The Hematophages

by Stephen Kozeniewski

  “That’s all it is, then? Helena is just guilt-tripping me?”

  Tina shrugs.

  “Maybe. Or maybe you feel guilty because you did something you deserve to feel guilty about.”

  “What are you telling me?”

  “Look, Ambroziak, I don’t really know you. I have an obligation to fix up your fucked-up body. Your fucked-up soul, that’s for you and your clergy or your company-assigned grief counselor. Don’t look to me for absolution.”

  “Well, what am I supposed to do now? I’m supposed to be in there. I’m supposed to be helping save Becs. Or at least avenging her.”

  Tina shrugs and starts to walk off, turning her back on me in more ways than one.

  “Go ask for orders. Or, better yet, take a break. And yes, that’s medical advice.”

  Twenty-Four

  I’m famished. I know I should go to the galley and get something, but the specter of me sending Becs off to some shady doom amongst half-clothed savages on some distant world when all she ever wanted to be was a cook is too much for me. That’s her place. Even if her people don’t know what I did, their every ordinary move will seem like they’re eyeballing me, judging me. I can’t go near that place.

  My stomach howls in objection.

  “Yes, yes, my pet,” I say, patting my tum-tum, “Maybe we can find a vending machine or something.”

  I wander in a haze, not even sure where I’m going. Eventually I stumble into a vending machine – literally. I wave my wallet wand in front of the pay dock. Everything, strangely, looks appealing, although I usually eschew vending machines altogether. I choose an exorbitantly priced candy bar, as well as a vacuum-sealed package of cheese and beef jerky that seems appealing, but I can’t imagine how it can be after sitting in a vending machine for more than a few days. I peel back the package on my cheesy, meaty treat, and it tastes exactly like wax, as I should have guessed. There’s not even an obvious distinction between the cheese and the meat, except for color and (I suppose) consistency. I wolf it down anyway.

  The candy bar is tastier, but I’m somehow able to savor it slower. I’m wandering again, wavering as though there is an ill crosswind aboard the weatherless Borgwardt. Only a morose musical score would complete the scene. After a few minutes the waxy treat begins to kick in and my eyes begin to focus and suddenly I know not only where I’m going, but where I practically already am. My feet had subconsciously brought me all this way without me even realizing it.

  Standing outside the hatch to Zanib’s lab, I have a funny, almost indescribable feeling. It’s guilt, yes, but also a desire to do wrong. I want to seek comfort in Zanib’s arms. That sounds so warm and inviting, even though I should be doing something, almost anything, else. Becs is missing because of my insurmountable ambition. I won’t pay any real consequences for it. They’re not going to be able to fire me for giving an opinion, even if I knew at the time it was a lie. Diane made the decision, the responsibility is hers…even if it’s really mine. It’s hers on paper.

  I should be doing something. Even just a little bit of work. It would make me feel better. But I don’t want to feel better. I want to laze about while people are dying on my behalf. Even more, I want to suck Zanib in, too, stop her from doing anything valuable for the mission. I don’t care if the cameras catch us. I want them to. I want to wallow in it.

  I press my lips to the seal of the hatch.

  “Zanib,” I whisper.

  I press my ear to the same space, and hear nothing but the whirl of the mechanical winch we used to bring K.P. up into the ship. Another catch. I’m surprised. Zanib said the eels were too clever to get caught twice. Perhaps word hadn’t gotten around yet. Or perhaps there were more parasites in the fleshworld than just K.P.’s species.

  “Zanib!” I repeat, a little bit louder this time, still glancing up and down the ship. I know it’s a small ship and sound travels.

  Zanib must be in there, but she must not be hearing me. I’m loath to knock on the hatch. I try to open it, but it’s locked, of course. I pull out my jotter.

  “Let me in,” I type to her personal account.

  Supposedly it’s secure from the corporation’s meddling, but I’ve also read a hundred different little text blocks telling me the corporation is welcome to view anything sent out over its comms networks, supposedly “private” or not.

  There’s a pause as I see she’s received my message, then the indication that she’s writing back.

  “Forget your code already, virgin?” she replies with a smile indicator.

  Irritating woman. Come fuck me already.

  “You never gave me the code.”

  It seems to take forever for her to write back.

  “The company gave you a code when you came onboard.”

  I’m not in the mood for her nonsense.

  “Will you just open the hatch?”

  “Fuck. Hang on.”

  My heart’s fluttering. I haven’t felt this way in ages. I start to pace a little circle in the deck. Still waiting. Still waiting. What the hell is she doing in there? I’m about to pound on the hatch, finally giving up on discretion in frustration, when I glance back down at my jotter.

  “Okay, and why am I standing here looking at an empty hallway?”

  Shit. She’s in our room.

  “I’m an idiot. I’m standing outside your lab. Don’t go anywhere.”

  “I wish I could lock you out. No, just kidding. Hurry.”

  I do. Our room is practically on the other side of the office. It feels like an eternity crossing the distance. It’s made longer by me glancing at every camera I pass in every hallway. I swear each one is following me. That’s impossible, of course. None of the security personnel are even on the Borgwardt. Well, no, I guess on second thought, Quinn still is. But she can’t be angry at me. It’s my guilty conscience spying on me through the lenses.

  I feel naked, nude, exposed, every centimeter of me out on display like meat in a butcher’s shop. What is it? What is this paranoia that is running through me, coursing through my veins like anti-crank? It’s like I’m afflicted by a madness and I won’t be safe until I pass through the archway of my own room, safe and sound.

  When I finally do, it’s like diving into a pool. The air even tastes sweeter. I know there’s no difference between the office outside these bulkheads and the small haven within, but it feels like I’ve stepped off the edge of a cliff. Zanib is there to catch me.

  Silent, she descends from her bunk. I know she’s just clambering down as I’ve seen her do many times before, but this time tastes different. This time the scent of anticipation is on the wind. She’s moving less like a shiphand and more like a goddess.

  Now she’s on the deck, level with me. Her feet are bare, her toes amazingly dainty for someone her size. She looks at me, into me, through me. I don’t know what to do. I’m frozen to the spot like a hare. I’ve been struck by Medusa’s bolt, turned into an effigy of myself.

  She reaches up and unzips her jumpsuit. Again, I know in some way it’s a pedestrian maneuver, the simplest possible of ways to doff the simplest possible of garments, but it is imbued by my anticipation and, let’s just admit it, lust, with the power of a siren’s call. She is a glamorous fashion model, strutting down the catwalk just for me, her sultry eyes just for me, her body for my eyes alone.

  She doesn’t even squirm. The suit just slides off of her. I hope the same rose-tinted colors are affecting her gaze on me, because I know I could never be that smooth and subtle. I have all the grace of a gorilla plowing through a china shop. In fact, as if to prove me right, I reach up and grapple with my own zipper, only to instantly get it caught on the wrong teeth on the wrong side. I’m a hopeless mess.

  She strides toward me, her teeth on bold display. She’s enjoying my awkwardness, yes, but she’s happy to see me. Neither of us has said a word yet. She merely takes my zipper in between her hands and I admire her strength as she gives it a yank and the mechanism recatches the teeth
correctly closer to my bosom. She stares down at my cleavage and so I follow suit. When I come up for air she’s looking into my eyes.

  “Like what you see?” I ask, hoping I’m not grinning too dorkily.

  “Shh, shh. You’re ruining this, virgin. No talking.”

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  “What did I just say?”

  I decline to respond this time. She unzips me the rest of the way. As she does, her knuckles brush against my crotch. I flush, worried that I haven’t shaved down there in an age, but she doesn’t say anything. In fact, the next few strokes of her hands, which it only takes me a few seconds to realize are not accidents, seem to luxuriate in my pubis. She doesn’t mind. She starts to stroke me and I look down at her but she stops, takes my chin, and forces me to look into her eyes. Only then does she begin again.

  “This is me doing this,” she seems to be saying without a word leaving her lips. “This is me up here, the one looking in your eyes, doing this, down there, to you.”

  I nod. I don’t know if she’s communicating with her finger-strokes or her eyes or what, but I nod. She slows down and stops again, more organically this time. She reaches up to slip me out of my suit, sliding my sleeves down one at a time, like a snake sloughing its skin. I’m nude now, my jumpsuit pooled around my ankles. We both are. I step out of the puddle of cloth as she takes my hand and leads me back to our bunks.

  She lays me back on my own bunk like I’m an empty dress. The lower bunk is easier to get to. We’d both make asses of ourselves trying to clamber up into Zanib’s bunk, even Zanib who seems to have a preternatural, cat-like grace in the boudoir that I hadn’t noticed previously. I look up into her gleaming, earnest eyes and almost ask her to be gentle, but I’ve remembered her one rule.

  “Are you ready, virgin?”

  I giggle.

  “What happened to no talking?”

  “Plans change.”

  With a horrifying pop, like the sound of all the air being sucked out of an airlock, Zanib’s left eye pops out of its socket. I gasp in shock as it dangles near the corner of her mouth, still attached by a long string of nerve endings.

  “Are you…?”

  I can’t even fully get the question out before the right eye pops out as well. My libido drains away like a tub emptying in fast motion. This is no medical emergency. And Zanib’s eye sockets aren’t empty. Each one is filled with the distended, tooth-filled jaw of one of the monstrous lampreys from the planet below.

  Twenty-Five

  I struggle to escape, but Zanib – or whatever the things that are inhabiting Zanib’s body are – holds me fast. I knew she was strong but she feels unnaturally strong, her hands on my shoulders are like iron.

  “What-what-what,” I’m muttering, out of breath and unable to control my mouth.

  The panic’s rising, filling me up so that I can practically feel it in the back of my throat. I cringe in horror as the lithe, sinewy body of one of the blood-drinking parasites slithers out of Zanib’s right eye socket. It looks like K.P. did. For all I know it is K.P.

  If it is, he is rooted somehow in her head. I can’t see past his chubby body, at least past the point where he emerges from her eye socket. I shudder to think of what must have happened although it seems pretty obvious: they’ve devoured her brain and taken up residence in her skull.

  The second hematophage emerges from the left eye socket, and this time I can see more, though it is horrifying. The left one is thinner in diameter, which makes me think it may be a female. I can see past her and see that indeed, except for small, ragged chunks still clinging to the inside of her skull, Zanib’s brain is missing.

  K.P. – if it is K.P. – makes a sudden lunge downward, completely at odds with the hypnotic rhythm with which he has been swaying in the air up until now. I cry out in pain as he latches onto my breast. It feels like a thousand tiny needles piercing my skin. As his teeth dig into my flesh, a sickening feeling washes over me as the blood begins to drain out of me. As he suckles at me in a perverse mockery of nursing, I feel as though someone is swirling the thousand needles around in my skin. His teeth are undulating in time with his suckles.

  I feel a wet slap against my cheek and cry out a second time as the female latches onto me. Her teeth pierce straight through my cheek and I can feel her teeth clattering against my own as she drains me. A warm wetness pools under me and I realize I’ve voided my bladder without noticing.

  “Zanib,” I finally manage to say.

  “Sorry, virgin,” she says in a weirdly distant voice, “there’s not a whole lot of Zanib left.”

  She’s holding me by the shoulders. My arms aren’t free, but they’re free enough to struggle. I pound on her belly as best I can with so little leverage. It’s a feeble attempt at best. I have to calm down. My heart is fluttering a meter a minute, which just means that my strength is ebbing away faster as the vampiric little monsters drain me.

  There’s a solution here, Paige. Analyze it. Analyze your surroundings. Tackle it like you would any other problem.

  I swoon, the world going completely black and consciousness slipping away from me for the briefest fraction of a second. My impulse is to panic, but my will is stronger. Time is running out, sand is draining out of the hourglass as quickly as my blood is draining out of my body. I have no idea how much time I have. All I know is that it is limited, and precious. I could fall unconscious permanently any second now.

  I glance around the room. No weapons spring readily to mind. We don’t have much except our clothes. My jumpsuit is in a pile on the deck. Could I strangle Zanib with it? Cut off her oxygen? Does she even need oxygen? Is she dead already, a corpse animated by the strange will of these creatures? Or is she still alive? Are they keeping her alive, using her, driving her like a vehicle?

  Table that for now. No time for the theoretical. Working theory: Zanib is alive and I can affect them through her. If that doesn’t work…

  I’m swooning again. No time for worrying about hypotheticals, either. One chance to do it right, and hope the plan is sound, that’s all.

  My eyes fall down to the lump in my pile of clothing. What have I got in my pocket? Of course! The armband. Fucking Tina. If she hadn’t taken it off me, I could be slapping at it now, either cranking myself up or filling my blood with some kind of poison that would hopefully stop the parasites from their unholy ministrations.

  A plan is forming hazily as the seconds tick by, and I feel myself growing paler and more distant.

  Step One: get out from under Zanib.

  Step Two: slap the armband on her and juice the aliens.

  Step Two seems rock solid, although the armband may as well be on Lahiniti for all the good it’s doing me over there. Step One is the real hurdle, though.

  My mind races. By luck or happenstance, the perfect memory rears its head. I’m a child on Yloft. Fighting with Peavey before she was even Peavey, back when she was still Yadira. Fuck, we’ve known each other a long time. Peavey punched me, not hard, but I still doubled over in pain because she had struck me directly in the solar plexus. Knocked the wind out of me. For what couldn’t have been more than a few seconds I was drowning, drowning in the perfectly controlled air of Yloft station, unable to draw a breath. Up until this very moment it had been the starkest single moment of horror I had ever experienced. The literal inability to draw a breath was terrifying beyond anything I could have ever imagined up until that point.

  I might… might… be able to strike Zanib in the sternum from this angle. I make the attempt, even hit the mark, but I’m far too enfeebled from blood loss and from her rock-solid grasp on my shoulders. I try again, again nothing happens. I have one minor advantage: she’s not shifted her methodology. She hasn’t noticed I’m trying something new. She’s just holding me as fast as I had been, when I had merely been wriggling before.

  I need something harder to strike her with. Nothing’s in reach. The female hematophage gnaws sickeningly at my deformed cheek, a grim mocker
y of a lover’s kiss. The light in the room is bleeding away. I know it’s not really. It’s exactly the same luminosity it’s been the whole time. It’s that my eyes are becoming unfocused, unable to even see, my body betraying me in the very grasp of my attacker.

  My neck relaxes. I lean back, resigned to the end. They will drain me dry and leave my corpse here, perhaps unnoticed for hours or days or weeks, unmourned, killed by the only person in this part of the galaxy I could even rightly call a friend. Worse things will happen then. Others will be drained. Many will die.

  Suddenly I surge forward, but not really as I’m still held fast. I’ve just felt a new rush of energy. It’s not philanthropy. I don’t give a shit if all the others die. Perhaps my body had been storing one last burst of adrenaline for this very instant. No, I don’t give a shit about the others. I just refuse to be left here, all my ambitions left unfulfilled. No. Paige Fucking Ambroziak does not go out this way.

  And I do have something hard to hit her with. I even have it at my disposal. She’s clenching my shoulders so powerfully, I’m completely free to pull my legs up to my chest. I wrap my arms around my shins. Pull back like a rubber band tensing, then release. My right knee strikes her dead center, right in the sternum.

  Zanib gasps. I recognize it, the same dry, mucusy cry that I gave that day on the playground with Peavey. I’ve knocked the wind out of her. That means the hematophages aren’t in total control. Some element of Zanib’s physiology is still important. She staggers back, the lampreys’ suckers ripping horrifically out of the two spots where they had stuck themselves to me. I know all I’ve done is bought myself a few seconds. When your diaphragm spasms, it feels like an eternity to you, but in the real world it’s just a moment.

  The hematophages are flailing wildly, as Zanib stumbles away. Which means my guess was right: they are driving her like a car. I just have to get up now and get to the armband. I can’t, though. I’m too weak. Like a fucking baby. I surge with all my strength but all I can manage to do is throw myself out of the bunk and down on to the hard metal deck. I brace myself with my elbows and wince in pain as both are struck by the onrushing deck.