It wasn't even dark yet. The man could see the monsters pushing through the rough gurweed grass a hundred meters away. They were in a hurry.
The man looked briefly at the grass knife in his hand—he had been harvesting when he heard the violent commotion coming his way—and then at the other half dozen men with him.
"Why're they this far east?" one of them asked. "And why are they out in the daylight?" No one answered him.
One of the men—Sherm; taller and leaner, but also weaker of temperament, than the others—turned and dashed up the path toward the clearing. He could just see over the tops of the hollyberry trees (bushes, really): the yellow-and-black striped harvester hovercraft sat in the clearing with its standby lights blinking.
One of the monsters screamed: a high piercing sound like a child's plea amplified.
That broke the stillness among the other men. They bolted.
They weren't fast enough.
The monsters came tramping out of the gurweed, arms pumping, hands empty but tipped with tough, pointed nails, doggedly pursuing the men. They didn't bother with the trail; they just trampled down the gurweed as they came.
Sherm was frantically mashing the buttons next to the harvester bay door. Always a little slow with numbers, he couldn't for the life of him remember the door code. He'd written it down in his notebook somewhere and he started pushing his hands into his pockets in a fruitless attempt to find it. Why he even wrote with a pen and paper these days suddenly infuriated him. Not so throwback hip now are we, Sherm! Why didn't he just keep it on his microtab or tab like everybody else!
As the other men broke from the trail and ran across the clearing, they were all yelling different numbers to him; he couldn't make anything out. When the first man reached Sherm he slammed into him, then brutally pushed him aside. His fingers shaking, the man tried tapping in the nine-digit code.
"For fuck's sake!" he cried as the keypad responded to his code with an angry buzz. He waited for the solid red light to blink amber. But it was too late.
Behind him, much too close, he heard one of the monsters scream again.
The leading beast stood easily four meters tall, like the others strung out in a ragged line behind it. Merle-grey fur covered its body. It looked like a massive, tailless bearcat, but stood upright and had a peculiar head. It resembled an ape, but the mouth wrapped halfway around from ear to ear, so that when it screamed it looked like the lid of a trash bin lifting up. This configuration explained why half of its yellowed eyes were on the side of its head, just below its ears. The other half were on top.
It screamed again, the rows of needle-like teeth shiny with its spit. The men backed up to the outside shell of the harvester, its metal no protection whilst they stood between it and the monsters.
"Fuck's sake," the man at the keypad cried again. Then the keypad made a pleasant, small beep and the harvester door hissed open. "Hah!" the man said. His whole body trembled. He stumbled inside.
As soon as the men began to move, the monsters leapt forward, closing the last fifty meters in seconds. Sherm was still standing dumbly by the door when the first monster ripped open his chest with its claws. It followed up with a bite that took Sherm's arm off at the shoulder, blood spraying backward and arcing across the chipped yellow high visibility paint.
Sherm made no sound as he dropped to the dirt, his mouth briefly open in shock, eyes wide. Then his mouth closed, his breath stopped, and the spark left his eyes.
Three of the beasts crammed their way inside the harvester, swiping out with their claws at whatever looked like a human. They tore and shattered envirosuits hanging against the far bulkhead. They caught two of the men out in the open bay, driving their claws into the men's backs before smashing their heads against the metal floors with their feet, reducing the skulls and the meat inside to a grisly grey-white-red paste.
One of the men—Mel—made it to the cockpit of the harvester and smashed the emergency button with his fist. He wasn't sure what to expect. In fact, in the moment his mind was drawing a complete blank on the basic training he and the others had gotten eight years ago before setting out for this remote plot of land in a distant corner of the galaxy. They put off annual refresher training in favour of time off.
A calm female voice said, "Emergency procedure initiated," and began counting the seconds down from 50.
"Too fucking long!" Mel said.
A lot could happen in half a minute.
Two of the monsters had come around the front of the harvester on the outside. They stared at the man inside. One of them screamed and Mel could hear it plainly through the thick glass. The cockpit was made to withstand substantial impacts, so he wasn't too worried. But still, he backed away.
"46...45...," the female voice said.
Mel caught movement from the corner of his eye and turned to see Jason Holson sprinting across the clearing, one of the beasts fast on his heels.
"C'mon," Mel said. He gnashed his teeth and clenched his fists. His stomach dropped as he watched the monster pounce on Jason's back and drive its claws into the man's back.
Mel heard a banging behind him. He turned and saw Mike Pritchard's face pressed up against the small porthole that looked into the bay of the harvester. His eyes were wide with terror.
"Mel! Let me—" Something snatched Mike away from the porthole before he could finish talking, his words replaced with a painful scream, a spray of red slashing across the glass. Then several yellow eyes pressed up against it and peered in at Mel. Mel backed against the control panel.
"28...27...," the female voice continued.
A massive impact behind Mel made him turn just as another huge furred fist smashed into the windscreen. So far, so good—the glass was holding. Mel breathed in rasping gulps of air. He stared at the furry creatures hell bent on getting at him. They stood on two legs, four arms and claw-tipped hands banging like crazy, rows of pointed teeth gnashing, and what looked like 20 eyes of differing sizes all focused on him. He could make out the two rows of eight teats poking through the soft fur along the thing's torso. A female. Mel realised they were all female. Where were the males?
"20...19...18..."
Mel thought about his wife and daughter. They hadn't wanted to come here at first. They had wanted to stay on Ceres, closer to Origin and closer to extended family. But Mel couldn't find work on Ceres—or anywhere else in the Origin System. His ladies had settled in here, though. Made some friends. Things were getting better. This was a fairly established colony. Fifth generation. That made Mel think about the monsters again. Where had they come from? Why was there no knowledge of them before this year?
He heard a different clamour from the other way and turned back to the door. The monster was slamming its body into the metal door repeatedly. The metal began to bow inward.
"9...8...7..."
Mel waited, holding his breath.
SLAM! The door bowed more.
"6...5...4..."
SLAM! It looked as though the door had given as much as it would.
"3...2...1. Initiating emergency separation."
Mel glanced over his shoulder at the two monsters uselessly banging on the cockpit glass. Then the cockpit module shot forward, exploding away from the harvester and smashing into the two beasts in front of it. Mel was thrown about the cabin like a rag-doll. Blood and fur slid down the outside glass as the cockpit skidded across the open ground for three hundred meters before coming to rest at the end of a deep furrow, like a farmer's row, plowed into the earth.
Mel lay in a heap on the metal floor, blood streaming out of one ear and several cuts on his head and hands. He was unconscious, but breathing.
A red light blinked over a metal plate inscribed with the words: RECOVERY BEACON.
Everything was quiet.
A red-and-white parachute suddenly ejected from the top of the cockpit with a loud POP! and lazily drifted down to cover the metal and glass pod like a blanket.
Then everything was still again.
ns 15.158.61.48da2
