Colleen Anderson

The acrid cloying blood, the wet pulling apart of skin and muscle sluicing about her feet made her gorge rise. Keela swallowed reflexively, trying to rid herself of bitter saliva as blood clotted the sand beneath her in the still night air.

She threw the pelt onto the sand, wiping sweat from her eyes, not to mention the tears forming hotter trails over her cheeks. Hateful work. Why couldn’t the gods have sent something deserving of being killed? Why something so beautiful, yet terrifyingly efficient as a force of nature? They all had to survive, though, even the great cats, but Keela did not know if she could continue much more fighting, fearing, being a monster. Yet, weren’t they all? Leaden exhaustion weighted her limbs and mind.

Keela tucked the serrated knife in its sheath and folded the skin into the pack, then strapped it to her back. It would serve as a sunbreak for Yasmeen as she healed…if she healed. Then Keela looked up at the boat of the gibbous moon, wishing it would carry her back to those first months when this had seemed just a small pastoral planet, teeming with nothing larger than the beaver-sized herbivores. Now, there were only twenty researchers left and three years to wait until the next supply ship. Their equipment had died first, prey to the vagaries of electromagnetic fluctuations and heavy metals. This howling wasteland of a parched planet was slowly eating them. The heat, the lack of water, the giant black and white spotted cats, canines curving down like a sabertooth’s, all of it, tried to expel the people for the invading bodies they were.

When Yasmeen had been attacked by this cat, Keela had shot an arrow that wounded it, then tracked it, to fight a deadly winner-takes-all. She checked the suture patch over her arm, making sure blood was not leaking through. The night painted the blood a sinister substance and it spotted her skin as if she were a great cat too. Loading meat into the second pack, Keela then took bearings, hoping they could come back for more, should it prove edible.

She began trudging back to the base camp, searching for the one remaining white dome. It was clear how much they stood apart from this apparently simple planet. Everything flowed, sinuous, moving from one state or space with apparent ease. Wind undulated the sand into rippling dunes. Short grasses moved in waves. What sparse trees there were curved branches back toward the earth, as if afraid to bear the full brunt of the harsh white sun. The cats and the herbivores all seemed to flow, as if embodying the properties of the rare sightings of water.

Keela listened to the odd pops and snaps that filled the night air. She turned slowly as she walked, trying to gauge the landscape for movement, her eyes straining against the pale light. Cocking her head, she sniffed, feeling the taint of heat. Morning would soon be ripping away the evening. Muttering, “I want to live, I want to live,” Keela tramped determinably until the low rumble of the cats permeated her chant.

Another slow pirouette revealed three slinking shapes. That was it then; she would become part of the ecosystem by joining the food chain. She would fight. No…no use. There was no hope with three. A frozen silhouette, against the night’s backdrop, she thought quickly, madly, not wanting to die.

Maybe, maybe there was one way to survive.

Carefully she eased the pack off that held the meat, then the other. Crouching slowly onto all fours, she pulled out the glossy black and white pelt, and threw it over her shoulders and head. Gritting her teeth against the disgusting dank feel, she hunkered under the sticking, stinking hide. She hoped they would ignore her, think her a dead cat. Scratches and cuts stung where the dead skin touched her. She clutched the knife, a pitiful defense against the curving scythes of the great cats’ claws.

The gruesome clamminess was still preferable to feeling fangs sink into her flesh. Tears leaked from her eyes as the throaty huffs sounded closer. Gagging beneath the pelt, she felt her suture patch give way and the weight of the skin settle firmer against her. Something stepped on her—the great head-sized pad of the cat—and crushed her into sand and darkness.

Weight pushed onto her, squeezed the air out and all she could smell was cat and dirt and blood. She stifled her nausea. Not moving, breathing slowly, shallowly, she let the spotted coat blanket her, completely conceal her in its gummy funeral gloom. She waited as one with it, believing she was nothing more. The great cats must believe that it was one of their own that had died.

Pain knifed through her, rippling in a spasm. They weren’t attacking but one of her cuts might be infected. Still, she remained stationary as the cats moved off and the pain took her breath away, sealing blackness beneath her eyelids.

✥

Heat filled her. A hot breath. She rose, sloughing off the beast and stared at the other three. Her whiskers twitched as she swung her great head about. This was how she survived, flowing with the planet’s ways. A growl escaped her throat as she cursed the heavens, and loped off to the caves.

………………………………………………

Colleen Anderson’s 200 plus pieces of fiction and poetry are in such venues as Chilling Tales, Evolve, Exile Book of New Canadian Noir and Cemetery Dance. She has been an Aurora nominee, and is in Imaginarium and Best of Horror Library. New pieces are coming in Nameless, Our World of Horror, OnSpec, Black Treacle, and Pantheon.

See You Later

M Luke McDonell

Arabella’s front door beeped in polite disapproval of her polymer-coated iris. Hurriedly, she typed in the long access code and held her palm to the scanner, but too late. Mrs. Constantino was out of her apartment and shuffling down the hall towards her, the frayed hems of her oversized sweat pants dragging on the clean white carpet.

“Something wrong, honey? Lock stuck? I’ve been having the same trouble with my windows. I called the management company but all they do is send a reset code that doesn’t fix anything.”

Arabella breathed through her mouth to avoid the smells of vodka and cat pee that blanketed the old woman. All the residents complained that they’d moved into this building to get away from the riffraff on the streets and now they had to deal with it in the halls. Mrs. Constantino was somehow able to afford the sky-high rent though, so there was nothing to be done about her.

The lock retracted but Arabella held the door shut. Mrs. Constantino was oblivious to polite hints and would stay for hours if she let her in.

“You okay, honey? You been crying?” Mrs. Constantino asked.

Arabella resisted the urge to rub her aching eyes. The technician warned her not to touch them for 24 hours. “No, I just got AR lenses.”

Mrs. Constantino’s wrinkled face lit up in a smile. “You’re going to love them. I can see better than a hawk now.”

Arabella forced herself to examine Mrs. Constantino’s bloodshot eyes and indeed, a thin silver line traced the iris. Where did this woman get her money? “I didn’t need them for medical reasons,” she admitted. “I have 20/10 vision now.”

Mrs. Constantino winked. “You don’t have to tell me these are more than fancy glasses.”

As she drew in a burbling breath to elaborate, Arabella pushed the door open and slipped inside. “I’m supposed to rest,” she called in weak apology as she slammed the door behind her.

In the bathroom, she stared at the silver ring of her iris with distaste. The irony was that Hugh hadn’t wanted the lenses either. He treated his body like a rare sports car, too precious to drive. When his company insisted that all senior management get the permanent implants – a bleeding-edge technology not yet legal in the EU – he actually considered quitting.

Arabella rarely put her foot down but in this case she did so with force. Her husband’s last promotion was contingent on a move to this decrepit city – one of the last outposts of cheap labor. She’d had to leave her friends, her favorite sushi restaurant, and the hairdresser she’d finally trained to give her a proper cut. Hugh would damn well get some plastic in his eye after all the sacrifices she’d made.

She’d grown to regret her insistence. Hugh had become increasingly distant in the months since he’d gotten the implants. He came home from work earlier, but shushed her when she tried to speak to him.

“I’m in a meeting,” he’d say, exasperated, waving his hand to indicate a conference table she couldn’t see. He moved through the apartment in strange patterns, avoiding things that weren’t there and clipping the edges of furniture that was.

He wouldn’t watch streams with her on the wall anymore, declaring the resolution inferior to what his eye screens displayed. In theory, they could view the same content simultaneously and Hugh made a show of synching his glasses with the wall, but when he sat next to her, head tilted to the ceiling, giggling during the tense parts of dramas, she knew he was seeing something else.

They’d had plenty of bumps on the road of marriage before, but at least they’d been looking out the same windshield. She would fix this.

Arabella ran icy cold water over her face until the pain in her eyes subsided. She had to hurry. Hugh would be home from work soon. He didn’t know she was getting lenses, so hadn’t bothered to lock the settings he’d spent months perfecting.

She approached the strange contraption in his office hesitantly. The black goggles, mounted on a thick silver pole, resembled a grotesque Venetian carnevale mask, wires instead of ribbons trailing from both edges. The technician had explained that the tiny screens needed to be recharged once a day and that was a good time to adjust settings as well. Contrast, brightness, automatic data overlays – Arabella had only half-listened to the detailed instructions. She’d use Hugh’s settings; that was the point of getting these, after all.

She leaned in. Tiny white words appeared in the darkness. Recharge? in the center, Yes and No, on the far left and right respectively, appeared beneath.

Arabella gazed steadily at Yes.

A green circle appeared. Watch the dot for the next 15 seconds. Please do not blink, the text directed.

So far, so good. After the elapsed time, another menu appeared. Update settings? And beneath, Home, Work, and New.

She selected Home and held still as information was transferred to the tiny processors.

Your update is complete.

Arabella straightened, blinking rapidly in the suddenly too-bright light. What was this? The view from the upper-floor window was no longer of polluted Lake Tanganyika but of a busy, beachfront promenade. Bikini-clad teen girls, pale, sweaty tourists, and overly-tanned men in linen suits paraded past a backdrop of white sand and turquoise sea.

It took her a moment to recognize this was Ocean Drive in Miami. She’d accompanied Hugh to a conference in South Beach last year. They’d both found the city incredibly gauche and the newly-passed ordinance allowing nude sunbathing was ridiculous and unsanitary.

Yet, here she was. The resolution was incredible. A teen girl, modestly clad in a thong bikini, retrieved a volleyball from the footpath and raced back to her game. Sunlight glinted off the rhinestones of a passing woman’s purse and cast rainbows on the ceiling of the room. Arabella reached to remove her glasses – her usual method of consuming virtual reality – before remembering she wasn’t wearing any.