Stephen Hunt - From the Deep of the Dark

Circular platforms were built into the side of a handful of the semi-submerged forest’s trees, gill-neck guards squatting languidly outside of the water with their rifles by their side. It didn’t seem right, them with their affinity for the life aquatic staying out of the water while prisoners from the race of man waded through the everglades with slop up to their waists. But then, the brackish green subtropical wetland smelled bad enough to Dick halfway up a gillwort tree, and he wasn’t even attempting to breathe the stuff.

‘Let yourself hang back in the harness,’ Morris called up. ‘You’ll take easier swings at the fruit. And cut down, not up, gillworts resist less that way.’

‘You can always send the steamman up here,’ Dick said.

‘You’ll all get a chance, that you will.’

‘It is your race that is believed to possess simian ancestry,’ said Boxiron, ‘not mine.’

The steamman got his turn soon enough. Wading through the thick water up to his waist, Morris located a second tree with ripe fruit nearby. Boxiron was dispatched to climb up its trunk while Sadly and Daunt manoeuvred the harvesting raft halfway between the two trees, a couple of convicts sent across to catch the fruit the steamman began slicing off. Even with the strength-sapping device welded onto Boxiron’s chest, the steamman made a faster job of harvesting gillworts than Dick, pneumatic servos beating his tired old muscles, cramping from sweat and heat. After half an hour more of swinging the machete, Dick’s labours were interrupted by the sound of a small gas-driven engine. He glanced over his shoulder, sweat rolling off the tip of his itchy nose and falling towards the swampy surface below. It was On’esse. The camp commandant lounged under a shaded stretch of canvas in the middle of a shallow draft boat, a gill-neck guard at the front of the boat leaning into a tripod-mounted gun while another sat at the back, directing the small motor’s rudder and steering its passage through the everglade forest.

‘Work, you surface-dwelling scum,’ the commandant called from his shade. ‘We are two tonnes behind quota for my next shipment. Fall behind, and I’ll take every tenth man from this gang of slackers and peel your backs with my whip.’

If there was any sign of irony on the part of the gill-neck commander, urging them to labour harder from the comfort of his personal launch, the old sod was hiding it well.

A minute after his boat passed, zigzagging its way through the trees, panicked shouts began to sound from the workers in the water behind Dick, yells growing more urgent as the convicts scattered, some wading though the waters towards the guards’ platform, others heading for the harvesting rafts and the trees. Down below, Morris was shinning up the gillwort tree’s trunk, throwing a harvesting strap around the tree as he climbed.

‘Bloody On’esse,’ snarled Morris as he stopped under Dick’s position, five foot up from the water. ‘He knows the noise of his boat’s engine sounds like their challenge call.’

Dick looked down at the skeletal prisoner. ‘Whose?’

‘ Theirs! ’ The convict pointed towards thin bone-like wands cutting though the water with the deadly intent of sharks’ fins. ‘Snorkel spiders. Get out the water, all of you!’ he yelled down at the prisoners below.

Sodding hell. Sadly and Daunt and the two sailors below were casting around, trying to locate the cause of the commotion and work out their response. Too slow. The harvesting party behind — other sailors captured from the convoy — screamed out as bony snorkels lifted out of the everglades to reveal nests of mandibles stabbing in front of evil blanched skulls. Seconds later the human prey collapsed into the water under the leaping weight of these living thrashing machines. Now the newcomers knew what to do! Yelling in terror, prisoners desperately waded for safety, heading for the guard platforms, trees and the harvesting rafts. Underneath Dick, one of the sailors was trying to climb their tree trunk, but soaked and panicked and lacking climbing strap and hooks, he was barely able to scale a couple of inches above the waterline.

‘My hand!’ shouted Morris, reaching down, but the gap between him and the other prisoner was too wide. A frenzied storm of clicking mandibles lashed out, impaling the man in the spine and pulling him back screaming. Vanishing under the water, he left an outrush of bubbles and a slowly growing slick of blood as the only trace of his presence.

The other sailor in their party had dragged himself aboard the harvesting raft and was trying to pull Daunt out of the water. Behind the ex-parson, Sadly was wading towards the raft, using his cane like a punt to speed his limping passage forward. A bone-white snorkel was arrowing in on the informant and Dick could see the inevitable outcome of their relative speeds. Sadly would be snapped up before he got to the protection of the raft. As it closed on the informant, the creature’s bony skull began to surface, thrashing mandibles extending for the man. Dick hefted the machete he had been using and hurled it with all his strength. It windmilled around, sailing down, impaling itself in the back of the snorkel spider. Not enough. The snorkel spider slowed slightly, the thrashing of its mandibles growing ever more frenzied, leaping towards Sadly as the informant reached a hand’s gap from the raft. Both the sailor and Daunt were straining back out to the surface to catch Sadly, but he turned and dived under the water. He wasn’t pulled, he went under on purpose! Landing where Sadly had just been standing, the monstrous thing disappeared, the water churning. Then its snorkel bone flashed up and down. More thrashing, and Sadly exploded out of the murky liquid, one hand on his cane as he pushed it into the dying, jolting creature in front of him. He was using his cane as a lance, manoeuvring it between the bony plates of his attacker and ramming it into the soft vulnerable flesh. Pulling out the cane as though Sadly was a duellist withdrawing a foil from a skewered opponent, he flopped around and caught the others’ hands, Daunt and the sailor hauling his soaked, bloody form into the raft.

‘Sharply done,’ whispered Dick in surprise. I guess there’s a survivor in everyone, if you just prod ’em hard enough.

‘Too much blood in the water,’ moaned Morris.

At least the pool of blood underneath them belonged to the snorkel spiders, not their fellow prisoners. An angry rattling that sounded like the motor on the commandant’s boat filled the everglades. The commandant’s launch had turned around and was coming back to survey the damage to his operation, dozens of snorkel spiders in the water roaring counter challenges at the clattering engine.

‘Who has permitted this to happen?’ yelled On’esse, standing up at last, roused from his torpor under the shadow of the shade. ‘Why are you cowards not harvesting?’

From one of the guard platforms, a gill-neck called out in the commandant’s native tongue, indicating the snorkel bones hunting across the now empty waters.

On’esse dismissed the excuses with a stream of angry curses and pointed at Daunt, the sailor and Sadly on the raft. ‘You are standing on top of my harvest, you lazy fools! Spoiling today’s crop. Why are you not collecting fruit?’

‘There are bleeding monsters in the water!’ called the sailor.

On’esse strode to the front of his craft. ‘Am I blind? Am I unaware of this? Why do you think it is you pulling gillworts from this swamp and not I?’ He pushed the soldier on the tripod gun to one side, swivelled the weapon towards the convict labourer and triggered the gun. There was a shock of recoil through the commandant’s launch, the Jackelian sailor struck in his chest and thrown back off the harvesting raft. Three snorkel spiders thrashed against each other as they competed to claim the corpse. ‘Only those on the highest harvesting strap may stay in the trees. Everyone else, in the water, NOW! There are only seven beasts that I can see and half of those have been fed. We may lose a few of you untrained surface dwelling scum, and then everyone will work a double shift to make up for this debacle.’ He rocked the gun towards Daunt and Sadly. ‘You two first, climb off my precious fruit and down into the swamp with you.’