Seclurm: Devolution

by Noah Gallagher

  She needed distance to survive. She neared the rust-laden wall of the silo and saw a sudden spray of acid splash against it just in front of her. She fell on her back in response, and with balance lost, she found her grip on the gun somehow lost too, and it being out of her grip for even a brief second made her aware of how firmly she had been gripping it: the imprint of the grip was etched onto her palms, and her knuckles were pure white. In a horrid stroke of poor luck the strap flung off her shoulder as well, and she couldn’t tell whether the momentum had done it or if it had broken.

  In that instant she was down, the alien appeared from behind—she hadn’t been able to tell which direction the acid had been spewed from in all the chaos, but realized now that the alien had sprayed it on the wall in front of her merely to distract her—and it pushed her arms down to the floor with tremendous strength, a couple of short claws digging into her skin. Through a grimace, she cried out in pain, laying on her back with wide eyes and struggling breath.

  The alien settled down on top of her, its legs pressing her thighs to the floor. There was no way she was getting out from under it. Its hands—if they could be called hands—were wet and slimy, with a texture of roughness and what felt to her like knitted, unhealthy skin, as if it had just barely been woven together and might fall back apart at any moment. The face of the creature hung just above hers, a saggy-skin frame clinging to a bizarrely-shaped skull and a wide-open mouth with that long, perverse, dripping tongue. That thing bore no resemblance whatsoever to Randy, the animal part having completely overridden the human part. Liquid mixed with acid dripped onto Rosalyn’s forehead, and she shut her eyes and shook it off frantically as best she could, crying out in agony.

  The liquid stopped feeling acidic very quickly, however, and the pain ended. She risked opening her eyes and saw the creature stooping down with a marked change in behavior. It didn’t mean to kill her now, she could sense. But that did not ease her nerves one bit.

  Its mouth shape shifted and it slowly heaved its head back as if it were regurgitating something, dead black eyes displaying no emotions or reason at all.

  It shut its mouth before the liquid could fall from its lips, collecting it in a certain quantity within its cheeks. Beads of the liquid squeezed out, however—each one midnight black.

  Its head lowered down nearly to Rosalyn’s mouth, and she, trembling, shut her mouth like a clamp in spite of how much she wanted to scream. It pushed its mouth against hers, slime and filth smearing her skin and lips and nearly coaxing vomit out from her throat. She felt as if her very being was leaving her body for the horror of what was happening to her, and her eyes darted about helplessly. Below her, Terri and Sam were screaming and shouting as well, even more helpless than she.

  Unsuccessful at coercing her to open her mouth, the creature moved its hind legs off of hers and pressed them down upon her wrists instead so it could move its arms—or front legs—free. The pain in Rosalyn’s arms was immense; they felt like they were flattening, her bones straining to remain whole. Two trembling, clawed, alien hands grabbed her upper and lower jaw and began to pry them open. It had strength that Rosalyn could not begin to contend with. She felt it starting to defeat her. Her mouth opened slightly, and in mere seconds or less she knew she would be force-fed Seclurm to transform her into something like Randy now was. The wretchedness of it all seemed like it was reaching its horrible climax.

  Her hands, forced to the floor as they were, couldn’t reach far enough to grab the strap or handle of her gun. But with the alien having moved its legs off of hers, Rosalyn realized she could move them freely. She swung her legs around wildly in desperation, and her right knee found the strap of the gun and pulled it just so it slid close enough to her left hand for her to grasp it. By some stroke of either dumb luck or adrenal accuracy the handle of the gun was what slid into her grip, and was able to quickly turn the gun as close as she could get—twisting her wrist awfully and propping the gun up over her waist—to fire it at the body of the alien. Unable to see whether she was to aim truly or not, she pulled the trigger.

  The blast was deafening, and the creature’s shin was blasted out from under it, knocking it off balance. The knockback from the gun nearly blew it out of Rosalyn’s hands. She felt a thick splatter of Seclurm running down her cheek, missing her mouth by an inch. Her left arm free—though more scarred now by the clawed leg being blasted off of her ungracefully—she grabbed at the barrel of the gun to steady it and turned it just at enough of an angle to reach the main body of the Seclurm. She fired again, able to steady it now with two hands. The creature lurched forward and off of Rosalyn, its mouth opening in a scream and saliva mixed with Seclurm gushing out in the process to fall onto the perforated floor and drip down. Terri and Sam dove far away from it.

  Ignoring the pain that coursed through her, Rosalyn forced herself up, stumbling and stabilizing herself against the wall, and fired another shot at the alien’s back. It screeched and convulsed, turning around to face her while half of it lay on the floor. She fired again. It began to bleed from its chest. She aimed higher and fired again. The tongue was now a mess of lengthy, wiry chunks. Again. The face looked unrecognizable. Again. Again.

  The gun started to tremble and the barrel looked red-hot. It was overheating. Her legs gave out and she fell on her side with a long sigh. After laying there for a moment she sat up and felt at the bleeding wounds on her arms and wrists. They weren’t lethal, but they hurt a lot. And her cheek was covered with Seclurm and filth. Seeing the alien laying there bleeding and motionless, she let the gun drop so she could wipe off her face with her sleeves, grateful she knew for a fact that none of the liquid had actually succeeded in getting in her mouth. She felt herself retching and suppressed vomit. With bruised and trembling fingers she wiped tears from her eyes, barely able to stand up again, breathing heavy breaths for a long minute, unable to even speak or respond to the words that Sam and Terri were speaking to her now. They were saying something about a trapdoor in the corner of the silo that Rosalyn needed to open so they could climb up to her.

  The alien was dead. First Shauna, and now Randy. Transformed by Seclurm. And Rosalyn, in all her determination to come down here and do it all, was exhausted and hurt from a single fight. Yet they had much more to do before they could rest. Much more to do, or all would be for nothing.

  18

  Rosalyn strained to yank the barred, metal trapdoor open. As its clang echoed through the silo, Rosalyn called to her relieved crewmates below, “Are you both alright?”

  “We’re…living,” said Sam flatly.

  He started up the ladder he located on the back wall. Terri followed with cheeks moistened by tears and eyes full of death. The silo was full of the mucky, sulfuric scent of amniotic fluid and alien blood and gore, which they were starting to get used to after so long stuck here. Neither of them had got a good look at Rosalyn until they clawed their way out of the trapdoor onto the top level of the silo and stood beside her.

  Rosalyn’s clothes were grimy and torn, and she wore no glasses on her face, which looked odd to them. Her dark brown hair fell near to her shoulders, untied, and was covered in sweat like most of her skin. She looked weathered and emotionally distraught from the fight and yet she had a spring of energy to her steps and movements that baffled her crewmates. Rosalyn set the gun aside, happy to be free of its weight, and went to embrace Sam and Terri with a relieved sigh.

  “I’m so happy to see you,” she breathed. “It’s a good thing you guys were screaming so loud or I never would have found you.” She gave a small chuckle.

  They pulled away from her with a strange mixture of relief and utter bewilderment on their faces. Sam put his hands on his knees and breathed heavily. Terri, who seemed exhausted almost unto death, sat and leaned against the wall, her knees bent and eyes red.

  “Rosalyn,” began a heavily wearied, haggard Sam, “what are you doing here? Last I left you, you had shrapnel in your chest and I sealed you in the cryo-pod.
How are you standing here now?” He was looking her up and down with disturbed eyes.

  That mystery opened up once again for Rosalyn. It was one she had not yet figured out and feared that the answer might not be something they wanted to hear.

  “I couldn’t tell you,” she said slowly with a shrug. “I woke up, I walked out of the pod, and I was in the mountain. SNTNL couldn’t tell me how it happened, but I woke up in a small hangar somewhere near the top of the city. I found a room that SNTNL called the ‘reparation room’, and there I was healed of everything. I mean everything. I don’t even need glasses anymore. I definitely can’t explain how that happened. SNTNL contacted me at that point and told me everything that’s been going on and that you were in danger. It helped me find a weapon and I came down here to find you alive and to destroy the energy reactor.”

  Terri’s beleaguered eyes lit up at the mention of the cryo-pod in a hangar. “The cryo-pod? So it’s here?”

  Sam was taken aback. “Wait, how was the cryo-pod activated? I made sure it wasn’t going anywhere. How did it get here?”

  “I don’t know!” she said with a raised hand, growing slightly impatient. There were more important things needing to be done than this. “This is all really weird. I don’t even understand why SNTNL is back online. That, combined with everything else—it all makes no sense. All I can do is guess that…that there may be some unknown agent at play here.”

  One of Sam’s eyebrows raised. “I think you’re correct. It’s possible that it’s the same unknown agent that Randy and Terri followed into the ruins. The question is, are they helping us or…not?”

  “On that subject, I’ve found myself wondering whether we can trust SNTNL,” she said, biting her lip.

  Sam scratched his head. “Hmm. It hasn’t steered us wrong so far. But I guess I know what you mean. I didn’t have much choice but to trust it.”

  “And we don’t now, either. But let’s not get too caught up in following its directions or trusting its observations. There are too many unknowns going on here for that.”

  Terri ignored everything they said as she stood up tall. There was mania in her countenance, fear that had replaced her humanity. “We can go home! We can take the cryo-pod!” she shouted, shaking her arms with excitable, and yet miserable, hope.

  Rosalyn grimaced as she felt at the wounds on her arms and legs and side for a moment. They weren’t fatal, thankfully.

  Calmly she responded, “Yes, we have a way to get out of here after we’ve made sure the reactor will explode and destroy all traces of Seclurm in this horrible place. SNTNL mentioned a control room that overlooks—!”

  Terri stepped forward and gave her an incredulous stare. “What are you talking about? If you know the way to the cryo-pod, then let’s get the hell out of here before more of these things find us and kill us!”

  Rosalyn stopped for a moment, tightening her lips together and thinking. When she spoke, it was with careful and articulate deliberation. “I don’t want to put you both in danger. But I’ve been told about what this Seclurm substance is and what it can do. We’ve all seen it firsthand. Seclurm is running rampant in this place. Tons of it. It evolved Randy and Shauna, and nearly me just now. We can’t just let all of this remain here for FAER to find it; it needs to be destroyed.”

  A brief moment of silence passed. Terri buried her face in her hands before speaking with a voice that was more audibly calm than she’d been sounding and yet somehow seemed more intense than anything else that had been spoken. “Can you for once just stop worrying about the ‘broader consequences’ and think about us? Us surviving? Do you want all of us to end up like the others? …Like Shauna? …Like—like Randy?”

  She was pleading, searching for some understanding in Rosalyn’s eyes. Tears poured down her face.

  Rosalyn frowned. “You don’t have to come with me,” she said frankly. “I wouldn’t ask you to endanger your life. But all three of us can fit on that cryo-pod—with some modifications—so no one is launching that thing until we’re all ready to go. You can wait a few hours more, can’t you?”

  Terri breathed loudly for several moments, stuck in thought. She looked terribly angry; her eyes twitched and she couldn’t stand up straight.

  Rosalyn felt her throat tighten. Would Terri give her an ultimatum, or would she decide Rosalyn was right? Would she really steal the cryo-pod while Rosalyn went down to destroy the core?

  Rosalyn wasn’t sure if she was ready for her projected chances of survival to drop to zero.

  “Stop trying to kill us,” breathed Terri with malice oozing from her every atom. “You’re not my captain. You’re a disgrace.”

  Rosalyn felt a few twitches in her own face. She opened her mouth a few times to speak, anger threatening to burst out, but managed to hold her tongue. “Sam, can you help me out here, please?” she said with a huff.

  Sam’s head felt awful, aching ever since they had been trapped in this silo. His body felt sticky with dried sweat all over him, and the stinging in his fingers hadn’t gotten too much better. He knew Terri was distraught, but this was growing out of control. “I’m not an authority here,” he said finally, fearing to stoke the embers of conflict.

  Terri took another step forward, gaze pinned on Rosalyn. With heated desperation she argued, “FAER said they dispatched a rescue ship for us. We know where it’s coming from. We can set the cryo-pod on course to try and intercept it. When they wake us up, we can tell them not to go to 730-X Zacuali. And the best part is that we’ll actually live!”

  Rosalyn could feel her face growing red, and she frowned deeply as she countered, “And you trust them to listen to us? You? Doctor Jones, you of all people should know how recklessly greedy FAER is. We can try to talk them out of it until our faces turn blue. They—won’t—listen to us! And even if they would, we can’t even be a hundred percent certain that we’ll successfully intercept their flight path. If we happen to miss, we’ll probably end up stuck in space forever, the crew of the Chalet will reach this empty rock, and then the entire Earth is screwed.”

  Terri screamed and pulled at her hair. “I’d take my chances with THAT over the damn REACTOR!”

  Sam shrunk back again. He hated this kind of thing so much. He always had; it was why he had never gotten married. He watched them shout at each other for another few seconds before finally he worked up the courage to step up and shout, “STOP IT! CUT IT OUT!”

  The two of them gradually cooled down and looked to him. “Rosalyn, you’re probably right about FAER not listening to us. … But what’s your plan? What can we do?”

  She stood still and looked to him with neutral expression as she answered, “When we find the control room, we’ll have SNTNL’s help to know what we need to do. And we can do it. Again, I won’t ask you to go down into the reactor with me. I have the weapon, so I can do it while you two hide somewhere. Or try to head up to the hangar if you really want to, though I don’t imagine you’ll find it without me.”

  “Damn you, Rosalyn,” Terri muttered. “I can not be here in this hellhole any longer!” She slammed the wall, and its echo made Sam and Rosalyn jump. “Do you realize how many of those things must be down there?”

  “Hundreds.”

  “Oh, and you’re fine with that, huh, you maniac? Why didn’t you join the military instead of a space mining program? Dragging all of us into your insanity! And you’re saying there might be something else trying to kill us too?” She clenched her fists and raised them for a moment before finally slumping wretchedly down to the floor. “I don’t want to die,” she wailed. “Randy’s dead… Aaaagh! When will it end?!”

  Rosalyn’s face softened a bit, and her eyes seemed to shine. “I guess you’re right, Terri. …Once you get up to the elevator, SNTNL can contact you and help you find the cryo-pod. I’ll join you when I’m done, or…or you can leave if I don’t come back.”

  Terri cursed so abruptly that Sam’s eyes went wide. She stood up again with rage and got in Rosalyn
’s face, speaking with a raised voice that dripped with indignation. “You and your martyrdom! I am so sick and tired of it!”

  Rosalyn stared her right back with iron eyes and bared teeth. The inside of her head felt like it was buzzing. “I’m not a martyr! I’m a person who has the chance to stop a planet-wide disaster from happening. You think I don’t want to go home? I want to go home to the place I remember leaving from. Guess what, Terri? On the very possible chance that the cryo-pod doesn’t get noticed and picked up by the Chalet, we might drift into deep space and remain un-rescued for eternity. But we can always head straight for Earth, right? Well, when you get in that cryo-pod and put yourself into that comfy, cold sleep you’ve been waiting for, you might not make it to Earth to be woken up for something like sixty years. Even assuming you’re miraculously discovered by some passing spacecraft, you’ll be out there for decades at the very least. Just a little bit slower-going than FAER’s spaceships. By the time you wake up from that pod, FAER will have come to this planetoid looking for us, taken the Seclurm substance with them—either accidentally or intentionally—brought it all the way home, experimented with it, and unleashed its horrors upon the world the same way the civilization that lived here did. The same hellhole that we’ve all been living in for days will be for forever when you wake up in what you thought would be the same wonderful home you left behind. Does that sound like the way you wanted your trip to end? I know that’s not how I pictured mine going.”

  Terri shrank. Her eyes shifted and she frowned, Rosalyn’s points drilling through her anger.

  “Terri,” said Rosalyn, softening her countenance again, “I don’t know what Randy meant to you exactly. I’m so sorry that we lost him.” A few tears beaded into drops at the corner of her eyes, and she breathed slowly for a moment. “I’m sorry that you, and all of us, are being asked to do this. But someone has to. Damn it, someone has to do it, or more people will die. You don’t want that, do you? You don’t want what happened to Randy to happen to anyone else.”