Never Never Stories

by Jason Sanford

  I briefly wonder who among my millions of victims created this beast for me, but that doesn't matter. As I run for the dome's emergency escape pods, my last thought is of Jerod, wondering how far my brother got before his mavich merged their souls into its own special hell.

  * * *

  Antarctica's freeze-dried desert burns my nostrils as I stand guard over my buddies, who sleep double stacked in our platoon's pressure tent. I remember an old nature simulation Lauren and I downloaded about these Antarctic rock valleys, where only a centimeter of snow falls each century. Now, as I actually breathe deep of the place, I realize the sim never captured the continent's true reality. I wish I could share this with Lauren. Then I remember that I'm now female. I wonder if that would bother Lauren, and realize with sadness that it would.

  I sight my weapon along the horizon, looking for the mavich. My platoon and I are in a giant bowl of a valley rimmed by massive, ancient mountains. In the distance I see several human bodies – freelanga, created by me. I even recognize one of them and wonder how that particular bastard survived so long before being killed. Of course, in this freeze-dried desert the bastard could have died decades ago and still look fresh killed.

  Even though my modified body wouldn't freeze unless colder than liquid nitrogen, I instinctively shiver for a moment. Through my link with my platoon, I feel their absolute trust in me. They'd never believe that I created the freelanga we've fought for the last decade.

  My body shivers yet again, its own special warning that the mavich is closing in. For some reason I remember Gunny Sam, shot three times while pulling me to safety after I was wounded. Or Cpl. Tasanee, who ran all night across the moon's surface to tell headquarters that our platoon was surrounded and our communications grid dead. She saved us and didn't double-think it, merely gave me a hug and whispered that us gals got to look out for the big dumb jocks. All the big dumb jocks laughed at that. After all, the only rule of combat is never let down the person beside you.

  Dear God, please don't make me let them down.

  I leave the perimeter for a moment and look in the tent. Gunny Sam, Cpl. Tasanee, all of them sleep soundly because of their trust of me. We've fought on a dozen worlds. We're closer than any family. I'm not going to do it, I tell my body. I'm not going to leave them to die. At least let me wake them.

  But as I scan the horizon again, I see the mavich climbing down an icy mountain. Light bends around its teeth and claws. Inside its mouth I see the galaxy of stars, the last sight it gives before vengeance is created. I fight my body's leaving. Fight the gened urge to run and remake myself and forget yet again who I am.

  But I don't have a choice. Before the mavich gets any closer, I jump into the platoon's shuttle and fly toward the sky. I pray I haven't betrayed my platoon mates to their death. Pray the freelanga don't notice that no one's guarding the platoon.

  But the freelanga always look for the briefest scent of weakness. I should know. I'm the son of a bitch who created them. I'm the selfish bastard who programmed this damn freelanga body to keep running and changing and running forever.

  * * *

  I lean back in my chair as Dr. Daniels drones on about the difficulties she's had in replicating the genomic vaccine. I nod absently – “Yes, yes,” I say, “this is a what always stops our research.” – even though I'm no longer listening to her words. Instead, I look out the window at the hospital's Martian gardens. I planted half the bioengineered pines out there. Many are now so big I can't reach around them. My little contribution to this planet's terrafarming efforts.

  I stand and walk to the window, looking for the mavich. Dr. Daniels thinks nothing of this, assuming I'm deep in thought about the plague that's ripping through the Mars colony. What I'm really wondering, though, is why the mavich took almost fifty years to find me – and why it couldn't have waited just one more week.

  As Dr. Daniels talks, I want to interrupt her. To ask if she ever studied the histories on the freelanga. Dr. Daniels is young, just out of medical school, so I doubt she's bothered to download the detailed story of my former people. How I created the genetic modification which swept through the bodies of my true believers and turned brother against brother and brother into brother. How my freelanga murdered millions before they decided my teachings about the eternal mutability of self weren't worth killing for.

  I turn and look at the sims which hover over the conference table. Images of disfigured woman and men. Kids with skin half burned away. The entire hospital has been focused on finding a cure to the out-of-control disease lashing its way through our population. In the last month we released two potential vaccines only to see both fail.

  That's when I see the mavich, walking slowly across the red-tinged desert, its light-distorting spider legs shooting out to rocks and boulders as it tracks me down for vengeance. I plead with it. Beg for more time. I've done good, you see. Helped people. Not enough to wipe out my debt, but I have the cure to this plague. It's in my head right now.

  As I watch the mavich approach, I curse myself for not telling Dr. Daniels about the cure I'd worked out. After the hospital's last two disappointments, I hadn't wanted to raise anyone's hopes. Now they'll never know how close I came to saving them all.

  As I walk out of the conference room and my body tenses to run, I glance a final time at the pictures of the dying colonists. This is yet another sin I'll have to account for one day.

  For the briefest of moments, I wonder if that's how mavich wants it.

  And then I run.

  * * *

  I'm breastfeeding my baby in the nursery when my body realizes the mavich is right outside the house. I protectively cradle Alis's sleepy body before logic says she'll be safer in her crib. As I lay her down, she sighs, content in being fed and being loved. I run my fingers through her curly black hair for a moment then walk quickly to my bedroom.

  Paul's stinger is in the drawer where he always keeps it. I remember how often I've asked him to get rid of the gun; how many times he repeated irritating clichés about the jungles of the old Russian tundra being a dangerous place. As I pull the stinger out, I bless Paul for his foresight. I glance at him sleeping in the bed and blow a kiss as I walk outside to confront the mavich, cursing with all my might the bastard I once was.

  At first I don't see the beast, but then the trees shimmer and I realize it's standing right before me. I'm glad my body didn't detect the mavich until it was too late to run. While my body still aims to defend itself, I touch my love for Alis and Paul and realize I prefer death to running away yet again.

  The mavich pads around me, its gaping mouth of space and time twinkling to a billion newly created stars. My body raises the stinger and fires, but the gun can't harm something which barely exists. I smile at my coming death. I remember my love for Lauren, my betrayal of my platoon, the thousands I could have saved on Mars, the millions more my original self killed because I was so in love with my own perverted ideals. Most of all, I feel my love for Alis and Paul. I don't care how hard my original self worked to save his life, it's not worth the pain I feel for those I continually leave behind.

  The mavich steps toward me and from its gaping mouth I hear the cries of those I murdered so many years ago. I brace myself. Beg Alis to forgive me. Take comfort knowing Paul will love and raise our child.

  But then the mavich pauses, flickers, the distortions which form its body fading for some reason. In that instant, I realize my body is going to run again, that it's going to reach Paul's jump bike behind the house. That my body will once again escape and change and create a new life and new memories, a life I'll only understand when I'm once again forced to abandon everyone and everything I've come to love.

  However, even as I realize this my body's instinct to run misses a beat. I flick the stinger at my legs and fire, shattering bones and muscles. I fall screaming to the ground.

  The pain is almost too much to bear, but I take pride in having stopped my body. I brace myself and stare up at the mav
ich as it reforms even stronger than before. The beast opens its mouth impossibly wide, appears ready to envelope the entire world with its vengeance. I pray that Alis forgives me and close my eyes.

  And open them again to find the mavich squatting before me, grinning. Kill me, I think. Give your creators the vengeance they told you to deliver.

  But the mavich merely sits there, grinning. It then steps back and disappears into the forest.

  That's when I understand a mavich's true vengeance.

  Paul runs outside and holds me, presses his hands onto my destroyed legs to slow the bleeding. He tells me a medical shuttle is on its way. They'll repair you in no time, he says.

  I think of Alis sleeping soundly in her bedroom, and realize Paul is right. I'll be repaired in no time. And then my body will be running. And changing. And running again.

  Thankfully, Paul believes it's merely the pain from my legs which makes me cry and cry and cry.

  Peacemaker, Peacemaker, Little Bo Peep

  The sheep led the sheepdogs and wolves to pasture and prepared to gun us down.

  They lined us up for execution in an old soybean field as the night clouds above built to rains which never fell, and the wind gusted to burnings we smelled but couldn't see. I stood handcuffed to Victor Braun, a trucker I'd arrested three days before for the murder of a young hitchhiker. I'd caught Victor near the crime scene as he worked with bloody hands on his truck's broken-down engine. When I'd ordered Victor to the ground at gunpoint, he smirked before complying. Muttered about bad luck and cheap-ass foreign trucks and his amusement at being arrested by a woman half his size.

  “Care to tell me your name, honey?” he drawled once I'd cuffed him.

  “Sergeant Ellen Davies,” I announced, and slammed his head against the scratch-rock ground for what he'd done to that poor girl.

  But now we stood side by side as the people I'd served for the last decade paced up and down debating the best way to kill us.

  Before me, Pastor Albert Jones of the Holy Redeemer Church sadly shook his red-shag head. Jones had baptized me as a teenager, not long after he moved to our little town. One of the proudest moments in my life had been when he once praised me in a sermon as a true protector of the weak and voiceless.

  Now, though, he'd be my death. As Pastor Jones looked at me through sad-down eyes I cursed him, causing the woman beside him to angrily spit at my badge. Pastor Jones rested his hand on her shoulder and said to stop – this was a solemn occasion, not an occasion for petty vengeance. He then moved down the row, looking into the face of each person awaiting execution.

  On the other side of Victor stood Buck, a lanky rookie who, unlike every other deputy, begged for his life. I refused to beg, and with my free hand wiped the spit from my shield.

  “Good on you,” Victor muttered.

  Ours was a small department of only thirty deputies and half those stood in this old soybean field along with the handful of prisoners from our jail. The others were either dead – killed when we made our final stand at the sheriff's department – or had escaped with their families. And we'd only survived because Sheriff Granville had walked into the thousands of angry townsfolk with a white flag and convinced Pastor Jones to let us surrender.

  I'd never seen such bravery – the mob shooting and screaming and throwing Molotov cocktails as Sheriff Granville, already shot twice, waved his flag and shouted over and over, “We're better than this!”

  Sheriff Granville now leaned against Sgt. Glosser for support as blood dripped from the rifle shots to the sheriff's massive gut. He glared at Pastor Jones. They'd been friends ever since Jones arrived in town. Jones, embarrassed, said there was nothing he could do.

  “Always something you can do,” Sheriff Granville muttered weakly. “We've been there. Helped each and every one of you.”

  The sheriff's words rippled through the townsfolk. Several people shuffled the dust of old soybean plants, maybe remembering times we'd located a lost child or caught a thief. For a moment I thought the sheriff's words might make a difference, but suddenly Pastor Jones shrieked – an inhuman whine his voice shouldn't be able to make. The high-pitched scream of joy climbed into the word “Peace!” as the people around him joined in. Their voices were unable to match Jones' high-toned shout but they still trilled that cursed word until the mob lost all intelligence and peace no longer sounded like anything I've ever known.

  While the crowd trilled, Pastor Jones walked down the line. He pulled out Buck – still begging for his life – and removed the handcuffs before ripping off the kid's badge. He also freed two of our prisoners who'd been in jail for petty crimes. Pastor Jones ordered them to leave and never harm another. Buck didn't glance back as he ran through the dark into the nearby trees.

  Pastor Jones shrieked again, causing the crowd to raise their guns even as they kept trilling “Peace!” I recognized the pistol in front of me as my own service weapon, now held by my old Sunday School teacher Mrs. McKenzie.

  I could only pray my husband had received my warning and escaped with our daughter. As if hearing my unspoken prayer, Victor Braun grabbed my handcuffed hand with his own. My palm hot and sweat-slicked. His still coated in the hitchhiker's blood – stains he'd proudly refused to wash away.

  I hated his touch. I gripped it tightly.

  “Be ready to fall,” he whispered. And then Pastor Jones shrieked fire. And then we truly fell.

  * * *

  Sometimes you fall well before you know. You fall and feel the impact later.

  Is it fair to blame a dream for all this, knowing it only released what was inside us to begin with? Or is the dream an excuse? A word to tickle our mind. A mental escape to overlook the horrible things people have always done.

  At first the reports of mobs killing soldiers and police and criminals and thugs didn't disturb us. We thought these were simply revolutions and protests from people trying to change their lives – events which happened somewhere in the world on a regular basis.

  But then we saw the videos. Heard the eerie trilling. Saw the mobs attack while trilling “peace” as if the word was a sick, perverted joke. Witnessed how the crowds were controlled by a few individuals who shrieked at impossibly high tones, their voices controlling the mobs' actions like a virtuoso caressing bloody piano keys.

  And the dreams, don't forget the dreams. Trillers mentioned their dreams with star-gone gazes, as if unable to forget the experience yet unwilling to trust words to describe them. Those few who did speak in detail mentioned the calling they found in dreams, while those the trillers aimed to kill spoke of being rejected by their dreams.

  Before the trilling reached our town, Pastor Jones called our congregation to an evening prayer session. I sat on the stiff wood pew with my husband and daughter and wondered if it was really possible for my neighbors, my friends, to kill me because of the work I did. Barry held my hand in his massive grip – his calluses sticky with sap from working all day as a logger – while Lucy leaned against my side, sleepy and wanting to go home.

  But Pastor Jones pushed my worries aside as he thundered at our congregation to have faith. “We are all God's children,” he proclaimed. “Remember who you are. Don't allow this evil dream to steal your soul.”

  We all amened, but none of us said the word like we meant it.

  Afterward, as the congregation filed out, Pastor Jones walked up. “Makes you wonder,” he whispered to me and Barry, “about the truth of what we preach.” My husband laughed nervously to the melodrama in Pastor Jones' voice and told our daughter to go play with her friends.

  “Are you truly worried?” I asked once Lucy was out of earshot, having long since learned that when people make random observations they're often voicing deeper thoughts. Pastor Jones looked into me – the look people give when they want to say something but are afraid to utter the words. “I worry for you and your family, Ellen,” he said. “You should flee before whatever this is reaches town.”

  I gripped Pastor Jones' ha
nd and told him I appreciated the concern. “I have a duty to perform, the same as you,” I said. “As you said, we merely need faith.”

  Pastor Jones looked uncertain, the thunder and grace from his pulpit faded. Gone. But before I could press him, my old Sunday School teacher Mrs. McKenzie called to him, demanding Jones decide a theological point about dreams being debated by she and her friends. Pastor Jones chuckled nervously and walked away.

  Now, only a few weeks later, I'd love to ask Pastor Jones what he'd truly wanted to say. To ask what had truly worried him. To ask if trillers like him give any thought on the evil their dreams push into the world.

  * * *

  Into the ditch – mud and screams and cries – the water only a foot deep, hidden by cattails and grass as gunshots and flashlights played over the injured and the dead. The mob shot over and over at the shapes in the mud. They hadn't removed our body armor so many of the deputies survived the initial shots, only to be killed with follow-up shots to the head or rifle rounds which shredded kevlar and flesh.

  But Victor Braun had muttered fall, so when the gunshots rang we fell and rolled into the deeper water of the ditch. We hid in a tall clump of cattails, my leg burning from a bullet while my chest numb-tingled from a round stopped by my vest.

  Neither of us talked or moved, knowing sound and motion would reveal our hiding place. However, Sheriff Granville's deep voice boomed out from the ditch, mocking our executioners. He'd survived the initial volley and now laughed at the mob, cursing them as weak and stupid until Pastor Jones himself waded into the ditch and shot Sheriff Granville upside the head. I reached for my service weapon before remembering it was gone.

  And there we lay until the mob's eerie trilling died down and they wandered off one by one, leaving only the wind scudding the empty soybean field above us. I began to crawl toward my fallen colleagues, but I was still handcuffed to Victor and he wouldn't move.

  “Wait,” he whispered. “There may be a few left, watching for survivors.”