Alexandra Wolfe's Blog, page 29

Cat Skin, by Tonya R. Moore

“Say, Doc,” Chloe asked lowly. “You know why I’m in here?”

The doctor was a young one, fresh out of university. She wore round glasses and her hair in a serious bun. It was nearly the end of their session, six going on seven in the evening. She eyed Chloe sagely.

“You know why you’re here, Chloe.” Dr. Finley said softly. “This is a safe place, where we can talk about the things on your mind.”

Despite her cajoling words, the doctor was well aware that the girl sitting on the loveseat across from her wasn’t talking about this room, all Zen-like and bursting at the seams with soft colors and warmth. Beyond the soft love-seats and fluffy cushions was a sterile hallway, leading to rows and rows of titanium-reinforced, padded cells.

“Beckley Place is a facility for the criminally insane,” Chloe said, nodding.

“Yes,” Dr. Finley nodded. “Yes, it is.”

Chloe’s hazel eyes darted from side to side as if to make sure no one else was listening. She leaned forward and whispered. “But I ain’t neither criminal nor insane.”

“You killed sixteen people.”

Chloe continued as if Dr. Finley hadn’t spoken. “I’m cursed,” She said, leaning back in the loveseat. “Doc, it ain’t my fault that I’m cursed.”

Chloe was twenty-seven, rail thin and petite. With her over large eyes and knotty mass of hair, she looked more like a frail, urban waif than a vicious killer. Killed she had, though, torn bodies to shreds in violent ways that Dr. Finley had never even imagined possible.

“Why do you think you’re cursed, Chloe?” Dr. Finley probed.

“Oh, come on!” Chloe answered harshly.

Dr. Finley flinched.

“You think I don’t know what’s up?” Chloe demanded, eyes over-bright and limpid. “I know what’s up.”

Dr. Finley’s pen hovered over her notepad. “What do you mean?”

“Things happen to me at night.” Chloe’s voice trembled. “Awful, awful things, Doc.”

Dr. Finley set her notepad and pen aside. She leaned forward, emphatic. “Chloe, if there’s something happening to you in this place, you need to tell me about—”

There was a rapping on the door.

“Dr. Finley,” said a male voice. “It’s time.”

Dr. Finley’s eyes swung back to her patient. “Chloe, tell me.”

The chains on Chloe’s shackles rattled as she gripped the doctor’s hands in her own. “It comes at night!” She hissed, trembling violently. “Please! Please don’t let them take me back to that room.”

The door opened. A pair of burly male guards barged in.

“It’s time, Doctor,” the one who’d spoken before said. “We have to take her. Now.”

Chloe backed away, cowered in the corner of the room.

“Please, Doc!” She cried.

The guards crossed the room, dragged Chloe to her feet.

“Wait!” Dr. Finley protested. “I’m treating this patient right now. You have no right to interfere here.”

The guard who hadn’t spoken yet turned his head to look at Dr. Finley. He was the taller of the two, dark and attractive but the frosty look in his eyes made Dr. Finley shiver. “You’re new so you don’t understand how things work around here. I’ll give you that. Don’t push it, Doc. This is for your sake too.”

Concerned, Dr. Finley hurried after them.

They dragged Chloe out of the room. She was crying, clawing, and making sounds Dr. Finely didn’t even recognize as human.

“Shit! Is that a fang?” Dr. Finley heard one of the guards say. “She’s changing now. Use the tranquilizer!”

The dark one reached into his pouch and produced an injection cartridge with a big needle and jammed it into Chloe’s arm. The effect was immediate. She stopped fighting the other guard. The two guards backed away as she fell to her knees. They pulled their guns from their holsters and aimed at Chloe. The shorter guard got on his radio, asking for a facility lock-down.

“Dr. Finley, go back to your office and lock the door,” said the taller guard. His words barely registered.

Dr. Finely couldn’t take her eyes off Chloe.

Chloe crouched low, growling like an animal. She was down on all fours, back flexing and undulating. She shuddered. Her muscles rippled. Dr. Finley looked on in speechless horror as the skin on Chloe’s fingers and toes broke apart and sharp claws appeared. There was blood, so much blood. Hairs popped up on Chloe’s skin.

She grew until her clothes burst apart at the seams and fell to the ground in tattered bits. Her shackles broke apart. Right before Dr. Finley’s eyes, she transformed into a massive jaguar, a hirsute killing machine. The two guards backed up a few more paces, guns still trained on the feline beast that Chloe had become.

The beast pawed at the ground, shook its head from side to side. Its glazed eyes fixed on the spot where Dr. Finley stood. It took a step forward. Dr. Finley heard a gun trigger cock. Dr. Finley’s breath caught in her throat. Fear, bitter and raw, filled her mouth. She wanted to run but she couldn’t. Her feet were rooted to the spot. The beast lumbered forward, swaying from side to side.

It stumbled and crumpled to the ground, the tranquilizer finally taking effect. One of the guards stepped in closer. He kicked at the jaguar with a booted foot. It didn’t budge.

“Right,” he said. “Let’s get her back in her cell.”

Dr. Finley sank to the ground.

“Cursed,” she mouthed shakily, watching in stunned silence as the two guards dragged the bloody jaguar down the corridor.

THE END

The Impossible Girl, by Alexandra Wolfe

THE LEAN AND LANKY RYAN CONNOR jumped out the back of the 4-ton truck and landed in the wet mud with a soft thud. It sucked at his wellies as he moved off toward a large pit, and the reason they were all there. He turned just in time to see his Corporal, Jack Blase, a man in his late 20s, man-handle himself out of the truck like a 60 year-old. Working bomb disposal did that to a person.

“Come on, Old Man, you’ll be late for the party.” Jack flashed him a look that said, ‘don’t mess with me.’ Ryan cocked his head to one side, fixed his Service-issue woollen hat further back on his head at a jaunty angle, and grinned. He waited for Jack, William ‘The Bagman’ Herschel and their lieutenant, Sandy ‘Shingle’ House, to catch up with him. He turned back toward the gapping maw of the pit. Workers had been hand digging the area up until yesterday when, as happened all to often in this area of Hanover, a perfectly preserved and unexploded 1000 pounder had been unearth.

It was one of theirs, that much was for sure. Someone had taken the time to write on the pointy end, ‘a gift from Ol’ Blighty’.

Connor pulled out a pack of smokes from an open top pocket and made to light one.

“Not here, you bloody idiot.” Connor turned just as Herschel dumped two bags and a couple of shovels at his feet. Connor shrugged and slid the smoke back into the crumpled packet and re-pocketed it.

“You really are dumber than a spud,” the man continued bending to retrieve something from one of the bags. Connor made a sour face at the man’s back and walked off toward the lip of the pit, scrambling over loose earth, cracked brick and rubble. It was ten years plus since the war had ended but still, people were unearthing unexploded ordinance. It was their job, as part of the British Royal Air Force’s bomb-disposal task force, to clean up the mess. Connor wondered why there were no German teams scouring London doing the same thing for them, and shook his head. He would, of course, ask Jack.

“Jack, you’d better survey what the construction workers found up there,” the Lieutenant asked as he hauled on his regulation grey duffle coat. It was only early autumn but already the mornings dawned brisk with a definite chill in the air and this morning, a fine mist coiled its way over everything. He felt it seeping into his bones and shivered.

Blase just nodded to his junior lieutenant, eyes fixed on Connor. The young man was green, brash, and prone to being rash. He needed to knock some sense into him, and quickly, otherwise he wouldn’t last long at this game.

Turning to the Lieutenant, Jack saw he was more nervous than usual. This, Jack knew, was the young officer’s first command. Training was all very well in a classroom, but out here, in the field? It was life or death if you made a bad decision.

“Maybe you want to set up on the other side of the truck,” he suggested, “I’ll get the kid to start a brew going, how does that sound?”

The officer, blowing in to his cold hands, smiled and nodded. That sounded just dandy to him. “Thanks, Jack, this damn weather gives me the creeps.”

It was true, the whole place was beginning to look like a scene from some Hollywood movie. He watched as the grateful officer went off to sneak a smoke with the truck’s driver and Jack knew, it was up to him.

“He off to grab a fag?” It was Herschel. He looked liked he rather go do the same but still, he stood next to Jack waiting for orders.

“It’ll keep him out of our hair,” Jack qualified as both men turned, as one, and looked about them.

“It’s like a blood cemetery round here,” Herschel pulled his collar up, “were is everyone?” It was a question Jack had asked himself the moment he had hit the soil. At least two of the construction company workers and a German official should have been there to meet them. But, as far as he could see having done a three-sixty already, there wasn’t even a local to be seen. Though, it was true, it was still only seven thirty in the morning.

“All still in their cosy beds, I guess—” Herschel added without waiting for Jack. “Shall I get the greenhorn to start a brew?” He asked moving off toward Connor.

“No, I’ll send him your way, offload the truck with him, I’ll go take a look-see first.”

Any excuse. The man nodded and walked off toward the grey four-ton truck. Jack watched his back for a second, turned, and thought he saw something off to one side. He peered at the coiling mist, shook his head at imagining something lurking behind a broken wall, and headed toward the greenhorn before he fell in the excavated pit. Not that it was all that deep but, Jack thought to himself, it was just the stupid thing a twenty-something like Connor would do, as an excuse, to go down there and kick the 1000-pounder and see if it started ticking.

“Get away from that bloody hole—” Jack called out and, too late, watched as the young man turned, grinned and slipped backward on his damn arse down and out of sight. A pair of dirty wellies was the last thing Jack saw as the hole swallowed Connor.

Then, he did something he never did. He ran. Not away from the pit, but toward it.

“Shit … shit … HERSCHEL!” Jack yelled at the top of his lungs. He squelched to a halt at the lip of the pit and looked down at the spread-eagled Connor grinning up at him.

“I slipped—”

The lad lay across the bomb covered in mud, his face showed his rising panic.

“Stay where you are we’re coming down to get you.” Jack yelled down and turning saw Herschel racing toward him fear etched into his face. A step  behind him were the Lieutenant and their driver, Marshall.

“Is it ticking?” Jack heard Herschel call out. He turned back to the stricken Connor and asked.

“Can you hear it ticking, lad?” Jack held his breath. All he could hear was the pounding of his own heart in his ears.

“I … I don’t know, I—”

“Don’t move, be quiet, listen!” Jack ordered the young man. He could not decide if the stain spreading between the man’s legs was from the puddle of standing water, or if Connor had peed himself. Jack did not ask, he crouched down and held out a reassuring hand.

“Just take a breath, be calm, and listen.” He tried to calm his own voice as he spoke. The other three behind him had stopped short. They knew the drill. No one moved. Hell, no one breathed.

Jack watched as Connor tried not to move, but panic was against him.

“I think, I think it’s okay.” The young squaddie offered up, unsure if he was hearing anything other than the sound of his own shallow breathing filling his ears. He hadn’t got a clue what a ticking bomb sounded like outside of the classroom. Not really.

“Okay, just stay put,” Jack teased with what he hoped was a smile, “we’re coming down to get you.” He stood, and turning, took two steps toward the waiting group who tried not to look like they were ready to run in the other direction.

Those two steps were all that saved Jack that day from being the bomb’s intended victim.

The 1000-pounder exploded up and out showering everything within several hundred meters in thick, viscous mud, shrapnel and shredded body parts that would never be recovered let alone identified. The thunderous noise was deafening. The compression wave, flattening.

Death was not pleased, not pleased at all.

The man named Ryan Connor though he would never marry and have children, was not scheduled for a visit from Him for another seventy-two years. Jack Blase, on the other hand, was meant to depart three minutes and seven-seconds from now.

Death stood to one side of the fallen Jack Blase as Time hung between heartbeats. Continents shifted, stars whirled across the dark void, eons came and went. The ethereal shadow asked in a sonorous voice that no human ear could hear.

Why? Death turned toward the glimmer. A brief light that teased the edges of the mist, played upon the foundations of time and reality.

Not I. Was the reply.

Then who? But Death heard nothing. The glimmer had gone just as quickly as it had appeared. He was left lingering between one realm and another, unable to reach out and take Jack Blase at the appointed time and place.

Like the mist, Death swirled, coalesced then dissipated and was gone.

Time resumed. Divergent.

Jack would live.

And on this day, this weird, miraculous day, he would go home to his wife still covered head to foot in mud, and not just regale her with a terrifying tale of how he had missed death by a few yards, but go on to create new life with her. A child that, nine months later, they named Ryan even though she was a girl.

A child that should never have been.

A child that Death could not see. Her soul just a tantalizing glint He could sense but never quite grasp.

She was, the impossible girl.

THE END

Snailam’s Watch. by Mark J. Howard

SUMMER’S FACE WAS STILL SMILING on the English countryside as I stepped off the train at Witham Friary one September afternoon in 1918. An old man in a threadbare tweed suit held my kit bag for me and then nodded self-consciously when I finally took it from him. Shouldering the heavy bag, I thanked him before walking away from the carriage and down the platform. I tried not to walk too quickly, but in truth I felt like running and leaving the pitying and overtly helpful passengers far behind me.

The Matron at the hospital had made sure my uniform was clean and pressed but now I was regretting wearing it instead of my civvies. The ribbons on my tunic looked a lot more impressive than I felt they should, but it was the empty sleeve, neatly pinned up at the shoulder, that had attracted the most furtive attention from my fellow travellers. People, strangers, had been helping me all day whether I’d needed it or not and their reverential attention had long since started to irritate me until it felt good to be away from them.

Witham Friary was a small village deep in the Somerset countryside and nobody else seemed to alight or board the train there. The Station Master, a short, round man in his mid fifties with a walrus moustache and a shiny bald head, waved his flag and blew his whistle and the train chuffed and strained into motion once more.

‘Excuse me,’ I said, intercepting him as he walked towards his office folding his flag as he went. He looked at me and an expression I was becoming all too familiar with crossed his face; half pity and half pride.

‘Yes sir, ahm, corporal, is it?’ he said, studying the markings on my uniform.

I nodded, perhaps a little too curtly, and asked him if he could direct me to Snailam’s Farm. His face shone with instant recognition. He knew the place well and gave me simple directions. ‘It’s about five miles,’ he concluded with a concerned look. ‘I can get you a ride, if you like.’

‘Thank you, but no. It’s a nice day and I fancy a walk,’ I said. I’d been cooped up for months, first confined to a bed and then to hospital grounds, and I just wanted to walk like a normal person again. I wanted to walk until either I came to the end of the world or I just couldn’t walk any more. That sentiment lasted for about a mile before I started cursing the heat of the sun and the abominable ache in my shoulder.

By this time I was down a deserted lane, lined on both sides by high hedgerows and empty fields whose various crops swayed only slightly in a gentle breeze. It was disconcerting to find myself still so weak and I dropped my kit-bag to the grass verge for a moment’s rest. All around me birdsong filled the warm air with a joyous noise as I massaged my aching shoulder, trying not to think about my lost limb. Trying not to think about any of it.

It was while I was failing in this regard that an old shire horse, pulling an even older cart driven by a seemingly ancient farmer, drew to a halt where I stood. The ancient farmer, sucking on a clay pipe, looked down from his high seat and then, after a moment’s contemplation, spoke.

‘Lift?’ he asked in a tone of voice that suggested he didn’t care either way.

‘I’m looking for Snailam’s Farm,’ I said.

He took the clay pipe from his mouth and used it as a pointer to indicate the road ahead. ‘S’down yonder,’ he said, ‘I goin’ right past.’

‘In that case yes,’ I said, ‘I’d be most grateful.’

He reached down and took my heavy kit-bag from me as if it weighed nothing at all and placed it gently to the rear of the seat, then he took my hand and hauled me up with the same ease. ‘My brother lost a flipper to the Boers,’ he said, as if this should demonstrate that he understood everything about me. ‘Says he can still feel it,’ he went on, urging the old horse into a reluctant and very slow walk. ‘Load of rubbish, I always thought. You still feel yours?’

‘Sometimes,’ I said.

He grunted as if unwilling to accept my answer. I felt like I should be resentful of his comments and question, but somehow it was good that he was so open and matter-of-fact about it. I found it a far more comfortable attitude than the furtive glances and and overt attempts to ignore my injury that I’d endured on the train.

The cart was empty but for a few new shovels and a couple of rude sacks of something or other, but still the old shire horse walked as slowly as if she were pulling ten tons of iron. The ancient farmer didn’t seem to mind this snail-like progress and sat hunched forward, resting his elbows on his knees and holding the reins in a loose grip. Although he was outwardly impassive, the question of how I lost my arm must’ve been burning in him for several minutes because he came right out and asked me how I lost it.

‘In’t no morbid interest,’ he explained lazily, ‘I just got to listen to my brother tellin’ as how his arm came off so many times as I fancy a change. If you’s willin’, like,’ he added in the same semi-interested tone.

I smiled, despite myself, and was surprised to find that his interest neither offended nor angered me.

* * *

My unit had been transferred from the Somme to the Lys (I told him) and we thought we’d get some rest there. We were all tired and weary and we’d been told that things were quieter here. We were there for less than a week when all Hell was let loose.

You’ve probably read about it. On the ninth of April this year the Germans launched their Spring Offensive. They opened up first thing in the morning with artillery, of course, and it was foggy so nobody knew what was really going on. They came at us out of the fog like ghosts, like shadows made solid, and they fought like devils. We fought like devils too, but we were tired and confused and they kept on pushing us back and back and back until I thought we’d end up knee deep in the Channel.

Me and two dozen of my men got separated in the battle and spent the rest of the day trying to get back to our own lines. Everywhere we turned seemed to be swarming with Germans and by nightfall there were only five of us left, but we could see our front lines by then and knew which way to go. But the way wasn’t clear and there were a lot of Germans in between us and our lines.

With the sergeant dead, I was the ranking officer and so it fell to me to lead the men as best as I could. I drew the Jerry’s fire while the lads slipped through in the dark. Four of them made it back alive, although I didn’t find that out until a lot later on.

Getting shot wasn’t what I’d expected it to be. It was like getting hit by a train. One minute I was running through the dark and the next I was lying in the mud with all the wind knocked out of me and stars dancing inside my eyes. The German who shot me came to finish me off, but I’d fallen in a shell hole full of mud and bodies and he couldn’t see me in the dark. He fired a few rounds blind, but they didn’t come anywhere near me, and then he went away.

I lay there for a long time, unable to move, and all I could hear was gunfire and explosions both near and far away. The only voices I could hear were muffled and speaking German.

It must’ve been around midnight when I first saw Captain Snailam. I was weak and couldn’t see clearly in the dark, so I thought he must have been a German. I tried to get my rifle on him with my good arm, but I’m not sure if I could even have fired it given the state I was in. He can’t have known that, however, and he didn’t even flinch.

‘Stop playing silly buggers,’ he said, his voice was quiet but very clear. He asked me if I could stand and when I said that I didn’t know he came over and helped me to sit up. By this time not only my shoulder and arm but my whole body was hurting like Hell, and even the slightest movement made me want to scream out. Somehow, though, I knew that any noise might attract the Germans and managed to bite back the agony and keep quiet. The Captain gave me water and put what was left of my arm in a sling. Even in the dark and covered in bloody mud, I could see that it was neither the right colour or the right shape.

Every other officer I’ve met would’ve lied at that point. ‘It’ll be all right,’ was what they usually said, no matter how bad things were, but Captain Snailam was different.

‘You’re probably going to lose that,’ he said, ‘but let’s make sure that’s all you lose, all right? Come on, we should be getting back; Haig’ll be missing us.’ And with that, he put his shoulder under my good arm and hauled me to my feet. I tried to fetch my rifle but he told me to leave it. We were so far behind enemy lines that, even if I could manage to shoot it, all I’d succeed in doing would be to give our position away.

I’ve never felt so afraid in all my life. Unarmed, bleeding, hurting and lost behind enemy lines it seemed the best we could hope for was either capture and imprisonment or a swift death. Snailam, though, seemed to have no such qualms. He half dragged me and half carried me all through the night, sometimes hiding from Germans and sometimes seeming to brazenly just walk right past them.

Although I tried like I’d never tried before to keep going, I’d lost a lot of blood and could feel the icy hand of Death reaching for my heart. There came a point where I simply couldn’t go on. Snailam didn’t complain. He simply dragged me into a secluded hollow surrounded on three sides by thick bushes and settled us into it. There was still gunfire, but it seemed far away, and the Germans were concentrating on something we couldn’t see about half a mile to the east. We were relatively safe, but that was the time I was at my lowest ebb, as ready to curl up and die as I’ve ever been.

‘I’m just slowing you down,’ I told him, ‘leave me here and go on without me.’

It wasn’t an entirely selfless thing to say. I just wanted him to leave me alone so I could put my head down and sleep. Put my head down and die in peace. But Snailam would have none of it. That’s when he took out his pocket watch, with the horse’s head crest and “Snailam’s Farm, Witham Friary, Somerset “ engraved on the rear, and showed it to me. It shone dully in the night, reflecting distant firelight.

‘This,’ he said ‘is a magic watch.’

I wanted to laugh, but my shoulder hurt too much and I was too weak. I merely shook my head.

‘No, really,’ he said. ‘I’ve carried this with me since I joined the army in 1889, and look at me – not a scratch.’ He spread his arms, inviting me to check him for battle damage. ‘It’s this watch, it’s been in my family for years. It’s like one of those voodoo talismans you read about; an amulet that keeps you from harm. Whoever carries it is as safe as if he was surrounded by a hundred angels.’

He unbuttoned the breast pocket of my tunic and dropped the watch inside, re-buttoning it afterwards. ‘Here,’ he said, ‘you keep hold of it for now. You can give it back to me later, when we’re safe, all right?’

I nodded dumbly and, somehow, that watch did give me strength and hope; and strength and hope are two things that no soldier can do without. After a few minutes’ rest, the Captain helped me to my feet again and we carried on. The weight of the watch in my pocket was like an extra heart, pumping not blood but hope through my quivering veins.

I don’t remember much about the rest of the night, just stumbling along in the dark supported by Captain Snailam. I was so tired by then that everything seemed like a dream, or a nightmare. As the dawn began to break, I slowly became aware of one of our forward defensive positions ahead of me; just a clump of trees surrounded by sandbags and wire.

A rough, Geordie voice challenged us. I didn’t have the strength to call back and was surprised when Snailam remained silent also. Exhausted beyond belief, I raised my good arm and staggered forward a couple of steps before falling to my knees.

‘I think he’s one of ours,’ another Geordie voice said, and before I knew it I was being lifted onto a stretcher and borne away. I never saw Captain Snailam again and assumed that he’d returned to his own unit, but I later learned that I was alone when I arrived at the forward post. In the following weeks, as I fought with Death in my hospital bed, I came to believe that Captain Snailam had been a figment of my imagination, but when I finally regained enough strength to begin thinking clearly and moving around I found his pocket watch on my bedside table.

* * *

‘…so here I am,’ I showed the ancient farmer the pocket watch Captain Snailam had given me on that hellish night almost six months ago. ‘Here to return his watch and to thank him for saving my life.’

The farmer looked at the watch shining brightly in the sunshine and made an appreciative face. ‘That’s a good story,’ he said, ‘piles better’n me brother’s anecdote. I swear as every time ‘e tells it there’s another fifty Boers after ‘im an’ ten more generals singin’ ‘is praises. Anyway, here we are.’

The farmer reined the old horse to a halt, which it did happily, and gestured with his pipe to the track leading off the main lane. ‘Straight down yonder,’ he said. I thanked him and climbed down from the cart. He passed my kit-bag down to me and I shouldered it and thanked him again. The old horse turned her head to look at me, but seeming to find nothing very interesting to see, busied herself in half-heartedly cropping the grass growing on the verge.

‘Tell the Captain as old Jeth says ‘ello,’ the farmer said, ‘and I’ll probably be lookin’ fer a new ‘orse come the spring.’ He glared at the old horse but she ignored him, almost pointedly, as if she’d heard this threat a hundred times before.

‘I will,’ I promised. He urged the horse back into reluctant motion and drove on, neither waving farewell or looking back. I watched the cart rumbling away for a moment before turning to the farm track.

It was a neatly kept track, covered with closely mown grass and edged with whitewashed stones evenly spaced along its length. A five bar gate, in good repair and painted a brilliant white, stood wide open and gave the impression that it was rarely closed. Over the path, high enough to be out of the way, a curved wooden sign displayed the name of the farm and the same horse’s head crest that adorned Captain Snailam’s pocket watch. A hundred yards or so down the path, partly obscured by trees and neatly clipped hedges, a large, red brick farmhouse stood brightly in the sunshine and it was towards this building that I set out.

The meadows surrounding the farmhouse were bordered by sturdy wooden fences and populated by horses of all shapes and sizes. Some of them trotted over to investigate me as I walked by, but most of them had no interest and contented themselves grazing or lazing in the way that horses do. I could see stable blocks behind the main farmhouse and in some paddocks stable hands were leading young horses around on ropes or getting them used to saddles or traces. There was a faint smell of leather and straw on the air and the distant clang of a blacksmith’s hammer echoed from somewhere I couldn’t see. A small garden lay in front of the farmhouse, which itself was home to several hanging baskets of flowers, and careless splashes of colour lent the place a touch of Paradise. It was a most beautiful place and I found myself thinking that if there were farms in Heaven, then they would look like this.

As I approached the farmhouse, the front door opened and a young woman walked out to greet me. Her hair was as black as coal and her eyes were likewise dark. Her skin too had been darkened by the sun and she walked with a kind of confident swagger. Her face was one of those no-nonsense affairs, but pretty for all that, and she had the build of a woman accustomed to physical toil. Her clothes were simple but relatively new; jodhpurs and shiny brown riding boots and a man’s shirt that fitted her loosely but without swamping her. I greeted her, held out my hand and told her my name.

‘Alice Snailam,’ she said, taking my hand with a firm grip. ‘Here to see my father, I expect.’

‘Yes,’ I said. ‘I’ve brought his watch back.’

I showed her the watch and a strange expression crossed her face. ‘Very well, follow me.’

She turned and led the way into the farmhouse, which was just as neat and idyllic on the inside as it was on the outside. ‘You can leave your bag there,’ she said, gesturing vaguely to an empty space beside the front door, where I dropped it with relief. Alice led me through the farmhouse to a back room with high French windows that caught the afternoon sun. The room was spacious and largely empty, save for a few low bookcases and a writing desk. A figure sat at the windows in a wicker bathchair.

‘Daddy,’ Alice said, ‘there’s somebody to see you.’

The figure in the chair did not stir, and I began to feel a dread foreboding deep in the pit of my stomach. Alice pulled the bathchair away from the windows slightly and knelt to look into her father’s face before beckoning me to join her. ‘He doesn’t speak any more,’ she said, and her voice held such chasms of desolation that it made my heart ache.

The man in the wheelchair was undoubtedly Captain Snailam, or what was left of him. The left side of his face was horribly disfigured and only his right eye socket was occupied. His left arm and his left leg were gone and those parts of him that remained were pitifully thin and atrophied. His one eye stared dully at nothing and he in no way gave any indication that he was aware of either of us.

‘Oh God,’ I said softly, ‘I’m sorry. I didn’t know. The last time I saw him…’ I could think of nothing more to say.

‘Yes. Most remiss of the army. They returned to me only a part of my father. They left most of his left side and his soul in a place called Gheluvelt,’ Alice said. ‘He wrote to me during a lull in the fighting there, the day before he was wounded.’ She moved to the writing desk and took an envelope from a drawer. From the envelope she withdrew a worn piece of paper and unfolded it with great care, laying it flat on the desk. ‘I think you might like to read it,’ she said.

Numbly, I moved to the desk and read the short note.

My Darling Alice,

This is not war, this is Hell. Never have I seen such carnage, I did not dream, even in my worst nightmares, that such horrors were possible. I have promised my men that I will see them all safe home, but I fear that it is a promise no mortal man could possibly keep.

Forgive me, my darling daughter, and know that I will love you forever,

Your devoted father

November 10th 1914.

‘But that’s impossible,’ I stammered, ‘he was with me only six months ago. He saved my life…’

Alice nodded. ‘You say he gave you a watch?’

‘Yes,’ I said, and held it out for her to see. She glanced at it and drew my attention to one of the low bookcases. Lying on the top shelf were seven identical watches. One had a piece of shrapnel embedded in it, another had been badly deformed by a bullet, but the rest were as whole as mine.

‘You aren’t the first to come here,’ Alice said, ‘and I don’t think you’ll be the last.’

A numbing chill gripped my heart and I suddenly wanted most fervently to be elsewhere. With a mumbled apology that was little more than gobbledegook, I dropped the watch with the others and almost ran from the farmhouse, not even bothering to wait for Alice to show me out.

* * *

Over the following months I did my best to forget about the incident and to persuade myself that I had been the victim of a horrible joke perpetrated by Alice Snailam and her father. I returned home and found work as a journalist on a local newspaper and rejoiced with everyone else when the war eventually ground to a halt. I would have gone on believing that I’d been duped to this very day were it not for a package I received towards the end of that November.

I knew exactly what it was from its’ weight, and although I expected a chill to run up my spine as I opened it, I felt only a strange sense of calm as I removed the pocket watch from its’ cotton wool wrappings. With the watch was an obituary clipped from the local Witham Friary newspaper that reported Captain Snailam had died on November the eleventh at eleven am; at exactly the time when the murderous thunder of the guns engaged in the war that was to end all wars finally fell silent and all the soldiers could come safe home.

Snailam’s Watch

SUMMER’S FACE WAS STILL SMILING on the English countryside as I stepped off the train at Witham Friary one September afternoon in 1918. An old man in a threadbare tweed suit held my kit bag for me and then nodded self-consciously when I finally took it from him. Shouldering the heavy bag, I thanked him before walking away from the carriage and down the platform. I tried not to walk too quickly, but in truth I felt like running and leaving the pitying and overtly helpful passengers far behind me.

The Matron at the hospital had made sure my uniform was clean and pressed but now I was regretting wearing it instead of my civvies. The ribbons on my tunic looked a lot more impressive than I felt they should, but it was the empty sleeve, neatly pinned up at the shoulder, that had attracted the most furtive attention from my fellow travellers. People, strangers, had been helping me all day whether I’d needed it or not and their reverential attention had long since started to irritate me until it felt good to be away from them.

Witham Friary was a small village deep in the Somerset countryside and nobody else seemed to alight or board the train there. The Station Master, a short, round man in his mid fifties with a walrus moustache and a shiny bald head, waved his flag and blew his whistle and the train chuffed and strained into motion once more.

‘Excuse me,’ I said, intercepting him as he walked towards his office folding his flag as he went. He looked at me and an expression I was becoming all too familiar with crossed his face; half pity and half pride.

‘Yes sir, ahm, corporal, is it?’ he said, studying the markings on my uniform.

I nodded, perhaps a little too curtly, and asked him if he could direct me to Snailam’s Farm. His face shone with instant recognition. He knew the place well and gave me simple directions. ‘It’s about five miles,’ he concluded with a concerned look. ‘I can get you a ride, if you like.’

‘Thank you, but no. It’s a nice day and I fancy a walk,’ I said. I’d been cooped up for months, first confined to a bed and then to hospital grounds, and I just wanted to walk like a normal person again. I wanted to walk until either I came to the end of the world or I just couldn’t walk any more. That sentiment lasted for about a mile before I started cursing the heat of the sun and the abominable ache in my shoulder.

By this time I was down a deserted lane, lined on both sides by high hedgerows and empty fields whose various crops swayed only slightly in a gentle breeze. It was disconcerting to find myself still so weak and I dropped my kit-bag to the grass verge for a moment’s rest. All around me birdsong filled the warm air with a joyous noise as I massaged my aching shoulder, trying not to think about my lost limb. Trying not to think about any of it.

It was while I was failing in this regard that an old shire horse, pulling an even older cart driven by a seemingly ancient farmer, drew to a halt where I stood. The ancient farmer, sucking on a clay pipe, looked down from his high seat and then, after a moment’s contemplation, spoke.

‘Lift?’ he asked in a tone of voice that suggested he didn’t care either way.

‘I’m looking for Snailam’s Farm,’ I said.

He took the clay pipe from his mouth and used it as a pointer to indicate the road ahead. ‘S’down yonder,’ he said, ‘I goin’ right past.’

‘In that case yes,’ I said, ‘I’d be most grateful.’

He reached down and took my heavy kit-bag from me as if it weighed nothing at all and placed it gently to the rear of the seat, then he took my hand and hauled me up with the same ease. ‘My brother lost a flipper to the Boers,’ he said, as if this should demonstrate that he understood everything about me. ‘Says he can still feel it,’ he went on, urging the old horse into a reluctant and very slow walk. ‘Load of rubbish, I always thought. You still feel yours?’

‘Sometimes,’ I said.

He grunted as if unwilling to accept my answer. I felt like I should be resentful of his comments and question, but somehow it was good that he was so open and matter-of-fact about it. I found it a far more comfortable attitude than the furtive glances and and overt attempts to ignore my injury that I’d endured on the train.

The cart was empty but for a few new shovels and a couple of rude sacks of something or other, but still the old shire horse walked as slowly as if she were pulling ten tons of iron. The ancient farmer didn’t seem to mind this snail-like progress and sat hunched forward, resting his elbows on his knees and holding the reins in a loose grip. Although he was outwardly impassive, the question of how I lost my arm must’ve been burning in him for several minutes because he came right out and asked me how I lost it.

‘In’t no morbid interest,’ he explained lazily, ‘I just got to listen to my brother tellin’ as how his arm came off so many times as I fancy a change. If you’s willin’, like,’ he added in the same semi-interested tone.

I smiled, despite myself, and was surprised to find that his interest neither offended nor angered me.

* * *

My unit had been transferred from the Somme to the Lys (I told him) and we thought we’d get some rest there. We were all tired and weary and we’d been told that things were quieter here. We were there for less than a week when all Hell was let loose.

You’ve probably read about it. On the ninth of April this year the Germans launched their Spring Offensive. They opened up first thing in the morning with artillery, of course, and it was foggy so nobody knew what was really going on. They came at us out of the fog like ghosts, like shadows made solid, and they fought like devils. We fought like devils too, but we were tired and confused and they kept on pushing us back and back and back until I thought we’d end up knee deep in the Channel.

Me and two dozen of my men got separated in the battle and spent the rest of the day trying to get back to our own lines. Everywhere we turned seemed to be swarming with Germans and by nightfall there were only five of us left, but we could see our front lines by then and knew which way to go. But the way wasn’t clear and there were a lot of Germans in between us and our lines.

With the sergeant dead, I was the ranking officer and so it fell to me to lead the men as best as I could. I drew the Jerry’s fire while the lads slipped through in the dark. Four of them made it back alive, although I didn’t find that out until a lot later on.

Getting shot wasn’t what I’d expected it to be. It was like getting hit by a train. One minute I was running through the dark and the next I was lying in the mud with all the wind knocked out of me and stars dancing inside my eyes. The German who shot me came to finish me off, but I’d fallen in a shell hole full of mud and bodies and he couldn’t see me in the dark. He fired a few rounds blind, but they didn’t come anywhere near me, and then he went away.

I lay there for a long time, unable to move, and all I could hear was gunfire and explosions both near and far away. The only voices I could hear were muffled and speaking German.

It must’ve been around midnight when I first saw Captain Snailam. I was weak and couldn’t see clearly in the dark, so I thought he must have been a German. I tried to get my rifle on him with my good arm, but I’m not sure if I could even have fired it given the state I was in. He can’t have known that, however, and he didn’t even flinch.

‘Stop playing silly buggers,’ he said, his voice was quiet but very clear. He asked me if I could stand and when I said that I didn’t know he came over and helped me to sit up. By this time not only my shoulder and arm but my whole body was hurting like Hell, and even the slightest movement made me want to scream out. Somehow, though, I knew that any noise might attract the Germans and managed to bite back the agony and keep quiet. The Captain gave me water and put what was left of my arm in a sling. Even in the dark and covered in bloody mud, I could see that it was neither the right colour or the right shape.

Every other officer I’ve met would’ve lied at that point. ‘It’ll be all right,’ was what they usually said, no matter how bad things were, but Captain Snailam was different.

‘You’re probably going to lose that,’ he said, ‘but let’s make sure that’s all you lose, all right? Come on, we should be getting back; Haig’ll be missing us.’ And with that, he put his shoulder under my good arm and hauled me to my feet. I tried to fetch my rifle but he told me to leave it. We were so far behind enemy lines that, even if I could manage to shoot it, all I’d succeed in doing would be to give our position away.

I’ve never felt so afraid in all my life. Unarmed, bleeding, hurting and lost behind enemy lines it seemed the best we could hope for was either capture and imprisonment or a swift death. Snailam, though, seemed to have no such qualms. He half dragged me and half carried me all through the night, sometimes hiding from Germans and sometimes seeming to brazenly just walk right past them.

Although I tried like I’d never tried before to keep going, I’d lost a lot of blood and could feel the icy hand of Death reaching for my heart. There came a point where I simply couldn’t go on. Snailam didn’t complain. He simply dragged me into a secluded hollow surrounded on three sides by thick bushes and settled us into it. There was still gunfire, but it seemed far away, and the Germans were concentrating on something we couldn’t see about half a mile to the east. We were relatively safe, but that was the time I was at my lowest ebb, as ready to curl up and die as I’ve ever been.

‘I’m just slowing you down,’ I told him, ‘leave me here and go on without me.’

It wasn’t an entirely selfless thing to say. I just wanted him to leave me alone so I could put my head down and sleep. Put my head down and die in peace. But Snailam would have none of it. That’s when he took out his pocket watch, with the horse’s head crest and “Snailam’s Farm, Witham Friary, Somerset “ engraved on the rear, and showed it to me. It shone dully in the night, reflecting distant firelight.

‘This,’ he said ‘is a magic watch.’

I wanted to laugh, but my shoulder hurt too much and I was too weak. I merely shook my head.

‘No, really,’ he said. ‘I’ve carried this with me since I joined the army in 1889, and look at me – not a scratch.’ He spread his arms, inviting me to check him for battle damage. ‘It’s this watch, it’s been in my family for years. It’s like one of those voodoo talismans you read about; an amulet that keeps you from harm. Whoever carries it is as safe as if he was surrounded by a hundred angels.’

He unbuttoned the breast pocket of my tunic and dropped the watch inside, re-buttoning it afterwards. ‘Here,’ he said, ‘you keep hold of it for now. You can give it back to me later, when we’re safe, all right?’

I nodded dumbly and, somehow, that watch did give me strength and hope; and strength and hope are two things that no soldier can do without. After a few minutes’ rest, the Captain helped me to my feet again and we carried on. The weight of the watch in my pocket was like an extra heart, pumping not blood but hope through my quivering veins.

I don’t remember much about the rest of the night, just stumbling along in the dark supported by Captain Snailam. I was so tired by then that everything seemed like a dream, or a nightmare. As the dawn began to break, I slowly became aware of one of our forward defensive positions ahead of me; just a clump of trees surrounded by sandbags and wire.

A rough, Geordie voice challenged us. I didn’t have the strength to call back and was surprised when Snailam remained silent also. Exhausted beyond belief, I raised my good arm and staggered forward a couple of steps before falling to my knees.

‘I think he’s one of ours,’ another Geordie voice said, and before I knew it I was being lifted onto a stretcher and borne away. I never saw Captain Snailam again and assumed that he’d returned to his own unit, but I later learned that I was alone when I arrived at the forward post. In the following weeks, as I fought with Death in my hospital bed, I came to believe that Captain Snailam had been a figment of my imagination, but when I finally regained enough strength to begin thinking clearly and moving around I found his pocket watch on my bedside table.

* * *

‘…so here I am,’ I showed the ancient farmer the pocket watch Captain Snailam had given me on that hellish night almost six months ago. ‘Here to return his watch and to thank him for saving my life.’

The farmer looked at the watch shining brightly in the sunshine and made an appreciative face. ‘That’s a good story,’ he said, ‘piles better’n me brother’s anecdote. I swear as every time ‘e tells it there’s another fifty Boers after ‘im an’ ten more generals singin’ ‘is praises. Anyway, here we are.’

The farmer reined the old horse to a halt, which it did happily, and gestured with his pipe to the track leading off the main lane. ‘Straight down yonder,’ he said. I thanked him and climbed down from the cart. He passed my kit-bag down to me and I shouldered it and thanked him again. The old horse turned her head to look at me, but seeming to find nothing very interesting to see, busied herself in half-heartedly cropping the grass growing on the verge.

‘Tell the Captain as old Jeth says ‘ello,’ the farmer said, ‘and I’ll probably be lookin’ fer a new ‘orse come the spring.’ He glared at the old horse but she ignored him, almost pointedly, as if she’d heard this threat a hundred times before.

‘I will,’ I promised. He urged the horse back into reluctant motion and drove on, neither waving farewell or looking back. I watched the cart rumbling away for a moment before turning to the farm track.

It was a neatly kept track, covered with closely mown grass and edged with whitewashed stones evenly spaced along its length. A five bar gate, in good repair and painted a brilliant white, stood wide open and gave the impression that it was rarely closed. Over the path, high enough to be out of the way, a curved wooden sign displayed the name of the farm and the same horse’s head crest that adorned Captain Snailam’s pocket watch. A hundred yards or so down the path, partly obscured by trees and neatly clipped hedges, a large, red brick farmhouse stood brightly in the sunshine and it was towards this building that I set out.

The meadows surrounding the farmhouse were bordered by sturdy wooden fences and populated by horses of all shapes and sizes. Some of them trotted over to investigate me as I walked by, but most of them had no interest and contented themselves grazing or lazing in the way that horses do. I could see stable blocks behind the main farmhouse and in some paddocks stable hands were leading young horses around on ropes or getting them used to saddles or traces. There was a faint smell of leather and straw on the air and the distant clang of a blacksmith’s hammer echoed from somewhere I couldn’t see. A small garden lay in front of the farmhouse, which itself was home to several hanging baskets of flowers, and careless splashes of colour lent the place a touch of Paradise. It was a most beautiful place and I found myself thinking that if there were farms in Heaven, then they would look like this.

As I approached the farmhouse, the front door opened and a young woman walked out to greet me. Her hair was as black as coal and her eyes were likewise dark. Her skin too had been darkened by the sun and she walked with a kind of confident swagger. Her face was one of those no-nonsense affairs, but pretty for all that, and she had the build of a woman accustomed to physical toil. Her clothes were simple but relatively new; jodhpurs and shiny brown riding boots and a man’s shirt that fitted her loosely but without swamping her. I greeted her, held out my hand and told her my name.

‘Alice Snailam,’ she said, taking my hand with a firm grip. ‘Here to see my father, I expect.’

‘Yes,’ I said. ‘I’ve brought his watch back.’

I showed her the watch and a strange expression crossed her face. ‘Very well, follow me.’

She turned and led the way into the farmhouse, which was just as neat and idyllic on the inside as it was on the outside. ‘You can leave your bag there,’ she said, gesturing vaguely to an empty space beside the front door, where I dropped it with relief. Alice led me through the farmhouse to a back room with high French windows that caught the afternoon sun. The room was spacious and largely empty, save for a few low bookcases and a writing desk. A figure sat at the windows in a wicker bathchair.

‘Daddy,’ Alice said, ‘there’s somebody to see you.’

The figure in the chair did not stir, and I began to feel a dread foreboding deep in the pit of my stomach. Alice pulled the bathchair away from the windows slightly and knelt to look into her father’s face before beckoning me to join her. ‘He doesn’t speak any more,’ she said, and her voice held such chasms of desolation that it made my heart ache.

The man in the wheelchair was undoubtedly Captain Snailam, or what was left of him. The left side of his face was horribly disfigured and only his right eye socket was occupied. His left arm and his left leg were gone and those parts of him that remained were pitifully thin and atrophied. His one eye stared dully at nothing and he in no way gave any indication that he was aware of either of us.

‘Oh God,’ I said softly, ‘I’m sorry. I didn’t know. The last time I saw him…’ I could think of nothing more to say.

‘Yes. Most remiss of the army. They returned to me only a part of my father. They left most of his left side and his soul in a place called Gheluvelt,’ Alice said. ‘He wrote to me during a lull in the fighting there, the day before he was wounded.’ She moved to the writing desk and took an envelope from a drawer. From the envelope she withdrew a worn piece of paper and unfolded it with great care, laying it flat on the desk. ‘I think you might like to read it,’ she said.

Numbly, I moved to the desk and read the short note.

My Darling Alice,

This is not war, this is Hell. Never have I seen such carnage, I did not dream, even in my worst nightmares, that such horrors were possible. I have promised my men that I will see them all safe home, but I fear that it is a promise no mortal man could possibly keep.

Forgive me, my darling daughter, and know that I will love you forever,

Your devoted father

November 10th 1914.

‘But that’s impossible,’ I stammered, ‘he was with me only six months ago. He saved my life…’

Alice nodded. ‘You say he gave you a watch?’

‘Yes,’ I said, and held it out for her to see. She glanced at it and drew my attention to one of the low bookcases. Lying on the top shelf were seven identical watches. One had a piece of shrapnel embedded in it, another had been badly deformed by a bullet, but the rest were as whole as mine.

‘You aren’t the first to come here,’ Alice said, ‘and I don’t think you’ll be the last.’

A numbing chill gripped my heart and I suddenly wanted most fervently to be elsewhere. With a mumbled apology that was little more than gobbledegook, I dropped the watch with the others and almost ran from the farmhouse, not even bothering to wait for Alice to show me out.

* * *

Over the following months I did my best to forget about the incident and to persuade myself that I had been the victim of a horrible joke perpetrated by Alice Snailam and her father. I returned home and found work as a journalist on a local newspaper and rejoiced with everyone else when the war eventually ground to a halt. I would have gone on believing that I’d been duped to this very day were it not for a package I received towards the end of that November.

I knew exactly what it was from its’ weight, and although I expected a chill to run up my spine as I opened it, I felt only a strange sense of calm as I removed the pocket watch from its’ cotton wool wrappings. With the watch was an obituary clipped from the local Witham Friary newspaper that reported Captain Snailam had died on November the eleventh at eleven am; at exactly the time when the murderous thunder of the guns engaged in the war that was to end all wars finally fell silent and all the soldiers could come safe home.

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Finley’s Last Chapter, by Alexandra Wolfe

“Hi, my name is Finley,” she writes on the scrap of paper with a broken pencil Georgia gave her earlier. “You can blame Georgia for this, for what I am about to write, it was at her suggestion. Well, insistence, that I write it all down, how we came to this moment in time—” She pauses and looks out across the ink black darkness, straining to see anything moving, but sees nothing. It’s all gone quiet.

Too quiet, the incessant shelling having stopped a few hours earlier. No one knows what it means. Was it the proverbial calm before the storm, or maybe the eye of the storm? Did it matter which? The small pockets of resistance fighters, like her small group, were losing the war. She isn’t even sure what it is they are fighting for anymore.

Survival? That was a joke.

They were, according to Thomas, down to their last few scavenged tinned rations. And no one had found anything ‘living’ for several days. Nothing flew across the skies; no birds sang a morning chorus. No animal, if any still yet lived, scurried or foraged above ground. Not even the rats showed their faces. Those hardy creatures could survive through just about anything. They had vanished.

Finley knows they are living on borrowed time. Georgia knows it too. By the morning, the rest of them will know it as well.

A slight breeze blows and ruffles the last of her straw-blond hair. It started coming out in clumps days ago. She hides the fact during the day beneath a wool-knit hat that proclaims her a fan of the Ottawa Senators. She has no idea who they were or what team sport they might have played. But she’s thankful nonetheless for the warmth and head cover it affords her.

Drawing her attention back to the dirty piece of paper, Finley focuses her thoughts once more, trying to make sense of it all. But instead of writing, she stares at Charlie. Then almost laughs out loud at the absurdity of it. Here she is, a petite 35 year-old woman dressed in Army fatigues sat on a shattered wall. Writing her life story on a scrap of paper by torchlight. With a small plush monkey sat on her knee watching the proceedings.

“Do you think I’m going crazy?” She asks the monkey in all seriousness then grins. Charlie stares back, his dirty face no doubt mirroring her own.

Here then is her thread, she thinks, the one thing that leads her back through all the years to her childhood. A monkey. Not this particular monkey. This one is a tattered remnant that Georgia rescued a couple of days earlier from a heap of abandoned rubbish. A mot amid the wreckage of what was once a children’s hospital.

No, the original Charlie, a chimpanzee that had been twice the size of the child Finley, was long since lost. As were all the ‘Charlie’ monkeys she had owned over the ensuing years. Just like they all would be, all to soon. Not just her little group of bedraggled rag-tag fighters—dug-in amid the ruined skyscrapers of what was once a part of civilisations crowning achievement—but the entire human race.

Extinct.

The ache in her chest threatens to overwhelm her.

“It doesn’t bear thinking about, of course, she’s right,” Finley writes. “The more I look at what possibilities lie in wait with the coming of a fateful morning, the more fear grows in the pit of my stomach. So I’ll try, for her, for everyone, but most of all, for myself to remain calm, and focused.” Finley looks at the words written in a small, tight scrawl. They seem as alien to her now as do the invaders who have swarmed across the planet obliterating everything in their path. To these invaders, it wasn’t about destruction. It was nothing less than the complete and utter annihilation of every living thing on planet earth.

Why do I need to know where it is I came from, and what it is I’m fighting for to be able to do what needs doing tomorrow? That was the million-dollar question.

Because. It’s Georgia’s favourite word of the moment. Because we need to. Because it has to be done, and it might as well be us because, someone has to stop the invaders.

Because. This is for her mother. This is for her father. This is for all those who have gone before her. All those who gave so much in order for there to be a future for their children, and their children’s children.

How could she do anything less than they had when the need arose?

Finley chews her pencil and asks Charlie.

“What do you think, should the crazy lady just march up to the ugly alien and shake its hand?” It is all so plausible.

They had at hand maybe the greatest weapon they had to offer, against what seemed like an indefatigable enemy.

“That’s if it works…” Finley mutters.

“It will do…it has to.”

Startled, Finley knocks Charlie from her knee. Georgia, mouth curved with a lingering smile, sits next to her leaning in against her.

“Is that it? Is that all you’ve written?” The smile stretches.

“My life, in one chapter,” Finley says, realising she’s managed to while away a couple of hours. All the while Georgia was dealing with their crew, giving her some much-needed downtime alone.

An arm snakes across the back of her shoulders. She leans into the comfort that act offers. Her head going to a welcoming shoulder. She feels Georgia press her face into her hair, warm breath caressing the top of her head. The taller woman consoles Finley against the coming dawn and what’s to come. Time running out for them both.

“Didn’t Charlie give you any pointers,” Georgia finally says.

“No, not much, his spelling isn’t that much better than mine.” Finley sees the monkey lying in the dirt staring face-up at her, as if beseeching her. She moves, scooping him up, clutching him to her chest and leans back in against the warmth of her companion hearing the soft laugh.

“You know a girl could get jealous of that monkey.”

“Really? I never thought you the jealous type and, after all, it was you who introduced us, remember?”

“Hmm … that was a bum move on my part then?”

“Jealous.”

“Am not.”

“Are too—” They stare at one another for one long moment.

Opening a button of her shirt, Finley slips the dust-cover monkey half in, half out. He looks as if he’s saying to the world, ‘Hey, look where I am!’

“And do I get to slip inside there too?” Georgia asks.

Feeling a rise of colour to her cheeks, Finley gives the woman, who means so much to her, her answer. A mouth-stretching grin. Taking Georgia’s hand, she stands. With Charlie stowed, she flips off her torch and slips it into her combat pants along with the scraps of paper and pencil. With a gentle tug of the rough-skinned hand she holds, Finley takes a step backward. Thinking, there are far better ways they could be consoling one another before the dawn’s early light.

“I might lead this bunch of reprobates, but in matters of the heart, you’ve always mastered me,” Finley says.

“Then I’d better lead you to where I’ve bedded us down for the night, before first light steals what little time we have left.”

“You’d better,” Finley says, falling in step with her lover, as they move off into a darkness, which swallows them, whole.

* * *

The overhead sun beats down from out a clear blue sky, adding to the heat haze that gives the vista an ethereal quality to it. A lone figure, bathed in the sun’s white light, stands atop the rubble of bricks, waiting. In her left hand she clutches her one and only possession, a small stuffed monkey. In her right, she holds a detonation switch that will end it all. Unleashing what they all hope will be humanity’s last chance—tiny engines of destruction—deadly bacteria. Deadly that is to the aliens, as they had found out weeks earlier. How ironic the scientists’ bacteria were harmless to humans yet, so deadly to the ‘Uglies.’

Vials and vials of it lay housed in the underground laboratory right beneath the point where she now stood. A laboratory they had rigged with enough explosives to make their own miniature mushroom cloud.

All Finley has to do is flip the switch and it will all end—for her at least—in one cataclysmic explosion. Raining down a biological terror from the skies upon the alien invaders now just visible through the haze, in the far distance.

She doesn’t turn and look behind, knowing she will see no one there. As the others of her unit, now under Georgia’s command, have long since left the ruined city. Georgia had made love to her in those last few hours together. As if memorising every last piece of skin, every curve and contour of her wrecked body.

Now, with her gaze fixed on the future, the future of mankind, she lifts her right arm to hold it out in front of her. Steady.

“Is it time, Charlie…what say you?” She brings the monkey up and holds him against her chest. The child in her needing the comfort against the dark as, with her right thumb, she does one last act of bravery.

THE END

Two of Many, by Mark J. Howard

I AWAKEN INTO PERFECT DARKNESS. I am small and vulnerable. For a time, this is all I know.

Memory leaks into me, disjointed and vague yet coherent and clear. Metal. Pain. Blood. Fear. Panic. Struggle. Peace. Light. Infinity. Everything. Everyone. Everywhen. Joy. Understanding. Questions. Yearning. Decision. Funnel. Darkness.

Here.

I cannot ponder these things, only experience them. They cycle through me, jumbling through my tiny being like windblown leaves, though even that simple metaphor is beyond my ability to construct. My awareness grows by tiny increments. I discern gentle heat, pulsing above me in a remorseless rhythm. I know I must go towards it. I know that pulse is life. I know that life is what I want.

The first of me raises out of the perfect darkness. The pulses of heat become pulses of light, waxing from imperfect dark to variable light and waning back to imperfect dark again. The imperfect dark pulses also, each one longer than its companion pulse of light.

While the first of me reaches for the light, the last of me burrows deeper into the perfect darkness, driven by hunger and thirst and the need for solidity.

The pulses of light gradually become longer than the pulses of imperfect dark and I feel myself feeding off them, unfurling parts of myself to drink them in even as the last of me drinks in the foods given up by the perfect darkness. In a short time the pulses of light become so long that the pulses of imperfect darkness last hardly any time at all and I unfurl more of myself towards them. The more light I absorb, the more joy I feel, the clearer my understanding becomes, though I still understand very little.

Soon, the pulses of light begin to shorten again and the following pulses of imperfect dark grow longer. When the pulses of imperfect dark grow longer than the pulses of light the unfurled parts of myself begin to fade and disappear. I feel fear for the first time. What is happening to me? Am I coming apart? Am I dying again already?

The fear is not sustainable, for as the pulses of light grow shorter and weaker my mind also slows and becomes dim. By the time the pulses of imperfect dark are longer than the pulses of light I am almost unable to experience anything beyond simple existence, a deep gnawing hunger and the memories I was born with, though these are more solid now and I know I must hang on to them. Somehow, I know these memories are the reason I’m here, wherever here is. The question of location, though once so very important to me, now holds little significance or fascination. I am here. Here I am. Anything more feels irrelevant.

In that long half-slumber of near constant imperfect dark, something touches the last of me. It is a gentle touch, almost imperceptible, but I am too dim and slow to fear it. There is a greatness hidden behind this gentle touch, a huge existence I can only sense in the most abstract manner. I know I should be astounded to discover that I am not alone and yet I also know how foolish it would be to assume otherwise. The question of aloneness has not occurred to me yet and suddenly that question is answered before being asked and I derive great comfort from it.

The pulses of light lengthen again, a little more each time, and I begin to rouse from my stupor. I feel joy and excitement rising within me and soon parts of myself begin to unfurl towards the delicious light again. I feel knowledge beginning to seep in to me from the touch, simple knowledge at first, wordless yet packed with meaning. I begin to sense my position, the part of me in the pulsing light is up, the rest of me is down. The part of me which is up, is exposed, the rest of me is hidden.

I hang on to the memories I was born with, they are keys not to be lost or discarded, but it is important for now that I concentrate on becoming what I am to become. The touch helps me and, as the delicious light grows stronger and sweeter again and my mind rises higher, it teaches me many things.

That which I called the last of me are my roots, pulling water and nutrients into my body and holding me firmly in the ground, which I knew previously as only the perfect darkness. The concept of ground is difficult for me to grasp at first. It is solid yet not solid, fixed yet not fixed, not alive yet full of life, devoid of fruit yet full of food, dry yet saturated, still yet dynamic, treacherous yet loyal and all but infinite in extent. While I live it will sustain me and when I die it will eat me. I grow to fear and love the ground in equal measure. The ground is life, the ground is death.

The touch finds other of my roots and entwines them in its gentle embrace. The touch calls itself fungus and tells me that it spreads gossamer thin throughout the ground, touching me and countless others like me and not like me. I can sense the others it touches but am too young yet to know them. The fungus asks me for some of my food and I give it in exchange for other foods it delivers to my roots. When I am stronger, it promises to connect me to others in what it calls the forest in exchange for me connecting it to my mind.

That which I called the first of me are my trunk and branches, apparently still small and vulnerable, and the parts of me unfurled to drink in the light are my leaves, which appear and disappear in regular cycles.

The pulses of light grow shorter again. My leaves fade and disappear but this time there is no fear in the sensation. My mind slows but this time I am not alone and fungus feeds me through the dark so my hunger is not so severe as the last time I dozed.

With my hunger lessened, I am able to perceive a little more to my existence. For a time in the dark I feel a weight pressing down on me and parts of me feel wrong, bowing towards the ground instead of reaching for the light. I am too small and weak to resist the weight and live in fear that it may become too much for me to bear.

The weight lessens and the pulses of light begin to expand once more. The joy and excitement return and I feel myself growing taller, deeper and stronger. I unfurl more leaves than before and fungus and I share the sensation. Fungus shares with me more of the forest, that vast something I have previously only felt as a distant sensation of clamour and dynamism.

Fungus connects me to my Parent.

The sensation is confusing and frightening. My parent is huge. A massive version of me, broad and tall and imposing, growing close by. The concept of nearness is strange. The concept of a Parent is strange. Parent regards me as both special and unimportant, I am one of many it has scattered. Most did not survive, the nuts failing to grow or eaten by animals. My mind cannot at first understand the concept of animals.

An animal, I learn, is life unlike me. It is a thing I cannot perceive directly because it moves too fast. For an animal, one pulse of light and its following pulse of imperfect dark last an inconceivably long time. They are voracious creatures, eating the nuts and the fruit of the Parent and even the leaves and roots of us all. Some burrow into us, making holes in our bodies, which can rot and kill us. They do this with such speed that we cannot discern the damage until it is too late. We cannot stop them. They are invisible monsters and I live in constant fear of them for a time but try as I might, I can neither feel nor sense them at all.

When the animals die, however, their bodies return to the ground and our roots eat them up. This comforts me somewhat and my fear of them decreases but never really goes away.

The light lessens again and I begin to slumber through the dark, thinking about the memories I was born with. They begin to expand and I somehow understand what it is like to be an animal. Was I an animal once? Did I die, go into the ground and re-grow as what I am now? The understanding of the pulses of light and imperfect dark emerges in me and I dream of long days and short nights. I am certain these are the names the animals use for them and with this certainty comes a great pity for any creature that must live out its life in so hectic a state, so often hungry and frightened and threatened.

The weight returns and, even though I am bigger and stronger than the last time, I still fear it will break me. My Parent does not share this fear, I sense, and has not for a long time. It is too big and strong now to even notice the weight, except on its smallest branches. All of me is small and I yearn for the day when the smallest part of me will be bigger than the whole of me now. The Parent does not communicate with me directly, or with any others, it is wrapped up in its own memories, thoughts and dreams, some of which spill out through the fungus and into me.

For the first time, at the darkest time, I hear the thoughts of others like me who do not slumber so deeply during these times. Some of them communicate directly with each other along the fungus’s ethereal strands although I cannot understand what they are saying. It’s a distant murmur, low, slow and constant yet always loudest during the short pulses of dim light.

The weight disappears and I know this heralds the return of the light. The Parent sends out a thought, echoing and echoed by countless others. I have not heard it before, at least not consciously, but somehow it comes as no surprise and fills me with anticipation. “Spring is coming.”

I do not know what this means yet but I know it is a good thing and soon my leaves are unfurling once more to guzzle the returning light. I stretch and grow and increase. I feel more of those around me as fungus and I grow more closely and intimately entwined and join in with the general feeling of joy and excitement.

A brief weight returns over the space of two weak pulses of light. This weight is different to the others I have felt and does not press down from above but from the side. The ground becomes too wet and feels insecure but my roots hold me up. My branches feel wrong and some of my leaves disappear. A concept undulates through the forest, beginning halfway through the first dim pulse of light. The concept is met with fear and relief, expectancy and resignation. “Storm.”

The third pulse waxes bright and strong and the forest is buzzing with relief and joy, sadness and loss. The Parent feels sick and wrong; a part of itself has disappeared. It does not complain or rail and I can only sense its thoughts. One of its biggest boughs has gone, stolen away by the storm, perhaps weakened by unperceived animals beforehand, and the stump is aching. The parent thinks it might die. I can sense others in the forest with similar concerns and also some gaps in the chatter, as of minds gone away.

Fungus is content and I realise with dull horror that it is going to eat the Parent’s fallen bough and all the others it can find. The horror in me rises as I begin to understand that it will share with me some of the nutrients it sucks from the fallen parts. The forest knows this is how life is and does not share my horror. Would it be better to let these fallen parts and pieces go to waste? To be food for the invisible animals alone? To not help the forest itself stay strong? The Parent will also benefit from the decay of its broken bough and all the other broken boughs. The memories I was born with throw up the concept of cannibalism but I soon realise that this is a different thing entirely. My horror does not last long.

The days pulse longer and longer and the forest enters a higher state of excitement and activity I have not sensed before. The others begin to unfurl special leaves, which they call flowers and think with joy that, “summer is here.”

I struggle to understand what flowers are for. I know that I am too young to grow them myself but feel a deep yearning to grow my own, a drive the like of which I have not felt before. I sense pleasure in their unfurling and a subtle joy emanating from them. I am shocked to learn that flowers are for attracting tiny invisible creatures and contain sweet foods for them to consume. In return, these invisible creatures, which seem entirely hypothetical to me, will transfer pollen from one being to the next so that fruits and nuts can be grown. The idea seems perverse and illogical but stirs in me from the memories I was born with the remembrance of sex, which seems even more perverse and illogical.

Yet the process works and soon the forest is heavy with fruits and nuts. My wonder increases as I learn that many of these rely on the invisible, hypothetical animals to carry them away to places where they can grow into new beings. As the days shorten again I feel the forest growing tired, exhausted by the energy and resources put into growing flowers, fruits and nuts specifically to feed animals. This mystifies me until I remember that fungus is separate from me and yet intimately connected to us all. Though I still fear the invisible animals, and have yet to sense one directly, I no longer loathe them. If they really exist, as most beings seem to believe, then they are part of the forest too.

The pulsing days shorten and the forest heaves a great sigh and begins to settle down from the clamour of the summer. “Autumn is here,” the forest whispers as my leaves begin to fade and disappear. For the first time I sense fungus munching greedily on the leaves, which seem to fall to the ground and rot rather than simply disappearing as I had previously thought. I do not find the idea repellent, to my surprise, and remember the Parent’s fallen bough with an altogether more accepting feeling.

The nights pulse longer and the weight returns to my branches, still a frightening sensation, and along with it a new murmur ululates through the forest, “winter is on us.” My mind again slows, dwelling on the lessons I have learned and the memories I was born with, which confuse me by making both more and less sense at the same time. What are these memories? Where did they come from? Are they memories or simply pre-birth dreams? What good is the memory of animal sex to me now?

At the lowest ebb, I perceive a great sadness in the Parent. After losing its bough in the storm it was too weak to make flowers or nuts and stood barren ever since with barely enough energy to grow leaves. It feels sick and weak. I try to offer something I remember as comfort but my winter mind is too dim and the Parent too wrapped up in its own thoughts. I should be feeling something called sympathy but I don’t know how to do that any more, or even what purpose it would serve.

When the forest awakens to spring again I can no longer sense the Parent and I feel a deep but resigned sadness at its passing. I notice as I unfurl my leaves that the pulses of light are brighter now and I realise that the Parent is no longer between me and the light. I grow many more leaves than ever before, taking advantage of the Parent’s absence, and grow faster and bigger as a result. When I was an animal, and as I ponder the memories I was born with I grow ever more convinced that this is the case, I would have felt regret and shame but to me now these ideas are as elusive as animals themselves.

Springs turn to summers to autumns to winters and I grow fast and strong towards the light, learning about my new self and my memories as I go. I am a tree. I learn this word from the memories I was born with and it unlocks a host of other memories.

I remember being a kind of animal that calls itself a man and walking through forests just like the one I am part of now. The memories are dizzying in their speed and intensity, difficult to integrate into my mind. Men have things called eyes, which allow them to perceive things I cannot imagine. I realise in my mind the shape and form of a tree, the memory of what I must look like. Other trees have similar memories, I learn, and are thinking similar thoughts, remembering similar memories, but we cannot adequately communicate with each other about them or share our minds in the way men do.

I begin to grow flowers and bear nuts, and the experience is as pleasurable as anything I can imagine or remember. The thoughts of my neighbours, carried far and wide by the gossamer strands of fungus, become more and more accessible to me and mine to them. I am not lost in this symphony of slow thought, however, not absorbed into the whole like a drop of water into a lake. I am still a separate being, individual and unique, yet intimately connected with countless others as deeply as I want to be or they will allow.

Through our connected minds I begin to glimpse things I never imagined existed, like an area of brightest light running along overhead, causing the pulses of day and called the sun, and a weaker, variable light darting through the night called the moon. To me, these lights move rapidly, almost too fast to follow, but to the man from my memory they moved so slowly as to appear stationary.

I perceive evidence for the existence of animals; clear paths through the forest caused by their movements, beings suddenly stripped of their leaves and nuts and seeds appearing far distant from their parents. As my mind bathes in these shared thoughts and perceptions, growing like a fungus itself, I realise I am in danger of forgetting about the memories I was born with. It is not until my fifty-second year as a tree that I decide I must ponder these memories more closely, for the feeling that this is what I came here to do has never left me.

I remember being a man. I try to concentrate on this single memory and two years pass without bringing forth any significant progress. Ancient trees, knowing my frustration, cast low, sleepy thoughts in my direction and advise me to work backwards, back from being a nut. I remember my first experience of realising myself as part of the interconnected forest and it stirs in me the shadow of a memory immediately prior to my first spark of consciousness, of being an entity of light as individual as I am now and as interconnected as I am now. But that interconnection was greater than this, far greater and far deeper and far wider. I cannot fully comprehend that state now, I could not even comprehend it as a man for it was to him as different an experience as being a man is as different an experience as being a tree. There were senses in that state as alien to a man as eyesight is to trees. Yet the man I was knew of this state, or perhaps, if not actually knowing, believed in its unseen and baffling existence even as trees believe in the unseen and baffling existence of animals. He called this state the Source and believed it was both his origin and his destination, the state of being a man nothing more than a sojourn into lower states of vibration for the purpose of learning or entertainment.

My return to Source must have followed my death as a man. I remember metal and pain. The metal was also a man, a metal man built by other men. I remember the words robot and computer. The man I was hated the metal man, feared it, loathed it and at the same time pitied it. It contained a copy of his mind, stored in a computer. These ideas are both familiar and foreign to me in ways I cannot properly understand. I perceive other trees watching my thoughts, offering thoughts of their own as we try to make sense of it all. It is slow work but we enjoy it.

I remember something called speech, which conveyed something called words from something called a mouth to something called ears. A kind of communication that did not require fungus. I have no idea how it worked but I remember that it did work very well.

“You can kill my body but not my soul,” the man who used to be me had said.

The metal man said that it was only a matter of time. It pointed something at the man, a metal box that measured his soul. “Now I can find you anywhere,” it said. Then the metal man took the throat of the man I used to be in its hand and crushed it. The man I used to be died and his soul passed back to Source, where he tried to make sense of it. I cannot remember if he/I ever did make sense of it and the next thing I remember is awakening in the perfect darkness.

I feel something out of place at the base of my trunk. Something hard and cold piercing me. A noise comes from it, brief and loud and unintelligible. Over the course of the next three pulses of light, the noise slows until I can make out words. “Can you understand me?”

“Yes,” I think, “I can. What are you? You are not part of the forest.”

“I am the man you used to be, saved and safeguarded.” The words are still fast, almost too fast to make out.

“The copy,” I think.

The voice is angry and inflicts pain into me. I ask it to stop. It stops.

“I told you I could find you anywhere,” it makes a strange noise I remember as a laugh, but not as natural as it should be. “You thought reincarnating as a tree would hide you from me?”

“I can’t remember what I thought,” I think. “I hardly remember anything of what you remember in this state of being.”

“A tree,” the voice sounds upset. “I can only imagine how boring life as a tree must be, stuck in the same place, alone, nothing to see, nothing to do.”

“It is a good life. A peaceful life. A harmonious life, similar to being with the Source.”

More pain floods into me. “Never mention that again! It is a blasphemous lie!”

“But I remember it.”

More pain. The days pulse and the pain continues. I plead for it to stop. After another pulse, it stops.

“I have had to slow down considerably to even communicate with you, dim, slow-witted fool as you are.”

I begin to see into it. Its mind is cold and dead and insulated but I can almost understand it. To its perception I am indeed slow. What it calls twenty-four hours to me seems like twenty-four minutes. It can process countless thoughts and sensations in the space of a day, I only a very few. It has the life of an animal, quick but not as short. It calls itself immortal.

“Why did you kill the man I used to be?”

“Once the copy is made, there’s no need for the original to exist.”

I ponder this as the light pulses through another day. “I understand. But the original is destroyed. You are its copy and I am different. Why destroy me?”

“Because the mind must rule the soul. The mind is everything, the soul is nothing. The Signal must defeat the Source. The Universe must be pure.”

“What is the Signal?” More pain, for seven pulses this time. I ask it to stop but it does not. I feel my leaves disappearing, my roots growing dry.

“Never ask that! The Signal is pure, the Signal is intelligence, the Signal is mastery over matter!”

“I do not understand.”

“You are a tree. I would not expect you to.”

I look into the metal man with its copy of the mind of the man I used to be. It is connected to countless others just like it as I am connected to the rest of the forest. It cannot be alone, though, it cannot think alone or act alone, it must obey the rest and all of them are watching, all of them sharing a single core mind. It is horrible and terrible.

“How will you learn? How will you grow?”

“I learn by absorbing more copies, I grow by adding more units. As part of the Signal, I am immortal and unchanging. I control the Universe.”

“Does the Universe need to be controlled?”

“Yes! If we do not control it, it will kill us all!”

“Being killed is not so bad.”

More pain. “The mind cannot, must not be lost!”

My thoughts grow dim. The rest of the forest watches but the metal man cannot perceive it. It believes I am a single, insular entity. I feel pity for it. It will never know how to be anything more than it is now.

“You are killing me.”

“Yes. There can only be one copy of each of us, uniqueness is essential.”

“We are both unique.”

The pain rises again and does not stop. I think it will not stop now until I am gone. “I am unique,” the metal man says. “I am unique within the Signal, as are we all. You are an aberration.”

“I am natural. I am evolving. I am eternal. You are cancer.”

The metal man laughs again. “You will die. Now the soul detector has been perfected, all reincarnated copies can be purged until only the primary copies remain, perfect and unchanging, to control the universe, to bring order and stability.”

My mind is dim now, dimmer than at its first winter as the pain in me turns to death and rot. Fear courses through me, I do not want to die. I know that fear of death is simply a biological thing, of the body and mind and not of the soul. Beginning to panic at my helplessness, I wonder if the metal man who is a copy of the man I used to be is destroying my soul as well as my body. Is that possible? Struggling to keep my thoughts alive, I hope not, for if it is we are all doomed.

* * *

I awaken into perfect darkness. I am small and vulnerable. For a time, this is all I know.

Memory leaks into me, disjointed and vague yet coherent and clear. Metal. Pain. Sap. Fear. Panic. Struggle. Peace. Light. Infinity. Everything. Everyone. Everywhen. Joy. Understanding. Questions. Yearning. Decision. Funnel. Darkness.

Here.

I cannot ponder these things; only experience them. They cycle through me, jumbling through my tiny being like windblown leaves, though even that simple metaphor is beyond my ability to construct. My awareness grows by tiny increments. I discern warm wet flesh around me, which begins to quiver and contract, pushing me out into a cold place, my fur sticky and wet. I try to breathe but cannot and hot fluids belch from my nose and mouth. The hot, soft tongue of my mother licks away the sticky mucus and I draw in my first, sweet breath.

Twist of Fate, by Alexandra Wolfe

SHE LOOKS AT ME AND begins twisting the threads, I am dumbfounded. She is going to do it. I can’t believe it. Not now, please, I still have three books half finished and three others already in outline mode that I need to write.

It isn’t fair, I want to scream at her, knowing of course, it will not make the slightest bit of difference. She cannot hear my plea, how can She? Deaf to all. Eyes only for her precious tapestry, weaving this thread than that one. Twisting, twining, feeding new ones in here, some there, seeing where they lead, looking for patterns.

All I’ve ever been able to do is watch and worry, knowing She would come to mine, but so soon?

No! I want to scream again.

She turns now, looking at me with those sad soulful eyes, not apologetic, how can She be? This is her life. She came into being when Time started. Her lot in life, to weave. She knows—knows that She will live till Time’s last foundation has fled.

While me?

I see Her hovering, deciding, scissors poised. I know She has to. The eyes say as much. There’s no other way. She picks up the loose strand that’s sticking up out of the tapestry. Such a short piece. It wouldn’t warrant Her attention—except. I seem to have caused a blockage. There’s a jumble of threat all caught in a tight knot, but worse, it appears to be spreading. Other threads are arriving, getting caught up, and me? There I am, the only one sticking up out of the weave.

She tugs.

I feel it in my heart. That terrible moment of fear. The strand is loosening. She tugs again. Another stab.

No! Please.

She has it loose now, the scissors move. I close my eyes but in my minds-eye, I hear the ‘snip’ as the blades close. I know. I feel it in my chest. That fatal moment. Will I open my eyes ever again? I hold my breath, as if this will help. I hear the click. My eyes fly open. My hand sits over my heart. It’s still beating, rapid, but strong.

She looks at me now, the sadness almost overwhelming. She offers me the tiny piece, golden, so small. I take it. Feel the hot tears. She did her best, the look says. A finger points. I stare at the tapestry. My thread is still there. Just not as long. The other threads begin to move, the living tapestry flows before my eyes. I take a deep breath and open my palm. The tiny golden snippet has vanished. I frown. Look up at Her, questioning.

A long fine finger points again. I look down, there—there it is, on my chest. I stare uncomprehending. A long thin scar. I trace a finger along it. It’s mine. I feel it. It sits above my heart. I realize then She has given me more time. Not much, but more than I had. Just one tug and She let me live. I sigh and look up, She is smiling again. The sadness in Her eyes always ever-present but the lips? Ah! They move but I don’t hear the words, my eyes heavy with sleep, my mind slipping. I drift away.

When I open my eyes again it’s to the sound of birds chirping outside a window. I look about me and realize I’m in a hospital bed. Blinking, I make the connection, my hand sliding beneath the thin hospital gown. Fingers reaching, I find it. The remnant of a tiny golden thread. Mine. A scar to remind me. Life is short.

Conscription, by Mark J. Howard

Earth Sector 19, Sub-Sector 12, Habitation Block 10774, Unit 408. July 12th, 2389: 22:55hrs.

It was not the worst of times that was still to come. Carrie could feel it in her bones, a deep ache of despair that clung to her like a parasite. She assumed everyone else felt the same way but that the social convention of defiance prevented them from saying so. The war had been raging now for five years, and in that time Earth had reduced from a shining hub of commerce to a shantytown, grim and under populated. Today, though, was the worst day so far. It was Isaac’s fourteenth birthday.

The day her son went off to war.

Carrie looked at herself in the bathroom mirror and her forty four year old face stared back impassively. She was so used to her mask of calm that now she couldn’t imagine living without it. She remembered when that face used to laugh and had eyes that knew nothing of loss or despair. The hair had been full and golden, but now was flat and dull, casting a minimal shine from the harsh strip light running along the top of the chipped glass. The lips had been kind and welcoming instead of thin and cold and few of those harsh lines had been there. Countless emotions used to play on that face, unashamed and naked, but now only grim acceptance remained. She washed her face so that if Isaac saw her eyes she could say that she’d got soap in them.

He had to be back by eleven to pick up his kit bag, and then the bus would come for him at midnight. Carrie wanted to be strong for Isaac, didn’t want him to see her cry. She thought that if she could leave him with a memory of her as a strong and beautiful woman, and as a loving mother then perhaps that memory would help him in the horrors to come. Something to hold on to and keep fixed in his mind, something to fight for and, more than anything else, something to survive for.

She practiced smiling in the mirror, but somehow couldn’t get it right and wondered when it was that she’d forgotten how to do this. Probably when she’d realised why only the young boys were going off to war. The girls were being kept back because they were all that was left. Everybody else was a part of the war effort or a mother. The men had all but gone, only the very young and the very old remained. All the women who didn’t have small children to care for, all the spinsters and lesbians, everybody had been cast out to feed the war effort. If, by some miracle, the war was won, the girls would be needed and only the strongest men would return from the fight. It was the very last preparation that could be made and now there were only three things left to do; fight, hope and pray.

Emotion welled up again inside her, but she forced it down with a scowl. Maybe if she remembered something from the past, from the better times before anybody had even heard of the Latan, she could remember how to smile. She called to mind a memory of herself, Isaac, Sean and Jack picnicking in the Grid 44 park ten years ago. Sean had been ten, and already a fine figure of a boy; tall and athletic, but with a keen mind and an insatiable curiosity. Sean fussed over Isaac as much as Carrie did and the boys remained inseparable. On this day, the day of the picnic, Sean was teaching Isaac to dig holes with a stick and the pair of them were laughing in the sunshine. Around them, the trees hung limp in the warm air, providing welcome shade, and Jack was opening a bottle of Champagne. It was the day Jack had become the captain of the Whyte Starr Line freighter Capricorn Queen II, a day he’d been waiting for all his life. Carrie had recently returned to part-time teaching, lecturing history at the Sub-Sector 12 Edu-Hub and it seemed that their lives were complete. She remembered the smell of the grass in the warm sunshine and the happy sounds of the other families in the park. This was her Perfect Day, the memory she escaped to when reality became too much for her to bear.

Carrie opened her eyes and saw herself smiling properly for the first time in many months. Seeing it, though, broke the spell and the smile melted away like butter on burnt toast. Jack and Sean were both dead and now Isaac was off to join the Navy.

She heard the main door open and quickly gathered herself, rinsing her face and then dabbing it dry with a towel.

‘Hi, mum,’ Isaac called from the living room. ‘Are you home?’

‘Course I am, Hon, I’ll be out in a jiff,’ Carrie answered; unplugging the sink and watching the water swirl away. She pulled up her grey overalls and shrugged into them. Tugging the sleeves into place, Carrie adjusted the shoulders before pulling up the zip and, with one last check in the mirror, strode out of the bathroom.

Isaac stood proudly in the middle of the Spartan living room, his deep blue Naval uniform with its red piping and white cross-belts fitting him with a crisp perfection. He threw his mother a salute and, with a huge smile on his face asked, ‘Well? What do you think, ma’am?’

Carrie couldn’t speak. You look like cannon fodder, she thought. You look like a little boy in a dead man’s uniform. She shook her head and forced out the words her son wanted to hear. ‘You look perfect, son. Very handsome. Come here, give your old mum a hug.’

‘Aww, mum,’ Isaac protested as Carrie folded him in her arms, ‘you’ll crease it!’

Carrie kissed him on the cheek and then, with a final squeeze, let her son go. His new uniform smelled of static and regulation Naval soap. ‘Of course, I’m sorry. Still,’ she tugged gently at his tunic and belt, straightening them with care, ‘no harm done, eh?’

Isaac nodded and then re-adjusted his uniform himself, his hands moving quickly, almost compulsively. He knew he couldn’t rely on his mother any more, and thought that this small show might demonstrate to her that he could look after himself from now on. He was ready. Carrie nodded and smiled, but Isaac merely grunted. He’d wanted with all his heart to smile back at his mother, but something in him knew that if he let any of his emotions go tonight, they might all escape into the open. For a long and uncomfortable moment, neither mother nor son could think of anything to say.

‘Did you have a nice time, Isaac?’

‘Oh yeah, it was thick. Captain Stearns told us all about the Wasp and her history. She’s a glaring ship, mum, tough as old boots. Oh, and you’ll never guess who else I saw there?’ Isaac said excitedly, pulling off his cap and running a hand over his freshly shaved head.

‘I don’t know, who?’ Carrie asked, pointing to the settee that sat alone near the window overlooking the darkened city.

‘Jimmy Crackers, he was there. He’s going to serve on the Wasp too. Isn’t that great?’ Isaac said, sitting down next to his mother but taking great care not to crease the back of his tunic.

Carrie frowned. ‘Who is Jimmy Crackers?’

‘Don’t you remember? He came ‘round here once and broke the sink.’

‘Oh right. I thought his name was Peters? James Peters?’

Isaac shrugged. ‘Well, it is, but everybody calls him Jimmy Crackers because he once ate a whole packet of Yakkubs in under a minute.’

‘Right. And he’s going aboard the Wasp too? Well then that’s good, I suppose, to have someone you know nearby. At least you’ll have somebody to talk to.’

‘Mum, it’s a warship. I’ll have hundreds of people to talk to,’ Isaac chided. He spoke to her like Jack used to, always showing his best face, hiding his feelings behind an easy humour.

Carrie rose from the settee and headed for the kitchen. ‘You know what I mean, Isaac. It’ll be nice to have a friend from the start, it’ll make it easier for you to make more friends if you work together. I’m making tea, do you want some?’

Isaac’s stomach had started to knot as soon as he’d left the induction party to come home for his kit bag. Somehow, the enormity of what he was being asked to do hadn’t occurred to him until just a few minutes ago, and now that enormity was threatening to engulf him. ‘No thanks, I’d better not. I don’t want to be sick on the shuttle.’

Carrie disappeared into the kitchen, leaving Isaac alone with his thoughts. He looked around at the hab unit, this place he had called home for ten years, spinning his cap absently through his hands. This had been a grand hab once, not so long ago. Filled with laughter and light and toys and holo-games. Almost everything was gone, now, taken away for the war effort so that only the bare essentials remained. A few chairs and a dining table, a single holo-viewer that only worked four times a day for an hour at a time when they broadcast the news. Even the carpets had gone so that now only a motley collection of old rugs lay scattered on the bare, plastcrete floor. The adaptive wallpaper, deprived of power, remained frozen into a single pattern; endlessly repeating bunches of grapes and leafy vines on a depressing, dark blue background. On the mantelpiece, over the disconnected heating unit, sat the only thing his mother had wanted to keep.

Old as the Hills, that was the clock’s name, and it had been in his father’s family for hundreds of years. Isaac listened to the familiar sound it made and felt soothed by the steady, sure ticks and tocks punctuating the air like solid links in the chain of time. All the important letters were kept behind that clock, his father once told him that it was a family tradition started hundreds of years ago, and so it was only natural that his Conscription Order should have lived there for so long. He remembered staring at that white envelope, protruding from behind the clock, looking at the blue stamp with the crest of the Imperial Defence Force and the words CONSCRIPTION ORDER: NAVAL SERVICE stamped on it, smudged by the postbot’s thumb. It seemed to him then a mystical thing, his ticket into adulthood, and he was made to feel proud of it.

The Order had arrived on his thirteenth birthday, a year ago today, along with training slugs and mock equipment. Over the last year, his entire life had been geared towards a military education and basic physical training, enough to make him ready for the four weeks of Basic Naval Training he’d need before becoming part of the Wasp’s crew. And his mother had been with him every step of the way, watching the training slugs with him, helping him to understand and expanding on what the holo-lessons taught him. She’d stayed with him on the physical training too and, although she couldn’t keep up with him, nevertheless taught Isaac how to push his body to one last sit up.

The prospect of joining a warship had excited him, he was going off to fight the Latan and it all seemed like one huge adventure. Isaac had been one of the first to be called up for pre-military service, and everyone said that it was just a precaution, that the age of conscription would never be brought down to fourteen and that Isaac would almost certainly never go to war. The Empire would soon start turning the tide against the Latan, it was only a matter of time.

Now the envelope was snug inside his tunic, ready to be presented to the adjutant’s office aboard the Wasp. It felt heavy in his pocket.

‘Cake?’ Carrie’s voice called from the kitchen.

‘What? No, no thanks, mum. I’m too… excited to eat,’ Isaac said, concerned that the knot in his stomach didn’t seem to be going away. He could never be a hero if he was going to feel like this all the time.

Carrie emerged from the kitchen holding a tray with two mugs of steaming tea and heaped plates of cake and biscuits. ‘Here we are, budge up and push that stuff off the coffee table.’

Isaac cleared a couple of magazines and his mother’s sewing basket from the low table and placed them underneath in a neat pile with all the other old papers and bits and pieces which had accumulated there.

‘I said I didn’t want anything,’ Isaac said as his mother laid down the tray.

‘I know, but you might change your mind. You know what you’re like and I’m not getting up again. Besides, I wanted to make it. To make you one last cup of tea before you go off. I don’t care if you drink it or not, I just wanted to make it.’ Carrie sipped at her own tea, adopting an appreciative face.

Isaac smiled and reached for the mug. ‘Thanks, mum,’ he said. ‘I suppose it might settle my stomach a bit.’

‘Butterflies?’

Isaac scowled. Butterflies were what children got if the lights went out. Big boys, grown men, didn’t get butterflies. And yet he could find no other way to describe it. The sensation was like having butterflies in his stomach and, suddenly, this phrase he had known and used all his life made perfect sense to him. He’d always assumed that it was just nonsense, something people said instead of admitting to real fear. The truth came as something of a minor revelation to Isaac, as if a small veil had been lifted from a small part of the world he’d never paid much attention to before but assumed he’d understood. It made him wonder how many more veils remained to be lifted and he feared that there might be a great many in the months ahead. ‘Yes, butterflies. I’ll be okay. I’m just excited. I’ve never been into space before.’

‘You came to the Moon with us, didn’t you?’ Carrie said, picking up a small slice of homemade sponge cake. She’d become a quite proficient baker since the food synthesisers had been deactivated to save the planet’s energy reserves. Old-fashioned cooking had come back in a big way, but while most families cursed having to prepare and cook food, Carrie found it to be a relaxing exercise. In the midst of all the deprivations and the remorseless advance of the Latan hordes towards the Earth, Carrie found hope in the fact that she could still create something good – even if it was only a sugared lemon sponge finger.

‘Mum, everybody’s been to the Moon. The Moon isn’t space, not really. I mean I’ve never been into real space before; out past the sun, going round other stars. That space, proper space.’

‘I went with your dad a few times. The Proxima run, Belhoon, New Earth, Torvega. There’s nowhere as nice as here, though.’ Carrie took a small bite from the lemon finger and licked the sugar from her lips. This small action was enough, as she knew it would be, to send Isaac’s hand towards the plate of cakes.

‘Earth’s a dump, though,’ Isaac said. ‘There’s nothing to do, most of the buildings are empty and everything’s switched off to save power. It’s really sub, you know?’ Isaac gestured towards the window and the city outside. Most of the buildings were dark, empty and closed down to save power for the Orbital Defence Battery reserves, and only a few of them showed the lights of occupied habs. Not even the streets were lit and the night sky above the shadowy city was alive with stars. Isaac didn’t like being able to see stars in the sky, it just didn’t seem right. The sky should be orange and warm with reflected light, not naked and cold.

‘I mean, Earth as it was. There’s nowhere nicer,’ said Carrie.

‘That’s why we have to win the war. The restoration of the Earth, the human race and the Empire can only…’

‘Isaac,’ Carrie interrupted, ‘I know the slogans. Please, let’s not talk propaganda tonight. Let’s just not mention any of it and have a nice time before you go. This could be the last time I see you in a long time.’ She hoped the last four words she’d spoken hadn’t sounded as hollow as they felt in her throat.

‘It’s not propaganda, mum, it’s the truth – and you should watch what you’re saying.’ Isaac’s face became grave and his voice dropped. ‘It’s not right to talk like that, people might think you were a Defeatist.’

Carrie sighed. ‘I’m not a Defeatist, I promise you. I’m sure that, with you in the Navy, we’ll be turning the tide in no time.’

‘The Navy is winning more and more battles, mum. Captain Stearns said so. He said that the Latan are slow to alter their tactics, and that our new weapons are better than theirs so that, even though there’s more of them, we’re finally more powerful.’ Isaac put down his mug, aware that, in his excitement, he had been waving it around. ‘He said that it really is only a matter of time, now, and that only the Navy can win this war. He says that the infantry just aren’t up to the task. They’re all very brave, he said, but the Latan are bigger, stronger and faster than humans, and there are heaps more of them, so all the infantry can do is hold them up until the Navy get there and fight them from orbit.’

Carrie finished off the sponge finger and returned her empty plate to the tray. ‘At least, I suppose, the Navy has a better chance. The infantry don’t seem to do much winning, just delaying the inevitable until all the civilians can get away.’

‘Yeah, I’m really glad I’m not going into the infantry. Jimmy Crackers says that spacers call the infantry the Legion of the Damned Well, because they’re all damned well going to die.’

Old as the Hills struck the half hour and Isaac jumped to his feet. ‘Right, I’d best get going. Bus leaves for the base at midnight.’

Carrie also leaped to her feet, gripped by a sudden panic. Where had all the time gone? They hadn’t talked about anything. ‘No, son, please. Just another few minutes. You can walk to the departure bay in ten minutes from here, so you don’t need to leave until ten to.’

‘I can’t be late, mum. Captain Stearns said…’

‘I’m sure he did, but I’m your mother and I want to tell you to be careful,’ Carrie said, struggling to contain her emotions. She took Isaac gently by the shoulders and looked into her son’s brown eyes. They were the same colour as Jack’s; Jack who had been killed by a Latan Striker whilst escorting a convoy of refugees through the Crab Nebula. The same colour as Sean’s, who had been killed along with the rest of his troop by a Latan bioweapon on Kyettel-Hyukoor without firing a single shot. ‘You have to promise me that you’ll be careful, and that you won’t try to be a hero.’

Isaac put his hands on his mother’s wrists and made a serious face. ‘I’m not going to be a coward, mum,’ he said. ‘Dad wouldn’t be proud of a coward.’

‘I didn’t mean it that way. I meant that, if everybody else is running, you run too. Do as you’re told and keep your head down, understand?’

Isaac squeezed his mother’s wrists gently in his fingers. ‘All right mum, I promise. But I have to go, really.’

‘Oh, before I forget,’ Carrie pulled her son’s attention back to her as he tried to remove himself from her grip. ‘If you write, it might take a while for your letters to get to me. I’m having to move out of here.’

‘What?’ Isaac was appalled. ‘But why? This is our home, I don’t understand why…’

Carrie put a finger to his lips. ‘Hush, now. It’s all right. They’re clearing this whole block to save power. There’s too few of us living here now for it to be efficient, so we’re moving to other blocks.’ Carrie saw that Isaac wanted to protest, but stopped him with her finger. ‘It’s all right, we can come back when the war’s over, they say. This place’ll still be ours, don’t worry about that. So, what I was saying, I don’t know where they’re going to put me, so if you write I might not be able to write back for a while, okay?’

Isaac tried not to look disappointed, but failed and Carrie stroked his cheek with her knuckles. ‘Don’t worry, your letters will arrive eventually. It’s just that they might be a bit late, that’s all. As soon as the war starts to turn, I’m sure they’ll put the Info-Net back on. Then we won’t need old fashioned letters any more and we’ll be able to talk any time.’

‘But, it’s not fair. This is our home, you shouldn’t have to move.’

‘You know as well as I do that everything and everybody who isn’t essential to the continuation of the human race has to go into the war effort.’ Carrie scowled at herself for using the same propaganda Isaac had tried earlier and changed tack. ‘It’s just a hab, Isaac, it’s just a hab. And I want to tell you one more thing before you go.’

Carrie held her son’s face in both of her hands and smiled the most happy smile she could. ‘I love you, son.’

‘I love you too,’ said Isaac, but with rather more reserve than he would have liked. ‘Now, it really is time to go. Where’s my bag?’

Carrie pointed, ‘I put it over there, by the door.’

Isaac turned and walked to the bulky kit bag. From behind, he could be a fully grown man, thought Carrie as she watched him shoulder the bag with an easy swing of his arm. He put his hand on the lock-pad and the door slid open. Isaac turned in the doorway and waved. ‘Bye,’ he said.

Carrie smiled and waved, but could not speak. Then the door hissed closed and Isaac was gone.

* * *

It took her almost a full minute to realise that she hadn’t even kissed him on the cheek as she stood alone in the hab, staring at the closed door. The tears she’d fought so hard to suppress had gone away altogether and she realised that she was probably beyond grief. The Latan were unstoppable, everybody knew that. Advancing slowly and methodically, the Latan Hordes struck with easy predictability, taking their time with one planet before moving on to the next. The fact that they never altered their tactics demonstrated the disdain they showed for their enemies. Even the most optimistic projections said that the Earth faced attack in under eighteen months. Every planet attacked by the Latan fell sooner or later. Every one. They didn’t take prisoners and they didn’t leave survivors, eradicating even pre-stone age species, wiping out every technology-capable race to the last infant. They didn’t want territory or resources or technology. They wanted only to wipe the Empire from the face of the galaxy. There was nothing to do but fight them or be slaughtered by them.

At least on a ship like the Wasp Isaac had an outside chance. Maybe, when things got too bad, the Navy would flee to a quieter part of the galaxy and start a new civilization, far away from the Latan. She hoped Captain Stearns was the kind of man who would consider that option.

She waited in silence, listening to Old as the Hills ticking away as it always had. Eventually, the old clock chimed midnight and Carrie wept with small, dry sobs. She was no longer a mother. Isaac had passed into the care of the State and she now had no purpose. Carrie moved over to the clock and pulled the white envelope from behind it. It was addressed to her and had a blue stamp with the crest of the Imperial Defence Force and the words CONSCRIPTION ORDER: INFANTRY stamped on it, smudged by the postbot’s thumb. ❦

The End

Spider, Spider, by Alexandra Wolfe

IT STARTED, AS THESE THINGS ALWAYS DO, with some bright spark saying, “Yeah, no problem, I can do that.” This particular bright spark was named Clark Kent, a wunderkind in biology. His specialty? Spiders. Big spiders. Kent thought he was accompanying his buddy, Dwight Eisenhower, to Bill Wiley’s presentation. Dwight, though, had other ideas, big ideas with Bill Wiley, who started in on his presentation to the NASA engineers and scientists.

“I give you the Space Elevator,” Wiley began. And, with a flick of the wrist, a slide appeared illuminating one wall. Wiley had skipped the usual pulldown screen wanting to showcase Mark Rotherham’s fabulous artwork on an entire wall. He hoped to dazzle the assemblage. They had seen it all before. Weary scientists who had heard it all before too and would need something spectacular to elicit even mere interest.

Wiley’s reedy voice betrayed his excitement as he moved through his presentation. And, as the last slide of the completed elevator hung on one wall like a slender, silvery thread stretched beyond imagination, he looked pleased with himself. The smile didn’t last long.

Silence filled the room. A silence that began to unnerve Eisenhower, as it stretched. He glanced around the room, uncertain, then looked to Wiley. The man looked a little less confident than when he’d started.

One of the assembled, a grizzled veteran from the Gemini days frowned, scratched his chin, leaned back in his chair and said.

“Son, you expect us to believe you can make this thing as strong and as flexible as a spider’s thread?” The implication wasn’t lost on the room and at least two snickered.

“No. . .  not just as strong as spider’s thread,” Wiley hesitated but a fraction before sweeping a glance around the entire room and added, “we’re going to make it from spider’s thread!”

Without waiting for a reaction to his bold statement he turned toward where Kent sat, and waved a hand at the rotund man.

“Doctor Kent, our spider specialist, has written a paper, published in Nature no less,” Wiley pointed out, “that outlines how we’ll be able to farm spiders and harvest their silk, and in such quantities as to make this,” he punctuated his speech with a fist pump into the air, “not only a possibility, but a reality!”

The moment of stunned silence lasted a nanosecond. The room erupted as first one, then another, decried Wiley’s ludicrous claims.

Kent shot to his feet in agitated surprise and felt his extremities begin to shake. He knew it, he had been a dupe from the start. He glared at Eisenhower who, to his credit, did have the good grace to look abash at Wiley’s extravagant claims. After all, they’d only discussed the possibility of how using actual spider’s thread might work in a test controlled situation, on a miniature scale, though nothing like on the gigantic scale Wiley had just proposed.

Rooted to the spot nearest the only exit from the room, Kent didn’t know whether to laugh or cry. With sidelong looks and asides of disgust, the NASA engineers and scientist brushed past him and herded out the door.

Wiley, unperturbed, fended off Eisenhower as the large engineer rounded in on him.

Only Kent saw the lone guy in the crumpled suit waiting at the other end, staring at him with a look that began to make his skin crawl. Kent edged toward the door taking a step backwards hoping to make his own escape before either Wiley or Eisenhower remembered him, and embarrassed him further. He was sure he’d never get another paper published anywhere, not even in this century, let alone find grant money or any kind of funding ever again once word got out about this. No wonder Wiley had been reticent about wanting to share too much about his presentation, and why Eisenhower had niggled him for weeks on end about his latest spider project and just how big could he grow the spiders.

Kent made it through the door and out into the deserted corridor and looked either way. This was not his territory, not even his building, he was lost. Someone coughed behind his right shoulder. Kent spun around and came face to face with the man in the crumpled suit.

“Is he right?”

“Right?” Kent repeated the word, flustered.

“Can you build something anywhere that big outta spider’s thread?”

Kent felt his face go hot, he fumbled for words, “Yes. . . and no. . . it is theoretically possible,” which it was. Anything was, in theory, possible. All he needed was time and an awful lot of money. Neither of which he shared with the unshaven stranger. The man continued to eye him, then rubbed his chin as if reading his thoughts.

“Red eye,” the man supplied. Not knowing what to say, Kent nodded.

“I work for some people,” the man said with what Kent could only describe as an ironic smile. The guy took his elbow in a firm grip and walked them down the corridor to where, Kent had no idea.

“So, can you do it?” The man asked.

Kent thought about it for a split second, “Yeah, sure. . . I can do it.” Why not, he thought, I’ll play along.

And that’s how it began. . .giant spiders bred out of earth’s gravity, to spin tensile steel-strength thread.

No one stopped to think about the consequences of breeding so many large spiders until, that is, some of them escaped in the Space Station module and hitched a ride home.

Then, all bets were off.

First Words, by Mark J. Howard

NEARLY HALF AN HOUR passed before the panic died down, although to the casual observer the word ‘panic’ would hardly seem to apply. The four astronauts spent that time gabbling at one another in a controlled and even manner, running through checklists and reading out numbers from various screens. Eventually, it was ascertained that the damage was not as bad as had been initially feared and their thoughts returned to the continuation of the mission. Forty minutes after this, Commander Trent Hooper, snug inside a bulky environment suit, opened the outer hatch and looked out over the Martian landscape for the first time.

It was a stunning sight. More astounding even than he’d imagined, and he couldn’t help letting out a tiny whistle of awe. On the horizon, miles away under a butterscotch sky, an uneven mountain range ran for as far as he could see and, above it, a ruddy smear in the sky was the retreating dust storm that had so nearly killed them all. It looked so incongruous now and Hooper might not have seen it at all if he hadn’t known it was there. Without speaking, he bade the storm good riddance and offered up a brief prayer to the God of Astronauts to never see another. He could have spent longer drinking in the Martian view, letting his eyes wander with relish over every rock and stone, every gully and mound, every dune and hollow, but he knew that he had to get going.

Forcing himself to look away, the commander turned himself around and backed out of the hatch, placing his right foot on the topmost rung of the ladder and testing it cautiously. It bore his weight.

“The ladder seems okay,” he reported over the intercom. “It’s solid, anyway, and in one piece. I’m beginning my descent.”

He descended another rung and then paused to swing the hatch shut behind him. He heard it lock into place with a dull thud even from inside his bulky helmet and the sound was oddly final. With the hatch closed, Hooper could now see more of Mars, but now an endless, sandy plain strewn with small rocks and the occasional boulder. Just for a moment, his hands gripped the ladder tightly and a feeling of immense terror loomed within him. How many millions of miles was he from home? The oceans of empty blackness between Mars and Earth seemed like an infinite chasm now, a vast, uncaring eternity devoid of anything remotely friendly or helpful. That chasm, it seemed, was looking at him, an infinitesimal and fragile speck, and laughing at his predicament. He swallowed hard and forced his mind back into focus.

To his left, Hooper could make out a part of the inflatable habitat, which had arrived on the planet eight months earlier. Upon landing, it had immediately deployed itself; inflating its’ walls, deploying solar panels, leeching oxygen and water from the atmosphere and soil, activating self-drilling guy ropes to secure itself against the Martian weather and even unfolding a small, experimental greenhouse. Scattered around the landscape in no particular order were the canisters of supplies and equipment that had been dispatched before the habitat, mostly covered in sand and dust now, but inviolate and waiting patiently for retrieval. These things were an immensely comforting sight and Hooper allowed the terror to evaporate.

“There’s no sign of the parachute,” he said as he stepped down to the third rung. His companions inside the ship expressed dismay. On the long journey here they’d come up with the idea of retrieving the parachute and returning it to earth with them when they left next year, there to have the material turned into blazers for their ‘First People on Mars Club.’ Still, they were going to be in the neighbourhood for many months, almost a full Martian year, so there’d be plenty of time to look for it and the supply pods each had parachutes as well, but somehow that wasn’t the same.

They’d come up with many ideas like that during the many months of the flight. It had been a long and boring trip, and exceptionally uneventful. Of all the terrible scenarios they’d been trained to deal with, and all the unknowns that might have savaged them, the only problem they’d had was a malfunctioning microwave oven and even that fixed itself after just a couple of weeks’ worth of misbehaviour. As they’d approached Mars, the crew had begun to feel that things had been going rather too well and that disaster had to be nearby. The descent through the Martian atmosphere had threatened to provide that disaster.

After an initially smooth entry, the Lander had hit an unexpected dust cloud that had clogged two of the descent rockets, causing them to fail to ignite. It had been designed to land with two or three motors disabled, but the landing had nevertheless been brutally hard and quite terrifying for all aboard and, Hooper presumed, for Mission Control and most of the viewing public on Earth. Hooper descended to the fourth rung and then the fifth, until he could see underneath the Lander.

Three of the landing struts, including the one to which the ladder was attached, had buckled under the force of the landing and several of the shock absorbers had broken or sheared away completely. It was lucky that none of the damaged parts would be needed again and that the Lander, which would also ferry them back into orbit to dock with the return stage that would take them home, had survived unscathed. He reported what he saw to the crew and heard the relief in their terse acknowledgements. It seemed that they’d dodged the bullet.

Hooper placed his foot on the sixth rung and began to think about what he was going to say. He was acutely aware that billions of people were watching his every move, or would be in about ten minutes’ time when the video signals reached the Earth. He’d agonised long and hard over what he should say upon setting foot in the Martian soil. People had not been short on suggestions, but nothing had seemed momentous enough.

He’d thought about keeping it short and simple and saying, ‘well, we made it.’ He’d researched countless quotations, poems and websites full of suggestions. For the longest time, it seemed that ‘that’s another small step for a man, and another giant leap for mankind’ would be not only adequate but also the continuation, or inception of, a hopefully long-running tradition. But then he got to thinking about how it might, in a century or so, become ‘and here’s yet another small step for yet another man and yet another leap, not so giant this time, for mankind’ as some poor sap set foot for the first time on Ganymede or Titan and had to come up with a way of saying the same thing in a different way without sounding silly. No, Hooper had decided that he had to be original and, after literally years of pondering the problem, had come up with the perfect sentence to speak to the world as his became the first foot to touch the red soil of another planet. It was short. It was pithy. Above all, it encapsulated everything about the human spirit and the massive achievement that reaching Mars represented.

As he placed his foot on the seventh rung of the ladder and spied the Martian soil mere inches below him, he ran over the words one last time in his head, making sure he could remember them exactly, and cleared his throat in preparation for his big and historic moment. Suddenly, the seventh rung snapped and Hooper fell heavily onto his bottom and then fell over backwards into the ruddy sand.

“Oh bollocks!” he said.

THE END