Red Claw

by Philip Palmer

“Well you do seem to have an eye for the men.”

  “I just — well. I don’t know. Do I? I guess I just like flirting. And I love being with Tonii, because he’s so gorgeous. But I haven’t fucked a man in, ooh, well, put it this way, we had democracy then.”

  “That’s quite some time ago.”

  “Yes, it is.”

  “So what happened to her? Your wife?”

  “She was eaten.”

  “Ah.”

  “By an Invidia sordida. She was a microbiologist. I stopped dating Scientists after that.”

  “Invidia sordida. That’s the major predator on Strangely, isn’t it?”

  “Yes.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  “Thank you.”

  “Did you love her?”

  “No.”

  “Well. Still, it’s very sad.”

  “Oh yes.”

  “I’m lucky to have had William as long as I did.”

  “I think you are, really.”

  “I thank my lucky stars.”

  “Do you? Do you really?”

  “No, of course not,” Mary said. “Of course I don’t ‘thank my lucky stars’, are you fucking insane? Those bastards Hooperman and Saunders! I blame them both, in equal measure, for killing the man I loved. May they rot in hell!”

  David Go was cutting a tree down with a plasma pistol. It was a slow and tedious job. After several hours’ work, the tree toppled and crashed to the ground.

  “What now?” David asked.

  “Nothing,” said Sergeant Anderson.

  “You wanted me to cut the tree down?”

  “And now you have.”

  “But —”

  Hugo Baal was burning a hole in rock to create a cavern-office for Sergeant Anderson. It took him, also, about five hours.

  “There,” said Hugo proudly.

  “Now fill it in again,” said Sergeant Anderson, with zest.

  Hugo almost retorted. He remembered what happened the last time he had retorted — and shuddered inwardly.

  “Yes, Sergeant,” he said, with as much humility as he could fake. “Whatever you say, Sergeant.”

  Hugo began working out how to create a rock-fall that would close off the new cave.

  Tonii and Clementine were cleaning the AmRover, inside and out.

  This was not Soldiers’ work; nor was it purposeful work. For the AmRover, of course, was made of self-cleaning numetal. They knew that, Anderson knew that, but they still did as they were told.

  And so the two warriors scrubbed and mopped gleaming metal that would never, ever get dirty.

  The sun was setting over the Ocean-Aldiss-Tree, making it look like a forest fire frozen in time.

  On the beach, Mia, Ben, Mary, Clementine, David and Tonii were building a fire out of treebark on the soft red sands. They had filched a raw steak from the galley, together with two bottles of wine. And at the end of a long tiring day they were aiming to get blind drunk.

  Sergeant Anderson strolled over to join them.

  “Cheers, sir,” said Tonii, passing him a glass of wine.

  “Nice fire,” he said. The flames burned red against the red red sand. Anderson drained the glass of wine.

  “It gets so claustrophobic in that cave,” Clementine said, with a grin.

  Sergeant Anderson poured himself another glass of wine. “You’re using up oxygen,” he pointed out.

  “Well, you can’t drink wine with your helmet up.” Mary Beebe laughed.

  Anderson drained the next glass of wine. “Leave the bottle with me, return to your posts. Sit in the AmRover please, there’s oxygen to spare in there. Or sit in the cave, with your helmets up. I think standing orders are pretty clear on that.”

  “With respect, sir,” said Mary Beebe. “We can’t spend all our time in the cave, or the AmRover.”

  Anderson drained another glass of wine.

  “Do as you’re fucking told,” Anderson said affably, “or I’ll ask my men to strip you naked, and stake you out on the sand in the noonday sun. You’ll peel like a lobster, you old hag.”

  “Don’t threaten me,” Mary said, with a dangerous look in her eyes.

  “Private Newton, Private McCoy,” Anderson said.

  Tonii and Clementine drew their plasma pistols.

  Mary stared at them disbelievingly. “You wouldn’t?”

  “They would.” Anderson laughed. “Military discipline, you know —”

  “Is a wonderful thing,” said Mary Beebe, bitterly.

  DAY 22

  Dawn burned now on the Ocean-Aldiss-Tree. Giant birds flew through pink clouds, and a handful of stars still shone, lingering for a few precious minutes in black-and-blue-and-red sky, before being banished by the sun’s glare.

  Mary and Mia were back at work on the oxygen-catalyser, laying cables along the beach to their cave.

  Hugo was down in the savannah, stalking a No-Brain, so he could kill it, and feed the meat to the rats in his lab.

  David Go was hewing a tunnel out of rock, as part of Sergeant Anderson’s strategy to make this a city within the rock. David’s body armour was splashed grey with dust, and flames surrounded him as the plasma burned through rock. He looked like a troglodyte burrowing hellwards.

  And Sergeant Anderson was in his cabin, exploring the porn archives on his virtual computer, when Ben Kirkham arrived, breathless and agitated.

  “What’s the fucking hurry?” Anderson said, freezeframing the loving couple.

  “I’ve found something, sir,” Ben said. “In the edges of the forest. You have to see it.” His tone was excited, and oddly cheerful.

  “What is it?”

  “You have to see for yourself,” Ben said.

  “I’m busy,” Anderson informed him, glancing at the beautiful blonde who was now motionlessly orgasmic in the arms of a Hispanic Adonis, their limbs entangled and their bodies hovering above the floor. It looked, even to Ben’s jaded eyes, rather bizarre.

  Ben dragged his gaze away. “I think I’ve found another Depot!” he told Anderson, with barely contained excitement.

  A smile lit the Sergeant’s face.

  “Lead on,” he said.

  Ben low-hovered away from the cave, and Anderson followed. They flew along the red sands of the beach, then across the yellow savannah, until they reached the swamplands.

  “What does it look like?” Anderson asked.

  “It’s carefully concealed. But I spotted the landscaping. It’s buried underground, but there’s a trapdoor entrance next to a rock. I think Saunders may have built dozens of these places.”

  Anderson flew on, quietly thrilled. They entered the swamplands, and flew carefully now, wary of the danger of fish and swamp water leaping up to kill them.

  “Land here,” said Ben, as they reached a ghastly, gloopy fetid swamp lake with bubbling waters.

  They landed. Ben pointed at a rock formation. “Look, there. Hidden in the rock.”

  “I see nothing.”

  “Use your scope.”

  Anderson took his microscope out of his belt. He retracted his helmet and put the scope to his eye. It gave phenomenal magnification, ten times better than the helmet scope. He could see every grain on the rock, every insect that flew past it.

  “I don’t see anything,” said Anderson, and Ben fired a controlled taser blast into his temple and Anderson’s body danced in wild epilepsy.

  “What the fuck?” said Anderson, his limbs twitching and his body jerking, and he reached for his plasma gun.

  Ben tasered him again on the temple. Anderson’s body spasmed once more, but he still held his plasma gun. Ben moved in close, unclipped Anderson’s helmet and threw it aside, then took Anderson by the throat with his two powerful hands and began to choke him. Anderson held the plasma gun to Ben’s head but Ben choked and choked and Anderson lost the strength to press the trigger. The gun slipped from his grip and his face grew redder and redder. He clawed with his hands and wriggled his body weight to find a way to throw h
is adversary. He tried to bite and headbutt, tried to shoulder-charge and karate strike, and most of all he tried to break Ben’s grip.

  But despite all of the Sergeant’s enormous strength and his extensive martial arts training, Ben was a man possessed, and Anderson simply couldn’t break free of the stranglehold. Ben exulted at his own raw invincibility. Anderson marvelled that this puny fool was killing him.

  Then Anderson went floppy, and his eyes rolled back in his head, and he stopped breathing.

  Ben ignored the feint, and carried on strangling him. Anderson jerked back into life for the killer punch, but he was still being choked and he had no strength at all now. The strangling continued for some time.

  After a long time, when Ben was absolutely sure the other man was dead, he dropped him to the ground.

  Anderson fell and slumped down on the New Amazonian earth. His face was bright scarlet, he had bitten off his own tongue, and blood trickled from his mouth.

  But then his body-armour jets fired. He flew up into the air and ripped through undergrowth till he crashed into a tree and fell to the ground. He was disorientated, more than half strangled, but the will to live was still strong in him. He stood up, spitting blood, and reached for his reserve plasma pistol.

  But Ben shot a taser bolt into Anderson’s temple again. Anderson fell, badly, and began to spasm. And Ben strode swiftly over, and smiled at Anderson’s tree-battered contorted face. He took out a scoop from his utility belt, forced Anderson’s mouth open, then squirted a Rat-Insect into the Sergeant’s mouth.

  Anderson writhed helplessly. The creature was inside him, eating. He screamed. And screamed again.

  Then Sergeant Anderson stopped screaming. He was dead. Ben dropped two other Rat-Insects on to his face, and they gnawed away at the flesh until nothing but skull remained.

  Ben put Anderson’s helmet back on, but left it retracted. Then the Rat-Insects hopped off and returned to their native habitat.

  Sergeant Anderson was dead. And Ben felt a pang of regret.

  Regret, because the old thrill was no longer there. The killing had been difficult and bloody, but he had taken no pleasure in it.

  For there was a time when Ben had exulted in the killing of another human being, when he had revelled in every last moment of the death throes of his helpless, desperate victims. It had been his special, terrible joy.

  But now he felt nothing. The murder had felt mechanical, soulless, almost tedious.

  He must be getting old.

  Sorcha was so tired she fell asleep as she was walking. That was how she got caught in the Flesh-Web.

  She woke, blinded. She shone her flashlight — nothing. The Web was enveloping her, but it wasn’t crushing her. So at least this wasn’t a reprise of the Basilisk incident. She took a firm grip of her plasma gun and prepared to burn her way out.

  But then she realised she was moving. With its velvet-soft touch, the Flesh-Web was gripping her and moving her, passing her from web tendril to web tendril, like a shrub playing handball.

  She realised that she was being swallowed up by the Web. Part of the creature’s macabre digestion system. Sorcha called up Hugo’s briefing notes from her brain-chip:

  Carnearenum. Flesh-Webs. The heart of the interconnected jungle of New Amazon. This is definitely Animalia not Plantae, we’ve seen these creatures eat a full-size gantelopelle. The visible part of the Flesh-Web is, we believe, the creature’s stomach; its brain and other organs may be buried in the complex latticework. It eats by breaking up the component parts of the prey by pressure or via digestive juices of some kind, then conveying the pieces somewhere, we know not where.

  But for some reason, the Flesh-Webs weren’t breaking her into her component parts; they were swallowing her whole. And she was moving fast. Suckers caught and released, caught and released her, and propelled her deep into its heart — till suddenly she was free of the Web, inside a large oozing sac of some kind, and she was looking at a huge, round, throbbing object that oozed slime. Was this really, as it seemed to be, the pulsating brain of the Flesh-Web entity?

  “Major Molloy to Professor Saunders, come in please, if you can hear this. I need help!” she said, desperately, into her MI-radio.

  “Sorcha, is that you?” a voice said back.

  “Shit. Can you hear me?”

  “Of course I can.”

  “Sorry, dumb question. I’ve been trying to — where are you?”

  “I’m flying below the canopy. Give me your location.”

  She checked her brain implant, and gave him the grid reference of her current location.

  “OK, give me an hour or so, I’ll be with you as soon as I can,” said Saunders.

  An hour or so!

  She waited, as the slimy “brain” wobbled and oozed. It seemed like an eternity, though it was probably no more than three hours. Then she heard Saunders’s voice again:

  “OK. Me again. I’m flying over your coordinates now. But I can’t see you.”

  “I’m in the middle of that thing. The Flesh-Web. The jungle.”

  “In the middle?”

  “Well, somewhere inside it. It’s a continuous organism. An animal jungle.”

  “I know.”

  “Richard . . .”

  “Carl. Call me Carl.”

  “Carl. Whatever the fuck your name is. How do I get out?”

  “Why don’t you use your body-armour jets?”

  “I have no body armour.”

  “Shit.”

  “My battery failed.”

  “Do you have a plasma gun?”

  “Of course.”

  “Treat it like a Jungle-Wall. Full plasma blast. Don’t look back.”

  The “brain” exploded. A thousand tiny skittering sluglike creatures swarmed over her, covering each part of her body.

  “It’s doing something.”

  “What?”

  “They’re all over me. Fucking creepy shiny things. The brain is not a brain, it’s an egg.”

  “It’s trying to mate with you. There are fish that do that. They use the sperm of another species to spur them into laying eggs. And the Gryphons — well, let’s not get into that.”

  “It’s trying to eat me.”

  “Maybe it wants your DNA.”

  “I don’t like this anymore.”

  “See you up top.”

  Sorcha scrambled to her feet, opened up her plasma gun to tight-beam, and fired. A long high hole appeared in the Flesh-Web above her.

  Then she pointed the gun at the ground, set it to high-frequency energy pulse and fired downwards. With a whoosh, the plasma gun rocketed her up high, like a cannon ball, flying into the air, through the hole, past the suckers, ripping through the remaining Flesh-Webs and upwards and into the sky.

  Into the sky! She was flying high up in the sky, half a mile from the ground!

  Without body armour.

  She glided, for four or five whole seconds.

  Then she started to fall —

  Hugo inspected the corpse of Sergeant Anderson. He took photographs from every angle.

  Then he did a battlefield autopsy, splitting the corpse from head to toe with a laser, and photographing all the marks and lesions on the body. The skin on the face had been eaten away by some predator, but Hugo found unmistakable burn marks on the temples. Was there a New Amazonian predator that blew flame into its victim’s face? That would indeed be an interesting phenomenon. So maybe Anderson was killed by one flame-breathing predator, then gnawed to death by Rat-Insects?

  Hugo looked closer, and pulled the mask back off the face, then cut open the throat. He observed that the hyoid bone in Anderson’s neck was broken, a clear indication of manual strangulation. He then stitched the throat back together. He had seen no contusions on the skin of the neck, but Hugo injected an accelerant to speed up the lividity process, and a few minutes later dark red fingermarks appeared.

  He opened up the stomach cavity and found a live Rat-Insect, which had eaten most
of Anderson’s colon. Hugo killed the creature with a laser burst and split it open, and a bloody goo spilled on to the ground, the remnants of Anderson’s entrails.

  It was obvious to Hugo that Anderson had been manually strangled before he’d swallowed the Rat-Insect. It was also possible, Hugo speculated, that someone had forced the insect down his throat. How else would a trained Soldier come to swallow whole one of the vilest and ugliest creatures on the planet?

  The evidence was incontrovertible: Anderson had been murdered. Hugo wrote his notes up carefully. Then he reconsidered.

  First he deleted his notes, including his brain-chip memories. Then he opened up his camera, took out the memory card and buckled it in his fingers before burying it in the ground. He inserted a new memory card and photographed Anderson’s autopsied corpse from a distance, so that the lividity around the neck wasn’t apparent.

  He took out his stun gun, rummaged in the undergrowth to capture a dozen or more Rat-Insects and dropped the scurrying creatures inside Anderson’s body. He allowed them to feed and filmed the feeding.

  According to his new report, Anderson had suffered an armour breach and had been eaten alive by Rat-Insects.

  — and still Sorcha fell, fast and awkwardly. She wondered if she would fall back into the Flesh-Web and die a slow lingering death; or alternatively, hit the hard ground at speed and be killed instantly?

  Then a flock of birds descended on her. She recognised them as Gryphons, deadly and beautiful black raptors. One of them caught her in its beak.

  “Don’t shoot, whatever you do,” Saunders said in her head, and she narrowly avoided killing the Gryphon with a plasma blast.

  “Where are you?”

  “Look.”

  She looked. She was held in a Gryphon’s mouth. Beside her flew a second magnificent huge-winged bird with black scales that glittered in the sunlight.

  And seated on its back, like a cowboy on a horse, was Saunders.

  Hugo returned to camp. “A tragedy,” he explained.