Dark Valentines

by Mark Onspaugh

  Or, maybe the squids had just wanted to hear more screaming. Humans who got lased accurately never had time to do more than sizzle for a second before disintegrating into ash.

  Dillon found a dented can of tomato soup in the pantry and a discarded can of beets under the deep fryer. Someone had actually been picky enough to toss it aside. Dillon hated beets, they actually made him gag, but they were loaded with minerals and vitamins. He found a pot and made a fire with some old newspaper and the slats of a fruit crate. He cut up the beets into the soup and used a liberal amount of pepper and garlic salt. The resultant soup tasted like shit, but at least it didn’t taste like beets.

  He spent the better part of the day going through offices, scoring a couple of Payday candy bars in a baggie, two cans of minestrone soup and some packets of ramen noodles. The noodles never sat well with him, he’d trade them for something better if he could find someone to trade with.

  “You’re fooling yourself,” he thought.

  The truth was, he hadn’t seen many people left alive since his sister Marie had contracted AV-25. He had promised to stay with her, to be by her side until the end, then give her a decent burial.

  While he had been out looking for fresh water, Marie had gone off by herself.

  He never found her.

  She had been so worried about infecting him that she had gone off to die alone. It was typical behavior for his older sister, and he both admired and hated her for it.

  Like their parents, he had never had a chance to say goodbye.

  He lost Marie in Texas. In the two years it had taken him to reach California, he had only seen a handful of living humans. One had been an old desert rat in New Mexico. Dillon had been crossing the desert just after dark, and his only illumination came from starlight. He couldn’t risk using a flashlight, and batteries could often be traded for bullets. Besides, his night vision was pretty good.

  A trading post loomed ahead like a specter, its chipped and weathered hand-painted signs promising soda, beef jerky and cactus candy. Dillon hadn’t eaten in two days, and was hoping to find food and a place to rest out of the sun for a bit.

  He was within fifty feet of his goal the old man had popped up out of a hidden burrow like a trapdoor spider and had taken a shot at him, the bullet so close Dillon had heard the whine of it as it passed by his left ear. Fortunately, Dillon was younger and quicker and had put a bullet in the bastard’s forehead before he had gotten off a second shot.

  It was too bad, because the old bastard showed no signs of infection, and Dillon thought the man might be immune to AV like he was. It would have been nice to have some company, even if just for a little while. He pushed the corpse back down into the rat’s hidey-hole and helped himself to the man’s supplies, which included a lot of jerky and, wonder of wonders, some stale chocolate cookies. It had been so long since Dillon had had anything like that that he had gorged himself, eating the whole bag at once. This had given him a bad case of the runs the next day, but it was worth it. He also found a paperback copy of The Count of Monte Cristo squirreled away behind some crude Kachina dolls. Paperbacks were a rarity, most of them had been used for fires in the early years. There were still hardcovers in libraries that were still standing, but these were too heavy to carry.

  You had to pack light dealing with squids.

  His second encounter had been in Las Vegas.

  Much of the strip had been demolished by the Martian war machines, but a portion of the Excalibur still stood, its single charred turret looking like an actual remnant of some medieval castle rather than a casino. Dillon had tried to explore there, only to be pelted with silver dollars by a group of four or five laughing children. They were almost feral, hooting and howling at him like wolf children. Dillon wanted desperately to talk to them, to find out if there were other survivors, but they always attacked him with the heavy coins, which they could throw with unerring accuracy. He stayed for nearly a week, trying to coax them to come out, but they called him “Mars man” and “Squid shit” and told him to go away. Finally, he gave up and made his way to Los Angeles, their gibbon-like hooting fading in the distance.

  He had quite a scare in Arizona, just a mile from the California border. He had found two toppled tripods that had blundered into deep holes and crashed to the ground. Though there was no one about, he could see the holes had been concealed with a lattice of wood covered with sheet rock and earth. Careful examination of the area showed a line of such holes, nearly fourteen in all.

  “I hope you got the bastards,” he thought, admiring the work that had gone into so many traps. “I hope you got them before they got you.”

  He investigated the first tripod and found it devoid of corpses, Martian or otherwise. As usual, it was filled with complex devices that seemed to defy human manipulation. One of the leaders of the human resistance had theorized that Martian machines were attuned to Martian brains, and that no amount of coaxing, fiddling or cursing would get them to respond to humans.

  It was just as well. The thought of traveling the country in one of the hated machines made him nauseous. These things had nearly brought the human race to an end.

  Human race? Hell, practically all life on Earth had fallen to the Martian war machines, which seemed to fire on anything moving or with a heat signature. It seemed the Martians were only interested in wiping out life on Earth. Whether it was something they considered pre-emptive or they just wanted the real estate, they had very nearly succeeded.

  Dillon suspected that there were pockets of wildlife in some of the world’s more isolated areas, but it would be long after his lifetime before the Earth was fertile and green again. Something in the Martian arsenal had also rendered the oceans lifeless, or maybe it was another variant of AV-19. Whatever, he wasn’t taking a chance of swimming in open water or eating anything that didn’t come out of a can or pouch.

  He was sure the second tripod would be just as barren, and his mind was elsewhere, wondering if he would find a survivor, perhaps a girl close to his own age.

  There were two nude and desiccated human corpses in the second tripod, a middle-aged man and woman. Dillon had just registered that the corpses displayed unusual post-mortem wounds when a tentacle had wrapped around his left ankle. He saw with mind-numbing horror that a Martian had hidden underneath a control panel, and was now drawing him near. It was making that godawful sound they made, which registered on an aural and psychic level, making one’s skull vibrate while producing feelings of vertigo and nausea.

  The thing’s grip was strong, and the natural corrosive in its suckers was eating through his jeans and starting to burn his leg. If he didn’t do something, part of his leg would be pre-digested before he crossed another ten feet of floor.

  Dillon pulled a hunting knife from his belt, a good solid blade with one serrated edge. With a violence fueled by adrenaline and a life-long hatred he hacked at the tentacle, trying to saw through it before he was in reach of the creature’s smaller and more agile tentacles.

  It shrieked, and the noise went through his skull like a dental drill, making him cry out in agony. For a moment he nearly lost his grip on the knife, but knew he’d die if he did.

  With renewed vigor he stabbed and hacked at the thing, all the while cursing it, its lineage, its planet, its odor and its sexual proclivities.

  The mollusk-like body of the Martian raised up a good eighteen inches, and Dillon was horrified to see it possessed a complement of eight crab-like legs on its underside. It began to scuttle closer to him, the better to dine on him and prolong its own hateful existence.

  Dillon screamed like a mad man and hacked at the thing, forgetting in his blood range the pistol in his belt, the rifle in his backpack. He was an atavistic creature, now, like a proto-human facing some terror that had not been dissuaded by his fire.

  With a bloodcurdling war cry Dillon cut through the tentacle, taking off the tip of one thumb in the process. The creature shrieked and withdrew the injured stum
p, and Dillon rolled toward the door, now remembering his firearms.

  The shots inside the tripod chamber were deafening, and he did not stop firing until the creature was still and all three eyes had been pulped.

  Dillon collapsed just outside the tripod, remembering to crawl into the shade just before losing consciousness.

  He awoke around midnight, alternating chills and fever. The burned part of his leg looked inflamed, as did his injured thumb, which was scabbed but swollen.

  AV-25 he thought with mounting panic, but calmed himself. It was an infection from the corrosive on the Martian tentacles. If he could weather the fever and stay hydrated, he should be all right.

  He had some aspirin in his backpack, and he took these with a generous amount of water. He was loathe to be so free with his meager supplies, but erring on the side of caution might mean his life.

  He slipped in and out of consciousness, dreaming uneasy dreams heightened by fever to an almost psychedelic surrealism.

  Dillon drifted in and out of consciousness for three days from his infection. He rallied on the fourth day and made himself a gray sort of stew with jerky and what little water he had left. It was enough to revitalize him and he replenished his supplies in one of the “tiger traps” the locals had dug. He also found a gallon of kerosene. The smart thing would have been to lug it along, hopefully trade it for ammo or a new pistol, but Dillon needed to further punish the Martian who had nearly killed him. He buried the humans he had found in the tripod, marking their graves with simple crosses snapped off from the lattice-work of the traps. He waited until dark, and then had doused the interior of the tripod and the dead Martian with the kerosene. Outside, he used flint and steel to light a piece of kindling, and tossed it inside.

  There was a satisfying whumph, and a bright flame he was sure could be seen for miles. The stink of the burning squid was terrible, it made his eyes water and he vomited up his dinner. But he stayed where he was, hoping that stench would carry to any other of the goddamned things left alive.

  ♥ ♥ ♥

  He found a comfortable couch in one of the offices, and a pre-Invasion copy of Playboy from 1984. It was both maddening and tragic to look at those beautiful, airbrushed bodies and faces. It had been two years since Dillon had been with anyone, and he realized he might very well die alone.

  Fine. Everyone he knew was dead, anyway. If he could make sure the Martians were dead, then the Earth would be reclaimed by its own, even if it were just rats and roaches.

  Who knows, maybe they would do a better job.

  The Playboy featured a pictorial on “The Girls of NU”. One of them looked like Kelly Taylor, a girl he had grown up with in Jasmine. She had been his first kiss, a puppy love kind of thing between nine year olds. Kelly’s family had moved to Iowa when the Martians began advancing inland from Miami. The two of them had just started getting serious, both fourteen and full of grand plans that now would never happen.

  He tore out the photo of the Kelly look-alike and stuck it in his pocket. After that, he locked the office door and tried to bring each photo to life, if only in his mind. Then he slept, the first solid sleep he had had in several months.

  He dreamt of a beautiful girl out in the midst of a meadow run riot with flowers. She was naked, but her hair and skin color kept changing, as if she had some internal rheostat which allowed her to alter her appearance.

  He ran toward her, but could not gain any distance. It felt like he was running forever when the field began to burn and she was consumed like brittle paper, turning into a light gray ash that fluttered upon the breeze like bitter snow. He still tried to catch her and found himself surrounded by hundreds of tripods. Tentacles from every direction pulled at him, burning him and filling his nostrils with that Martian stench as they tore him apart.

  Dillon awoke with a start, the sun low in the west.

  He had been asleep nearly five hours.

  He was going to chide himself for dropping his guard, then reminded himself the door was locked.

  The door was ajar.

  Dillon was on his feet in an instant, drawing his pistol as he surveyed the room with quick efficiency.

  There was no one in the office but him.

  He crept silently toward the door, cursing the failing light. He had both a flashlight and lighter, but both would call attention to him. He had to rely on his sense of hearing and sense of smell.

  Dillon moved out into the hallway, praying that, whatever it was, there was only one.

  The corridor was undamaged, its bland line of doors on either side a silent testimony to a time gone forever, when people worried about deadlines and layoffs, relationships gone bad and bank accounts emptied. But they had also enjoyed love and vacations, frivolous purchases and fine meals, warm beds and secure, cozy homes.

  To Dillon, whose whole life had been framed by the Invasion, the thought of work as a file clerk or office manager was as alien as the Martians themselves.

  There was a layer of dust on the floor, and he could see his own progress along the corridor, his handprints on the knob and door of the room he had just vacated. Past this, there was only what seemed to be the passage of several large snakes.

  Squid tracks.

  Now his adrenaline kicked into high gear, and everything in the corridor seemed preternaturally sharp and well-lit. He moved slowly toward the far end, where the tracks proceeded to a stairwell.

  He sniffed the air, trying to locate that odor he knew so well. It seemed absent, which was puzzling. All he was catching was something like flowers… And… shampoo?

  The smell made him almost dizzy with nostalgia, and he angrily pushed those thoughts away. He couldn’t afford to let his guard down again.

  He stopped before the stairwell door, willing himself to breathe slowly and evenly, calming himself. The squid might be just on the other side of the door. The door opened inward, which would tip the creature off that he was coming, if it hadn’t already heard or smelled him.

  A woman screamed.

  He burst through the door to find a young woman halfway down the stairs, her legs wrapped in the tentacles of a Martian that was on the lower landing.

  The woman looked up at him, and he was shocked to see it was Kelly. How could that be?

  “Help me!” she screamed, and now he saw she only resembled Kelly. Her nose was different, as was the small spray of freckles across her nose, a scar on her cheek.

  Dillon pivoted and sighted in on the Martian’s eyes. He fired three rounds, though he was reasonably sure the first had killed it. His father used to say, “Three rounds for three eyes, cut those squiddies down to size.”

  Most of its tentacles retracted as it was hit, but one large one was wrapped around the girl’s leg. She was dressed in a plaid shirt and jeans, and he could see the corrosive exuded from the thing’s suckers had eaten through the fabric.

  Dillon holstered his sidearm and hurried down to her. He knelt next to her and removed his knife.

  “I’m going to cut this tentacle away, try to stay still.”

  She regarded him with eyes that were unnervingly blue. He busied himself with cutting the tentacle away, noting she had several burns where the sucker mucus had eaten through her jeans. It must have hurt like hell, but she didn’t cry out.

  He at last severed the tentacle and flung it down the stairs to the dead squid. Dillon helped the girl up, and together they went up the stairs and back into the corridor. He took her to the office he had vacated, and tried to make her comfortable on the couch.

  “Have you ever gotten tentacle burn?”

  She shook her head.

  “I did, recently. Got a bad fever for several days. If that happens, I’ll stay with you until it passes.”

  “Thank you.”

  “My name is Dillon, what’s yours?”

  “Hope.”

  Dillon looked at her. “Seriously?”

  She frowned. “You don’t like it?”

  “No, it’s just
… I mean… never mind.”

  She reached out and touched his hand. “Thank you for saving my life.”

  He was so lonely for human contact that he nearly pulled her to him in a frantic embrace, but held himself in check.

  Don’t want her to think you’re a head case, he thought.

  Hope’s bout with the fever nearly mirrored his own, but she passed through it one day faster. He chalked this up to the fact that her wounds were not as severe and she didn’t have to sleep in the desert chill.

  He watched her while she slept, praying he wasn’t imagining her. In her delirium she talked in her sleep, and he gathered she had recently lost someone named Charlie. The first rays of the morning sun shone through the window and were captured in her hair, bringing out faint reddish highlights against the gold, and her skin seemed flawless except for the scar on her cheek.

  For the first time in a couple of years he became concerned about his own appearance. Amazingly enough, there was a mirror intact in the men’s room. He was taller than he remembered, and he had bulked up some. His hair was a wild thatch of brown and his face was burned red from wind and sun. He remembered that Kelly had said he was “sweet to look at”, and he wondered if Hope would think so. His beard was fairly light but he shaved anyway, using a travel shaving kit from the small convenience store in the lobby. He also brushed his hair and washed his clothes.

  When she awoke at the end of the second day he was there with water and some vegetable beef soup he had discovered under a shelving unit in the cafeteria pantry. Compared to what both of them had been eating, it seemed like a feast.

  She ate her soup slowly and then took a long drink of water. She smiled at him.

  “You cut your hair,” Hope said.

  “Just combed it.”

  “Oh. Any special reason?”

  He looked at her and she smiled. She was teasing him, and it felt nice.

  They stayed there for another five days, the city around them as silent as a grave.