Them #13
Weisbrot eventually hypothesized that they evolved from a geological-based life-form, tempered into organic metal over millions and millions of years spent on a harsh and lonely planet.
Only by devouring one another could they replenish the biological material needed to regrow their scales.
But these were only educated guesses. Shots in the dark that left us with no direction.
Without a greater understanding of their life cycle or home world or food chain, we were lost.
Yet, all of this would’ve been rendered moot if we could’ve answered one question. The big one:
Is it possible to mutate an extraterrestrial creature, one that needed an entirely unearthly air to survive, into something that could walk among us?
Not that the intention was ever strictly assimilation, but there was no other way to study them alive, as frightening of a prospect as that was.
We’d seen the sheer ferocity within them.
What they were capable of. Of course, our ultimate intention, as all good science fiction teaches us, was to weaponize them.
Why would we send tanks or infantry units decked in monsters’ garb into battle when we could send the monsters themselves?
Oh, I had many phone calls regarding that possibility.
Those Washington men must’ve been hunched over their desks with such hard-dicked passion that an unfortunate onlooker may have mistaken it for sexual gratification.
Their voices were different when we talked about them.
Different from their usual, willfully impenetrable tones.
That matter-of-fact tenor of voice that thinks you’re dogshit and lets you know it.
That cruel rumble that came out of the depths of their throats and etched their opinion deep into the stone of your bones… but suddenly, now they were different.
For the first time, they listened. No orders.
No debriefs. Just hungry static words that begged for more: “What was that thing? How big was it? It broke through the chamber glass? How? How can they do that? With its head? Its skull? Jesus, Buxton, what was it? Was it fast? It was plated? Plated how? With what? Like an armadillo? Like a tall, mean armadillo? With a what? A stinger? Like a tail? What the hell was it, Buxton? Could it survive small arms fire? Is it intelligent? Could it be trained? No? Controlled? Reined in? Be our boots on the ground? Where the hell did it come from? What was it? Are there more of them? Can you get more? Make more? What do you call them? What in God’s name was it? ”
What was it? That was the only one of their questions I couldn’t answer.
Alien, extraterrestrial, monster… no word seemed to satisfy the stiffs who spoke like they were on the receiving end of a sex line, their marbly pale, wrinkled hands working to get the most out of their mail-order Viagra. Men like that wanted a name. An answer.
The next day, we codified them as “Scorpions.”
Despite public speculation, it wasn’t because of their stingers. Rather, their home planet, Gliese 667Cc, was located within the constellation Scorpius. The Washington men liked that name. It was as intimidating as it was colloquial. Obtainable.
“Scorpion” was lacking, if you asked me.
The little scorpions, the real ones, have always been here.
And the invaders—though they’re more like an invasive species—don’t bear much resemblance to the small, low desert arachnids whose stingers are raised and coiled.
The monsters walk on bladed stilts, mutant water towers sprung to life.
Our scorpions scuttle on tiny quiet legs.
But I’ve seen them float. Like knives through the air. They fight like ghosts in suits of armor.
It wasn’t about the constellation, not really. Scorpions, the earthly ones, were familiar. It was a recognizable word that painted a meager, manageable thing. Little scares that popped up in Harrison Ford movies. The name was a trick. An illusion. Most names are.
Do they ever look up at the night sky? Have they gotten over their fear of the dark?
Could they see the stars from the surface of their old world?
Did they see constellations? Do their chittering vocal patterns ever speak of ancient gods embedded in the cosmos?
Of old stories witnessed by old people? People?
Are they people? What do people do when the stars change?
When the cosmic order is uprooted and replaced by a new perspective?
One separated from the old by uncountable light-years of emptiness?
What would the ancient Greeks have done if one night their star-stories had been erased, replaced by something newly unimaginable and utterly different?
I wonder if they ever crane their high necks and examine Constellation Scorpius. If they see not a scorpion there in the heavens, but themselves.
I think they do. I think that’s how they know how much wrong we have done them. They look to the skies and see a Scorpion of infinite size that twinkles with gaseous dust, like when the rising sun bounces off their living metal, and they are reminded, maybe even told, of their old world.
A shadow drifted over the sun as the man trudged through the corn, startling him. He half expected to look up and see some giant horned head eclipsing everything, but it was just a cloud.
Shake it off. Can’t fix it. Play along with your own mistakes.
Behind him, a cornstalk crunched.
The man whirled around—there! Between the dying rows of gold. Between the bright crop and reclaiming weeds. A flash of black. The rustling cloak of the Reaper.
And then it was gone. Nothing there but dead corn.
Suddenly, a moose-sized shape erupted from the overgrowth, bounding toward him.
The man scrambled away in a zigzag pattern, running as quickly and unpredictably as his body could manage.
The heavy shadow flew past him and sent itself skidding elsewhere into the cornfield, buying the man precious seconds.
He suddenly stopped on a dime, then crept a few feet off to the side and dropped down to the dirt. He needed to pause; his lungs were choked with barbed wire, and his head pounded like a screen door in a windstorm. Adrenaline going now. But that throb in my head. The concussion. Their fault.
The man tucked himself beneath a thick clump of corn leaves. He knew he wouldn’t be able to outrun it. His only chance was to make it to open land and find a house, but if the Scorpion came upon him before then, he’d be done for.
Best to stand here, then. Fight to flight.
The creature’s footsteps—there was only one of them, he was sure—slowed.
He could see the tips of the stalks stir in a nonexistent breeze.
It was smaller than most Scorpions, hopefully a novice hunter.
Older than the baby last night, but still not tall enough to breach the top of the overgrown cornfield.
Sympathy for the devil? It was coming closer.
Timid for a monster, but stones don’t roll no more.
Everything stands still now. Everyone gone.
Last stone rolling. Crush as many as I—
The Scorpion stepped into view.
The head was shaped like a black, crystalline football. The eyes were such pale blue that they were almost white, the color of a little boy’s bedroom night-light. A color that used to keep boogeymen at bay. It walked almost feebly. Innocently.
In the juvenile predator’s mandibles, it held the man’s hat. Tasting his scent.
The man crept closer, crouched step by crouched step. His lack of size was suddenly an advantage in this dense, abandoned agriculture. The heavy leaves shrouded him, and his human stench was still dilu—
The Scorpion suddenly craned its neck thin and high above the crop line, stretching to its full height. Its blue eyes scanned the field as it chewed on the hat. Masticating.
The man dropped onto his belly, nearly spotted. The bastard wasn’t as small as he’d first thought, its long scrawny neck poking above the crops. Its eyes flickered between the leaves. But he’d been right about its age. It was young. A child or maybe teen, whatever their abominable equivalent was.
The stalker hadn’t seen him. Not yet. But it wouldn’t be long. Already had his scent.
The prone man readied his pistol, the dirty metal dull and gray beneath the sun. There was no other choice. Wouldn’t be long at all. Others would come.
He found his aim, braced his heart for the explosion of gunpowder, and pulled the trigger.
The beast’s head froze in surprise as death blazed a trail through its middle left eye. The bullet penetrated the baseball-sized orb, shattered the thin bones of its cranial sinuses, and tore out the opposite ocular cavity. Blue geysers of blood erupted from both sides.
“RRRRAAAAAAAAA!” it screeched as it bit down on the hat.
“RRRRAAAAARRAAAAAAA!” as its mandibles sprayed spittle to the sky, a three-pronged satellite broadcasting pain.
The remaining four eyes searched frantically for their attacker as the Scorpion’s limbs flailed, wildly lashing out at the stalks and whatever threat was hiding among them.
Five more gunshots echoed throughout the field. A trio of bullets emerged from the storm of dust and crop before ricocheting off the jagged obsidian skull, falling fruitlessly to the soil… but two others found their mark. The remaining eyes exploded and began to gush blue blood.
From what little remained of the junior leviathan’s eyes—those deflated flaps of pale mucus—a viscous aqua liquid began to ooze. Blind now, the Scorpion attacked violently, with neither discretion nor direction. Its bladed legs mowed like scythes. Nowhere within its reach was safe.
“RRRRAAAAAAAAAAA!”
The man turned and ran.
“RRRRRAAaaaaaa!”
The corn seemed never-ending. Oh yes, they were coming now. The rest. He knew. They had to have heard the commotion.
“Rrrraaaaa…”