The Spaces in Between

by Chase Henderson

  But this logo was just adopted by the Atlantean military ten weeks ago. This replaced their old logo, which was simply a horse with an erect phallus. Cameron dropped the scrap and pressed his face against the grate to get a better look at the body. More of the human bite marks covered the bones. A few rotten teeth were sprinkled around the corpse for good measure. The skull was collapsed and hollow.

  He violently fought the urge to throw up again. Then bolted towards the cargo bay again, but one big toe caught in the grating. Fire rose from his ankle and he hit the ground with an audible yelp. His helmet scattered across the walkway from him. His breathing ceased and his ears perked to catch any stray noises.

  Seconds later moaning came from down the corridor. More calls came back like a wolf howling to the rest of the pack. Cameron scrambled for his helmet, but his ankle felt like it exploded when it put weight on it. He could see the silhouettes of the approaching menace on the corridor walls. He wasted a moment watching them wobble and shuffle. He crawled after his helmet and snatched it up.

  Rotting and fetid men shuffled towards him, screaming the whole time. Dozens of them poured in from both ends of the corridor. Cameron scrambled towards the cargo bay door with his ankle screaming at him worse than the walking dead. He stumbled before the door, and the zombies were upon him.

  Cameron turned around and a wicked grin filled his face. He had always wanted a zombie horde at his command. He put both of his hands into the air, concentrated on his third eye, and reached out to the zombies. They stopped in their tracks. Cameron was taken back when he saw that they were struggling against his will. He fought harder, but there was still a spark in them that prevented complete domination.

  They still had their souls.

  “Who?” Cameron said. “Who did this to you?”

  One of the zombies with the least decay made an indignant expression, but relented. “We carried…a new bioweapon from HQ…in cargo bay two…somehow it leaked…it made us hungry….oh God…so…hungry…it consumed us…drove us mad…we tore apart the cargo bays looking for food…but nothing could stay down…”

  “After a week we began….to eat each other….” Another zombie added. “For God sakes their…whole families….we just didn’t care anymore…we want to die…can’t die…won’t let us die….”

  “Can you all talk?” Cameron did not want to have this conversation right now, and he shared his living space with a dead man.

  “At times it’s like watching a movie…just sit back while you’re body does horrible things…we feed then have clarity…can keep the ship in repair…to call more food…” Without realizing it one of the zombies broke free of Cameron’s control to pick up a chunk of meat that fell from a gaping wound in his stomach and tossed it back in his mouth. Cameron was apprehensive at best about this.

  “Cam! The tablets are in cargo bay two, but there is a whole zombie den there. We need to re-group….oh I see you’ve already given away our position.” Ryoma scowled while hanging in the middle of the air.

  Cameron was still parked on his rear end. “Yeah, I’m going to need your help on this buddy.” Cameron traced the Mehmet talisman in the air before Ryoma, but he sidestepped it.

  “Fuck you!” Ryoma shouted, but his George Takei accent dissolved into “Fyukku yuu!”

  Cameron shakingly propped himself up on his good leg. “If you do it then maybe I’ve got enough bullets left for them all.” Cameron grabbed Ryoma by his topknot and started shoving the ghost into his body. This would have been a hilarious sight if not for the mass of shambling dead coming towards them in super slow motion.

  “Why don’t you just go Astral?” Ryoma protested. He took control of Cameron’s arm for a moment to stuff Cameron’s head back into his helmet. “There ready to ikimasu!” Cameron ignored Ryoma and finished stuffing him in. Cameron’s arm sparked a life of its own and started plugging railgun bolts into the faces of the on coming zombie menace. Each shot blew out the back of heads each time Ryoma pulled the trigger with Cameron’s hand. They barely flinched.

  Once again Cameron found himself in one of the few moments that his lifetime of watching bad horror movies did not prepare him. He tried completely shredding one of the corpses in a hail of railgun bolts, but it just kept shambling forward. An empty clip hit the floor and shaky hands slid another in. Two more bolts blasted through the crowd at point blank range and a deft sword cut eviscerated another.

  Twenty living corpses piled on Cameron. Claws slashed against his suit and several gnashed out their teeth. Would hope would rotting teeth have against a suit desgined to endure the rigors of space travel. Unfortunately, they were clever corpses. The cutlass and railgun were wretched out of Cameron’s hands. The glass covering his face spider webbed after two railgun bolts bounced off it.

  Sparks flew as another applied the cutlass to the back of Cameron’s helmet. This was an atomic cutlass. When held they vibrate at such speeds that they could slice through an atom or so the legend goes. It never needed sharpening because friction did all the work. It would only take seconds to make it through to the skull.

  He grimaced when his body swept his bad leg under the zombies to free his hand. He overrode Ryoma’s control of his arm who wanted to snatch the railgun up again. Cameron pulled the flintlock pistol out of his belt and pointed it at the closest wall. The way Cameron handled a gun you really wouldn’t want to call it aiming. It was far less sophisticated than that. He pulled the trigger.

  The Soulforge watched as the bottom ring of Fillipre exploded. Cameron and the zombies were sucked out into the black. The Byakhee were both delighted and confused at the sudden change in activity today. First two spirits fought their way through them, and then there was an explosion killing over a hundred of them. The Byakhee screeched a cry that could only be heard on the Astral and began shredding the floating corpses with talon and tooth.

  Cameron’s ship sprung to life and swooped in with a pair of mechanical arms to pull apart any Byakhee in its way. Cameron watched the expression of pain and horror on the zombies’ faces while Soulforge whisked him away. Even in the cold of space and with very little of their body intact the zombies were alive and feeling every moment of it.

  5

  Within seconds the bridge of Soulforge was filled with wormwood incense. Cameron walked across the squishy floor with a black mirror tucked under his armpit. He had reverted his body to earlier that day when his ankle was whole and he still had lunch in his stomach. He plopped himself down in the middle of the room and put the mirror in his lap.

  The imaginary third eye in Cameron’s mind opened and through the mirror saw Fillipre as it was fifty years ago. The crew hustled and bustled about their day-to-day business. Cameron felt queasy about recognizing some of these people as they were in life. During the midday breaks the alarms went off. An emergency was reported in the second cargo bay the same bay that Ryoma told him the tablets were stored.

  Teams of crewmen in biohazard suits were in the room in seconds. There had been a blast in there. The crewmen taking inventory in the crash sustained major injuries, and were rushed to the medical wing. While decontamination routines were run on the room they were in too much of a hurry to decontaminate the victims. The hurt crewmen were quickly stabilized.

  Their injuries were more reminiscent to decomposition than burns, but the crew was ecstatic that they survived. Investigations on the explosion in cargo bay two were ceased. The men would have been released, but they couldn’t keep food down. The hunger was clouding their minds, but the hospital was convinced that the feeding tubes kept them all alive.

  Finally after a week it happened. One of the victim’s brothers visited, and they all attacked him. He was in critical condition and died in the night. The men were locked in a medical brig. The other crew watched in horror at the violence when they tried to eat each other. None of them could keep it down.

  The brother went missing from the morgue before his funeral and more crewmembers started to go missin
g. Eventually the zombies overtook the last five members of the crew. Now without a food supply they became desperate and greatly decayed. When the hunger wasn’t too much they could keep enough clarity to keep the ship’s systems going.

  The Atlantean military kept sending rescue and salvage crews long after the government said they’d stopped. The zombies learned to kill their food first so the disease didn’t spread and left fewer mouths to feed. Many tried to kill themselves, but only succeeded in disfigurement.

  What caused this?

  They did.

  Who?

  A face appeared in the mirror. A gray, teardrop shape with large eyes, only nostrils, and a tiny slit for a mouth. The eyes focused on Cameron and turned black. He kicked the mirror aside and scrambled away.

  It was Lam.

  6

  Over several millennia ago when the Atlanteans were still at war with each other another faction developed a super weapon. A sort of EMP that instead of erasing hard drives wiped minds clean. Society crumbled on that whole Atlantean satellite as all its inhabitants ran on only their savage, animal instincts. The other faction allowed them to destroy themselves for another month before rolling in an army to wipe out what was left.

  The faction forces were destroyed by the mindless. After being stripped of conscious thought they quickly formed a hive mind that wielded incredible psychic power. The mindless did not breed so the hive mind eventually uploaded itself to the Astral. Over the centuries this hive mind became conscious and meddlesome.

  The mind felt the need to police the cosmos and would intervene in even some of the most mundane activities. It acted as a spiritual force on the Astral, but could take any physical shape when needed. Their favorite is the grey alien that so many Earthlings have described. John Keel dubbed them Ultraterrestrials. However, they told Aleister Crowley their real name - Lam. Both soon gained the hive mind’s ire.

  They do not travel to other planets, in fact, are already there. They have been known to take the shape of flying saucers to confuse Earthlings. In fact Earth hasn’t been visited by an actual alien species for thousands of years since the Atlantis and Lemurian colonies. Lam has been interested in Earth since the 70’s shortly after L Ron Hubbard’s botched attempts to mimic the works of Aleister Crowley.

  Lam had power that rivaled the Old Ones and seemed to want to keep the tablets away from their ancestors. Cameron could only assume that they would oppose him too. He wiped the sweat from his forehead with the end of his sleeve and put out all the incense sticks with damp fingers.

  Cameron quickly replaced the weapons on his belt and snapped on a new helmet. He sat in the middle of the floor, opened his third eye, and concentrated on vibrating. To the very atoms he shook harder and harder until the spiritual film that separates worlds finally burst to grant him entry. On the Astral the landscape was the same, but had a very dreamy quality to it.

  He visualized an ornate redwood door. He felt the grain of it under his fingertips. He could smell the finishing on the wood. He reached for the doorknob and grabbed it. He opened his eyes and the door was there. Cameron turned the knob and stepped through. He now found himself standing in a meadow.

  It was a beautiful flowered meadow with dappled sunlight filtering through the giant redwood standing in the middle. Leaning against the tree was the white outline of a man standing roughly the same height as Cameron. The man called himself Noremac to which Cameron always rolled his eyes, but he was a competent guide to Cameron on these trips to the other side. Cameron was convinced that Noremac was his higher self. Noremac raised a pure white arm and waved to Cameron.

  “I need to get to the Underworld,” Cameron said. Noremac nodded and made a “right this way” gesture towards a cave at the base of the tree. Cameron ducked under a root to crawl after Noremac. After what seemed an eternity of crawling, the pitch-black tunnels lead to an opening. On the other side was Fae where lied the gates to the Underworld.

  The path through Fae was a windy one that twists and turned suddenly like a bronco trying to buck a rider. Wandering off the path in Fae was dangerous to a mortal since the road offered protection from the denizens who were not the small winged creatures of Disney mythos. The creatures that lived by the Fae roadside were the most malicious, but Cameron was sure he was packing enough heat to cut a path of fire right through the country. But persistence pays off in Fae, because all the roads lead to the same place – where you’re headed.

  And where Cameron was headed was the court of Lilith, Queen of the Underworld and keeper of its gates.

  Fae was in perpetual twilight, but had a full moon so bright that you could read by it. This was the best light for Lilith’s complexion. The millennia of living in the Twilight had paled her to snowy white. She was not a native to Fae, but in fact the first woman. She sought sanctuary in Fae after rejecting Adam and hence God. With a mastery of sorcery and the Tree of Life from eating the Forbidden Fruit she became the Queen of the Underworld.

  “Why Dread Pirate you’ve returned in a most insulting fashion,” Lilith said from her open-air throne. “Bearing cold iron and in that filthy flesh.” Her court of assorted Faeries, Hobgoblins, Gnomes, and Elves cowered about their bon fires where they eternally reveled in the Queen’s honor.

  “I’m afraid I’ve come here for business not pleasure this time,” Cameron said, “but it’s not with you. I just need you to open the gates. There is a disease spirit I need to talk with in there.” Cameron concentrated with all his might to maintain eye contact and keep his eyes from wondering to her cleavage blanketed in hair as black as space. It went beyond ample to the realms of supra-ample threatening to break out of her bodices to fly into orbit.

  “I think I know of the disease you speak. He’s running amok in my ex-husband’s realm so I don’t see why I ought to allow you to stop it. Name a price.”

  Some of the Fae a few centuries younger screamed when Cameron drew his flintlock pistol from his belt. “For opening the gate I won’t shoot off one of your tits.”

  “Oh, you old romantic.” Lilith grinned maliciously. “You certainly know how to talk to a woman.”

  “I thought you dropped that title centuries ago.” Cameron pulled back the hammer on his flintlock. “I’m a horrible shot, but there’s not much aiming I’d have to do here.” Lilith smirked and leaned forward with an eerie grace. The hammer fell.

  Fae hit the ground all around them. There was screaming and pandemonium. But the only a soft click ran through the air. Lilith threw her head back and her chest heaved in her roaring laughter. “I’ll open it. You’ve always known how to make me laugh, Dread Pirate, and that’s more than I can say for any other man.” She recomposed herself. “I need to warn you that thing is not part of Creation. Normal means will not bind it. You know, Cameron, you could stop this inane quest and stay with me forever. I’ll tell you how to keep your powers.”

  “I might be a lot of things, but not a sell-out.”

  As he passed through the wrought iron gates Cameron replaced the shell in his flintlock muttering something about duds. Noremac guided him through the Underworld, but it wasn’t very hard for Cameron to find Fillipre’s disease on his own. Its trail was marked with the path of dead flora and fauna on the borders of the realms of the Death Gods. They finally pinned it on the banks of the river Styx where the spirit was ambushing souls seeking passage there along with their spirit guides.

  The river divided Adam’s kingdom from the Necropolis, or Land of the Dead, or Limbo, or Summerlands, or Hel (but not Hell), or whatever the culture calls it. It wasn’t Heaven, but it certainly wasn’t bad. It was more like a locker room where souls could wash up before their next life. To gain entry would require passing the trials of whatever Death God, and it wasn’t really that hard. Those who were intentionally cruel were cast into Hell for a while to cool off, but that’s for another time.

  The creature thrashed on the banks, screaming in indecipherable tongues, and truly was beyond description. Or more acc
urate would not keep a shape long enough to be described. In one moment it could be a writhing mass of tentacles and then the next a writhing mass of puppies. The only real repeating features were the writhing and the mass.

  It turned and screamed something that could not be comprehended by human ears and lashed at Cameron with its tentacles. He snatched the tentacles flying at him and struck the spirit at the highest concentration of tentacles. It was launched a few feet away from him - aside from having to wear the space suit there were huge advantages to being a living human in the spirit realms.

  A chain materialized in Cameron’s hands and pierced the spirit through the center. He recited the words of power and binding over the spirit. It thrashed and changed shape to an immense primordial lobster. The shell and body were made of a permeable jelly, but the claws felt like rocks crushing down upon Cameron.

  If Cameron and his armor weren’t a hundred-fold stronger in the spiritual realms it might have actually hurt. Cameron slipped the flintlock out of his belt. Each immense shell it fired contained a pocket dimension holding a droplet of antimatter. When Cameron pulls the trigger the antimatter annihilates. It’s like watching an H-bomb going through a funnel.

  Cameron brushed himself off and made a “do you want to help me with this gesture” at Nomerac. He seemed disinterested. Cameron picked up the charred spirit and then threw it over his shoulder.

  “At least take me to Adam’s palace.”

  7

  The abandoned looking castle in the most isolated location of Adam’s realm was his own. Unlike Lilith he was completely disinterested in his kingdom. Adam had absolutely no intentions of ever holding court with the various nature spirits and Pagan gods that inhabited his realm. He used his mastery of the Arts Unseen bestowed on him by the Forbidden Fruit in order to gain power in hopes of impressing God. Over the millennia Adam grew immortal and incorporeal so he descended to the Underworld.