SNAFU: Unnatural Selection

HERE THERE BE MONSTERS Dave Beynon

“Are you done yet?”

Falstaff wore his usual roll-eyed expression of impatience. He tapped his foot, checked his watch and looked theatrically at the column of soldiers moving out.

“Almost,” I said, scribbling co-ordinates and notations in my notebook. “If the army allowed me a crew, this would all be going so much faster, Sergeant.”

“No crew. Just lucky old me, but you know the drill: we move in, we secure, you map – quickly – then we move out. That’s the way it is.”

I muttered under my breath.

“Did you just say ‘Invasion on a budget’ again?”

I nodded. I was indeed a broken record when it came to my need for a crew. Sgt Falstaff was as fine a person as you would meet in the soldiering profession but he lacked the temperament for surveying and mapmaking. You’d think a soldier would be good at standing still and holding a rangefinder or an elevation target but sadly, no. I’d had soldiers assisting me for the last twenty years and there wasn’t a one of them who didn’t sway.

“You know, in the old days…”

“Yes, I do know. In the old days, there would be a corps of engineers dispatched with each unit blah, blah, blah. I know. I almost sympathize. I really do. We soldiers, however, have a job to do. Do you think these indigenous people are going to quell themselves?”

I glanced back along the narrow roadway I was mapping toward the village. The old man who spoke for the village had told Murray, our IPLO – Indigenous Persons Liaison Officer – that the name of the place was Ithalaco. That was Murray’s best guess at how it was phonetically spelled, given the dialect was hard for a human tongue to negotiate. Murray did her best, but even a linguist of her skill had difficulty reproducing the sounds the locals’ beaks created. Well, Ithalaco was what was on the map now.

At the edge of the village, I’d placed a pair of markers. A traditional iron surveyor’s spike was hammered deep into the ground. The other marker was an elevated solar-powered beacon. I’d set it in the hope that one day there’d be a GPS satellite placed in orbit around this godforsaken world. A half-dozen local children moved cautiously around the two metre tall post, daring each other to touch it.

“There doesn’t seem to be a lot of quelling needed. They seem a pretty cowed population. Maybe just this once I could have enough time to double-check my measurements before we move on?”

“We don’t camp in the villages. The captain wants us five klicks into the jungle before we camp for the night. Can we go?”

“Fine,” I said, not yet packing up my transit, the main measuring device I use for calculating distance, elevation and location. “First I need you to take your marker and stand over by that tree. And try to hold it steady for once. God, what I wouldn’t give for just one set of measurements that made sense at the end of the day.”

I made the last of my notes then wrapped the notebook in good old fashioned oilskin. In the humidity of the jungle – any world’s jungle – portable computers were notoriously unreliable. Almost all of my equipment, from my optical sextant and transit right down to my pens, pencils and paper, was analog. My camera was digital, a bulky thing of neoprene, glass and plastic that seldom came out of its waterproof carrying case. It was so bulky I made sure Sgt Falstaff always ended up with it in his pack along with stakes, beacons, tapes and markers. I might not get a crew, but I was determined to make the good sergeant my own personal packhorse.

I gave the village one last glance as I collapsed my tripod. The village elder who had spoken with Murray came to the edge of the village and chased away the children. He looked at me, raised his two left hands and pointed toward the jungle the troop was entering. With an oddly human gesture, he shook his head and then dropped his gaze to the ground. I would have asked him what he was trying to tell me but I’d only picked up a handful of words and most of those had to do with food. Murray had moved on at the head of the march. I smiled, careful not to show teeth, and waved to the old man. He shook his head in response and returned to the village.

“While we’re young, Wilson,” said Falstaff. “You know how you want time to double-check your measurements? Just once, I don’t want to be bringing up the rear.”

I packed away the transit and secured my tripod to my pack. “What are you complaining about? In twenty years of following the army around making maps, I’ve never once had to set up a tent or prepare the evening meal.” I shouldered my pack and nodded toward the swath our trailblazers’ machetes had cut into the jungle. “And neither has my sergeant.”

Falstaff smiled at that. “You might just have a point, Engineer Wilson.”

True to form, five kilometres from the village, measured by my boot-mounted pedometer, Falstaff and I found the camp. Dinner was well underway. A rehydrated salad and a soybean brick augmented with vitamins and minerals made for a nutritionally-balanced meal. How could it be that humanity managed to master faster-than-light travel but was hopelessly stymied when it came to infusing anything approaching flavor into a soybean brick?

I took my foil plate and sat next to Murray.

“Ted,” she said. “Nice to see you found us.”

“Always nice to see you, too, Lisa. It doesn’t take a mapmaker to follow the trail this bunch leaves. Chicken tonight?”

Murray lifted the edge of her nutrition block and shrugged. “I’ve no idea what kind of meat they tried to simulate with this one. They failed. Again.”

“I’ve been eating this stuff for twenty years. A few years back there were a half dozen bricks that tasted just like smoked salmon. I think they were labelled as chicken. Never tasted anything so good before or since out of a ration pack.” I swallowed a chalky mouthful. “So, has the captain figured where we’re going tomorrow?”

“I think we are exploring from here on. The village elder told me his village stood on the frontier. No other people heading… which way are we heading anyway?”

I didn’t need to check my compass. “West. Well, west-ish. The magnetic north on this world is offset from the rotational axis by twenty-six degrees so your angle of—“I stopped myself. I’d long ago discovered the details of my profession made for snooze-worthy dinner conversation. “We’re kind of heading west.”

“Chokohn – that’s the elder’s name – he told me there’s a string of villages that run the equivalent of north and south in a straight line along the edge of this denser jungle. He said they never come in here.”

“Never? I know this jungle’s dense but Falstaff and I passed a ton of what looks like edible fruit on our way here.”

She shrugged. “He said ‘never’.”

“Maybe that explains it.”

“Explains what?”

I described the elder’s actions and gestures as I was packing up to leave.

“You’ve always got to be careful, Ted. You can’t assign human meaning to alien gestures. Jesus, there’s not universal consistency across human cultures, let alone alien ones.”

“Well, it sure looked like he was trying to tell me not to come out here.”

Murray shrugged. “They’re a primitive culture. Limited agriculture. Just starting to smelt metals. Maybe jungle represents the unknown and they’re naturally afraid of it.”

“I guess. But for a fledgling culture, this jungle also represents new resources, right? Hey, that’s why we’re out here. But the old man said they don’t come out here at all? Not even to hunt? Not even those kids I saw poking around my beacon?”

Murray shook her head. “This whole area is taboo. Because it’s taboo, there’s naturally superstition surrounding it.”

“Boogeymen?”

She laughed. I always liked it when I was able to coax a laugh from Murray.

“Pretty much. But his word, if I’m right, translates to ‘The Others’.”

“How ominous. Wait a minute. I thought that’s what the indigenous people called us.”

“That’s what I thought they were calling us. They call us Jahahlla.” The word ended in a delightful trill that brought out Murray’s laugh lines. “I thought that meant ‘others’ until today. The elder explained the difference. I now know it means ‘visitors’ or ‘travellers’.”

“So how do you say ‘others’?”

There was nothing at all delightful about the guttural clack that came out of Murray’s mouth.

“Oh… that doesn’t sound very friendly, does it?”

“No. Chokohn told me we shouldn’t come out here. I explained to him as best I could that we’re mapping the area so that when more visitors arrive they’ll know where everything is. He told me we didn’t want to know what was in the jungle. He said we could just end our map at the edge of his village and go back the way we came.”

“I wish. I can’t believe I’m about to say this but I could really go for the relative luxury of a spaceship right about now. We’ve been here for over a month now. This traipsing through the wilderness following soldiers is a young person’s game.”

“You whine and complain but you love it. Besides, on a civilized world there’s no need for mapmakers.”

“Or linguists. Not on the civilized ones.”

“Too true,” she said. “It’s weird. Usually the locals are only too ready to have us push on.”

“Not this time?”

“No. Chokohn invited us to stay, rather than have us press on into the jungle. He said they’d hold a feast for us, if only we promised to go back the way we came.”

“They really don’t want us out here, do they? Do you think they’re really concerned with us running into these Others you mentioned?”

Murray picked at the last of her lettuce but made no motion to move that sad leaf to her mouth. “We hear things like this on other worlds. You know that. Oh, don’t go out there. Bad things are out there.” She inclined her head toward where the captain sat, eating and talking with her officers. “More often than not the locals are simply trying to keep our soldiers from finding some place of religious or cultural significance. Or from uncovering some nearby resources – resources they’d like to keep for themselves.”

“You can hardly blame them. After all, it is their planet.”

Murray placed her hand on my arm. “What a naïve notion, Cartographer First Class Wilson.” Her tone was good-natured, but there was a bitter undercurrent I wasn’t sure she’d intended to share. She lowered her voice a shade. “It’s their world until we find something useful. Then it becomes annexed. For their own protection, of course.”

“Of course,” I said. “We’re all just one big happy galactic family.”

Sgt Falstaff approached with his tray, eying his food brick dubiously.

“Chicken?” he asked as he took a seat.

“Chickenish,” said Murray. “So, what is the captain saying about tomorrow’s adventure. We’ll continue to the west?”

“That’s her plan,” said Falstaff. “We’ll break camp at dawn then press on until we find a big enough gap in the tree canopy to launch a drone to scout ahead. We’ll reassess the situation then.”

As it turned out, we never had a chance to launch that drone and only some of us ever got the chance to reassess the situation.

I’ve marched on more than three dozen worlds, through terrain far more varied than anything found in earth’s solar system. Each ecosystem brings its own challenges, and the only thing worse to march through than jungle is swamp. After hacking our way for three hours without a break, the jungle abruptly opened into a vast misty wetland shrouded with a fetid layer of yellowish fog.

“Private Ho, let’s have an atmospheric test before we press on,” the captain called out from the front of the line. I heard one of the soldiers moving through the ranks, though I couldn’t see her. I was reaching for the respirator in the pouch on my hip when the captain called the all clear. “No toxins.”

Those were the last words spoken before everything went to hell.

The fog drifted to the edge of the jungle, enveloping us and reducing our visibility. Falstaff stood two metres away. I could barely see him. From the wetlands, I heard what sounded like a breaking wave accompanied by a locust swarm’s worth of fluttering.

Two quick shots were fired from the front of the line, followed by a wet slap and a loud crack. A rapid burst of gunfire, a scream and then the sound of branches snapping as something flew through the jungle to my left, landing with a meaty thump. As part of the Cartography Corp, I carry no weapon, yet I found myself instinctively reaching for one at my hip. Falstaff, long a soldier before he became my assistant, reached for a weapon he did not have. He unclasped the marker staff, brandishing it like a spear.

I raised my hand and was about to speak when something leathery, grey and moist reached out of the fog and dragged Falstaff away. The marker staff fell to the ground. As I reached for his foot, a length of ropy, slime-coated tentacle slapped against my cheek. The tentacle’s tip was just below my eye. It terminated in a glistening thorny claw that dripped a pus-like yellow venom.

A quick jab just below my left eye, then oblivion.

An alien insect crawling across my eyelid startled me awake. My mouth seemed full of ash. As I opened my eyes, I realized the left one was swollen shut, save for a crusty sliver. When I tried to lift a hand to determine the extent of the swelling I realized I’d been bound.

I was naked. Sitting. My outstretched legs were tightly secured with braided jungle vines lined with tiny nettles that irritated my skin. Behind me, my hands were tied with the same type of vine. Like guy-wires securing an upright post, three lengths of vine kept me from slumping onto my side. Whatever had taken us had dragged us to a boggy clearing. On the ground before me, my clothing and gear was laid out, neat and orderly. Everything had been examined and lined up. My notebooks lay open and my hand-drawn maps were unfurled next to their waterproof cylinders.

“Ted.”

Murray’s voice came from my left. I turned my head and immediately regretted it. My head swam with vertigo and I tasted bile. I tried to focus through my left eye.

“Lisa,” I said, “what happened?”

“Don’t know. Something took us. Your eye? Can you see out of it?”

“Not especially. Does it look as bad as it feels?”

I got a vague sense of movement and interpreted it as a nod. “It’s swollen and there’s a crusty scab on your cheek. Is this the first time you’ve gained consciousness?”

“As far as I can remember. You?”

“I woke… a while ago… to someone screaming in the distance. I panicked and tried to pull free of these vines. I guess I exerted myself too much. Tunnel vision then I passed out. I woke up a few minutes ago and have been calling to you.”

I had a touch of tunnel vision myself and the pasty taste in my mouth had me on the edge of throwing up. I flexed my arms. There was a little give, yet not enough to work my hands free. Besides, with each flex the nettles bit into my flesh, telling me that struggling was not in the cards.

“How many of us are here?” I seemed to be the end of the line, if there was a line, with Murray and any others to my left, invisible to my swollen eye. “More than just you and me?”

“Falstaff is a little ways off. Kind of by himself. The rest of our soldiers are farther away – those that are still with us, anyway. There’s only six or seven. The captain’s at the very end.”

“That’s all?” Thirty-six people had broken camp that morning. “Jesus. Did you get a look at what attacked us?”

The vision in my left eye was starting to clear. I could actually see her nod this time. “I mostly saw their handiwork. Jesus, Ted, they tore our people apart. Private Ho was just ahead of me before that fog rolled in. She screamed. Jesus. Then… pieces of her started hitting me and landing all around. Half of Private Martinez hit the ground next to me. His mouth was still moving. Something like a lobster claw pulled me to the ground… then I woke up here.”

“A claw? Like a crustacean?”

“Yeah. Like a crab or a lobster or the Kiloko people on Chara. Only bigger than any claw you’ve ever seen.”

“I was taken down by a tentacle.”

“A… tentacle? More than one species? Working together?”

I could only shrug.

“Lisa? All of my stuff has been arranged near my feet. I can’t see too clearly over your way yet. Is everyone’s gear down by their feet?”

“Yeah,” she said. “It’s weird. It’s so neatly stacked. The soldiers’ armor and weaponry are separate from their food and kit. My clothes are apart from my notebooks and recording equipment and from what I can tell one of my voice recorders is missing. It looks like Falstaff confused them a bit.”

“Why?”

“Well, it looks like we’ve been grouped by function. The soldiers with their armor and weapons are all in one group. You and I – the record keepers and note-takers – are over here. But Falstaff is all by himself in the middle. He wears armor and a uniform like any soldier and they’re piled like everyone else’s armor and uniform. His food and kit are stacked to one side. In the middle, where the other soldiers have weapons, Falstaff has that marking stick you make him carry, those beacons of yours, some iron spikes, a hammer and a big empty waterproof case.”

“Empty? My camera was in that case.”

“That’s odd. Two different types of recording devices are missing.”

I shifted, trying in vain to become more comfortable. Impossible. I forced my left eye to open wider. I was rewarded with pain and added focus. I nodded.

“I can see a little more clearly now,” I said. “Do you think that whoever took us understands how to use our devices?”

Murray nodded.

“I’d bet money we’re being recorded right now.”

“By who? Whom?”

“Whom. And that’s the question.”

The days on this planet lasted just over thirty-eight earth hours. The sun stood high in the sky when the captain finally regained consciousness.

Captain Najafi, after straining heroically against her bonds with no success, ordered a roll call.

“What do we know, people?”

Each of us relayed our experience prior to capture. Each described an attack by a different creature, though barbed tentacles seemed a common theme. Captain Najafi listened without comment until Murray mentioned our missing equipment.

“We’re obviously dealing with intelligence. Specialist Murray, do the actions of our abductors jive with what we know of the indigenous people of this planet?”

Murray shook her head. “Not at all. These are a peaceful, timid people. They’re not aggressive at all.”

“So we’re looking at another race?”

“Another species. More than one. But it doesn’t feel right.”

“What do you mean, Specialist?”

“My experience shows that where two sentient species evolve on the same planet, there’s more similarity – in culture, behavior and physically, as well – than we’ve seen here. It’s almost as if we’re dealing with something alien out here.”

As it turned out we were dealing with something alien, but not in the way Murray meant. Between the people trussed up in that clearing we had over two hundred years of experience in a score of disciplines honed on over five dozen planets. None of it prepared us for what happened next.

A patch of bog a dozen metres away began to pulse with a glow usually reserved for the bioluminescence of a creature dwelling in a very deep ocean. The ground heaved, accompanied by a mucky sucking sound. The air seemed charged with ozone and a metallic taste filled my mouth. A leathery grey hand rose from the centre of the pulsing patch of earth, each of its eight long fingers ended in a dirt-crusted claw. A narrow, lanky arm followed the hand. Another hand and arm followed. Then another. In all, six spidery arms and hands reached out and dragged the creature from the ground.

Spindly and creased, it towered over us. Folds of seemingly mummified skin stretched over bones that looked as if they’d snap with any hint of pressure. Four fleshy legs coated in a layer of sickly yellow quills supported a torso that looked more insect than animal. Each leg ended in what looked like a cloven hoof.

Atop the torso was a tapered, scaly head. Filled with needle-like teeth, a vertical maw opened and closed with the same rhythmic pulse as the luminescent earth. Lining each side of the maw were four unblinking eyes, glassy as marbles and as black as space.

Head pivoting on a pencil-thin neck, the gaze of those eight eyes settled first on the captain, then on Murray.

Sounds, harsh and crisp, slid past all those wicked teeth. It sounded like the language of the villagers only with a hard edge, decidedly nastier.

Murray’s eyes grew wide. Clearing her throat, she answered in the natives’ language. Anticipating everyone’s unasked question, she supplied a translation.

“It asked me if I was the one who was good with language,” she said. “I told it I was.”

The creature rattled off more words and gestured toward the captain with half of its arms. Murray spoke considerably less. If a smile is possible on a vertical mouth, the thing grinned and made a sweeping gesture that encompassed all of us.

“It… it encourages me to translate everything. It seems interested in the captain. It wants to know if you are our chieftain, Captain Najafi. What should I tell it?”

Najafi sat taller. “Tell it that I am and I demand to be released. That all of us must be released. Now.”

Murray spoke the words. The top and bottom of the maw curled, showing mottled gums. A rapid string of words was followed by the clacking of the claws on one of the creature’s hands.

As Murray opened her mouth to translate, a ball of dark fur about a metre in diameter fell from one of the trees that surrounded the clearing. It landed silently, then chattered as dozens of hook-footed legs pushed out of the fur. The feet scuttled it closer to the captain. As it turned, the fur parted, revealing a thin-lipped mouth lined with broken, jagged fangs. It stopped just short of Najafi and snapped those teeth twice in her direction.

“It says… it says you will be freed, Captain. I’m assuming this other… lifeform is to free you.”

In a blur, the furred creature sped around the captain, snarling and snapping. Like a flea, it hopped back. The vines securing Najafi lay in tatters around her. Naked, she rose defiantly to her feet.

The spindly creature smacked its top two fists against its torso and spat a handful of words. Then it gestured to the ground in front of Najafi. The head pivoted to Murray.

“It says that it is chieftain of its people as you are of yours. It wants you to put on your… the word it used was the one the villagers use for the thin fibre wrap they wear, but I think it means your armor. It wants you to put on your armor.”

Captain Najafi glared at the creature.

“Specialist Murray, do you know the local vernacular for ‘go fuck yourself’? Tell it I do not take orders from aggressors.”

Murray swallowed, then spoke to the creature. It bobbed its head, curiously like a nod. It clacked its fingertips together.

From the darkened edge of the clearing, one of the shadows detached itself from the others and slid silently across the ground. As it grew closer the shadow coalesced, drawing darkness into itself and taking bipedal form. Featureless at first with tar-like glossy black skin, it took on approximately human proportions. On feet that didn’t seem to quite touch the ground, it strode over to Corporal Tsang. Silently, the shadow creature grabbed Tsang’s hair with one hand and peeled off his right ear with the other. As Tsang screamed, ink black fingers flung his ear to the ground. Before it landed, the furry creature skittered and leapt, catching the ear and devouring it with a snap and a snarl.

The chieftain spat some words at Murray.

“Captain,” she said, “it wants you to put on the armor. It says… it says that Corporal Tsang has lots of parts that might be ripped free if you decline.”

Najafi was already reaching for her breastplate. As she strapped on her armor, Najafi glared at the chieftain. After pulling on her helmet, she glanced at Murray.

“Fine. Now what does this son of a bitch want?”

Murray translated.

The chieftain pointed with half its hands at Captain Najafi’s rifle. It made a motion of grabbing and pulling. It spoke, but Murray hardly needed to translate.

“It is telling you to take your rifle.”

Najafi smiled, showing teeth.

“Big mistake.”

She casually walked toward her gun. At the last second she rolled, scooped up the rifle, knelt and fired. A burst – six or seven rapid shots – blasted the chieftain off all four feet. Najafi turned her sites on the shadow creature. Before she could fire it dissipated, like smoke caught in a sudden gust. In a heartbeat she sought and found the furred creature, firing a pair of shots at it as those dozens of tiny legs launched it into the foliage.

“Chew on that,” she said. “Keep calm, Corporal. I’ll have you all freed in a jif—”

The captain fell silent. A series of rapid huffs came from the prone chieftain. The huffs became louder and more frequent.

“Murray,” I said, “is that thing still alive? Is it having trouble breathing?”

Murray’s face was slack. She bit her lip and hung her head.

“It’s laughing. Jesus Christ, Ted, it’s laughing at us.”

The staccato of exhalations grew louder as the chieftain rose. All six of Najafi’s bullets had found their mark, leaving considerable holes in the creature’s carapace-like torso. Black ichor oozed from the wounds. When a viscous dollop hit the earth, the ground smouldered and the vegetation nearby withered. As we watched, the ichor congealed at the edges of the wounds, sealing them.

The chieftain raised all six arms. Now it sounded like laughter to all of us. The tapered head turned to Murray and barked a few words.

“We are tiny,” she translated. “Tiny and weak.”

Captain Najafi emptied her clip.

A standard issue assault rifle holds thirty-eight shots in its clip. Najafi was so close that the remaining thirty must all have struck true. Throughout the barrage, the chieftain stood its ground, all four legs bracing and straining against impact. When the echo of the last gunshot faded, amid the shifting smoke of gunpowder, impossibly the chieftain still stood.

Its torso, head and arms were a slaughterhouse of trauma. Like a hypnotised person, I watched slack-jawed as all of that trauma folded in on itself and healed. The chieftain laughed and barked a single word, then it launched itself at our captain.

Nanocarbonfibre armor – a miracle material that requires extreme temperature and special tools to cut – lay shredded on the ground. All of the claws on the ends of all of those fingers on each of those six arms surrounded Captain Najafi in a whirlwind of motion. Before Najafi began to scream, the chieftain stepped back to regard its handiwork with those eight hard eyes.

In less time than it took to shred her armor, the chieftain had flayed our captain. As I reflect, I like to think that shock took her, then and there, shielding her from the agony. I like to think that. I just wish I could believe it. I can’t. As she fell, I saw her eyes.

Before she hit the ground, a carpet of things rattled from the tall grass at the edge of the clearing. No two seemed exactly alike. Some slithered faster than any snake. Some scuttled, sideways and crablike. Others lurched, or crawled or scampered. However they moved, all were lightning fast and all shared a common goal.

The creatures converged on Captain Najafi, blanketing her in an undulating, writhing, nightmare mass. Her muffled screams ended, replaced by crunching and the unwholesome chewing sounds of a thousand tiny mouths. We sat in horrified silence until the mass of creatures swept back to the tall grass, moving across the ground like a blanket of cockroaches confronted by a sudden light.

Not content with simply eating Captain Najafi, the creatures left an oval depression where she had fallen, devouring every hint of her, down to the tiniest drop of blood that might have soaked into the soil.

When I looked at Murray, she was shaking. All of us were. From the IPLO and the mapmaker, to the battle-hardened soldiers, each of us wept. Corporal Tsang, his lost ear forgotten, stared at the shallow void where our captain had been. Next to him sat Private Verne and Private Jimenez. Too far apart for physical consolation, they stared at each other, trying to give emotional support. They tried to be brave, but their features betrayed them. Fear was winning.

I didn’t really know the next three privates. They’d rotated in a month ago, just before we’d been dropped on this world. I wish I could tell you their names and what sort of people they were in life. I can’t. I can only tell you they died as well as circumstances allowed, which wasn’t well at all. Terrified and crying and often on their knees, they begged for mercy from the merciless with exactly the results you’d expect.

Falstaff, segregated for no reason other than his equipment, suffered alone, waiting for what came next.

In a daze, I asked Murray a question.

She turned to me. “Wh-what?”

“Before… before what happened… the chieftain… it said something. It sounded like just one word.”

“I don’t want to say, Ted. Really. You don’t want to know.”

“Please. Share it, Lisa. Tell me and share it. What did that thing say just before it skinned our captain?”

“Jesus, Ted. I’ve only heard that word a couple of times among the indigenous people and only ever among the children.”

“The children…”

“Once in a while, one of the privates will share some chocolate ration or a cookie pack with one of the indigenous kids. That thing over there said the same word the children say when they’re anticipating a treat.”

“Share it, Lisa. What did that thing say just before it tore into Captain Najafi?”

“It said ‘yummy’.”

The chieftain refrained from dirtying its hands murdering any more of our number. Instead, it whooped and laughed and clapped as every few hours a fresh nightmare would detach itself from the shadows, slither from the grass, drop down from the trees, rise from the fetid swamp or crash from the jungle into the clearing. Starting with Corporal Tsang, these new creatures, each just as horrible and twisted as the next, worked their way down the line of soldiers. Twice, the kill was as swift as Captain Najafi. The rest were not so fortunate. One of the privates I didn’t know must have taken an hour to die, all the time tormented by a tentacled thing whose touch burned like acid.

Each time a new horror entered the clearing, the chieftain spoke to Murray. It told her the rest of us must watch. If we looked away, the shadowy thing reappeared and began slicing off pieces of the next person in line. When the last private finally died and was devoured, the chieftain strode across the clearing to Falstaff.

It took his face into one of its eight-fingered hands. It seemed to size him up, then looked down at his gear. It turned to Murray and spoke.

“It says you’re different from the other soldiers, Falstaff,” Murray said. “It is asking me why you wear armor but carry no weapon.”

The chieftain nudged the hammer and stakes with one of its hooves. Murray barked a long string of words.

“I just told it those aren’t weapons. That they’re used to mark location – territory is the word the indigenous people use. I told it you assist Ted, Falstaff. I don’t know what it wants.”

The chieftain approached me. The maw opened and closed as it drew near. The fingertip claws clacked with each step. It regarded me with those cold, glassy eyes. I felt like some scientific specimen wriggling on a pin. It levelled a claw in my direction and spoke at length with Murray.

She nodded at the end and took a deep breath.

“These creatures did take your camera and my voice recorder. When I asked it why it said, ‘So that we can relive the moments again and again after you are used up.’”

“Used up? Jesus…”

“I think ‘used up’ actually means ‘gone’ but I’m not entirely sure. Given what we’ve been through… It was very interested in why we are here. I explained as best I could. Then it wanted to know about you.”

I swallowed hard. “Me?”

“It says it wants to talk to you about your maps.”

The furry creature with all the legs and the snapping teeth dropped from the trees and sped toward me. I felt hot breath as it snarled and circled me, freeing me from the vines amid a tornado of flashing, broken ivory. As it scuttled a few metres away, it clacked its teeth at me.

The chieftain crouched and placed a fingertip beneath my chin. It lifted my head so I would have to look into its maw as it spoke. After a dozen or so words, it seemed to smile and released my chin.

“It wants you to be cooperative. If… if you aren’t… the Shadowman will hurt me.”

I nodded. “Tell it that I’ll do as I’m told.”

“Fuck that,” yelled Falstaff. “It’s just going to kill us all as soon as it gets what it wants. Don’t you dare help it, Ted.”

The Shadowman appeared behind Falstaff and silently reached toward his ear.

“Stop!” I raised a hand and pointed at the chieftain. To my surprise, the Shadowman actually hesitated. “Don’t you dare let that thing hurt him. Lisa, tell it if that… that Shadowman lays a finger on Falstaff there’s no way in hell I’ll do what it wants.”

Alien words tumbled frantically from Lisa’s mouth. The chieftain laughed and dismissively waved three of its hands. The Shadowman drifted back a few metres, but like a bad dream didn’t dissipate entirely.

I dipped my head to the chieftain. “Thank you,” I said. “Falstaff, please stay quiet. I think the Shadowman behind you is just itching to rip you apart the next time you open your mouth. Lisa, what does it want from me?”

The chieftain gathered my maps and rolled them out on the ground. It placed different bits of our gear on the corners to keep the papers from curling up. Murray translated back and forth as we spoke.

“These are pictures of this world?” the chieftain said.

“Yes. I’ve shown where there’s water and land. This shade of green is the jungle. Villages are marked. These lines are elevation – how high or low the land goes. See?”

A crusted talon tapped a dot on the map.

“This place here. That is the village of Chokohn, yes?”

I nodded. “It is. You know of Chokohn? Of his village?”

“I visit him in his dreams.” The smile appeared on the maw. “In his nightmares.” The chieftain’s other hands moved to all the other village dots on all three maps. “I visit them all in their nightmares. They know better than to come out here looking for us. I am surprised old Chokohn did not warn you to stay away.”

We all lowered our heads. Understanding the gesture, the chieftain laughed.

“He is a wise man. You should always listen to wise men. Wise men know this territory–” one of its hands spread out over the blank area of the map that represented where we were “–all of this territory belongs to me and mine. We have now taught you – as we once taught their ancestors – this place is not for you. Like their ancestors, we shall allow some of you to go so that you may pass down the notion that this is an unpleasant place to visit.” It tapped the map, then pointed at me. “We let you go specifically to mark that on your picture. A warning that your people may be wise enough to heed. A warning so your people will always know what awaits them when foolish enough to come this way.”

The chieftain rose, clacking its fingertips twice. The furry creature whirled around Murray, then Falstaff, freeing them both. We all stood naked in the clearing. The chieftain turned to leave, then hesitated. It clacked its fingers one last time. The Shadowman appeared at Falstaff’s side, seized his left hand and twisted off his little finger. As Falstaff slumped to his knees, holding his hand to staunch the bleeding, the chieftain spoke its last words.

“Do as I ask,” it said, “or I shall send the Shadowman for the rest of them.”

Dropping to my knees, I scrambled to open the case that held my pens. I outlined the area the chieftain had indicated in black and crosshatched the edges of the lines for emphasis. With a trembling hand, I made the notation.

“What have you written?” Murray asked.

“The only thing that makes sense,” I told her. “Here There Be Monsters.”