Fading Light: An Anthology of the Monstrous: Tim Marquitz (24 page)

The shadow was coming.

Nearly five billion years old, Venus was now gone. One of Earth’s
closest neighbors, the rising and sitting gem of millions of
twilights, had been reduced to rock and dust in one single blow; a
cosmic Kung Fu punch to the face, exiting the back of the head. Its
remnants had become a spreading cloud, widening out along its
former orbit and north and south of the sun’s equator. Over the
weeks it lengthened, at first leaving us with a day of the sun’s
shadow, then two, then three. Until, like a snake eating its tail, it
connected, creating perpetual twilight. The nights became dark as
pitch, with only the stars, and the barely visible moon. I wondered
if it, too, had left, abandoning us with only its ghost pale face to
look down upon us, the silent witness to Earth’s demise.

Just then the ground shuddered again, and Selena moaned from the
couch. I touched her leg and she pulled it away to disappear beneath
the blanket. Even awake, she can’t stand my touch, pulling away
or sinking into herself, without a word.

It’s night now, and in the skylight above; meteors flash and
scorch the sky by the dozens, streaking in every direction. For the
last couple of weeks, bits of Venus have fallen into our atmosphere.
Only a few have hit, landing in the oceans or in isolated places,
most burning out. The lightshow is the only beautiful thing to come
out of this.

Outside, beyond the reach of the floodlights, I catch glimpses of a
smoky shadow occasionally poking out from the leafless bare trees,
like it was testing the waters, pulling back at the touch of the
light. If it is the same one or more, I can’t say. And what
walks or crawls or slithers inside that blackness, I don’t
think I want to find out.

Yesterday, as I walked the outside perimeter of the house, a loud
rustling came from deep in the trees. Something was running towards
the house and the light, crashing through the new layer of
preternatural fallen leaves. I lifted my rifle, eyeing the barrel end
to the sound, following it as it moved to the edge of the yard. I
almost fired when a deer burst through the tree line, but my trigger
finger froze. I stared transfixed by what happened next.

The deer froze in mid leap, it front hooves hitting the dirt,
clacking as it tried to run. Its eyes were wide in terror. At first,
I thought it had caught its hind legs in a twisted root, and then I
saw the black smoke wrapped around the deer’s flank. Its legs
were off the ground, lifting to its belly as if its ass was being
sucked into a vacuum tube. The deer flailed at the ground and bayed
like a dying baby. Then I smelt the thing gripping it; a fetid
combination of shit and piss and acid; alien shit. My stomach
lurched.

The smoke widened and with a gulping motion, lengthened down the
deer’s body to close again at its chest. The deer’s hind
end and legs disappeared into the smoke.

I shot into the black mist, filled the chamber again, and fired once
more. No effect. No cry from whatever terror hid in that dreadful
light-swallowing smoke. Only a pause, as if in consideration, and the
smoke opened again, about to take another gulp of the struggling
deer. Then, for the briefest of moments, the smoke cleared at the
edge. It was quick, I know, hardly a second, but I remember it
diamond clear. I see it now, and in my nightmares (when I
do
sleep) coming out of the dark to swallow me.

A round gaping maw, rimmed by a snake-like, rusty blood lip, with
hooking talons turned inward beneath that lip, some digging into the
deer’s flesh, pulling while others followed. No eyes loomed
above that horrific mouth—if there were, they were hidden by
the swirling smoke. Short, cupped tentacles reached out and slapped
at the deer skin. The deer’s scream became high and gurgling,
eyes bulging in animal terror.

Something in that scream squeezed my brain. I adjusted my aim and
slapped the inside of the deer’s skull on a tree trunk. The
deer went limp. The smoke widened and slipped down the deer’s
neck, making its antlers snap like twigs and fall away, the smoke
swallowing its head. Flailing tentacles slipped from the smoke’s
tip, as if tasting for anything left, and retreated like jerked
ropes. The smoke was gone like it was never there.

I keep a shotgun loaded with Foster Solid Slugs near me at all times
now, a pistol on my hip, and shotguns at every door and in each room.

The weeks following the coming of the shadow, we thought we could
survive it, Selena and me, at least the living part. The predictions
varied in a timeline, but it was certain the ring around the sun
would dissipate; a majority of Venus’s mass blown into the
outer solar system or falling into the oven of the sun. The rest
would disintegrate, torn apart by gravity and melted by solar winds.
The sun would shine again on Earth, but when? Estimates ranged from
three months to a year. I was prepared, not for this, of course, but
I had built my house strong, and stored it fully with food, fuel,
medicine, and protection. The rest of the world could go hang, and it
certainly would. In the ensuing weeks I watched the riots—removed by pumped in video—and
the panic of the world. It only confirmed what I thought of people. I was only concerned with
one thing: Selena and I living.

Despite the constant darkness, I tried to keep my spirit up, hoping
it would transfer to Selena. But the death of her father lay heavy on
her, and I got the feeling her trust in me had faltered. She pulled
away, as inexorably as the sun’s darkening face. Hardly eating,
she slept much and cried alone. But on occasion, I would catch her
watching me as I obsessively perused the web, watching the world fall
apart. A small, wry smile would be on her face—I didn’t
ask why—and it gave me a small hope. When the warm light of
the sun returned, so would she, and all would be right again.

But Delano and the destruction of Venus was only the first act, the
spectacular setup for the terror to come. I had hacked into Skylab,
too, and had caught excited and terror-filled communications between
the American astronauts and Houston. Their space home had gone dark
outside, the stars and the dim Earth blinking out with no warning. A
swirling smoke had enveloped them, and a deep moaning came through
the hull. It left as quickly as it came. When they looked out a
window onto Earth, a dark splotch covered China like a bruise. Then
the pictures came. It looked more of a turning skin tumor, to me. It
was growing. Infrared revealed the country-spanning cloud as cold;
cold as space. Within it, something only slightly warmer squirmed
like a cup of bait worms, as big as mountains.

I found myself staring at the screen, standing with my hands gripping
my hair. I heard a choked cry and turned to find Selena sitting, her
knees pulled to her chest, eyes peering at the screen. After that,
she was gone mentally; wandering the house like a ghost, moaning and
weeping, unable to affect the world.

Before the Web went dark and all outside communication was lost, the
videos I watched (Selena never reentered the media room) were beyond
imagining. More clouds arrived from space. From them fell skyscraper
size tentacles, only seen from the cloud edge, laying and sweeping
across the ground, scrapping up cities and forests in a cataclysmic
cloud of dust, smoke, and fire. Nothing and no one escaped from
beneath the alien clouds and the behemoths that inhabited them. What
did emerge were smaller black smoked clouds, moving across the land
like meth induced slugs.
These were the progeny of the cloud
,
I thought, out for tidbits of life that had escaped the tentacles.

Of course, there was a glut of speculation about what had invaded us,
where they had come from. But I know. They are the maggots, the
worms of the cosmos that nourish themselves at the graveyard table.
They were Eaters of the Dead.

Outside, one of the spreading clouds grows nearer, and
their
children wander the woods just beyond my floodlights.

Today was my personal apocalypse.

I jerked awake having fallen asleep while writing. The yellow tablet
and pen fell from my lap unheard, covered by the thunderous sound of
distant destruction. I rubbed my eyes with my fists and turned to the
couch. Selena was gone, only her slender impression on the cushions
and the blanket crumpled on the floor remained. I looked outside and
blinked my eyes, pushing back the fading nightmare I’d awoken
to. The floodlights were dimming and brightening. I stood to go to
the generator room, having forgotten to fill the gas tank, when I saw
movement outside. It was Selena, naked and walking lethargically
across the open yard toward the tree line.

I shouted her name and ran towards the door. My foot smashed into the
step of the floor rise. I barely heard my toes break, pain exploding
across my foot. I screamed, wanting to curl up in a ball, but
scrambled for the gun in the dark until my hands found its cold
barrel. Struggling, I stood, limping to the open door and out into
the yard.

I turned my head, frantically looking for Selena, hoping the
creatures hadn’t already taken her. And there she was, about
thirty yards away. She stood too near the trees, turned to the now
bright floodlights, her arms outstretched, her eyes closed as if she
were soaking up an imaginary sun. Behind her, smoky shadows moved in
the dark closeness of the trees.

I wanted to run to her, to drag her back to the house, but my foot
was numb with pain, and I only managed a few clumsy steps. The
floodlights dimmed again to a yellow glow and the lighted perimeter
shrunk. I lifted my shotgun as an alien cloud extended from the
trees, reaching for Selena. I fired into it, limping forward as I
ejected shell after shell. The gun boomed over and over, until it was
empty.

The smoke was nearer Selena, rising into the air like an enormous cut
worm. Whatever was inside, the shotgun slugs had caused no damage.
Selena stood there, the world around her gone as she soaked up
imaginary sunlight. Hardly realizing, my pistol was before me gripped
in both hands. My pain forgotten, I moved closer, gun sighted on the
towering cloud.

I glanced at Selena. Tears poured down her face, her eyes open,
looking into mine; the first eye contact she had given me in weeks.

Above her head, the smoke tip turned downward, opening to reveal the
blood-lipped round mouth. Tentacles squirmed as its gaping
hook-filled mouth widened.

I dropped the gun sights to Selena’s chest. My eyes filled with
sadness, making her image distort; her skin seemed to glow. I took
the shot and darkness enveloped me.

I’m back in my window seat now, crunching another Lortab,
ignoring its bitterness. My foot is numb, wrapped just tight enough
to have allowed me to build the kern of rocks I see outside, glowing
white in the sun. Selena is beneath it.

A crack in the ring around the sun saved us from being devoured. It
wasn’t soon enough to save Selena from me, though.

The alien cloud is gone from my horizon, its minions retreated. The
end of the world was averted by some godless miracle, but not my
world. My personal apocalypse is still here.

I’m looking at the shotgun leaning against the window, and
wondering, with its barrel in my mouth, can my finger reach the
trigger?

Ten short years.

That’s how long we have. The ore that gives us light, keeps us
warm, and runs the food plants has finally come to an end. Three
hundred and fifty years after the dimming. A good run.

But not long enough. Not by my reckoning. I’m only twelve
points short of my breeding merit. There’s no way I’m
checking out of here before then.

So I volunteered. “Exploration duty”, that’s what
they call it. “Suicide”, Tom Draper said. “Escape”,
Linda whispered in my ear the night before I left.

As it turns out, all three were right in their own way.

It started well enough, despite my apprehension at heading out. The
flyer they gave me hadn’t been upside for thirty years; nobody
had. Too cold, too dark, no point. Until now. I had to wait for two
days while the bots fitted an ore probe and a drill and that just
gave me more time to fret. I was actually happy when I strapped in
and took the flyer into the tube.

The five minute ascent to Hell soon put paid to that.

I felt cold before we got halfway up. Of course I knew about Hell. No
light for three hundred years, thirty foot thick ice shelves and no
life bigger than a patch of lichen. I
knew
that. I just didn’t
realize what it meant in real terms.

At least the flyer had a heater. I pushed it up to
Full
and it
still wasn’t going to be enough. We punched through to the
surface a minute later and I immediately forgot about the cold.

They’d taught me about Hell. But they hadn’t mentioned
the sky. A carpet of stars hung from horizon to horizon—a
glittering jewel that had remained unseen for decades. I felt humbled
in the face of such immensity. More than that, the open space filled
me with such dread that I had to lower my eyes, unused as they are to
looking at anything more than ten feet away.

I switched on the ore probe and let it run. I had nothing to do for
hours now except hang there in the sky and try to ignore the stars
that seemed to be falling ever closer, threatening to wrap themselves
around me, engulf me and drag me off to the black beyond.

I say this to give you some idea of my thought processes in those
early hours. I know I am speaking of things you have been taught,
things you have seen on the holovids for most of your lives. But
nothing has prepared you for what is out there, what must be faced if
we are to survive the time that is left to us. It is vast, it is
empty, and it does not care.