Brian Evenson - Dead Space - Martyr

He wrapped one arm around the ladder and hung there, waiting. Where was it?

And then suddenly he saw it, just a few feet below him now, its gray body blending in with the ladder. As he watched, one end of it left the ladder and started wavering like a charmed snake, looking for flesh to grab on to. And then suddenly it whipped up and wrapped around his foot.

It wrapped itself tight and hard, almost dislodging him, leaving him hanging by one arm, legs dangling in the air. He tried to swing the plasma cutter down to saw it off, but it was too low — he’d have to let go to get down to it, which would mean falling. It had started pulsing, tightening, and then began working itself up his ankle and onto his leg. Struggling for a foothold with the other leg, he finally managed to find it. He lifted himself on his toes as far as he could go, the ankle feeling like it might tear off, and swung his arm loose, grabbing hold again a few rungs down. That was enough; he could reach now. He sawed it in half with the plasma cutter. Ichor jetted from it, and then it fell.

Feeling dizzy, he clung on tight. He might have stayed like that forever except his head, pressed against the ladder’s siderail, heard a dull pounding. Something else was coming. Still dizzy, he looked down. Two others were already starting up the ladder, these more humanoid, the kind with scythes sprouting out of their shoulders. They held on to the ladder with the tiny hands sprouting from their bellies, their scythes waving madly back and forth as they climbed.

He climbed frantically up, back the way he had come, trying to get to the level ground of the platform, knowing all the time that they were gaining on him. He could almost feel their scythes slicing up and taking off his legs.

Then suddenly he was at the top, on his knees and panting. He slung the cutter’s strap over his back and let it hang, pulling the chain saw around. Precariously balanced, he tugged on the rip cord. The first time it didn’t catch, nor the second time. The first one was already there, the tips of its scythes visible over the edge of the platform, its head just coming into view. He tore the rip cord back hard, and this time it caught. He revved it and then leaned down and pushed it into the creature. The chain blade whipped the blood in all directions, spattering him from head to toe.

· · ·

He stepped off the ladder, the chain saw sputtering in his hands. Were there others? It was a big room, poorly lit.

He moved cautiously toward the passage to the labs that would lead him down to the airlock. There were spills of flesh here and there around the walls, near the vents. Living, it seemed. He prodded one with his boot, but it didn’t seem to respond, just sat there. He stamped on it, but it didn’t seem injured by that either.

He was almost to the door of the lab when it came, rushing at him with an almost unholy cry. In the darkness and shadows, he had a hard time seeing it at first; it was just a blur. He revved the chain saw, trying to keep the blade between him and it, and struck it full in the head.

It was the most terrible of the beasts he had seen so far. It backed quickly away, hissing. Its jaw was distended, its teeth having grown long and predatory, the flesh having torn all the way back to the hinge. Its arms had become forelegs, its body thickening in the front and narrowing in the back. It had a single, overly muscled leg in the back, the other leg stretched and emaciated and lashing like a tail, the thinned toes fanned out and flexing at the tail’s top.

It took a few steps sideways, then gathered itself and leaped. He tried to take its head off with the chain saw but was only partly through when the chain caught on something chitinous and the weapon was torn from his hands, almost dislocating his shoulder. The neck pulsed and spat fluids over his chest, the head leaning to one side and still snarling. The forelegs scratched and tore at him. He groped for the chain saw but couldn’t get to it, wasn’t certain that he’d be able to get it started again anyway. He kicked the creature back and it circled slowly, its head hanging like a loose sack, before springing again. Blinded, it struck just a little to the left of him, smashing into the wall. He was already scrambling up, trying to get the plasma cutter into his hands and turned on. It knocked him down and into the sickly smelling tissue that covered the deck and then reared back, looming over him. He rolled to one side but couldn’t avoid its claws tearing through his shirt and the shoulder beneath, pinning one arm down.

And then suddenly he had the cutter on. He struck once hard, tearing off the foreleg pinning him. It balanced awkwardly over him on its remaining two limbs. He chopped into the other foreleg and it crashed down.

He pushed it back and stumbled away, the shoulder really starting to ache now. He circled it slowly, waiting for a moment to dart in and cut the last leg when it did a curious thing: it got its remaining leg planted but rather than using it to leap at him as Altman expected, it flipped the whole body over, landing it on its legtail. It stayed there motionless, perfectly balanced, the last leg contracted back, like the leg of a dead arachnid. It must be dead, Altman thought.

He came cautiously forward, but it didn’t move. Carefully, he reached out and touched it with the edge of the cutter, and the leg sprang out hard, catching him in the chest and hurling him back against the wall.

He lay there for a moment, stunned. His chest felt like it’d been caved in. Slowly he sat up. The creature was still there, still balanced on its tail, its one remaining leg contracted again.

Fuck it, he thought. Gathering his weapons, he circled around it, giving it a wide berth, and made for the door.

· · ·

The laboratory beyond the door was a shambles, everything turned over and collapsed, pure carnage. Bodies and pieces of bodies were everywhere. He moved through it cautiously, careful not to touch anything, and out the next door.

The next room was almost completely intact, which, somehow, made him almost more nervous. He moved past the central table and to the observation booth. From there he connected to the vid system, still running on emergency power.

He flicked quickly through the cameras he had access to, saw more of the creatures in almost every place he looked. The airlock door between the upper and lower decks, he saw, was open and shooting sparks. In the space just before it, just one room beyond where Altman was now, between him and the airlock, moved a creeper, maybe even the same creeper that he had seen before — though if it was, it was bigger now, and growing. It moved slowly forward, consuming everything, converging everything.

Shit, thought Altman. No going that way.

He asked the system for alternative paths, but there weren’t any. The facility had been very deliberately constructed with one connecting point between its upper and lower halves. As long as the creeper was there, there was no way forward.

Unless…

Unless I go through the water, he realized. He flicked the vid display to the submarine bay. If he could get there, he could get in. It was what, twenty meters down? A long swim by any standard, and pressure would be strong as well. And once he was there, he’d have to enter the chamber and close the doors and wait for the water to be pumped out. If that wasn’t enough to kill him in and of itself, the cold of the water very well might.

Then the display he was looking at was interrupted, cut into by another feed. A face appeared, a grainy black and white feed. “Who’s there?” the man said. “Who’s in the system?”

The man was vaguely familiar. It was, he realized, the man who had taken him to see the Marker in its chamber for the first time. What was his name? Harm something. Yes, that was it, Henry Harmon.