It Was a Dark and Stormy Night...

by Kurtz, Matt; McKenzie, Shane; Strand, Jeff

  The man put his arm out of the driver’s window and gave her the finger.

  Alone in the silence, Mihaela sobbed.

  ***

  The crushing weight of acceleration vanished as the booster engines disengaged. Nauseous groans emanated over the communicator.

  “Engaging autopilot. Engaging artificial gravity,” Morrison said. “Congratulations, ladies and gentlemen, the first part of the mission has been a success. This is your Captain, John Morrison, and we are orbiting the Earth at an altitude of approximately one hundred and fifty miles, at a relative speed of eighteen thousand miles per hour. If you look out of the port windows you will see the moon rising over the Earth as we approach the first waypoint. After that, the ion drives kick in, and it’s nonstop to Titan. On behalf of Project Perseus, I would like to thank you and wish you a pleasant journey. Before we can all settle down and enjoy our trip, let’s have a status update. Medical?”

  “Check.”

  “Navigation?”

  “Check.”

  “Engineering?”

  “Cluck.”

  “Say again, McTavish?”

  “Cluck. Cluck. BUCKAWK.”

  “Is that supposed to be a joke, McTavish?”

  “Buckawk.”

  “Listen to me, what happened on Mars was not my fault,” Morrison yelled. “I was ordered to take off, so if that’s gonna be a problem, tell me now.”

  “Boooork?”

  “Okay, McTavish, you asked for it.”

  Morrison strode toward the engineering section, clenching his fists. The door to the geology lab slid open and a blond woman hurried after him, past a dark haired man that stepped out of the Captain’s path and pretended to be invisible. She grabbed Morrison’s arm.

  “John, for God’s sake, we are on this ship together for the next year. You can’t beat McTavish to a pulp ten minutes into the mission.”

  “If you think I am standing for that, Carol, then you are out of your mind.”

  “Why don’t you let Karl and I go down there and talk to him?” she said, motioning to the dark haired man.

  Morrison’s shoulders sagged. “You’re right, Carol. Thank you. But you tell him I won’t stand for that kind of talk. This is his only warning.”

  “Don’t worry, John, we’ll sort it out.”

  ***

  Karl and Carol stepped through the blast doors into the engineering section. The corridor stretched out ahead of them into the darkness. Steam hissed from the cooling pipes that lined the walls and ceiling.

  “Shane?” Karl called. “We gotta talk to you, man. Where are you?”

  Silence.

  “Come on, McTavish, stop screwing around,” Carol said.

  The only reply was the rumbling of the maneuvering thrusters and the sporadic hiss of high pressure steam being released by valves on the coolant pipes.

  “What an asshole,” she said. “McTavish. Come on, stop being a jerk.”

  A loud metallic clang rang out from behind, making them both jump.

  Karl took Carol by the arm. “Come on, let’s head back. Morrison can deal with him.”

  “Yeah, good idea,” she said and followed Karl back through the maze of pipe work.

  Karl pushed aside a length of chain that obstructed the corridor when a shadow loomed over him. “What the fu—”

  A razor sharp beak flashed from the darkness toward his face. Fragments of bone burst from the back of Karl’s skull, showering Carol with flecks of brain and blood.

  Carol’s legs turned to jelly and she fell to her knees. “Oh my God, you have to help me,” she screamed into her communicator. “It killed Karl. It—”

  “Carol? CAROL,” Morrison’s voice boomed over the communicator. “Guthrie, Anderson, meet me outside of Engineering. Doc, prepare to receive casualties.”

  ***

  Mark Guthrie, the mission biochemist, and James Anderson, its communications expert, were already outside the heavy blast door when Morrison arrived.

  “What the hell’s going on, Morrison?” Guthrie said.

  “It’s McTavish. He’s lost it and attacked Carol and Karl,” he said. “So here’s the plan. We go in, beat the shit out of him, and retrieve the casualties. Any questions?”

  “Yeah, why did you pick me? Dimitri’s military and outweighs me by three stone,” Guthrie said.

  “Because Dimitri’s our navigator, and we need one of those more than we need a chemist. You’re expendable. Anything else? Good.”

  The door to engineering slid open and the men stepped through. The corridor was illuminated with emergency lighting, stretching off into the darkness. Morrison made a series of complex movements with his hands. The other two men looked bemused and shrugged. Morrison rolled his eyes.

  “Guthrie, you go left. Anderson, go right. I’ll take point.”

  “Screw that,” Anderson said. “If McTavish has gone mental, then splitting up is stupid. He’ll just pick us off one at a time.”

  “Yeah, I’m not in the mood to be expendable so you can play the hero. We’re sticking together,” Guthrie said. “You can go first.”

  Morrison sneered. “Stay behind me and try not to get in the way.”

  The men took the central corridor and headed into the engineering section. A rhythmic tapping could be heard over the hum of the engines.

  “What the hell is that?” Guthrie whispered.

  “Not a clue. Morse code?” Anderson said.

  Morrison cocked his head and listened to the sound for a moment, then shook his head. “No. Stay alert.”

  The men headed toward the source of the noise. As they reached an intersection, Morrison put up his hand and made more complex signals. When the other two men looked confused, he made a show of pointing around the corner. Guthrie and Anderson nodded their understanding. Morrison stood with his back flat against the wall and peeked around the corner.

  Carol lay unconscious against a bulkhead. She was bleeding from a puncture wound on her arm, but otherwise seemed unharmed. Karl, however, was a different story. He lay prone in the middle of the corridor. Most of his head was gone and standing over him was a gigantic orange chicken, pecking at the ruined remains of his skull and gulping down the fragments of bone and gristle.

  Morrison popped his head back around the corner and collapsed against the wall, his face white.

  Guthrie put his hands up and mouthed the word, “What?”

  Morrison shook his head. Guthrie made a face and pushed his Captain out of the way to take a look for himself. He peered around the corner and immediately pulled his head back, falling back against the wall next to Morrison. Anderson looked at them.

  “It’s a chicken. A giant fucking chicken is eating Karl’s head.” Guthrie clamped his hands over his mouth as he realized what he’d done.

  The tapping stopped.

  The men looked at each other and held their breath.

  “Bork?”

  “Oh shit,” Morrison said. “Get Carol out of here. I’ll keep it occupied.” He pushed himself away from the wall and stood in the center of the corridor.

  The chicken puffed up its feathers, making it appear even larger than before, and regarded the man with its malicious yellow eyes.

  “Come on then, you ugly bastard,” Morrison yelled as Anderson inched around the corner toward the unconscious woman.

  The chicken’s head darted to the side as Anderson reached Carol and it shrieked in outrage, lowered its head and charged toward the terrified man. As the enormous fowl reached him, Anderson put his arms up to protect his face, realizing too late that his face was not the creature’s target. As the monster reached him, it reared up and slashed at his midsection with razor sharp spurs, slicing through cloth and flesh with ease. James stood, open mouthed, as his entrails spilled from the gaping wound in his stomach, unraveling onto the floor in a wet, red heap.

  “I…I…I—” he gasped as the chicken’s beak darted forward and skewered him through the throat.

 
Morrison launched himself toward the huge bird as Anderson’s body fell to the floor, but was swatted aside by one of its wings and slammed hard against a bulkhead. The chicken stalked toward him with murder in its beady eyes.

  “Oi. Big Bird,” Guthrie yelled.

  The creature turned to face the new threat, lowering its head to attack. Guthrie slammed his fist into the emergency pressure release valve on the engine cooling pipe.

  “You need to let off some steam,” he said as a jet of superheated vapor engulfed the monster.

  The creature screamed in agony and, squawking in pain and fury, flapped away into the depths of the ship.

  Morrison picked himself up from the floor and looked at the bodies of the two men. He shook his head and turned to Guthrie.

  “Let’s get Carol and get the hell out of here before it comes back.”

  ***

  The crew gathered in the mess hall and argued. Captain Morrison and Mark Guthrie sat white-faced and silent until everyone had arrived.

  “So what the hell is going on, Morrison?” Sian O’Donnell said, the mission’s systems specialist.

  “We have a situation in engineering. Karl Wilson and James Anderson are dead, Carol Evans is injured, and Shane McTavish is missing.”

  “How? What happened?”

  “We have a hostile life-form on board the ship. We’ve sealed it in engineering until we decide what to do.”

  “A hostile life-form? Like an alien?” Sian said.

  Morrison looked at Guthrie, who shook his head, and looked back down at the table.

  “It’s a chicken. A seven foot tall chicken.”

  “You what? Are you having a laugh?”

  “I wish I was, but as absurd as it sounds, that is the situation.”

  “How the hell would someone get a giant chicken onboard? For that matter, WHY would someone put a giant chicken onboard? Are you sure this isn’t some kind of sick joke?”

  “I am deathly serious. As to how and why it’s here, we can figure that out later. What’s important now is what we do about it.”

  “Well, with three vital crew members dead, I say the mission’s a bust. Let’s abort and get the hell off this ship before we hit the waypoint and the ship goes automatic,” Bill Jones said, a cheerful Welshman that worked both as the mission’s physicist and cook.

  “That is not an option. This mission has cost billions of Euros, and if we miss this chance, it could be decades before anyone tries again,” Morrison said. Guthrie rolled his eyes and put his head on the table.

  “I think I know what it is,” Dimitri Kosovan said. “We have a legend in my country. Even a man who is pure of heart and says his prayers by night may become a hen when the henbane blooms and the moon is full and bright.”

  “Isn’t that supposed to be a wolf?”

  Dimitri shrugged. “Blame Hollywood. Some studio exec must have decided that wolves were scarier than chickens. In Romania, we take the curse of the werechicken very seriously indeed.”

  “I can’t believe the conversation that we are having. Have you lot lost your bloody minds? Werechickens? You must be mad.”

  Dimitri’s face fell. “Captain, according to legend, he who survives a lycanthrope attack is doomed to become one. We need to get to Carol and the Doctor.”

  ***

  Morrison emerged from the medical bay and shook his head.

  “So? Where’s the Doc and Carol?” Sian said.

  “No sign of them. The med bay is trashed. All I could find was this,” he said, holding up a single golden feather.

  “Oh this is ridiculous, Morrison. Half the crew is either dead or running around the ship clucking.” Sian said. “We have to abort.”

  “Yeah, let’s get the hell out of here before someone else gets it,” Guthrie said. There was a murmur of approval from the others.

  “We can’t. We hit the waypoint three minutes ago. The ship is on autopilot now. We’re going nowhere, and neither are our feathered friends.”

  “So basically, we are completely clucked,” Guthrie said bitterly.

  “Bullshit,” Morrison said. “I say we find these feathered bastards and open up a can of good ol’ American whoop ass on them. Who’s with me?”

  “Well, you’re the only American on board,” Bill said. “We’re scientists, not soldiers. How do you expect us to fight a seven foot chicken with no weapons and no training?”

  Morrison snarled. “Bunch of chicken shit civvies. Okay, you go hide in the command module. I’ll deal with this.”

  “What are you going to do?” Guthrie said.

  Morrison hefted a plasma bone saw and grinned. “I’m gonna have me a barbeque.”

  ***

  Morrison moved along the corridor in silence.

  “Morrison? You there?” Guthrie’s voice. “McChicken has escaped. Watch your back.”

  “Roger that. I’m just coming up on the airlock now.”

  Morrison punched a code into a keypad and the airlock door hissed open. The airlock was a large room with another open internal door on the far side, and a large segmented door that opened into space.

  “Here, chickies,” he yelled. “Come see what Uncle John has for ya.”

  He checked both corridors and turned the power setting on the saw to maximum.

  “Come on, you ugly sons of bitches.”

  A high pitched shriek came from deep within the ship and Morrison could hear the scampering of scaly feet. He tightened his grip on the saw.

  A golden head craned around a side corridor and glared at him.

  “Boooooork?”

  “Guthrie, this is Morrison. I’ve got Carol here.”

  “How can you tell?”

  “It’s blond and it’s got chicken breasts.”

  “Oh.”

  The golden hen cocked its head, regarding the man, and took two tentative steps forward.

  He caught a flurry of movement in his peripheral vision and spun around, swinging the plasma saw. The blade scythed through feathers and flesh. A gray chicken head, with a pair of glasses perched on its beak, bounced off the wall. The bird’s body took a couple of steps backward.

  “What’s happening?” Guthrie said.

  “It’s Doc…he’s turned as well. But it’s okay, I took him out.”

  The headless chicken ran around in a circle and then launched itself toward Morrison, spurs flashing, carving a deep gouge across his midsection. Morrison collapsed, blood seeping between his fingers as he tried to hold his insides in place. The headless chicken reared up to strike again.

  “Cock a doodle doo, mother clucker,” Morrison spat through bubbles of blood, and hit the airlock release.

  ***

  Mark Guthrie watched as Morrison, and what had once been the ship’s doctor, were sucked into space, exploding in a cloud of blood, skin, and feathers as they hit hard vacuum. He turned from the screen to the rest of the crew.

  “Anyone else got any bright ideas?”

  “We need to start thinking like scientists. The macho approach will just have us decorating the side of the ship like Captain Morrison,” Bill said. “Are we happy to go with the assumption that these are actually werechickens?”

  The crew nodded.

  “We know they are strong, cunning, and their change is influenced by the moon. We also know that anyone pecked by these creatures will transform into one.”

  “Well, I know that I can’t find them on any of the cameras,” Guthrie said.

  Bill frowned. “It looks like we are running out of time. Our options are to contain them, kill them, or neutralize them by removing the moon’s influence.”

  “What do you mean?” Sian said.

  “If we can get far enough away from the moon, those afflicted should simply change back.”

  “That sounds great but we can’t change course, and it will take days for the ion drive to get us clear of the moon,” Sian said.

  “We could give it a push,” Dimitri said. “Fire the chemical rockets. We’
d burn a lot of fuel, but we’d put some distance between us and the moon.”

  “There is one problem with that plan,” Bill said. “We’d have to go down to engineering to fire the rockets.”

  Guthrie groaned. “Today just gets better and better.”

  ***

  The crew crept through the corridors, toward the engineering deck. Dimitri led the way, holding a large torque wrench like a baseball bat. Sian and Bill followed, carrying meat cleavers that they had grabbed from the mess hall. Guthrie brought up the rear, wielding a cutting torch from the lab.

  “It’s too quiet,” Guthrie whispered. “Where the hell are they?”

  “I wouldn’t complain if I were you. I’m happy as long as they are not where I am,” Dimitri said.

  They reached the blast doors leading to engineering and Dimitri punched in the code while the others watched the corridor. The door shuddered and opened about half way, then jammed. The crew squeezed through the gap into the dark corridor beyond.

  “Keep it quiet. No talking unless it’s vital,” Dimitri whispered.

  They walked on in silence, pausing at each intersection to check for movement. When they reached the section where Karl and Carol had been attacked, Sian buried her head against Guthrie’s shoulder as they stepped over the ruined corpses.

  A call echoed through the maze of pipes.

  “Cock a Doodle Doo.”

  After a moment, the reply came.

  “BUCK BUCK BUCK BUCKAWK.”

  The crew exchanged nervous glances and continued onward, their grips tightening on their makeshift weapons.

  “This is it,” Dimitri said. “We can fire the boosters from here. It will just take a moment. Be alert.”

  The controls were mounted against one of the engines. Dimitri tapped a series of commands into the console while the others watched.

  The sounds of scurrying feet resonated through the corridors. Sian whimpered. The low hum of the engines went up several decibels and the floor vibrated as the booster engines fired.

  “Got it,” Dimitri said. “Let’s get out of here.”