Chris Pourteau - Tails of the Apocalypse

BOOM.

Pain.

Now I’m lying on the ground. There’s blood everywhere. My blood. I can smell it. The medic-man has Emily’s boom-maker. He boomed me with it. Smoke rises from both ends.

“Demon!” Emily grabs my neck, holding up my head. She’s screaming and crying, but it all seems really far away. “Demon! Demon!”

I’m so sleepy. I kick a bit as the medic-man grabs Emily and picks her up, carrying her towards the metal-box. She screams and cries and fights, but she’s so little. The medic-man carries her up the ramp and onto the metal-box.

The woman looks at me. She, too, is crying. She’s upset even though I tried to bite her neck. “Fuck!” she yells at medic-man. “You didn’t have to fucking shoot him!”

Medic-man says nothing.

He too is crying.

Emily fights. She’s trying to get to me. I can see her through a tiny window, her face filling it up. She thumps her fists on the metal. I want to get to her, although I also want to nap; to go to sleep and let the pain go away. But I can’t get up. My rear legs don’t work.

I have to be with Emily.

The door to the metal-box seals. It hums loudly as though it might explode at any moment. Then the ship begins to rise. Soon they’re gone. All I can smell is the fresh grass and the blood. Then the wind changes. With it, comes the distant scent of bugs.

The humans will make sure Emily is safe. I hope. I don’t know if I did the right thing, but I know one thing.

I’m a good boy.

I know I am because Emily told me so.

When I was planning my novel series Symphony of War , I wanted to do something at once different and familiar. I wanted to borrow from every science fiction world I’d known and use what I liked the most: the result is the Universe at War. It’s like someone took Warhammer 40,000 , Starcraft , Pitch Black , and Ghost in the Shell and threw them all in a blender.

This part of it, though, is something different. When we see Polema in “Demon and Emily,” it’s through the eyes of a dog. Getting this right was a real challenge for me; this story is the first time I’ve used first-person present to write, something I swore I’d never do. But it suits the mind of a dog so much better than past-tense forms, which tend to imply a narrator. A dog has a more limited mindset than a person; the only things that Demon thinks about are happening in the moment.

One thing that stumped me in the writing of this, though, is just how old Emily is. How would Demon’s mind process this? She’s largely unchanged since he was a puppy; as far as Demon’s concerned, Emily and her family are unchanging. It’s a bit of a mystery, but if you pressed me, I’m inclined to say thirteen.

Astute readers might note that the Polema of my novel, Symphony of War: The Polema Campaign , is very different from the Polema shown here. That world is a barren desert. This one is rich and green.

War changes a place, even in as short as four years, the span of time between this story and my novel.

You can see more of the old Polema in The Immortals: Kronis Valley , more of the Myriad arachnid invaders in the novel-length Symphony of War , and I’m sure we haven’t seen the end of Emily, either. Watch for her in a future installment of The Immortals .

I’ve attached a picture of me and my cat, Fall. Fall is totally adora-Fall, and she was sitting on my lap for, like, ninety-nine percent of the writing of this story. So there’s that.

I hope you enjoyed reading “Demon and Emily” as much as I enjoyed writing it.

For more of my writing, see my website at http://www.lacunaverse.com/. To join my new-releases newsletter, go to http://eepurl.com/toBf9. You can email me at dave@lacunaverse.comand you can find my Facebook page at http://www.facebook.com/lacunaverse.

The world is rarely as it seems. You look to the stars and think you know all there is to know. You look to the depths of the sea and assume that by cataloging the variations of life, you are the master of your domain.

But what about the war that rages beyond your ken? What about the legends of old that occupy the collective unconscious of your people, the truths that dare to escape the dark recesses of your dream-self? You think you know yourself, but your dream-self knows you better. Your vanity could be your downfall on that day when the Final Stand is made—as it was once before.

I know this, because I have watched you for eons. That is what I do, and for years beyond counting.

Time immemorial.

And rarely have I seen one of your kind that stands above the rest, that accomplishes something worth remembering. Most of your race merely disappear into the dust of endless days, but on occasion, one among you will glean a useful insight into the universe.

One of your poets said it best.

And what was that other thing he said? Oh yes.

But then, when least you look for it, you see something that flies in the face of expectations, something that erases your preconceived notion that mortal creatures are innately inferior. Sometimes this nobility is shown in the rare spirit of one of your kind, and sometimes it’s in one of the Creator’s nobler beasts. As you will, perhaps, see in this story I am sharing with you.

Who am I, you ask? I have been called many things. Names. Labels. Myths. But I am most well known as Armaros, one of the Watchers.

And who are the Watchers? Each culture has its own way of describing us, and we have a history as interwoven as the most complex of tapestries. Most of your kind refuses to acknowledge our existence because of what that would mean for you. But if you open your mind to broaden your understanding, you will see that we have been here all along. One of your sacred texts even lays it bare.

“There were Nephilim on the earth in those days… and afterward.”

It would not surprise me if you have all but forgotten this. Your kind is cursed with the arrogance of willfully selective memory. Your species is special, as you believe, but not in the way you believe. You are the latecomers, a relatively new species. You think you are the only ones, Earthborn, and you think your history is the only history. I see your shortsightedness as a curse, but I suppose you might see it as a blessing. It is probably easier that way for you. Sometimes I too wish I could forget.

For all your shortcomings, I must say, you are beautiful. But you lack the ability to accept realities unsupported by your physical senses, and you think that if you cannot touch a thing, then the thing is not real. Perhaps it is due to your temporally linear nature. You feel a special connection with this floating rock. Grounded. And why would you not? You were fashioned from that very earth. How ironic, then, that the tale I wish to tell is of a legendary hero who built a boat to survive.

I witnessed this history—what you think of as myth—despite the Creator’s best efforts to wash us, the Unclean, away. We were here long before you. We are here now. We will be here long after you are gone.