by Various
I took the hammer from him and picked up the tool belt. “There’s probably something that I’m supposed to say right now,” I said. “But I don’t have any idea what it is.”
• • •
Winter on the island used to be a joy. Lashing storms and howling winds are harmless and fun when you’re in a cozy cabin with a good book. This year, when each piece of firewood had to be sawn by hand, when each bite of bread meant there was less flour in the bin, it was like the cabin itself was cringing when the rain beat at the windows and flooded over the roof like an endless, spiteful river.
Late January, it was cold enough to see my breath by dusk, cold enough for the rain to hurt when it hit. The drops thundered against my hood when I went out to fetch firewood before it was completely dark.
I stood in the driveway for a while, watching streams of water flow over the sparse gravel, forming deltas and islands, shaping the silt into patterns that blended and changed every minute. I’d got what I wanted, hadn’t I? The world was leaving me alone. So, what was my problem? Darren finally stuck his head out of the door and waved the lantern at me through the sheets of rain, like some kind of skinny worried lighthouse keeper.
• • •
Spring came, right on schedule. I was a bit surprised, in spite of myself, to see crocuses perk up the scraggly grass in the front yard and vanilla leaf lay its carpet along the creek bank. Winter had been a trial. We’d lost a few treetops on the Bluff, the crowns battered right off in the violence of the wind. A heart-stopping whump had woken us one night when an old growth fir had blown down, kissed the cabin roof, and smashed the kitchen porch. Darren took over the gardening, such as it was, and the baking, too. He was a surprisingly good cook. And I’d taught him to whittle. Once, I caught him leafing through my battered copy of Walden Pond. He rarely bothered to charge up the cell phone any more. The maps gathered dust on the shelf and our talk was mainly food and weather.
One particularly warm March day, I went down the shore trail to what was left of the dock. The thick planking had taken a beating in January and listed badly to one side. We’d spent a long day dismantling the kitchen porch, salvaging most of the wood, straightening the bent nails and I wanted to soak up the very welcome sunshine. I sat against a post, resting my sore knees, and admired the rocky shoreline and brilliant blue ocean. I’d bet it hadn’t changed much in a thousand years.
“Cup of tea?”
I opened my eyes. I must have dozed off. Darren handed me the Perrier bottle full of cold yerba tea and sat, dangling his legs over the edge. He never liked it down here. I guess it reminded him of his plane crash. The storm had knocked the little Cessna into the sea like it was swatting a bug. His pilot had been killed instantly, the plane sunk a half a klick offshore and Darren had floated around for a while, clinging to his metal briefcase as it bobbed on the waves. He’d kind of come in with the tide, clutching the case against his chest.
“Thanks.” I took a long slug of tea and watched an otter bobbing just off shore. It was unusual to see one by itself. Now that was an animal perfectly adapted to its environment. A little sun, a little fish, and it had a happy life.
“Think we salvaged enough boards for a root cellar?” Darren squinted at me and brushed his hair out of his eyes. He’d taken to tying it back into a stubby ponytail. I studied him for a minute. His sharp cheekbones caught the sun and his forearms below his raggedy rolled-up shirtsleeves were hard, the tendons taut above his scratched and dirty hands. No one would recognize him as an insurance agent now.
“You were right.” I said, using the little speech I’d been rehearsing for a week or two. “We need to leave. Me choosing to be here is one thing. Stagnating here against our will is another.”
“Leave? Where? To Vancouver?” Darren shifted on the rough boards. “But there hasn’t been another text message. No more balloons. Nothing.” He swung his feet back and forth. “You know they’re probably all dead.”
“We don’t know that. We need to check it out.” I swallowed the last of the tea and replaced the cap on the bottle.
“No. We don’t.” Darren shrugged. “I’ve adjusted. We can make it here. We are making it here.” After a minute: “Why the change of heart?”
“I think I’ve adjusted too. I spent years wanting to be self-sufficient, wanting to blow off humanity.” I paused. “I was wrong. I need people, whether I like it or not.”
“So, I want to stay and you want to go. Kind of ironic.” He elbowed me and laughed.
“You know what my tipping point was?” I let out a grin. “I used the last of the toilet paper this morning.”
“Funny guy. Anyway, even if you got me to agree, how would we get there? Can’t swim, can’t sail, can’t fly. There ain’t no way.” He put his hands flat behind him and leaned back so his face caught the sun. The otter dived, surfaced, and dived again.
“The boards from the porch, the old nails, some plans from a book I have, and a whole lot of swearing, that’s how. Low tech wins the day. I build a little dinghy and some oars. It’ll get us across the strait, then maybe we can baby it down the coastline for a bit. Might not have to hike through the mountains at all.”
“Those dried up, splintery boards? They won’t bend worth a damn. And waterproofed with what? Seagull spit?” His laugh was more of a bark.
“Son, it’s for real. We’re gonna do this.”
“You, who never commits to anything?”
“Yeah, me.” I grinned again. It felt good.
“It seems kind of all or nothing. You’re sure a rowboat’ll work?”
“Not sure at all. But I know we have to try. Build the boat and wait for a weather window.”
“Hurry up and wait, eh.” Darren twisted his mouth. This was the point in my speech where I thought he might be cart wheeling down the dock. Guess he had changed.
He kept silent so I added, “There’re patterns that use flat boards. We’ve got two cans of contact cement to seal the hull with. If we layer on pieces of the balloon fabric I think it will work. We can do this, son.” I tried to read his body language.
“Well, at least it won’t be right away. I’ve got some cattail roots drying for flour. If I don’t keep turning them over each day, they’ll go moldy.” He picked a splinter out of the dock and threw it in the water.
“Well, yeah, but it shouldn’t take all that long. I’ve simplified one of the book’s plans—”
He lifted a hand and gave me a lopsided smile. “Okay, sure, fine. You go ahead. I’ll be here when you get back.”
The otter swam away, heading back to its companions.
We both watched the ripples spread out behind the otter, travel to the dock, and lap up against the pilings beneath our feet.
Erik B. Scott became eligible for the John W. Campbell Award for Best New Writer with the publication of “The Exterminator” in Daily Science Fiction (Jan. 2013), edited by Michele-Lee Barasso and Jonathan Laden.
Visit his website at steampunk-rocker.blogspot.com.
* * *
Flash: “The Exterminator” ••••
THE EXTERMINATOR
by Erik B. Scott
First published in Daily Science Fiction (Jan. 2013), edited by Michele-Lee Barasso and Jonathan Laden
• • • •
AFTER THE THIRD knock, the door finally opened a crack. Jaren saw a scaled hand wrap around the door and a pair of narrow yellow eyes peek out suspiciously. “I’ve been waiting,” his serpentine voice beckoned. He opened the door and led Jaren inside.
Jaren sighed, “We are sorry for the delay, sir. There are hundreds of construction projects going on around the city right now and most are in need of our services.”
The Morgat scoffed, “I don’t doubt that—my people actually take some pride in their progress, unlike you humans.”
His voice betrayed condescending pride as he spoke, and although he had intended to offend Jaren’s humanity, in reality his barbs had missed the mark. “I’ve always a
dmired your people’s commitment to progress, from the time I was just a young boy in one of your government’s civil service camps.”
“You were in a camp?” Inquired the Morgat.
Jaren nodded. “I expressed an interest in serving with the occupation forces, so I was displaced from my parents and put in one of the camps. My test scores weren’t high enough though….”
“And so they placed you in the exterminators,” interrupted the Morgat, seemingly unaware of Jaren’s admiration. “Now let’s get to this job you’re going to be doing for me. I have a huge pest problem in the basement. They’ve taken over. I need you to get rid of them.”
As he spoke, Jaren looked around the interior of the building. The Morgat must have caught him looking; he nodded in approval. “I see you’ve taken notice of my restoration. You should recognize it: a fully restored 20th-century human hotel, complete in all its decadence.” He pointed with delight to a crystal chandelier hanging above them.
“I don’t understand,” said Jaren, “Why would you rebuild a human structure?”
“I’ll admit that it isn’t to my tastes,” he replied, “but some among my race find your culture fascinating. I am going to run an authentically human boutique hotel.”
“I can’t understand why they would prefer this,” said Jaren, “I’m a human myself and I have always felt more at home in your species’ sterile metallic environments than my race’s… opulence.”
“That’s quite rich, coming from a human,” said the Morgat. “Do you fancy yourself one of us?”
Jaren could feel the blood rush to his face. “I would never presume—”
The Morgat laughed again, “Enough,” he said. “You have a job to do. I’ll leave you to your work. The basement stairs are over there.” The Morgat pointed to a doorway in the back corner of the room, before himself retreating up the master stairwell and into the office.
As he reached the bottom of the basement stairs, Jaren reached into his backpack and removed his rifle. In centuries past exterminators killed mice and insects; they would have found such a large weapon unnecessary. Modern-day exterminators had it worse. His vermin were bigger, smarter, more dangerous. Many of his colleagues went out on jobs never to return.
Jaren began stalking from room to room in the darkness. Suddenly his ears perked up, having heard a whimper coming from a large storage closet in the back of the basement. His prey. He crept over and threw the door open, and a loud scream came from inside.
And there before him sat the vermin, huddled together in a clump in the middle of the room. They were not insects, not rodents—they were primates. Humans.
Jaren raised his rifle. He heard the sound of his own voice, speaking coldly. “You shouldn’t be hiding here, squatting on Morgat property. You should be registered and living in the ghettos, like the rest.”
The humans gave no response, and for a minute there was an agonizing silence. Suddenly a man he had not seen in the corner lunged out from the shadows. Without thinking, Jaren discharged three rounds into the man’s chest, dropping him where he stood.
“Daddy!” the cry came loud and abrupt, and a little girl broke free of her mother’s embrace and rushed over to the corpse, in tears.
“Look in the mirror,” said the girl’s mother, her eyes widened by terror, revulsion, and pity, “You’re not one of them. You’re one of us. Stop this.”
Her words evoked a familiar feeling. Images of his mother’s tearful face the morning that he chose to join the civil service flooded him. She had tried to fight it—to say that he was just a confused boy, that he really belonged here with his people. He remembered feeling profound loss as he was escorted away.
Jaren blinked. In a moment the internal conflict had passed. These were not his people, not now, not ever.
“No, I’m not one of you,” Jaren said to the woman, choking back on his bile. He pulled the trigger—first the mother, then the little girl, then the others. He left none alive.
When the job was done, he once again climbed the basement stairs, his face covered in blood. He was anxious to report back to the Morgat; to tell him what a good job he had done. He knew that he could never be one of them, but maybe, just maybe, the Morgat would hire him to work in the hotel, or be his assistant. Who knows, in time maybe he could—
“That was fast,” the Morgat said, “Well done.”
“Thank you sir,” Jaren replied. “I was wondering….”
“Yes, yes of course, your payment,” said the Morgat, misunderstanding his intent. He handed him a slip of credits. Jaren was about to speak up again, when the Morgat dropped a hammer. “Now get out of my sight,” he said. “Just because I employ vermin to kill vermin doesn’t mean I want to keep them around afterwards.”
Jaren’s heart sank in his stomach at the words. He took his leave of the Morgat. He would never be one of them. He would never be human. He was an exterminator, and that would have to suffice.
Jason Sheehan became eligible for the John W. Campbell Award for Best New Writer with the publication of A Private Little War (2013), from 47North.
Visit him online at twitter.com/Jason_Sheehan.
* * *
Novel: A Private Little War (excerpt) ••••
A PRIVATE LITTLE WAR
(excerpt)
by Jason Sheehan
First published as A Private Little War (2013), by 47North
• • • •
One
IT WAS a bad time. Everything was cold and sometimes everything was wet. When the wet and cold came together, everything would freeze and tent canvas would become like boards and breath would fog the air, laddering upward from mouths like curses given corporeal form. The ammunition, if not carefully kept, would green and foul and jam up the guns so that the men started stealing hammers from the machine shop, passing them around hand to hand until, one day, there were no more hammers in the machine shop and Ted had to order everyone to give them back.
“All of them,” he said. “Now.”
And so the men came up with the hammers—from their flight bags, from their pockets, or tucked beneath the seats of their machines. Every other man or so had stolen a hammer, and every other man or so gave his hammer back.
Kevin Carter did not give his hammer back. He stood with the other men as half slunk away to fetch back the hammers that they’d used to bang the shit out of their guns’ breeches when the shitty, greened ammo fouled their smooth operation. He stared after those who had to walk the flight line looking for their machines and watched those who rummaged through their kits for the tools, and when Ted looked him in the eyes, Kevin folded his arms across his chest and met Ted’s gaze with guiltless, frozen calm.
Of course he’d stolen a hammer. He’d been one of the first. But he’d be damned if he was going to give it back just because Ted had asked. Besides, it was in his machine in the longhouse and, at the moment, it’d seemed like a long way to walk.
Danny Diaz was dead. Mikke Solvay had drank himself useless and been sent home. Rog Gottlieb had gotten sick and was extracted in a coma that was next door to death. John Williams had been crippled with both legs shattered below the knee. None of the trip alarms worked. They were electronic—tiny little screamers, no bigger than a baby’s fist—and the cold and the wet fucked with their internal whatevers so that they failed as fast as they were deployed to the perimeters of the field. Also, they were all supposed to be connected together by lengths of hair-fine wire, but the indigs—the friendly indigs—knew about the wire and so stole every yard of it the minute it was laid. No one could figure what they did with it, but that didn’t stop them from stealing it. No one could figure what they did with dead batteries either, or buttons clipped off uniforms or shell casings, but they stole those, too.
The contact fuses in the bombs corroded. The cords that held the tents up would grow a white fur that looked like frost but wasn’t. Shortly after, they’d snap, and a tent would come down or sag like a drunk punched in the s
tomach and, for ten minutes or an hour, the men would all have something to laugh about. Especially if it happened in the middle of the night or in the rain. And even though no one was dying (or anyway, no one that mattered), it was a bad time for the war. Everyone thought so. And it made a lot of the men sick just thinking about it. They were fighting the weather as much as they were fighting the enemy and, slowly, they were losing. They all knew that something was going to have to change, and soon. There was just that kind of feeling in the air.
• • •
Two nights ago, the company had gotten word that Connelly’s 4th had moved into position across the river. They’d been turned back at the bridge, again near Riverbend, but had finally made their crossing at a heretofore undiscovered ford two miles downriver and were digging in by dawn. They were exhausted, but nearly at full strength due, in large part, to the overwhelming cowardice of Connelly himself. He was afraid of the dark, was the word. Doubly afraid of fighting in it. Triply afraid of dying in it. It was rumored that the downriver ford was found accidentally by some of his pikemen who’d stumbled onto it while retreating.
It was dark so, obviously, the company’s planes couldn’t fly.
• • •
The next night, Durba’s riflemen were put in place to secure the ford. On paper, they were the First Indigenous Rifle Company—the First IRC, attached as the fifth company, supernumerary to Connelly’s four-company native battalion of foot-sloggers and local militia—but called themselves just Durba’s Rifles or, sometimes, the Left Hand of God because Antoinne Durba (who’d claimed on many raving, red-faced occasions as a drunken guest at the Flyboy encampment, to once have been a missionary before finding another calling more suited to his disposition) was a man of vociferous, if rather selective, Christian faith. He seemed only to like those bits of scripture where God, in his infinite wisdom, was smiting something or someone, and had a disturbing tendency to insert his own name into these verses in place of the Almighty, referring to himself always in the third person—Durba smasheth this, Durba fucketh that all up and back again.