Chemicaust
Daniel Moore
Copyright Daniel Moore 2010
A flicker of time passed. The stars were smudged with blood, like a camera lens capturing pictures in the crimson-smeared hands of a weary photographer. Another flicker; the world was ending, the atmosphere was wrong, the sun shone through too intense, too yellow even through the blood. It was painful to keep eyes opened, stinging with blood and with sweat, his mouth boiled dry of spit, his throat parched. He lay flat on his stomach. It was painful to stay awake against a light like that. Another flicker and it was dark again. The wind whipped at his hair, long by army standards and a darker black by contrast to his pale skin.
Somewhere nearby a rat scurried about, digging in the dirt, gnawing on bones and devouring bits of burnt flesh. The sand beneath him was a dark grey, and cold, like powdered granite. The smell of burning and the heat of the explosion were already gone, had been gone for a while. It felt too soon for the noise and the light to be left behind. The rat emerged in the dark, red eyes and pointed teeth, a demon in the cold. The moon was a deep yellow unfamiliar to the soldier’s eyes, but kinder than the sun. Luke didn’t remember any time passing, but it flickered again.
He couldn’t move, something in the explosion had done him harm, there wasn’t pain, but there wasn’t movement either. The vermin froze as it sensed a predator – the trees were gone – the sand had bled into the wilderness. The two animals – soldier and rat – watched one another until the wind kicked up and Luke’s concentration broke. His eyes snapped shut to preserve sight against the closing storm. The scurrying of claws moved away, little gusts of sand kicked up behind a flurry of sharply pointed paws. Luke’s mind cleared. He remembered everything sharply for a moment and then the images flitted from him, wandering away into a desert which once was green. Wandering the night his vision snapped around the clearing. Everything was sand for miles where earlier a forest had grown. The explosion had caused it, the change. Luke was adjusting. It wasn’t easy.
The whir of gold and copper servos in his arm was sickening; they whined meaninglessly in places and failed their adjusting procedure. Vents shifted opened and shut of their own accord like metal gills striped vertically along the length of his forearm. The metal flaps squeaked from lack of oil when they opened, and clicked when they closed – it was an annoying repetition and Luke willed it to stop. It wouldn’t stop, nor would his heart. It wouldn’t stop until sand drifted over him, the servos stopped turning and the bare essential systems stopped functioning. The drive would keep him alive until it ran out of energy, started feeding on fat, and then on blood, and then ran dry. The sky promised a storm, but the moisture in the air seemed not to touch Luke, his skin was dry and cracked, his back already seared red. He felt nothing.
He heard the rat again; it had come back, scurrying over the dunes. The blood was dry, the sweat which had beaded at temples and on a back exposed to the sun was gone. Aperture eyes clicked shut and flashed opened. The fear was gone from the animal. It perched regally on two feet and stared down at the fallen boy, whiskers drooping nearly to the sand. The storm had died down. It wasn’t the same rat. This one was larger, more intelligent; its eyes gleamed a horrid human blue, its hair floated in wisps about its head. Its fur was the dark grey of the sand it stood upon, and where it fell away in patches the skin beneath stood out starkly. Blue eyes seemed to float in the air above patches of rat-flesh. Paws poked at his back, his arms and his face. The rat scurried around his body inquisitively. Luke would have cried out had he been able. The miniature golden gears in his arm screeched for a moment as if in harmony with Luke’s desire, clicked and then hummed. The steel gills on his left arm stopped flapping meaninglessly. The wind howled and the sand kicked up, there was a tension in the air.
The rat bared his teeth and its tail writhed behind it like a snake in pain. It leaned in close to Luke’s head and smiled. It got down on hands and knees to examine him. It wasn’t a rat. Luke couldn’t scream. The sensation of flinching rolled over his body but Luke didn’t flinch. He couldn’t get away. The rat bit into his eye. There was no pain but half of his vision turned off like a snap and a moment later blood fogged the camera lens again. He lay still as the rat enjoyed its meal, with his remaining eye Luke saw white flesh held between paws, dangling optical nerves. The steady hum of the drive reassured and terrified – it promised renewed strength but also the return of pain. He couldn’t scream. Time passed and more vermin came, and he couldn’t scream. Steam vented from his arm and granted a reprieve from the teeth and then the rodents returned, and the not-rodent with the blue eyes and the scalpel-sharp knife. He couldn’t scream. Finally the storm that had been promised broke; thunder seemed louder in the desert where it didn’t belong. Rain began to fall.
Luke felt the knitting of his spine, almost instantly after so much motionless. He felt shocking cold drops on a badly burnt back. He felt the warm of blood and then a serene pain, in his head, along his spine, and rippling out through his limbs. It felt like acid in his veins as his nerves switched back on, motivated by chem pumped through his body. Injected into his blood-stream by the drive in his arm. He screamed and the rodents leapt away, except for the rat with blue eyes, and hands, and the knife. The blue-eyed one only backed up and watched him. Luke moved his hands, curled his fingers into fists, tried to get his arms underneath his chest, push himself up, roll himself over. His skin was dry and cracked, it hurt to move.
The rat startled backwards at the show of life. It was terrified, and then calm and then smiling. It leapt on him, the blue-eyed rat with the scalpel, and with an animal ferocity drove the knife into Luke’s back. The acid in his veins spilled from the wounds and soaked his back and then his entire body in pain. The rat kept stabbing, the remains of Luke’s strength ebbed with the flow of blood, the scent of which brought the vermin back. The rodents only came close enough to watch; they recognized the scent of death. Luke was surprised there were no birds – there were always birds where there was blood.
Luke refused to die, or rather was forced to remain living. As fast as the rat slashed holes in his skin, the fallen soldier’s drive sought to repair the wounds. Skin stitched back together almost instantly as it was torn apart, the sight of which turned deliberate stabs into frantic tearing, the rat’s knife leaving ragged wounds instead of clean cuts. Luke didn’t scream anymore, the pain was too much for screaming, and yet, he was not dead, and even against the assault of the creature the drive was prevailing. The whirring servos in his arm repaired the damage to his eye and with it his sight. Tissue regrew and his eyes reformed. Simultaneously chem pumped steadily into his veins to rapidly generate scar tissue. In the instant Luke thought he could bear no more pain, the drive restored strength to his muscles, tension to tendons and ligaments.
Luke rose to his feet with the rat still on his back, the animal still stabbing while scar tissue knitted over the damage. Hunks of skin lay at his feet. Blood drenched his body and that of his assailant, but Luke lived and his strength had returned. The rat was tiring, clinging to the soldier’s back, and Luke healed more quickly than injuries could be inflicted. With a jerk of his arm Luke brought his elbow up and rammed it like a piston into the rat’s ribs. A crunch. The creature cried and let go, falling onto its back and pushing itself clumsily away from the soldier. The rat healed too. Luke turned to watch as ribs popped back into placed and the caved in chest swelled outwards, healthy and whole.
With a snap fire jumped from Luke’s fingertips. Gouts of flame sprouted from each finger and dove into the sand, melting the grey into glowing red on contact. The rat cried out and steam vented again from Luke’s arm. The heat from his hand burrowed towards the rat and as the creature tur
ned, fumbled, managed to gain its feet and start to run, the ground beneath it opened up. The rat plunged into boiling stone and was instantly consumed. Luke fell to his knees. The vermin were gone, and where it had been the sand was turned to stone, solid granite, smooth as ice. The rat was gone; Luke had known him. In front of Luke laid the knife of a friend, a fellow soldier and a rat. From the now-cooling granite steam coloured yellow by the moon; rain hissed where it hit the stone slab.
There was very little chem left; Luke ejected the vial from his arm, vent flaps receding like a shutter to reveal the mechanics of the drive. The vial was a finger’s length long and filled with a vibrant purple liquid. Two fingers in diameter and four times as long. It was rounded at one end and capped with a rubber tip at the other. A hypodermic could punch through the rubber end, or the pin of a drive for injecting the liquid manually or feeding a drive respectively. The container popped out, the sound hanging in the air; maybe a half-ounce remained. Luke grinned – it was more than enough. A little chem went a long way in the