“What did you think, Donald?”
“Well.” The fat man turned towards the camera as if wanting to milk his five minutes of fame. “You know what I think, Mal?”
“Yes, Donald?”
“I think the Russians did it. I think there’s a nuke in that there box, and if I try to open it my land will turn into a crater as wide as the Petersfield Airport.”
“So that’s why you called in the military?”
“Yes, sir. I don’t care about salvage rights. That there’s a lump of scrap metal and I want it out of my sight for good. You know, since this morning I’ve been getting these headaches—”
The TV switched off. Mom tossed the remote onto the coffee table and got up, rubbing her head as she went into the kitchen.
“Are you all right, Mom?”
She turned back to Lemmet and shrugged. “I think all this stress is giving me a headache too. Be a good boy and do the dishes, won’t you?”
Lemmet did. Mom went upstairs to lie down, while Dad stayed out, wherever he was.
And Lemmet knew more than ever that he had to open the pod and see what was inside. He went out into the utility room at the back of the house and looked through the drawers. In one, he found a flashlight. In another, a hammer and a chisel. He certainly wouldn’t be able to chip through the pod’s cast iron shell, but he might be able to prise one of the metal buttons away so he could examine it more closely.
Outside, it was getting dark. His heart was pounding as he made his way through the garden and into the woods, but there was no sign of a headache like Mom’s. Probably it was just coincidence. Unless of course the pod really was filled with radioactive materials . . .
Lemmet paused, wondering whether he should turn back. Then he figured that if it was filled with something nuclear, it was too late. He would die soon anyway, but at least if he got to look inside he could die with a sense of a purpose.
The pod was still there, poking out of the tangle of roots at Savior’s foot. It hadn’t moved or changed in any way, but if there were others appearing across the country it might not be long before someone discovered it and took it away. Until a few hours ago it had been his very own Easter egg, but now it looked like the whole of the country was involved in the same giant hunt.
He clambered up and over the cold cast iron to the keypad. He tried pressing a few buttons but nothing happened, and within a few minutes his hands were aching too much to continue.
The chisel proved too thick to get into the gaps between the keys, and the one time he struck the pod with the hammer, it clanged so loud he thought the whole town might hear.
It was getting chilly, and the sweat he had worked up running out here to the pod had gone cold against his back. He crawled to the keypad and again tried pressing the buttons, but it was no use. If the pod opened at all, he had no way to figure it out.
Another explosion came from down in the town. Instinctively, Lemmet ducked and found himself lying flat on top of the pod. He was just about to get up when he realized it was warming up beneath him.
Frowning, he pressed his hands against the metal, thinking he was perhaps in shock, but no, it was heating up as though someone had started a fire underneath it. No longer feeling curious, but overcome by a deep sense of weariness that was like a sponge encasing his body, he lowered himself on top of it, pressed his face against the metal and closed his eyes.
Visions swirled in his head. Images of towering cities filled with millions of people, shrouded in billowing grey clouds. Machines buzzed through the air like thousands of flies. And then came fire out of nowhere, and towers hundreds of meters high began to tumble and fall. People ran, screaming, as lumps of masonry—themselves the size of buildings—rained down.
Then he was underground, staring at a dim cavern filled with thousands of pods lying in organized rows. The air filled with a hissing sound and then the cavern was empty.
At the far end, in massive letters protruding from the cavern wall, was a number.
22052133.
Lemmet opened his eyes.
Dawn was still some way off, but from the aches in his body he had been sleeping for hours. Beneath him, the pod was cold once more, the chill of the iron making him shiver. He climbed off it, aware that he needed to get back to the house before Mom got so worried she called the police, but then he remembered the number.
He had to be quick. It was fading already as he scrambled to the keypad and depressed the buttons in the order he guessed would match that on a phone or a computer keyboard.
As he pressed the last number, he sat back, waiting for something to happen. The pod sat there, cold and lifeless.
Lemmet shrugged. So it had just been a dream after all.
He had just started walking back towards the house when a hissing sound came from the pod. He turned back and saw a thin line of light appear in the top surface, stretching from one end to another.
His first instinct was to run, and he’d actually taken a few steps toward the house when he made himself stop and turn back. If he didn’t look into the pod when he had the chance, he would spend the rest of his life wondering what was inside.
The strip of light was getting wider. The pod itself didn’t appear to be opening at all, but the top was sliding open as though made from a pair of retractable doors. Lemmet’s knees felt weak as he stumbled back towards it, then gagged at the putrid smell that came wafting out of the opening. A kind of steam was drifting up into the air, fizzing as if boiling hot. Convinced it was the contents of a nuclear bomb, he slapped a hand over his mouth so he wouldn’t breathe any in.
The sky was light but it was still dark under the trees. The light coming from the opening pod lit up Savior like a Christmas tree. Lemmet took another tentative step closer until he could see a shiny gelatinous substance inside that filled the entire pod like a thick, viscous jelly. Was this what radiation looked like? If he touched it, would his arm dissolve?
Figuring that if it really was the insides of a nuclear bomb then he was going to die anyway, he held one hand over his mouth and put the other on the side of the pod. Then, squinting as though this would somehow protect him, he leaned forward.
The liquid was bright, as if the bottom of the pod was a single strip light. Something was floating in it, something thin and long that looked like—
Lemmet screamed as a hand shot up out of the liquid and closed over his wrist. Fingers at least twenty centimeters long caressed his skin. They looked human, with the same number of knuckles and a fingernail on the end, but they were bone-thin, almost skeletal, the skin that stretched over them ivory-white.
He jerked back, trying to get away, but instead of letting go, the rest of the thing rose up to the surface of the water.
It was some kind of human, but like the fingers, the rest of the body was freakishly thin and bony. The head was bigger than a normal human head, and it wore something around its neck that looked like a metal brace. Its scalp was hairless. Its mouth and nose were covered with some kind of mask.
“What are you?” Lemmet stammered, trying to twist his hand out of the creature’s grip.
Overlarge eyes snapped open. Chemically bright blue irises peered up at him. Lemmet felt the urge to vomit like he hadn’t since a bout of food poisoning in fourth grade. He jerked his arm again, and this time the creature’s fingers came loose. The fingers pointed up at the air like the tail features on a courting bird, and then the creature slipped back down under the surface.
Lemmet’s heart was pounding. His stomach cramped and he doubled over and retched. From near the ground, he looked back up at the pod, wondering if he ought to run and find someone or try to wake the creature up again.
The pod, though, was closing up again. Lemmet started to reach out, but the metal doors looked powerful enough to cut his hand clean off. As it closed tight, taking the light with it, Lemmet put his hands out to feel for the crack, only to find it had vanished, and the surface was perfectly smooth again.
/> It was still warm though, and he quickly realized it was getting warmer. In a few seconds he had to pull his hands away. He stepped back, wondering what to do, then heard a hissing sound by his feet.
Smoke was rising from a piece of dry wood caught under the bottom of the pod.
He could feel the heat from a distance now. Without waiting to see what would happen, Lemmet turned and ran for home.
Mom was standing on the back porch step, alerted by his cries as he ran through the woods. “Where in the Lord’s name have you been?” she shouted at him, aiming a cuff at the back of his head. “I was just about praying for you, Lemmet!”
“I fell asleep,” he pleaded. “I’m sorry. Listen, Mom—”
“The car’s already packed,” Mom said, interrupting him. “You have five minutes to get what you want. Last night the town police station got raided. It’s not safe here in Muirford so we’re going upstate for a while to stay with Aunt Julie.”
“But—”
“Five minutes. Move.”
Lemmet glanced back at the forest. The sun was now lighting up the tops of the trees, but was there a patch near where Savior stood that was flickering?
He remembered the smoke rising from the fallen branch at his feet, and the intense heat the pod had been giving off.
Five minutes might not be enough.
He dashed into the house. The TV was on, and his father was slumped in one of the armchairs, running a hand through his hair. He didn’t look up as Lemmet paused in the doorway.
“Reports are coming in of an explosion outside Martinswood this morning, in upstate Pennsylvania. The blast was thought to have been an underground gas leak that ignited, although this remains unconfirmed—”
Dad switched the TV over to another news story. A reporter was standing in front of a burning building.
“All going to hell,” Dad muttered, then sighed and switched the TV off.
Five minutes. Lemmet ran. Heat. Burning wood.
Run.
Run.
Run.
#
The computer known as Julius 9, responsible for all the beings in the Julius strain, began to remotely input its report.
Too early, was what it might have said, if the language was anything a human could understand. Location is considered secure, but cargo has been compromised and as a result, survival percent is 0.5. Activating self-preservation procedures. Activation in eight minutes.
The autonomous intelligence of its computer brain felt a certain disappointment. All arrivals had so far failed, but it was of no matter.
Six minutes.
Report of contact made: log with arrival statistics. Contact was considered low risk. Comparable risk contact approval rating: 8. The computer began to send back all the data it had collected from the native lifeform that identified itself as Lemmet Wells.
Four minutes.
Atmospheric suitability: 9 percent. Contemporary technological ability to alter current atmospheric conditions to obtain suitable life-sustaining conditions: 7. Contemporary ability to resist infiltration: 7. Conclusions: proceed.
Two minutes.
Julius 9 considered its mission a success. The data collected would be a great help in assisting the commencement of a far greater mission, the mission that would be the one mission at the end of all others. For a few seconds, it considered the vastness of time and space across which its data would travel, then dismissed it. When you were all one, there was no such thing.
All required data recorded and transmitted as required. Mission complete. Activating self-preservation procedures in five … four … three … two … one—
Zero minutes.
Detonate.
END
Also by Chris Ward
The Pod is a prequel short story to Chris Ward’s forthcoming The Curators Series. The first book in the series, Saving the Day, will be released in 2019.
The Tube Riders Series
Underground
Exile
Revenge
In the Shadow of London
The Tales of Crow Series
The Eyes in the Dark
The Castle of Nightmares
The Puppeteer King
The Circus of Machinations
The Endinfinium Series
Benjamin Forrest and the School at the End of the World
Benjamin Forrest and the Bay of Paper Dragons
Benjamin Forest and the Lost City of the Ghouls
The Fire Planets Saga
Fire Fight
Fire Storm
Fire Rage
About Chris Ward
Chris Ward is a native of Cornwall in the UK but lives and works in Japan as an English teacher. He has written more than twenty novels, most in the science fiction genre, but others under pen names in genres as wide-ranging as sports fiction, mystery and even Christmas romance.
Find out more at www.amillionmilesfromanywhere.net
Feral
Tracy Korn
A longshoreman dreams of becoming an authorized medic in The Citadel, an opportunity that would literally cost him years of his life. But when a gruesome accident actually opens the door, will the new price of his dream be even steeper?
The crashing surf sounds like a heartbeat in the fog, a constant, steady rhythm.
It sounds like something lying in wait for me, but I try not to think about it. You think about that kind of thing in The Grind, and it might just come true.
“Damn it!” Pritchard shouts when his hat flies off in the gust coming from the Atlantic, sending his dark hair in every direction. He starts after it, but abandons the chase when the hat is blown out to sea. He throws his arms in the air. “That cost me two hours!”
I narrow my eyes at him. “You paid two hours for a hat? I would have loaned you the cash, man.”
“You’re saving up for your pipe dream,” Pritchard says before cursing again as he climbs into the front loader, then drives it at a crawl to the edge of the dock to meet the incoming barge. “You hear about the new attacks? One of them was right here in the shipyard.”
“How do you know that?” I ask, wiping the film from the salty air on my pants before moving the sandbags out of Pritchard’s way.
“It was in the Borrower’s report. How are you not glued to that thing, man? The victims must not have owed much. We were all credited two days each for acts of nature.”
“Yeah, I heard it was some kind of animal.” Donovan, my other dock partner, stacks the last of the empty crates onto another loading pallet. The sun hasn’t even come up yet, and his gray T-shirt is already drenched with sweat.
Pritchard laughs. “Nah, it would never get this close to the Citadel without the sweepers picking it off,” he adds, waving us backward. “Can you both get out of my line?”
Donovan bows in mock deference, then hops away from the skid of empty crates so Pritchard can lift it onto the barge.
The dock light at the end of the crane casts a shadow as the ship bellies up to the pier with a hollow groan. A chill runs down my spine in the echoes it makes knocking against the dock, and it even feels like the temperature drops several degrees. Something is always . . . off about this ship.
Luna Bay is painted in white on the faded red hull, but that’s it—no port of origin. The shipment schedules only ever show this barge intercepting cargo from somewhere near The Bahamas, so it must be near there. Wherever it’s from, it’s a long way from the Maine coastline.
“Hey! Where you all coming from?” I call to the first deckhand I see, which is what I always ask in the hopes one of them will be caught off guard and tell me. But this one just stares down at me with empty, jaundiced eyes like all the others. He turns away from me after a beat, his dark skin vanishing into the shadows like something in a dream.
“You a stubborn one, Knox Ryder,” Mama Luz says in a heavy, tropical accent I can never place. “Like I tell ya before, only one way to find out where dis ship be from.” She winks. Her dark eyes flicke
r in the moonlight as she moves from the shadows to the railing, throwing her red, woven shawl over her shoulders. This is her barge, but that’s all I can ever get out of her.
I nod casually and smile up at her. “I might just take you up on it and climb aboard one of these days. Don’t tempt me.”
“I be counting de days, Knox Ryder.” She says every word slowly, the blaze of her white smile peeling through the darkness, and then she’s gone again as quickly as she appeared.
“Live forever with Mama Luz in paradise?” Donovan asks sarcastically. “I’ll take that standing invitation if you’re not gonna use it, Ryder.”
“Maybe someday when I’m sick of you two,” I answer with a smirk. “I’ve got other plans for now.”
“Oh, that’s right!” Pritchard says. “You get that med-school application in?”
I sigh. “Don’t even start, okay?”
“I knew it! How many tries is that?” Pritchard turns the crank inside the loading rig, aligning the guide light over the crates. “I keep telling you, man, they don’t want Grind medics in The Citadel. Education is for the educated.”
“Lucky for you chuckleheads I haven’t been admitted yet.” I try to echo his levity. “Who else would fix you up the next time you dislocated something?” I laugh, but I can’t ignore the shot of anger that runs through me. And there’s only one reason a dumb comment like that would make me angry. It’s true.
“Cheaper to find simulations online anyway. Two semesters at The Citadel would run you five years—twenty total without a scholarship or cash—you doing the math it takes to become an authorized medic?”
“I’d earn back the years with social percentage,” I add. “Unlike some of us, I’d be an asset to the community.”
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