“Of course.”
“Why do you have a gun? You supposed to kill us if we say no?”
“If you don’t come back, I don’t come back,” Collins said.
“You’d kill yourself if—”
“They’d change my course. I’d suffocate and die somewhere between here and Venus. I’d rather not have a slow death. I’d rather not hear the broadcasts they’d send up letting me know the ramifications of mission failure. I’d rather not hear my wife and your wife on the news crying over us. Neil,” Collins said. “Get this done. Please.”
Armstrong drifted down the hatch into the Eagle lander. Collins replaced the storage box below his seat and flicked on the internal comms.
“You copy this?”
“Yeah,” Armstrong muttered.
“Fuck off, Mike,” Aldrin said.
“Copy that,” Collins said. “Everything you need to know is in that book, but I’ll give you the nickel tour. If you have any questions, save them for the trip home. Now, just after WWII, Soviet commanders discovered a Nazi bunker buried in the ice in northern Russia. Nobody knows how long they’d been working there, but it was a full-on research facility. Captured Soviet soldiers were their lab rats. Typical Nazi shit, you know. Making men into supermen. They failed, obviously. Every man they tried it on died. But they made strides. There were corpses there. Huge muscles. Skeletal mutations. All of them dead. The Krauts left some promising notes. Jump ahead to 1957, when the Soviets placed a primate into successful earth orbit.”
“Hold on. That never—we were the first to send—”
“What did I tell you about questions, Neil? They did it. Just take that as fact. They weren’t testing the viability of launching a living thing into space, they were testing the formula they found in that Nazi base. Apparently the thing that hampered the serum’s effectiveness on men was gravity. They shot that fuckin’ monkey so full of Nazi dope that it would have killed him on Earth. In space . . . he grew. He turned into something. Something so strong and powerful that the capsule he was in couldn’t contain him. He broke out, tore it open with his bare hands.”
“And did he survive the fall?” Aldrin asked, rolling his eyes.
“We don’t know,” Collin said. “The safe bet says no. They estimate the vessel came down in the Pacific Northwest. There have been teams of US soldiers moving through the area to find evidence of its demise or terminate it on sight. No more questions. The Reds saw what they needed to see. Two years ago they started testing it on humans. Low-dose. Vladimir Mikhaylovich Komarov, that name ring a bell?”
“First man to die in a spaceflight. Killed on impact in a landing malfunction, right?”
“Yes and no. He was the first to get a full dose of their treatment in space. First to become superhuman. They just needed to verify it worked. Then they rigged the craft to kill him on impact so they could examine his remains.”
Collins pitched the craft, bringing the moon’s eerie light into the cabin.
“And now, sixteen days ago, they landed a craft on the moon. Three cosmonauts, fully dosed. We have a rough idea of their LZ. We’re coming in about a hundred yards away.”
“You’re telling me they’ve been up here for over two weeks with no food or water? Or air for that matter?” Armstrong asked.
“They had the benefit of not needing to land with a reusable craft. They have rations, and their metabolisms work a little differently now. They’re alive, as far as we know, and probably hungry. Just waiting for a ride home. They’ve been pushing to get us up here to stop that. Intelligence suggests we have a ten hour headstart on them. They’re on our tail and time is short. If they land, if they’re able to recover those soldiers and get them back to earth . . . god help us all.”
“And what are we supposed to—”
“Just read the book, Buzz. Strap into your chairs, get the hatch set. I wish this was under better circumstances. You wanted to go to the moon, you’re going to the moon. My job is to drive the bus and make sure you have a ride waiting after you get done. Your job is to get down there, pick up some space rocks so we have something to show and tell, and kill some god-damned commie werewolves.”
“Jesus H—” Armstrong muttered, sliding into position in the Lunar Lander Module.
“What if we miss?” Aldrin muttered.
“Don’t miss,” Collins yelled back at them. “This is for America and the world, fellas. The whole shebang. You’re not allowed to fail. That’s it.”
Collins secured the hatch to the Lunar Landing Module and moved back to the pilot’s seat. A small pendant of St. Christopher hovered next to his ear in zero-grav, spinning like a tossed coin, the patron saint of travelers not knowing where to begin.
***
Aldrin and Armstrong sat in uneasy silence, staring out of the windows on the Lunar Landing Module, waiting. Aldrin’s finger tapped a staccato rhythm on his thigh. He lifted the wrist gun to examine it more closely, set it down, then lifted it again. He opened the chamber and looked at the rounds in the magazine. Long like a rifle cartridge, but fat like a shotgun shell, each topped with a sharp, silver projectile.
Armstrong let out a long sigh. “Shit.” He opened the pamphlet and scanned the information again. It was laid out simply as any good government dossier should be. Large text. Short sentences. Lots of diagrams. What he saw made no sense. Men, mutated, larger than life, coated in hair, their jaws distorted and misshapen, teeth jutting at odd angles. Heavy brows that hid their eyes, shoulders hunched so high their necks were no longer visible. The artist had helpfully drawn a large Soviet Flag behind the creature, as if this would spur some sort of patriotic sentiment to drive their mission forward. There were three names listed next to the drawing, presumably the three cosmonauts-turned-lab rats. The last names were spelled in heavy Cyrillic characters with an English translation to the right.
ВОЛКОВ: VOLKOV.
СОКОЛОВ: SOKOLOV.
ГОЛОВКИН: GOLOVKIN.
“What do we do here, Buzz? Volkov, Sokolov—”
“Blow their heads off. Neil, I—We do our jobs. Look, I personally think everyone’s gone off the reservation here. I expect there’s some kind of stress-related . . . I don’t know, Neil! I don’t know. Maybe we walk out there and nothing happens. We get some dirt, we plant a flag, we go home. We don’t have any options here. This thing is landing on the moon, we’re inside of it, that’s that. We have to kill a . . . ”
Aldrin’s face creased up, a tear streaked out of one eye. He let out a strange barking howl. It took Neil a moment to realize he was laughing. The ridiculousness of the situation smothered him like a wave.
“We’re werewolf hunting,” Neil said, laughing.
“The very notion is . . . is . . . ”
“More ridiculous than a man on the moon?” Armstrong asked.
They laughed again, because what else could they do? What else but strap experimental weapons to their wrists and prepare to die for their country?
“Six shots apiece,” Aldrin said, shaking his head.
“And three of them.”
“You think these things work?”
“They’re designed and manufactured by the US Government,” Neil said, followed by an uncomfortable silence.
“You think these things work?” Aldrin asked again.
***
They spent the rest of the descent alternating between nervous laughter and unbearable quiet. It had been a relatively smooth flight down. The feeling of the landing impact thudded through them like a heavy bass drum. They sat in silence, staring out the windows.
“Neil?”
“Yes?”
“We’re on the moon, Neil.”
Armstrong paused, holding his hands in front of him. “Yeah. You hear anything out there?”
“We’re not going to.”
“You see anything?”
“Nope.”
The intercom crackled. “Eagle Houston, do you copy?”
“Hous
ton Eagle, we’re . . . we’re here. You rolling cameras for air on this?”
“Public cameras stay off until your first job’s done.”
“But you have a private feed? Gonna enjoy watching us get torn to shreds?” Aldrin asked.
“What are you seeing out there?” Houston continued.
“We hit the mark. What are we looking for?”
“The area of concern was marked on your maps. We expect contact either inside of the Little West Crater or over its far ridge. Last intelligence received from . . . that the Sov . . . ”
The comms went fuzzy. Armstrong looked at Aldrin. “Of course.”
“All right. Quickest way to get this done is to get it done, right? You got that wrist rocket ready to go?”
“Yeah,” Armstrong said. “You sure you don’t wanna go first?”
“I’ll be stuck behind the door until you get out of here. Soon as you clear, I’ll follow you down. If the ground is solid I’ll just drop in.”
“Well. Since this isn’t being recorded for posterity, I’d just like to say that it’s an honor for America to be on the god-damned moon, and whoever thought of this mission without telling us can kiss my ass.”
“They oughta put that on a plaque, Shakespeare.”
“Let’s go.”
Armstrong felt the pop of the airlock door more than he heard it. As the hatch creaked open, brilliant white light flooded the cabin, reflected from the lunar surface.
“Wait until you see this, Buzz.”
Armstrong leaned through the hatch cautiously, straining to check his peripheral vision through the bulky spacesuit. All was still and quiet. Now came the hard part. He turned his back on the moon and reached a leg out to the descent ladder.
“Still alive,” Armstrong muttered.
“Copy that.”
Armstrong descended one rung further. “Two rungs. Still alive.”
“Copy that, Neil. Maybe reserve the comm batteries for important announcements.”
“Me being alive is pretty fuckin’ important Buzz. To me, anyway. Four steps to go. Still alive.” Armstrong hustled down the remaining rungs and hovered above the final step. He turned as much as his suit would allow to survey the ground. Once he’d gotten the word he’d be going through the hatch first, he’d envisioned this moment, how to place the first footprint on the moon. And now, looking down, he saw the point was moot.
There were footprints there. That word lingered in his brain. Footprint. Not boots. Large, five-toed mammalian markings that were somewhat human save for what looked like a large opposable toe. Spaced about five feet apart. Left, right, some of them with divots in the soil that Armstrong assumed to be a handprint.
“How’s it looking, Neil?”
“Clear for now. Collins wasn’t lying. We’re not alone.”
“Coming down, clear the way.”
Armstrong held his breath and pushed lightly back from the ladder, drifting down to the lunar soil like a feather. The land beneath him felt like soft sand over stone. Fine and powdery. He laughed, because he thought that’s what it would be, but here he was . . .
A shadow drifted across his peripheral vision, Aldrin drifting down from the ladder. He hit the ground and strode past Armstrong, wrist-rocket aimed ahead. He swept the perimeter. “Wake up, moon man.”
“Look around you, Buzz . . . ”
“I know. I should be enjoying this. So should you. Damn commies.”
“A-hunting we will go,” Armstrong said, releasing the safety on his wrist-rocket.
“Is that uhhh . . . ” Aldrin pointed at the strange footprints.
“That’s them. That’s our path.”
“Sea of Tranquility my ass . . . ” Aldrin said. “Cover me. Let’s move.”
They hopped ahead, thoroughly unsure of how to proceed. There was some basic military training that kicked in, how to watch the horizon, how to cover each other, but all of that was based on earth gravity, a full field of vision, and full range of motion. They had none of that.
“Little West Crater ahead,” Armstrong said. “How do you want to handle this?”
Aldrin scanned the edge of the crater. “It’s like standing in a god-damned oil painting. Nothing’s moving.”
“That’s a good thing, right?”
As the words left Armstrong’s mouth, a small puff of dust rose over the edge of the crater. An irregular shape, different from the surrounding rocks and dirt, this looked more like a large burlap sack covered in hair and rolled in soot.
“Feels like we got eyes on us,” Armstrong said.
“We do.”
They stopped, bobbing slightly as they watched the lip of the crater. Something was watching them, low to the ground, moving slowly. They had no way of judging its size. But there were two tiny, shining black pits, unmistakably eyes, watching them. The thing slithered slowly to their left, then lifted its head up to scream a soundless warning. It lowered itself down into the crater.
“Okay,” Armstrong said. “Okay. Okay.”
“Okay,” Aldrin replied.
“Okay.”
“Yeah,” Aldrin said. “How are they breathing? Where are their suits? What do they—”
“Buzz, get back!”
Armstrong bounded to Aldrin and shoved him down as a jagged moonrock shot over their heads.
“Guess they know we’re here, huh?” Aldrin said.
“Do we shoot?”
“Not from this distance.”
Another puff of dust appeared over the ridge. A small scrap of uniform floated slowly over the hill, a shred of reinforced fabric with a torn hose connected to it. It spun before them like a disembodied internal organ. A hand rose slowly over the crater rim, palm facing them. Its fingers were blackened and purpled, the skin swollen over elongated bones. It rose higher, attached to a twisted forearm clothed in the tattered remains of a cosmonaut’s spacesuit.
Slowly, it extended one finger, then pointed at the fabric floating in the space between them. Aldrin reached out to grab it. “You read Russian?”
“Cyrillic,” Armstrong said. “And no. But that name stamped on the fabric is one of the ones from the pamphlet. Sokolov.”
“Any ideas?” Aldrin asked. “He introducing himself?”
Armstrong shrugged his shoulders, then realized Aldrin probably wouldn’t notice such a small gesture. “I’m gonna get closer.”
“Wait!” Aldrin shouted.
The rim of the crater exploded as if a land mine had gone off beneath it, and a great, shadowy shape rocketed toward them.
“Shit. Shit shit shit!” Armstrong shouted, readying his wrist rocket.
The shape was on a beeline for Aldrin, and in zero-G, there was no way to react in time. The thing extended twisted hands for Aldrin, aiming claws for the visor of his helmet. Aldrin lifted his wrist rocket to fire. He depressed the button and felt a vibration at his wrist. A small plume exploded at the thing’s shoulder, fluid spattering into globules that floated all around them. Still it charged. Aldrin cursed himself for firing too soon as he tried to ready a second shot.
The thing hadn’t changed course, and it was too late. Aldrin saw its face, finally. It was a horrible stew of features lupine, simian, and human. Jaw distended, cheek skin frozen solid and cracked wide open from howling, eyelids flaking away. Snapped tendons and torn muscles flapped in the low grav as the thing’s fingers extended, claws coming straight at Aldrin’s face. The last thing he saw before squeezing his eyes closed was another name in Cyrillic he recognized from the pamphlet, VOLKOV. He closed his eyes.
A hard tap on the front of his visor sent him tumbling backward, cartwheeling and slamming twice into the lunar soil as he floated away from the impact. He assumed the worst, that his visor had shattered or his suit had been punctured, and waited for the cold vacuum of space to take him.
Through squinting eyes he saw the inside of his visor covered in sweat and spittle, but intact. He turned and dragged a foot along the soil to slow his momentum. He c
lambered to his feet, Armstrong fifty feet away, circling around a chaotic whirlwind of dust and debris.
Volkov, the thing that had come for him, was tangling with something else, something equally twisted. The new creature had Volkov pinned to the ground, hammering down blow after blow in a grotesque silent symphony of violence. Volkov raised its arms in a pathetic gesture of mercy to no avail. The creature on top continued to pound, smacking and tearing until Aldrin saw Volkov’s neck snap. It continued to pound away until Volkov turned to pulp, a fine spray of blood and guts and flesh misting and crystallizing in the lunar atmosphere.
Aldrin had moved closer to Armstrong, until they were shoulder-to-shoulder. Armstrong pointed at Aldrin, then gestured to the side of his helmet. He repeated the gesture.
Armstrong was trying to tell him his comms were out. He grabbed Aldrin and turned him, reconnecting a stray cable on his suit antenna.
“—hear me? Dammit, Buzz, gimme—”
“Gotcha Neil, gotcha. We’re on, we’re on . . . ”
“What in the hell is—”
Armstrong stopped, then turned Aldrin to face the creature that may have saved his life. It stood tall above the remains of the thing that had attacked Aldrin. It was easily seven feet, its arms and legs grotesquely elongated, the skin hard and swollen over sinew and muscle and mutated bone. The tattered remains of a spacesuit clung to its legs and lower torso, and one of its hands was still encased in a spacesuit glove. The other was bare, the fingers almost a foot long, pointing at the tattered piece of spacesuit in the soil that read SOKOLOV. Patchy hair covered the thing’s front torso, growing thicker higher up its arms and shoulders. The creature was a wall of muscle, no neck, veins inky black beneath purple-blue skin. A mane of fur ringed its head, eyes flicking like black diamonds.
It arched its back, muscles flexing, jaw distending to an impossibly wide degree.
“You feel that buzzing?” Armstrong asked.
“It’s howling,” Aldrin replied.
“Of course it is. You want the shot, or should I—OOF!”
Armstrong was cut off as yet another creature bounded over the rim of the crater and barreled into his midsection. He felt strangely light after the initial collision, tumbling with the creature across the lunar landscape. The thing had latched its jaws onto his ankle, and although the pressure was great and painful his suit was still intact.
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