by Adam Lowe
What he offers for our amusement has me turning on my heel and heading for the door.
“Mike,” he shouts after me. “I need to talk to you after the meet.”
I nod and head outside, lean against the wall to smoke a cigarette.
Watching people fight to the death. Men, high on angel dust and god knows what else, ripping at each other like animals. I’ve seen it all before. Here he is, suggesting a spectator sport yet again. Crude, yes. Dangerous and vile, of course. But passive all the same. After watching the dogs, I’d wanted to be a part of the crowd. But now I knew it still wouldn’t be enough.
“I want to fight,” I say when he comes out of the warehouse. “I want to get my hands dirty this time.”
He shakes his head.
“I will not have your death on my hands. Nor any death from this collective. You know that. If you want to commit suicide, you do it on your own.”
I shake my head in return. “I can win.”
“No, you can’t.”
And then he takes my hand. “Come,” he says. “I promise you will not be disappointed.”
When I was a kid, a boy of twelve or thirteen, me and Gareth used to watch Mrs P undress at night. Peeping through the corner of the window where the net didn’t quite meet the edge of the frame, we’d take it in turns to watch the luminous flesh slowly appear as clothes were shed. She always slept naked and always went to bed at least an hour before her husband. We’d get a full view of her bush, that beautiful mound of thick black hair, her wide hips and thighs. I would watch the way Gareth’s mouth tightened when he was aroused, and his neck would get blotchy. Later we would shoplift from Smiths and play chicken with the cars on the main road. Always looking to get our kicks. He was killed in a simple automobile accident. A drunk driver rammed into the back of his parents’ car, killing him and his dad outright. After that I started to steal into people’s houses at night and take any crap I could carry in two hands. But without my look-out, my ally, I was no good and landed myself in jail more than once. Sitting alone in the cell I would think of Gareth. How he had been cheated in death. It had crept up on him and then taken him in one ear-splitting moment, by a drunken man, a regular, normal human being, soused, not even in control. A totally passive death.
The men have weapons. I thought they would be fighting bare-fisted but no, they both have metal scaffolding poles to fight with. They charge each other, weapons held high. One knock to the skull would be enough, but we want the fight to last awhile. So they aim low, shattering kneecaps, breaking ribs. There is quite a crowd here, and we are in amongst them this time, close enough to be hit by an occasional splatter of blood. We shout and jeer, clap and yell ‘hit him hit him hit him’. The smaller man bites off a large piece of his tongue as metal crashes into the side of his head. He spits it out and grabs the other man in a half-nelson. They hold back a little more than the dogs, though they growl and wheeze and bark at each other. One is on his knees, vomiting, and the other takes the opportunity to kick him in the ribs. They don’t hate each other. They probably don’t even know why they’re doing this. The survival instinct is as strong in these men as in any other animal. That is all. Kill or be killed. I can feel the pulse of the crowd. I have a semi-erection. Not far from where I stand, a man is masturbating furiously, eyes locked on the fight. We want a victory. For many of the people here, it’s simply a business transaction: winner takes all. For the rest of us, we don’t care who takes the crown. All we want is to witness a triumph.
It ends with a crescendo. Back from the brink, the smaller of the two men wins the war with an attack of blows to the head. The tall man is left with no face, his head mashed to a bloody pulp, his body black and blue. After much waving of money and pats on the back, the crowd begin to disperse, some happy with their winnings while others, dejected, return to the fringe they came from. Some stragglers wait behind. I wait for Tuvia, who is talking to a big man wearing tattoos and a holster. When they walk over to me I unfold my arms and stare hard into the man’s steel-grey eyes. With a nod from Tuvia, he hands me the gun. I am blank-faced and blood-smeared. But he has seen something in me.
“Kill him,” Tuvia says, pointing to the winner of the fight who sits on the floor sucking on the bloody end of dog-eared cigarette.
“But he won the fight.”
“The rules of the game Mike. The winner must die as well as the loser.”
“But—”
“No, Mike. If you can’t do it, it’s fine.”
The tattooed man is getting impatient. I look down at the target. He is watching me, my face. Does he look smug, or is it my imagination? Does he want me to kill him? Is he daring me? I point the gun at his head and pull the trigger.
“So,” says Tuvia as we walk away from the murder scene. “Did you feel something then?”
“No,” I say. “I didn’t feel a thing.”
Rachel Kendall can’t keep secrets. She is editor of Sein und Werden and ISMs Press. Her debut collection, The Bride Stripped Bare, was released to critical acclaim in 2009. Her work also appears in Cabala (edited by Adam Lowe) and Women Writing the Weird (edited by Deb Hoag).
Adrift with Space Badgers
by Jeff Burk
The men, drunk on boredom, blood lust, and bathtub wine, cheered on the two combatants in the center of the ship’s hangar.
Most planet-dwellers have heard of space badgers, but have never seen one in real life. They’re nasty little buggers. They have claws, sharp teeth and are completely fearless. They look very much like Earth’s honey-badger, but wear tanks of air on their backs. A hose connects each tank to a clear, glass, fish-bowl helmet covering the badger’s head. These pieces look like equipment, but they are actually part of the space badger’s body. The species evolved these appendages to survive in both the vacuum of space and in pressurized environments. Darwin never saw these little bitches coming.
Whereas sailors have to deal with rats stowing aboard ships—spacemen have to deal with space badgers. The feisty little creatures build nests inside of machinery and fuck up the workings of all sorts of internal systems if they’re not immediately dealt with. Nothing is more annoying than to suddenly lose main power for a day or two and be stuck dead in space just because you’ve got a family of space badgers getting all cozy in the reactors.
Therefore, most people who work in space have no patience or sympathy for the little fuckers. It’s considered standard practice to kill all space badgers on sight. Or if you don’t kill them right away, you catch them and keep them for space badger fights.
Like the one the maintenance crew was watching.
They gathered around a barrel full of water, placing bets on which of the two space badgers trapped inside it would survive.
While space badgers can survive and navigate fairly well in vacuums, they really hate water. They can barely swim and their air pack only lasts for a short period of time before they need to refill it in an oxygen rich atmosphere.
There was no way either badger could escape the barrel. A small platform, big enough for just one space badger body, was the only safe haven above waterline. That’s what they were fighting for.
The two thrashed about in the water; claws slashing and splashing, glass helmets clinking off each other and the platform. As one badger climbed, the other jumped on top of him, pushing him down under the water.
Each badger had a stripe painted down its back—one was red, the other blue. Red Stripe perched himself firmly atop the platform. Blue Stripe desperately clawed at him from below.
“Gentlemen, we may have ourselves a winner soon,” yelled Lieutenant Hanson over the cheering men.
Blue kept trying to climb up to safety but Red swatted him with his strong paws and sent Blue tumbling back into the water. Stunned and tired, he struggled to move. Red’s little chest heaved and sighed as he tried to catch his breath.
Blue made one final mad dash at Red, but Red easily caught Blue’s helmet between his claws. Blue attempted to
thrash free but Red held on tight and smashed Blue’s helmet against the platform.
Clink, clink, clink, and then—CRACK!
Shards of glass plopped into the water as Blue’s helmet shattered. The space badger fell limp. His head began to expand like a balloon until it almost completely filled what was left of the helmet.
POP!
The space badger’s head exploded, spraying some of the men standing close by with blood, bone, and brains. They roared even louder.
“Red is the winner, settle up!” yelled Hanson over the cacophony.
Commander Gaines handed two hundred credits over to Hanson.
“Not your lucky day, eh, Commander?” Hanson said, grinning while taking the money.
“I’m lucky when it counts, Lieutenant.”
Ensign Walker went to the barrel with a hammer in his hand. The winning space badger was soaking wet and shivering. Its eyes darted around at the crew, pleading, searching in vain for some method of escape. It saw Walker looking at it and swiped its claws along the side of the platform while hissing as loud as it could.
Walker smirked. He raised the hammer above his head and smashed it down on the space badger’s helmet. The glass shattered almost completely away—all that remained was a jagged ring of shards around its neck. Its head expanded, and then—POP—it exploded.
The normal reward for the winning badger.
“Alright ladies, play time’s over,” yelled Gaines above the excitement.
The men quieted down and snapped to attention.
“Clean this shit up and get back to work,” he continued. “We have a ship to keep working. I’ll be on the bridge if anyone needs me.”
Gaines grabbed a nearby toolkit and headed to the turbolift. Before reaching the door, he turned back to his men.
“And someone find out where those fucking space badgers are comin’ from. Find them and burn them alive.”
The U.S.S. Davis was a Super Freighter, capable of transporting several million tons of cargo across more than twice the distance of a standard freighter ship. Commander Gaines had been the chief engineer of the ship for more than two decades. His job was to oversee the ten person engineering department and keep the ship moving, the air flowing, and the gravity going. On most missions, the worst he had to deal with were a few blown out connectors and some loose wires.
The doors to the turbolift opened and Gaines stepped onto the bridge. It wasn’t much of a bridge—nothing like the ambassador and war ships had—just a few tech stations that monitored the status of the ship, and a view screen that took up the entire front wall. Right now, it displayed only empty space and pinpoint stars.
Four officers monitored the display screens and Captain Ingles stared at the view screen. Bored.
Gaines went over to the navigation station. Lately it had been acting up a bit and was calculating their arrival at Depot Station 23 above two hours later than what other calculations were determining. That’s not off by much, especially not for the three month mission they were on (transporting 350 million barrels of quadrotriticale). But you really don’t want the navigation system acting up at all. The last thing they needed was to get lost, with the nearest starship over fifty systems away.
Gaines knelt down and popped off the circuit panel. He looked over the mess of wires and bolts but nothing was obviously damaged. That meant he was going to have to check each circuit manually until he found the problem.
Shit. This is going to take hours.
“Captain, a large object has been detected three hundred meters off our starboard bow. About two hundred meters across, four hundred long.”
“That’s almost as big as us,” said the Captain. “How’d it get that close without our sensors picking it up? View screen, now.”
A gigantic creature filled the view screen. It looked like a blue whale—the kind of animal one would normally see swimming peacefully on Earth. But this beast had three rows of teeth in its gaping maw. Its body glowed a strange and unnatural neon blue. The monster flapped its four pairs of flippers slowly in space and turned to face the ship.
Gaines had heard of these creatures but he never thought he’d actually see one—a Behemoth.
A spaceman’s nightmare, the Behemoth was the most feared creature in space. Nobody really knows how many ships have been lost to Behemoth attacks over the years. The space whales have some way of evading ships’ sensors. Only two ships have been known to escape a direct Behemoth attack.
The monster darted forward with astonishing speed straight for the freighter ship.
“Evasiv—” began the Captain, but was cut off as the ship shook violently. The men on the bridge went tumbling. One of the officers flew head first into the computer screens. His head whipped back and twisted around—snapping his neck. The corpse fell to the floor.
The main lights went out and the emergency lights turned on, bathing everything in a red glow.
Then the female robotic voice of the ship’s warning system began. “Warning. Warning. Extreme structural damage sustained. Engine core overload imminent. Crew is advised to evacuate. Crew is advised to evacuate.” The message repeated itself.
Gaines looked around the bridge and locked eyes with the Captain. There was a large cut across his forehead, spilling blood down his face. The ship shook again as the Behemoth continued its attack.
“You heard the lady,” said the Captain, smiling. “Time to—”
His windpipe was crushed before he could finish. The paneling above him gave way and several tons of metal, wire and other duct work fell on top of him. Instantly mashing him to a gooey pulp.
Gaines bent down and picked up his toolbox. He wasn’t sure why—he just operated on autopilot. He hopped into the turbolift and punched the button for the flight deck. Repeating the steps he had memorized in emergency drills.
When he reached the deck, he had to crawl under metal beams and through loose wires to get into the corridor. He singed his hair on a small fire burning in a fallen air duct. When reached the evacuation area, the escape pod doors all glowed green, indicating that the pods were present and ready to launch. Either Gaines was the first one to get there, or no one else was going to make it off the ship.
He ran straight for the nearest green oval-shaped door and was ten feet away when his feet caught on something and he fell flat on his face. He looked back and saw Lt. Hanson. The officer was trapped beneath a heavy sheet of metal. It covered most of his body, which was why Gaines hadn’t seen him lying there. Hanson gripped a hold of Gaines’ feet.
“—Warning. Warning. Extreme structural damage sustained—”
The computer continued its alert.
Gaines tried to shake his feet free, but the injured man held tight.
“Let go,” yelled Gaines as he kicked.
“Help . . . ” Hanson whispered.
There was no time. Gaines swung the toolkit into Hanson’s head. There was a loud crack and the man moaned. Gaines sat up and brought the metal box down again and again and again. Hanson’s body began to convulse and Gaines hit harder and faster. Each blow emitted a wet slushy plop, but still the grip on his feet did not weaken.
“—Crew is advised to evacuate. Crew is advised to evacuate—”
He stopped hitting when there was almost no more head left to smash. Gaines reached down and pried the dead man’s hands from his feet. Finger by finger.
Gaines stumbled to a standing position, toolkit still in hand, and the ship lurched to one side tossing him into the wall, right next to the pod.
“Warrrrrrrrrnnnnnnnnn ssssssssssd—”
The warning system shut off and the red emergency lights went out. The only source of illumination was the green glow of the escape pod doors. Gaines hit the button on the door and it rose up smoothly. He threw himself in and the door slid shut.
The computer system inside the pod whirled to life.
“Ignition in 3, 2, . . . . ”
The pod jerked as it separated from the U.S.S. Dav
is. Gaines looked out a porthole and saw the Behemoth biting huge chunks out of the freighter. There was almost nothing left of it—nothing worth salvaging anyway.
A blinding flash of white light exploded from the center of the wreckage. Gaines backed away from the porthole rubbing his eyes. They burned. And all he could see were throbbing white clouds.
The pod pitched suddenly. First down and then up, hard. Gaines’ feet left the floor and he was hurled through the air. His head hit something and his body crumpled down.
He tried to stand but he could not get his limbs to work. His vision obscured by white blurs, then grey, then black.
Gaines sat up rubbing the back of his head. His hand brushed a hard bump the size of a walnut and sharp pain shot through his head. He winced and brought his hand where he could see it. Blood. Cradling his head in both hands, he inspected the wound with his fingertips. He gently poked. It felt like an ice pick to the brain every time his fingers made contact but he was relieved to find nothing serious.
He stood up, and while his legs felt wobbly, he didn’t appear to be injured in any other way.
He went back to the porthole and looked out. The U.S.S. Davis was gone. Millions of tiny hunks of mangled metal floated aimlessly in space. The engine must have gone nuclear.
There was no sign of the Behemoth.
The interior of the escape pod was about twelve feet wide by twenty feet long with an eight foot clearance. It was one long room with a cockpit with a hyper-strong glass shield surrounding it. The walls were storage cabinets and computer banks; all colored the same shade of metallic gold as the floor and ceiling. The porthole in the docking door was the only other view outside.
Gaines went to the cockpit and sat down. A quick glance at the control panel showed all the pod’s systems at normal operational levels. The blast from the ship didn’t seem to have damaged the escape pod. Thank God.
He did a scan of the surrounding space for life signs or emergency signals from other escape pods. It took the computer under a minute to complete its operation. Nothing. It appeared that Gaines was the only one who made it off the ship.