of the boulder with one of its legs.
Tulliver sat up and crawled to the other side of the boulder. The line of crabs had risen up to cover the bottom of the gray rock, their segmented legs tap-tap-tapping as they were pushed higher by the mass of creatures behind them.
“No!” Tulliver cried out.<
br />
He tried to stand and collapsed, so he got to his broken knees as the crabs crawled up all sides of the boulder, closing in on him, coming together to seal the boulder beneath their uniform gray sheath as if it were a wound in the landscape that needed to be smothered.
The lip of the encroaching circle of crabs peeled back from the boulder as it rose above Tulliver’s head, revealing the underside of the interlocked crab migration: a churning multitude of sharp, segmented insectoid legs, all reaching out for Tulliver as he quaked in fear against the cold, hard surface of the boulder.
Something glimmered on the rising wall of segmented legs: a small locket dangling from a delicate golden chain.
The edges of the open circle came together overhead, blocking out the sunlight. As the blanket of crabs settled gently on top of him, Tulliver screamed.
LEERA
She drove the last of the radio spikes into the soft ground and twisted it deeper, then pressed the small button at its top to activate its negating signal.
The spike was at one end of a wide half-moon lining the base of a flat hill east of the colony. Leera had chosen that spot for the colonists to wait out the crab migration. The electrical current coursing through the ground near the towering bare tree trunks seemed to stop just below the rise of the hill. Coupled with the radio spikes, Leera hoped the migration would flow around the hill and the people temporarily stranded on its bald plateau.
She had even gone so far as to suggest they move the colony structures to the hill and make it their main settlement. Her predictions for the size and speed of the crab migration indicated it would circumnavigate Galena once every two years, assuming the creatures took a direct route and didn’t stop for weather or a seasonal hibernation.
While the crabs represented a threat to the colonists, Leera couldn’t help but be fascinated by them. Their anatomy, behavior, how they interacted with their environment — she wanted to know more about all of it.
She wiped a sweaty strand of hair from her forehead and looked up at the orange early evening sky.