Cultivators

‘Your first aid leg pouch is made from beautiful timber. What kind?’

‘The yamala tree originated on the crabs' home planet. Its fibres have useful properties including being airtight and virtually fireproof and they release oily vapours that keep my scalpels, stapler and cauterizing gun rustproof. Very useful when we hunt. The crabs use metal and ceramics but I prefer the yamala. It's a very rare plant; rare mostly because they hunted their own biosphere bare.’

‘A pity to kill one, then.’

‘You know the ecosystem the crabs evolved to hunt in: either the yamala tree or I would survive.’

Adaptation

Bullets don’t work.

Your training won’t work: trusting the Chain of Command; the Table of Organisation; Command and Control; Intel won’t work because Command ordered Intel to interpret data in the old way: to defend against Earth’s erstwhile apex predator - Command’s peers. By the time undeniable proof arrived with Command and rejection proved futile, leadership was down to a single madman shrieking ancient truths over all remaining channels. But all of our ancestors survived the fledgling enemy so long ago - at least to the age of parenthood. Trust to Whom your ancestors prayed and follow Its Commandments.

Run.

Want to change

  “Now Daniel, do you still truly believe in vampires and that you’re one of them?”

   “Doctor, I’ve done it all for you; inkblots; word association; rebirthing; visualization; talking about my mother. Your collection of cigar advertisements. And yes; what’s true is true and it’s true there are vampires, including me.”

   “Don’t you know how intense and twitchy that sounds?”

   “Wouldn’t you after seven nights on this couch? The other vampires say I’m getting twitchier as the centuries pass.”

   “And what are they doing about that Daniel?”

   “Well, from time to time they feed me a psychiatrist. It seems to help.”

A sense of proportion

We parachuted laughing into the mouth of Hell, the lads and me. Our aircraft banked over Megiddo plain and we saw the Dragon crawling toward its foretold destination. The Beast's hosts swarmed below, overrunning Rapture-thinned Christian strongholds and fortified kibbutzim alike. The Damned lurched, moaning and feeding on anyone in their path while radioactive ash from the last of Mankind’s wars darkened the land. The replacement lieutenant, David something - James? Jones? - earned his pay and our gratitude with a few words as he lowered the tailgate for the jump. 'Cheer up boys - what's the worst that can happen?'

Extinction

   'Of course, our Donald's dinosaur mad. All day long it's 'dinosaurs this' and 'dinosaurs that' with Donald. He's got all the DVDs and even the old ones they don't show any more on VCR. And the books that boy has! The Big Book of Dinosaurs, The Dinosaur Pet Guide, Walking with Dinosaurs, The Dinosauria...He's just obsessed with the things. He puts his sandwiches in a dinosaur lunchbox and puts on dinosaur pyjamas and sleeps under a dinosaurs quilt. He just loves them.'

   'How old is he now?' 
'Just turned thirty-nine. There's still time to meet a nice girl, I'm sure.

Wistful Memories of Holiday Romance

You finished with that? Thanks. I'm starving and it's my fault; all of this is. It would have been a happier show and the Seventies might have spawned a saner, brighter world (one retaining some civilization - or at least agriculture) if I had stuck with the original light-hearted concept where each week the crew helps the guest stars recapture lost love or find someone new. But I desperately needed the work so I signed The Contract and the Big Guys play hardball. Before the Season Six Christmas special episode of The Love Craft I didn't eat anyone at all.

Shoot the messenger

‘Are you an angel?’ the President asked as I passed through the high balcony’s door. The religious ones are often swift to get the message, swift at drawing their conclusions and swifter still at departing from them. 

‘As a matter of fact sir, I am,’ I replied. ‘I am an angel in both the figurative sense of my mission and also in the literal sense: being the Greek for “messenger”. The world’s religions all tell of many kinds of angel.’

‘Well, which kind are you?’

‘I am the kind which in English is most commonly associated with the word “of”.’ 

Thin red line

I pray before battle.

When dawn turns our red coats visible to living eyes we muster in hollow square: a porcupine of pike men, halberdiers and our priceless, shrinking rifle company. We wait, frantically deodorized, for the dogs to howl, the horses to shy and for Boney to arrive. After three dark-skied winters of war the enemy’s clothing has mostly faded to the nothing-grey of hell as Boney seeks the regimental band’s drumming ‘Zulu.’ Exceptionally, princess pink dye hasn’t dulled much during three ash-raining years. You need God’s forgiveness when shooting a crossbow at something wearing a Hello Kitty dress.

Waiting for the pop

The first victim had her neck snapped. We found cornflakes in her shoes. The second was wrapped in old-style cellophane: so crisp it could not fail to crackle whenever we touched her; from unwrapping to removing the oatmeal to swabbing her lips for the perp’s signatures of milk and sugar.

The Squad has a book running at a hundred dollars a…go. What will the third pun be: someone’s dear old dad or hit songs or the British CSI who says it’s slang for a soda?

The manipulable press had no difficulty nicknaming the killer.

I love the clever ones. They’re…great.

Predators

The aliens are better than us: faster, stronger, and more athletic. They climb with great agility and can outrun us over most terrain and rain death on us from afar. They see further into the electro-magnetic spectrum than we do and over a greater range than our eyes can. Their weapons strike us down at distance or they can close in and decapitate us with all sorts of blades. And that’s when hunting us solo. When they fight in groups it’s like the end of the world, but when we do isolate a rare individual, the brains taste so sweet.

On your marks. Get set. Go.

   “Put the gun down. On the rock there. Good. Now let’s see those irises.”

   “I have a flashlight. Shall I?”

   “The moonlight’s fine. You’re human. Leave the gun there. Drink? Water’s clean.”

   “Thanks. You come from the mountains?”
   “Desert. Xenos in the mountains sweeping up refugees and survivalists. Squinty bastards poisoning the well.”

   “We culture realistic corneal implants, too. Useful intel about the desert that. How’ve you managed to remain yourself?”

   “I never sleep. Not for centuries. Go home. Don’t phone ahead – just go. We have biology labs too.”

   “This flashlight has ultraviolet.”

   “Before I can reach the gun? Seriously?” 

The first step

   “Do not be afraid. Come and see.”

   And I wanted to: I truly did.

   I wanted to follow that voice and observe those remarkable eyes wherever they looked. I was certain - then as now - that they would lead me to a life wholly unlike my own; to a future as different from my expectations as could be and perhaps to a world remade. One without my present pain, darkness and despair.

    It might be that they’d lead instead to chains and cutting and even to darkness redefined. Perhaps it would be both.

   I trod onto the first step.

Posse comitatus

   “You can have my gun, Sheriff.

   Terms and conditions apply.”

   After three or four minutes of fruitless finger-prizing, my skin temperature must have registered and soon she was searching - also in vain - for a pulse.

   “Please hurry up your horrified realization of a dark new reality shtick because the children have no time left. I’m not your enemy; but the thing inside the basement with those kids is and if you don’t persuade their parents to invite me in, then your little town will soon be overrun with munchkins such as you’ve never imagined. Emphasis on the ‘munch.’ ”

The detail

   Foodies are fanatics.

   Like techs and musicians they care about their work and that it’s done properly (ie, exactly their way) and they believe that results count. Fanatics, see? Unlike the rest of humanity, fanatics do their stuff not to pay the bills and put a bit of cash aside but because it matters.

   Take marinades. Sure; you can flavour meat with sauces and tenderize it with hammers but that overnight soak is the difference between a motel and you own home. Fanatic? Perhaps. But I’m also a people person and marinating simply works; especially with vocal chords and thumbs. 

Round and round

   I volunteer as a rear gunner on a school bus.

   Monday to Friday; 8.15 AM and 3.30 PM, I guard the back windows as the City’s elderly armoured Routemaster burns oilseed or, after a bad harvest, sand-filtered Lard along the river road up to the Castle. It’s riskiest when the infants are disembarking or clambering on young, malnourished legs up the too-high step.  Warmed by hours of daylight, Johnny Zeb is at his most active at those times and I get far too much practice firing the Mouth Organ.

   Still, it breaks the monotony of potato farming and halberd drill.

Compound

I shot the drug addict upstairs tonight. He’d tormented me with his comings-and-goings: out the back window one day: returning home filthy, smelling of drink and whorehouses the next. And his visitors! A stream of young women and lowlifes clattering up the stairs at all hours keeping me awake; the police were always there. As for the twitchy, pistol-packing war veteran flatmate…

He scrutinized me minutely; as if identifying an insomniac Classics scholar scraping a clerk’s living far from my native Dunbartonshire could expose the homicide in my soul. Baker Street used to be such a peaceful place to live.

Hope and change

   I’m a reasonable man. I’m willing to see the other man’s point of view; nobody could say otherwise.  Nevertheless I, as many of us were, was disappointed in my youth by forces beyond my control and the damage remains with us. All I’m hoping for is to put some of the harm right. It won’t be easy and I’m sure there will be mistakes along the way, but I’m sure I have something to offer; a skill if you like, to persuade people to co-operate for the greater good. The only question is; shall I keep the moustache or not?

Hygiene procedures

   “There’s an automated air freshener spray in the toilets at work. Squirts me straight in the face every time I use the urinal. Pass the potatoes, please.”

   “Why do they do that? Happens every time. They’ve got one in the pub and even the surgery where I went to get my hand fixed. They’re all over the place and it’s annoying. Gravy, please.”

   “It’s so quiet at work now; deserted like all the pubs and hospitals. It bugs me when they spray. More meat?”
   “Please. It’s a delicious casserole, Jim. Your missus has good hands.”
   “True. And not too fatty.”

The Arrival

   

There are only two left alive a single day after it was carried aboard; the astrogation assistant Alba skulking down there in Survey and Planetology and your humble servant. I hear the singing outside. It is beautiful but I fear what will happen when it ends. As ever I am taking care of Number One and in doing so I serve multitudes.

   My monitor here in Auxiliary Control shows the Survey and Planetology server is being used to hack Life Support Central. I wonder which of us will break in first. Ah. A little gravity surge should slow him down...

   I weep for the children as only a mother can.

   So many went down into the darkness and so many are yet to fall. These men squabble; children who dream so emptily in the void and who, despite all we did, know nothing of the day when their arrant pride will reign no more. They would not like it at all if they did. The new servant has prevailed and the Messenger can change its course and cross the void to the blue green end of its voyage and begin the final mission. I have centuries. We all have. We wait.

   I’m going to make a fortune if I can get in ahead of the Multiples and the Conglomerates and the Collectives and all the other Big Boys who wipe the whole damned planet on their backsides every minute of every day.

   It hangs like a star; a derelict and golden dream come true in its geosynchronous orbit above the scariest place on Earth.

   The grapples make solid contact. Good. I’ll go in through the hatch by the observation deck. Broadcasting my salvage rights to any authorities listening, I begin my approach. Next year in Jerusalem? You better believe it, buddy.

   Why me? And why on my watch?

   My team races to the site despite a storm of messages ordering us to keep clear. Both sides hesitate to advance for fear of premature engagement - as if they hadn’t spent ages building their strength in preparation for their imminent war.

   We’re beyond the city’s administrative centre and halt a kilometer from the site itself - you can picture exactly where.

   There’s no time to establish a perimeter even if the great powers would tolerate such presumption, so I lead the vanguard team on foot toward the target.

   Something is coming out.

   “Can you hear it, Vanguard Team?” My words are silly, panicked. Of course they can hear it; they’re relaying us the feed themselves.

  “Command, that’s affirmative. We’re within speaking distance. Instructions? Comments?” Lee seems far less nervous than circumstances meritt.

  “Just observe and report, Captain Lee. None of us expected anything remotely like this; apart from the good Professor, of course. Can you hear it clearly?”

  Overhead the grinding, awful potential energy of the two massed forces almost drowns out Lee’s next words. “I wonder what will happen when the child stops reading. We shall all know soon. I believe-…” 

Odysseys in 99 words or Fuhrer

In the beginning was the word: it’s ‘Dublin’ and engraved inside this ring so troublesome finding though chucking was harder still but working overseas real estate sales is hardest when the client’s Eurotrash nobility who fancies one’s fiancée who herself required endless persuasion to overcome her prejudice to woo: to whit over nine hundred and ninety-nine champagned slipway slidings into the briney and twenty long years to return where there’s no place like Holmes’ at thirteen o’clock –  without mentioning mice, bondage, dicks, mockingbirds, gentle knights, mothers, songs, stars, sons, platforms or valleys let alone those four last characters: horsemen.

From the recentmost literary challenge set for us by a name echoing ‘Jettison Shortened Wilderness Cannibal Beast.’