Page 26 of Them

We lost them then. Deeper into the forest they went, terrain that would take us weeks to sweep. It was hard country, impossible for a significant fighting force to efficiently navigate. They were gone. Predators among the foxes and hawks and humans.

After that, the Canadian border became so well guarded that the Canucks stopped believing we were still doing training exercises and started asking if we were still the good old pals we’d always been. Roads in and out of northern Maine were heavily patrolled, and the woods grew cancerous with armed outposts. The two young Scorpions, already lethal, swift, and wise, had nowhere to run.

But they didn’t need to. They had a whole world of mountains and lakes and humans.

What did they think? Did they know the truth of their nature? Ungodly abominations of mortal ingenuity? Did they wake up and say “We need to live” because they were on the run in an alien landscape, like a Schwarzenegger movie flipped on its head? “We need to live” because what else is a soul to declare to this torrential, tormented world? They were alive and wanted to stay that way. Wouldn’t you?

We recovered the dead body so the other two couldn’t reproduce. Their life cycle began like asexual parasites; a Scorpion would kill another of its kind and lay a single egg inside. Sometimes twins. They weren’t mere clones either; generations of DNA are stored in their stingers, each child a combination of dozens, even hundreds, of ancestors.

But their lungs. Their fucking human lungs. The creatures we bred in captivity weren’t what we pulled back from the stars. We’d changed them. Given them a piece of our scent. They’d become ever so different.

The cannibals had become a little bit human, and they were hungry.

When the man awoke, he struggled to remember where he was. There was no light, save for the bright spear streaming in through a narrow window high on the opposite wall. That’ll need to be covered later, he thought begrudgingly.

He checked his watch, the hands reading noon, but his brain forgot the time as soon as he glanced away. It didn’t matter anyway. He couldn’t remember when he’d gone to sleep. With the state of his brain, it was impossible to say if he’d slumbered for mere hours or an entire day. Neither would surprise him. There were no more calendars to tell the truth.

He remained in the basement bed for a long time. His skull still ached. How long had he rested again? After his other two concussions?

The first one was in high school, long ago. He’d been kneed in the head after the whistle was blown, after slide tackling… He couldn’t remember what team they’d been playing. Was it the concussion that blocked the opposing school’s name? Or time and decay?

The recovery process had been a piece of cake. He couldn’t remember what chocolate cake tasted like. Chocolate was his favorite. Two weeks’ rest, the athletic trainer had told him. Two weeks of limited physical activity. And his head had only hurt for a day or two. That was it.

The second concussion happened in college… during his first or second year? The man knew that he should’ve graduated by now but wasn’t quite sure how old he was anymore. That calendar issue again.

That one had hurt bad. It was just a good, hard header in another offseason practice, but one too many. The straw that broke the camel’s back… only it felt more like a stone splitting his skull into a hundred jagged pieces. He’d lost time, blacked out, and came to stretched out on his back, surrounded by trainers and teammates. They said his eyes were gone for a moment, that he looked like a zombie.

And suddenly the man wished that he had someone other than the mirror to tell him how he looked. He reached his hand to his head and fingered the wild tumble of curls, still ever so slick with stale shit. Reminding himself that the hat was gone. That he needed a shower. Clean clothes.

His vision darkened as he pressed himself to his feet, eyes barely clearing as he shambled toward the basement’s bathroom and grabbed his pack. The man disrobed and lit a candle. Unzipped his bag, took out several plastic bottles of water, then stepped into the tub. Though he yearned for plumbing, for hot steam rolling over his pores, the containers of shampoo and body wash he found on the shower shelf were the next best thing. The lotions were only a little chunky, and though he’d smell like a human again, a danger in this age, it was worth it.

The man went through the cycle several times—applying product, pouring water on himself, scrubbing the grime from his skin, and then rinsing off again—before he stepped out of the tub and began scraping a towel all over, as if to polish himself.

In the mirror, his fingers traced down to his chin. Bristly whiskers prodded his fingers. He never was much at growing facial hair. A year since a proper grooming had left him with a billy goat patchwork. He needed to shave.

Back to bed then. But before he could sleep, he stripped the deer-shit-streaked sheets and found another set in the closet. Last night’s set was used to wrap up his filthy clothes, then stuffed into a trash bag. A new outfit was in short order. He wanted to be clean, if only for a little while longer.

Nude and tucked between fresh sheets, he thought of his second concussion, which took three weeks of rest to recover from. And not just no running or jumping or soaring, but full-on bed rest in a mostly darkened room. He’d asked John… no, James Kim, one of his teammates, to pick up blackout curtains from Walmart so he didn’t have to deal with the sunlight. Those dusty blinds that came standard dormitory issue hadn’t done shit to keep out the brightness.

James Kim. What had become of him? He was from South Korea. Did he ever make it back home? Did the Scorpions ever reach that far?

What’s the point in wondering?

Two weeks, maybe three. The man didn’t hope for one or the other. He and hope had stopped getting along quite some time ago.

He rolled onto his side, pressed his head into the softness of the pillow, and closed his eyes, entering a blissful medium between sleep and waking, filled with an utter awareness of self-conscious emptiness. Briefly, the man thought that this was better than sleep. He didn’t like his dreams. He couldn’t remember last night’s, but he knew it had been dreadful.

Later that afternoon, after a period of fitful napping, the man became aware of the rest of the pain. His feet ached badly. He rubbed the bottom of one against the opposite ankle. It felt tough and coarse with blistered skin. Didn’t even notice in the shower. At one time, his soles had popped and oozed with oily pus, but they’d soon grown used to their nightly walks. Must’ve torn ’em open. Did my shoes get wet? Can’t remember. Oh well. Dry now.

His thighs and calves felt thick and foreign, almost robotic. The man suspected that if he dug his pocketknife deep into his muscles, he would discover a layer of false flesh. A lifelike facade hiding whirring joints and hard metal circuitry with flashing red bulbs that begged him to recharge his battery. Don’t worry, legs, charging now. Taking my time.

What’s time?

Collective agreement upon progression of unseen force.

No collective anymore. I decide now.

But as the sun slipped to the horizon, light filtering in through his lone window, he couldn’t help but feel helpless. It was shortly before eight in the evening, yet noon felt no further gone than an hour or two. He was foggy. Slipping. Time was leaving him behind.