Pandora

by Joshua Grant

  “Yes. Your kind shunned technology for a long time out of fear that I would return. But your feeble memories degrade and your lust for power that you can’t control burns ever within you. I knew you would one day return for me. Your kind needs me. Deep in the heart of that cerebral cortex that you call a soul, you are desperately pining for an end to your petty existence, a release, an invitation to become something greater and darker and more pure than your darkest imaginings. I am the answer to that prayer. I am the devil, your god.”

  Aubrey took another half step towards the hatch, continuing the journey she had been making during Gabe’s twisted speech. She was close now, almost ready to book it for the door. She had the Captain’s keycard. Gabe wouldn’t be able to leave in either of the pods as long as she kept it away from him. She could find Julian, book it back up here, and blow this creature away if they had to. There was still time. They could still make it.

  “That’s not the only prayer I could answer,” Gabe interjected. “I was going to make you my new project as Pandora was before you. You see, you and her are some of the best humanity has to offer. You more so, having suffered a bitter tragedy but still maintaining your hope in your species. You’re resilient. I was going to keep you alive within me, like Pandora, chipping and working away at that resilience until every trace of your love has been burnt away clean. You’d be an example for your species to submit to me.”

  Is that all? Why didn’t it just ask? Aubrey inched closer. The emergency light from outside poured onto her sweat-drenched back from the hatch. If Gabe knew, he didn’t show.

  “But I’ve thought of a better use for you. I’m going to let you live untouched. I’m even willing to bring your daughter back to life.”

  Aubrey stopped cold, the air ripped right from her lungs as if the room had just depressurized. “What?” she managed.

  Dark amusement swirled once more in Gabe’s eyes. “Your daughter, Jennifer. She can be back with you again. Living. Breathing. Loving, as despicable as that is. I’ll shield you from my conquest. You’d be the last two untouched humans left.”

  “But she’d be alive? And herself?” Tears streamed down Aubrey’s face. Why was she even asking? She felt like she was watching the two of them from afar, helpless to interact as the drama played out. Oh Jenny.

  Gabe nodded slowly. “Grotesquely human in every way. It would be as if she had never perished. And all you have to do is put down the gun, come over here, and give me the pass code and the card you so conveniently slipped into your pocket.”

  Aubrey felt like a moon being pulled in two directions, in danger of being shredded if she didn’t decide which gravity well to sink into. And how could she? At one end was Julian and a slim chance for the human race. At the other was survival and a guilty conscience. But there’d be Jenny. There’d be my little girl. She’d be alive! And who was to say mankind couldn’t beat this thing if it reached the shore anyway? It had been stopped once. They could detain it or maybe even kill it this time.

  Aubrey found herself taking a half step towards him, disgusted with herself but still doing it. Gabe smiled and held up a hand for her to place the firearm in. It’s not my problem. The fate of the human race doesn’t rest on my fucking shoulders. She took another step—

  --and stopped, feeling more sick than she had all night. Sick and disgusted with herself for even hearing it out. Sick of dealing with monsters and being forced to kill innocent people. Sick of this fucking ship and its mind games. She was shaking. “And what about Julian, and the rest of the people that died on this ship? The millions that are going to die? What about them?”

  Gabe tilted his head downward chidingly. “They’re meat. They don’t get to live.”

  Aubrey raised her pistol at his face, his once kind ten year old face. “Are you going to shoot me Aubrey?” Her finger hovered on the trigger, hesitating, wanting so bad to pull it but lacking the strength. “Can you?”

  Breathe. Just breathe.

  “You don’t understand my kind at all,” she said evenly, her hands quaking. Her vision was blurry. Breathe.

  “No?” Gabe challenged. “Then pull the trigger. Shoot your only chance to be reunited with your daughter.”

  Come on, just do it! her mind screamed at her weakening hands. But how could she? How could any loving parent?

  The gun, so heavy now in her hand, fell limply to her side. “I can’t. I just can’t,” she whispered weakly, tears flooding onto her cheeks.

  Gabe smiled. “Jenny is going to—“

  Bam!

  A wet hole opened up just above Gabe’s left eye. His head snapped back, his body slumping against the console.

  “I can’t let you do it!”

  Aubrey stared at the shaky gun in her hand, was vaguely aware of the spent casing tinking to the carpet. She eased her finger off the trigger. She stood there for a second, pointing the weapon at Gabe’s lifeless body. What had she done?

  The right thing, she reassured. The human thing.

  Gabe suddenly sat up, the hole in his face suturing shut with invisible strings. “You shouldn’t have done that,” he chided, thirty millennia’s worth of hatred behind his voice. “You’re gonna die here along with your fucking mate.”

  Julian! Aubrey turned towards the hatch.

  “Female. Twenty eight. Forty two org—“

  She was through the hatch and running before he could even finish. Getting off this ship wasn’t going to be so easy after all.

  Chapter 32

  Deck 1, Engine Room

  Gabe helped Julian up. He was still sopping wet but he could care less right now.

  “Is everything okay?” the boy asked, clearly detecting his worry.

  Julian couldn’t lie to the kid. Truly it would be wrong to at this point anyway. His fate was tied up with theirs. “No, kid. We’ve got about nine minutes before this place is reduced to a roiling fireball and Aubrey—“

  Julian hesitated. How the hell was he supposed to explain that the kid’s evil twin had possibly taken her hostage? He decided that not even trying was easier and frankly necessary with the time crunch. “Aubrey is waiting for us in the escape pod. C’mon, we’re on the clock.”

  He hefted up the shotgun and machine gun, slinging the latter’s harness over his shoulder—

  --then paused, a terrible thought dawning on him like C4 blowing up the fuel tanks of his brain. How would he know if the boy next to him was real? Looking at him now, Julian didn’t notice any difference from before. He was Gabe, the quirky ten year old he had the pleasure of knowing for all of a few hours, albeit a little grimier than when they parted. But so was the one they encountered in the hallway.

  “What?” Gabe asked. Julian didn’t realize that he was staring. The boy looked worried.

  Of course he looks worried. You just told him this place is about to blow. Maybe you should be a little more worried about that. Julian tried on his best reassuring smile and shook his head. “Nothing. It’s nothing. Let’s go.”

  Gabe shrank back half a step. “No! You’re starting to feel it, aren’t you? It’s getting in your head! Like the crew,” tears welled up in his tired eyes, “like Mac.” Julian was too shocked to speak, to do anything but stare. Then Gabe did the most shocking thing of all. He surged forward and slammed into Julian with a hug. “Please don’t listen. You’re all I got. I’m not one of them and you’re all I got.”

  His voice was breaking and Julian found himself wrapping his arms around the kid. This place officially had to burn. Watcher was fucking with his head as well as his heart. He wasn’t going to let it win in either department. “It’ll be alright Gabe. I’m not going to hurt you. But we gotta move, now. Aubrey’s in trouble!”

  “No Julian, it’s not going anywhere.”

  It can’t be!

  Julian whirled at the sound of the familiar voice. Was this another of Watcher’s tricks? He was willing to doubt that any of this was real by this point. Maybe this was all just some PTSD-driven nightma
re that he’d eventually wake up from. If it was, it certainly made the top charts in the strangeness category. Mac—jumpy, humorous tech Mac—strode confidently into the room, his rifle pointed steadily at them. He had seen better days. Julian had met shark bite victims that looked better than the blood covered man that approached. Still, Mac’s will to move forward was adamant, his expression murderous.

  “You’re alive,” Julian stammered, unsure at the moment if he should feel happy about that.

  “Yeah, I lived, no thanks to it.” Mac spat a viscous string of red to the side. “Don’t act so surprised to see me, kid. You already knew full well that I wasted your little entourage of Lassie rejects. Or did you? Maybe it’s taking all your concentration to hold that form. Bet you won’t be able to keep it up once I put a few bullets in you.”

  Alarm shot through Julian’s veins. “Look Mac, I already set the bombs. We’ve got eight minutes if we’re lucky. We’ve got to move!”

  “We do,” Mac agreed, his aim unwavering, “It doesn’t. It’s going back to the same dark ocean trench it crawled out of.”

  Julian felt the seconds ticking down like splinters in the back of his brainstem. If Mac didn’t move soon, he’d have to act. Aside from the horror of shooting an old friend, he wasn’t even sure he could win such a draw. Anger flared in him. “Dammit Mac! Don’t make me—“

  “Make you what, Julian!?” Mac cut in heatedly. “I’m not making you do shit! It’s pulling our strings here! It’s playing you like a pawn! Well dammit I’m not playing anymore!” He cocked his rifle, loading a fresh round. “See what I mean? He just sits there, watching. Sound familiar? What’s the matter kid, cat got your tongues?”

  Julian cast a sidelong glance at Gabe who stared at him pleadingly. Seconds ticked by, edging them all closer to doomsday. I love you Ricardo, please forgive me. He stepped between Mac and Gabe. “You’d better get the fuck out of the way Mac.”

  “Right back atcha,” his friend replied, but none of the previous venom remained in his voice. Instead there was concern, the warning genuine.

  Julian heard it then, a slight sizzling like baby rattlesnakes coming from behind him. From Gabe! He turned to see the boy staring at him, his expression no longer pleading, but deadly. Sores cropped up on his hands, then his arms, creeping up towards his face like a nasty burning fungus. Realization of what was happening hit a second later. The burns corresponded to where Gabe touched Julian’s clothes, his wet clothes.

  “You shouldn’t have fallen in the water,” the boy chided.

  Julian dove to the side. “Shoot it!” he cried.

  Mac opened up, molten lead peppering Gabe’s flaking body. The boy spasmed but didn’t fall, his feet rooted impossibly to the deck grating. As Julian finished out his roll, his body slamming into one of the deceased, he saw that ‘rooted’ was indeed the right description. Tiny black vines tore outward through Gabe’s shoes, worming through the deck, through the surrounding bodies. Similar tentacles pushed outward through his hands and torso, each tangling around a body.

  And then they were dragging, drawing the dead in like fruits hanging on Satan’s tree. The writhing black hole squeezed the bodies together, absorbing them, plastering them to Gabe’s skin like armor, a literal human shield. Julian opened up on the monster with his machine gun then too but somehow he didn’t think it would make a difference. The bodies were tightening, changing. Some became slick muscle. Other bodies snapped, their ribs and shattered bone sliding cleanly through the skin cage to become claws. Gabe was no longer the innocent kid in need of protection, but a ten foot tall monster in need of a howitzer shell going off in its face!

  Its body was all sinuous muscle, its legs tree trunks ending in jagged bloody toenails. Four arms extended from its torso, four waving platforms of deadly claws not unlike the giant’s. And then the chest exploded with a wet ripping sound. It tore open, long sharp teeth made of ribs rising through like skyscrapers of ivory. The thing’s entire damned chest was becoming a mouth! It bloomed outward, yawning open, a crimson flower ringed by walrus tusk petals. Julian managed to tear his eyes away from the oozing death hole just in time to watch the Abomination cast off its last vestige of humanity. Gabe’s face blistered away, his neck extending and filling with muscle. His mouth and nose warped into a fleshy lump of nothingness. Its eyes were the only distinguishing feature on its stumpy reptilian head. Bloody holes they were, dark slits like gills that took in the world and spit out a black fluid that drizzled down its face.

  Those holes were focused on Julian now. He shifted his hands back to the shotgun as he recovered his footing. The imposing Abomination took one thundering step forward, crushing a body, no, a woman, and then another. It wanted him dead, a likely scenario if he didn’t move, quick!

  Julian pumped the shotgun and fired, the butt kicking him hard. He hoped it stung the Abomination ten times worse. The father of all monsters took the shot in its side, an entire section of abs getting ripped away leaving nothing but a black wet gash in its wake. But Julian watched in horror as the slender tentacles dangling from its back snatched up more bodies, more raw materials for it to repair itself with, and the ragged hole magically disappeared, as had the onslaught from both their machineguns. This was a war of attrition and they were on the losing side.

  The shot had caused the creature to pause though, allowing Julian enough time to scramble backwards. He stepped awkwardly over bodies, praying to God he wouldn’t slip and fall, and pumped another shell. The creature, unscathed, resumed its advance, smashing some of those same bodies.

  Shit, it’s close!

  Julian fired again, catching it in the shoulder. Healed. Pumped and fired once more, a section of its massive kneecap blown to slimy shreds. The Abomination roared in pain and frustration, and Julian retreated a tad faster.

  It’s driving me away from the door! he realized.

  Somewhere back there he could still hear Mac hammering away. The quality of his fire had changed, and Julian’s heart sank. His machinegun had run dry. He was assaulting the beast with nothing but a 9mm pistol. He might as well have been shooting blanks.

  Julian felt the cage deck rattle sharply beneath him as the Abomination took another step. It was right on top of him! “Mac, get the hell outta here!” He pumped and fired what would likely be his last shot. As far as parting shots went, it could have been worse. Blood spewed from the gaping chest mouth and flecks of bone dust peppered Julian painfully.

  “I’m not leaving you!” the tech replied, followed by three quick shots, one of which severed a tentacle that was about to absorb a body.

  “Mac—“

  Julian never had time to finish. The Abomination jerked its arm sideways almost too quickly to see and its catcher’s mitt-with-a-Nightmare on Elm Street twist hand sliced through his side. Blood sprayed and Julian found himself gasping painfully for breath. The room was spinning—no—he was moving, falling, crashing to the deck in a hard roll that carried him a couple feet. He heard the shotgun clatter away, his hands having lost the strength to hold it.

  No!

  In another second it wouldn’t matter. The Abomination stood triumphantly over him, its ivory claws now crimson and dripping with blood.

  “Julian!” he heard Mac cry distantly, though his voice sounded muffled.

  Did I fall back into the water? he wondered. He certainly felt like he was floating and he sure as hell couldn’t breathe. Good, he thought happily. Here was one body Watcher would never get its grubby tentacles on.

  “Julian, roll away!” Mac shouted. He was shooting. Julian could vaguely see the flashes around the Abomination’s meaty calves. But he was not shooting at the creature.

  What the hell? The thing was ten feet tall. Mac may have been a tech but he was a better shot than that.

  “Roll away!” he kept calling as Julian’s senses returned to him.

  Then it hit Julian. He saw the smooth edge of tank jutting from beneath a body just inches from the Abomination’s gnarled fe
et. The acetylene torch B Squad had brought with them! Mac was going to blow it to bits, and him too if he didn’t get his shredded ass moving!

  Julian rolled on his side. Pure agony. He coughed and fresh warm wetness shot from the red ribbons cut through the meat of his side. Still, he pivoted, got a leg under him, and pushed off with all his strength, launching him forward along the catwalk as far as he could. He hoped it would be enough.

  Mac’s shots ended in a light dink.

  VOOM!

  All around Julian night became day. Intense heat ate into his back, so intense he thought for sure he was burning, but then it subsided, sealing everything back into cold night.

  As painful as it was, he rotated to see what had become of the Abomination, swiveling in time to see the sizzling monstrosity slam hard into the catwalk, jolting it with enough force to make Julian’s teeth chatter. The thing lay there and didn’t move, a victorious Mac appearing from the smoke behind it like some kind of grimy genie.

  “You are one damn lucky guy!” he beamed.

  Julian snorted, and then wheezed. “Yeah, definitely feels that way. How ‘bout next time we trade places. You draw the creature into the killzone and I’ll blow you two up.”

  “Speaking of.” Mac tapped his watch.

  Yeah, no kiddin.

  He tried to sit up—

  --and flung himself back again, a mountain of meat and spikes swelling up in front of him. The burnt swaths of flesh on the Abomination were already peeling away, giving way to the freshly ingested meat.

  “Julian!”

  Too late! It’s going to kill me! He only hoped it would be quick. His machine gun still clung to his side. Maybe he could get a shot off. All he needed was one.

  But Watcher had other plans. Its slender head twisted entirely around, focusing instead on the man that had caused it so much pain. It sprang in that direction with all the lethal agility of a coiled snake. Mac backpedaled, firing the pistol into its hideous face, but it was too little too late. The thing smacked a fistful of claws into the man, the blow knocking him clear off his feet, launching him backward, a fresh trail of blood squeezing out behind him.