by submission | Jul 12, 2008 | Story
Author : Jacinta A. Meyers
He had a reputation from the time he brought in his first kill from the lush planet. Walked through the warden’s office lugging the thing in a sack over his shoulder. Everyone involuntarily gasped when they felt the floor shudder, heard the thunder of his steps and looked up.
Before he was a hunter, he had been a builder. You could tell by the enormous honed muscles, his foul speech, his burly way of leaning. He dropped the sack to the floor and leaned over the counter, making it creak with his weight. “Got one,” he said.
“Right,” I said, pulling out a form. “What kind of an entry?”
“Sentient-intelligent.”
Ah. “Weighing some brains today?” My fingers twittered over the keyboard, entering the order. To my right a little door in the wall hissed open, allowing a tray to ease forth with a prepared canister full of preserving fluids. “Why don’t you bring it around.”
He hefted the sack up over the counter. Well, that was one way to do it. I undid the tie. And gasped.
It was the biggest cranium I had ever seen.
My tools were ready. I brought down the hose to suck up the noxious fumes of death while I worked. My hands were deft; sever the head from the body, incision here, incision here, and the skin pulled away clean. Insert the chisel here, between the two primary skull plates. Quick bump and open. Use the tubes to suck up excess fluids, pry away veins and capillaries…
At last, my gloved hands slipped the prize from its nest. I carried the gooey mass to the scales and set it down.
“Bastard. You don’t got the stem!”
“It’s the rules, mister. Stems don’t count toward the final measurement.” I focused hard on the numbers as they slowly stopped moving up.
1,672.12 grams. “A new record,” I breathed. Picking the brain back up, I carefully moved it to the canister and set it down into its new home. I shook my head. “That’ll make some trophy.”
The hunter was still leaning against the counter, picking at his pointy teeth with one large claw. He straightened a little when he saw me take my place again behind the keyboard. “Well?”
“I have confirmed the record. Congratulations,” I said. “Now we just have to finish the forms. Can I see your system license?”
He belched before passing a chip across the counter to me.
“Great.” I cringed and flicked it into the computer drive. “Sentient-intelligent. Specimen, brain. Species, homo sapien. Oh…” I looked up. “Where on Earth did you say you bagged this one, again?”
by submission | Jul 10, 2008 | Story
Author : Asher Wismer
Here’s me, walking through the deserted streets of Chicago. I can see a few ravens pecking at some unidentifiable detritus in the gutter; somewhere, a car alarm is weeping to the night sky, and I can still smell the restaurant exhaust on the breeze.
Here’s me again, now searching an abandoned shop for something more nourishing than chocolate. Don’t get me wrong, I love chocolate, but the body craves salts and proteins… more’s the pity. Chips are good in a pinch.
I wonder what will happen to the water supply? Theoretically, the underground reservoirs will be shielded enough to avoid contamination, but most of Chicago’s city water comes from open-air cisterns. I should only drink bottled water, until it runs out. Then I’ll have to find a library and do some research; there must be a deep self-contained reservoir not too far from here.
Hey, I can scream in the library and no one will care.
I’m all alone, but there are plenty of other people around. Not moving, of course, but who needs to these days? Last time I saw independent movement that wasn’t animal was on TV, and that stopped after a couple of days anyway. End of times, worst of times… most serene of times? The ELF would be delighted, but I guess when there aren’t any human members to know or care the point is a little bit moot.
Yeah, the water thing bored me too. No point; plenty of bottled water. No electricity, but I can scrounge a generator from somewhere if I need it. Now I just need something to do for the rest of my life.
I could travel; plenty of fuel for that, but it seems somewhat futile to go anywhere. Gasoline will gel eventually, so I should use it while it’s still good. I could devote myself to recording our history in some invulnerable form, like carving it on a mountain face for future civilizations, but I doubt I could get farther than my own little life before I die of exhaustion.
Come to think of it, every possible form of media that tells our story will degrade beyond comprehension before anyone gets to read it. Whenever this kind of thing happens in fiction, there’s always a motivation, a need to tell the story of humanity and the mark we left on the planet. It’s just… I don’t think there actually is a mark. “When all is said and done,” they say, but now all really is said and done and that’s it. There’s nothing left. There’s no second coming, no messiah, and no future for anything that could conceivably call itself intelligent.
Just me. Nothing else. No magically surviving camp of refugees, no single person of the opposite sex conveniently named “Eve,” no gods descending from the skies.
And certainly nothing that could remotely be called a future.
Right. Here’s me, walking through the empty, desolate streets. The car alarm is silent; battery must have run out. The ravens are gone; better pickings elsewhere. The evening wind has blown away all recognizable human scents, and I think that the smell of all those other people will start to fill the air very soon.
Here’s me, walking along, my finger on the trigger.
by submission | Jul 6, 2008 | Story
Author : Sharoda
My father died today, not from the invaders but from old age.
When the First Wave was discovered heading for earth I was still young. I can remember everyone sitting around the TV watching the talking heads as they pretended they had a clue what was going to happen; everyone except my father.
I remember him talking to friends and relatives about how bad this was and how people should prepare. They called him a doomsayer; he said he knew how Noah felt when he started building the Ark. He didn’t care, he started to organize.
By the time the First Wave hit most of the world was convinced that E.T was coming to welcome us to the wonders of the universe.
Hundreds of millions died in the first attack, they hit every major population center. Few places were able to mount any kind of defense much less a counter attack. My father’s group of “crazy’s” from their bases in the Adirondacks was one. They were the core of what became the North American Resistance.
After the devastation of the First Wave many people were ready to give up and let the invaders take over. My father called a meeting of what leaders could be found. The assembled leaders were filled with a patriotic fervor by my father’s impassioned speech. It ended with what became our rallying cry.
“Not one grain of sand, not one blade of grass, not one leaf from one tree will I give up. This planet is ours!”
“NOT 1” was painted, scratched, chiseled, and blasted into every surface.
The resistance grew and within a month we brought down an intact machine; more followed. We learned their language, their science, their codes, their history and their plans for earth; we learned that, though still far away, the Second Wave was already in route.
We fought them on the ground and developed tactics that took advantage of their weaknesses.
Still it was years before we were back in orbit, in ships that combined their technology and ours. In the first attack on a First Wave mega ship my father was the commander. Many told him he should stay on the ground where it was relatively safe.
“What if you get killed”, he was asked more than once.
“What if I don’t go”, was always his answer.
Three of the seven ships came back but the mega ship was destroyed.
Years of grinding war continued as we drove them from the skies and from every corner of the planet; then more years of preparing for the Second Wave.
We met them just outside the orbit of Saturn. We destroyed or captured most of their ships. When commanders asked about prisoners my father, now the elected Planetary Leader, answered simply “Not 1”.
My father was not young when the invasion started. Now, as the new fleet is nearing completion, the years have finally caught up with him.
Every day dozens of people come to the house, just to see him. We don’t turn anyone away as long as they’re quiet and respectful; they always are.
Tomorrow I’ll talk to the fleet commanders as they prepare the Third Wave, our Wave, our attack on their home world. I’ll remind them of my father’s last words. “Not 1”, he said and then closed his eyes for the last time.
My father died today, of old age.
In a world that was invaded, where more than a billion died simply for being human, which has been in a planetary war for decades, it means only one thing. We’ve already won.
by submission | Jul 5, 2008 | Story
Author : Asher Wismer
“It’s spreading, isn’t it.” It was not a question. James looked wan, as always, but now his voice was tinged with a hopelessness that I had never heard before. It almost broke my heart.
“I’m afraid,” I said, “that the cancer has spread to your lymphatic system. Frankly, I’m astonished that you’re still talking.”
“Doesn’t matter, I guess,” he said, and looked out the window. The first battery of tests we’d done had discovered an astonishing amount of cancer running through his body. The cells had metastasized at an alarming rate, decaying from his stomach, where it had started, through his chest cavity and lungs. I hadn’t been kidding. James should have been in a coma at this point. Tests had shown some of his internal organs literally riddled with cancer; some of them were just masses of cancer cells in a vague organ shape.
“So what tests do we do next?”
“There’s nothing left,” I said, and felt terrible. James was a family man, working in construction. His wife had a good job downtown and his kids were in their teens, but the rapid deterioration meant the had only a few months to live.
If that.
“After it gets into your lymph system,” I continued, “it’s more or less over. We simply can’t treat it fast enough.”
“I figured as much.” He didn’t look sad, not really. Just resigned, and that was almost as bad.
I laid a hand on his shoulder, trying to be comforting, and he reached up and patted it absently. “Do you want to call your family?”
“No. They knew going in what was happening. They’ll be fine.”
I didn’t quite know how to take this.
“Aren’t you worried about leaving them behind?”
“You know,” he said, looking up at me, his hand still clasping mine, “I think we all knew this was coming. Who knows, maybe I’ll get to come back sometime and see them again.”
“Perhaps.” I left to see other patients, and the image of James looking forlornly out the window stuck with me all day.
***
“I’m not cut out for death duty,” I said. “It’s too grim, too depressing.”
“It’s part of your job,” said Alex, the attending doctor for my shift. “You have to be able to handle situations like this.”
“What if I just work pediatrics?”
“You think kids don’t ever die? Anyway, this is mild. You just wait until you have to sit with a dying patient all night, waiting for the last breath to come. You’ll find yourself PRAYING for his death.”
“Anyone ever tell you about your great bedside manner?”
“I watch too much TV. Are we done for the day?”
“I guess,” I said, standing to leave. “I just wish there was a way help him.”
“I’ll agree with you on one thing,” he said. “It’s amazing that your cancer patient is still alive. I looked at the samples they took; it’s spreading faster than I’ve ever seen.”
“He isn’t reporting much pain now. Maybe it’ll be easy.”
“Cancer is a mutation of the cells, changes them irrevocably, and the human body can’t handle that. Theoretically, if you lived long enough, your body would convert over to pure cancer cells. You’d be a cancer vegetable.”
“Maybe the cancer would leave the brain alone.”
“What, and make him immortal? I saw that movie. It sucked. Listen, you should see the staff therapist. Talk it out a little.”
“Yeah, I guess.”
As I left, I idly scratched the palm of my hand, where James had held it.
Damnable itch.
by submission | Jul 2, 2008 | Story
Author : Michael Varian Daly
Tzisoc knew they were about fifteen miles south of Zhytomir, but until they saw the rail line and the village just to the east – Vertokyivka she believed – they had no map fix.
Artillery ‘crumped’ to the north, fellow Black Guard units fighting their way into Zhytomir itself.
She brought the troop to a halt in the village’s abandoned fields, letting the horses graze upon whatever they could find. In the dry heat of mid-August, that wasn’t much. She was still amazed at the stunning primitiveness of Russia during this time, even this far west.
She sighed, checked out her little command; twenty six Sisters, their horses, three extra mounts.
“Too many First Timers in this Wave”, she thought. She had gone from private to sergeant in five months because of that. That was also why they didn’t spot the Maxim gun until it opened up, a languorous ‘tat-tat-tat-tat’.
They had learned enough to pull back rapidly instead of gazing about open mouthed. The Germans missed completely.
“Green,” Tzisoc hissed, as she dismounted several yards back.
“Corporal Kaminel, take Second and Third Sections around to the right! Pin them down!” she told her second in command. “First Section come with me!”
As Tzisoc and seven troopers moved around to the left, the sharp crack of Mosin-Nagant carbines could be heard, answered by the Maxim gun…and the flatter crack of Mausers.
“They’ve got infantry,” Tzisoc said. The others nodded.
They found a low rise on the German’s left flank. Tzisoc spread her troopers along it and kept moving left.
She could see the Germans now, their coal scuttle helmets moving around in a trench line. She brought her rifle up, fired.
One of the helmets flipped back with a satisfying spray of blood and meat.
She hugged the earth as slugs zipped over head, thumped in the dirt. Then First Section opened up and the bullets stopped. She took a quick look; no Germans.
She was up and running in an instant. “This is going to get me killed,” she thought. But she had signed up knowing The Black Guard’s motto; Mors Amatricum Nostrum…“Death is Our Lover”
Halfway to the trench a German appeared. She shot him in the chest.
Then she was in the trench. Another German. She shot him in the face. A third German came at her with a shovel, knocked her rifle away.
She screamed a war cry, leaped upon him, dagger out. She could feel the bone and gristle through the hilt, feel his death rattle, smell his bowels voiding.
She heard a ‘thunk’ to her left. The chest-shot German had just pounded a potato masher against the dirt.
“Oh, shi…” The blast set her hair and uniform on fire. Metal tore into her face, eyes… PAIN!
…whiteness…
Her body was still spasming violently when the Mandroid Medtechs cracked the Sim Tank. A Pneumodermic injector shot her full of hormones and supplements. She went limp.
She awoke in a deceptively simple hospital room, bright, sunny, no medgear visible, but it monitored her to the subatomic level.
A Sister came in wearing a white coat, her hair in a Service Pageboy. Tzisoc noticed the silver outlined black star insignia of The Black Guard pinned to her coat.
“I’m Nesrood, your counselor,” she smiled. “I hear you bought the farm.”
Tzisoc laughed. “Only five months in.”
“You’ll do better next time,” Nesrood said. She pointed to her insignia; the black star had a red III and a white V. “I died the first two times.”
She pulled a clear package out of her pocket, handed it to Tzisoc. “Welcome.”
It was a Black Guard pin. When Tzisoc’s skin touched it, a red I appeared. She grinned with sheer joy. “Yes, I’ll do better next time.”
