D B Reynold – Rajmund     “It was totally dark.”

Charlaine Harris  - Dead Until Dark     “I’d been waiting for the vampire for years when he walked into the bar.”

Kelley Armstrong – Men of the Otherworld     “Antonio.”

Victor Hugo – The Hunchback of Notre Dame     “On January 6, 1482, the people of Paris were awakened by the tumultuous clanging of all the bells in the city.”

Bram Stoker – Dracula     “Left Munich at 8:35 PM on 1^st May, arriving at Vienna early next morning; should have arrived at 6:46, but the train was an hour late.”

Robert Louis Stevenson – Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde     “Mr. Utterson the lawyer was a man of a rugged countenance that was never lighted by a smile; cold, scanty and embarrassed in discourse; backward in sentiment; lean, long, dusty, dreary and yet somehow lovable.

William Shakespeare – Hamlet     “Who’s there?”

Charlotte Bronte – Jane Eyre     “There was no possibility of a walk that day.”

Mary Shelley – Frankenstein     “You will rejoice to hear that no disaster has accompanied the commencement of an enterprise which you have regarded with such evil forebodings.”

Anne Rice – Interview with the Vampire     “I see, said the vampire thoughtfully, and slowly he walked across the room towards the window.”

John Wyndham – The Chrysalids     “When I was quite small I would sometimes dream of a city – which was strange because it began before I even knew what a city was.”

Steven King – The Stand     “Hapscomb’s Texaco sat on Number 93 just north of Arnette, a pissant four-street burg about 110 miles from Houston.”

Gaston Leroux – The Phantom of the Opera     “It was the evening on which MM. Debienne and Poligny, the managers of the Opera, were giving a last gala performance to mark their retirement.

Authors:  Anne Rice, Bram Stoker, Charlaine Harris, Charlotte Bronte, D B Reynolds, Gaston Leroux, John Wyndham. Kelley Armstrong. Mary Shelley, Robert Louis Stevenson, Steven King, Victor Hugo, William Shakespeare.

Book Titles:  Rajmund, Jane Eyre, Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, The Phantom of the Opera, Frankenstein, Dracula, The Hunchback of Notre Dame, Men of the Otherworld, Dead Until Dark, Hamlet, Interview with the Vampire, The Chrysalids, The Stand.

 First Lines:

“Who’s there?”

“Hapscomb’s Texaco sat on Number 93 just north of Arnette, a pissant four-street burg about 110 miles from Houston.”

“On January 6, 1482, the people of Paris were awakened by the tumultuous clanging of all the bells in the city.”

“Antonio.”

“You will rejoice to hear that no disaster has accompanied the commencement of an enterprise which you have regarded with such evil forebodings.”

“I’d been waiting for the vampire for years when he walked into the bar.”

“When I was quite small I would sometimes dream of a city – which was strange because it began before I even knew what a city was.”

“It was totally dark.”

“Mr. Utterson the lawyer was a man of a rugged countenance that was never lighted by a smile; cold, scanty and embarrassed in discourse; backward in sentiment; lean, long, dusty, dreary and yet somehow lovable.”

“There was no possibility of a walk that day.”

“I see, said the vampire thoughtfully, and slowly he walked across the room towards the window.”

“It was the evening on which MM. Debienne and Poligny, the managers of the Opera, were giving a last gala performance to mark their retirement.”

“Left Munich at 8:35 PM on 1^st May, arriving at Vienna early next morning; should have arrived at 6:46, but the train was an hour late.”

This is episode three of the Garden of Hell series of sci-fi short stories, following after Tiger Lilies and Two Moons - both posted in September’s fiction.

 Copyright J. Dianne Waye October 2011

Contains mature subject matter and violence.

How do you fight something when you don’t know the rules?  Everything we’d been taught, all our survival skills, camouflage techniques, combat strategies, didn’t work on this planet.  Deadly spores, deadly vines; ripe fruit denied to our empty stomachs. No meat to hunt; not a single animal roamed this Garden of Hell.  Even the grass betrayed us, lying flat and exposing us, as we crawled towards the crest of the ridge.

The last two humans left behind until that shuttlecraft streaked across the sky – and they were avoiding us.

“Why haven’t they tried to contact us?  They must have seen the smoke.”  I forced my way through a thicket of undergrowth, trying not to damage any of the bamboo-like bushes.  It would be easier to scythe it down, but who knew the repercussions involved in that action.

“They would have turned around and landed in the village, if contacting us were their intentions.”  Miller kept his voice low, the bushes and trees seeming to lean in and eavesdrop on our conversation. 

We cleared the ridge and kept our heads down, both of us scoping the scene with our binoculars.  The shuttlecraft lurched to one side, landing gear damaged in an amateur attempt to touch down.  Coveralled men milled about, tending a fire, rolling out barrels of supplies.  The flight crew lay prostrate on the field, grey uniforms tattered and bloodied; one squirming, the other three motionless.

Blue bandana around his head, Citizen Faust 96239 – the identity stitched on his clothing – kicked the surviving crewmember, grabbed him by the collar, screamed into his face.

Faust’s pantomimed questions went unanswered.  The last crewmember, pistol-whipped to a bloody pulp, collapsed to the ground.  The gun’s barrel about-faced and dug into his forehead.  Skull bones shattered, brains exploded; a fraction of a second later, gunshot echoed off the rocky ridge face.

I dropped my binoculars and reached for my rifle.  Miller placed his hand over mine, the briefest headshake stopping me.  Two fingers flicked; time to withdraw.  I followed him back down the slope, away from the ship.

“We need to burn those corpses.  Those men – they’re all going to die.”

“Good.”  He turned away, long strides increasing the distance between us and them.

“Why are we leaving?  What do you know, that you’re not telling me?”

Miller paused, the habit of rank secrecy so ingrained it still battled within him.  Just like how he had to struggle each time he touched me, knowing it was forbidden in our old life.

“It’s a Chain Gang Shuttle.  Criminals condemned to hard labour, come to clear the land.”

“Why didn’t Mothership warn them, stop them?  Make them turn around?”

“She would have.  They hijacked the ship.”

I grabbed Miller’s arm.  “We need to do something.”

“It’s not my job anymore.”

“Then what is your job?”

“To keep you alive.  Let’s go.”

Something ate away at him, chewed him up inside.  Miller was no coward.  He looked Death straight in the face when we got left behind by Mothership, pulled me out of a nest of killer vines.  He’d earned my trust.  But now his muscles tensed, his eyes clouding with emotions I didn’t understand.

I swallowed my questions and followed him into the jungle.  Whatever ghost nipped at his heels kept him moving.  We hiked until my legs trembled with fatigue.  Hours after sunset, we came across an abandoned barn, a crudely thrown-together wood-slat construction.  I stopped, looked into his eyes.  Exhaustion devoured me whole – that, and disappointment over the loss of human contact.

He held the barn door open for me, swept away our footprints from the path, and covered me over with our scavenged blanket.  The whites of his eyes darted, watchful; sentinels to the demons that plagued him.  Too keyed up to sleep, he took first watch.

Snake-like coils softly embraced my skin, wrapping around my limbs.  A tendril strayed, wavered and withdrew, then stroked across the hollow of my throat.

I gasped as it squeezed, choking off my breath.  Not even enough air left to scream.

“Eva.  Wake up.  You’re having another nightmare.”

Miller shook me urgently, until I blinked and surfaced.  No – no killer vines – not here.  We were safe for now, inside the barn.  The scent of hay lingered along with the smell of livestock, all perished from the spores, but the imprint of life had not yet been erased.

I smiled as he kissed me on the cheek.  Brown eyes flecked with gold crinkled at the corners, warm and inviting, the part of him I liked best.  His lips strayed across my throat, pausing, waiting for an invitation.  Dawn’s beams scattered through the cracks in the walls, shattering stripes of light across the hay bales.  He sat back on his heels, dark hair crowned by a halo as it crossed the beams.  Out of the shadows now, his skin picked up an odd purple hue, the aubergine of eggplants.

I screamed.

“Eva.  Wake up.”

A dream within a dream.  Still trapped on the nightmare planet, though.

The real Miller had green eyes now.  Something had changed them, something in the air, the food, the water, saturating his pupils first with a hazel hue; now a deeper green.  And the real Miller had a bloody nose, from where I’d accidentally punched him in my sleep.

He wiped a sleeve across his upper lip, smearing blood across the morning stubble.  He kissed me tentatively, not surprised when I turned away, still too close to that dark dream world.

I shoved some canned food into my pack, somebody’s abandoned emergency stash; he filled the water bags by hand-pumping the well.  At least the colonists had thought of how to survive if the power failed.  They’d never considered how to survive if Mother Nature fought back against their efforts to farm the land.

Miller hesitated before he slipped into the bright morning, letting his eyes adjust, his senses sharpen.  Overnight the moss had grown, climbing up the sides of the barn, bursting with new clusters of green at an accelerated rate, thickest on the outside wall where we had been sleeping.

He drew in a big breath and puffed it out slowly onto the moss, like blowing out birthday candles on a cake.  Everywhere his breath touched, the moss reacted, greening and blooming.

“It’s feeding off the carbon dioxide in our breath.  It’s ironic, isn’t it, that the plants doomed themselves to extinction with those defensive spores.  It’s just a matter of time before the environment collapses.”

“One more thing to worry about.”

“It won’t happen in our lifetime.”  His hand rubbed my shoulder.  I moved in closer, into the crook of his arm, inhaling that male scent of his, devoid now of civilization, of shaving cream and soap.  “Have you reloaded your pistol?  Here – take Reese’s ammo.”

I winced when he mentioned Reese, never considered plundering my dead friend’s pack.

Miller froze, put a finger to his lips, and pointed at the trees.  Something moved there, shifting through the undergrowth.  Branches swayed, leaves curling inwards.  Wild field flowers closed their heads.  Everything around us suddenly stopped moving.  We crouched down, trying to conceal ourselves in the long grass, but it flattened.

Something hunted us.

We fled into the jungle in the opposite direction.  I tensed as that rattlesnake vibration started up.  We dropped and crawled away from the source of pursuit, but every leaf, every branch, betrayed our efforts.

No matter where we ran, an armed prisoner awaited.  Herded like cattle, we were forced towards the shuttle, twisting and turning, running, running; flushed out, with nowhere to hide in the fields of wheat.

Six figures stepped out, guns pointing.  “Drop your weapons.”

Miller froze, cool gaze appraising the odds.  Not in our favour.  Three more of them perched in the trees.  I counted Miller’s blinks, then he clenched his jaw twice: the signal to surrender.

I threw my gun to the ground and raised my hands to the back of my head.  Faust patted me down, ran his filthy hands over me, finding everything – my pocket knife, my hunting knife, even the coil of garrotte wire in my hair.

Lean and bald, a man stepped forward, eyes dancing over Miller like he’d just won the grand prize at the fair.  “Well, well.  Look who it is.  Captain Andy.” 

Miller swallowed, every muscle straining, tightening.  “Hello, Crow.”

“Bet you regret surrendering now.  Would have gone out in a blaze of glory, wouldn’t you, son?”  He strutted over to Miller, poking him in the chest with our machete.  “Too late.”

Laughter bounced through the clearing.  The trees shivered and hummed, but the Chain Gang didn’t understand the warning sound.  They marched us to their campsite, leaving us bound and gagged until dusk.

Flickering firelight, greasy faces in the glow; the dank odours of fear, canned beans, and decay.

Faust ripped the tape from my mouth.  “How many colonists?  Where are they hiding?”

I stared at him, silent and defiant.

“Tell me.”  He grabbed my hair, pulling back my head to expose my throat.  “Talk.”

“I am Private Perez 4930.  I am a hostage.  I cannot be broken -”

Crow threw his head back and laughed.  “Miller’s been feeding you that crap.  I’ll break you Perez.  You’ll see.”

“You are my enemy, but you shall not defeat my will.”

Crow signalled; two men dragged Miller upright, held his head. 

“You want me to fix her good, boss?”  Faust leered out of focus; spotted four eyes, then two.  He came closer, foul breath reeking, broken teeth grinning.  “Make him watch.”

Miller struggled against the men holding him.  “I’ll kill you, Faust.”

“She’s mine now.”  The edge of Crow’s blade danced inches from my eye, ready to flick out my eyeball if I moved.  Instead it caressed the skin of my cheek, carving a half-circle into the flesh.  Blood swelled and dripped.  “I’ve branded you.  C for Crow.”

“You bastard.”  Miller wrestled free in a twisting jerk, head-butting the two men restraining him.  He charged Crow, heedless of the blade.  Faust reached him first.  They collided, toppling into the yellow grass.  The knife slid into Miller’s chest, puncturing a lung.  Blood erupted, bursting from his lips, his nose. My Miller, the reason I was still alive, tried to stand, dropped to his knees.  An involuntary scream erupted from me.

Black eyes, red rage.  Crow knocked Faust down, next to Miller.  “No.  You idiot.  I told you not to kill him.”

Miller sucked in a gurgling breath and spit out a mouthful of blood, right into Faust’s eyes.

Faust blinked, wiped his hands across his eyes, and threw his arm over his face.  “It burns.”  He rose to his feet, stumbling, staggering, as the rash bloomed across his throat, down his neck, like wild fire over his skin.  Blisters rose, broke, oozing green goo.  He melted head first, arms and legs flailing, torso dissolving into a puddle of slime.

The Chain Gang stepped back, away from me.

Out of the jungle came that rattlesnake chorus, rising and humming, shaking with a storm wind that didn’t blow from the sky.  Dragging footsteps; low guttural groans.  An army of misshapen warriors emerged, a parody of the dead flight crew: aubergine skin, eyes without whites, mouths without teeth, mutant freaks with a zombie gait stroll.  Relentless.

Chaos erupted.  The Chain Gang screamed, ran; fired rounds into exploding targets, like smashing pumpkins.  But the mutants kept coming.  They gored and strangled the humans, dragging them away to God knows where, for uncertain purpose.

I threw myself over Miller; his blood pooled into the tall grass.  One of the broken freaks crawled towards me, sniffing my legs, sniffing Miller.  Motionless and quiet, I felt no fear; there wasn’t anything it could take away from me now.  It ignored us, turning away, attention caught by the last living prisoner squirming near the campfire.  I closed my eyes until the screaming stopped.

Miller squeezed my hand, staring unblinking at the two moons.  Not quite dead – not yet. 

“Don’t leave me,” I whispered.

Moss crawled and thickened where his last breath kissed the ground, resisting my attempts to tear it away from his limbs, until I finally stopped fighting it, accepted it; let it shroud him with soft tender leaves.

Tiny yellow flowers opened where my tears damped the growth, raising petal faces to the brightening emerald sky.  Dawn always rises, whether you’re ready for it or not.  Whether grief and loneliness overwhelms you, or doesn’t.

To give up now would dishonour Miller – everything he stood for.

Finding information is easier in the internet age.  You can source out agents, rank them, find out all about what they want to read, follow their blogs, research what makes them tick.

Learning resources are a click away.  Countless articles are posted about what to do, or what to stay away from.  Social connections can be made on twitter, on-line writing groups, and writers’ blogs.

How-to textbooks line the bookstore shelves.   There’s workshops, classes; you name it.

So much information, a non-stop stream, all of which should be improving the quality of what ends up on the bookshelf.  But who’s written the classic of the new era, something that will stand the test of time?

And the more I learn, the more questions I have.

Has blogging actually advanced anyone’s career as a writer?  Does anyone get discovered this way?  Does all this social networking work, or is it just another time-drain?  E-publishing is the new trend many frustrated writers take, a route available for those that don’t fit that main-stream mould.  But does e-pubbing make a wider selection of good books available to readers, or is this another form of vanity press?  And how about those agents?  Some declare that they’re swamped under an endless stream of e-mails from prospective writers, to the point they can barely breathe.  Is this true?  Are certain genres dead, and who gets to decide this fate?

Maybe it’s the economy right now, holding back the risk factor for agents to sign on new authors.  Maybe the market is inundated by a flood of new authors, writing that novel that blooms in their imagination, spurred on by other writers’ success stories.  Maybe the e-pub business is the new counter-trend, liberating us from mainstream cotton-candy.  But it seems to me that the factors that should make this journey easier are making it harder to publish an actual hold-in-your-hands book, the path to selling buried deep under an avalanche of the tools of this new era.

As a writer, R U redi 4 these obstacles?

Now despite the fact that it “feels weird” for her to talk about herself, she’s agreed to answer a few questions.

JDW:  What made you decide to join the Kelley Armstrong Writers’ Forum?

MAS:  As a fan of Kelley’s writing, I knew of her forum and the writing group but was nervous about other people reading my work.  It wasn’t until I got some very honest feedback on my writing from a writer I barely knew that I decided to join.  She made some helpful suggestions including one that I join a critique group.  Immediately I thought of OWG.  She was so right!

JDW: What’s the greatest benefit to posting your work there for critiquing?

MAS: Every month when I get crits back, I’m so grateful for what others find that I missed.  At first, the learning curve was huge because I’d never been ‘taught’ how to write so I learned a lot from everyone.  Sometimes it’s just having one or more people confirm what works or doesn’t work that’s most valuable.  Also, I was surprised at how the process of critiquing others’ work can be so rewarding.  It gives me a different perspective on other writing styles and helps my own writing.  

JDW: What was the most significant lesson learned from her Toronto Writers’ Workshop?

MAS: I want to say hanging with Kelley over coffee and hearing her speak about her characters but I’m guessing you want something more literary.  In that case, I’ve always thought of myself as a character-oriented writer.  The characters come first for me, both as a writer and a reader.  Kelley helped me see that I didn’t know my characters as well as I thought I did.  It was a shocker.  I think it was day four before I would admit this to myself! 

JDW: How has the workshop changed or influenced your work?

MAS: The week left me with an overall positive feeling about my writing.  I felt encouraged and recharged.  Before this, I was beginning to feel confused and unsure in some ways but the week reassured me that I was on the right track.  Also, there’s something about spending all day every day for a week with writers, talking about writing and reading each other’s work that is inspiring.  I got to immerse myself in that frame of mind and came out of it feeling more than ever that writing is what I love.

JDW: How do you manage your time?

MAS: I’m a night writer.  During the day, at home with three young kids, I only get to write in snippets and some days more than others.  But when they’re in bed, the night is mine.  I write about 4-5 hours when the house is quiet and dark, uninterrupted.  It’s funny that I had visions of myself spending the morning with a laptop in a coffee shop when the kids went back to school but that just hasn’t happened.  I’m gonna stick to my night routine – it works for me.

JDW: What made you choose Young Adult as a genre?

MAS: I like reading and writing YA because the angst and insecurity that usually accompanies that phase of life.  It makes for interesting character growth.  If I’m also being honest, I wonder if I had enough fun as a teen and that maybe I’m living vicariously through the characters.  I’d love to be that age again.     

JDW: At what point in your life did you realize you were a writer?

MAS: I’ve written off and on when I was in school but it wasn’t until recently that I considered myself a writer.  A couple of years ago I told a writer friend of mine that I’ve always wanted to write a book and her response was “why don’t you?”  At the time my youngest was getting a little older and I felt like I was beginning a new phase of my life where I could do more for me.  Writing was top of the list.  I wrote my first novel in six weeks and haven’t looked back. 

Not exactly a pleasant thing.  But it’s a rite of passage.

I spent twelve weeks writing Inner Demons, a novel set back in my old stomping grounds – Acadia University – where the main character lives in the haunted farmhouse I once lived in.  Even the old lady ghost managed to find her way into the story.  I can hear the leaves crunching under my feet as I walk across autumn campus grounds, smell the tang of Bay of Fundy water, see the fireworks display of the Northern Lights flashing across the night sky from the top of University Drive.

But what happens when you bring so many real elements into a work of fiction?  For me, it makes it impossible to have perspective towards the story itself.  I cannot separate what’s on the page from what’s in my mind.  Too close, too personal.  I poured out everything I had into this story, believing it was going to end up in that storage box in the closet with the rest of my writing.  I didn’t hold anything back – no inhibitions – so certain that no one was ever going to read it.

After I finished it, I missed the intimacy of the characters, missed having them in my head.  I’d cheered for them, wept for them, plotted out their lives with great care.  I felt empty, alone.  Drifting.  I wanted that powerful feeling back – that Virgin Writer Effect.

I’ve written two other novels since then – but haven’t lost myself inside a story like I did with Inner Demons.  Maybe it’s something you only get to experience once.  Cheers to you if you’ve survived this. 

Is the novel I wrote any good?  Does it really matter?  In life, just like as in writing, it’s the journey that counts.

I am a workaholic.  No doubt I will perish either at work, or face down in a stack of homework.  I cannot conceive of retiring – ever.

I ask a lot of questions.  Did you notice this already?  Do you often feel like you’re being interviewed when we talk?  Does it bug you?  Should I stop now?

I like to cook.  I like to try weird new food.  When I go to a restaurant, I’ll order something I’ve never had, if I can.  My family does not embrace this philosophy, and dreads when I get a new cookbook – unless it’s The Giant Book of Cookie Recipes.

The Universe is a funny place.  It makes me laugh.  Like the week my shopping list included: hamster food, mouse traps, sledgehammer.  You just can’t make this stuff up.

I can sew, draw, paint and make stuff that works.  This week my kid and I knit a hat.  It’s a good hat, despite the fact that neither of us knew how to knit before we started.

Most people fall into the category of optimists or pessimists.  I’m a poptimist.  I’m absolutely certain my car will break down again, and I’m absolutely certain someone will stop to help push me off the road and let me use their cell phone to call a tow truck.

I have a collection of Star Trek stuff.  Blinking spaceship Christmas ornaments that talk in Borg and Klingon, a lunch box, a Jim Kirk action figure complete with phaser and tribbles, a CD of Shatner and Nemoy singing duets, a Cardassian coffee mug, biographies, books, movies, games.  Everything I need to know about life, I learned from Star Trek.  Go boldly, my friends.

 Copyright J. Dianne Waye September 2011

Contains Mature Subject Matter

This story is the second episode in the yet-unnamed sci-fi series, following after Tiger Lilies.

One false step, one mistake.  That’s all it took to place me between life and death, in this unforgiving solitude.

The waterfall beckoned, luring me with sweet promises of relief from the sweltering jungle heat.  Between tall trees dripping with moss, cracked shale glistened with the river’s progress.  Two chalk-white moons hung in the emerald sky, alone and exposed in daylight, abandoned by the company of stars.  Like Miller and me.

A vine twisted and snagged my ankle, snapping me up like a sprung trap.  I hung upside down, winded, disoriented, blood pounding in my ears.  The empty waterskin – the purpose of this venture – tangled around my neck and swung like a pendulum beneath my head.

I wasn’t going to call for help.  Not yet.  Not without trying to figure it out for myself.

Several long creepers trailed from the trees, almost close enough to reach.  I started the slow swing, stretching out my hands, reaching.  Scaly and thin, the first one came loose and fell to the ground when I tugged.  The next one held steady, anchored firmly in the canopy.  I dragged myself upright, hand over hand.  My ankle swelled from the pressure, sprained by the whiplash effect, but not broken.  I pulled out my knife and sawed away at the knot around my foot.   Green sap oozed from the slash, sticky residue dulling the blade. 

I wiped the blade clean on my fatigues and gripped the knife handle in my teeth.  Too late to worry about a poison ivy rash; not too late to worry about ingesting toxins.  My left limb tired from supporting my weight, so I tried to switch arms.  A tendril wrapped around my wrist, trapping me.

To every action there is a reaction.

I sheathed my knife and pulled out my revolver, waiting for the swaying to still, and fired.  Hard not to miss, at point-blank range.  The rope broke, releasing my foot.  I danced and dangled like a mad parody of a hung corpse.  The grip on my wrist released, plunging me onto the forest floor.

Bashed head, swollen wrist, twisted ankle.  My ego suffered the greatest damage.  I had panicked, wasting precious ammunition.

The canopy overhead stirred, as if set in motion from the wind.  But no breeze penetrated this crevasse.  A hissing noise rose, sinister like a rattlesnake; the forest floor writhed with coils and ropes coming alive.  I blasted another shot into the deepest verdant spot.  Foliage and bark floated in the air; green amber wept in gleaming puddles.  But the noises stopped dead.

“Eva.  Eva.”  Miller’s shouts echoed off the cliff wall, louder each time, no longer drowned by the pounding of the waterfall behind me.

“Don’t come in here.”

He paused, riveted by my tone, hesitating.  Captain Miller, Lord of War, held hostage by indecision.  Surveying the scene, analyzing the odds with his detached objectivity, he pulled out his revolver and aimed at a tree trunk.

“No – don’t,” I screamed, too late.  I covered my head as leaves shattered and scattered.  The tree groaned, sighed, and toppled across the pile of vines.

Silence fell, an uncanny void; even the pounding water muted.  Overhead, the palms leaned to block the sky; I shivered.  Miller pushed the log my way, tightrope-walking across it until he loomed over me.  His hands, strong and competent, reached out to jerk me free.  I swung onto his back, arms gripping his neck.

I closed my eyes as he balanced across the trunk.  If he fell into this snake-pit of roots, there would be no one left to rescue us.

His boots thumped on bouncing wood, then he lowered me onto bare wet rock.

“Can you walk?”

I tested my foot, not wanting to take off my boot because of the swelling.  I wouldn’t be able to get it back on again.  “No.”

“Did you get water?”

“No.”  Useless, and a liability.

“I warned you it was dangerous.  I ordered you not to go off alone.”  Brown eyes, made hazel by the jungle gloom, narrowed.  I waited for him to bark drop and give me twenty, or whatever he said to keep his troops in line, but he looked up and away, distracted.  The reprimand on his lips died.  “What the hell?”

He grabbed me and ran, breath hacking in a parched throat.  I dared to look behind.  The vines were moving, snaking across the broken shale, reaching for us.  One snagged across my neck, tendrils wrapping over my throat, snatching me from Miller’s back.  I thumped to the ground, tearing fingers struggling with the stranglehold.  Miller sparked up his flame thrower and blasted the closest palm, incinerating it.  Trees swayed and groaned like banshees.  The creepers retreated.

Miller picked me up again and followed the river’s edge, as it opened into a torrent of water surging from forest depths.  It plunged into a valley; more jungle that way, an endless sea of green.

Sweating, exhausted, he put me down on a pebbly slope away from the hissing trees, and stopped to fill the water bags.  A single purifier table remained.  He shook the bag, dissolving the pill, and held it to me.  What was the point?  We were going to have to drink the water, sooner or later.  I scooped up a cupped handful of river water and poured it down my throat, returning his cool stare.

Some kind of fruit-bearing plant leaned over the river’s edge.  Miller busied himself, gathering the crab-apple globes.  Starving, I accepted a palm-full of berries.  Tart and refreshing, they filled my stomach and quenched my thirst at the same time.

I wanted to say I was sorry, tell him I was wrong for disobeying his orders, but I didn’t know how to start.  “How do you know they’re safe?”

“I study up on the local flora and fauna before a mission.  This one took half the time, since there’s no fauna here.”

“There used to be,” I said, as I held up a broken fossil, something primitive like a trilobite.  I needed him to keep talking, to keep my crazy thoughts at bay.  “Why do you study so much?”

“I got left behind, once.  Had to survive on my own, fight my way out.  Things like that change you.”  He reached for another handful of fruit, but as his fingers touched the cluster it withdrew, curling away and vanishing inside the leaves.

In the pools of water at the river’s edge, water lilies closed their heads, tucked and folded their petals like they do when dusk falls on Earth.  Tiny Creeping Charlie runners along the shore retreated into their base.  The grass flattened.

“It’s all connected,” I said.  “It’s all one organism.  Each plant reacts to the next.”  Loneliness overwhelmed me – and the fear that we couldn’t fight an enemy we couldn’t understand, couldn’t relate to.  I hadn’t been trained for this – this monster all around us, in the air we breathed.  Carriers of plague, banished from our kind.  No future here, not for us.

I held out the fruit to him, the last of our supply.  It wasn’t fair he wouldn’t get any, now.  And I didn’t need it, any more. 

“We need to go back to the village,” Miller said.  “We can’t keep surveying with your ankle like that.  We need supplies – batteries, communicators, food.”  He fumbled in his pack, turning away from me.

No.  I couldn’t go back to the deserted village, to the ghosts that wandered there.

My hands trembled as I unholstered my pistol.  Cold steel cut into my temple.

“Perez,” he said.  “Don’t be a coward.”  His voice shrilled, rose in anger.  “Don’t give in.”

I shook my head; couldn’t speak, couldn’t look into those eyes.

“I am a soldier.  Say it with me.  I am Private 4930 Eva Perez, citizen of Earth.  I am a prisoner of war.  I am strong.  I cannot be broken.  You are my enemy, but you shall not defeat my spirit.”

His hand touched my sunburned shoulder, skin flinching from the contact.

“Say it, Eva.  Say the words.  I am a soldier.”

Words so softly whispered, barely rising over the bubbling stream.  “I am a soldier.”

Our voices rose in unison, the soldiers’ creed our prayer; unifying, solidifying, bringing hope to my soul.

I let his hands move mine away; his fingers slipped the gun from my grip.  Angry, I wiped away unwelcome tears.  “I am a coward.”

“No.  I’m the coward.  I can’t face this alone.  I need you, Eva.  Don’t leave me.  Promise.  Promise not to leave me here, alone.”  He slumped against the rocks, pebbles etching dents into his knees, where he knelt before me.

“I promise,” I said.

The jungle murmured and watched, as the river led us back to the village.  If we spoke, the echo got those trees humming their rattlesnake chorus again.

Grassland finally opened before us; golden wheat fields choked with indigenous plants, weeds or grass or whatever flourished here.  Moss crawled over the village buildings, sinking footholds into brick and shingle, tearing down eaves troughs, spreading wide cracks through the sidewalks – eradicating, on a rapid scale, all traces of the attempt at colonizing.  Waist-high crops rustled on their own accord as we waded towards the gazebo.

“Take what might be useful,” Miller said.  “Anything you find.  I’ll see if I can spark up the generator, get our batteries recharged.”

“Should we bury them?”  I limped around the corner of the gazebo in the town square, where the last two members of our away team lay dead in their bio-hazard suits.  Ivy tendrils wrapped around Rogers’ feet, crawling up and across the five steps to the platform.  Rosevelt was buried under the shroud of leaves, somewhere.  It would take some time to wrestle the bodies out of this mess.

Blossoms dotted the stems, pretty long white petals amongst waxy leaves.  Purple fruit, oblong and eggplant-like, hung from thicker stems.  Translucent skin promised juicy contents.  I bet down, fascinated, as the orbs shimmered and flickered with shadows moving within.

“Are they edible?”

Miller shrugged.  “Never saw that on the list.  Better not take the chance.”

Was it a trick of the light?  Or was some kind of insect living inside, like the worm in a Mexican jumping bean?  I plucked one of the eggplants from its stem and cut it open.  Purple juice spilled over my hands, the contents flopping onto the wooden floorboards.  A tiny fetus, a replica of us – revolting, bizarre.

The plants had cut through Rogers’ bio-suit, penetrating into skin, stealing his DNA.  Creating, evolving a new life form.

Miller dragged me off the steps.  His flame thrower blasted, blazing and charring.  The eggplants screamed, high pitched and piercing; I covered my ears.  The roof licked with fingers of fire, collapsing onto the unholy harvest, ending that horrible sound.

I lifted my head, to follow the plume of black smoke carrying away the pungent odour of singed flesh.  Two moons stared down, scarred by a wisp of white trailing across the emerald sky – a shuttlecraft contrail.

Someone else, come to join us in Hell.

The Fire in Fiction by Donald Maass.  There’s a good reason it’s first on my list.  Get it, read it, live it.  Writing the Breakout Novel is a great book, too.  I could go on all day about Mr Maass.  Read his twitter tips, while you’re at it.

Self-Editing for Fiction Writers by Renni Browne and Dave King.  Editing techniques presented in a clear and concise way.  Simply brilliant.  Wow.  Eureka.

The Transitive Vampire by Karen Elizabeth Gordon.  Add The Well-Tempered Sentence to your shopping list, too.  Grammar and punctuation presented in an amusing, charming way.  Sure wish I had these for textbooks, when I went to school.

Making a Good Script Great by Linda Seger.  Ah the screenplay – my first love.  These techniques cross over into novel writing, too.  It’s all about rewriting.

Dorling Kindersley Eyewitness Travel Guides.  A great place to start if you’re setting your story in an unfamiliar part of the globe.  Maps, photos, history, culture, art, architecture, geography, climate.  Yup – it’s all there.  Oh yah – good for travellers, too.

Roget’s College Thesaurus.  My mangled, beat-up, dog-eared copy has seen better days, but it’s always within arm’s reach.  Can’t beat the detailed explanations – no word processor thesaurus comes close.

Webster’s Dictionary.  It’s massive, it’s awkward, it weighs a ton.  And it’s worth its weight in gold.

And here are a few books about writing, from the writer’s perspective:

Bare Bones Conversations on Terror with Stephen King.  Here’s a tip:  don’t read this before bed.

The Outlandish Companion by Diana Gabaldon.  Inspired me to tackle my first full-length historical novel.

What would you add to this list?

Now I’m off to wrestle with some man-eating eggplants, for my next sci-fi short story episode of When Mother Nature Fights Back.  You’ll never look at salad the same way, again.

Copyright J. Dianne Waye September 2011

“Trust me.  Open your eyes.”

I fought against the vertigo, against the instinct to keep my eyes squeezed shut.  Brown pupils flecked with gold greeted me, the rest of his face interrupted by the helmet and gas mask.  The corners of his eyes crinkled, as if he was smiling somewhere underneath all that equipment.

“Now focus on a distant object.  Take a deep breath.”  His knee pressed into mine, long legs crowding the aisle gap between us.  “Better?”

The rolling, lurching in my stomach faded to something I could cope with.  “Yes.”

“First away mission?” he asked.

“First non-simulated drop.”

“You’ll do fine, Private 4930 Eva Perez.”  As he turned away, the glare of his interior monitor flashed against his visor, red words streaming in a backwards reflection.  Our orders – for his eyes only.

The siren screamed to brace for landing.  Up and down the row of uniformed troops, a dozen pairs of hands gripped, visors snapped, seatbelts tightened.  The yellow biohazard insignias emblazoned on our suits glowed between the darkness and the flashing warning lights.  Everything shook now, including all the parts of me that hadn’t already been trembling, but I wasn’t alone in my jacked-up adrenaline rush.

The levelling landing feet took over, smoothing out the awkward angle of the cabin.

“Heads up.”

All eyes snapped to attention.

“There’s been no word from the colony for six weeks now.  Unknown if we’re walking into a hostile situation.  Keep in contact at all times.  Role call every ten minutes, on the hour.  Nobody takes a leak without backup cover.  No exceptions.  No distractions.  War zone drill.”

“Sir yes sir.”

The hatch whooshed open, bright light glaring before my visor shifted into polarized mode.  One by one we dashed out, heads low, running in formation, guns ready.  Dash, crouch, cover.  Dash again.

In less than a year the colonists managed to build a town square.  Some shops, some houses, a barn, a bandstand for dancing on moonlit nights while two orbs circled the foreign heavens.  Tall flowers, like tiger lilies, swayed orange and black in the breeze, scattering a dusting of pollen along the sidewalks.  Not exactly Earth, but still lovely.

No signs of life – no bustling humans, no barking dogs, no livestock cropping the overgrown grass.

He waved to me – Captain Miller – last month a title on my assignment roster, now in charge of my survival.

“What do you make of this, Perez?”

My scanner swept over the object he indicated, a brownish-green goo dried up along the thin edges, oozing out of a discarded boot.

“Unknown, sir.  Sending data to Mothership for analysis.”

“Creepy.”  He shuddered, and then stilled himself.  A rag fluttered by; he poked it with the barrel of his gun, lifting it up for inspection.  It was a shirt, soaked with that same crusty mess as the boot.

“Over here, sir.”  The background static didn’t cover the tremor in Private Reese’s voice.

More discarded clothes, this time sheltered from the sun and wind by the overhang of a porch, half in, half out, of a doorway.  Inside the building, clusters of clothes and shoes dotted the floor, like the humans dissolved right where they stood, bones melting away with flesh.

Reese shook his head.  “Impossible.”

“What – who – could do this?” I said.

“Don’t know.”  Miller would have rubbed his chin, but the helmet got in the way.  “Scout drill alpha six.  Start now.”

We scoured the area, sector by sector.  No bombed buildings.  No discarded foreign biological warfare cartridges.  No black scorch of flames.  No buzz of insects in the summer heat.  No birds swooping in the emerald sky.

There were no survivors.  We plotted the location of each possible corpse, looking for a pattern.  Half-eaten meals, unfinished homework, unclosed communicators scattered on the floor.  It was as if they just all turned to Jello right in the middle of an ordinary day.

The emptiness of it all ate away at my soul.

“Troops recall to base.  Begin roll call.”

The drill began, the list of names with a breathless pause between voices, waiting for something to happen, someone to go missing.  We instinctively huddled against the mystery, backs to the gazebo in the village square, rigid in attack formation.

“Incoming transmission.”  Miller paused, riveted by the privacy-mode message broadcasting into his helmet.  The team watched the horizon, while I watched Captain Miller.  He stood erect, and then his shoulders drooped like he was slowly being deflated.  When the signal flashed out, there was almost nothing left to him.

“At ease, people.”

“Word?”

“Mothership has confirmed that the colonists perished from a hostile microbe event, non-compatible with animal cellular structure.  The microbes are carried by the pollen, not released until the flowers bloomed.  A defensive mechanism against invading organisms.”

“Like us.”  Reese swallowed so hard it broadcasted over the headsets.

“Correct, Private.”

“I hate this drill.  Bio-hazard scrub.  Quarantine.  But I could use a good colon cleanse after all that deep-fried briskon on Orion Five.”

Everyone laughed at Reese – everyone but Miller.  His eyes were hidden behind the glare of sunset reflecting off his visor.

Reese headed for the shuttle, a knot of soldiers trudging behind him.  “Let’s get it over with.  At least I won’t have to go through quarantine alone this time.”

“Wait.”  Miller cleared his throat, his voice cracked, and he started again.  “You deserve to know.”

Wind rustled through the flowers.  The tiger lilies swayed; a fresh burst of pollen scattered on the air, glazing my visor with sticky yellow dust.

“We can’t go back.”

“What do you mean?”

“Mothership deems the microbes too toxic, too risky for decontamination protocol.  The rest of the fleet could be wiped out if we return.  You get on that shuttle, you’re dead.  They’re going to blow it up when it reaches orbit.  A humane end for us.”

“Order them to stand down.”  Spit and sweat marked the inside of Reese’s visor, his breath clouding and vanishing.  He shoved Miller, who raised his fists in defence.  “Tell them.  Now.”

I jumped between them.  “Back off.”

“You choose.”  Miller said.  “Get on the shuttle, end it quick.  Stay here, run out of air, die in your sleep.  Take off your helmet, turn to slime.”

“I’ll take my chances here.  I’m not being murdered by my own kind.”  Reese tore off his helmet, cropped hair plastered to his skull, beads of sweat darkening his fatigues as he ripped off his bio suit.  He took in a few deep breaths and smiled, eyes closing as his nostrils flared.  “Sweet.  Like honeyed roses.”

A spotted rash bloomed on his throat, racing over his chest.  He scratched absently, like working away at a mosquito bite.  Bubbles and blisters formed – painless, because he still smiled.

Weeping puss burst from the blisters, green-brown slime dripped from dissolving skin.  He melted away, like a candle without a flame.

Gone.

Someone poked the sludge with his boot – number 3628 on his sleeve – and he walked away to board the shuttle.  Several people followed him, decision made.

“Anyone else?”

The last three of us shook our heads.

The shuttle doors slammed shut; the engine fired.  The mechanical beast rose into the sky, contrail white against green, to collide with a silver missile.  Red flair, black smoke; the starburst explosion scattering the shrapnel of our destroyed future.

We sat quietly inside the gazebo, four points in a useless compass, contemplating the cold logic of Mothership.

Rosevelt died first, hyperventilating through the remnants of his oxygen, quickly using it all up.  When his life support monitors flatlined and winked out, he looked relaxed like he was sleeping.

Rogers went next.  We’d trained together, hoisted each other over walls at boot camp.  He was my friend.  I held his hand while he let go, wanting to wipe away tears, his and mine, but I couldn’t reach.

My air thinned.  My lungs screamed like a drowning swimmer.  Claustrophobia wrestled with reason – what did it matter how the end came?  I tore off my helmet, gulped in that sweet scent of honeyed roses.  Reese was right.  It was a better way to let go.

Miller reached for my hand, guiding it up to his own helmet.  “Help me,” he whispered, as his fingers fumbled with the air locks.

“Come to join me, for a last breath of air?”  The oxygen made me giddy, like tequila in my blood.  Miller’s face emerged, so handsome in completion; those dark brown eyes flecked with gold, the knife-edged nose.  Hair so thick I couldn’t see his scalp, even with the buzz-cut.  When I touched his cheek, tiny blisters broke under my fingertips, slicking clear fluid across his skin.

I closed my eyes, wanting my last vision to be of his face, beautiful and whole.  The sun must have set; my skin felt cool.  The breeze kissed my skin, drying the sweat of fear, of defeat.

His hand reached for mine, remaining solid.  It squeezed again.

“Look,” he said.  “Open your eyes.”

Dazzling bursts of lights, blue and green and yellow, danced across the night sky.  Aurora Borealis – what would they call it here?

He pulled me to my feet.  Crusty scabs itched like crazy, my flesh pock-marked by the strange invading microbe.

“They won’t ever come back for us, will they?”

“No,” he said.

Tiger lily stalks waved in the breeze, rustling and humming vibrations like a song.  The moons’ light glimmered through petals so thin and transparent, that tiny veins branched out against the velvety softness.  So lovely, so deadly.

His hands caressed my skin, eager for contact, for the companionship of the last living soul.

It’s not wrong to take pleasure this way, so freely given, with someone who could never touch me in that other world.  My hands reached out, dancing across his broken skin, hungry for contact, for joy.  The last human, won by default.

And he was so beautiful, I couldn’t close my eyes.