PATCHER

by Martin Kee

  The urine is highly acidic, he’s learned and his host asks him to repair the fence almost weekly because the animals are so prone to breaking the thin wood. He’d like to suggest something more as a material, but language is still a huge barrier. A section of the fence has warped inward and he walks the perimeter, kicking it lightly to see where the weak points are as the antelopes grunt and follow him.

  His foot goes through a plank, crunching and falling off at the bottom. He walks across to a pile of scrap, grabs another board, replaces it. Looks at the stubborn little animals as they stare back.

  “This is why we can’t have nice things,” he says, reaching over the fence. He stops. Something catches his attention, another antelope-thing. It stands about fifty meters away, grazing there, oblivious to him. Kendal sighs.

  He finds another broken patch, behind some tall weeds, just big enough for an antelope to wriggle through. In fact, he’s surprised more of them haven’t gotten out, but then they aren’t all that bright. After he hammers the new plank in place he walks out and around to where the rogue animal watches him from a distance.

  “Okay, kiddo,” he says. “I bet it’s nice and all out here, but I gotta get you back inside.”

  Chewing, the animal takes a few steps away, keeping a safe twenty meters or so between them.

  “Oh come on,” Kendal says. He pants as he takes a few more steps. “This is silly. You need to go back in there. There’s crap out here that will eat you for dinner… I mean, I will probably eat you for dinner sooner or later, but that’s beside the point. You need to be in here where it’s safe.”

  The animal, listening to him, stays still as he approaches. Kendal tries to herd the animal, moving along side it, trying to apply pressure towards the fence, but every time he does, the creature does a little dance and moves further away.

  “Fine. You know what? Just go. Shoo! Go get yourself killed. I’ve got other problems to worry about.”

  The animal utters a curious grunt between chews, blinking with four mournful brown eyes. The pupils are goat-like, horizontal. Kendal sits down, catching his breath.

  “You know, this was all a mistake right? I was supposed to be on some other planet by now. Certainly not here. You have your family, right over there in that yard. You’ve got your brothers and sisters and your mom and dad. And here you are, out in the middle of nowhere, refusing to go home. At least you have a home to go to.”

  He stands, walks over to the animal again. “Come on, let’s go.”

  He could probably pick the stubborn, goat-sized animal up if it really came down to it, but the animals have some small tusks just inside their lips. He’s caught the males at times sparring with them, leaving some nasty cuts along their scaled hides. He doesn’t want to see what sort of damage they could do to him, considering his skin would be about as effective as tissue paper in protecting him. Plus, even with the cloud cover, he can tell it’s getting dark.

  “Dammit,” he says. “Let’s just go. You and me. Come on.”

  The animal grunts again, ears back. Stubborn asshole.

  “Okay fine,” Kendal says. “I didn’t want to have to do this but you’ve given me no choice.”

  He knows there’s some rope in the barn, so he turns and leaves, retrieving it. The antelope is still there, watching him when he returns, chewing on a stalk.

  “Okay, you little jerk. I lived on a ranch a lot like this one. You think you know how to outsmart a lasso?”

  The antelope stares at him dumbly as Kendal fashions the cinch in the rope. The rope isn’t made for his hands. It’s too thin, but he thinks he can at least get the noose around the animal’s neck. He looks up, sighs. Where did the animal go?

  To his dismay, the antelope has wandered even closer to the tree line, grazing against the weird parasitic bamboo. He knows things live there in that forest, things that will make short work of the poor dumb creature.

  The antelope watches him with placid eyes as he approaches, arm out, dangling the lasso in one hand. “Easy does it,” he says. “Let’s make this easy. What do ya say?”

  Kendal takes a step. A branch cracks.

  Behind him he hears a whistle, his name. The antelope hears the call as well, ears up, tail alert, it dodges away from him, fleeing into the thick forest.

  “Shit.”

  Behind him he hears his name being called again and again.

  Her fault. Not his. But he’s past the point of no return now. He’ll probably find the creature just on the other side of the tree line, watching him from the shadows with those big dumb eyes, and if he can just catch up, he’ll be able to toss the loop around its long, stupid neck and make it back before predators start coming out.

  Another hour’s work is all. He’ll be back before dinner, he tells himself, then vanishes into the forest.

  Chapter 23

  CHAZ SCRATCHES his beard as the group moves past, the same tool-using, bird-chirping ones that killed Val. They move in some sort of caravan, traveling along what he guesses to be a trade path of some sort. They move single file, their backs covered in beads and bits of iridescent shells and insect parts. Extra limbs hang from some of the monsters, sewn with coarse thread, making them look like ragdolls on stilts. He’s too far up in the ridge for the travelers to see him as they pass by beneath, leading small pack animals burdened with bags and trellises.

  It’s been a month and he still finds himself surprised each and every time he comes across the strange animals.

  He dreads these moments.

  The implant, seeing new shapes and unfamiliar with the inconsistent patterns of strange animals—why is it they never look the same?—chirps in his skull, shrieking when it can’t find the dead server. Chaz clenches his teeth, closes his eyes, presses a fist to his temple.

  He’s been paralyzed before. It almost cost him his life a week ago, when his implant thought one of the aliens was a completely new species. It shrieked in his mind: NEW SPECIES DISCOVERED. REPORT FINDINGS TO SERVER. SERVER NOT FOUND. NEW SPECIES. PATENT SIGNATURE AND FILING REQUIRED. SERVER CONNECT FAILED. He’d only barely managed to climb into a small cave, turning to see a pack of the irregular, mismatched aliens standing around the spot he’d just been.

  Here though, he should be safe. Even as his implant barks and begs for him to file his quarterly report, Chaz knows he’s hidden as the caravan of nightmare animals parade past a hundred feet below.

  Stomach pangs make him double over as he starts to imagine one of those pack animals, no bigger than a goat, roasting over a spit. Saliva flows and he inadvertently wipes his mouth with a dirty sleeve.

  Little mint jelly, side of vegetables, and you’re talking about a feast for the night.

  He wonders if they’d know. Maybe accidents happen all the time along these canyon roads. Maybe a stray boulder comes crashing down, knocks out one of their small mules and they just have to leave it. Then he swoops in and pulls it away. It wouldn’t be hard to do. Timing would be key—

  His stomach knots again and he closes his eyes. Rations ran out a few days ago, and while he’s been able to safely test a few of the indigenous plants, he knows it’s not enough. A man needs protein to live, and who knows what kinds of parasites he’s picked up from the leaves and insects he’s scavenged from the meager land here.

  He waits, ignoring the gnawing vacancy in his gut. The last group moves by in the waning light and Chaz looks around for a boulder. Below him he hears the chatter and birdsong as they march. No time now.

  The last of them move past into the canyon as he feels around for something heavy, his hand only coming away with sand and dirt.

  Too slow, Chaz. Too slow and now you’re gonna starve because you didn’t plan ahead.

  But really, what was he supposed to expect? He didn’t plan to come across a group of them. Hell, even the cat things had been avoiding him now that he’d eaten a few. He wasn’t even looking for this little caravan and now it’s gone and he slinks back away from the ridge.


  His shaking hand goes to his face, pinching the bridge of his nose as a sob gurgles up from his throat.

  Birdsong.

  Chaz freezes, afraid to open his eyes, afraid to look. The light has already faded and he’s out in the open now. Sitting duck. He wouldn’t be able to outrun them, not in his condition.

  We had a good run, buddy, he thinks as he looks up and sees the lone figure staring at him.

  At first he thinks it’s some sort of trap, the implant screeching in his head, his stomach cramping with hunger. He’s clearly missed something. A single solitary creature stands in front of him, but there have to be more. Chaz looks to the left and right, but it’s just this one.

  And it doesn’t seem afraid at all, staring at him, calling in a low chirp, the same little ten note song over and over. Chaz has no idea what it wants.

  Then it dawns on him. It’s trying to coax him the way a person might try and tempt a stray dog. Soft tones. Come on boy. It’s okay. Nobody’s going to hurt you. It approaches, one arm out. This creature is smaller than the others, maybe a juvenile. So brave.

  He waits, keeping his posture small, curled, knees on chest. Waiting.

  It stops, standing over him, no bigger than a toddler.

  Chaz leaps.

  In one lunge, he overwhelms the ragdoll. It lets out a shrill call as he lifts the ragdoll’s chin and skull, twists, feels something snap. The body goes limp and Chaz carries it back away from the ledge, back into the bushes and rocks where nobody can find him.

  It’s an odd mix of starvation and curiosity, mixed with revulsion. Nothing about the animal seems right. Animals grow a certain way, he knows. They look proportional. They look like the parts are all connected, but not these. Arms, legs, neck, all seem strangely disjointed, unrelated, all stemming from that central, hard, shell-like panel on the back. Though he’s hungry, Chaz can’t hold back his curiosity.

  The necropsy is quick, a cut here, a cut there. The skin comes away easily in swathes, exposing the muscles and meat beneath. He frowns.

  For starters, there’s no definable skeletal structure, the bones—if you can call them that—growing outward from a central pivot beneath that soft shell on its back. This one has only two arms. On other ragdolls, he’s counted three, seen some with as many as seven or eight. At first, he thought they were all different species. But this is the first he’s seen up close.

  “Up close and very personal,” he mutters, as he sheers away pale pink muscle from bone.

  The bone is soft, almost like shark cartilage, and he guesses they don’t need strong bones being as small as they are. What’s troubling is the way the limbs have all grown outward, like tumors, just randomly sprouting in different places. Reminds him of when he was a kid. There was this boy down the street named Brad or Chad or something he can’t remember. Always used to steal his sister’s dolls and mutilate them, cut them up, glue them back together in sometimes perverse ways.

  “You guys are a bunch of little plastic surgeons aren’t you?” he mutters under his breath.

  He traces a finger around the joints where the limbs are attached. The skeleton grows outward to meet the radial limb, which is crazy, counterintuitive to everything he knows about biology. Obscene.

  As he opens the abdomen, the thing spasms, twitching and letting out a shrill sound, not just a death rattle, but a full-on cry. Implant signals flash in his brain, recording the new sound, never heard before by human ears. It’s like someone just shoved a hot iron into his ears.

  “Jesus!” Chaz says. He drops his skinning knife and covers the shrieking mouth. He thought he’d snapped its neck. Clearly he hadn’t. A small spindly hand reaches up, presses against his face as eyes the size of raisins stare up at him so wide he can see whites. “Shit. Shit. Shit.”

  He presses his hand down hard on the face, shoving it into the dirt. If that sound keeps up, more are bound to hear. He fumbles for the knife and feels the ragdoll try and wriggle from underneath his other hand. Goddam they’re slippery. The creature bends, twisting its neck, slipping away just as he grips the knife. Organs fall out, gray and red and green, dragging on the ground.

  Chaz scrambles for the knife, then turns, seeing the animal crawl away, pulling itself along the sandy ground with a single arms. His fingers close around the knife, swing it around in a wide arc and down. The blade pierces the thick shell splitting it, pinning the creature to the sand. The ragdoll collapses. A rattling sigh escapes from the creature , vibrates up through the blade. Stillness. He waits, mouth open, panting, eyes wide.

  Then it lurches. Again. Making that rattling cry, reaching with one arm, stubbornly refusing to lay there and die, hauling itself along the dirt, leaving a trail of liquid and urine.

  “Fuck you!” he screams. “Stay dead, you fuck!” and twists the knife, pulling down, tearing an incision down the things soft back. The shell splits like fine leather and he sees more of the inner workings, the irregular joints and organs constricting. He stabs again, and again, driving the knife home until the shrieks stop, until the thing is nothing more than a tattered pile of meat on the ground. And even that moves still, the individual parts reaching for one another, trying to mend, trying to heal.

  There’s no killing these things, he thinks, watching with a slow fascinated horror as the skin begins to crust over, the residue bubbling up out of the wounds. You kill them and they heal all over again. No wonder they can just stick arms on one another.

  He feels for his bag, his hand rummaging blindly as the creature starts to crawl again, almost mechanically, as if it’s forgotten he’s even there.

  Chaz pulls out the gun. If this doesn’t do it, he doesn’t know what will.

  He cranks the power to high with a flip of his thumb, squeezes the trigger. The gun hums to life, scorching heat from invisible energy, the killing energy of stars gone supernova. White flame erupts from the animals torso, billowing black smoke, lighting the inside of Chaz’s small cave, painting the walls with fire and pain as the creature writhes, flailing in the flames. There’s no wound now, no cries except for the odd squeal of escaping gasses.

  Then it lies still, a charred mass.

  Eyes wide, Chaz keeps the gun pointed at it, no longer caring if there is any charge left. His the barrel shakes and he realizes that he hasn’t blinked. It’s going to move again. Going to get up and jump at me, latch onto my face. He waits for what feels like minutes, as steam and smoke fills the small cave. The sound of cooling fluids, the crackle of settling flesh. The scent hits his nostrils.

  The body smells like meat. It reminds Chaz of bacon. He can no longer wait, crawling forward on his hands and knees, taking the knife and slicing a strip from the cooked body.

  It tastes better than rations.

  Chapter 24

  “I’M SURE it’s nothing,” Veerh says. He rests his bulk on the stool by the examining table as Bex stares out the window. “For all you know he just went for a walk, went to mark his territory… or whatever it is he does.”

  He’s trying to be comforting, and she seems to appreciate it. She gives him a little nod.

  Since she moved here, banging on his gates, wounded and combative, Veerh finds himself surprised now at her sheer stubbornness. Most people would have moved on, driven away by the cold aloofness of the townies here. Even now, Veerh thinks he might be one of the only friends she’s had, him and Bindo and Scoop. But that’s it. Outside the doors, out on the street, few people talk to her. Most people only come in when they have an injury or something that needs grafting. Her presence is seen by the residents as a necessary evil. They stand silently as she does her work, pay her, and leave without a single word of kindness or conversation. Then he hears them talk. Snide, cruel comments.

  And now, with the giant gone, along with one of the taalbstriders, Bex has been without a helper for days. Nobody but Veerh had assisted her to mend that fence, and by the time they were done, it was too dark and too risky to look for the giant. Bad timing all around, as she pu
t it.

  Veerh suspected it was more than bad timing. But again, nothing seemed to derail Bex. Even now, she glances out the window expectantly as she preps her clinic, does the inventory. He watches her work and worry.

  “It’s just not like him.” She turns away from the morning light spilling in through the window, her eyes small and red-lined with worry and fatigue.

  Veerh shifts in his seat, resting a huge knotted arm on the table. It bulges with spikes and bone blades, armored, gleaming in the morning light. He folds in one of his protruding claws, a courtesy. When you’re a living weapon, it’s hard not to look threatening.

  “Look,” he says. “Did you notice him acting strangely at all? Did he appear spooked or scared?”

  “How would I know?” she snaps at him.

  “I wouldn’t know either,” he says, ignoring her rudeness. “But I am trying to help.”

  “I know you are… I know and I’m sorry. I’m just so damn tired.” Bex heads into the kitchen without waiting for an answer. “Do you want anything to drink?” She calls out.

  “Tea,” he says. With her out of sight, Veerh scratches at the yellowing patch of skin along his side, a life-saving measure that’s become an unwelcome guest. Foreign skin. Alien skin.

  “I mean, he was acting a little tired, I guess,” she says from around the corner. There’s a hum as she sets the small filament to heat water. “And he kept pointing at the mask.”

  “You mean that umbilical cord?”

  “Yeah, that,” she says, poking her head back out. “I mean, I always assumed it was because Scoop was premature. When Vin and I found him.”

  “I know this story,” Veerh says. “But that doesn’t mean it’s true.”

  “What’s that supposed to mean?” Bex frowns.

  Veerh twists his neck, pointing a head spike her way. “I mean that maybe it isn’t what you think.”

  “What else could it be?” she asks, and places