by Allen Ivers
Liquid skin was a bit of misnomer -- it was a combination antiseptic and an adhesive coagulant, designed to simulate a bandage. It would harden when exposed to the heat of the human body, creating a kind of gel cap that would protect the wound from further exposure.
It wasn’t an effective permanent fix, as active bleeding diluted the material, but as a temporary triage treatment, it could not be matched. It would destroy any gangrenous bacteria growing, or at least stop its spread. And it sealed the wound, to prevent continuous blood loss or contamination. It was a critical supply in Emergency Clinics the world over.
Jazmin tried not to watch, but the slopping sound was bad enough on its own.
“Your sister had a prosthesis?” Raines asked.
“More like I had a sister.” Jazmin’s bite may have been aimed at someone thirty four million miles away, but Raines was just as likely to get bit. May as well stick your head in the lion’s mouth.
“She die?”
“No,” Jazmin said, “Just not my sister anymore.”
Raines looked up, trying to draw Jazmin’s gaze. She saw it, but refused to look down, lest she catch a glimpse of the disgusting injury.
“No family then. You come out here with someone?”
Jazmin’s natural anger response softened to something more wistful. “Found someone. She’s gone too.”
“People make a habit of doing that around you?” Raines asked, already knowing the answer. This was going to be like tapping the third rail of a subway car, but the static charge was building. Better to let it out somewhere now than later.
Jazmin finally did match Raines’ stare, but there was a natural focus in her eyes that kept her safe from the stomach-churning image allotted her. “Mars has a psychiatrist now?’
“No, I’m just educated.” Raines was hardly a soft shoulder to cry on. But the others were busy and this needed to be done.
“Why do you care?” Jazmin snapped.
“I care because that thing in the canyon will use your fears against you. It will pull on your pains and your sorrows and your rage, and it will reduce you to the most reptilian base of who you are. Unless you give it nothing to hold on to.”
Jazmin looked Raines up and down, her eyes catching on that awful wound before answering. “Is that what happened to Amelia?”
A likely result, but no way to know for sure. “I don’t know. But it’s what it tried to do to me. You came here with someone?”
“Cally. She died at the front gate when an alien laser cut her in half.” Jazmin snorted, like a wolf in the cold, her eyes tracking to the brittle shards of plant matter on the desk. Blame, but unfocused. “She was trying to save an idiot.”
“It would have killed her without much of a thought, the way we might plow under crops or exterminate pests. The boot feels no guilt over the insect.” Jazmin’s face twisted at this information. Raines almost smiled, an apology for the candor. “I learned a few things from my captor.”
“I’m assuming your lab rat ain’t him?” Jazmin asked, her lips curling in a cocktail of disgust, fear, and hatred. She was seeking a foe, someone she could beat into submission.
“It has no name for itself,” Raines whispered, like she might invoke its power by even referring to it. “It has no use for titles. It killed Amelia. It killed the colonists. And It will kill all that try to stop it.”
“It killed Cally?”
“No,” Raines sympathized, “Like everyone else, she was killed in the crossfire of someone else’s war. The Beast and this thing…” Raines leered down at the glassy shards. “They brought their war… to our field.”
Chapter 17
Manifest
Jericho’s torch spat and dripped in equal measure, white sparks and yellow slag. It was the third airlock door he had fused that hour.
Locklear spent his time compiling the available resources. The mess hall was still well stocked, intended for a hundred or so, give or take. Feeding four would be trivial by comparison. He didn’t have to worry about his rations, at least.
Besides food, there was a handful of medical supplies from the station doctor and personal kits abandoned in living quarters. All in all, even sparse supplies for a full colony would leave the rag-tag band very well equipped.
Weapons were quite a different story. Not much could be salvaged from the dead, and Amelia was an armory unto herself that had walked off into the night. Sidearms with a handful of magazines were their only defense.
Nobody entirely understood the why of the extreme measures, only that the original colonists had not taken the time and paid for that mistake. Raines seemed adamant that the Beast would be making a move on them, and they had some time to waste before the shuttle would make its approach.
And so they prepared for a siege.
Against humans, anyway. Locklear had no goddamn idea for how to prepare against this kind of enemy. What to do about the floor when it had a penchant for midnight snacking?
Jericho pulled his goggles off, nodding at the supervising Locklear. It was a good weld, smooth. If something tried to break through, they’d at least have some warning.
“Good work,” Locklear said, clapping a hand on Jericho’s gigantic shoulder. “Let’s get back to Medical, see if Jazmin’s punched the ticket on our little friend yet.”
Jericho slung up his torch and cans -- it took a good minute or so. With the volatile gases secured and clamped down, the two started their short walk back down the corridors.
It was downright disconcerting, the clang of boots on metal grating. The echoes bounced off the walls and in the distance, moaning back along the corridors, like there was a ghost banging around in there too. At this point, Locklear wasn’t willing to discredit that possibility.
“Where’d you learn the way of the torch?” Locklear asked, hoping the awkward phrasing might defuse some of the growing tension.
Jericho’s curt response did not help. “School.” Locklear threw that rope out there and Jericho just watched it fall to the ground with a feeble empty thud.
“Oh,” Locklear offered back, passing the baton of conversation in an awkward display of apology.
“Nothing else to say?”
That voice.
Locklear spun about, dropping to one knee with his pistol drawn. But all there was to see was the empty hallway and fused door behind them. The casual dust particles floating in the air, snow looking for a grave to rest upon.
Locklear couldn’t shake the idea; there hadn’t been dust in the air when they walked by. It was like something had disturbed it.
Jericho stopped at his side, leering back down the way they came, but refusing to fully turn. Good, keeping one eye forward. Lest something somehow swing up behind them.
Locklear’s eyes scanned over the hallway, waiting for something to appear. Maybe pop up from a shadow he somehow missed or drop down from the ceiling.
“Sir?” Jericho asked, his concern more for Locklear’s twitchy behavior than whatever was hiding.
Did he not hear that voice, that familiar gravel and terse delivery?
Take a chance. Maybe.
“Amelia?” Locklear called out and it was like the space ate his voice, that once terrifying echo now refusing to report in. Someone caught the words from the air.
Locklear lowered his pistol to the grating under him, tapping the steel barrel against the corrugated floor. The ring of metal simply refused to echo, like the space had been suddenly soundproofed in that disquieting surreal way.
He debated screaming, but thought better of it, lest this apparition reach down his throat and take his voice entirely.
“Fall back to Medical. Now,” he hissed.
Jericho led the way, as Locklear backpedaled, refusing to take his eyes off the sealed airlock door. He half expected it to slide open without ceremony, as though Jericho’s torch hadn’t spent the last fifteen minutes melting the alloy.
Mercilessly, nothing, as Locklear closed the door in front of them.
> Jazmin was re-dressing Raines’ leg. If it was painful, Raines wasn’t saying much. Jazmin had all but drained her canteen trying to clean the wound, with bloody water in a plastic bucket by the bed.
But Jazmin took no prompting to drop that particular mission, despite Locklear’s martial entrance. “What do you got?” Jazmin questioned, an interrogative that Locklear couldn’t decisively answer.
“Seal it,” Locklear ordered. Jericho didn’t need to be further prompted, as he proceeded to set up his torch.
“What did you see?” Panic was creeping into Jazmin’s voice now.
Locklear couldn’t let them lose control now. “How long till the shuttle touches down?”
Jazmin reached for her watch, but Raines spoke from memory, “Twenty fives minutes to touch down, hour to fuel.”
Jericho sparked the torch, lighting the room with a flickering strobe. It would be slow work. These doors were rated for the extreme temperatures of wherever they’d be put. Somehow, everyone knew that it was going to take too long.
“Get her up!” Locklear snapped, pointing to Raines.
“She has one fuckin’ leg, Lock.”
“Get her a crutch, or something! We are going mobile.” Locklear dropped the magazine in his pistol, counting the rounds. Fourteen, plus one in the chamber. A second magazine in his waist. Just under thirty shots. Not nearly enough. “Fuck!”
It was the Medical bay, so a crutch wasn’t hard to come by, and the blessed lower gravity would make the ardor of hopping along a bit less painful. Jericho couldn’t carry her; Locklear couldn’t spare the gun hand.
“Where are you going?”
Everyone jumped, weapons drawn. There she was, standing tall in the center of the bay, like she’d always been there.
Amelia Dane.
“It’s waking up,” Raines whispered, more caution than fear. But it was obvious from her tone that this was something of immense proportion. And the sudden appearance of old friends was not even remotely what she was really worried about.
Jericho’s torch laid where he dropped it, the fire burning piteously against nothing. A quiet sizzling warning.
Amelia turned her head, stifling an honest laugh, “Thought you’d be glad to see me, boss?” If it weren’t for the bizarre rigid stance, he just might be. She was standing tall, feet squared under her, excellent posture. She always used to lean on one leg, hip cocked.
This wasn’t Amelia. Not anymore.
“Did you kill her?” Locklear blurted. Get it talking, keep it talking. Every second it’s talking, it’s not attacking.
She blinked, as if the direct question had stalled her hard drive. Her eyes darted around the room, before falling back on Locklear. “Kill who?”
“Don’t fuck with me, I will drill you right between the eyes. You know exactly what I’m asking.”
That blinking again, before Amelia squared her shoulders. “High voltage through a weak system. Nothing to be done about it. You are too primitive.”
Locklear rolled his fingers, resetting the sweaty grip on his pistol. Amelia had stopped with the blinking. It was then Locklear noted how pale she looked, the gray of her eyes, as though the blood had drained right out of her. “If it’s any consolation, she didn’t suffer.”
“Why did you let us go?” Raines hobbled forward as though she was the one in charge.
Amelia tilted her head, eyes narrowing with recognition, “Not all learning is done primarily. Some of it is more… passive.”
It watched them, to see if they would survive. That’s why Amelia fled when she did. It had seen enough.
“So now what?” He asked, staring right down the aperture sights of his pistol, imagining what would happen when he pulled the trigger. Would it be as dramatic as he pictured, or would she slump to the ground like dirty laundry?
Amelia looked right back down the barrel, as though she was the one aiming at him.
She did not speak but the voice he heard came in his eyes, his fingers, his blood. A deep thought driven into his mind with a hammer and tack.
You search for answers to explain your own intrusion. You take your strides into the night, tripping onto a process greater than your ken.
This is not your affair. But you shall be accommodated.
The ground heaved to, an angry wave rolling under their feet searching for a distant coastline to break against. Crunching stone and warping steel groaned against the pressure, and the lights flickered overhead.
Locklear couldn’t help but stagger, falling to one knee. Vulnerable.
He tumbled to one side, using the momentum to bring himself back up, but by the time he had reset, Amelia had vanished. If she had ever been there in the first place.
Fan-fucking-tastic.
Jericho snagged his torch off the floor, where it had begun to melt through the grating. He snuffed out the flame, before packing it up. Smart. The way this was all going, they may need to make their own exit.
Whatever wild goose chase was about to begin, Locklear would have to be sure it ended at the locker rooms, so the team could suit up. Without suits, they would just be scampering around, rats in a maze until the time ran out.
“Well, it knows where we are,” Jazmin chirped.
An unholy clang, as something big bashed against the half-sealed door. Everyone jumped away, as the initial strike sounded like a car crash right next to them.
“And it’s got a pretty direct style,” said Locklear, quick with the jab.
Another bang, followed by more staccato blows landing to the doorframe. The door was designed to slide out of the way, so the strikes were trying to force against the natural movement, and what little weld there was did something to reinforce the integrity.
But whatever was breaching through had gotten past the first weld without so much as peep. Maybe Amelia had been sent as a distraction?
If they breached the airlock, then any consecutive breach would blow everything and everyone out onto the front yard.
Don’t freeze. Map out the path. Do it.
Out of Medical, through the Locker Rooms and up to Operations. From there, he could run this merry goose chase wherever he liked.
“Everybody up. Jericho, take point and pave the road to the Lockers. Jazmin, weapons free, pick your shots. You only get so many.”
Jazmin checked her magazine, someplace between terrified and elated. “Fuckin’ A.”
Jericho tapped Raines on the shoulder, who gave him an energetic nod back. She had no desire to hang out any more than he did.
The door weld cracked, and the heavy alloy bent just so, allowing a crisp view of what was beyond.
A flurry of flailing limbs, a grinder in the darkness. Whatever many tentacled horror awaited them felt right out of the night terrors of small children.
A wind immediately kicked up, as the air tried to shove its way out through the crack.
Locklear flicked out his shield, bending his knees to mask as much of his body as possible, while wrapping his pistol along the side. The wind pulled on the panels like he’d opened a sail, but he wanted the cover more than he cared about his shoulder burning.
Jazmin stepped up to his side, utilizing as much of the coverage as she could. Everyone’s training was kicking in now. The two shared a look, and ten thousand things crept across that stare.
Jazmin didn’t trust Locklear to act when he had to, and she didn’t want to die here. Not like Cally had, so suddenly and quietly.
No, she would go down surrounded by brass.
The two had backed almost all the way out of the room when the door finally breached. What poured forth was something Locklear should have expected.
Dozens of humans shambling forward, skin tainted pale red. They all were missing chunks of flesh, sometimes whole limbs, and in their place grew sickly amalgams of stone and gore, like the very stone was trying to escape a jail cell of meat.
The shell up in front, his whole leg had been replaced by a spear of ruddy sandstone. The tatters o
f his colonial jumpsuit hung off his body. There was a name etched onto the chest pocket.
Hotchkiss.
It didn’t look at Locklear, but it knew exactly where to throw the tiny spines of stone that buried into the shield, one lodging deep in the plastic, sticking out just a half inch above his wrist.
“Let’s roll, people!” Locklear shouted.
Jazmin’s first shot took whatever was left of Hotchkiss’ head off in a puff of red powder and wet carnage.
The stonemen seemed annoyed by this tact, and proceed to sprint forward as fast as their damaged bodies could against the buffeting wind – shifting, shambling, stuttering sprints.
The narrow compartment, filled with beds and storage, managed to bottleneck their approach but there was something surreal to how they clambered in a kind of unison. They didn’t care for stepping on each other, but they also seemed to throw each other forward, like a wave whose outstretched fingers reached out for the shore.
Locklear and Jazmin backpedaled as best they could, popping off shots at any stonemen that got too close, but the wave was breaking, tumbling faster and faster.
The open corridor between Medical and Lockers allowed the monsters to advance unimpeded. Their little pistols were buying mere seconds.
They slipped through the doorway. “Close it now!” Locklear screeched.
Jericho slapped the lever into place, cranking the doors shut. But not before one of the stonemen lunged through, tackling Locklear to the ground.
The eyes glittered in its skull, like uncut gems. They didn’t roll or tighten or focus on anything. They looked right through him and saw everything.
He had no jaw, no mouth to speak of. It had been removed with deliberate intent, leaving an ashy gash that might have been its throat once upon a time. It didn’t speak or snarl or growl or moan.
It creaked, as it swung an arm for his gut. Its skin was brittle but the tiny shards that slid out of his forearm made for a serrated hacksaw.
