by P P Corcoran
Mr. Karrol was still pawing away, making weird noises. Not words, not dog barks: noises. I figure the rotting tongue stopped working properly but it didn’t notice because aliens don’t speak human. Or, could be I was actually being told something about why they picked my planet to infect. Are we the only world with formaldehyde and fun fauna?
Whatever, I let the hollering continue while I dealt with the old looking dirty splintery nose-twitcher in the Marines uniform. This guy was getting wiggly and agitated before I had hit the hipster but seemed fresh out of steam now. No doubt needed a fresh nibble as a pick me up, which was never going to happen again. I could feel it dead-eye balling me.
I aimed for the scraggly part under the quivery chin wobble, but the Furry tripped before the bullet hit. Instead I took off the top of Mr. Karrol’s right dog-haunch shoulder. He stopped making noises and looked right up at me. I almost felt bad. Like it knew that was a first taste of what was coming.
Those noises started up again, and the antler shaking... My relatives might really have liked their late baseball coach however, this one was only an echoed piece of meat, falling apart and liable to gore me hard. I never liked the original guy in the first place. He was a dick. If you catch my drift. Three strikes you're out.
Mr. Karrol’s look-alike got a rubber bullet smack in the Adam’s Apple. The body thrashed around like a chicken with its head cut off - even though the head was still on for a while. I waited, thinking about how much each of these star-bugs was worth in cold hard non-electronic cash. Ca-ching.
Took two whole minutes before the dang thing was laying quiet. Still. Not an antler shaking, not a paw twitching. Silent. Like the corpse it partially cloned. Down, boy!
Usually, the last of them will begin acting up—stumbling in circles, doing whatever aggressive feral semi-beast things do. Chawing, cawing, roaring, yapping, barking, snapping.... This old-looking Furry was different, standing upright, in the dirty uniform, its little velvety nose wrinkling, while I aimed. I knew there wasn’t any real thinking or feeling going on. Merely a doomed space-germ in a rotting meat bag, looking forlorn and smelling to high heavens. Nothing else. I couldn’t think about the fact this astro-copycat seemed to understand it was a doomed space-germ. No. This Martian marine was nothing. Some vicious animated infection on bunny legs...legs that never really belonged to it.
The infection on bunny legs saluted me.
My heart stopped. My brain went into worry mode. Was what I was looking at an alien? Was he a real Furry? Could a real Furry have Alzheimer’s?
I hate when stuff like that happens. Damn. Was he someone’s grandpa having a final fling in the seedy world of plush anonymity? Were they looking for him? Could I see a zipper anywhere on his downy parts? Why would he wear a fuzzy animal costume and a uniform? Talk about fetishes. Oh man. Damn it. I was counting on the money for whacking four of them today.
He was an alien.
I needed the money. He had to be an alien.
I shot him in the throat. Whatever.
Semper Fi, Peter Rabbit. I let him twitch a little, watching to make sure the others were all still stone cold out. Nothing like the gut wrench of having a paw grab your leg as you go to pull its eyes out. We lost people that way, early on. Good men and women I needed to watch and whack myself, after, once they swelled up. I earned a tidy bunch of cash, but I wish those events never happened.
I put on my gear, which consisted of a pair of latex gloves and a disposable face mask—some people go all out with body suits and leg protection, but I can’t work like that. I'm a hand’s on, face in, kind of gal.
I went down into the dirt with my stuff: government issued plastic bags, machete, marker, gallon sized zip lock baggies, twine, a long thin knife ...and my special antique cooking spoon that I use instead of the regulation scooper I was assigned. My spoon is better. I sharpened the bowl along one side. Reshaped the long handle so the cutting edge fit snugly into sockets. It used to belong to my mom.
Everyone has their own method of killing these freeloading alien fiends. Me, I open each eye lid, (if they have eyelids, some of the fish faces don’t), slip my spoon in behind the ball, and tug. Out pops the eye, in goes the long knife, and there goes the optic nerve. Since I got the hang of it, I can remove and sever in two moves. It’s fast, and less disgusting than other things I’ve done. Trust me. They aren’t finished until that nerve is cut.
Today, because I still felt uneasy about old Hippity-Hopper, he got his peepers popped and his optic nerves severed first. Out, in, stab, he was done. No more worries. Now for the rest of them.
I put the detached eyes in zip lock bags and use the twine to tie them around the neck bases. Good and tight. Regulations require hunters to take off the heads and bag them, too. Which is a pain in the ass, particularly when they come with horns or long bills or forehead shark fins. But we must. Too many politicians watched too many zombie movies back in the day. It’s annoying though, these critters aren’t undead. They’re made from copies of the dead with assorted livestock images thrown in. It’s nothing but a waste of time decapitating them. The whole mojo is in the optic nerve. Sever the nerve and it’s all over. You’re left with a flesh bag with horns or fur. And no eyes. I’d stomp the round squishy suckers into juice if it was up to me. Just because. But that’s the government, we’re not allowed to do the whole job our way.
I whacked each of the copied craniums off, and stuck the baggies of eyeballs around the spinal stumps. Like I said, pointless work. Mr. Karrol was a nightmare with his double antlers. The long-eared Marine didn’t make things too easy either. Still, I did my job. I always do.
As far as I’m concerned, all the fun is over as soon as the scooper comes out. After that, it’s work: tagging, bagging, dragging. But work pays the bills.
The decapitated trunks with their tie-ons are lined up for disposal trucks to pick up. The noggins are placed in special double-thick see-through plastic bags. Labeled clearly with time and place of removal. These are delivered to the CDC office up by the county sheriff’s. Everyone is afraid they’ll regenerate if a molecule of visual nerve is left inside so, the Furries heads, no matter what they look like, stay with the trappers.
I get the willies, driving with them sitting in a row on my passenger seat. One of these days one of them will open its lids and those eyes will be back in, unpopped again. Staring back at me. I drive as fast as I can to the sheriff’s office. Where somebody else takes them out and logs them in ...and pays me.
Keep coming, you animal looking withered-corpse copycat fucks from outer-space. I’ll get you. I’ll get you all.
Because I hate people, and I hate you, but I like money.
- THE END -
About Juliegh Howard-Hobson
A post-modern drop out, Juleigh Howard-Hobson lives on a farm, nestled besides a dark forest, with her family and a black dog named Grimm. There are secrets whispered in the woods. Magic falls from the clouds. The dog may or may not be mortal.
She is a Million Writers Award "Notable Story" writer, a Predators and Editor's top ten finisher, she holds an Anzac Award and an Alfred Award, and has been nominated for “The Best of the Net”, The Pushcart Prize and, most recently, a Rhysling.
Her speculations can be found in in Devolution Z, Bewildering Stories, The Liar's League, Danse Macabre, Leading Edge Science Fiction and Fantasy Magazine, Every Day Stories, Glory of Man: The Rise and Fall of the Reality Soldier (Cockroach Conservatory), History is Dead (Permuted Press), Loving The Undead (From The Asylum), Lost Innocence Anthology (Niteblade), Return of the Raven (Horror Bound) and many other places, both in print and in pixel.
Her fifth book—a numinous formal poetry collection—is Our Otherworld (Red Salon Press).
For the record, she was born in England, raised in New York City as well as just outside of Sydney, Australia. She currently lives in the Pacific Northwest of the USA. It rains. A lot.
When not writing, she tends to her private gardens—one of which
grows dark shadowy plants and the other archaic ones (an alexander potage anyone?)—while she does not dig trap trenches, there is a lot of composting. Beware.
Connect with Juleigh here:
www.castrumpress.com/authors/juleigh-howard-hobson
Altered
by Alexander Harrington
You blink away the remains of dreamless sleep and sit up. The room around you slowly comes into focus, dull and milky around the edges of your vision. For a moment you have no sense of where you are, but familiarity quickly asserts itself: you’re in the living room of your home; a small, two-bedroom house in an unremarkable suburb-built years before you were born.
Stretching, you look out the bay window at the evening sky, gradually turning a soft orange, troubled by accents of bruised purple. The street outside is still. It’s peak summer, and your town has been strangled for weeks by a record-breaking heatwave with temperatures unheard of in decades.
Across the street your neighbors’ two children run back and forth through a sprinkler, their hysterical bouts of laughter punctuating the languid stillness of the quiet neighborhood. Your house is within walking distance of a train depot which serves as a way station for the surrounding counties’ negligible industry; beneath the echoing laughter of the children, comes the sound of distant clanking freight cars starting forward on a rusting track.
An unfamiliar black car with tinted windows meanders past your house, then speeds up as it passes the stop sign, tires squealing obnoxiously. One of the older children shouts something obscene in response.
At first mistaking it for a train, you hear thunder rumbling, it’s tones low and stealthy, as if it's preparing to sneak up on the world.
It is remarkably hot inside your house, considering your expensive air conditioning is already at its highest habitable setting. With the back of your hand, you wipe sweat away from your brow and neck; there are dark patches of perspiration on the couch where you have just been sleeping.
Rising on unsteady legs, and with a slight limp, you wander listlessly to the kitchen. Opening the fridge door you grab a bottle of cheap domestic beer, the only thing guaranteed to give some relief from the heat that clings uncomfortably to your body. Downing half of the bottle you set it on the counter, knowing the flack you’ll get from your partner if you leave empties lying around.
Next to the sink sits a small Pioneer stereo system with an iPod dock. The radio is on, tuned to an AM news station.
“Meteorologists have reported atmospheric disturbances on both East and West Coasts,” a voice that last knew the splendor of youth sometime around the 1960s intones. “Listeners all over the country have been calling in and sharing details of sightings as far inland as Canmore and Lethbridge...”
You switch the stereo input to its iPod setting and select a play list of Van Morrison’s greatest, keeping the volume low.
The door to the patio and backyard is just to the left of the kitchen window — a window that cracked during one of last winter’s more severe ice storms. You run your fingertips over the fracture from where it branches out from the corner of the frame; it’s something you’ve put off fixing for months now, in spite of the relative simplicity of the task, and you can feel an irrepressible frown tug at the corners of your mouth, frustrated that yet another item has cropped up on your ever growing to-do list, derailing what little free time you get to yourself these days.
Knowing that procrastinating any further on the matter will only spark a blow-out with your partner — of the sort occurring all too frequently lately — you resign yourself to visit the hardware store and put the matter to rest. Your partner is laying down in the upstairs bedroom before they have to work, so you’ll have a couple of hours to slip out unnoticed and get a start on it.
Maybe, if you’re lucky, you can score brownie points with this little project and alleviate some of the tension that’s been kicking around between the two of you over the last couple of weeks. Besides, it feels like they’re always complaining about your lack of initiative, your lack of drive, so why not prove them wrong for once?
Energized, you reach for your keys on the counter, but hesitate, deciding to indulge in a quick cigarette before you leave. You’re motivated but still groggy, in no mood to rush; not in this heat.
Locating the cigarettes next to the pig-shaped cookie jar your partner made you buy for them at a yard sale; a ghastly eyesore you often think of smashing to bits with something blunt whenever you see it. Ignoring the pig’s risible stare, you grab your smokes and step outside.
Outside now you sense a malaise hanging over everything — a sudden and definitive silence punctuated only by the buzzing of cicadas. The children across the street have gone quiet, likely having been ushered inside by their parents to stave off heat exhaustion.
Craning your neck you look up to the darkening sky, a drop of rain alights gently on your forehead. The air feels damp; a stark relief from the oven the inside of your house has become. Another drop lands on the weathered deck boards beneath your feet. Then another. You light your cigarette, holding the first drag in your throat slowly letting it out as lightning illuminates the backyard like an incredibly bright camera flash. You tense up for a second, waiting for an ear-splitting crack that never arrives. There is only silence.
Suddenly the storm clouds overhead are illuminated by a collection of bright, green-hued lights. You can’t discern a source for these lights, but their flashing seems oddly coordinated, like fireworks sequenced to music — you almost expect to hear a symphony by Wagner bombastically fill the air around you.
The lights flicker in and out of the clouds, dancing and bouncing off each other like drunken fireflies. Your mind searches feebly for an explanation for this strange display: aircraft, extreme light pollution, aurora borealis. Nothing in your experience quite matches what you’re seeing, though a popular acronym almost slips past your lips...
The sound of rattling tin causes you to jump. The noise is close by. From over the short fence that separates your properties, you see your neighbor — a genial old fellow with a doting wife and a runty dog that may or may not be deaf. He’s putting the garbage out, which rest assured is no easy task for a man of his advancing age.
The sight of him fills you with an abiding sense of endearment: he’s a charming man with a handful of amusing anecdotes in his repertoire, though you're convinced by now that you’ve heard each one at least three times. Not that you’d ever tell him that — you enjoy the man’s presence in your life too much to run the risk of offending him.
Waving towards the man, you expect him to seize the opportunity to offer you a beer on his rickety and decaying back deck. However, he only smiles and nods his greeting, turning back to the house and disappearing behind the glint of his screen door. Standing there for a moment, you feel slightly put out; certainly not offended but nursing a childish feeling of rejection you know is uncharacteristic.
Finishing the last of your cigarette, you’re about to step back inside when the rain begins in earnest.
The black cloud above the house seems to undulate like an artificial lung; the air ripens with ozone. Then the rain begins to fall, heavy, with a sound like marbles clattering down a set of wooden stairs. Only a few drops land on you before you close the door with a heavy thump.
The torrent hammers relentlessly on the world outside, droplets spattering through the screen of the open window as you stand, safe and dry, in the darkening kitchen. You watch the rain fall, transfixed, struggling to remember the important task you set for yourself just minutes ago.
A sudden rush of nausea washes over you, dizziness makes the room reel violently. The ozone smell from the rain intensifies, filling your nostrils with an unpleasant, sickly sweet scent. Bile rises in your throat and you swallow hard to suppress it. You quickly close the distance between yourself and the window, slamming it shut.
You feel a pulsing headache forming; a writhing sensation beneath your eyelids, like tiny insects scurrying en
masse. Pressing your palm to your forehead in a vain attempt to suppress it, wincing at the inexplicable aches now tugging violently at your muscles, your joints, your bones, even your skin.
Deciding to postpone your plans you take a hot shower instead, hoping it will help restore your balance. At least it will cleanse you of the unpleasant feeling of grime and sweat coating your body.
You head down the hallway to the bathroom, passing the open doorway to the master bedroom where your partner’s still sleeping form lies on the bed. Entering the bathroom you flip on the light switch to the left of the door. Peeling off your sweat-dampened clothes, you step into the tub, and turn the water on. The warm, comforting patter of the water against your body is an almost instant antidote to the pervasive feeling of clamminess that’s been haunting you since you woke up.
After a minute or so of just standing under the water, the lightheadedness you experienced in the kitchen returns. The headache without warning violently builds momentum, your temples throb, a buzzing sound like a hive of angry bees fills your ears. Your vision begins to blur and distort as building steam from the shower cloaks the room in white. Your thoughts begin to race with worst-case scenarios: heart attack, stroke, aneurysm.
