Page 11 of Them

When it died, there was applause. Everyone on-site, from the scientists to the generals, thought it was going to be our very own Manhattan Project. The hazmat unit worked all night to clean up, contain, and catalog the score. There was much to be excited about. Gliese 667Cc had water. And there was flora. Fauna. They had a field day collecting microbiological samples.

But there was nothing they were as excited about as that stalk. It was a snakish thing. A piece of chimera from the stars. That’s what they wheeled to Weisbrot’s lab. The rest of the teleported material went elsewhere. Shipped across the country on the same highways folks used to take to work every day.

But the beast from beyond? The beast stayed in the desert, while Weisbrot made it his mission to understand it. And Artemis fired again. And again. And again. At the same planet, at the same creatures, over and over and over.

Weisbrot’s gone now. Been gone. Everyone’s gone.

But perhaps I can enlighten you further about the denizens of Gliese 667Cc.

They hate the dark because they lived in tidal-lock sunshine. They love the water because they were born in a single terminator-line river that spanned their entire world, a planet four times as massive as our own. They walk on organic metal stilts because they waded unchallenged through their domain. They eat each other because there was nothing else big enough to satiate them, and they implant fetuses in each other because they don’t have wombs or cocks or cunts. They eat us because we told them to. They move in packs because they love. Their eyes glow so they can see in dark waters, and they spin when they walk because they’re a paranoid species. They scream because they feel and they feel because they’re real and they hate us more than anything for bringing them here.

Most of all, I think, they remember their home and are disappointed with ours.

The man fled a chorus of gravelly wails. More than just the child now. They were all sounding the alarms. They were coming. Right now.

He dodged and ducked through the trees, pistol in one hand, flashlight now in the other, its frail yellow beam bobbing with every stride. He sprinted for twenty seconds before he heard them following, their metal hides scraping their surroundings. Living, breathing missiles. Heat-seeking.

He wanted to look back to see how much ground the blue eyes were gaining, but his reptilian instincts terminated all curiosity and fear. Cortisol numbed everything but a blunt logic that grabbed the man by the collar and surged him forward. Throttled him.

Without breaking stride, the man holstered the pistol and swooped down with his other arm, setting the flashlight on the ground, pointed ahead. He hoped the beam would distract them for a moment and illuminate enough forest to find freedom.

Running alongside the dagger of light, his hands free, the man seized the bag of deer shit from his pocket. He tore the Ziploc open and began smearing it all over. Wrists. Neck. Face. Hair. The stench made him gag and stagger as the yellow flashlight behind him was overpowered by fierce cerulean. Hide now hide now hidenowhidenowhideno—

BROOUHM!

The man collided with the trunk of a pine and sprawled to the ground, arms pinwheeling. The baggie of deer shit, his fatal distraction, fell away. His vision dwindled and his head throbbed and the whole of his skin seemed to swell with tears as the man groped the ground and found the feces, and suddenly he could not remember where he was other than a place of grave danger as he tried to scramble to his feet and once again stumbled.

He crawled away from the encroaching thunder, the dreadful roar of fury, and the man could only be certain that they were coming.

They were coming.

He scuttled like a molting crab, hands plunging into dirt and rocks, splintering fingernails, as he dragged his limp legs forward.

WhooshwhooshWHOOSH! as the monsters rushed toward him, their metal hides whistling in the witching hour’s breeze. Closer.

And then another sound: running water. The man remembered the waterfall and worried that he’d scrambled the wrong way, but no. This water was nearby, yet barely audible over the ringing inside his skull. Quiet. Calm.

He crawled faster, repressing the urge to puke all over the forest floor, now clutching the open Ziploc in his teeth so that all ten fingers could claw their way toward the water, and finally his filthy hands reached and found open air and he hurled his body over the edge.

The ground gave way to a meandering creek, bordered by an overhang of roots and dirt that had been hollowed out by decades of seasonal floods. But now the water ran low, and the man thrust himself inside the damp cove.

Hidden from sight, he finished slathering himself with deer feces, doing his best to conceal his scent, and prayed to an indifferent God that the creek was too shallow and narrow to draw his assailants’ interest. Vomit swelled from the sickness inside his skull and the shit upon his skin.

Where am I?

The forsaken flashlight, sixty yards back, was suddenly crushed—crkt!—its trailing light snuffed out. But the man remembered his other tool: the recorder, the digital recorder! Hands jabbed at jacket pockets until they found the plastic case. He seized the device and threw it over the edge of the embankment, pressing the play button as he released it, like pulling the pin on a grenade.

The recorder sailed, tossed with the last of the man’s dwindling strength. He curled back under the creek bank and waited for the screams.

Oh, my fucking head. Hurts.

One night, many moons ago, he’d fed the digital recorder with his best bloodcurdling cries. He’d once believed that the clever trick would someday give him a chance to run, but now it only allowed him to hide in a broken ball. A mouse frozen behind a splinter in the wall.

His screams erupted in the forest air, but after striking an unseen branch, the recorder tumbled to the ground, hardly twenty yards away by the sound of it. The throw hadn’t covered nearly the distance he’d hoped for! He pressed his back against the rough earth, trying to disappear into the roots of the overhanging tree.

The slashing rumble of approaching Scorpions grew louder—WHOOSHWHOOSHWHOOSH—until they came upon the recorder and stopped. The man listened closely from his hiding spot as, one by one, the beasts could be heard circling the electronic contraption. They went quiet for a moment, as if investigating their discovery.

The man wasn’t sure how many were out there. All he knew for certain was that his head was pounding. Contused. As he listened to them grunt and poke at the recorder with the tips of their stingers, the man began to cry, and he couldn’t tell if it was because he was afraid or because he could no longer control his brain. Loose loose I’m loose as a goose. Cry cry I cry your pardon. Pardon me. Me. Fox and the geese, is it? No. I’m all alone. World’s gone to the foxes.