by Apex Authors
"The very same,” the Huouyt said. He boarded the ship once more and returned with a third crate. “I hear they have an appetite for the same molecular makeup as the Geuji. We'll see."
Esteei was stunned. Voracious, vaghi could eat six times their own weight each day and breed dozens of times a week. More, if food was plentiful enough.
"But the Geuji are sentient."
The Huouyt snorted. “Of course they are. It took me two tics after first stepping off the ship to determine that.” The Huouyt tapped its downy head. “Simply because your brain is the size of a pebble, you assume everyone else's is, too."
"Then what...?"
The Huouyt's cilia rippled over its body, amusement pouring off of him in a wave. “The Huouyt are next in queue for a planet, little Jahul. This one has an ocean absolutely unpopulated by native filth."
The Huouyt are aquatic.
Terrified, Esteei said, “You don't need to kill them. The Geuji aren't using the ocean. You can share the planet."
"The Huouyt don't share."
Esteei stared at him, unable to speak.
"Now,” Bha'hoi said, continuing to unload crates. “You have a decision to make, little Jahul. Will you hold still while I kill you quickly, or will you make me leave you here on Neskfaat, to starve to death?"
"Neskfaat...?"
"It's what we're naming it. It means—"
"Holy water."
Bha'hoi's face twisted into a frown. “Yes.” He moved to the closest box of vaghi, which squealed when he neared.
"You loose those things on the land and you'll never get rid of them,” Esteei said, desperate now. Around them, the empty shoreline stretched miles in both directions, the blackness of the Geuji reaching to the highest tide mark.
Bha'hoi snorted. “We don't care what happens to the land.” He kicked open the first crate and watched the scaly flood that followed with greedy eyes.
The sudden, intense fear emanating off the Geuji as the vermin coursed over its glistening black body almost drove Esteei over the edge. He stumbled back, toward the water.
Bha'hoi kicked open two more boxes before Esteei regained his wits. He ran forward, intending to knock the Huouyt away from the box.
The Huouyt caught him and held him by the throat, his downy arm like solid ruvmestin.
"Listen to me very carefully, little Jahul.” The Huouyt's mirror-like eyes were icy cold. “I'm not an Overseer. I never went to Huouyt Basic. I was trained in a different place, one you might know. Does ‘Va'ga’ mean anything to you?"
Esteei's inner chambers stretched to bursting, pumping rank fluids over his skin.
Bha'hoi's face twisted. “I thought it might."
To punctuate his statement, he kicked open another box, to the resulting terror of the Geuji.
"Now,” Bha'hoi continued, “Of all the creatures on that ship, I liked you the most. You didn't get in my way.” He kicked open another box, allowing the vaghi to course out over the landscape. “In fact, it would've been hard to split the Ooreiki up without you taking up Nirle's cause like that. Truly noble of you, Emissary."
Esteei shuddered at the cold, psychotic emptiness of the assassin gripping his throat.
He was faking. All this time, he was faking his emotions. It was all an act.
"The little Jahul finally understands,” Bha'hoi said, smiling. “Yes. I can switch off my emotions as easily as you flip the incinerator switch on your body wastes.” He cocked his head. “I have the feeling you picked up one or two real ones, but it never worried me. I knew your brain was too small to put it together."
Absolute, psychotic nothingness radiated from the Huouyt—so devoid of emotion it was an emotion.
"Let me go,” Esteei whispered.
Bha'hoi released him. “Stay within sight. If you attempt to call the Claims Board, your death will be much more horrific than the simple one I have planned."
"Please,” Esteei said, backing away down the beach. “Let me go."
Bha'hoi laughed. “You want to stay on Neskfaat? What will you do out there? You have no food, unless you wish to eat your Ooreiki friends.” He motioned down the beach at the half-buried corpses, laughing. “You'll die slowly, Jahul. If I do it, at least it will be painless. Besides, you've got time. I've still got three other continents to visit.” He kicked open another box.
Esteei continued backing up. He could outrun the Huouyt. With six legs, running was one of the only physical advantages the Jahul had over other species.
"Come here."
Esteei froze.
The Huouyt assassin sighed and started toward him.
Esteei ran.
* * * *
Agony.
It was all around him.
The Philosophers were being eaten alive.
Crown flinched as the tiny jaws ripped at his flesh, burrowing into it, consuming him as he lay there, unable to fight. Crown's memories were disappearing with the agony in his body; the connections, the conversations, the theories that he had made during his lifetime were slowly being devoured with his flesh.
Crown endured it, but many others couldn't.
Around him, Philosophers were losing their minds along with their bodies. They rambled, they pleaded, they cried.
The vermin continued to devour them.
When the first Philosopher died, it was the most horrible experience Crown had ever felt. It broadcast its final, terrified moments outward to all the others to help the others understand, maybe prevent their own deaths.
Crown wished he had kept it to himself.
In time, they would all understand.
* * * *
Esteei stumbled along the shoreline, plagued by guilt, weak with hunger. The vaghi were spreading across the planet. When Esteei could catch the squirming, biting beasts, he ate them.
Jahul did not eat living creatures.
Yet Esteei endured the anguish in his sivvet and smashed the vaghi's scaly heads open to reach the tiny clump of edible flesh inside ... anything was endurable now that he had to listen to the Geuji's constant emotional scream.
They were being eaten alive.
Esteei was sure it was ‘they,’ since the Geuji along the coast had been whittled down to patches, now. Each patch gave a different type of scream. It built in an unending crescendo in his head, driving Esteei to the very brink of sanity. He had nowhere to escape, trapped between the ocean of water and the ocean of Geuji.
After two weeks, Esteei turned back, praying the Huouyt hadn't left, willing to die to avoid the Geuji's scream.
Bha'hoi and the ship were gone.
"Please,” Esteei whimpered, slumping against a Geuji-covered, tear-shaped rock. “Please. I can't take any more.” He didn't know how far he had traveled, or how long he'd been going, but his legs would no longer carry him.
Slumped against the rock, Esteei trembled from the pressure in his sivvet. He slid into a ball as he had countless times the past two weeks, knowing it would do no good against the torment, but instinct taking over.
* * * *
Suddenly, Crown understood.
The Jahul can feel us.
He passed the message outward, sending it to everyone he could still reach.
Immediately, the Philosophers silenced their emotions. They knew the chance was slim, that the Jahul would be more worried about his own life, but it was possible that he could help them.
Could. But would he?
From what Crown had seen of these creatures, they were not like the Philosophers.
They were nothing like the Philosophers.
* * * *
The emotional anguish stopped.
Esteei tentatively unrolled.
His eyes fell upon a single patch of Geuji, a ring of vaghi around it, eating it.
The Geuji was clearly alive, its ebony flesh flinching away from the gnawing teeth as they chewed toward its core.
Turning, Esteei saw another, only a few feet away. It, too, was being eaten.
And another, further up the hill, bore its own ring of vaghi.
But the Geuji weren't screaming.
The silence in his head was as absolute as if someone had removed his sivvet.
Given the first peace he'd had in weeks, Esteei's mind was suddenly very clear.
"Get away from them!” he screamed, diving at the vaghi.
They scattered, only to resume chewing on another patch of black, further away.
A heavy, palpable fear hit his sivvet from the Geuji that was now being eaten at twice the speed, then disappeared just as quickly.
"Get away!” Esteei shouted. He ran at the vaghi, making them flee over the rise. Esteei felt the sudden fear of the Geuji on the other side before it was contained.
They're doing it for me, Esteei realized, stunned. They're dying silently so it doesn't hurt me anymore.
Behind him, another vaghi had found the Geuji the others had fled. Furious, Esteei reached down, plucked up a rock—sticky from Geuji residue—and threw it. It hit the vaghi, making the animal shriek. It ran over the hill and disappeared, needing no further encouragement from Esteei.
Amusement coursed through the air around him, coming from many directions at once.
"You understand, don't you?” Esteei said.
"Yes,” the one upon the tear-shaped rock flashed. It was the only one that was still mostly whole, saved by the shape of its perch, but even that wouldn't last.
"I can survive,” Esteei said. “You don't need to endure it."
But, as one, they continued to hide their pain from Esteei, allowing him peace.
"I can't save you,” Esteei whispered.
The Geuji sent him an emotion that broke his heart. Understanding.
Fury uncoiled in Esteei's soul. He picked up another handful of rocks, and this time he aimed to kill.
* * * *
Esteei went back to the Ooreiki's bodies and collected their rifles. He staked out a territory encircling the tear-shaped rock and patrolled it during the day, while the vaghi fed, and he gathered surviving clumps of Geuji from the surrounding areas at night, bringing them into his circle.
When Esteei's nightly journeys grew too long, when he began collapsing from exhaustion, unable to focus during the day, Esteei whispered apologies to those he couldn't reach and stopped seeking out survivors. He knew there were more out there. He felt them die, even as he felt gratitude from the ones he protected from the vaghi's gnawing mouths.
The vaghi eventually moved on, finding easier pickings deeper inland.
Without vaghi to eat, Esteei began to starve.
As weakness overcame him, Esteei propped himself against the tear-shaped rock and continued to watch his tiny domain, rifle across his lap.
Esteei's days became a haze of sunny delirium, followed by a night of rest. When he was lucky enough to kill one of the vermin, he crushed its scaly skull open and sucked out the flesh raw. Killing no longer bothered him.
Neither did dying.
Esteei was barely conscious most of the time. More than once, he lost a Geuji in broad daylight, too weak to protect it from the now-starving vaghi.
Give up, a tired voice in his mind told him. No one's going to come.
Then, a louder, angrier voice said, I am the Emissary of this planet. I'm sworn to protect these people.
And so it went on. His inner arguments grew longer, what he remembered of his days shorter. He lost more and more Geuji, the vaghi growing bolder with every passing hour.
I'm going to lose them all, Esteei realized.
No.
Just hold on.
Just a little longer.
Esteei wasn't sure if the words formed on the Geuji's dwindling bodies, or if he imagined them. Either way, he somehow found the will to stay alive.
Every horrible day, Esteei stared up at the sky, felt himself slipping away, then dragged himself back to shoot more vaghi.
Just a little longer.
* * * *
The planet was dead. Except for their tiny patch of survivors, the entire planet was dead. Crown knew it as surely as he knew the Jahul was dying.
Soon, maybe only days, the respite from the vaghi's gnawing jaws would end.
Crown wished he could do something. In the beginning, the Jahul had communicated with him, scribing in his flesh, giving him words to show their rescuers, if they came. Over time, the Jahul had stopped responding.
Now, he said nothing, wrote nothing. He just stared out over the tiny patch of ground, killing the vaghi, losing consciousness in broad daylight. The other Geuji were failing with him, no longer connected, no longer having anyone to speak to but themselves.
This wasn't what was supposed to happen.
Fury overtook him when Crown realized his people would not have the bodies that they had hypothesized, had waited millennia for. He knew that somewhere, this alien culture had the power to grant them mobility, but they were never going to get it.
They were all going to die here.
He could only watch as the Jahul began to slip away.
And somewhere, over the rise, he heard the vaghi.
Please, Crown wrote. Please stay awake. Just a little longer.
* * * *
Neskfaat, 10th Turn, 93rd Age of the Huouyt
Excuse me?"
"A Jahul, sir. He's clearly mad. He's staked out an acre of land inside our claims territory."
Pingit sighed. “Who's he with?"
"Sir?"
"Which company?"
"Sir, he's been here a very long time. He's been eating vaghi to stay alive."
Pingit recoiled. “Vaghi?"
His assistant nodded. “Has piles of corpses around him. We think perhaps since the first exploration. He matches the description of the Jahul who went missing."
"Jahul don't kill their food."
"He was starving, sir. He's been starving a very long time."
"Bring him here."
"He won't leave the area."
"Why the hell not?"
"He's defending a patch of Geuji against the vaghi."
Pingit's headcrest quivered with surprise. “Some of the mold survives? Congress registered it as extinct two turns ago."
"A few patches still live inside his territory."
"It's our territory, now. We've leased it from the Huouyt."
"The Congressional recon force stayed to help him fight off the vaghi."
Pingit scowled. “You let him commandeer our troops?"
"The Ooreiki decided to help him. Everything he mumbled was gibberish—I don't think he even knew we were there—but he had rank, sir, still pinned to his tattered atmosuit. An Overseer of some sort."
Pingit cursed. “So it was the Emissary. Take me to him."
* * * *
That Jahul is dead,” Pingit snapped. It had already released its death-toxins, drowning the place in a putrescent, eye-burning smell.
Yet the Ooreiki continued to shoot the vermin, ignoring him. The multitude of vaghi that had accumulated to gnaw at the edges of the Geuji were quickly being picked off to nothing.
Frustrated, Pingit grabbed one of the Ooreiki by the arm. “What in the hell—"
"Sir,” the Ooreiki said, nodding at the rock against which the Jahul now leaned in death. It went back to firing.
Pingit frowned at the mold spread across its surface. In it, someone had scribed, “Help."
"Who wrote that?"
Then, before any of the Ooreiki could answer, the impressions in the Geuji's skin shifted and changed. “Sentient."
Pingit's headcrest quivered against his skull.
Beside the tear-shaped stone, his assistant was trying to lift the limp Jahul from the ground. The death-toxins rubbed off on him, and the assistant backed away, gagging.
Pingit's gaze returned to the Geuji covering the rock.
"Help,” the mold said again. “Sentient. Register us."
Then, “They ate us alive."
"Somebody call the Regency,” Pingit manag
ed in a whisper. “We've made a big fucking mistake."
Interview with Bryan Smith
Bryan Smith is a quiet individual—he prefers to let his fiction do the talking—who generally avoids the spotlight at conventions and the internet message boards. This practically makes him an aberration in the world of horror literature. The truth is, he doesn't need to raise hell to attract attention to sell a book. With writing that reflects an appreciation of old school 50s horror that stretches to more modern influences such as Jack Ketchum and Ed Lee, Bryan Smith has made a name for himself as one of the top writers of mass-market horror in the business.
Jason Sizemore: Fans of Apex Digest will be especially delighted to know that your latest novel, The Freakshow, has a plot heavily influenced by old-school science fiction. Do you see yourself pursuing a mix of science fiction and horror in future novels?
Bryan Smith: I'm not sure. There may be an element of that from time to time. The thing is, I tend not to plan out my novels in advance. I just let them develop organically, and sometimes this means I wind up incorporating weird, unexpected elements. This makes for an interesting—and sometimes exhilarating—experience. I'm entertaining myself, and I often feel as if I'm a spectator in an audience, watching some wild, freaky low-budget horror/exploitation movie. This was especially the case with The Freakshow.
JS: Leisure, your publisher, tends to print straight horror. Was the SF a problem for them?
BS: No, at least not in this case. Don D'Auria never mentioned it as an editorial concern. Based on his comments, he essentially saw it as a fun horror novel. I think it's a matter of context. Yes, there are SF flourishes in The Freakshow, but mostly in the sense of cheesy SF movies from the 50s and later. Some have mentioned Killer Klowns From Outer Space as an inspiration, and it certainly was to some extent. Throughout the writing of The Freakshow, I continually referred to it as my “psychotronic book". I wanted it to be as absolutely weird and twisted as I could possibly make it, following in the tradition of such sleaze classics as Street Trash, Blood Diner, Basket Case, Brain Damage, Strange Behavior, Frankenhooker, and so on, as well as more respectable weird fare with SF touches like Videodrome and Liquid Sky. Ultimately, The Freakshow is so extraordinarily over the top in terms of explicit subject matter and presentation that it is solidly a pure horror novel, despite the SF stuff.