Eric S. Brown (12 page)

The cylinder hovered above the house for a few more seconds before it shot diagonally upwards through the sky, leaving the rotters, the house, the dying beast in the woods, and the Earth behind.

EPILOGUE

Thomas awoke with a start. His instincts told him he was drowning. He was inside some sort of transparent tube filled with a clear liquid too greasy to be water. He tried to hold his breath, thrashing and smacking his hands against the transparent glass of the tube. Thomas could feel the liquid coating his eyes. It seeped into his mouth and nose as he finally had no choice but to try to breathe. As the liquid reached his lungs, it somehow provided oxygen to his cells. The process was horrifying but he wasn’t drowning. His rational brain waged a war with the more primitive part of his mind to convince his body that it was okay and there was no danger. He stopped struggling and floated in the liquid.

The room around the tube that held him was like the interior of a cave, only the walls weren’t made of rock. They had a shimmering, organic appearance, as if he were Jonah and this place was the belly of the whale that had swallowed him. Everything was illuminated by an eerie green light that seemed to come from everywhere at once. Thomas remembered the strange blue beam shining onto him and the tingling sensation that had swept over his entire body. He lost control of his bladder, urinating into the liquid of the tube that held him. Streams of yellow bubbled by his eyes.

He was on a spaceship, the cylinder-like craft he had seen above his house.

A section of the wall separated like two cells dividing under a microscope and something entered the room. The wall merged together again behind it, a mass of knitting tissues. The thing had three legs, spider-like in appearance. Above them was a malformed--by human standards anyway--twisted torso that resembled a human turned sideways with arms protruding from what would have been the human’s front and back. Each of the arms ended in a nine fingered hand. The fingers were elongated. He counted four joints on each of them. The thing’s head, however, was remarkably like a human’s, the only differences being the lack of hair and the twin orbs of flowing darkness where its eyes should be. It screeched at him.

When his only response was a stunned look of terror, it stuck out its tongue, which split into three tentacles before withdrawing into its mouth once more. This time when it spoke, it did so in perfect English. “Your designation is Thomas Hyatt, is it not?”

Thomas nodded.

“
I would ask you where the man you knew as Elijah was but I don’t suppose it matters. The XZH virus is loose on your world so it is of no further use to us. Any information he managed to gain about your race is now useless as it will be extinct in a matter of days if it isn’t already.”

The alien’s side slid open. One of its hands reached into the new pocket and produced something that looked very much like a scalpel. “Still, I suppose for protocol’s sake we should at least take a look inside you and see what makes you tick.”

Thomas tried to scream but the viscous liquid choked his vocal chords silent.

END

Author Bio

Eric S Brown is the author of numerous books including the Bigfoot War series, War of the Worlds Plus Blood Guts and Zombies, How the West Went to Hell, Season of Rot, and World War of the Dead to name only a few. His short fiction has been published hundreds of times in the small press and beyond. He lives in North Carolina with his family where he continues to writes tales of blazing guns, hungry corpses, and the things that lurk in the woods.

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