#monster attack

The sky overhead is grey and sunless, about as bright as it ever gets. The field is dry and dead where it meets the purple fog. The science outpost creaks gently with the faint breeze.

George Bailley speaks, his raspy timbre muffled by a gas mask, “No leaks, Minnie. Your suit looks good, now check mine.”

The laborer turns around and his shorter compatriot pats him down. She inspects the seals around his neck, wrists, waist, and ankles, then tugs on the seams, twisting the fabric to check for holes. She nods. “You look good.”

George turns and shouts, “We’re set, Doctor Campbell!”

A tall, thin figure emerges from the outpost laden with two heavy duffel bags. He is wearing a sealed suit that matches George and Minerva, though he has yet to don his mask. His blonde locks are short and well kept, and his face is blemished only by the bags ‘neath his eyes. He strides over, dour-faced, and hands a bag each to the laborers. “This is your first time in the voidfields, yes?”

George nods and Minerva answers, “Yeah, but this is pretty routine for you by now, right? With the laborers getting rotated every couple days and all, you must get out there a lot.”

Campbell twists up his face and shrugs. George and Minerva share a look.

The doctor puts the mask over his face, wrapping the rubber carefully over his hair and behind his neck, clipping the metal ring of its base to a matching ring on the neck. He rolls his head as far as the getup will allow, then turns suddenly back toward the outpost, striding back to where he came from.

As he disappears inside, George whispers, “That wasn’t very reassuring, eh? Why d’ya think they even need to rotate the assistants out so often?”

Minnie grimaces behind her mask. “Probably partial exposures or something. Newbies like us don’t really know what we’re doing out there. It can’t be that stressful though, it’s not like there’s anything in the voidfields besides fog and dirt.”

Campbell reappears, this time closing the outpost door as he exits. He is carrying a pump-action shotgun.

“You just had to say something, eh?” George jabs quietly.

The doctor motions for the two of them to follow as he passes and they are surrounded by mist just a moment later. Visibility drops to a few feet and sound is strangely muffled as well. Campbell leads silently, walking at a comfortable pace. The ground is hard, rough, and devoid of plant life. The sky is hidden completely by the mist, and even though it is mid day, it is only as bright as the evening out here.

Minerva clears her throat after a while. “So, Thomas—”

“Doctor Campbell, please,” their guide interrupts dryly.

Minnie sighs. “Doctor Campbell. What’s it we’re looking for out here exactly? You seem to know where you’re going.”

He glances to his wrist, where a compass is mounted. “Indeed. All headings are made relative to Redhaven, which, as the strongest source of magnetic interference, is where all compasses have pointed since The Transit. We’re looking for the regular round of samples, soil and air, but the previous team found a surface vein of void crystal, and I intend to collect some larger pieces for study.”

George’s eyes glaze over and he ganders around. The environment is monotonous, uniform and without interruption, until something dark flies silently overhead. He startles and whispers, “Uh, Doc? Is there anything living out here? The onboarding guys said that there wouldn’t be anything else out here.”

Campbell doesn’t turn around. “I find it extraordinarily unlikely that this place is entirely devoid of native life. Right after The Transit, for example, troubled citizens reported encountering strange organisms, and The Redhaven Estate confirmed the acquisition of some such samples. Just as well, this dimension is likely just as old as our home dimension, so to think that no life would have evolved here, separate from us, is nothing less than hubristic.” That final note is marked with disdain.

The doctor pauses, then stops in place. He turns around and stares at George. “Wait…why do you ask?”

Before George can answer, something plummets from the sky. It is barely visible through the fog, a dark thing of chitinous scales and leathery wings, silent as death. It strikes Doctor Campbell over the shoulder, the force of it sending them both to the ground as his weapon tumbles off into the fog.

Campbell wrestles with it, swearing and shouting and swinging his arms as it tries to take off with him between its talons. George jumps on top of it, grunting and dragging even as it threatens to carry him off as well. Minerva dives for the gun, tromping around in the mist with her back hunched, looking for a glint of metal until…”There!”

She picks up the shotgun and turns with it. “Get off, George! I don’t wanna put a hole in ya!”

The man complies, or is made to comply, as the beast flexes a wing and discards him.

Minerva pulls the trigger and a spray of black filth and chipped chitin tears into the air aloft birdshot. The monster release Campbell and shrieks, flapping and flailing into the atmosphere even as Minerva chases it with another shot.

Doctor Campbell gasps and fumbles to his feet, holding the shoulder of his rubber suit in a folded mass. George rises as well and rushes to the doctor’s side. “Thomas, my god! Are you alright?”

The researcher groans and, through gritted teeth, mutters, “Doctor Campbell…and no, I’m actually doing quite poorly.”

Minerva backs up to the group, shotgun still held aloft, head swiveling. “Your suit’s ripped up, doc. We gotta get out of here before too much of the gas gets in.”

“Agreed,” Campbell manages. “There should be tape in one of the bags. I want to patch myself for now at the very least.”

George rifles through his duffel, shakes his head, and then rifles through Minerva’s. “Got it!” He continues to talk as he works. “There, just keep it pinched ahead of where I’m working. Doctor, there’s blood! Are you gonna make it.”

Behind his mask, Campbell’s wincing contorts into a frustrated smile. “I don’t exactly have many options now, do I?”

George doesn’t grant that a response. “There, all done. Now, which way’s back?”

Campbell raises the compass on his wrist, but does not speak. He keeps his arm raised, but his other hand fidgets at his side. Finally, he turns the compass outwards.

The face of it is broken and the needle is fully detached.

The doctor cocks his head to the side and says, “Looks like we’ll have to guess.”

Minerva shakes her head. “Doc, don’t we have flares or something? I though you had special shells for the shotgun.”

Campbell laughs. “We were the only ones at the outpost today, and we’re now too far out for flares to be visible from the city. You can shoot them off all you like, Minerva, but I think we’re far and away more likely to attract more of the wildlife than we are to attract help.”

He doesn’t allow the others a moment of respite, even as their panic begins to germinate. He starts off in a random direction at once.

George and Minerva move to keep themselves up tight behind Thomas, sweeping the fog around them with their eyes, occasionally exchanging glances, but never words.

The air of abandon that saturates the voidfields has been replaced, has contorted. Every errant shadow is the tip of a beastly spine, every incline and hill, the back of some enormous creature. The sky overhead, muted by the soupy air, seems to teem and flow with hungering, predatory shades.

There is a change far away. Something glows, pulses with strange light. Doctor Campbell tenses and the aura about him shifts, no longer desperate, but something else.

Minerva and George tiptoe on the silence, their feet falling just in their guide’s shadow so as to avoid breaking the razor-thin sense of security he provides.

Campbell’s pace quickens and the fog grows thin and gives way.

There is a place in the middle of the voidfields where the fog cannot seem to penetrate, a hemisphere of fresh, clear air. Plants grow here, sinewy, muscley things with red flesh and purple veins. Their petals fold neatly over one another and thorns sprout from their stems. Their roots dig into hard stone, cracking it like ice, weaving through it like sutures.

At the center of the clear is a large glowing crystal. It is purple and riven with clusters of an opaque, copper-colored mineral. It pulses with a light that is cool and comforting, even beckoning. Something sings deep beneath the ground.

Thomas strides up to the stone immediately. “George, gather samples. Stone, air, and plants. Let me handle the crystal and don’t wander out of the clear area. Minerva, guard him.”

The laborers set about their work. George bottles material: plant stems, thorns, petals, chips of stone, and clear air. Minerva watches the area all around and the sky above. Campbell takes a chunk from the crystal at the center and the light pulses once, this time shifting slowly, like syrup. The song in the deep whines.

“Minnie,” George suddenly whispers, standing at attention.

“What’s the matter?” she whispers back, turning to face him. George doesn’t speak though, just points.

There, on the edge of the mist, there is a dark shape, a mass of insectoid legs, like bent steel sticking out of flesh. They are curled upwards like those of a dead spider, utterly unmoving. If the creature has eyes, it is not looking into the clearing.

Minerva takes an uneasy step toward it, shotgun barrel first. There is a dark purple fluid pooled beneath the creature. She prods it with her weapon and, when it doesn’t move, she whispers, “I think it’s actually dead, George, and look at that.”

She takes a hand off of the gun and points. George squints into the fog, leaning uncomfortably over her shoulder. His mouth falls agape at the sight of a broken walking stick. “No, it couldn’t be…not all the way out here…”

Minerva shakes her head. “It is. It has to be. That’s Eustace’s cane.”

Doctor Campbell whistles in the distance. “You two, pack it up. We’ve got what we came for, and while you were futzing around, I’ve fixed the compass as well. Don’t touch that body either. We aren’t taking samples of wildlife until we have a proper protocol. That thing may still be waiting in ambush, or it may explode with acid blood if disturbed.”

Minerva and George share a look, then hurry back over to the doctor. He cocks his head to the side. “You didn’t find anything else of note, did you?”

Minerva shakes her head, and George answers, “Nope, just more fog beneath a sunless sky.”

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