Page 14 of Them

The specimen towered above its second victim, folded itself inward into a shape that was almost like a human being bent over, and coughed. Its triple jaws opened wide, and its bone-mouth hacked with a deep echo. Blue pus was spat out onto the blood-slicked floor.

Then it fell over and died.

It couldn’t live in our world, you see? It came from another place. Breathed another atmosphere. But never fear, that’s where Weisbrot came in. Yes, that was our plan all along, whether I want to admit it to myself or not. Whether I listened to him or not.

We were going to take whatever we reeled back… and make it our own.

The man awoke to a voice he nearly couldn’t place. A woman’s, older and jovial. Low valleys and high peaks, windpipes fit for hymns and gospel. A powerful volume that commanded attention. It was… his mother’s. Her face appeared in his mind’s eye for the first time in years, framed by her flourishing curls. Her eyes glistened with golden-brown love. Warm, mahogany cheeks rippled with dimples.

C’mon, Timmy! her voice echoed in his head. She was… yelling. Smiling, but yelling. The pulsating pain of sunrise beat against his eyelids, and he wasn’t sure if he was dreaming. For a moment, he thought he was thirteen again, lying sprawled on the artificial grass of a youth soccer pitch. Get up and run, baby! As always, there she was. Right there cheering him on. She never missed a game. Run like the wind, Tim!

But the voice of his mother, no matter how urgent her words, only settled the man’s weary soul. Her memory fell over him like a warm blanket. He stirred like a child on Sunday morning, slowly and without alarm.

Wheels, baby, wheels!

He stood, stumbled back to his knees, and blinked a few times, disoriented. Then sudden fear swooped upon him and his chest filled with bloody adrenaline and his gut screamed with terror as he looked around at the coming daylight. His body was still, but his mind vibrated with the chaotic flow of panic.

A deep breath. Focus, man, he thought, in his own gruff voice again. Don’t get distracted.

He gripped the butt of the pistol and rammed it into his thigh.

Inhale, exhale.

Another jolt to his leg.

Inhale, exhale.

The man bent over and vomited.

They were there. At the waterfall. He could hear the roar of it. And two hours ago, they had been right here, where he now stood. They’d come after him. He’d seen one up close. Could’ve reached out and touched it.

The man looked to the horizon and saw that the sun was only just making its entrance. Day was nearly upon him, but he had not yet lost; there was still time. Not much, but yes, a little time before they woke and wandered.

He waded through the shallow creek, away from the falls, with sloppy stealth, then began jogging in a lopsided gait.

What had happened? He’d struck a tree. Too much time spent looking over his shoulder. Too much fear of what followed him. Flashlight in pieces. The digital recorder broken and gnawed. Deer shit smeared all over, falling off in dry clumps, a nauseating stench caked upon him. But he still had the gun. His backpack and jacket. Yes, he was all right. But…

He had a concussion. He knew that. He’d had two in his beforelife. Never this bad, though. He needed to rest, needed to find a safe place to do so. How thick was the forest? How long until he came out into a clearing and found another house?

As he clambered amid the undergrowth and beneath the tall oaks, the sun began to dawn. The solar light crept above the horizon, scattered through the leaves, and that was when he heard them wake: “Krrrokkkaaa! Krrrokkkaaa!”

Their sunrise cries reverberated off the bark, and the man began to move faster. The stirring moans, like eldritch chickens ushering in the new day, were calm. Like most of the others he’d heard before. Ordinary in an extraordinary world.

What were they saying? What were they feeling? He’d woken up a baby last night, right? Yes, he remembered. A little one, young and light and new. Small enough to fit inside a dead human’s torso.

A Scorpion baby. Their baby. What were they saying then in their metal musings? With any luck, they wouldn’t feel threatened. Could such a force of abominable nature even comprehend vulnerability? Would they want to hunker down with the child and protect it? Or would they pursue the boogeyman of an infant alien nightmare?

“Krrrokkkaaa! Krrrokkkaaa!”

His body lurched into a steady pace. The details of the syllables were distorted by distance and difference, but the man was sure that the monsters were not particularly alarmed. They spoke without urgency, as he’d heard from other nests on other mornings. Words alone are not enough to fill the lack. Every creature must know how to utter them.

The child. It had been nesting inside someone. A dead person. Nestled inside them like a fawn in a meadow. They didn’t kill each other just for food, but to reproduce too. The news reports claimed that Scorpions implanted their young in each other’s corpses. Each abominable larva born into a landscape of viscera and rot, forced to consume in order to break free from their macabre womb. An immediate reminder of what awaited them if they weren’t strong enough to survive.

There had been whispers that the Scorpions could incubate inside people too. The man had never encountered evidence of it—he’d been hiding in the bunker during the worst of the massacre—but he now knew it to be true. Some real Ridley Scott bullshit, he thought.

But there was more than that. So much more. The Scorpion sleeping above the waterfall was a newborn. The corpse, the human corpse, was fresh. It had to be; the blood was still rinsing out in the churning current.

Yes, the man thought, it was a fresh death.