CRACKED: An Anthology of Eggsellent Chicken Stories

by J. F. Posthumus

  “Never understood knick-knacks, myself,” Jeb said. “And the message?”

  “Captain Choquette suggested it was a plea for them to move the chicken farm, which had apparently encroached on its nesting grounds. He said that it trying to communicate that much of a message in Union Standard was evidence enough to consider it a sapient, protected species. The colonists tossed the eggs into the forest about where they’d found them, and they moved back to an older settlement. I heard our galley chef complain that the eggs wouldn’t taste as good, but small price to pay.”

  Misha laughed in amazement. “That’s incredible! What a first away mission.”

  “That’s not how it ends,” Ellie said decisively.

  “What do you mean?” Misha asked.

  With thought processes worthy of a Logic, she laid out her reasoning. “First, this does not explain the beetles carrying the eggs around. Second, if Kun’pau had joined minds with another sapient creature, why was he squawking for a week after he got back to the ship? The universal translator should have figured out the language in a day or two at most. Finally, you still haven’t told us how you got those.”

  She pointed to the necklace of chicken neckbones.

  Now, LeRoy expressed his awe. “I don’t know how you do it, L.T., but you’re right. That was not the end of our adventure. It turned out the captain had misinterpreted a lot. The beastly fowl we’d encountered was indeed the last of its generation, but it wasn’t just some desperate mother hen trying to protect her species. Every chick hatched with one thing in mind — kill the closest thing next to it.”

  “Murderous mothercluckers,” Enigo said, quoting the Chief of Security’s log from that mission.

  LeRoy nodded. “That’s where the beetles came in. Apparently, they have some kind of instinct to carry the eggs away, so that they’re separated from each other. The colonists disrupted that, not only by gathering the eggs but by bringing in a predator that fed on the beetles.”

  “The chickens! They disrupted the ecosystem.” Misha covered her mouth to hold back an exclamation that might or might not have rhymed with cluck but was not something she wanted to say in front of her captain.

  “It was worse than that, ma’am. The beetles kept doing their job, which meant they carried the eggs to the next colony, too. When those mothercluckers hatched, they attacked their mother, each other, and the colonists.

  “When Commander Kun’pau was finally able to talk, he went straight to the captain and told him the danger the colony was in. By the time we got back there at maximum warp, however, half the colony was dead or injured, and we had to go in with bladed weapons until we could modify the phasers. We never did figure out how they resisted our initial fire, but fortunately, once we reversed the polarity, we roasted them good. I lost two toes, chunks of my thighs and half my elbow before the battle was done. And we did have to use the ship’s phasers at one point. But I ain’t ever had better chicken before or since.”

  “They weren’t sapient?” Misha asked. “But what about ‘No Lay I?’”

  LeRoy shrugged, so Ellie, who had had a brief and ultimately unsatisfactory romantic relationship with a Logic science officer, answered. “It was a language shadow, most likely. Commander Kun’pau was probably trying to explain the situation and thinking about writing his mission report, and the creature picked up some stray words.”

  LeRoy nodded. “That makes sense. I never got told. Still, I learned some valuable lessons that mission. Never assume a creature has noble intentions.”

  He pocketed his chain and picked up his cooling fish, “And some species are just meant to be eaten.”

  The End

  About the Author

  Karina Fabian is a spec fic writer and a long-time Star Trek fan. She started writing the serial adventures of the HMB Impulsive during a difficult time in her life as a way to relieve stress. Three years later, Space Traipse: Hold My Beer continues with a weekly blog and a series of story collections. She also writes other science fiction, fantasy, and horror stories, plus creates fill-in journals. Learn more at https://fabianspace.com.

  It Clucked

  Amber Draeger

  It Clucked

  Amber Draeger

  Disclaimer: Any and all references made herein are definitely intentional and may be considered satire.

  Western Texas Agri-Science Research Outpost

  March 1st

  It colored the night sky a neon pink as it plummeted through the folds of our atmosphere. I watched through the cracked lens of my son’s left-behind KidderScope, turning the broken plastic zoom knob to its full 1.5x magnification.

  High up in our atmosphere, orange flames, skirted by ribbons of blue, shot around the circumference of the object. My breath caught in my throat. The sight was beautiful, and the object was… slowing.

  I, sitting in my shredded vinyl folding chair in the back of the Silverado, jostled with the truck as two-hundred-and-fifty pounds of bearded cowboy slid from the cab behind me.

  “Holy moly, boss,” Merryl’s voice boomed in the nighttime silence, his exasperation punctuated with the too-hard slam of the truck door. He leaned against the wall of the truck bed. “That don’t look right. You see what it is?”

  “Nope,” I said, turning back to my Dirt Cheap toy clearance special. “I would kill for an actual telescope about now.”

  “Is it a meteor? Is it… coming toward us?” I looked back at Merryl as he licked his bottom lip. Knowing him, he was calculating the amount it would be worth if we could find and sell it—and the portion we would split with Perry, whose sparse equipment we used to hunt for fallen sky-rocks.

  I snickered. “Would we be so lucky?”

  I turned my attention back to our falling rainy-day fund. It glowed brighter, and, it seemed, larger. I prayed to the gods of the stars that it landed nearby, close enough for us to locate and grab it. But, as the words left me, my mouth dried.

  What was it? A satellite?

  It was too small to be one, unless it was a broken piece of one, but no other visible debris accompanied it. Oblong in shape, it appeared to tumble end-over-end, like an egg rolling down a bowling lane, all the while growing in size… and getting closer.

  “It’s speeding up.” Merryl said.

  I sighed. “It’s not speeding up, Merryl. That’s physics. It appears that it is due to our angle of observation.”

  “Good for you, passing freshman physics, sir, but that thing is moving completely outside of its trajectory.” He pointed to the sky behind me.

  I turned, my smirk waning, to see the darned thing zig-zagging before my eyes. My hands trembled, possibly from the sight, or perhaps from the cold of the desert land that stretched out around me. Even with my less-than-optimal vision, I knew this was no normal meteoroid.

  I blinked, and it changed course again, and this time, headed due South—directly toward the distant parking lot lights of our tiny main building.

  “Holy shit,” I said, a more intellectual vernacular failing me. The truck door slammed again behind me, and the bed shook beneath me, as Merryl climbed into the driver’s seat.

  “Hold on,” he yelled over the roar of the engine.

  I white-knuckled the walls of the truck bed as we bounced through the pasture. A fishtail onto the meager dirt road connecting our pastures to our center, and we hit our shortcut down an “ATV/TRACTOR USE ONLY” marked path.

  We raced the object, praying we could get Perry out before it wrecked the facility.

  As we blew past the “All Visitors Check IN at Front Desk” sign and the dim parking lot lights, a flash of brilliance shot out around the object, blinding us.

  Merryl slammed on the brakes, and I crashed into the back window, the thud of my head striking glass covered up by a louder plunk of something heavy striking dirt.

  It hit and, whatever it was, it rested right in front of us.

  “What on God’s green Ear—” Dr. Perry yelled, the bang of the steel entrance door ringing
behind her. “Sounded like a demon tore through my roof.” She looked back at the roof and then turned to me. “Did a meteor just land in our parking lot?”

  “That’s no meteor,” Merryl answered. He moved near it, the volume of his voice softening. “It’s probably an Air Force experiment or one of them Chinese satellites.”

  I pulled myself up and peered over the roof of the truck. A hole, at least the height of Merryl, had opened in the dead center of the lot, and its edges glowed red with molten rock. Perry took a step back, a hand running through her long dishwater blonde hair, the other adjusting the black-rimmed glasses on her face.

  “Can you see what it is?” I called out. Perry shrugged, but Merryl pressed on, kicking a path through the red-hot rocks with his boots.

  “It’s small, whatever it is. JESUS BE WITH ME, HOT!” He shook his right foot in the air, and a string of liquid leather sole dripped from the bottom.

  “Get away from there, dumbass,” Perry yelled.

  Merryl ignored her, as usual, and walked until he stood at the edge of the crater.

  “What the—” he said, and as Perry and I both yelled for him to stop, he jumped into the hole, and only the small tuft of his brown hair remained in sight.

  “You okay?” I yelled as I clamored over the side of the truck. The heat of the Earth radiated through my boots as I trod toward Merryl.

  “It’s an egg,” Merryl shouted. “Like a damned chicken or turkey. No, too small for a turkey. It’s got to be chicken.”

  “What?” Perry walked near as well, her lithe limbs dancing around the debris.

  We exchanged a look, wide-eyed and incredulous. Her brow wrinkled. “Wait, Merryl. Do not touch it!” She sprinted toward him, and I followed her lead.

  We arrived in time to peer down on Merryl as he picked up the egg with his right hand. “It’s cold as ice. How could a chicken egg survive that kind of fall?” He lifted the object near his face, examining it. “No cracks, either.”

  It moved, rocking in the palm of his hand.

  His eyes widened, and I reached out for him. “Set it down and climb out.”

  “I think it’s hatching,” he said, moving his face closer. A small tapping sound floated through the air. Merryl held it up higher, straining to see it without his eyeglasses.

  A crack formed and splintered, until it stretched the length of the egg. A tiny, triangular piece of shell dropped onto Merryl’s hand, revealing a small black hole. Merryl brought it closer to his eye, and I shuddered.

  “Hey, little guy. Where did you come from?” His voice was soft and baby-like. “It’s a little chick.”

  “What?!?” Perry shrieked.

  “Merryl, it can’t possibly be—” I started to reason with him, but words failed me.

  Merryl smiled and looked back at the egg in his hand. It rocked again, and, this time, the egg splintered apart, leaving a scrawny brown chick standing on Merryl’s palm.

  It chirped.

  “Aw, what a cute little buddy,” Merryl said to it, lifting it to his eye-level. “How in the wor—”

  The chick’s beak opened and a shrill screech blasted out of it. It flapped its fluff-covered wings.

  It launched itself toward Merryl’s open and smiling mouth. I stared in horror as its scrawny legs grew, stretching out twice their length, its body lagging behind it.

  Its toes grasped Merryl’s lips, and, before he could jerk them away, tiny talons sprung from their ends and dug into his flesh. He screamed. The rest of the chick caught up and barreled itself, legs and all, into Merryl’s mouth.

  Merryl clawed at his cheeks, pulled at his lips, his gasping plugged by a muffled ball of chirping fluff. Two stringy three-toed feet poked out from in between his lips.

  I slid into the hole in the ground, my ass pulling hot coals from the edges in with me. Merryl turned to me, his eyes near bulging, face turning shades of blue. He clawed at his throat.

  I reached for him, and wrapped one hand around the back of his neck; the other I focused on grabbing the jutting little bird legs. They slipped through my fingers and tucked, moving past Merryl’s lips and into the dark recesses of his mouth.

  I stepped back, horrified, frozen in the moment. Tears, of pain, of terror, streaked down Merryl’s weathered face, and his eyes rolled into the back of his head. He rocked back and forth, swaying as though an unforeseen wind blew him.

  “Catch him!” Perry yelled as she slid in beside me.

  Her voice jolted me into action. I leaned toward Merryl, grabbing around his waist as he crumpled like a snowman in warm rain. His weight pulled me, making it so I couldn’t support him. Instead, I folded with him as I eased him down to the ground.

  “Is he breathing?” Perry clawed at the back of my shirt, trying to find purchase to pull me away and let her through.

  I obliged, never taking my eyes from Merryl.

  His eyes were closed. His chest rose and fell in a soft, shallow rhythm, as though he were sleeping.

  “What the hell just happened?” I whispered.

  Perry pushed her dark-rimmed glasses back on the bridge of her nose. “I’m not sure, but he’s breathing, so there’s still time.”

  “Time for what, Perry? Call the ambulance? Tell them a chicken egg fell from the sky, hatched, and lodged its little body in our friend’s throat?”

  “Yes,” Perry said, leaning over Merryl. She reached into a back pocket and produced her cell phone, five models too old and one screen too cracked to be of much use. She held it to the sky, but all that remained in the corner were unfilled vertical bars. “We need to get him out of this hole and somewhere I can keep him stable.”

  “Agreed,” I muttered as I pulled myself up and out, on my unspoken mission to grab our first aid kit and a stretcher.

  The heat bit at my hands and feet, but I ignored it, instead turning my thoughts on the sleeping, invaded gentle giant in the hole next to me. Feelings washed over me, disbelief of what I’d just seen, concern for Merryl, but nested beneath them all, fear remained.

  What had landed in the midst of us was a new lifeform, something that many dreamed of encountering. All I saw when I looked down at Merryl’s steady breathing was the understanding that it was not the blessing scientists made it out to be. It was a thing most dangerous… and foul.

  We stretched unconscious Merryl out on the exam table in Lab A.

  Using small kennels filled with the chickens, Perry had made up for the lack of distance from the edge of the metal table to Merryl’s feet by sliding the metal cages beneath his calves.

  I watched him breathe, the rest of him motionless.

  “We have him stable. Three hours minimum? You can’t send a helicopter? Or a trooper? Anybody?” Perry’s voice echoed off the metal walls.

  The backward and forward movement of her shadow told me she was pacing, never a good sign. Perry was the stoic, scientific, let’s-slow-down-and-study-it kind, and the only giveaway to her emotional upheaval was pacing, which I’d witnessed once, during the strained birth of a genetically-modified calf.

  She stormed back in, her bronze cheeks reddening with a temper I’d long suspected she’d kept covered with bottle blonde hair. “They can’t make it for five hours.”

  I stood up. “I’ll drive him then. We can stretch him out in the back of the Tahoe.”

  Perry held up a hand as she neared the exam table. “The only direction you’ll be able to drive is toward the border. School bus wreck has the highway and emergency services locked down.”

  “Shit,” I said. “What now?”

  Perry crossed her arms with a sigh, looking down at Merryl. “We wait.”

  “What did you tell them?”

  Perry sighed. “I told them a space chicken jumped in Merryl’s throat—of course I didn’t. I said he had an object lodged in his mouth and throat, is unconscious, but breathing.” She crossed her arms. “I’m going to stand watch over him. Maybe I can pull that thing out if it exposes itself.”

  “What do I
need to do to help?”

  “I still need the feed at Barn 21 to happen at ten-thirty, if we are to stay on track.”

  I pursed my lips. I didn’t care much for menial tasks when someone was in need, but part of our operation was experimentation, with anything from cross-breeding to testing new nutrient mixtures, and most of that depended on us operating like clockwork, especially during the skeleton-crew summers. “Can’t Bodie handle that?”

  Perry looked down her nose, over the edge of her glasses. “You’ve seen Bodie today?”

  I slammed my fist against the RV door, rattling the cracked fiberglass window. Inside, bass thumped louder than my knock, so I grabbed the handhold to my left and prepared to kick at it until he either answered or my foot answered for him by way of broken lock and busted handle.

  It flung inward on my third attempt, sending the shaggy-headed twenty-year old flying backward. “What the hell?”

  I stepped inside and found myself engulfed in a sweet-smelling haze. “There’s been an incident, and you’re taking the ten-thirty feeding in Barn 21.”

  He waved his hands at the air as though he could clear his transgressions, and then, no doubt thinking better of it, grabbed his coat and slid past me out the door. “I’m supposed to be off-duty.”

  I followed him in turn, making sure to slam the door behind me. “I’m supposed to be incredibly drunk. Yet here we are.”

  “Where’s Merryl?”

  “Injured,” I said, pointing to the idling side-by-side I’d driven out to his on-site RV.

  He slid into the driver’s seat of the Gator, and I let him. I needed a moment to think and not do, and by the looks of him, we’d be taking a slower ride than normal anyway.

  The kid lived high among the clouds of his god, Bob Marley, flunked most of his classes, but every year his dad donated to our flagship university. Bodie had started with an internship at our university, complete with paid-for studies abroad. The wanna-be Botanist fell down that ladder, hitting every rung until we were left with him, and nonetheless, in the summer—our most in-need-of-actual-help season.