by Неизвестный
Upstairs, the grieving children whimpered at the sight of the bloody soldier. The sound cut Myers worse than the grub’s beak had. He couldn’t bear to look at the boys, and he knew that every second he stayed only traumatized them more. Laying the leftovers from his rations on the table, he limped out of the house and walked into the waiting darkness. The exact moment he got far enough away to be out of earshot of the boys crying, he unraveled the sleeve of his jacket from the crutch and ripped it into strips, with which he bound his seeping hand. Once that was done, he threw himself down on the ground and fell almost immediately into a fitful sleep.
Day Two
Myers awoke at dawn, sad to see that he was still in the same miserable world that he’d been in the day before. His joints were so stiff that he worried for a moment that they’d somehow fused during the night. Where the grub had carved up his hand, a throbbing sting had arisen, and nothing he did seemed to dull the pain. Pulling himself into a sitting position, he dug out his lunch rations from his pack and began to eat as fast as his leaden limbs would allow. The entire time, he stared spitefully at his bag. He wished someone from the Army would suddenly pull up in a jeep and tell him that the Martian weapon had been destroyed some other way, so he could repeatedly drive his boot down on the grub’s bottle until he’d reduced the unholy monster to a wet stain. However, like most of the hopes he’d had during the war, it went wholly unfulfilled.
Despite his lack of an appetite, the soldier knew his body would need all the nutrients it could get after losing so much blood, and he made himself finish the whole course of rations. The food wasn’t good by any means, but it didn’t come back up, so he considered the meal a success. After he’d buried the empty boxes and tins, he gathered his things and set off. Considering what he’d seen the larva do the previous night, he hung the satchel from the top his crutch rather than have it spend another minute against his body. He figured if the beast got lose again, it would maybe buy him a couple of seconds to get clear of it. It was better than nothing.
As Myers shambled on, he noted the dearth of livestock in the fields with a newfound anxiety, even though their absence was consistent with what he’d found during the first leg of his mission. At the time, he’d been so secure in the belief that the farm would provide for the slug’s needs, he hadn’t thought twice about the empty pastures. However, there weren’t any more settlements between him and the warehouse that held the invader’s canon. That meant he would be entirely dependent on the countryside to supply the beast’s meals over the next two days. And should the protracted scarcity of animals fail to reveal itself as an anomaly with a quick and lasting about-face, the soldier knew that it would be him serving as the awful creature’s supper that night.
Eager to avoid another run in with the treacherous beast, Myers unblinkingly scoured the orchards and meadows for any sign of movement, but he found only desolation. A yoke of fear bore down on his shoulders, its weight increasing with every unsuccessful second of his anxious search. Soon enough, the sight of something as small and insignificant as a group of leaves shaking in the wind or a shadow shifting as a cloud passed in front of the sun was enough to make him whip his head in its direction and hold his breath. An hour later, his apprehension was carried to a new height by the sudden realization that even the birds had vanished, the disappearance of their chirping leaving the pastures eerily quiet. Feeling as if he might be suffocated beneath the weight of his disquiet, he considered abandoning the beast or shooting it with his pistol. It was then, after all of his other ordeals, that Myers was nearly driven mad: seemingly in response to his yearning to be rid of the slug, a single, chiding tap came from his satchel.
No longer thinking of his mission, he dredged his mind for some resolution. In a burst of inspired mania, he remembered there was a creek that ran northwest of his location. Though out of his way, it was the only source of water for dozens of miles around. Knowing that any thirsty animals in the vicinity would have to stop there to drink, he instantly altered his course and headed toward the brook at a clip that was highly precarious, given the condition of his ankle. Regardless, the only thing Myers could feel was the imaginary sensation of the slug crawling across his body and tunneling through his flesh. Too engrossed in his efforts to keep that nightmare from becoming a reality, he didn’t even look up on the two occasions when a Martian ship passed over his head. As far as he was concerned, the invaders were the least pressing of his current worries.
When he finally reached the stream, he let out a sigh of elation and immediately began to trace the thin waterway’s bank. Expecting that the larva wouldn’t begin its relentless knocking until around the same time in the afternoon as it had on the first day, Myers was jolted when the rapping started up almost as soon as the sun had climbed directly overhead. No less effective than a coachman’s whip, the distressing sound kept the soldier hobbling along even as fatigue and hunger overtook him. For a brief moment, he considered wolfing down some of his dinner rations and taking a sip from his canteen while he walked. However, he couldn’t yet bring himself to stick his hand back into the satchel where the ravenous creature lurked.
Focused myopically on the creek’s banks, the soldier’s spirit broke a little bit at a time with each hoof track that turned out to be a mud-covered leaf or trick of the shadows. After some inestimable time, he became vaguely aware that the sun had changed position, and he cast his eyes upward to find that it had begun to slide into the final quadrant of the sky. He tottered as he realized that several hours had somehow passed without him knowing. And still, he was no closer to catching the monster something to eat.
Whether reacting to the cessation of their search or inexplicably divining the soldier’s despair, the maggot began to goad its transporter with increasing frequency, its provocations coming in angry, staccato bursts. Despondent, the soldier hunched his shoulders and lurched onward. He became obsessed with listening for the sound of the larva escaping, so much so that he almost didn’t recognize a white blob on the edge of his perception as a sheep until he’d covered half the distance to it. His legs locking, he stared in disbelief at the dirty animal as it lapped from the brook, oblivious to his presence. Afraid that the larva’s rapping would frighten the sheep, Myers fumbled to remove his pistol from the satchel. The gun’s rough grip sent waves of pain flooding through his mangled palm. Ignoring the hurt, he hurriedly tried to line up the sheep in the pistol’s sights, but he couldn’t seem to steady his hand.
All of a sudden, the animal looked up sharply. Myers’s heart sank, certain that he’d been spotted. The sheep’s eyes were aimed in another direction, however, its attention rapt. Whatever the cause of the ewe’s wariness, the soldier was loath to give it a chance to bolt. He aimed his shaking gun at its front leg, knowing that if he could wound it badly enough, it would immediately go into shock, and he wouldn’t have any trouble getting to it before it died. The fact that the sheep clearly wouldn’t have enough blood to sate the grub was irrelevant to the soldier. He’d deal with what he had now, and worry about the rest afterwards.
Myers held his breath and diverted his remaining strength into his right arm. His finger eased the trigger back, and the gun barked in his hand. A burst of red dyed the sheep’s side. With a terrified shriek, it turned and ran. Myers’s first instinct was to shoot it again, but he couldn’t risk killing it. Instead, he let out a curse and stumbled after the fleeing animal. Expanding its lead, the ewe disappeared over a hill, leaving the soldier to track it by the trail of gore that spilled from its wound. His breathing ragged, he limped up the rise, worried that the sheep would be gone by the time he reached the top. What he found, however, was his prey panting on the ground, a matter of yards away.
Reinvigorated by his good fortune, Myers shuffled over to the ewe and knelt at its side. As the soldier removed the bottle from his satchel, the grub pounded the plug off its crown and pounced onto the sheep’s neck. Shredding wool and flesh alike, it bored into the center of the animal’
s body and stilled its heart. The gruesome scene notwithstanding, Myers was about to allow himself a moment of much-needed rest when he heard a low growl over the sound of the beast’s excited sucking. He craned his neck to the side with excruciating slowness, his mind rebelling against what he found: a handful of yards away, a lion crouched low to the ground, clearly about to attack. It was scarred and lean, and Myers guessed that it had escaped from the Paris zoo during the bombings. Most likely, it had been feeding off livestock ever since, but it would have recently run into the same problem as the soldier. The worn man’s empathy on that point did not stop him from surreptitiously raising the gun in his hand. Almost as if being sporting, the big cat restrained itself until the moment the pistol’s barrel leveled off, and then it surged forward with a roar. Myers jerked the trigger as fast as he could, wondering if he was already too late. Two shots rang out in quick succession, followed by a silence so thick it seemed as if the world had stopped turning and the winds gone to ground.
Day Three
Myers was brought around by the sound of a broken stopwatch stuttering inconsistently over every second it counted. Disorientated, he sluggishly opened his eyes and realized that he’d passed out on his feet. The night was dense and black, its unquestionable dominion heralding either that the sun had been in full retreat for several hours or that its inevitable return had only just begun. Half a mile away, its bulk lit up by raised floodlights, the soldier could see the warehouse that protected the Martian weapon. A high chain-link fence topped with curling razor-wire marked off a sizable plot of land around the depot. At each corner of the enclosure, a guard tower stood on latticed supports. Inside the elevated boxes, the silhouettes of armed Nazis were visible behind cyclopic searchlights, whose bright beams roved back and forth across the meadows outside the compound. Set up to accommodate one vehicle at a time, a checkpoint manned by two armed guards in black pea coats and helmets protected a gap in the center of the fence’s southwest side, which was the solitary means of access to the warehouse.
As Myers’s head cleared, he tried to recall how he had arrived at the warehouse. However, all he could piece together were disjointed snippets. He remembered that he had stopped the lion, but that it had managed to rake him once across the stomach before it fell. The bloody tears across his shirt and the burning wounds beneath them were proof enough of that. Afterwards, with daylight fading fast, he’d dressed his wounds as well as he could. At the same time, the larva had poked its beak out of the sheep’s deflated side, and sensing another source of nourishment nearby, it had dug into the barely breathing cat. The second the monster was finished, Myers had crammed it back into its glass cell and loaded the container into his satchel. He’d wasted a good deal of time finding the grub’s food, and he knew if he didn’t keep going he’d never make it by the end of the third day. The rest of his journey had been a blur of pain and semi-consciousness, as his awareness faded in and out to the sound of the beast’s accelerating rapping. Twilight had given way to night, which in due course ceded its post to dawn. Finally, the afternoon had again fallen to the charge of the eventide that now enveloped him.
Regardless of the miracle that had brought him to the compound, Myers knew he was done for. His guts felt like they might spill out of the gashes in his abdomen with the slightest movement; he couldn’t bend his ankle without a shock of pain turning his entire body rigid; a putrid stench had begun to waft up from the cuts in his hand; gripped by a relentless fever, he sweated half the time and shivered the other. He was tired enough for seven people.
Ready for it all to end, he lumbered toward the compound’s gate. The moment the guards saw him, one of them picked up a phone and started yapping to whoever was on the other end. As for the second Nazi, he set himself in the middle of the unpaved road leading into the complex and raised his machine gun.
“Halt! This area is restricted!”
“Help!” Myers cried in German, waving his hand and continuing to stagger forward. “For God’s sake, help me!”
“Turn around and go back! You can’t be here!” commanded the guard, his softer tone seemingly revealing a touch of sympathy for what he believed was a fellow countryman.
“It’s the resistance! They’re coming!” the American half-lied.
Having finished his phone call, the other guard hurried over to his compatriot and trained his weapon on Myers, as well.
“What’s going on?” he asked without looking away from the ghastly intruder.
“I think he’s a German. He claims the resistance is coming.”
“Do you hear a ticking?”
The two men’s faces instantly became ashen as they realized Myers was the source of the unsettling sound and what it could mean. Knuckles turning white on their guns’ grips, they refocused the weapons on the shuffling figure.
“Don’t take another step!”
“We’ll fill you full of holes, fool!”
Myers shook his head and tried to placate the Nazis with a conciliatory smile.
“It’s not what you think!” he exclaimed, loosening his satchel from his crutch. “I knew you wouldn’t believe me about the resistance, so I stole some of their things! Here, I’ll show you!”
“Leave the bag alone! I’m not warning you again!” shouted the first guard, his finger tensing on the trigger.
The pack hanging from his fist by a strap, Myers finally stopped walking. He figured he was close enough. Simultaneously, the larva, apparently enraged that they had once again come to a lengthy rest, knocked against the bottle with renewed vigor. The sound of tinkling cracks spreading across the jar’s surface emanated from the bag, followed immediately by the din of shattering glass. The satchel bucked and shifted as the unrestrained monster wormed its way to the side of the cloth container and began to rip at its flank. Bewildered, the guards stared at the flayed pack with open mouths and beady eyes.
“Goodbye!” Myers said with a smile. He tossed the bag at the guards’ feet.
More concerned with their own safety than the soldier’s disobedience, the Nazis jumped backwards and nervously aimed their guns at the emerging grotesquerie. As they saw how small the strange-looking beast was, however, their alarm seemed to dissipate, and they leaned closer to try to get a better view of it. Without hesitation, the larva swept toward the first guard, its disturbingly fast undulations mirroring those of a sidewinder. Flinging itself upward, the grub struck the backpedaling Nazi in the left thigh and dug in with surprising ease. A seemingly endless shriek of pain and fright issuing from his throat, the guard let go of his gun and tried to pull the grub out of his leg by latching onto its exposed rear. Stronger than it appeared, the monster ignored the guard’s efforts and twisted deeper and deeper, eventually disappearing into the German’s body.
Its movements visible as a shifting lump beneath its victim’s clothes, the beast rapidly burrowed up the Nazi’s leg. Unable to do anything else, the horrified guard beat at the swell with both fists as it traveled over his hip and into his stomach. Then, pounding three times against his sternum, his eyes rolled back in his head, and with a strangled gurgle, he died. The second guard watched helplessly as his comrade dropped to the ground in a lifeless heap, the skin around the dead man’s face and limbs already starting to collapse, thanks to the grub’s vigorous feasting. Realizing the fallen German was beyond his help, the second guard faced Myers shakily, aimed his gun at him, and rattled off several shots.
Myers felt the first bullet burn its way through his chest, but none of the others. His aches and pains receding like floodwater after a terrible storm, he fell to his knees and then flopped forward onto his stomach. Unable to breathe due to his perforated lungs, he noiselessly mouthed his wife’s name. A dreamy smile fluttering across his parched lips, he closed his eyes and knew no more.
Behind the Nazi that had shot Myers, a contingent of Martian and human soldiers approached, brandishing both conventional and alien weapons. As the lead Martian opened his mouth to question the stu
nned guard, the corpse of the dead sentry begin to jerk as if it were still alive and being ravaged by electricity. The entire mob retreated a few steps, watching in confusion as the carcass’s abdomen became round and distended. Suddenly, the bulge burst open in a hail of bloodless entrails and chips of bone. A geyser of blotchy, pink and gray material erupted hundreds of feet into the air, and then froze. In the shadow of the vile tower, the witnesses muttered and stared in uneasy wonder. Defying explanation, the base of the fleshy protrusion began to billow outward and upward, as if being filled from within by some forceful jet of liquid. Its rapidly expanding mass quickly buried the corpse from which it had originated and drove the spectators around it to move farther away. When the tower’s diameter and height had grown to twice that of a grain silo, there was a wet peeling sound and five tendrils separated themselves from its sides. Anchored to the projection’s foundation, the gigantic tentacles descended to the ground and began to writhe. Simultaneously, red and blue veins sprouted just beneath the surface of the tower’s skin. At last, a thousand slits of every size opened up along the mass’s exterior and filled with uneven, blocky teeth.