Distant Worlds Volume 1

by Benjamin Sperduto

  Leaning on the shovel, he put a hand to his forehead. Despite the cold temperature, he felt hot. His gaze drifted to the plague-ridden corpses at the far end of the room.

  Is the fever setting in?

  A firm knock on the door pulled his attention away from the mystery.

  “Zlygost?”

  It was the boy’s voice. He sounded happy.

  “Are you still in there, Zlygost?”

  Panicked, Zlygost backed away from the door and hobbled over to the beds. His eyes darted all around the house looking in vain for some other avenue of escape.

  A tremendous blow ripped the wooden door from its hinges and sent it flying against the opposite wall. Two pale faces peered inside as Zlygost cowered between the beds, trembling.

  The boy smiled.

  “Found you!”

  The girl did not appear to share his amusement. Her face remained somber as they slowly moved inside. She glanced down at his leg and then at the shovel.

  “Won’t get far with that,” she said.

  The boy pointed to the corpse of the woman lying near Zlygost.

  “That one’s fresh,” he said.

  Every muscle in Zlygost’s tightened as the girl approached. He considered lifting the shovel to strike at her, but once again she stopped just beyond his reach. She knelt down by the woman’s corpse and pulled the blanket away from her face and out of her mouth.

  She looked up at Zlygost and smiled.

  “Very fresh.”

  Her lips drew back to reveal the rows of teeth that lined her distended jaw as she began to tear the clothing away from the woman’s body. The boy was already gnawing upon the corpse’s arm before she’d finished.

  Zlygost considered staving the girl’s head in with the shovel, but he feared what would happen if he missed or failed to kill her. Instead, he lurched towards the door, using the shovel to all but vault his way out of the charnel house. The boy and the girl both ignored him as he passed by, though he thought he heard the boy giggling.

  Emerging from the doorway, he started hobbling across the village square, but the mud made his progress difficult. He slipped and slid and very nearly fell a few times as he navigated a maze of overturned wagon carts, splintered barrels, and scattered piles of bones. But the town’s muddy streets and buildings remained unfamiliar to him. He had no idea where he should run to or what he would do when he got there.

  The rain was falling harder now and it was getting late in the day.

  Zlygost picked what appeared to be the widest road and followed it. He went some distance before reaching what appeared to be the outskirts of the village. There was more space between the buildings there and a pair of wooden posts just taller than a man stood on either side of the road a short distance ahead of him. He stopped when he reached them and turned to see the lettering that was carved into their sides.

  Dokhlyiselo.

  He had visited almost every settlement within a dozen miles of Novgorod and was familiar with those he had not. This place, however, was unknown to him.

  His eyes turned back to the road that led into the village. He could almost see the square from where he stood.

  The boy and the girl were there, watching him.

  Zlygost cursed and started down the road again.

  The muddy road ran relatively straight. Wide, rolling hills spread out on each side of it. The landscape was barren, only occasionally broken up by a rock formation, a bog, or a patch of bent, stunted trees. Every few dozen yards, Zlygost looked over his shoulder. The heavy rain made it difficult to see anything, but there was no mistaking the two pale, black-headed figures keeping pace with him. They did not seem to be gaining on him, but they were also in no danger of falling behind.

  Despite the rain and the fading light, Zlygost found that his body felt warmer as he went on. At first, he wondered if he had contracted the plague, but the sensation seemed too familiar and pleasant. His skin tingled and his stomach felt more fluttery than sick. On a few occasions, he glanced down at his hands and thought he saw the black tendrils sprouting from his skin again. There was no time to examine them closely, however; he needed both hands to wield his makeshift crutch effectively and maintain his meager speed.

  It was nearly dark when Zlygost spotted light some distance ahead of him. There was a cottage nestled alongside an immense, moss covered boulder that sat just off the road. It was larger than any of the buildings he’d seen in the village and was constructed from a mixture of stone and wood. There was a stone chimney rising from the center of the roof and a thin trail of smoke puffed out from under the sheet of metal that shielded the fire inside from the rain.

  Zlygost limped towards the cottage and banged on the door.

  “Open up! Help me!”

  There was no answer.

  He looked behind him, but it was too dark to see if his pursuers were still on his trail.

  “Help me! Please!”

  Still no answer.

  Zlygost reached down and tried the door latch. It lifted without difficulty and he pulled the door open.

  The interior of the cottage was quite bright. There was a stone fireplace set along the far wall, which was at least partially formed by the side of the boulder. Various pots and pans were stacked near the fire and the main room was filled with wooden furniture covered with furs. A large, round table sat in the center of the room.

  There was no sign of the cottage’s occupants.

  Zlygost turned to look out the door.

  The children stood in the middle of the road.

  They were watching him.

  He shut the door, threw the metal bolt into place, and then slumped over to one of the stools set around the table. The pain in his leg was getting worse and he felt exhausted. If the children came to the door, he feared that he didn’t have the strength to keep running from them.

  The sound of something moving in the cottage caught his attention. To the right of the fireplace, there was a heavy curtain hanging over what seemed to be a doorway. The curtain was suddenly drawn back to reveal a tall, thin man dressed from head to toe in black clothing. A silver clasp shaped like a dog’s head held his cloak in place and a small, narrow broom hung from his belt. Long, brown hair framed his hawkish features and partially concealed his eyes. In the flickering, uneven firelight, Zlygost thought he caught tinges of crimson in the stranger’s fearsome gaze.

  Oprichnik, he thought. A loyal dog of the tsar. Cold, cruel, merciless.

  Zyglost held his breath to keep his weary body from shaking. They stared at each other for a moment before the man spoke.

  “Didn’t think to find you here.”

  Zlygost exhaled slowly as he shook his head.

  “I’m sorry,” he said. “I knocked at the door, but no one…”

  Oprichnik waved his hand.

  “Forget it. It’s not my house, either.”

  He stepped over to the fireplace and picked up a leather sack lying next it.

  “Are you hungry?”

  Zlygost’s stomach had been turning inside out since he’d stepped into the cottage. The fireplace should have provided plenty of heat, but the place somehow felt colder and damper to him than the outside air.

  “No.”

  The man shrugged and tossed the sack onto the table. He then took up the iron poker sitting next to the fireplace and stabbed at the logs burning inside. The surge of light hurt Zlygost’s eyes and he recoiled as sparks flew from the fire. When the oprichnik was finished, he left the tip of the poker imbedded in the red-hot coals.

  There was a knock at the door.

  Zlygost nearly leapt from the stool as he turned towards the sound.

  “That will be for you, I take it?”

  He looked back at the strange man, who was now standing next to the fire with his arms crossed.

  “Wretched things. Plague always draws Baba Yaga’s brood out from under their rocks.”

  “For God’s sake,” Zlygost said, “you have to help me
!”

  The man looked down at him.

  “I’m afraid you’re already beyond God’s reach, Zlygost.”

  There was another knock at the door.

  Zlygost tried to ignore the sound this time.

  “How do you know who I am?”

  The oprichnik smiled.

  “You don’t remember me, do you?”

  Zlygost shook his head.

  The man sighed.

  “What’s the last thing you remember before today?”

  Zlygost thought for a moment before answering. He was finding it more and more difficult to concentrate.

  “I was leaving Novgorod,” he said.

  “And after that?”

  Zlygost tried to recall anything else, but there was nothing but darkness.

  He shook his head.

  “I woke up in that cage,” he said. “Everyone in the village was already dead.”

  His hands trembled as he finished.

  Almost everyone, he thought.

  The man nodded.

  “Well, I wouldn’t expect you to recall much of anything. It had a firm grip on you when I found you before.”

  The firelight seemed to have grown much brighter. It was making Zlygost’s head hurt and he found it difficult to force his next question out.

  “What had a grip on me?”

  The man’s eyes narrowed.

  “It’s recovering fast,” he said. “You don’t have much time left.”

  Before Zlygost could ask what the oprichnik meant, pain wracked every nerve in his body and he fell out of his seat. He braced himself against the floor and saw hundreds of black tentacles slithering through the pores on the backs of his hands and his forearms. Beneath his clothing, his skin writhed as if it was covered with a tangled mass of serpents.

  The oprichnik stood there watching him and seemed entirely unmoved by his pain.

  Even as terror overwhelmed his reason, Zlygost tried to ask what was happening to him. He opened his mouth to voice the question, but the squirming tendrils had already sprouted from his tongue and the inside of his cheeks. They were slithering down his throat and spreading into his lungs.

  But just as he felt as if he was about to suffocate, the pain receded and Zlygost felt warmth returning to his body. The darkness filled his gut and flowed through the veins of his shadowy flesh. He felt strength pouring back into his muscles and his senses became sharper than the finest of blades. A black cloud swept over his mind and pushed aside the senseless details that drove the petty ambitions of weaker, mortal beings.

  Morality. Weakness.

  Fear. Pointless.

  Love. Meaningless.

  The nichnytsia crushed Zlygost’s soul and buried it in the darkest depths of its malefic heart. Born of the nechistaya sila, the black one had no need for the feeble essence of humanity, only a living body to serve as a vessel for the dark substance of its true being. Restored to control of Zlygost’s body, it would again rule over the night that so terrified his mortal kin.

  As the nichnytsia rose to its feet, the oprichnik calmly pulled the iron poker out of the fireplace and plunged its red-hot tip into the dark creature’s chest.

  The intense heat of the glowing iron sent a rippling shockwave through the substance of the shadow and it lost hold of the sorcerous moorings that fused it to Zlygost’s physical body. The darkness retreated before it could be burned to lifeless ash, slinking back into its refuge deep within the host’s soul to nestle amidst the blackest parts of its nature.

  Zlygost became aware of himself once again, felt his consciousness return to the body that had been torn away from him.

  He also became aware of the iron poker that had been driven into his heart.

  The oprichnik stepped back as he fell to the ground clutching at his wound. Zlygost tried to speak, but his mouth filled with blood.

  A loud knocking sound echoed through the room.

  “I’m sorry, Zlygost, but I can’t leave anything to chance this time.”

  The oprichnik grabbed Zlygost by the arm, opened the door, and dragged his body outside. The rain sizzled when it struck the hot iron protruding from his chest.

  Zlygost struggled to open his eyes.

  The boy and the girl loomed over his dying body.

  He heard his killer’s voice somewhere behind him.

  “He’s all yours. Leave the iron where it is; it’ll hold off the nichnytsia until you’ve finished.”

  The children knelt down beside him and began to pull at his clothing.

  “Almost ready now,” the girl said.

  His body was going numb. There was just enough sensation left in his limbs to feel something soft running over his leg.

  A wet, crunching sound echoed faintly inside his head.

  The rain came down harder as Zlygost’s vision faded.

  The Armageddon Line

  Originally published in Fall of the Galactic Empire (Rogue Planet Press, 2015)

  One of the very first short stories I ever wrote, “The Armageddon Line” was an important step for my writing career. At a time when I couldn’t seem to complete anything I started, shifting my focus from novels to short stories helped to teach me a great deal about story structure and conflict. “The Armageddon Line” represents everything I knew about writing at that time, which was really just enough to get myself into trouble. The story went through quite an ordeal before seeing publication, however, including a huge pile of rejections (an important character building process) and a “near miss” in which it was accepted by an online magazine that ceased operations shortly thereafter. The struggle to get this story published taught me another important writing lesson: never give up.

  The sight of Earth made Ulziach sick. There had been a time when that pathetic ball of blue and green rock was the most beautiful thing he could imagine, but such memories were painfully distant. Ulziach leaned back in his soft chair and raised a slender glass of blue wine to his thick, hueless lips.

  “Stupid Earthlings.”

  He drank the rest of his wine with a gulp and set the glass down. The liquid tasted stale in his mouth. It was not the fine, expensive wine he was used to. He hadn’t been able to afford that for some time now. The money that had once gone towards well aged wine, lavish foods, and exquisite clothing now went to more practical things, primarily maintenance costs for his large ship which maintained orbit around the blue and green planet below. Ulziach despised the denizens of that little sphere for many reasons, but it was the sacrifice of his own considerable comfort that commanded the bulk of his rancor.

  “Always the little luxuries.”

  The hairless, grey skinned figure sitting across from him chuckled.

  “You complain a great deal for someone so well off, Ulziach,” the figure said. The sound of its flowing, sing-song voice made Ulziach’s stomach quiver.

  “Oh, on the contrary, Tirius, I’ve little to complain about. In fact, I feel fortunate that my father did not live to see his fortune slowly disappear.”

  Tirius chuckled again. Ulziach suppressed the urge to strangle him.

  “Well, then, old friend, shall we discuss my reasons for being here?”

  Ulziach hated bureaucrats. His father would never have allowed a worm like Tirius to use the word “friend” so casually, especially in his own home.

  “By all means, I wasn’t expecting to see you so soon. Your arrival was quite a surprise.”

  Ulziach hated surprises.

  “What brings you to this dark little corner of the Commonwealth?”

  “There are members of the Senate who are very interested in the progress of the planet below us. They have sent me to investigate your involvement with its inhabitants.”

  “My involvement? What do you mean by that? And why should any Senators care about this primitive little rock?”

  That was a question he would like to have answered. Even though it was officially classified as an NIZ, a Non-Interference Zone, it had been a long time since a
ny politician had shown any interest in Earth.

  “Whether you choose to believe it or not, Ulziach, there are many Senators who are encouraged by the advances the Earthlings have made in recent times. This world government of theirs seems to be effective. I’m sure you realize how long it has been since the last Earth war was fought.”

  “Twenty five years, eight months, and twenty three days by Earth standards.”

  It was a figure he reviewed every day.

  “A number of leading researchers believe that we are witnessing a key moment in the development of a civilization. There has never been a planet like Earth. It is untouched, free from all outside interference. This may be the best opportunity we will ever have to watch a civilized species develop. No civilization has ever gone this long without coming into contact with an alien culture. How do you think your kind would have developed had they not encountered an offworld civilization? What would they be like today? Earth gives us the opportunity to answer our ‘what ifs.’ Surely even you can see the value in that?”

  Ulziach shrugged.

  “What’s your point, Tirius?”

  “Ulziach, I’m afraid that the Senate fears you are in a unique position to threaten the stability of Earth,” Tirius said.

  “Well, legally it still belongs to my family.”

  “Surely I don’t need to remind you of the Commonwealth’s NIZ laws?”

  “How could I possibly forget?”

  “There have been…reports…that seem to say otherwise.”

  Ulziach stiffened.

  “Are you trying to accuse me of something, Tirius?”

  “Not at all, Ulziach. But you should know that there have been reports from Earth that the Senate NIZ Committee finds troubling.”

  “What sort of reports?”

  “The NIZ Administration Agency employs a small group of informants on the Earth’s surface, shape changers for the most part. They have….”

  “What?!?”

  “Ulziach, let me expl—”

  “This is an outrage, Tirius! NIZ or not, the Senate still recognizes Earth as the private property of my estate! That makes it strictly off limits to all Commonwealth personnel! I demand to know who is responsible for this!”