by Adam Lowe
He plotted a course for the nearest starbase. It would be a long trip—about two weeks stuck in that tin can. But the pod was stocked with food and water. He would be fine. He finished entering the coordinates and hit ENGAGE.
Nothing happened. ENGINE FAILURE flashed in bright red letters across the screen.
“Shit,” he muttered. Maybe the blast did damage his pod.
According to protocol, his next course of action was to send out a distress call. He recorded a brief message giving his name, title, ship of service, location and request for immediate assistance. When he finished he pushed SEND.
MESSAGE FAILURE.
“Shit!”
He sat back from the panel. He couldn’t move the ship and he couldn’t call for help. He spun around in the chair to look over the escape pod and see if he could think of anything else to do.
His eyes immediately latched onto the toolkit that was lying on its side in the far corner. He could fix the pod. It might take a while but he knew he could do it.
If he worked quickly, he figured he might still have enough supplies to get him to the starbase, even with the extra time spent fixing the ship. The standard escape pod was stocked with thirty days, worth of food and water along with a variety of medical supplies.
Medical supplies . . .
Gaines remembered the lump on the back of his head. He touched it. It still hurt just as bad but the bleeding stopped and the swelling was going down. He should wash it off.
He opened the first cabinet. It was empty. There were a few brown crumbs and an empty energy bar wrapper but nothing else. He went to the next cabinet and opened it—it too was empty. And so were the next two cabinets.
“What the fuck . . . ” said Gaines, as he looked from empty cabinet to empty cabinet. Every escape pod was inspected before leaving dock to make sure they were properly outfitted. There’s no way this should be possible. Yet here he was.
He had no choice but to get to work on fixing the pod.
He grabbed the toolkit and took out his screwdriver. The access panel to the main circuitry was located in the center of the floor. It was purposefully easy to access just for situations like this. Gaines unscrewed the four bolts that held it in place and hoisted up the heavy metal panel.
At first, he couldn’t make sense of what he saw. Where there should have been a mess of wire and motherboards, there was a solid, heaving mass of brown fur. Suddenly a dozen little heads in glass helmets popped up.
Space badgers.
They hissed at Gaines.
He calmly placed the metal panel back in place and screwed the four bolts back in place. He could hear the space badgers on the other side, scratching with their heavy, sharp claws.
He went back to the cockpit and did a scan of his pod for life-signs. A minute went by and then a second minute. After three full minutes had passed and the computer hadn’t finished conducting its scan, he began to get worried.
Please don’t fail on me too.
After five minutes there was a loud beep and the screen read SCAN ERROR—TOO MANY READINGS IN TOO CLOSE PROXIMITY—CANNOT ACQUIRE FIXED SCAN.
Holy fuck, they were nesting in here, Gaines thought.
Scratch, scratch, scratch, scratch.
The noise came from all around him. Gaines heard the space badgers scratch beneath the floor, in the ceiling, and from inside all the walls. When he opened the panel, it must have riled them up.
Gaines sat still, looking around the small cabin that suddenly seemed much smaller, listening to the animals move about. It sounded like there were hundreds of them.
Well, I guess I know what’s messing with the pod.
It took him a full hour to thoroughly search the entire pod but he safely, and sadly, confirmed that there was no food or water anywhere on the ship. The space badgers must have ate and drank it all. There were also no medical supplies, tools, or weapons. In fact, there was nothing that wasn’t bolted down. Even the emergency space suit was missing. The space badgers had cleaned the pod of everything. Why they did that, Gaines had no clue.
He sat back in his chair and his eyes quickly began to feel very heavy. All the stress and physical exertion were taking their toll on him.
He must have fallen asleep but he snapped awake to the sound of claws scurrying on metal. He looked across the pod and saw four space badgers digging through his toolbox. On the wall next to them, one of the metal panels had been bent forward providing a two foot hole in the wall. Through that, Gaines could see nothing but fur as dozens of space badgers moved within the walls of his pod.
“Hey,” he shouted while standing up.
The four space badgers whipped their heads up and turned to face Gaines. Each held a different tool in their claws and they were as still as statues. Suddenly, three of them made a dash for the hole in the wall. The fourth dropped the tool it was holding, grabbed the handle of the toolkit, and ran—trying to take all the tools with it.
Gaines chased after them. By the time he reached the other side of the pod, three of the space badgers had already escaped with their prizes. The fourth was trying to pull the toolkit through the hole but it was too bulky to fit.
Gaines grabbed the kit and pulled back but the space badger would not let go. He accidently hit the latch and the kit spilled open, dumping tools on the floor. Other space badgers darted out of the hole and snatched up the instruments from the floor.
“No no no no.” Gaines said. Acting out of reflex, he let go of the kit and tried to scoop up the tools from the floor. Each time he tried to grab one, a space badger claw would shoot out, scratch him, and steal the tool. In moments, the space badgers pulled all the tools through the hole and even the kit itself.
Gaines kicked the bent out metal panel. “Fuck! Fuck! Fuck!” he yelled with each kick as he bent it back into place.
When he’d closed it enough to keep out the space badgers, Gaines slumped to the floor and looked at his hands. They felt like they were on fire. Each one, covered with dozens of bleeding scratches. In some spots, the cuts were so deep that the blood flowed down his fingertips and dripped onto the golden metal floor.
He looked around and saw that the space badgers had missed one tool—the screwdriver. Gaines darted across the floor on his hands and knees and greedily scooped up the tool.
Those Goddamn pests got my food, my water, my medicine, and now my tools. All I got is this fucking screwdriver.
He sat on the floor looking at his one tool. If he was going to get this ship moving again, he needed to figure out how to get all the space badgers out of its interior.
He sat for a full half-hour thinking over the situation, when finally an idea came to him. An absolutely insane idea. But if it worked, he could escape. If it failed, at least he’d be dead sooner that starving or dying of thirst.
He went to work right away. First he addressed the panel the space badgers had bent out. He unscrewed four bolts and it fell to the floor with a Clang! Confused space badgers blinked at the bright light from the cabin and half-heartedly hissed at him.
Gaines ran to another wall and unscrewed the first panel he came to. Once it was removed, more confused space badgers spilled out. He unscrewed another panel and another.
Once he removed all six interior wall panels he went to the panel on the floor—the same one where he first discovered the space badger infestation. Now the other badgers had adjusted to the light and were angry at being disturbed. They jumped at his legs and scratched while he unscrewed the final bolts, frantically trying to finish his work.
Finally the last bolt was out. He pulled on the panel and tossed it aside. The interior of the cabin filled with space badgers. They poured out of the openings in the walls and floor.
Gaines kicked the animals aside and made his way across the room to the cockpit. He sat himself down in the chair and strapped all three seat belts—two across his chest and one across his lap.
He pushed buttons on the control panel while space badgers scratched
his legs, tearing open dozens of wounds, and began to climb his command chair.
The screen read OPEN DOCKING DOORS? EMERGENCY OPPERATING OVERRIDE YES/NO.
Gaines took a deep breath and pressed YES.
The docking door began to open. Then all air was violently sucked out of the escape pod. The force spun Gaines’ chair around and scores of space badgers flew out the door.
The animals poured from all of the open panels. They just kept coming and coming. Gaines felt his lungs threatening to burst and his eyes felt like they wanted to leap from their sockets.
Finally, the atmosphere seemed empty of space badgers—except for one that had its claws dug into Gaines’ calf muscle. The pull of the vacuum wrenched the wounds wider, and the animal still hung on. Gaines kicked at the beast with his other leg. He didn’t know how much longer he could hold on. His lungs were screaming but if he tried to take a breath it was all over for him.
Just when Gaines thought he could take no more, the space badger lost its grip and went spiraling through the pod and out the door. Gaines’ hands thrashed atop the control panel and hit the button reading CLOSE.
The docking doors lowered shut and immediately, the life support system adjusted the atmosphere to normal. Gaines gasped for breath.
He hit buttons on the control panel starting a full system scan. In moments the screen read SYSTEM SCAN COMPLETE: ALL SYSTEMS NORMAL.
Gaines almost started crying.
It worked. I have control of the ship again.
He replotted the course to the closest starbase. Sure it would take him two weeks, and he didn’t know what he was going to do about food, water, or all the open wounds on his body—but at least he was moving.
He paused and looked out the glass screen. All around the ship hundreds of space badgers floated in space. They thrashed about and tried to space-swim their way back to the escape pod or to other hunks of floating debris. It would still be another half an hour before their air ran out and they choked to death. Gaines wished he could stay to watch that.
The stars directly in front of his escape pod suddenly looked very weird. It was like they were shimmering and shaking in place. The area turned a familiar neon blue as a huge mass revealed itself in front of the small ship.
The Behemoth was back. It must have had some kind of camouflage system that enabled it to blend into its space background. Gaines finally solved the mystery of how Behemoths can so easily sneak up on ships.
Not that it mattered.
The monster was attracted to all the space badgers floating around. They had nowhere to escape—and neither did Gaines.
He furiously attempted to finish punching in the coordinates but he was too late. The Behemoth’s jaws snapped shut around the escape pod and the hundreds of space badgers.
Jeff Burk is the cult favorite author of Shatnerquake, Super Giant Monster Time, and Cripple Wolf. He is also the Editor-in-Chief for The Magazine of Bizarro Fiction and the Head Editor of Eraserhead Press’ horror imprint, Deadite Press. His influences include: sleep deprivation, comic books, drugs, magick, and kittens.
You can stalk him online at jeffburk.wordpress.com and facebook.com/literarystrange.
Sleep Deeply
by Mark West
Tom Davis noticed that his throat felt dry at the exact moment the car alarm went off, shattering the stillness of the night with its piercing scream. He tried hard not to hear it, tried to block it out but couldn’t.
“Bugger,” he said and sat up. He pressed his earplugs in deeper but the sound wouldn’t go away and the more he thought about trying not to hear it, the more it penetrated and rattled around his brain.
He flicked his blindfold up and looked at the clock, the digital numbers swimming a little whilst his eyes focussed. It was 3:47, he’d been in bed since 11:25 and he was desperate to go to sleep. Not that being desperate would help. Tom had suffered from insomnia since he was fifteen and he cursed his affliction
He flopped back onto the bed and coughed. Should he go and get a glass of water or not? His breath hitched in his throat so he swallowed a couple of times and decided to stay where he was.
From outside, he heard a front door slam and then a rapid series of beeps that stopped at the same time as the alarm.
“Thanks a lot, mate,” said Tom as he smoothed the duvet against his chest and tried to clear his mind. He wished Amy was lying next to him, she would have helped him through the night.
They’d met, three years ago, at the Wildebeeste Club in Chaton. He was more tired than normal, tripped and bumped into her. Apologising, they’d both noticed a spark and talked through the night and started to see one another.
He explained about his affliction and she was intrigued, having never had a sleepless night in her life. She helped him with his rituals—the ear plugs, the blindfold to block out the light, the silence he needed to try and sleep and the patience for when he invariably couldn’t. However great their love was though—and he believed she truly did love him, as much as he loved her—some things cannot survive the strain of one partner being awake a good day or more a week longer than the other.
She left him in the March and it cut him to the quick. His insomnia got worse and, desperate for a cure, he re-read the same books he’d read in his teens. Pills were prescribed by a doctor who’d tried too many things on Tom already and he invested in a state of the art blindfold and ear-plug system that seemed to have been designed by the military it was so comprehensive.
Nothing had worked. It was now early October and the nights had drawn in so much that it was perpetual darkness to Tom. His job didn’t inspire him like it once had and he pined for Amy. It seemed like he had nothing left, except for this bloody gift that he’d now had for thirteen years. Unlucky thirteen, someone had once said to him when he was in a betting shop. He didn’t put much store in superstition—when you spend most of your life awake, magic and miracles soon explain themselves—but how everything was coming together this year could make him change his mind.
He looked back at the clock and saw that it was now 4:02. He groaned and pulled his blindfold back down. He had a meeting in five hours and twenty eight minutes when he would try and sell some bods from Unilever on the idea of having a pig advertise their new washing powder. He had to sleep, he had to win this account—everything had to work for him for a change rather than try and hobble him, every step of the way.
The worst thing he found about his insomnia was how loud his body was—the blood in his ears, the clicking in his jaw, the sound of his breathing and the pulse in his wrists. Everything was as it was during the day obviously, but at night, with silence around him, it became a cacophony of noise, a concert in the Royal Albert Hall with the Tom Davis Body Orchestra, conducted by No-Sleep-Brain. That was bloody annoying because it didn’t matter what you did, that orchestra started at one o’clock in the morning and they kept going, no fag breaks, no tea breaks, no nothing for hours. Night after night, hour after hour, minute after bloody minute.
He felt short of breath, coughed and breathed in deeply.
Why couldn’t it stop, why couldn’t it all stop? He wanted Amy back but knew it was a lost cause and the anticipation of the boredom of thinking the same thing over and over—all night—was starting to drive him insane.
He felt short of breath again and breathed in.
Baboom Baboom, went the blood in his ears.
Flick swish, went his eyes.
Tick dribble, went his mouth.
He listened for his breath, waited for it to make its appearance, like the first violin.
It wasn’t there. He felt short of breath again.
BREATHE.
He inhaled. He listened for the pulse in his wrist and felt it, like a bass echo—bu-bu, bu-bu.
He couldn’t breathe.
BREATHE.
He inhaled but felt full, as though he was trying to eat something and his mouth was still full from the previous bite.
Exhale! Exhale!
Breath whooshed out of him like a punctured balloon.
What was going on?What was happening to him, why wasn’t he breathing?
Inhale. Exhale.
His could still hear his pulse, the clicking in his mouth, the soft shuffle of his tongue along his palate but there was no breath. Cold fear roughly caressed his heart and he inhaled so deeply that spots danced before his eyes. He swiped them away with a leaden hand, exhaled and inhaled again quickly so that not a moment was lost. He sat up in bed, panicked, in an attempt to keep his airways straight, all the while keeping his breathing going—inhale, exhale, inhale, exhale. He pulled off his blindfold. What was happening?
He stood up, the simple act requiring more exertion than he realised. Inhale—quick, quick—exhale. Keep it going.
Taking deep breaths and very quick exhales he worked his way to the bathroom, pulling the light switch and temporarily blinding himself. He thought about how painful the light was on his eyes and then felt tightness in his lungs.
Inhale. Exhale.
He opened his eyes slowly and walked to the sink, looking at himself in the mirror. His hair looked like Elvis’ on a bad day, which was normal. He eyes were slightly bloodshot and that too was normal. He felt another tightness in his chest.
Inhale. Exhale.
“Jesus, what’s going on?” He ran a hand over his face and through his hair. He tried to think about anything unusual that might have happened that day and then felt giddy, his vision filling up with white spots. Looking in the mirror, he saw the faraway look in his eyes.
Inhale. Exhale. What was happening? Inhale. Exhale.
He looked into his own red-rimmed eyes and something in his tired, frantic mind clicked into place. Although it didn’t make sense it seemed like his lungs weren’t on automatic anymore, they were running on manual, for some reason. He wasn’t aware that that could happen and the fact that he would go down in medical history as the man who had to think about breathing didn’t cheer him up at all.