Month: August 2015

And wake up he did. With a surge of adrenaline, he pointed his blaster at the creature and fired.

“Not happening.”

Over and over the bolts of energy ripped through the hazy shape until it lay on the floor in a mass.

When it lay motionless, he pulled at his legs in a feeble attempt to free himself. It was no use. The substance that held him to the ground was like an organic concrete.

He pulled his blaster again and fired into the mass that held him down, but the energy did little to move it.

With a twist of his back, he slid the pack down his left arm and then, reaching inside, produced a mobile torch. He shouldered it again with care and spun the knob on the device. with a click the flame sprung to life and he leaned down to where the sludge met the floor.

An hour later there was little progress, but the progress increased his hope. With the lessened tension on his right leg, he was able to work his arm down into the pocket at his hip where his knife rested.

He flicked it open and chiseled into the substance, removing it until the blade was dull. In a clumsy motion with too much force the blade passed through the material and found its way into his leg.

He could feel the blood moving down his leg inside his restraint.

The base of the sludge was still firm around his feet where he could not reach, and at first it frustrated him. But when he wiggled his feet, nervous from his newest injury, his boots held fast but his foot did not.

He leaned backwards against the hardened material and used it for leverage, prying off his shoes. Once he had broken the bond at his feet, he wriggled his way out of his pants. With a clumsy movement, found himself on the ground again, free.

With a limp to his step, he moved down the hallway to the medical bay. Inside he searched for bandages and wrapped his leg.

When the bleeding stopped, he eased his way from the medical table and returned to the decontamination chamber. With dread, he stepped inside.

The machine ignited with a whir, sending lasers back and forth across his body. Outside the door a red light shone.

“I hate this part,” he thought to himself.

With a loud noise the fans started, pushing gas into the room until he gasped for breath on the floor. When he thought that he might pass out, the second set of fans started, pushing the gas out and allowing a cool breeze into the chamber.

He gasped again, this time to pull the air into his lungs as fast as he could. His body ached, but he managed to pull himself up again by the side rail. When he had regained his footing, he stepped back into the main corridor of the outpost and breathed a sigh of relief.

“Now just to wait out the storm, only a few more hours.” He said to himself.

“You don’t think it’ll be that easy,” the unfamiliar voice said, somewhere in the back of his mind.

Darkness filled the room, and slowly the creature rose from the ground. He watched the creature with it’s confused, tilted head, rise to the ceiling and expand it’s body around the walls of the communication center, staring at him with it’s blank gaze. He ran from the room the moment the darkness was near him, but not before grabbing a portable voice communicator from the communication desk.

He began to run down the hallway, tossing everything in his path behind him to try and stop the creature from getting close to him. The creature twisted, turned, and deformed and reformed itself, getting around any obstacle in front of it. Once it appeared as if he had bested the creature, he stopped for a breath of air. Suddenly, his voice communicator began to crackle…

‘This is … cue… br…”

The communication was scrambled, he couldn’t make out what was being said. He decided to try for a better position. Maybe another room had better reception. He ran towards the front of the outpost, back to where it all started. There, he reached the cafeteria, and once again a voice came through his communicator.

‘Do….y…….me”

The reception in the room was worse. It seems that the rooms where the creature resided caused an interference on the voice comms. The brighter the room, the better the reception was. Realizing this, he turned around and decided to run straight towards the exit of the outpost, but he couldn’t move.

His legs, were frozen, stuck, in a mud like substance. Then, he heard a dripping noise. It was similar to the one he had heard when he first discovered the creature. Shivers ran down his spine, and as he turned towards the noise, he saw the creature. Once again the creature stared back, with the blank gaze, a blank canvas of a face.

As he stared back at the creature he felt a cold like liquid on his feet, slowly rising up his leg, his shin, and his hips. He looked down and saw that the creature was extending itself onto his body, slowly covering every inch of him. Soon after he looked up, staring back at the creature, fear engulfed him. He could not speak a word. The darkness surrounded his eyes and soon he was completely covered…

‘Wake up,” said a soft unfamiliar voice, ‘this is only the beginning.”

He bolted down the hallway as fast as his tired legs could manage. A glance over his shoulder confirmed it wasn’t far behind. He skidded to a stop in front of the communication room door and, when he was inside, he sealed the door behind him.

“It’s liquid. The door is water-tight, right?” He said, looking for anything else to keep the creature at bay. Readying his pistol, he braced himself against the communication panel.

It wouldn’t take him without a fight.

With a quick glance over his shoulder, he flipped on the power to the communication equipment and waited. When the power-up cycle had completed, the static on the intercom stopped. He spun around and punched in the sequence for an outpost in distress and waited.

“Odd that they turned off the communication system but didn’t destroy it?” He thought, his eyes trained on the door. Without the extra white noise from the comms, the room felt as dead as a tomb.

“Mining Outpost Seven, what is your distress?” A voice called from just over his shoulder.

He did not want to turn his attention from the door. If the creature could slip around the seal, it would likely do so without making a sound. But he could not communicate with the rest of the sector if he did not.

Drawing in a deep breath, he spun around and tapped a small orange key on the control panel.

“This is currier…” he stopped for a moment. If he told them his name, he would be forever marked, perhaps even isolated for the rest of his life in a contamination room. If he did not, maybe he could avoid this on his record.

“I’m a carrier out of Oklahoma Six. I crash landed on Mining Outpost Seven while delivering a package. I’m requesting immediate evacuation for myself. There’s something here, it killed the crew.”

“A currier?” The man at the other end of the call said with an Earthly southern drawl. “What are your coordinates?”

He glanced over his shoulder, and when he did not see the creature he punched in the coordinates from his watch. After he had sent them, he turned his back to the screen and waited.

“We’re dispatching the rescue team from the local station, but the storm on that planet will delay extraction. Are you in a position to wait it out?”

“I’m holed up in the communication room,” he said. “I’m not even sure where the thing is, or if it knows where I am.”

“Sit tight, the storm should be away from you in about six hours. If you don’t signal from the ground, we’ll send in the evacuation team.”

That meant trouble.

“Send a shuttle, not a team,” he said. “It’s too risky.”

“We have our protocols to follow.”

“I’ll be in the canyon, or I’ll be dead. Just bring the ship.”

“Good luck. This completes transmission,” the man said. And then he was gone.

In the intensity of the conversation, he had forgotten to watch the door. With a quick motion, he turned around wiht his pistol ready. A sigh of relief and a quick smile escaped his mouth when it was still sealed.

As the cover for the ventilation system clanged to the floor, his relief died a quick death.

As he sat there and thought about the situation he was in, he thought to himself, “First the herbivore, and now this? I thought we were mining on this planet because there was no sign of life?”

He noticed a notebook in the corner of the room. It was the journal of one of the crew members, a scientist. Normally these outposts were home only to miners, so what was a scientist doing with with a bunch of miners? The book was covered with dust and drops of dried blood. He grabbed the book and returned to his hiding place. Remembering that he needed to stay safe because someone, or something, was coming back for those miners.

He opened the journal, carefully. He skimmed along until he found something that might provide some insight as to why a scientist was with the crew. There, in the middle of the journal he noticed the mention of a new mineral. He read to himself, “The Recour quadrant is a calm one. It has a vast planetary system, but this planet of the ten in the quadrant had no sign of life even thought it had the ability to sustain it. Once teraformed, the planet produced a mineral that helps produce oxygen similar to how trees produced it on Earth. This mineral is a significant push forward for science and to find a new planet to officially call home.”

“Since we began to focus on gathering this mineral instead the of others, we’ve noticed a change in attitude within the crew. People seem to be happier, and more motivated. I think the discovery adds more worth to their time on this planet separated from people, other outposts, and the rest of the colonies.” He skipped a few pages ahead. “Today I noticed something strange when analyzing the mineral. There was something else that it was producing, something organic, an organism. I decided this was something the crew didn’t need to know about. I discovered a new species and definitely didn’t want anyone else taking the credit.”

“As I continued studying this organism, I noticed it had a particular quality about it that was different from any other species we had come in contact with before. It took the shape of objects around it, almost like as if it was learning, and adapting…”

Before he could read further he heard a noise. He took a deep breath, and heard a slow steady dripping noise coming from the cafeteria. He thought to investigate but hesitated.

“I’m not about to be someone’s dinner,” he thought to himself. But his curiosity got the best of him.

Before reaching the doors, he decided to peak through the glass panes. What he noticed was one of the bodies, beginning to decay.

A strange orange liquid dripping from the foot, the face of the body was sliding down it’s chest, towards it’s legs. Fear began to take over as he noticed the liquid begin to move towards the door.

“What…the…fuh…fuh…”

As he struggled for words, the liquid began to solidify right before him. It raised up at a slow steady pace, forming legs, then hips, then torso, and soon after a head, and a complete body, with no face.

He closed his eyes, “This is a dream. SHIT! This is a freaking dream. You’re going to open your eyes and this is all going to be gone. You’re going to wake the hell up and be in some stupid room, in that stupid ship that you hate so much. WAKE UP!”

SMACK!

When he opened his eyes, he sighed in relief. He saw his reflection through the glass window and laughed, but the reflection did not laugh with him. It stared, tilted his head in confusion, and then opened the door.

The sweat rolled from his brows, almost as if he were still under the sun. It was a single drop of sweat in his eye that brought him out of shock.

His hand dropped to where his pistol rested, and with a quick motion it was up and ready. His thumb racked against the safety and the gun whirred with charge.

Looking up into their eyes again, he stepped backward and then spun toward the door. The light in the hallway beckoned him like a moth to a flame.

His hands quivered as he crept down the hallway. Though he had not noticed it when he entered the cafeteria, the difference in the temperatures was drastic. The cooling system poured cold air onto him, making him shiver as it chilled the sweat that still clung to him for dear life.

The sound of a slamming door echoed past him, and he shivered again.

At the end of the hallway, by the decontamination room, he peered out the window to survey his options. The rainwater ran off the edge of the roof, flooding this side of the canyon. The wind was downing trees and even tossing around a pair of cycles.

He closed his eyes. Leaving shelter would be the death of him. If he was to stay inside, he needed a place to hide.

The first door down the hallway opened into the communication room. The light inside was on, which gave him hope.

“It’s as good of a place as any, and it’s right by the main door.” he thought.

From inside, he noticed a small walkway between the communication and the medical room. With as much stealth as he could manage, he entered the medical room and sealed the door to the hallway in a feeble attempt at security. Then he closed off the door between the medical and the communication room for good measure. The last door to seal was the door to the communication room.

He dared not change any details about the room that would be noticeable from outside. Whoever, or whatever, had killed the miners likely knew this place better than he did.

In a corner of the room away from the door he crouched against the wall and wept.

For as hard as he tried, he could not shake the image of their eyes from his thoughts. And then a terrible thought occurred to him. The heat in the cafeteria, the use of anti-gravity bands to keep them suspended, the lack of decay… Those men were hanging to cure.

The dark and red clouds loomed overhead, full of threat, as the sun began to set.

“A storm is coming,” he thought to himself.

The storms of this planet made the worst storm in earth seem like a drizzle. The wind picked up, and the dust from the mountain tops began to skip across the ground beneath him. He inched closer to the outpost.

An eerie feeling came over him.

He arrived at the outpost door, which slid open just as he passed the sensor. While in the decontamination chamber, he noticed the steady white noise over the outpost comms. Not a word was spoken.

As decontamination finished he walked inside the outpost. Uncomfortable with the silence he shouted, “That’s some serious weather out there!”

He smiled at the breath of fresh o2 inside, but his happiness quickly turned to worry as the lights inside began to fade. All he could see was the texture of the walls, and all he could hear was the sound of his footsteps and the white noise from the comms.

“Um, this is courier Lee of the Recour quadrant. I’m here to retrieve a package.” he said nervously.

He walked around the outpost for a minute or two before reaching the cafeteria, where it was pitch black. He scurried around, feeling the walls for a light switch. He found it.

There, from the ceiling, hung four people. What looked to be the crew of the outpost. Eyes wide open, toes numb, blood rushing… this is probably what they would have felt had they been alive. They were perfectly straight, as if standing; head straight, arms, legs, everything, just perfect.

He didn’t scream, he didn’t shout, he didn’t run, he stared. He walked around the bodies, examining every aspect of them. He’d seen dead people before. What he had never seen was four people dead, floating, in mid air.

A large beast stood, silhouetted against the dawn. It rose far above the first rung of branches and it devoured the leaves from the top tiers of the trees with its long neck.

“An herbivore,” he said under his breath.

It was good news. He would be no match for an animal of that size, especially one that might hunt him. With his rife he might have been able to down it, but that belonged to the swamp now. It was only him and his sidearm, a repeater with a fuzzy sense of accuracy.

He stopped still in his tracks and waited. The creature ate for another few minutes and then moved on to the next grove where it found a large orange fruit.

When it was safe he moved forward, toward the mountains. From where he stood, they stretched upwards like a jagged row of teeth. A scar marked the side of the range, in a way that let his imagination believe some ship had crashed against it.

But falling from the sky had been on his mind for the last two days.

He stopped at a small brook to fill his water packs. The nozzle at the end of each pack filtered the luke-warm liquid as quick as ever, but the heat of it did nothing to relieve him from the sun. He dared not stand around near the stream, though he wished he could take time to clean off. On the outer worlds, creatures more dangerous than the plant-eater thrived. They dwelt in the forests, unknown by and unafraid of humans.

His pace livened with his new supply of water, but his blood sugar soon fell, leaving him weak. His sugar tablets helped some, but the grumbling in his stomach was worse after the spike of insulin.

He pushed on, his eyes fixed on the mountains ahead. For as much as he scanned them, he could see no sign of the outpost. And then, as if they had built it between blinks, it was there. In the distance, it seemed motionless, devoid of life. But it was too far away to know for sure.